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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 As a part of the update for the Covid-19 Exposure Notification API made by Google and Apple, the Bluetooth controllers have been recalibrated to improve the detection of nearby devices. The new Covid-19 Exposure Notification API was introduced by Apple And Google earlier in May this year that would allow public health authorities to create apps that can alert users when they have been exposed to the virus. The API has just received updates that makes it more flexible about how data is obtained by the apps that use it. The update to the API was announced by Google yesterday and includes a bunch of changes that make these exposure notifications more capable and flexible, according to a report by 9to5Mac. The public health authorities who have adopted the API into their apps now have more control to decide the level of risk for each exposure based on technical information. Another change in the API is that the Bluetooth controllers have been recalibrated to improve the detection of nearby devices. The first version of the API that was rolled out did not allow different apps to communicate with each other and the updated version now supports an interoperability feature between countries. The new update also promises better debugging tools so as developers can perform more in-depth testing in order to create more reliable apps. Google said that these improvements have been brought in based on the requests from governments that are using the API already. Currently, there are 16 countries using the API. Canada just got a Covid Alert app that uses the API to offer virus-related exposure notifications and the Brazilian Ministry of Health has also announced that Brazil is going to offer support for the same API for iPhone and Android. Brazil has access to exposure alerts through the Coronavirus SUS app that provides data on the pandemic and tips on prevention. The government said that patients who have tested positive will receive a unique token with the test results that can be inserted into the Coronavirus SUS app to alert others when the app is installed. This process is both voluntary and anonymous. Reports have it that this update to the Coronavirus SUS app with Exposure Notification API is already there on Android and will be rolled out to iOS soon. Additionally, Covid Alert application and any app built using Apple and Googles Exposure Notification API will not work on iOS 14. Four suspects were charged for their alleged involvement in the recent Twitter hack, announced the Department of Justice. US authorities announced the arrest of 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark from Tampa, Florida, it is suspected to have orchestrated the recent Twitter hack. The arrest is the result of an operation coordinated by the FBI, the IRS, and the Secret Service. The arrest of Clark, who is suspected to be the mastermind behind the attack, was first reported by Florida news outlet WFLA-TV. Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren filed 30 felony charges against the teen this week for scamming people across America in connection with the Twitter hack that happened on July 15. states WFLA-TV. The charges hes facing include one count of organized fraud, 17 counts of communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to computer or electronic device without authority. Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren filed charges against Clark for being the mastermind behind the attack that compromised 130 accounts. The teen is believed to have gained access to Twitters backend, then he used an internal tool to take over several high-profile accounts and promote a cryptocurrency scam. The attackers posted messages urging the followers of the hacked accounts to send money to a specific bitcoin wallet address to receive back larger sums. The hackers were able to take control of 45 of them sending out some posts on behalf of the owners, and downloaded data from eight. The list of hacked accounts includes Barrack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Michael Bloomberg, and others. With this fraudulent scheme, threat actors obtained nearly $120,000 worth of bitcoins (approximately 12.86 bitcoins were amassed by attackers in accounts associated with Clark) from the unaware followers of the hacked accounts. Below some of the charges reported in a press release from Warrens office: organized fraud (over $50,000) 1 count communications fraud (over $300) 17 counts fraudulent use of personal information (over $100,000 or 30 or more victims) 1 count fraudulent use of personal information 10 counts access computer or electronic device without authority (scheme to defraud) 1 count In a separate announcement, the US Department of Justice announced additional charges against two Clarks accomplices, Mason Sheppard (19), aka Chaewon, and Nima Fazeli (22), aka Rolex, from Orlando, Florida. Mason Sheppard, aka Chaewon, 19, of Bognor Regis, in the United Kingdom, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. states the DoJ. Nima Fazeli, aka Rolex, 22, of Orlando, Florida, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer. The third defendant is a juvenile. With exceptions that do not apply to this case, juvenile proceedings in federal court are sealed to protect the identity of the juvenile. Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs hacking, Twitter hack) Share this... Linkedin Share this: Twitter Print LinkedIn Facebook More Tumblr Pocket Share On China's ARJ21 capable of serving all high-plateau airports People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 14:35, July 31, 2020 China's independently-developed ARJ21 regional jetliner has been verified capable of operating in all high-plateau airports, its developer announced Thursday after due testings. An ARJ21 airplane returned to Shanghai on Thursday after completing a half-month flight test, which thoroughly examined the aircraft's operation capacity in a high-plateau airport environment, said the Shanghai-based Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC). The ARJ21 aircraft completed the expanded tests on its performance on the maximum take-off and landing altitude at Daocheng Yading Airport located in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Sichuan Province. Located 4,411 meters above sea level, it is the world's highest-altitude civilian airport. The tests verified that ARJ21 is capable of operating in all high-plateau airports, and paved the way for airlines to use the aircraft to open more high-altitude routes, said the COMAC. The ARJ21 is China's first turbo-fan regional passenger jetliner model and is designed with 78 to 90 seats and a range of 3,700 km. It can fly in alpine and plateau regions and is adaptive to various airport conditions. Plateau airports refer to those airports with an altitude of more than 1,500 meters above sea level. They include high plateau airports that are more than 2,438 meters above sea level. China has the world's largest number of plateau airports, of which 19 are high plateau airports. Most of these airports are located in the western regions. According to the Chinese commercial aircraft maker, the COMAC values high demands from the Chinese civil aviation market, especially those in the western regions. The plateau operation attaches high requirements on the aircraft to maintain safety in high-altitude environment with thin air, complex terrains and changeable weather. The ARJ21 development team took the high-altitude performance and operation capacity as key design targets of the regional jetliner model, said the COMAC. In 2013 and 2017, the ARJ21 aircraft carried out flight tests at two Chinese airports, respectively, at altitudes of 2,842 meters and 2,905 meters. The latest test flights in Daocheng expanded the aircraft's maximum take-off and landing altitude, and further verified its reliability and plateau performance, the COMAC added. As a pioneer of Chinese commercial airplanes, the ARJ21 aircraft was put into commercial service in June 2016 by Chengdu Airlines. As of July 22, the COMAC delivered a total of 33 ARJ21 airplanes to its customers. They are serving on air routes linking 56 cities, according to the COMAC. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Worshipers, including Cindy Meddinna, center, gather for a service at Bundy Canyon Christian Church in Wildomar, Calif. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) Jennifer Trujillo made a 30-minute trip from her home in San Diego County to the country roads of Wildomar in Riverside County for the first time in weeks. For the last year, the Pala resident had made the trek up every Sunday to attend the service at Bundy Canyon Christian Church, a complex of colorful old-timey buildings along a rural road. The coronavirus outbreak had sidelined Trujillo, 37, from her trips to church, leaving her to reading the Bible and practicing her faith at home. She knew about the worries of church services leading to outbreaks of COVID-19. That health officials criticized such gatherings as posing a public health risk to parishioners and others they may come in contact with. But Trujillo would not ignore the call of her pastor to return. Pastor Michael Khan preaches at Bundy Canyon Christian Church. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) "I feel safe around this community," Trujillo said. "The word that the pastor gives forth is amazing and its better in person. I just wanted to go back." And so she did on a mid-July Sunday to an all-too-familiar scene of parishioners packing the pews. She was instructed not to sit next to anyone outside of her immediate household members. It was a vain attempt at social distancing. After scouring for a seat, her 9-year-old daughter Morgan and Trujillo settled for a spot near the center of the pews. Like others, they were squeezed in closer than six feet from other people. A fan conjured up a light breeze. Three vocalists and a drummer performed on stage as dozens of people sang along. Churches across the state have been whipsawed by state closure and reopening orders, as church events have been tied to coronavirus outbreaks. In May, infections tied to singing in a church service in Redwood Valley and two more outbreaks from Mother's Day church services in Mendocino and Butte counties drew concern from public health officials. Cases linked to singing during church services have drawn the ire of scientists and even some church leaders. Still, Bundy Canyon kept its usual choral arrangement as the congregation swayed their arms like concertgoers to the singing. Story continues When the services in this church along Bundy Canyon Road began, congregants greeted one another with hugs. Few wore masks. Worshipers gather for a service at Bundy Canyon Christian Church. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) "I will give power to my two witnesses ... these men have power to shut off the sky so that it will not rain during the time that they are prophesying and they have the power to turn water to blood and to strike the earth with every type of plague," Randy Eichert intoned from the pulpit as he read from Revelations. But whatever final judgment the junior minister preached about the pandemic seemed, at the moment, far from a growing concern. The tension between safety and faith has coalesced in the suburbs of Southern California. In parts of California's so-called Bible Belt, the controversy over rising cases of infection and deaths related to the coronavirus has not stopped residents from packing in-person services. It's what his flock wants, Bundy Canyon Christian Church Pastor Michael Khan said. Pastor Michael Khan at Bundy Canyon Christian Church. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) They didnt like being apart at all, Khan said. We have trust in God that nothing will happen. Since the start of the pandemic, not one of our members got sick or lost their job. The church will always be victorious. It is an altogether not surprising development in this part of Southern California. In May, Riverside County was quick to rescind stay-at-home orders and was among the largest proponents for reopening services. In the countys southwest corner, conservatism and a strong evangelical base distinguish this suburban region from the rest of the Golden State. Church is a big part of the community stretching across the I-15 from Temecula to Wildomar. This nexus for megachurches and more than 10 Mormon congregations took the first chance to open up its houses of worship when the first lockdown orders eased. And when Gov. Gavin Newsom called for the suspension of indoor in-person services the second time around, some ignored it while others moved their worship outdoors, including in parking lots. Despite the state orders, Bundy Canyon Christian Church hosted about 60 members without masks in their barnyard church a larger crowd than they normally received at their 10 a.m. service. Congregants tried to space themselves out and were restricted to sitting next to only people who lived in the same household, per the churchs guidelines. But as the building got closer to reaching capacity, that task became harder. The church isn't very big, we keep families close but others spaced out. Were not breaking the law per se, Khan said. That is, not Gods law. Worshipers gather for a service at Bundy Canyon Christian Church. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) This pandemic has instilled a level of fear in people, and some is unwarranted," he said. "The church is trying to help people lose this fear through God. After weeks of online-only services, Khan reopened in June and invited only members of his worship team the people that lead services, including members of the choir. But slowly, more people came back. Khan said no one from his church has fallen ill due to COVID-19 or lost their job. "I'm preaching and teaching something I live. We have faith in God that nothing will happen to us," Khan said. "And being present is more powerful than it being taped. It's like photography, every time you reprint it loses its color. We want to be in that presence." Menifee resident Cindy Meddinna wasn't worried about catching any virus when she returned to Bundy Canyon Christian Church. The church was basically a second home to her. She couldn't wait to get back. "I don't need the building to worship. The Lord is with me, but I gotta have my fellowship with all of my teachers, leaders and my church family," Meddinna said. To her, being able to return to church overrode any concerns about COVID-19. In fact, she had none of the latter. "I am covered in the blood of Jesus Christ and I don't believe in COVID, and God will never allow me to contract it," she said. "I think it's more of a political thing." Worshipers gather in the parking lot for a church service at Calvary Chapel Temecula Valley. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) In Temecula, 61-year-old Lisa Correa, a parishioner who also works as Calvary Chapel Temecula Valley's children's ministry director, reclined back in her seat. She arrived 15 minutes early for a service, which normally would guarantee her a prime spot in the church. But unlike at Bundy Canyon Christian Church, services had changed here. Instead of sitting in pews, parishioners would sit on lawn chairs arranged across the church's parking lot. In addition, they would have to bring their own Bibles to minimize the spread of the virus. Correas husband, Frank, 61, who is an assistant pastor, said the online services didnt have the same effect. ... I think we all missed church. You can hear the message online, but you lack the fellowship. Even though it's fellowship at a distance, it's still fellowship, his wife added. "And the singing going on doesn't concern me since we're far back." Pastor Chris McPike of Calvary Chapel said the pandemic had brought about a sense of isolation. The changing directives from the state were also disorienting, he said. Pastor Chris McPike and worshipers gather in the parking lot for a church service at Calvary Chapel in Temecula. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) He had to quickly adapt to online services by posting live videos on Facebook for his congregation to view from the safety of their homes. The pain of preaching to a computer was short lived, though, as he was able to reopen his church doors to 25% capacity in June when case numbers slowed. But just as he was getting into the groove of his socially distanced indoor sermons, the rug was pulled from underneath him. Two weeks ago , the same feeling of disappointment flooded in as cases across the state spiked and he was forced to cancel services that were just coming back to life. McPike had no intention of breaking the law, so he went the route of businesses such as those of hairdressers, nail salon technicians and restaurant owners: He took the word of God outdoors. Ive been through it all as a pastor, McPike said. Y2K, H1N1, and still nothing compares to how COVID has impacted our church. We want to provide that spiritual experience, but we also want to keep everyone safe. Worshipers John and Kimberly Wellons, right, get their temperature taken by church secretary Julie Hamilton, left, as they gather in the parking lot for a service at Calvary Chapel Temecula Valley. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) During a recent 8 a.m. service, families attempted to find refuge under the receding shade cast from the building; they squinted from the sun as they leafed through their personal copies of the Old Testament and awkwardly waved to their neighbors several feet away. Most congregants wore masks. Temecula residents John Wellons, 39, and his wife, Kimberly, 40, felt secure not wearing masks because they were sitting near the back in the parking lot. The couple ached for the days of yore. "I think we're in a place where we've moved past the virus and we need to move back to some normalcy, so it doesn't scare me," Kimberly Wellons said. "We're called as Christians to gather and worship the Lord, so that's what I intend on doing. The safety aspect doesn't scare me." As for the virus that has upended the world? My God is bigger than coronavirus," she said. "Im not concerned." Sushant Singh Rajput's Sister Appeals To PM Narendra Modi To Not Have The Evidences Tampered With; Read Post She cited a Washington Post article on 30 residents at the Southeastern Veterans Center about 30 miles from Philadelphia. They had underlying heart conditions and had not been tested for COVID-19 but were given hydroxychloroquine, a drug known to cause serious heart irregularities. The FDA emergency-use authorization that was in effect at the time stressed that the drug should only be administered to COVID-positive patients in hospital settings, not in nursing homes, Brownley said. The Southeastern Veterans Center lacked the equipment that would have been necessary to provide the FDA-recommended heart monitoring. The state homes receive more than $1 billion a year from the VA to care for about 20,000 veterans. Though VA contractors inspect the homes every year, the agency doesnt share the findings of inspections on its website, something GAO researchers said also needs to change. Outbreaks hit hard in homes Since the start of the pandemic, almost 63,000 residents of long-term care homes nationwide have died of COVID-19, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis released Thursday. That number is an undercount because four states dont report coronavirus fatalities from nursing homes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), yet it still is more than 40 percent of all deaths. The number of coronavirus deaths at state veterans homes also isnt known because the homes dont have to report them to the VA. Three centers that Brownley cited out of what the GAO says is 148 state veterans homes had nearly 200 deaths: 42 at the Southeastern Veterans Center, 81 at the New Jersey Veterans Home at Paramus, and 76 at the Soldiers Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts. As of last week, 199 residents out of 336 beds at the New Jersey Veterans Home had COVID-19, a 59 percent infection rate. VA-owned and -operated community living centers reported only two positive COVID-19 cases out of 7,500 residents, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said in an interview last week. Whos in charge? When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the Veterans Health Administration reached out to state veterans homes to focus on safety and quality care, Teresa Boyd, a physician and the VAs assistant deputy undersecretary for health for clinical operations, told the committee. Even though these homes are state-run facilities, we have always had an open and positive communication with them and maintain a readiness to help, should they require aid, she said. We share a common focus and prioritize safe and quality care for our veterans. Paul Barabani of the Holyoke Soldiers Home Coalition, a grassroots group of family and veterans that formed after coronavirus deaths at the center escalated, contended that the VA did not properly oversee the site after the homes officials told the VA it did not have an infection-control program. It is the coalitions belief that the lack of sufficient staff and overcrowded rooms were root causes of the rapid spread of the virus, resulting in the death of 76 veterans at the home, Barabani said. My thoughts on improving VA oversight of the veterans home would be a much greater collaboration and partnership between the VA and the veterans homes. When AARP asked agency officials if they could have prevented coronavirus outbreaks and deaths in state veterans homes, a spokesperson said federal law doesnt give them authority over a state home. In other words, individual states not the federal Department of Veterans Affairs are solely responsible for the operation and management of state-run veterans homes and any problems that arise within them, said Christina Noel, the VAs press secretary. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) criticized the deaths from the known outbreaks in the state veterans homes. The question that I have to this committee and those who are testifying, [and] I think we all have a right to ask: Whos in charge? he said. Former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday ridiculed the ruling BJP's threat to sue him for alleging Rs 2,000-crore corruption in coronavirus management in the state. "Let them send a legal notice. Am I the one to be afraid of notices? Am I not a lawyer? Don't I know what weightage such notices carry?" Siddaramaiah told reporters in Mysuru. Siddaramaiah, also the Congress Legislative Party leader, was reacting to BJP's state general secretary and MLC N Ravi Kumar's statement on Friday that the party would send him a legal notice. Siddaramaiah had last week alleged that the total expenditure of the government relating to COVID-19 was Rs 4,167 crore of which at least Rs 2,000 crore was allegedly pocketed by Ministers and officials. The BJP not only dismissed the charges but also decided to sue the Congressman. The Congress leader mocked that the question asked to the government is responded by the BJP with a legal notice. "I had accused the government of corruption in COVID-19 management but there is someone called Ravi Kumar who says he has sent me a legal notice. Let him send it. We will face it," Siddaramaiah said. Ravi Kumar had also questioned Siddaramaiah's competence to speak about corruption when he could not answer where he got the expensive Swiss watch from. In reaction, Siddaramaiah said the case is now a closed chapter after the anti-corruption bureau gave him a clean chit. "I have returned the watch to the government," he said. Then he sought to know whether he should also dig out the previous corruption charges involving Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa. Ravi Kumar had also stated that Siddaramaiah does have the moral high ground to talk of corruption while sitting with Congress state chief D K Shivakumar by his side, who had been to jail on corruption charges. Reacting to the charge, Siddaramaiah sought to know what morality has the BJP to ask him. Defending Shivakumar, Siddaramaiah said the cases do not relate to corruption but political vengeance. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 22:36:13|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HONG KONG, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Leung Chun-ying on Saturday lashed out at Hong Kong opposition for placing politics above public health as they criticized the postponement of the 2020 Legislative Council (LegCo) General Election of the HKSAR. Hong Kong is being hit by the third round of COVID-19 outbreak, with the daily new cases exceeding 100 for over 10 days and the source of infection of many cases remaining unknown, Leung said on social media, noting that all large group events have been postponed or canceled as a result. Under such circumstances, the election campaign will not be able to proceed normally in the coming month, nor will the vote casting and counting, said Leung. The priority of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government and the whole community for a period of time ahead must be curbing the spread of the epidemic and reducing COVID-19 infections to zero, Leung said. While protecting public health, Hong Kong also needs to resume normal economic activities as soon as possible, so as to prevent economy from further declining and unemployment from further worsening, he added. Enditem The House approved on Friday the six-bill bundle spending package worth $1.3 trillion, including around $210 billion for emergency funding of federal agencies in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The spending bill got a vote of 217-197 in favor of legislation. This fund will cover the government starting October 1. The departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, and Energy will be covered with the passage of this measure. Other state and local governments will also be funded in terms of health prevention efforts, medical research, infrastructure, and public housing, among others. More than half of the package will be allocated for defense, according to a The Hill report. This includes a three percent pay increase for troops, a $9.3 billion for fighter jets, and $22.3 billion for new Navy ships. The bill would also financially assist the Army with $1 million for renaming assets named after Confederate figures and block the funding for President Donald Trump's border wall. The legal measure would also block Trump from using military construction funds to build his wall, and refuse to refill the accounts he emptied to fund the wall using emergency powers. "This package prioritizes the lives and livelihoods of the American people, and makes the strong investments needed to build a stronger future for every person," said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey was quoted in a report. However, even with the House's passage of the legal measure, Trump has reportedly threatened to veto the bill. The appropriations process is also stalled with Democrats and Republicans arguing whether to include emergency coronavirus cash in their annual spending bills. The spending package did not include funding for homeland security and the legislative branch. Democrats have discussed several times whether to bring the homeland security bill to the floor during disagreements between the party's more progressive ranks. Reports said progressives want to remove funding from agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Republicans have attacked House Democrats for loading up their spending package with billions of dollars in emergency spending. Republicans said the extra cash blows up a two-year budget deal struck last summer. The legislative branch was not present during the disagreements on congressional play. The GOP opposed the bills on two bases, which is spending and policy riders. "I remain concerned about the use of emergency-designated funds as a workaround and scheme to break the budget agreement between the two parties and the president," Tom Cole, Appropriations Committee vice ranking member, was quoted in a report. Stimulus Check Meanwhile, another $1, 200 stimulus check is coming to help people offset the worst financial effects of the coronavirus disease. Republican and Democratic leaders are still trying to decide what should be included in the latest measure to boost the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. This includes the possibility of another round of economic payment, also known as stimulus checks. Stimulus checks are being provided under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act based on adjusted gross income and how many dependents are living in a household. Congress is considering a second stimulus check. But it is still to be known, who will qualify for another round of stimulus checks, and how much could be received. Check these out: Is a 2nd Stimulus Check Far from Reality? Senate Bares Update Republicans Finally Reveal the Amount of Next Stimulus HEALS Act Includes More Benefits Beyond Another Stimulus Payment Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law Friday that imposes a 2.5% tax on health insurance companies that will help pay the premiums for people who rely the marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act to shop for coverage. Both houses of the state Legislature approved the bill (A4389) Thursday, giving the state ample time to prepare for the ACA open enrollment period that begins Nov. 1. As the federal government continues to attack critical provisions of the Affordable Care Act, our administration remains committed to lowering the cost of coverage, expanding access to care, and improving health equity for our most vulnerable, Murphy said in a statement. This action could not come at a more critical juncture, and will directly benefit our uninsured and underinsured populations at a time when many New Jerseyans have lost health coverage as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department of Banking and Insurance would levy a 2.5% tax on insurance companies based on the amount of money collected in premiums. The proceeds estimated at about $200 million would be deposited into the Health Insurance Affordability Fund and used to subsidize the cost of insurance for people who earn no more than four times the federal poverty level. A single person earning a maximum of $50,040 and a family of three earning $86,880 would qualify. An estimated $77 million of the tax money collected will bolster the states existing reinsurance program to cover high cost claims and lower premium costs in the individual market. This bill will help to ensure that people are able to afford health insurance during this critical time when a global disease is not only threatening their health, but their financial security in unimaginable ways, said Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) one of the bills prime sponsors. The legislation passed along party lines in both houses, with zero yes votes from Republicans. Business leaders and some health care providers, such as the Home Care & Hospice Association of New Jersey and the New Jersey Dental Association lobbied against it, saying the tax would be passed on to consumers who could hardly afford it. The home care and hospice industry cares for a population that requires specialized, intensive, and personalized care, said Nancy Fitterer, president of the Home Care and Hospice Association of New Jersey. These patients already face expensive health care costs and simply cannot shoulder another financial burden in our state and neither can their families and caregivers who support them and rely on affordable coverage to stay healthy themselves. The New Jersey Business and Industry Association testified against the bill while it was making its way through committee, arguing it would increase costs on businesses and nonprofits, large and small, which have continued to offer health benefit plans during the current COVID-19 pandemic while struggling themselves to remain afloat. Small group single health insurance premiums paid by businesses with fewer than 50 employees increased by nearly $2,500 between 2008 and 2018, Buteas said. For those remaining, further cost increases would be devastating and accelerate their exit from the market, she said. Supporters of the bill said this was not actually a new tax at all. Insurers have been paying a federal premiums tax since 2014 to help pay for the landmark health care law, also known as Obamacare. But the federal government will stop collecting this tax in January. Public health and family advocates urged the Murphy administration to impose the tax to expand coverage to a wider swath of uninsured and under-insured residents. Small employer health benefits plans, dental service corporations, and multiple employer welfare arrangements wont have to pay the tax, according to the bill. With the passage of this bill, New Jersey is solidifying itself as a national leader in protecting the Affordable Care Act and keeping health coverage affordable, said Brittany Holom, senior policy analyst for New Jersey Policy Perspective, a left-leaning research and advocacy organization. The Health Insurance Assessment will provide ample resources for New Jersey to expand health coverage, lower the number of people who are uninsured, and address racial disparities in access to care. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, its that improving access to care will improve public health for all, Holom said. Local journalism needs your support. Subscribe at nj.com/supporter. Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. DUBAI Kuwait has banned until further notice commercial flights to 31 countries it said that it regarded as high risk due to the spread of the coronavirus, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Saturday. The countries include India, Pakistan, Egypt, the Philippines, Lebanon and Sri Lanka, which all have large numbers of expatriates in Kuwait. The list also includes China, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Iraq. The ban was announced the same day Kuwait began a partial resumption of commercial flights. The authorities have said Kuwait International Airport would run at about 30% capacity from Saturday, gradually increasing in coming months. Kuwait, which has recorded nearly 67,000 coronavirus cases and more than 400 deaths, began a five-phase plan at the start of June to gradually lift restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the virus. A partial curfew remains in place. Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) The validity of telecommunication and broadcast permits was extended until the last working day of December 2020, according to a memorandum order issued by the National Telecommunications Commission. NTC Memorandum Order 14-07-2020 states that the extension was prompted by mobility issues brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Telco companies can still file applications for renewal of permits or licenses at the NTC central office in Quezon City. In a statement, Smart Communications Inc. welcomed the development. Hand-in-hand with the government, we will be able to surmount the challenges presented by COVID-19 and continue improving communications services for Filipinos nationwide, Smart President and Chief Executive Officer Al Panlilio said in a statement. 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. Report: Taliban Slowly Pushing Afghan Government to the Brink By Jeff Seldin July 31, 2020 U.S. and coalition defense officials fear the Taliban are successfully ratcheting up attacks against the Afghan government, hoping to push it past its breaking point, while often keeping allied forces at bay. The officials, who spoke with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), warn that despite the February agreement between the Taliban and the United States, violence directed at Afghan government forces "stayed well above historic norms" from April through the end of June. The only respite for Afghan forces during that time came during the three-day Eid holiday cease-fire in late May, the officials said, demonstrating "the Taliban's ability to exert command and control of their fighters." A separate U.S. Defense Department assessment provided to SIGAR for its quarterly report, released Thursday, was equally blunt. "The Taliban is calibrating its use of violence to harass and undermine the [Afghan defense and security forces] and [the Afghan government], but remain at a level it perceives is within the bounds of the agreement, probably to encourage a U.S. troop withdrawal and set favorable conditions for a post-withdrawal Afghanistan," it said. The latest warnings come at the start of another three-day cease-fire (for the Eid al-Adha holiday), and as the Taliban promise the imminent release of imprisoned Afghan security forces, both developments seen as signs that long hoped-for intra-Afghan negotiations will soon get under way. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani expressed hope this past Tuesday that such talks could start "in a week's time." Taliban officials have likewise expressed cautious optimism about the talks, insisting they are negotiating in good faith. "Our clear message remains that we are not looking for monopoly over power because all the diverse Afghan tribes and ethnicities are in need of one another," Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said in a speech this week, where he went on to accuse the U.S. of violating certain commitments in the agreement. "Frequent drone strikes, bombardments, raids and artillery attacks on unjustifiable grounds do not serve the interests of anyone," the Taliban chief said. U.S. military officials remain wary of the Taliban's intent. "The number of enemy-initiated attacks is, in fact, very worrisome," U.S. Central Command's General Kenneth McKenzie told VOA in an exclusive interview earlier this month. "The Taliban has not lived up to some of the obligations they have made," he added. "I don't know that they will." But there are questions about how much leverage the U.S. has in its deal with the Taliban. According to Defense Department officials, the deal with the Taliban "included commitments to seek to continue reducing violence." But the State Department told SIGAR those commitments only go so far. State Department officials said there is no blanket prohibition against Taliban attacks against Afghan security forces. And during a May briefing, they noted Taliban attacks against Afghan forces broke only "the spirit" of the agreement. "The Taliban's leaders are working to further weaken the Afghan government while running out the clock on the U.S. presence, knowing that their prospects for success are going to increase in the months to come," said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "It should be noted that, thus far, there is no evidence showing that the Taliban is complying with its supposed counterterrorism assurances," he added. Making the situation even more precarious, the SIGAR report cautions the Afghan government is struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The latest data show about 36,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases and just fewer than 1,300 deaths. But researchers warn those numbers likely underestimate the problem. As of July 15, despite limited testing, nearly 43 percent of COVID-19 test samples in Afghanistan came up positive, according Johns Hopkins University, giving the country one of the highest positivity rates in the world. Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health has said the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose by almost 700 percent in May alone. The pandemic, which has caused countries to shut down borders and trade, is also hammering the Afghan government's finances, sending revenue plunging by more than 23 percent during the first half of 2020. The lack of food is also worsening, as prices for staples such as flour and cooking oil increase and more Afghans fall into poverty. "About one-third of Afghanistan's estimated 32.2 million people remain in either a crisis or emergency state of food insecurity and require urgent action," the SIGAR report said. Ayesha Tanzeem, Carla Babb and Ayaz Gul contributed to this story. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday pulled up the Maharashtra government over the delay in appointment of a new Advocate General and sought an explanation, observing many constitutional and statutory functions of the state were suffering for the past eight months. A bench of Justices Abhay Oka and Anuja Prabhudesai said the inaction by government to appoint an Advocate General affects the cause of justice as well as members of public. It was high time that the government appointed a new Advocate General to represent the state, said the bench while hearing a petition filed by Congress MLC Sanjay Dutt. Many constitutional and statutory functions (of the government) are suffering due to the non-appointment of the Advocate General and it affects the cause of justice as well as the public, the bench remarked. The judges while noting that there was a delay in filling up the post of Advocate General called upon the state to explain the same in an affidavit within two weeks. The court granted two weeks time, instead of a month, as prayed by the state, and directed the government to file an affidavit by December 13, by which time the new AG should be appointed. The matter has been listed high on board on December 14. Nagendra Rai, senior advocate of Supreme Court and former Acting Chief Justice of Patna High Court, appeared for the petitioner along with advocate Ashish Mehta. Dutt sought a direction to the Maharashtra government to appoint a regular Advocate General in place of the current acting Advocate General. Dutts petition said the court should declare that the post of acting Advocate General was unconstitutional, and that the appointment of Advocate General should be made only as per the provisions of Article 165 of the Constitution. Dutt clarified that he was not questioning the integrity and professional capability of the acting Advocate General Rohit Deo, but said he wanted a direction to the government to follow the Constitutional provisions. Deo was functioning as an acting AG for the last seven months, while under the Constitution no post of acting AG exists, he said. Dutt had also raised the issue in the state Legislature earlier, the petition said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Dundalk FC have led tributes to well known groundsman and videographer Harry Taaffe, who sadly passed away last weekend. The Lilywhites confirmed the tragic news, after they had issued a missing person's appeal earlier on Sunday. In a statement the club said they were 'devastated' to learn the news of Harry's passing. It said: 'We're absolutely devastated to confirm that Harry Taaffe has tragically passed away.' 'Our deepest condolences to Maria, Orla, Elaine, Shane and Harry's family. He was an integral part of our club and his passing has left us numb. Rest easy H. You'll live forever in our hearts.' The father of three was well known and loved among players, staff and fans, not only as a groundsman, but also as a talented videographer, where he captured reaction to some of the clubs successes in recent years. Sympathy and condolences have poured in from across the League of Ireland. Galway United's official Twitter account said: 'So sorry to hear this sad news.' Harry always made us feel so welcome in the TV gantry at Oriel Park and on one occasion when our camera failed, he provided us with his own footage. An absolute gentleman. May he rest in peace. Condonlences to his family, friends and Dundalk FC." When it comes to the travel industry, it feels like everything's a gamble from booking a holiday in what might be the next quarantine hotspot to investing in an airline that may or may not go bankrupt at any moment. If you're willing to take a chance on booking a two-week break in Alicante, though, you might also have the risk appetite for a travel stock or two. Warren Buffett famously said that we should be 'fearful when others are greedy, and greedy only when others are fearful' and, after all, many have rarely felt so fearful about a summer break. Risky business: But if you're willing to take a chance on booking a two-week break in Alicante, you might also have the risk appetite for a travel stock or two HOW SHARE PRICES WERE SUNK BY COVID For the travel industry, the coronavirus pandemic has been a tale of one disaster after another, with little to mitigate the pain. First came reports of coronavirus on cruise ships, ensuring that this particular form of vacation came to be viewed as little more than a floating petri dish. Then came total lockdown, meaning that no one could go anywhere on holiday at all. Now, just as green shoots start to appear and families begin to wonder about a summer break, comes the abrupt quarantine requirement slapped on those taking a trip to Spain amid fears of a second Covid wave, raising concern that the same could happen again to anyone who books a holiday anywhere at all. Jason Hollands, managing director of fund broker and adviser Tilney Bestinvest, says: 'The travel sector has been right at the sharp end of the Covid-19 crisis and continues to face considerable headwinds.' Richard Hunter, the head of markets at Interactive Investor, agrees, pointing out that two big players were ejected from the FTSE 100 in June as their share prices collapsed when all about them recovered. Carnival and easyJet were the two to lose their FTSE 100 crown. The cruise operator lost 3.5billion between March and May this year, after it suspended sailings following severe outbreaks on some of its ships. It is now planning to sell six of its vessels, although it hopes to resume in a very small way in late summer, starting with its German brand, Aida Cruises. The shares down from more than 32 six months ago to close at 8.26 last week reflect the company's problems. Has the pain in Spain killed off summer holidays this year? After a great deal of fuss about air bridges and people being able to go on summer holiday, things suddenly changed. A swift about turn saw a 14 day quarantine period imposed for those arriving in the UK from Spain at just hours notice, hitting tens of thousands of holidaymakers who are there already, those with trips booked and leaving Britons hoping for some Spanish sunshine stuck in travel limbo again. Are holidays to Spain off the cards for some time, and can you go to France, Italy, Greece or anywhere else safe in the knowledge you can come home and not have to take an extra fortnight off work? On this podcast Georgie Frost in Spain and facing a 14 day quarantine if she can get back is joined by Simon Lambert and Grace Gausden to talk holidays, travel insurance, refunds, air bridges and whether even a staycation is safe. Press play above or listen (and please subscribe if you like the podcast) at Apple Podcasts, Acast, Spotify and Audioboom or visit our This is Money Podcast page. Budget airline easyJet has faced more of a rollercoaster, with periods of hope about the travel industry opening up being followed by despair. The shares were over 15 at the beginning of the year, but closed at 4.94 last week, having nearly reached 9 in early June when it looked like Spanish summer holidays might be back on. Other travel companies listed on the UK stock market have suffered similar ignominious fates. They include holiday operator Tui, which has been doing its best to get customers on holiday this summer, but has been forced to cancel Spanish bookings due to the Government's recent pronouncement. Shares that were close to 10 at the beginning of the year are now nearer 3, having fallen from a hopeful 5.30 in June. Share price falls means easyJet was one of the firms to lose its FTSE 100 crown The cruise operator lost 3.5billion between March and May this year Then there's IAG (International Consolidated Airlines Group), which owns British Airways and Spanish airline Iberia, with shares down from 6.40 in February to under 1.70 this week; and Ryanair, with shares down from over 15 to around 11 since the beginning of 2020. Finally, Dart, which owns airline Jet2, has seen shares tumble from nearly 20 to 6.75 since the beginning of the year. Hunter, at Interactive Investor, says that recent isolated outbreaks of the virus have put further pressure on the travel industry, dashing any hope of immediate economic recovery. 'Market hopes of an eventual turnaround have buoyed sentiment for IAG, and to some extent easyJet, but for Carnival there seem few investors willing to nail their colours to the mast,' he warns. WINNERS IN THE RACE TO SURVIVE For those willing to take a gamble on these bombed-out travel stocks, there are two big questions to ask. The first is, 'When will people travel again?'; and the second is, 'Which companies can survive until then?' Brave investors need to be looking to the long term, as well as scrutinising the balance sheets of travel stocks very carefully and even then there are no guarantees. On the first question, even the Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, fears it will take too long to get back to normal travel patterns he cleared out his portfolio of airlines back at the beginning of the year. Hollands, at Bestinvest, says unless there is a viable vaccine, a recovery in prospects looks 'a long way off'. 'Ultimately, these businesses face enormous uncertainty which could be very painful for shareholders,' he says. A vaccine could speed things up considerably, but Hollands points out that, even if that comes along, consumer spending will be impacted by rising unemployment, meaning that expensive travel plans could take a long time to recover. Not everyone is as pessimistic as this, however. Warren Buffett cleared out his portfolio of airlines back at the beginning of the year Kartik Kumar, co-manager of the Artemis Alpha Trust, which has 9.5 per cent of its net asset value in easyJet and Ryanair, says: 'Aviation will go on. The fittest will survive and perhaps even thrive.' His strategy is to look at the competitive advantages of various airlines, as well as their balance sheets, before investing. 'Our view is that short-haul will trump long-haul. That's because, for example, video conferencing poses a greater substitute for business travel than staycations do for leisure travel,' Kumar adds. 'We express these views through investments in Ryanair and easyJet. Both are able to achieve high returns on capital and grow their share of the market due to company-specific competitive advantages.' Ryanair has more than 3.9billion of cash, he points out, while easyJet also has a strong balance sheet. Kumar also highlights easyJet's dominant positions in Gatwick, Geneva and Berlin airports, where capacity is limited, and Ryanair's low cost base as advantages that will help the two to survive. Darius McDermott, managing director of Chelsea Financial, a broker, also believes that scrutinising accounts is the key. 'Those companies with stronger balance sheets are going to be the ones most likely to survive. This is because even if they did need to raise capital, they will be able to because they have less debt.' British Airways owner IAG revealed a 4billion loss on Friday as well as a much anticipated rights issue supported by main shareholder Qatar Airways. British Airways owner IAG revealed a 4billion loss last week Chief executive Willie Walsh said he does not anticipate recovery until 2023. The rights issue will shore up its balance sheet, but dilute the value of the current shares but should give the company the firepower to outlast the crisis. Analysts also have a cautious 'buy' rating on easyJet. Cruise ship business Carnival is proving particularly hard to call for experts. However, Russ Mould, at investment platform AJ Bell, says that the cruise industry has some characteristics that will aid its recovery. 'The industry is dominated by three major players Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean,' he says. 'It's not quite an oligopoly but this trio is powerful and they had the brands, state-of-the-art fleets and routes that gave them some degree of pricing power. If the cruise industry can hang in there for long enough, the good times could roll again, but it may take a long time.' THE FUNDS FOR TRAVEL OPTIMISTS You could take a punt on travel stocks by buying them direct, but many people prefer to spread their risk by buying a fund or investment trust. Artemis Alpha, mentioned previously, is one possibility. Other holdings include online trading group Plus500 and JustEat and it yields 2 per cent. It has risen 5.2 per cent in three months and is down 6.4 per cent over three years. Artemis UK Select is also an airlines fan. It has 2.47 per cent of its investors' money in IAG and 1.48 per cent in Ryanair. It has fallen 3.1 per cent over three months and fallen 18.4 per cent over three years. Man GLG fund owns Ryanair, easyJet and IAG, while the R&M Recovery fund also owns Ryanair. Those wanting a position in holiday operator Tui will find it harder to find an actively managed fund, though Hollands, at Best-Invest, notes that it is in many trackers. Contrarian fund Temple Bar Investment Trust, which pursues a strategy of buying unloved companies, has 1.99 per cent of its clients' investments in Carnival. The fund has had a rough year, however, down 41 per cent, so it's only one for the brave. Baillie Gifford Strategic Bond fund owns online travel agency booking.com, which has some diversity in that it benefits from staycation travel as well. PREPARE FOR A BUMPY RIDE They say it's always darkest just before the dawn, and for the travel industry things look very dark right now. 'The longer the crisis grinds on, the more existential the threat becomes,' says Hollands. But just as the advent of Covid-19 changed things almost overnight, vaccines and effective treatments could build confidence again very quickly. With millions of us miserable about the restrictions of a Covid summer, there could be a huge boom in bookings when confidence is restored. At present, travel stocks are only for those who travel very hopefully indeed, but these optimists may just be the ones sitting pretty when we arrive. 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Jeyaraj and his son J.Bennicks as if they were skinned alive confirming police torture. The video was taken when bodies of father and son were being shown to Kovilpatti Magistrate M.S.Bharathidasan during the post-mortem of the bodies. Some relatives of the victims were also allowed to be present. One can also see and hear the relatives of Jeyaraj and Bennicks breaking down on seeing the brutal injuries on their buttocks and also on the blood clotted face of Jeyaraj. Jeyaraj and Bennicks had been booked for not closing their mobile shop in time on June 19 by the Sathankulam police. They were sent to judicial custody and lodged in the Kovilpatti jail on June 21. Jeyaraj died on June 22 night and Bennicks on June 23 morning in judicial custody, allegedly due to the police torture. Five policemen working in Sathankulam police station have been arrested. The Madras High Court while hearing the case had said there was prima facie evidence to register a murder case against the Sathankulam police officials. The court also transferred the probe into the deaths of Jeyaraj and Bennicks to the CBCID to gather and protect the evidence. Later the case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The court has also initiated criminal contempt cases against three police officials -- Additional Superintendent of Police Kumar, Deputy Superintendent of Police Prathapan and constable Maharajan -- for their behaviour at the Sathankulam police station in front of Kovilpatti Judicial Magistrate Bharathidasan who had gone for an inquiry. They texted back and forth with tips, and he sent her a YouTube video. Thats when she discovered scoring, thought it was beautiful and decided to give it a try. But its just one of the final steps in the 24-hour process of making bread. The dough has to be fed, and then kneaded and rested and punched. After 24 hours, its ready to score. Each drawing takes less than 10 minutes. Shes learning other techniques, too, like how sprinkling the top with rice powder works better than flour. She used activated charcoal powder for the first time in making the fist for her friend Halley Taylor, an activist and South teacher who advocates for Black students. On the bread, it will move and rise and stretch in the oven, she said. I steam it in a Dutch oven first, then take the lid off. Thats the first time I can see what the pattern is going to look like. It browns in some areas and not in others. Pearsons videos on TikTok (mamabeastska) and her Facebook page (cooking with mama beast) arent limited to bread. In the hundreds she has made since April, she shares recipes for dishes from across the globe. New Delhi: Government has in-principle approved strategic disinvestment of loss-making subsidiary of Indias largest steelmaker SAIL, Salem Steel Plant (SSP) and the Parliament was informed about it on Monday. SSP, a special steel unit of state-run SAIL, pioneered the supply of wider width stainless steel sheets and coils in the country. The government has accorded in-principle approval of strategic disinvestment of SSP in Salem district of Tamil Nadu, Minister of State for Steel Vishnu Deo Sai said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. SSP is a loss-making unit of Maharatna firm SAIL, he added. It has been consistently making losses for the last 5 years despite investment of around Rs 2,200 crore by SAIL under the modernisation and expansion project of SSP, the minister said. The Salem plant can produce austenitic, ferritic, martensitic and low-nickel stainless steel in the form of coils and sheets with an installed capacity of 70,000 tonnes per annum in cold rolling mill as well as 3.64 lakh tonnes a year in hot rolling mill. Its steel melting shop can produce 1,80,000 tonnes of slabs per annum. Besides, the plant has the countrys first top-of-the-line stainless steel blanking facility with a capacity of 3,600 tonnes per year of coin blanks and utility blanks/circles. A morbidly obese teacher who sexually abused six boys during the 1980s will not go to prison because he's 'medically unfit'. Peter John O'Neill, 61, will not spend a single day in jail, despite pleading guilty to six counts of indecent assault and one count of penetrative sexual abuse of a young person. The reason he wont spend a single day in prison is because O'Neill now lives in Canberra and is in a wheelchair and has been deemed medically unfit to travel to Tasmania, The Mercury reported. Plans to extradite O'Neill collapsed in the Supreme Court of Tasmania on Friday after the cost of bringing the paedophile to the state due to COVID-19 restrictions would be an estimated $25,000 to $40,000. Peter John O'Neill, 61, will not be imprisoned despite pleading guilty to six counts of indecent assault and one count of penetrative sexual abuse of a young person (stock image) O'Neill suffers from several conditions, such as spine degeneration, difficulty breathing due to his size and chronic pain. and has a full-time carer. He cannot shower, leave his home and recently had a fall and fractured his ribs. The court was told it was also likely that O'Neill suffered from 'psychotic depression with auditory hallucinations'. Chief Justice Alan Blow said he was limited in the kind of sentence he could hand down to O'Neill. O'Neill cannot serve time interstate for Tasmanian crimes and has no money to pay a fine. He also cannot undergo a community correction order due to his series of medical conditions. Chief Justice Blow also said there was no point in placing O'Neill under home detention as he cannot leave his home anyway. He said he was limited to imposing a suspended jail sentence on O'Neill. One of the abuser's victims read a statement in court of how what happened to him as a child made him 'not a whole person' (stock image) Greg Barns, O'Neill's defence barrister, told the court normally it would be no question that his client would serve a prison sentence. 'A term of imprisonment must be imposed, but in the circumstances the sentence would have to be suspended,' Mr Barns said. One of the abuser's victims read a statement in court of how what happened to him as a child made him 'not a whole person'. 'As a survivor of abuse, I have to acknowledge that I've lost a lot,' the victim said. 'I quickly stopped believing in God and I stopped trusting authority.' The first complaint against O'Neill was made in 2013 but due to his medical conditions his prosecution has been delayed for years. O'Neill will be sentenced on August 25. Mumbai, Aug 1 : Kulwendra Singh Kapur, a Director (Systems) with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), was found dead in mysterious circumstances outside his home in Bandra, officials said here on Saturday. According to MMRDA sources, he was found in an unconscious state in the compound of his official quarters in Bandra East, near the MMRDA office, late on Friday night. He was rushed to the Hinduja Hospital by his wife and son where he was declared dead on admission. A case has been registered and the matter is being investigated, including the cause of death. Kapure was appointed to the coveted post of Director (Systems) at MMRDA in September 2019 and prior to that he was working with the Western Railway in a senior position. Expressing his deepest condolences, MMRDA Metropolitan Commissioner R.A. Rajeev termed the sudden demise of Kapur as "a big loss to MMRDA". "MMRDA as a family shares the grief along with his family in this difficult times. May god give the family strength to overcome this irreparable loss," Rajeev said in a statement. Dr. Sara Watson and her partner, Anna Ford, always wanted children, but when Ford gave birth to their son, Eli, three years ago, Watson was told she could not put her name on his birth certificate even though he was conceived using her egg. At the time, the parentage laws in Rhode Island, where the unmarried couple resides, did not recognize Watson, who did not carry the baby, as a parent. Im the biological parent but not the birth parent, Watson explained. The way the law has been worded, the only way I could get parental rights was to adopt. Image: Watson family (Courtesy of Sara Watson) However, adoption in Rhode Island requires a mandatory six-month waiting period. For the first eight months of my childs life, I didnt have any parental rights at all, Watson said. His legal parents were my partner and an anonymous sperm donor. Watson, a family medicine physician, said the adoption process was onerous. She and her partner had to get three letters of reference attesting to their ability to be good parents; they had to have a home study; and Rhode Island law required that they put an ad in a newspaper in Massachusetts where the anonymous sperm donation was from asking if anyone wanted to claim the parental rights of their child. Because she could not immediately establish legal parentage, Watson could not do many things that come with being a parent in her childs first months. I couldnt add him to my insurance, I couldnt pick him up from day care, I couldnt authorize him going to the doctor or getting vaccines, she said. Image: Watson son (Courtesy Watson family) While many same-sex parents across the country have encountered hurdles similar to those that Watson and her partner faced, changes are being made at the state level to address these legal gaps. Last week, Rhode Island and New Hampshire updated their parentage laws in ways that will prevent other LGBTQ parents from going through what happened to Watson. Gov. Gina Raimondo signed the Rhode Island Uniform Parentage Act, legislation that allows same-sex and unmarried couples to establish parentage by signing a voluntary acknowledgement of parentage form and updates state law to accommodate children born using assisted reproduction and surrogacy. Story continues Now, nobody will have to live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether their kid will have two parents at birth, Watson said. In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu signed HB 1162, a law that similarly allows unmarried couples both straight and gay to adopt children, extends second-parent adoption to same-sex parents and mandates that a court judgment of parentage can be used to secure the parental relationships of children born through assisted reproduction. While parentage laws have become more inclusive in these two states, LGBTQ people across the country confront a complex legal landscape when it comes to parenting, which can vary from state to state, and can call their parental rights into question. Gaps in parental rights LGBTQ people and women are most likely to fall through the cracks of parentage law because of the way the law has historically developed. Originally in the U.S., parentage followed marriage, so only children born to a married woman had legal parents. Children born to unmarried women had no legal parents, Douglas NeJaime, a professor of law at Yale, told NBC News. "What people dont realize is that, often, there is a disconnect between our social understanding of parenting and our legal understanding of parentage." Supreme Court decisions in the mid-20th century repudiated the idea of illegitimacy, and subsequent decisions extended parental rights to married same-sex couples. Gaps, however, remain in many states where laws do not account for assisted reproduction technology or unmarried same-sex couples. What people dont realize is that, often, there is a disconnect between our social understanding of parenting and our legal understanding of parentage, NeJaime said. Your family, your school, your community may recognize you as a parent but you might be surprised to learn that the law does not. He said these issues often do not come to the fore until the family is in crisis or one of the two parents decides to dissolve the relationship. Thats what makes it so heart-wrenching to confront that you are essentially a legal stranger to your child, he added. Variation in state law The United States is a patchwork quilt when it comes to the legal definition of parent. Parentage is really a creature of state law, Patience Crozier, an attorney for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD. Each individual state has its own parentage laws. Only 13 states afford rights to nongestational parents, like Watson, regardless of marital status, according to the LGBTQ think tank Movement Advancement Project. The other states, according to the group, explicitly recognize the nongestational parent only if the couple is married. Image: Watson family (Courtesy Watson family) To address the variability in parentage law across the country as it pertains to nonbiological parents and to eliminate gendered distinctions, the Uniform Parentage Act was updated in 2017. The act, originally promulgated in 1973, is a model legislation drafted by members of the Uniform Law Commission, a group of experts, academics, practicing lawyers and judges, who work on model legislation for states. Courtney G. Joslin, a law professor at University of California, Davis, served as the primary drafter of the 2017 UPA. She said only four states California, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have enacted all or large portions of the latest UPA. These states offer paths to parentage for nonbiological parents regardless of their marital status and do not require these parents to adopt their own children. However, several states and the District of Columbia have amended portions of their laws to extend some protections to children of same-sex couples, according to Joslin. Other states, such as Virginia and Louisiana, have laws that are written in ways that exclude nonheterosexual parents. For example, Louisianas surrogacy law requires that the couple be married and that both individuals contribute their own genetic material. That is a way to exclude gay people, NeJaime said. Joslin told NBC News that parentage is an issue on which uniformity is particularly important, adding that a lack of uniformity nationwide adds a level of precarity for same-sex couples. It is incredibly hard for families to have their status potentially change as they move across state lines, she said. Related: The civil rights giant, who died this month, was a fierce and early defender of gay rights. For example, a hypothetical married lesbian couple in Rhode Island who has a child through assisted reproduction would both be considered parents because of the marital presumption, she said. However, she said one of those parents could lose her parental rights if the couple moves to another state. If they rely on their status as a matter of Rhode Island state law, and they move to Texas, split up and there is litigation, the court will almost certainly apply Texas state law, and that ruling might be different, Joslin explained. Several states, including Colorado, Massachusetts and Connecticut, introduced parentage legislation this legislative session that close some of the legal gaps for same-sex parents, but COVID-19 scuttled LGBTQ advocates hopes of seeing the bills pass this year. Foster and adoption The 2015 landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges which made same-sex marriage legal across the U.S. also made it legal for married same-sex couples to foster and adopt in every state. However, many states have passed religious exemption laws that curb the parental rights of same-sex couples. Ten states now permit state-licensed welfare agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples if doing so conflicts with the agencys religious or moral beliefs. This fall, the Supreme Court will hear a dispute between the city of Philadelphia and a Catholic charity over the extent to which religious organizations that receive taxpayer dollars can refuse to work with same-sex prospective foster parents. The case could have a significant impact on the parental rights of lesbians and gays. Related: Critics say the ruling, which broadens the ministerial exception in employment nondiscrimination law, could open a Pandoras box of workplace discrimination. LGBT people are more likely to be raising foster and adoptive children, any exclusion is going to shrink the pool of foster and adoptive parents, NeJaime said. There are over 440,000 children in foster care nationwide, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, and over 120,000 children awaiting adoption. LGBTQ people are significantly more likely to foster and adopt than heterosexual/cisgender people. Child advocates concur on the harm that can come to children who are not placed in loving homes. The thing about parentage is that in some states it does have that culture war dimension to it, in other places people have managed to see that what is at stake is to make sure childrens welfare is protected, NeJaime said. As much as I see a connection between these two issues, I hope parentage does not become part of the culture wars the way foster and adoption have. Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 04:11:50|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JERUSALEM, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Israel will resume international flights on August 16, the state's Minister of Transport announced on Saturday. As the number of patients in critical condition has not risen sharply, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently approved reopening the Israeli skies for international flights. According to the Transport Minister, Miri Regev, the Israel Airports Authority is already preparing to resume flights, including the setup of a rapid 20-to-30-minute coronavirus testing array. She noted that passengers arriving in Israel from countries with low morbidity would not have to enter quarantine. Enditem Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dawood Salmane with Salam Faraj in Baghdad (Agence France-Presse) Basra, Iraq Sat, August 1, 2020 11:45 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066adc2f5 2 World Idul-Adha,Iraq Free On the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, when Iraqis visit loved ones' tombs and take children to the funfair, the coronavirus pandemic put both cemeteries and Ferris wheels off-limits on Friday. The virus has cost almost 4,700 lives and infected over 121,000 people in Iraq, but it has also sharpened an economic crisis born of a slide in lifeline oil revenues. "Civil servants' salaries are being paid late, taxis or day laborers no longer have work, this has an impact on everyone," said Ahmed Abdel Hussein, an official in Basra, a port city near the southern tip of Iraq. "I'm thinking of all the children who this year will not get any presents because of the crisis," he said on the first day of the feast, being celebrated with the country under curfew. "Eid used to be the happiest day of the year before, now it's a burden," said another official, Falah, 35, who has two children and an elderly mother to support. Shopkeepers and traders, who rely on Eid al-Adha for a large part of their annual turnover, are also affected. Read also: Indonesian Muslims celebrate Idul Adha amid coronavirus pandemic Abu Hassan al-Bazouni, who owns a sheep farm in Basra, has seen sales decline despite the tradition of sacrificing a lamb for the feast. Apart from high unemployment, "this year, confinement has prevented trade from one province to another, so sheep prices have increased," he told AFP. In a survey by the International Rescue Committee, 73 percent of Iraqis said they were eating less to save money, while more than 60 percent had taken loans to make ends meet. Said Attiya, who runs a clothes store, said business was down 95 percent on last year. For Eid in 2019, he hired eight vendors. This year, he is on his own, opening the store only five hours a day. Many other stores in Basra, he said, have closed "because you can't import anything and many can't even pay the rent". For Ahmed Nejem, another resident, it's hard to stay at home during the holidays, traditionally a time for family gatherings. "This year, we're not going out and we can't even buy for presents for the kids," he said. Animated messages, most decorated with flowers, others jokes, sent on social media apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook have taken the place of family visits. In one such animation, a sheep, spared the slaughter because of costs, merrily sings: "We are celebrating with our masks. It's Eid, I'm wearing my gloves. It's Eid and I won't kiss anyone." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 16:59 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066aeacd1 1 National fugitive,bank-bali-case,djoko-tjandra,Bareskrim,National-Police,corruption,bribery Free The National Police will investigate allegations that a flow of illicit funds allowed graft fugitive Djoko Soegiarto Tjandra to evade law enforcement for more than a decade. Police arrested Djoko in Malaysia on Thursday in what authorities called a planned operation. He had spent 11 years on the run. After being questioned at the headquarters of the National Polices Criminal Investigation Unit (Bareskrim), Djoko was detained at a police facility in Salemba, Central Jakarta. We will proceed with our investigation related to the issuance of travel recommendation letters and [] the alleged flow of illicit funds [pertaining to his flight], Bareskrim head Comr. Gen. Listry Sigit Prabowo said during a televised press briefing on Friday. Djoko escaped the country to Papua New Guinea in 2009, a day before the Supreme Court sentenced him to two years in prison and ordered him to pay more than Rp 546 billion (US$54 million) in restitution for his role in the Bank Bali corruption case. He managed to returned to Indonesia in early June to file a request for a review for his conviction. He reportedly filed the documents after obtaining a new electronic ID card and passport and having his Interpol red notice status lifted. Read also: Court drops fugitive Djoko Tjandra's case review plea after consecutive no shows Djokos clandestine return to Indonesia has implicated three high-ranking police generals, who were removed from top positions in the force for their alleged facilitation of Djokos travel within the country. Bareskrim Civil Servant Investigator Supervisory and Coordination Bureau head Brig. Gen. Prasetyo Utomo has been named a suspect by the police for allegedly issuing forged travel letters for Djoko. Indonesian Anti-Corruption Community (MAKI) chairman Boyamin Saiman previously urged authorities to trace the flow of funds in the case, suggesting there was more to be discovered. We could look into additional alleged bribery surrounding the case if he were to open up, Boyamin said during an interview with Kompas TV on Thursday. Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) acting spokesperson Ali Fikri said the antigraft body had offered help to the police track the flow of funds in the case. We have communicated and coordinated with Bareskrim through our deputy [head] of prevention. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 03:13:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Two aircraft collided in midair Friday near the Soldotna Airport on Kenai Peninsula in the U.S. state of Alaska, killing 7 people including Alaska House Representative Gary Knopp, according to an Anchorage Daily News report updated on Saturday. One of the aircraft involved in the crash was a single-engine de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration. The other twin-engine plane had been later confirmed as a Piper PA-12. Alaska Department of Public Safety said in a statement that one plane carried six people. Gary Knopp was the only occupant in the other plane. All were confirmed deceased on the scene except for one person that succumbed to injuries during transport to the local hospital, the statement said, adding that positive identity has been made on all occupants of both aircraft and next of kin notifications have been made. Knopp was a certified flight instructor and registered pilot. He was elected to the Alaska Legislature in 2016 after serving on the Kenai Borough Assembly. He was a candidate in this year's Republican primary for House District 30, according to the ADN report. Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has ordered the U.S. flag and Alaska state flag to be flown at half-staff in honor of Knopp beginning mid-day Friday and ending at sunset on Monday. "Throughout his 42 years on the Kenai Peninsula, Gary became well known as an avid outdoorsman, a skilled pilot, and a dedicated public servant. His presence will no doubt be missed by those he faithfully served," said Dunleavy. The Alaska legislative leaders on both sides of the political aisle also expressed their grief over Knopp's death and extended condolences to his wife and family. Enditem WASHINGTON Lazelle Maxwell, 48, is nearly 12 years into a 30-year sentence for a nonviolent crack cocaine charge, a penalty exacerbated by previous run-ins with law enforcement that led to his designation as a career offender. Three years into remission after a diagnosis of prostate cancer, Mr. Maxwell has no major disciplinary infractions on his prison record. He spends most of his days behind bars caring for an elderly, partly paralyzed inmate at a low-security federal penitentiary in Butner, N.C. More than a year and a half ago, he learned that he might be eligible for a reduction in his sentence under the First Step Act, a bipartisan bill President Trump signed in December 2018 that has been lauded as the most consequential criminal justice legislation in a generation. Mr. Maxwell sent a hopeful one-page note to the judge who sentenced him, asking for a lawyer so he could apply. The judge rejected his request. Mr. Maxwell never had a chance to plead his case. It really just knocked all the breath out of me, for real, Mr. Maxwell said from an office in the Butner prison. Becoming a police officer isnt something you even think about, Cross said. As a young African American, seeing images of innocent protestors being hosed or bitten by dogs, a part of you doesnt want to be involved. But I saw it differently and thought these were people who didnt look like me dealing with people who did. I want to be that person to make sure they are treated with respect and dignity. Yves here. Its depressing to see consultants successfully hawking dubious metrics to water down police reform. But I suppose I should not be surprised. By Sarah Lahm, a Minneapolis-based writer and researcher whose work has appeared in outlets such as the Progressive and In These Times. Follow her on Twitter @sarahrlahm Produced by >Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute The Minneapolis City Council voted to disband the citys police department on June 26, a little more than a month after George Floyd died after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. Chauvin, along with three other officers who were there when Floyd was killed, has since been fired from the force and is now awaiting trial for Floyds death. The city council vote does not automatically mean Minneapolis will no longer have a police department, of course. After a series of steps, the public will be asked to vote in November on an amendment regarding whether or not this course of action is the right one. In June, a competing vision of police reform had been on the table in Minneapolis. Just as community-led initiatives were gaining traction, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo announced in June that his department would be using real-time data to overhaul its operations. The work would be driven not by local grassroots groups, but instead by a Chicago-based company called Benchmark Analytics. Chief Arradondo announced on June 10 that the Minneapolis Police Department would contract with Benchmark Analytics to identify problematic behavior early, according to local NBC affiliate KARE 11. Red flags flew up instantly, however, when this arrangement was made public. For one thing, Benchmark Analytics is a private firm that promises to deliver an all-in-one solution to advance police force management, according to the companys website, primarily through the use of algorithms that supposedly predict which officers may end up behaving problematic[ally] on the job. This approach was at odds with the reallocation of resources from the police department to social services that many community leaders in Minneapolis and other cities are pushing for. Another bone of contention involved funding, as it was reported that Benchmark Analytics reform model would be paid for by the Minneapolis Foundation, a philanthropic group led by a former mayor of the city, R.T. Rybak. Activists, however, quickly seized upon the fact that not only did the proposed contract with Benchmark Analytics appear to have materialized without any public oversight, but Rybak himself is a founding board member of the firm. This prompted the Racial Justice Network to launch a petition criticizing conflicts of interest in the Minneapolis Foundations involvement in police reform. On June 25, Rybak announced that the Minneapolis Foundation has dropped its involvement. A Minneapolis Police Department spokesman also said that the department is trying to find alternative funding for the Benchmark Analytics program; Mayor Jacob Frey said if the city doesnt find other funders, it will see if the program can be done with existing money. It seems unclear so far whether or not another funding source for Benchmark Analytics has been found. But in a July 14 interview with Minnesota Public Radio, while Mayor Frey did not mention Benchmark Analytics by name, he did tell radio host Cathy Wurzer that his plans for police reform will center on an early intervention system that uses evidence and data gathered by the University of Chicago. (This description seems to align with the work of Benchmark Analytics, which is owned in part by the University of Chicago.) Frey told Wurzer that the data gathered is intended to help the Minneapolis Police Department weed bad apples out by predicting which officers are more likely to have some sort of critical incident in the future. The push to bring in Benchmark Analytics was not the first time either Rybak or the Minneapolis Foundation has attempted to use power and wealth to push privatization plans on city residentseven though they often claim they are acting on behalf of marginalized people of color. For evidence of how this approach can fail the public, look no further than the Minneapolis Public Schools, where a similar cast of characters and strategies have already been used to shake up the districts schools. These reform efforts took Minneapolis schools down a failed path, and they stand as a warning sign of how attempts to rehabilitate police forces, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, can be subject to the same sort of misguided thinking and exploitation by opportunists. Top-Down Reform for the Minneapolis Public Schools For years, the Minneapolis school district has been subject to education reform tactics pushed by both right-wing and neoliberal groups, purportedly on behalf of the citys most vulnerable students and families. These tactics have included school choice schemes; a flawed, data-centric makeover of the district led by the global consulting group McKinsey & Company; and attempts to populate the local school board with market-based reform acolytes. These local reform efforts are part of a national and ongoing trend, with representatives from both major political parties pursuing austerity and accountability reforms for public schools with the help of billionaire philanthropic outfits such as the Walton Family Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The focus of these efforts usually involves using data (primarily from high-stakes standardized tests) to push a crisis narrative around public education. The crisis justifies the takeover of public entities, often for the exclusive benefit of plutocrats. Recent examples of this include New Orleans and Puerto Rico, where the disasters wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Maria, respectively, helped pave the way for privatization within the multibillion-dollar K-12 education market. Elites Driving Change In Minneapolis, initial attempts to push privatization schemes, primarily through the proliferation of highly segregated, privately run charter schools, took root during former mayor Rybaks tenure. Rybak was mayor of Minneapolis from 2002 to 2013, during which time he established himself as a press-ready politician who could both crowd-surf and whip city budgets into shape. At one point, he was dubbed a leader of the American Progressive Movement by fellow Democratic National Committee insider Howard Dean. Rybak has a longstanding track record of aligning himself with neoliberal and pro-privatization forces. When he first became mayor in 2002, for example, he immediately opened the citys doors to the controversial global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, whose operatives crafted a developer-friendly revamp for Minneapoliss municipal structure. As mayor, he had little direct control over the Minneapolis schools but still helped promulgate the idea that the achievement gap between white students and students of colora concept that has been deemed racist by observers such as Ibram X. Kendiis best solved through top-down initiatives funded by elites. In 2007, he was the only person to publicly speak before the Minneapolis school board in favor of closing a handful of schools on the citys historically Black north side, for example, even as scores of community members rallied on behalf of keeping them open. Then, a few years later, he signed off on a document known as the District-Charter Collaboration Compact, which came to Minneapolis through the Center on Reinventing Public Educationa nonprofit based in Washington state that has been a leading force in the privatization of public education across the country, from Indianapolis to New Orleans and many points in between. The compact was signed in 2010 by Rybak and a list of other local school and civic leaders, who all promised to tackle the test score-based achievement gap by working to close, reconstitute, or by other means immediately address persistently low-performing schools, whether district or charter. Churn, Churn, Churn This embodies the churn approach to school reform, with constant streams of student and teacher data being used to declare winners and losers in the education marketplace. Any innovation, disruption, or deregulation is worth a try in this scenario, if it can be used to boost numbers and tell a beat the odds story of success. So far, there has been little to show for the get-tough promises spelled out in the District-Charter Collaboration Compact as the metrics the plan was intended to address continue to reflect a statewide problem with serving high-needs students, as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2019. Instead, the crisis narrative continues to dog the Minneapolis Public Schools. In fact, it is still being used to justify extreme measures, including the districts current restructuring plan, which was voted in just as the COVID-19 pandemic took holdagainst the wishes of many grassroots community groups. Rybak left the mayors office in 2013. On his way out, he told reporters that he wishes hed spent more of his 12 years in office trying to improve the citys schools. Data-Driven Police Reform What he did do, however, was walk out of the mayors office and into a position as head of a local data-driven education reform initiative, Generation Next, before taking over as head of the Minneapolis Foundation in 2016 and, according to 2017 tax records, nabbing an annual salary of around $340,000. That salary, by the way, is nearly 10 times what the average Black family in Minneapolis earns each year, according to a May 2020 Washington Post analysis of 2018 Census Bureau data. The Minneapolis Foundation, both before and during Rybaks leadership, has pumped millions of dollars into school choice models in the Twin Cities. This includes support for some charter schools whose enrollment data appear to support racial segregation, such as (as of 2017) KIPP Minnesota, where nearly 96 percent of students are Black, according to 2019-2020 state data. (The Minneapolis Foundations number one grant recipient in education as of 2018 was the elite Blake School, where tuition runs as high as $34,000 per student annually.) While Rybak has held high-profile positions in education, it seems he has emerged unscathed from the misguided market-based, data-dependent education reform initiatives he has backed. Instead, it was his recent attempt to insert himself and the Minneapolis Foundation into police reform efforts that amounted to a day of reckoning for Rybak. When it became known that the Minneapolis Foundation, with Rybak at the helm, was attempting to drive police reform efforts, local activists quickly pushed back. They had ample reason to do so. Communities Thwart Privatized Police Reform Much in the same way that privatizers and opportunists applied accountability measures to teachers and schools as a way to improve outcomes, while sidestepping broader conversations about wealth inequality and structural racism, supporters of data-driven reform are targeting police departments and police officers for a similar makeover, thanks to outfits like Benchmark Analytics. There has been increasing use of surveillance technologies by local police across America, according to the ACLU. But from body cameras worn by police officers to predictive crime software, all the data and technology in the world has done little to improve policing, many experts say, and has in fact been more of a boon to police departments who often use it against the very communities they are supposed to be protecting. And that raises another key point: a data-driven approach funded by elites is not the same thing as allowing community members to guide police reform in their own neighborhoods. Activists said as much at a June 22 press conference, held to call out Rybak and the Minneapolis Foundation on their record of failing to curb police brutality and to cooperate with the community on the issue. Groups such as Communities United Against Police Brutality, which used the hashtag #StepBackRybak in a Facebook post that shared the Racial Justice Network petition and criticized Rybaks connection with Benchmark Analytics, and the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations convened the media event in front of current Minneapolis mayor Jacob Freys office. As mayor, Rybak failed miserably where police accountability is concerned, Michelle Gross of Communities United Against Police Brutality said forcefully at the press conference. As chair of a civilian review board tasked with developing recommendations for the police as far back as 2002, Gross alleged that Rybak showed disregard for the communitys work and in fact had a secret plan to gut their efforts. Local civil rights attorney, activist, and founder of the Racial Justice Network Nekima Levy Armstrong echoed Grosss criticism of Rybak. Armstrong, who once sat on the Minneapolis Foundations board, called Rybak to task for allowing the Minneapolis Police Department to get out of control while racial disparities in the city grew larger. He now has the audacity to [act] as if he is an expert on addressing police accountability, she told the small crowd of reporters gathered at the press conference. We are calling on the Minneapolis Foundation board, their trustees and their donors to stop allowing [Rybak] to gaslight the Black community, Armstrong stated. Their strategy worked. Within a few days, the Minneapolis Foundation announced that it was withdrawing its funding for the Benchmark Analytics program. This was an impressive check on Rybaks power. So for now, it looks like police reform efforts in Minneapolis will stay out of the hands of such opportunists, thanks to pressure from local activists and their supporters. Still, the legacy of supporting neoliberal education reform and privatization for the citys public school system remains intact. In the coming months, the Minneapolis Public Schools district is set to embark on an ambitious overhaul designed to right-size the district in the face of steep budget and enrollment shortages. But these drops in funding and public school enrollment numbers in Minneapolis were catalyzed by the funding and support for school choice and data-driven accountability schemes at the expense of the citys public school system. The kind of grassroots activism seen in Minneapolis in the fight against a misguided police reform program is a useful model and could help end these efforts to undermine and privatize public schools. Costa Rican doctors performed free COVID-19 tests on Friday for around 200 Nicaraguan migrants stranded in Penas Blancas. The group of migrants have been stuck at the border city for nearly two weeks after the Nicaraguan government refused to allow them back without proof that they are COVID-19 negative. The tests were performed in a mobile laboratory installed by the San Jose Bible Clinic, the largest private hospital in Costa Rica. The team was hired through a humanitarian campaign organised by several Costa Rican NGOs, with support of foreign donors, private business and the Costa Rican government of Carlos Alvarado. Human rights organisations have strongly criticised the Nicaraguan government's decision to demand a negative test from its citizens as a requirement to enter their own country. Some 1,500 Nicaraguans are estimated to have tried to return to the country since 1 July. Today, Tom Selleck is best known for portraying New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in the CBS hit show Blue Bloods. Yet, this isnt the first time the actor has led a successful series, as no one can forget Sellecks 9-season run in Magnum, P.I. Yet, both of these shows are only two of the actors great accomplishments. The actor has displayed his acting prowess in several other film and TV productions. Tom Selleck | Jamie McCarthy / Staff 1. Quigley Down Under (1990) Soon after Magnum, P.I. came to an end, Selleck starred in Quigley Down Under. The film follows rifleman Matthew Quigley (Selleck) who travels to the Australian outback to answer a help wanted ad for a sharpshooter. Yet, not everything is at it seems on paper. RELATED: Blue Bloods Star, Tom Selleck Opens Up About Taking a Break From Fame After Magnum P.I. When Quigley meets his employer (Alan Rickman), he soon discovers that hes been hired to kill aborigines. Quigley and his new employer fight it out, yet Quigley gets knocked out, and hes left in a remote area of the outback to die. After hes rescued, he plots his revenge. 2. Three Men and a Baby (1987) Three Men and a Baby premiered towards the end of Mangum, P.I. The film follows three bachelors with little-to-no parenting skills as they aim to take care of a baby left in their care by one of their girlfriends. The film stars Tom Selleck, Ted Danson, and Steve Guttenberg. RELATED: Blue Bloods: Tom Selleck Gives Hope That the Show Will Go Beyond 10 Seasons 3. The Jessie Stone franchise Tom Selleck and Jessie Stone have become one and the same over the years. And, the next Stone production has been announced! Selleck has portrayed Jessie Stone many a time, as multiple TV movies focused on the character have graced Selleck fans. Jessie Stone is a New York Police Chief investigating a series of murders, in adaptations of Robert P. Parkers novels. Each TV movie follows Stone down a different and dangerous winding path. 4. Friends (1996 2000) Though Tom Selleck was not a leading character in Friends, he played Dr. Richard Burke Monicas love interest in ten different episodes from 1996 to 2000. Fans enjoyed seeing a Hollywood A-lister appear on the show. Like Brad Pitt and other famous faces who graced the screen, he was present just long enough to leave an everlasting impression long enough until Chandler came in to seize Monicas heart instead. 5. In & Out (1997) Tom Selleck portrayed Peter Malloy in In & Out, which followed a midwestern teacher (Kevin Kline) who questions his sexuality after a former student makes a comment about him at the Academy Awards. Selleck plays a newscaster who comments on the story that takes the small Indiana town by storm. Though Selleck is not the lead in the movie, the film remains a well-known comedy with a handful of A-listers (and then-upcoming stars) taking on minor and supporting roles. By Online Desk India reported its highest single-day spike of 57,117 fresh COVID-19 cases on Saturday taking India's tally near the 17-lakh mark. According to Health Ministry, India recorded over 57,117 fresh COVID-19 cases in last 24-hours taking tally to 16,95,988 including 5,65,103 active cases, 10,94,374 cured/discharged & 36,511 deaths. As a possible explanation for India's intriguingly low COVID-19 mortality, doctors from the Tata Memorial Centre have proposed that the lower incidence of blood clots in deep veins in warmer climates and latitudes closer to the equator might help account for the relatively low mortality in India. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get the alleged attempt to topple his government stopped and said he is open to welcoming back the Congress rebels led by Sachin Pilot. Answering queries from reporters, Gehlot said if the Congress high command forgives the dissidents, he will embrace them. Since the power tussle between him and Sachin Pilot resurfaced this month, the Congress veteran has used harsh words against his former deputy, once even referring to him as nikamma or useless. Gehlot said he will do whatever the Congress leadership wants and gave the party the credit for becoming the Rajasthan chief minister thrice. The chief minister was on his way back to Jaipur after an overnight stay at Jaisalmers Suryagarh resort, where loyalist MLAs have been shifted ahead of the assembly session from August 14. The Congress has accused the BJP of playing a major role in the rebellion by the now sacked deputy chief minister and 18 other Congress MLAs who are threatening his government. We have no quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government. Modi should get stopped whatever is going on in Rajasthan, the chief minister said outside the hotel where the MLAs were shifted Friday. Gehlot and the ministers are likely to spend most of their time in the state capital as the Congress tries to keep its numbers intact in Jaisalmer. He claimed that democracy is under threat in the country is and the Union Home Ministry is after his government in the state. He repeated the charge that the rate for trying to lure MLAs away has gone up after the announcement of the assembly session. Reacting to BJP state president Satish Poonias statement over the shifting of Congress MLAs to Jaisalmer, Gehlot called him a new leader who wants to take on former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. He commented that Raje has disappeared from the scene. Poonia had mocked the Congress, asking if the Gehlot loyalists will next move further westward across the border into Pakistan. MLAs from the Congress and its allies had remained confined to Fairmont hotel in Jaipur since July 13 before being flown to Jaisalmer on chartered flights. They are likely to visit Tanot Mata temple near the Pakistan border and some other places during their Jaisalmer stay, expected to continue till the assembly session begins on August 14. Gehlot recalled that he had informed Narendra Modi about the political situation in the state through a letter and a telephone conversation. He said he will write another letter to Modi asking him to call a video conference of all chief ministers again to review the Covid-19 situation. He said adequate testing for coronavirus is not taking place in some states while Rajasthan has increased its testing capacity to 40,000 per day. We have done excellent Covid management in the state. The recovery rate is good, the death rate is less than 1 per cent, he said. Including the rebels, the Congress has 107 MLAs in the 200-member assembly. The BJP has 72 MLAs. The European Union on Thursday imposed travel and financial sanctions on a department of Russia's military intelligence service and on firms from North Korea and China over their suspected participation in major cyberattacks across the world. In its first-ever sanctions related to cybercrime, the EU targeted the department for special technologies of the Russian military intelligence service, known as Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, it said in a statement. The bloc accused the Russian service of having carried out two cyberattacks in June 2017, which hit several companies in Europe resulting in large financial losses. The service is also accused of two cyberattacks against Ukraine's power grid in 2015 and 2016. Four individuals working for the Russian military intelligence service were also sanctioned for allegedly participating in an attempted cyberattack against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Netherlands in April 2018. North Korean company Chosun Expo was also sanctioned on suspicion of having supported the Lazarus Group, which is deemed responsible for a series of major attacks worldwide, including an $81 million heist against Bangladesh Bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2016, the world's biggest cyber fraud. The company is also allegedly linked to an attack against Hollywood film studio Sony Pictures to prevent the release of a satirical movie about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2014. 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. " " Acting U.S. Comptroller General and General Accountability Office (GAO) head Gene Dodaro testifies before Congress in July 2009. Manuel Balce Ceneta/ AP Images Every year, the federal government takes in trillions of dollars in tax money and spends it on a variety of programs and projects. Every U.S. state takes in billions of tax dollars as well. Is there someone keeping track of how the government is spending all that money, making sure it's used effectively, and watching out for waste? Someone who acts as a sort of accountant for the government? Luckily, the auditor general takes care of all of this. An auditor general is sometimes known as a comptroller, or just controller. (For the record, the word "comptroller" was originally two French words combined into a single word. It's technically pronounced like "controller," though you may hear it pronounced phonetically) [source: Merriam-Webster]. Auditors general exist at virtually every level of government, and many corporations have them as well. The most important auditors general work for state governments. The U.S. federal government has one as well -- the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is headed by the Comptroller General of the United States. Advertisement Becoming an auditor general requires you to either be appointed or elected to the position. Each state has a different method of choosing their auditor general. The Comptroller General of the U.S. is appointed by the president for a 15-year term, subject to congressional approval. State auditors general may be appointed by their state legislatures, by committees within a given legislature or by the governor. Some states elect their auditor general, which works just like any other state-level elected position. The job of the auditor general revolves around tracking government finances, so accounting experience is a must. Most auditors general have accounting degrees and years of governmental management experience. Often they work their way up through a state's accounting department (often known as the Office of the Auditor General), even serving as deputy auditor general before being appointed to the top job. It's rare to see someone appointed to an auditor general position directly from a career in the private sector, since getting a political appointment requires some political connections. Many auditors general also have worked in local or state politics. For elected auditor general positions, there might not be any specific qualifications. While a solid background in accounting would seem like a good way to attract voters, someone with little experience in the field can get elected if they have a reputation for cutting down waste and corruption -- or they have a large election fund. Now you know how to become an auditor general, but what does an auditor general actually do? Magenau has this year succeeded in obtaining Australian citizenship, although her ceremony was cancelled because of the pandemic and rescheduled to a virtual gathering online for August. But she says the feeling of being trapped in a country has changed the way she feels about Australia, which she always associated with freedom. "Australia for me is a welcoming country that loves immigrants, it's multicultural but since this travel ban has started for incoming and [outgoing] traffic I feel very trapped here and to be honest, I'm not really sure I can really identify with being Australian because it feels like it's against my human rights to have my liberty of movement." she says. Asked if she could deliver a single message to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Magenau says: "It makes me feel like I am living in a prison, that's what I would say, it's a prison island." Magenau's application has now been approved and she was flying out on Friday, a fortnight since her father's death. But she says she was only successful because she requested help from the German embassy and her local MP Paul Fletcher. Others have been less successful. Australia's bans which are imposed by the federal government but are the decision of the national cabinet also apply to foreigners entering the country, even if they have valid visas. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age has been inundated with pleas for help from citizens around the world, seeking to either leave Australia or enter it, to reunite with their families and loved ones as Australia's travel bans, first imposed in March, have been extended indefinitely. Many have been reluctant to go on the record, fearing it will damage their chances of receiving an exemption. In one case, one Melbourne woman says she was battling to try and attend her own wedding in Macedonia but had so far not been approved. A spokesman for the Australian Border Force said urgent requests were processed within one week although other applications could take up to four weeks to be approved or rejected. And it said it had overwhelmingly granted more exemptions than it had denied. Between March 25 and June 30 this year more than 11,500 Australian citizens and permanent residents have been given exemptions to depart Australia, with 3300 denied. For foreigners trying to enter the country, the spokesman says it had granted permission to 10,350 foreign nationals and denied 440. Brian Bathgate and wife Sue from Cheltenham, England fall into the latter category. Long wait: Sue Bathgate with her dogs Bertie and Poppy, who are currently in Australia. Brian and Sue Bathgate, pictured with Chantelle James and her sons Ethan, 11, and Louis, 5, in Devon last year. The couple, aged in their seventies, had been planning their dream of moving to Sydney's northern beaches to live near Sue's three grandsons and daughter Chantelle James. The couple was granted sponsored-parent visas in November and had shipped all their belongings, including their border terriers Poppy and Bertie, who flew to Australia on March 18, ahead of their one-way flight scheduled for March 23. It was only once they were inside Heathrow's Terminal 5 that their nightmare began. "They printed out the luggage labels - took the luggage away, they printed out the boarding pass to Singapore and then the lady said 'it won't print out the Singapore to Sydney boarding card'. It was just dreadful," Brian says. "None of us knew about the travel bans until mum and Brian weren't allowed in, because they were on a visa we just assumed they would be able to be let in," Chantelle says. "It's devastating, a day before they could have got on the plane and they could have been here." The couple has purchased a home in Sydney but have been living off mattresses loaned by friends in a flat that is under renovation in England since March 23. They have applied four times for an exemption on compelling and compassionate grounds to come into Australia but have been rejected "straight away" every time. "It's just a blanket no," Chantelle says, "you can only apply online and you get an automatic response, there's no human contact." Sue says she's fallen into depression for the first time in her life. "I got really quite anxious and depressed and in the end I had to go to the doctors and they've given me something because I was just spiralling down and that has never been me, ever, I've always been so positive and very friendly, the whole thing has just been awful awful," Sue says. The couple say they were more than happy to pay for their own quarantine which would protect the Australian public from any coronavirus risk. The family has already paid nearly $40,000 in visa and relocation costs to move to Australia but Chantelle says that was nothing compared to the emotional damage the travel bans were causing. "It's not just the financial cost, it's the emotional cost of having your parents overseas with nowhere to live and no future, they can't plan anything.'' she says. Chantelle, 43, says having lost her father to coronavirus in May and unable to travel to his funeral in the UK, the need to have her mother and step-dad close by was more acute than ever. Hoping to be reunited: Charlotte Bolt is still in England after her partner Michael Hawkey travelled earlier this year to Mt Isa to work. "Life is short and they are phenomenal grandparents to our kids, and amazing support to me; ordinarily we see each other two or three times a year, now there's no end and nothing we can do, we're just helpless," she says. A couple with even less hope of reuniting is 24-year-old Charlotte Bolt from Exeter and Michael Hawkey, 28, from Cardiff in Wales. Hawkey moved to Mt Isa in January to take up a new job in the mining sector. Bolt was planning to follow having been given a verbal job offer in March ahead of her scheduled move in April. They both planned to use their working-holiday visa but Bolt has been stuck in England because of the pandemic-imposed travel restrictions. "If Mike were Australian - what threat would I be then? Just because he's not Aussie I can't come," Bolt says. "I'm willing to pay whatever it takes, whatever the flight costs, I'm willing to come with my savings and spend that money in the Australian economy, I wouldn't be a burden, I'd be bringing something with me. "What health risk do I pose if I'm going to go into quarantine for 14 days like any other Australian citizen? Even if I had to quarantine twice I'd do it." Hawkey says their case was "insignificant" compared to the hardship other families and couples were experiencing as a result of Australia's travel bans but says the most difficult factor was that there was no sign of when the bans might be lifted. "I think the biggest problem is that there is no date for this to end, there's no end goal," Hawkey says. A man was arrested Friday following a string of assaults in the area of Roncesvalles and Howard Park avenues. Driss Zahri, 37, of no fixed address, was charged with four counts of assault, two counts of assault with a weapon, six counts of each of failure to comply with recognizance and failure to comply with probation. The arrest came after six reported assaults in the area since late May, most since July 20. Five of the six victims have been women. Police have previously appealed to the Roncesvalles community to help them identify a suspect. About 200 community members and residents of the area had also gathered at Sorauren Park on Wednesday for a physically distanced forum to talk about what they can do to keep each other safe. Zahri was scheduled to appear in court on at Old City Hall on Saturday, Aug. 1. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-1100 or call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477). Keeda Haynes believes she brings a unique perspective to the race for Tennessee's 5th Congressional District. After spending over three years in prison for a crime she says she didn't commit, she hopes a spot in Washington will allow her to speak for vulnerable constituents -- and make a little history as well. Haynes, a former public defender, is in a three-way race that includes 17-year Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper. The primary election, which is slated for Aug. 6, has no Republican in the race so the winner will almost certainly be elected to Congress come November. "I have a unique perspective that a lot of people don't have. ... I've been a defendant and defender," Haynes told ABC News. "I really saw just how this war on drugs really decimated Black and brown, low-income communities." If elected, the progressive Democrat would make history as the first Black woman in Tennessee ever elected to Congress. The state has only had two Black representatives elected to Congress, with the last candidate elected over two decades ago, according to the U.S. House of Representatives. MORE: 63% support Black Lives Matter as recognition of discrimination jumps: POLL Along with supporting criminal justice reform and the Black Lives Matter movement, the 42-year-old Haynes is also passionate about issues such as providing access to affordable housing, raising the minimum wage and reducing student loan debt. "We are reimagining each and every system so that Black lives can matter across every single spectrum," she said. Haynes, who is from Franklin and later moved to the state's capital of Nashville, was the second of five children. She graduated from Tennessee State University with a degree in criminal justice and psychology. But just two weeks after graduating college, she had to turn down a position as a legal assistant because she had to report to federal prison. PHOTO: Keeda Haynes, a 42-year-old former public defender who was previously incarcerated for a crime she says she didn't commit, is running for Congress in Tennessee. (Courtesy Keeda Haynes) At 19, she started dating a man in Nashville for a few years and began accepting packages for his cellphone and beepers shop, she told ABC News. She later found out that those packages actually contained marijuana. She spent three years and 10 months in prison -- on what was initially a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence -- on charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana. Story continues In 2006, Haynes was finally released from prison while continuing to maintain her innocence. She went on to pass the bar exam and work in a public defender's office for over six years. Her historic run comes as a record number of Black women are running for Congress across the U.S. In 2019, a record number of Black women were serving in state legislative offices, according to The Center of American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. In the last two years Black women saw the largest gain in representation at the state legislative level since 1994. MORE: Barack Obama's eulogy for John Lewis signals pivotal day in 2020 election: OPINION Haynes' advice for young Black girls hoping to follow in her footsteps is to remember that you have the ability to make the impossible possible. "Prison did not deter me from doing what I said I was going to do," she told ABC News. "There will be people that will tell you that you can't do things and that things are impossible, but you have to stay focused." Haynes called late civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis, who was laid to rest Thursday in Atlanta, an "iconic figure" in the fight for justice and equality, and expressed eternal gratitude for the work that Lewis accomplished throughout his remarkable life. "Even in the face of police violence, he still believed in something bigger and still fought for liberation. ... I personally feel obligated to do this work in his name," Haynes said. Formerly incarcerated woman runs to be 1st Black woman in Congress from Tennessee originally appeared on abcnews.go.com AAP leaders to visit Ram Lalla shrine before Ayodhya yatra, first list of UP candidates soon Manish Sisodia urges Delhiites to use public vehicle at least 1 day every month to make Delhi pollution free Manish Sisodia writes to Amit Shah after Lt Governor blocks unlock 3 move India oi-Deepika S New Delhi, Aug 01: Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia wrote to Amit Shah Saturday requesting immediate directions to be issued to Lieutenant Governor to overturn his decision cancelling Delhi government's directive to open hotels and weekly bazaars. In his letter Sisodia said the Delhi government was preparing to re-send these decisions - the re-opening of hotels and weekly markets (the latter on a week's trial) - to the Lieutenant Governor's office on Tuesday and asked Shah to ensure that they were passed this time. Unlock 3.0: Centre issues fresh guidelines for reopening of gyms, yoga institutes "Coronavirus cases are steadily decreasing in Delhi and the situation is under control. Cases, however, are increasing in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, but over there hotels and weekly markets are allowed to function," Manish Sisodia pointed out. "It is inconceivable why a state that did a better job of bringing the coronavirus outbreak under control is being forced to shut down its economy," he said. "I request that you change this decision and instruct the Lieutenant Governor to immediately approve the Chief Minister's proposal," Sisodia wrote. On Friday Baijal, who represents the centre and chairs the Delhi Disaster Management Authority, ruled that hotels and weekly markets could not be re-opened. Sources in his office told news agency PTI the decision had been taken because the COVID-19 situation in the national capital was still "fragile" and the threat is "far from over". The ruling AAP (Aam Aadmi Party), which has frequently clashed with the centre and Baijal over the Covid crisis, demanded non-interference in its decisions. The party pointed out that active infections were on the decline and that it was time to focus on the economy. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Baijal has scrapped a number of orders pitched by the Delhi government. Last month, he cancelled a controversial decision to reserve hospitals (except those run by the centre) for residents of Delhi. He also reversed a decision to test only those people with symptoms, saying asymptomatic cases and high-risk contacts would also be tested. This is not the first time during this pandemic that the Delhi government has appealed to Amit Shah. In June Sisodia wrote another letter, asking him to roll back a central order requiring all Covid patients in the city to visit a quarantine centre for evaluation. That central order came a week after yet another flashpoint between Baijal and the Delhi government - over mandatory five-day quarantine for all patients. That directive, issued by Mr Baijal himself, was withdrawn after massive protests by the ruling AAP. Delhi has more than 1.35 lakh COVID-19 cases so far, including nearly 4,000 deaths linked to the virus. However, it has only 10,500 active cases and a recovery rate that is significantly better than the national average (around 84 per cent compared to 64 per cent). The Justice Department scheduled two additional federal executions on Friday, an announcement that comes weeks after it fought off last-minute legal challenges and successfully resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause. The executions of Christopher Andre Vialva and William Emmett LeCroy are both scheduled to be carried out in late September. The government carried out three executions in July, and two other executions had been set previously for August. Vialva, 40, was convicted along with a co-defendant in the 1999 kidnapping and killing of an Iowa couple at Fort Hood in Texas. The federal government has scheduled executions for two men in late September. Three men were executed in July and two more men are scheduled for August executions. The federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, where one of the July executions occurred is shown The youth ministers had stopped to use a payphone in Killeen, Texas, and agreed to give Vialva and two others a ride, authorities said. Vialva pulled out a gun, forced the couple into the trunk and drove around for several hours, stopping at ATMs to withdraw cash and attempting to pawn the womans wedding ring, according to prosecutors. The victims, Todd and Stacie Bagley, were both shot in head and placed in trunk of their car, which then was set afire. Vialva -- who is the first Black inmate to be scheduled to be executed since the federal government resumed the death penalty this year -- is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24. A co-defendant in the case, Brandon Bernard, also received death sentence, though his execution date has not yet been scheduled. LeCroy, 50, of Georgia, was convicted of raping and killing Joann Lee Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, in 2001 and then stealing her car. Prosecutors said he broke into her home and attacked her when she came home from a shopping trip, binding her hands behind her back before he strangled her with an electrical cord and raped her. They said he then slit Tieslers throat and stabbed her repeatedly in the back. At the time, one of LeCroy's lawyers argued he should face state charges and not be tried in federal court under the federal carjacking statute. LeCroy's lawyers said he had no intention of stealing the car when he was burglarizing Tiesler's home. He was arrested at the U.S.-Canada border and was previously convicted of firearms and drug offenses, burglary, aggravated assault and child sex abuse charges. LeCroy is scheduled to be executed on September 26. The federal government has already executed three men in July, including Daniel Lewis Lee (left) and Wesley Purkey (right) Keith Dwayne Nelson (left) is scheduled for a federal execution in August. Dustin Honken (right) was executed in July The resumption of federal executions by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, started on July 14, with the execution of former white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee. Two others, Wesley Purkey and Dustin Honken, were executed later the same week. Anti-death penalty groups say President Donald Trump is pushing for executions prior to the November election in a cynical bid to burnish a reputation a law-and-order leader. U.S. officials have portrayed the executions, particularly those of men convicted of brutal killings of children, as bringing long-delayed justice for victims and their families. There are currently 58 men and one woman on federal death row, all of them in Terre Haute. At least until this year, the federal government has not been prolific executioner compared to states. Combined, states have executed thousands of people over decades. But just 37 were executed for federal crimes between 1927 and 2003, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Thirty-four were executed between 1927 and 1963, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg - put to death in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. No federal executions were carried out from 1963 to 2001. And only three happened from 2001 to 2003. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was among them. The Justice Department announced an Aug. 26 execution date for the only Native American on federal death row, Lezmond Mitchell, earlier this week. Officials had previously set Keith Dwayne Nelsons execution for the same week in August. Mitchell was convicted of the 2001 killing of a woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter. Nelson was convicted of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl while she was rollerblading near her Kansas home, raping her in a forest, then strangling her. Lee, Purkey and Honkens victims also included children. Genetic testing for all women over 30 would prevent millions of deaths from breast and ovarian cancer globally and be cost effective in medium and higher income countries. That is the conclusion of international research published in the journal Cancers, looking at the economic case for population-level screening for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations. Nicole Braude had a double mastectomy and is now pregnant with her first child. Credit:Nick Moir Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Australia and these gene mutations are known to cause 10-20 per cent of ovarian and 6 per cent of breast cancers. The genes were made famous by Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie who had a double mastectomy in 2013 after losing her mother to cancer at 56 and discovering she had the BRCA1 gene mutation. Melody Caramins, a Sydney-based genetic pathologist and ambassador for Pathology Awareness Australia, said the BRCA mutations made a woman 85 per cent more likely to develop breast cancer in her lifetime. This risk could be mitigated if known, through risk reduction surgery, increased screening or preventative medication. Rep. Ilhan Omar is one of the best-known Democrats from the class of 2018, a lightning-rod member of the Squad whose outspoken liberal politics have made her an enemy of Donald Trump. Back home in Minneapolis, however, her polarizing national profile is complicating her bid to win a second term. Facing a political newcomer who raised a jaw-dropping $3.2 million last quarter much of it from pro-Israel donors who oppose Omars foreign policy stances Omar suddenly finds herself on the defensive against claims that shes too divisive to effectively represent the solidly Democratic district. We don't need someone distracted with Twitter fights, said primary challenger Antone Melton-Meaux, who pledges to focus on local issues and avoid the spotlight. I don't want to be a celebrity. I want to serve the people, and people are tired of the politics of division and distraction. The first Black Muslim woman to serve in Congress, Omar has built an image as a progressive champion who isnt afraid to stand up to Trump. The president, in turn, has frequently singled out the freshman lawmaker, disparaging her as an anti-Semite, an America-hating socialist and falsely claiming that she publicly supports al Qaeda. A Somali refugee who is the first member of Congress to wear a hijab, Omar was attacked in xenophobic terms by Trump in 2019 when he encouraged her and other members of the Squad to go back to where they came from. As a result, supporters rallied around Omar in the district, which is the most strongly Democratic in the state. Yet many constituents have been alienated by her comments about Israel. Omar has been accused of anti-Semitism after suggesting support for Israel was popular due to campaign donations , that pro-Israel lawmakers had dual allegiance to both the U.S. and Israel and Israel had hypnotized the world . Rep. Omar's past comments invoked age-old anti-Semitic tropes and rhetoric that echoed and brought about the nightmares of persecution, said Rabbi Avi Olitzky, who leads a congregation in the district. Story continues Olitzky threw his support behind Melton-Meaux, who has spoken out about Omars comments about Israel, and said the challenger brings desperately needed conflict resolution skills to the political climate. Fifth Congressional District candidate, Democrat Antone Melton-Meaux, answers questions during an interview in his Minneapolis office Wednesday, July 22, 2020. Melton-Meaux is giving Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar an unexpectedly strong, well-funded primary challenge in one of the country's most heavily Democratic congressional districts, which includes Minneapolis and some suburbs. (AP Photo/Jim Mone) University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs said Omars comments have infuriated the districts small but influential Jewish community. You've got an opponent who is playing on these divisions with resources to build his name recognition and take the fight to Omar, Jacobs said. Can she counter that with less money and with political skills that have not been impressive to this point? A significant swath of the Fifth Districts Jewish community has an uneasy relationship with Omar, according to Steve Hunegs, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council for Minnesota and the Dakotas. But Hunegs added the community is not monolithic and some progressive Jews are behind the incumbent. Omar voter Liz Loeb said as a Jewish person, she was hurt by Omars rhetoric, but does not think the lawmaker is anti-Semitic. I need a representative that advocates for, and cares about and understands the experiences of people who are marginalized within communities, Loeb said. Allies of the first-term lawmaker say Omar has reached out to the Jewish community and point to her apology in 2019 . In a sign of her support from the national party establishment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed Omar earlier this month a year removed from Pelosis rebuke of the congresswoman. Omar is also backed by former Rep. Keith Ellison, who vacated the seat when he ran for Minnesota attorney general in 2018. Omar won an open, six-candidate primary that year with 48 percent of the vote and triumphed in the general election by nearly 60 percentage points. Still, pro-Israel bundlers are making her defeat a priority this cycle, angered by her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. And Melton-Meaux has been backed by pro-Israel PACs who oppose Omars foreign policy stances. A super PAC that backs Americas alliance with Israel is even starting to air Omar attack ads in the district. A previously little-known Black mediation lawyer, Melton-Meaux produced a second quarter fundraising haul that dwarfed Omars tally of $471,000 . Omar allies like Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chairman Ken Martin criticized Melton-Meaux for receiving big special interest money. You can judge someones values by where they're taking money from and who's fueling and funding their campaigns, Martin said. Jeremy Slevin, Omars communications director, hit back at claims that Melton-Meaux is a unifier and criticized his past work as a corporate lawyer representing employers. I feel pretty strongly that the image he is presenting in his primary challenge is bogus, Slevin said. Slevin also took issue with Melton-Meauxs casting of Omar as out of touch with her congressional district and in search of the limelight. I think it's demeaning for someone to suggest that because a leader is subject to routinely racist and xenophobic attacks from the president, that they are therefore seeking celebrity, Slevin said. Although Melton-Meauxs substantial fundraising numbers catapulted him into contention for the seat that encompasses Minneapolis and its first-ring suburbs, Omar is still viewed as the favorite in the Aug. 11 primary. The congresswomans recent internal polling showed her leading Melton-Meaux 66 to 29 percent, with a 74 percent approval rating. The Melton-Meaux campaign blasted the poll as methodologically flawed but declined to share specifics from their own polling. Melton-Meaux said his message, which centers around criticizing Omar for her voting record and her controversial comments on Israel, is resonating. He called out Omars vote against the USMCA trade deal and present vote on a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide. And he ripped her for missing nearly 5 percent of votes during her first term. Martin, the DFL Party chairman, said he was confident Omar would win next months primary, backed by the state partys support and what he said was a groundswell of voter mobilization following the police killing of George Floyd -- which occurred two miles from Melton-Meauxs home. Melton-Meaux noted that the incident led him to reflect on his experiences with law enforcement. As a law student at the University of Virginia, Melton-Meaux said police detained him for a crime he did not commit. I know without a shadow of a doubt, but for a few circumstances, that could have been a knee on my neck, he said. So to see former Officer Chauvin snuff out the life of George Floyd over eight and a half minutes in broad daylight in the city that I love was heartbreaking. Minneapolis lawyer Don Lewis, who is endorsing Melton-Meaux, says his main issue with Omar isnt her controversial comments on Israel, but her lack of connection with the districts needs. Lewis, who is Black, said he views Melton-Meaux as an effective coalition builder whose background as a descendant of African enslaved people is meaningful. Melton-Meaux is betting on more voters like Minneapolis resident Pam Goldfarb Liss in order to win on Aug. 11. She supported Omar in 2018 and consistently votes the DFL party line. But now, she says she is voting for Melton-Meaux because she feels Omar is more concerned with fighting Trump than standing up for her constituents. I would like to have a mild-mannered representative who builds bridges and gets things done for Minnesota instead, Goldfarb Liss said. Netflix is working on a feature film adaptation of Ubisofts Beyond Good & Evil, the streaming platform has revealed on Twitter. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the project is still in early development and still in in the midst of looking for writers. It already has a few names attached to it, though, including Rob Letterman (Detective Pikachus director) wholl head up whats apparently going to be a hybrid live-action/animated flick. Meanwhile, Ubisoft Film & Televisions Jason Altman and Margaret Boykin will serve as producers. Some good news for Beyond Good & Evil fans A Netflix feature film adaptation of @Ubisoft's epic space pirate adventure is in development! pic.twitter.com/H5uMIXhir6 NX (@NXOnNetflix) July 31, 2020 Beyond Good and Evil, which came out in 2003, is an action-adventure game that takes place in the year 2435 on a planet under alien attack. It follows the adventures of Jade, an investigative reporter who becomes part of an underground resistance movement working to expose a government conspiracy. While it enjoyed a pretty decent reception, it wasnt commercial success. Its HD release for Xbox in 2011 did extremely well, however, and Ubisoft eventually announced a prequel in 2017. This may not be the only project Netflix and Ubisoft are collaborating on. A Variety report said the streaming giant is also developing a Splinter Cell animated series, which will be written by John Wick franchise co-creator Derek Kolstad. Sgt. Anthony Conner, president of the Omaha police union, said the bill would not give officers the same kinds of due process allowed to other public servants. He contrasted the proposed board with the Citizen Complaint Review Board, established by Stothert to handle complaints about police actions. The legislation seeks to solve problems that do not exist in Omaha, Nebraska, or any other municipality in Nebraska, Conner said. Under LB 1222, all Nebraska communities with populations over 5,000 that employ a full-time police officer would have to appoint a citizen committee to investigate complaints about police conduct and all shootings involving police. The bill spells out the boards authority and how they should operate. It would require cities to provide an independent investigator for such boards. The board would, if necessary, provide recommendations to police departments and forward its findings to local prosecutors. Wayne got approval to introduce the bill in the waning days of the legislative session, well after the normal bill introduction deadline. It addresses issues that gained prominence during the four-month pandemic-induced break in the session. Federal police clean in front of the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse in downtown Portland in Portland, Oregon, on July 28, 2020. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Portland Man Charged for Tossing Bomb at Courthouse During BLM Protest Federal authorities on July 31 charged a man with arson for tossing a bomb at the federal courthouse in downtown Portland after discovering an online review his grandmother left about the green vest the 18-year-old wore to the protest. According to the U.S. Attorneys Office at the District of Oregon, Gabriel Agard-Berryhill, 18, was seen in a video posted on social media throwing a bomb at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on Tuesday, setting off a large explosion. Authorities found Agard-Berryhill wearing the same green vest in other videos and eventually discovered a review for the item written by his grandmother. I got this for my grandson whos a protestor [sic] downtown, he uses it every night and says its [sic] does the job, the review said. A Portland man has been charged with arson after throwing a large explosive device at the Hatfield Federal Courthouse during a protest on July 28, 2020. Investigation by @USMarshalsHQ and @ATF_Seattle. Read more: https://t.co/UTh2KnA4k5 pic.twitter.com/ImmuQMBbhm U.S. Attorney Oregon (@USAO_OR) July 31, 2020 The security cameras at the courthouse recorded a large incendiary object land near the plywood protecting the buildings facade. The explosion ignited a fire near the main entrance. Law enforcement personnel on the scene collected various items as evidence and send them for lab analysis, but the investigators ultimately tracked down the suspect based on photos and videos of his unique +ICONS vest. The vest brand was clearly visible in a photo in which Agard-Berryhill appears to hold a shield in front of a naked woman who faced the police. Investigators found another image of the vest on Facebook and identified the suspect. No legitimate protest message is advanced by throwing a large explosive device against a government building. Mr. Agard-Berryhills actions could have gravely injured law enforcement officers positioned near the courthouse, other protesters standing nearby, or himself, Billy Williams, U.S. Attorney at the District of Oregon, said in a statement. The violent opportunists engaged in dangerous acts of violence, such as arson, need to realize there will be grave consequences, Russel Burger, U.S. Marshal for the District of Oregon, said. Serious crimes of this nature go beyond mere property damage to the courthouse and endanger peoples lives. Agard-Berryhill appeared before a magistrate judge on July 31 and was released pending further court proceedings. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. Authorities charged another man with arson on July 28 for setting fire to the Justice Center in downtown Portland, located not far from the federal courthouse. According to DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec, 74 people have been arrested during the riots in Portland as of July 28. Portland has been the site of nightly riots for more than two months after the police-custody killing of George Floyd. The nighttime violence is separate and distinct from the peaceful protests that occur earlier in the day. The violence subsided for the first time on the night of July 30-31 as protesters urged each other not to provoke a response from federal law enforcement in a bid to have the Trump administration draw down the federal presence in the city. Washington, Aug 1 : US President Donald Trump has said that will ban the popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok from operating in the country through an executive order as early as Saturday, according to media reports. Speaking to reporters on board the Air Force One on Friday, the President said: "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the US." Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order as early as Saturday to officially bar the company from the US, The Hill news website reported. "Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that," the President said, while signalling that he was not supportive of allowing an American company to acquire TikTok. Trump's announcement came hours after reports that Microsoft was in talks to purchase TikTok from Beijing-based company ByteDance. That report emerged around the same time news outlets reported that Trump was considering signing an executive order requiring ByteDance to divest the American portion of TikTok due to concerns that the company may be giving sensitive US data collected through the app to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said The Hill news website. Trump administration officials have for weeks floated taking action against TikTok due its connections to China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made similar comments earlier this month, announcing that the administration was considering banning Chinese apps, including TikTok, due to national security concerns. The US President's announcement also came nearly a month after India on June 29 banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, over national security concerns. Pompeo had welcomed India's move, saying the "clean app" policy will promote New Delhi's national security against the CCP spying on the country. "We welcome India's ban on certain mobile apps that can serve as appendages of the CCP's surveillance state. India's 'clean app' approach will boost India's sovereignty, will also boost India's integrity and national security as the Indian government itself has stated," he had said. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Search launched after man jumps off bridge to Phuket PHUKET: Rescue workers and Marine Police this afternoon are searching for a young man seen parking his motorbike on the Thao Sri Soonthorn Bridge onto the island from Phang Nga and leaping over the side into the water below. By Eakkapop Thongtub Saturday 1 August 2020, 04:43PM The man was identified as Sarayut Sangsawang, 18, from Phang Nga. Photo: Supplied The man parked his motorbike in the emergency lane and jumped over the side. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub The search for the man began early this afternoon. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub Passing motorists called the Khok Kloi Police Station, on the Phang Nga side of the bridge, to inform officers of the incident at 12:20pm today (Aug 1), reported Pol Col Prasert Srikhunrat, Chief of Marine Police Division 8. The witnesses reported that the man, aged 20 to 30 years, had parked his Honda MSX motorcycle, registered Phang Nga, in the emergency lane. He removed his shoes, then jumped over the side. The man was last seen being pulled by the current under the bridge towards the open water at the western end of the channel. Col Prasert reported that police have confirmed the mans identity, Sarayut Sangsawang, an 18-year-old resident of Moo 7, Ka Lai Subdistrict, in Takua Thung District, Phang Nga province. He also confirmed that Mr Sarayuts relatives have been informed of the situation. If there are any updates we will let you know, Col Prasert said. SEOUL, July 31 (Reuters) - The economy of isolated North Korea grew for the first time in three years in 2019 as better weather conditions boosted crop yields, but sanctions imposed to stop its nuclear ambitions kept factory output weak, South Korea's central bank said. Gross domestic product (GDP) in North Korea last year rose 0.4% in real terms from the previous year when the economy suffered the biggest contraction in 21 years, shrinking 4.1% due to a drought and sanctions, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said on Friday. North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programmes and the U.N. Security Council has been toughening measures in recent years. "The sanctions have not become any tougher since 2017-end and weather conditions have been more favourable which helped output from the agriculture sector to improve," a BOK official said. "Even so, its too early to say (North Korea's) economy is in a recovery" as its trade volume in recent years is half the levels seen before the international sanctions kicked in. North Korea's economy grew 3.9% in 2016, the fastest pace in 17 years, but sharply contracted in the following two years. Current leader Kim Jong Un vowed to switch the focus from the development of nuclear arsenal to economic development in 2018 before he held an unprecedented summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. The two leaders have met three times, but failed to find a compromise over the North's nuclear weapons programme. Estimates for North Korean economic data by the BOK are considered the most authoritative as the isolated nation does not disclose any statistics on its economy. Since 1991, the BOK has used figures from intelligence agencies and the unification ministry data on everything from size of rice paddy crops, water flows at dams to traffic near the border to make estimates. The BOK said output from agriculture, forestry and fisheries which accounts for about a fifth of North Korea's economy increased 1.4% last year, while industrial production fell 0.9%, following a 12.3% drop in 2018. However, North Korea's trade volume jumped 14.1% in 2019, as exports of non-sanctioned items such as shoes, hats and wigs increased 43%, the bank said. Story continues The BOK official said North Korea's trade was expected to worsen significantly this year as the coronavirus outbreak would have curbed shipments to China, its biggest trading partner that accounts for more than 90% of North Korea's total trade. North Korea's gross national income per capita stood at 1.408 million won ($1,184.79) in 2019, about 3.8% of that of South Korea. In the 1950s North Korea's command-driven economy posted a healthy an annual growth rate of 13.7%. But a focus on post Korean War military spending, the fall of the Soviet Union, and a famine in the mid-1990s that killed an estimated two million people, crippled the economy. ($1 = 1,188.4000 won) (Reporting by Cynthia Kim; Editing by Michael Perry) Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 20:31:59|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Aerial photo taken on Aug. 1, 2020 shows fishing boats sailing out of a fishing port in Dongshan County, southeast China's Fujian Province. Some fishermen were allowed to fish on Saturday after a three-month fishing ban was lifted on the sea area of the province. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan) Vivek Anand Oberoi, the first Bollywood actor to come onboard the Dailyhunt app, recently announced a nationwide talent hunt to introduce fresh faces in his upcoming horror-thriller movie Rosie - The Saffron Chapter. The actor has teamed up with producer Prernaa V Arora to launch this unique initiative, which is very close to his heart. Rosie - The Saffron Chapter is touted to be India's first horror-thriller film based on true events. The movie will be helmed by Vishal Mishra. It based in the Saffron BPO, which is considered to be one of the most haunted places in Gurgaon. Does being a part of the film sound exciting to you? For all aspiring actors, male and female, here's the first step that will take you closer to your Bollywood dream! Participate in the talent hunt for Vivek Anand Oberoi's film Rosie - The Saffron Chapter. If you win, you will get a chance to work in an important role alongside prominent actors in the film! Here are the details of the talent hunt: Get hold of the audition script for the #RosieTalentHunt, which is available on the registration link mentioned below. All you have to do it is send us the YouTube link of your audition tape. Don't forget to ensure that the uploaded video is listed under public view on YouTube. So, are you ready to be the next superstar of Bollywood? Click here to view the Registration Page Link of the Auditions for Rosie - The Saffron Chapter! Important Points For Auditions: - Before you step in to give us a glimpse of your acting, don't forget to read all the rules and regulations of the audition on the Registration Page. - Please read the audition script carefully on the Registration Page before you submit the entries! Auditions that do no stick to the given script will not be considered. So, what are you waiting for, folks? Send in your audition video now and get a chance to work in Rosie - The Saffron Chapter. LIGHTS, CAMERA AND ACTION! 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. A 20-year-old missionary who participated in a series of bank robberies, including a daring daylight heist at a Grimsby bank, has been sentenced to four and a half years behind bars. It cannot be stated strenuously enough that real life is not like video game simulations of crimes or movies, said Judge Brenda Green. Emotional and psychological suffering was needlessly inflicted on innocent people who were simply trying to earn an honest living or go about their daily affairs. These offences have had a profound impact on some of the victims. Michael Christopher, a resident of Etobicoke, was sentenced in July in Ontario Court of Justice in Oshawa on four counts of robbery and a single count of wearing a disguise. The judge called the case a tragedy brought on by greed and youthful idealization of thrill-seeking crimes. It is tragic because of the psychological and emotional harm that was needlessly inflicted on innocent victims and the large financial losses to the banks, Green said. It is tragic because a young man with no record chose to commit incredibly serious offences despite having a positive, supportive upbringing and significant potential. Christopher and two youths, both 16, committed six bank robberies in six cities over a matter of weeks in the spring of 2019. All told, the trio made off with more than $104,000 in cash. The robberies were sophisticated and involved pre-planning and organization. Stolen vehicles and stolen licence plates were used to commit the crimes and the bandits concealed their identities with masks, and wore gloves. They also changed jurisdictions after each successful robbery in order to avoid detection by law enforcement. The first robbery targeted a Scotiabank branch in Hamilton on Feb. 4, 2019. The second robbery took place Feb. 27 in Grimsby. In that case, Christopher and one of the teens entered the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce on Main Street West. They stole money from the tills and unsuccessfully attempted to access the vault. Their getaway vehicle crashed near the Queen Elizabeth Way and Casablanca Boulevard. An unsuspecting Good Samaritan offered the trio a ride. Additional bank robberies followed in Vaughan, Ajax and Barrie. Through the course of the investigation, police found a cellphone and discovered photos of Christopher holding large bundles of cash. These were well-planned and carefully executed, brazen daylight bank robberies without any consideration for the safety of the employees or any innocent people who had the misfortune of being inside the banks in the middle of a business day, the judge said. Shortly after one of the robberies without any regard to those victims or any apparent remorse, Mr. Christopher proudly posed with his ill-gotten gains in selfies. Court heard from several tellers who submitted victim impact statements, each detailing how they now struggle as a result of the robberies. Im 28 years old and have always been given a clean bill of health. Since the incident Ive been put on blood pressure medication for an elevated heart rate, one woman wrote. She said she continues to live in a state of fear. Fears for security go beyond fear of the offenders. Its fear of everyday life. Its fear of functioning at work. Fears every time a door slams, or someone shouts, or the wind catches the door, or a customer rushes in from the cold. Fear every time someone moves too quickly or too loudly. Fear every time someone appears unexpectedly. She said the offenders didnt just steal money, they stole her normal. You stole my emotional stability. You stole my smile. You stole my excitement and enjoyment of coming into work. You stole my ability to sit through an entire shift without bursting into tears. You stole aspects of my life they had no right to. Several other bank employees described ongoing nightmares, a shattered sense of safety and lasting trauma. Court heard Christopher had no prior record and is actively involved with his church and has participated in four missionary trips to Nicaragua in the past. He has strong family support and his boss described him as a model employee. Mr. Christopher is an enigma, the judge said. It is mind boggling that this very young first offender with so much potential became entangled in an organized bank robbery ring. The judge said it is important to note the defendant was not driven by desperation to fund a drug addiction or crushing poverty or the ravages of mental illness. There is no mystery about what motivated these crimes, he wanted money and the thrill of the crimes, Green said. He was motivated by greed and he was willing to risk lives and harm people to get material things. The two co-accused, one from Brampton and one from Mississauga, pleaded guilty to several charges at an earlier date and were sentenced to 10 months of open custody and five months of community supervision, and eight months of open custody and four months of community supervision, respectively. They cannot be named under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The death toll in the Punjab spurious liquor tragedy mounted to 86 on Saturday even as chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh suspended seven excise officials and six policemen. The state government also announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh for each of the families of the deceased, officials said. Tarn Taran alone accounted for 63 deaths, followed by 12 in Amritsar and 11 in Gurdaspurs Batala. Till Friday night, the state had reported 39 deaths in the tragedy unfolding since Wednesday night. The chief minister announced the suspension of 13 officials during his weekly Facebook Live interaction with public. Among the suspended officials are two deputy superintendents of police and four station house officers. Strict action will be taken against any public servant or others found complicit in the case, said the chief minister, describing the police and excise department failure to check the manufacturing and sale of spurious liquor as shameful. Nobody will be allowed to get away with feeding poison to our people, he added. Most of the people who lost lives in Tarn Taran district were from Naurangabad, Bhullar, Sangha, Pandoori Gola, Kakka Kandiala villages. 25 in police net so far On Saturday, police arrested 17 more persons by conducting more than 100 raids in the three affected districts of Amritsar-rural, Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran, along with several other places in and around Rajpura and Shambu border (Patiala). The total number of arrests in the case has gone up to 25 as eight persons were arrested on Friday. A woman kingpin, a transport owner, a wanted criminal, a mastermind and owners/managers of various dhabas (from where the illicit liquor was being supplied) are among those arrested, said state police chief DGP Dinkar Gupta. The raiding parties have also seized large quantities of lahan ( raw material of illicit liquor) from various villages and dhabas in the region around Shambhu border, Rajpura and Patiala, he said, adding that the raids had exposed a massive racket extending across several districts. The eateries --- Zilmil Dhaba, Green Dhaba, Chhinda Dhaba (allin Patiala district) --- have been sealed. 750 litres lahan seized Police said 700 litres of lahan was seized from Baghaura village from where two accused, Satnam and Rashem, who have been arrested. Their accomplice, identified as Lakhwinder, is absconding. One Darshan Rani alias Faujan was arrested by Batala cops while another key accused Beeri of Deo village in Tarn Taran is also in police net for supplying t spurious alcohol. Prem Singh, the owner of Azad Transport, and Bhinda (wanted by Tarn Taran Police) were arrested by Rajpura police in raids conducted today. Govinderbir Singh, alias Gobinda of Jandiala City, who was bringing spurious liquor from Tarn Taran to Amritsar rural area has been identified as the racket mastermind. As per police, Gurpal Singh of Dhotian village in Tarn Taran, who was arrested in Phillaur on July 9 for smuggling of spirit, is believed to be the kingpin of the racket being run in Majha. Protest by victims families The family members of some of the victims protested outside the morgue of the Tarn Taran civil hospital on Saturday. Bhullar village resident Kawaljit Kaur, whose brother-in-law Parkash Singh died after consuming spurious liquor, said, The health authorities have kept 13 to 14 bodies in a morgue which is capable of storing only three. (Bloomberg) -- Australias government has ordered Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.s Google to share revenue generated from news articles, adding to growing global regulatory and political pushback against the digital giants. The two companies will have to negotiate with traditional media on remuneration in good faith, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Friday. If no agreement is reached, there will be a binding arbitration process and penalties for breaching the code of up to A$10 million ($7 million) or 10% of local revenue. The move aims to correct what the government says is a power imbalance between two of the worlds most profitable companies and a local media industry thats bleeding jobs as it loses advertising revenue to digital platforms. It follows measures elsewhere in the world, including in France where antitrust regulator in April ordered Google to pay media companies to display snippets of articles. This is not about protecting Australian news media businesses from competition or from disruption that is occurring across the sector, Frydenberg said What we have sought to do is create a level playing field. Google said it was deeply disappointed by the governments heavy-handed intervention that threatened Australias digital economy. Facebook said it was reviewing the draft code to understand the impact it will have on the industry, our services and our investment in the news ecosystem in Australia. Traditional media firms have long complained their content is being exploited by digital platforms without due compensation. As newspapers and broadcasters hemorrhage jobs, their complaints have garnered more political support. Regulators in other jurisdictions -- as well as investors -- are watching closely to see how the code works in practice. Should watchdogs in other markets follow Australia, it would chip away at two of the most wildly successful business models of the 21st century, built largely on content free-for-alls. Story continues The draft code, which is open to consultation until Aug. 28 before being legislated later this year, will initially only apply to Google and Facebook but could be extended to other digital companies in the future. Smaller businesses, like regional and rural newspapers, will be allowed to collectively bargain with digital platforms. Google and Facebook would be required to give 28 days notice of algorithm changes likely to impact traffic or the ranking of news behind paywalls. The platforms must also give media firms clear information about the data they collect through users interactions with news, including how long they spend on an article and how many articles they view in a certain time period. There is a fundamental bargaining power imbalance between news media businesses and the major digital platforms, Rod Sims, the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission which drafted the code, said in a statement. We wanted a model that would address this bargaining power imbalance and result in fair payment for content, which avoided unproductive and drawn-out negotiations, and wouldnt reduce the availability of Australian news on Google and Facebook. Mel Silva, Googles managing director for Australia and New Zealand, said the code discounts the already significant value Google provides to news publishers across the board, including sending billions of clicks to Australian news publishers for free every year. It sends a concerning message to businesses and investors that the Australian Government will intervene instead of letting the market work, and undermines Australias ambition to become a leading digital economy by 2030, Silva said. (Updates with Facebook comment in fifth paragraph) 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. She's been enjoying her first family holiday abroad with husband Hugo Taylor and daughter Sienna after jetting off to Santorini earlier this week. And Millie Mackintosh looked incredible as she showcased her postpartum figure in a plunging white swimsuit in an Instagram snap shared on Saturday. The former Made In Chelsea star, 31, was also celebrating 12 weeks since her little girl Sienna was born, as she uploaded sweet snaps of her cuddling the tot. Stunning: Millie Mackintosh looked incredible as she showcased her postpartum figure in a plunging white swimsuit in an Instagram snap shared on Saturday Millie oozed confidence as she posed for a mirror selfie in the swimsuit by Casa Raki, before heading out for some fun in the sun. The star donned a pair of brown cat-eye sunglasses as she snapped herself in the mirror from their luxury apartment on the Greek island. Millie later uploaded a snap of herself and Sienna cuddling up as they enjoyed a spot of lunch, with the beauty covering up in a crisp white shirt. The first time mum was keen to document their first holiday as a family of three, and took to her stories to share a series of snaps from their day. Doting mum: The former Made In Chelsea star, 31, also wished her baby girl Sienna a happy 12 week birthday as she uploaded sweet snaps of her cuddling the tot Millie shared an image of her shirtless former co-star beau as he prepared to take a dip in the sea. Before uploading a snap of herself and her girl cuddling in the shade during their day at the beach. In one snap, she captioned the image: 'Happy 12 week birthday Sienna', marking three months since she gave birth on May 1st. Sweet: The first time mum was keen to document their first holiday as a family of three, and took to her stories to share a series of snaps from their day Proud mum Millie went on to share a plethora of snaps of her baby as she doted on the tot throughout the day. The family then headed off to lunch, with the beauty sharing a snap of Hugo ahead of his slap-up meal. The sunglasses entrepreneur, 34, also took to his own Instagram to share a sweet snap with Sienna as he marked her 12 week birthday too. Looking good: Millie shared an image of her shirtless former co-star beau as he prepared to take a dip in the sea Cosy: Before uploading a snap of herself and her girl cuddling in the shade during their day at the beach He wrote: 'Happy 12 week birthday my little angel... Mama & Papa love you always and forever.' On Tuesday, Millie uploaded a sweet snap of herself breastfeeding her daughter Sienna during her baby's first flight. Proving safety comes first, she sported a protective face mask as she thanked British Airways staff for their help during their 'smooth' journey. Fashionista: Millie looked effortlessly chic as she stepped out with little Sienna in tow Bundle of joy: Proud mum Millie went on to share a plethora of snaps of her baby as she doted on the tot throughout the day Time to eat: The family then headed off to lunch, with the beauty sharing a snap of Hugo ahead of his slap-up meal The media personality, who has been vocal about urging others to 'normalise breastfeeding', appeared in great spirits as she nursed her little one. Sharing her delight at her relaxing trip from London Heathrow Airport, the TV star said: 'Our first experience @heathrow_airport with Sienna went really smoothly, everyone had masks on and kept their distance. 'Planning on feeding at take off and landing to help with her ears.' (sic) The blonde posted another photo of herself cuddling up to the sunglasses entrepreneur and their bundle of joy as she revealed her newborn slept throughout the flight. She said: 'We made it! No tears on the flight she mainly slept and @british_airways staff were really helpful.' (sic) At peace: On Tuesday, Millie uploaded a sweet snap of herself breastfeeding her daughter Sienna during her baby's first flight Hong Kong Postpones Legislative Elections by One Year, Sparking Outcry 2020-07-31 -- Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam on Friday announced the postponement of elections to the Legislative Council (LegCo) by one year, in a move that was immediately slammed by pro-democracy lawmakers as questionable, and tantamount to a political coup. Lam said the 2020 LegCo election, originally scheduled for Sept. 6, would now be held on Sept. 5, 2021. The government said the move was made "in order to protect public safety and public health as well as ensure elections are conducted openly and fairly." But 22 lawmakers issued a joint statement on Friday saying the decision had sparked a "constitutional crisis." "Postponement of elections is tantamount to detonating a constitutional crisis, which is tantamount to a political coup," the statement said. "Hong Kong's constitution and laws should not allow such manipulation to take place," it said. The Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office (HKMAO) of China's cabinet, the State Council, and Beijing's Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong issued separate statements on Friday expressing their understanding and support for the decision. A Hong Kong government spokesman cited growing risks of a major community outbreak of coronavirus that could overload the city's public hospitals. "A situation with millions of voters casting their votes on the same day will create a very high infection risk," the spokesman said. "Under the existing regulation to prohibit group gatherings, it would not be possible for candidates to carry out any meaningful rallying activities." He said Hongkongers living and working in mainland China would be unable to return to their city to cast votes, while many remain stranded overseas due to the pandemic. He said the government would invoke the Emergency Regulations Ordinance and that the decision would take effect on Aug. 1. Hong Kong's Basic Law states that the Legislative Council shall be elected every four years, and that elections can only be postponed for a maximum of 14 days. Beijing sends two messages Sing Ming, associate social sciences professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the government wanted to send two messages with the announcement. "The first is that the Beijing is taking a hard line; the second is that the plan by pro-democracy candidates to win more than 35 seats in LegCo must not be allowed to succeed." Opposition and pro-democracy candidates swept the board in District Council elections last November, prompting fears among pro-China politicians that they could win a majority in LegCo on a wave of popular anger and months of street protests over the loss of Hong Kong's promised freedoms and autonomy under Chinese rule. Sing said Lam is at a low ebb in opinion polls, amid widespread public anger at her administration's handling of the pandemic, and widespread fear and public opposition to the draconian national security law imposed on the city by Beijing. "If elections are held in September, even if they disqualify a lot of pro-democracy candidates, the government could still end up with less support from voters," he said. "Also, it's difficult for them to disqualify pro-democracy candidates if they never say anything publicly about the national security law or China's violation of [Hong Kong's mini-constitution] the Basic Law," he said. "I am guessing that the hardliners in Beijing are going all out to demolish any political opposition, and to plug all possible loopholes [for their resurgence]," Sing said. Chung Kim-wah, assistant professor of social policy at Hong Kong's Polytechnic University, said the postponement could spell the end of LegCo as a meaningful political body. Chung said the government could select anyone it wants to act as provisional lawmakers pending an election that never takes place. "This could have a massive impact," Chung said. "Maybe there won't be any voting ever again, and they will just recruit some of their lackeys to form a provisional LegCo, meaning that the government can do anything it wants." Sing said the government could also use the weakening of the democratic camp to resurrect unpopular political reforms granting votes to all five million voters, but only for candidates subject to approval by the authorities. The announcement of this plan on Aug. 31, 2014 sparked the 79-day Occupy Central movement for fully democratic elections. Call for sanctions Friday's announcement came as the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on governments around the world to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials responsible for imposing the national security law on Hong Kong and to refuse requests for cooperation under the law. "In just one month, Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have made painfully clear that the new law is a tool of repression, not national security," HRW China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement. HRW said it had written to 40 governments in a letter that was signed by more than a dozen other groups, including Human Rights in China, ChinaAid, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network, Freedom House, Hong Kong Watch, and Humanitarian China. Meanwhile, U.K. foreign secretary Dominic Raab condemned the earlier disqualifications of 12 pro-democracy election hopefuls by election officials on Thursday. "I condemn the decision to disqualify opposition candidates from standing in Hong Kong's Legislative Council elections," Raab said in a statement. "It is clear they have been disqualified because of their political views, undermining the ... rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Joint Declaration and Hong Kong's Basic Law," he said, in a reference to the 1984 agreement governing the 1997 handover of Hong Kong back to China. Reported by Man Hoi-tsan and Lau Siu-fung for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Lu Xi for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Copyright 1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content July not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NEW ORLEANS, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors of pending deadlines in the following securities class action lawsuits: Forescout Technologies, Inc. (FSCT) Class Period: 2/6/2020 - 5/15/2020 Lead Plaintiff Motion Deadline: August 10, 2020 SECURITIES FRAUD To learn more, visit https://www.claimsfiler.com/cases/nasdaq-fsct-2 Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) Class Period: 2/2/2018 - 3/10/2020 Lead Plaintiff Motion Deadline: August 14, 2020 SECURITIES FRAUD To learn more, visit https://www.claimsfiler.com/cases/view-wells-fargo-amp-company-securities-litigation-2 If you purchased shares of the above companies and would like to discuss your legal rights and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact us toll-free (844) 367-9658 or visit the case links above. If you wish to serve as a Lead Plaintiff in the class action, you must petition the Court on or before the Lead Plaintiff Motion deadline. About ClaimsFiler ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations. Egypt's Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat has invited Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk to visit the Giza Plateau after his controversial tweets in which he wrote that the Pyramids were built by aliens. Musk tweeted on Friday that "Aliens built the pyramids obv (obviously)." before adding in another tweet the great Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II was an alien. "The Great Pyramid was the tallest structure made by humans for 3,800 years. Three thousand, eight hundred years," Musk, who has more than 37 million followers, wrote in the following tweet. Musk, 49, is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. He became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers. Musk made headlines in May 2012, when SpaceX launched a rocket to send the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station. Al-Mashat replied to Musk's tweet on Saturday morning indirectly rebuffing his claims and inviting him to visit the Great Pyramids to check out the tombs of pyramid-builders. "I follow your work with a lot of admiration. I invite you & Space X to explore the writings about how the Pyramids were built and also to check out the tombs of the pyramid-builders. Mr Musk, we are waiting for you @elonmusk," Al-Mashat, former minister of tourism, wrote. The Great Pyramids, which dominate the Giza Plateau, are among the most popular touristic destinations in the world. Each of these spectacular structures served as the final resting place of a king of the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613-2494 BC). The Great Pyramid of Giza was built for King Khufu (c. 2589-2566 BC), and the other two for Khafre and Menkaure, Khufu's son and grandson, respectively. Khufus pyramid, the oldest monument on the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is both the oldest and largest of the three, and the first building to exceed it in height would not be built for another 3,800 years. Famous Egyptologist and former minister of antiquities Zahi Hawass responded to the outlandish claims in a one-minute video saying Musk's are "complete hallucination". Hawass added in a written statement that all the archaeological, historical and linguistic pieces of evidence prove that the "Pyramids were built by the Egyptians." The pyramid-builders' tombs prove the Great Pyramid was Egypt's national project and that it took them 32 years to build it, he stressed. "All the tombs around the Great Pyramids mentioned the Khufu Pyramid and the king himself," Hawass said in the video. In his written statement, Hawass added that the Great Pyramid of Khufu was one of the pyramids built between the third and 18th dynasties. Inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu inscriptions tell about the "workmen and gangs" who built the Pyramids, Hawass added. "There are also Wadi El-Jarf papyri that tell us for the first time about Khufu and building the pyramid," he added. Wadi El-Jarf papyri are a collection of King Khufu's papyri discovered in 2013 at Wadi El-Jarf port, 24km south of the Zaafarana area and 119km from the city of Suez, by a Franco-Egyptian mission led by French Egyptologist Pierre Tallet and Egyptian Egyptologist Sayed Mahfouz. "The Wadi El-Jarf papyri revealed the chief of staff 'Murar' told us about building the pyramid and cutting quarries from Turah area," Hawass said. The papyri, the oldest known examples of Egyptian writing, provide an everyday account of the pyramid-builders who, during the reign of Fourth Dynasty King Khufu, transported limestone blocks from the quarries of Turah on the east bank of the Nile to the Great Pyramid at the Giza Plateau through the Nile and its canals. They also show the workers at Wadi El-Jarf port participated in the construction of the Great Pyramid in Giza, indicating a highly efficient administrative system during Khufu's reign. On King Ramses II, Hawass stated that evidence proves the king is from the Egyptian Delta's Sharqiya governorate and his family lived in "Per-Ramses" (a Pharaonic name meaning House of Ramses) that is currently Qantir village, 5.6 miles north of Faqous in Sharqiya and 60 miles northeast of Cairo. 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. Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and apathy. This is also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression. It affects more than 16.1 million American adults or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older, according to Anxiety and Depression Association of America statistics. Major depressive disorder affects how one person feels, thinks, and behaves. This can result in different emotional and physical problems that tend to affect normal daily activities. Can It Be Inherited? You could be asking if major depressive disorder can be inherited, especially if you know one of your family members to have it. Watching someone close to you deal with depression may be hard, especially if they are not getting the proper support for it. Major depressive disorder can be inherited, especially if you have a relative who suffers from depression, according to experts. You are also almost five times as likely to develop clinical depression. Researchers have also delved in the possibility of a connection between genes and depression. A British research team conducted a study with multiple family members with depression. They believe that as much as 40 percent of those with depression can be linked to genes. However, there is still no known specific gene to cause major depression. "We know that there are genetic factors, it seems to be heritable, but we also know there are a lot of other factors involved," Renee Witlen, MD, a psychiatrist in Portland, Maine, was quoted in a report. Other Factors Environmental and lifestyle factors can play a role too. Witlen said trauma, substance abuse, social isolation, and financial concern can also contribute to depression. A 2015 study focused on how trauma can contribute to depression with 349 chronically depressed patients. The study found that reported childhood trauma such as sexual, physical, and emotional abuse can be a factor. A 2017 study published in the Public Library of Science found that those who felt more socially isolated were also more depressed. Women who just gave birth can also have postpartum depression. CDC said that one in nine women will experience postpartum depression. Researchers suggest that changes in hormone levels after pregnancy may contribute to postpartum depression. Hispanic Communities and Depression There are also common health disorders among Latinos such as generalized anxiety disorder, major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and alcoholism. However, only one in five Latinos with symptoms of psychological disorder approach a doctor. Also, only one in 10 Latinos approach a mental health professional. The Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey said around 28 percent of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. had depression symptoms. Thirteen percent for Mexican Americans and 10 percent of Cuban Americans. There is a barrier in the mental disorder treatment in the Latino community. This could be contributed to culture, wherein talking about emotions is not part of it. Treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy alone will not be effective. Psychiatrist Diana Lorenzo, MD, of Cleveland Clinic's Center for Behavioral Health, said mental health issues have a stigma in the Latino Community. "Many Latinos would prefer to ignore these conditions over talking about them openly," Lorenzo was quoted in a report. Lorenzo cited five solutions that could help improve Latinos' access to mental health care. These are removing the language barrier, collaborating with primary care physicians, encouraging family involvement, offering sensitive and culturally competent treatment, and educating about the physiologic roots of mental illness. "When they understand that chemicals in the brain play a primary role, they view the diseases differently," Lorenzo said. Check these out: Mental Health Needs of Latino Communities in Philadelphia Exposed by the Pandemic How to Overcome Mental Health Issues Brought By The Pandemic How To Maintain Good Mental Health While Working From Home Sorry! This content is not available in your region Treasury Sanctions Chinese Entity and Officials Pursuant to Global Magnitsky Human Rights Executive Order U.S. Department of the Treasury July 31, 2020 Washington Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned one Chinese government entity and two current or former government officials in connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). These designations include the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), Sun Jinlong, a former Political Commissar of the XPCC, and Peng Jiarui, the Deputy Party Secretary and Commander of the XPCC. The entity and officials are being designated for their connection to serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which reportedly include mass arbitrary detention and severe physical abuse, among other serious abuses targeting Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim population indigenous to Xinjiang, and other ethnic minorities in the region. "As previously stated, the United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers accountable in Xinjiang and across the world," said Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. This action is being taken pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13818, "Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption," which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. These designations are the latest U.S. government actions in an ongoing effort to deter human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region. On July 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of State, along with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, issued the Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory, advising businesses with potential supply chain exposure to Xinjiang to consider the reputational, economic, and legal risks of involvement with entities that engage in human rights abuses in Xinjiang, such as forced labor. On May 22, 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce added nine PRC entities related to human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region to the Commerce Entity List; this action complemented the October 2019 addition to the Commerce Entity List of 28 entities engaged in the PRC repression campaign in the Xinjiang region. Also, in October 2019, the U.S. Department of State announced a visa restriction policy under section 212 (a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act for PRC and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials responsible for, or complicit in, human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The XPCC is a paramilitary organization in the XUAR that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The XPCC enhances internal control over the region by advancing China's vision of economic development in XUAR that emphasizes subordination to central planning and resource extraction. The XPCC's structure reflects a military organization, with 14 divisions made up of dozens of regiments. Chen Quanguo (Chen), who was designated on July 9, 2020 for his connection to serious human rights abuse, is the current First Political Commissar of the XPCC, a role in which he has exercised control over the entity. Chen is also the current Communist Party Secretary of XUAR, and has a notorious history of intensifying security operations in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, where he was deployed before arriving in Xinjiang to tighten control over members of Tibetan ethnic minority groups. Following his arrival in Xinjiang, Chen began implementing a comprehensive surveillance, detention, and indoctrination program targeting Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minority groups. The XPCC has helped implement Chen's CCP policy in the region. The XPCC was designated today for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Chen. The following individuals are also designated today for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the XPCC: Peng Jiarui, the Deputy Party Secretary and Commander of the XPCC. Sun Jinlong, a former Political Commissar of the XPCC. SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS As a result of today's action, all property and interests in property of the entity and individuals named above, and of any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, 50 percent or more by them, individually, or with other blocked persons, that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons, are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. Unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC or otherwise exempt, OFAC's regulations generally prohibit all transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons. The prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person or the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods or services from any such person. Concurrent with this action, OFAC is issuing a general license to authorize certain wind down and divestment transactions and activities related to blocked subsidiaries of the XPCC through 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time, September 30, 2020. For details, see General License No. 2. GLOBAL MAGNITSKY Building upon the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, the President signed E.O. 13818 on December 20, 2017, in which the President found that the prevalence of human rights abuse and corruption that have their source, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States, had reached such scope and gravity that it threatens the stability of international political and economic systems. Human rights abuse and corruption undermine the values that form an essential foundation of stable, secure, and functioning societies; have devastating impacts on individuals; weaken democratic institutions; degrade the rule of law; perpetuate violent conflicts; facilitate the activities of dangerous persons; and undermine economic markets. The United States seeks to impose tangible and significant consequences on those who commit serious human rights abuse or engage in corruption, as well as to protect the financial system of the United States from abuse by these same persons. Information on the individuals and entities designated today. Information on the Department of State actions under 7031(c). Information about the Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory. Information about the Commerce Entity List additions, and additional information about the Commerce Entity List additions. #### NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Manila: Manila police detonated a suspected bomb found on Monday in a trash bin just a few meters from the US Embassy, snarling morning traffic after authorities closed a portion of a major boulevard where the device was found. No one was reported hurt in the incident. Two explosions were heard as a bomb disposal unit detonated what police described as a suspicious package believed to be an improvised explosive device. Street sweeper Winniefreda Francisco says she called police after finding a cellphone attached to a bottle-like cylinder wrapped in black, with wires connecting the cylinder to the phone. It was not immediately clear if the device found was really a bomb. Manila police spokeswoman Marissa Bruno would not give further details, saying a statement will be issued later. Metropolitan Manila Development Authority official Frisco San Juan Jr said they had to divert traffic from a portion of Roxas Boulevard fronting the embassy. The closed lane of the road was reopened after police declared the area safe. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to launch the cover page of a Ramayan Encyclopedia during the ground breaking ceremony for the Ram temple in Ayodhya on August 5. The encyclopedia is being prepared by the Ayodhya Shodh Sansthan, a part of the Uttar Pradesh governments culture department. The Ayodhya Shodh Sansthan is preparing Ramayan encyclopedia. It will have several chapters. But the first chapter will be based on Ayodhya. It will have all details related to Ayodhya- its name, history, cultural and religious facts, said Rishikesh Upadhyay, Ayodhya mayor. Ramayan encyclopedia will be a source of valuable information on Lord Ram for all, especially the younger generation, Upadhyay said. The logo for the encyclopedia has been borrowed from a carving on the front gate of a 10th century temple in Cambodia. This carving is said to be the oldest description of Ramayan in the world. The second chapter of the encyclopedia is based on the 65 rulers of Ayodhya, starting from the Ikshvaku dynasty to Ram. Documentation of all Ram temples across the country, facts related with Lord Ram, goddess Sita and Lord Hanuman is being done in 500 words. A maximum of four photos of one temple will be used in the encyclopedia, said an official of Ayodhya Shodh Sansthan. The state government has already released funds for this project and it will take around five years to complete, the official cited above said. The Prime Minister is also likely to announce several development projects for Ayodhya and dedicate ongoing projects which have been completed to people of Ayodhya. PM Modi, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Baghwat, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and several Union ministers are expected to attend the ground breaking ceremony on August 5. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Operating in the shadows of the online marketplace, specialized tech companies you've likely never heard of are tapping vast troves of our personal data to generate secret "surveillance scores" - digital mug shots of millions of Americans - that supposedly predict our future behavior. The firms sell their scoring services to major businesses across the U.S. economy. People with low scores can suffer harsh consequences. CoreLogic and TransUnion say that scores they peddle to landlords can predict whether a potential tenant will pay the rent on time, be able to "absorb rent increases," or break a lease. Large employers use HireVue, a firm that generates an "employability" score about candidates by analyzing "tens of thousands of factors," including a person's facial expressions and voice intonations. Other employers use Cornerstone's score, which considers where a job prospect lives and which web browser they use to judge how successful they will be at a job. Brand-name retailers purchase "risk scores" from Retail Equation to help make judgments about whether consumers commit fraud when they return goods for refunds. Players in the gig economy use outside firms such as Sift to score consumers' "overall trustworthiness." Wireless customers predicted to be less profitable are sometimes forced to endure longer customer service hold times. Auto insurers raise premiums based on scores calculated using information from smartphone apps that track driving styles. Large analytics firms monitor whether we are likely to take our medication based on our propensity to refill our prescriptions; pharmaceutical companies, health-care providers and insurance companies can use those scores to, among other things, "match the right patient investment level to the right patients." Surveillance scoring is the product of two trends. First is the rampant (and mostly unregulated) collection of every intimate detail about our lives, amassed by the nanosecond from smartphones to cars, toasters to toys. This fire hose of data - most of which we surrender voluntarily - includes our demographics, income, facial characteristics, the sound of our voice, our precise location, shopping history, medical conditions, genetic information, what we search for on the Internet, the websites we visit, when we read an email, what apps we use and how long we use them, and how often we sleep, exercise and the like. The second trend driving these scores is the arrival of technologies able to instantaneously crunch this data: exponentially more powerful computers and high-speed communications systems such as 5G, which lead to the scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence to rate all of us in some way. The result: automated decisions, based on each consumer's unique score, that are, as a practical matter, irreversible. That's because the entire process - the scores themselves, as well as the data upon which they are based - is concealed from us. It is mostly impossible to know when one has become the casualty of a score, let alone whether a score is inaccurate, outdated or the product of biased or discriminatory code programmed by a faceless software engineer. There is no appeal. Surveillance scoring bears a faint resemblance to credit scoring in the 1960s. In that pre-computer era, private investigators working for banks, retailers and insurance companies tailed consumers and scoured newspapers for information about arrests, promotions, sexual orientation, drinking habits and cleanliness to decide a consumer's creditworthiness -- until Congress established rules in the 1970s giving consumers the right to review and question their credit scores. Today's data snoops obtain infinitely more information about their targets, and in real time. And the impact of surveillance scoring is far more pernicious. The tech industry insists that its every advance improves our lives. But that's a myth. Surveillance scoring enables companies to cloak old-school discrimination in an aura of technological infallibility and wonder. Secret surveillance scores create micro-markets in which some consumers are no longer welcome. They divide Americans into "haves" and "have-nots," with the losers relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Consumers need a 21st-century solution to this emergent threat. Congress, awash in tech money, is mired in an outdated legal paradigm: "disclosure" of privacy policies and "consent" via a click. No one pretends that these industrial age contract law concepts will do anything to curb data larceny, let alone regulate or bar secret surveillance scores. We petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and regulate surveillance scoring. The commission's response? A blog post urging the firms that develop and apply scores to regulate themselves. This is only the latest example of Washington's capitulation to the tech industry, whose continuous loop of privacy violations, abject apologies and payment of inconsequential penalties confirms that consumers cannot rely on the federal government for protection. Secret surveillance scoring places us at the precipice of the "singularity," a dystopian turning point after which machines will make judgments about humans that will determine our fate. We either seize control of our future, or risk losing it. - - - Rosenfield and Antonini are consumer advocates. Lavish Florida retreats were a popular escape for rich New Yorkers riding out the covid-19 lockdown. Now, many are rushing to make things more permanent even while the virus surges in the Sunshine State. Sellers in places like Miami and Palm Beach are getting flooded with offers, and the supply of available properties is plunging. Florida's favorable tax laws have long been a draw for high-net-worth individuals, but the pandemic's disruptions -- to work, school, public safety and northern states' budgets -- have increased the allure, pushing many of the wealthiest finally to make good on aspirations to relocate. "What was the three-to-five year plan is now the three-to-five month plan," said Simon Isaacs, a Palm Beach luxury broker who last month helped a New York couple find a $6.2 million home there. "If everything shuts down again, do you want to be stuck in an apartment in New York, or do you want to be stuck in a home in Florida?" Purchase contracts in South Florida soared across all price ranges last month compared with a year earlier, when there was no contagion to worry about. At $1 million and above, deals more than doubled in Palm Beach and Broward counties, data from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate show. In Miami-Dade County, they rose 68%. That momentum is continuing, even as Florida sets records for covid deaths. In the first 20 days of July, 162 contracts were signed for Miami-Dade homes priced at $1 million or more, an 88% jump, according to the Miami Association of Realtors. "Everybody who was on the fence to move for tax reasons now seems to be moving," said Danny Hertzberg, an agent with the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker in Miami Beach. "We hear over and over, 'My tax attorney spoke to me,' or 'I spoke to my accountant.' People are thinking about establishing residency." The surging demand helped Hertzberg sell a five-bedroom house in Sunset Islands, west of Miami Beach, within a week, after a previous turn on the market ended in March with no takers. The relisted home -- with a saltwater pool and a dock -- had six showings in a single day, half of them to New Yorkers. The purchase closed July 27, for $7.25 million. In Palm Beach, where the inventory of luxury homes tumbled 75%, there's so little to buy that even properties that had languished on the market are finding takers. Douglas Elliman broker Sonja Stevens was in a hurry to find a new, smaller place for Related Cos. executive Kenneth Himmel and his wife, Janet, after quickly selling their Palm Beach estate for $18.3 million. They decided on a six-bedroom home on nearby Jungle Road that had been listed for 2.5 years, and closed early this month for $10.7 million. Related, the New York-based developer behind Manhattan's Hudson Yards, is building an office tower in West Palm Beach on a bet that firms seeking a foothold in Florida would favor modern space. Since the covid outbreak, lease talks have accelerated with some potential tenants, including private equity firms from New York and Chicago, said Gopal Rajegowda, the Related senior vice president overseeing the project. Himmel, chief executive officer of the company's mixed-use division, Related Urban, said the pandemic has inspired well-heeled executives who can work from anywhere to seek out the area's year-round "resort lifestyle." Lloyd Abramowitz's high-net-worth clients at Cerity Partners are asking more often about the financial wisdom of moving to Florida. They're concerned about New York City's rising crime rate, and a higher federal tax burden should a Democrat win the presidency, said Abramowitz, a New York-based partner at the firm. "And then, add on this: Is it really worth it?" he said. "Do you really have to be in New York anymore to do the work you need to do?" Residents of posh New York suburbs may have added incentive to relocate: Their large homes that lingered on the market for years are now finding eager buyers, said Laura Beck, chairman of the private clients group at law firm Cummings & Lockwood LLC in Greenwich, Conn. "If there are people knocking on my door offering me money for my house," Beck said, "maybe now is the time." Welcome Guest! You Are Here: The Supreme Court on Friday refused to block the Trump administration from using billions worth of funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall. President Donald Trump's border wall raised various environmental concerns, reaching the Supreme Court that ultimately gave a 5-4 vote that works in favor of continuing the construction. A number of groups like American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Sierra Club asked the Supreme Court to get involved again after the justices last year cleared the way for the administration to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for the border wall while the case played out in the courts, reported The Hill. The court's four liberal justices dissented the ruling, saying they would have halted the construction while the case is still going through court challenge. Last month, the administration lost with a federal appeals court. The appeals court first said the use of Pentagon funding for the project is illegal. But now, the justices have given them temporary victory, the Fox News said. In an Associated Press report, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a brief dissent for the four liberals. It in, he said he feared the decision "may operate, in effect, as a final judgement." The Friday order means the court is not likely to even consider how grave the issue is until after the November election, so work on the wall will continue. Last summer, when the case was at an earlier stage, the justices were also split 5-4 along ideological lines. It allowed the administration to start the construction using the defense funds. This gave Trump the chance to make progress in his 2016 campaign promise with his race for a second term. The Trump administration seeks to use the funds in replacing a total of 129 miles (208 kilometers) of rundown or old fencing in New Mexico, Arizona and California. According to U.S. Customers and Border Protection, 92 miles (148 kilometers) have been completed of the project as of mid-July. The Supreme Court is on break, but has not given signs of acting on certain pressing items. Hearing cases will restart for the high court in October. Push Back Continues for Border Wall ACLU's National Security Project staff attorney Dror Ladin is not giving up his union's case against the border wall. "The fight continues," he said. Ladin noted that every lower court that has considered their case has ruled the border wall illegal. "The Supreme Court's temporary order does not decide the case," he said. He said ACLU will be back before the Supreme Court soon to "put a stop to Trump's xenophobic border wall once and for all." In June, the high court had declined to hear an appeal from environmental groups that fought back against the construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The group challenged a 1996 law giving the president authority to prevent illegal immigration and border crossings. They claimed that the Trump administration did not go through enough environmental impact studies for building the border wall. The coalition said endangered species like the jaguar and Mexican wolf will be affected by the barrier. Want to read more? Check these out! New Senate Republican COVID-19 Plan Could Cause Jobless Benefit Delays, Homelessness Trump's Military Fund Diversion for Border Wall 'Unlawful,' Appeals Court Says USC Reports Coronavirus Outbreak at Fraternity Row, 40 Infected Australians could soon face meat shortages as coronavirus outbreaks continue to affect abattoirs and meat processing plants, an expert has claimed. Patrick Hutchinson, the chief executive of the Australian Meat Industry Council, warned that closures could have a knock-on effect across the industry. On Friday, the coronavirus-stricken abattoir Cedar Meats confirmed that another employee had tested positive for COVID-19 after working on July 22. It comes after 111 workers and close contacts of the Melbourne abattoir were forced to self-isolate in April after being diagnosed with the virus. Abattoir Cedar Meats Brooklyn (pictured) confirmed that a worker had tested positive to the virus on Friday. They last worked at the site on July 22 Three Australian Meat Group abattoir workers in Dandenong South have also tested positive to COVID-19. 'The impacts of any potential closures of processing plants has a flow through effect to our wholesalers and retail network chains, which ultimately affects our farmers and producers,' Mr Hutchinson said, the Herald Sun reported. 'We are an essential service feeding Victorians and Australians through independent retail and supermarket chains, and the global community, daily. We take this very seriously.' Three Australian Meat Group abattoir workers in Dandenong South (pictured) have tested positive to COVID-19 A coronavirus cluster in Melbourne has also forced some KFC stores to close and left others with reduced stock. Picture: A KFC store at Glen Waverley A coronavirus cluster in Melbourne has also forced some KFC stores to close and left others with reduced stock. 'Our chicken supply has been disrupted in Victoria this week and some of our restaurants will only be open for limited hours or may have to close this weekend,' a KFC Australia spokesperson told 7NEWS on Friday. 'We're sorry for any issues this causes our customers we're doing everything we can to help our suppliers get back on track.' KFC Australia was unable to specify which stores have closed or were affected. A chicken processing facility shut down in Melbourne last week after five workers tested positive to COVID-19. All 200 staff at Ingham's Thomastown processing plant were stood down with pay and production has stopped until further notice. The company has production and processing facilities in five Australian states. All others remain open, and supply in these locations has not been affected. Commenting on the outbreaks at meatworks, Australian Meat Industry Employees Victorian secretary Paul Conway said it was due to the proximity of workers. Victorian Transport Association chief executive Peter Anderson warned testing would threaten Australias national road freight network. Pictured: A truck arriving at Cedar Meats in Melbourne 'Anywhere where there is workers that work closely (the virus) will fly through the workforce quicker than other places,' he told the Herald Sun. Victorian Transport Association chief executive Peter Anderson warned supermarket shelves, housing other goods, could also be affected if the Australian Government continues to stand by its decision to test truck drivers entering from Victoria. He warned testing all drivers would threaten Australias national road freight network, with 650,000 tonnes of supplies crossing the NSW and SA borders with Victoria each day. NSW, however, on Friday backflipped on mandatory COVID-19 testing for truck drivers entering the coronavirus-infected state. 'This will mean people wont get food. This will mean buildings wont get built. There will be gaps on shelves and people will go into a panic because theyll say - there is no rice, no flour, what am I going to do?' he told The Australian. By Trend The further strengthening of the OSCE and its comprehensive approach to security is inextricably linked to full respect for and implementation of the fundamental principles and commitments enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act, said the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Prime Minister and Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of Albania, Edi Rama, on the day marking the 45th anniversary of the landmark document, Trend reports with reference to OSCE. The Chairperson-in Office paid tribute to the Helsinki Final Act noting it was instrumental in advancing human security over more than four decades in the OSCE area. The Helsinki Process made a critical contribution to reducing tensions and to creating the conditions that led to the end of the Cold War, he said. It facilitated the transition from confrontation to co-operation and paved the way for the creation of the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe, envisaged under the Paris Charter and established in 1995. Rama stressed that the right way to commemorate the Helsinki Final Act is to make an urgent effort toward realizing its vision of respectful inter-state relations and adherence to commitments. As Europe is scarred by conflicts, the work of our Organization, as well as the good will of all of its participating States, is needed even more. To be meaningful and relevant, peace and democracy must not be simply our common words and horizon, but our common objectives. The Helsinki Decalogue with its ten principles, including its respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights are as relevant today as they were back then, 45 years ago. This historic agreement was reached by a diverse group of countries that did not share a common approach on all issues, Rama said. He added that despite the stark divisions at the time, the countries developed a vision and had the courage to put in place the foundations of the comprehensive security system, which has served the OSCE region for almost half a century. We should find inspiration in this anniversary, to move forward with renewed determination, the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office said further. He noted that confidence and trust can only be built through open and frank dialogue, and this requires sustained efforts, patience, and perseverance. I am convinced that the OSCEs inclusive platform for dialogue and joint action makes it a crucial and enduring forum for engagement, Rama concluded. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz A Dromahair woman who claimed she had become an invalid after slipping and falling in a supermarket has settled her High Court action on undisclosed terms. Olivia Harte Lynch (46), a law and business graduate and a working mother, was described as being a "shell of her former self" after allegedly slipping on a muffin. Peter Bland SC, (with Mr Eddie Walsh SC, Mr Keith O'Grady BL and Mr Gerard McGovern, solicitor) for Ms Harte Lynch told the High Court in Dublin last Thursday, the third day of the action that the case had been settled and could be struck out. He said Ms Harte Lynch was withdrawing her claim for loss of earnings. The terms of settlement were not disclosed. Ms Harte Lynch, of Skreeney, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim, sued JNF McGoldrick Ltd, trading as McGoldrick's Londis, Main Street, Dromahair, as a result of the accident in the store on August 23rd, 2012. It was claimed there was failure to remove the cake or muffin from the floor in order to ensure it would not constitute a trap or a source of danger. Londis denied liability and contended that Ms Harte Lynch was the author of her own misfortune. It alleged she did not wipe her feet on entering the shop and failed to keep a proper lookout. Jonathan Kilfeather SC, for Londis, said it was not being alleged by his client or the indemnifying insurance company, FBD, that this was a staged or fraudulent accident. He said there was no doubt Ms Harte Lynch slipped and fell but the issue is whether the fall was due to any alleged negligence. Counsel told the court there was no allegation that the fall "was staged " and he said that was not the way the defendants were approaching the case. There is a vast array of medical evidence on both sides which was "diametrically opposed." He told the court there is also an issue in relation to the nature of the injuries suffered and the sequelae. When opening the case, Mr Bland said this slipping episode was life changing for his client, who had to have surgery and suffers from chronic pain syndrome since the fall. Mr Bland said Ms Harte Lynch fell near the coffee area after entering the shop. When she got up , he said she saw what looked like cream and icing on the floor and thought it was a piece of chocolate from a cake. He said Ms Harte Lynch told a member of staff at the deli counter what had happened and was told that 'actually dear, it's a muffin'. Mr Bland said their case was there was no adequate cleaning system in place and the only cleaning system involved the floor being wiped with paper after the accident. The case opened before Mr Justice Bernard Barton last Tuesday and he was told the action could take two weeks. As I walked around the sun-dappled streets of Amsterdam, something felt strange in this world swept by fear and pandemic. There was laughter coming from barges sliding along the famous canals, clusters of cyclists clogged the streets, shoppers dipped into chic boutiques, the barber shops seemed busy and cafes served couples chatting over coffee. I heard many voices of tourists in bars and restaurants, while even the seedier sides of this celebrated Dutch city had people strolling through them. It took me a moment to realise what was so weird. Then it struck me. It felt like I had stepped back in time, returning to the pre-pandemic normality of a bustling city filled with human beings whose faces were not covered by cloth. For while 120 countries in the world, including much of Europe, have ordered citizens to wear masks in public places to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the Dutch are doing things differently. The nation's top scientists, having examined key data and research, have declared there is no firm evidence to back the use of face coverings. Indeed, they argue that wearing the wretched things may actually hamper the fight against disease. While 120 countries in the world ordered citizens to wear masks in public places to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the Dutch are doing things differently. Pictured, people enjoying a drink in Amsterdam 'Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,' said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. 'There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.' This is a bold but highly controversial stance especially as fears grow of a second wave sweeping through Europe. Last week, Downing Street joined the global stampede to enforce face masks in public spaces such as shops, supermarkets and stations, following Scotland, Spain and France, along with Holland's neighbouring nations of Belgium and Germany. 'We think masks have a great deal of value,' said Boris Johnson. 'Scientific evaluation of face coverings and their importance in stopping aerosol droplets has been growing. People should wear them in shops.' But the Dutch disagree to the delight of all the citizens I spoke with in Amsterdam. 'I hate wearing them,' said Aicha Meziati, 29, in the hip fashion store Das Werk Haus. 'They are horrible. People look like they have nappies on their faces.' Margriet, a 24-year-old sales assistant in a pop-up drink shop, said it was hard to read people's facial expressions when they wore masks. 'You make contact with people better without them and it is easier to talk to them in the store.' Holland's position is based on assessments by the Outbreak Management Team, a group of experts advising the government. It first ruled against masks in May and has re-evaluated the evidence several times, including again last week. It believes they detract from a clear three-pronged message that has kept deaths from coronavirus down to less than half the rate in Britain: wash hands regularly, maintain social distancing of 1.5 metres and stay at home if suffering any symptoms. The one exception outside of the medical frontline has been on public transport, where masks are mandatory on the basis it is difficult to stay apart on crowded buses, ferries and trains. 'We have seen this approach works,' said Christian Hoebe, a professor of infectious diseases in Maastricht and member of the advisory team. 'Face masks should not be seen as a magic bullet that halts the spread. 'The evidence for them is contradictory. In general, we think you must be careful with face masks because they can give a false sense of security. People think they're immune from disease or stop social distancing. That is very negative.' Hoebe, head of infectious disease control in Zuid-Limburg, the region hit hardest when the pandemic struck Holland, pointed to a Norwegian study showing 200,000 people must wear surgical masks for one week to stop a single Covid-19 case. Holland's top scientists, having examined key data and research, have declared there is no firm evidence to back the use of face coverings. Pictured, day trippers and tourists walk in Amsterdam on July 25 Yet few people have medical masks in Britain they are rightly preserved for the NHS while wearers routinely misuse or contaminate their coverings by fitting them incorrectly, failing to change them and touching their faces. 'I was in Belgium recently and saw many people putting them beneath their noses, upside down or under chins', says Hoebe. 'Others stuffed them in their pockets. The effectiveness also depends on the right fabric and the mask being worn very close to the nose.' Studies by one membrane specialist at Eindhoven University found that while the coronavirus particles are caught by an electrostatic layer in medical masks, they can penetrate bigger pores found in cotton and even vacuum cleaner bags. The World Health Organisation has also been sceptical, warning that 'widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high-quality or direct scientific evidence'. Although changing its advice in June to back the encouragement of mask wearing in some settings, the WHO lists 11 'potential harms' that range from discomfort through to self-contamination and lower compliance with more critical preventative measures. As in some other European countries, Holland has seen an alarming recent rise in reported infections, which have almost doubled to 1,329 cases over the past two weeks, combined with marginally higher rates of hospitalisation and fatality. Yet the cabinet's advisory team says this was driven by clusters of people infecting each other at family gatherings and parties, where they would not have worn masks regardless of any changes to rules about public spaces. Another outbreak came from a bar in Hillegom, near Amsterdam, where the owners told customers they could sit close together, shake hands and hug since the virus was dormant. 'We know what we are doing,' they wrote on Facebook. They were quickly proved wrong, however, after 39 cases were traced to the bar. It has since been closed and the social media post removed. Holland, a country of 17 million people, has seen 6,147 pandemic deaths after adopting what it called 'intelligent lockdown', which imposed significantly fewer restrictions than Britain and relied more on trusting citizens to behave sensibly. Although two recent polls claim a majority backing use of face masks for indoor public spaces, I found people on Amsterdam's busy shopping streets supported their government's stand and seemed very aware of the simple rules. Holland, a country of 17 million people, has seen 6,147 pandemic deaths after adopting what it called 'intelligent lockdown'. Pictured, tourists on the Nieuwendijk in Amsterdam on July 23 'I like it when people can decide for themselves,' said Jesus Garcia, wielding the clippers in Barbershop Jordaan filled with mask-free staff and customers. 'You would have to really educate people how to use them properly for safety.' He said he had worn masks during a trip to Spain. 'I did not feel it was really helping since people were wearing them all wrong, putting them in their pockets, placing them under their noses. It defeats the purpose.' One customer having a trim agreed. 'I find face masks absolutely awful. They're claustrophobic and don't work,' said Mark Casey, corporate finance partner at a major accountancy firm. Coriem Warmenhoven, serving in a flower shop, said she was glad they did not have to wear masks. 'I'm afraid it will become necessary,' she said. 'We must deal with the virus but it is best to be intelligent and give people responsibility.' She is right to be nervous. The mayors of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the nation's two biggest cities, have been pressing for more power to impose mask-wearing in crowded areas, which was granted last week. Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema, alarmed by throngs of tourists and young people making parts of her city too crowded, is insisting on compulsory masks for anyone aged over 13 in the Red Light District and two popular shopping streets. Warmenhoven told me she was going to holiday in Holland after discussing with her husband where to go. 'He said he didn't want to go anywhere abroad that you have to wear masks,' she said. This bears out the hunch of the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, which has commissioned research to find out if their country has an edge in the struggle to entice dwindling numbers of tourists. Ben Coates, the author of Why The Dutch Are Different, who lives in central Holland, said the speed with which normal life had returned in the country was remarkable. 'When you walk around, you are hard-pressed to see much difference now,' he said. He added that while Dutch citizens tended to trust their governments, they also had strong libertarian instincts. 'People don't like being told what to do, so they will cycle without helmets and sleep with whom they want.' The one family I found wandering along the canals clad in face masks turned out to be holidaying Italians from near Milan. 'We have been wearing them all the time for five months, so they don't feel uncomfortable any more,' said Michaele Muller. He added that they had been astonished when they arrived in Holland. 'We drove through Switzerland, where everyone has a mask, then in Germany, where it is also mandatory. Then we crossed the border and suddenly no one was wearing them.' Later, I came across a British accent belonging to a scientist who had just moved from Milton Keynes to a new job in the city. 'It feels very different from the UK,' said Jenny White. 'It feels much more normal here. You can almost forget about the disease.' Ukraine To Seek Extradition Of Alleged Russian Mercenaries Detained In Belarus, Moscow Calls For Their Release By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, RFE/RL's Belarus Service July 31, 2020 Kyiv says it will seek the extradition of alleged contractors from the Russian private military company Vagner being held in Belarus as Moscow demanded their release, saying they were in transit and headed to Turkey. Belarusian authorities have launched an investigation against 33 Russian contractors from Vagner who were detained earlier this week. Authorities allege they wanted to destabilize the country ahead of the August 9 presidential election. Moscow has vehemently rejected Minsk's claims, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying on July 31 that the 33 men were in transit to Istanbul before flying to "a third country." "Their stay is connected neither to Belarus itself nor its internal affairs," Peskov told reporters, calling for their release. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office said Kyiv would ask Belarus to hand over 28 of the detainees on charges of fighting alongside Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Nine Ukrainian citizens are among the 28, it said. Fighting between Ukraine's armed forces and the separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk has killed some 13,200 people since April 2014. The Vagner Group is a Russian paramilitary organization believed to be run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an influential Russian businessman close to President Vladimir Putin. Its fighters have turned up in conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and Africa. The chief of the Belarusian Security Council, Andrey Raukou, said on July 30 that "upwards of up to 200 militants" remain at large in Belarus and efforts to locate them continue. The August 9 presidential vote is shaping up to be a tough race for incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka, an authoritarian leader who has been in power since 1994. Lukashenka has cracked down on the opposition during the campaign, with the arrest of hundreds of people, including journalists, bloggers, and political activists. Charges were pressed against two potential candidates. In a statement on July 30, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that from May through July, Belarusian police arrested "at least 1,100 people for gathering peacefully on issues related to the election." Nearly 200 people were sentenced to detention for up to 15 days and more than 300 others were fined, the New York-based human rights group said, urging the international community not to "ignore such serious flouting of human rights obligations." With reporting by TASS, dpa, AFP, and UNIAN Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-to-seek -extradition-of-alleged-russian-mercenaries- detained-in-belarus/30758940.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 Liz Truss has been told to beef up post-Brexit protection for British farmers or face a 'brick wall' of Tory rebellions. The International Trade Secretary was warned to expect a fresh revolt from Tory MPs unless she guaranteed 'in law' not to sell out the UK's world-class food production standards in a trade deal with the US. The warning comes despite Ms Truss unveiling a commission last week to advise on forthcoming trade deals. It also follows repeated pledges from the Minister, a free trader, that she would never let down UK farmers by allowing in 'unsafe', cheaper US-made food such as hormone-fed beef or chlorinated chicken to secure a lucrative trade deal with Washington. Liz Truss (pictured in 2019) has been told to beef up post-Brexit protection for British farmers or face a 'brick wall' of Tory rebellions But Tory rebels, who staged a Commons revolt in May, are demanding more concessions including beefing up the 'weak' trade and agriculture advisory commission as the price for staving off more rebellions this autumn. Critics have already complained that the advisory body will expire in six months and bemoaned what they see as a lack of 'animal welfare' representation among its membership. In the Lords last week, senior Tory peer John Randall warned that without offering more, the Government would be 'rather like a car heading towards a brick wall'. The former Government Deputy Chief Whip said the makeup of the trade commission 'leaves many people a little wary'. His remarks come amid Government fears that the Lords will next month insist on inserting fresh protections for quality British food in the Agriculture Bill setting up the prospect of a further Tory revolt in the Commons, backed by Labour. And yesterday, his views were echoed by senior Tory MP Neil Parish, who led the previous Commons revolt when 18 of the party's MPs defied the Government to vote for specific protections in law against sub-standard imports. Mr Parish, chairman of the powerful Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said the lifespan of the commission 'will clearly need to be extended beyond six months'. The warning comes despite Ms Truss (pictured arriving at the Foreign and Commonwealth office to participate in the first in person cabinet meeting since the coronavirus lockdown) unveiling a commission last week to advise on forthcoming trade deals He added: 'The commission needs teeth, probably by putting it on a statutory footing, to give people confidence that its work can't just be ignored after it reports.' Mr Parish, who had already said he was not sure how much he trusted Ms Truss, appeared to take another swipe at her. He said: 'Having recently met with the Prime Minister, I know he is really passionate about supporting our farming sector but I'm not sure everyone in Government is necessarily on the same page.' Campaigners battling to safeguard British agriculture have thrown their weight behind The Mail on Sunday's Save Our Family Farms campaign, which aims to keep controversial US food products off our supermarket shelves. This newspaper also revealed in June how Mr Johnson overruled the International Trade Secretary to insist unsafe US food would be kept out of the UK by imposing prohibitively high tariffs on them once the country left the EU single market at the end of the year. Last night, a source close to Ms Truss sought to allay fears by stressing she 'doesn't go to work every day trying to undermine British farming and standards', adding: 'She wants to secure deals that benefit the industry, consumers and the whole UK. The commission reflects that desire. We want the advice of experts and to put agriculture and farming at the heart of Britain's trade policy.' But last night, the Greener UK coalition of 13 leading environmental groups branded her commission 'powerless'. Spokesman Patrick Killoran said: 'It is hard not to conclude that the only people the Government is trying to please are US trade negotiators.' Labour's rural affairs spokesman Luke Pollard said: 'We need more than a new quango we need our high food and farming standards in law so farmers cannot be undercut by trade deals.' Govt. needs to boost COVID-hit private sector By Sunimalee Dias View(s): View(s): Employers in the private sector struggling to overcome the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic want the government to establish labour market-related policies and grant concessions in terms of delayed EPF, ETF payments and tax relief as the country faces mass scale unemployment and tight cash flows. This was detailed in a survey carried out by the Employers Federation of Ceylon (EFC) titled An Initial Assessment of the Impact of COVID-19 on Employers with a sample of 100 firms that are members of the EFC and with a total employee base of 125,000 during the period April 15 May 12, 2020 when businesses were most hit after the government announced a lockdown period. Firms suggest that the labour market include facilitating promoting work from home; flexi working hours, less government intervention on salary and other payment (especially in the plantation sector). They have also urged to introduce government-sponsored wage payment schemes; setting off the non-working days due to lockdown against employees leave entitlements. Employers have also requested to delay the payment of EPF and ETF by a maximum of three months, EFC Director General Kanishka Weerasinghe said at a media briefing held at the EFC auditorium at Rajagiriya on Thursday to release the findings of the survey. He noted that employers had requested for a delay in both employers and employee contributions and that moratoriums had not been allowed. Though the delay is permitted only for the employers contribution some do delay the employee contribution as well. In addition employers are seeking modifications on laws pertaining to the above concerns that have arisen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic which has disrupted economic activity since most local labour laws did not address situations of this nature as they were quite archaic having been established decades back. Firms have stated that labour market-related interventions is the most important to enable businesses to minimise cash flow problems and start operations as most have been hit by huge losses in terms of revenue and export earnings resulting in liquidity problems that require remedial monetary and fiscal measures. Trade-related policy interventions is required in providing relief on tariffs on exports and imports, removal of CESS and other para-tariffs on imported construction material. Export earnings suffered 100 per cent losses among firms with more than 250 employees as large-scale firms account for about 95 per cent of total export earnings. The leisure and food services sector recorded the highest economic losses in terms of occupancy, revenue, foreign exchange earnings and 73 per cent of its investments. In addition more Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing is a requirement that employers have asked for in a bid to contain the spread of the virus through employees exposed to foreigners and international travellers. In addition it was suggested to treat printing industry as an essential service and expand air freight operations. Nearly 75 per cent of firms in key economic sectors managed to implement work from home practices. More than half of all firms in the survey were faced with serious cash flow problems in meeting day-to-day expenses. The worst hit was the small and medium scale firms and firms serving both domestic and foreign markets. Among private sector workers, about 21 per cent in the production for export category of workers are likely to lose jobs. In addition about 9 per cent from the executive and non executive grades will be laid off in addition to 19 per cent from the production for export and domestic sectors. Labour Department estimates job losses to reach about 14,000 that are likely to increase to 25,000, Mr. Weerasinghe said. Private sector workers comprise 8 million out of which 2.5 million are in the formal sector. London: In a bid to curb excessive pay of corporate honchos, the UK is set to give workers a say in bosses pay amid concerns over soaring pay packages of top executives. In a move that threatens to spark fresh rows between ministers and business leaders, the government will announce the crackdown on sky-high salaries in a blueprint to tackle rogue bosses, The Sunday Times reported. British Prime Minister Theresa May promised to tackle corporate greed when she entered Number 10 amid concerns about soaring pay packages for top executives. Employee representatives will get an advisory role on company remuneration committees, giving them the right to point out where exorbitant pay could have a negative impact on the firms reputation or the rest of its staff, the report said. Pay for chief executives of FTSE 100 companies has soared over the past 18 years, up from an average of 1 million pounds in 1998 to 4.3 million pounds in 2015, far outstripping growth in average pay. A green paper on corporate governance to be published this week will require companies to publish pay ratios showing the difference in pay between the chief executive and average employee, and to introduce binding annual shareholder votes on executive pay packages. Private company bosses will also get a new code of conduct on behaviour and transparency that would cover executives such as Sir Philip Green, the Arcadia boss criticised after the sell-off of British Home Stores. Good governance helps companies take better decisions, for their own long-term benefit and the economy overall ensuring public trust in British business and making sure the UK is the best place in the world to do business, a government source was quoted as saying. The Prime Minister believes that measures to tackle rogue bosses are required to improve the reputation of capitalism in the face of the rise in anti-globalisation and anti-business sentiment. The publication of the green paper comes after May appeared to water down her commitment on giving workers a say in how their companies are run, ruling out imposing the appointment of employees to company boards. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. World is on verge of country defaults French Foreign Ministry considers unacceptable Azerbaijan statements about Pecresse US to return two valuable artifacts over 4,000 years old to Iraq Germany may consider halting Nord Stream 2 if Russia attacks Ukraine Israel successfully completes test of anti-ballistic missile system Plane landing in Sochi struck by lightning Putin and Aliyev discuss Ukraine situation Greek PM Mitsotakis threatens Turkey with sanctions Handelsblatt: US and EU abandon idea of disconnecting Russia from SWIFT international payment system Artsakh President meets representatives of non-governmental organizations Avalanche kills person in Iran Erdogan says he is pleased with decline in volatility of lira NEWS.am daily digest: 18.01.22 Turkey and Azerbaijan to start laying gas pipeline to supply Nakhichevan UK begins to supply Ukraine with anti-tank weapons Armenian PM holds meeting on Armenia's Transformation Strategy until 2050 Nagorno-Karabakh: Remains of another Armenian soldier found in Jrakan region Tehran to not accept any border change in South Caucasus Dollar holding relatively steady in Armenia Armenia special representative: Future process depends on Turkeys constructiveness degree Erdogan: Gas from Mediterranean to Europe can only be pumped through Turkey Iranian Consul General discusses customs cooperation in Nakhijevan Inecobank brings Apple Pay to customers Parliament vice-speaker says he is familiar with Armenia proposals on border demarcation commission work US Secretary of State to visit Kyiv Russia, Iran and China to hold joint naval drills OSCE Chairmanship on Aliyev statement: We reiterate our full support to Minsk Group Co-Chairs Artsakh NSS denies rumors about penetration of Azerbaijanis into Karabakh villages Indonesian parliament approves bill to relocate capital Armenia PM to Bulgaria colleague: Our interstate relations are marked by continuous development of cooperation Armenian President meets Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Azerbaijan to ban foreigners from visiting Nagorno-Karabakh occupied part European Parliament new speaker elected Armenian National Interests Fund participates in Abu Dhabi Sustainable Development Week summit North Korea fires missiles for fourth time this year ECHR recognizes violation of Armenian PM's rights after 2008 elections Turkey reveals plans to produce combat aircraft Karabakh official: Azerbaijan presidents impudent behavior is due to OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs silence Azerbaijan special services force Artsakh resident to intelligence work Copper price is stable Minister of State: OSCE MG Co-Chairs must accept exercise of Karabakh people's right to self-determination Armenia President, UAE Minister of State discuss possibilities of cooperation in science and technology Investigation into criminal case of several Armenia soldiers returned from Azerbaijan captivity is over Canada sends detachment of special forces to Ukraine Armenia ex-President Kocharyan, former deputy PM now MP Gevorgyan case trial resumes 2 more persons die of coronavirus in Artsakh Armenia family has 10th child Converse Bank brings Apple Pay to customers Gold is getting weaker Lacote: French institute to operate in Armenia (PHOTOS) Ardshinbank Brings Apple Pay to Customers Armenia President in UAE, meets with Emirati environment minister Armenia legislature approves changes to several laws Differences in data on coronavirus deaths in Armenia are corrected 360 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Norway to begin Breivik early release hearing Economy minister to head Armenia side of commission on economic cooperation with Kazakhstan Mexico crime photojournalist killed Newspaper: Criminal case against Armenia archbishop dropped Newspaper: Opposition Armenia Bloc in parliament to toughen its tactics Scientists discover large breeding colony of icefish in southern Antarctica China creates low-gravity artificial moon Tehran welcomes normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers discuss regional issues UN Secretary-General: Vaccinate whole world to end pandemic Giant asteroid to fly past our planet Armenian President meets with Executive Director of Mubadala Investment Company UAE counting on Turkey Indonesia to move capital by 2024 Passenger traffic at Armenian airports decreased by 30% Armenian Investigative Committee: Six soldiers captured in November arrested Turkish government to discuss Rubinyan-Kilic meeting results German FM threatens Russia in case of aggression against Ukraine Armenian MFA senior staff meets with ambassadors to European countries Turkish court acquits German journalist Mesale Tolu Turkish UAV intercepted over Greek island Protest in front of Armenian Health Ministry France introduces vaccine passes Bitcoin begins to lose out competitors Exchange rates in Armenia Safari browser caught leaking user data Xi Jinping: Confrontation between major powers can have disastrous consequences Lukashevich: Russia concerned that OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs may not be able to visit Nagorno-Karabakh Court obligates Armenia ruling force MP to prove ex-President Sargsyan lost more than $100M in casinos Ex-ruling party official: Armenia authorities may renounce Genocide, Karabakh Armenian PM's party decides to provide free textbooks to non-state schools Times: Johnson prepares cadre purge to save his own skin Pecresse accuses French government of inaction after Aliyev's statements on her Karabakh visit Armenia President attends Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week forum opening Armenia legislature ruling majority member: It is possible for us to have neighborly relations with Azerbaijan President approves Artsakh government decisions on provision of financial assistance Armenia parliament opposition faction leader on canceling US visit: We must fulfill our international duties Fire in Abu Dhabi kills three people ANIF Anti-Crisis Fund to invest in Armenia cargo transportation Azerbaijan to soon open bus routes to Artsakhs occupied Shushi Armenia ruling force MP, businessman: Turks will be able to use our medical services in Gyumri, Yerevan Erdogan wants to save Turkish economy with oil production in the Black Sea Copper rises in price Thousands of flights canceled in US due to snowstorm Passions in Armenia legislature run high, recess announced Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has accused Russia of trying to cover up an attempt to send 200 fighters from a private Russian military firm into Belarus on a mission to destabilize the country ahead of its August 9 presidential election. Lukashenka made the remarks on August 1 after he said he'd read an initial report by Belarusian investigators into the alleged plot by members of the Vagner Group -- a private Russian military company thought to be controlled by an influential political ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Its fighters have turned up in conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and Libya. Earlier on August 1, the Russian Embassy in Minsk announced that its diplomats had met with a group of 33 jailed Vagner Group contractors who've been detained by Belarusian authorities. "As far as I understand, this is just the first group of 180 or 200 people that had been planned for redeployment to Belarus," Lukashenka was quoted by the BelTA state news agency as saying on August 1. "Russia's attempt to hide the 'tail' now and claim that the arrival of this group was agreed on with us -- this is total nonsense," Lukashenka said. The Kremlin has demanded their release, saying their arrests were "unreasonable." Earlier this week, 32 contractors from Vagner were detained near Minsk while another was detained in southern Belarus. The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office said on July 31 that Kyiv would ask Belarus to hand over 28 of the detainees on charges of fighting alongside Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. It said nine Ukrainian citizens are among the 28. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on August 1 that Moscow considers all of the detainees to be Russian citizens. Peskov also has rejected Minsk's claims that the group planned to interfere in Belarus's presidential election. He says the 33 men were detained while they were in transit to Istanbul before flying to "a third country." "Their stay is connected neither to Belarus itself nor its internal affairs," Peskov told reporters on July 31. However, Alyaksandr Agafonov, who leads the Belarusian investigation, says the mens plans for onward travel were just "an alibi." Agafonov also said that the evidence about the reasons for their stay in Belarus is incoherent and contradictory. The head of the Belarusian Security Council, Andrey Raukou, said on July 30 that "upwards of up to 200 militants" remain at large in Belarus and efforts to locate them continue. The August 9 presidential vote in Belarus is shaping up to be a tough race for incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka, an authoritarian leader who has been in power since 1994. Lukashenka has cracked down on the opposition during the campaign, with the arrest of hundreds of people, including journalists, bloggers, and political activists. Charges were pressed against two potential candidates. With reporting by Reuters, TASS, dpa, AFP, Interfax, AFP, and UNIAN Photo: (Photo : Photo by Todd Trapani from Pexels) Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been actively campaigning health safety protocols to stop the further spread of the virus. When summer began, the CDC also released guidelines for youth and summer camps. They even released a video educating campers and administrators on how to stay safe at summer camp. However, there were still reported cases of the coronavirus outbreak in a summer camp in Georgia. According to a report from NBC News, more than 200 campers and administrators tested positive with the coronavirus. READ ALSO: 4 easy safety tips for kids to follow when swimming [to avoid drowning] Coronavirus in summer camp According to the report from CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, there were 120 staff members and 130 trainees that had an orientation at the summer camp. It opened on June 21 with more than 360 campers. After a few days, one staff member had to leave the camp because of chills. This staff member tested positive for the coronavirus. Because of this, campers and staff members were sent home. Health officials were alerted of the situation. Reports say that the camp did not require the wearing of face masks, despite the vigorous campaign of CDC to do this precautionary measure. Documents proving that staff members were negative of the coronavirus were provided by the summer camp before opening. However, the staff members were the only ones asked to wear face masks. Campers roamed around without one. READ ALSO: 6 Interesting summer activities for kids before the school reopening Positive coronavirus cases The health department recommended that everyone who went to the camp to get tested for the coronavirus. Everyone from the summer camp also had to self-quarantine. The tests returned with 260 positive cases. Among these are 231 individuals aged 17 years old and younger. CDC said, "Settings, like multi-day, overnight summer camps, pose a unique challenge when it comes to preventing the spread of infectious diseases." READ ALSO: Experts Say: The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Not Slow Down [But People Still Want Get-Togethers] Spread of coronavirus among children Kids at the summer camp were reported to join in several indoor and outdoor activities. They were singing and cheering during their stay there. They were also asked to sleep in cabins. All of these activities were done without wearing facemasks. In a report released by CDC last Friday, the organization reiterated that the incident only proves that children are susceptible to the virus, thus playing "an important role in transmission." That is contrary to early reports that children are not playing a role in the transmission of the deadly virus. CDC believes that asymptomatic infection of the coronavirus is contributory to the transmission. CDC added, "This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection." READ ALSO: Summer Camps are Cancelled, Parents are Disappointed Russia's health minister announced that the country is planning a mass vaccination campaign for October. A state research facility in Moscow, the Gamaleya Institute, completed clinical trials of the vaccine and is working on getting it registered. Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said: 'We plan wider vaccinations for October' after outlining his plan to give the vaccine to teachers and doctors first. The Gamaleya Institute, a state research facility in Moscow, has finished clinical trials for a potential vaccine which Russia plans to roll out in October Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said doctors and teachers will get the vaccine first Russia's first potential vaccine is set to be approved in August, anonymous sources told Reuters. However, some experts have expressed concern that Russia is moving too fast on developing a vaccine, without making sure it is safe, in order to win national prestige. US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, said yesterday that it was unlikely the US would use a vaccine developed by Russia or China because of different regulatory systems. He told a Congressional hearing: 'I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing the vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone.' 'Claims of having a vaccine ready to distribute before you do testing, I think, is problematic, at best.' Russia was also reported to have been involved in hacking coronavirus research labs in the US and the UK in May this year. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre did not name any countries but Sky News said the culprits are understood to include China, Russia and Iran. Russia's ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, told the BBC he rejects the accusation. The joint advisory said coronavirus research was targeted as the first country to develop a vaccine will undoubtedly achieve huge diplomatic and geo-political influence. Worldwide countries are in a race to create a vaccine with over 20 currently in clinical trials. At least four are in final Phase three human trials, according to World Health Organisation data, including three developed in China and another in Britain. The UK has already ordered 100 million doses of a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford. New Delhi: Congress on Monday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi terming him "insensitive" for his remarks in the 'Mann ki Baat' radio programme saying he talked of moving towards a cashless society when a very small population of the country used plastic money. "The Prime Minister, in his programme on Sunday, said the youth and tech-savvy should help others in moving towards a cashless society. But, he must remember what percentage of the people uses credit and debit cards.People are dying due the impact of demonetisation and he makes such remarks. Modi is insensitive," Congress leader Anand Sharma told a gathering of Youth Congress workers and NSUI members in front of the IYC office on Raisina Road in New Delhi, on the occasion of 'Jan Aakrosh Diwas' called by the opposition parties. "Modiji doesn't do 'Mann Ki Baat'. He only likes listening to himself and doing what he pleases," he alleged. Modi, in his radio programme, had appealed to the people to shift to a cashless system of transactions and asked the youth to help in the process by educating the elders and those not literate. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala attacked the Prime Minister saying he must also "try to listen to the voices of those whose family members had died due to the impact of demonetisation". "Modiji has started this problem and instead of indulging in a political slugfest with the opposition, he and his government should try to find a solution to it," he said. Surjewala reiterated his party's stand of demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Centre's demonetisation decision, which the Congress alleged was a "scam". Sharma said even in the US, "dollars are used as black money but they don't suddenly remove their currency". "Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes accounted for about 86 per cent of the currencies in circulation. Is he saying that 86 per cent of the money was black? Modi has denigrated the country by this move and he must apologise to the nation," the Deputy Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha said. NSUI workers later attempted to take out a march towards Parliament but were prevented by the police who detained them after they tried to climb the barricade. Youth Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda also took part in the protest. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson posted a video on his official Twitter account and stated that he was too overweight when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and was admitted to intensive care earlier this year. Johnson's battle with obesity Johnson said in the clip that he posted on Twitter on July 20 that he always wanted to lose weight for years. He also said that like many people, he is also struggling with his current weight. According to Johnson, he had a change of lifestyle after the recovered from the coronavirus. The Prime Minister goes jogging every morning and he brings his dog Dilyn along. He also talked about the benefits of shedding a few pounds and how it can help the NHS or the National Health Service. The video of the Prime Minister has been released together with the launch of the UK government's strategy to lower the obesity rates in the country. Also Read: Fact Check: Will Trump's Order Drop the Prices of Insulin to "Pennies a Day?" According to the records released by the government, around 63% of adults in the UK are above what is considered a healthy weight, and half of those in the percentage are considered obese. Another data released by the UK government showed that alarmingly, 1 in 5 children, ages 10 to 11, are already considered as overweight or obese. The data also indicates that children who are living in low-income households have a higher chance of being obese. On July 20, the government policy paper was released and makes it a point of linking the risk of being overweight during the pandemic. In the last few months, the government has seen that being overweight or living with obesity puts a person at risk of dying from COVID-19, as the excess fat tissue on vital organs like the lungs, heart, and liver makes it difficult to treat the patient. The UK government is hoping that the campaign will encourage those who fall under the category of overweight or obese to lose at least 2.5 kg, stating that losing weight could help save the NHS around 105 million or $135 million in the next 5 years. The whole campaign comprises of numerous measures, from making the restaurants in the country put calorie numbers on menus so that people can watch what they eat, to banning the promotion and advertisement of unhealthy food in shops, newspapers, and television. Changing his tune Johnson said that the government's plan will help those in the UK to lose weight and that the measures are designed so that it won't come off as bossy in any way. However, the Prime Minister was opposed to the exact same plan proposed by the previous government to help the UK to fight against obesity. In 2007, Johnson wrote in a column in Telegraph UK that the plan of the government to add calorie numbers on menus and wine bottles was "loony." Johnson also wrote that the "bullying" plan could lead to a legal challenge. In 2004, Johnson also wrote in a column in Telegraph UK about the plan of the government to ban smoking in public and to have designated smoking areas. He stated that the previous government is comprised of people who are "dogooders" and who just want to stop the public from doing things that they do not like. Related Article: Donald Trump Suggests Delaying Presidential Election Due to Possible Fraudulent Results in Mail-In Voting @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TRENTON, N.S. Police in Nova Scotia are still searching for a 33-year-old man from Pictou County they say evaded arrest late Friday. New Glasgow police said in a statement Saturday that Christopher McKay fled from a home in Trenton, N.S., as officers tried to execute a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest on an alleged parole violation. Const. Ken MacDonald said officers increased their patrols in the Trenton area as the search for McKay continued throughout the day. He could still be in our county, MacDonald said in an interview Saturday afternoon. He said police do not believe there is a threat to public safety, but he asked local residents to remain vigilant. Police arrested another man earlier Saturday who had been accompanying McKay and was also wanted for an alleged parole violation, MacDonald said. Authorities had issued an emergency alert early Saturday morning but later lifted the warning to residents to remain in their homes. McKay is described as five-feet seven-inches tall, weighing 200 pounds, with face and neck tattoos. Police have asked anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact them immediately. Read more about: India reports dip in Covid infections with 2,38,018 new cases, positivity rate at 14.43% Failure to vaccinate everyone will give rise to new variants, says UN chief Faith vs safety in burials: COVID-19 remains in dead bodies for 9 days says Centre COVID-19: Only 1.61 per cent patients need ICU care India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Aug 01: India's Covid-19 case fatality rate is progressively declining and now stands at 2.18 per cent, one of the lowest globally, while just 0.28 per cent of the total active patients are on a ventilator, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Friday. He also said of the total 5,45,318 active cases, 1.61 per cent patients need ICU care and 2.32 per cent are on oxygen support. Chairing the 19th meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Covid-19 through video-conference on Friday, Vardhan said India has achieved the milestone of more than 10 lakh recoveries, a recovery rate to 64.54 per cent. COVID-19: BMC to start 2nd phase of sero survey in Mumbai "This shows that the active cases under medical supervision are only 33.27 pc or approximately 1/3rd of total positive cases," he was quoted as saying in a health ministry statement. US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news "India's Case Fatality Rate is also progressively reducing and currently stands at 2.18 per cent, one of the lowest globally," he said. Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar, Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Puri, MoS Shipping (Independent Charge) Mansukh Lal Mandaviya, MoS Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey and MoS Home Nityanand Rai joined the meeting. Speaking on the severity of the disease, Vardhan said, "Out of the total active cases, only 0.28 pc patients are on ventilators, 1.61 pc patients needed ICU support and 2.32 pc are on oxygen support." On the country's testing capacity, he said 6,42,588 tests were conducted in a span of 24 hours through a network of 1,331 labs -- 911 government and 420 private - which has taken the cumulative number to more than 1.88 crore tests so far. The GoM was briefed on the current status of Covid-19 in India and was apprised about the ramping up of the domestic production capacities of various sectors for manufacturing PPEs, masks, ventilators and drugs such as hydroxychloroquine, the statement said. In terms of healthcare logistics, cumulatively 268.25 lakh N-95 masks, 120.40 lakh PPEs and 1,083.77 lakh HCQ tablets have been distributed to states/UTs and Central institutions, it said. During the meeting, National Centre for Disease Control Director Dr Sujeet K Singh presented a comparison on daily cases, deaths and growth rate in 10 countries with the highest caseload, it stated. Covid-19: Bengaluru's KR Market, Kalasipalya markets to remain shut till August 31 The GoM was briefed that the overall recovery rate for India is 64.54 per cent -- the highest 89.08 per cent in Delhi, followed by 79.82 per cent in Haryana. Karnataka has the lowest recovery rate of 39.36 per cent. The GoM was also apprised on the distribution of confirmed cases and active cases in the containment zones across the country. The statement said the NCDC director also briefed the GoM on the growth rate in top 12 states -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, Telangana, Bihar, Rajasthan and Assam. He also told the meeting about the number of tests and positivity rate across states and UTs and active cases and deaths in top 20 districts and containment zones across districts. He highlighted that efforts are being made to reduce mortality in high caseload regions and cities like Pune, Thane, Bengaluru, Hyderabad etc that are showing recent upsurge. The meeting also suggested some measures including revamping the strategy for effective management of containment zones through stricter perimeter control, widespread rapid antigen tests, intensive and rapid door-to-door search, more isolation facilities for suspects/cases and standard case management protocols. These have to be aided by an increase in oxygen beds and ventilators and assessing the true burden through planned serosurveys, the statement said. In moderate caseload districts/cities, the efforts would focus on preventing spill-over from the high burden areas, limiting local spread, early identification of cases, strengthening contact tracing with the use of technology and community involvement, the ministry said. As for the low burden districts, the efforts aimed at preventing infection among the population from other areas, strengthening Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) surveillance and targeted testing, rigorous contact tracing with targets to be set by the local administration and prior identification of high-risk population, it said. Director-General of Foreign Trade Amit Yadav briefed the GoM on different items that were put under export restriction and prohibition during the Covid-19 pandemic and their present status. The GoM deliberated upon the protocols being followed at the airports and the systemic improvements in triaging of incoming passengers. Meanwhile, India's Covid-19 case tally zoomed past 16 lakh on Friday, registering a record single-day jump of 55,078 infections. The death toll due to the disease rose to 35,747 with 779 fatalities being reported in a 24-hours span, a health ministry bulletin updated at 8 am showed. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Saturday, August 1, 2020, 8:32 [IST] Morgan County registered its sixth COVID-19 death Friday as total cases in the county rose by 10. The death involved a 95-year-old man at Jacksonville Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, according to the Morgan County Coroners Office. The additional diagnoses Friday brings the total case count in Morgan County to 210, according to Morgan County Health Department. Of the 10 cases, three were women in their 20s, one was a man in his 20s, one was a women in her 30s and one was a man in his 50s. Four of the cases involved were employees of the long-term care facility and included a woman in her 50s, a man in his 30s, a woman in her 40s and a woman in her 60s. All are isolated at home, according to the health department. Health officials also Friday identified an outbreak of COVID-19 connected to a wedding reception that took place July 25 at Hamiltons Catering at 110 N. East St. in Jacksonville. According to the Morgan County Health Department, four adults who attended the event have tested positive for coronavirus disease. All guests from the wedding are being placed under quarantine, according to the health department. Anyone who has questions about the quarantine or needs to report a positive COVID test can contact the health department at 217-245-5111. Cass County cases rose by seven on Friday. Positive tests were returned for a man in his 20s, two women in their 30s, three men in their 40s and a man in his 50s, according to Cass County Health Department. The total case count in Cass County is 201 a previously reported infection was found to involve someone from another county with 147 recoveries and 11 deaths. In Scott County, a new positive case involving a woman in her 20s was the ninth reported in the county. Total cases in other west-central Illinois counties as of Friday were: 13 in Brown County; 17 in Greene County; 62 in Jersey County; 13 in Pike County; 15 in Schuyler County; 953 in Sangamon County; and 127 in Macoupin County. The Illinois Department of Public Health on Friday reported 1,941 new cases and 21 deaths. Statewide, there have been 178,837 cases and 7,495 deaths. On July 30, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell announced that no charges would be filed against Darren Wilson, the former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in 2014. The murder of Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, and earlier failure to indict Wilson, who is white, six years ago sparked massive nationwide protests against racist police violence. In justifying his decision Bell, elected St. Louis Countys first African-American prosecuting attorney in 2018, stated, Although this case represents one of the most significant moments in St. Louis history, the question for this office was a simple one: Could we prove beyond a reasonable doubt that when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown he committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law? Bell claimed that a review of the evidence could not prove Wilsons guilt, continuing the whitewash carried out by his predecessor, Bob McCulloch. In fact, there is a substantial body of evidence showing Wilson gunned down the 18-year-old, despite the youth not posing any threat to the cop. Most witnesses to the event cited in a federal government report described that Wilson initially tried to force Brown into his police car and shot the youth after he attempted to flee. Brown, who was injured by the initial volley of gunfire and some distance away, then tried to surrender putting his hands up and turning around. Wilson then resumed shooting, with one bullet fatally hitting Brown in the head. An independent autopsy of Browns body was also conducted in 2014 by long-time medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden and forensic pathologist Shawn Parcells. The autopsy disproved claims by Ferguson police that the death was caused by a physical altercation between Brown and Wilson. Bell, in an attempt to distance himself from his own decision to not file against the former cop, also stated, There are so many points at which Darren Wilson could have handled the situation differently, and if he had, Michael Brown might still be alive. One of Wilsons lawyers, Jim Tower, told the New York Times that neither he nor Wilson was aware of the investigation. Bells failure to bring any charges against the former cop are a travesty of justice and indicative of the entire political establishments defense of police violence. Bell became prosecuting attorney last year after beating incumbent McCulloch on a platform of reforms to reduce jailing for non-violent crimes and transparent investigations. Both Bell and McCulloch are Democrats. McCulloch was known to have close ties to the police. As prosecutor, he utilized a grand jury process that lasted three months to clear Wilson and claimed that physical evidence contradicted the accounts of witnesses. The decision by the grand jury not to indict was suspicious given the amount of evidence and witnesses involved in the case. An indictment does not have the same legal standard as a guilty verdict in a trial. Mass anger over Browns killing and the decision not to indict Wilson, resulted in protests across the US. Democratic Missouri Governor Jay Nixon deployed National Guard troops to disperse the peaceful demonstrations in Ferguson. The Obama administration throughout the protests feigned sympathy for Browns family, while accepting the grand jury decision and decrying mistrust of the police. Following Bells victory over McCulloch in the 2018 Democratic primary, there was a growing demand for Bell to reinvestigate the killing of Brown. Browns family also made a public plea to the attorney to reopen the case. A number of liberal publications including the Times also hailed the election of Bell and Ella Jones, the first African-American mayor of Ferguson, claiming that they would be more sympathetic to peaceful protests and open to reforms. On the one-year anniversary of Michael Browns murder, the WSWS noted: In official circlesand this includes the proponents of identity politics that orbit around the Democratic Partythe killing of Brown and other incidents of police brutality are presented entirely within the framework of race. This is a political diversion to conceal the underlying class issues and roots of police repression in the capitalist system itself. ... The military/police occupation of Ferguson revealed to the whole world that behind the outward trappings of democracy in the US, the groundwork for a police state has been created. This is one expression of the deep decay and crisis of American capitalism. The last two months have completely confirmed the perspective of the WSWS. The promotion of politicians like Bell with the claim that due to his race he will implement policies that benefit the poor or the black community has proven to be a complete failure. In fact, in the US roughly 1,000 people are killed by police every year. While a disproportionate number of people killed by police are black and the plurality are white, the shared aspect of those killed by police is that they are poor. According to the data gathered by killedbypolice.net, which has tracked police killings in the US since 2015, the number of police killings has remained relatively constant under both the Obama and Trump administrations. The ongoing wave of police killings is reflective of the continued lurching of the political establishment toward authoritarianism. The Trump administrations deployment of federal agents to disperse protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in cities throughout the US is only the most recent and overt expression of the ruling elites moves toward dictatorship. The advertiser boycott of Facebook took a toll on the social media giant, but it may have caused more damage to the companys reputation than to its bottom line. The boycott, called #StopHateForProfit by the civil rights groups that organized it, urged companies to stop paying for ads on Facebook in July to protest the platforms handling of hate speech and misinformation. More than 1,000 advertisers publicly joined, out of a total pool of more than 9 million, while others quietly scaled back their spending. The 100 advertisers that spent the most on Facebook in the first half of the year spent $221.4 million from July 1 through July 29, 12 percent less than the $251.4 million spent by the top 100 advertisers a year earlier, according to estimates from the advertising analytics platform Pathmatics. Of those 100, nine companies formally announced a pullback in paid advertising, cutting their spending to $507,500 from $26.2 million. Many of the companies that stayed away from Facebook said they planned to return, and many are mom-and-pop enterprises and individuals that depend on the platform for promotion. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks chief executive, has emphasized the importance of small business, saying during an earnings call on Thursday that some seem to wrongly assume that our business is dependent on a few large advertisers. The Socialist Equality Party in the United States held its sixth National Congress from July 19 to July 24, 2020. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Congress was held entirely online. More than 30 percent of those who attended were participating in their first party Congress, which is held every two years. Leading members of all sections and sympathizing groups of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) delivered greetings to the Congress. Over a period of five days, the Congress discussed and then adopted a resolution, The global pandemic, the class struggle, and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party, which is published on the World Socialist Web Site today. The resolution provides a comprehensive analysis of the historic, economic, social and political context of the pandemic and its revolutionary implications. Defining the pandemic as a trigger event in world history that is accelerating the already far-advanced economic, social, and political crisis of the world capitalist system, the resolution states: The working class is confronted with a crisis for which there is no progressive solution apart from a revolutionary struggle against capitalism, leading to the conquest of state power, the establishment of democratic control by the working class over the economy, the replacement of the anarchy of the market with scientific planning, the ending of the nation-state system, and the building of a global socialist society dedicated to equality, the elimination of poverty and all forms of oppression and discrimination, a massive rise in the standard of living and the level of social culture, and the protection of the environment. The resolution analyzes the crisis triggered by the pandemic in a broader historical, socioeconomic and political context: While the specific conditions that produced the coronavirus have an accidental and contingent character, the response to the pandemic has been determined by the pre-existing conditions of capitalist crisis and the interests of the ruling class. The capitalist class has continued and intensified the same parasitic economic relations and social policies that it employed during the previous period. A central theme of the document is that the pandemic marks a historic turning point whose impact will prove no less decisive in shaping the course of the twenty-first century than that of World War I on the twentieth century. Rejecting the view that the fight against the pandemic is primarily a medical problem, the resolution explains: As the uprising of the working class was necessary to bring an end to World War I, the class conscious intervention of the working class, in a struggle against capitalism, is necessary to create the conditions for an effective social response to the disease. The resolution examines the economic, social and political logic underlying the events of the last half-year. To understand the present situation and chart a course for the future, it is necessary to review how the crisis has developed in the country which has become the global center of the pandemic, the United States. The resolution identifies three distinct stages in the development of the crisis. The first stage was between December 2019 and March 27, 2020: The outbreak of the pandemic, the suppression of information and the rescue of the corporate-financial elite. It was during this period that the Trump administration and congressional leaders of both capitalist parties made the socially catastrophic decisions that prioritized the rescue of the banks, large corporations and powerful Wall Street investors over preventing the spread of the pandemic and saving lives. Rather than taking measures to stop the pandemic, the ruling class pursued a policy of malign neglectan attitude of indifference on the part of governments to the virus, [which] was conditioned by concerns over its impact on the markets. It used the months of February and March to prepare and implement a multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, culminating in the enactment of the so-called CARES Act on March 27, adopted nearly unanimously by the Democrats and Republicans. While the ruling class sought to suppress any response to the pandemic, the resolution calls attention to the reaction of the working class: In opposition to the ruling classs policy of malign neglect, the working class began taking action to protect itself against the pandemic. Walkouts and protest actions were organized by workers employed by Instacart, Amazon and Whole Foods. Auto workers in the United States and Canada carried out a series of wildcat actions, which coincided with a wave of strikes and protests in Europe. Articles published on the WSWS and statements by the SEP, including the March 14 statement, Shut down the auto industry to halt the spread of the coronavirus!, were read and shared by tens of thousands of workers. Under growing pressure from the working class and with the bailout legislation still in preparation, the federal, state and local governments were compelled to accede to a lockdown of the economy. The second stage, between March 27 and May 31, 2020, was dominated by the reckless back to work campaign of the ruling class and the eruption of protests against police violence. The resolution reviews the bipartisan campaign within the political establishment to force a return to work, which began with a column advocating a policy of herd immunity by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. The resolution cites the warnings from the SEP and the WSWS that this policy would lead to an explosion of new cases and deaths. The resolution analyzes the massive multiethnic and multiracial protests over police violence that spread throughout the US and internationally in late May following the murder of George Floyd: While the protests were sparked by police violence, their underlying causes were anger over the protracted and severe decline in living standards, the crushing debt levels imposed upon youth and the bleakness of their prospects for the future, pervasive social inequality and its consequences, the constriction of democratic rights, and the impossibility of effecting meaningful change and improvement in social conditions within the framework of the existing political structures of the two-party system. The third stage began with Trumps June 1 press conference at the White House, at which he declared his intention to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against the protests. This initiated the administrations ongoing attempts to establish a presidential dictatorship. While this initial coup attempt was not successful, the SEP warned in a statement on June 4, cited in the resolution, that nothing could be more dangerous than to think that the crisis has passed. It has, rather, just begun. This warning was confirmed even as the SEP Congress was meeting, with the deployment in Portland, Oregon of federal paramilitary forces operating under Trumps command. Anticipating the threats over the past week by Trump to delay or cancel the upcoming elections, the resolution warns: Regardless of which party wins the electionand that requires the debatable assumption that the election will be heldthe tendencies that found such noxious expression during the Trump administration will persist and worsen. The Democrats responded by ceding all opposition to Trump to the military, while escalating their own campaign to divert social opposition. The sections of the capitalist class and the affluent middle class aligned with the Democratic Party, the resolution states, always extremely sensitive to any sign of working class militancy and socialist influence, intervened to hijack the demonstrations and misdirect them along explicitly racialist lines. Congress delegates participated in an extensive discussion on the background to the Democrats racialist campaign, legitimized by the New York Times 1619 Project, to rewrite American history: Determined to disorient the protest movement and suppress the growth of the class struggle, the New York Times intensified its campaignwhich it had initiated in August 2019 with the launching of the 1619 Projectto discredit the American Revolution, the Civil War and its principal leaders. What began as a legitimate demand for the removal of the statues of leaders of the Confederacy became the occasion for defacing and removing statues that memorialize the lives of Washington, Lincoln, Grant and even a prominent abolitionist. Notwithstanding attempts to place race at the center of politics, the resolution insists that the overwhelming social reality of the United States is economic inequality, which is rooted in the division of society based on class. The resolution also warned of the escalating preparations by the United States for war. Both Trump and the Democrats, moreover, are committed to an expansion of war abroad. The resolution states: Throughout the pandemic, there has been no letup in the bellicose policies of the United States. US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has maintained a heavy travel schedule, demanding support for American threats against Russia and its primary geo-political rival, China. The Trump administration has sought to generate hostility by referring regularly to the Wuhan virus, even to the point of claiming, without any evidence, that China set out to infect the American public. The resolution warns: The danger of war should not be underestimated. There are many examples in the twentieth century of a crisis-ridden regimethat of Hitler is the most notorious exampleresorting to war as a solution to what it perceives to be a desperate crisis within the border of its own country. On the basis of its analysis of the past seven months, the resolution advances a perspective and program of action for the weeks and months ahead: The first half of the year has been dominated by the response of the ruling class to the pandemic. The response of the working class will come to the forefront in the second half. The disastrous consequences of the ruling classs policies have delivered a staggering blow to the legitimacy of the capitalist system. The corporate response to economic collapsemass layoffs, wage-cutting, demands for the further slashing of expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other vital and already underfunded social programswill meet with growing resistance in the working class. Opposition will mount to working in unsafe conditions and to school reopenings that facilitate the spread of the COVID-19 virus. There will be opposition to evictions and foreclosures. Therefore, the Socialist Equality Party foresees an immense growth of working class struggle, which through the intervention of the party will assume a politically class conscious and anti-capitalist character. In outlining the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party, the resolution explains the significance of transitional demands that connect the issues and needs arising from a concrete situation to the strategy of socialist revolution. In relation to the coronavirus pandemic, the SEP calls for and will fight for an end to the reckless and criminal back-to-work campaign; the repeal of the corporate-Wall Street bailout; an emergency program to provide economic security for all unemployed people and vastly expand the health care infrastructure; the expropriation of the wealth of the corporate and financial elite to address the urgent social crisis facing tens of millions of people; and the establishment of workers democratic control of the major banks and corporations. In the discussion of the resolution, Congress delegates emphasized the relationship between the development of the objective situation and the activity of the Socialist Equality Party. There was extensive discussion of the SEPs experience in establishing rank-and-file safety committees in factories and workplaces to protect workers against the threat posed by viral transmission. Changes and additions proposed by delegates in the course of the discussion were incorporated into the final draft of the resolution. The vote on the resolution was conducted online, and it was passed unanimously. The Congress delegates elected a new national committee. The members of the incoming national committee reelected Joseph Kishore as national secretary, Lawrence Porter as assistant national secretary, and Barry Grey as US editor of the World Socialist Web Site. The Congress delegates reelected David North as national chairman. The Congress resolution provides an unequaled analysis of the crisis triggered by the pandemic, directed toward the development of socialist class consciousness and the independent action of the working class. It provides a direction for revolutionary politics and the development of a socialist movement of the working class. It deserves the most careful study by workers and young people in the United States and throughout the world. Read the resolution, The global pandemic, the class struggle, and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party. To contact and join the SEP and the ICFI, click here. The demands facing hundreds of thousands of college students as they ramp up for the fall semester in Texas are numerous while the coronavirus rages on. Social distancing. Face covering requirements. Reducing capacity of in-person classes. But with campuses that are as big as some cities the most difficult challenge will likely be one that the nation has grappled with since the pandemic began: testing. Colleges and universities across Texas and the region are offering a mix of in-person, online and hybrid classes this fall. One of the key elements on any reopening plan that includes on campus interaction is testing for coronavirus. Rice University in Houston plans to do random weekly screening for a portion of the colleges community, according to its website. And upon arrival, undergraduate students will be tested in a free two-step process. Rice has contracted 60,000 tests for the fall semester. The Texas A&M system will send about 15,000 tests kits to its 11 college campuses each month and will have a central location for free testing for students, faculty and staff, officials said. A&Ms testing, which will be conducted using mouth swabs, will require an online registration and sign-up. The systems more than 151,000 students and 25,000 faculty are encouraged to get tested if they experience COVID-19 symptoms, or suspect that they have been exposed to someone with COVID-19. Ensuring the health and safety of our students is our top priority, said John Sharp, Texas A&M chancellor. Baylor University in Waco will require students and faculty returning this fall to produce negative results for a COVID-19 test and will mail out more than 18,000 tests directly to them starting next week, according to the university website and spokeswoman Lori Fogleman. The self-administered PCR test kits, a nasal swab test which Baylor refers to as the gold standard for testing, will include instructions with a video on how to collect the sample and packaging for overnight shipping. Students are required to send their nasal swab sample to the lab the same day as the test kit is received. Students will receive their results through email and test notification in one to two days. If they test positive, students can return to campus 10 days after they test positive. Baylor will also continue to conduct surveillance testing of students throughout the semester and will test symptomatic students through its on-campus health center. Rice is similarly requesting that students be tested for COVID-19 at home and receive results before returning to campus. Those who test positive should stay home, Rice officials said. But routine testing for larger campuses such as Texas A&Ms flagship, which has nearly 70,000 students, can be difficult, expensive and impractical, as testing only captures a small snapshot in time, said Gerald Parker, an infectious disease expert and director of the biosecurity and pandemic policy program at A&Ms Bush School of Government and Public Service. You and I can be tested tomorrow, and tomorrow or in two days, we could test positive, so making it a requirement to test everybody as they come back to school doesnt make a lot of sense, Parker said. But he added there are other effective ways to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19: focusing on testing the symptomatic, contact tracing to identify those who have come in close contact with positive cases, and active public health monitoring in order to protect people who are at-risk and most vulnerable. The cost of testing Testing on a large scale comes at a cost. The free tests offered by A&M, for example, cost the system $150 each ringing up an estimated $2.25 million monthly. Officials have already set aside about $16 million for testing, which could be offset by a possible 75 percent reimbursement through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Still, officials are encouraging those with insurance to get tested with their doctors. Sharp negotiated a deal with California-based testing company Curative Inc., which has committed to producing lab results within 30 hours of receiving samples. The company currently processes more than 55,000 tests a day and has released more than 1.2 million test results. The University of Texas at Austin, which will also require its students to self-quarantine ahead of their return to campus, plans to provide daily symptom screenings and testing for the virus but at a cost. UT-Austins Health Services will charge $88 for tests for the virus and $53 for antibody tests, which indicate whether a person has already been infected, according to its website. Insurance may cover all or some of the cost. And at Rice, students who test positive will be placed in isolated housing in the universitys Sid Richardson College or will be required to self-quarantine in their living space. All non-quarantining students in on-campus living spaces that share a bathroom with a person who has tested positive will be moved to a nearby hotel at no cost to students, Rice officials said. Even with all of the precautions, asymptomatic cases prevalent among younger populations can make curbing the spread more difficult, which could be a motive for health officials to implement a sampling system of students to identify where there may be unrecognized cases, Parker said. The University of Houston is working to provide on-campus testing for students and employees who are symptomatic, with a 24-hour or less turnaround time for results, said UH spokeswoman Shawn Lindsey. The university plans to have onsite testing at its student health center in October, which would test 40 to 50 people daily with results in about an hour. Until then, testing will be outsourced to a lab that will provide results within a day. COVID-19 testing at UH will be provided at no cost to employees and students who have the colleges student health insurance, Lindsey said . The cost for those who do not have health insurance has not been determined, but UH is exploring federal reimbursement options. Other approaches Universities are considering other novel approaches to identify COVID-19 and curb the spread, Parker said. This includes monitoring wastewater for signs of the virus and active testing surveillance technology. Clear communication about the virus and safety protocols could use improvement as some states, including Texas, experience surges in cases, Parker said. We havent done a good job in communication on all levels, said Parker, adding that there has been some mixed messages about how to curb the spread of the virus, including the guidelines on social gatherings, facial coverings and avoiding large gatherings. It gets confusing. As our knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 itself has changed, it would have been better early on if we said, Hey, theres a lot we dont know about this yet, and we are going to learn a lot as we go through this pandemic, Parker said. brittany.britto@chron.com Charleston lost some of its sense of security the night of May 30, as a peaceful protest wound down and was replaced by a smaller, more hostile group that lingered downtown and trashed scores of businesses and traumatized people in its path. We are thankful that no one was seriously injured and that the damage is being repaired, but that does not erase the fear and anguish stirred that night among hundreds of innocent property owners, business owners, customers and others. The actions of Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg and Police Chief Luther Reynolds that night have come under justifiable scrutiny. Its a natural, healthy and necessary bit of civic soul searching to ensure that we do all we can to prevent a repeat of what happened. We are encouraged by the diligent and mostly complete efforts to try to hold responsible those who perpetrated the violence. Unfortunately, only a handful of arrests were made the night of May 30 and the earliest hours of May 31, when bands of opportunistic criminals roamed between Broad and Line streets, harassing police, setting fires, breaking windows and stealing. But in the two months since, police have worked admirably to interview witnesses, track down videos and photos and follow other leads that might give them a full picture of what happened that night. And that work has resulted in more than 80 warrants, including 46 burglary charges; 22 charges for substantial damage to property; 10 assault and battery charges; and three charges of inciting a riot. Police have identified 31 suspects in connection with those crimes and, working with other jurisdictions, have made 23 arrests. They still are following leads, but Chief Reynolds says their work is more than halfway done. I think that as terrible as that night was, as terrible as the impact continues to be on our city and it was traumatic; there was a loss of money, of tourism, of confidence, there were people that were traumatized my answer is this brings a measure of justice, Mr. Reynolds tells us. If you have somebody who has a horrible crime committed against them, you cant change that, but you can bring a measure of peace to the family, and in this case to the city. While some have speculated the May 30 riot was somehow orchestrated or inflamed by national figures or groups, Mr. Reynolds says the citys investigation has found little evidence of that. Most arrested so far did not live downtown or even in the city but in and around North Charleston, Summerville and Goose Creek. Thats not surprising since residents of downtown Charlestons African American neighborhoods, particularly the East Side, suffered along with the businesses on King Street. The Family Dollar, which became even more important to the East Side after the Meeting Street Bi-Lo closed a few years ago, suffered some of the worst damage and still hasnt reopened. The city also is working closely with the FBI and U.S. Attorneys Office on possible federal charges in some cases. We welcome the cooperation between both levels of government in bringing the rioters to justice. Radio communications released last month starkly revealed the chaos and commotion that night. The chatter included reports of looters, men armed with rifles, breaking glass and fires. The recordings underscored just how violent and destructive those several hours were. For much of the night, police were outnumbered and occasionally under attack. Not only could they not respond to some calls as usual, but they and officers with other law enforcement agencies that eventually arrived to help out were able to make just 10 arrests that night. Their main priorities were containing the mob, answering 911 calls and protecting firefighters who successfully ensured none of the deliberately set fires got out of hand. The next day, Mr. Reynolds vowed the department would do all it could to track down those responsible, and he and his officers appear to have lived up to that. Their efforts should continue until all leads are exhausted. The city also should continue evaluating its leadership and performance that night to help ensure we do what we can to prevent a repeat of that violence. Thanks to a combination of new treatment and aggressive infrastructure work, Newark has turned the corner in its battle against lead in drinking water. But three suburbs that buy their water from the city are still working to address the issue. In July, Newark officially dipped below federal drinking standards for lead for the first time in three years. It was the culmination of an aggressive push by the city to remove thousands of lead lines from its system, and to revamp how water is treated at the beleaguered Pequannock treatment plant. Bloomfield, Belleville and Nutley all purchase drinking water from Newark, without any additional treatment. As Newarks new corrosion control treatment continues to take effect, all three of the towns should see benefits. But without further action of their own, theyll be left with little protection if Newark has problems again. MORE: See our comic that draws out how lead got into drinking water across N.J. Bloomfield has launched its own lead service line replacement program, though on a much smaller scale compared to what is seen in Newark. Matt Watkins, Bloomfields township administrator, said his town has replaced 131 lead service lines as of Thursday. Up to this point, Bloomfield has been replacing lead service lines as they are found through other work. On Monday, the town council approved a $295,000 contract for a company to investigate possible lead service lines at over 500 locations in Bloomfield. Any such lines that are found will be replaced through a separate contract, Watkins said. That work appears to be paying off. Bloomfield met federal standards for lead in its drinking water in the first half of this year, and has not registered a lead exceedance since the first half of 2019. Bloomfield is also continuing an effort to ween itself off of Newark water. The town plans to build new pump station that will allow Bloomfield to connect with the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission. Once that station is complete, Bloomfield will get more than half of its water from the NJDWSCs Wanaque reservoir. Initially, that Wanaque water will serve the northern portions of the town. Watkins said the town plans to eventually build new water mains to supply the Wanaque water to the rest of Bloomfield. The interconnection project with the NJDWSC has been hampered by coronavirus-related delays, Watkins said. The timeline for the project is currently unclear. In all, Watkins said that Bloomfield has spent $4.3 million on water system improvements since 2017. By the time ongoing and upcoming projects are completed, the town will have spent $10 million. Nothing has slowed us down, other than the obvious pandemic, Watkins said. Nothing has slowed us down on making improvements to the water system. We still think thats essential. Belleville, which registered high lead levels for the third-consecutive monitoring period in the first half of this year, has a longer road ahead. The town is the only municipality that gets 100% of its drinking water from the Newark water department, Belleville Mayor Michael Melham previously told NJ Advance Media. Still, Belleville has yet to break ground on lead service line replacements. There are about 5,500 lead service lines served by the Belleville water department, according to recent public notices from the town. Melham has previously said the cost of replacing those pipes is estimated to be between to $35 million and $40 million. Because Belleville has failed to meet lead standards, the town is required by federal regulations to replace at least 400 lead service lines. Melham said this initial group of replacements will serve as a sort of pilot program for the town, which plans to eventually replace all of its lead service lines. Melham has been adamant that he doesnt want to simply bond $40 million for lead service line replacements. He said he worries thats too heavy a burden for Bellevilles budget, and he doesnt think its fair to homeowners in his town who dont have lead service lines. Im not comfortable blanket burdening the entire township for the tune of $40 million, Melham said. Instead, Melham said Belleville will pay for the replacement work through smaller bonds taken out by Bellevilles water department, which the mayor said is capable of bonding independently of the town. Those water department bonds would then be paid back by property owners who have their lead service lines replaced. The payment would be in the form of an additional fee on the homeowners quarterly water bill. Melham estimates that fee will be about $15 each quarter, and will take 20 years to pay off. Melham noted that if a homeowner wants to sell their house but has a lead service line fee on the water account, the seller can either pay off the remainder of the balance outright or the buyer can agree to take on the quarterly charge. I think its a really smart, clever, fair way to do it, Melham said of the funding scheme. Melham said Bellevilles lead service line replacements will be done as streets in town are repaved, and could take between three and five years to complete all 5,500 replacements. Bellleville has about 500 more lead service lines in the towns Silver Lake neighborhood which are served by the Newark Water Department. The Brick City is replacing those lines; Melham said he expects Silver Lake to be free of lead service lines by the fall. The issue in Nutley is on a much smaller scale. Newark serves water for just 436 homes in Nutley, according to the towns website, all of which are near the towns border with Bloomfield. It is unclear how many, if any, of those homes have lead service lines. Nutley has not exceeded federal lead standards in the past year. Prior to that, the town test its water on a triennial basis. Nutley Mayor Mauro Tucci did not respond to a request for comment from NJ Advance Media. Newarks work to replace about 18,000 lead service lines, at no cost to property owners, is largely funded by a $120 million bond program offered to the city by Essex County. Similar bond offers were extended to Bloomfield, Belleville and Nutley. None of the three towns have accepted the offer, according to Anthony Puglisi, an Essex County spokesman. He added that the countys offer remains on the table. Read more of NJ.coms coverage of New Jersey water issues here. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Michael Sol Warren may be reached at mwarren@njadvancemedia.com. I ndoor gigs at grassroots venues cannot realistically restart until October at the earliest and the Government should focus on distributing crisis funding until then, a leading industry body has said. It comes after the Government announced it was postponing plans to allow indoor performances from August 1. Audiences will not be allowed back inside venues for at least a fortnight, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, bringing the new reopening date to August 15. Music Venue Trust (MVT), which represents hundreds of grassroots venues across the country, said it was saddened but not surprised by this latest development. In a statement, MVT said: Since May 2020, Music Venue Trust has repeatedly informed the Government that live music events in grassroots music venues would be extraordinarily difficult to stage, not economically viable, and at risk of being cancelled at short notice during the current pandemic. A number of venues across the country have attempted to stage such events based on advice from the Government, incurring substantial costs to make their venues safe. That expenditure now adds to the growing mountain of debts accrued by those venues working within the government guidelines. The best albums of 2020 so far 1 /14 The best albums of 2020 so far Getty Images Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia Future Nostalgia arrived at the end of March, a ray of light to pierce the lockdown gloom. It was a shot at writing something timeless, taking strands of classic disco and Eighties synth-pop and putting them through a slick, modern filter. On standout tracks such as Dont Start Now and Cool, Dua Lipa hit her target. More than anything though, this was something defiantly fun, a heartening reminder that there are brighter times ahead. Getty Images Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher It would be easy to label Punisher as a sad album, because it is, with heartache and despondency always within an arms reach. But to simply call it that would be to grossly undersell it the album, also out today, is cathartic, nostalgic, surreal, grounded, darkly comic and, more often than not, weepingly beautiful. The disarming vocals are morbidly quotable (The doctor put her hands over my liver /She told me my resentments getting smaller) and confirm the 25-year-old Bridgers as one of her generations deftest writers. Getty Images for Tibet House Tame Impala - The Slow Rush It took some time to fall in love with Kevin Parkers latest album as Tame Impala. Its layers were dense and meticulously produced, a product of the Australians dogged perfectionism, but when they did eventually unravel, the albums brilliance was revealed in vivid colour. There was squelchy hip-hop and tap-dancing piano on Borderline, alluring sophisto-funk on Breathe Deeper, and dizzying disco on One More Year. Parkers lyrics were typically conflicted, stuck between past and future, but musically, hed never sounded so assured. AFP via Getty Images Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters Fiona Apples fifth album was eight years in the making, and sounded as if it had been simmering for all that time. It was inescapably personal, rattling with homemade percussion, grinding against Apples visceral vocals as she retold traumas of sexual abuse and toxic relationships. But it all coalesced to give momentum to a magnificent release of tension, the sound of a furiously convinced artist. Kick me under the table all you want, she asserted, I wont shut up. Getty Images Run The Jewels - RTJ4 When Killer Mike, one half of Run The Jewels, wrote Walking In The Snow (You so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me) he was remembering the tragic death of Eric Garner in 2014. It should have been retrospective; instead, it was hideously prophetic, arriving on RTJ4 amid the George Floyd protests. But these were wide-lens raps joined by partner El-P, they fired lyrical missiles at the racist police and ruling elite, interspersing it with cutting quips and dark humour. Painful, prescient, and hugely powerful. Getty Images for DIRECTV J Hus - Big Conspiracy Big Conspiracy was the sound of an artist taking his time. The eclectic beats, largely provided by chameleonic producer Jae5, avoided the usual bombast for something understated. The lyrical gaze was sharp, ranging from the legacy of slavery to the grind of everyday life, all of it recounted with clever wordplay. It wouldnt be a Hus album without tales of at least one sexual conquest the song Cucumber provides it but all in all, never has the east Londoner been so searingly composed. Getty Images for Nike Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways Bob Dylans 39th studio album, released today, might just be one of his greatest. Before this, eight years had passed without any new original music. Had the old master lulled himself into retirement? The surprise release of a 17-minute song about the JFK assassination did away with any doubts. Its a densely lyrical album, a poetic and historical tapestry, proving that, at 79, the Nobel Prize-winner is still at the peak of his songwriting powers. AFP via Getty Images Georgia - Seeking Thrills Georgias exhilarating second album landed back in January (oh, those halcyon days) and was the sound of an artist brimming with new-found conviction. Arriving five years after her debut, she had finally found her voice quite literally, shunning the over-produced vocals of before and a winning musical formula: retro-tinted dance pop, pairing the throbbing echoes of Chicago house with sharp modern melodies. Hollie Fernando Orlando Weeks - A Quickening Former Maccabees frontman Orlando Weeks took a mature step away from his indie-rock past on his debut solo album, supplanting it with soft, cloudy atmospheres. A Quickening covered his impending fatherhood, and all of the unknowingness that comes with it. It was minutely intimate Ill be your blood sugar, he pledged to the unborn child with his vocals at their most tender and innocent. Jackson Bowley Laura Marling - Song For Our Daughter Another album to ease the pandemic blues, Laura Marling had initially planned an August release, but brought it forward to April. It had an effortlessly classic sound to it the folky tones of Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake chimed throughout but this album was undoubtedly Marlings own. Her vocals were soaring, sardonic and soothing, singing with all the wisdom of an artist who, still only 30, now has seven albums worth of experience behind her. Getty Images MVT added that it had consistently asserted that no grassroots music venue will be able to stage live music events before October 1 at the earliest. It continued: Music Venue Trust would like to restate and emphasise the position of the sector, which is that a clear and decisive position on the part of government to provide support for grassroots music venues in the form of efficiently distributed crisis funding until such time as they can reopen safely and viably would provide the much needed clarity that venues, artists, audiences and the wider public need. In early July, the Government announced a 1.57bn rescue package for the UKs cultural sector. Arts Council England later confirmed that its 500m Culture Recovery Fund would be split up into grants ranging from 50,000 to 3m. Both live music venues and nightclubs are eligible to receive the funding. Two rounds of applications have been announced for the grants, with a first deadline of August 21, and a second of September 4. More youth are dying of suicide, overdose than COVID-19 during pandemic: CDC director COVID-19 has put country in 'state of chronic stress,' suicide prevention advocate says Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Suicide and drug overdoses are killing more young people than COVID-19 as the two pre-existing epidemics have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield warns. In an interview with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging earlier this month, Redfield laid out that suicide and drug overdose have claimed more young lives during the pandemic than COVID-19, a disease that has been attributed to thousands of deaths nationwide this year. "We're seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID, Redfield explained. We're seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose that are above the excess that we had as background than we are seeing the deaths from COVID. A June survey from The Addiction Policy Forum reported a 20% increase in substance abuse with 34% of respondents experiencing a change in their treatment and recovery due to the pandemic. The American Medical Association also voiced concern in a July 20 report stating that over 35 states have reported increases in opioid-related mortality as well as ongoing concerns for those with a mental illness or substance use disorder. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 34 in the United States, second only to unintentional injury, according to the CDC. Suicide took the lives of nearly 15,000 people within that age bracket in 2018, CDC data suggests. Last year, the public health institute reported that the suicide rate for kids 10 to 14 has nearly tripled in the last decade while the suicide rate among older teenagers has increased by 76%. In his July 14 interview, Redfield emphasized the absence of schools for the increase in suicides, overdoses and general mental health difficulties faced by young people during the pandemic. He also said resources to combat these problems have been overworked by COVID-19 or are too dangerous to access. You know, a lot of kids get their mental health services, over 7 million, in school, Redfield explained. A lot of people get food and nutrition in schools. Schools are really important in terms of mandatory reporting of sexual and child abuse. Obviously, socialization is important. Redfield said that the "cost to our nation in continuing to keep these schools closed is substantial." Susan Tellone, the clinical director at The Society for Prevention of Teen Suicide in New Jersey, told The Christian Post that there is an increased concern surrounding suicide and overdose, most of which has come from virus-induced chronic stress. All people experience acute stress, which is a short-term feeling that is not always negative, she said. Chronic stress, though, is ongoing stress that lasts months to years and can lead to an increase in mental health issues like depression. The increase in the U.S. is caused in part by widespread chronic stress, Tellone said. COVID has put all the country, not just youth, in a state of chronic stress, she explained. Thats been across the board. Ive been saying were all in the same storm, but in different boats. According to Tellone, people are experiencing stress in different ways. While some are heavily impacted by physical isolation, others feel the stress from financial burdens or loss of work. For young people, the pandemic has provided a variety of losses. High school seniors have lost the opportunity to partake in graduation ceremonies and milestones. Social interactions have changed form during the virus, which has become a difficult transition for some. Some are stuck in toxic environments where theyre around domestic, substance or sexual abuse, Tellone stated. Its the uncertainty that creates this stress. You cant make plans or know the future. Theres not an end in sight and it is getting to feel exhausting for some people. This is not true for all young people, though. Some young people have enjoyed doing school work from home and have felt less pressure since COVID-19 began, which Tellone defined as a mixed bag of reactions toward COVID-19 closures. Despite the increased demand for mental health resources to combat the increased suicides and overdoses, Tellone said the virus presents an opportunity to end the stigma of talking about mental health. She believes this could lead to further advancements in study and treatment. Because we know mental health is going to be an issue, we could all understand that if you dont have financial means there is still help, she said. Its an opportunity to recognize that mental health is as important as physical health. An entomologist displays a dead Asian giant hornet, a sample brought in from Japan for research, May 7, 2020, in Blaine, Wash. Researchers are looking for unique ways to collect data as COVID-19 puts a dampener on the field research season. (The Canadian Press/AP, Elaine Thompson) Researchers Look for Unique Ways to Collect Data as COVID-19 Changes Methods Aaron Fairweather has 27 colonies of ants to keep happy in the living room by getting the temperature, humidity and light just right although the environment at home may not feel quite as comfortable as in a lab. The PhD entomology student from the University of Guelph said it was the only way to continue collecting data as COVID-19 puts a damper on research and labs cant be used. Fairweather, like several other scientists, is trying to make the best of the summer when researchers typically spend long hours outdoors collecting data in the field. Its a pretty bleak year for research, Fairweather said. There will be a gap in the knowledge. Fairweather had been planning an intensive research project on ants since last fall but said a lack of the usual resources could mean a setback for an entire year. I have to wait till next year, probably, to be able to get in and do the active experiments that I wanted to do. While the data collected from the colonies of ants at home could help, that type of research is not feasible for many scientists so a gap in research might mean data could be skewed or years of work have to be thrown out, Fairweather said. Arthur Fredeen, a professor in the Natural Resources and Environmental Studies Institute at the University of Northern British Columbia, said he is concerned about teaching field work. His ecology class this fall requires working with students taking measurements and observations in the field, he said. Ive had to grapple with the technologies that can help me deliver the course online, even though it will be quite challenging to do so in an adequate way. Pascal Lee wont be testing equipment and studying rocks in the high Arctic this month, likely for the first time in nearly 25 years. The chairman of the Mars Institute and a planetary scientist with the California-based SETI Institute does research on Devon Island because its surface resembles the red planet. This year his team planned on testing a new space suit and an astronaut smart glove. The group hopes to make it to the island in September but if that falls through, their equipment may have to be tested in the United States. Missing a summer for us means missing a year, he said. The choice for some researchers is between losing out on a year of data collection through field work and adapting to quarantine on a boat for a month. The director of the University of British Columbias Marine Mammal Research Unit will be doing the latter with eight researchers as they continue a study from last year to determine if there is a shortage of chinook salmon for southern resident killer whales. Andrew Trites said the researchers are creating their own bubble on the boat, starting with a two-week quarantine period before they board the vessel in mid-August. Everybody is a little paranoid, Trites said. In the end if the pandemic doesnt kill us, maybe being confined together will, he said laughing. Itll be quite a challenge. On a similar research trip last year, scientists got off the boat after docking and went into cities and towns, but that wont happen this year, he said. Only one person, masked and gloved, will be allowed to leave the wooden boat called Gikumi to get supplies while the vessel is refuelled. Were going to be packed a little bit like sardines but everybody has a job on the boat, he said, noting team members are aware of the effect the quarantine period might have on their mental health although being able to see the horizon may help. Field work is important, Trites said because there is an element of biology, which cant be done without being near animals. While computers and mathematical models make projections and look at probabilities, he said answers to some questions can come only by observing animals in their natural habitat and recording whats going on to make meaningful comparisons and draw conclusions. What the team will miss, Trites said, is the interaction with researchers on other boats. One of the biggest losses this research season may be the generation of new ideas, reflection, and the ability to brainstorm together to solve biological mysteries, he said. So well be waving at other researchers whom we know from a distance, and hoping there will be an opportunity in six months, a year, year-and-a-half, where you can finally sit down together and have much more meaningful conversations. By Hina Alam Amaravati, Aug 1 : Former Andhra Pradesh Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pydikondala Manikyala Rao, 59, died of Covid-19 on Saturday. Rao served as Endowments Minister in 2014-18 in the Chandrababu Naidu-led government. On July 4, Rao had announced on social media that he had tested Covid-19 positive. A week ago, he was shifted to a private hospital in Vijayawada. For the past few days, he was on ventilator support. Condoling the death, Andhra BJP president Somu Veerraju recalled his services to the state. "He joined the party in 1989 and climbed up the ranks. He earned the plaudits from all sections as legislator, minister and party member," Veerraju told IANS. Rao was elected from the Tadepalligudem seat in the 2014, when the BJP contested the Assembly polls in alliance with the Telugu Desam Party and the Jana Sena Party. Rao had last tweeted on July 25, when he asked well-wishers not to worry about his health and that he would overcome the Covid. Same day he had tweeted his wishes for speedy recovery to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Police in Zimbabwe on Friday arrested internationally-acclaimed novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga as they enforced a ban on protests coinciding with the anniversary of President Emmerson Mnangagwa's election. Dangarembga, 61, was taken away in a police truck as she demonstrated in the upmarket Harare suburb of Borrowdale alongside another protester, an AFP photographer saw. Streets in the centre of the city were largely deserted as police and soldiers set up checkpoints to prevent entry. Opposition politician Jacob Ngarivhume, head of a small party called Transform Zimbabwe, had called for demonstrations against alleged state corruption and the country's slumping economy Police ask for travel documents at a road block in Mbare, a township in the suburbs of Harare. By Jekesai NJIKIZANA (AFP) The protests were timed to coincide with the second anniversary of Mnangagwa's election, which the opposition says was a fraud. But most people stayed at home after police on Thursday issued a ban and warned of a tough response. "All security arms of government are on full alert and will deal decisively with any individuals or groups fomenting violence," it warned. There were more checkpoints and roadblocks than usual on roads leading to the centre of the capital, manned by police and soldiers. In the central business district, police carrying batons or riot shields were heavily deployed, an AFP journalist saw. Novelist arrested In the suburbs, only a handful of people appeared to brave the ban. An AFP photographer saw Dangarembga and a fellow protester, Julie Barnes, hauled into a truck full of police armed with AK-47 rifles and riot gear. Shortly afterwards, she tweeted: "Arrested! At Borrowdale. Ope it will be OK". She also tweeted a photo of herself and Barnes, sitting on the floor at a police station. She had been carrying placards calling for reforms and the release of Hopewell Chin'ono, a prominent journalist arrested last week under a government crackdown. Minutes before her arrest, she told AFP: "It seems that there has been a big reaction by the authorities to this protest. Dangarembga and a fellow protester, Julie Barnes, were arrested after staging a roadside demonstration. By ZINYANGE AUNTONY (AFP) "They declared it illegal -- I'm not quite sure (why), apart from the fact that they don't want it...Our constitution gives Zimbabweans the right to demonstrate peacefully and that's what we are doing." The Cambridge-educated author is the only Zimbabwean woman writer to win the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and has often been praised for speaking out on women's issues. She leapt to prominence in 1988 with "Nervous Conditions", a coming-of-age story about a girl's battle to escape poverty and gain an education. The book became an instant classic. Her arrest came days after her latest novel, "This Mournable Body," entered the long list for the Booker Prize. In a statement, police confirmed she had been arrested "for trying to incite the public to engage in illegal demonstrations while carrying placards written various political messages meant to cause public disorder." Among several others arrested Friday was Fadzayi Mahere, a lawyer and spokeswoman for the main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change-Alliance. Mahere live-streamed via Facebook images of riot police scaling metal barriers into a suburban eatery where she had retreated after her protest, and arrested her. The British ambassador in Harare, Melanie Robinson tweeted: "Very concerned about reports of abductions, arrests and threats targeting those exercising constitutional rights. Freedom of expression is vital even in times of COVID19, with social distancing observed". Poverty and hunger The government had denounced the protests, calling them an "insurrection". Ruling ZANU-PF spokesman Patrick Chinamasa earlier this week claimed that US ambassador Brian Nicholls was sponsoring the protests and called him "a thug". Mnangagwa took over from longtime ruler Robert Mugabe after a coup in November 2017. But hopes among many that he would end Mugabe's disastrous economic slump have been dashed, and many Zimbabweans say they are worse off than before. The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) says some 8.6 million Zimbabweans, or 60 percent of the population, will require food aid as a result of a drought, economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The country has recorded 3,092 virus cases including 53 deaths. fj-pho-str-sn/ri Flash The British government and the European Union (EU) confirmed Friday a new timetable of meetings aimed at reaching a post-Brexit deal on a future relationship before the end of 2020. A series of meetings between negotiating teams from both sides will meet in London and Brussels during August and September, with a final round taking place in Brussels in the week ending Oct. 2. The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said last week at the conclusion of the last round of talks that an agreement would be needed by October at the latest. This was so it could be ratified by the EU and its 27 member states before the current post-Brexit transition period ends on Dec. 31. Details of the program of meetings was published by Downing Street, with the British government saying the program takes into account the current state of the negotiations after six rounds. The latest round of talks ended on July 23 when both sides said there is still some way to go to reach a future trading relationship. The future of fishing in waters off the British Isles as well as the so-called level playing field were the crunch stumbling blocks to reaching a deal in time for Dec. 31 when the Brexit transition period ends following Britain's departure from the EU on Jan. 31. At the end of last week's talks, Barnier said Britain had not shown a willingness to break the deadlock over fisheries as well as post-Brexit rules on competition in trading. According to Downing Street, the schedule of meetings has outlined a forward process established to create what was the most conducive conditions for concluding and ratifying a deal before the end of 2020. Subject to any COVID-19 constraints, the negotiating groups will meet physically, in full alternately in Brussels and London, with specialised sessions in more restricted formats. Round 7, the next formal negotiating session, will take place in Brussels starting Aug. 17. Round 8 takes place in London in the week starting Sept. 7, with the final Round 9 crunch meeting taking place in Brussels starting Sept. 28 and ending Oct. 2. If Britain and the EU fail to secure a trade deal before the transitional period expires, both sides will trade under World Trade Organization terms, under which new border controls and tariffs will mean extra cost for their trade. Siauliu Bankas AB, company code 112025254, domicile address Tilzes st. 149, LT-76348 Siauliai, Lithuania. Siauliu Bankas Group earned EUR 20.9 million of unaudited net profit in the first half of this year The loan portfolio increased by EUR 88 million in the Q2 and reached EUR 1.76 billion which is by 16% more than a year ago While overcoming the pandemic challenges, the Group managed to provide all services to customers both - in customer service points and remotely, and offered support solutions to residents and businesses impacted by COVID-19 Following the highest standards of corporate governance, two more independent members elected to the Banks Supervisory Council Siauliu Bankas Group earned EUR 20.9 million of unaudited net profit in the first half of this year (at the same time last year - EUR 27.8 million). Operating profit before impairment losses and income tax for the first six months of this year amounted to almost EUR 34 million, which is by 2% more than in the corresponding period last year. Net interest income increased by 10% compared to the first half of 2019 and amounted to EUR 37.4 million. Net fee and commission income decreased moderately to EUR 7.7 million and was 8% less than in the first half of last year. Mainly due to negative countrys macroeconomic outlook for this year, additional provisions of EUR 3.4 million were recognised for possible impairment losses making the half-year provisions in amount of EUR 8.3 million. The half-year cost-of-risk ratio (CoR) stood at 1.0%, although, according to the updated forecasts at the end of the first quarter, it was expected the annual ratio would reach 1.4%. The efficiency of the Group's operations remains high - the cost / income ratio did not reach 37% at the end of June, and the return on equity exceeded 13%. The capital and liquidity positions remain sound and prudential requirements are met with a large reserve - with a liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) of 223%* and a capital adequacy ratio (CAR) of 18.7%*. Story continues Overview of Business Segments Business and Private Clients Financing The loan and finance lease portfolio totalled EUR 1.76 billion, which was by 5% more than at the end of Q1 and by 16% more than a year ago. In Q2, the growth of the loan portfolio was mainly influenced by increased activity in the housing loan market and the acquisition of the mortgage loan portfolio of private customers of the Lithuanian branch of Danske Bank A/S in amount of EUR 121 million. The mortgage loan portfolio reached EUR 247 million at the end of the half-year compared to EUR 65 million a year ago. Uncertainty caused by the pandemic reduced lending to business - the corporate loan portfolio decreased by 2% during the quarter to EUR 1.12 billion. The Bank was one of the first in the market to provide loans under state business aid programmes to the companies facing financial challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. From the start of quarantine till the end of the aid programmes, loans amounting to EUR 46.5 million were signed with more than 500 companies. The issuance of these loans will have a positive effect on commission income. By 30th June, Siauliu Bankas postponed credit repayments to 675 customers who faced financial difficulties caused by the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Business clients - 426 companies - account for the largest amount of loan deferrals (EUR 227 million), credit repayments were also temporarily delayed for 249 private customers (EUR 8 million). The moratoriums have been extended until 30th September, therefore the Group is still receiving requests for deferral, however, the number of clients filling applications for a grace period is relatively low. Companies in the real estate, accommodation and catering, wholesale and retail sectors mainly applied for aid, while private clients applied mainly for deferral of mortgage, leasing and real estate loan repayments. In Q2, the European Investment Bank (EIB) selected Siauliu Bankas for the establishment of a EUR 200 million multi-apartment building renovation fund. The terms of the cooperation agreement between the Bank and the EIB are currently being negotiated in line with negotiations conducted with senior and junior debt investors to the fund's equity. With almost 10 years of experience and being a market leader in renovation financing, the Bank has all the necessary infrastructure and know-how to lend the funds raised for the modernisation of multi-apartment buildings. Daily Banking During the quarantine Siauliu Bankas provided all the banking services in the customer service units, i.e. did not limit itself to the basic services only. However, the Bank reduced the number of operating units, thus, the volume and income of cash transactions, currency conversion, settlements decreased. As of 1st June, all service units of the Bank were already operating at their normal business hours. During this period, the volumes of business lending inquiries started to grow again, and the sales recovered. Household expectations returned to the pre-quarantine level, together with consumption and credit demand. During the quarantine, part of clients started to use more digital channels - internet banking and mobile app. After quarantine, about 25% more customers consult on banking services remotely. Saving and Investing The deposit portfolio exceeded EUR 2.17 billion in Q2 with a growth of 2% compared to the end of Q1 and 10% compared to the end of June last year. Most of deposit portfolio growth came from customers demand deposits, which increased by EUR 160 million in the first half of the year. During the ECBs TLTRO III operation in June the Bank borrowed EUR 150 million for the 3-year term. This has further diversified Bank's funding sources. In order to use the funds efficiently, the proceeds were immediately invested in government securities, while the ECB loan will ensure the funding for the Bank's growth in the future. Goals for 2020 Although the results for the first half of the year exceed due to the pandemic updated goals for 2020, there is still a lot of uncertainty in the world. The Bank will continue to monitor the situation closely and will inform its stakeholders about the changes of financial goals. Other News Following the highest standards of corporate governance and transparency, two more independent professionals with extensive experience in the financial sector - Adriano Arietti and Susan Gail Buyske - were elected to the Siauliu bankas team of the Supervisory Council. After receiving permission of the supervisory authority, the Supervisory Council will consists of 8 members, 5 of whom will be independent. The Bank aims to continue to improve the corporate governance of the Group, based on the best global practice. Life insurance company Bonum Publicum owned by Siauliu Bankas changed its name to SB Draudimas from 1st July. The change was driven by the synergy potential in sales and products development with Siauliu Bankas and based on a Group-wide image strategy of being closer to the customer and offering customers all financial services of the Group companies in-house. Siauliu bankas invites shareholders, investors, analysts and other stakeholders to join its investor conference webinar scheduled on the August 5th, 2020 at 4:30 pm (EEST). The presentation will be held in English. For more information, click here . * - preliminary data Additional information: Head of Finance and Risk Management Division Donatas Savickas +370 41 595 602, donatas.savickas@sb.lt Attachment A new Employment Wage Support Scheme and extension of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment into next year will provide much needed certainty to businesses and individuals in Fingal, a local Fine Gael TD has said Speaking after the Government's July Stimulus package was announced, Deputy Alan Farrell said the new 7.4bn suite of measures will help get Fingal's businesses back on their feet and get as many people as possible back to work quickly while continuing to manage the impact of Covid-19. Deputy Farrell said: 'I'm pleased to confirm a new Employment Wage Support Scheme will succeed the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme and run until April 2021. 'Employers in Dublin Fingal whose turnover has fallen 30% will receive a flat-rate subsidy of up to 203 per week per employee, including for seasonal staff and new employees. 'New firms operating in impacted sectors will also be eligible. The scheme will support around 350,000 jobs into the beginning of next year.' 'The restart grant for enterprises will benefit a range of SMEs. It will be expanded by 300m bringing the total funding to 550m. The payment level is being increased to 25,000. Further payments may be available to those firms which have already received them. Other businesses, such as B&Bs across Fingal, not previously included in the scheme, will now be eligible.' Businesses forced to close due to public health requirements will be granted a waiver of commercial rates for the six months to end-September 2020. Deputy Farrell said: 'The Pandemic Unemployment Payment, due to end in August 2020, is being extended until April 2021. We know that this is extremely helpful to those not working. We have heard that testimony repeatedly. This will provide security for households across Fingal as job opportunities return. To help restore consumer confidence and support retailers and businesses across Fingal, there will be a 6-month reduction in the standard rate of VAT from 23pc to 21pc, from the beginning of September. Our tourism sector has been crippled by COVID-19. 'A new Stay and Spend incentive will allow any taxpayer who pays over 625 on accommodation, food and non-alcoholic drinks, between October and April 2021, claim back up to 125 through a tax credit.' Authorities in Iran say they have detained the leader of a U.S.-based opposition group it accuses of involvement in a 2008 bombing and of plotting other attacks. The Intelligence Ministry said on August 1 that it had detained Jamshid Sharmahd of the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar. It said in a statement that security forces arrested Sharmahd in a complicated operation, but did not specify how, where, or when the detention took place. Iranian television showed a video of a man identifying himself as Sharmahd giving a confession. Iran is known to use torture to force confessions from prisoners. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman told Reuters that the U.S. government was "aware of reports of Sharmahds detention. The Iranian regime has a long history of detaining Iranians and foreign nationals on spurious charges. We urge Iran to be fully transparent and abide by all international legal standards, the spokeswoman said. Tondar did not immediately respond to e-mails from RFE/RL. Two telephone numbers on its website no longer work. In a statement on its website, the group mentioned an abduction of Sharmahd without explicitly confirming "stories of various networks. Based in Los Angeles, Tondar says it aims to overthrow the Islamic republic and reestablish a monarchy similar to that of Cyrus the Great. It runs pro-Iranian opposition radio and television stations abroad, as well as social media channels. According to the group's website, Sharmahd is an Iranian-German electronics engineer born in Tehran in 1955 who had lived in Germany before moving to Los Angeles in 2003. The Intelligence Ministry said the group directed armed and terrorist acts in Iran from America. It alleged that Sharmahd planned and directed an explosion at a religious center in the southern city of Shiraz in 2008 that killed 14 people and wounded 215. It also claimed Iranian intelligence had foiled several other attacks over the years, including on a dam in Shiraz, at the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum, and the Tehran Book Fair. According to some media reports, Sharmahd claimed responsibility for the Shiraz blast. Tondars website says Iranian authorities blamed the group for the Shiraz attack after it had broadcast information about it. In 2009, Iran executed three men convicted of involvement in the 2008 bombing. Tondar says the three men were members of the group. Tondar has claimed responsibility for some attacks, including the bombing of a seminary used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Shiraz in June 2019. It also claimed credit for an explosion at a refinery in 2016. In 2007, Tondars founder, Frood Fouladvand, and two other members of the group disappeared in what Amnesty International described as a likely Iranian intelligence operation in Hakkari Province on the border with Turkey. Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi called Tondar the "most violence-prone" royalist opposition group. "Despite our complaint to Interpol, Sharmahd would travel everywhere under his own name. This shows how empty anti-terror slogans by Americans and their Europeans allies are," he told state TV. The detention under unknown circumstances comes as tensions between the United States and Iran have escalated since the United States withdrew from the international Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed crushing sanctions. The United States has also accused Iran of destabilizing the Middle East and supporting militias and terrorist groups across the region. While overshadowed by other exiled opposition groups, Iran reportedly brought up Tondar multiple times while negotiating the terms of the 2015 deal. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused the West of hypocrisy. The west must cease financing and harboring terrorists, he said on Twitter. Iran is known to have assassinated and abducted multiple exiled opposition figures in the past. With reporting by Radio Farda, AFP, AP, and Reuters A demonstrator burns an American flag in front of the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse in the early morning in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 1, 2020. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images) Demonstrators Set Fires, Damage Property in Portland Without Law Enforcement Response Bibles, American flags were burned Demonstrators in Portland set fires, blocked traffic, and damaged property overnight but met no challenges from police. Few law enforcement officers were visible downtown, days after the state agreed to help quell continued violence at and near a federal courthouse. No Portland police officers engaged with the crowd, the police bureau said in an incident summary. According to video footage from the scene, no federal officers engaged in crowd control. Multnomah County Sheriffs deputies were stationed near the Justice Center, a few blocks from the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse, but they didnt appear to respond to any of the crimes being committed. Video showed multiple fires set in the vicinity of the courthouse into the early hours of Aug. 1. One fire was boosted by plywood ripped off a business while demonstrators added American flags to another directly in front of the courthouse to keep the flames stoked. Bibles were also burned. Ken Cuccinelli, acting Homeland Security deputy secretary, shared footage of the property destruction on Twitter on Saturday, adding: Portland still not fully stopping destruction. Poor Portland business owners and employees. Sad. Some protesters have urged people to refrain from damaging property or attacking the building. Groups are aligned with city and state officials, who want federal officers to leave. The sidewalk outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse is empty during a demonstration in Portland, Ore., on July. 31, 2020. (Alisha Jucevic/AFP via Getty Images) You cant contain yourself, or what? Is there a problem? Are you not raised right by your family, or what? Whats going on here? Why attack the building? I dont want to deal with the feds again. Its horrible. Its pathetic. Grow up, one man told a portion of the crowd early Saturday. Others tried provoking a response from federal officers, banging on a garage door at the federal building and launching projectiles at it. Activist chants include ACAB, or all cops are [expletive], and graffiti downtown includes Dead Feds and Kill All Cops. If you are not here because you stand directly against every single cop and every single fed, then you are not here for an ally for everything that Black Lives Matter actually entails, one activist told those assembled. The Trump administration surged federal assets to Portland in early July when police officers failed to protect the federal courthouse from rioters. Reese Monson, a leader of Black Unity PDX, speaks to a crowd in front of the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse is empty during a demonstration in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 1, 2020. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images) After speeches outside the Justice Center at around 9 p.m. Friday, the crowd moved to the federal building, the police bureau said. Through the rest of the night and into the next morning the crowd was subdued. Some lit fires, climbed the fence outside the federal courthouse, threw objects and chanted, according to its incident summary. The large bonfire burned for about an hour before going out. President Donald Trump said late Friday that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers wont leave Portland until local police complete cleanup of Anarchists and Agitators! DHS officials said the previous night was relatively peaceful after weeks of clashes between officers and rioters. After weeks of violent rioting and nightly attacks, federal officers in Portland saw their first night of state and local law enforcement support and relative peace, DHS said in a statement. Both state and city police officers helped protect the courthouse, the federal agency said, adding: Crowds remained peaceful through the course of the evening; there were no reported actions, and thus no intervention by state or federal officers. Gurugram, Aug 2 : A 30-year-old man, son of a former Deputy Superintendent of Police, was arrested for allegedly threatening to blow up the district prison, an official said on Saturday. The accused identified as Ravi Anand Chautala had posted an audio recording on social media threatening to explode the distrct jail, and had also demanded the release of inmates including his father Dharamveer Chautala who was recently arrested for allegedly supplying mobile phones, simcards and contraband to other inmates while he was deployed as Deputy Superintendent of the Gurugram prison. "Since the matter was extremely serious, we analysed the voice in the audio recording. It matched with the voice of the Ravi. We have alerted our intelligence officers around the jail and apprehended him," said ACP (Crime) Preet Pal Singh Sangwan. The crime branch of Gurugram police had arrested Dharamveer Chautala, the then deputy jail superintendent, on July 23 along with his aide for allegedly supplying contrabands and mobile phones with simcards to the inmates of the district prison located at Bhondsi village. Following the direction of Gurugram police commissioner KK Rao, the Crime Branch had conducted raid at the house of Chautala and seized 230 gm fine quality of charas and 11 mobile phones with 4G simcards and mobile batteries. WASHINGTON>> President Donald Trump in recent days suddenly acknowledged the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic and edged away from some of his most audacious falsehoods about it. Thats not to say he gave the public an honest accounting. Trump minimized the potential risk to children and those around them as he advocated reopening schools. He again marveled at the number of COVID-19 tests being performed in the U.S. even as the overwhelmed testing system crucially fails to deliver sufficient access and timely results. And he cited a low U.S. death rate from COVID-19 compared with other countries, when the global statistics appear to contradict him. All this while Trump canceled Republican National Convention events in Jacksonville, Florida, bowing to the reality that many Republicans were reluctant to go a state where the virus has been out of control. Meantime his press secretary peddled false internet rumors that the cancel culture led to the cancellation of a cartoon about puppies. A review of some statements from the past week: TESTS TRUMP, on the U.S. approaching 50 million tests: This allows us to isolate those who are infected, even those without symptoms. So we know exactly where its going and when its going to be there. briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: This is by no means true. In many if not most parts of the country, people who manage to get a test can wait for many days for the results because labs are overwhelmed. In the meantime, those people could be and in some cases surely are spreading infection. And many people who want a test but report no symptoms cant get one. Some labs are taking weeks to return COVID-19 results because of the crushing workload from the surge of new cases. Theres been this obsession with, How many tests are we doing per day?' said Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The question is, how many tests are being done with results coming back within a day, where the individual tested is promptly isolated and their contacts are promptly warned? ___ KIDS and COVID-19 TRUMP on young people and the virus: Now, they dont catch it easily; they dont bring it home easily. And if they do catch it, they get better fast. Were looking at that fact. briefing Wednesday. THE FACTS: That isnt a fact. He doesnt have the science to reach this broad conclusion. His coronavirus task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, and other public health officials have said repeatedly that while children appear to get less sick from the virus than adults, the threat to young people and their ability to spread the virus are not understood because not enough research has been done on kids and COVID-19. Birx underscored the point Friday on NBCs Today show. Whether children under 10 spread the virus the same as older children is still an open question she said. We know that children under 18 are less sick, but there are some that suffer terrible consequences if they have underlying conditions, she added. Children under 10 do get infected. Its just unclear how rapidly they spread the virus. Trump has been pushing for schools to reopen and at one point threatened to withhold federal money if they dont. While his assurances about children were unsupported, they were a step back from his earlier rhetoric that portrayed kids as practically immune to infection. Its very unique how the children arent affected, he said in early May. Incredible. ___ U.S. DEATHS TRUMP on the U.S. and other countries in the pandemic: Weve done much better than most. And with the fatality rate at a lower rate than most, its something that we can talk about, but were working, again, with them because were helping a lot of countries that people dont even know about. briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: No, the U.S. does not shine in comparison with other countries. The U.S. has experienced far more recorded infections and deaths from COVID-19 than any other country, including those with larger populations, and it lags a number of other nations in testing and containment. Trump seems to have edged away from claiming that the U.S. mortality rate is the worlds best, after being confronted on that point in his Fox News interview a week ago with Chris Wallace. His more modest boasts since, though, also are not correct. Understanding deaths as a percentage of the population or as a percentage of known infections is problematic because countries track and report COVID-19 deaths and cases differently. No one can reliably rank countries in this regard. The statistics that do exist fail to support his assertion. In an analysis of the 20 countries currently most affected by the pandemic, the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center finds the U.S. with the fourth worst rate of deaths per 100,000 people only Britain, Peru and Chile are seeing more reported deaths as a proportion of their populations. On another measure, looking at what percentage of reported cases lead to death, the U.S. is in the middle of that pack, with a case-fatality ratio of 3.6% Looking at deaths among all countries, not just the ones most suffering at this stage of the pandemic, the U.S. fares somewhat better but still not among the best. Its recorded 44 deaths per 100,000 compares favorably with Britain (68.6 per 100,000) as well as Spain (60.8), Italy (58) and Sweden (55.7), for example, but poorly with Canada (24), Brazil (40), Mexico (33) and dozens more countries. Disparities in reporting are only one reason not to take these numbers conclusively. Many factors are in play in shaping a death toll besides how well a country responded to the pandemic, such as the overall health or youth of national populations. ___ CANCEL CULTURE KAYLEIGH McENANY, White House press secretary, on Trump: Hes also appalled by cancel culture, and cancel culture specifically as it pertains to cops. We saw a few weeks ago, Paw Patrol, a cartoon show about cops was canceled. briefing Friday. THE FACTS: No, Paw Patrol was not canceled. Fake rumors online said it was. And its not about cops. Its a cartoon about puppies. The lead puppy is a cop. Theres a firefighter puppy, too. ___ MASKS McENANY, when asked about Trumps change in tone this past week in urging people to wear masks: There has been no change. The president has been consistent on this. news briefing Friday. THE FACTS: Trumps messaging has been inconsistent, to say the least. Trump from the beginning has made clear that wearing masks is voluntary and shunned wearing one in public. He frequently ridiculed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for wearing a mask in public. In May, when a reporter declined to pull down his mask to ask a question at a news briefing so Trump could hear better, the president mocked by saying, OK, because you want to be politically correct. And Trump told The Wall Street Journal last month that some people may wear them as a political statement against him. People touch them, he said. And they grab them and I see it all the time. They come in, they take the mask. Now theyre holding it now in their fingers. And they drop it on the desk and then they touch their eye and they touch their nose. No, I think a mask is a its a double-edged sword. This past week, as his poll ratings on the handling of the coronavirus have fallen, Trump on Monday tweeted a photo of himself wearing a mask and called it an act of patriotism. That evening, he was seen maskless at the Trump International Hotel in apparent defiance of D.C. coronavirus regulations, according to video footage of the event. Were asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask, get a mask, Trump said Tuesday at his first appearance at a coronavirus briefing since April. Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. ___ TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS TRUMP: You know, one day, we had a virus come in, and I closed the borders, did a lot of things that were very good. And nobody wanted to do it. I wanted to do it. We closed the border to China. We put on the ban. We didnt want people coming in from heavily infected China. briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: He didnt ban travel from China. He restricted it. Dozens of countries took similar steps to control travel from hot spots before or around the same time the U.S. did. The U.S. restrictions that took effect Feb. 2 continued to allow travel to the U.S. from Chinas Hong Kong and Macao territories over the past five months. The Associated Press reported that more than 8,000 Chinese and foreign nationals based in those territories entered the U.S. in the first three months after the travel restrictions were imposed. Additionally, more than 27,000 Americans returned from mainland China in the first month after the restrictions took effect. U.S. officials lost track of more than 1,600 of them who were supposed to be monitored for virus exposure. ___ VETERANS TRUMP: On the VA, we got Veterans Choice. Nobody thought that would be possible. Thats been many decades. Theyve been trying to get Veterans Choice. Its called Choice, where they can go get a doctor if they have to wait on line for two weeks or five weeks or two days. briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: Its false that he achieved Veterans Choice when other presidents couldnt. President Barack Obama achieved it. Trump expanded it. It has not eliminated delays for care, including for those with waits of two weeks or two days. The program allows veterans to see a private doctor for primary or mental health care at public expense if their VA wait is 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive to a VA facility is 30 minutes or more. After the coronavirus outbreak, the VA took the step of restricting veterans access to private doctors, citing the added risks of infection and limited capacity at private hospitals. ___ REALITY CHECK TRUMP on the pandemic: It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better. briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: A rare departure from his bullish accounts of progress against the virus and, by all indications, true. ___ Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Chicago contributed to this report. ___ EDITORS NOTE A look at the veracity of claims by political figures. ___ Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck Fact check: Trump bending facts on virus, Biden, economy Fact check: Trump wholly distorts Biden on immigration Fact check: Trump teams false comfort on schools, virus Fact check: Trump and the virus-era China ban that isnt Lootcase Director: Rajesh Krishnan Cast: Kunal Kemmu, Rasika Dugal, Vijay Raaz, Ranvir Shorey, Gajraj Rao Lootcase, directed by Rajesh Krishnan, is constructed around a scenario that most of us have only fantasized about the hope of someday chancing upon unexpected wealth. The film plays out longer than it should, but its mostly clever, and it benefits from a crackling cast that comes together to elevate even the saggy bits. Nandan Kumar (Kunal Kemmu) is a blue-collar worker in a printing press, struggling to give his family a better life. His wife Lata (Rasika Duggal) suggests that he should supplement his income by starting a small business from home. Among other complaints, she reminds him that hes been promising to take them to Shimla for years. Maine toh sweater bhi bunke rakha hai; aise hi pada hai, she says. Their young son understands that money is tight, but a kid wants what a kid wants. While returning home after completing a night shift one day, Nandan stumbles onto an abandoned suitcase stuffed with cash. It doesnt appear to belong to anyone, but it could be the solution to every problem hes ever had; a means to uplift his family from a life of pinching pennies that they seem destined for. So away he goes, bag in tow, oblivious that a corrupt politician, some ruthless gangsters, and a trigger-happy cop are in hot pursuit of it. Much of the humour in Lootcase comes from two factors the first being Nandans inability to find a suitable place to hide the bag. Were talking about a lower middle-class fellow who lives cheek to jowl with neighbours in a ratty chawl. Where do you hide ten crore rupees? The second source of amusement is his inability to spend much of the cash. Na chaar rupaay ka churan khareed sakta hoon, na chaar crore ka flat, he laments, realizing the impracticality of hoarding two thousand rupee notes. There is also the irony that his wife is constantly complaining that they dont have enough money, yet he knows shed never be okay with keeping what doesnt belong to them. The other characters too are quirky; the screenplay coasts along nicely when Gajraj Rao shows up on the screen as a sweet-talking MLA who gets people to carry out his crooked bidding by employing a passive-aggressive approach. Vijay Raaz is a hoot as a National Geographic-obsessed don who employs wildlife terminology while issuing orders to his henchmen. Theres also Ranvir Shorey in good form, as a hot-headed police officer whos becoming increasingly desperate and violent as the hunt for the suitcase gets increasingly intense. A word also for the fine actors in smaller roles who add to the hilarity like Nandans polite neighbour, Vijay Raazs goondas, and Ranvir Shoreys informer. At the centre of this comedy of errors are Nandan and Lata. Kunal Kemmu does the aam aadmi routine with real flair, and his scenes with the excellent Rasika Duggal are some of the best in the film. Their Chinese food analogies for sex deliver some of the biggest laughs. But Lootcase unravels in its final act, losing steam well before the finish line. At 2 hours and 13 minutes, its way too long; theres just not enough plot to justify that running time. The climax is your standard Priyadarshan-style chaos of multiple characters and complete madness, although there is more bloodshed here that one tends to see in comedies. Also, its quite predictable how things will inevitably end, so theres no real point in stretching the screenplay. The films best bits are its little throwaway moments and there are plenty of those. Lootcase is not perfect or extraordinary in any way. But it will bring a smile to your face. And in these times I think its fair to say were grateful for what we can get. Rating: 3/5 By Express News Service CHENNAI: The city on Friday recorded another dip in the number of fresh cases of Covid-19 with only 1,013 people testing positive. The case growth rate in the city has also been low, ever since the cases dropped from the 2,400 levels in the first week of July. Since then, the number of recoveries have risen from 60 per cent to 85 per cent, while active cases have fallen short to just 12.7 per cent. Officials from the corporations Public Health Department said that most people who were diagnosed with Covid-19 in the first week of July, have now been discharged. The current active cases are those who had tested positive in the past week or so, the official said, while adding that most of the cases are mild-to-moderate, mostly diagnosed from the fever camps or through contact tracing. They are kept in the care centres for around four to seven days. Once they are stable, they are sent back home on the condition that they quarantine themselves for a period of 14 days, he said. Corporation officials also claimed that so far, the condition of patients had never deteriorated after they were sent home from the care centres. Door-to-door survey staff continue to monitor the discharged patients to ensure their condition does not deteriorate suddenly, he added. Four corporation zones in the city Teynampet, Manali, Tondiarpet, and Royapuram have active cases at 10 per cent or below. Further, six zones have registered a recovery rate of over 85 per cent. With around 12,000 tests being done daily, the positivity rate in the city hovers around the 9 per cent mark, even as the civic body had vowed to bring it down to five per cent by August. Experts opine that a positivity rate of five per cent or below is a good sign that the city has contained the spread of the infection. However, a cause for concern would be the decrease in number of people attending the fever camps. From about 30,000 people attending the camps daily in the first week of July, the footfall had fallen to around 25,000 in the past few days. Of the total 77,358 samples taken from these camps, as many as 15,113 had tested positive till date, indicating that the positivity rate stood at 20 per cent. CITY TILL DATE Total cases: 99,794 Discharges: 84,916 Active cases: 12,765 Cancun, Riviera Maya maintaining 23 percent hotel occupancy rate Cancun, Q.R. Although reactivation for the Cancun, Riviera Maya tourism sector is slow, the head of state tourism says they are still hopeful at ending the year with a 60 percent occupancy rate. Marisol Vanegas Perez, the Secretaria de Turismo Quintana Roo, acknowledged that the reactivation is slow for the northern region of Quintana Roo due to the maximum 30 percent capacity rate for the current orange epidemiological light. However, she does say that the agency is anticipating an occupation rate of at least 60 percent for year end. Vanegas Perez says to date, more than half of the Cancun, Riviera Maya hotels have reopened, and that during the month of June, over 91,200 visitors arrived at the Cancun International Airport. She says the main national arrivals were from Mexico City and Monterrey, while the international tourists arrived mostly from Dallas and Miami. She mentioned that nine international airlines continue to operate from the United States, Canada and Cuba including Delta, American and Jetblue, while national airlines into Cancun International include Viva Aerobus, Aeromexico and Volaris. Hotel occupancy in the northern region of Quintana Roo (Cancun, Riviera Maya) has averaged 23.5 percent, which is equivalent to the stay of 23,835 tourists, reported Marisol Vanegas. She pointed out that occupancy rates in Cancun were 24.6 percent and in Riviera Maya 21.7 percent for an average of 23.5 percent. Alberto Solis Martinez, president of the Association of Vacation and Tourist Complexes said we thought that the occupation rate would be less, but people are responding. It gives the impression that they are eager to travel, to get out of the stress of the pandemic, adding that for August, they anticipate a 30 percent occupancy rate. The current 30 percent cap on hotel occupancy is the limit due to the orange epidemiological light for the northern region of the state. The orange light is forcing some hotels to delay their reopening or to open in phases to accommodate demand in order to reduce operating costs. The Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres Hotel Association reports 55 hotels (more than 12,000 rooms) remain closed. San Francisco, Aug 1 : The US Department of Justice has charged three young individuals (including one juvenile) with hacking Twitter last month that compromised the accounts of 130 high-profile users including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The 19-year-old Mason Sheppard (aka "Chaewon") of the UK was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. "Nima Fazeli, aka "Rolex," 22, of Orlando, Florida, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer," the Department of Justice said in a statement on Friday. The third defendant is a juvenile. "With exceptions that do not apply to this case, juvenile proceedings in federal court are sealed to protect the identity of the juvenile," said the statement. Twitter revealed on Friday that the massive hack that spread a cryptocurrency scam by hijacking accounts of high-profile celebrities, politicians and businesses was a result of a phone spear phishing attack. The attackers targeted 130 Twitter accounts, ultimately tweeting from 45, accessing the DM (Direct Messages) inbox of 36, and downloading the Twitter data of seven accounts. The incident raised concerns around Twitter tools and levels of employee access. "The hackers allegedly compromised over 100 social media accounts and scammed both the account users and others who sent money based on their fraudulent solicitations," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. As alleged in the complaints, the Twitter attack consisted of a combination of technical breaches and social engineering. "There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence," said US Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California. The hackers are alleged to have created a scam Bitcoin account, to have hacked into Twitter VIP accounts, to have sent solicitations from the Twitter VIP accounts with a false promise to double any Bitcoin deposits made to the scam account, and then to have stolen the Bitcoin that victims deposited into the scam account. As alleged in the complaints, the scam Bitcoin account received more than 400 transfers worth more than $100,000. "Today's announcement proves that cybercriminals can no longer hide behind perceived global anonymity," said Thomas Edwards, Special Agent in Charge, US Secret Service, San Francisco Field Office. Twitter said that since the attack, it has significantly limited access to its internal tools and systems to ensure ongoing account security. As a result, some features -- namely, accessing the Your Twitter Data download feature -- and processes have been impacted. Twitter said it will be slower to respond to account support needs, reported tweets, and applications to its developer platform. Rhiannon is a single mom in my 40s and a teacher who lives north of Toronto. She says I think I have a classic style. I dress mostly in black and am usually more dressy, less casual. Rhiannons friends and family would describe her as friendly, kind, curious, caring. One friend says I am intense, because I dont do small talk, not even with strangers. Rhiannon likes to read, hike, jog, do yoga, and go for coffee, drinks and walks with friends or dates. She says Im looking for a guy who has done some reflecting, and is evolved in how he relates to people. Im meeting divorced men with children, and I expect that theyve grown since their relationship ended, can understand why it broke down, and are working on being their best self. I met Cory online. We didnt have the usual short and shallow exchange; instead, we wrote entire paragraphs back and forth. He asked good questions; he shared things about his life and his kids; he was interesting. I liked that he was a storyteller. He was kind, encouraging, and enthusiastic. We moved off the app and started emailing, and for about two weeks exchanged long emails about work, parenting and past relationships. I loved it. It was so much better than endless texting about nothing. I learned a lot about him, and felt comfortable sharing a lot about myself. We were emailing back and forth one night, and Cory just said, you know, we could meet and talk just like this over coffee instead of emailing, so on a whim I went out to meet him at a coffee shop. We talked for about three hours. It was the best conversation I had had in a long time. Still, I sensed that he wasnt totally comfortable moving forward. He seemed a bit hesitant. I was happily surprised when he asked me on another date. For our second date, we decided to go for a walk. It was really nice to see him again. Hes very cute, with a great smile and great eyes. He was also funny, and quiet at first, but when he started talking, he relaxed. It was steaming hot, and five minutes into our walk, the sky opened up and it started pouring. Huge droplets were coming down, but it was warm. Cory asked me if I wanted to go inside somewhere, but I said no, we should keep going. He said that I was awesome. We walked around for two hours and got completely drenched. Our shoes were squeaking! We laughed and told stories. The rain didnt bother either of us. We talked about parenting, dating, work, friends, exes, growing up. We moved between topics easily. We joked, laughed, poked fun at each other. Cory leaned in to hear what I was saying, and looked right at me, right into my eyes. He really listened, and didnt interrupt. The connection was there. We were both present. Neither of us wanted to be in charge of the conversation, or move the conversation in a certain direction. After two hours in the rain, I suggested that we go back to my house so I could put his clothes in the dryer. We were absolutely soaked, and Cory had to meet friends for dinner in my neighbourhood after our date. He later said that for all he knew, I could have been a serial killer, but he didnt want to go out to dinner in wet clothes! He had a set of gym clothes in his car, so he changed at my place and we sat in my living room and talked for another hour while his wet clothes dried. It was easy to just enjoy each others company. I walked him to his car, and our date ended with a great hug and a small kiss. He said he would call me, and he did. We only had a few more dates before we called it, but were still friends. In retrospect, neither of us was really ready to move forward, at the time. We dont see each other a lot, but we text and email, and share things that are happening in work and life. Were both really supportive of each other. Its OK that it didnt work out: our walk in the rain was, hands down, my favourite date by far. Rhiannon rates her date (out of 10): 10 Want to be a dating diarist? Email datingdiariescontac@gmail.com Beijing: An eight-year-old boy in east China is getting visitors from across the country as he looks likeChinese billionaire Jack Ma, according to a media report. Up to 50 people, a day has visited Fan Xiaoqin over the past two weeks. The boy looks remarkably like one of China's richest men, Jack Ma who founded the e-commerce companyAlibaba, the BBC reported. Rumours had been swirling on social media that the billionaire had promised to fund his education, right through to university. The boy's family, who live in Jiangxi province, are poor and rely on government benefits. Xiaoqin's father Fan Jiafa is disabled - his right leg has been amputated - his mother has had polio, and his grandmother, who is in her 80s has Alzheimer's. When journalists asked Alibaba if there was any truth to the gossip, they were told it was unfounded. The company issued a statement on Weibo: "All the news about Mini Jack Ma shouldn't be treated as a joke. To fund one child education is easy, but in order to help millions of poor children, more resources need to be used." That hasn't dampened the public's interest, though. Guess who's the real #JackMa of #Alibaba? The 2nd richest Chinese to fund education of his poor 8-yr-old look-alike https://t.co/iw5mZRJ8bf pic.twitter.com/S61ZTuRlsb a China Xinhua News (@XHNews) November 14, 2016 "MiniJack Ma" as he is now known, first became an online sensation in 2015 then faded from public view, but with this month's new and unfounded rumours, people started contacting and visiting the family offering Xiaoqin starring roles in films and adverts. "It's a good thing that my son looks like Jack Ma," FanJiafa told BBC Trending, but he has reservations about some of the offers they've received. "I don't want him to go into the film industry and make money now. I hope Xiaoqin can be independent one day and support himself but I believe only education can improve his life."At the moment, Xiaoqin is struggling to keep up in school and can't write. "I just hope Xiaoqin can receive a good education," says his dad. "I don't read and write much as I just spent two years in primary school. I think studying the most important thing." And the family has had plenty of moral support on social media. "How depressing! Some people are really opportunistic!"commented one angry Weibo user. Xiaoqin's father says he doesn't know who to trust and is worried about sending his sons away. Over the past 10 days,he's received more than 10,000 yuan (USD 1,500) in cash donations, clothes, food and household items. What he wants now is for "the local government to help me and offer me some advice," the report added. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Eisya A. Eloksari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1 2020 Hotel associations in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are pushing to resume travel within the ASEAN bloc to boost regional tourism, which has suffered greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic. While opening borders to tourism may be months away for some countries, many ASEAN nations are resuming domestic travel and hospitality services for local tourists. 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 The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) normally spreads through your nose and mouth. That's why, doctors recommended mask wearing and social distancing. But what about our eyes? Do we also need to protect our eyes using goggles or face shields? According to Dr. Thomas Steinemann, a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, it is certainly possible for a person to get coronavirus through the eyes. Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) said there was "emerging evidence" of people catching the coronavirus from droplets floating in the air. Hence, one of those droplets can enter our body through our eyes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is also possible to get infected by touching contaminated surfaces and then touching our eyes. Steinemann told CNN that if droplets are in the air, then it can "land on the eye." However, he noted that contracting the coronavirus through the eyes is less likely than getting it through nose or mouth or from inhaling it. He added that if a significant number of people are getting infected through the eyes, doctors would probably diagnose more COVID-19 patients with conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye. But he clarified that having pink eye doesn't necessarily mean you have COVID-19. "Also, consider the path the virus would have to take to infect you. It would have to infect the surface of your eye and be carried to your nose through your tears. From the nose, it would travel to the mouth or throat, and from there to the airways and into the lungs. That's a rather circuitous route," Steinemann noted. However, he emphasized that "it's certainly plausible." Steinemann said eye coverings are good for people who can't practice social distancing or those who have to be in contaminated air areas due to being healthcare workers or home caregivers for an infected patient. He noted that for an average person, who does only work from home or does not have close contact with other people outside their home, wearing a face mask and practicing a safe distance from others would be enough. For his part, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, said wearing an eye shield could help because the virus could enter through the eye. In a recent interview with ABC News, Fauci noted that theoretically, everyone should protect "all the mucosal surfaces." "If you really want perfect protection of your mucosal surfaces, you have mucosa in the nose, mucosa in the mouth, but you also have you mucosa in the eye," he said. "So if you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it. It's not universally recommended. But if you really want to be complete, you should probably use it, if you can," he added. To sum up, wearing goggles or face shields can add extra protection, especially for those in high-risk situations, where you're likely to come into contact with the virus. But for an average person, wearing a face mask and practicing social distancing will be enough. Check these out: Are There Medications to Treat COVID-19? Here's What We Know New Study Claims The Taller You Are, The Higher Risk of Getting COVID-19 USC Reports Coronavirus Outbreak at Fraternity Row, 40 Infected Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the government is working with the RBI on need for restructuring of loans to help industry tide over the impact of COVID-19. "The focus is on restructuring. Finance ministry is actively engaged with RBI on this. In principle, the idea that there may be a restructuring required, is well taken," Sitharaman said while addressing Ficci's National Executive Committee Meeting. The Finance minister also said that the decision on reducing GST rates on the healthcare and other products will be taken by the GST Council. Sitharaman said the Finance Ministry is working with RBI on the demand of the hospitality sector for extension of moratorium, or restructuring. "I fully understand the requirements of the hospitality sector on extension of the moratorium, or restructuring. We are working with RBI on this," she said. To help borrowers deal with liquidity crunch during the pandemic, the Reserve Bank had announced a three-month loan moratorium in March, which was later extended by another three months till August 31. Borrowers opting for loan moratorium can defer payment of the interest and principal component of the loan during this period. Sitharaman said every step which the government took, has been done after exhaustive consultations with the stakeholders and within the government. "We have taken these steps to ensure that the impact is felt on the ground," she said. Addressing the concerns over the difficulties faced by the MSMEs in taking loans under the Emergency Credit Guarantee Scheme announced by the government, she said: "Banks cannot refuse credit to MSMEs covered under emergency credit facility. If refused, such instances must be reported. I will look into it". As of July 23, 2020, the total amount sanctioned under the 100 per cent Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme by public sector banks and private banks stands at Rs 1,30,491.79 crore, of which Rs 82,065.01 crore has already been disbursed. As part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Package, the government had announced Rs 3 lakh crore Collateral-free Automatic Loans for businesses, including MSMEs. On the suggestion for creation of a Development Finance Institution to handle the emerging credit requirements of the industry, she said, "The work is going on the Development Finance Institution. What shape it will take, we will know shortly". The minister also said that India is asking for reciprocal arrangements are being asked with the countries with which we have opened up our markets. "Reciprocity is a very critical point in our trade negotiations," she added. Alan Menken has had a very busy few weeks becoming the 16th EGOT winner in history, announcing a brand new musical animated film and, now, revealing more details about an upcoming Beauty and the Beast Disney Plus series. Previous reports had said that the series will follow the iconic film's villain Gaston, who was played by Luke Evans in the recent 2017 live-action series. Evans, as well as Josh Gad (who played LeFou in the film), will both reprise their roles in the live-action series, which will feature musical numbers and generally flesh out the lives of the two antagonists before their fateful experiences with a rose and an angry man-monster. In a new interview with Variety, Menken, who is working on the prequel series, has now revealed its title "Little Town". The name is a reference to the lyrics from the original film's opening number "Belle", sung by Emma Watson in the most recent live-action cinematic piece. Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz have signed onto co-write and run the series, while Gad will be an additional co-writer, as well as an executive producer alongside Kitsis and Horowitz. It is not known whether Watson, or co-star Dan Stevens, will return to the prequel, or when it may be seen in the UK. Menken is very busy at the moment, with work continuing on a live-action version of The Little Mermaid with Lin-Manuel Miranda (the film recently announced casting) as well as a Night at the Museum musical and Hercules stage show and live-action film. Further details on Little Town, produced by ABC Signature Studios, are to be announced. While much of corporate America, from airlines to hospitality, has been savaged by the pandemic, big tech is enjoying what can only be perversely described as a good lockdown. The big four Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google's parent Alphabet posted combined quarterly sales of 156billion from April to June, and all reported higher profit. Unsurprisingly, Amazon came out top with a record quarter of 68billion in sales, sending its shares shooting up 4 per cent. Another 4billion or so was added to the Bezos wallet. Centre of the universe?: Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google's parent Alphabet posted combined quarterly sales of 156billion from April to June Yet the rise in value of the tech giants was all the more astonishing because it came just hours after their chief executives were grilled on Capitol Hill about their alleged abuse of monopoly power and global dominance. Perhaps just as well that the results did not come out until a day after the hearing, on what was dubbed 'Super Thursday' so the congressmen were not armed with fresh proof of just how powerful and profitable they are. And the fact all four reported on the same day meant none could be singled out. Strength in unity, as the saying goes. As it was, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg squirmed and struggled to defend themselves during what was a combative hearing in which they did not for once have all the slick answers. Zuckerberg admitted to 'neutralising' rivals, and has already described his purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram as a 'digital land grab'. Even Bezos sweated when asked about a bookseller being taken out by his Amazonian beast. What a land grab it is. The four horsemen control nearly all that we do on the internet: selling apps, sending messages, pestering us with ads, stealing news, answering people's questions and buying just about everything one wants. This is extraordinary power. Fortunately, the US politicians are serious about discovering how this power works, how it is wielded and if necessary cracking down on their reach. Plans: The Australian Government has announced plans to force Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for content in an attempt to prevent the country's media from being ravaged The sub-committee of the House Judiciary Committee has been investigating their dominance over the internet for a year now, and came well prepared with ammunition to show how the tech titans have been responsible for bullying and destroying small businesses. That's on top of charges that big tech controls how we are surveilled and our data manipulated, that Facebook spreads misinformation and censors, while Amazon handles laundered goods. But what should the policymakers do? Should the big tech behemoths be broken up in the same way Theodore Roosevelt took the axe to Standard Oil and the telephone companies in the 1920s? Or can their power be reined in by higher taxes and stiffer regulation? It's a daunting dilemma. On the one hand, there is a strong argument that the West should support rather than demonise these great success stories, because the real threat is China. Nearly half of the world's biggest online firms including Alibaba and JD.com are Chinese, and they are growing fast. There is another point. Would breaking them up benefit the customer? As most of us could testify, going through lockdown without Facetime on our mobile phones and Amazon to shop online may have been tougher still. But not impossible. As we also saw during lockdown, small business owners snapped into action and came up with the most enterprising solutions. Now what we need is a fairer environment in which smaller social media outlets or online retailers can compete before being crushed by the big guns. How can a more level playing field be achieved? Well, US politicians should look to the Australian government for inspiration. It has announced plans to force Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for content in an attempt to prevent the country's media from being ravaged. If they don't pay, the Australian regulators will fine them hundreds of millions of dollars. Facebook and Google have already threatened to walk away rather than pay for news. Good. Let them walk. Unusually, there is cross-party support for change. Both the Republicans and Democrats want to see big tech reformed, to varying degrees and for different reasons. But don't hold your breath, certainly not until after the November US elections. Which is why the share prices of the big tech corporations largely stormed ahead after their results. Investors take the view that the regulators will not be cracking down any time soon. KYODO NEWS - Aug 1, 2020 - 22:20 | All, Coronavirus, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday appeared for the first time in public since April without wearing his much-touted government-sponsored mask, which has been derided as a symbol of his administration's out-of-step policy against the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of donning what became known as the "Abenomask," which was so small that it rode up on his face, Abe seemed more comfortable wearing one similar to commercially available ones, which fully covered the lower half of his face. Abe's new cloth mask was made in Fukushima Prefecture. He wore it when he attended a government meeting to discuss responses to the pandemic held at his office. "From now on, he will use various products," a source close to the office said in reference to the change. Related coverage: Japan to lift ban on reselling face masks FOCUS: Japanese expat's handmade mask sales boom as Aussies adopt new habits Gov't spokesman goes mask-free in briefings as Tokyo fights coronavirus Abe started wearing his Abenomask, a pun on his signature "Abenomics" economic policy mix, in April when the government started providing the washable cloth masks to every household to solve the mask shortage at the time. The masks proved highly unpopular due to their poor quality and slow delivery, with billions of yen spent on the policy. So far 130 million of the masks have been provided to households nationwide. Even as Japan's mask shortages have eased, the policy has continued to court controversy. The administration is scrapping its plan to deliver an additional 80 million cloth masks to nursing homes and other facilities after opposition parties and some of the public criticized the move as inefficient and wasteful. The government is now considering giving the masks only to those that wish for them and stockpiling the remainder. Southbound lanes of the 110 Freeway heading into downtown Los Angeles are empty in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press) Last week, we published an update of the Opinion section's "Reimagine California" project in which we are asking readers to help guide our thinking on what California ought to look like after the COVID-19 pandemic noting that more than 3,700 of you have sent us responses. We asked for more readers participation in the project; a few dozen of you obliged. Your suggestions include, on one end, the granular, ground-level changes readers want to see everything from increasing controlled burns in wilfire-prone areas to using germ-resistant grocery bags and on the other, reforming entire segments of society such as healthcare and education. Sprinkled among those were calls for racial justice and, yes, partisan digs. Similar to the 3,700 responses that had already come in, the latest suggestions betray an abiding desire for reform among our readers, and the pandemic has helped clarify exactly what those changes might be. Here's a sampling of those responses and as always, please write us with your ideas. Bill Higbee of Long Beach was among the readers suggesting street-level changes: I can think of a couple ways to improve, if not totally reimagine, California. Plant lots of trees along our streets, especially drought-tolerant and flowering trees. It would improve air quality and beautify our cities. Paint our bare concrete walls with murals, especially along our freeways. Art lovers would flock to California to enjoy the works of art, and we who live here could enjoy them too. Remove car lanes on streets and install protected bike lanes. When people feel safe riding bikes instead of driving cars, we will all be fitter and healthier, breathe cleaner air and reduce climate change. These ideas do not radically reimagine California, but every little bit helps. And I think they are very doable. Carmen R. Gonzalez of Glendale foresees temporary changes becoming permanent: You have sent out a strange call to action about a post-pandemic era, when we are nowhere close to escaping this scenario. Even if we develop a COVID-19 vaccine, we are not out of the woods for future pandemics. Story continues Given the radical changes we have experienced so far, I foresee a greater accommodation for government-sponsored child care designed to be smaller with social distancing in mind. I also see greater integration of government sites and buildings to support education, as L.A. County is already contemplating (for example, shared use of parks and libraries). I can now imagine remote access for cultural events, which was temporary, becoming a mainstay. Virtual museum tours and online speaking events will continue well into the future. I hope telecommuting is permanently embraced by employers. Whatever the future holds, I'll be reading the L.A. Times for the latest. Cheryl Clark of Long Beach was one of many readers to call for strengthening the government safety net: If we've learned anything from the pandemic, it's that we must provide healthcare to everyone. Nobody should worry about paying for a doctor or medicine. And, as European countries do, we should make sure that the unemployed are able to eat and pay rent. We need a dole, I guess. So few are at the top, and they're getting big bucks from our government while the unemployed are desperate for rent and food money. Increased taxes paid by the rich people will provide enough to ensure that the unemployed and disabled can live peacefully. Anthony Edwards of Sydney, Australia, offers a bleak assessment from afar: California is well, was an international tourist destination. Disneyland, the redwoods in the north, the San Francisco Bay, San Diego all are places I want to visit again, but not until COVID-19 is dead, gun violence and mass shootings are down, and President Trump is history. It's up to you how you cut it, but until you show more care and love for your fellow American, we're not into you. At all. I hope to visit you and my American friends again soon. VANCOUVERAn Indigenous mother and son have launched a lawsuit against the Vancouver Police Department, the City of Vancouver and Walmart over an arrest on Mothers Day last year. A statement of claim filed this week in B.C. Supreme Court says officers used excessive force and unlawfully arrested Shane Robertson and Margaret Deneault after they left a Vancouver Walmart store. The lawsuit alleges a security guard accused Robertson of stealing, he denied it and the family left the store. It says while they loaded their vehicle, six Vancouver police officers arrived, tackled Robertson to the ground and restrained him by putting their knees on the back of his head, neck and legs. The lawsuit says Robertson wasnt resisting but was repeatedly punched while he was restrained. None of the allegations have been proven in court and no statements of defence have yet been filed. Vancouver police spokesman Sgt. Aaron Roed said in a statement that police were called to the Walmart for reports of an assault in progress. The caller told dispatchers that a man spat on a store security guard, he said. After police arrived, Roed said Robertson refused to listen or co-operate with officers, and also shouted profanities. The suspect was taken to jail for breach of peace, and Roed said the man was later apologetic about his behaviour. Robertson was banned from shopping at any Walmart in Canada, the lawsuit says. Neither Robertson nor his mother were charged in connection to the allegations. Robertsons lawsuit alleges he received a concussion, broken ribs, bruising, cuts, sprains and other soft-tissue damage. It asks for general, special, aggravated and punitive damages. The statement says Deneault was also pulled from her vehicle, put in handcuffs and told she was under arrest. The (police) members then took statements from both Deneault and Robertson, who advised that they had paid for all their items and showed (police) their receipt, the court statement says. The pair were questioned and ultimately released, although the lawyer representing the pair said in an interview that Robertson was unlawfully held for several hours. Toby Rauch-Davis said the lawsuit is about police brutality. No crime had been committed, my clients had receipts and hadnt stolen anything. And really the police just came in, beat Mr. Robertson, arrested him in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses and then decided to ask questions about what happened. A video of Robertsons arrest released by the law firm shows two police officers and a person in plain clothes on top of the man on the ground when another male officer enters the frame and is seen kneeing the man in the back. The bystander taking the video can be heard shouting, Why are you hitting him? The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner has started an investigation into the arrest, said Andrea Spindler, its deputy commissioner. Investigations are required to be completed in six months. A spokeswoman for Walmart Canada said the company wont comment on matters before the court, but respect is a core value of its work. We do not tolerate any behaviour which contradicts this value, including racism and discrimination, said Felicia Feder, the manager of corporate affairs, in a statement. Read more about: Deaths of '300 Russians' in Syria sent warning to Moscow, Pompeo says Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 8:27 AM US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the deaths of "300 Russians" in a failed attack on a military base held by US and mainly Kurdish forces in Syria's oil-rich eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr more than two years ago sent a warning to Moscow. Speaking at a Senate hearing on Thursday, Pompeo sought to forestall criticism over President Donald Trump's statement that he had not raised with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin accusations that Moscow paid the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan. "I don't think there's any doubt in the mind of every Russian leader, including Vladimir Putin, about the expectations of the United States of America not to kill Americans," Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I can promise you that the 300 Russians who were in Syria and who took action that threatened America who are no longer on this planet understand that, too," he said. On February 7, 2018, hundreds of Russian forces aligned with Syrian government troops were killed in US airstrikes near the town of Khursham in Syria's Dayr al-Zawr province. US officials claimed at the time that the Russian fighters had crossed the Euphrates River and were shelling the positions of the Kurdish-led militants from the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), where American advisers were present. Syria's state-run al-Ikhbariyah Syria television news network then condemned the "brutal massacre" by the United States, and said the bombing had left "dozens of people dead and wounded." The Russian Defense Ministry also said Syrian government troops and their allies were hit as they launched an operation against the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the region. Russian jets have been carrying out air raids against targets belonging to the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and those of other terror outfits inside Syria at the Damascus government's formal request since September 2015. The airstrikes have helped Syrian forces advance against anti-Damascus terrorists, who have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country since 2011. Earlier this month, the Kremlin roundly dismissed news reports that US intelligence had allegedly found Russia offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the reports "hoaxes," and stated that they damage the reputation of the media that publish them. The Russian Foreign Ministry, for its part, said the initial story in The New York Times demonstrated the "low intellectual abilities of US intelligence propagandists." Trump said in an interview with "Axios on HBO" published on Wednesday that he did not bring up intelligence reports that Moscow paid the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, when he spoke with the Russian leader last week. Senator Robert Menendez told Pompeo on Thursday that Trump's remarks were "astonishing" and that the bounties marked an "outrageous escalation" by Russia. Menendez also asked the US state secretary how he would have acted if a Democratic president acted similarly to Trump. "If you were sitting in your old House seat, would you be okay with a president who abandoned our troops but not even raising this with the Kremlin?" he said. Pompeo said he had raised Afghanistan with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but declined to comment on Trump's discussions. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address File photo According to The PUNCH, the Rivers State Government said on Friday that seven girls had been rescued from a bar in Rumuokwurusi, Obio/Akpor Local Government Area where they were used as s*x workers. The state Commissioner for Social Welfare and Rehabilitation, Mrs. Inime Aguma, who disclosed this while speaking with journalists in Port Harcourt, on the occasion of International Day against Trafficking in Persons, said the girls would soon be reunited with their families. Aguma stated that the girls were among over 30 persons arrested in June by security operatives and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, with officials of her ministry during a raid known as 24-Hours Bar at Rumuokwurusi. While stating that the state government led by Governor Nyesom Wike has zero tolerance for trafficking, she said the girls were now in the protective custody of the ministry, adding that efforts were ongoing to identify families of the girls. Aguma said, On a Sunday morning when we raided that bar, they (operators) didnt expect it. The night before they paraded the girls for the patrons to make their choices. The owner of the facility would soon be arraigned. We took away over 30 people from there and at the end of our investigation, we found out that they were using young girls for prostitution. We are trying to identify their families. Seven of them are in our custody now. Aguma called for a review of the NAPTIP laws to make it beneficial to the people, noting that the state had to rely on some of its facilities to accommodate issues arising from trafficking. 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. It is a time for market shakeups. On Friday, tech giant Apple unseated oil giant Saudi Aramco as the worlds most valuable company. Earlier in the week, the market saw Reliance Industries unseat the worlds second-most valuable energy company, ExxonMobil. Reliances upward move can be attributed to Googles investment in Reliances Jio Platformsa digital services segment of Reliance. Tech is reveling in the coronavirus, smoothly transitioning workers to remote work and a magnet for those looking to sink money into stay at home stocks. Not so for the oil industry, which has struggled on multiple fronts, including an excess of oil and crashing demand. Apples stock did well on Friday after a tremendous Q2 report, and its market cap rose to $1.8 trillion. Meanwhile, Exxons earnings reportthe second-largest energy company after Aramco--was anything but great, with rumors that Exxon is planning some significant cuts to jobs and spending so it can keep kicking out that beloved dividend. Aramcos Q2 report will not be available until August 9, and it will be a reflection of the overall state of the oil market in Q2in other words, it isnt going to be pretty. Aramcos Q1 profit fell 25%, and that was well before the coronavirus infiltrated the world and created widespread lockdowns. In fact, oil prices were only really low during the last few weeks of Q1. But in March, Aramco lowered its April OSP. In April, it lowered Mays OSP; each cut another blow to the worlds largest oil producer. It wasnt until May when Aramco boosted its next-month OSPthe last month of the quarter. This will likely result in Aramcos Q2 revenue coming in south of $40 billion, compared to $75 billion this time last year. Compare that to Apples nearly $60 billion in revenue for the quarter, and you have a new king of the hill. By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Washington: House Democrats are demanding a reckoning from the US ambassador to Brazil after news reports there said he was urging country officials to lower ethanol tariffs to help President Donald Trump's chances of reelection. In a letter Friday to Ambassador Todd Chapman, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Represenative Eliot Engel, and Western Hemisphere subcommittee Chairman Albio Sires, cited a report in prominent Brazilian newspaper O Globo depicting Chapman telling Brazilian officials about "the importance for the [President Jair] Bolsonaro government of maintaining Donald Trump as US President." Jair Bolsonaro with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in March, just before the pandemic changed their fortunes. Credit:Bloomberg In the article, according to the letter, Chapman also communicated to Brazilian officials that it was important for their "government to do the US a favour" by reducing ethanol tariffs, as those are important in the state of Iowa, a potential "key player" in 2020. Panel Democrats are asking Chapman to state in writing whether the comments are true, and back up his claim with documents related to his conversations with Brazilian officials, "to reassure Congress" that he "is truly representing the interests of the United States and not the narrow, political interests of President Trump." August 01 : The makers of Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl dropped the trailer of the film today after a long wait. Starring Janhvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi and Angad Bedi, the film is slated to release on August 12, 2020, on Netflix. The trailer will certainly hold your attention. While Janhvi essays the first female Indian Air Force pilot in combat during the Kargil War between India and Pakistan, Pankaj plays Janhvis father, and Angad portrays her brothers role, who is in the army. The interesting trailer takes us through an inspiring journey of Gunjan Saxena, who dreams of being a pilot in the forces. While everyone is against her wish, her father supports her irrespective of what her mother, brother, and society think. The trailer gives a glimpse of some endearing moments between Janhvi and Pankaj. Whether a woman or a man flies the plane, they are both called pilots, Pankaj tells Janhvi in the trailer, which is no doubt a strong moment. The trailer also shows how Gunjan faces discrimination in the Air Force because of her gender. But her career took off when she was sent to the 1999 Kargil War. Directed and co-written by Sharan Sharma, the film is based on the life of Flight Lieutenant Gunjan Saxena, who made history when she became the first Indian woman in combat during the Kargil War. Gunjan Saxena and Flight Lieutenant Srividya Rajan flew the Cheetah helicopters for casualty evacuation, when they flew very close to Pakistani positions as well. "Today is not the day to announce any further steps, but that work is under way ... that is an active process," he said. Loading "We are giving due consideration to a whole range of different options. When I am in a position to announce decisions, I will do that and I will take questions at that time. "Even minor changes have a significant cost. But the numbers are too high and there is a growing case for us to do more. What we may be doing now may not be enough. "If you take further steps you need to ... [ensure they are] a circuit breaker to try and pull this up." 'Appalling behaviour' among Victorians flouting lockdown rules Police Minister Lisa Neville lambasted those choosing to flout stay-at-home directions after one person was fined $1652 for driving from Melbourne to Wodonga for a McDonald's Big Mac. Loading Ms Neville said Victorians were fed up with the "appalling behaviour" of some, including one person who drove from Melbourne to Ballarat to get some "fresh air" and another person who drove nearly 60 kilometres from Werribee in the city's south-west to Springvale in the south-east to get groceries. "I am fed up with it, Victoria Police are fed up with it. Can I be really clear, just in case there is any doubt at all, that there is absolutely no reason or need to drive from Melbourne to Wodonga to have a Big Mac," she said. Since the start of the pandemic, Victoria has recorded 1841 community transmission cases, where the source of a person's infection is not known. Victoria had its second worst day of the pandemic on Friday, with 627 new cases and eight deaths. Late on Friday evening, a government spokesperson confirmed the state's Emergency Management Commissioner, Chief Health Officer and Police Chief Commissioner will be given greater influence over the government's effort to bring the state's coronavirus crisis under control. There is a growing case for us to do more. Premier Daniel Andrews Amid the leadership shake-up, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Mr Andrews called on the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, the nation's key decision-making committee for health emergencies, to conduct an intensive analysis of Victoria's coronavirus data ahead of an expected announcement on Sunday. Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the panel faced "impossible decisions" that could cause widespread economic ruptures with the closure of non-essential businesses, tougher restrictions on high-risk workplaces and tighter limits on movement between suburbs of Melbourne and Mitchell Shire. Professor Sutton said tougher restrictions would bring "really significant consequences" but admitted that after a record 723 new cases on Thursday, a tougher lockdown appeared unavoidable. More than 20 Victorians on ventilators At least three Victorian healthcare workers, including a young trainee doctor, are in intensive care after contracting coronavirus, fuelling concerns for the safety of frontline medical teams. They are among 379 people fighting the virus in hospital. Of 41 patients in intensive care, 24 are on ventilators. Victoria's public health team may need to increase again in size as case numbers continue to rise. Mr Andrews denied the public health team did not have enough staff and was under-resourced at the start of the pandemic, with the team now having 2000 people to complete tasks like contact tracing. "Is the team bigger than it has ever been? Yes, because this is a once-in-a-century event," he said. "Can it or will it need to get bigger still? I think it may every single day we examine if there is more that we can do." Victoria now had 5919 known active cases of coronavirus on Saturday afternoon. Contact tracers continue to be stretched by the number of new virus cases each day. In one of many examples of delayed contact tracing, students at Al Siraat College in Epping were not notified by the Department of Health and Human Services about a positive case in a staff member until 10 days after the test result came through. Meanwhile, Mr Andrews said the situation in aged care remained "very serious", with the three deaths recorded on Saturday believed to be linked to nursing homes. Hospital nurses have worked 570 shifts in aged care settings, which were "confronting and challenging environments", he said. It comes after WorkSafe confirmed it had started preliminary inquiries into at least 10 aged care homes in Victoria, including those with major, deadly outbreaks such as St Basil's in Fawkner and Epping Gardens Aged Care. The eastern hemlock is not one of those ubiquitous, celebrity trees such as the white oak or the white pine. Throughout much of its range - from northern Alabama up to New Brunswick, Canada, and Minnesota - the hemlock has lurked mainly in dark mountain valleys, where the cool, moist climate favored it over competitors. In northern states and Canada, it mixed with sugar maple, beech and other cold-hardy forest dwellers. Still, the tree has inspired naturalists and writers from Henry David Thoreau to Robert Frost, who took solace from snow falling from a hemlock. Then, starting in the 1970s, a tiny aphid-like insect known as hemlock woolly adelgid, originally from Japan, unleashed the tree version of a pandemic in American hemlock forests. The adelgid, recognizable by cotton-like fuzz it produces while feeding on hemlock needles, has killed millions of trees and upended ecosystems throughout the eastern United States. Having turned much of Appalachia and New England into tree graveyards, the insect reached the Eastern Shore of Lake Michigan by 2016 and threatens to continue its death march through the upper Midwest. Many scientists and foresters wrote off the hemlock as a lost cause. But a few wondered whether rare combinations of adelgid-resistance genes might lurk in the trees. Those scientists sought, propagated and planted cuttings from trees that remained green when their neighbors had become gray ghosts. Researchers have reported that these trees survive better and grow faster than nonresistant ones. The result could mark a steppingstone toward a potential hemlock comeback. When hemlocks started dying in large numbers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, forest experts knew they had a problem. The tree hosts dozens of insects and birds such as the blue-headed vireo and hermit thrush, and its year-round shade keeps mountain streams cool enough for trout. Scientists started looking for ways to keep hemlocks around. One strategy involved looking for rare hemlocks that appeared to tolerate the adelgid. In the mid-2000s, a New Jersey state entomologist surveying near Delaware Water Gap found a stand of lush, green hemlocks amid gray skeletons. University scientists cloned some cuttings from what they called "bulletproof" trees and, in 2015, planted them in test plots near other hemlocks that were infested with adelgids. Four years later, the researchers returned to each plot and assessed the trees. Ninety-six percent of the clones from the cuttings had survived, compared with 48 percent for other hemlocks. Bulletproof clones were taller and had more foliage and insect-resisting chemicals called terpenes, the researchers reported in a paper published in May in the journal Forests. That's even more impressive, says Evan Preisser, a University of Rhode Island ecologist who led the research, because the scientists did nothing to help the trees during those four years. Because of the study's small sample size - just eight resistant and four nonresistant trees at each site - Preisser calls it a "proof of concept" that adelgid-resistant trees can be found and propagated. But some scientists are skeptical that genetics can rescue the hemlock. Rusty Rhea, an entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Asheville, N.C., believes the bulletproof trees may have fared better because of environmental factors where they were growing, and that Preisser's study period was too short to prove the trees could survive in the forest. "I'm a little hesitant to give people hope that there is resistance based on . . . propagules that are only 4 or 5 years old," Rhea says. Rhea's agency, the main source of funding for forest-related research in the United States, has taken a different approach. The service has backed a long-term effort to identify predatory insects that could limit adelgid numbers on a permanent basis, similar to, for example, how wolves control elk populations in Yellowstone National Park. This "biological control" strategy has gone awry before, but when done carefully, it can reduce populations of damaging pests - for example, introduced insects have aided California's citrus industry. But biocontrol has rarely succeeded in natural forests. Starting in the 1980s, scientists searched Japan, where the adelgid came from, and the West Coast of North America, where adelgids also live, for insects that munch on them. Researchers have spent more than 20 years testing a beetle called Laricobius nigrinus, native to British Columbia. In April, scientists reported that in sites in the eastern United States where they released Laricobius, the beetles damaged around a third of the adelgid egg sacs laid in the winter. As a result of the feeding, fewer adelgids emerged in the spring at these sites. But that's hardly cause for celebration, because the adelgid has two life cycles per year. A follow-up paper published in June by the same authors reported that adelgid numbers at the study sites rebounded in the summer, thanks to the insect's high reproductive rate; one adult female can produce up to 500 offspring. Biocontrol researchers are now pinning hope on two tiny silverflies, both native to the western United States, to control the summer adelgid generation. The flies have been shown to reduce adelgid numbers in bags tied onto tree branches. But when released in the open, the flies have tended to disappear rather than attain large enough numbers to control adelgids. Still, Rhea says, the flies are "the best bet we know of right now." Forest Service researchers have also found that hemlocks in full sun grow faster than in shade, even with adelgids feeding on them. Rhea hopes that growing hemlocks in forest clearings and deploying beetles and flies will eventually allow trees to reach maturity and reproduce before the adelgid kills them. To Preisser, however, the ongoing struggle to establish sustainable adelgid predators population in the forest suggests biocontrol may be a dead end. He advocates seeking stands of adelgid-resistant trees adapted to different locations, growing them in large-scale demonstration plots to determine which genes provide the most adelgid resistance and breeding the best performing trees together, an effort that Preisser concedes will be expensive and time-consuming. Even with modern practices, a hemlock may need to grow for seven to 10 years before its seeds can be collected, says Ben Smith, a forestry researcher at North Carolina State University's Mountain Research Station in Waynesville who is developing a hemlock breeding program there. "To crop breeders, that's an eternity," Smith says. "For tree breeders, it's not terrible." Preisser is not sticking around to find out. Frustrated by difficulties in persuading funders to support his research, he is moving on to other things. "It's become clear to me over the past 10 years that science doesn't make a difference," he says. The idea that beleaguered trees' genomes could hold the keys to their own salvation has indeed encountered resistance from scientists, says Jennifer Koch, a biologist at the Forest Service's research station in Delaware, Ohio. It was "a huge hurdle to get people to believe resistance existed," she says. "Particularly with hemlock, that's one that people really struggled to believe." Research by Preisser and others has laid the groundwork for breeders to cross partially resistant trees to produce ones that can survive to reproductive age in the forest, Koch says. She is working to launch a hemlock breeding program with the nonprofit conservation organization American Forests; it will be hosted at Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, Ohio, and will also include ash and beech trees. New Jersey is setting up its own hemlock breeding program. Success won't require finding or producing a completely resistant tree, Koch says. Beetles and flies can also play a role by helping to keep adelgid numbers down and lengthen trees' lives. "We're not looking for immunity. We're looking for that balance. [The tree] can still be a host to this insect, but . . . the insect population won't reach a level that's going to kill the tree," she says. "You mimic what happens in nature." DANGEROUS MOVES Can you ever be too careful? I dont think so. And I dont think local school districts are being careful enough. Its shocking they are considering reopening strategies without widespread vaccine immunity especially when the consequences may be fatal. GET REAL Someone signed as Wow had the temerity to compare federal law-enforcement officers, assigned to quell the violence and destruction done by rioters in Portland, to stormtroopers in Germany. Anyone making such an offensive and inappropriate comparison can not be taken seriously in public discourse. GODWINS LAW CHECK IT OUT The U.S. Postal Service has a free program called Informed Delivery Using this program will allow you to view an image of each piece of mail that will be delivered to your residence on that day. To sign up,go to: uspsinformeddelivery@usps.gov. JOHN THE MAILMAN TRY AGAIN To anyone and all, can we not somehow have another primary a name to new presidential candidates, one Democrat and Republican, and get rid of this farce thats going on? WORRIED ABOUT EVERYTHING NO SURPRISES HERE Nothing President Milquetoast says or does anymore can surprise me. I think the guy is reading the handwriting on the wall and knows that the majority of Americans are going to show him the door in November. But as far as the things hes capable of, I mean, he might try to cancel the election or question the outcome or the guy could even start a war. Im often shocked about the deflections of his incompetence. BAFFLED HERE ON BEATTY THERE HE GOES AGAIN Once again in typical fashion, Trump is criticizing Tony Fauci, because Trump always deflects blame to other people. Donald Trump in his own mind is a perfect person and never makes mistakes. So its always somebody elses fault. Its another example of his mental imbalance. TAILS WE LOSE I guess its okay for a not-so-funny comedian like Kathy Griffin the hold up the severed head of Donald Trump, the president, but its not okay to send in troops federal troops to protect federal buildings in federal property. We really have the tail wagging the dog in this country. Im angry. YOU BET YOUR LIFE Joe Biden in his best days as a U.S. senator straggled the fence on most issues. And in his worst days, he was totally wishy-washy. Know he is being pulled by the nose by the far-left faction of his party and has no clue where he is. The Russians and Chinese are putting their bets down, knowing that he can be steamrolled even easier than Hillary. STONER FOR TRUMP COUGH IT UP I think minimum wage should be raised, definitely. I deliver pizzas. I guess for $7 an hour, but considering Im an essential worker now. Im out them taking a chance of getting this coronavirus while Im doing it. So yeah, pay me more. Im taking the chance to get you food. MR. K LOUIE LOUIE Louie Gohmert is such a complete moron. He is now saying that he thinks he got the coronavirus from wearing a mask. Not from not wearing a mask, but from wearing a mask. These kind of people, how does somebody like him get in Congress? Anyway, hes someone who is that idiotic as to suggest that wearing a mask gave him the virus when all the scientific data proves that wearing a mask prevents the virus. TS A PLOY The intermittent USPS deliveries are designed to undermine confidence in our public universal delivery system. Political donor Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has been actively seeking ways to discredit our postal service in advance of the November election. As a former mail carrier, I resent how our hard-working, committed postal employees who do their best for us are every day being sabotaged from the top down. The Bihar police team, which is in Mumbai to investigate an abetment to suicide case related to the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, has so far recorded the statements of six persons, an official said on Saturday. The four-member team arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday to probe the abetment to suicide case registered against Rajputs friend, actress Rhea Chakraborty, and others in Patna. Till now, the police team from Bihar has met the late actors friends, colleagues and relatives. They have recorded the statements of six persons- Rajputs sister, who stays in Versova, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, a cook, his friends and colleagues, the official said. The police team is also likely to question the members of Rajputs staff, he said, adding that some of them had been changed. ANI reported that they will also speak to the actors co-stars. They also gathered information about Rajputs various bank accounts and also visited the banks to look into the financial transactions, he said. The visiting team had on Friday gone to the Crime Branch office to submit an application seeking assistance from the Mumbai police in probing the case. As a large number of media persons gathered at the spot, the Andheri police personnel took the officers of the Bihar police in their vehicle for safety. A video of the team from Bihar being taken into the vehicle surfaced on some social media sites and messaging apps with the netizens criticising the city police over their behaviour. When asked about it, the official said, As it was issue of the safety of the Bihar police personnel, the city police put them in a van and dropped them at a safe place. Krishna Kumar Singh (74), Rajputs father, had lodged a complaint against Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, for alleged abetment to suicide, in Patna on Tuesday. The Patna case was registered under various IPC sections including 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 306 (abetment of suicide). Singh accused Chakraborty, a budding TV and film actor, of having befriended his son in May 2019 with the intention of furthering her own career. Rajput was found hanging in his suburban Bandra apartment on June 14. The Mumbai Police, who are already investigating the alleged suicide by the actor, have questioned several people from the film industry in connection with the case. New Delhi, Aug 1 : President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday greeted the nation on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, suggesting people to enjoy the festival sharing happiness with the needy by maintaining social distancing and other norms to contain COVID-19 spread. "Eid Mubarak! Idu'l Zuha symbolizes the spirit of sacrifice and amity which inspires us to work for the well-being of one and all. On this occasion, let us share our happiness with the needy and follow social distancing norms and guidelines to contain COVID-19 spread," the President tweeted. He tweeted in Urdu, English and Hindi. The Prime Minister expected that the festival would inspire people to create a harmonious and inclusive society. "Eid Mubarak! Greetings on Eid al-Adha. May this day inspire us to create a just, harmonious and inclusive society. May the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered," he said in his tweet. Union Home Minister Amit Shah also took to Twitter, saying: "Greeting on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. May this day bring peace, harmony and prosperity in our society". Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha or Bakrid by stepping out in their best clothes and meeting their friends and families. As is the tradition, Muslims around the world sacrifice animals on this day. Later, a feast is prepared which is divided into three parts. One part is for family, friends and neighbours, the second part is distributed among the needy, and the last part is kept for immediate family. We are back to a One Man Show, the voter is wise to this View(s): Sajith Premadasa has long been the heir apparent of the United National Party (UNP). Many attempts, not so much by him, but others who wanted the ouster of the incumbent Leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, have pushed him to the fore to take the mantle of leadership. As a compromise he was made Deputy Leader. Push came to shove last year when the party leadership was pressured to make him the Presidential candidate. It wasnt the best induction to high intensity national politics for the young politician, son of former President R. Premadasa. He was left a bad loser. The die was however cast. He was pushed even further to lead the UNP, or break away. He opted for the latter when he couldnt succeed in removing the incumbent. He took away with him a large number of UNP MPs and supporters who feel he can deliver them salvation. Will he succeed next week, or will he be the sacrificial lamb yet again, is left to be seen. Why do you feel confident that the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) can win a majority of the seats at next weeks general elections? For too long have we been dependent on looking for solutions coming from an individual. We live in a fast changing society with complex challenges to deal with as we have recently experienced with Covid-19. Political teams are needed to steer the country. The team we are running for this election is made up of politicians with more competence, experience and vision than any other party. It also includes new and young people. Despite the limitation in post-Covid campaigning and the obvious disadvantaged access to electronic media, my team and I have travelled throughout the country taking our message. Are you realistically expecting a majority of the seats, given the fact that the trend is for the party that won the presidential election to win the parliamentary election as well? The current situation also provides the voter plenty of time to make a judgment on the performance of the president and cabinet over nearly 9 months. Usually on the assumption of a presidency the international rating agencies would reaffirm or upgrade ratings of the country. Instead Sri Lanka was downgraded. More recently other governments who are economic partners have expressed concern on economic policy direction. It appears that we are back to a one man show which could have disastrous health, economic and social consequences. The voter is wise to this. Hasnt the split in the UNP vote further reduced the SJBs chance of winning more seats? No. We have left behind the poor performance, the indecision, the bond scam, the corrupt practices of the past to forge a new beginning. We have understood and are in solidarity with the vast majority of UNP voters. We truly are the inheritors of the political philosophy championed by D S Senanayake of one nation, respect for diversity and equal opportunity for all. You broke away from the UNP, challenge the UNP and want UNP votes. Even the Courts have held the SJB is a different party recognized by the Elections Commission contesting, inter alia, against the UNP. Are you not at least partly responsible for the liquidation of the UNP? John F. Kennedy once said those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. The UNP leadership has consistently stifled proponents of genuine, dynamic change within it in favor of personal loyalty and control. In that sense, it is the UNP leadership that liquidated their own party, by refusing to accept and empower the new generation of politicians that has arisen to bring about reform. The creation of the SJB to represent this new generation is therefore the best possible response to such a situation. Some of your frontline leaders make it look like the SJBs objective is to win Sirikotha, and then the Government. How far is this the case? In a political campaign many things are said and many inferences are drawn. We are campaigning to form the next government. We believe that our programme and our team have the best possibility of success. We need to stabilize the volatile situation immediately. The global economy will contract by 4.9% in 2020. Sri Lankas budget deficit will be near 10% of GDP, foreign reserves will be dangerously low, the debt repayments in 2021 will be a challenge. In 2020 the debt repayments were possible due to the favorable reserve position we maintained in 2019. Our first priority is macroeconomic stability. We will work with India, China, EU, USA, Japan and others including the World Bank, ADB, IMF, AIIB and other multilaterals. Our strength has been international relations. We regained GSP+ and had the ban on fish exports lifted through diplomacy in difficult times. We will regain and protect Sri Lankas export markets and improve the environment for business and the private sector. This will create jobs and incomes. Meanwhile we are committed to easing the burden on the poor through targeted social welfare. In hindsight, would not the timing of your bid for the Presidency have been better in 2025? There is never a convenient time to run for president, and conditions could be so different in 2025 that to speculate on it is irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is that the candidacy of Gotabaya Rajapaksa posed and continues to pose a real danger to accountability and good governance. Ranil Wickremesinghe could not have made the case against the Rajapaksas as effectively. The caretaker government has timed the release of a committee report claiming that as Minister, you misused funds from the Central Cultural Fund for your Presidential campaign. Your comments? I vehemently reject such assertions. Why have they brought this issue up in the final week of the election campaign ? Their political motives are very clear to throw mud at our performance and vigorous campaign. The principles of natural justice have been completely violated. How could a commission write a report without consulting the parties concerned? Its shocking as its Chairman is a retired judge. It is also noted that another member of the commission is the head of the legal unit of the Presidents office. I was Minister of Cultural Affairs from December 2018 for a short period, even though the discredited report refers to the period 2016-2019. It is clear that this is a conspiracy hatched by the present government and the remnant clique of the UNP to shutdown the speedy advancement of the SJB. The UNP clique is driven by fear and unable to accept their fate and the wave of support for us. Whether your coalition wins or loses, are you willing to be part of a National Government with the UNP, SLPP, JVP, TNA or any other willing parties? We expect to form a government. We will be opposed to assisting or legitimizing any party that seeks to dismantle accountability measures, such as the Right to Information Act, the 19th Amendment and the checks and balances on the Executive President that have been such important contributions towards creating a more just society. Do you feel your father faced any specific challenges that made his political struggle difficult? Do you think you are facing similar challenges? My father rose from amongst the common people in the city of Colombo to the highest executive office in the Country. He carried on his shoulders the aspirations and dreams of the masses while breaking many barriers on his journey. The Sri Lankan political power structure as demonstrated by the first rows in Parliament, namely a family on one side, and a small clique of corrupt loyalists on the other side, want to obstruct our new team. We will embark on a new journey to build a corruption free, modern society that will treat everyone equally. The streets of Gorey saw activists march for Coco's Law after the awareness-raising event was organised by campaigner Jackie Fox along with March for Justice Ireland. They walked from Lidl up to Gorey Main street keeping social distance, and then held speeches on the Main street which attracted support from those marchers as well as passers-by. During her emotional speech, Jackie told the crowd about her daughter Nicole, the happy life she had before the difficulty with bullying began. She also spoke about the campaign journey, which has the aim of bringing in a new law to crack down on online bullying and harassment after Jackie's daughter Nicole (21) died by suicide after years of hardship at the hands of bullies. Jackie has been campaigning for two years, having marched in Dublin and spoke before a committee in the Dail. So far close to 32,000 signatures have been gathered on a petition to support Coco's Law. It is now hoped that other marches will take place in other counties but Jackie felt it was important to hold the first one in Gorey as she is now living in Courtown. Next on the agenda is Cork and it is hoped that a march will be held in Wexford town also. She was delighted with the support on the day, with some families in attendance whose children suffered in the same way. 'It went really well, we picked the perfect spot. I was a bit nervous over the social distancing but we kept our distance all the way up with a great crowd for the march itself. March for Justice Ireland have been fantastic, and the amount of people that stopped and started walking up with us great. I want to thank the people that did come with us, the passers-by and everyone who stood, listened and cared. 'I noticed I got more followers on the campaign page on social media and messages in,' she said. Although Labour TD Brendan Howlin has been supportive to Jackie since the beginning, she said she was disappointed that no local TDs or senators from North Wexford took part in the march. 'I would have been happier if local politicians came to the march or even shared the information on social media, but they said they couldn't because of the Covid-19 restrictions. The guards came and were happy with us keeping our distance from each other. 'Brendan Howlin has been pushing it forward to getting the Harmful Harassment Communications Related Act brought in and he agrees about how important it is'. To find out more about Coco's Law, the petition is available to sign online at change.org, by searching 'Bring in CoCo's Law' and you can keep up with the campaign on social media. By Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, Deputy Director General of the Information Office of China's Ministry of National Defense (MND) and Spokesperson for the MND Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense (MND) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), answers reporters' questions at a regular press conference on July 30, 2020. (Photo: mod.gov.cn) (The following English text of the press conference is for reference. In case of any divergence of interpretation, the Chinese text shall prevail.) Ren Guoqiang: With the approval of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the PLA Army and Air Force will send service members to Russia to participate in the International Army Games (IAG) 2020, which will be held from August 23 to September 5. The army troops will participate in five contests including the Tank Biathlon for tank teams, Safe Environment for nuclear biological and chemical (NBC) reconnaissance teams, Masters of Armored Vehicles for armored vehicles teams, Army Scout Masters for army reconnaissance units, and Open Water for pontoon bridge units. The air force troops will get engaged in the Airborne Platoon for airborne unit competition. At the critical moment of the global fight against COVID-19, China dispatches troops to the IAG to further strengthen strategic coordination between the Chinese and Russian militaries, deepen practical cooperation in the field of military training, carry out friendly exchanges and promote mutual learning with participating teams from the rest of the world. This is also a way to improve training and combat readiness of our troops. Ren Guoqiang: Recently, the Naval Aviation of the Southern Theater Command deployed new-type aircraft including H-6G and H-6J bombers to conduct high-intensity training during day and night time in the relevant waters of the South China Sea. The troops completed training subjects such as take-offs and landings during the day and at night, long-range raids and strikes against maritime targets, and achieved expected effect. This training is a routine arrangement within the annual plan. It can help hone skills of the pilots and improve all-weather combat capability of the troops. Question: We have noticed that this year's flood control situation is very serious in China. Many troops are still fighting on the front line in hard-hit provinces such as Fujian, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Anhui, racing against time to save the lives of the people and their property. Could you brief us on the militarys participation in flood control and disaster relief? Answer: Since the start of this year's flood season, there have been floods and geological disasters in many provinces in China. President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to disaster control and relief and has made important instructions, directing the PLA and the People's Armed Police Force (PAP) to actively participate in rescue and disaster relief. The peoples military always follows the Partys command. Soon after the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly transferred to the battleground against the floods. Following President Xis instructions, the military took saving peoples lives and property as its priority and made quick efforts to respond to the floods. They went all out to carry out rescue and disaster relief work, and have achieved remarkable results. As of July 28, the Chinese military has deployed 725,000 soldiers, 228,500 militia, 7,749 boats, and 54,116 construction machinery and vehicles in total to participate in 3,749 rescue operations. The military has assisted in the transfer of 137,000 people and over 4,560 tons of materials from the disaster-stricken areas. There are over 11.8 million sandbags filled, 3,800 piping leaks blocked, 900 kilometers of embankments reinforced, and 224 kilometers of roads restored. The military always follows the instructions of the Party. It is the unchanging soul and purpose of the peoples military to obey the Party's command and serve the people. Since the beginning of this year, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee, the CMC, and President Xi, the military has been actively involved in both the fight against COVID-19 and the flood. Together with all Chinese people, we will overcome all the hardships and difficulties, fight the flood with unity and courage and strive to win the final victory in flood control and disaster relief. Here are some photos of battling the flood. Question: US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in a recent speech that China is undermining international rules and taking malicious and coercive actions. He also said that Chinas aggressive activities including military drills targeting the Taiwan region in the East China Sea and the South China Sea will increase the risk of miscalculation. Whats your comment? Answer: The remarks from the US side about China are groundless and unreasonable, full of arrogance, bias, attacks and smears. We are firmly opposed to these remarks. It is a well-known fact that the US always bends international rules as it sees fit and is aggressively pursuing "America first" and unilateral bullism. Unlike the US, who has withdrawn from many international organizations and treaties, China is taking solid actions to fulfill its international responsibilities and obligations and joined the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on the same day the US announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO). The US has held and bragged about some highly-targeted military exercises in the Indo-Pacific region, deployed game-changing weapons and equipment to the region, and even openly pursued an alliance against China. We urge the US to stop undermining world peace and regional stability, and stop sowing discord among countries. Recently, the US has strengthened its military contacts with the Taiwan region, promoted arms sales to Taiwan and floated possible joint military training with Taiwan. These actions have sent extremely wrong messages to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities. These are the latest moves from the US that violate the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques. These attempts to contain China with Taiwan interfere in China's internal affairs and undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. They are completely wrong and extremely dangerous. The US should realize that China must and will be reunified, and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation must and will be achieved. We can always seek wisdom from the past to enlighten the days to come. The past has proved that both China and the US would gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. In the future, a community with a shared future and diversity is the only prospect for human development. We hope that the US can abandon the Cold War mindset and zero-sum concept, view China-US relationship and the military-to-military relationship in a rational way, stop the negative words and deeds, and do meaningful things to improve bilateral ties and mil-mil relationship and protect the common interests of China and the US. Question: In July, the US Department of State issued US Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea, claiming that China is seeking to build a "maritime empire" in the South China Sea. It accused China of causing instability in the South China Sea by carrying out military exercises in waters off the Xisha Islands. Meanwhile, the US military has posted on multiple Twitter accounts in a high-profile manner that it has conducted dual-carrier operations in the South China Sea twice this month. It is reported that this is the first time the US military has made such an arrangement in many years, which will seriously undermine the peace and stability of the South China Sea. Whats your comment? Answer: We are firmly opposed to the US statement. Ignoring historical and objective facts on the South China Sea issue, the US side has flagrantly violated its own commitment to not taking side on the sovereignty claims of the South China Sea, willfully and groundlessly criticized China, sowed discord among countries in the region and even conducted dual-carrier operations in the South China Sea. These have fully exposed the "hegemonic mentality and double standards of the US. It calls itself an "arbitrator" of the South China Sea issue, but is in fact actually a disruptor of regional peace, cooperation, and international relations. China has indisputable sovereignty over South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters, which has full historical and legal basis. At present, with the joint efforts of China and Asean countries, the situation in the South China Sea is generally stable, and positive progress has been made in relevant consultations. China urges the US to stop making false remarks, stop taking provocative military actions, and stop sowing discord among countries in the region. The attempts made by the US concerning the South China Sea can only make China more firmly defend its own sovereignty and security, and to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea. Question: We have noticed that the US and the Taiwan region have been continuously strengthening military exchanges recently. The US Department of State has just approved a new arms sale to Taiwan worth 620 million US dollars, which was acclaimed as a helpful move to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the region by Taiwans defense authorities. At the same time, a promotional video of the US Special Operations Forces showed images of joint military training with Taiwan. Taiwan media said it was a clear strategic message to the Chinese mainland. Whats your comment? Answer: In regard to the US announcement of a new round of arms sales to Taiwan, China has stated its solemn position and imposed sanctions on Lockheed Martin, the main contractor of the arms sale. The US sending military personnel to Taiwan for exercises and exchanges has seriously violated the fundamental principles of international relations and the political commitment the US has made to China. It has a severe negative impact on bilateral relations and mil-mil relationship between China and the US, and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. It has sent a wrong message to "Taiwan independence" separatist forces and is a deliberate provocation. The Chinese side has expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to it and has lodged solemn representations to the US side. We urge the US side to immediately correct its mistake, stop its official and military contacts of any form with Taiwan, earnestly abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, and promise that no similar incident would occur again. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. The future of Taiwan lies in reunification and the welfare of the Taiwan compatriots lies in national rejuvenation. There is no way out for Taiwan to bank on foreign support, and it is doomed to be futile for the US to contain China with Taiwan. We have the firm will, full confidence and sufficient capability to thwart any form of external interference and separatist attempts for "Taiwan independence". And we will resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and safeguard peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Question: China and Latin American countries are working together to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Please brief us on the anti-pandemic cooperation between the PLA and Latin American militaries. Answer: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has been closely following the development of the pandemic in Latin America. China and Latin America have helped each other in the fight against the pandemic and demonstrated their profound friendship with practical actions. At the request of the militaries of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela, China has provided them with medical supplies including protective clothing and surgical masks. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of China-Latin America diplomatic relations. Over the past six decades, China and Latin America have been working hand in hand and become "bosom friends living thousands of miles away from each other". Under the guidance of the leaders of China and Latin American countries, the PLA and Latin American militaries have carried out active and practical military exchanges and cooperation, and achieved fruitful results in high-level exchanges, military training, and personnel training. Today, the relationship between the PLA and the militaries of Latin American countries has been further improved through collaboration on the COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control. China will actively deepen military relationship with Latin American countries and make positive contributions to deepening bilateral cooperation. Question: According to reports, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) recently held a series of video conferences on defense affairs. Could you please brief us on the participation of the Chinese military? Answer: From July 7 to 8, representatives from the Chinese military attended video conferences of the Asean Defense Senior Officials Meeting Plus (ADSOM Plus) and the ASEAN Regional Forum Security Policy Conference (ASPC). The participating parties exchanged ideas on topics including the militaries participation in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and current international and regional security, and exchanged views on strengthening the coordination between the Asean Defense Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM Plus) and Asean Regional Forum (ARF). The Chinese side introduced the Chinese military's experience in the domestic fight against COVID-19 and the international cooperation in fighting the pandemic, and proposed that all parties should strengthen capacity building in jointly coping with non-traditional security challenges. The meetings have yielded positive results in enhancing understanding and building consensus. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the defense departments and militaries of China and Asean countries have maintained close communication and coordination, explored exchanges and cooperation under ling-term pandemic prevention and control and achieved positive results in providing anti-pandemic material assistance, dispatching medical expert groups, and holding video conferences in exchange of experience. Next, the Chinese military will continue to strengthen practical cooperation with relevant parties in the fields of pandemic response, joint exercises and training and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief so as to jointly maintain regional security and stability. Question: Recently, the Japanese government issued the Defense of Japan 2020 (Annual White Paper), claiming that China's military development lacks transparency, China has unilaterally changed the status quo in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and China has used anti-pandemic assistance as a pretext to seek its own political interests. It also described the cross-Strait relations as China-Taiwan relations. What's your comment? Answer: On July 14, the Japanese side released the Defense of Japan 2020 white paper and its contents related to China are inconsistent with facts. The white paper made irresponsible remarks on Chinas national defense and military development and exaggerated the so-called military threat of China. It distorted facts and discredited China on issues such as the South China Sea, the East China Sea and Chinas pandemic response, and made extremely irresponsible remarks on the Taiwan question. We are strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposed to these contents and have lodged solemn representations to the Japanese side. At present, China-Japan relationship is in a critical period of improvement and development. We urge the Japanese side to take history as a mirror and look to the future, and stop making wrong remarks. Following the strategic consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, the Japanese side should work with the Chinese side towards the same goal, jointly promote a constructive bilateral security relationship, and make positive efforts to enhance mutual political and security trust, safeguard regional peace and stability, and promote the continuous improvement and development of China-Japan relationship. Question: Recently, provinces across China have released the results of College Entrance Examination (CEE) successively, and students are filling in their application forms for colleges. Would you please brief us on the progress of the admission of Chinas military schools? Answer: According to this years arrangement in military school admission, in order to cultivate new-type high-quality and specialized military talent and meet new requirements of the college entrance examination reform, the 27 military schools plan to admit around 13,000 high school graduates from 31 provinces with strict qualification requirements and admission standards. Currently, political reviews, physical examinations and application interviews are under way in various provinces. Students intending to apply for military schools can pay close attention to the information released by the admission offices of respective provinces or provincial military commands to learn about admission requirements. Besides the programs for officer candidates admitted in advance by the military schools, students can also apply for programs for civilian students in the National University of Defense Technology and the three military medical universities of the PLA Army, Navy and Air Force. What needs to be emphasized is that military school enrollment will be carried out in strict accordance with enrollment plans and procedures and there are no so-called additional or internal quotas. Students and their parents are welcome to keep watch on the enrollment to maintain the fairness and justice of military school admission. Question: Are there any new policies for the enrollment of soldiers to military schools this year? Answer: In order to implement the decision made by the Central Military Commission in military reform, broaden the channels for selecting officer candidates from enlisted personnel, and attract enlistees with great potential and high CEE scores, a pilot program has been set for enlistees recruited from colleges (with their college admission qualification reserved or being recruited in the military with their names still on the school roll) in the "Double First-Class" initiative (namely world-class universities and first-class disciplines). According to the pilot program, such enlistees are exempted from exams to be admitted to military schools. However, their CEE scores should have reached the threshold for the first-tier universities in their provinces and they should have scored high in basic military skills tests, and the majors they study should be in need in the military. In addition, they still need to meet the political, physical, mental, and other requirements for military school admission. For enlisted personnel who have participated in important operations or the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, the military has identified how to calculate the bonus scores for them and applicable situations. Besides, the service time requirement has been relaxed for enlisted personnel who have participated in UN peacekeeping operations or overseas maritime escort missions to apply for vocational and technical education for non-commissioned officers. Question: According to media reports, the PLA Tibet Military Command has conducted a number of military exercises at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters on the plateau area. Please brief us on it. Answer: Recently, the PLA Tibet Military Command has organized day-and-night fire strike drills involving multiple types of artillery and artillery fire assault drills in high altitude areas, aiming to test the troops' long-range precision strikes and fire assault capabilities in plateau environment. The exercises mentioned above are within the annual training plan and are not targeted at any specific country. Question: Since the clash between China and India in the Galwan Valley region, the border troops of the two militaries have held multiple rounds of talks. Please tell us more about the relevant situation. Answer: China and India have conducted effective communication and coordination through both diplomatic and military channels since the clash at the Galwan Valley occurred. At present, the situation in this region has been deescalated, and the disengagement between the border troops of the two countries are gradually carried forward. China and India are important neighbors to each other, and maintaining peace and tranquility in the border area is in the common interests of both sides. China hopes that the Indian side will work with the Chinese side toward the same goal, follow the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, bear in mind the importance to protect overall China-India relationship and maintain regional peace and stability, focus on cooperation, properly address differences, and earnestly promote the relationship between the two countries and the two militaries to continuously develop along the correct direction of friendly cooperation. The 93rd anniversary of the founding of the PLA is to come in two days. In the past 93 years, under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the heroic peoples military has has fought numerous battles, overcame great hardships and difficulties, and won glorious victories one after another. It has played a great and historical role in the process that the Chinese nation stood up, became prosperous and grew strong, and made important contributions to safeguarding world peace and prosperity. Since the beginning of 2020, under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, the Chinese military has thoroughly implemented President Xi Jinping thought on strengthening the military, faithfully fulfilled its missions and tasks, and comprehensively strengthened training and preparedness. In the fights for defending the motherland, pandemic prevention and control, poverty alleviation, and flood prevention and disaster relief, it has always obeyed the command of the Party and served the people, and has not been afraid of hardship and sacrifice. It has lived up to the peoples expectations through hard work. On the occasion of the August 1st Army Day, the People's military will report to the Party and the people with victory and dedication, while celebrating its own birthday! Here, we are willing to extend our high respect to all service members, in particular, to the border troops, and officers and soldiers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and the flood. The whole military will continue to carry forward the fine traditions, always maintain the nature, purpose, and inherent qualities of the people's military, shoulder the historical mission of strengthening the Chinese military in the new era, and make new contributions to realizing the Chinese Dream of strengthening the military and safeguarding world peace with concrete actions. Advertisement Strict social distancing measures were in place during the third day of the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca amid the coronavirus pandemic. A limited number of Muslim pilgrims of Saudi Arabia residents gathered at the Great Mosque in Mecca to pray during one of the Islamic rituals of pilgrimage, the Tawaf Al-Ifadah. The symbolic ritual of 'Stoning the Devil', throwing seven pebbles at the largest of the three pillars, known as Jamrat Al-Aqaba took place on the third day of the hajj. Pilgrims were required to wear face masks and lines were marked out across the floor of the Great Mosque to ensure citizens adhered to social distancing guidelines throughout. Strict social distancing measures were in place during the third day of the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca on Friday, amid the coronavirus pandemic A limited number of Muslim pilgrims of Saudi Arabia residents gathered at the Great Mosque in Mecca to pray during one of the Islamic rituals of pilgrimage, the Tawaf Al-Ifadah Pilgrims were required to wear face masks and lines were marked out across the floor of the Great Mosque to ensure citizens adhered to social distancing guidelines This year, as few as 1,000 pilgrims allowed to preform the hajj compared with the 2.5million pilgrims last year as coronavirus drastically affects the pilgrimage Saudi authorities took coronavirus precautions, including monitoring pilgrims movements with electronic wristbands and requiring them to quarantine before and after the hajj The hajj pilgrimage has been drastically affected by the virus, as last year, some 2.5million pilgrims took part. But this year, for the first time in modern history, as few as 1,000 pilgrims already residing in Saudi Arabia were allowed to preform the hajj. Strict preventative health measures have been taken by the Saudi authorities to ensure that pilgrims are free of coronavirus. Numerous precautions were taken, including testing pilgrims for the virus, monitoring their movement with electronic wristbands and requiring them to quarantine before and after the hajj. Pilgrims were selected after applying through an online portal, and all had to be between 20 and 50 years of age. The hajj, both physically and spiritually demanding, intends to bring about greater humility and unity among Muslims. It is required of all Muslims to perform once in a lifetime. Pilgrims were selected after applying through an online portal, and all had to be between 20 and 50 years of age This year, for the first time in modern history, as few as 1,000 pilgrims already residing in Saudi Arabia were allowed to preform the hajj Strict preventative health measures have been taken by the Saudi authorities to ensure that pilgrims are free of coronavirus The symbolic ritual of 'Stoning the Devil', throwing seven pebbles at the largest of the three pillars, known as Jamrat Al-Aqaba took place on the third day of hajj The hajj intends to bring about greater humility and unity among Muslims and is required of all Muslims to perform once in a lifetime Islam's most holiest site, the Kaaba at the centre of the Great Mosque in Mecca, was also given a new 4.5m silk cover as part of the annual hajj pilgrimage. More than 150 artisans and technicians, with the help of two cranes, put the black cloth, known as the Kiswa, over the four sides of the Kaaba. The cloth is split over five pieces up to almost 50ft in length and is made of high-quality silk and embroidered with gold and silver. It costs 4.5million to make and is traditionally embroidered and stitched together in Saudi Arabia. The cloth covers the Kaaba - the most sacred site in the Islam faith and the spot Muslims face when they say their prayers five times a day. Every year the Kiswa is replaced as part of the five-day pilgrimage which this year has been restricted for just 10,000 people to participate in due to coronavirus. Mask-wearing workers carefully pull the new Kiswa up the side of the Kaaba and in place ahead of the removal of the older cloth. Gold and silver are used to decorate the silk cloth More than 150 people took part in the job of draping the Kaaba with the new Kiswa with the help of two mechanical cranes. The Kaaba is at the centre of the Great Mosque in Mecca The Kiswa is embroidered with gold and silver threads. Here a worker pulls the cloth over the Kaaba. The annual event ties in with the hajj pilgrimage The final result as the new Kiswa is placed over the Kaaba in Mecca's Great Mosque. The five pieces cover the four sides of the stone structure, and a curtain for the door Out with the old Kiswa, and in with the new. The old cloth is replaced by workers who use long ropes while standing at the stop of the Kaaba Embroidered on the kiswa are Quranic verses which are now done with help by computers, thus increasing the speed of production. Slide me Not this year: Muslim pilgrims touch the Kaaba (right) - the cubic building which Muslims face when praying - during last year's hajj, a practice which has been banned in 2020 over coronavirus fears. This year (left) the story is very different What is the Kiswa? The Kiswa is a silk cloth placed over the Kaaba at the centre of the Great Mosque in Mecca - the holiest site in Islam - and is replaced each year as part of the Hajj pilgrimage. Its origin is from when the Prophet Muhammed covering the Kaaba with Yemeni clothes following the conquest of Makkah in the ninth Hijri year, as he performed his farewell pilgrimage. The colours of the covering has seen regular changes through the ages, including white, red and yellow. But today it is black with gold and silver threads embroidered in it. It is split into five pieces to cover four sides of the Kaaba and a curtain for the door to the holy site. Up to 50ft in length, it weighs almost 1,500 lbs in high-quality silk. It costs $6million to make and is traditionally paid for by the Saudi Arabia kingdom. Advertisement Stringent protocols were in place today, including the wearing of face masks with the job carried out by staff of the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques. Deputy head Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al-Mansouri said each of the four parts of the Kiswa was separately raised and tied at the top in preparation for stretching the cloth down. Then, the old cloth was removed from the bottom and the new one remained. Among the workers, photographers took pictures as the new cloth was unveiled this morning. The Kaaba represents the metaphorical house of God and the oneness of God in Islam. Saudi Arabia stakes its reputation on its guardianship of Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina and its peaceful organisation of hajj. Over the years, the kingdom has spent billions of dollars on making one of the world's biggest religious gatherings safe. This year it has faced the challenge of making hajj, a once-in-a-lifetime duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it and a major source of income for the government, safe from Covid-19. It has dramatically reduced the number of pilgrims to ensure social distancing measures are adhered to. The hajj minister said in June the number of pilgrims would be limited to around 1,000, but no official number has been given for those performing the rituals this week. Some local media cited a figure of around 10,000. Saudi healthcare and security professionals, on the frontlines of the battle against the disease, make up about 30 per cent of the total, with the remainder coming from 160 nationalities residing in the Kingdom. Mask-wearing pilgrims circled the Kaaba in small groups of 50 people yesterday, each keeping a safe distance apart and accompanied by a health professional monitoring their movements. Workers bring in the Kiswa into the Great Mosque on their shoulders and heads ahead of it being draped over the Kaaba Nearly 1,500lb of silk, enough to cover the Kaaba estimated to measure 50ft high, is made before gold and silver are threaded into the cloth. Here a worker eyes up the length Workers carefully adjust the new Kiswa, which is replaced each year as part of the annual haj pilgrimage Indication of why workers had to take care when replacing the Kiswa over the Kaaba. The cloth precisely wraps around the Meezab, a golden spout from where rainwater falls Using a crane, workers were able to easily add the new Kiswa, while also taking the replaced one down. Due to coronavirus, they all had to wear face masks while carrying out the job Muslim pilgrims maintain social distancing as they circle the Kaaba the day before the draping was repalced. The hajj ministry said non-Saudi residents of the kingdom from around 160 countries competed in the online selection process but it did not say how many people applied Saudi authorities initially said only around 1,000 pilgrims residing in the kingdom would be permitted for the hajj, but local media reports say as many as 10,000 will be allowed to take part In past years, a sea of pilgrims dressed in white terrycloth garments would start to gather at Mount Arafat, or hill of mercy as it's known, before dawn and remain there until nightfall, spending the day in deep contemplation and worship. It is common to see pilgrims with tears streaming down their faces, their hands raised in worship on the slopes of the rocky hill where the Prophet Muhammad called for equality and unity among Muslims. This year, the sliver of pilgrims performing the hajj arrived at Mount Arafat before noon by bus today. They are travelling in small groups of 20, following strict guidelines around social distancing, and have undergone tests for the Covid-19 disease and were in quarantine before the hajj. (Photo from (l) to (r)): duncan c on Flickr via CC/ Sylvia L. on Yelp The restaurant and bar industry has been hit hard since shelter in place started in March, forcing a number of businesses to shutter permanently. Here's a list of noteworthy establishments that have closed during the month of July. 4505 Burgers and BBQ Popular barbecue restaurant, 4505 Burgers and BBQ, made the decision to shutter its Oakland location this month. "Unfortunately this hiatus is the best option available to us," the restaurant said in a statement. "This was not an easy decision, but for the time being, its for the best." Read more Arts Cafe Owners Sarah and Hae Ryong Youn of the tiny diner, Art's Cafe, have closed shop after 30 years in business. The restaurant had been closed since the start of shelter in place in March, and the Youns opted to retire rather than reopen the restaurant. Read more Badlands The popular nightclub in the Castro District announced its permanent closure via a Facebook post in late July, stating a new owner would be taking over the space. The space had faced previous allegations of racial discrimination in previous years, including some new allegations, according to Bay Area Reporter. That new bar is reportedly reopening in the fall, but the new name and owner were not yet mentioned. Bay Area Reporter Beachside Coffee Bar & Kitchen Nine years after it opened in the Outer Sunset, Beachside Coffee Bar & Kitchen permanently closed, thanking customers for their support through the years. The restaurant made the announcement on Instagram, writing, "This pandemic has been difficult for many small businesses, us included, but heres to positive thoughts of what the future will bring as we all move forward." Read more Photo by Theresa D. on Yelp Izakaya Roku / JapaCurry Owner Jay Hamada closed shop on his brick-and-mortar spot and was looking for an interested party to take over its popular food truck, JapaCurry. "We had an amazing time serving food and drinks to San Francisco and the Bay Area," the restaurant wrote in an Instagram post. "We saw so many smiles, celebrations, and people enjoying our food. Well miss you all. Read more Jeanne D'Arc After 48 years in business, the popular Jeanne D'Arc shuttered, confirming its closure on Bastille Day in a Facebook post. Nestled inside the Cornell Hotel de France, the restaurant was known for its prix-fixe menu and its authentic French cuisine. Read more Louis' Restaurant The long-running restaurant shuttered in July because of the pandemic, after 83 years in its iconic location near Sutro Baths, The Chronicle reported. "It was a privilege to operate in arguably the most beautiful setting in the world," the restaurant said in a statement on Facebook. Read more Nizarios Pizza Nizario's Pizza closed its Castro location after being unable to reach a lease agreement with its landlord, after nearly 20 years in business. Nizario's three other San Francisco locations still remain in operation. Read more Odwalla Popular juice company Odwalla closed in July after parent company Coca-Cola made the decision to shut down the business. The company got its start in 1980, starting as a small operation in Santa Cruz and selling its juice directly to local restaurants. Read more Peggy Sues The 1950s-themed diner shuttered after 20 years in San Jose, posting a sign that read, "Thank you for your support and patronage over the past 20 years at this location. It has been an honor and privilege to serve you." Read more The House Popular North Beach restaurant, The House, announced in a Facebook post that owners Larry and Angela Tse decided to close the 26-year-old restaurant after careful consideration, thanking the community for supporting the restaurant over the years. Read more The Summer Place Dive bar The Summer Place permanently closed after 23 years of being operated by owner Suzy Gordon and her two sons, Hoodline reported. Hoodline Them Ky Vietnamese restaurant Them Ky in the Tenderloin has shuttered after 27 years in business, Tablehopper reported. Tablehopper Velvet Cantina Mission eatery Velvet Cantina decided to close its doors permanently this month, reopening briefly as a bottle shop in May, before deciding not to renew its lease, Eater SF reported. Eater SF Alix Martichoux Vive La Tarte Known for its popular tacro, a meat-filled pastry that is a cross between a croissant and taco, Vive La Tarte made the decision to shutter its Ferry Building location, the owners told The Chronicle. Vive La Tarte's two other locations, in Noe Valley and SoMa, remain in operation. San Francisco Chronicle Scroll through the slideshow at the top of the article to see other restaurants that have shuttered this year. MORE FOOD + DRINK COVERAGE: Face masks have more or less become part of daily life as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Too make them a bit more bearable, some firms have given customers the opportunity to buy ones with a custom design. Cameron Mattis, from New York, thought he'd come up with a very bright idea when he decided to use a photo of the lower half of his face, in the hope the mask would 'blend in'. But in revealing the pictures of him wearing the mask on Twitter, Cameron said the picture of his face was printed 20 per cent too big, making him look ridiculous. His tweet, which went viral and was liked more than 600,000 times, prompted dozens of people from the US and the UK to reply with their own pictures of their 'face' masks. Here Femail reveals some of the funniest face mask fails, including Cameron's original. Too make face masks a bit more bearable, some firms have given customers the opportunity to buy ones with a custom design. Cameron Mattis, from New York, opted for a photo of the lower half of his face, in the hope the mask would 'blend in'. But the photo was printed 20 per cent 'too large', with hilarious results His tweet, which went viral and was liked more than 600,000 times, prompted dozens of people to reply with their own pictures of their 'face' masks. Pictured: Cameron in the street wearing his oversized 'face' mask, and right, with the mask upside down Fellow Twitter user Jamie Emerson, from Charlotte, North Carolina, replied with her 'epic fail' of a mask, which bore her laughing face Debs Bascombe, from Devon said the picture of her face on her mask had come out even bigger Jason Smith, from Stoughton, in West Sussex, shared this hilarious photo of him and a companion with their masks featuring oversized pictures of their faces Nicola Hudson, from Scotland, told Cameron, 'I feel your pain' as she shared pictures of hers' and a companion's masks Twitter user E Comment, from Florida, said their custom mask was 'way more than 20%' too big. In fact, it was so big that the man's chin had entirely disappeared US-based Twitter user @real_diculous claimed their own mask fail was 'way worse' - and it certainly looked that way Susan Walsh, from Hayes, Middlesex, claimed she thought her mask was 'great' Tim Oldland, from Essex in South-East England, shared his ballooned mask fail Jack Hall, from Watford, Hertfordshire, had opted for a quilted mask, but his face still came out a bit big A mask worn by Haley Williams, from Hot Springs, Arkansas, had really zoomed in too much on the picture of her face User @jasperM54 shared their mask and told Cameron, 'I feel your pain' User @FireMuzzy bucked the trend with their perfectly aligned mask Firefighters on Friday evening were battling the Apple fire, which has burned 900 acres in the Cherry Valley area of Riverside County. The vegetation fire was reported at 4:55 p.m. in the 9000 block of Oak Glen Road, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. There is zero per cent containment. More than 300 firefighters, several helicopters and air tankers responded to the fire. Evacuation orders are in place for residents south of the county line, north of Dutton Street and east of Oak Glen Road. They also include residents north of Gilman Street in the Banning Bluff area. An evacuation centre has been opened at Beaumont High School for people and animals. Fernando Herrera, a public information officer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Riverside County Fire Department, said about 1,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate. He said open land with thick vegetation has provided quite a bit of fuel for that fire to continue to burn (and) have a lot of intensity. There have been no reports of structure damage, but the fire has come very close to homes. A lot of peoples backyards were on fire, Herrera said. It ran in between homes and around homes. It definitely was very threatening. We could have lost homes, but we brought in a massive amount of ground resources to do structure defence, protect the life and property of all these residents. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Contributed Photo / Department of Justice / Contributed Photo A New Haven man pleaded guilty Friday to federal offenses, admitting he robbed banks in East Haven and Windsor Locks while he was on federal supervised released, according to authorities. Gary W. Bornman, 58, waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty to two counts of bank robbery. He also admitted he violated the conditions of his supervised release from a previous federal case, according to a news release from the office of U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham. Sixth class pupils from St Patricks NS were presented with hoodies that say Class of 2020-School shut since March during their graduation celebration The sixth class pupils at St Patrick's NS Bearna Chle recently enjoyed a special get-together to mark the end of their time in primary school. The school prepared a video message with words of congratulations for each child from their teachers and parents. The video also included a poem and song especially composed for the occasion and photos and memories for the children's time at the school. Each child also received a special certificate to mark the occasion of their graduation. Following all guidelines, the children and their parents had the chance to meet up for the first time since March with a gathering in a public field in Kilcarra. The event was organised by the parents' committee and children enjoyed pizza and sweet treats while catching up with their friends. The school's parents association had also arranged for special sixth class hoodies printed with each child's name and the phrase 'Class of 2020-School shut since March' as a reminder of their time in St Patrick's NS. Patna: As six people died due to lightning in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed deep condolences and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh each to the families of the deceased, said Chief Minister`s Office (CMO). "Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed deep condolences on the death of five people in Aurangabad and one in Banka due to lightning. The Chief Minister has given instructions to grant Rs 4 lakh ex-gratia to the next of kin of the deceased," CMO stated in a release. Meanwhile, eight people in Bihar died after being struck by lightning - three each in Sheikhpura and Jamui, and one each in Siwan and Begusarai districts, the Bihar Chief Minister`s Office (CMO) said on Thursday. As per an official release, Chief Minister Kumar announced an ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh each to the next of the kin of the deceased. Kumar also appealed people to follow the orders of the authorities and avoid coming out of their homes. While 26 teams of National Disaster Response Force/State Disaster Response Force have been deployed in affected areas, according to the state government. There are many things Americans find confounding about Australia, including that koalas are not bears, the correct ratio of butter to Vegemite, and the superiority of compulsory voting. I am happy to tackle all of these issues with them, but theres one fact about Australian life I cannot justify to befuddled foreigners, and that is that we are not led by an Australian. Palaces and princesses and tiaras are potent pieces of childhood mythology. But lets not mistake a story about a kingdom far, far away with happily ever after. Credit:Getty Images In these apocalyptic days of fires and plagues, as nationalists and morons stride the world stage in ill-fitting suits, it feels churlish, even ungrateful, to mention the very nice lady in natty pastels who is in charge of our country. The recent release of the Palace Letters from the time of Gough Whitlams dismissal was the inconvenient reminder we all needed. Although the Queens fingerprints are not on the murder weapon, as The Sydney Morning Heralds editorial put it, it is clear she did not, at the very least, do anything to dissuade her private secretary from signing off on the dismissal of our prime minister. Whenever the topic of the Queen comes up over here, I try the usual line shes technically head of state, she doesnt really do anything, the Commonwealth Games are great but even as I say it, I see how confusing this arrangement is to outsiders. Including British people, whod probably rather have a rotating cast member from Home and Away live at Buckingham Palace and cut ribbons. Theres a reason why no one outside Australia uses the term head of state as much as we do. Its to justify something which makes no sense. Three years into their new careers as White House officials, Ivanka Trump, the presidents eldest daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner, reported income of at least $36 million in 2019, according to financial disclosure reports made public on Friday. The couples investments, mostly in real estate, were worth at least $204 million and as much as $783 million, roughly the same as their maximum value of $786 million in 2018. The documents, like other federal disclosure reports, show ranges of income and asset values. In some cases, they require only a minimum figure, making it impossible to discern a precise maximum figure for income. (President Trump also released his annual financial disclosure report on Friday.) During 2019, the couples income could have been as much as $157 million, and possibly more. That compares with a range in 2018 of $29 million to $135 million. Today we will run through one way of estimating the intrinsic value of AKITA Drilling Ltd. (TSE:AKT.A) by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. One way to achieve this is by employing the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Believe it or not, it's not too difficult to follow, as you'll see from our example! We generally believe that a company's value is the present value of all of the cash it will generate in the future. However, a DCF is just one valuation metric among many, and it is not without flaws. For those who are keen learners of equity analysis, the Simply Wall St analysis model here may be something of interest to you. See our latest analysis for AKITA Drilling Crunching the numbers We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company's cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. To start off with, we need to estimate the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, and so the sum of these future cash flows is then discounted to today's value: 10-year free cash flow (FCF) forecast 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 Levered FCF (CA$, Millions) -CA$8.0m CA$5.00m CA$4.54m CA$4.26m CA$4.11m CA$4.02m CA$3.98m CA$3.98m CA$3.99m CA$4.02m Growth Rate Estimate Source Analyst x1 Analyst x1 Est @ -9.27% Est @ -5.99% Est @ -3.7% Est @ -2.09% Est @ -0.96% Est @ -0.18% Est @ 0.37% Est @ 0.76% Present Value (CA$, Millions) Discounted @ 14% -CA$7.0 CA$3.9 CA$3.1 CA$2.6 CA$2.2 CA$1.9 CA$1.6 CA$1.4 CA$1.3 CA$1.1 ("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = CA$11m Story continues The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business's cash flow after the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield (1.7%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 14%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2030 (1 + g) (r g) = CA$4.0m (1 + 1.7%) (14% 1.7%) = CA$34m Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= CA$34m ( 1 + 14%)10= CA$9.4m The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is CA$20m. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Compared to the current share price of CA$0.3, the company appears quite undervalued at a 35% discount to where the stock price trades currently. The assumptions in any calculation have a big impact on the valuation, so it is better to view this as a rough estimate, not precise down to the last cent. dcf Important assumptions Now the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate, and of course, the actual cash flows. If you don't agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at AKITA Drilling as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 14%, which is based on a levered beta of 2.000. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. Moving On: Whilst important, the DCF calculation shouldn't be the only metric you look at when researching a company. It's not possible to obtain a foolproof valuation with a DCF model. Preferably you'd apply different cases and assumptions and see how they would impact the company's valuation. If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. Can we work out why the company is trading at a discount to intrinsic value? For AKITA Drilling, we've put together three essential aspects you should assess: Risks: To that end, you should learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with AKITA Drilling (including 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) . Future Earnings: How does AKT.A's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart. Other Solid Businesses: Low debt, high returns on equity and good past performance are fundamental to a strong business. Why not explore our interactive list of stocks with solid business fundamentals to see if there are other companies you may not have considered! PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every Canadian stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com. MINSK -- Belarusian presidential candidate Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose recent campaign events have drawn large crowds, staged three rallies on August 1 ahead of the country's August 9 election. Tsikhanouskaya was appearing on August 1 at rallies in the Belarusian towns of Hrodno, Vaukavysk, and Slonim. Thousands of people were attended the rallies, with aerial footage of the event in Hrodno showing a large crowd gathered near a stage from where she spoke. Tsikhanouskaya announced her candidacy after her husband, vlogger and activist Syarhey Tsikhanouski, was arrested and banned from the election after he had expressed his intention to run for the presidency. "He was detained and thrown into jail. But it just so happens that he had a wife who also wants changes!" Tsikhanouskaya told the cheering crowd in Hrodno. Tsikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former teacher, has said that all events planned for her campaign would proceed despite a warning from the Belarusian Security Council about the need for additional security measures at public events. The warning came after Belarusian authorities earlier this week detained 33 contractors from the Russian private military group Vagner on allegations that they were trying to destabilize the country ahead of the election. Moscow has rejected the claims, saying the contractors were only transiting through Belarus on their way to Turkey and "a third country." Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office said Kyiv would ask Belarus to hand over 28 of the detainees on charges of fighting alongside Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. At least 63,000 supporters turned out for Tsikhanouskaya's rally in Minsk on July 30, according to the Vyasna human rights center, making it one of the largest opposition rallies in the country since the start of the campaign for the August 9 presidential election. Tsikhanouskaya and several other candidates are running to unseat President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who is facing mounting public opposition after 26 years in power. The campaign has become contentious since the arrest of hundreds of people, including activists and bloggers, as the government has cracked down on rallies and demonstrations supporting opposition candidates. Tsikhanouskaya spoke on July 31 in Lida, promising peace and an increase in pensions. She asked civil servants not to be afraid to express their opinion and not to falsify election results, even if threatened with dismissal. Only about 300 people turned out for the event, but participants told RFE/RLs Belarus Service that rain was a factor and they said more people would have come if the rally had been held more centrally or at a location easy to reach on public transportation. The Investigative Committee of Belarus says Tsikhanouskaya's husband has been charged with "committing actions to incite social hatred and the assault of law enforcement officers." A statement from the committee on June 30 said Tsikhanouski was charged with preparing mass disorder -- along with veteran opposition politician Mikalay Statkevich, who was also jailed in the run-up to the polls, and several unnamed individuals. If convicted, they could be sentenced to eight years in prison. Tsikhanouskaya has rejected the charges against her husband. With reporting by Current Time and Reuters Operating in the shadows of the online marketplace, specialized tech companies you've likely never heard of are tapping vast troves of our personal data to generate secret "surveillance scores" - digital mug shots of millions of Americans - that supposedly predict our future behavior. The firms sell their scoring services to major businesses across the U.S. economy. People with low scores can suffer harsh consequences. CoreLogic and TransUnion say that scores they peddle to landlords can predict whether a potential tenant will pay the rent on time, be able to "absorb rent increases," or break a lease. Large employers use HireVue, a firm that generates an "employability" score about candidates by analyzing "tens of thousands of factors," including a person's facial expressions and voice intonations. Other employers use Cornerstone's score, which considers where a job prospect lives and which web browser they use to judge how successful they will be at a job. Brand-name retailers purchase "risk scores" from Retail Equation to help make judgments about whether consumers commit fraud when they return goods for refunds. Players in the gig economy use outside firms such as Sift to score consumers' "overall trustworthiness." Wireless customers predicted to be less profitable are sometimes forced to endure longer customer service hold times. PHOTO DATA: Harris County, Texas receive 'F' grade in social distancing scoreboard Auto insurers raise premiums based on scores calculated using information from smartphone apps that track driving styles. Large analytics firms monitor whether we are likely to take our medication based on our propensity to refill our prescriptions; pharmaceutical companies, health-care providers and insurance companies can use those scores to, among other things, "match the right patient investment level to the right patients." Surveillance scoring is the product of two trends. First is the rampant (and mostly unregulated) collection of every intimate detail about our lives, amassed by the nanosecond from smartphones to cars, toasters to toys. This fire hose of data - most of which we surrender voluntarily - includes our demographics, income, facial characteristics, the sound of our voice, our precise location, shopping history, medical conditions, genetic information, what we search for on the Internet, the websites we visit, when we read an email, what apps we use and how long we use them, and how often we sleep, exercise and the like. The second trend driving these scores is the arrival of technologies able to instantaneously crunch this data: exponentially more powerful computers and high-speed communications systems such as 5G, which lead to the scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence to rate all of us in some way. The result: automated decisions, based on each consumer's unique score, that are, as a practical matter, irreversible. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Once the first useful mobile data network, 3G is going away That's because the entire process - the scores themselves, as well as the data upon which they are based - is concealed from us. It is mostly impossible to know when one has become the casualty of a score, let alone whether a score is inaccurate, outdated or the product of biased or discriminatory code programmed by a faceless software engineer. There is no appeal. Surveillance scoring bears a faint resemblance to credit scoring in the 1960s. In that pre-computer era, private investigators working for banks, retailers and insurance companies tailed consumers and scoured newspapers for information about arrests, promotions, sexual orientation, drinking habits and cleanliness to decide a consumer's creditworthiness -- until Congress established rules in the 1970s giving consumers the right to review and question their credit scores. Today's data snoops obtain infinitely more information about their targets, and in real time. And the impact of surveillance scoring is far more pernicious. The tech industry insists that its every advance improves our lives. But that's a myth. Surveillance scoring enables companies to cloak old-school discrimination in an aura of technological infallibility and wonder. Secret surveillance scores create micro-markets in which some consumers are no longer welcome. They divide Americans into "haves" and "have-nots," with the losers relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Consumers need a 21st-century solution to this emergent threat. Congress, awash in tech money, is mired in an outdated legal paradigm: "disclosure" of privacy policies and "consent" via a click. No one pretends that these industrial age contract law concepts will do anything to curb data larceny, let alone regulate or bar secret surveillance scores. We petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and regulate surveillance scoring. The commission's response? A blog post urging the firms that develop and apply scores to regulate themselves. This is only the latest example of Washington's capitulation to the tech industry, whose continuous loop of privacy violations, abject apologies and payment of inconsequential penalties confirms that consumers cannot rely on the federal government for protection. Secret surveillance scoring places us at the precipice of the "singularity," a dystopian turning point after which machines will make judgments about humans that will determine our fate. We either seize control of our future, or risk losing it. - - - Rosenfield and Antonini are consumer advocates. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Alya Nurbaiti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 12:18 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066add026 1 Politics diplomacy,US-China-trade-war,FPCI,Indonesia-US-relations Free Indonesia must continue to closely engage the United States regardless of who wins the US presidential elections in November, diplomats and foreign policy experts say, as it seeks to rekindle its partnership with a superpower largely preoccupied with its rivalry with China. With the race to the White House picking up speed, Indonesia must decide on how to best anticipate two possible scenarios: preparing for a change in US leadership or bracing for more of the same. Americans are expected to head to the polls on Nov. 3 to vote in President Donald Trump for a second term or to let former vice president Joe Biden steer the US into a different direction. Either way, experts agreed during a virtual discussion this week that the result of the election would affect Indonesias foreign policy stance vis-a-vis the US, as well as Washingtons relations in the Asia-Pacific in general. On the one hand, former Indonesian ambassador to the US Dino Patti Djalal was especially confident that Trump would lose on account of unanticipated job losses and other challenges wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout history, US voters are known for being punitive toward leaders who govern when the state is in distress, he said on Tuesday. Indonesia must start figuring out a partnership strategy beyond trade and investment to anticipate inevitable changes post-election, especially if candidate Biden outvotes Trump, said the founder of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI). If elected, Biden will be the most foreign policy prepared president. But how bold and different his foreign policy will be depends on whether the Democrats could rule the Senate, Dino said of the former member of the US Senate foreign affairs committee. The Foreign Ministrys director for America (I) affairs, Zelda Kartika, said that if Biden was elected, more nonconventional security issues could be raised in discussions, such as human rights, democracy, immigration, environment and labor issues, in contrast to a Trumpian foreign policy that focuses more on trade and investment and sanctioning. Meanwhile, chief country representative of the US-ASEAN Business Council in Jakarta, Landry Haryo Subianto, said Indonesia must anticipate shared concerns with the US in the coming years, including on issues such as climate change, health, technology and trade and investment. Landry added that the US-China trade war under a Biden presidency would likely be more sophisticated and with less censuring toward China. Weary of its hefty trade deficit with Beijing, Washington declared a trade war in March 2018. It quickly escalated with tit-for-tat punitive duties on hundreds of billions of dollars of bilateral trade, disrupting global trade. Trumps fixation on the trade war has other countries scrambling to benefit from the fallout from two superpowers, and Indonesia is no exception. The government has formed a special task force to attract companies leaving China. In June, seven foreign businesses, including US-based light product maker Alpan, confirmed their relocation plans to Indonesia. Indonesia must take the opportunity to persuade as many US companies seeking to move out of China and relocate their production facilities to Southeast Asian countries, said Siswo Pramono, the Foreign Ministrys head of policy analysis and development. He said the trade war would continue regardless of who would be elected the new US president later this year. Biden wants to boost domestic manufacturing while taking a hard line on Chinas alleged steel dumping and intellectual property infringement. Meanwhile, Trump will continue to attack China, encourage US companies to avoid offshoring and slap tariffs on Chinese goods, he said. Even though Trump has arguably dragged US leadership down by retreating from global forums, introducing policies deemed unfavorable to many nations including US allies and dismantling former president Barack Obamas achievements, foreign views of the US remains generally favorable, according to a Pew Research poll in January. Despite low confidence in Trump, there are still high expectations for US global leadership among the international community, including from Asia-Pacific, said Syafiah Muhibat, head researcher on international relations at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Also, many US voters still feel represented by Trump despite the lack of trust in him globally, said international law expert Hikmahanto Juwana of the University of Indonesia. As such, he said, Indonesia should prepare for both scenarios. If Trump wins again, forget that bilateral trade will run smoothly before Trump manages to bring back US jobs. Besides, we must also think about how to reduce tension in [Southeast Asia] because under Trump, the escalated trade war might turn the region into a battleground, he said. Syafiah of CSIS said the most important yet still unanswered question was what changes could either US presidential candidate offer to ASEAN. Trump is known for his tit for tat or transactional policy, which often undermines multilateral interests. The undecided policy toward ASEAN leaves a challenge to Indonesia, that is how to contribute in regions to uphold multilateral partnership, said Shafiah. US ties with Indonesia and ASEAN has been lacking in recent years, with Washington focusing most of its resources on its rivalry with Beijing. The US ambassadorships to Indonesia and to ASEAN are currently vacant, with ad interim officials without much sway in policymaking left in charge of relations. Kenya Airways resumed international flights on Saturday, heading to about 30 destinations for the first time since the routes were suspended in March due to the coronavirus. The carrier, in which Air France, KLM holds a small stake, resumed domestic flights in mid-July after the government cleared local air travel. "We announced we are starting with 27 destinations, we increased it to 30 just following demand," Allan Kilavuka, the airline's chief executive officer, said during a ceremony ahead of seeing off a flight to London. He said for the rest of the year the airline expected demand to remain below 50% of capacity, but it would increase flight frequencies depending on demand. "In fact 2020, we call it a lost year. Because at some point we even see demand of 25% in some months, in some months we see 38%," he later told Reuters. The COVID-19 pandemic has depressed the global aviation industry, with African carriers alone expected to lose $6 billion this year in revenue. In July, Kenya Airways said it would lay off an unspecified number of number of workers, reduce its network and offload some assets due to the coronavirus crisis. Kilavuka said so far the company had laid off some 650 people, mostly trainee pilots, trainee cabin crew, technician trainees and newly hired staff on probation. "What I have to emphasise though is it's not because we want to. Those employees have done nothing wrong. They are very good employees. It's just that we cannot afford to keep them," he said. The airline was struggling long before the coronavirus outbreak, posting 2019 losses of almost 13 billion shillings ($120 million). Last month the Nairobi Securities Exchange suspended trading of Kenya Airways shares for three months, citing the government's plan to restructure the carrier, after it submitted to parliament a draft law on nationalising the airline. Search Keywords: Short link: The new decree that limits imports of tobacco from Luxembourg into France has now taken effect. It is official: France has limited the tobacco sales abroad, or rather has capped the transport when returning to France. The decree that was voted for in July was introduced to the French Official Journal on Friday, 31 July, and is thus in effect from now on. To be precise, the decree severely limits the import of foreign tobacco into France, regardless of its origin. Here are the new limits: 200 cigarettes (previously set at 800) 100 cigarillos (in contrast to 400 prior to the decree) 50 cigars (instead of 200) 250g of smoking tobacco (previously 1 kg) The limits apply to both individual and collective transport methods. The limits can be surpassed if bought in France and must be accompanied by a document stating the products' origin. Daniel G. Newman, one of the nations most influential and innovative voices on campaign finance, had a rather unorthodox entry into the fight against political corruption. When I was in college, I was really into playing pinball, he told me in a phone interview. In reading a story in a trade magazine, he was both fascinated and appalled by a two-page spread about pinball industry lobbyists treating members of Congress and their families to an event in which they could sample the latest games for free. The lobbyists goal: persuade elected officials to introduce a dollar coin that would be more widely circulated than the poorly accepted Susan B. Anthony version. I thought: This is nuts! Newman recalled. These people are trying to change the whole monetary system in the country just so that people will drop more money into pinball machines, he said. I was awakening to what I now see is special-interest influence with effect on every area of the economy. Newman was equally serious about academics, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University (biomedical ethics) and in 2005 going on to co-found the Berkeley startup MapLight, a groundbreaking tracker of everything from campaign donations to legislative voting records that has become an essential resource for advocates and journalists. In fact, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla tapped MapLight as a resource in modernizing the states online disclosure system in 2015. Newman put his knowledge to good use in his newly released graphic novel, Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy. The book is an answer for the frustrated American trying to explain to fellow citizens the corrosive effect of money in politics and who is tempted to say, Let me draw you a picture. Unrig draws the pictures, with clever and insightful storytelling. It features three elements that are not usually associated with books about political reform. Its a fast 250-page read, its fun and its laced with hope. It doesnt just bemoan the status quo, it offers road maps for getting involved and bringing change. Newman covers the bases on how democracy is undermined, from the origins and effects of an electoral college that reduces a presidential election to no more than a dozen swing states to partisan redistricting in which politicians choose their voters to the dominance of unregulated dark money. His chapter Who Votes runs through the history of voter exclusion (at the time of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, just 6% of Americans could vote, white male property owners) to the Jim Crow laws to the voter suppression tactics (ID laws, poll closures) that have proliferated since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 gutted a key portion of the Voting Rights Act. It includes a particularly timely panel from the late Civil Rights icon, the Rep. John Lewis, so eloquently eulogized by former President Barack Obama on Thursday. They were never beaten, jailed, run off their farms or fired from their jobs, Lewis is quoted in the cartoon. No one they knew died simply trying to register to vote. Then again, book publication deadlines are such that Newman could not have hoped to anticipate, let alone include, President Trump raising the notion of delaying the Nov. 3 election out of the thoroughly unsupported theory that mail-in voting would lead to rampant fraud. The idea that an American president would challenge the legitimacy of an election before a single vote was cast (will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history, Trump tweeted) could be a chapter in itself for an updated version of Unrig. Newman takes the long view. One thing that I really want people to understand is that the erosion of democracy did not begin with Trump, he said. The forces that are trying to take power away from the people, the forces of anti-democracy, are not going to stop at whatever point Trump leaves office. Daniel G. Newman I asked Newman if he had a target audience in mind. I wanted to reach people beyond the audience for a thick nonfiction book, he said. I wanted a book that really brings clarity and brings optimism. If you just read the headlines in the news its really hard to understand at a deeper level whats driving so many of our countrys problems. And by writing a comic book, its also possible to bring fun and inspiration from hearing other peoples stories and seeing them illustrated. The beauty of Unrig is that it does not lose its seriousness of purpose in the breezy presentation. Its release was obviously timed for the 2020 election season, but its shelf life will endure. More Information Where democracy is broken: Highlights from Daniel G. Newman's graphic novel 'Unrig' Voter suppression "Literacy tests and poll taxes were eventually outlawed. They are examples, however, of a voter suppression strategy that continues today ... more than 100 years later." Lobbyists Hiring one "can influence even one or two votes in Congress (and) be worthwhile, because corporations hire so many ... a corporation can gain the results it wants." Dark money These schemes "allow corporations and wealthy individuals to elect lawmakers who serve their interests without the public ever knowing whose interests are being served." See More Collapse As Newmans book points out, 40% of eligible voters more than 90 million Americans did not vote in 2016. That is more than voted for Hillary Clinton (66 million) or Donald Trump (63 million). Unrig makes a compelling case for why our participation matters, and who controls the levers of power when we dont engage. John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicles editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron Parliament has approved a facility agreement of 48,278,793.77 between government and the Standard Chartered Bank, London, to finance the design and delivery of prefabricated bridges for deployment across the country. The request was presented to the House on June 23, 2020 by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Abena Osei-Asare, on behalf of the Minister of Finance. Background The Ministry of Roads and Highways is currently implementing a rigorous programme to improve the condition of the country's road network and related facilities throughout Ghana. The minister said under this programme, the road agencies, particularly the Department of Feeder Roads, is rehabilitating and upgrading weak or broken log bridges with short and medium span steel, composite bridges and the construction of major box culverts and bridges over water crossings to reduce the bottlenecks on the feeder road network. The Chairman of the Finance Committee, Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah, told the House that the Deputy Finance Minister indicated during the committee's meeting that some sections of roads in a number of rural areas, including old wooden and steel bridges, are damaged, thereby making many roads impassable during the rainy season. This has, by and large, constrained socio-economic development, he noted and added that governments over the years had implemented and continue to implement a number of road infrastructure projects to connect districts to municipalities and municipalities to metropolitan areas, he said. Presenting the report of the committee, the New Juaben South Member of Parliament (MP), said out of the feeder road network of about 42,045km, only 25,931km is engineered with good alignment and adequate drainage. According to him, some of the projects include the Ghana-Dutch Bridges Project, the Ghana-Acrow Bridges Project, the Belgium Bridges Project and the Spanish Bridges project. Government also implemented the Road Sub-Sector Development Programme (RSDP) from 2001 to June 2008 with support from the Arab Bank for the Economic Development of Africa (BADEA) where six major bridges were constructed. The bridges are Aframso Bridge (ASR), Jomoro Bridge (ER), Ofoase Bridge (ER), Hiawa Bridge (ER), Bridge on Suskuliga River at Nayoko (NR) and Bridge on Tintaraga River at Ngane (NR). ---Daily Guide International travel may be the furthest thing from most peoples minds right now, but its all Indy Nelson can think about. The 26-year-old Hayward resident has set foot in every country. In fact, he says he has set world records for being the youngest person to do it in the shortest period of time. By November 2017, after 18 months of whirlwind globetrotting, he visited the 193 sovereign countries recognized by the United Nations, plus Taiwan and the Vatican. It became an obsession, Nelson said. Thats always been my thing setting lofty goals. Which is why it stings him so much that Guinness World Records, the official judge of such endeavors, has refused to recognize his feat. Nelson said hes been trying for years to convince the organization, compiling some 9,000 pages of evidence of his travels. But he has been rejected four times, for what he argues are unfair technicalities. Nelson is what some might call a country collector: a traveler who racks up experiences while keeping track of every particular. Many country collectors view travel as a calling, while others treat it as a sport. Either way, Guinness is the organization that sets the standards for the highly coveted youngest, fastest record Nelson is seeking. Securing the record even if only temporarily can be a springboard to book deals, public speaking gigs and TV appearances. And with the coronavirus pandemic throwing international air travel into a tailspin, it seems possible that the current record for being the youngest, fastest traveler in the world could stand for the foreseeable future. Nelson, though, says he doesnt have interest in making a career off the title, despite having spent $106,000 on his travels. What he really wants, he says, is validation for years of work. Ive wanted to break a record with Guinness since I was 6, Nelson said. Now Ive done it, but no one knows about it. Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Guinness has been tracking the youngest, fastest world travelers since at least 2004, and the requirements to claim the record are rigorous. For instance, travelers vying for the record arent allowed to rent cars or pay for private transport; however, taxis and ferries are permitted over certain distances if applicants can prove there were no alternative transportation options available. Then, at the end, travelers have to submit tons of proof: passport stamps, transportation logs, videos, sworn witness statements and more. The bureaucracy required to claim the title is part of what makes the record so difficult to obtain. Nelson argues that Guinness has been finding new reasons to reject his claim over the past two years. Eric Nguyen, 27, of San Jose, also claims to have broken the record, and says he is being similarly stonewalled by Guinness over technicalities. From 2011 to 2017, he sought the record for the youngest person to travel to every country at a cost of about $70,000. Both men say the record-keeping organization lacks transparency and consistency. Nelson says, for example, that a Guinness case worker rejected his bid for renting a car in Yemen, though a former record-holder wasnt penalized for that. In another instance, Nelson said he was dinged for using a private bus service, though he demonstrated that the service was public and in line with the rules. Speed-traveling records are already among the toughest to verify because of all the minutiae involved in proving ones case, Guinness World Records Editor in Chief Craig Glenday told Freakonomics in 2008. Granular criteria and technological advancements like GPS make it easier, he said, but to a certain extent there is an element of faith involved. Besides that, the youngest, fastest record has been an object of intense competition recently, and the rules have continued to evolve. In fact, even if Guinness were to verify Nelsons claims, he wouldnt qualify as the record holder. Lexie Alford, originally of Nevada City, beat Nelsons time in 2019 when she was 22. Courtesy Indy Nelson Guinness declined to answer questions for this article. In a statement, a representative pointed out that there are strict requirements for the record and said that it disqualifies attempts that dont meet those requirements. The representative declined to comment on Nelsons or Nguyens cases. Even if neither might qualify for the current record, for these travelers who have spent thousands of dollars and months planning these trips, even being recognized for having set a record in the past feels important. We have been unfairly denied, said Nguyen, who is Vietnamese American and wanted the record in part to inspire people of color to travel. Im not sure what were supposed to do at this point. Among former record holders in travel, theres some support for Nguyen and Nelsons case against the strict rules of Guinness. The organization is quite bureaucratic, to put it nicely, said Gunnar Garfors, a globetrotting author from Norway who holds two Guinness world records for traveling. The organizations methods for evaluating travel records are inconsistent, he says. His own first record attempt was rejected by one Guinness staffer, but later approved by another. I think it depends on who you get on your case, said Garfors, who is friendly with Nelson and Nguyen. One former youngest, fastest record holder, British-Italian author Maurizio Giuliano, was more pointed in his criticism of Guinness. In an email to The Chronicle, he said the verification requirements have changed substantially since he held the title in 2004 and are now silly or outright ludicrous. Giuliano said Guinness should recognize Nelson and Nguyen as former record holders and that they are right to be upset. A bigger issue, though, is whether the youngest, fastest record will continue to be meaningful as people pursuing it spend less and less time in the places they visit, Garfors said. Some seem more interested in seeking the money and fame associated with it, an approach he said runs counter to the spirit of traveling in the first place. On a recent Zoom call, Garfors shook his head disapprovingly. I know people who didnt even leave the airports in these countries, he said. It defeats the purpose of travel. But Nelson and Nguyen said theyre not interested in becoming travel-guy media personalities. Nguyen is studying for medical school admissions testing, and Nelson is pursuing project-management jobs in tech. Both said they feel stuck, unable to reconcile the time and energy they spent chasing the elusive record. Thats why both are seeking retroactive acknowledgment and perhaps a re-evaluation within Guinness about how it handles its record-keeping. Im hoping people catch on, like, hey, this famous organization is supposed to be inspiring people to greatness, why arent they upholding their mantra over these little technicalities? Nelson said. These are years of our lives we cant get back. Gregory Thomas is The Chronicles editor of lifestyle and outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @GregRThomas There is a scene in Tiffany McDaniel's new novel Betty that stands out for its complex, nuanced portrayal of trauma. A mother, Alka, pins her nine-year-old daughter to a bed and re-enacts over the child's clothes the sensation of being raped by her father when she herself was a young girl. Reading the scene, we immediately identify with Betty, the book's narrator, as her damaged, depressed mother passes the legacy of abuse on to the next generation. It comes as a surprise then, when speaking to McDaniel from her home in southern Ohio, that she has a far more generous view of her character's actions. "I see Alka as someone who has this past and really wants to tell it," she says. "Betty was the first person in her life that she actually told about her views. She didn't tell her husband or any of the older children. She singled Betty out because she felt that she was strong enough to withstand it and to hold it inside her." What makes this view even more remarkable is that Betty is based on real life. McDaniel's mother is the central character. Her grandmother Alka was sexually abused for years by her father until she escaped the family farm through marriage to a Cherokee Native American. The history of the Cherokee people in America is the other focus of McDaniel's book. Set in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in rural Ohio, the novel is full of interesting details on Cherokee culture, which work as a counterbalance to the grim aspects of the family's history. Expand Close Strong: McDaniel's mother is the central character in Betty / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Strong: McDaniel's mother is the central character in Betty Read More Although Betty is McDaniel's second book, it is the first novel she wrote, nearly two decades ago at the age of 18. She spent a long time trying to find an agent and publisher. Those in the industry told her it was too dark, too risky, too female. "They wanted the women characters to be more welcoming," she says. "They wanted me to change the narrator to a man. They said I could write the Huckleberry Finn of my generation. But my story was nothing like that. I didn't write that." McDaniel heard the male narrator advice so much that she decided to apply it to The Summer That Melted Everything, her 2016 debut novel. "That book went out on submission and sold in a month. It's certainly harder for female stories to get noticed and if it wasn't for the #MeToo movement, I feel that Betty might not have been published." Betty skilfully depicts the coming-of-age of a young girl in 1960s America. It's impossible to conceive of the novel without her as the central voice. "Her experiences were so defined by her gender," says McDaniel. "She had all these encounters growing up that were so integral to being a girl. We would hope that things have changed in the time since, but we can see that we haven't yet gotten equality in 2020. Betty is someone who wants to hold on to her Cherokee heritage - a matriarchal society - while trying to fit into a world where Christianity is the dominant religion." In a novel that deals with the abuse done to women by men over generations, the requests for a male narrator seem at best misguided, at worst unethical. "Yes," she says. "I wanted to stay true to the story. And," she adds wryly. "I didn't want to turn my mother into a man." In Betty, sexual abuse affects a number of female characters who later become mentally ill and suicidal. Growing up, McDaniel heard a lot about her Cherokee heritage, but she only discovered at 17 the history of abuse on the other side of the family. It was a defining moment in her life that made her see how vital it was to give victims a voice. "Most people don't realise that these things happen as regularly as they do," she says. "It's only when people share these stories that they realise they're not alone in that abuse." Video of the Day McDaniel (35) is based between two locations in central and southern Ohio. An insomniac who often writes at night, she prefers to keep other personal details to herself. She does say that she grew up in a house of three sisters. It was the same in her mother's family, and this sense of sisterly solidarity is deftly explored in the novel. As research, McDaniel carried out Q&A sessions with her mother, grandmother and aunts. How did she manage to get emotional distance when it came to turning fact into fiction? "In the main it was really difficult," she says. "My mother was describing what went on in her life, details I kept intact for the book. Those sorts of things were really hard to hear. I actually stripped some of the abuse that happened in real life from the book. In reality my grandmother had brothers who were raping her as well. I also had a Q&A session with my aunts about their experiences of abuse. I knew that these women had become addicts and lived really difficult lives. I saw how they had tried to survive." In addition to exploring generational abuse, Betty looks at the struggles of a mixed-race girl growing up in mid-20th century, small-town America. Sexism and racism are ingrained in the culture. Some of the most affecting scenes depict Betty's experiences at school, where she is bullied by peers and belittled by teachers for having brown skin. With the death of George Floyd in Atlanta in May, the issue of race is once again to the forefront of American politics. Black Lives Matter protests have been held across the world. What does it feel like on the ground in Ohio? "There is the sense that these protests are different because they're persistent and collective," McDaniel says. "People have really engaged in a way that the leaders of the civil rights movements from the 50s and 60s say is new. White people have never been so involved. "My mother and grandfather grew up with brown skin in predominantly white communities. I didn't experience what they did [because I'm fair-skinned] but with the novel I wanted to explore how it felt to be them. My mother told me how teachers basically told her she'd do nothing with her life. "They'd have career days at school and they'd tell her to sit out. How do you get the confidence to rise out of that? She somehow did and I'm grateful for it." Confidence is an important part of a career as a writer too, particularly when dealing with reviews. An initial review of The Summer That Melted Everything in the Guardian was highly critical of McDaniel's lyrical style. Did she feel vindicated when that same paper awarded her its coveted Not the Booker Prize later that year and followed it up with a glowing review? "I did," she says, laughing. "It was nice there was a critic who enjoyed it much more than the first. That felt good. I'm one of those people that any time there's a bad review, those are the ones I remember. There can be a thousand good reviews but I'll remember the bad one. I think it's that I always want to please every reader and I have to remind myself that I can't. I have to write for the characters, and for the readers who do love the work and the writing." With McDaniel's personal connection to Betty, and the long wait for the book to be published, one suspects the stakes this time round are even higher. "It is very important to me," she says. "I think with family stories in general, but especially when we're talking about generational abuse, we need to give victims the chance to talk about what happened to them. To try and preserve something for the next generation." 'Betty' by Tiffany McDaniel, published by W&N, is out on August 20 U.S President Donald Trump signed executive orders on July 24 and stated that the executive orders are the solutions for Americans who struggle to pay the current prices of prescription drugs. President Trump told his crowd of supporters and numerous reporters at the ceremony that under the executive order, the price of insulin for all patients will come down to just "pennies a day", he added that it was a massive cost saving. Will insulin be pennies a day? Numerous news outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that the signing event was treated like it was symbolic since the executive orders are not going to take effect this year yet. Meanwhile, CNSNews and Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, which are known as conservative media outlets, reported on President Trump's pledge to decrease the prices on prescription drugs at face value and they highlighted Trump's speech at the event. Because of this confusion, the site Snopes investigated the claims, on whether the liberal side is correct by saying that Trump's executive orders will not take effect this year or whether the conservative side is correct in saying that it will. Also Read: Obama Supports Donald Trump in Calling for End to Filibuster Rules in Government Numerous diabetic patients are now waiting on when the orders will take effect as they would indeed pay less for insulin cartridges and insulin syringes as soon as the executive order takes place. In September 2019, a Congressional analysis posted that insulin averaged $34.75 per dose in the United States, and the price is almost three times higher than the average price of insulin in other countries. President Trump did issue Executive Order on Access to Affordable Life-saving Medications on July 24. He signed the order and it authorized the Department of Health and Human Services or HHS to make changes on the cost of EpiPens for all Americans who need it, the cost of insulin is also included in the price changes. Insulin prices in the United States have increased dramatically in the past few years. Although Americans with severe allergies and diabetes have access to affordable EpiPens and insulin because of Federal programs and commercial insurance such as Medicaid and Medicare, a lot of Americans still can't buy the products. The truth With President Trump's directive pertained to FQHC or federally qualified health centers, which are around 1,400 community health care clinics across the United States that treat patients from low-income households on sliding fee scales and purchase discounted drugs from pharmaceutical companies under 340B which is an existing federal program. This means that President Trump's order requires the participants of the 340B Program to offer insulin at reduced prices to patients with little insurance coverage or no insurance coverage. A news site for health care providers, Advisory Board, said in a statement that only those from low incomes, those with high cost-sharing requirements for EpiPens or insulin, those with high deductibles and those without health insurance would be eligible for discount. While it was true that President Trump issued an executive order that was intended to lower the price of prescription drugs for Americans, it was misleading to say that insulin would cost "pennies a day" and that it is not for everyone as it would only target patients from low-income households and those who are uninsured. Related Article: Donald Trump Suggests Delaying Presidential Election Due to Possible Fraudulent Results in Mail-In Voting @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Lankan prof honoured by American Association for Thoracic Surgery By Yomal Senerath-Yapa View(s): View(s): Dr. Ajit Yoganathan was in the limelight of both engineering and medicine this year, when the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) named the acclaimed Sri Lankan-born biomedical engineer their first honorary fellow. He is the first recipient of an award tailormade to recognize persons who are not cardiothoracic surgeons but have made contributions to the fields of cardiac or thoracic surgery. Dr. Yoganathan who lives in Atlanta, is a Member National Academy of Engineering and Emeritus Regents Professor & Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair in Biomedical Engineering at The Georgia Institute of Technology. He can wear the new laurels with ease. One of the most distinguished Sri Lankans living in America, with his work at his Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics Laboratory (CFM Lab) he has saved countless lives. He stands out for two achievements particularly- inventing the science of prosthetic heart valve engineering, and planning software for difficult cardiac surgeries in babies with deadly birth defects. Dr Yoganathan hails from a medical family, with a busy GP father and his mother a professor in pathology, whom he would accompany to lectures and sit swinging his legs on the benches at the University of Ceylon (Colombo). After his schooling at Royal College, and graduating from the University of London having studied chemical engineering, he moved to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1973 where he was to do his PhD. Here he first heard his professor, William Corcoran, speak about his work researching blood flow. That engineering could serve medical ends and help save lives simply fascinated him. There was to be no turning back from that point. Translational Medicine is the term for what Dr. Yoganathan has been advocating for four decades now- to translate science and engineering directly into patient benefit. His reputation as the preeminent expert on replacement heart valve design blossomed in the late 70s. He had always been interested in heart valves, and soon his lab (the CFM) began working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to come up with the initial standards for valves and test protocols at the lab bench. Until then there had been no official lab testing procedures and no required preclinical or clinical trials for mechanical valves. New heart valve designs were implanted straight into patients with no testing, meaning that sometimes as much as a dozen valves could fail till a successful one was put in. This was such a tricky situation because the physics of blood flow can be elusive, varying from patient to patient and with effects of hypertension and other diseases. Dr. Ys overarching contribution was to end the guesswork (of mechanical valves), states a glowing tribute in Horizons, the magazine of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Also, much of the credit for inventing the transcatheter valve goes to Dr. Yoganathan. This arterial catheter guides a prosthetic valve in a collapsed state through an artery to the heart, where a balloon expands the valve to replace the damaged natural valve, or to correct a narrowing in the aorta. This has saved thousands of patients for whom open heart surgery was too risky. His achievements in paediatric cardiac surgery- argued by paediatric surgeons to be more groundbreaking than work with valves- were made via cardiovascular knowledge with years of flow and physiology data gathered with ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging, modeling, and computer simulation. In previous cardiac surgeries of babies with potentially fatal birth defects, there was the same trial-and-error method as with valves. It was Dr. Yoganathan who pointed out ways to predict what surgery would do to blood flow- meaning there would be no more risky experiments on babies. He also isolated one heart defect- where two out of a 1000 American babies are born with only one ventricle in the heart- and was able through work done with them at low cost, to develop a new software. Created with the expertise of Jarek Rossignac, a professor in Georgia Techs College of Computing, the software enables surgeons to get patient-specific surgical solutions based on the anatomy and physiology of the individual. It was all this work that facilitated his 2015 induction into the National Academy of Engineering; the second Sri Lankan to be given the highest honour for engineering achievement in the States. After retiring in June this year, Dr Yoganathan continues to work at Georgia Tech to run his groundbreaking Structural Heart Research Program. He has ensured that a talented group trained under him- including more than 50 Ph.D. students and as many masters graduates- will continue his legacy of translational cardiology. China has mobilised a battalion strength of Peoples Liberation Army soldiers near Uttarakhands Lipulekh Pass, one of the locations along the Line of Actual Control that have witnessed movement of Chinese troops over the last few weeks outside of the Ladakh sector, people familiar with the matter told Hindustan Times. India and China have been engaged in a standoff in East Ladakh beginning early May that flared up on June 15, leading to the bloodiest clash between soldiers from two sides in 45 years. Three weeks later, both sides agreed to start the disengagement and de-escalation of troops at the standoff points after a conversation between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. ALSO WATCH | Rafale jets should worry those threatening India: Govts message to China There has been thinning of troops at the standoff points but the disengagement is still work in progress. Also Read: Army wont take eyes off Ladakh, preps to shop for Siachen-like gear for troops Simultaneously, Indian military officers in Ladakh noticed a huge effort by Chinese troops to bolster its strength in the depth areas, and give infrastructure projects on its side a hard push. Chinese troops have augmented its presence on its side of the LAC elsewhere too. There has been accretion of PLA troops across the LAC at Lipulekh Pass, parts of North Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, a top military commander said. Lipulekh Pass, which falls on the Mansarovar Yatra route, has been in the headlines for the last few months after Nepal objected to a 80-km road built by India to the Himalayan pass. The Lipulekh Pass is also used for annual barter trade during June-October between tribal populations living on either side of the Indo-China LAC. Kathmandu escalated tensions with India this year after it changed its political map to count the Kalapani area including Lipulekh - which lies close to the tri-junction of India-China-Nepal - as its own. Also Read: China says it treats Nepal as an equal in gushing exchange on 65th year of ties At Lipulekh Pass, PLA has moved a battalion - approximately a 1,000 soldiers - at some distance from the border. It is a signal that the Chinese troops are prepared, a second army officer said. He added that India has matched the strength of the PLA troops and is keeping a close watch on Nepal in context of its recent border claims. The situation on the Line of Actual Control remains dynamic with the PLA trying to emphasise its presence beyond Ladakh by building infrastructure on their side of the LAC, the top military commander quoted above said. In Ladakh and elsewhere, the troop movements and the mistrust has led the army to prepare to station soldiers in the icy heights of Ladakh through the winter irrespective of how the disengagement and de-escalation efforts pan out. The government has already sounded out its embassies in US, Russia and Europe to locate manufacturers of high-altitude clothing and snow tent manufacturers for emergency purchases. If it still falls short, the plan B is to divert stocks from locations such as Thoise, the base station for soldiers deployed in Siachen Glacier. It looks unlikely that we would be able to take our eyes off the border, said an army commander. Underscoring that this could be the only way for now to make Indian territory off-limits for an expansionist China and hold peace on the border. After the PLA aggression, we dont trust the Chinese and fear that they will come back again north of Pangong Tso as summer arrives in 2021, said a military commander. Although the PLA has disengaged from patrolling points 14 (Galwan), 15-16 (Hot Springs), a smattering of adversary troops are still on forward location at patrolling point 17 A (Gogra) and withdrawal from all contested finger features is a distance away at the Pangong Tso. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON WASHINGTON (AP) As Joe Biden nears the announcement of his vice presidential choice, the top contenders and their advocates are making final appeals. The campaign hasn't finalized a date for naming a running mate, but three people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans said a public announcement likely wouldn't happen before the week of Aug. 10. That's one week before Democrats will hold their convention to officially nominate Biden as their presidential nominee. Biden said in May that he hoped to name his pick around Aug. 1 and told reporters this week that he would have a choice in the first week of August. He notably stopped short of saying when he would announce that choice. Running mates are often announced on the eve of a convention. As he prepares to make his choice, a committee established to vet possible running mates has provided Biden with briefing materials. Biden will likely soon begin one-on-one conversations with those under consideration, which could be the most consequential part of the process for a presidential candidate who values personal connections. The leading contenders include California Sen. Kamala Harris, California Rep. Karen Bass and Obama national security adviser Susan Rice. The deliberations remain fluid, however, and the campaign has reviewed nearly a dozen possible running mates. For Joe Biden, this is crunch time. After all the vetting, all the investigations into the prospective nominees, its now up to Joe. Its personal, said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was vetted for vice president in 2008. Its now about his gut feeling. Representatives for Biden declined to comment for this story. The selection amounts to the most significant choice Biden has confronted in his nearly five-decade political career. He has pledged to select a woman and is facing calls to choose the first Black woman to compete on a presidential ticket. Given the historic significance of the moment, some are urging Biden not to let the announcement linger too long. Story continues My sense is that the VP himself, having been through this process, is aware of and mindful of not letting people hang out there too long, said Democratic strategist Karen Finney. There certainly seems to be a bit of a media frenzy, and I think we have to be aware that at a point, it becomes unfair to the candidates being considered." As a decision looms, the camps are jockeying for position. Harris' allies mobilized this week after Politico reported that the co-chair of the vetting committee, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, was concerned about Harris tough debate stage performance and that she hasnt expressed regret. Several California elected officials and labor leaders initiated a call with the vetting team to emphasize that Harris has strong support among labor and political leaders in her home state. The call was organized by Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and included the mayors of Oakland, Long Beach and Stockton and former Gov. Gray Davis. A group of us really felt we needed to organize and speak out and correct the record because she has tremendous support, Kounalakis said. Beyond emphasizing their strong relationships with Harris, they also pushed back against the idea that Harris wouldnt be a loyal partner. Harris, while not directly addressing her vice presidential prospects, told a group of young Black women Friday that it's common for Black women to face resistance when they exercise their power. There will be a resistance to your ambition. There will be people who say to you: You are out of your lane,'" she said during the digital summit. They are burdened by only having the capacity to see what has always been instead of what can be. ... I've had that experience my entire career." Biden has sought feedback on his pick from former President Barack Obama, who has provided advice but has insisted the choice is his to make, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations. Biden allies say his wife, Jill, and sister, Valerie Biden Owens, are likely to play a key role in the decision, as they have with many of Bidens biggest political decisions throughout his career. Jill has held online campaign events and fundraisers with virtually all the potential contenders in recent weeks, as has Biden himself, effectively offering the contenders a try-out opportunity with the presumptive Democratic nominee. On Thursday night, Bass joined Biden for a virtual fundraiser that raked in $2.2 million. She has also taken steps to build her national profile, including providing interviews to multiple outlets over the past week. On Friday night, Biden held a virtual fundraiser with Elizabeth Warren, who has also been considered as a running mate. Biden said the event raised more than $1.7 million from over 50,000 grassroots donors. That's about a quarter of the $6 million the Massachusetts senator brought in during her first online fundraiser for the former vice president last month that appealed to higher-dollar donors. We've known each other a long time. Her fearless work for a just America has transformed lives and inspired millions, including me," Biden said. "She is something else. You all know her. Warren said, This is a time of unprecedented crisis. But I wake up every single day with a heart full of hope and here is why: Vice President Biden is meeting the moment, she added. The two talked for nearly an hour but did not mention the vice presidential selection process. Some Biden donors have already begun to plan prospective fundraising events ahead of the formal announcement. Bidens team expects his running mate to contribute immediately to his fundraising operation. Of the finalists, Harris is thought to be the most formidable traditional fundraiser, while Warrens ability to attract small-dollar donations from the partys progressive base is also viewed as a major asset. ___ Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Will Weissert in Washington, Steve Peoples and Jonathan Lemire in New York, Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report. New Delhi, Aug 1 : Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, here on Saturday, announced the completion of pan-India 1000 genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2. The sequence data will soon be released in the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) for use by researchers across the globe. The Department of Biotechnology had launched the programme in May to be conducted by autonomous Institutes of DBT, collaborating with national laboratories and clinical organisations. "The information in the database will improve our understanding on how the virus is spreading, ultimately helping to interrupt the transmission chains, prevent new cases of infection and provide impetus to research on intervention measures," said Vardhan. The Minister said the data analysis might bring out some interesting conclusions to help in the fight against Covid-19. He also dedicated to the nation the largest network of five Covid-19 bio-repositories established by the Department of Biotechnology. The aim of these bio-repositories are archival of inactivated virus and clinical samples, including naso-oropharyngeal swabs, stool, urine, saliva, serum, plasma and serum. These are at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, the Institute of Life Science, Bhubaneswar, the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi, the National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, and the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine, Bangalore. These bio-repositories will use the clinical samples for R&D and are authorised to share the samples with academia, industry and commercial entities involved in development of diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, etc. The Minister said 16 vaccine candidates were in different stages of development. The BCG vaccine is undergoing phase 3 trial, Zydus Cadila DNA vaccine is in phase I and II trial and 4 other vaccine candidates are in advanced stages of pre-clinical study. "Five good clinical laboratory practice clinical trial sites have been developed and 6 animal models for vaccine development studies are also ready," he said. Chandigarh: The Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP-JJP coalition government will open 10 government girls colleges in nine districts, including the backward Nuh district that has 80% Muslim population. Government sources say Khattar will announce this decision on August 3 on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan. The chief minister is likely to be connected via video conference with the villagers where the colleges will be constructed. In a July 31 letter to deputy commissioners (DCs) of Yamunanagar, Sirsa, Sonepat, Kaithal, Jind, Nuh, Hisar, Bhiwani and Panchkula, the director general and secretary higher education said that Khattar will be announcing the new girls colleges coinciding with Raksha Bandhan through video conference. The colleges will be opened at Bhainswal Kalan and Baroda (Sonepat), Agroha (Hisar), Goriwala (Sirsa), Issarwal (Bhiwani), Morni (Panchkula), Pratap Nagar (Yamunanagar), Ladana Chaku (Kaithal), Chatter (Jind), and Firozpur Jhirkha (Nuh). ADMISSIONS FROM THIS SESSION These colleges will be started from the makeshift buildings of government senior secondary schools from the coming academic session. The admissions will be made from this academic session. The higher education department has asked the district administrations to make arrangements to host the video conference at respective villages. Proper backdrop of the proposed colleges will be installed at the sites where panchayat members and other citizens will be invited to attend the digital ceremony. According to official data, ever since the BJP came to power in Haryana in October 2014, the present state government has set up 52 government colleges, including 30 for girls. There are 157 government collegesin the state of which eight colleges are in Jind district alone, while 20 government colleges are running in Sonepat district. The state government aims to open at least one college within a radius of 20 km, state education minister Kanwar Pal had said on the floor of the Vidhan Sabha during the budget session. In another step aimed at women empowerment, Khattar announced in his budget speech that girl students will get a passport free of cost from their colleges on graduating. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Ant McPartlin arrived at Heathrow Airport on Saturday ready for a month-long summer holiday. The television personality, 44, was joined by his girlfriend Anne-Marie Corbett, 44, and her two teenage daughters. Earlier in the day, Ant signed off his social media account, shared with Declan Donnelly, with the TV duo announcing they were taking a break and would be back at the end of August. Schools out! Ant McPartlin arrived at Heathrow Airport on Saturday ready for a month-long summer holiday In keeping with government guidelines, Ant donned a black face mask as he left their taxi to grab a trolley to push three huge suitcases into the departures terminal. The Geordie star cut a casual figure in an all-black ensemble, while Anne-Marie looked smart in a navy blazer and low-cut maxi dress. The couple appeared excited for their family holiday as they headed into the airport to check in. Family vacation: The television personality, 44, was joined by his girlfriend Anne-Marie Corbett, 44, and her two daughters See you in a month! Earlier in the day, Ant signed off his social media account, shared with Declan Donnelly, with the TV duo announcing they were taking a break Earlier in the day, Ant took to his and Dec's joint Instagram account to announce they were taking a break from social media and presenting duties. Posting a snap of themselves in Hawaiian shirts reading airport magazines, they wrote: 'We're both taking a break for a few weeks to spend time with family and friends. 'Wishing everyone a great month and we'll see you at the end of August!' Break: Posting a snap of themselves in Hawaiian shirts reading airport magazines, they wrote: 'We're both taking a break for a few weeks to spend time with family and friends' Safety first: In keeping with government guidelines, Ant donned a black face mask as he left their taxi to grab a trolley to push three huge suitcases into the departures terminal Chic: Anne-Marie looked smart in a navy blazer and low-cut maxi dress It's been a busy few weeks for the pair who on Friday took part in a promotional day of filming for their upcoming book Once Upon A Tyne. The break will be very much needed for Ant as ITV confirmed its flagship show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Outta Here! would return for a 20th series on Thursday. It was also announced that a special one-off documentary called I'm A Celebrity: A Jungle Story, which will celebrate the very best moments of the show's stellar 19 year history. Precautions: The former PA donned a black patterned face mask Family time: Ant appeared excited for their family holiday as he chatted away to Anne-Marie's youngest daughter In May it was reported that show bosses were holding crisis talks to save this year's show amid the pandemic. According to The Sun, insiders were unclear whether the show would go ahead later this year after the TV industry was thrown into chaos by COVID-19. A source at the time said: 'I'm A Celebrity is six months away but bosses are holding meetings about how they can ensure it still goes ahead in the current climate. A raft of measures are being looked at. Casually-clad: The Geordie star cut a casual figure in an all-black ensemble Off on holiday! It looked like the family had packed plenty for their month long break 'One of the most recent plans was to employ a crew that is 95 per cent made up of Australian workers to overcome the issues surrounding flying to different countries and the quarantine restrictions. 'This would mean a lot of the shows UK crew missing out on their annual big gig but ITV are having to seriously consider every option.' The insider added that due to the changing nature of the pandemic, every possible situation was being planned for. Goodbye for now: Earlier in the day, Ant took to his and Dec's joint Instagram account to announce they were taking a break from social media and presenting duties Ant and Anne-Marie have been in a relationship for around two years, with their romance first causing controversy due to his marriage breakdown with ex wife Lisa Armstrong. Lisa, 43, was left devastated when she learnt of their romance, tweeting at the time: 'She was MY friend who I let into OUR home.' In April, Ant's divorce from Lisa was finalised although the pair still share custody of their dog Hurley. The former couple have previously been transferring the dog between homes during lockdown. A Brock University professor is demanding his employer retract a statement it issued condemning his opinions and issue a public apology. This comes nearly two months after the university described an article by chemistry professor Tomas Hudlicky, published by a Germany-based online academic magazine, as hurtful and alienating. Hudlickys article, published by Angewandte Chemie International Edition on June 4 and quietly removed from the website two days later, created a full-fledged storm on social media, as people condemned it as racist and misogynistic. In a statement Hudlicky published Thursday on his personal website, www.hudlicky.ca, he said many people on Twitter condemned the content of the essay, the journal for publishing it, and me for writing it. At the time, Brock provost and vice-president academic Greg Finn also posted statements on the universitys website, calling Hudlickys opinions highly objectionable" and hurtful and alienating to members of diverse communities and historically marginalized groups who have, too often, seen their qualifications and abilities called into question. Hudlicky said Finns open letter which can still be found on Brocks website greatly damaged my standing not only within but also outside Brock community. I will demand that Brock retract their open letter and issue a public apology in a timely manner, as per the terms of a grievance filed on my behalf by the Brock University Faculty Union (BUFA), Hudlicky said in his statement. Contacted Friday, Brock spokesman Kevin Cavanagh said the university has nothing further to add to its previous statements regarding its condemnation of the Hudlicky article. Hudlicky said much of criticism generated by his article was in response to his opinions on workforce diversity, when he wrote that candidates should be hired based strictly on their merit rather than identification with any particular group. Despite the criticism, Hudlicky said his article did not contain anything that would qualify as unethical or unacceptable speech or conduct, as described in codes of conduct of many learned societies and certainly in the policies of Brock University and other institutions. I stand by the views I wished to express in the essay, some of which are common knowledge, while others were duly cited from primary and secondary sources, Hudlicky said. He added, however, that he could have worded his opinions in a clearer and more diplomatic way. For instance, Hudlicky said, he supports workforce diversity and believes if a group of candidates are similarly qualified, someone from a disadvantaged group should be offered the position. But if a special advantage is offered to one group, he said, another group is unfairly disadvantaged. In view of some apparent misunderstandings and misinterpretations generated by the essay, I am planning to edit the now disappeared document and publish it in revised form for the permanent record, Hudlicky said. It is tragic to see that in several Western democratic societies, open discourse and debate can apparently be easily superseded by censorship, persecution, and condemnation, propagated by social media, reacted to by Brock University, all contrary to the norms of legal process and the upholding of freedom of speech. The appearance and pursuit in recent years of certain new and politically correct ideologies has led to the establishment of a society in which any opposition or any dissenting opinion regarding the new norms are silenced and punished rather than discussed. This is a very dangerous trend and one that may even evolve further into a new cultural revolution. In an email, Hudlicky told The Standard he is not concerned about the issues, knowing the universitys faculty union is behind me. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Star/Asia News Network) Johor Bahru, Malaysia Sat, August 1, 2020 10:05 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ad4edb 2 SE Asia Malaysia,student,Singapore Free Malaysians studying at Singapore universities are expected to walk across the Causeway over the next few weeks as the universities resume their semester this month. National University of Singapore (NUS) student Ivan Chong will be returning to Singapore at the start of his semester. "A majority of my friends have decided to go back to Singapore at a later date and continue with online classes or defer their semester until the border reopens," the 20-year-old said. "This is because we have to pay about S$1,000 (RM3,000) to be quarantined for two weeks in Singapore before being allowed to go back to class," he said, adding that he would only know more details about the quarantine, such as the venue, by Aug. 2. "Most of the classes will still be conducted online, and only classes with a maximum of 50 people are allowed. I have decided to go back as I do not want to miss out on classes or assignments," said Chong. Read also: COVID-19: Malaysian mothers in Singapore freeze breast milk for babies at home According to the Singapore government website gov.sg, all incoming travelers are required to serve a 14-day stay-home notice. Since the movement control order was enforced, no vehicles other than trucks are allowed to cross the Singapore-Malaysia border, he said. "Hence, we will have to walk across the Causeway for 1km, bringing along our luggage. This is the second time I am walking. The first time was when I returned to Johor Baru after Singapore announced its circuit breaker, " he said. Eugene Chong, 19, who will also be starting his semester at NUS, said he looked forward to the next phase of his student life despite the circumstances. "This will be my first semester at the university. Instead of having my parents around, I will have to go there on my own and carry my own luggage across the Causeway. "It may not be ideal, but I have no other choice," said Chong, who had paid S$1,500 (RM4,500) for his two-week quarantine before starting classes again. "I am unsure when I can come back to visit my parents once I leave Malaysia, " he added. Meanwhile, Nanyang Technological University student Justin Seow, 25, said some of his classmates would also be coming back this month. "I decided to remain in Singapore and will only return to Johor Baru when the border reopens completely." "Most of my classmates who are now in Malaysia have decided to remain there for the time being, but some will walk across the Causeway to return this month, " he said. Seow hopes that Malaysia and Singapore can provide shuttle service for those who really need to cross the border, especially students. Since both countries imposed travel restrictions, many people have been seen walking across the Causeway with bags. Topics : Malaysia student Singapore Topics : This article appeared on The Star newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Covid-19 produced several breakout stars, from musicians to podcasters to a couple of canine social-media stars called Olive and Mabel. Local shops also shot up in our affections as we pored over every last detail in their windows while living in our 2km bubble. And when it came to navigating the brave new world of mask wearing, Irish linen was another breakout star, emerging quietly from stage left to become a new and valued friend. Light and comfortable on the face, linen is woven from spun flax and has naturally antibacterial and anti-fungal properties. But it's not just because it makes for good masks that we have fallen back in love with this heritage material. Linen's fast-growing profile has been driven by its eco credentials: biodegradable, highly durable and, best of all (for the mask-wearing public), it's breathable. Over the years, it has been linen's tendency to crease and wrinkle, a quirk that was to blame for the prejudices it endured. In our time-poor lifestyles, the maintenance routine around ironing linen while damp broke some hearts and dimmed the will of less committed fashionistas. Expand Close Princess Diana wearing a Paul Costelloe linen dress in Sydney in 1983 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Princess Diana wearing a Paul Costelloe linen dress in Sydney in 1983 However, in our 'recalibrated' lives, there is a tangible desire and heightened respect for comfort and all things natural. Linen coming back into vogue is down to a mix of trends, but with sustainability now key across both fashion and lifestyle, organic linen represents the ultimate in sustainable luxury. The humble linen tea towel was always a staple in Irish kitchens but now a new trend has emerged for linen hand and bath towels. These have the added bonus that the weave acts like an inbuilt exfoliator. Meanwhile, in the bedroom, luxury linen sheets have long been a big high-end seller in the US - and word is spreading. Not only are linen sheets thought to encourage regular sleep cycles but the more you wash them, the softer they feel. The discovery of dyed flax fibres in a cave in Georgia dated to 36,000 years ago tells us that ancient people used wild flax fibres to create linen-like fabrics. The Egyptians used it for their burial shrouds and mummification. As Dublin-based textile conservator Rachel Phelan points out, linen from the tombs of the pharaohs in London's V&A Museum and The Met in New York City remains in remarkably good condition. Phelan, who conserves clothes, explains that linen is tough. "It was made to last and if you look at medieval wills, such as that of John Rothe (mayor of Kilkenny in 1613), he and his wife left their linens to certain people because they were valuable and would last forever." The last year has indeed been something of a golden one for linen in the world of haute couture. Sarah Burton, creative director at Alexander McQueen, did much to raise the profile and appeal of Irish linen when she and her team travelled last summer to Northern Ireland, where linen was once a powerful industry. Expand Close On trend: Irish linen kimono robe, 395, with ultra-skinny scarf, worn as an obi belt, 70, from Stable of Ireland / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp On trend: Irish linen kimono robe, 395, with ultra-skinny scarf, worn as an obi belt, 70, from Stable of Ireland "Often our collections start with a research trip, and for spring 2020 we went to Ireland," Burton told the fashion bible Vogue ahead of her April runway show. "I wanted the collection to be about slowing things down, stripping back to the toile - and about timelessness. That led us to linen, a completely sustainable cloth, a noble fabric, and one that Ireland, in particular, is famous for." In Derry, Burton and her team worked with William Clark, the oldest linen mill in Ireland, and they got to witness up close the creation of 'beetling', a 300-year-old finish in which the linen is pounded over many hours. This allows the base cloth to develop a beautiful and characterful sheen. The smashing process flattens the fibres to produce a smooth, satin-like texture. William Clark is the last commercial beetlers in the world and creates a finish unrivalled by modern processing that can be tailored to suit your needs. In Banbridge, Co Down, the McQueen team visited the Thomas Ferguson company, which has been in business for 166 years and is the last remaining damask linen weaver in the world. When the McQueen collection was shown in Paris last January, the audience was enthralled by the Irish heritage. Irish linen was back in the limelight. Burton, who designed Kate Middleton's wedding dress in 2011, has done a lot to bring fresh eyes to the Irish linen landscape. But in delivering her modern take, she is following in the footsteps of couturier Sybil Connolly, who created a sensational twist on the fabric after arriving here from Wales in the 1940s. A risk-taker by nature, Connolly's signature approach was to pleat handkerchief linen. Hardly cost-effective, it was a case of artisanal craft over cost. It took up to nine yards of linen handkerchiefs to create just one yard of her uncrushable pleated fabrics. But the canny Welshwoman seduced style icons around the world with it, including American First Lady Jackie Kennedy, who posed for her 1970 Aaron Shikler White House portrait wearing Sybil's pleated masterpiece. Expand Close Sybil Connolly's pleated linen 'Heiress' masterpiece dress / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sybil Connolly's pleated linen 'Heiress' masterpiece dress Indeed, Connolly called her Georgian Dublin home on 71 Merrion Square "the house that linen built". Her important archive pieces - including 'The Heiress' fairy-tale tiered gown of chevron-pleated handkerchief linen with decolletage filled with Irish crochet motifs - are part of a collection at The Hunt Museum in Limerick. Connolly's work can be viewed online and there is a capsule collection currently on exhibition in the museum on Rutland Street. Dublin-born designer Paul Costelloe has been working with Irish linen since the 1970s. The veteran designer waxes lyrical about its uses, from how it looks in christening robes and First Communion dresses to how it behaves in production, flying through the machine. "Think Marcello Mastroianni in the film La Dolce Vita. He is wearing a black linen suit which is very masculine and actress Anita Ekberg wears a white linen shirt. It looks so beautiful, so chic," he says. "Linen has values that I think people have only perceived and become aware of quite recently. I certainly know our sales of linen over the last couple of months have been incredible," says Costelloe, who will present natural, undyed linen pieces next spring. The designer made headlines in 1983 when he dressed Princess Diana in two Irish linen dresses for her tour of Australia. The fact that Diana was snapped beside scantily clad lifeguards on Bondi Beach guaranteed column inches for Costelloe and his dropped-waist, yellow Irish linen dress. It remains his favourite Costelloe piece in the late princess's royal wardrobe. "Diana looked cool, feminine and comfortable, and that's what happens when you wear linen - it weaves a magic of its own," says Costelloe. The modern-day saviour of Irish linen fashion sits on the outskirts of Wexford town. Emblem Weavers is one of the only companies weaving linen in the south of Ireland. The company's founder, Jim Conway, used his 21st-birthday money in 1962 to buy two second-hand looms. He made a yarn winder from a bicycle wheel and set up his weaving business in a basement on Dublin's Amiens Street. Conway sold his fabrics door to door before hitting the international market and supplying Sybil Connolly. Nowadays, Emblem's order books show how popular Irish linen has become, with clients in Japan and across Europe. Jim's son, Stephen, explains how there are various linen weaves which produce differences in the texture and the drape of the fabric. "The most common is a plain weave. There is the herringbone in various sizes and sateen or twill weave. The finishing process lends a lot to the finished fabric and we do two finishes - a soft laundered finish where the fabric is broken down with air to give it that very silky-type feel, and we also do a tumble-washed, tumble-dried version which is quite rustic, pre-creased and very popular with the up-and-coming designers," Stephen tells me. At one stage in the 19th century, some 240,000 acres of Irish land were planted with flax but Stephen says very little, if any, is grown in Ireland anymore. "The majority of flax is grown on the French and Belgian border. We deal with spinning companies in France and Italy. We buy our yarn white and have it dyed." According to the Irish Linen Guild, which was founded in 1928, the trademark can only be used to mark genuine Irish linen products such as linen yarn which is spun in Ireland and linen fabrics woven in Ireland by members of the Guild. Flax was grown in Ireland as far back as 1,000 BC. It was cured in bogs around the country and the Brehon laws made it obligatory for farmers to learn and practise the cultivation of flax. Emblem Weavers supplies woven linen to everyone from Paul Costelloe to Richard Malone in London, and at home it supplies fashion and lifestyle brands such as Stable of Ireland, The Tweed Project in Galway, Alanagh Clegg of Four Threads, Eoin Dillon of Reuben Avenue, Irish Linen House and the Bebhinn label in Waterford. Former models Sonia Reynolds and Francie Duff frequently appeared in glossy magazines around the world wearing glorious linens and heritage Irish tweeds. They loved the fabrics so much, they wanted to celebrate them and, four years ago, started their lifestyle brand, Stable of Ireland. They sell their linen dresses, kimono robes, scarves, tablecloths, napkins and towels as well as face masks at their Westbury Mall store in Dublin, and online to their international market. "We wanted to celebrate Irish textiles, particularly linen, and where once it was part of our DNA, when it came to the introduction of synthetic fabrics, I think the Irish parked their love of linen," Reynolds tells me. "The Europeans had a great understanding of it but I think the Irish view was, 'sure it always creases' - but that is part of the charm and the beauty of linen. It is a natural fibre. It breathes. "For us, linen has become the unsung hero in our modern times. When you delve back in history, linen was used in everything from thread, shoe laces and rope to lining aeroplane wings in the Second World War. It's been used for sacking, refined bed linen, table linen, handkerchiefs and fishing netting." In his book After a Fashion, author Robert O'Byrne chronicles how in the early part of the 20th century, linen production and its attendant industries, such as shirt-making, were one of the major sources of employment in Northern Ireland. In 1949, linen accounted for almost 29pc of manufacturing jobs - but by 1975, that figure stood at just 5pc. In Galway, Aoibheann MacNamara and Triona Lillis of The Tweed Project conduct a conversation about linen with zeal. They, too, are modern-day champions of the fabric. They advocate using "indigenous fabrics as a truly authentic expression of Irish design". "We have been working with linen from the very first day and our first collection was white linen shirts. We work with our indigenous Irish fabrics like tweed, linen and Irish knits," says Aoibheann. In a new initiative launched last month, the pair released a limited-edition linen balloon dress. The oversized dress features a V-neck and is finished with puff sleeves. "Our plain-weave linen from Emblem Weavers has a gentle, billowing effect. It is very soft, with a lot of movement. We decided to do the dress in black and in white and we are keeping it simple," Aoibheann explains. "The beauty is that linen lasts forever and we need to value it. What is really amazing is that it is antibacterial and anti-fungal, and I'm not sure people know that. Why would you be wearing something plastic as a mask when you can wear something natural?" Let's hope our lockdown love affair with Irish linen lasts long beyond pandemic face masks - it's high time for this unique indigenous fabric to reclaim the limelight at home. An 'excessive heat warning' has been issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) for the Southwest United States over the weekend, with temperatures reaching a record-tying 125 degrees in Death Valley National Park on Friday. The NWS announced on Wednesday that the warnings would apply for parts of S. Nevada, NW Arizona & SE California and advised for people to 'hydrate frequently and limit times outdoors.' 'Strong high pressure aloft will result in a protracted period of VERY hot temps across the deserts,' the NWS Phoenix said on Twitter. The National Weather Service has issued an executive heat warning for parts of S. Nevada, NW Arizona and SE California NWS advised folks to avoid strenuous activity and the cancel outdoor activities The weather service also announced that the Phoenix, Yuma and Imperial areas would have their Excessive Heat Warning into effect until Monday. On Friday, the temperature at Death Valley National Park in California was blazing at a sweltering 125 degrees Fahrenheit. The scorching temperature tied a record high for July 31st set in 2017, the weather service shared. Needles, California, saw record breaking temperatures as their new high of 121 degrees beat out the old record of 117 degrees set in 1978. In Kingman, Arizona, the new record of 112 degrees Fahrenheit beat out the old record of 108 degrees set in 1938. On Friday, the temperature at Death Valley National Park in California was record tying at a sweltering 125 degrees Fahrenheit (stock) Temperatures in Phoenix are expected to reach a high of 113 degrees on Saturday Temperatures in Las Vegas were 113 degrees on Saturday, described by the NWS as being a 'little less hot but still dry' in comparison to the day before. Phoenix also saw extremely hot weather as their low morning temperature was still a 'very warm' 93 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures are expected to reach a high of 113 degrees on Saturday. Many cities across this particular region of the country will see temperatures well over 100 degrees as the weekend continues into the week. The National Weather Service has advised residents to avoid 'strenuous activity' and to also cancel outdoor activities. In addition to staying hydrated, they have also told people to seek air condition and to check in with family members. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, more than 600 people die from extreme heat every year. Mumbai/Manali, Aug 1 : Police patrolling has been stepped up outside the residence of actress Kangana Ranaut in Manali after her family complained of hearing some gunshots late on Friday night near the house. In a statement Kangana issued on Saturday, she claimed that the incident was meant to intimidate her for speaking up about actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Superintendent of Police Gaurav Singh told IANS there was no evidence of firing at the spot. No formal complaint from the Ranaut family has been received, and no security has been deployed at her residence. Image Source: IANS News Kangana's father Amardeep Singh Ranaut told IANS that the shots were heard in the nearby apple orchards. "They sounded like gunshots, may be they were crackers just to keep bats away from the orchards that are currently blooming with apples," Amardeep Singh told IANS over phone. Superintendent of Police Gaurav Singh said: "We received a phone call about loud noise and subsequently patrolling was stepped up in the area as a precaution. No security has been provided to her." Police officials said owners of nearby orchards were questioned and they denied bursting crackers or firing gunshots to keep bats away. Amardeep Singh said they didn't authenticate whether the sound was from the barrel of the gun. "I was at my native place (in Mandi district) with my family. When we came to know about the noise, we all came here (in Manali) to stay with Kangana," he said. He said he the family was satisfied with the police action. As per the police statement, at around 9.45pm on Friday, the police station in Manali received a call from the house of Kangana Ranaut wherein stated that they heard some loud noise in the vicinity. Meanwhile, Kangana issued a statement on Saturday over the incident. The actress, who is currently staying in Manali along with her family, feels somebody did this to threaten her after her recent comments on actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Kangana's statement said: "I was in my bedroom. I heard a cracker-like sound at about 11.30 pm. At first, I thought it must be a cracker. And then another shot happened, and I got a little alarmed since that sounded like a gunshot. I called my security in charge immediately... Let's see what this was, and if this is repeated again. I have heard the sound of a bullet and I think it was definitely a bullet, very intently fired twice, two shots with a gap of about eight seconds between them. And it was right opposite my room. So it seems like someone was behind the boundary walls, there's a jungle and a water body there." She continued: "I think some local people may have been hired to come near my place, you know, it is not difficult to pay someone seven-eight thousand rupees here and assign them something like this. To do this to make a statement on the day I called out the chief minister's son -- I don't think it was a coincidence. People are telling me that they will now make your life miserable in Mumbai. Well, I don't have to be in Mumbai, they are doing it here also. Is there open goondagardi in this country? This is how Sushant must have been frightened. But I will continue to ask questions." Kangana's statement claimed that the police will continue probing the incident. The family of Kangana is settled at Bhambla village near Hamirpur town of Himachal Pradesh, some 200 km from state capital Shimla. -- Syndicated from IANS Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that Young India is a storehouse of talent and brimming with innovative and creative solutions to the countrys problems, and with a little guidance students would go a long way in taking India forward amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the new global scenario that would emerge once the health crisis is over. It was a huge challenge to conduct the Hackathon in the times of coronavirus. It is amazing to see it happening despite the severe challenges. I congratulate the participants and the organizers for rising to the occasion and making the event possible, PM Modi said. The Prime Minister praised the concept of a rainfall prediction model that was put forward by one of the finalists and said that he appreciated the step and encouraged the student saying that the innovation if successful, would be of immense help to farmers in an agricultural country like India. The Prime Minister was addressing students at the Smart India Hackathon 2020 grand finale, through video conferencing. This year, around 10,000 students are participating in the hackathon. The grand finale of Smart India Hackathon 2020 (Software) will be held from August 1 to 3. The Smart India Hackathon has emerged as a vibrant forum to ideate and innovate. Naturally, this time our youth would be focussing on the post-Covid-19 world in their innovations, along with ways to create an Aatmanirbhar Bharat, PM Modi had tweeted earlier. The hackathon is being organised by the HRD ministrys All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Persistent Systems and i4c. At the beginning of the finale, Union HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank announced that the winner would get 1 lakh as a cash prize. The Prime Minister interacted with students from Shri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Tamil Nadu (Coimbatore), MLR Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, JECRC University, Jaipur, Graphic Era University, Dehradun and Chandigarh Engineering College and encouraged the youngsters to come forward with more innovative ideas. The hackathon is a nationwide initiative to provide students with a platform to solve some of the critical problems people face in daily lives. It is also aimed at building a culture of product innovation and a mindset of problem-solving among students pursuing higher education. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON As the fall semester fast approaches, schools, public health officials and President Donald Trump are scrambling to work out a way to reopen academic institutions. A new study by Yale University experts suggests it is possible after all - but only if every student gets tested every two to three days. Keeping infections and potential fatalities to a minimum would also require other restrictions, like a shortened semester and moving any student with symptoms of coronavirus to an 'isolation dorm.' Testing only students with symptoms, or even testing every student just once a week, would allow coronavirus to spread to nearly every person on campus, the Yale model found. Testing every one or two days would result in 60 to 160 infections at any point over the course of a stunted 80-day semester - a relatively tolerable number of sick students. It's doable - but hardly cheap, costing between $120 to $910 per student - or at least $6.9 million for a three month semester. 'We believe that there is a safe way for students to return to college in fall 2020,' the study authors wrote. But doing so 'sets a very high barlogistically, financially, and behaviorallythat may be beyond the reach of many university administrators and the students in their care.' Testing only based on symptoms would lead isolation dorms to become overwhelmed a coronavirus spread to an entire 5,000-person student body (bottom left), but testing every two days (top right would keep infections relatively low - but cost millions of dollars Using a hypothetical class of 5,000 students, of which 0.2 percent - 10 students - are asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus, few of the scenarios the scientists ran through their model can keep every student - in addition to faculty, staff and other community members - from contracting coronavirus. They came to their recommendations for reopening schools by considering how much loss of life Americans are willing to tolerate compared to how much universities and families might be willing to spend. In the study, published in JAMA Network Open on Friday, the Yale team came up with three scenarios: best, worst, and base. Although new forms of testing that could be faster, more accurate, cheaper or all three may be on the horizon, the scientists estimated that each test would cost between $10 to $50 a piece (for both the test kit and associated costs like staff to administer the tests). Schools like Boston University are frantically trying to decide whether and how to reopen this fall. BU will test its students, as will others, but with varying strategies (file) Assuming schools would go with a less expensive test and move every student with symptoms or a positive test (whether false or true positive) to an isolation dorm, they found that the best-case scenario would be testing every two days, in which around 60 to 80 students would be in isolation at any given time, but most would be false-positives. If screening was only done weekly, it would take longer for cases to be identified, but they would only go up. That would mean that, by semester's end, more than 300 students would be in the isolation dorm, and up to 200 of them would be true positives. Testing only those with symptoms would mean almost no false-positives, but more than 400, truly covid-infected students would be in the isolation dorm by the 70th day of school. Screening that way would also lead to the entire student body getting infected - knowingly or unknowingly - before they even made it through 80 days of school. Daily screening would have similar results for isolation, and keep the number of students who got infected to a minimum of 60 infected students at any given time. In the worst case scenario (middle) even a perfect test, given only based on symptoms would not stop coronavirus from spreading to every student on a campus But the cost would almost certainly be prohibitively. Even with the cheapest, most inaccurate test daily screening of students would cost $48 million - about half of the combined tuition revenue the school would make from those 5,000 students. Testing every two to three days was the most balanced outcome, resulting in about 106 infected students in the isolation dorms at any given point over the semester. It would cost a somewhat more modest $24 million (still enough to send nearly 200 students to a public university for a year). And their findings only account for the risk posed to students themselves. 'Reopening college campuses imposes risks that extend beyond students to the faculty who teach them, the many university employees (administrative and facilities staff) who come into close daily contact with them, and the countless other members of the surrounding community with whom students come into contact,' the authors wrote. 'University presidents have a duty to consider the downstream effect of their reopening decisions on these constituencies. 'However, their first responsibility is to the safety of the students in their care.' Russia is preparing to start a mass vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus in October, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Saturday, RIA news agency reported. The minister, who did not give details about the vaccine to be used, said doctors and teachers would be the first to be vaccinated. A source told Reuters this week that Russia's first potential COVID-19 vaccine, developed by a state research facility, would secure local regulatory approval in August and be administered to health workers soon after that. Also read: Coronavirus vaccine will be ready by early 2021: Dr Anthony Fauci Another woman has been accused of lying to get into Queensland from Victoria after allegedly hiding in the back of a truck. The alleged stowaway, 51, is accused of illegally crossing into Queensland with another person and has since been issued with a notice to appear in court. Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles said at a press conference on Saturday that two people were found in the back of a truck. Police say the 51-year-old declared she was visiting the state from Victoria for essential work, but officers claim this is not the case after speaking to her in Gympie at 11am on Saturday. Police said in a statement the woman allegedly lied on her Queensland Border Declaration, which are 'consistently' reviewed by the Queensland Police Service. Pictured: Defence personnel at a checkpoint on the Queensland-New South Wales border in Coolangatta All vehicles travelling into Queensland will be stopped and checked as coronavirus cases in the Sunshine State rise and the pandemic continues 'Further investigations revealed that her purpose of travel was untrue,' police said in the statement. The woman was issued a notice to appear at Gympie Magistrates Court on November 30 and was taken to hotel quarantine, where she remains. Her actions follow an aged care worker at Bolton Clarke Aged Care facility in Pinjarra Hills testing positive to COVID-19. Officers from the Gympie Police Station (pictured) visited the 51-year-old at an address about 11am on Saturday to clarify her travel intentions and whereabouts The woman, aged in her 30s, is the wife of a 27-year-old Bellbird Park man, who also tested positive for the virus on Friday. The cases are linked to the infected young women who allegedly sneaked across the border from Melbourne - and continued to visit shops, bars and restaurants, despite feeling sick. The aged care facility in Brisbane's southwest has since locked down over fears other workers and residents are at risk. All residents and staff at the facility will now undergo testing. 'We are working with them (the aged care facility) to keep all residents safe,' Mr Miles said. Health Minister Steven Miles (pictured) confirmed at a press conference on Saturday the 51-year-old woman and one other was found stowed away in the back of a truck The women responsible are Diana Lasu, 21, and Olivia Winnie Muranga, 19, who allegedly lied on their border declarations about where they had been when they arrived in Brisbane from Melbourne via Sydney on July 21. They carried on working, socialising and visiting a number of venues while waiting for their test results - which came back positive, police allege. The aged care worker's husband is believed to have caught the virus from relatives who visited the Madtongsan IV Korean restaurant at Sunnybank on July 23, when one of the women was there. They are now at the centre of the new COVID-19 cluster, along with another 21-year-old woman Haja Timbo. Olivia Winnie Muranga (left) and Diana Lasu, (right) both 19, arrived together in Brisbane from Melbourne via Sydney on July 21 The aged care worker's husband is believed to have caught the virus from relatives who visited the Madtongsan IV Korean restaurant at Sunnybank (pictured) on July 23, when one of the women was there All three women have been charged with one count each of providing false or misleading documents and fraud over their alleged lies to authorities when they arrived in Brisbane. The aged care worker is the third case of community transmission linked to the cluster, following one of the women charged sisters testing positive earlier this week. Community transmission had been eradicated in the state for two months before those infections. She is now working with authorities to determine all the locations she has been to while infectious. 'She and her husband have been absolutely model citizens, they really and truly have been unbelievably fantastic,' Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said. FILE PHOTO: A logo of Brazil's state-run Petrobras oil company is seen at their headquarters in Rio de Janeiro By Sabrina Valle and Gram Slattery RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA on Thursday posted a loss of 2.7 billion reais ($524 million) in the second quarter, hurt by tumbling oil prices despite record export volumes to China. The result, down from a record quarterly profit of 18.9 billion reais a year ago, came as the company pursued an aggressive volume-over-cents strategy to drive sales as crude prices slumped, hitting multi-decade lows in April. In a securities filing, Petrobras, as the firm is known, said its cash generation, or EBITDA, was 24.99 billion reais in the April to June quarter. This was ahead of a Refinitiv consensus estimate of 20.9 billion reais, but the figure was boosted by major non-recurring items, namely a court victory in a major tax dispute, the company said. Without one-off items, EBITDA would have come in at 17.7 billion reais, it said. The swing to a loss illustrates how record exports by Petrobras and fairly steady production levels were not enough to insulate the Rio de Janeiro-based company from the far-reaching effects of the novel coronavirus on the oil industry. "Brent prices of $65 per barrel in February tumbled to $19 per barrel in April 2020 due to a 25% contraction in global demand, threatening a sudden halt to cash flow," Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Roberto Castello Branco said in a letter to investors. Crude inventories built in the first quarter of the year were sold at a discount in the second quarter, contributing to 1.1 billion reais in losses, the company said. Exports hit a record in terms of volume in April, with more than 1 million barrels a day sold. China was the destination of 87% of the oil. As demand for fuel plummeted, Petrobras strived to place its products in a bid to avoid costly production halts amid a ramp-up plan at highly productive deep-water fields, but revenue figures show it exported at thin margins. Petrobras sales revenue fell more 44% compared to the second quarter of 2019, to 27.7 billion reais. ($1 = 5.15 reais) (Reporting by Sabrina Valle and Gram Slattery; additional reporting by Roberto Samora. Editing by Richard Pullin) She's been proudly sharing snaps of her newly slimmed down physique in a variety of ensembles during her idyllic Greek getaway, after shedding an amazing three stone. And Gemma Collins looked fabulous as she displayed her figure in a strapless black bikini and netted cover up as she stepped out in Mykonos this weekend. The TOWIE star, 39, who recently endured a bitter split with ex James Argent, oozed confidence as she posed for a snap before heading off to her next destination. Looking good: Gemma Collins looked fabulous as she displayed her figure in a strapless black bikini and netted cover up as she stepped out in Mykonos this weekend Posing up a storm next to a Mercedes G-Wagon, Gemma looked fabulous in black bandeau bikini top and matching bottoms, which she teamed with a black netted dress. Gemma accessorised her holiday look with large, square sunglasses and clear sandals, while she carried her essentials in a large tote bag. The Diva On Lockdown star swept her blonde locks into a loose ponytail, while she wore minimal make-up for her outing. Gemma appeared in good spirits as she larked around outside while joined by her pal Charlie King. Holiday style: The TOWIE star, 39, who recently endured a bitter split with ex James Argent, oozed confidence as she posed for a snap before heading off to her next destination The reality star favourite took to her Instagram on Saturday to share a Boomerang of herself in front of a fleet of cars as she declared she was off to Athens next. While hours previously she shared a stunning snap of herself lounging in a swimming pool, with a simple caption stating: 'HEAVEN'. Gemma has flown out to Mykonos with her personal trainer pal and former TOWIE star Charlie to help heal her broken heart following her split from James aka Arg. The Diva Forever star, who has been vocal about her use of controversial 250 SkinnyJabs, has shared a number of bikini snaps from her Greek holiday amid her weight loss. Fashionista: Posing up a storm next to a Mercedes G-Wagon, Gemma looked fabulous in black bandeau bikini top and matching bottoms, which she teamed with a black netted dress Work it: Gemma accessorised her holiday look with large, square sunglasses and clear sandals, while she carried her essentials in a large tote bag Meanwhile, she has reportedly booked a boob job because her 'body is getting smaller'. She told The Sun: 'I can't wait to get rid of these boobs, they're massive and look ridiculous. I have never looked better than I do now and I've never felt so good.' While admitting it tends to be the 'norm' to opt for larger breasts when booking cosmetic procedures, Gemma insisted that she wants a her natural boobs reduced. She added: 'I never have wanted surgery. But as my body is getting smaller, I feel like I am falling over on top and I just want them gone.' Diva on holiday: Gemma appeared in good spirits as she larked around outside while joined by her pal Charlie King Elsewhere, her ex James seemed to be moving on from the couple's recent love split by partying with close friends in Marbella. He was recently in high spirits during an appearance at popular local nightspot Olivia's La Cala, owned by old friend and former co-star Elliott Wright. While on Saturday he appeared in a good mood as he rode his motorbike following boat ride the previous day. Arg, who has flown to Marbella with ex Lydia Bright's sister Romana, cut a casual figure in a white T-shirt, red loafers and green patterned shorts. The star, who is still yet to gain his full driving license, picked up a scooter to travel around the city. Water babe: While hours previously she shared a stunning snap of herself lounging in a swimming pool, with a simple caption stating: 'HEAVEN' He and Gemma ended their relationship in July after she revealed a string of abusive messages, purportedly sent to her by the TV personality prior to their split. It's understood James had made derogatory remarks abut her weight after she suggested that he had bought another woman dinner. The series of texts began with Gemma saying: 'What man pays for another woman!!!', while Arg responded by saying: 'Insensitive.' Confident:The Diva Forever star, who has been vocal about her use of controversial 250 SkinnyJabs, has shared a number of bikini snaps from her Greek holiday amid her weight loss Clearly riled, the blonde said: 'And the woman that saved your life has to pay for herself!!!' Her next message was masked, but her now-ex responded: 'You are supposed to be treating me you hippo.' Moments later, Gemma uploaded another series of messages, where he sent her a plane emoji in reply to a picture of flight details. 'I'll take a mate, I'm not booking it. You said you would be a gentleman!', she penned, before he shockingly said: 'YOU FAT F**K. IVE JUST LOST ANOTHER 2000' (sic). He didn't refer to what he had lost 2000 of. The self-proclaimed diva has decided to take some time off social media, citing that she was 'devastated' and 'heartbroken' by the exchange. Going under the knife? Meanwhile, she has reportedly booked a boob job because her 'body is getting smaller' However after returning to the UK from her own Tenerife getaway, Gemma apologised to her former beau for releasing the messages. In a screenshot obtained by MailOnline, the Diva On Lockdown star contacted her fellow reality star in the early hours of the morning. She wrote: 'I am sorry about putting the messages up, I was just so hurt you suggested an open relationship, it didn't look like a joke when you typed it. 'I was so upset but I shouldn't have put the messages up, that was anger on my part which was wrong. I am so sorry about that x.' (sic) The Chief Imam of Umuahia Central Mosque, Alhaji Bako Hamza-Goni, has called for unity and peaceful co-existence among Nigerians, irrespective of their ethno-religious and political affiliations. Hamza-Goni made the call on Friday in Umuahia, during the Eid prayers organised by the Muslim community to mark this year's Sallah celebration. He described peace as a necessary requirement for development, saying that it was a collective responsibility of all Nigerians to promote peace and shun divisive tendencies. The cleric therefore urged Nigerians to embrace peace and avoid acts of violence in the overall interest of the nation. He lauded the state government and security agencies for the prevailing peace and security in Abia and charged the residents to complement government's effort by being law abiding. In an interview with newsmen, Alhaji Yaro Danladi, the Chairman of South-South and South-East Northern Traditional Rulers, appealed to the Federal Government to urgently deal with the current insecurity in different parts of the country. Danladi urged the Hausa communities in the two geo-political zones to maintain cordial relationship with their host communities. Alhaji Suleiman Ukandu, the Chairman of Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Abia, said that the celebration was centered on developing faith and trust in God. Ukandu said: The message has always been adhering strictly to the tenets of Islam, so we have a duty to ensure there is peace, unity and social justice in Nigeria. He urged the people of Abia to adhere to the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) safety protocols for the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 in the area. Meanwhile, the Imam of the Yoruba Central Mosque, Umuahia, Misbaudeen Raji, also urged the Muslim faithful to intensify their prayers for Allah's mercy and intervention, now that Nigeria is going through a trying moment. Raji gave the charge in a sermon during the Eid celebration by the Yoruba community in Abia. He admonished the people to be patient in the face of the hardship occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic. He urged them to take the hardship as a trial of their faith in Allah, saying that the situation would soon pass away. People complain that there is no money for this year's celebration. Money is not important, what is important is your life. What we experienced during the lockdown is a trial for those who are faithful to Allah. It calls for patience, the cleric said. He attributed the security challenges in most parts of the country to the citizens' disobedience to God's injunctions. According to him, Nigeria will enjoy peace and stability the moment the citizens begin to follow the rules of Allah. In separate interviews, some of the worshippers thanked God for life, in spite of the numerous challenges that made this year's festivity lowkey. Mr Sulaimon Olanrewaju said, This year's celebration will be lowkey because of what we have exprienced. There is so much hardship but in all situations, we thank God, he said. Also, Mrs Omolara Tijani, said that the occasion symbolise the significance of sacrifice and almsgiving. Many of us may not have the money to slaughter ram this year because of hardship but we can still share the little we have with the poor among us, Tijani said. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the celebration featured the symbolic slaughtering of rams. The event attracted at least 500 worshippers, who wore facemasks but physical distancing was not observed. Provisions for handwashing were also made at strategic points at the various prayer grounds as part of the efforts to check the spread of COVID-19. A detachment of security personnel were on ground in the capital city to maintain adequate security during the prayer sessions.(NAN) Gohmert is at least consistent. In early March, a slate of conservative lawmakers, including Gohmert, was exposed to an infected person at a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference. The event provided its own kind of contact tracing, and a passel of Trumpite luminaries, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chose to quarantine out of what Cruz at the time called an abundance of caution. But not Gohmert. He opted for a dearth of caution. He took no action, in the language of a GovTrack report charting COVID-19 in Congress. Since then, Gohmert claims he has been getting tested regularly, and he has been seen occasionally wearing a bandana. He seems to have gotten swabbed Wednesday chiefly because the president requires a clean bill of health for anyone who comes near him. Trump, of course, nearly always forgoes a mask. Gohmert reported in a video on his website that he was first given the quick test for what he, like many anti-Asian bigots, calls the Wuhan virus. When that came back positive, he was retested with the swab that goes way up in your sinuses (In fact, it goes in the cavity between the nose and the mouth). It too was positive. Women have always had to battle sexism and other forms of gender discrimination. From the suffragettes to the #MeToo movement, those brave enough to stand up to oppression have led the way for womens rights, but much is still needed for the world to see true gender equality. Recent estimates show that only about 35% of countries have women as heads of their governments, even though they make up almost 50% of the worlds population. Here are the incredible women first elected as heads of their countries. From presidents to prime ministers and chancellors, these remarkable ladies paved the way for girls everywhere. 1. Sri Lanka - Sirimavo Bandaranaike (1960 -1965, 1970-1977) Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the worlds first female Prime Minister in 1960. She began her political career the previous year following the assassination of her husband who was prime minister at the time. Sirimavo was elected head of state of Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka, from 1960 until 1965, and again from 1970 to 1977. Her government was notable for its socio-economical advancement; establishing a state-run system and nationalizing many businesses. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, continued her mothers legacy as a prime minister and later on as Sri Lankas first woman president. 2. India Indira Gandhi (1966-1977, 1980-1984) Brittanica.com Born into a political family, Indira Gandhi was the only child of Indias first elected prime minister. She attended a Swiss boarding school, and later, Oxford University, before launching her political career. She rose to prominence quickly, becoming the first female prime minister of India in 1966 and serving three consecutive terms. She was a vocal supporter of East Pakistans (present-day Bangladesh) independence and became the first leader to recognize it as a country. She revitalized the farming industry, nationalized the countrys banks, and led India into the nuclear age. Back as prime minister in 1980, she was assassinated four years later by two of her own bodyguards. 3. Israel- Golda Meir (1969 1974) History.com Golda Meir was born in Ukraine and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She immigrated to Israel in 1921, when the country was called British Palestine. During World War II, Meir was a leading spokesperson for the Zionist cause, and later helped establish the state of Israel, signing their declaration of independence in 1948. She was elected prime minister in 1969 and led her country during the Yom Kippur War. She resigned in 1974 and passed away four years later from lymphoma. 4. Argentina - Isabel Martinez de Peron (1974-1976) Majoritas.com Isabel Martinez de Peron was the worlds first female president and served as Argentinas president from 1974 to 1976. Already on the brink of anarchy, her countrys economic and political situations continued to deteriorate. She was seized by air forces and held under house arrest for five years. 5. Central African Republic - Elisabeth Domitien (1975-1976) Born in 1925, Elisabeth Domitien was active in politics from an early age. In 1972 she was appointed prime minister of the Central African Republic, by the former president Bokassa. A year later, however, she was dismissed from her position a year later, because of her opposition to his proposed monarchy. In 1979 she staged a coup against him and was briefly imprisoned. 6. Portugual - Maria da Lourdes Pintasilgo (1979-1980) The first, and only, female prime minister of Portugal, Maria da Lourdes Pintasilgo only held office for three months. During this short time, she was still able to reform social security and improve health care and education systems. 7. Bolivia - Lidia Gueiler Tejada (1979-1980) Lidia Gueiler Tejada was Bolivias first female president. She was sworn in 1979 as an interim president and served an eight-month term. After a coup detat, she continued to work in politics as an ambassador to Columbia and Venezuela. 8. Dominica - Dame Eugenia Charles (1980-1995) Credit: Image by One News Box The granddaughter of slaves, Eugenia Charles was not only the female first prime minister of Dominica, but she was also the countrys first female lawyer and the first woman elected as head of state in the whole of the Caribbean. Known as the Iron Lady of the Caribbean Charles fought tirelessly again government corruption. In 1991 she received the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire. 9. United Kingdom - Margaret Thatcher (1979 1990) Margaret Thatcher came from a humble background and worked as an industrial chemist before launching into politics. She joined the Conservative Party and became its leader in 1975. By 1979, she was the United Kingdoms first female prime minister. Thatcher was also the first woman elected to lead a major Western country. Nicknamed the Iron Lady for her hard stance against communism, she held office for 11 years, making her the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. During her run, Thatcher promoted free-market policies, privatized state-owned companies, and helped lead Britain towards a better economic future. 10. Iceland - Vigdis Finnbogadottir (1980-1996) Vigdis Finnbogadottir became Europes first female president in 1980. Despite being a divorced, single mother, she became an iconic political figure and the first woman to be elected head of state in a national election. A staunch advocate for Icelands cultural heritage, Finnbogadottir was immensely popular and was re-elected three times until finally retiring in 1996 after an astonishing 16-year tenure. The Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the Holy See invites condolences to be expressed on August 3 and 4 from 10am to 3pm. In the Taipei Guest House, a memorial will be open from August 1 to 14. Lee Teng-hui's body will be cremated and the ashes buried in Wuzhi military cemetery, among those who have made significant contributions to the nation. Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the Holy See has prepared a memorial for the late President Lee Teng-hui, who died two days ago. A note sent yesterday to all diplomatic representations in the Vatican announces that it will be possible to express condolences at the embassy chancellery in via della Conciliazione 4 / D, third floor, on August 3 and 4 from 10 am to 3pm. Via della Conciliazione is a few steps from the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. The note recalls that Lee Teng-hui was "president from 1988 to 2000 and the first to be elected by popular vote. He always hoped for Taiwan to be 'a nation of democracy, of freedom, of human rights and dignity'. " The current president Tsai Ing-wen had a strong relationship with Lee Teng-hui. She said of him: "He laid the foundation of democracy built on pride and our own identity; his legacy will guide generations of Taiwanese to face the challenges that lie ahead with courage. " The Taiwanese president has decided that a memorial for Lee Teng-hui will be prepared at the Taipei Guest House from August 1 to 16, from 10am to 5pm. The memorial will exhibit photos, videos and personal belongings of the deceased leader, to try to express his life and his message. Lee's body will be cremated and his ashes buried in a special area of the Wuzhi military cemetery, for those who have made significant contributions to the nation. portland protests PORTLAND, OREGON, USA - JULY 21 : Protesters use shields and umbrellas against the Federal forces in Portland, Oregon on July 21, 2020. Over a thousand people, including a large march of mothers, demonstrated for racial justice and against Donald Trumpas insertion of Federal officers in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) John Rudoff/Getty Images The Department of Homeland Security collected and analyzed communications between Portland protesters and shared the information with other law enforcement agencies, The Washington Post reported. However, Brian Murphy, acting DHS undersecretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I & A), told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a briefing last week that office personnel did not interact with protesters, according to a letter from the committee. The DHS report included protesters' communications via the Telegram messaging app, discussing where to take the protests and how to avoid officers. It is not immediately clear how the DHS obtained access to the protesters' messages, nor what the motives were behind tracking and analyzing communications between civilians exercising rights protected by the First Amendment. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The Department of Homeland Security reportedly collected and analyzed messages between protesters in Portland, contradicting what a department official told a Senate committee last week. An internal DHS document, obtained by The Washington Post, showed the department had access to electronic communications between protesters and included their messages in an intelligence report, which was shared with other law enforcement agencies like the FBI. Brian Murphy, the acting DHS undersecretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I & A), had previously stated that office personnel had no contact with protesters, according to a letter from Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asking Murphy to confirm the statement. However, the Open Source Intelligence Report, dated less than a week before Murphy's briefing before the committee, included protesters' communications via the Telegram messaging app, discussing where to take the protests and how to avoid officers. "The report describes the messages as 'likely Portland-based encrypted messaging app users discuss TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] to evade law enforcement when being pursued,'" according to The Post report. "It also states that the information came from 'a Telegram chat room,' which it described as 'an instant messaging service.'" Story continues It is not immediately clear how the DHS obtained access to the protesters' messages, nor what the motives were behind tracking and analyzing communications between civilians exercising rights protected by the First Amendment. "DHS does not comment on congressional correspondence. We respond as appropriate," the department told The Post in a statement. The Post reported earlier this week that the DHS was also compiling intelligence reports on two journalists covering the protests who published leaked unclassified internal information. The reports were also disseminated to other law enforcement agencies. Read the original article on Business Insider Los Angeles, Aug 1 : British star Idris Elba has confirmed that a movie version of his popular detective drama series, Luther, is under works. In the series created by Neil Cross, Elba was seen as DCI John Luther, a genius detective with a gift to solve murders, but his mind can't always save him from the violence of his passions. The show ended its five-season run in 2019. "I've maintained I'd like to see it come to a film, and that is where I think we are heading towards -- a film. And I'm looking forward to making that happen. It is happening," Elba said, while He shared the news while speaking to the press after receiving the BAFTA Special Award at the Virgin Media BAFTA Television Awards, reports variety.com. The London-born star is being recognised by BAFTA for his craft and for pushing for diversity and new talent. "With film, the sky is the limit. You can be a little bit bolder with the storylines. And (you can be) a little bit more international, and a little more up the scale. But John Luther is always going to be John Luther," he added. Elba also shared that he would like to direct and write more, as well as act. With his own production company, he said that he has been producing "solidly for about five years. I love it, it is a really slow burn thing, and you cultivate your land really slowly, but it is really satisfying". He added: "I love acting, and I'd like to win a BAFTA as an actor one day." Asked about championing new talent, Elba said: "We've all got a duty -- each one, teach one, and to give others an opportunity. I wouldn't be here if someone didn't think I didn't have talent. You have to pay it forward." Science is clear on the efficacy of face masks it's proven to slow the spread of COVID-19. But what of face shields? Youve probably seen someone wearing one in your neighborhood. Its basically an individually sized salad bar sneeze guard attached to a headband. The advantages of a transparent plastic face shield over a face mask arent trivial. Breathing is easier while wearing a shield. Speech isnt muffled like it can be through a mask. Eyeglasses are less likely to fog up. People wearing a full-face visor instead of a mask tend not to touch their mouth, nose and eyes as much. You can see if a person is smiling at you through a face shield. With a face mask, you cant know for sure if its grin or a scowl under the fabric. Psychologists and speech therapists find that communicating with patients wearing a face shield is easier than with those wearing a mask. Hearing-impaired people can read the lips of people protected by a shield. Doctors, nurses, dental workers and other front-line health workers wear shields, but mostly as an added layer of protection in conjunction with masks. They're essential for intubation, which often causes to patients to expectorate violently. The shields also extend the longevity of the masks by blocking droplet contamination. If someone coughs in your face, a mask wont protect your eyes, but a shield will. And unlike face coverings designed for single use, such as surgical masks and N95 masks, plastic shields can be washed down and reused indefinitely. Despite the benefits, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is clear on its guidance: Face shields are not recommended for normal everyday activities or as a substitute for cloth face coverings. For one thing, its unknown how well shields, which have openings at the sides and bottom, protect others from droplets expelled by the wearer. Furthermore, the level of protection a shield affords to the person wearing it has not been thoroughly studied. In a recent coronavirus outbreak at hotel in Graubunden, Switzerland, only those workers who were wearing a face shield were exposed. "It has been shown that only those employees who had plastic visors were infected. There was not a single infection among employees with a mask," Rudolf Leuthold, director of the cantonal health department in Graubunden, told The Local. Nevertheless, face shields have their advocates. A Cincinnati physician says teachers and students should wear full face shields instead of cloth masks when classes resume in the fall. "These [holds up his fingers] are the 10 most deadly weapons, which is why you do not want to touch your t-zone,' your eyes, nose and mouth," internist Dr. Will Sawyer told Fox19. "Its self-inoculation." Sawyer maintains people can't help touching face masks to constantly adjust them, but a face shield forces them to keep their hands away from their face. However, the CDC says COVID-19 is primarily transmitted via respiratory droplets by coughing and sneezing, speaking and even breathing. Hand-to-mouth/nose/eye transmission is believed to be much less common, although it does happen. Whether you wear a mask or a shield, frequent hand washing is strongly encouraged. School districts in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states are including face shields among the protective gear theyre ordering in anticipation of reopening in the fall. In the Bay Area, for example, the Palo Alto Unified teachers union wants the district to outfit teachers with both face masks and shields. Dr. Eli N. Perencevich, an infectious disease physician and professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, co-authored an essay in the Journal of American Medical Association arguing for greater use of face shields by the general public. The opinion piece was published April 29. Perencevich referred to a 2014 simulation study in which face shields were shown to reduce immediate viral exposure by 96% when worn by a simulated health care worker within 18 inches of a cough. But the author of the study, William Lindsley, a research biomedical engineer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, told NBC News people should stick to cloth face coverings. "A cloth mask or a medical mask is going to do a better job of protecting you against the smaller particles than a face shield would," Lindsley said. "A face shield is good against the really big stuff [droplets] that you can kind of see. But as the stuff gets smaller and smaller, it's just easy for that to go around the face shield and be inhaled." There is mounting scientific evidence that the coronavirus can be spread as an aerosol, mainly indoors, suggesting that viral particles could be inhaled through the openings at the bottom and on the sides of a face shield. Swiss Federal Office of Public Health spokesman Daniel Dauwalder told The Local visors or shields are no substitute for face masks, but they could serve as a "complementary form of protection." California and New York both require people to wear face coverings in public. But while New York allows anyone to substitute a plastic shield for a mask, California's Department of Health's guidance states that shields be worn only by those who have a medical condition that prevents them from wearing a mask. It also stipulates that the shield should have a drape attached to its bottom edge. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. SF pastor claims without evidence that 'news reports on COVID are largely unreal' Andytown Coffee closes cafes, roastery after former employee tests positive for COVID-19 Florida Man Took Coronavirus Aid and Bought a Lamborghini, Officials Say Trump calls new Senate GOP coronavirus bill 'semi-irrelevant' Newsom announces $52M in funding to help hard-hit part of California Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate 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. New Delhi, July 31 (IANS) Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said on Friday that novel coronavirus had laid bare the weaknesses in the society and lamented that economics doesn't recognise workers employed in the informal sector. He stressed the need for according recognition to such workers. During his conversation with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the founder of Bangladesh Grameen Bank said: "The financial system is designed in a very wrong way. And the Covid-19 crisis has revealed the weaknesses of the society in a very ugly way; you can see it now. "These are hidden away into the society; we get used to it; the poor people are there; migrant workers are in the city, hiding in the city. But suddenly, we see millions of them on the highway trying to go home. And then on foot, thousand-mile journeys. That is the saddest part that Covid-19 pandemic has revealed. We have to recognise these people." He was responding to Rahul Gandhi's question about the finances of the poor, and the impact of poverty on women, and how this Covid-19 crisis and ensuing economic crisis was going to affect the poor. Yunus said that economics does not recognise these people. "They call it the informal sector. Informal sector means we have nothing to do with them; they are not a part of the economy. Economy begins with the formal sector; we are busy with the formal sector. If we can only finance them, we can take care of them, pay attention to them, they'll be moving up the ladder," the Nobel laureate said. Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006. He set up the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help the poor escape poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves. Yunus said: "Women are the remotest of all. Looking at the structure, this is the lowest in the structure. They have no voice, nothing in the society; traditions make them completely separate. They are the basic strength of the society." "All the entrepreneurial ability, when microcredit came and went to the women, they showed how much entrepreneurial capacity they had. That's why microcredit is known to the whole world and not just in Bangladesh because they have shown their worth. They can fight; they have the skills; artisanal skills and all kinds of skills, beautiful skills. They are all forgotten because they all belong to what we call the informal sector," he said. In the last four months, the Congress leader has interacted with Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, epidemiologist Johan Geseicke, Professor Nicholas Burns at Harvard's Kennedy School, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, and Indian industrialist Rajiv Bajaj. --IANS aks/tsb A NHS Spitfire flew over the UK as a tribute to the hard work of frontline heroes who risked their lives during the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of Brits watched the plane as it passed over the skies this weekend to commemorate the work of the NHS and key workers. The blue Spitfire PL983 'L' flew over 27 hospitals across the south east - emblazoned with the names of 80,000 NHS heroes. The blue Spitfire PL983 'L' flew over 27 hospitals across the south east of England on August 1 - emblazoned with the names of 80,000 NHS heroes John Romain, pictured, flew the NHS Spitfire over the country to thank the NHS workers who risked their lives during the coronavirus crisis The plane, which had previously been flown every Thursday during lockdown to thank key workers, made two trips across the country this afternoon Family members, neighbours and friends have also been nominated by members of the public and their names were hand painted on the aircraft. The Spitfire, flown by pilot John Romain, set off on August 1 for a special flight in tribute to the hard work of the NHS staff during the pandemic. The plane, which had previously been flown every Thursday during lockdown to thank key workers, made two trips across the country this afternoon. The plane took off on its first route from Duxford Airfield, near Cambridge, at 11am before flying over Southend University Hospital and 17 others before landing at Goodwood Aerodrome at 12:30pm. It took off from Goodwood Aerodrome in Chichester, West Sussex, at 3pm before flying over the Queen Alexandra Hospital NHS in Portsmouth. It flew over a further 10 hospitals before landing back at Duxford. The plane made two trips, taking off on its first route from Duxford Airfield, near Cambridge, at 11am. It landing at Goodwood Aerodrome in Chichester The aircraft landed at Goodwood Aerodrome in Chichester, West Sussex, after its first route before taking off again at 3pm on its second route A spokesman for The Aircraft Restoration Company said: 'Saying and receiving a thank you is one of the simplest pleasures enjoyed by humankind, it takes the smallest of efforts but can carry vast meaning. 'So, how could we give people an opportunity to join us in saying thank you to the NHS whilst also giving them the opportunity to thank someone closer to home well, this is what we've come up with. The plane had the message 'THANK U NHS' painted on the underside of its wings by the Aircraft Restoration Company, a firm which restores vintage aircrafts. Nurses take pictures of the Spitfire as it flies over Southend University Hospital, South End, Essex on the first route of the day The plane, which has 'THANK U NHS' on the underside of the wings, flew over Peterborough City Hospital, pictured, as a tribute to frontline workers Pilot John Romain landed the NHS Spitfire in Chichester. The plane had the message 'THANK U NHS' painted on the underside of its wings by the Aircraft Restoration Company From July 5 to September 20 the Aircraft Restoration Company will be handwriting 80,000 names onto the Spitfire. You can nominate someone's name to be painted on the aircraft by donating a minimum of 10 to the NHS Charities Together charity. Nominations should be sent to the JustGiving page, with the name and reason for the nomination, before the deadline of September 20. Owners will be adding the names of the local heroes throughout the summer and sharing updates on social media pages. More flights are planned in the coming weeks. A Chinese industrial company operating in Ghana, Sunda International have made a donation to the Kumasi Central Mosque in the Ashanti Region. The donation coincided with the celebration by Muslims worldwide of Eid Al-Adha, the holiest festival in the Islamic calendar. Eid Al-Adha or the Festival of Sacrifice is celebrated to commemorate the obedience of Ibrahim in a four-day celebration that began on 31 July and will last until Monday, 2 August. The yearly ritual is considered a time to think of others as well as repenting for sins committed in the past. The Festival of Sacrifice marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage, where Muslims return from pilgrimage in Mecca. Muslims will sacrifice goats, sheep, lambs, and cows to represent Ibrahims commitment to God, where Allah came to Ibrahim in a dream and asked him to sacrifice his son Ismail as an act of obedience to God. Participation in the sacrificial festival is mandatory for all obedient Muslims that can afford an animal. It is also mandatory for people with money to give an amount to charity, so less fortunate people can afford to join in on the celebration as well. As part of their corporate social responsibility, SUNDA International donated an assortment of their brands as well as a bullock to the Kumasi central Mosque through astute businessman Herbert Mensah to enhance the celebration of the Eid Al-Adha. King Edward of Hello FM in Kumasi together with Prince Osei of Kessben FM stood on behalf of SUNDA International and Herbert Mensah and presented the items to the leadership of the Kumasi central mosque. They donated a big bullock and other products from Sunda International. He remarked that the yearly gesture by Mr. Mensah is in line with his long-held tradition of keeping a bond with the Zongo community that has always supported him especially during his days as Kotoko chairman, his activities with the May 9 Foundation and his efforts to build Ghana Rugby. King Edward also added, Herbert Mensah believe in the goodness of helping the poor in our society the same way as sponsors like Sunda International. He acknowledged Sunda international for their donation of product brands such as Kleesoft, FasKit, and so on. Receiving donation on behalf of the Muslim community, regional chief Imam Abdul Mumin praised SUNDA International and Herbert Mensah for their dedication and commitment to the Zongo communities and the poor in general throughout the years. Imam Abdul Mumin prayed for blessings of Allah (God) upon the life of SUNDA International and Mr. Herbert Mensah as well as all generous givers to the poor in our society. Thousands of Ghanaians including Ghanas vice president Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia have joined millions of other Muslims from all over the world this year to fulfill one of the major pillars of Islam and to celebrate Eid al-Adha in the holy city of Mecca. SUNDA International is a Chinese company in Ghana engaged in the importation and distribution of household consumable products and detergents in Ghana and West Africa for over thirteen years. 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 India has extended the suspension of all international passenger flights until August 31 in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, said a report, citing the country's Director-General of Civil Aviation, DGCA. However, this restriction shall not apply to international all-cargo operations and flights specifically approved by DGCA. The aviation regulator also noted that during the suspension period, more than 2,500 repatriation flights by foreign carriers had been approved to uplift stranded passengers to and from India. Under the Vande Bharat Mission, in total, Air India and Air India Express have uplifted 2,67,436 stranded passengers and other charters have uplifted 4,86,811 stranded passengers during the period from 6th May to 30th July, 2020, the government said in a statement. To allow gradual movement of passenger traffic, 'Transport Bubble' agreements have been signed with US, France, and Germany. On July 9, India had announced an air bubble deal with the UAE that would be in place from July 12 to 26. Recently, 'Transport Bubble' agreement had been signed with Kuwait to uplift stranded passenger both to and from India. More similar arrangements are likely to fructify and ease passenger movements from different countries, the regulator said in a statement. In the coming days, more countries like UK, Canada could also have these bubbles with India allowing people as per government norms to travel to and from there, it added.-TradeArabia News Service Champaign, IL (61820) Today A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High 46F. Winds S at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Cloudy. Low 26F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible. Mallika Nivasa Samithiya enters centenary year with plans for the future By Ruqyyaha Deane View(s): View(s): Beginning with a stanza led by a Buddhist monk and followed by a lovely song sung by children of the Sneha Child Development Centre, the 99th annual general meeting (AGM) of the Mallika Nivasa Samithiya was held on July 30 on a simple note, reflecting the core values of this longstanding Buddhist social service organisation. Taking place at the Mallika Home set amidst a canopy of trees in the heart of Bambalapitiya, the AGM began after the garlanding of a portrait of the Samithiyas founder Mallika Hewavitarne. With the reading of minutes and presentation of the budget and annual report, a new board was elected for the upcoming year. Damayanti de Alwis Fernando was elected president for a second term while Chitra Manukulasuriya and Chandra De Silva were elected vice presidents. Sriyani Hewavasan was elected deputy president, Manel Samarasinghe secretary and Thyagi Gunawardena treasurer. I expect to take this Samithiya forward with my utmost strength and courage; respecting its rules and regulations and not breaching the trust you have placed on me, President Damayanti de Alwis Fernando said addressing the gathering while expressing her thanks to the outgoing and incoming board. She spoke of the proposed building for which the foundation stone is to be laid soon. The delay in starting construction work was due to the ongoing pandemic and shortage of funds, but the new committee is determined to push forward and make it a reality, she said. Colombo University Vice Chancellor and chief guest Chandrika Wijeratne in her address touched on the challenges facing society in current times. For 99 years, we have been continuing this organisation and not only have we faced the COVID-19 pandemic but even during situations more dangerous we have persevered together, she said. Noting that it was quite unfortunate that there was a shortage of youth due to low reproduction rates, Prof. Wijeratne said she was happy to see that those present at the meeting currently in their silver age were living a full life. She expressed her appreciation that elders and children who are taken care of at the Samithiyas homes are living a happy and free life and that people who are at the two ends of the life cycle are so well cared for. She thanks those who ensured this happened through their support and monetary contributions. The Mallika Nivasa Samithiya celebrates its centenary this year to be commemorated on October 8 and plans are being made for a grand celebration at the BMICH as the society completes 100 years of being a pivotal charity organisation helping elderly women and children alike. Under its umbrella are the Mallika Home for elderly women, the Parakrama Child Development Centre for children between the ages of 5-18 and Sneha Child Development Centre for children under the age of 5. A request has been made to the Mayor of Colombo through the Prime Ministers Office to rename the road housing the societys headquarters and homes as Srimathi Mallika Hewavitarne Mawatha after the founder. In four years of federal politics, Nicolle Flint has had a fast lesson in just how entitled some Australians feel when it comes to using sexist language about women in public life. She has experienced the worst of it such as highly sexualised slurs daubed on her electoral office window and the everyday, which includes the relentless focus on women's appearance. This week, in a move rarely seen among members of the Liberal Party's conservative faction, she spectacularly called out the latter after having her "tight, black, ankle-freezing trousers and stiletto heels", her earrings and even her smile critiqued in a column by veteran broadcaster Peter Goers, who dubbed her a "fashion plate". Nicolle Flint was amazed at the bi-partisan support she received from female politicians around Australia this week after calling out sexism. Credit:Ben Searcy Furious, she donned a bin bag for a Twitter video in which she asked "so Mr Goers, what should a woman in politics wear? How about a garbage bag to match your rubbish views". She was delighted to see that her tweet attracted loud support from women across the political spectrum, including many with wildly opposing political views. Former Air Force base in Gettysburg on market for $4.5 M A former air force base near Gettysburg is up for sale. The base is listed as having 50 beds and 15 bathrooms on a 42-acre parcel of land. SpaceX and NASA are preparing the return flight of two astronauts from the International Space Station while keeping an eye on Hurricane Isaias as it threatens Floridas Atlantic coast. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are scheduled to undock SpaceXs Dragon capsule from the space station at 7:34 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday if weather forecasts on Earth cooperate. They will begin an engine burn to break out of orbit Sunday afternoon, with a splashdown near Florida planned for less than an hour later at 2:42 p.m. If bad weather poses a problem, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will delay the milestone mission until Monday with plans for a Tuesday arrival. NASA has set a maximum acceptable wind limit of about 10 miles per hour (16 kilometers per hour), as well as rules on wave size and frequency. The space agency has seven potential landing sites in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Behnken and Hurley launched for the station May 30 on a Falcon 9 rocket made by Elon Musks Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Their flight was the first time American astronauts have voyaged from the U.S. since NASAs space shuttle program ended in 2011. And its SpaceXs first test flight to the station with astronauts on board, coming 18 years after Musk founded SpaceX with the ultimate goal of populating other planets. Atmospheric Re-Entry In the return flight, the Dragon will be traveling at about 17,500 miles per hour (28,160 kilometers per hour) before re-entering the Earths atmosphere, where it will rapidly slow and heat up. The vehicle will undergo temperatures of as much as 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,927 degrees Celsius) during re-entry, according to NASA. The SpaceX craft has two sets of parachute deployments. The first involves two drogue chutes that deploy at 18,000 feet when the vehicle is traveling at 350 miles per hour. Then four main parachutes that come out at 6,000 feet, with Dragon moving at about 119 miles per hour. Dragon has oxygen, water and supplies to remain in orbit for about three days if the weather deteriorates. NASA could extend that slightly, Steve Stich, the agencys commercial crew program manager, told reporters July 29. SpaceX plans for the astronauts to exit the capsule within an hour after splashdown, at which point it will collect the capsule for re-use. U.S. military aircraft in Hawaii and South Carolina are prepared to fly a search and rescue mission, if necessary. Next Missions The ocean landings come after a 45-year splashdown hiatus and hark back to NASAs Apollo program, which saw astronauts plop into the Pacific Ocean to be retrieved by ships. The last U.S. space return by sea was the joint Apollo-Soyuz docking mission, which ended with the Apollo capsules return in July 1975, northwest of Hawaii. If the test mission goes according to plan, NASA aims to send its next space station crew in late September with four astronauts aboard the Dragon. The vehicle Behnken and Hurley flew will be refurbished for a Crew-2 Mission in the first half of 2021 with another four astronauts including Megan McArthur, Behnkens wife, who will serve as the missions pilot. NASA has contracted with SpaceX and Boeing Co. for crew-ferry missions to the space station. Boeing plans a second uncrewed test flight of its Starliner vehicle later this year after a mission in December failed to reach the space station. Now read: NASA launches its latest Mars rover Defection should be treated as a constitutional sin: Abhishek Manu Singhvi India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Aug 01: Defection is a constitutional sin and ways to solve this issue should be a priority, Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, member of Parliament said. Dr. Singhvi, a senior advocate and national spokesperson of the Congress said at a webinar on Parliamentary Democracy that a whip should be reserved for falling governments. This should be used only for confidence votes or money bills such as the Budget. Dr. Singhvi said that the webinar organised by advocate, J Ravindran that defection is a major issue and is a constitutional sin, which involves opportunistically ditching a party. If a speaker wants to help you, he need not decide anything for years. When the political equation suits you, then the speaker ends up deciding in three days, he also said. Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi tests positive for COVID-19 He also lamented about the fact that a defection is engineered, then elected leaders resign and this reduces the strength of the House. It creates an artificial majority for one group and they circumvent the defection law. Singhvi also said. A few years back there was a bonhomie, when I sat at the Central Hall of Parliament. These are facets of Indian democracy, but they need to be underlined and emphasised. This is the spirt that we must preserve. I am extremely concerned that vendetta politics and narrowness is growing. This would be the beginning of the end of parliamentary democracy and at the national level unfortunately, this is a new development, he also added. Parliament is for a fair and open discussion and it is supposed to symbolise and signify the assent of India's diverse population to decisions of governance and population. Giving out his wish list for reform, Dr. Singhvi said that he laments the fact that MPs have no power to initiate legislation. Only the government of the day can initiate a legislation. If I have an excellent legislative proposal, I can only propose it, but it is up ton the government to take or not. This must change, he said. Abhishek Singhvi to introduce private member bill in RS for enforcing two-child norm Speaking on the Rajasthan issue, he said that under Article 174 the Governor has no power except to call for a session if the Cabinet tells him. He is not a member of the assembly. He is an ornamental gatekeeper, who can open the gate in a formal way, but cannot come inside and play. Can a Governor take more than a month to call an assembly? Everything cannot be solved by the courts. Unfortunately when the protectors of the Constitution become the destroyers, then nothing can save the system, he also said. The anti-defection law needs a one line amendment. It should say if you have resigned and created an artificial majority, then the person shall be barred from becoming a minister for six months. In today's scenario, you can resign, become a minister and then face the elections after six months. "I think it is time to decide fundamentally whether defection is a sin or not. The value judgment is that you will not change the party. Once you decide that defection is a sin, then let us make it to avoid all the circumvention." Defection is not only about violating the whip. It is also about not attending party meetings. Sachin Pilot says he is part of the Congress and wants to be part of it. But he will not attend the party meeting, Dr. Singhvi also said. On the ordinance route taken by the governance, he said that this has a place in the Constitution. This route can be used only for truly emergent situations. The other route is the Money Bill route. In this the last word is with the Lok Sabha. This in fact makes the Rajya Sabha redundant. A Money Bill must predominantly deal with money matters such as the Budget, Dr. Singhvi also said. On the disruptions in Parliament, he suggested a few measures. If MPs come into the well and disrupt Parliament, the first thing to do would be cut their salary. The next would be to get the marshal to suspend the MP for the day. In case of repeated disruptions, the MP could be suspended for the session, he also added. Dr. Singhvi also said that the sittings of Parliament and assemblies must increase. Assemblies sit an average of just 20 to 30 days. In the case of Parliament it is 4.5 months, which s better. However, there could be more sittings, he also said. Dr. Singhvi said that India is the most vibrant democracy. Please ask yourself why India is the only country that has remained a vibrant democracy after having emerged from the British rule. We got a Gandhi before a Nehru. There is no better person who could have used ahimsa to get independence. There was none better than Nehru and he had the large heartedness to preserve and enhance democracy. Gandhi followed by Nehru is the real answer to India's vibrant democracy. hwoldke adds: If you have multiple copies of the same title, the proper question isnt which one to keep . . . but whether each of these volumes has something unique that is important to you. You may end up with four copies of Moby Dick, but so what? You keep one because of its annotations, one because of its illustrations, one because of an insightful ntroduction, and one because it was the first big person book you ever bought . . . But a word of caution: Be careful about getting rid of any book because you think youll never read it again. I say this, having gone through spots of culling several years ago, only to have gone out since and replaced a good deal of what I got rid of. My younger self was ignorant of what my older self has wanted to reread. President Donald Trump said that TikTok may be banned in the US, and other options are also being looked at. President Donald Trump plans to announce a decision ordering Chinas ByteDance Ltd. to divest its ownership of the music-video app TikTok, which is popular with U.S. teens, according to people familiar with the matter. The U.S. has been investigating potential national security risks due to the companys control of the app, and Trumps decision could be announced as soon as Friday, the people said. We are looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok, Trump told reporters at the White House Friday. We are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok. Spokespeople for the White House and Treasury Department didnt immediately respond to requests for comment. A TikTok spokesperson couldnt be reached for comment. Snap Inc., a TikTok competitor, gained on the report, reflecting speculation that it may benefit from any move that weakens TikTok. Shares of the Santa Monica, California-based company were up 2.7% to $23.02 at 2:37 p.m. in New York. Bytedance bought Musical.ly Inc. in 2017 and merged it with TikTok, creating a popular and fast-growing social media hit in the U.S -- the first Chinese app to make such inroads. As TikTok grew more popular, U.S. officials grew more concerned about the potential for the Chinese government to use the app to gain data on U.S. citizens. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which investigates overseas acquisitions of U.S. businesses, began a review of the purchase in the fall of 2019, according to a person familiar with the investigation. TikTok has become a political pawn between the U.S. and China, and elected officials have criticized the apps security and privacy practices, suggesting that user data collected through the app might be shared with the Chinese government. Trump said earlier this month he was considering banning TikTok as a way to retaliate against China for its handling of the coronavirus. TikTok critics and competitors have played up that fear, including Facebook Inc., which has criticized the app for alleged censorship. Trumps threat to ban TikTok came just a few weeks after reports that many TikTok users had tried to sabotage a Trump campaign rally by requesting tickets they never planned to use and coordinated a push to flood Trumps 2020 campaign app with negative reviews. TikTok, which has offices in Los Angeles, has been looking for ways to distance itself from its Chinese ownership, seeking to reassure the public that no data is stored on servers in China and that the app operates independently. Bytedance even appointed a CEO formerly of Walt Disney Co, Kevin Mayer, to run its operations in America and the rest of the world. Longford retailers have given an indifferent response to the Governments July Stimulus package with some arguing its overall measures dont go far enough. Tax measures announced last week totalling 7.4 billion have been the subject of much debate as the country aims to kickstart its economic recovery in the wake of Covid-19. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said Irelands July stimulus plan is twice as large as that of the UK in relative terms, with a higher spend per person. However, for local shopkeepers and sole traders on the ground, the concessions have been called into question in terms of their overall long term and likely impact. We need all we can get at the minute, said John OBrien of Matt OBrien Fashions in Longford town. The announcement was good but personally I think they need to do more. The VAT rate has come down from 23 per cent to 21 per cent and its a small drop and personally I think it should have been done eight years ago as its still 20 per cent in the UK. Mr OBrien welcomed a decision to introduce a 600m commercial rates waiver to help cash strapped firms but warned there were far more pressing micro-level issues at play. At the minute there is two hours free parking but the minute it comes back in it will keep a lot of people away. The only way to get things back to where they were is to get people shopping and the way to do that is by giving people confidence and through government support, he added. Micheal Ellis of Fresh Today was just as non committal, saying the tax breaks announced last week were positive in theory but fanciful in terms of their all round prospective delivery. We were extremely busy during the pandemic, he said. But we are going to Killarney and Cork and its outrageous expensive. I just dont think reducing the VAT rate will have any addition at all. From a retailers point of view, I think they should have left it the way it was because how are we going to be able to pay for social welfare and everything else? I just think we will be left with an outrageous debt to pay. Two of Longford-Westmeaths four TDs Joe Flaherty (Fianna Fail) and Peter Burke (Fine Gael) were both wholesome in their praise of the measures announced. Mr Flaherty said: For several months I have been dealing with local business owners who were wracked with doubt and whether they would be able to open for business again. A suite of supports in the stimulus will greatly assist them in this regard. "The key now will be to ensure that as many local businesses as possible apply for and draw down the Restart Grant with likely grants now boosted by as much as 150%. His Fine Gael counterpart described the announcement as "comprehensive" and highlighted a 600m commercial rates waiver as a means towards reviving an economy which has been decimated by the ongoing health crisis. The waiver was initially brought in for a three month period and was designed to cover all ratepayers that had been forced to close," said Mr Burke. "However, as anyone will know that has been on a high street in any major town recent months, normal commercial activity did not resume in July. "From being in towns, from talking to business owners, it was clear that there was a worry that rates would be due and that the revenue would not be there to meet them. By Carl Hessler Jr. chessler@21st-centurymedia.com @montcocourtnews on Twitter NARBERTH >> A Delaware County man who worked as an aide at Bryn Mawr Hospital must answer to charges in Montgomery County Court that he allegedly had sexual contact with a teenage female patient while she was in his care at the hospital. Kaseef Nshe Festus, 30, of the 1200 block of Roosevelt Drive, Haverford Township, was ordered to stand trial, after a preliminary hearing before District Court Judge Henry Schireson in Narberth, on charges of institutional sexual assault of a minor, endangering the welfare of a child and corruption of a minor in connection with an alleged May 7 incident involving a 16-year-old girl at the hospital located in Lower Merion. Festus remains free on $10,000 unsecured bail to await a pretrial hearing in county court. If convicted of all the charges at trial, Festus faces a possible maximum sentence of 91/2 to 19 years in prison. However, state sentencing guidelines could allow for a lesser sentence. With the charges, Montgomery County detectives alleged Festus had sexual contact with a 16-year-old girl while she was being treated in the emergency room at Bryn Mawr Hospital between May 6 and May 8. The alleged contact occurred as the girl stayed in the emergency room while the girls family and hospital staff were attempting to locate a proper placement and treatment facility for the girl, according to the criminal complaint filed by county Detective Walter Kerr. The girl was taken to the hospital on May 6 after her parents discovered a self-inflicted cut to the girls arms, according to court papers. The girl was released from the hospital on May 8 with outpatient treatment arranged. While attending outpatient treatment on May 11, the girl disclosed that when she was at Bryn Mawr Hospital the previous week she had sexual contact with a hospital employee, who was subsequently identified as Festus. The girl told child social workers that during the overnight hours of May 7 to May 8, Festus, identified in court papers as a patient safety associate, was assigned to stay with her in her room, according to the arrest affidavit. Detectives alleged Festus and the girl talked, held hands, kissed and then had sexual contact despite Festus initially telling the girl that he could get into trouble for having sex with a patient and maybe they should wait until (the girl) was 18, according to the criminal complaint. When Festus was interviewed by detectives on May 22 he claimed that he and the girl began to have sexual contact but that he stopped because I knew it was wrong and I told her I could get in trouble, according to the arrest affidavit. The case will be prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Gabriella T. Soreth, who is assigned to the district attorneys Family Protection Unit. Festus is represented by defense lawyer Jeffrey Azzarano, of Philadelphia, according to court records. Three male producers at "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" have been accused of sexual misconduct at the daytime TV juggernaut, ranging from inappropriate comments and touching to assault. The accusations against head writer Kevin Leman, executive producer Ed Glavin and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman were published late Thursday in a BuzzFeed News expose reportedly based on interviews with dozens of former "Ellen" employees. Leman and Norman quickly denied the allegations in statements. Glavin did not immediately issue a public response. The BuzzFeed story broke the same day The Hollywood Reporter obtained a letter that DeGeneres sent to show staff promising to "correct the issues" plaguing the off-camera office environment. One ex-employee reportedly said Leman asked if he could manually pleasure him or perform oral sex in a bathroom at a company party in 2013, according to BuzzFeed. Another allegedly saw Leman grab a production assistant's penis, and yet another reportedly saw Leman grope a production assistant in a car and kiss his neck in May 2017, the outlet said. Several former employees said it was common for Leman to make sexually explicit comments at work and ask colleagues about their sex lives. "He'd probably do it in front of 10 people and they'd laugh because 'it's just Kevin being Kevin,' but if you're in a position of power at a company, you don't just get to touch me like that," one former employee reportedly said. Leman categorically denied "any kind of sexual impropriety" in a statement. "I started at the Ellen Show as a PA more than 17 years ago and have devoted my career to work my way to the position I now hold. While my job as head writer is to come up with jokes and, during that process, we can occasionally push the envelope I'm horrified that some of my attempts at humor may have caused offense," he told BuzzFeed. "I have always aimed to treat everyone on the staff with kindness, inclusivity and respect. In my whole time on the show, to my knowledge, I've never had a single HR or inter-personal complaint made about me, and I am devastated beyond belief that this kind of malicious and misleading article could be published," he said. Five former employees reportedly told BuzzFeed that Glavin touched them inappropriately in ways that included rubbing their shoulders and back or placing his hand around their lower waist. "(Glavin) had a reputation for being handsy with women," one reportedly said. "You could definitely see the creep factor and the creepy touching. That was out in the open for everybody to see," one former employee who claimed Glavin regularly touched her in the control room told BuzzFeed. "Obviously, no one wants that, and no one wants to be uncomfortably touched by someone. But you didn't want to piss them off or you would be fired, so it was just that culture of fear," she said. Forty-seven former employees reportedly told BuzzFeed that Glavin led with intimidation and fear on a daily basis. Tribune News Service Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. English director Alan Parker, 76, dies Alan Parker, a successful and sometimes surprising filmmaker whose diverse output includes "Bugsy Malone," "Midnight Express," and "Evita," has died at 76, his family said. A Briton who became a Hollywood heavyweight, Parker also directed "Fame," "The Commitments and "Mississippi Burning." Together his movies won 10 Academy Awards and 19 British Academy Film Awards. The director's family said he died Friday in London after a long illness. Parker was born in London on Feb. 14, 1944, and, like many other aspiring British directors of his generation, including Ridley Scott and Adrian Lyne, began his career in advertising as a copywriter and director of commercials. He moved into television with critically acclaimed 1974 drama "The Evacuees," which won an international Emmy Award. The next year he wrote and directed his first feature, "Bugsy Malone," an unusual, exuberant musical pastiche of gangster films with a cast of children, including a young Jodie Foster. He followed that with 1978 feature "Midnight Express," the reality-based story of an American's harrowing incarceration in a Turkish prison for alleged drug offenses. It won two Oscars including one for Oliver Stone's script and gained Parker the first of two best-director nominations. Parker is survived by his wife Lisa Moran-Parker, children Lucy, Alexander, Jake, Nathan and Henry, and seven grandchildren. Associated Press Kevin Williams reviews Thomas Sowells new book on charter schools in the July 27 issue of National Review. The review is published under the headline The Collapsing Case against Charter Schools. The review opens: Thomas Sowell who will have just turned 90 when this review is published could have retired by now. He could be publishing the memoirs of a celebrated intellectual or the late-career tracts of an eminence grise. What does he give us, instead? A methodologically rigorous, closely argued, data-driven case for charter schools, with very little high-flown rhetoric (I noted one exclamation point) and 94 pages of data tables. Charter Schools and Their Enemies is a bloodbath for Sowells intellectual opponents, and it ought to be a neutron bomb in the middle of the school-reform debate. But Thomas Sowell has been giving the reading public and the policymaking class some of the most intelligent advice to be had for many decades why would they start listening to him now? Much of Charter Schools and Their Enemies is dedicated to the seemingly simple but not simple project of comparing educational outcomes at charter schools with those at conventional public schools. He begins with an illustrative case that will be familiar to many conservatives: The TexasIowa public-school comparison. If you judged simply by scores on standardized tests, you would conclude that Iowa has much better public schools than does Texas. But theres a wrinkle: White students in Texas outperform white students in Iowa, Hispanic students in Texas outperform Hispanic students in Iowa, and black students in Texas outperform black students in Iowa. But Iowa is very, very white, and Texas is not. The source of the disparity in standardized-test outcomes for white, black, and Hispanic students is of course the subject of some controversy, but those disparities are longstanding, they are similar in many cities and states and from urban to rural areas, and they are slow to change with one important exception: in charter schools. In conventional public schools, the majority of the students are white or Asian; in charter schools, the majority of the students are black or Hispanic. Studies finding that charter schools perform only about as well as conventional schools actually tell us something very interesting: that in charter schools the racial gap in achievement has been significantly diminished and in many places eliminated, while in public schools it has not. Sowells major analysis considers the overwhelmingly black and Hispanic student populations in both charters and conventional public schools in New York City. Why these students? For one thing, Sowell has gone to great lengths here to compare students who are very similar to one another. In fact, Sowells main study is limited to charter-school students attending class in the same building as conventional public-school students in the same grade, in schools that are majority-black and -Hispanic, with a special focus on the charter-school networks that meet in five or more buildings, meaning the biggest charter groups: KIPP, Success Academy, Explore, Uncommon, and Achievement First. Focusing on these New York City students has a couple of added benefits: New York keeps track of students by ethnicity and socioeconomic status, facilitating a better apples-to-apples comparison, and crucially, for the purposes of this kind of study it assigns children to charter schools through a lottery. Parents have to nominate their children for a spot, and there is presumably some difference between the parents who bother and the parents who dont, but the charter schools are not able to cherry-pick the best students and thereby pad out their performance numbers. And the numbers? Thats the bloodbath I mentioned. There is, as one would expect, significant variability in the performance of the charter schools, just as there is significant variability in the performance of the conventional public schools. (And here it bears underscoring: Charter schools are public schools, publicly funded and serving public-school students; the difference is that charter schools are relieved of some of the constraints imposed on conventional schools by public-sector unions, their financial interests, and the political interests built atop those financial interests.) In almost every case, the charter schools including the worst of them outperformed the conventional public schools operating in the same buildings, in the same neighborhoods, serving very similar students. In most cases, the share of charter-school students achieving proficiency or better on standardized tests was a multiple of the number of the conventional public-school students doing so; similarly, in most cases the number of conventional public-school students receiving the lowest classification on those same tests was some multiple of the number of charter-school students doing so. Sowell lets the data speak for themselves, reporting the high and low English and math figures for each of his comparison sets. (Sowells convention is to group the grade levels the charters and conventional public schools have in common in each of the buildings they have in common; so, for example, if a charter school has four grades in common with public schools in five buildings, that produces 20 grade levels for comparison. It looks a little weird at first, but it makes sense.) For the charter schools, the data are a litany of triumph, and for the conventional public schools, they are a lamentation. Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has again made a public appeal for Prime Minister Narendra Modis intervention in the ongoing political tussle for power in Rajasthan. Gehlot had earlier made similar appeals to the PM and also written to him complaining about Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and other developments in the state. In his latest public appeal, Gehlot alleged that the rate for allegedly buying out MLAs had increased in the state. He and his party colleagues have directly accused the BJP of involvement in alleged horse-trading attempts to uproot his government. Prime Minister should stop the tamasha going on in Rajasthan. The rate for horse-trading has increased here. What tamasha is this, ANI quoted Ashok Gehlot as saying in Jaisalmer. Gehlot had made a similar claim on Thursday saying the going rates for MLAs had increased from Rs 25 crore to unlimited amount ever since the governor agreed to call the assembly session on August 14. Gehlot has indicated that he will call for a trust vote to prove his governments majority on the floor of the house during the session. Also Read: Rajasthan Congress goes to SC on disqualification, shifts MLAs The embattled chief minister has shifted his flock to Jaisalmer alleging increased attempts by the BJP to buyout and threaten MLAs in his camp. He and around 100 other MLAs are now camping in a hotel in Jaisalmer. One of the ministers in his camp had yesterday claimed that the chief minister believed MLAs will be safer there till the beginning of the assembly session on August 14. Gehlot also reiterated his demand for resignation of Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat today saying Shekhawat had no moral authority to continue since he has been named in an alleged scam related to a cooperative society. Gajendra Singh Shekhawats name has come up in Sanjivini Cooperative Society. Court has also directed in the matter. He should resign on moral grounds, Gehlot was quoted by ANI as saying in Jaisalmer. Also Read: Rajasthan police told Sachin Pilot and other MLAs never stayed at Manesar hotels Congress leaders in Gehlots camp claim that Shekhawats role in alleged horse trading attempts had been exposed by investigations conducted by the special operations group of the state. They also claim that he can be heard plotting Gehlot governments downfall in one of the three audio clips that are being cited as proof of his guilt by the Congress. Gehlots government appears to have a wafer-thin majority with the support of around 101 MLAs excluding the speaker but with the inclusion of allies in the 200-member assembly. His former deputy and Congress rebel Sachin Pilot appears to have the support of 22 MLAs including 18 legislators from the Congress, who are said to be camping with him. The BJP has 74 MLAs in the assembly. As students around the state are preparing to return to school in various formats, the Chattanooga School of Language seeks to provide distance learning opportunities for students in need of foreign language support this school year. Virtual programs are offered this fall via Zoom at various times during the day and feature Spanish, German and French for elementary, middle and high school students at the beginning and intermediate levels. More languages are offered in private tutoring or customized requests as well as for adult learners. In the midst of so much that is unknown right now, there is one thing that seems pretty clear, said Laurie Stevens, founder/director of the language school. And thats the need for distance learning options for students. She said that over the past few months, since Covid-19 hit, the CSL team has been training in best practices and preparing to expand their distance learning options to all students in a way that is just as interactive and effective as if students were sitting in the same classroom together, in person. The programs are geared toward a variety of students, including, but not limited to: A homeschooling family launching into online instruction; A student who will now be attending school in person for some days of the week and having class virtually the other days; A teacher, caregiver or student who wants some additional support in foreign language during the upcoming semester and school year; A professional who is working from home; A caregiver who has recently added the job title of school teacher" to your resume; A front-lines worker who is interested in communicating in another language but has limited time to attend an in-person class; or Someone who just wants to ... learn another language. According to Debbie Ingle, mother of a CSL Spanish homeschool student, At the Chattanooga School of Language, my daughter has done more than just checked off a box on our list of classes for her to take. She is actually acquiring a new language. I fully expect her to reach fluency. CSL is not drill and kill book work. The teacher and students speak to each other in the target language....just like parents teaching language to children at home. It really works." When describing what distance learning looks like at CSL, Ms. Stevens highlights several key features of the schools programs: Classes are held in real time. Our classes are held on Zoom, an online video conferencing platform that allows students to be live with your teachers and fellow classmates, interacting and enjoying the language learning experience together. You will be connecting with them live, as if youre in person! This lets you receive the personal interaction of an in-person class even though were online. Connecting with your teacher in real time means you can ask questions and connect with them in the moment. Additional In-Person Activities / A Hybrid Model of Learning Some of our classes are going to offer in-person experiences in addition to our online distance learning model. Through the hybrid model of instruction, students can receive supplementary in-person additional experiences (select classes/languages will be offering this.) More details coming soon. All in-person activities will allow for proper social distancing and adhere to safety protocols. We are bringing our mission to you. Distance learning provides many unique benefits: o Convenience -- Who said you can't learn German in your PJs?! o No commute -- Save money and time from having to drive to class. Take your class in the comfort of your own space, at a time that's convenient for you. o Flexibility -- Classes are recorded so you can re-watch at your convenience and be sure you don't miss anything! Our focus is still on proficiency. Communication in the target language. Our language classes are founded on the principles of Comprehensible Input, and our focus is language acquisition. Our activities are adapted for online distance learning platforms, so students still receive a classroom experience as if they're in person. Students will develop a connection and understanding of the target language and culture through storytelling, interaction and fun exercises that are designed for distance learning. Classes will be conducted primarily in the target language, and the students will be given the tools to develop their comprehension and communication skills. To view more information on each program, visit the links below or contact info@chattanoogalanguage.com | 423-802-2040. Distance Learning/ Homeschool Program: https://chattanoogalanguage.com/homeschool-program/ Distance Learning/ After-School Program: https://chattanoogalanguage.com/after-school-classes/ Distance Learning/ Immersion Playgroup: https://chattanoogalanguage.com/immersion-playgroups/ Distance Learning/ Language Classes for Adults: https://chattanoogalanguage.com/language-classes/ Annabelle Stephenson is set to star on the beloved Aussie drama, Home and Away. On Saturday, it was announced that the 32-year-old actress will join the hit series next month. Fans will no doubt be thrilled to hear that the Revenge star is set to appear alongside returning favourite, Luke Jacobz, 39, as his on-screen wife, Taylor Rosetta. Heading to the Bay: Annabelle Stephenson (pictured) is heading to Summer Bay to star on the beloved Aussie drama Home and Away. She will appear alongside returning favourite, Luke Jacobz, as his on-screen wife After working in Hollywood on various projects, most notably the hit US drama Revenge, Annabelle is thrilled to be back on Aussie soil. 'It's the Aussie spirit, it's so welcoming,' she told the Daily Telegraph. '(In America) there is a powerhouse production company and there's quite a hierarchy behind it. You just come in, do your job and leave.' Coming home: After working in Hollywood on various projects most notably the hit US drama Revenge, Annabelle is thrilled to be back on Aussie soil. 'It's the Aussie spirit, it's so welcoming,' she said. Pictured on the hit show, Revenge Lucky! Annabelle admits that she almost missed out on the coveted Home and Away role, after her first audition tape didn't quite go to plan. But she had better luck once she returned to Australia and eventually landed the gig Annabelle admits that she almost missed out on the coveted Home and Away role, after her first audition tape didn't quite go to plan. But she had better luck once she returned to Australia and eventually landed the gig. In the meantime, fans are thrilled to see her soon-to-be TV hubby, Luke Jacobz, return to Summer Bay. The actor is reprising his role as police officer Angelo Rosetta, who returns to the Bay to look into the murder of Ross Nixon, Bella's father. Earlier this year, Luke announced his return to Home and Away, almost a decade after leaving the show in June 2011. Back to Summer Bay: Luke Jacobz is reprising his role as police officer Angelo Rosetta (pictured in character), who returns to the Bay to look into the murder of Ross Nixon, Bella's father He told The Sunday Telegraph that that Channel Seven producers contacted him in January asking him to reprise his role. '[Channel Seven executives] called me in and said, ''how do you feel about Angelo coming back to the bay?'' said the actor. 'I said ''very good'' - and almost straight away it was, ''okay, let's get a haircut, a wardrobe fitting and look at some scripts,'' he enthused. Returning star: Luke thrilled fans when he announced his return to Home and Away, almost a decade after leaving the show in June 2011 Since leaving Summer Bay, the Logie award-winning actor has stayed busy with a number of high-profile hosting gigs, including The X-Factor and Instant Hotel. He also danced his way into Australia's hearts as the winner of the 2008 season of Dancing With The Stars and did a stint in the jungle on I'm a Celebrity... in 2019. Most recently he hosted The Proposal, but the show failed to win over audiences. New Delhi The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a fraud case against a real estate developer Rahul Gaur and his wife Navneet Gaur for allegedly cheating Bank of Baroda (BoB) and the Syndicate Bank of Rs 80 crore in the name of developing a high-end residential complex planned by their firm Brys International Private Limited. Gaur is son of a top builder but the company said their name should not be dragged with him as it has nothing to do with him. According to the CBI FIR, accessed by HT, the company had taken a credit of Rs 250 crore (Rs 150 crore from BoB and Rs 100 crore from the Syndicate Bank) in 2015-16. The company was supposed to develop luxurious apartment complex comprising 291 luxury apartments at Sector 150, Noida. The project was abandoned by the borrowers at initial stage itself, CBI said. The company also submitted fake bills showing purported purchase of material from certain supplies which could not be located and the vehicle particulars mentioned in the bills of supplies were also found to be bogus, according to the FIR. It is alleged that the initial deposits by the buyers should have been credited to the escrow account but it was not done. A forensic audit of the companys account showed round-tripping and diversion of funds, opaque functioning and misrepresentation of facts, it added. Rahul Gaur could not be located for his comments. Hurricane Isaias dumped torrential rain on the Bahamas Saturday as it rumbled toward Florida -- the first big test for the storm-prone US state reeling from the coronavirus crisis. The category one storm was expected to unleash up to eight inches (20 centimeters) of rain on the islands before directing its fury at the United States. As of 1200 GMT, Isaias was packing maximum sustained winds of up to 85 miles (136 kilometers) an hour, and was located over the northwestern Bahamas. "The latest projections have Isaias coming very close to the east coast of Florida as a category one hurricane later this evening and into tomorrow," Governor Ron DeSantis said. "The most important thing we want people to do now is remain vigilant." The storm slowed down as it went over the Bahamas, moving at only about 12 miles an hour. "Hurricane conditions are expected along portions of the Florida east coast late Saturday," the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said, adding a "dangerous storm surge" was possible in some areas. In the Bahamas, the deputy director of the country's meteorology department, Jeffrey Simmons, told The Nassau Guardian "the worst part" of the storm came to New Providence, the most populous island, early Saturday. It is the archipelago's first hurricane since Dorian, a maximum strength category 5 storm last year that devastated two islands, pummeling them for three days. Prime Minister Hubert Minnis relaxed strict virus-related stay-at-home orders to allow residents to prepare for the storm, but urged them not to use the time for "socializing." 'Very much in flux' To the north in Florida, residents rushed to stock up on essentials before the storm, the ninth named storm of the Atlantic season and the second hurricane. The storm's slight turn offshore may spare the state the worst. "This stuff is all very much in flux," DeSantis said, while insisting: "The state of Florida is fully prepared for this." Story continues While the governor did not expect many storm-based evacuations -- which would be difficult given that shelters are usually crowded and social distancing would be hard -- he said hospitals could be forced to move some patients, depending on power outages and flash flooding. Isaias is seen as a major test for emergency systems in Florida, one of the US states hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis. Only California, with almost double Florida's population of about 21 million people, has registered more cases. On Friday, Florida reported another 257 deaths, setting a new state record and pushing its virus death toll to 6,843. Florida's coronavirus testing centers were closed Thursday and will not reopen until they get the all-clear after the storm. The state's emergency management division explained that the testing centers are housed in tents and could not withstand tropical force winds. Isaias left a shambles in Puerto Rico, downing trees and electric lines and inundating houses as it cut a path through the island on Thursday. And in the Dominican Republic, locals were cleaning up after the Magua river broke its banks due to the storm surge. (AFP) By Express News Service BENGALURU: Karnataka will be one of the first states in the country to systematically implement the new National Education Policy (NEP), Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar said on Friday. The minister has already consulted officials on the implementation of NEP, and said a blueprint that suits the requirements of the state will be brought out soon. The government was aiming to come up with the customised policy by August 20, he added. During a webinar session with K Kasturirangan, who presided over the draft NEP committee, the minister thanked the space scientist on behalf of the state for bringing out a policy that is expected to drastically improve the education system in the country. Though Kerala is my janmabhoomi (birthplace), Karnataka is my karmabhoomi (workplace), Karnataka is my state. The NEP has been formulated keeping in mind the various aspects of Indias topography. I am confident that the new NEP will greatly help India achieve holistic development in the next 20 years, Kasturirangan said in response. Kasturirangan said Karnatakas contribution in the formulation of the new NEP has been immense as several key elements that are already in place in the state have been incorporated. He also praised the states education expert MK Sridhar for his contribution in formulating the NEP. GB Foods the producers of Gino and Pomo range of products have donated to the Kumasi Central Mosque in the Ashanti Region. The donation coincided with the celebration by Muslims worldwide of Eid Al-Adha, the holiest festival in the Islamic calendar. Eid Al-Adha or the Festival of Sacrifice is celebrated to commemorate the obedience of Ibrahim in a four-day celebration that began on 31 July and will last until Monday, 2 August. The yearly ritual is considered a time to think of others as well as repenting for sins committed in the past. The Festival of Sacrifice marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage, where Muslims return from pilgrimage in Mecca. Muslims will sacrifice goats, sheep, lambs, and cows to represent Ibrahims commitment to God, where Allah came to Ibrahim in a dream and asked him to sacrifice his son Ismail as an act of obedience to God. Participation in the sacrificial festival is mandatory for all obedient Muslims that can afford an animal. It is also mandatory for people with money to give an amount to charity, so less fortunate people can afford to join in on the celebration as well. As part of their corporate social responsibility, GB Foods donated an assortment of their brands as well as a bullock to the Kumasi central Mosque through astute businessman Herbert Mensah to enhance the celebration of the Eid Al-Adha. King Edward of Hello FM in Kumasi together with Prince Osei of Kessben FM stood on behalf of GB Foods and Herbert Mensah and presented the items to the leadership of the Kumasi central mosque. They donated a big bullock and other products from GB Foods. He remarked that the yearly gesture by GB Foods is in line with their long-held tradition of keeping a bond with the Zongo community that has always supported them in their existence in Ghana. King Edward also added, GB Foods believe in the goodness of helping the poor in our society. Receiving donation on behalf of the Muslim community, regional chief Imam Abdul Mumin praised GB Foods and Herbert Mensah for their dedication and commitment to the Zongo communities and the poor in general throughout the years. Imam Abdul Mumin prayed for blessings of Allah (God) upon GB Foods and Mr. Herbert Mensah as well as all generous givers to the poor in our society. Thousands of Ghanaians including Ghanas vice president Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia have joined millions of other Muslims from all over the world this year to fulfill one of the major pillars of Islam and to celebrate Eid al-Adha in the holy city of Mecca. GB Foods has been in operation for over 40 years spanning several African countries. GB Foods, with Gino, Jumbo, Pomo tomato paste as some of the flagship products, originates from Barcelona, Spain and has a flourishing production factory that employs hundreds of Ghanaians. 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 The Royal Mint vetoed plans for a coin to mark the 50th anniversary of the legalisation of homosexuality, fearing a 'lack of appeal'. Bosses at the Mint considered celebrating the landmark Sexual Offences Act 1967, widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of social legislation passed in the UK. But documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday under Freedom of Information laws reveal officials did not feel creating a coin would be 'commercially viable'. The Royal Mint considered celebrating the landmark Sexual Offences Act 1967 but vetoed the plans, as officials officials did not feel creating a coin would be 'commercially viable' You Cnut be serious! Why ancient King spelt red faces for Royal Mint The Mint faced an unexpected dilemma when it approved a coin to celebrate King Cnut. On creating a coin to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the King's coronation, officials had to agree on how to spell his name, noting the potential for 'misreadings'. Cnut, a Danish-born Prince who was anointed English ruler in 1017 and reigned until his death in 1035, was identified as Cnut in Old English sources but also went by the Norse name Knutr, given his joint kingship of England, Denmark and Norway. In addition, Latin sources gave his name as Canutus, which led to the Anglicised Canute in the 19th Century. Minutes from the Mint's advisory committee on the design of coins, medals, seals and decorations say they took expert guidance on which spelling to use on the 5 commemorative coin, inset. It was noted that Cnut was 'the most authentic spelling' but Canute the name eventually chosen 'lent itself less to unfortunate misreadings'. Cnut the Great is best known for taking his throne down to the sea and ordering the tide to turn back so it did not wet his feet and robes. Officials had to agree how to spell King Cnut's name on a celebratory coin, noting the potential for 'misreadings' Advertisement Gay rights activists last night said the decision was a 'cop-out'. The 1967 Act decriminalised consensual sex between men over 21 and secured cross-party support. While it did not introduce full equality, it paved the way for legislation that did. Minutes of meetings held in 2015 by the Royal Mint's advisory committee on the design of coins, medals, seals and decorations, show a coin to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Act and one to mark the release of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper album were considered. 'The marketing department at Royal Mint ultimately came to the conclusion that neither would be commercially viable, the homosexuality theme because of the lack of appeal it was likely to have for collectors and the Beatles album because of the complexity and cost of dealing with the licensing elements,' the minutes state. Such considerations did not prevent The Royal Canadian Mint from producing a one dollar coin in 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality there. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: 'It seems bizarre and quite appalling that the anniversary was not deemed significant enough. 'The argument that it was not commercially viable sounds like a cop-out. For millions of LGBT+ people and straight allies, this would be a coin worth having.' Other documents reveal the Mint's rigorous attention to detail once an idea had been approved. For example, members of the committee, chaired by former Tory Cabinet Minister Lord Waldegrave, were alarmed by planned illustrations for coins to celebrate children's author Beatrix Potter. They believed Mrs Tiggy-Winkle's fingers were too 'pointed' and Squirrel Nutkin had 'paws like claws', while Lord Waldegrave thought the jowls for Peter Rabbit 'were too heavy here as well, giving the impression of a rather too well-fed Alderman Rabbit'. They asked for new, 'friendlier' models. Last night, a Royal Mint spokesman said they were working on coins to 'commemorate events and individuals linked to the British LGBT movement', adding that all proposals go through a 'rigorous planning and design selection process' and that some 'can be proposed on several occasions before progressing to a UK coin'. Residents in Cornwall have expressed dismay at overcrowding due to an influx of domestic tourists on so-called staycation in the UK. One local in Wadebridge said on Facebook that some tourists were not socially distancing because they feel safe down here. My shielding is paused from today but Im too scared to go out, she said. Tried walking into town a couple of times but no social distancing at all. I was constantly doubling back, leaping out of the way and panicking just to keep my distance from the hoards. Its horrifying. Another, in St Ives, said she was too scared to go food shopping because of the crowds and had told her children not to visit the main shopping street or the harbour seafront. This was the general consensus among friends," holiday lettings manager Claire Harris told the BBC. The county has long been a popular tourist destination but demand has soared in recent weeks due to current restrictions on travelling abroad, including the last-minute cancellation of thousands of trips to Spain. Neighbouring Devon warned of an unprecedented influx of visitors this weekend, while Cornish resorts have dispatched street marshals to give social distancing advice at hotspots. Visit Cornwall chief Malcolm Bell said campsites are fully-booked and anyone arriving without a booking was unlikely to find accommodation. He told Cornwall Live that most people "are behaving themselves, but that some, including tourists and locals, were not following the guidelines. It is based on age, with locals and visitors, with those below 30 in particular who are not following the guidelines, he said. You see some groups and think that must be a big family as you see six children or more of a similar age. Some Twitter users in Cornwall also expressed anger at the surge in holidaymakers. Complaining about the rise in Covid-19 infection rates, one wrote: Thank you to the silly tourists who have invaded Cornwall. Holidaymakers queue for the Padstow-rock ferry (Getty) (Getty Images) Im now back in isolation, she added. Another user, directing her message at Conservative MP for St Austell and Newquay Steve Double, said the crowds were totally unjust. We stuck to the rules and this is our reward, she said. Parasites have a public relations problem. Unlike the many charismatic mammals, fishes and birds that receive our attention (and our conservation dollars), parasites are thought of as something to eradicate -- and certainly not something to protect. But only 4% of known parasites can infect humans, and the majority actually serve critical ecological roles, like regulating wildlife that might otherwise balloon in population size and become pests. Still, only about 10% of parasites have been identified and, as a result, they are mostly left out of conservation activities and research. An international group of scientists wants to change that. About a dozen leading parasite ecologists, including University of Washington's Chelsea Wood, published a paper Aug. 1 in the journal Biological Conservation, which lays out an ambitious global conservation plan for parasites. "Parasites are an incredibly diverse group of species, but as a society, we do not recognize this biological diversity as valuable," said Wood, an assistant professor in the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. "The point of this paper is to emphasize that we are losing parasites and the functions they serve without even recognizing it." The authors propose 12 goals for the next decade that could advance parasite biodiversity conservation through a mix of research, advocacy and management. "Even though we know little to nothing about most parasite species, we can still take action now to conserve parasite biodiversity," said Skylar Hopkins, paper and project co-lead and an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. Perhaps the most ambitious goal is to describe half of the world's parasites within the next 10 years. Providing taxonomic descriptions allow species to be named, which is an important part of the conservation process, the researchers said. "If species don't have a name, we can't save them," said Colin Carlson, the other project co-lead and an assistant professor at Georgetown University. "We've accepted that for decades about most animals and plants, but scientists have only discovered a fraction of a percentage of all the parasites on the planet. Those are the last frontiers: the deep sea, deep space, and the world that's living inside every species on Earth." Importantly, the researchers stress that none of the parasites that infect humans or domesticated animals are included in their conservation plan. They say these parasites should be controlled to safeguard human and animal health. The paper is part of an entire special edition devoted to parasite conservation. Wood is the lead author on one study in the collection that finds the responses of parasites to environmental change are likely to be complex, and that a changing world probably will see both outbreaks of some parasites and a total loss of other parasite species. "We need to recognize that there will be a diversity of responses among parasite taxa and not take for granted that every parasite is dwindling toward extinction or about to cause a major outbreak," Wood said. Parasites often need two or more host species to complete their lifecycle. For example, some parasites first infect fish or amphibians, but ultimately must get transmitted to birds to reproduce and multiply. They ensure that this happens through ingenious ways, Wood explained, often by manipulating the behavior or even the anatomy of their first host to make these fish or amphibians more susceptible to being eaten by birds. In this way, the parasite then gets transmitted to a bird -- its ultimate destination. Given this dynamic, Wood and colleagues wanted to see what would happen to the abundance of parasites if the ecosystems in which they live changed. They designed an experiment across 16 ponds in central California's East Bay region. In half of the ponds, they installed structures such as bird houses, floating perches and mallard decoys intended to attract more birds, thus temporarily altering the natural ecosystem and boosting biodiversity in these ponds. After a couple of years, the researchers analyzed parasite biodiversity in each of the 16 ponds. What they found was a mixed bag: Some parasite species responded to elevated bird biodiversity by declining in abundance. But other parasites actually increased in number when bird biodiversity increased. The authors concluded that as biodiversity changes -- due to climate change, development pressure or other reasons -- we can expect to see divergent responses by parasites, even those living within the same ecosystem. Traditionally, the field of disease ecology assumes one of two paths: That we are either heading toward a future of more disease and massive outbreaks or toward a future of parasite extinction. This paper shows that both trajectories are happening simultaneously, Wood explained. "This particular experiment suggests that we need to anticipate both trajectories going forward. It starts to resolve the conflict in the literature by showing that everyone is right -- it's all happening," Wood said. "The trick now is to figure out what traits will predict which parasites will decline and which will increase in response to biodiversity loss." Wood's lab is working on that question now by reconstructing the history of parasites over time, documenting which parasites increased in abundance and which declined. However, there's almost no historical record of parasites and without this information, it's difficult to know how to conserve them. By dissecting museum specimens of fish, the researchers are identifying and counting various parasites found in the specimens at different places and times. "These pickled animals are like parasite time capsules," Wood explained. "We can open them up and identify the parasites that infected a fish at its death. In this way, we can reconstruct and resurrect information that previously we didn't think was possible to get." ### Co-authors on this paper are Pieter Johnson and Margaret Summerside of the University of Colorado Boulder. This research was funded by the Michigan Society of Fellows, National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the University of Washington, the University of Colorado, the National Institutes of Health and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. See the journal for the full list of authors and funders for the special edition. FROM: Michelle Ma University of Washington mcma@uw.edu (NOTE: Researcher contact information at end) For more information, contact Wood at chelwood@uw.edu and Hopkins at hopkins@nceas.ucsb.edu. Grant numbers: NSF: OCE-1829509, DEB-1149308, DEB-1754171 NIH: RI0 GM109499 A lifeguard wearing a face covering heads up the steps at Heisler Park in Laguna Beach. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) California recorded 214 coronavirus-related deaths on Friday, a record-setting daily total that capped a month of rising fatalities amid a surge of new COVID-19 cases. It marked the fifth time in July that California broke its single-day record for deaths, and the third time this week. The previous record of 176 was just set on Wednesday. In the past week, an average of 127 Californians have died every day. That's a 22% increase from the previous week's average daily death toll of 104. Officials announced Friday that a teenager in the Central Valley had died of causes related to COVID-19, becoming the first juvenile death from the disease in California. Officials said the teen had underlying health conditions but declined to provide specific information about the victim's age or county of residence, citing privacy concerns. Our hearts go out to the family and loved ones of this young person whose death is a tragic and powerful reminder of how serious COVID-19 can be, Dr. Sonia Angell, the state public health officer, said in a news release. The teen died earlier this week at Valley Childrens Hospital in Madera, the hospital said in a statement. The death of this patient reaffirms that children ... are not immune from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the statement said. No other COVID-19-related death of a person under 18 has been confirmed by the state since the pandemic began. In March, Los Angeles County public health officials announced that a 17-year-old was believed to have died of causes related to the virus but later determined he didn't die of COVID-19. Los Angeles County added at least 2,505 cases Friday and 65 deaths, bringing its total to 188,541 cases and 4,624 deaths. Officials noted that the number of fatalities marked an increase, with an average of 46 deaths a day in the past seven days, compared with last weeks daily average of 36. As we are seeing increases these past few days in the numbers of people dying from COVID-19, the reality of the devastation cannot be ignored, Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County health director, said in a statement. Story continues The county Department of Public Health said in a news release that deaths are a lagging indicator that reflect exposures from weeks earlier. Orange County reported 418 new coronavirus cases and 14 deaths Friday. Five of the deaths were among people who lived in skilled nursing facilities, and four were among residents of assisted living facilities, officials said. California on Friday became the first state to surpass 500,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases. By Trend The Government of Georgia has launched a large-scale study on the management of COVID-19 and the impact of the pandemic with the help of international partners, Trend reports via Press Service of the Government Administration. Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia met with the development partners, together with Natia Mezvrishvili, head of the Administration of the Government. According to Mezvrishvili, it is especially important to assess and analyze the measures implemented by the government in the fight against the pandemic, including with regard to identifying and understanding flaws in order to ensure that the countrys institutions can deal with similar potential crises more effectively in the future. The independent study will analyze the impact of the crisis on social, human rights, and legal issues, as well as the stability of state institutions. The actions of the government in the process of managing the state of emergency and the pandemic, the existing challenges, and the impact of COVID-19 on the vulnerable population of Georgia will be assessed. Recommendations will also be developed within the framework of the study to ensure that state institutions are better prepared in the event of recurring crises. The study encompasses important issues such as crisis management, the analysis of the legal framework during the pandemic, and human rights, which are critically important. Our goal is to identify the challenges that we encountered in this process despite the achieved success and to deal with the possible next wave, as well as similar future crises, even more effectively, Mezvrishvili stated. The study, which also provides an assessment of crisis management, the legal system, and human rights protection systems under conditions of the pandemic, will be conducted jointly by eight UN agencies and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Express News Service CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu government temporarily revoked the Covid-19 treatment licence of Bewell private hospital in Chennais Kilpauk for charging a COVID patient Rs. 12.20 lakhs, for 19 days of treatment. According to a statement, Health Minister Vijayabaskar, based on allegations and complaints that the hospital was overcharging, inspected the facility and reviewed the treatment. It was found that the hospital had indeed overcharged patients and did not follow the pricing cap set up by the state. Hence, the licence of the hospital was revoked temporarily. The state government fixed rates for private hospitals for COVID-19 treatment after several instances of the hospital fleecing patients were reported. According to the government order, Grade 1 and 2 hospitals can charge a maximum of Rs. 7,500 in general ward per day while grade 3 and 4 hospitals can charge Rs. 5000. Earlier, Tamil Nadu had included treatment of COVID-19 patients in private hospitals under the Chief Ministers Health Insurance Scheme. In government hospitals, treatment has been made free-of-cost for COVID-19 patients across the state and other specially setup COVID-19 care facilities. The families that are already enrolled and eligible under the Chief Ministers Comprehensive Health Insurance scheme can avail the treatment as per the latest announcements. Fayaz Wani By Express News Service Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Saif-ud-Din Soz is not a free man despite the Jammu and Kashmir government telling the Supreme Court that he was never under detention. A J&K government spokesman has also tweeted that Soz was not under arrest or detention. In an exclusive interview to The New Indian Express, Soz talks about Art 370 and restoration of statehood to J&K. Are you a free man? I have been under house detention since August 5 last year. The government is telling lies. I am barred from venturing out from my residence. The government released a video saying you are a free man? It is a deceit and nothing else. I had gone with the permission of police in the morning to see my ailing sister. I was accompanied by the policemen. The policemen on the instructions of their superiors might have made a video and released it. After I returned to my residence, I tried to move out at around 12.35pm to visit my daughter but was not allowed to venture out. I am under detention. There is no written order and all the instructions are being issued verbally. Are you considering a legal recourse? The Supreme Court which accepted the government statement that I am a free man should look into the facts. I am discussing legal issues with my lawyers. How do you see August 5, 2019 developments when the Centre scrapped J&Ks special status and split the state into two Union Territories? Kashmiris would never accept abrogation of Article 370. It was the basis of our accession with the Indian Union. The most important condition of the accession was retention of internal autonomy as enshrined in Article 370. Do you support the restoration of Article 370? The people of Kashmir want restoration of Article 370 or granting of a substitute for that with constitutional guarantees. The Centre has introduced the domicile law and now domicile certificates are being issued. How do you see it? It is a fraud as it is not done by an elected government. They may run day-to-day administration, but they cant take decisions of very wider implications. It is not acceptable to us. The Charleston Museums Board of Trustees voted unanimously not to accept the statue of John C. Calhoun recently removed from Marion Square by the city. This decision, based solely on practical considerations, was made with due deliberation by the museums staff collections committee, management team and its board of trustees. Without question, the Calhoun statue is an important piece of the citys history and at first glance would be a riveting object to display and interpret. Space, however, is at a premium for The Charleston Museum. With some calling for the statue to be relocated there, the museum finds itself in the same spatial predicament as other museums across the country. Although they may seem like the appropriate and natural destinations for removed statues, a museums finite space cannot always accommodate these large objects clearly designed to be exhibited outdoors. Whether an object related to its archives, archaeology, history, historic textiles or natural history collections, the museum has an obligation to be discriminating in what is brought in and should always take into account current and future storage, exhibition and facility limitations. Acquisition of collection pieces for the museum is governed by our collections policy, the key document for providing guidance in this process, most recently reviewed and approved by the board and staff in November. With regard to acquisitions, the policy notes specifically that appropriate storage space must be available and the size and weight of any individual object should be such that it can be accommodated by Museum personnel and facilities. Examples of objects the museum has declined in the past due to their size include the capstan of the battleship Maine, a large piece of the old Cooper River Bridge and a telephone switchboard from the Francis Marion Hotel. At more than 12 feet in height and about 6,000 pounds, there simply is no room to accommodate the statue in the building. Our freight elevator measures 10 feet by 10 feet by 10 feet, so it would be particularly difficult to move the statue to the second floor, where most of our exhibits and storage areas are located. The weight would require reinforcement of the floor. First-floor lobby space is limited and frequently used for events. It is already difficult to accommodate large crowds there, whether due to events, school groups or busy visitation days. That leaves the exterior of the museum. One might suggest that the courtyard would be an appropriate place for the statue. With a recently renovated entrance for guests to come into the museum through the courtyard, this attractive area is now accessible to the public anytime during museum operating hours. Placing the statue there would be moving it from one public place, Marion Square, to another, the museum courtyard. Yes, interpretive panels describing Calhouns views on race, his support of the Souths antebellum slavery-based economic system and secession, as well as the events that led to its removal could all be incorporated within the display, but the statue itself would still dominate. When one entered the courtyard, it would be the only thing noticed. No amount of interpretation would overcome its immense size, even if positioned at near ground level. For these reasons of sheer practicality, the statue will not fit at the museum. The city of Charleston and The Charleston Museum have had a long and mutually supportive relationship, beginning in 1816 when the city helped purchase items for our collection, and the city has been financially generous ever since. The museum is the primary repository for much of the citys history, a key attraction that helps bring tourist dollars to the area, and regularly hosts public meetings and events. The museum also houses and exhibits many city-owned artifacts, most related specifically to the Civil War. Our board and staff look forward to continuing this long-standing affiliation and assisting with finding a place for the Calhoun statue that is a more suitable and practical fit. Carl Borick is executive director of The Charleston Museum. Lea Thompson backed fellow actor Brad Garrett's claims about Ellen DeGeneres' infamously bad behavior on her personal Twitter page on Friday. 'True story. It is,' wrote the 59-year-old Back to the Future star in response to Garrett's sentiment that Ellen's mistreatment is 'common knowledge' in Hollywood. On Thursday night, Garrett also revealed that he happens to 'know more than one who were treated horribly by [Ellen],' though he did not provide any specific allegations. True Story: Lea Thompson substantiated fellow actor Brad Garrett's claims about Ellen DeGeneres' infamously bad behavior on her personal Twitter page on Friday; Lea pictured in 2019 Garrett added that allegations of mistreatment came 'from the top' and he made sure to tag DeGeneres' personal Twitter account. 'Sorry but it comes from the top @TheEllenShow Know more than one who were treated horribly by her. Common knowledge,' read Brad's tweet in full. Brad's brave tweet came after the actor became aware of a Variety article that detailed the written apology Ellen had sent to her staff that seemed to lay the blame on underlings. Although Garrett was a six-time guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show between 2004 and 2007, he didn't list any specific allegation against the comedian. Common knowledge: 'True story. It is,' wrote the 59-year-old Back to the Future star in response to Garrett's sentiment that Ellen's mistreatment is 'common knowledge' in Hollywood Close encounters: On Thursday night, Garrett also revealed that he happens to 'know more than one who were treated horribly by [Ellen],' though he did not provide any specific allegations Ellen recently sent her staff a memo in which she wrote she was 'taking steps... to correct' issues with her employees. 'Hey everybody it's Ellen. On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be a place of happiness no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. 'Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry. Anyone who knows me knows it's the opposite of what I believe and what I hoped for our show,' she began her memo. The boss: The actor said it's 'common knowledge' that the host treats people 'horribly' while posting an article about Ellen's apology, which seemed to lay the blame on underlings Repeat guest: Garrett was a six-time guest from 2004 to 2007, though he didn't mention any specific incidents from his time on the show; pictured during a old skit on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Contrary to Garrett's claims that the mistreatment came from her, she suggested other employees were to blame. 'As we've grown exponentially, I've not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I'd want them done. Clearly some didn't. That will now change and I'm committed to ensuring this does not happen again,' she wrote. Earlier this week, it was reported that her show was now subject to a probe by WarnerMedia which will look into 'staff experiences on set,' according to an internal memo. The memo insisted that producers Telepictures and Warner Bros. Television are committed 'to providing an environment where employees can flourish.' Ellen DeGeneres' memo to her staff addressing mistreatment allegations Hey everybody its Ellen. On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen Degeneres Show would be a place of happiness no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry. Anyone who knows me knows its the opposite of what I believe and what I hoped for our show. I could not have the success Ive had without all of your contributions. My name is on the show and everything we do and I take responsibility for that. Alongside Warner Bros, we immediately began an internal investigation and we are taking steps, together, to correct the issues. As weve grown exponentially, Ive not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew Id want them done. Clearly some didnt. That will now change and Im committed to ensuring this does not happen again. Im also learning that people who work with me and for me are speaking on my behalf and misrepresenting who I am and that has to stop. As someone who was judged and nearly lost everything for just being who I am, I truly understand and have deep compassion for those being looked at differently, or treated unfairly, not equal, or worse disregarded. To think that any one of you felt that way is awful to me. Its been way too long, but were finally having conversations about fairness and justice. We all have to be more mindful about the way our words and actions affect others, and Im glad the issues at our show were brought to my attention. I promise to do my part in continuing to push myself and everyone around me to learn and grow. Its important to me and to Warner Bros. that everyone who has something to say can speak up and feels safe doing so. I am so proud of the work we do and the fun and joy we all help put out in the world. I want everyone at home to love our show and I want everyone who makes it to love working on it. Again, Im so sorry to anyone who didnt have that experience. If not for COVID, Id have done this in person, and I cant wait to be back on our stage and see you all then. Stay safe and healthy. Love, Ellen Advertisement Earlier this month a number of employees of The Ellen DeGeneres Show blasted it as a 'toxic work environment.' One current and 10 former employees of the daytime chat show accused the three executive producers, Ed Glavin, Mary Connelly and Andy Lassner, of 'bullying.' A source told Buzzfeed: 'The issue is these three executive producers running the show who are in charge of all these people [and] who make the culture and are putting out this feeling of bullying and being mean.' 'They feel that everybody who works at The Ellen Show is lucky to work there: 'So if you have a problem, you should leave because we'll hire someone else because everybody wants to work here.'' Don't talk to her: Although DeGeneres has not been accused of any wrongdoing, employees have claimed they were instructed not to talk to her if they saw her in the building Although DeGeneres has not been accused of any wrongdoing, employees have claimed they were instructed not to talk to her if they saw her in the building. A Black woman claimed she suffered a number of 'microaggressions,' her request for a raise was ignored and she was accused of 'walking around looking resentful and angry' after asking for staff members to undergo diversity and inclusion training. Another former employee alleged they were fired after taking medical leave for one month following a suicide attempt. 'You'd think that if someone just tried to kill themselves, you don't want to add any more stress to their lives,' they said. Some high-profile figures have begun to come to Ellen's defense in recent days, including Scooter Braun, the music manager for pop stars including Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. The executive posted praise of Ellen to social media and called her a 'kind, thoughtful, courageous human being.' 'People love to take shots at people. They love to see people fall. How quickly so many forget. How easy it is to stay quiet when it doesn't effect them. @TheEllenShow is a kind, thoughtful, courageous human being who stands for what is right and highlights on her show the best of us,' he wrote. 'She has helped change the views for equality all around the country and the world. She doesn't do what is popular she does what is right. Her story shows us that. Her history provides us a better world. Today I'm sending love out to her. I know first hand how much she helps others both when we are all watching and when we are not. @theellenshow thank you for all you do and keep your head held high.' Kind words: Some high-profile figures have begun to come to Ellen's defense in recent days, including Scooter Braun, the manager for pop stars including Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande Twin probes have been ordered into the Visakhapatnam crane crash incident that has killed 11 people so far. Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy has also directed district officials to take immediate action in the case, as per information released by the chief ministers office. Vizag district collector told news agency ANI that the crane crashed while it was being commissioned into operation. A new crane was being commissioned. Trial run was being conducted to bring it into full-scale operation, said district collector Vinay Chand. He also confirmed that the district administration had begun a separate inquiry into the incident. We have also ordered inquiry both from within Hindustan Shipyard and also a high-level committee from administration, Chand was quoted as saying by the agency. At least eleven confirmed casualties have been reported so far from the crash that took place within the premises of Hindustan Shipyard Limited this afternoon. Some other people are also believed to be injured. Initial reports suggested around 20 workers were involved in the commissioning process when the crane came crashing down without a warning, crushing most victims and injuring a few others. Some people on the ground are reported to have luckily escaped injuries. Four of the eleven deceased were employees of the government undertaking, according to PTI. This is the third industrial accident in Visakhapatnam in the last three months and questions are being raised if safety audits are being conducted properly. We are seeing from the last 90 days in Visakhapatnam that LG Polymer gas leak took place, there was a blast in Visakhapatnam container yard and now this happened, said one resident, who supports JanSena political formation in the state. Thirteen people died in a Styrene gas leakage from LG Polymers plant on the outskirts of the city in the wee hours of May 7 earlier this year and a major fire was reported from the container yard a few days ago. He added that the government needed to be very strict with compliance of safety protocols for operation of Industrial outfits. All this is happening because there is no safety audit. The government should arrange safety audits and cancel the license of those who do not have an audit done, he said. Hindustan Shipyard Limited is a ship building company and a central government undertaking. It is alleged that the crane that fell on Saturday had been bought almost a decade ago and its operation was recently outsourced to a private agency. The official website for Hindustan Shipyard Ltd describes the company as the nations premier shipbuilding organization catering to the needs of shipbuilding, ship repairs, submarine construction and refits as well as design and construction of sophisticated state-of-the-art offshore and onshore structures. The company counts direct sea access, excellent infrastructure, skilled work force and rich expertise among its strengths. The website says the company has built 191 vessels and repaired 1982 vessels of various types so far. New Delhi: Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday (August 1) said that the Production-Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) launched by the government will create 3 lakh direct while close to 9 lakh indirect jobs. Talking about the progress in the scheme Prasad said that Government's PLI Scheme to boost mobile and electronics manufacturing in India has received good interest from domestic and foreign companies. He added that while 22 applications were received for Mobile And Electronics PLI Scheme, 40 companies have shown interest in the components scheme. These companies will produce mobile phone and components in India worth Rs 11.5 lakh crores in the coming 5 yrs out of which products worth Rs 7 lakh crores will be exported. Addressing a press conference Prasad said, '' Under the Production-Linked Incentive Scheme, around 22 companies have applied. These companies will produce mobile phone & components in India worth Rs 11.5 lakh crores in the coming 5 yrs out of which products worth Rs 7 lakh crores will be exported.'' Highlighting the benefits of the scheme Prasad said, ''These companies will create 3 lakh direct while close to 9 lakh indirect jobs. The benchmark for international companies was to manufacture mobile phones of worth Rs 15,000 or more.'' Prasad also claimed that the scheme is India positive but not against any country. He said, ''I do not wish to take the name of any country. We have got proper rules and regulations with regard to our security, bordering countries, all those compliances are important.'' Production-Linked Incentive Scheme is a scheme launched by the IT ministry which would give incentives of 4-6 per cent to electronics companies that manufacture mobile phones and other electronic components such as transistors, diodes, thyristors, resistors, capacitors and nano-electronic components such as microelectromechanical systems in India. (With ANI input) 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 Were about to go home was something Vietnam Airlines flight attendants said repeatedly to Vietnamese citizens on a flight from Equatorial Guinea a couple of days ago. Vietnam Airlines crew After a long journey to bring more than 200 Vietnamese citizens home safely, the crew were all relieved and happy to have fulfilled an important mission. Flight attendant Pham Xuan Truong, who was also on flights repatriating Vietnamese citizens from Germany, the Netherlands, and France, volunteered for this special flight. This one, he said, is probably the most memorable and emotional he has flown in his career. At 1.30pm on July 28 (Equatorial Guinea time), the Airbus A350 aircraft, carrying crew members, medical staff, and health equipment, landed at Bata International Airport in Equatorial Guinea - a small facility with poor infrastructure. It was very hot outside, Truong said, but more than 200 Vietnamese workers had waited patiently for the plane to arrive. When it landed, Truong saw Vietnamese citizens cheerfully waving and full of hope. They had been at the terminal for some time. There were no seats, no fans, and no drinking water. They just stood around or sat on the ground, Truong said. After the plane doors opened, more than 200 protective suits were given to passengers. When coming on board, they were warmly welcomed by crew members, showing solidarity and order in strictly implementing preventive measures. For 22-year-old flight attendant Nguyen Anh Tuan, this was not the first time he had volunteered to work on flights bringing Vietnamese citizens home during the COVID-19 pandemic, as he earlier engaged in repatriation efforts from Germany and France. He said he will volunteer for other flights. This special flight, he said, had five sets of protective gear for the crew. While hot to wear, all flight attendants did so. It took a total of 37 hours to fly from Hanois Noi Bai International Airport to Bata, and return. When the plane landed in Vietnam, everyone on board was excited to be home safe and sound. Sharing his feelings after the long flight, Tuan said he felt proud because all 219 Vietnamese citizens came back home safely. When asked about the possibility of him catching the virus, he said he accepts the risk. I believe in our medical staff, who have steadfastly fought the disease and treated many patients, he said. The 14-day quarantine at the National Hospital for Tropical Disease in Dong Anh district in Hanoi will pass quickly and everything will be fine, he said with smile. Vietnam Airlines and special flight bringing Vietnamese home Vietnamese citizens say thanks to the Vietnamese Government and Vietnam Airlines for repatriating them from Equatorial Guinea (Photo: VNA) A special flight carrying 219 Vietnamese citizens previously living in Equatorial Guinea landed safely at Hanois Noi Bai International Airport a couple of days ago. It was the 41st flight conducted by the national flag carrier to bring Vietnamese people home from different parts of the world. It was the first time, however, that the airline had to do so while also dealing with a large number of infections, as many passengers are thought to be carrying COVID-19. Dang Anh Tuan, head of the airlines Communications and Branding Department, said right from the early days of the first outbreak, Vietnam Airlines has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Government and people everywhere and every time. Despite facing a high risk of infection, its staff have been willing to put themselves on the frontlines of the national fight against the pandemic, Tuan said, adding that more than 130 employees, including pilots, flight attendants, technicians, and ground staff, voluntarily agreed to be part of the flight and this is truly touching. Flights followed the strictest standards and had experienced flight crews and highly-qualified engineers, technicians, and ground staff, he said. Standby spare parts were also taken, so any technology-related problems could be addressed. Tuan said Vietnam Airlines had prepared for a month for the special flight, with dozens of meetings held to discuss every detail, under the direction of the Prime Minister, the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, and the Ministry of Transport. With its experience in repatriating Vietnamese citizens from unstable places such as Libya in 2011 and 2014 or Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Vietnam Airlines worked with relevant ministries and sectors such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Health on preparations and on having suspected cases of infection on board. All necessary preparations relating to technical issues and protective gear were made, to deal with any and all situations that may occur on the flight. Preparation of fuel for the aircraft at Equatorial Guineas Bata International Airport was also problematic, as the airport had no fuel at all. But the carrier worked with the Equatorial Guinean side to resolve the problem, with the latter making arrangements for fuel to be transported to the Bata International Airport. To deal with every arising circumstance, Vietnam Airlines decided to choose the most experienced crew members, Tuan explained, adding that the captain previously flew to Libya to rescue Vietnamese workers. After landing in Hanoi, Captain Pham Dinh Hung told the Vietnam News Agency: The flight was safe. No passengers had any problems during the journey from Bata to Noi Bai. Phung Hoang Quan, a flight attendant onboard the special flight, said it was his third trip repatriating Vietnamese. Unlike previous flights, however, where most of the passengers were students, this flight had passengers who had been identified as being possibly infected with COVID-19. Im not married as yet, so before these flights this I always speak with my parents, he said. Fortunately, they understand the nature of my career and support me. He added that if Vietnam Airlines conducts more such special flights, he will again put his hand up./.VNA Johnny Depp arrives at the High Court in London, Wednesday July 8, 2020. Johnny Depp is facing a second day of cross-examination by lawyers for British tabloid The Sun, which is defending a libel claim after calling the Hollywood star a wife beater. Depp is suing The Suns publisher, News Group Newspapers, and its executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an April 2018 article that said hed been abusive to ex-wife Amber Heard. Dear Future Tensers, I reach out to you still contemplating the profundity of what Mark Zuckerberg told his congressional inquisitors on Wednesday: The space of people connecting with other people is a very large space. So large, it even includes newsletters in your inbox. Three clear winners and one loser emerged from Wednesdays Big Tech hearing in Washington. The winners were Rep. Pramila Jayapal, our new eviscerator in chief; Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichais future career as an anger-management therapist; and Tim Wu. When the going gets tough in coming weeks, I will close my eyes and picture the Google CEO soothingly saying congressman with infinite patience, as he did at the beginning of all his answers. The more irate the congressional questioner, the more patient, measured, and empathetic his congressman sounded. And that posture! On Zoom! Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement As for Wu, the Columbia law professors 2011 prescient and engaging book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires remains the greatest single work on the cycle (from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel) all revolutionary communication and information technologies have gone through. Its a cautionary tale written at a time when most policymakers still had a more sanguine view of these disruptive tech companies, and Wednesdays hearing could have been the books 22nd chapter. Pointing all this out is a bit self-serving and parochial, admittedly, given that Wu was a New America and Future Tense fellow, and frequent Slate contributor. But the good news for you all is that we will send a copy of the book signed by the author to the first person who tweets @futuretensenow with the answer to the following question: Which former information/communications monopolist once said Competition, means strife, industrial warfare; it means contention; it oftentimes means taking advantage of or resorting to any means that the conscience of the contestants will permit? Advertisement Advertisement The clear loser on the day, meanwhile, was Cisco, which is quite an accomplishment given that it was not one of the four companies testifying. But its WebEx video platform did not impress, as our friends over at Quartz pointed out. Personally, I wish the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee had been in a more trolling mood and had chosen Microsoft Teams as the platform the chieftains of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google had been forced to access. (As I write this Microsoft is a more valuable company than three of these four.) Advertisement Speaking of trolling, the day after the hearings, the four testifying companies announced their quarterly earnings. On a day when the U.S. government reported that GDP had shrunk by a nearly unfathomable 9.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, the four tech companies exceeded all expectations by posting a combined $29 billion in profits between them for the same period. If these trendlines continue, Big Tech will soon account for 100 percent of U.S. GDP (and then some, given their global reach). Moreover, these companies will be in a position to buy their CEOs some desperately needed artwork for their walls. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Such congressional hearings have traditionally been frustrating for two reasons. First, allotting representatives five minutes apiece to do as they please invariably leads to a sequence of disjointed mini-hearings, instead of one coherent whole. Anytime one questioner starts making headway on an issue, the person in the hot seat is saved by the bell. Thats why when a hearing really needs to get something accomplished, the questioning is ceded to committee counsel. The second traditional frustration, more particular to tech hearings, is the abysmal level of subject-matter understanding and preparation by our legislators, but on this score Wednesday represented a pleasant surprise. For the most part, as Dipayan Ghosh and Stephen Wicker noted on Future Tense, it was clear the subcommittee members had done their homework and could speak somewhat knowledgeably about the companies various misdeeds. And yes, for there to be meaningful progress in how we regulate technology with an eye toward maximizing future innovation, we all need to acknowledge that these companies enrich lives and hurt plenty of consumers and competitors by how they exercise their formidable market power. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement For his more nuanced and entertaining set of takeaways from the headings, check out our frequent contributor Mike Godwins assessment. Elsewhere, while the Trump family didnt have a good week on Twitter, the presidents ambassador in Mexico City, Christopher Landau, has become an improbable Twitter star. Read Mia Armstrongs engaging dispatch on how the ambassador has set about befriending an entire country, one tweet at a time, despite representing an administration not known for its fondness for our neighbor to the south, or its people. Our Future Tense Fiction story for the month of July was Legal Salvage, by Holli Mintzer, a tale of how A.I. may transform secondhand sales. In the response essay, A.I. expert Kate Compton looks at whether artificial intelligence can have authentic taste. And for secondhand yarns that shouldnt be recirculated, Chloe Hadavas has checked out Confederate Facebook, and what it means for efforts to police hate speech on social media. Advertisement Advertisement You should also check out these other recent Future Tense stories: Lawrence Norden What Congress Needs to Do Now to Secure Election Day Ari Schneider The Worlds Highest and Fastest Cell Service Could Have Geopolitical Implications Lindy Elkins-Tanton No Student Should Have to Sit Through a Zoom Lecture Upcoming Events Our team is currently planning our fall programming, so watch this space, and please feel free to reach out to suggest any themes or speakers on how technology impacts our lives. We often start with a question (e.g., How good will Wi-Fi be on Mars?) when thinking about future events, and we welcome your submissions. You can email me at andres.m@asu.edu or our fearless editor Torie Bosch, torie.bosch@slate.com. Wish Wed Published This The Wall Street Journal story on accusations that Amazon uses data from prospective partners and companies it invests in to subsequently develop competing products was a thoroughly reported piece that helped inform Wednesdays hearing, and echoed (Amazon Echo is in the story, sorry) previous complaints by third-party sellers on the site. Future Tense Recommends Disasters are natural, some inevitable. But their most devastating consequences almost never are. That is the lesson detailed in Floodlines, an eight-part podcast from the Atlantic that tells the story of the government, media, and societal failures that converted Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath into an unnatural disaster. Vann R. Newkirk II follows four New Orleanians in the days, weeks, and years after the levees broke, weaving stories of resilience with evidence of institutional indifference and neglect. Its a timely reflection on racism, climate, accountability, and the luxury of denial, and its by far the best thing Ive listened to in quaran-times. Mia Armstrong, Future Tense contributor What Next: TBD Henry Grabars miniseries on the future of the American cities continues. Last week, Henry asked: Can New Orleans survive without live music? This week, as pandemic-related federal and state eviction moratoriums begin to expire, he examines what may be in store for millions of Americans who cant pay the rent. Andres Martinez, Future Tense editorial director Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. The U.S. general manager of Chinese video sharing app TikTok has said that the service is 'not planning on going anywhere' after President Donald Trump vowed to ban it over security and privacy concerns. 'We're not planning on going anywhere,' said Vanessa Pappas in a video address on TikTok. 'When it comes to safety and security we're building the safest app because it's the right thing to do.' 'We are so proud of all the various communities who call TikTok home,' Pappas said, urging the app's millions of users to 'stand for TikTok.' Pappas claimed that the app employs 15,000 people in America, and plans to add an additional 10,000 jobs in the coming years. It follows Trump's vow to sign an executive order banning the app, which is expected as soon as Saturday, and has set off a flurry of acquisition speculation, with Microsoft reportedly exploring a deal to take control of the Chinese app in order to allow it to continue operating in the U.S. 'We're not planning on going anywhere,' said Vanessa Pappas, US general manager of TikTok, in a video address on the service Two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday that China's ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to get White House approval for an acquisition by a U.S. company. U.S. officials have said TikTok under its Chinese parent poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles. ByteDance's reported concession will test whether Trump's threat to ban TikTok is a negotiating tactic or whether he is intent on cracking down on a social media app that has up to 80 million daily active users in the United States. Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One late on Friday that he would issue an order for TikTok to be banned in the United States as early as Saturday. 'Not the deal that you have been hearing about, that they are going to buy and sell... We are not an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) country,' Trump said, referring to earlier reports that ByteDance would seek to retain a minority stake in a potential acquisition. ByteDance was previously seeking to keep a minority stake in the U.S. business of TikTok, a proposal which the White House had rejected. Trump told reporters he could ban TikTok in the U.S. as soon as Saturday, while traveling back from Tampa on Air Force One Friday Under the new proposed deal, ByteDance would exit completely and Microsoft Corp would take over TikTok in the United States, the sources said. Some ByteDance investors that are based in the United States may be given the opportunity to take minority stakes in the business, the sources added. About 70 percent of ByteDance's outside investors come from the United States. The White House declined to comment on whether Trump would accept ByteDance's concession. ByteDance in Beijing did not respond to a request for comment HOW DOES TIKTOK WORK? Users post videos of themselves and broadcast them on the app Anyone can find these videos and post comments on them It also allows you to message that person privately Some of the most popular videos are watched more than 10 million times Each TikTok video is generally 15 to 60 seconds long The videos are typically set to music, often showing the user dancing, doing a trick, or lip-syncing Advertisement Under ByteDance's new proposal, Microsoft will be in charge of protecting all U.S. user data, the sources said. The plan allows for another U.S. company other than Microsoft to take over TikTok in the United States, the sources added. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment. TikTok, which has some 800million users around the globe, has raised concern among worldwide and U.S. officials for its potential threat to security, along with claims that the Chinese government is using the technology to spy on citizens. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday said the app was being looked at by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks. Critics have warned of the potential security threat the app could pose because of its Chinese-based parent firm, ByteDance, which has consistently denied any links to the Chinese government. The number of American users has been estimated to be as high as 80 million a month - although because the company is not publicly traded, the estimate by outside analysts is impossible to verify. The platform took the world by storm in 2017, which allows users to create original videos that are shared in the app for millions to see. The move comes after Joe Biden's presidential campaign banned staffers from using the Chinese video sharing app, citing security and privacy concerns. In a memo on Monday, Biden's general counsel, Dana Remus, ordered staff members to delete TikTok from both their personal and work phones, and to 'refrain from downloading and using TikTok,' according to Bloomberg. The memo also bans staff from trading individual stocks without approval from the campaign's general counsel, an unusual step for a presidential campaign. Earlier this week TikTok pushed back at what it called 'maligning attacks' that call attention to the video app's Chinese connections - a coded reference to the inquiry. TikTok faces regulatory challenges across the globe, and a potential ban by the U.S. government over suspicions Beijing could force its Chinese owner to turn over user data. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is seen above on Friday TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said the attacks were 'disguised as patriotism and designed to put an end to our very presence in the U.S.' 'We are not political, we do not accept political advertising and have no agenda -- our only objective is to remain a vibrant, dynamic platform for everyone to enjoy,' Mayer said. 'TikTok has become the latest target, but we are not the enemy.' As relations between the United States and China deteriorate over trade, Hong Kong's autonomy, cyber security and the spread of the novel coronavirus, TikTok has emerged as a flashpoint in the dispute between the world's two largest economies. ByteDance has been considering a range of options for TikTok amid U.S. pressure to relinquish control of the app, which allows users to create short videos with special effects and has become wildly popular with U.S. teenagers. ByteDance had received a proposal from some of its investors, including Sequoia and General Atlantic, to transfer majority ownership of TikTok to them, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The proposal valued TikTok at about $50 billion, but some ByteDance executives believe the app is worth more than that. ByteDance acquired Shanghai-based video app Musical.ly in a $1 billion deal in 2017 and relaunched it as TikTok the following year. ByteDance did not seek approval for the acquisition from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals for potential national security risks. Reuters reported last year that CFIUS had opened an investigation into TikTok. TikTok's wide popularity among American teens has brought scrutiny from U.S. regulators and lawmakers who fear their personal information could fall into the hands of government officials in Beijing The United States has been increasingly scrutinizing app developers over the personal data they handle, especially if some of it involves U.S. military or intelligence personnel. Ordering the divestment of TikTok would not be the first time the White House has taken action over such concerns. Earlier this year, Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd sold Grindr LLC, a popular gay dating app it bought in 2016, for $620 million after being ordered by CFIUS to divest. In 2018, CFIUS forced China's Ant Financial to scrap plans to buy MoneyGram International Inc over concerns about the safety of data that could identify U.S. citizens. ByteDance was valued at as much as $140 billion earlier this year when one of its shareholders, Cheetah Mobile, sold a small stake in a private deal, Reuters has reported. The startup's investors include Japan's SoftBank Group Corp. The bulk of ByteDance's revenue comes from advertising on apps under its Chinese operations including Douyin - a Chinese version of TikTok - and news aggregator app Jinri Toutiao, as well as video-streaming app Xigua and Pipixia, an app for jokes and humorous videos. The Tears of TikTok: Social media stars with millions of followers bid farewell to the popular video-sharing app where they shot to fame after President Trump announces he's banning the Chinese-owned platform By Karen Ruiz for Dailymail.com TikTok stars are bidding farewell to the popular video-sharing app after President Trump announced he was banning the Chinese-owned platform on Saturday, amid national security concerns. The social media outlet, where users can create 15 or 60 second videos, has grown wildly popular among young people over the last year and is estimated to be used by more than 80million Americans. As news of the ban broke on Friday, TikTok stars rushed to say their final goodbyes to the app where they found celebrity status, asking fans to follow them on Instagram or YouTube instead. TikTok mega-star Dixie D'Amelio, who boasts 32 million followers, uploaded a video of herself reacting to the demise of the app Skin care guru Hyram, who gained a following after sharing tips on beauty and skin care products, shared a farewell video to 5.4millon followers on Friday The D'Amelio sisters, Dixie, 18, and Charli, 20, are among young stars who have made a career from TikTok, after videos of their dances went viral. Charli (left) is currently the most-followed user on the app, with 75.1million fans Among them was popular skin care guru SkincarebyHyram, who has amassed 5.2 million followers in recent months by sharing videos of his beauty and skincare tips. 'Goodbye y'all. You have all made my life incredible for the last five months. I'll miss our memories, seeing your beautiful faces and all the laughs,' he said in a video. 'Remember: Keep that skin GLOWING.' TikTok mega-star and singer Dixie D'Amelio, also uploaded a video of herself reacting to the demise of the app, staring blankly at the camera as her song 'Be Happy' played in the background. Dixie, 18, and sister Charli, 16, from Norwalk, Connecticut, became two of the most popular users on TikTok, which they joined last summer, after videos of their singing and dancing went viral. Charli, who is yet to react to the ban, is currently the most-followed star on TikTok, boasting 75.1 million followers, while her older sister has 32 million. The girls have been known to make videos with fellow TikTok celeb Addison Rae, who is followed by 53.3million users. Addison, 19, took to Twitter after learning the news, asking followers to 'send flowers pls'. TikTok has propelled the careers of many young social media users including Addison Rae, who is followed by 53.3million users and has created videos with Kardashian sisters Addison took to Twitter to react to the news of the platform being banned Earlier this year, 16-year-old Charli D'Amelio (pictured on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon) became the first TikTok star to land a Super Bowl commercial when she appeared in an ad for Sabra Hummus Popular TikTokers Tony Lopez and Michael Le, also known as JustMaiko, each shared videos asking fans to find him on other social media platforms before the app shuts down for good. 'Well s**t. F**k. Follow me on Instagram I guess. This might be it,' Lopez said. The shuttering of the app will not only be a loss to the millions of fans joined to participate in viral trends, but it has sparked concerns for those who now use it to make a living. Tik Tok has produced a community young celebrities, many of whom have been able to make careers as influencers after landing lucrative sponsorships with brands. Earlier this year, Charli D'Amelio became the first TikTok star to land a Super Bowl commercial when she appeared in an ad for Sabra Hummus. As for getting paid for social media content, the teenager reportedly charges up to $100,000 per post, according to Cosmopolitan. Charli and Dixie have also partnered with Hollister and makeup brand Morphe in the last few months alone. The same goes for Addison Rae, who joined TikTok last July and has since amassed a massive following, with 3.1billion likes, and has been featured in videos with the Kardashians. Michael Le, also known as JustMaiko (left) has amassed 34.5million followers through his popular dancing videos. He and fellow TikToker Tony Lopez shared videos asking followers to find them on other social media platforms before the app shut down for good 'If TikTok actually gets banned please support your favorite creators and follow them on all other social platforms immediately. Your support means more than you know,' one Twitter user said on Friday. TikTok has raised concern among worldwide and U.S. officials for its potential threat to security, along with claims that the Chinese government is using the technology to spy on citizens. On Friday, Trump said the popular video-sharing platform could be barred as soon as Saturday by executive order or through use of emergency economic powers. 'As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States' he told reporters on Air Force One as he returned from Florida. 'Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that [emergency economic powers].' As many as 22 domestic and international firms, including iPhone maker Apple's contract manufacturers as well as Samsung, Lava and Dixon have submitted the proposal under the government's Rs 41,000-crore production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile phone manufacturing. Total of 22 companies have filed applications under the PLI scheme from various countries including Taiwan, South Korea, German and Austria as Friday was last day for submitting proposals. Over Rs 11 lakh crore worth mobile phones will be produced over the next five years, Union telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here on Saturday. However, there were no applications from Chinese companies under the scheme which was announced by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to promote domestic manufacturing of smartphones and components. "India is not averse to investment from any country but companies will have to follow rules related to security clearance.", he said. "There will be huge (mobile phone) production of around Rs 11 lakh crore, huge export of around Rs 7 lakh crore and great employment opportunity for 3 lakh direct and 9 lakh indirect people. I personally thank all the companies that have applied," the Minister said. These proposals for mobile phone manufacturing are expected to create around 12 lakh jobs, 3 lakh direct and 9 lakh indirect employment opportunities, in the country. Domestic value addition is expected to grow from the current 15-20% to 35-40% in the case of mobile phones and 45-50% for electronic components. "The benchmark for international companies was that they make mobile phones priced at or above Rs 15,000. International companies that have applied are Samsung, Foxconn Hon Hai, Rising Star, Wistron and Pegatron," Prasad said. Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron are contract manufacturers for Apple iPhones. There is no price limit for Indian companies under the scheme. In terms of revenue, Apple accounts for 37 % and Samsung 22 % for global sales of mobile phones and the PLI scheme is expected to increase their manufacturing base manifold in the country, an official statement issued by the ministry of electronics and IT (Meity) said. The minister further said these companies will make thousands of crores investments based on the approval of their proposal. Prasad said Indian companies, including Lava, Dixon Technologies, Bhagwati (Micromax), Padget Electronics, Sojo Manufacturing Services and Optiemus Electronics, have applied under the scheme and 10 companies have filed applications under the Specified Electronic Components Segment. The companies that have applied for components production of around Rs 45,000 crore include AT&S, Ascent Circuits, Visicon, Walsin, Sahasra, Vitesco and Neolync. An empowered committee (EC), which includes NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant will now finalise applications which will eligible to get benefit under the scheme. On 2 June the Minister had released guidelines about-PLI Scheme to increasing electronics manufacturing by 2025 and create additional 1.5-2 million new jobs. D onald Trump vowed to ban social media platform TikTok and said he would take action as soon as Saturday. The US president has expressed national security and censorship concerns over the popular Chinese-owned video app. He told reporters on Air Force One on Friday as he returned from Florida: As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States." Mr Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, I have that authority before adding: Its going to be signed tomorrow. The app is popular with people around the world / AFP via Getty Images Reports by Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal citing anonymous sources said the administration could soon announce a decision ordering ByteDance to divest its ownership in TikTok. There have been reports of US tech giants and financial firms being interested in buying or investing in TikTok as the Trump administration sets its sights on the app. The president spoke to reporters on Air Force One, returning from Florida / AFP via Getty Images The New York Times and Fox Business, citing an unidentified source, reported Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok. Microsoft declined to comment. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, While we do not comment on rumours or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the US and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikToks fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and US tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a competitive threat. But its Chinese ownership has raised concerns about the censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government, and the potential for sharing user data with Chinese officials. File photo The PUNCH reports that tragedy struck on Friday morning when three men and a woman who newly moved packed into an apartment on Reachman Estate, behind Anglican Girl Grammar School, Asaba, Delta State, were found dead. City Round gathered that the victims, who were in their mid thirties, packed into the estate on Tuesday. The cause of their death could not be ascertained as of press time, but some neighbours attributed the death to generator fumes. An eyewitness, a neighbour, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity, said, I dont know any of them but one of them who is the original tenant on this estate is one Mr Mike from Isoko whose father was still in the mortuary before this incident. They packed in two days ego. Since Wednesday, their door had been locked and we were wondering why they did not come out. It was in that process we informed the police. Policemen broke the door and found five of them lying on the floor. Four of them were already dead while one was in a coma. We immediately rushed him to the hospital. Their generator was on till 10am on Thursday before it went off by itself. Another neighbour, who described the incident as pathetic, also said he saw the victims packing their loads into a newly rented apartment on Tuesday. With the look of things, it seems generator fumes killed them, he added. The Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Onome Onovwakpoyeya, who confirmed the incident on Friday, said the bodies had been deposited at the morgue in the Federal Medical Centre, Asaba, for autopsy. She added, Investigation is ongoing to unravel the circumstances leading to the death of the four occupants of the estate. Ahead of the September 19 governorship election in Edo State, the Chief Imam of Benin City, Abdulfatah Enabulele has endorsed Governor Godwin Obaseki for the second term in office. Accompanied by some other Muslim clerics, Enabulele said Governor Obaseki has won his way into the hearts of the people of the state since assuming office in 2016. According to him, the administration of the Edo Governor has provided exemplary leadership to the people of the state. In less than four years in the life span of your administration, majority of those living in Edo State are very proud, happy and satisfied with the purposeful style of leadership Your Excellency has provided the good people of Edo State. Your administration has provided progressive, pragmatic and dynamic policies for the lives of millions of people positively across the state and beyond. Under your leadership, Edo people have witnessed absolute commitment, the sincerity of purpose, honesty, and respect for the rule of law, transparency, and accountability in practical terms in Edo State. Within four years, we saw a government that is responsible and responsive to the needs of the people. We have seen a government that will not make noise but wisely operate in a manner that could be described as 'the more you look, the less you see. The Imam, therefore, prayed for God's protection on the governor against what he describes as 'evil manipulations' involving the Devil and its agents. ChannelsTv The move comes after Donald Trump threatened to ban the video sharing app in the UK. Photo: Getty Microsoft (MSFT) is reportedly in talks to buy controversial video sharing app TikTok, as US president Donald Trump threatens to ban the platform on home soil. The sale from Chinese company Bytedance would serve to bolster Microsofts advertising business and would be the companys most significant acquisition since its purchase of LinkedIn in 2016. Reuters reported on Friday the pair were in exploratory deal talks, citing people familiar with the matter. Forcing Bytedance to divest would potentially resolve, in part, long-held data concerns for some policy makers about Chinese-owned companies operating on US soil. Donald Trump has not endorsed the deal, however, telling reporters aboard Air Force One last night: "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States." When asked when this would happen, he said: Soon, immediately. I mean essentially immediately. READ MORE: NatWest 'completely prepared' for no deal Brexit It is not clear what authority the president would have over a blanket TikTok ban, or what legal challenges it would face. He said he could use emergency powers or an executive order to push such a ban through. Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A TikTok spokesman said: While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. Microsofts move comes amid mounting tension between western powers and China. The US has been locked in tense trade disputes with China over the past few years. Alongside this the US has also criticised Beijings handling of coronavirus outbreaks. (Bloomberg) -- Chinese importers of computing chips are ramping up their purchases of equipment through Hong Kong, in the expectation that U.S. sanctions on the territory will soon make the trade much harder. Re-exports of semiconductors through Hong Kong to the mainland jumped by 11% in the first half of the year from the same period in 2019, almost double the increase in total chip purchases, according to Bloomberg calculations using official data. Re-exports rose by 21% in June alone. The Hong Kong trade represents more than 38% of Chinas total chip imports on average. In the wake of Beijings imposition of a national security law on the Asian financial hub, the U.S. government has revoked the special trading status that eased commerce in sensitive goods including some computer chips. For buyers like Huawei Technologies Co., Xiaomi Corp. or Lenovo Group, a worst-case scenario would entail severe supply bottlenecks. Chinese customers are willing to buy more before the actual effective day of the sanction, according to Victor Choi, chairman of Hong Kong Electronics & Technologies Association, who estimates there are 300 or so firms which specialize in the trade. They are placing more orders for those items than before. Huawei has sought to reassure customers that its chip supply remains intact despite growing U.S. restrictions. Chinas largest tech company has stockpiled enough inventory to tide them over short-term disruptions, even as it rapidly accelerates in-house development of alternatives to American silicon. But Washingtons sanctions mean that cache may eventually run out. Chinese firms have in general been hoarding chips for fear of further supply chain shocks, and the Hong Kong pipeline is a key source, based on the data. Hong Kong has long served as a tech conduit to China partly due to its low-tax status and open financial system. The special trading status also meant firms there were more likely to get export licenses than buyers across the border. Story continues Drastic Change The removal of Hong Kongs special status would drastically change how the global semiconductor industry operates, industrial research firm TrendForce warned in a report earlier this month. Broader U.S. sanctions on Hong Kong and China will shift the semiconductor warehousing business out of Hong Kong to a different Asian trans-shipment hub in a worst-case scenario, said Rory Green, an economist at TS Lombard. Yet, the result for China tech industry is higher fees reflecting greater transaction costs but not a death blow. Choi also noted that some trading companies in Hong Kong are thinking about setting up new sales offices in India, Vietnam or Cambodia to continue selling to Chinese customers. The costs will go up with such relocations, he said. The new rules could be a key bottleneck for China, according to Natixis economists Alicia Garcia Herrero and Gary Ng. An important risk to watch is whether Hong Kongs new status with the U.S. will encourage American allies to follow suit. 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. Colombo Port remains crippled, containers held up By Kasun Warakapitiya View(s): View(s): Work at the Colombo Port remained crippled for a second consecutive day over a workers dispute regarding the Eastern Container Terminal. Discussions were held between trade unions and Ports Authority Chairman last afternoon. However, these failed to resolve the issue. Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) Chairman (retired Former Army commander) Daya Ratnayake told the Sunday Times that they had urged the trade unions to at least release the containers held up inside the port last evening. Another round of discussions was due to be held later in the day. Mr Ratnayake said that the port normally cleared at least 10,000 containers per day. The union action had brought the process to a complete standstill. He pointed out that the Ports Authority agreed on the demands of the unions, but would not change the stance they were taking. Mr Ratnayake explained that since the previous government had signed a Memorandum of Understanding regarding the operations of the terminal with India and Japan, the current government had to negotiate with them to find resolutions. He added that such a process takes time, therefore, they needed more time to resolve the matter, as the Sri Lankan Government needed to discuss the issue with foreign governments. Meanwhile, 23 Port trade unions demanded that the Eastern Container Terminal needed to be operated under Sri Lanka. They say that the terminal, which was constructed with public money, cannot be sold to foreign countries. The move to halt operations of all terminals was taken on Friday evening as the government failed to respond to union action carried out three days ago. Ports Progressive Union General Secretary Shyamal Sumanaratne said that they would continue the trade union action, as the meetings with the Ports Authority Chairman and Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police (SDIG), Western Province, Deshabandu Tennakoon held yesterday afternoon ended without resolution. He said that the Police and Ports Authority Chairman requested trade unionists to call off their action and allow Port operations to commence. We declined to do that until the government ensures in writing that they would not sell the Eastern Container Terminal, he said. He added that they clear about 5,000 to 6,000 containers daily; therefore their action would add up to a Rs 120 million loss of revenue. Meanwhile, container drivers stranded at the Port said that most of their consignments contained perishable goods, and that therefore they needed to distribute them. They said that the containers were held up for two days as the Port unionists had blocked entrances. They said that even a vehicle cleared by Customs could not be driven out of the Port. The honours system faced fresh criticism last night after a peerage was awarded to a former Brexit Party MEP accused of defending the IRA. There was also anger that the new batch of Labour peers includes an academic who retweeted claims that the Jewish establishment had taken out a contract on Jeremy Corbyn over the antisemitism controversy. Boris Johnson is facing a growing row over the elevation of 36 peers to the Lords including Tory donors, his brother Jo and long-term friends such as the Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev. Lord Fowler, the Lord Speaker, yesterday branded the new 830-strong upper house as ridiculous and not necessary. But there was also fury at the decision to send Claire Fox, a former Brexit Party Euro MP for the North West, to the Lords as a non-affiliated peer. But there was also fury at the decision to send Claire Fox (pictured), a former Brexit Party Euro MP for the North West, to the Lords as a non-affiliated peer She has been accused of failing to condemn the IRA for its 1993 terror outrage in Warrington which killed two children aged three and 12 and injured more than 50. At the time, Ms Fox was a leading figure of the Revolutionary Communist Party which defended the right of the Irish people to take whatever measures are necessary in their struggle for freedom. And yesterday, Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim was killed in the bombing, said the decision to make Ms Fox a peer offends me and many others deeply. In a tweet, Mr Parry added: Claire Fox never apologised for defending the IRA bombing of Warrington which took the life of my son Tim and Johnathan Ball. However, Ms Fox hit back yesterday to deny she had defended the IRA terrorists. She pointed out she had issued a statement some years ago that said: Contrary to what has been reported elsewhere, I do not support or defend the IRAs killing of two young boys in Warrington in 1993. I have not mentioned the horrific times of over 23 [now 27] years ago since then and do not believe there is any justification for violence in Ireland today. She added: The killing of Johnathan Ball and Tim Parry was a terrible tragedy The 1994 IRA ceasefire and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement drew a line under the conflict. It is surely time to move on. Among five new Labour peers all nominated by previous party leader Mr Corbyn was Professor Prem Sikka (pictured), a defender of Mr Corbyn during the antisemitism rows But Warrington North Labour MP Charlotte Nichols said last night: Does the Prime Minister understand the hurt that giving her a seat in the House of Lords will cause to the families of those who lost their children? Among five new Labour peers all nominated by previous party leader Mr Corbyn was Professor Prem Sikka, a defender of Mr Corbyn during the antisemitism rows. Labour insiders yesterday voiced their concerns Prof Sikka had tweeted a link to an article which questioned the motivations of British Jews saying to whom is their loyalty a classic antisemitic trope. He claimed everybody needs to read the article, which also stated: The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on Jeremy Corbyn. Allies of Prof Sikka last night pointed out the academic was simply retweeting an article written in a well-respected Israeli newspaper. One former Jewish Labour MP last night told The Mail on Sunday that the remarks would have fuelled antisemitic sentiment at the time. Prof Sikka could not be reached for comment yesterday. Opening schools this fall will be a challenge, but the decision to have most of Ontarios two million students back in class full-time was based on the best medical advice, says Premier Doug Ford. Speaking Friday at Queens Park, Ford said the province is spending $309 million to help school boards with their COVID-19 costs this fall. So were putting the money in there, but Im the first to admit are we going to face a challenge? Im sure were going to face a challenge. But did we get the best medical advice we could ever get from some of the smartest minds in the country? Yes we did. Fords comments came a day after he and Education Minister Stephen Lecce unveiled the provinces plan for all elementary students to return to school full-time and most high school students to do so as well. Students will be required to wear masks all day, starting in Grade 4. Younger children are encouraged to do so. The government was criticized, however, for leaving class sizes in elementary schools as they are, meaning upwards of 30 children in kindergarten or the upper grades. Classes from Grades 1 to 3 are, for the most part, capped at 20 students. Unions and opposition critics accused the government of adopting a bargain basement plan and not spending enough to hire the appropriate number of teachers and custodians to keep classes smaller, a step experts have called critical to limiting kids contacts and the spread of COVID-19. Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe said schools will be taking a number of measures, including masks for older children, regular hand hygiene and sanitizing and asking sick students to stay home. Everything contributes to maintaining health, and well have to see how it goes and monitor how we can improve things as we go along, Yaffe said. Yaffe also said her office has worked through a number of potential situations with the Ministry of Education so that schools will be able to understand what could happen if there is a case because theres a lot of concern and anxiety. She said families will be urged to keep children home if they show any symptoms, but if symptoms appear when kids are at school, then the teachers and the staff will be trained on how to isolate the child quickly, notify their caregiver if its a young child, possibly test them if theres consent and if theres ability, or send them for testing with the parent. If someone does have COVID, the childs teacher and class will be tested, and the whole class could potentially be asked to quarantine. It is unlikely an entire school would ever be shut down, she added. If we have two cases in the same class, its the same as with one case. But what if we start to have cases in separate classes, the first question will be are they linked to each other? They might be friends. They might be siblings in different grades. And trying to investigate it, do we think they actually infected each other somewhere outside of the school? In which case, the fact theyre in different classes may not be as relevant. But if we find they actually infected each other at school somehow, then were looking at two classrooms and following them up, Yaffe said. It would be extremely rare, in consultation with public health, that a whole school would need to be closed. Obviously, there could be circumstances, if its widespread. But I want to reassure people we will take every potential case very seriously, investigate them, make sure that contacts are identified and isolated and tested, so that we can make sure people stay as healthy as possible. Meanwhile, the Toronto District School Board announced that its interim director, Carlene Jackson, will leave in October to become the provinces first comptroller general and deputy minister in the Treasury Board Secretariat. Jackson replaced director John Malloy who left to run a school board in the San Francisco area. It is unlikely the Toronto board will have hired a director by this fall, so another interim will have to be appointed. Jackson, who has headed the boards COVID planning and budget processes, has an MBA and is a chartered professional accountant. In an email to staff, Jackson said, Since 2017, I have had the honour of working alongside trustees, staff and school communities to overcome challenges, achieve goals and support the many students, parents and staff that make up the largest school board in Canada. It has been an honour to serve as an associate director and most recently as the interim director of education. Long-serving board chair Robin Pilkey is also stepping down and will be replaced by a vote of trustees in August. Sushant Singh Rajput's death case recently took a new turn after the late actor's father Krishna Kishore Singh filed a first information report (FIR) against the late actor's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty under various sections, including 'theft and abetment to suicide'. The Bihar Police team is currently in Mumbai to probe the matter. As per the latest reports, the Bihar Police has recorded the statements of six people in connection with Sushant Singh Rajput's death case. A PTI report stated that the four-member team arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday (July 29, 2020) to investigate the 'abetment to suicide' case registered against Rhea Chakraborty in Patna, Bihar, by Sushant's father. A police official told the news agency, "Till now, the police team from Bihar has met the late actor's friends, colleagues and relatives. They have recorded the statements of six persons - Rajput's sister, who stays in Versova, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, a cook, his friends and colleagues." The report further stated that the Bihar Police is likely to question Sushant's staff, adding that some of them had been replaced by other staff. ANI reported that the Bihar Police will also be speaking to Sushant's co-stars. The police official continued, "They also gathered information about Rajput's various bank accounts and also visited the banks to look into the financial transactions." On Friday (July 31, 2020), the visiting team had gone to the Crime Branch office in Mumbai to submit an application seeking assistance from the Mumbai police in probing the case. The Andheri Police personnel took the officers of the Bihar Police in their vehicle for safety, as a large number of media persons had gathered at the spot. On the other hand, netizens slammed the Mumbai Police over their behaviour after a video of the visiting Bihar Police team being taken in the vehicle went viral on social media. Reacting to it, the police official said, "As it was the issue of the safety of the Bihar Police personnel, the city police put them in a van and dropped them at a safe place." Meanwhile, actress Rhea Chakraborty issued a brief statement against the allegations in a video message on Friday (July 31, 2020). She said that she has immense faith in God and the judiciary, and believes that she will get justice. Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his Bandra residence on June 14, 2020, and the Mumbai Police confirmed his death by suicide. ALSO READ: Sushant's Friend Smita Parikh Claims The Late Actor Was Anxious After Disha Salian's Demise ALSO READ: Sushant's Friend Siddharth Pithani Says He Was With The Actor The Night Before His Death 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 All the headlines around the recent Russia Report concentrated on the interference by spies in Britain's referendums. What was equally as startling were the revelations of how much dirty money is being washed through London by the dodgy Oligarchs and their Chinese equivalents. And that is something that we in Ireland need to pay close attention to given our close relationship with Britain's financial services industry. Indeed the Government's own money National Risk Assessment on Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing published recently spells out the dangers: "Ireland's close economic ties with the United Kingdom and its shared border mean that it could be a risk of certain cross-border activities. Furthermore, the potential impact of the United Kingdom leaving the EU will need to be monitored, particularly with regard to the border," it says. The Russia Report of the British Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) into allegations of Russian interference in British politics, including alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum was released this week. After reading it, you can see why prime minister Boris Johnson dragged his heels over publishing the report. It is a damning indictment of Russia's interference and influence in British politics. The report also shines a light on illicit Russian money being laundered on a grand scale in London, which now has the dubious moniker of the 'London Laundromat' Russian oligarchs view London as a particularly favourable destination for their money which the ISC attribute to the exploitation of the UK's investor visa scheme introduced by John Major's government in 1994. They point out that the UK welcomed Russian money and that few questions, if any, were asked about the provenance of this considerable wealth. Furthermore the ISC believes the UK Government at the time naively felt that exposure to a law-based commercial environment would promote good governance by encouraging ethical and transparent practices by the Russians. The report is damning on how that worked out. "What is now clear is that is was in fact counterproductive, in that it offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London 'laundromat". It goes on to say that "the money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment - PR firms,charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money contributing to a 'reputation laundering' process" The British National Crime Agency estimates hundreds of billions of pounds are being laundered through the UK every year, and that it was a prime destination for Russians looking to legitimize the proceeds of corruption. At the last count, there was some 35bn (38.8bn) of Russian money alone sloshing through London's jurisdiction. According to the ICS report many of the oligarchs have very close links to Russian President Vladimir Putin and are now well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth. "This level of integration - in 'Londongrad' in particular - means that any measures now being taken by the Government are not preventative but rather constitute damage limitation," it said. Enabler's Paradise This has spawned a growth industry of enablers such as lawyers, accountants, estate agents and PR firms who have cashed in on the illicit money washing through London. The ISC go on to say that " a large security industry has developed in the UK to service the needs of the Russian elite in which British companies protect the oligarchs and their families, seek kompromat (compromising information) on competitors, and on occasion help launder money through offshore shell companies and fabricate 'due diligence' reports, while lawyers provide litigation support". It's hard to believe that we are talking about the UK rather than a banana republic, but the US State Department has for some time, considered the UK as a Country/Jurisdiction of Primary Concern in respect of Money Laundering and Financial Crimes. According to the Know Your Country, a website which tracks countries money laundering risk profile, the UK is ranked 79 way below countries such Zambia, Rwanda and Qatar. According to financier Bill Browder "London is the world capital of dirty money". Brexit and AML Brexit is likely to amplify this as legitimate money is replaced by illicit funds as many companies are getting out of London. The National Crime Agency predicts that money-laundering opportunities will increase following Brexit, as criminals are ultimately attracted to weakness. While the EU is stepping up its efforts to create a robust anti-money laundering (AML) infrastructure through data sharing and the formation of a new European AML authority to be launched early 2021, after Brexit the UK will be isolated from this new intelligence sharing. This will make it a target for increased money laundering activity. 'Big Crocs' China's equivalent of the oligarchs, dubbed 'big crocs', have now reportedly overtaken the Russians as the biggest overseas buyers of London property with over 200,000 properties now in the hands of Chinese and Hong Kong buyers. This would seem to be as a direct result of the Chinese government's recent crackdown on these 'big croc' tycoons who are escalating their endeavours to launder money abroad. London is a prime location for them which adds to its already dubious reputation. Clearly, Britain and London in particular now have a serious image problem. The money laundering activity by dodgy oligarchs - and more recently Chinese 'crocs' has done enormous reputational damage. This is something which will only deteriorate further post-Brexit unless the UK government makes some very hard decisions. But we cannot be too smug. Here we need to be extra vigilant in our anti-money laundering regime post-Brexit to prevent this dirty money entering our financial system. The recently published National Risk Assessment identifies Brexit as a major threat. As Britain depart, Dublin will suddenly become far more attractive to the Oligarchs and Crocs and that is something we must do everything to avoid. James Treacy is co-founder of AMLIntelligence.com and publisher of StubbsGazette The Delhi government, in a three-day drive, has brought down the number of containment zones in the city by over 200, bringing relief to as many as 241,888 people from following stringent lockdown rules, revenue minister Kailash Gahlot said on Saturday. The drive to restructure Delhis containment zones was conducted between July 28 and July 30 to free up more localities, permit movement of more people and further boost the economy, the government said. Click here for full Covid-19 coverage The exercise involved redrawing the boundaries of containment zones to make them smaller. It could be a lane, a building or a larger area, depending on the contacts traced to the Covid patients and high-risk groups identified in the zone. The containment strategy executed by the 11 district administrations was reviewed by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday. The move comes at a time when the Centre, on July 29, permitted states to de-seal a containment zone 14 days after the recovery of the last Covid-19 patient from the area. Earlier, de-sealing was allowed 28 days after the last Covid recovery case. Data presented to Kejriwal during Saturdays review showed that on July 27, Delhi had 715 containment zones -- the highest so far -- with 348,099 people residing in them, following strict lockdown rules. By July 31, the number came down to 496 and now, only 106,211 people are living under lockdown. This drive was conducted for three days and I personally went on the ground to inspect containment zones with the respective district magistrates (DMs) in various parts of the city. In the review meeting today, the chief minister expressed his satisfaction over the result of the restructuring and the subsequent de-scaling of containment zones. The CM has directed that the situation must be reviewed at regular intervals, Gahlot said. Documents, accessed by HT, showed that of all the 11 districts, the southeast district saw the biggest turnaround in terms of the population being affected by it, despite the number of containment zones remaining mostly the same. The southeast districts containment zones reduced by one only (from 31 to 30), but the boundaries of the containment zones were redrawn afresh. We did it in such a way that now only 7,517 people are living in CZs in our district, instead of 73,612 people recorded on July 27, said a senior official from the district. In terms of the number of containment zones, the west district saw the maximum reduction from 104 on July 27 to 61 on July 31. This was followed by Shahdara district (from 47 to 7) and south district (from 77 to 50). During the intensive review, we found that the containment zone in southwest Delhis H & F Block in Raj Nagar part II, Palam Colony, was the biggest in terms of the population under lockdown. It had 43,000 residents living in it. We broke it down into smaller zones and now only 1,600 people are impacted after the restructuring. Similarly, Central Delhis A, B and E2 Blocks in Shastri Nagar had 36,423 people under containment. This has now reduced to 1,200 people, minister Gahlot said. According to government documents, the biggest containment zone in Delhi in terms of population now is in northwest Delhis C Block, Mangolpuri. It was notified on May 22 and has around 3,000 residents under lockdown. This is followed by Central Delhis Jawahar Nagar and north Delhis Block 1, Sector 17, Rohini containment zones, both of which now have 2,500 people living in each zone. Till June 20, Delhi had 262 containment zones. On June 21, the home ministry, which has been monitoring and suggesting interventions in Delhi, directed the state to scale up containment activities and start aggressive re-mapping and redrawing of sealed zones. After this direction, in just a weeks time, by June 27, Delhis containment zones increased to 421, after which the numbers gradually kept increasing. Dr Lalit Kant, former Head, Division of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, Indian Council of Medical Research said, It is a good idea to keep reviewing containment zones. It helps in more effective contact tracing as well. But it is also important to keep testing people in containment zones since by employing this strategy, it becomes possible to identify and isolate those who may have come in contact with the infected individual. Residents of Blocks K in north Delhis Jahangirpuri, which opened up after more than three months, said the descaling process enabled them to go to work. Despite the areas de-containment, our RWA is still rightfully exercising caution. The movement of people to and from the gated colony is highly regulated. Some gates are shut until the RWA further decides on opening, said Rajiv Kumar, a resident of the area. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON TEHRAN, Iran - Iran on Saturday said it detained an Iranian-American leader of a little-known California-based militant opposition group for allegedly planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others. Irans Intelligence Ministry also alleged Jamshid Sharmahd of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran planned other attacks around the Islamic Republic amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the U.S. over its collapsing 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. It was unclear how the 65-year-old Sharmahd, whom Iran accused of running the opposition groups Tondar militant wing, ended up detained by intelligence officials. The Intelligence Ministry called it a complex operation, without elaborating. It published a purported picture of Sharmahd, blindfolded, on its website. Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi later appeared on state TV, saying Sharmahd had been arrested in Iran, without elaborating. Requests for comment sent by email to the Glendora-based Kingdom Assembly of Iran were not immediately answered and a telephone number for the group no longer worked. The U.S. State Department, which mentioned how Sharmahd earlier had been targeted for assassination in a recent report called Outlaw Regime: A Chronicle of Irans Destructive Activities, acknowledged reports of his detention. The Iranian regime has a long history of detaining Iranians and foreign nationals on spurious charges, the State Department said in a statement. We urge Iran to be fully transparent and abide by all international legal standards. Iranian state television broadcast a report on Sharmahds arrest, linking him to the 2008 bombing of the Hosseynieh Seyed al-Shohada Mosque in Shiraz. It also said his group was behind a 2010 bombing at Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis mausoleum in Tehran that wounded several people. The report also alleged without providing evidence that Tondar, or Thunder in Farsi, plotted attacks on a dam and planned to use cyanide bombs at Tehrans annual book fair. State TV later aired footage of Sharmahd interspersed with footage from the moment of the 2008 explosion at the Shiraz mosque. Sharmahds face appeared swollen and the style of the footage resembled one of what a rights group has identified as over 350 coerced confessions aired by the broadcaster over the last decade. The Intelligence Ministry has not said what charges Sharmahd will face. Prisoners earlier accused in the same attack were sentenced to death and executed. The Kingdom Assembly of Iran, known in Farsi as Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran, and Tondar seek to restore Irans monarchy, which ended when the fatally ill Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country in 1979 just before its Islamic Revolution. The groups founder disappeared in the mid-2000s. Iranian intelligence operatives in the past have used family members and other tricks to lure targets back to Iran or friendly countries to be captured. An alleged Iranian government operative who allegedly tried to hire a hit man to kill Sharmahd disappeared in 2010 before facing trial in California, likely having returned to Iran. A 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable from London later published by WikiLeaks shows that a Voice of America commentator said that same operative earlier had been in contact with him. British anti-terror police later warned the commentator that he had been targeted by the Iranian regime, the cable said. The two cases marked a clear escalation in the regimes attempts to intimidate critics outside its borders, and could have a chilling effect on journalists, academics and others in the West who until recently felt little physical threat from the regime, the cable said. Sharmahd last appeared in an online livestream video on Dec. 29, according to his groups website, speaking in Farsi while sitting in a black chair in front of a black background. We are not only seeking the liberation of the homeland, but we are also moving towards a special direction, and that is to be Iranian, Sharmahd said at one point in the video. Because we have heard that once upon a time some people were living in the region who were able to build an empire. While overshadowed by other exiled opposition groups, Iran reportedly brought up the Kingdom Assembly multiple times while negotiating the terms of the 2015 deal, which saw Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Irans Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi reacted to the news by criticizing the U.S. for allowing Sharmahd and others to live in America. The U.S. must be responsible for supporting terrorist groups which are inside of this country and carry out and lead terrorist acts against the Iranian people, state TV quoted Mousavi as saying. A statement attributed to Tondar claimed the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010 by a remote-control bomb, though it later said it wasnt responsible. Suspicion long has fallen on Israel for a string of assassinations targeting scientists amid concerns about Irans nuclear program, which the West fears could be used to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran long has maintained its program is for peaceful purposes. Sharmahds reported arrest comes as tensions remain inflamed by President Donald Trumps 2018 decision to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal. A series of incidents last year were capped by a U.S. drone strike in January killing a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Iran responded by launching a ballistic missile attack on U.S. soldiers in Iraq that injured dozens. ___ Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Read more about: Trump saw that when he was unable to extricate the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal for more than year. His well-publicized withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization wont actually become final until after the Nov. 3 election, if ever. His decision to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany could take years. Washington The United States just suffered its worst economic quarter in nearly 75 years. Its recovery from the depths of a pandemic-induced recession has stalled, as coronavirus deaths rise again across the country. President Donald Trump has what appears to be one final chance to cut a deal with Congress to ensure hard-hit workers and businesses do not collapse before the November election. He has shown little interest in taking it. Rather than push for a comprehensive plan that could win support from both Democrats and Republicans, Trump has instead embraced big-ticket items that Senate Republicans did not want and that would do little to help millions of struggling workers and businesses. That included a payroll tax cut and an expanded tax break for business lunches, along with $1.75 billion to rebuild the FBI's headquarters in Washington. He has derided efforts to find middle ground with Democratic leaders on a broad economic rescue package, declaring Wednesday that "we really don't care" about several possible parts of it. Trump and his aides waited until the eleventh hour to engage Democrats over expiring unemployment benefits that have been a lifeline to millions of workers, and Democratic leaders have dismissed his last-minute proposal to temporarily extend them. Over the past week, the president has publicly called for stimulus measures that were not included in the $1 trillion proposal that his administration and Senate Republicans unveiled Monday, like continuing a national moratorium on evictions. The president's approach to the negotiations over another round of federal stimulus for the ailing economy has confounded economists, lobbyists and lawmakers, who say they are baffled by Trump's apparent lack of urgency to nail down another rescue package that he can sign into law. The economic rebound Trump still boasts about has stalled as virus cases reach records and states reimpose lockdowns. Labor Department data released Thursday showed that new unemployment claims had risen for the second consecutive week and that the number of continuing claims was also increasing. On Wednesday, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, warned the nascent recovery that was underway in May and June was sputtering. A wide range of polls show Trump's lead over the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, on economic issues has evaporated in recent months. Congress is set to leave for recess in less than two weeks, with little prospect of major legislation remaining from then through the election. Strategists say there is a potential compromise to be had between Democrats and the White House, most likely in the range of a $2 trillion package, before Congress decamps for its summer recess. They do not understand why Trump would decline to seize a deal and risk watching Americans lose their homes and businesses as November approaches. The president's strategy to help the economy "is hard to decipher," said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has urged Congress to provide more aid to people, businesses and hard-hit state and local governments. "It seems to me there isn't a clear strategy to support the economy right now coming from the White House." Trump, he added, "is just misreading how bad the economy is and how hard of a shape workers and families are in right now." But the president has remained steadfast in his belief that the virus will soon abate and continues to portray the economic slowdown as a blip. During remarks at the White House on Thursday, he said that a comeback "won't take very long, based on everything that we're seeing." Asked this week in North Carolina if he was worried about the state of the recovery, Trump replied: "I don't think so. I think the recovery has been very strong. We've set record job numbers." Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said the president's rosy predictions were not going to help the millions of Americans without jobs. "Donald Trump thought he could just happy-talk his way through the things people are talking about in their kitchens and their living rooms, which is how to beat the virus and how to fix the economy," he said. When the Commerce Department reported the economy contracted in the second quarter at its fastest rate since the immediate aftermath of World War II, Trump's reelection campaign responded with a news release promoting job gains in May and June and attacking Biden over his economic record as vice president. Outside economists are far less bullish than the president on the economy's trajectory. Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote in a research note Thursday that "we would not be at all surprised" to see little job growth or a dip in the unemployment rate for August or September, given current trends in the economy. Forecasters at TD Securities have recently cut their projections for growth in the third quarter and warned that growth for the end of the year will "depend significantly on COVID developments." Powell, the Fed chair, said Wednesday that the stimulus spending approved so far had been crucial to keeping "people in their homes and businesses in business" but warned more support would be needed given "a large number of people" would struggle to regain employment in the months to come. The delays in negotiations have already pushed the country over a benefit "cliff" the additional $600 a week that unemployed workers were receiving under the economic rescue package Trump signed in March expire Friday. Many economists warn that the sudden reduction in buying power for millions of Americans will only worsen the current slowdown. Senate Republicans have begun to minimize Trump's role in hastening the recovery with more federal spending. "A strategy for the economy?" asked Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind. "That's not how economies work. He's not the Wizard of Oz you can print this, I hope you do he's not the Wizard of Oz, who controls the economy. Growth is created by innovators and entrepreneurs and rank-and-file workers, based on supply and demand. "I think he's doing what he can," Young added, "so that the economy can open up again." Coronavirus infections can be controlled at universities this fall if students are tested for the virus every two days, according to a study published Friday. The study was done by researchers from the Yale School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open. The study used computer simulations to show how the virus might spread among a hypothetical cohort of 5,000 students. In the simulations, 4,990 students were assumed to be coronavirus-free, while 10 were assumed to be infected. Researchers found screening every two days using a rapid, inexpensive test - even one that was not always accurate - would "maintain a controllable number of covid-19 infections" if coupled with "strict behavioral interventions" such as quarantining positive students in isolation dormitories. The study estimated screening would cost $470 per student per semester and did not consider the effects of reopening schools on staff and communities where colleges are located. It also said that monitoring students for symptoms was not sufficient and that logistical challenges such as the availability of tests or isolation dormitories "may be beyond the reach of many university administrators and the students in their care." But the pace and extent of viral testing that the study envisions could be difficult to carry out. Brett Giroir, a top federal health official overseeing coronavirus testing, acknowledged to lawmakers Friday that getting results back to all patients within two to three days is not possible now. Giroir told a House panel that 75% of test results are coming back within five days. Still, the study suggested that with sufficient resources, universities could reopen. "We believe there is a safe way for students to return to college in fall 2020," the study said. A. David Paltiel, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health and the study's lead author, said the study was undertaken as a consortium of university presidents in the Boston area looked for a way to safely reopen. Paltiel said the frequency of testing is more important than its accuracy. Repeated tests would eventually find the positive cases, he said. While there are risks in any plan to reopen campuses in a pandemic, according to Paltiel, there are also risks to letting students stay at home. "The problem doesn't go away simply because you don't reopen campus," he said. "We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." The study comes as many universities, including some in the Washington region, announced plans to move online for the fall semester. Georgetown University and George Washington University will remain remote for the rest of the year. Other schools, including Yale and Harvard, plan to welcome some students back to campus. Yale will require undergraduates living in dorms to be tested twice weekly, while Harvard plans to test students on campus every three days. Other schools, such as those in the University of Maryland system, will require students to test negatively for the novel coronavirus before enrolling. Colby College in Maine, which has about 2,000 students, has set an ambitious viral testing goal. It has pledged to test everyone on campus - students, faculty and staff - three times a week at the start of the semester and twice weekly for the rest of the term. The cost for testing will be as much as $2.5 million. But Colby, like several schools in the Northeast, has access to relatively inexpensive testing through a nonprofit biomedical research center in Cambridge, Mass., that is charging about $25 to $30 per test. Elsewhere in the country, prices can surpass $100 per test. For colleges facing fiscal challenges, that could be a steep cost. "All college presidents want tests that are fast, cheap and reliable," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a higher education advocacy group. "Unfortunately those don't exist." Michael Mina, an epidemiology professor at Harvard who was not involved in the study, said high-volume testing by universities is "a little bit niche," but may be the key to safely reopening for the fall semester. While the public, many drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration are focused on tests' accuracy, Mina said, battling the coronavirus successfully may simply demand testing more often, even if tests aren't always reliable. The problem is not all schools - let alone the general public - have private labs or relationships with the pharmaceutical industry that give them access to a large number of tests. Simple at-home tests that provide rapid results are necessary everywhere, Mina said. "This is a very powerful approach to get society running again," he said. "It's a way we should all be thinking." - - - The Washington Post's Rachel Weiner and Nick Anderson contributed to this report. The Hadapsar police on Saturday arrested a ward boy for allegedly molesting a Covid positive patient undergoing treatment at Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of private hospital at Hadapsar. According to police officials, Ashok Namdeo Gawali (40) molested 35-year-old Covid patient on Saturday by inappropriately touching her. The accused, according to Hadapsar police inspector Ramesh Sathe, was wearing a mask and went near the bed of the victim. He then lowered his mask and told her if she recognized him. The man then shared a personal detail with her due to which she ignored him. The man then demanded her mobile number which she refused. He then physically molested her. At that time, a woman staffer of the hospital came to the spot and recognized him. The accused then immediately left the room. The victim lodged a complaint with Hadapsar after we sent the team to hospital We have no arrested him, said Sathe, who is investigating the case. The accused has been booked under section 354 of Indian Penal Code, according to FIR. The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy releases its July 2020 report on violations of the right to fair trials in Tibet. Tibetans living under Chinas rule are routinely denied the right to a fair trial, with judicial proceedings against them often held in secret and confessions obtained under torture used against them in court, a Tibetan rights group says in a new report. Especially in cases deemed politically sensitive, Tibetans are rarely informed of their right to counsel, the Dharamsala, India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) says in its July 2020 report Barriers to Exercising the Right to a Fair Trial in Tibet. Very rarely are they able to retain a defence lawyer of their own choice. Many do not have legal representation at their trials, TCHRD said, adding that in court proceedings involving state security or state secrets charges, the cases against Tibetans are mostly completely closed to the public and the media. Family members are also often not told of their loved ones detention or arrest, especially during periods of pre-trial detention when they are most likely to be severely tortured, TCHRD said. Since Tibetan detainees are mostly charged with national security crimes without due process, they are held incommunicado for months and sometimes never to be found alive. Chinas procuracy meanwhile fills a dual role as both prosecutor and supervisor of the legal process, TCHRD said. It supervises the work of judges and the courts and can call for the reconsideration of cases including the instigation and extension of pre-trial detention, which result in a serious conflict of interest and a lack of independent oversight. Tibetans who try to voice their grievances against the Chinese government on social and environmental issues are frequently the targets of arrest, TCHRD researcher Pema Gyal told RFAs Tibetan Service in a recent interview. And Tibetans who are arrested are barred from receiving a fair trial, he said, citing the cases of Tibetan community leader Anya Sengdra, who had posted online criticisms of environmental damage and Chinese officials embezzlement of poverty alleviation funds, and Tashi Wangchuk, who had advocated publicly for Tibetan language rights. Both are now serving long prison terms, and neither one had committed a criminal act according to Chinas own constitution or laws, which are frequently disregarded in criminal prosecutions, Gyal said. Judicial independence doesn't exist In China, independent judicial practice doesnt exist, Gyal said, as the Chinese Communist Party appoints judges who dont favor any case that goes against the CCP. Meanwhile, clampdowns on communications in Tibetan areas of China block the regular flow of information to outside contacts, Gyal said, adding, We still dont know the number of Tibetans who have been arrested. RFA has previously reported numerous examples of secret trials, with defendants held incommunicado with little or no access to lawyers before a sentence is passed but not made public. Last year, when a Tibetan monk who was jailed for three years after being held incommunicado for 14 months and shuffled among several different places and various detention centers in Sichuan province, Chinese human rights lawyers told RFA that few attorneys in China are willing or able to represent Tibetans and other ethnic minorities in political cases. China has confiscated the licenses of human rights lawyers," New York-based Chinese attorney and rights advocate Teng Biao said, referring to a sweeping crackdown on rights lawyers launched on July 9, 2015 that decimated the profession and is still claiming victims. Even if a Tibetan family tries to hire a lawyer for the defense, they fear further retaliation from the Chinese government," he told RFA in September 2019. Both in China and Tibet, [Chinas] constitution provides for the rule of law, but the constitution also provides that the [ruling Chinese Communist] Party takes precedence and is above all else, TCHRD said in its report. It is likely that high conviction rates will continue given the lack of judicial independence, restrictions on defense lawyers and the overarching requirement to maintain stability. The security of the state and the Party is paramount, TCHRD said. Reported and translated by Tashi Wangchuk for RFAs Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney. PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, MI A Plymouth Township woman is facing felony charges after the township clerk discovered the womans attempt to obtain a ballot using her daughters signature. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged Karen Lynne Rotondo, 57, with one count of knowingly making, filing or publishing a false signature on an absent voter application. The offense is punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a $1,000 fine, a press release from the attorney generals office said. The release said Rotondo forged her daughters signature on an absent voter application and mailed it to the Plymouth Township clerk. The daughter was unaware that the application had been filed in her name, the release said. The clerk, who was reviewing applications for absentee voter ballots, followed established procedures and discovered evidence that the ballot application was not executed by the person to whom it was sent, the release said. No ballot was actually sent and no illegal voting occurred, according to the release. Serious criminal consequences exist for those who attempt to tamper with our election process, Nessel said. Michiganders should know that absentee ballot applications, which is the subject of this fraud investigation, are not just rubber-stamped and processed robotically. Clerks and other election officials conduct careful examinations of these applications to ensure they are authentic, complete and comport with the law. Rotondo is expected to be formally arraigned on the charges in the coming days, the release said. Court dates and additional details are not yet available. READ MORE: Michigan ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to count after court declines to hear challenge League of Women Voters sues Michigan over absentee ballot access, deadline Group seeking to have absentee ballots postmarked by election day appeals to Michigan Supreme Court SEYMOUR Christopher Bowen, a candidate for state representative, is calling for faster COVID-19 testing after he tested positive for the virus. He and his wife were tested as a precaution at Premier Urgent Care in Oxford on July 22, Bowen said in a post on Facebook on Wednesday. I will add my name to the chorus of people pushing for better, faster testing, said a Wednesday Facebook post from Bowen, a Democrat challenging Nicole Klarides-Kitria for her state representative seat. Bowen said he tried to get a rapid test done Wednesday but said it was just not possible. He said one rapid test site, in Hartford, couldnt see him until next Tuesday. Bowen said he and his wife got tested because they are sometimes around people and want to be absolutely sure. In the social media post, published Wednesday, Bowen said he went to a lightly attended, socially distanced, outdoor event in Beacon Falls on Tuesday. He said masks were worn, but he still told the Beacon Falls Democratic Town Committee of his positive test results as a precaution. This morning, Bowen said Wednesday, my wife and I received word that our COVID-19 test from last Wednesday was positive. We have been asymptomatic the whole time. Bowen said after talking to medical professionals, specifically the doctor at the urgent care facility, they were told they could be swabbed to get tested again, but there would be no point. We were informed that a positive test is likely even well after the fact, and that even though we tested positive as of last Wednesday, theres a strong chance we werent even contagious. Still, Bowen said, the costs of being wrong are too high. He said he and his wife and his campaign would implement several precautions. He said he will get tested again in a week or two. Officially known as the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), the country's military is deeply rooted in the people and has maintained close bonds with them since its establishment 93 years ago. "The PLA should always be part of the people, work for their interests, and maintain close ties and share good and bad times with them," Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a speech at a ceremony marking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the PLA on August 1, 2017. "The people's army goes wherever there are enemies, and wherever there is danger," he stressed. That is exactly what the military is doing this year standing together with civilians in the "people's wars" against COVID-19 and the flooding. 'Never retreat' After the novel coronavirus outbreak started in Wuhan, China's epicenter, around 4,000 military medics were dispatched to three hospitals there. They treated over 7,000 patients and saved numerous lives from January to April. "We, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, swear that we will never retreat in face of the epidemic and will safeguard peace and health of the people," said Ma Ling, a military medic serving in an ICU at Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan. After completing their mission, the military personnel were honored by Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission. In an order of commendation, Xi said the epidemic was a "war and test" to the army, and that the troops won the war with strong faith, high scientific and research capacities and great sacrifice. Safeguarding the people In summer, thousands of PLA men embarked on a new mission to combat another dangerous enemy the flooding in a number of provinces along the Yangtze River caused by almost non-stop heavy rain. Water levels in the river and adjacent lakes have been compared with the disastrous flooding in 1998. President Xi urged the PLA and the People's Armed Police (PAP) Force to actively participate in rescue and relief efforts. "We are the people's army and should fight on the frontline at this moment," said Xiao Shuai, a soldier of the PAP in southwest China's Sichuan Province. Zhang Hongbing, a local government official in the eastern province of Anhui, hailed soldiers and officers fighting the flooding as a "real people's army." "Once the troop arrives, the people feel safe and sound," Zhang said. As China strives to build strong armed forces, Xi has called for a commitment to the PLA's basic principle "serving the people heart and soul." The PLA must "go through thick and thin" with the people and always be a military "trusted, supported and loved by the people," he said. SOURCE CGTN Microsoft has started detecting CCleaner, a popular utility tool for Windows as a Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA) PUA: Win32/CCleaner threat in the Microsoft Defender, the first wall of defence and security for Windows. Piriforms CCleaner is a top-rated utility tool that has features such as registry cleaner, application/browsers data cleaner amongst various other useful things. Their Disk Analyzer and Driver Wiper has garnered positive reviews for providing the utility for free. What is a Potentially Unwanted Application? Windows Potentially Unwanted Apps, also known as potentially unwanted programs that protect the computers from by disallowing the users from installing untrusted, suspicious programs that may cause irreparable harm and damage. The PUA can be turned off from the settings as well which Microsoft advises against unless the users are absolutely sure about the application/program being blocked. Locked Horns with Microsoft Back in early 2019, Microsoft banned CCleaners website on the Microsoft Community forum. The ban was a result of Microsofts consistent stance on the damage that registry cleaner does to Windows PCs. Microsoft Identifying CCleaners as a PUA 2020 The Microsoft Security Intelligence site has added a new entry to its database, which classifies CCleaner as a PUA: Win32/CCleaner threat. While no reasons have been given on the move, we could gather the following Microsofts policy on registry cleaning utilities. Microsoft does not support the use of registry cleaners. Some programs available for free on the internet might contain spyware, adware, or viruses. If you decide to install a registry cleaning utility, be sure to research the product and only download and install programs from publishers that you trust. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the use of a registry cleaning utility can be solved. Issues caused by these utilities may not be repairable and lost data may not be recoverable. Some products such as registry cleaning utilities suggest that the registry needs regular maintenance or cleaning. However, serious issues can occur when you modify the registry incorrectly using these types of utilities. These issues might require users to reinstall the operating system due to instability. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved without a reinstallation of the Operating System as the extent of the changes made by registry cleaning utilities varies from application to application. Avast Enters the Picture In the fall of 2017, Avast, a popular antivirus vendor, purchased CCleaner as a part of their expansion plan. They started bundling their additional products and promotions inside the CCleaner installer. Piriform sunk themselves further into a puddle of problems by toying with user consent on CCleaner regarding sharing usage information with the company. This was on top of the mandatory push of updates which could not be disabled. 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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 Firefighters rescued one man but were unable to save another after the pair were swept away in an arroyo in Northeast Albuquerque on Friday night. An official with Albuquerque Fire Rescue said they responded around 8:20 p.m. to multiple reports of a man caught in the Embudo Arroyo, near Washington and Menaul NE. AFR said crews found a man in the rushing waters of the arroyo, near Candelaria, being pulled out by some civilians with a rope. Once rescued, the man told AFR his friend was also swept away in the flood waters. Crews spotted the other victim minutes later floating down the arroyo system but unfortunately he was face down in the water and unresponsive for over 20 minutes, the official said. AFR said they were unable to recover the mans body at multiple sites before turning over recovery efforts to Bernalillo County firefighters. No other information is available at this time, the official said. With the rise in what some call "techno-nationalism" in the United States, Chinese companies are facing national security accusations by the US on a broad frontfrom telecom giant Huawei to popular video app TikTok. However, three of the four CEOs of major US tech companies that testified on Capitol Hill this past week said they had no knowledge of technology theft by China at their businesses. Their responses contrast with the relentless hunt by the US administration for culprits among Chinese tech companies. The four CEOsTim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Google's parent Alphabet, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebookwere asked on Wednesday at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing investigating the practices of major US technology companies whether they believed the Chinese government was stealing intellectual property from US companies. "I know of no case of ours where it occurred," Cook replied to the question posed by Representative Greg Steube, a Florida Republican."I can only speak to firsthand knowledge." During Cook's opening statement, he called iPhone maker Apple "a uniquely American company". But he also praised Shenzhen-based Huawei, which the US has worked to portray as a national security threat and has coaxed some of its allies to shun the company's gear, as a leader in 5G mobile technology. "We also know that customers have a lot of choices and that our products face fierce competition,"Cook said."Companies like Samsung, LG, Huawei and Google have built successful businesses with different approaches. We're OK with that. Our goal is the best, not the most." Pichar said: "I have no firsthand knowledge of any information stolen from Google", which runs the world's most widely used search engine. Bezos, the world's richest person who runs an omnipresent e-commerce company, mulled the question out loud before answering that it was something "I've read reports of, but don't have personal experience." Zuckerberg said the allegations of technology theft were "well documented", but didn't provide any specific examples. He said the fastest-growing app in the world is TikTok, a social media video platform owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. "History shows that if we don't keep innovating, someone will replace every company here today....If you look at where the top technology companies come from, a decade ago, the vast majority were American. Today, almost half are Chinese." Zuckerberg's testimony seemed at odds with his previously expressed ardor for China. In October 2014, he held a 30-minute question-and-answer session entirely in Mandarin at Tsinghua University in Beijing, when he had joined the school's advisory board. "I'm very glad to be in Beijing," he said to the audience that day. "I love this city. My Chinese is really a mess, but I study using Chinese every day." At a Canada-China Economic Forum on Monday, Paul Evans, a professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, said the ban on Huawei's 5G technology is just "the tip of a very large iceberg in the chilly waters of techno-nationalism". Xu Liping, a senior fellow at the National Institute of International Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US administration has been painstakingly looking for evidence to support its false claim that China has stolen their high-tech technology. But the answers from these tech firm leaders made its lies fall apart, Xu said. "Some US politicians, who speculate that China has stolen their technology, underestimate Chinese people's wisdom and technological innovation," he said. He said that with globalization, the science and technology gap between countries has been narrowed in the past few decades. But some US politicians think China's technology level remains at what it was three to four decades ago, an attitude that he said goes against common sense. "Politicizing high-tech development will hurt both sides, and the rational thing for the US to do is to boost technological exchanges with China rather than find faults with China and Chinese companies," he said. "What the US did to Huawei will also affect its own technological development." He said that high-tech development requires high investment as well as a consumer market for the products. Thus, a Chinese market that uses US technological products will further help the US boost its high-tech research and development."That is a virtuous cycle," he said. Alexander Capri, a researcher at the Hinrich Foundation, said with the "techno-nationalism" in the US, foundational and emerging technologies and all forms of tech collaborationsuch as cross-border research and development and exchanges between academicsare now falling under an extensive export-control umbrella. These trends are leading to a technology cold war between the US and China, he said. "We see the US getting TSMC(Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) to pledge to build a plant in the US and now there's a huge amount of funding that's going to come out to relocate semiconductor manufacturing to the United States, so this is all part of this decoupling process," he said. David Kappos, a former undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, said:"Threats aren't going to go very far with China anymore. They've got a huge economy and they can rival us in that regard. Logic, and fact and data are going to go a long way. "There will be competition, there will be tension and challenges, and interests that are not always aligned, but there's also a lot to be gained from cooperation." Washington state's primary election is coming up on Tuesday, where voters will select their top candidates for several local and state offices. Voters who are registered should have already received their ballots in the mail in July. In the primary election, voters will choose their top contenders to decide who will face off in the general election later this year. In King County election officials are projecting a 43% turnout for the primary election. If you haven't voted yet, don't worry there's still time to get your ballot in before the deadline. Keep reading for everything you need to know about Tuesday's primary. How to register: If you aren't yet registered to vote in Washington, it's not too late. Washington offers same-day voter registration, so people who aren't registered to vote can to so in person at the King County Elections Office in Renton, the Elections Annex in downtown Seattle or a voter center. Here are the Seattle locations. To figure out whether or not you're registered, check here. How to vote: Registered voters should have received their ballots in the mail by July 17. Inside the ballot packet, there will be a return envelope, a security sleeve and the ballot. You must remember to sign and date the envelope before returning the ballot. Ballots must be returned to ballot boxes or postmarked by August 4 at 8 p.m. to be counted. A map of ballot drop boxes can be found here. People are invited to drop or mail in their ballot at any point after they receive it. No stamps are needed to return ballots. Officials recommend people postmark their ballot by the Friday before Election Day to make sure it is postmarked by the correct date. Vote centers are located across the county for people who need help with their ballots. But due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, officials are urging people to do as much as possible virtually. People who do come to vote centers will be required to wear face masks and follow other public health guidelines. "We will have Vote Centers open for those who need assistance or have missed the deadlines but ask that those who are able to utilize the online tools do so," King County elections said. Who's on the ballot? The primary will include the governor's race, along with U.S. representatives, state legislators, secretary of state, attorney general, commissioner of public lands and superintendent of public instruction. You can learn more about each of the candidates running here. In the governor's race, more than 30 candidates are running, including incumbent Jay Inslee, who is running for a third term. According to a Crosscut poll from earlier this month, Inslee was leading the race, with 46% of respondents saying Inslee would be their choice. He was followed by Republican Loren Culp, who got 14% of the vote in the poll. Other candidates in the race include Raul Garcia, Joshua Freed and Tim Eyman. Still, according to that poll, 29% of Republicans said they were undecided about who they will vote for in the election. What the turnout looks like so far: As of data updated Thursday, across the state, 879,041 ballots had been received, representing 19.1% of voters. In King County, 237,327 ballots had been received, out of 1,360395 registered voters. That represents only 17.4% of voters. In the 2016 primary, 35% of ballots were received in the election. But, comparing this year's primary election to the same time in the 2016 primary, 2020 is pacing ahead. Just 12.2% of ballots had been returned at the same time in 2016, five days before the election. Where to find the results when they're posted: Initial results can be found here at about 8:15 p.m. on August 4. Results will continue to be posted each day as ballots are counted. Results will be verified on August 21. RELATED: Earlier this week, the government released the New Education Policy after a gap of 34 years. Among other things the NEP seeks to encourage school education in mother tongue, do away with a Chinese wall between professional and non-professional education and promote an inter-disciplinary approach. An HT analysis of unit level data from a recently released National Statistical Office (NSO) survey on education, which was conducted in 2017-18 shows that these are exactly the fields where Indias education landscape has massive inequalities has been undergoing a lot of churning. This two-part data journalism series seeks to highlight some of these aspects. The first part will highlight that there is a deep aspiration for imparting English medium education to children, access to which continues to remain unequal. It will also highlight how socio-economic hierarchies determine access to professional education. The second part will discuss how share of students getting into professional courses, especially engineering, has fallen in this decade. This according to experts could be a result of their falling utility in the job market. Students from the richest 20% of the society are seventeen times more likely to be studying law than those from the poorest 20%. And a student who does not belong to an other backward class (OBC), scheduled class (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) is six times more likely to be studying management than a Scheduled Tribe (ST) student in India. Girls are less likely to be getting English medium education than boys, and more women take up humanities than men in India. Indias education landscape is extremely unequal. These inequalities manifest themselves in the form of differences based on caste, class and, in some cases, gender. Those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder are more likely to be studying humanities than a professional course. They are also much less likely to have access to English medium education. Differences in geographical location can increase or decrease these inequalities. Stereotyping, however, is of little help in understanding Indias education landscape. For example, the commonly held belief that most Muslims send their children to Madrasas (religious seminaries) and not proper schools is a myth which is not supported by data. These findings are based on an HT analysis of unit level data of a nationally representative survey conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in 2017-18 and released in July. The data points cited above are in keeping with the larger trend of students from privileged sections of the society, who are more likely to be studying professional courses. The socio-economic have-nots also have a much lower likelihood of receiving English medium education. A student who does not belong to an other backward class (OBC), scheduled class (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) is almost three times more likely to getting English medium education than a Scheduled Caste (SC) student. A student from the top 20% of society is ten times more likely to be studying in an English medium school than someone who belongs to the bottom 20%. To be sure, both humanities and non-English medium education are the most common among Indian students. Interestingly, even Indias poorest and socially most deprived parents are doing all they can, including spending beyond their means, to send their children to English-medium schools. The inequality in English-medium education is the lowest at the pre-primary level. For example, the share of students who do not belong to an other backward class (OBC), scheduled class (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) receiving English-medium education at the pre-primary level is 1.4 times more than the share of SC students. This gap increases to 2.7, 2.9, 2.8 and 2.4 at the primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary level. Similarly, a student from the top 20% of the society is 5.4 times more likely to study in an English-medium school than a student from the bottom 20% at the pre-primary level. At the primary and upper-primary levels, this number increases to 11.6; and to 12.1. At the secondary and higher-secondary levels this ratio is 6.1. Experts describe this as a precarious aspiration. There is a very high aspiration for English-medium education, even among the poorest. This often leads to parents sending their children to low-cost private schools which claim to impart English-medium education. While some government schools such as Kendriya Vidyalayas offer quality education at very low cost, they are difficult to get into. Local government schools are often understaffed and the teachers poorly paid, said Vidya Subramanian, assistant professor at the Centre for Education, Innovation and Research at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. This aspiration is precarious because interruption of incomes often forces poor parents to withdraw their children and put them in government schools, Subramanian added. Overall access to English-medium varies drastically across states. Just 6% students were receiving English medium education in Bihar. This number is 63% in Telangana and 95% in Jammu and Kashmir. Because the survey was done in 2017-18, the report looks at the undivided state of Jammu and Kashmir, which also includes Ladakh. Hindi belt states fare badly on both overall share of English-medium education as well as inter-caste inequality. Dalit ideologue Chandrabhan Prasad blames the Congresss politics of plates over slates and socialist baggage of anti-English politics for the poor state of English education among Dalits in Hindi belt states. Dalit children are attracted by mid-day meals to go to government schools and miss out on English-medium education, he said. North Indias Dalit and OBC (other backward class) politicians did not pursue right-based politics and only indulged in empty rhetoric off capturing state power. This has not helped the cause of education among Dalits, Prasad added. The NSO data also busts an entrenched stereotype. In 10 out of 20 large states, the number of Muslims attending English-medium schools, expressed as a proportion of all Muslims attending schools is higher than the corresponding proportion for Hindus. The erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, Indias only Muslim majority state, has the highest prevalence of English medium education in the country. This goes against the popular notion that Muslims primarily send their children to Madrasas rather than modern schools. If a Muslim child is shown as receiving English medium education, he cannot be going to a Madrasa, as they offer education in either Arabic or regional language, said Ather Farouqui, General Secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu. (This is the first of a two-part data journalism series on inequalities, aspirations and ongoing changes in Indias education landscape. The second part will look at fall in share of students getting into professional courses.) THE National Lottery is appealing for Euromillions players in Limerick to check their tickets from last nights draw. It comes after a prize worth 500,000 was sold at a filling station down the road from Thomond Park rugby stadium. This winning Quick Pick ticket was bought at the Circle K Thomond service station in Thomondgate, Co Limerick. The lucky store is located between the famous rugby ground Thomond Park and the Thomond bridge, which overlooks the River Shannon. Its the 19th EuroMillions Plus top prize of 500,000 won in Ireland so far this year, with all 19 winners sharing a whopping 9.5 million on this game alone. The winning numbers from last nights EuroMillions Plus draw are: 11, 12, 15, 32 and 44. A spokesperson for the National Lottery said: Officially it may have been the last day of summer yesterday but for one lucky ticketholder in Limerick, its going to be sunny for a long time as they scooped the EuroMillions Plus top prize of 500,000. In fact this is the 19th such winner weve had so far in 2020. We are appealing to all out EuroMillions players in Limerick, specifically those who maybe stopped in the Thomondgate area for fuel yesterday, to check those tickets very carefully. If you have matched all five of the above numbers contact our prize claims team on 1800 666 222 or email claims@lottery.ie and we will make arrangements for you to collect your prize. While there was no winner of last nights EuroMillions jackpot of 38,953,665, more than 57,000 players in Ireland were prize winners. Next Tuesdays EuroMillions jackpot (4th August) is heading for an estimated 50 million. Limerick is home to one of the biggest ever Euromillions winners, Dolores McNamara, who scooped 115m back in 2005. Senate According to The PUNCH, the Senate said it had received fresh fraud allegations against the management of the Niger Delta Development Commission. The red chamber said the new financial infractions were not captured in the list of the allegation of N40bn reckless spending which a whistle-blower brought against the NDDC to the parliament recently. The Senate said the fresh probe would be handled by the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions. The chairman of the panel, Senator Ayo Akinyelure, confirmed the development in an exclusive interview with our correspondent in Abuja. He explained that the acting Managing Director of the NDDC, Kemebradikumo Pondei, would be summoned after the Senate panel had concluded its public hearing involving the United Bank for Africa Plc and the liquidators of the defunct NITEL/EMTEL, which would take place next Wednesday. Akinyelure said, There is a petition that has just been sent to my committee by the leadership of the Senate. I received it on Tuesday. It is about the alleged fraudulent practices of the acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission. I will take my time to study the petition. Our committee will invite him as soon as we conclude hearing on the case involving the UBA which is before our committee. We will invite the MD to come and explain to the whole world how he allegedly misappropriated billions of funds as the head of the agency. Akinyelure, who did not give further clue into the content of the petition against Pondei, however, said the embattled MD would also answer questions about allegations of contract scam against some federal lawmakers. The senator from Ondo Central said, He (Pondei) will also tell Nigerians about the details of the senators who allegedly took gratification and contracts from him. He must come and prove it beyond reasonable doubts. No senator awards contracts. We can only facilitate project allocation for our various constituencies. We dont even know when the executive would advertise those projects. Our job is to ensure that the project is executed. If any Senator or House of Representatives member had gone to the NDDC management to take money or contract, we will ask the MD to expose such a person. The NDDC should stop blackmailing the entire Senate. We have 109 members in the Senate. We are celebrated Nigerians. We were millionaires before we came into the Senate. We had jobs. All the allegations against us are fallacy of the highest order. Investigations by one of our correspondents revealed that the fresh petition against Pondei was sent to the leadership of the Senate after the chambers ad hoc panel had concluded its probe of the NDDC and even submitted its report. The report of the panel, led by Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi, was considered and approved by the upper chamber before proceeding on its annual vacation last week. The Chairman, Senate Committee on Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, however, gave a hint about some of the fresh allegations against Pondei in a statement he signed last week. Nwaoboshi had while reacting to the allegations by the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, wondered while the former Akwa Ibom State governor chose to blackmail lawmakers instead of checking the alleged daily reckless spending in the NDDC despite its probe by the National Assembly. Nwaoboshi alleged that the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC under Pondei paid N39.4m to a media outfit, Messrs Clear Point Consultancy, to defend media attacks against Akpabio. He alleged that Pondeis IMC was using taxpayers money to launder Akpabios image. The senator also said the IMC was allegedly paying N51.8m every month as an allowance to Pondei while other members of the team were allegedly being paid N18m monthly. Nwaoboshi said, The above revelations are just a tip of the mind-boggling and reckless payments running into billions of naira by the IMC members to themselves and expended with the approval of Mr Akpabio. The Senate had last Thursday called for the dissolution of the IMC. It also asked the embattled IMC, led by Pondei, to refund an extra-budgetary expenditure amounting to N4.923bn to the NDDC accounts. The red chamber took the decision after approving the recommendations of its ad hoc committee. The ad hoc panel was set up to unravel the alleged financial recklessness at the NDDC between October 2019 and May 2020. The Senate asked the Secretary to the Government of the Federation in the Presidency to take over the supervisory role of the NDDC. The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, had said the report would be submitted to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), who according to him, was eagerly expecting it. KYODO NEWS - Aug 1, 2020 - 08:35 | World, All, Coronavirus Vietnamese health authorities said Friday that a 70-year-old man being treated for COVID-19 in central Vietnam has become the country's first person to die of the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Until now, Vietnam had been relatively spared amid the pandemic, compared with some of its neighbors, with the total number of confirmed cases standing at just 509 as of Friday morning, according to the Vietnam News Agency. Since mid-April, confirmed infections had been limited to returnees to Vietnam. Last Saturday, however, community transmission was detected in the coastal city of Danang, and the country has since reported tens of locally transmitted COVID-19 cases. Danang, with 80 reported new cases as of Friday, was put under lockdown earlier in the week to stem the spread. More than 7,000 people there have been identified as being in close contact with COVID-19 patients, according to VNA. Hanoi health authorities, having already started mass coronavirus testing, on Friday ordered the closure of bars, karaoke venues and roadside stalls and banned large gatherings. The southern economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City has taken similar measures. Both of Vietnam's two major cities have received tens of thousands of people returning from the virus-hit central region, popular with tourists, after holidays. Juno Temple was 17 when she read Little Birds, a collection of erotic short stories by Anais Nin. They really affected me, and woke a sexual sort of fire that I didnt know I had, notes the London-born star, who grew up in Somerset, and has been acting since she was a young teenager. Now, 14 years later, the quirky actress is playing the lead role New York heiress Lucy Savage in Sky Atlantics adaptation of Nins book. I made a lot of notes of little things that I wanted to add into the script, trying to get actual one-liner direct quotes from Little Birds, and I got a couple of them in there, which was really exciting, reflects Temple, star of films such as Atonement, St Trinians and Maleficent, plus Netflix series Dirty John. That was cool that everyone was open to me doing that. Little Birds is a six-part series, written by Sophia Al-Maria an American-Qatari filmmaker and artist and directed by Detroit-born Stacie Passon, whose previous projects include House Of Cards. Set in Tangier International Zone in 1955, the contemporary and daring tale follows Lucy as she heads to exotic climes for love and marriage. When her husband Hugo does not greet her in the way she expected, she finds herself on a journey to freedom and independence. We see Lucy discovering the surprising, diverse and degenerate world of Tangier, in Morocco, a country quivering on the cusp of independence. Along the way, she meets a myriad of characters including a scandalous dominatrix, Cherifa Lamor (Yumna Marwan) who particularly captures Lucys imagination. Seeing as the show is based on a volume of erotica, you can expect to see some bold sex scenes on screen, which look they could be quite awkward to film. Was there anything the cast drew a line under when it came to depicting characters in intimate situations? I was very clear from the very beginning of what is allowed and what is not allowed, declares Marwan, who was born in Lebanon, but grew up in Beirut and then Iowa. Im still scared to this day, to right this second, for when Little Birds comes out, how many family members Im going to lose. It sounds like Marwan being quite jokey at first, but then she stresses: Its funny, but its not funny; even though I made sure that I would never show my breasts or my ass or I would never be in a scene where Im having sex, its still like I did too much for what my family would expect from me. The production team, the director, were very, very understanding... It just felt like any boundary that the actor would set during the scene was accepted immediately, which made me comfortable to be able to do the scene. Stacie has been quite attentive to any conversation we would want to have with her, related to any intimate scenes, follows Raphael Acloque, who portrays an Egyptian aristocrat named Adham Abaza. She was always available, whenever we needed to discuss anything about it. Hugh Skinner known for shows such as Fleabag and W1A plays Hugo, who is not only trapped in a relationship with Lucy, who he doesnt love, but we also see trying to become an arms dealer. Its so hard because when you put it like that, he sounds dreadful, quips London native Skinner (35). But there are a lot of external forces weighing down on him and, in that sense, hes a bit of an emotionally stunted pinball. But despite being gay and deciding to marry a woman, hes really lucked out with Lucy actually because she proves to be incredible. All the characters, theyre all sort of outsiders in a lot of ways, taking ownership of their otherness and transcending the situation, and hes lucky to be with Lucy as she finds liberation. This may be a period drama, but theres no denying that the themes will resonate with modern audiences. For example, the idea of people being desperate to shake off the shackles of society still very much exists today, I suggest. Yeah, I think power struggles will always exist and I think this show is all about people fighting for their own agency, or struggling for their own independence; whether thats personally, or politically, thats always going to be relevant, 51-year-old Nina Sosanya, who plays eccentric entertainer Lili Von X, nods in agreement. Its going to have a wide audience, because its set in a particular period, but its a period thats incredibly attractive to us anyway, just visually, continues the Londoner, who starred alongside Skinner in W1A, and is also known for BBC One drama Last Tango In Halifax. And youre going to have people that have lived through those changes - a section of the audience that might sometimes be overlooked, which is the people that are older than us, 70-plus who have actually seen those changes, who have lived through the sexual revolution of the 60s... This is going to be very interesting for them. The show was shot in Tarifa in Spain, as well in Manchester. While on location, did the cast have any particularly memorable cast nights out after filming had finished for the day? When wasnt there one?! Temple quickly replies, grinning. Lots of dinners, lots of conversations, lots of laughter, lots of tears, lots of screaming, lots of hugging. It was great. It was also just an incredible learning experience. I always say that I am always surprised by how much we liked each other because Ive done so many projects with people that I absolutely hated, Marwan follows candidly. At the end of the day, its a job. But something about this felt different... This felt like a very, very special project where, for some reason, most of us felt very connected to each other. There was something about just all of us being there together that helped me a lot during the process of filming. Which makes it extra cruel we have to be doing press for this via Zoom, because of a pandemic! cries Temple. It really would be nice to be together to do this for real. Little Birds launches on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday, August 4 MADISON For months, President Donald Trump has alleged without evidence that any expansion of mail-in voting in the 2020 election will lead to tremendous fraud and a rigged election. But an APM Reports analysis of voter data from Wisconsins April primary shows a far more measurable and consequential effect of mail-in voting rejected ballots. Slightly more than 23,000 ballots were thrown out, mostly because those voters or their witnesses missed at least one line on a form. The figure is nearly equivalent to Trumps 2016 margin of victory in Wisconsin of 22,748 votes. And with voter turnout expected to double from April to more than 3 million in November, a proportionate volume of absentee ballot rejections could be the difference in who wins the swing state and possibly the presidency. The analysis shows the difficulty some voters had casting a ballot through the mail, often for the first time. Voter and witness must sign For an absentee ballot to count in Wisconsin, a voter and a witness must sign the ballot envelope and include the address of the witness. Those safeguards put in place to eliminate mail-in ballot fraud contributed to the rejection of 13,834 ballots, according to APM Reports analysis. Election experts say people in states like Wisconsin that traditionally have low by-mail voting rates are more prone to make errors. Youre asking folks to do something new, said Michael McDonald, a political science professor and voter data expert at the University of Florida. And whenever you try to do something new in the midst of unprecedented demand, youre going to have problems. Nationally more than 300,000 absentee ballots were rejected in the 2016 presidential election, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. But that number is likely to grow in November as election officials and public health experts encourage by-mail voting to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The anticipated surge will come in an election already expected to have heavy turnout nationwide. We could easily see a million or more ballots being rejected because of some deficiency of the ballot, McDonald predicted. Wisconsin is among 29 no excuse states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow residents to vote absentee for any reason. Another five states send ballots to all registered voters without requiring a request for one. APM Reports, the investigative and documentary journalism team at American Public Media, and Wisconsin Watch analyzed Wisconsins experience because the state is vital to Trumps reelection efforts and was one of the first to hold an in-person primary as the nation shut down. The state also has traditionally low vote-by-mail participation. The analysis serves as a case study of what may lie ahead for presidential battleground states overwhelmed by applications and without the experience or systems to cope. Other such states, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, saw problems managing increased absentee balloting in their primaries. More than 60% of ballots cast in April election In the 2016 and 2018 Wisconsin general elections, absentee ballots made up no more than 6% of the ballots. In April, the portion jumped to more than 60% after the state instituted its stay-at-home order. State officials stress that the percentage of rejected ballots in the April primary is consistent with rejection rates in past elections. While the rate may be similar, raw numbers will make the difference when it comes to winning or losing an election. APM Reports and Wisconsin Watch requested the names of voters whose ballots were rejected in the April primary, the 2018 general election and the 2016 primary and general elections. Rejections are important to understand because voters may make a mistake, receive no notification and not be given an opportunity to fix the problem. James Moses of Salem Lakes, Wisconsin, says he was never notified that absentee ballots he cast in multiple elections were rejected. Moses says he voted absentee in April because he had shoulder surgery and could not drive. APM Reports filed an open records request to view his April ballot envelope. It was rejected because his wife, who witnessed Moses fill out the ballot and put it in the envelope, did not list their address on the certificate envelope. Wisconsin requires the voter and a witness to sign the ballot envelope. It also requires the witness to fill out an address. Moses says the rejections make him distrustful of voting by mail. Next time he plans to vote in person no matter what it takes. Clerk tried to contact voters Salem Lakes clerk Shannon Hahn says she tried to contact voters who did not properly fill out the form. We acted like detectives trying to find and get a hold of these people, she said. We would have much more rejections if it wasnt for us contacting people. Hahn went above and beyond. Wisconsin law does not require election officials to contact voters if they find a problem with an absentee ballot, which is similar to roughly 35 states. Wisconsins April 7 election was chaotic. There were political and legal fights over whether the election should be delayed. The U.S. Postal Service failed to deliver hundreds of ballots. And competing legal rulings created uncertainty over which guidelines voters and clerks had to follow when it came to absentee balloting. State election officials have taken steps to ensure a better process for the August primary and the November general election. They have changed the computer system to help municipal clerks process absentee ballot applications. They are putting barcodes on mailings to help voters and officials track their ballots. And they are hoping the courts make early decisions on which rules to follow. I certainly hope that we can get the rules down straight so everybody knows what they are, so theyre not changing very close to the deadline, said Reid Magney, spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Magney said the commission also will mail absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in September to help local elections officials. Ingredients for a spike in ballot rejection Attorneys representing Democrats have pushed to loosen the restrictions on mail-in voting in at least 13 states including Wisconsin. Although studies show that younger voters and minority voters tend to have their ballots rejected at a higher rate than older, white voters, McDonald says he is not certain that will continue especially if mail delivery slows in rural communities that traditionally back Republican candidates. These rejected absentee ballots tend to break toward the Democrats, McDonald said. I dont think anyone knows how these ballots will break for November, because theres so many different moving parts. A typically high voter participation rate, combined with small city staff in an area that is not used to voting by mail, are ingredients for a spike in ballot rejection. Consider the city of Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Residents of this community of 11,500 people north of Milwaukee take voting seriously more than 80% of the voting age population cast ballots in the past two presidential elections. That is more than 13 points higher than the state average. But nearly all those voters voted in person. That changed with the pandemic. More than 60% of Cedarburg voters cast absentee ballots, compared to 7% in 2018. We were just inundated, said Tracie Sette, Cedarburgs city clerk. It was all we could do to just keep up with the requests. The increase also brought a surge in ballot rejections. In April, Cedarburg had both a relatively high number of rejected ballots (209) and rate of rejected ballots (7%), according to Wisconsin Elections Commission data. Comparatively, just three ballots were rejected in the 2016 presidential primary and the 2016 and 2018 general elections. Bob and Jan Capen voted absentee for the first time in the April election. The couple signed their names as witnesses to each others ballots and mailed them in. Neither of their votes counted. Their ballots were marked as certification insufficient, the most common reason cited for the 23,196 absentee ballots rejected in April. Copies of the Capens ballot envelopes show they both missed the yellow-highlighted line that required their addresses as witnesses. Its my fault, Bob Capen said. But based on what Ive learned so far, its not an easy process for a lot of people, so I can see how it could get all clustered up. First-time absentee voters can get confused Diane Coenen, president of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association, says first-time absentee voters can be confused by the ballot envelope, which displays a lot of information and requires attention to detail. Most people do not read it from top to bottom, Coenen said, And if they miss something, the ballot will be rejected. Rykki Casey of Cedarburg is a health care worker who voted absentee because she takes care of elderly and hospice patients. I didnt want to spread (illness) to them, she said. Casey was confused about why her vote did not count. Her husband witnessed her ballot, but a copy of the ballot envelope showed that he, too, missed the line for his address. I feel very sad. I want my voice heard, she said. Sette says she tried to contact voters to tell them about the problems with the ballot envelopes in April but stopped when she and her two colleagues became overwhelmed. She aims to contact voters if she finds problems with their ballots before the August and November elections. Were getting probably about 15 to 20 ballots back every day now, Sette said. And every single day, there is a little stack that is missing some information. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is preparing a public relations campaign in the next few weeks to remind voters how to cast a mail-in ballot. The commission reported in late July that more than 700,000 absentee ballots have been sent to voters for the August primary 10 times the number of ballots sent in the 2016 August primary. That should free up time for clerks to contact voters. Our hope is that we will have enough time to be able to communicate with voters, said Magney of the states election commission, and for them to be able to communicate back and handle this process. The nonprofit news outlet Wisconsin Watch provided this article to The Associated Press through a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News. Tom Scheck and Geoff Hing of APM Reports and Dee J. Hall of Wisconsin Watch contributed to this report. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items of interest from Friday: REVENUES DECLINE: Iowa tax revenues have declined nearly 11 percent since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the state Legislative Services Agency reported Friday. From March 19 through July 30 for calendar years 2019 and 2020, net state tax revenue declined $350.4 million and 10.7 percent year-over-year. However, fiscal analyst Jeff Robinson cautioned that not all of the change is a result of COVID-19. Much of the significant decrease resulted not from the business closures, job losses and other impacts of COVID-19, but instead from the tax due date delays instituted by Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Department of Revenue. It will not be until the delayed tax payments have been deposited that the economic impact of recent events can be reasonably calculated, he said. Key data in the fiscal update included a decline of nearly 12 percent, or $154.6 million, in individual income taxes over that period. Corporate income taxes declined $43.3 million, or more than 12 percent, and sales/use tax revenue fell by $41 million, nearly 5 percent. Fuel tax revenue was off by 5 percent, or $13.1 million. With casinos closed for much of that time, gambling tax revenues fell nearly 60 percent or $67 million, LSA said. NO BAILOUT: Nine Iowa Republican legislators signed a letter from the American Legislative Exchange Council and its partners telling Congress the idea of the federal government bailing out states would be harmful to taxpayers, federalism and ultimately the states themselves. While economic conditions remain dire due to government-mandated business closures during the pandemic, federal lawmakers have already granted a general $150 billion COVID-19 relief fund, a $30 billion education costs fund, a $45 billion disaster relief fund and more for state and local governments, according to the letter that was signed by more than 200 legislators. We feel a federal bailout of state budgets would be counterproductive rewarding states that have made poor financial decisions at the expense of those that have been fiscally responsible, the letter continued. The Iowa legislators signing the letter were: Sens. Charles Schneider, Des Moines; Zach Whiting, Spirit Lake; and Zach Nunn, Altoona; and Reps. Phil Thompson, Jefferson; Joe Mitchell, Mount Pleasant; Linda Upmeyer, Clear Lake; John Wills, Spirit Lake; Skyler Wheeler, Orange City; and Jeff Shipley, Birmingham. GOOD BUDGETING: A study conducted by the accounting firm KPMG of the fiscal risk and resiliency of each state in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic found that Iowa is the most fiscally sound, most resilient state in the country when it comes to battling through COVID-19. The study, commissioned by the Council of State Governments, weighed a number of factors, including percent of GDP by industry in each state, the expected reduction of state revenues, balance in each states rainy day fund, each states debt to income ratio, the solvency of each states pension system and each states unemployment trust fund, as well as each states cost per enrollee in Medicaid, and growth in K-12 education funding since the Great Recession. The full report can be found at https://web.csg.org/COVID19/fiscalimpact/. The findings validate the conservative budgeting practices Senate Republicans have implemented over the last four years, said Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny. The findings should make Iowans confident of stable and predictable funding under Republican leadership, he said. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Bengaluru, Aug 1 : Thousands of devout Muslims celebrated a subdued Eid-ul-Adha (Bakrid) across Karnataka, with majority of them offering namaz at home as per the COVID-19 induced guidelines to contain the pandemic, an official said on Saturday. "As advised by 'ulemas' (scholars) and 'qazis' after 'Jumma' (Friday) namaz, most of the devout offered Eid prayers in their homes, while a few did it inside mosques, wearing mask and maintaining social distancing," a Waqf board official told IANS. Though the board informed the community on Thursday that Eid prayers could be offered inside mosques keeping social distancing and other guidelines, state Haj and Wakf department secretary A.B. Ibrahim on Friday appealed to the devout to offer namaz at home to avoid crowding and risk of being infected due to surge in coronavirus cases across the state, especially in Bengaluru. "As directed, prayers were offered by 8.30 a.m., 'qurbani' (sacrifice) was made by 11 a.m., followed by a dawat (festival meal) at homes in cities and towns across the southern state," said the official. Admitting that this is first time in decades, Bakrid could not be held in open grounds (Idgah maidan) and outside mosques due to curbs on assembling or gathering of people in large numbers, the official said the devout had complied with the order of the Wakf board, ulemas and qaziz for safe health of all. The Eid marks the spirit of sacrifice Ibrahim made by offering to sacrifice his son Ismail to god's command though a lamb was substituted in his place in a symbolic gesture. Citizens above 60 years, persons with co-morbidities or asymptomatic and children below 10 also offered namaz at home as advised. Earlier in the day, caretakers of mosques disinfected the premises and surroundings before and after namaz. As social distancing had to be maintained at the gathering, the devout avoided shaking hands and hugging. Instead, they greeted each from a distance. The qurbani (sacrifice) of goats and sheep were made in designated abattoirs (slaughter house) or secluded places, maintaining hygiene and disposing their waste residuals in conformity with the guidelines. With 5,483 positive cases across the state on Friday, the state's Covid-19 tally shot up to 1,24,115, including 72,005 active after 49,788 were discharged so far, while 2,314 succumbed to the infection since March 9. As the epicentre of the pandemic in the state, Bengaluru reported 2,220 fresh cases, taking its tally to 72,005, including 37,618 active after 16,896 were discharged till date. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Back in late March, which seems like an eternity ago for many, the CARES Act was signed into law. As part of this relief package, stimulus checks began to drop into people's bank accounts across the United States around a fortnight later. CARES Act: stimulus check payments CARES: Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security These payments were sent quickly and efficiently into the accounts of those taxpayers who had filed a 2019 or 2020 tax return. Tens of millions of Americans are said to have already received this payment by 15 April, just two and a half weeks after the legislation was signed into law by President Trump. The payments continued and most filers had their extra money to do what they wanted with by the end of the month. Full screen Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is swarmed by reporters as he leaves the Senate floor and walks to his office at the U.S. Capitol on 30 July 2020. Jonathan Ernst (REUTERS) This was great news for filers, but for others the wait for the much needed financial support was delayed, for some, significantly. Although there had been plenty of warning about the potential of the coronavirus pandemic hitting America - after what was being seen in Asia and Europe - the CARES Act ended up being rushed through and some of the payment processes were far from smooth. The hope is that for the next set of stimulus checks this will be much improved. Thanks to the CARES Act American households were sent an Economic Impact Payment (EIP) to help them with any hit they may have had to their income. An income limit was set, which meant that $1,200 was paid per adult with adjusted gross income (based on their 2018 or 2019 filing) up to $75,000, adjusted down to zero for those above $99,000. For married couples filing jointly the threshold was $150,000 adjusting down to $198,000. For head of household filers the amount was $112,500 adjusting down to the cut-off at $146,500. There was an additional payment made for dependents, which saw $500 made available per child under 17 years old, up to a maximum of three dependents per household. HEROES Act: stimulus check proposal HEROES: Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Hopes weren't exactly high once the Democrat-led HEROES Act passed through the House of Representatives by a narrow margin mid-May. Immediately Republicans - and the President - dismissed the $3 trillion aid package proposal, with even Nancy Pelosi accepting that it may only be a starting point for the next round of negotiations. Within the package there was a push for a repeat of the $1,200 EIPs seen in the CARES Act with the same criteria for income level eligibility. That said, there was a difference with the additional payment for dependents. Under the HEROES Act provisions the amount for dependents would be increased to $1,200 and those eligible would be expanded to include college students, dependents over the age of 16, disabled relatives and dependent parents. There would be a maximum payment of $6,000 per household (a maximum of three dependents, so $2,400 for the couple and $3,600 for the dependents). HEALS Act: stimulus check proposal HEALS: Health, Economic Assistance, Liability protection and Schools As the summer approached, we didn't see much movement on the new bill although payments continued to drip out from the CARES Act. Then, after a delay, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally announced the Republicans stimulus proposal on 27 July, which was presented in the Senate in the afternoon session. The legislation was named the HEALS Act and called for $1 trillion of new funding to help fight the economic effects of Covid-19. In his statement, McConnell announced that as part of the package there would be another round of $1,200 stimulus checks for individuals, as per the CARES and HEROES Acts. Once again, the difference lies with the criteria over dependents, with the HEALS Act looking to expand the remit to include those named in the HEROES Act (college students, dependents over the age of 16, disabled relatives and dependent parents) however rather than increase the amount it would follow the CARES Act at $500 per dependent. Second stimulus check: when will it be agreed? Congress will go into recess on 7 August so this is seen as the deadline for getting the bill passed and signed into law. There are a number of other factors in play, Republicans are very keen, for example, to ensure no business owners can be sued if an employee contracts Covid-19 after returning to work, and so the negotiations will likely continue until then. Where it ends up, nobody is sure, but with the pandemic expected to continue to impact on lives and the economy for some time to come, compromise by all sides is required, with aspects of CARES, HEROES and HEALS all in the mix. And this could be further influenced by other proposals being put forward, such as the $1,000 payment to adults and children from GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), Steve Daines (Mont.), Mitt Romney (Utah), and Marco Rubio (Fla.). Just before a final burn that will drop the Crew Dragon out of orbit on Sunday afternoon, it will jettison the bottom part of the spacecraft, known as the trunk, which will then burn up in the atmosphere. At re-entry, the Crew Dragon will be traveling at about 17,500 miles per hour. Two small parachutes will deploy at an altitude of 18,000 feet when the spacecraft has already been slowed by Earths atmosphere to about 350 miles per hour. The four main parachutes deploy at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. Once the capsule splashes in the water, it is expected to take 45 to 60 minutes to pluck them out. Why does Isaias affect the departure? The storm complicated where splashdown could take place. At the splashdown site, winds must be less than 10 miles per hour for the capsule to land safely. There are additional constraints on waves, rain and lightning. In addition, helicopters that take part in the recovery of the capsule must be able to fly and land safely. The first landing opportunity will aim for only the primary site, Pensacola. If weather there is inconsistent with the rules, the capsule and the astronauts will remain in orbit for another day or two, and managers will consider the backup site, which is Panama City. King or Queen for a day View(s): And so, another election costing the country Rs. 10 billion is on the cards next week to elect 225 Members of Parliament. It appears to be an election that is generating the least amount of public interest in contemporary times. It is not just the Covid-19 pandemic that has been a dampener. Neither is it the apathy among the citizens in the politics of the land for Sri Lankans are totally immersed in the subject at all times. It is also not exactly that many believe it to be a foregone conclusion; one-horse race. It must have something to do with a grave sense of disillusionment bordering on disgust with politicians of all hues. Okkoma horu eka horek ta deela mokotada. All are rogues why give to one rogue, is a familiar refrain from voters unfortunately painting all candidates in the fray with the same brush. Then again, the politicians must take the rap for this sorry state of affairs as nothing has been done to weed out the corrupt in a you scratch my back; I will scratch yours political culture. That is not where the country must be, certainly not for a nation whose people won Universal Adult Franchise the vote, way back in 1931. There is, arguably no country the size of Sri Lanka that has so many politicians 7,400 plus are vying for 225 seats in Parliament. From the national legislature to provincial councils and local government councils, the ratio of elected representatives to citizens is terrifically high for a low middle income country. The conduct of MPs particularly during the 52-day Constitutional crisis in 2018 was the nadir of Parliamentary decorum and yet, many of those who brought representative government to the gutters have got nominations to contest for a seat in the next Parliament as well from their parties. Few have shown any remorse for their behaviour then, and their party leaders have not bothered to punish them. The question therefore, is whether Rs. 10 billion from the public purse is money well spent to send back some of these rascals to that so-called august assembly. Sri Lanka is no longer a Parliamentary democracy after it introduced an Executive Presidency in 1978. The hybrid system allows the Executive President to be the Head of Government but where Parliament controls the passage of laws and voting of money. For the past four months, the Executive President showed that he can run the country without a Parliament. Even former parliamentarians have supported this view. In the process without recourse to Parliament, billions of rupees has been borrowed by this Government from banks. That is the danger of running a country without a Parliament or under the radar of any public scrutiny. It is a dangerous precedent that would lead to yet another system of Government the country has managed to avoid for 70 years. The ruling coalition is asking for a two-third majority to change the Constitution. Nobody knows for certain which provisions of the Constitution they want changed, and which retained. Voters are being asked to keep implicit faith in their leaders and vote blindly. That could be a regrettable prospect because those coming into office after a general election have often abused the principle of the mandate of the people to do any villainy that will merely prolong their stay in power with personal political agendas overriding the national interest. Proportional Representation (PR) is one buffer against two-third majorities. No party or coalition has won a two-third majority under the PR system, not even President Mahinda Rajapaksas Government at the zenith of his popularity after defeating the LTTE on the battlefield, and uniting the country once again. On that occasion he ended up very close though with 144 seats, six short of the magic number of 150 seats for a two-third majority. The ideal should be a new Constitution even if there is a two-thirds majority in Parliament, to be put to the people at a referendum. But given the cost of yet another election, and the futility of it all as most would vote purely on party lines, such an exercise would be merely academic. The only safeguard then is the Supreme Court that sits as the Constitutional Court the last bastion of a democracy. The main platform of the ruling coalition is for a strong Government, whatever that may portend. Given the disarray in the Opposition ranks, the ruling coalitions road to victory, at least for a working majority, is all but assured. If the people are to vote for one side, they might as well vote for a working majority. Otherwise, the country is going to witness political manoeuvrings and horse trading that is going to make a mockery of the verdict of the sovereign people. With no anti-defection laws still in place, newly elected MPs are free to jump into Government ranks. Political analysts expect a party or coalition that does not obtain either a working majority or a two-thirds majority to engage in such deal-making, form a National Government, and expand the Cabinet as favours to long-jumpers. Usually, the party or coalition that wins a Presidential election wins the subsequent Parliamentary election. This caretaker Government has not got unpopular enough to lose. The split in the main Oppositions ranks is going to have a huge bearing on the two parties. Even if they might have sunk together, they are doing everything they can to sink separately. They are offering their political rivals victory on a platter due to their impatience and intransigence. The JVP is an unfortunate party. Doing its best to present a fresh face, it continues to be haunted by the ghosts of its 1971 and 1987-89 past. It is contesting under a new banner and symbol and probably has the best National List on offer, but still is dogged by its inability to convert its good image to votes. This is a malady or malaise of the political system, and the electorate which is also culpable for the low quality products that enter the National Parliament. In the North, an old familiar tune is being sung. A separate homeland; self-determination and the like. Despite a 30-year bloody insurgency, no lessons have been learned. To say the economy is in shambles is an understatement. The nation has been reduced to begging for moratoriums on loans taken and the future bleak. Why anybody would want to be in Government in this scenario is a mystery. For the masses, the ballot is with them right now and they will have to live with the way they vote. Theres no better time to recall that old saying people get the government they deserve as a pointer to use that ballot wisely even if the options are limited. Apple iPhone (Representative Image) iPhone maker Apple's contract manufacturers, as well as firms like Samsung, Lava and Dixon have proposed to produce mobile devices and components of over Rs 11 lakh crore in the next five years under the government's new scheme to boost electronics manufacturing, according to sources. The proposals submitted by the companies to the Ministry of Electronics and IT to avail benefits of the Production Link Incentives (PLI) are expected to create 12 lakh employment opportunities -- 3 lakh direct and around 9 lakh indirect jobs, a source told PTI. "Foreign companies that have submitted proposals for the scheme include Samsung, Foxconn Hon Hai, Rising Star, Wistron and Pegatron," the source said. Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron are contract manufacturers for Apple iPhones. Taiwan-based Pegatron is a new investor in India. Apple and Samsung account for nearly 60 per cent of global sales revenue of mobile phones. "In the next five years, mobile phones worth about Rs 9 lakh crore in the category of above Rs 15,000 per unit are expected to be produced as per the proposals submitted by the companies. Mobile phones worth about Rs 2 lakh crore are expected to be produced in the sub-Rs 15,000 category," the source said. Export demand of about Rs 7 lakh crore is expected to be met from the proposed production capacities. Indian companies that have applied under the scheme include Lava, Dixon Technologies, Micromax and Padget Electronics. "Lava has plans to invest around Rs 800 crore over the next five years under the scheme," another source aware of the submission said. The government had notified three schemes on April 1 for the promotion of electronics. These were schemes for manufacturing of electronic components and semiconductors, modified electronics manufacturing clusters (EMC 2.0) scheme, and production-linked incentive scheme for large scale electronics manufacturing. These schemes jointly offer incentives of around Rs 50,000 crore over the period of next five years. Electronics and IT Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney on June 2 had said that the schemes will push mobile production to Rs 8 lakh crore in value terms and exports worth Rs 5.98 lakh crore in the next five years. Meanwhile, around 8-10 companies have filed applications for component manufacturing which include motherboard maker AT&S, Ascent Circuits, Sahasra and Vitesco. "They are expected to produce components of over Rs 40,000 crore over the period of next five years under the scheme," an industry source said. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close She has been working on her incredible physique during lockdown. And Wheel Of Fortune icon Jenny Powell appeared in good spirits as she stepped out from her yoga class in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, on Saturday. The presenter, 52, showcased her toned torso in a cropped neon vest top which offered a glimpse of her washboard abs. Toned: Wheel Of Fortune's Jenny Powell, 52, showcased her toned torso in a cropped neon vest top as she stepped out from her yoga class in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, on Saturday She paired her yellow top with matching drawstring shorts which flattered her long, tanned limbs. A fresh-faced Jenny wore her raven tresses in a messy bun. The presenter opted for grey trainers and carried a spare T-shirt for the outing. The star wore a patterned satchel across her body to carry her workout essentials. Smiles: Jenny paired her yellow top with matching drawstring shorts which flattered her toned limbs and wore a patterned satchel across her body to carry her workout essentials Jenny appeared on Wheel Of Fortune alongside both Nicky Campbell and John Leslie from 1995-2001. Jenny has been keeping up with her fitness regime after she revealed earlier this year she was struck down by a cyst in 2012 that nearly cost her 53,000, just four days into a three-month sabbatical to Florida. According to The Mirror: 'The star was rushed from the Seaquarium in Miami to a nearby hospital after a 'twinge' in her side turned into 'excruciating' pain. Fitness enthusiast: Jenny has been keeping up with her fitness regime after she revealed earlier this year she was struck down by a cyst in 2012 (pictured on Thursday) On-site medics worried the 'searing pain' could be the TV star's appendix and recommended she sought medical attention immediately. The family - Jenny and her daughters Pollyanna, then three, and Constance, then 10, had embarked on the holiday with her partner Martin. Jenny said: 'It felt like we were at the beginning of this great adventure, but within 45 minutes of the first twinge I was doubled up and my left side felt so excruciating I burst out crying. 'I knew that US medical bills could be astronomical and I was so worried it could cost thousands as Martin chucked us all into the car and we headed to hospital. By the time we got there I couldn't stand up straight. I was doubled up in pain, needed a wheelchair and was puking up from the agony.' Jenny underwent MRI and CT scans at the hospital which revealed she had a dermoid cyst in her left ovary which was around the size of an orange. Give us a spin! Jenny appeared on Wheel Of Fortune alongside both Nicky Campbell and then John Leslie from 1995-2001 (pictured with Nicky in 1995) The abnormal, sac-like growths tend to develop during in a woman's skull, lower back, ovaries or face during her reproductive years. The cysts can be removed through keyhole surgery, and Jenny was told hers could be taken out that day and only leave two very small scars behind. By 6pm, the Celebs on the Ranch star was about to undergo the operation. The surgery went well for the mother-of-two - but Jenny was sure she hadn't bought any travel insurance to foot the 53,000 ($70,000) bill. Luckily, she remembered a bank account she used with her ex-husband Toby Baxendale had provided travel insurance automatically - and she had never closed it. Vietnam confirmed the death of the third COVID-19 patient, a 68-year-old woman with blood cancer, on Saturday morning, according to Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Truong Son. The patient had been battling acute myeloid leukemia, type-2 diabetes and hypertension before her death. She had been treated at Da Nang Oncology Hospital in the namesake central city before being discharged on July 23. The patient returned to the infirmary days later with a cough and fever, and was moved to a quarantine area and sampled for COVID-19 testing as per regulations. The test result came back positive on Thursday, July 30 and she was identified as Vietnam's COVID-19 patient No. 499. The patient then developed complications including myelosuppression, respiratory failure and circulatory failure. Her respiratory failure turned worse from 7:00 pm Friday. Doctors put her on a ventilator and held a consultation with health ministry experts in Da Nang regarding her treatment. Despite the doctors' efforts, the woman was pronounced dead at 4:55 am Saturday. According to Dr. Nguyen Gia Binh, chairman of the Vietnam National Association of Emergency, Intensive Care Medicine and Clinical Toxicology, patient No. 499s death was attributed to end-stage blood cancer, severe pneumonia and COVID-19. According to the Da Nang Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, the patient had not been anywhere else but the hospital and her home on Tran Cao Van Street in the citys Thanh Khe District in the 14 days prior to her death. This is the third virus-related death in Vietnam, a country of over 95 million with 558 COVID-19 cases to date. On Friday, the Southeast Asian country recorded its first-ever virus-associated deaths of two men aged 61 and 70, both with many severe underlying health conditions. Vietnam has reported 558 COVID-19 cases, with 373 recoveries, as of Saturday morning. Out of 182 COVID-19 patients under treatment, 20 are in critical condition while the conditions of 22 others are getting worse. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! By Trend A pilot project on the application of electronic permits is expected to be implemented by the TRACECA Permits System member countries, Secretary General of the Permanent Secretariat (PS) of the TRACECA Intergovernmental Commission (IGC) Asset Assavbayev told Trend. He said that this mechanism is expected to be launched by 2022. "There are many technical details that we have to coordinate and approve. In particular, these are issues of verifying the authenticity of permissions, developing appropriate software, cybersecurity issues and others related to the functioning of the information system," Assavbayev added. The secretary general noted that these permits in hard copy are distributed annually among the TRACECA Permission System member countries and are used by international road carriers. "The need of road carriers for permits is high, and therefore the question was raised about the transfer of permits to electronic media. The member countries, including Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine and others, have signed the corresponding protocol under the auspices of our organization," he said. As part of the IGC TRACECA, by the initiative of Turkey, the TRACECA Multilateral Permits System for international road transport was developed and introduced in 2015. On June 11, 2020, a meeting of the Permanent Representatives (National Secretaries) of the PS IGC TRACECA was held in an online conference mode. During the meeting, the participants exchanged views on issues of principles, approaches and methods for determining the routes of this corridor, the proposed draft agreement on a Single Transit Permission for the project, as well as the accession of the parties to the agreement on the development of multimodal transport TRACECA. TRACECA is a system of international cargo transportation by road, based on the Customs Convention on the international transportation of goods using TIR. The TRACECA Intergovernmental Commission is open to all initiatives that contribute to strengthening the regional transport dialogue and ensuring efficient and reliable international Euro-Asian transport links that contribute to the active development of the economy. The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Saturday. This file is no longer updating. Click here to read the latest coverage. Web links to longer stories if available. 7:30 p.m.: South Africa surpassed 500,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, representing more than 50 per cent of all reported coronavirus infections in Africas 54 countries. Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize announced 10,107 new cases Saturday night, bringing the countrys cumulative total to 503,290, including 8,153 deaths. South Africa, with a population of about 58 million, has the fifth-highest number of reported cases in the world, behind the U.S., Brazil, Russia and India. 6:40 p.m.: The head of Mexicos efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic has sidestepped calls to resign after Mexicos death count rose to overtake the United Kingdom as the third-highest in the world. Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said that I express my respect to the nine of Mexicos 32 state governors who called for his resignation, adding I hope we can continue to work together. On Saturday, Mexico reported yet another new daily high for confirmed cases 9,556, which raised the total cases to almost 425,000. The country also posted 784 more confirmed COVID-19 deaths, raising its total to 47,472. 4 p.m.: The coronavirus forced MLBs 17th postponement in 10 days on Saturday, prompting at least two more players to opt out and casting doubt the league can complete a truncated 2020 season. A Cardinals-Brewers game in Milwaukee was postponed for the second straight day after one more player and several staff members with St. Louis tested positive for the coronavirus in rapid samples, Major League Baseball said. The staff total of positives was three, The Associated Press reported. Milwaukee then announced that Gold Glove centre fielder Lorenzo Cain had opted out of the rest of the season. The Miami Marlins, whose season is on hold after 19 cases, received no new positive results in their latest round of coronavirus testing, MLB said, but second baseman Isan Diaz also opted out. The Philadelphia Phillies, meanwhile, were permitted to access Citizens Bank Park for staggered workouts after their weekend series with the Blue Jays was postponed. 2:45 p.m.: Floridas coronavirus report included 179 more resident deaths and 9,642 new COVID-19 cases, as the state kept away from the record-setting numbers of the past few days. Health officials the previous day reported 257 deaths from disease complications, the most during the pandemic. These are fatalities that happened in recent weeks, but took time to confirm for the COVID-19 tally. While the newly reported cases is a jump from the 9,007 infections listed on Fridays report, its the seventh straight day of fewer than 10,000 cases. Read the full story here 2:30 p.m.: Just hours into the first day of classes, Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana got the news from the local health department: a student who had attended classes had tested positive for the coronavirus. Those who had come in close contact were ordered quarantined for 14 days. We knew it was a when, not if, said Harold E. Olin, superintendent of the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation told The New York Times about the reopening last Thursday. However, he added, we were very shocked it was on Day 1. It is unknown if any other students were infected, but the incident shows how schools need to be prepared amid the COVID-19 pandemic as they open their doors after prolonged shutdowns. 2 p.m.: Five months after the coronavirus outbreak engulfed New York City, riders are still staying away from public transportation in enormous numbers but the picture emerging in major cities across the world suggests that public transportation may not be as risky as nervous New Yorkers believe. In countries where the pandemic has ebbed, ridership has rebounded in far greater numbers than in New York City yet there have been no notable superspreader events linked to mass transit, according to a survey of transportation agencies conducted by The New York Times. Those findings could be evidence that subways, commuter railways and buses may not be a significant source of transmission, as long as riders wear masks and train cars or buses never become as intensely crowded as they did in pre-pandemic rush hours. 11 a.m.: There are now a total of 116,312 COVID-19 cases in Canada including 124 new cases in Ontario, which represents a 0.3 per cent increase. Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said that 28 of 34 public health units have five cases or less, and 16 have no new cases. In total, Ontario now has 39,209 confirmed cases, with 2,775 deaths. Hospitalizations continue to decline, with fewer patients in ICU and on ventilators today as well, she said via Twitter. Total confirmed cases across Canada to date: Alberta: 10,843 (including 196 deaths) British Columbia: 3,641 (including 195 deaths) Saskatchewan: 1,319 (including 18 deaths) Nova Scotia: 1,069 (including 64 deaths) Manitoba: 401 (including 8 deaths) Newfoundland and Labrador: 266 (including 3 deaths) New Brunswick: 170 (including 2 deaths) Prince Edward Island: 36 Quebec: 59,312 (including 5,674 deaths) Yukon: 14 Northwest Territories: 5 Deaths in Canada from the novel coronavirus now total 8,935. 8 a.m.: In the beginning there was so much helplessness. A pandemic is by definition something that can be as big as the world; it was too much to comprehend, much less address. It reduced some people to the basics: What can I do to protect myself? And for some, it pushed them to ask, what can I do to help? Before Hayley Wickenheiser, before Ryan Reynolds, before the prime minister, thats what Conquer COVID-19 was. If we remember one thing from this pandemic, let it be the extraordinary people behind Conquer COVID-19, Bruce Arthur writes. Read the full story here. 7:16 a.m.: China reported a more than 50 per cent drop in new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday in a possible sign that its latest major outbreak in the northwestern region of Xinjiang may be waning. The 45 new cases over the past 24 hours, 31 of them in Xinjiang, where the outbreak has been focused on the regional capital Urumqi, is down from 127 cases nationally on Friday, including 112 in Xinjiang. The National Health Commission on Saturday also reported eight new cases in the northeastern province of Liaoning, where officials in the port city of Dalian have collected nucleic acid tests on more than 4 million people. 7:09 a.m.: Japans capital recorded 472 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the third straight day of record numbers. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike issued a warning in an online video, urging people to wash their hands, wear masks and visit those businesses that display the special city-backed stickers with the image of a rainbow, which indicates good social distancing. Most people getting sick were in their 20s and 30s, highlighting how they may be putting their guard down and going out partying, according to officials. Nationwide, the daily count of coronavirus cases in Japan totalled a record 1,579 on Friday. 7:04 a.m.: The Australian state of Victoria has recorded three more deaths from the coronavirus and 397 additional cases, a significant drop from this weeks high. Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said he understood the latest deaths were linked to aged care, where 1,008 cases are currently active. They take the national death toll to 201, including 116 in Victoria. Authorities warned that many of those infected were failing to self-isolate at home. Andrews said he was looking at whether there needed to be changes in fines for people who have tested positive but were not at home when military personnel and public health officials came knocking. 6:50 a.m.: India recorded the steepest spike of 57,118 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking its coronavirus caseload close to 1.7 million, with July alone accounting for nearly 1.1 million infections. The Health Ministry on Saturday also reported 764 additional deaths for a total of 36,511. Indias Civil Aviation Ministry delayed resumption of international flights by another month until Aug. 31. But it will continue to allow several international carriers from the United States, Europe and the Middle East to operate special flights to evacuate stranded nationals. 4 a.m.: South Korean prosecutors arrested the elderly leader of a secretive religious sect Saturday as part of an investigation into allegations that the church hampered the governments anti-virus response after thousands of worshippers were infected in February and March. Prosecutors in the central city of Suwaon have been questioning 88-year-old Lee Man-hee, chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, over charges that the church hid some members and under-reported gatherings to avoid broader quarantines. The Suwon District Court early Saturday granted prosecutors request to arrest Lee over concerns that he could temper with evidence. Lee and his church have steadfastly denied the accusations, saying theyre co-operating with health authorities. Its spokesperson, Kim Young-eun, said the church will do its best so that the truth is clearly proved in court. More than 5,200 of the South Koreas 14,336 COVID-19 cases have been linked to the church so far. Its branch in the southern city of Daegu emerged as the biggest cluster after infections spiked in late February. 1 a.m.: Mexico now has the third most COVID-19 deaths in the world, behind the United States and Brazil, while former success story Vietnam is struggling to control an outbreak spreading in its most famous beach resort. Mexican health officials on Friday reported 688 new deaths, pushing the countrys total to 46,688. That put Mexico just ahead of the United Kingdom, which has 46,119, according to the tally by Johns Hopkins University. In Vietnam, a third person died of coronavirus complications, officials said Saturday, a day after it recorded its first-ever death as it struggles with a renewed outbreak after 99 days with no local cases. All three died in a hospital in Da Nang, a hot spot with more than 100 cases in the past week. Thousands of visitors had been in the city for summer vacation and are now being tested in Hanoi and elsewhere. Friday 5 p.m. Ontarios regional health units are reporting a total of 41,303 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19, including 2,811 deaths, an increase of 114 new infections in 24 hours. The province-wide case growth was dominated by increases in three health units Friday: There were 26 new reported infections in Ottawa, 21 in Windsor-Essex, and 20 in Toronto. Still, July is ending with the province at its lowest rate of new infections since well before the pandemic first peaked in Ontario in the spring at 116 cases per day over the last seven days. Meanwhile, just two more fatal cases were reported, both in Toronto. The Stars count includes some patients reported as probable COVID-19 cases. This means they have symptoms and contacts or travel history that indicate they very likely have the disease, but have not yet received a positive lab test. The province cautions its separate data, published daily at 10:30 a.m., may be incomplete or out of date due to delays in the reporting system. In the event of a discrepancy, data reported by (the health units) should be considered the most up to date. Click here to read more of Fridays coverage. The parents of a three-year-old boy who tragically died while playing at an inflatable park will sue the company for $2.7million. Hunter Young, from Upper Coomera on the Gold Coast, visited Inflatable World Toowoomba on October 3, 2016, with his grandfather where he allegedly fell onto a hard floor and suffered severe head injuries. He became unresponsive and had a seizure before he was taken to Brisbane Hospital where he later died. His parents, Michelle and Lee Young, have now filed a personal injuries damages claim against Toowoomba Indoor Sporting Arenas and Inflatable World Australia. They allege the inflatable park was negligent as they failed to implement proper safety measures which resulted in their child's death. Hunter Young (pictured), from Upper Coomera on the Gold Coast, visited Inflatable World Toowoomba on October 3, 2016, with his grandfather The three-year-old (pictured) became unresponsive and had a seizure before he was taken to Brisbane Hospital but did not regain consciousness and died Mrs Young is claiming more than $2.16million and Mr Young is claiming $563,100 but both companies have yet to respond. The claim, which has been seen by The Courier Mail, said Hunter and his grandfather were not given safety instructions regarding the usage of the facility when they arrived. It stated there were only three staff members rostered on the day Hunter died and it alleged that was insufficient supervision for such a large facility. They allege the park had no safety rules in place to reduce incidents that could occur from children running around the inflatable park. Lastly, the claim said the parents believed there should have been separate play areas for young children to ensure they were safe. His parents, Michelle (pictured, left) and Lee Young (right) have filed a personal injuries damages claim against Toowoomba Indoor Sporting Arenas and Inflatable World Australia They allege the inflatable park was negligent as they failed to implement proper safety measures which resulted in their child's death (pictured: Inflatable World Toowoomba) The claim also detailed how Hunter's death has impacted the lives of his parents. Mr Young has developed obsessional behaviour to 'preserve the memory of Hunter,' the claim stated. Mrs Young has suffered from depression since her son's death. The claim states she has received psychological counselling and therapy for traumatic stress and has not returned to her job as an associate solicitor. Both parents claim they have had reduced appetite, difficultly concentrating and sleeping, and said they are unable to interact with their family and friends. In 2017, a three-year-old dalmatian, Emma Roo was rescued from a slaughterhouse in Xi'an, China. Her front legs had been chopped off, the tips of her ears shaved, and a part of her tail was missing too. It is a belief in the dog meat trade that cutting an animal's limbs off produces adrenaline, which helps make the remaining meat tender. Media Drum World/@emmarooonlyhastwo Emma was rescued and taken to a veterinary practice in Beijing. She was rehomed for two years, but sadly she ended up back at the clinic in 2019. With the help of a non-profit organisation, Dalmatian Rescue, in South Florida, USA rescue groups were able to find Emma a home with Misha Rackcliff Hunt, 27, who adopted the three-year-old dalmatian in April 2020 after spotting her online. Also Read: Dog Abandoned For Having An 'Illicit Relationship' Has Been Adopted, Given New Name And Life Media Drum World/@emmarooonlyhastwo "Due to the nature of her injuries, we know that they were human inflicted. This is apparently common with 'rare' breeds who are dismembered and tortured. Emma has a fear of any chainsaw-like sounds such as hair dryers, vacuums, and lawn mowers, LadBible quoted Guest services coordinator and lifelong dog lover Misha, from Charleston in South Carolina, as saying. "She has a couple of missing toes on her back paw which a vet determined to be a birth defect so it's thought she was discarded at a young age as she wouldn't be sold or adopted. Eventually, Emma arrived in the US on January 28, 2020 - just weeks before the export of animals was banned due to COVID-19, she further said. Also Read: Lion Cub Whose Legs Were Broken And Was Tortured, Now Learning To Walk And Play After Rescue Media Drum World/@emmarooonlyhastwo Explaining the little dogs behaviour, Misha said, "When I first brought her home, she would scream at the top of her lungs whenever I left the room. She was always protective over her food and toys. At one point, she would even guard random pieces of my clothing because she was scared that it would be taken away. She can be wary of men too so I chose a male massage therapist who she loves seeing weekly. It's really changed her behaviour. It is clear that Misha is giving Emma all the love she deserves and we are glad that after suffering like she did, Emma Roo has found a forever home. Also Read: Fishermen In Goa Rescue Olive Ridley Turtles Trapped In Nets UPDATED: 02/02/2020 13.50pm A man in his 20s has been charged in connection with a fatal assault in Co Kildare. A man in his 30s was found with serious injuries in Glenaree Bridge, Rathangan, shortly after 9pm on Friday night. The man but was taken to Naas General Hospital by ambulance, but was later pronounced dead. The other man was arrested following inquiries by gardai and is due to appear in Naas District Court Sunday afternoon. By Terje Solsvik OSLO (Reuters) - Four crew members on a Norwegian cruise vessel were diagnosed with COVID-19 after it arrived at the Arctic port of Tromsoe early on Friday, said the University Hospital of North Norway where they are being treated. By Terje Solsvik OSLO (Reuters) - Four crew members on a Norwegian cruise vessel were diagnosed with COVID-19 after it arrived at the Arctic port of Tromsoe early on Friday, said the University Hospital of North Norway where they are being treated. All 160 crew members on the Roald Amundsen have been quarantined on the ship, while the 177 passengers - all of whom have already disembarked - are being contacted by telephone and are being told to self-isolate, operator Hurtigruten said. "By the time we were notified, the passengers had left the ship," Tromsoe municipality chief doctor Kathrine Kristoffersen told a news conference. "All passengers will, for the time being, be asked to quarantine." The four patients were all foreign citizens, the hospital said, while declining to elaborate on their state of health or nationality. During the cruise, passengers were frequently instructed to socially distance in order to reduce the risk of disease, said one passenger, Line Miriam Haugan, a former junior minister at Norway's Ministry of Health. "The crew observed us washing our hands and also took our temperatures," Haugan told Reuters. "When I learned of the outbreak, I immediately went for a test and will quarantine at least until I get the result," she added. The ship's operator and owner, Hurtigruten, which in March suspended most operations due to the pandemic, announced on July 7 it would gradually return all but two of its 16 vessels to service by the end of September, albeit with reduced capacity. The Roald Amundsen had been on a week-long journey from Tromsoe to the Svalbard archipelago, half-way between Europe and the North Pole, and is scheduled to sail around the British Isles in September, docking at ports in England and Scotland. In the early phase of the pandemic, thousands of passengers were stranded on cruise vessels in the waters of Asia, the United States and elsewhere, leading operators to cancel journeys and triggering mass layoffs by the industry. (Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Gareth Jones) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. The Legislature enacted a $1.8 billion information technology bond bill after lawmakers reached a deal on a finalized proposal late Friday. The bill now heads to Gov. Charlie Bakers desk. The IT bond bill offers cybersecurity and technology improvements to early child care, classrooms, law enforcement, the food industry and other areas all in the midst of a global pandemic that has made internet access, teleconferencing platforms and secure, efficient websites crucial for remote work. The House voted, 155-4, to enact the bill early Sunday. The Senate unanimously approved the proposal. Im happy. Its a good bill, said Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat and one of the legislators in the bills conference committee. Its necessary to ensure that we have the appropriations necessary to continue our investments in IT and general government, and Im glad it was done. The massive bill authorizes $50 million to improve access to remote learning technology for grades K through 12, particularly for vulnerable populations that have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the bill, the Department of Early Education and Care would distribute $25 million in grants to licensed early education and child care centers to offset the costs of capital improvements meant to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The department would give priority to child care centers serving families with subsidized child care and those considered crucial to the states workforce. The bill also includes $160 million for technology and telecommunications improvements, including a study of cell phone service coverage in counties where most municipalities have 500 people or fewer per square mile. The study would offer a clearer picture of the telecommunications barrier Western Massachusetts residents face and how to improve it. Of the $160 million, at least $10 million will have to be spent on improving coverage in these areas. Other highlights include $20 million for a body camera grant program, $10 million to modernize the states criminal justice data system and track racial disparities across the judicial system and $2.9 million to the Office of the Commissioner of Probation to create an automated electronic process for sealing criminal records. Lawmakers reached a deal on the proposal on what would normally be the final day of the two-year legislative session. The House and Senate voted to extend formal sessions past Friday, allowing them to continue debating major bills through the rest of the year. Several of those bills are in conference committee, including proposals on police reform, economic development, health care and transportation. House Speaker Robert DeLeo said in a statement early Saturday that the House had passed several of those priority bills this month. Now having extended the legislative session due to COVID-19, the House will continue to work with the Senate to reach resolution on these items, the Winthrop Democrat said. Its a changed world, said House Minority Leader Brad Jones, a North Reading Republican. Everybody agreed to extend the session because its important. Rodrigues was asked if the several conference committees could reach deals on major bills in August, to which he said, I think they could all get done in August. Will they? We dont know. Related Content: Ten more universities for Sri Lanka Kalutara, Galle, Hambantota, Nuwara Eliya and Matale; technology-related degrees View(s): View(s): The Government is proposing to establish ten new universities in districts which currently do not have universities. Higher Education Minister Bandula Gunawardane told the Education Times these universities will provide degrees related to technology. Discussions have already been held with the University Grants Commission to prepare the curriculum to be followed at these universities. Information technology, Engineering technology, Bio-system technology and Robotic technology were some of the courses to be introduced. The Higher Education Ministry had also planned to introduce degrees which may be relevant to each district. For instance if there are tea plantations in a particular district we have selected, then we will introduce degrees related to agriculture or another relevant degree programme, for the university that will established in that district, Minister Gunawardena said. Under this plan, five of these universities will be first established in the Kalutara, Galle, Hambantota, Nuwara Eliya and Matale districts. Five hundred students will be registered initially at each of the universities. Students who reside within each of these districts will be given priority for university enrollment. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide the funding for these universities. A sum of US$ five million had already been granted for the feasibility studies of this project, while US$ 50 million will be made available for the further activities of the project. (C) More than 450 students were honored in Cleveland State Community Colleges Spring and Summer 2020 Virtual Commencement Ceremony Friday night. Graduates, friends, family, as well as staff and faculty of the college, watched along online on the colleges special Graduation Website hosting the event. In addition to those honored in this unique event for Cleveland State, three special individuals were recognized for their dedication and hard work during the ceremony. Nehemias Perez Santiago was selected as the 2020 Distinguished Graduate. Mark Wilson was selected as the Distinguished Staff Member and Donna Brogdon was selected as the Distinguished Faculty Member. The Distinguished Graduate award is given each year to the graduating student who, in the opinion of the college faculty and staff, has contributed the most to the advancement and betterment of the college. Mr. Perez first enrolled at CSCC as a full-time student in the fall of 2018. According to his nomination form, he was nominated for his integrity, sense of community, commitment to diversity, his loyalty and devotion to his country, as well as the Cleveland State Community at large. The sense of community he creates and promotes can be seen in his service to the Boys and Girls club, service to New Student Orientation (NSO) - Social Science leadership, and Peer Mentoring. Mr. Perez has volunteered many hours to the children at the Boys and Girls Club through genuine interest in their psychosocial development and general well-being. He would go beyond the expected duties of his role as leader of the NSO Social Sciences division. He was always prepared to share with new students his experiences in class, with faculty, participating in clubs on campus, and promoting CSCC's embracing of diversity. In addition, he shows leadership by serving as President of the Diversity Club. He united the Criminal Justice Program and the Diversity Club to prepare and serve food at a local homeless shelter through collaboration with Communidad de Esperanza. He extended the Diversity Club to McMinn County by finding the first President of the Diversity Club at the Athens Center. To illustrate his care for the diversity of CSCC, he worked with the representatives to advocate for equity and inclusion on campus. He participated in promoting and participating in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. march while holding the banner to lead the march. He also serves part-time as a security officer at the CSCC main campus. Other students nominated for this award include Britnay Gore, Abigail Flores, Samantha Benavides and Reedhi Bamnelkar. The Distinguished Staff award is presented each year to an individual who has performed meritorious service to Cleveland Stateabove and beyond the expectations of the job. This award is open to any CSCC employee other than those classified as Executive, Administrator or Faculty. Mark Wilson began his career at Cleveland State over 27 years ago. He was originally hired in Student Services, and he then took a position as a faculty member for a short time, but later returned to Student Services where he is currently employed as the Director of Counseling and Career Services. Wilson has taken pride in every job or role he has had at the college. He is dedicated to the college and demonstrates that fully when asked to take on additional responsibility. Through a restructuring in the Student Services Division, he was asked to take on responsibility for supervising the Testing Center, a position that had a full-time Director running it; without reservation or question, he stepped up when the Students Services Division needed him and took on the additional responsibility. The same thing happened when the person over Veterans Services retired and the position would not be filled immediately. He stepped in and took on additional responsibility to make sure those students got the services they needed. In addition to numerous campus committees, he is also respected in his community and involved in many charitable activities. He is a Tennessee Promise mentor and member of the Cleveland Area Interagency Council. He is also an active member of Georgetown Baptist Church where he teaches Sunday School and he and his wife, Melissa, help with Vacation Bible School each summer. According to his nomination, He performs all aspects of his work with excellence, integrity, and a positive attitude and is an outstanding representative of the college. Other staff members nominated for this award include Chris Mowery, Kelli Roach, Suzanne Ratcliff and Sindy Reynolds. The Distinguished Faculty Award is given each year to a member of the Cleveland State faculty in recognition of meritorious service to the college and community. Donna Brogdon began her teaching career with Cleveland State serving as an adjunct professor for 19 years, but she joined the business department as a full-time instructor nine years ago. She has been promoted through the years and received her status as a tenured, associate professor in 2017. According to her nomination, Donna has made significant contributions to the business department through her development of numerous courses, mentoring of adjuncts and new instructors, and the design of the A.A.S. Business curriculum for both the Pathways Project and Tennessee Valley Early College (TVEC). Ms. Brogdon continues to teach one of the most diverse schedules of any faculty member in the division, teaching day, afternoon, evening, off-campus, distance learning, hybrid, online, TNeCampus, and accelerated courses. She effectively utilizes the dynamic classroom to enhance instruction and group activities in her courses. In addition to numerous committees on campus, she also gives freely of her own time to local womens organizations and other community events. Chuck Barkley and Laurie Rowland were also nominated for the Distinguished Faculty Award. In addition to the distinguished awards given out during commencement, several other students were honored during this time. The first class of Tennessee Valley Early College (TVEC) graduated on Friday. The TVEC is a partnership between the college and local school systems designed to allow students to pursue an associate degree at the same time they are earning a high school diploma. Graduates of this program include Savannah Baker, Emily Brock, Madison Collins, Aaliyah Cranmer, Aaliyah Davis, Briza Dedicatoria, Makena DeLuca, Abigail Flores, Kristin Jump, Holly McDaniel, Riya Patel, Grayson Payne, Emily Rollins, Jannat Saeed, and Gianna Wright. All TVEC graduates received the University Parallel Associate of Science Degree. Graduates of the Honors College at Cleveland State were also recognized for their degrees and special Capstone Projects they conducted during their enrollment in the college. Reedhi Bamnelkar (Accounting AS) Capstone Topic: Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility And Stock Prices Rebecca Ann Bartlett (Art, Studio AA) Capstone Topic: The Shade Society (a graphic novel project) Christine Bebawy (Art, Studio AA), (University Parallel AS) Capstone Topic: The Coptic Arts and Theology William Brewer (Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries AS) Capstone Topic: Culvert Remediation for Improved Salamander Habitat and Passage on Sina Branch, Ocoee District of the Cherokee National Forest Jewelia Fox (Music AFA) Capstone Topic: Can Everyone Sing? Trained and Untrained Voices Arielle Gearhart (Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries AS) Capstone Topic: Tennessee Dace Habitat Assessment Katina Green (Art, Studio AA), (Sociology AS) Capstone Topic: Lost, Forgotten, Thrown Away (Elders) Zoe Grosskreutz (Agriculture-Animal Science AS) Capstone Topic: Raw Milk: Our Rights Outweigh the Risks Hannah Hall (Mass Communication AS) Capstone Topic: The Bias Against Community College: A Short Film Nathaniel Harrell (Pre-Health Professions AS) Capstone Topic: Are Electronic Cigarettes Better than Combustion Cigarettes? Bradley Hayes (Pre-Health Professions AS) Capstone Topic: Animal Lives Matter: The Importance of Large Animal Vet Rebeka Kinzer (Education AS) Capstone Topic: People First, Business Next Sadie Lane (Criminal Justice AS) Capstone Topic: Human Trafficking within Tennessee Ashi Patel (Allied Health Sciences AS) Capstone Topic: Health Hazards of Consuming Contaminated Water Emily Pritchett (Education AS) Capstone Topic: Seizure Frequency and Musics Impact on Epilepsy Jannat Saeed (University Parallel AS) Capstone Topic: Women In America: The Pink Tax and Other Legal Forms of Oppression Tabitha Spresser (Psychology AS) Capstone Topic: Factors That May Prevent Victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Low Income Areas from Seeking Therapy Ashley Tate (University Parallel AS) Capstone Topic: Doggy RX: Why Insurance Companies Should Include Service Animals as a Covered Benefit David Tullock (Business Administration AS) Capstone Topic: The Business of Running: Lifestyles, Equipment, and Technology Jordan Wagers (Education AS) Capstone Topic: Technologies That Increase Student Engagement Lindsay Zamorano (Speech Communication AS) Capstone Topic: Negative Effects of Technoference on Early Childhood Development and Parental Communication Sushant's Friend Claims Disha Salian's Death Had Upset The Actor Smita told Republic TV, "Rhea left Sushant's house on the 8th morning. I was told two big luggage bags were filled, maybe they broke up, and the driver dropped her to her house. Mitu Di came that very evening. Sushant was absolutely alright. On the 9th, Disha Salian's death upset Sushant quite a lot. He was constantly telling Mitu Dii, "They will not leave me now. They will come behind me." Sushant Singh Rajput's Friend Smita Parikh Claims That The Actor Was Scared For His Life Post Disha Salian's Death Sushant's friend Smita claimed that Sushant was very anxious after his former manager Disha Salian's death. She said that earlier, Sushant used to play TT and had even finished advanced sessions of yoga. However, post Disha's death, Parikh claimed that Sushant used to repeated tell her that 'they' would chase him now. Smita said, "I don't know who "They" he was talking about, he never told anyone about that." Sushant Wanted To Leave The Industry, Says The Late Actor's Friend Smita told Republic TV that Sushant called up his sister Priyanka's husband (who is an IPS officer) on June 11, and told him that he was scared and wanted to leave Mumbai. She claimed that in November too, Sushant had approached his family and wanted to leave the industry. Smita said that the actor wanted to go to Chandigarh, and that he was disturbed and very anxious." Sushant's Friend Explains The Sequence Of Events She told Republic TV, "On June 13, Mitu (Sushant's sister) was supposed to come back and spend time with Sushant. She tried connecting, but Sushant didn't respond. Mitu Di then called Siddharth Pithani and she was told that he asked for juice and is sleeping inside. This was alarming for the sister. The room was locked from inside, according to Pithani. The sister also tried to speak to the cook. She took a rickshaw and rushed towards Sushant's house. She is only 15-minutes away from Sushant's house and gets a call from Pithani saying, 'Didi jaldi aajaiye, bhaiya ne hang kar liya hai'. But by the time she reached home, she did not see him hanging as he was already brought down on bed." Smita Parikh Says Sushant Changed 5 SIM Cards Smita told the news channel that Sushant changed 5 SIM cards. She said that she doesn't why he had 5 different numbers. Smita also claimed that producer Sandip Ssingh is not known to anyone in Sushant's family. She said that none of Sushant's family members know or saw him at the actor's place. Dentists reject police cocaine story in Boss case THAILAND: Dentists do not use cocaine as an anaesthetic on patients, the president of the Dental Council said yesterday (July 31), pouring cold water on the excuse police used for not filing a drug charge against Red Bull heir Vorayuth Yoovidhya. accidentsdeathdrugspolice By Bangkok Post Saturday 1 August 2020, 09:38AM Vorayuth Yoovidhya is escorted to the Thong Lor police station in Bangkok for interrogation, hours after a crash that killed a police officer on Sept 3, 2012. Photo: Kosol Nakachol. Pojanart Poomprakobsri, the council president, was responding to a report that police were aware of cocaine in Mr Vorayuths system after a fatal hit-and-run in 2012 but decided not to press a narcotics charge because the drug had been used in dental treatment. Dentists no longer used cocaine because its anaesthetic effect was short-lived, and it has been linked to hypertension and impact on the hearts of patients, Mr Pojanart said. Dentists use other synthesised substances that have better anaesthetic properties and fewer side effects. As a result, cocaine has disappeared from the dental field, he said. The Dental Council was ready to provide police with information, he said, adding that it wanted information on the dentist who treated Mr Vorayuth so that it could verify if cocaine was really administered. Confusing accounts of the drug investigation are among many developments that have emerged since it was learned that prosecutors had dropped all charges in the case against the scion of one of the countrys wealthiest families, causing national outrage. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered the establishment of a high-profile panel to look into how police and prosecutors arrived at their decisions and where the investigative process might have broken down. it is due to report within 30 days. Mr Vorayuth, now 35, was accused of driving his black Ferrari when it struck the rear of a policemans motorcycle at high speed, dragging his body along Sukhumvit Road before speeding away in the early morning of Sept 3, 2012. The victim was Pol Sgt Maj Wichian Klanprasert, 47, who was based at Thong Lor police station. He delayed answering the initial charges seven times. It was not until April 27, 2017, that prosecutors finally charged him with reckless driving causing death and failing to help a crash victim. He fled on a private plane two days before he was due to face those charges. He is believed to have spend most of his time overseas since then. The speeding charge was later dropped when the one-year statute of limitations expired. The charge of failing to stop and help a crash victim expired on Sept 3, 2017. Late last month, public prosecutors dropped the third and most serious charge, reckless driving causing death. Otherwise it would have remained on the books until 2027. Mr Vorayuth whose nickname is Boss, is the son of Chalerm Yoovidhya, whose family co-owns the energy drink megabrand Red Bull and ranks second on Thailands richest list with net worth estimated at US$20 billion (about B617bn). Mufti's party says continued incarceration is a tactic by New Delhi to intimidate her Srinagar: A day before Id-ul- Azha, the authorities in Jammu & Kashmir on Friday released Peoples Conference (PC) chairman Sajad Gani Lone from house detention. However, the detention of former chief minister and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) has been extended by three months, official sources here said. Lone was among the political leaders and activists taken into preventive custody ahead of the abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir into two Union Territories on August 5 last year. After his release was announced, Lone tweeted, "Finally five days short of a year I have been officially informed that I am a free man. So much has changed. So have I. Jail was not a new experience. Earlier ones were harsh with usual doses of physical torture. But this was psychologically draining. Much to share hopefully soon. After spending more than six months in subsidiary jails here, Lone , a separatist-turned-mainstream politician who after meeting Narendra Modi in November 2014 called him his older brother, was moved to his residence here in February this year but placed under house arrest. Mufti remains in detention despite the release of most key political figures including two other former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, who were freed earlier this year. Under the PSA, introduced in J&K in 1978 initially to deal with timber smuggling but later used by successive governments against political opponents, a person can be detained for six months to two years without a formal trial. The PDP described the extension of Mufti's PSA detention as highly undemocratic, unconstitutional and inhuman" and reiterated that such vindictive measures will not deter the PDP from pursuing its core agenda and speak truth to power. The party's spokesperson Syed Suhail Bukhari said measures such as prolonged detention are aimed at intimidating Mufti and her colleagues but they would increase the level of alienation and frustration among the people who have been plundered of their identity since August 5 last year. He alleged, It is bizarre that for the past six months, while the petition against the illegal detention of Ms. Mufti is pending in the Supreme Court, the government here is hell-bent to hound the PDP president through such illegal, unethical and undemocratic measures. No quantum of pressure and intimidation can push us into submission and to give up on our resolve to fight for the honour and dignity of the people of J&K. It is ironic that by taking such undemocratic, unconstitutional and unnatural measures, the BJP still believes in the efficacy of these methods and is trying to repeat the old mistakes which will be meaningless and will prove counterproductive, the PDP said. As a general rule, Melody and Mike Baine only leave the house to buy groceries. Their seven-year-old son has asthma, and Mikes father, who lives with the family, is immunocompromised. To venture too far from home would be to risk the health of several loved ones and imperil others, says the couple from east Hamilton. Thats why, when the Ontario government announced its back-to-school plans on Thursday opting to return elementary students to class full-time and secondary students part-time the Baines made the difficult decision to keep their child home for the upcoming term. What choice do we really have? said Mike. Im not going to wait to find out if my kid gets sick. Hes not going to be a guinea pig in this experiment. The Thursday announcement from Ontarios Ministry of Education allows for Hamiltons elementary schools to return to normal, five days per week schooling, while secondary schools will rely on a staggered model that allows small groups of students to attend school on alternating days. The plan was applauded for introducing new provisions like mandatory face masks for students from Grade 4 to 12, but has also received criticism from teachers and school boards for underfunding personal protective equipment and staffing needs across the provinces 4,800 public schools. Though medical experts say children under the age of 10 are less likely to spread COVID-19, some parents worry full-time elementary classes without face protection for students could harm the most vulnerable. I know kids arent supposed to get it as bad, but theres always the unique case. And if one of them gets it, it could spread to parents or teachers, said Mike. We just arent willing to take that risk. The Hamilton school boards have plans in place to allow students to learn remotely if their parents are uncomfortable with sending their children to school. These students are expected to keep up with classes through e-learning tools with regularly updated information from teachers. The remote learning measures mean parents will have to ensure their child is staying up-to-date on homework and learning the materials from afar. Mark, the Baine couples son, is a naturally curious and sociable student. He likes interacting with teachers and seeing his friends in class. Before the pandemic, he was looking forward to entering Grade 1, his parents said. Now he doesnt get to interact with his teachers or classmates, said Melody. We know hell get bored. Hell want to do something other than study. We have to make sure hes actually doing his work. Roberto Quinlan, a parent of three children living in Dundas, sends his kids to school by bus. Without any French immersion Catholic schools nearby, the kids travel half-an-hour every morning to get to school in Hamilton. Quinlan has a medical condition that prevents him from driving, and his wife goes to work early in the morning well before the kids school day begins. Taking the bus is their only option to get to a French immersion school, and there are plenty of risks along the way that could lead to one of them getting the virus, he said. Given his medical condition, Quinlan is worried that if he were to get COVID-19, he wouldnt survive. But the cost of keeping his children at home comes with its own set of problems. While I do have these concerns, I also see my kids suffering from a lack of social interaction, from a lack of being able to interact with friends. And I think there are some subjects that you simply cant learn without in-person interaction, he said. But am I worried about them bringing home the coronavirus? Of course I am. It weighs on me every single day. The US Justice Department has scheduled two additional federal executions, an announcement that comes weeks after it fought off last-minute legal challenges and successfully resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause. The executions of Christopher Andre Vialva and William Emmett LeCroy are both scheduled to be carried out in late September. The government carried out three executions in July, and two other executions had been set previously for August. Vialva, 40, was convicted along with a co-defendant in the 1999 kidnapping and killing of an Iowa couple at Fort Hood in Texas. The youth ministers had stopped to use a payphone in Killeen, Texas, and agreed to give Vialva and two others a ride, authorities said. Vialva pulled out a gun, forced the couple into the boot and drove around for several hours, stopping at ATMs to withdraw cash and attempting to pawn the womans wedding ring, according to prosecutors. Executions Scheduled for Two Federal Inmates https://t.co/jttm5aViQz Justice Department (@TheJusticeDept) July 31, 2020 The victims, Todd and Stacie Bagley, were both shot in head and placed in boot of their car, which then was set afire. Vialva, who is the first black inmate to be scheduled to be executed since the federal government resumed the death penalty this year, is scheduled to be executed on September 24. A co-defendant in the case, Brandon Bernard, also received death sentence, though his execution date has not yet been scheduled. LeCroy, 50, of Georgia, was convicted of raping and killing Joann Lee Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, in 2001 and then stealing her car. Prosecutors said he broke into her home and attacked her when she came home from a shopping trip, binding her hands behind her back before he strangled her with an electrical cord and raped her. They said he then slit Ms Tieslers throat and stabbed her repeatedly in the back. At the time, one of LeCroys lawyers argued he should face state charges and not be tried in federal court under the federal carjacking statute. LeCroys lawyers said he had no intention of stealing the car when he was burgling Ms Tieslers home. He was arrested at the US-Canada border and was previously convicted of firearms and drug offences, burglary, aggravated assault and child sex abuse charges. LeCroy is scheduled to be executed on September 26. The resumption of federal executions by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, started on July 14, with the execution of former white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee. Two others, Wesley Purkey and Dustin Honken, were executed later the same week. Not many people can have paid closer attention, or greater tribute, to Toronto and its citizens during the coronavirus lockdown than the Star photographers who produced daily portraits of lives being lived very differently. Since a state of emergency was declared in the city on March 17, their work captured the emptiness of abandoned streets, the isolation of housebound residents, the consolations found in simple pleasures, the pot-banging gratitude, the imaginative ways to maintain community, and the slow, slow re-emergence. The 151 photos they produced, in a series that ends Saturday as Toronto enters Phase 3 of recovery, was beautifully enhanced by a writer who, until now, has been anonymous. It was Star politics editor Jordan Himelfarb who illuminated the photo series with imaginative captions that amounted to micro-essays of whimsy, poetry, levity, history and philosophy. With them, Himelfarb used a novel technique to turn a normally routine journalistic task into something special, treating readers to the daily delights of a curious, erudite and compassionate mind. What he added to the photos was by turns amusing, uplifting and thought provoking. The idea was to capture every aspect of life in Toronto during the pandemic, in all its ridiculousness, and all of its tragedy, he said. The political dimension, the social and personal dimension, the eeriness, the surge of solidarity all of that. All those facets of this strange time. Himelfarb would receive each days photo at about 4 p.m. from the Stars visuals editor, Taras Slawnych, or photo assignment editor Tim Finlan, and study it to see what element touched him. Then, within a couple of hours, he wrote a caption of anywhere from 10 to 135 words. He found inspiration, he said, in literature, history and mythology. It is no small challenge to write succinctly, to express an idea, conjure a scene, deliver pleasure to the mind and spirit in so few words. But, inspired by images from Star photographers Andrew Wallace, Rene Johnston, Rick Madonik, Steve Russell, Richard Lautens and Kelsey Wilson, Himelfarb did just that, inviting readers on an informative stroll one day with Jonathan Safran Foer, another with Jonathan Swift through centuries of thinkers contemplating how men and women face challenge and find purpose and joy, and how sacrifice is sometimes demanded for the common good. On an Easter Sunday that was for many more poignant and symbolic than most, his cutline was pulled from a lot of religious traditions to give people hope at a dark time, he said. As good writers do, he sprinkled gold coins along the readers trail, dropping in an explanation of how the penny-farthing bicycle got its name, or his twin haikus paired with a photo of blossoming cherry trees in High Park. If some readers found it a little unusual, it was. And that was the idea. RELATED STORIES GTA 137 days of lockdown in 151 pictures and reflections: How Toronto went quiet and then came back to life I was going for a little weird, Himelfarb said. I had a lot of fun. Its been a real joy. The Stars deputy editor Catherine Wallace said Himelfarb took the project in just a beautiful direction. Weve heard from readers saying how much they appreciate his daily poetry and the unexpected references, and some of them wondering who the writer is, Wallace said. Now they know. 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 WARNING - GRAPHIC IMAGES: A fisherman has contracted a deadly flesh-eating disease after washing a fish without gloves. Mr Wang, from Guiyang in south-western China, pricked his hand on the spine of a Japanese sea bass between his left ring and little fingers while preparing it for dinner on July 17. The 60-year-old told Guiyang Evening Post the fish spine neither drew blood nor left a visible wound, so he paid no attention to it and finished his dinner. However, just three days later, he ended up in intensive care at Guizhou Provincial Peoples Hospital and now faces amputation due to a rapidly spreading disease caused by the marine bacteria Vibrio vulnificus, the hospital said. A fisherman has contracted a deadly flesh-eating disease after washing a fish without gloves. Source: AsiaWire/Australscope I love eating fish, especially bass. On 17th July, I was cleaning the insides of the fish when I pricked my hand between my fingers, Mr Wang told the paper. I didnt think anything of it because this has happened hundreds of times before. The next morning it started swelling. I applied some topical ointment to it, but it only worsened in the afternoon, so I went to the doctors." The pathogen present in brackish water is believed to have entered his skin from the tiny spine prick, causing a flesh-eating disease known as necrotising fasciitis. Hospital images show Mr Wangs left hand covered in festering and blistering skin lesions as his palm and fingers begin swelling and turning black. Mr Wang arrived on 20th July after staying in another hospitals dermatology department for two to three days, ICU medic Doctor Dong said, according to a local paper. He suffered some slight swelling in his fingers. They thought it was some type of skin condition, but his condition worsened. After the doctors learned he had come in contact with fish, they suspected Vibrio vulnificus, which has a high mortality rate, so they transferred him here. Story continues Swelling in Mr Wangs left hand spread up his entire arm and he was placed on an urgent course of antibiotics. His left arm improved after treatment, but swelling and lesions on his hand continued to worsen until he lost sensation, Doctor Dong told the newspaper. Mr Wangs hand had to be cut open in order to drain pus and fluids building up in his palm. He is now able to move his fingers but he is not yet in stable condition. Doctors said Mr Wang may have to have his hand amputated. Source: AsiaWire/Australscope Doctor Dong said Mr Wang could face either the amputation of his entire left hand if necrosis continues, or they could preserve his hand and digits while retaining only partial fine motor skills. Between 50 and 70 percent of patients suffering from Vibrio vulnificus die within 48 hours, he said. Many infected patients have amputations or die, so he can consider himself lucky so far. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five people with the infection die within a day or two of falling ill. In the first two days, it hurt so much I wanted to die. Thankfully, after treatment in intensive care, Im now able to move my hand a little, Mr Wang said. Doctor Dong said over 95 percent of the worlds deadly Vibrio pathogens exist in tropical Asia, mostly in estuaries and other coastal areas. The bacteria is present in fish and shellfish, including oysters. Australscope Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play. Soon after Unlock 1, the industry - which is estimated to polish nine of 10 rough diamonds in the world - resumed operations, but a surge in cases at diamond polishing cluster, especially in Katargam and Varachha, forced units to go into a voluntary lockdown, which continued until recently. With daily Covid-19 cases stabilising in Surat and Unlock 3.0 set to kick in, the citys diamond industry is slowly resuming operations. The civic authorities have allowed a maximum of two diamond polishing workers at each table, against the earlier practice of four, based on an industry representation. Surat, the worlds largest diamond polishing hub, has been reeling from the pandemic with a flurry of positive cases bringing its diamond polishing industry to a near standstill. Soon after Unlock 1, the industry - which is estimated to polish nine of 10 rough diamonds in the world - resumed operations, but a surge in cases at diamond polishing cluster, especially in Katargam and Varachha, forced units to go into a voluntary lockdown, which continued until recently. Around 1,700 diamond polishing workers in the hubs of Katargam and Varachha have tested positive. Several units have been even penalised by the Surat Municipal Corporation for flouting social distancing norms. According to Dinesh Navadiya, regional chairman of Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), the civic authorities, including the municipal commissioner and the city mayor, have allowed certain relaxations, helping resume work at polishing units. For instance, the number of hours of operations has been extended from four hours to six hours. As against the previous order of allowing operations between 2 pm and 6 pm, now units can operate between 12 pm and 6 pm, Navadiya said. Diamond units in the city were closed during the lockdown, but started servicing pending orders when Unlock 1 kicked in. Soon, exports to the key market of Hong Kong started to pick up, while trade with Europe and the US resumed. Also, to ease inventory of rough diamonds - estimated at $2 billion - the industry went for a voluntary ban on the import of these precious stones. Rough diamonds worth over Rs 6,700 crore were imported in June 2019. In May 2020, the number stood at roughly Rs 610 crore. Industry players were hoping for an early revival until Covid-19 hit them again. The city, so far, has reported 10,757 cases, as against 25,080 in Ahmedabad. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters U.S. Adds Materials To Metals Sanctions Against Iran By RFE/RL July 31, 2020 The United States has expanded sanctions against Iran's metals industry, adding 22 materials to the U.S. sanctions regime, a move that allows Washington to blacklist any company or entity that transfers the materials to Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the announcement in a statement on July 30, calling it a "major expansion" of the Iran metals-related sanctions administered by the State Department. Pompeo said the 22 specific materials listed were used in connection with Iran's nuclear, military, or ballistic-missile programs, which "pose a grave threat to international peace and security." Pompeo also said he was firm in his determination that Iran's elite security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), controls Iran's construction sector. As a result, sanctions may still be imposed on those who knowingly transfer certain materials to or from Iran to be used in connection with Iran's construction sector, Pompeo said. The materials he said he had determined are used in connection with Iran's nuclear, military, or ballistic-missile programs included aluminum powder with purity above 98 percent. Aluminum powder is a key ingredient in solid-fuel propellants used to launch missiles. Tensions between Tehran and Washington have been on the rise since the United States withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and reimposed crippling sanctions that have battered the Iranian economy. The United States pulled out of the nuclear agreement in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions as part of what it calls a "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran. In response, Iran gradually started breaching its nuclear commitments. Pompeo also has been urging the UN Security Council to extend an arms embargo on Iran. The United States has formally asked the council to extend the embargo, which is set to be progressively eased beginning in October under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which enshrined the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. Veto-wielding Russia and China have questioned Washington's right to use a disputed legal move to force a return of UN sanctions on Iran. The United States has said that allowing the embargo to expire would cause instability in the Middle East. With reporting by Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-adds- materials-to-metals-sanctions- against-iran/30758262.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 I was just saying hello, and before we knew it, we just heard the gunshots. They just started crying and we all ran, said the woman, who identified herself as Miss Cooper. Sick dogs and cats are being smuggled across Victoria's closed state borders by dodgy animals breeders taking advantage of the high demand for pets during lockdown. The RSPCA has seen a spike in the illegal sales of dogs and cats during the coronavirus pandemic, which they say has coincided with the tripling of wanted ads from Victorian households desperate to adopt a pet. The RSPCA's Lisa Calleja with rescued dog, Myrtle. Credit:Joe Armao Lisa Calleja, inspectorate team leader with the RSPCA's major investigations team, said more than 30 investigations were under way into the illegal sales of pets, with the majority of those animals coming from interstate and many carrying deadly diseases. "People have always bought puppies from unethical sources ... but we are seeing more of it now because supply can't really keep up with demand. On the online selling channels, there are pages and pages of wanted ads, and only maybe a couple [of pets] available for sale. First Minister keen to maintain open border between North Wales and north west of England despite fears over visitor influx This article is old - Published: Saturday, Aug 1st, 2020 The First Minister wants to maintain an open border despite fears that stricter lockdown measures in the north west of England could see a further influx of holiday home owners to north Wales. Following a spike in Covid-19 cases, visiting people at home has been banned in parts of northern England as well as rules on face coverings being extended to more indoor settings, including museums and places of worship. But with the rules impacting Greater Manchester, east Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire, a north Wales MP has raised concerns that stricter measures and the spike in cases could see more residents of these areas head for holiday homes in north Wales, placing greater pressure on already stretched health and public services. Liz Saville Roberts, having questioned the Prime Minister on Friday morning, says that the lack of leisure travel restrictions could have direct consequences. The Plaid Cymru Westminster leader and MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, said: North west Wales is a primary holiday destination for people from these areas, and I am very aware that the population of Abersoch for example will be going up from 1,000 to 20,000 as we speak. I also raised concerns about people travelling to second homes in Cornwall, Cumbria and Wales during our meeting back on 20th March, and we know that this became an issue at the time. We can be certain that people will decide to travel to their holiday homes from these affected areas as a direct result of these new lockdown measures and this when our local health board is failing to cope as it is. I called on the PM to make an announcement against all non-essential travel from these affected communities. When questioned during Fridays press briefing, the First Minister described the scenes in the north of England as concerning, having discussed with Boris Johnson the measures in place there, describing them as larger in line with the stricter guidelines already in place across Wales. My advise to those travelling across the border is that if you come to Wales, please help us to keep Wales safe, he said. We welcome people from other parts of the UK to Wales and ask them to take all actions to keep themselves, their families and others safe. Maintain social distancing, wash your hands and if youre using shared facilities do so carefully and consciously, that way we can keep Wales safe and open for everyone to noting. But noting that while he understood the anxiety behind such calls, the First Minister described the Welsh English border as very permeable, with large numbers moving back and forth to work every day. My focus is not on closing borders, its about making that safe and we have put lots of things in place to make sure that when people visit Wales the information they get, the settings they visit and experiences they will have will have been made safe for them and others said Mr Drakeford in response to a question from the Local Democracy Reporting Service. We look to businesses to make sure that they put in place all of the things that we have agreed and say to individuals that come to Wales to help us to keep Wales safe. We give them very clear information on how they can do that and I think the evidence to date is that people are very respectful of that and providing they are we look forward to continue welcoming people to Wales. By Gareth Williams Local Democracy Reporter The United States is proud to help Ukraine defend itself from Russias aggression. U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE James S. Gilmore said this at a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. As part of its larger disinformation campaign, Russias Ambassador has mentioned on multiple occasions the provision of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. The Ambassador has attempted to cast this military aid in a negative light, alleging that the United States, and not Russia, is responsible for the continuation of this conflict. Russia has put particular emphasis on the provision of Javelin anti-tank missiles. The purpose of these missiles, as their description implies, is to destroy or demobilize armored vehicles, such as tanks; in other words, they are defensive weapons. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis once said, defensive weapons are only worrying if you are an aggressor," Gilmore said. The United States has provided nearly $2 billion in security assistance since Moscow initiated this conflict in 2014. Besides providing defensive Javelin missiles, the United States has also provided the Ukrainian government with HumVees, patrol boats, and counter-artillery radar systems, among other equipment, and helped fund the training of Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemembers. "None of this is a secret; in fact, we are proud to help Ukraine defend itself from Russias aggression, and we are transparent in making our support known," Gilmore stressed. Just last month, the American Embassy in Kyiv announced a delivery of $60 million of weapons and other equipment, and the U.S. Congress approved a $250 million aid package to Ukraine this year. "This military aid is a clear indication of our unwavering support of Ukraines sovereignty. As a key strategic partner in Europe, the United States stands by Ukraine in its efforts to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity from a powerful and, regrettably, adversarial, neighbor," the ambassador said. As Ukrinform reported, on July 30, a group of U.S. Senators introduced the Ukraine Security Partnership Act to provide security assistance and strategic support to Ukraine. The aid amounts to USD 300 million per year. In turn, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration supported an increase in the supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine in the defense budget for the 2021 fiscal year. ish Rocket Labs Electron vehicle will resume ferrying satellites and other payloads to space this month. The FAA has given the company the go-ahead to launch Electron rockets again after figuring out why its 13th mission ended in failure. In early July, Rocket Labs Pics Or It Didnt Happen mission resulted in the loss of both the rocket and its satellite payloads, including a Canon satellite that was supposed to demonstrate an Earth imaging camera system before it enters mass production. The company launched an investigation with the FAA and managed to pinpoint the culprit: an anomalous electrical connection. Apparently, one of the rockets electrical connections was intermittently secure through flight, increasing resistance and causing the component to heat up and expand. That, in turn, caused surrounding components to liquefy, which led to the electrical systems disconnection and ultimately to the engines shutdown a few minutes into the second stage burn. In its announcement, Rocket Lab said that it was able to gather the data it needs, because the vehicle was unharmed and was able to continue sending information to its ground team. It also explained that it wasnt able to detect the issue before the flight, because the electrical connection remained secure throughout testing. However, its now knows that the issue can be avoided through additional tests. Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said in a statement: The issue occurred under incredibly specific and unique circumstances, causing the connection to fail in a way that we wouldnt detect with standard testing. Our team has now reliably replicated the issue in test and identified that it can be mitigated through additional testing and procedures. The next Electron launch doesnt have an exact date yet, but it will take off from Rocket Labs Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath recently released a video where he supported the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and defended the decision to hold a bhoomi pujan in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. I welcome the bhoomi pujan. Indians have been waiting for this and this is what we all want. This is possible only in India, said Nath, the first senior Congress leader to openly speak in support of the grand August 5 event. The statement is surprising at a time when opposition leaders like Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, both Congress allies in Maharashtra, have questioned the need for a bhoomi pujan function amid a health crisis. Sources say many younger leaders like Deependra Hooda and Jitin Prasada want the Congress to officially clear its stand on the issue. And they want the party to toe the line taken by Kamal Nath. Nath, like many Congress leaders, has seen the writing on the wall. The BJP swept to power in 2014 and 2019 on the cart of Hindutva among other issues. Though the Congress tried to belatedly latch onto a Hindutva agenda, it couldnt shed the appeasement of minorities tag and the BJP used it very effectively to its advantage. At a recent meeting on UP strategy, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra asked her party leaders for inputs. Almost all of them said the Congress needs to hit the ground running. The Hindutva image of the Yogi Adityanath government gives the BJP a head-start and the Congress has lot of ground to cover. What helps the Congress is the feedback that the Samajwadi Party has a minority appeasement image, and for fear of losing his vote bank, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav cannot be seen as pushing the Ram Mandir agenda forcefully. We must not lose out and should spell out our stand on the bhoomi pujan and Ram Mandir. This is important if we want to recover in UP, a leader told Priyanka. In fact, after the historic Supreme Court verdict last year, the Congress had openly welcomed the construction of the temple, but has been silent on bhoomi pujan. The Congress has officially not even been invited for the grand ceremony. Many young leaders like Jitin Prasada feel that the Congress should pre-empt the BJP strategy by going to Ayodhya even if not invited. Younger leaders like Hooda and Prasada who are carving a niche for themselves in the party, understand that the Congress needs to now change its mould. Remaining silent will be playing into the hands of the BJP. In fact, some at a meeting with Sonia Gandhi made the point that the Congress should not hesitate to take credit for Ram Mandir. Some Congress leaders insist it was Rajiv Gandhi who opened the locks of the Ram Mandir, though historians deny this, saying it was a small crowd which did it while Rajiv Gandhi was silent. Whatever the case, the fact is that the Congress has burnt its fingers. And with Priyanka in charge, its important that the party seek a desperate makeover. During the 2019 general elections, Priyanka, and even Rahul, visited many temples, peddling a Hindutva line. But as results showed, this was clearly not enough. For starters, leaders feel the Congress must support the bhoomi puja. In fact, some suggest that party leaders should be seen watching it on television sets. Or it may be too late. Sniper, AKs, war like stores recovers as Army foils major infiltration bid India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Aug 03: In a pre-dawn operation, the Indian Army foiled a major infiltration bid along the Line on Control. The Army detected suspicious movement of unidentified persons at around 600 metres on the own side of the Line of Control at Machhal Sector, Kupwara. The infiltrating terrorists were intercepted by the Indian forces. A fire-fight ensued and after the first light a search was carried out and blood trail was seen. To observe August 5 as Black Day in J&K, Pak Army, ISI put out detailed flow chart The Army recovered 3 AK 47s, a sniper rifle, 8 grenades and other war like stores. An recent assessment showed that Pakistan has been upping the ante and is attempting scores of infiltrations into the Valley. The assessment also says that terrorists are not focusing largely on north Kashmir. Earlier the focus was largely on south Kashmir. The intelligence has said that this is a changed strategy by Pakistan and it appears as that the terror groups have expanded its reach in this part of Kashmir. US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news The Intelligence also says that several foreign terrorists have infiltrated into north Kashmir and are looking to recruit as many locals as possible. They want to build on the logistics and also expand the network of overground workers Meanwhile Pakistan has come out with directives to be followed on August 5, a year since the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. On completion of one year of military sieve of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir and to show solidarity with the people of Kashmiri people, the following terminologies will be used on August 5, a press release from the government of Pakistan has said. 5th August has now been termed as Youm-e-Istehsal and Ghasbana Qabza, the press release read. The note also says that the terms of use will be IIOJK and not IOJK or IOK. It also says that the term to be used is Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and not Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir or Indian Occupied Kashmir. It also says that the term to be used is illegal action and not illegal annexation. Demographic apartheid can be used by not demographic re-engineering. Pakistan sets agenda for August 5 with outreach to Malaysia, Turkey Military siege can bee used but not lockdown, the press note also says. All TV and Radio channels should play Pakistan and AJK national anthems immediately after one minute silence on August 5. The TV channels must ensure that the presenters should wear black solidarity bands and channel logos must be turned black to condemn Indian atrocities in Kashmir, the note further mentions. The theme shall be One year of Indian Military Siege in IIOJK, the press note approved by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan also says. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Saturday, August 1, 2020, 8:47 [IST] A federal officer pushes back demonstrators at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Ore. Beyond the debate over the federal response to protests in Portland, there is the question of whether the Department of Homeland Security, with its specialized national security focus, is the right agency for a job that is traditionally the responsibility local police. Read more WASHINGTON -- A senior Department of Homeland Security official whose office compiled "intelligence reports" about journalists and protesters in Portland, Ore., has been removed from his job, according to three people familiar with the matter. Brian Murphy, the acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, was reassigned to a new position elsewhere in the department, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. Acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf made the decision on Friday, one person said. Murphy's removal follows revelations in The Washington Post that the Intelligence & Analysis Office (I & A) at DHS compiled Open Source Intelligence Reports about the work of two journalists who had published leaked department documents. In a separate intelligence report, the office also analyzed the communications of protesters in Portland. Wolf, ordered I & A to stop collecting information on journalists after The Post article was published on Thursday. Murphy had previously told Senate committee staff that his office did not collect, analyze or exploit information on the electronic devices or accounts of protesters. On Friday, Democratic senators sent Murphy a letter asking him to confirm that was true. Murphy is a former FBI agent who worked on the bureau's efforts to combat radicalization. Current and former colleagues have described him as hard-charging and driven and said he has a history of defying managers and bosses. Some current officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said that Murphy has earned a reputation at DHS for aggressively trying to expand the operations of the intelligence office. Although it is technically an element of the broader intelligence community, I & A publishes reports largely based on unclassified or public sources and isn't designed to engage in clandestine operations like the FBI or the CIA. Murphy tried to fashion the office into more of an operational player, akin to those larger agencies, and drew scrutiny and criticism internally over his efforts, some officials said. One noted that I & A's collection of information involving journalists was effectively the last straw and led to his ouster. Officials have also worried Murphy was misapplying the authorities of I & A. For example, the intelligence reports about the journalists' work appeared to justify collecting the information under a standing requirement for intelligence about cybersecurity threats. It was unclear how tweets by journalists constituted a threat to cybersecurity, which the department usually interprets as hackers trying to disable critical infrastructure or break into classified computers. Recently, Murphy tried to broaden the definition of violent protesters in Portland, in a way that some officials felt was intended to curry favor with the White house. In an internal memo, Murphy announced that the label "violent opportunists," which his office had used to describe people who were attacking law enforcement personnel and property, would be changed to "violent antifa anarchists inspired," according to an internal memo. Murphy argued that the violent protesters werent merely taking advantage of a moment but had overwhelmingly been linked to radical ideologies driving individuals toward violence. That conclusion was undercut by an earlier DHS analysis that found there wasnt enough information about the Portland protesters for the department to know how they might be connected to anti-fascist or anarchist groups and what precisely was motivating them. Many of the protests in Portland have been peaceful and in response to police violence around the country. Prasanta Mazumdar By Express News Service GUWAHATI: The Assam government is preparing to reopen schools and colleges from September 1. We are mentally preparing to reopen schools and colleges from September 1. However, it will depend on the decision of the Central government, Assams Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told journalists on Saturday. There will be no school for students up to class IV. The reopening of schools will come with a set of riders. One of them is that all teachers and staff have to mandatorily undergo the Covid-19 tests before August 30. For the students of V-VIII, the classes can be conducted at a village field or an open space. A maximum of 15 students can attend the classes at a time. Students whose schools are located away can attend such classes. These will be like gurukuls of ancient times, the Minister explained. Educated youth can volunteer to assist the teachers by taking classes and they will be provided with a certificate. Without elaborating, Sarma said the certificate could benefit them in the long run. He said the private schools could also take the classes by following the guidelines. He said it was a voluntary exercise which the state government wanted to start. The government would allow schools to conduct classes on their campus for the students of classes IX to XII. The students of IX and XI will have the classes twice a week. The classes will be four days a week for the students of X and XII. There will be two shifts of three hours each and a maximum of 15 students will be allowed to sit in one room. Sarma said the timings would be such that the students of two classes would not meet each other. As regards colleges, he said the classes would be conducted only for the final semester students. Students, who study elsewhere but are stranded at home, can attend the classes in nearby colleges. The decision on the conduct of classes in the universities will be taken by the respective vice-chancellor. Meanwhile, Sarma welcomed the decision on National Education Policy (NEP) describing it as historic. He said the state government would constitute a 40-member committee to prepare a blueprint for its implementation in the state. Assam so far recorded 40,269 Covid-19 cases including 98 deaths. Currently, there are 9,811 active cases. The state has a population of 3.3 crore, according to NRC data. LG Electronics is looking at options to build a second R&D centre in the country This was announced by a representative of LG Electronics at a meeting between Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and South Korean companies on July 29. Industry insiders said LG's plan to build an additional R&D centre appears to be aimed at boosting the competitiveness of its Vietnam plant. LG said it is currently looking for candidate sites in Vietnam but has not confirmed detailed plans for the new centre, such as its research field, size, and construction timeline. Regarding the plan to expand its existing facility, most recently, chairman of Haiphong Peoples Committee Nguyen Van Tung reported that the city is looking for the governments approval to expand Dinh Vu-Cat Hai and Trang Due industrial parks to serve LGs expansion. LG entered the Vietnamese market in 1995 under the name LG Sel Electronics. It opened its first factory in Hung Yen with an investment capital of $13 million and a production line capable of producing 550,000 units per year. In March 2015, LG launched a high-tech plant to manufacture an assortment of products in Trang Due, Haiphong with a total investment of $1.5 billion. It is the largest LG facility of its type in the region at 800,000 square meters, playing a key role in the development strategy of LG globally. The plant has a capacity of 16 million products per year. It produces and assembles high-tech products such as televisions, mobile phones, washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, and digital devices for automobiles. South Korea's No.2 electronics company already runs an R&D centre focused on its vehicle component solutions business in Hanoi. Documents relating to dealings between Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein have been released by a United States court, where the British socialite faces criminal charges that she aided the late financier's sexual abuse of girls. Among the materials released were email correspondence between the pair in early 2015, including an email in which Epstein told Ms Maxwell she had "done nothing wrong". US District Judge Loretta Preska had ordered the documents' release by Thursday, saying the public's right to see them outweighed Ms Maxwell's interests in keeping them under seal. However, two depositions remain under seal after Ms Maxwell filed an emergency motion with the federal appeals court in Manhattan to keep them from becoming public. That court has yet to rule, and the depositions will remain sealed until at least Monday. Lawyers for Ms Maxwell have said that in one of those depositions, filed in April 2016, Maxwell was asked "intrusive" questions concerning her sex life, and that its release could make it "difficult if not impossible" to get a fair trial. The second is a deposition by an unnamed Epstein accuser. Lawyers for ms Maxwell did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the documents were unsealed. The cache of documents released on Thursday and the depositions that remain under wraps were part of a now-settled 2015 civil defamation lawsuit against Ms Maxwell by Virginia Giuffre, who said she was underage when Epstein kept her as a "sex slave" with Ms Maxwell's assistance. A lawyer for Ms Giuffre did not immediately respond to a similar request. Ms Maxwell (58) has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997, and committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath. She was arrested on July 2 at a home in New Hampshire where prosecutors said she had been hiding out. Ms Maxwell has been held in a Brooklyn jail after a judge denied bail, calling her a flight risk. Her trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein was found hanged, aged 66, last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty. Pending appeals by Ms Maxwell, Judge Preska had ordered the release of more than 80 documents in all, including flight logs from Epstein's private jets; and police reports from Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a home. Among the materials released on Thursday were emails from January 2015 between Epstein and Ms Maxwell. The pair were identified respectively as "jeffrey E" and either "Gmax" or "G Maxwell." "You have done nothing wrong and I would urge you to start acting like it," Epstein wrote on January 25, 2015. "Go outside, head high, not as an escaping convict. Go to parties. Deal with it." Epstein sent the email a day after ms Maxwell said she would appreciate it if another woman, identified by a single name, "would come out and say she was your g'friend - I think she was from end 99 to 2002." Ms Maxwell's lawyers have sought to distance their client from Epstein in their unsuccessful effort to win bail. In a July 10 bail request, the lawyers said the media had shifted their focus to Ms Maxwell following Epstein's death, "wrongly trying to substitute her for Epstein - even though she'd had no contact with Epstein for more than a decade", had never been charged with a crime or been found liable in civil litigation, and had always denied allegations of misconduct. Other unsealed materials included emails from Ms Giuffre to the FBI in 2014, including when she expressed interest to the FBI in pursuing a case against Epstein and proving "how much paedophilia occurred by Jeffrey and the many other monsters he obliged." Former Maharahstra CM and now the Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis broke his silence on Sushant Singh Rajput's alleged case of suicide and reiterated the frequently raised public demand for a CBI inquiry in the case, as the contention around actor Rhea Chakraborty's involvement convolutes it further, now in legal chambers. Maharashtra Leader of Opposition and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said that the Enforcement Directorate should carry out an investigation in actor Sushant Singh Rajputs suicide case. There is a huge public sentiment about handing over #SushantSinghRajput case to CBI but looking at the reluctance of State Government, atleast @dir_ed ED can register an ECIR since misappropriation and money laundering angle has come out, tweeted Fadnavis. Meanwhile, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said that no FIR had been registered in Maharashtra yet and that the case must be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). There is a huge public sentiment about handing over #SushantSinghRajput case to CBI but looking at the reluctance of State Government, atleast @dir_ed ED can register an ECIR since misappropriation and money laundering angle has come out. Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) July 31, 2020 There is a confrontation between two states and there has been no FIR registered yet in Maharashtra. Chirag (Paswan) had spoken to CM Thackeray that there should be CBI probe. All political leaders are demanding for it. It should be handed over to CBI, Paswan told ANI. Also read: I believe I will get justice: Rhea Chakraborty breaks silence on Sushant Singh Rajputs death probe Also read: SSR Death Probe twist: ED files money laundering case over transactions worth 15 CR A team of the Bihar Police that arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday, recorded statements of two persons, including actor Sushant Singh Rajputs sister, on Wednesday in connection with the case. An FIR was filed by Sushant Singh Rajputs father against actor Rhea Chakraborty in Bihar on Tuesday. Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai residence on June 14. According to the Maharashtra Police, statements of 41 people, including filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, film critic Rajeev Masand, director-producer Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and filmmaker Aditya Chopra have been recorded in the investigation so far. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajput case: Former bodyguard makes shocking claims against Rhea Chakraborty SYNOPSIS: This article explains the legal framework of inter-country adoption in terms of international law. This article also explores the concept of transnational adoption from Indian perspective. INTRODUCTION: Adoption can be defined as a legal process that terminates the legal rights and obligations of the child towards the biological parents and replaces the same rights and obligations towards the adoptive parents. Adoption establishes a parent-child relationship among those not so related by the birth of the child. For the abandoned children, adoption means a balanced physical and psychological family environment, and parents-to-be have the opportunity to become parents and experience family growth. This is one of the ways to solve the problems of the destitute and orphans. It is also a way to meet the interests of a person without children. It is common in all parts of the world. Adoption has been prevailing in India for centuries. Even great epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata depict adoption. The practice of adoption has been practiced for centuries, but the concept of international adoption is a relatively new concept. Although Hindus from the Vedic era to the present day, have always desired to have natural born son for the spiritual benefit and the continuation of lineage, yet right from the Vedic age, the existence of secondary sons in one form or the other has been recognised. Yet, the existence of another son in form of secondary son has been recognized. Most of these ideas for secondary sons became obsolete over time, and in the British era there were only natural and adopted sons. This adoption agency has become international. International adoption can be defined as adoption of a child by a person belonging to another country. International adoption may be a more practical option for many families than domestic adoption, especially for those looking to adopt a healthy child. It should be borne in mind that this type of adoption includes Trans-racial, Trans-cultural and Trans -national aspects, so therefore care has to be taken that the process of solving the problems of such children may not land them in more difficulties arising on the wake of maladjustment in the new atmosphere. INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK: Globally, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the main text for setting standards for adoption. International adoption is specifically regulated by the 1993 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-country Adoption (the 'HC), which has been ratified by about 90 countries. International legislators' approach to adoption changed in the late 20th century due to serious concerns about the misuse of adoption at the time. Article 21 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child includes the obligation to 'ensure that the child concerned in inter-country adoption enjoys safeguards and standards equivalent to those existing in the case of national adoption. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the authority overseeing compliance with the Convention, expresses concern about violations of inter country adoption standards in many countries and urges all countries involved in international adoption to ratify The Hague Convention as a solution to the problem. The Hague Convention has two main purposes, both unequivocally aimed at protecting children from illegal adoption practices in different countries, rather than encouraging such practices: 1. 'to establish safeguards to ensure that inter-country adoption takes place in the best interests of the child and with respect for his or her fundamental rights as recognized in international law; and 2. 'to establish a system of cooperation among Contracting States to ensure that those safeguards are respected and thereby prevent the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children. Besides the CRC and HC, there are several international laws that protect the rights of children in terms of international adoption. These include the European Convention on Adoption of Children, 1967, Inter-American Convention on Conflict of Laws Concerning the Adoption of Minors, 1984, and the European Convention on the Exercise of Childrens Rights (ECECR). ADOPTION FROM NON-HAGUE CONVENTION COUNTRIES: Despite the existence of the HC, most Countries have not yet signed it, so many international adoptions take place outside the framework of the Convention. The procedures in the non-signatory countries are not very strict. With this in mind, non-signatories are attracting more and more people seeking inter-country adoption. For example, ICA in Ethiopia has continued to grow significantly over the past decade, from a few hundred per year at the start to over 4,000 in 2009. LAWS OF ADOPTION IN INDIA: Internationally, India has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Convention on International Adoption. The main laws adopted in India under the Hindu system are contained in the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 (HAMA). The 2000, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act and all amending Acts (2006, 2010 upto 2015) guarantee those rights to adopted children which are recognized by the Hague Convention. However, the 2000 law did not define adoption, and the term was included in the 2006 amendment. This was a major development as up till now adoption by a non-Hindu was guided by the Guardians and the Wards Act, 1890. Minority castes such as Christians, Muslims or Parsis did not recognize adoption hence the adoptive parents had to remain as guardians to their adopted children as per the Guardian and Wards Act, 1890. CONCEPT OF INTER-COUNTRY ADOPTION IN INDIA: The issue of validity of inter-country adoption was first discussed in the famous case of Re Rasiklal Chhaganlal Mehta, in 1956. The Court ruled that inter-country adoptions under Section 9(4) of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 should be legally valid under the laws of both the countries. Adoptive parents must comply with their country's adoption laws and must obtain approval for adoption from the competent authorities so that children do not suffer in immigration and obtaining citizenship in the adoptive parent's country. The Supreme Court of India has formulated guidelines for inter-country adoption for the benefit of the Indian government. The guidelines were framed in the public interest litigation petition "Laxmi Kant Pandey v. Union of India". Regulatory body CARA (Central Adoption Agency) was recommended and accordingly established in 1989 by the Government of India. What is Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA)? CARA is an autonomous agency set up under the Ministry of Women and Child Development that deals with adoption issues in intra-country as well as inter-country adoptions. The CARA guidelines stipulate that foreign partners wishing to adopt children in India must be sponsored by a government-approved child welfare agency or a social agency in the country where the foreign spouse lives. The CARA guidelines also state that domestic adoption is preferred first. According to the CARA guidelines, only three types of children are recognized as adoptable: Those children who have been surrendered. Those who are abandoned. Those who are orphans and are under the care of some specialized adoption agency. These guidelines also stipulate that all child Care Institutions (CCIs) must be registered under the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2006 pursuant to section 34 (3). The state recognizes suitable CCIs as specialized adoption agencies pursuant to section 41 (4) of the Juvenile Justice Amendment Act 2006. The specialized adoption agencies can turn into agencies for inter-country adoption only when they have proper infrastructure for normal adoptable children as well as children with special needs, and have quality child care services. In addition, it must meet all the requirements of the CARA. Since then, the agency has played a key role in defining the rules, both substantive and procedural, in terms of inter as well as in country adoptions. This rule was legally recognized following its adoption by the central government under Rule 33 (2) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Rules, 2007 and is now being applied and adopted throughout the country, having also been adopted and notified by several states under the Rules framed by the states in exercise of the Rule making power under Section 68 of the JJ Act, 2000. In Mr. Craig Allen Coates v. State through Indian Council for Child Welfare and Welfare Home for Children the Court ruled that where the adoptive parents fail to establish clearly the motive for adopting a child from another country, then the adoption process would be barred and be declared as mala fide and that CARA should ensure more stricter guidelines in this regard. One of the most important issues of international adoption is finding prospective adoptive parents, especially from India. The Supreme Court of India, in the Karnataka State Council for Child Welfare v. Society of Sisters of Charity St Gerosa Convent, acknowledges that the reason for seeking Indian parents or parents of Indian origin is to ensure the welfare of the children so that they grow up in an Indian environment to help preserve their culture and heritage. The best interests of children are main and primary concern. The Punjab and Haryana High Court in a recent judgement allowed a three-year-old child, adopted in 2018 by a Sikh woman who is a British national, to fly to United Kingdom with her to join the rest of the family. Justice Kaur in the ruling said JJ Act is special law for a limited class of children those in conflict with law, in need of care and protection and protection, orphaned, surrendered or abandoned but the child in this case is being given by the biological mother to her sister. 'The submission made by Amicus Curiae makes sense as it is not understood as to how an Act, which is applicable to a special class of children, namely, orphans, abandoned, surrendered and in conflict with the law, be also applied alongwith all its tedious procedures to children being given in adoption by able, mentally sound parents and that too to a relative directly. More so, when they are close relatives, said the court. PROBLEMS ARISING IN CASE OF INTER-COUNTRY ADOPTION: Child Trafficking: The biggest threat to adopted children is child trafficking. Lack of awareness of the legal process for international adoption has led to many fake adoption agencies being set-up. Children are trafficked overseas by, providing false information, fake documents and making use of loopholes in the adoption guidelines prescribed by the Supreme Court. Post-adoption negligence: Tracking adoptions becomes more difficult when children are surrendered to adoption in different countries. CARA guidelines describe the role of Indian diplomatic missions, foreign accreditation agencies and social workers in protecting children from child abuse after adoption, but in practice they have not helped anyone. Post-Adoption Identity Problem: For transnational adoption, adoptive parents must complete the adoption process on their own after entering their country, they have to take the child out of the country as legal guardian first. The situation becomes very bad if the legal guardian is not the child's adoptive parent. Guidelines lack force of law: CARA guidelines are often not legally effective. Therefore, if an ordinary citizen is not a member or belongs to a country that has withdrawn from the Convention, the parties are not required to follow the instructions or laws of India. This guidelines does not guarantee the health, safety and well-being of the children after they leave India. Since the CARA guidelines mention nothing about any penal actions against unrecognized adoption agencies, child trafficking in the name of inter-country adoption has gotten an easy way out. RECOMMENDATIONS: International adoption should be handled with great care as it can lead to child trafficking, exploitation of children and sexual abuse of children. Some recommendations are: CARA should get two chapters that separately deal with in County and intra country adoption. If the authorities do not comply with the rules and regulations, a crime case be considered. The Approval Process for Adoption Agencies must be made stricter. Awareness programmes should be arranged for the poor, needy women and parents in case they want to give their child up for adoption, to go through the correct legal procedures rather than becoming the victims of touts. CONCLUSION: Transnational adoption is a great way to start a new life for children and adoptive parents. However, without a proper structure for adoption, this would violate the rights of the child. India also needs better policies and laws to deal with international adoptions. It is important to ensure the safety of child not only within the country, but also when the child leave the country after adoption. ENDNOTES: D. Howe, P. Sawbridge, and D. Hennings, 'Half a Million Women, New York: Penguin, 1992. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 21(c). Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 20. Hague Convention, Preamble and Article 1. Hague Convention, Article 4. Hague Convention, Article 4 (d) Hague Convention, Article 30 Special Commission on the Practical Operation of the Hague Convention of 29 May 1993. https://travel.state.gov/content/adoptionsabroad/en/about-us/statistics.html http://www.lawctopus.com/academike/inter-country-adoption/ http://trackthemissingchild.gov.in/trackchild/readwrite/JJAct_2015.pdf Recommendation concerning the application to refugee children and other internationally displaced children of the Hague Convention of 29 May 1993, adopted 21 October 1994. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/three-yr-old-punjab-kid-adopted-by-britons-wins-legal-battle-to-get-indian-passport-fly-to-uk-6528076/ 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 Shalini Kashyap Join LAWyersClubIndia's network for daily News Updates, Judgment Summaries, Articles, Forum Threads, Online Law Courses, and MUCH MORE!!" Tags : others While Kuwait largely recovered from the first Gulf War, many believe invasion opened door to decades of devastation. In the early hours of August 2, 1990, Iraqs army under President Saddam Hussein launched an attack on neighbouring Kuwait. Within hours, the capital city of the small oil-rich country had fallen, while Kuwaits head of state, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, had fled to Saudi Arabia. When I heard the news that morning, I was overcome by an overwhelming sense of pain and despair, said Subhi Tawfiq, a retired general of the Iraq army at the time. It was a dreadful day for both Gulf countries, but definitely the beginning of the end for Iraq, he said, recalling the events 30 years ago. Nothing has been the same again. Expansionist agenda Although Iraq and Kuwait had decades-old border disputes, the two countries became close allies during the formers 1980s war against Iran. Kuwait provided Iraq much needed funding in the form of loans for military equipment during the eight-year conflict. But after the Iraq-Iran war ended in 1988, Iraq, economically exhausted and laden with enormous debt, needed more financial assistance. It had its eyes on Kuwaits massive oil resources and expected it to forgive its debt. Soon after Kuwait rejected its request to forgo the loans, Baghdad launched its offensive. Weeks later, Hussein had annexed Kuwait and pronounced it Iraqs 19th province. From Kuwaits perspective, Iraq has always harboured an expansionist agenda towards Kuwait and their invasion fit into that agenda, said Dania Thafer, director of the Gulf International Forum. Many in Kuwait also argued that the invasion was largely motivated by Iraqs desire to control Kuwaits large oil reserves, she added. Operation Desert Storm The invasion was met with swift condemnation by the international community which moved to isolate Iraq politically and economically. On August 6, the UN Security Council (UNSC) demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It also slapped a trade, financial and military embargo on Baghdad. But by late November, Kuwait was still under Iraqi occupation. The UNSC then authorised the use of all necessary means to force Iraq out of Kuwait if its troops did not withdraw by January 15, 1991. In the meantime, US President George Bush sent troops to Saudi Arabia and assembled a US-led international coalition with the goal of intervening if the deadline was not met. As the deadline passed with Hussein refusing to retreat, the US-led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm on January 17, 1991, with the fierce bombardment of targets in both Kuwait and Iraq. The 43-day operation ended on February 27 after a 100-hour ground offensive forced Iraq to withdraw its troops. After nearly a seven-month occupation, Iraq had finally accepted all UN resolutions but only after suffering thousands of military and civilian casualties and extensive damage to its infrastructure. In Kuwait, meanwhile, entire neighbourhoods had been destroyed, hundreds of Kuwaitis were killed or tortured and most of its oil wells had been set alight. Saddam two-day operation to invade Kuwait turned into a seven-month occupation and, for many Iraqis, opened the door to 30 years of devastation which is still ongoing [File: Christophe Simon/AFP] Iraq brought to its knees Shortly after the cessation of hostilities, Sheikh al-Sabah returned to rebuild and recover a shattered Kuwait. Some analysts argue Kuwait never fully returned to its prewar opulence. Still, the small Gulf state eventually regained domestic harmony despite resentment among some Kuwaitis against the US operations and towards those who fled the country during the war. Kuwait also preserved its international standing, especially after parliament was restored following a 1992 election, explained Courtney Freer, an expert on Gulf states and research fellow at the London School of Economics Middle East, adding that the invasion solidified feelings of nationalism and loyalty to the ruling family. For Iraq, however, the invasion opened the door to decades of devastation. In 2003, a US-led invasion devastated the country and was followed by a bloody sectarian conflict and the emergence of ISIL (ISIS) that seized large swaths of the countrys territory between 2014 and 2017. Until today, the country suffers from a lack of basic services and deep-rooted corruption amid growing anger over a sectarian ruling elite that has done little to alleviate the suffering of common Iraqis. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was a dreadful day for both Gulf countries, but it was definitely the beginning of the end for Iraq. Retired Iraqi army general Subhi Tawfiq Instead of gaining access to Kuwaits oil reserves or becoming a more strategic regional power, Iraq emerged from the war a pariah state led by what the international community now considered a rogue actor. Iraq left the war weaker economically, politically, and militarily. Moreover, the neighbouring GCC states and Iran had developed antagonistic relations with Iraq, making Iraq politically isolated in the region, explained Thafer, using the acronym for the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional bloc comprising of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iraqis also continued to suffer under crippling sanctions and years of embargo imposed by the UN. The sanctions and isolation brought Iraq to its knees. After the war, my whole monthly salary a substantial income at the time could barely buy me a pack of cigarettes, recalled the retired army general Tawfiq. That invasion destroyed Iraq. Things only got from bad to worse, he added. Solidified US presence in Gulf A major long-term effect of the Gulf War was that it paved the way for greater US security and military presence in the region. Although US involvement in the war came on the heels of a request from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states for military assistance to curb Iraqi expansionism in the region, Washington had its own clear interests. Bush was scared that Saudi Arabia and other GCC states could be next which would effectively cause disruption in oil production thereby causing a ripple-effect for economies across the globe, said Thafer. Additionally, the Gulf War provided a geostrategic opportunity to expand US military presence in the Gulf region and solidify its position as a superpower, she added. The US benefitted economically from its expanded security role in the Gulf. Defence and military trade increased as the US began having more military-to-military cooperation with the GCC states. The Gulf War provided a geostrategic opportunity to expand US military presence in the Gulf region and solidify its position as a superpower. Dania al-Thafer, director of the Gulf International Forum Freer agreed: The war arguably justified a larger US military footprint on the Arabian Peninsula, with large bases in Kuwait, Qatar and a naval base in Bahrain, since the invasion had revealed vulnerability of the smaller states in the region. It also set the stage for the US-led invasion of Iraq more than 10 years later. Unsurprisingly to many, tens of thousands of US troops assembled in Kuwait before the start of the operations, with Kuwait serving as a bridgehead for the US military occupation of Iraq. According to Freer, the USs successful involvement in the first Gulf War emboldened its decision to invade Iraq in 2003. There was a sense of unfinished business, since US involvement did not lead to regime change in Iraq something that the first Bush administration wanted but did not impose, said Freer. Since the end of the first Gulf War, there have been major signs of mending regional and global relations with Iraq. Several global powers supported Iraq in a military operation against the ISIL until Baghdads victory against the armed group in 2017. Furthermore, several Gulf states provided financial support for the post-ISIL rebuilding efforts and have since shown growing interest in boosting bilateral relations. Notably, Kuwait also dedicated $30bn aid in 2018 to help Iraq but 30 years on, the memory of the devastating war still haunts many in both Kuwait and Iraq. Night Curfew in Maharashtra: Check guidelines, rules; what is allowed, what is not allowed Maharashtra govt trying to frustrate probe against former minister Anil Deshmukh: CBI to SC Maharashtra likely to see rise in COVID-19 hospitalisations by Jan-end or early Feb Sushant's death case: Maha govt files caveat in actress Rhea Chakrabortys plea in SC India pti-PTI New Delhi, July 31: Maharashtra government on Friday filed a caveat in Supreme Court, seeking to be heard before any order is passed in actress Rhea Chakraborty's plea for transfer of the FIR from Patna to Mumbai. Sushant Singh Rajput's death probe: Why Maharashtra and Bihar police are locking horns|Oneindia News Maharashtra government's moves comes a day after Bihar government and the father of Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput moved the top court by filing caveats to ensure that actress Rhea Chakraborty does not get the relief of transfer of the case, without they being heard. Sushant Rajput death: Ball in SCs court as Bihar, Maharashtra police fight it out "We have filed a caveat in the Supreme Court in actress Rhea Chakraborty's transfer plea," Maharashtra government standing counsel Sachin Patil said. Caveat is a pre-emptive legal measure taken to ensure that a party does not get any favourable order without a notice or a hearing accorded to the opponent. The caveats were filed by the two state governments and Krishna Kishore Singh, father of the late actor, after Chakraborty, the rumoured girlfriend of Rajput, had moved the top court seeking transfer of the FIR lodged at Patna to Mumbai for the offence of abetment of suicide. In her plea, Rhea has alleged that actor Sushant Singh Rajput's father has used his "influence" in roping her in the FIR lodged at Patna in Bihar accusing her of abetment of suicide of his son. Rajput, aged 34, was found hanging from the ceiling of his apartment in suburban Bandra in Mumbai on June 14 and since then the Mumbai police has been probing the case keeping in mind various angles. The allegations in the FIR lodged at Patna against Rhea "reflect the influence" of Rajput's father in illegally roping her in the case, said the petition filed by her on Wednesday seeking transfer of the FIR from Patna to Mumbai, On Thursday, Rajput''s father filed the caveat through lawyer Nitin Saluja after getting the advice of family advocate Vikas Singh and urged the court that "Let nothing be done in the above matter without prior notice to the undersigned." Senior advocate Vikas Singh had said that Chakraborty'''s plea in the Supreme Court seeking transfer of an FIR from Patna indicated that "somebody in Mumbai police was helping her." Bihar government, which has given a new twist to the ongoing probe of the Mumbai police by lodging an FIR at the instance of Rajput''s father for offences like criminal conspiracy and abetment of suicide against Rhea, followed the suit and filed the caveat in the apex court through its lawyer Keshav Mohan. The Bihar government and the father of Rajput have been made parties to the transfer petition filed by Rhea Chakraborty in the apex court. In a related development, the top court on Thursday had junked a PIL, filed by one Alka Priya, seeking transfer of probe into Rajput''s death case from Mumbai police to the CBI. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said that Mumbai police be allowed to do the job and if there is something, then a plea be filed before the Bombay High Court. "Go to Bombay High Court if you have anything concrete to show," the court said while dismissing the PIL. Rajput's father, on July 25, had lodged the FIR at Rajiv Nagar police station in Patna against Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, accusing them of abetting the actor''''s suicide. It led Chakraborty to rush to the top court to seek transfer of Patna FIR to Bandra in Mumbai. U.S. Slaps Sanctions On Chinese Entity, Individuals Over Rights Abuses In Xinjiang By RFE/RL July 31, 2020 The United States says it has imposed sanctions on a Chinese government entity and two current or former officials for their alleged involvement in "serious rights abuses" against Uyghurs and other mainly Muslim ethnic groups in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. These designations include the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), the Treasury Department said on July 31, describing the entity as "a paramilitary organizationthat is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party" and "enhances internal control over the region by advancing China's vision of economic development." The two newly sanctioned individuals include Peng Jiarui, the deputy party secretary and commander of the XPCC, and Sun Jinlong, a former political commissar of the XPCC. The action freezes any U.S. assets of the company and officials, and prohibits Americans from doing business with them. "As previously stated, the United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers accountable in Xinjiang and across the world," Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement. The move comes amid a deterioration of relations between the United States and China, and an intensifying U.S. effort to pressure Beijing over gross human rights abuses reported in the Xinjiang region. Beijing is accused of placing more than 1 million Uyghurs and members of other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in internment camps and prisons where, since early 2017, they have been physically abused, subjected to ideological discipline, and forced to denounce their religion and language. China says the camps are reeducation and training centers needed to combat separatist terrorism and extremism. Founded in the 1950s, the XPCC initially settled demobilized soldiers on work farms in Xinjiang, and gradually came to run a vast amount of farmland, as well as businesses in areas including real estate, insurance, and cement. Experts say the organization, which is said to number more than 3 million people, has administrative authority over several cities and is almost entirely made up of Han Chinese. Chen Quanguo, the current first political commissar of the XPCC and Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, was sanctioned by Washington earlier this month. With reporting by AFP and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-slaps-sanctions-on -chinese-entity-individuals-over-rights -abusrs-in-xinjiang/30759265.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 Todays Headlines The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. Email address By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Representative image The great rings of Operation Uranus closed around GermanysSixth Army on November 19, 1942, the armies of General Georgi Zhukov encircling the flower of the Wehrmacht in the epic battle that doomed Third Reich. Four weeks later, the German diplomat Peter Keist welcomed a visitor into his room at the Strand Hotel in downtown Stockholm. Ernst Clauss a German-Baltic businessman of uncertain nationality and even less-clear business had arrived with a message from the Soviet Unions secret police: the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin wanted to discuss peace. Even in the midst of a war for existential survival, which claimed the lives of millions of people, the adversaries had sought to keep their options open just as generations of diplomats had done from the times of Genghis Khans conquest of Khwarazmia to the Cold War. New Delhi could do worse than draw some lessons from this history for its Pakistan policy, and keep implements other than the hammer in its strategic toolbox. For weeks now, rumours have proliferated in New Delhis diplomatic and policy communities on the existence of a secret India-Pakistan diplomatic channel on Kashmir. The more colourful variants of the story place National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on secret flights to Islamabad; the more mundane ones involve negotiations involving high officials in London and Washington. From the fate of Kashmir, the future of Afghanistan, and to the trial of Kulbhushan Jadhav, incarcerated in Pakistan on espionage chargeseverything is claimed to have been discussed. There is not surprisingly not the slightest shred of evidence that such a channel in fact exists, but the persistence of the rumours tells us something important: the cul-de-sac India-Pakistan relations have reached is causing real concern. Faced with a crisis along the Line of Actual Control with China, the argument goes, theres good reason for India to quietly explore if it can ensure the borders with Pakistan stay quiet. Ever since he ordered cross-Line of Control military strikes in 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pursued what might be called a strategy of deterrence-through-uncertainty. The prime ministers strategy The strategy has had significant dividends: There hasnt been a single significant jihadist attack in India, outside of Jammu and Kashmir, since 2016, even though its clear that Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate retains the capacity to stage them through its proxies. Indeed, Afghanistans intelligence services claim that the ISI was even running a cell in Nangarhar, led by Kashmiri jihad commander Abdul Gani Dar, to train Indian jihadists. Yet, the strategy also has its limitations. Following the 2018 bombing of a Jaish-e-Muhammad facility in Balakote, Pakistan hit back, bombing Indian military targets in Rajouri. The apparent Pakistani willingness to escalate surprised many in New Delhi, who believed Islamabad would react, as in 2016, by doing nothing. For every Diwali teen-patti player, the strategic dilemma Prime Minister Modi is confronted with will be evident: He has no way to know, for certain, whether the other side is bluffing about the cards it holds when it raises the stakes, and must beware the potential costs if they arent. Add to this dilemma the so-called Commitment Trap. Having responded to past terrorist attacks with force, Prime Minister Modis supporters expect similar muscular action in the future, too. The prime minister, though, knows all military action involves risks. Every attack across the Line of Control involves rolling the dice, and misjudgments, miscalculations or even pure bad luck could lead events in a dark direction. Talking, as the historian Vojtech Mastny pointed out and generations of Indian diplomats dealing with Pakistan have learned the hard way, doesnt guarantee good outcomes either. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayees much-hailed bus journey to Pakistan in 1998 ended, to his embarrassment, in Kargil. But negotiation can be one of several tools to manage risk and that, in the final analysis, is what statecraft is all about. In the event New Delhi and Islamabad do decide to talk or are already talking a map to guide the path already exists. At a May 27, 2014, meeting, outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave Prime Minister Modi a set of unsigned notes, containing records of secret negotiations to seal a Kashmir deal with Pakistans former military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. In essence, the deal involved autonomy for Kashmir in return for the Line of Control becoming a permanent border. New Delhi remains sceptical New Delhi might not be willing to countenance autonomy for Kashmir today but its possible Pakistans army chief, General Qamar Bajwa, might be willing to discuss options. Among the ideas floated during these negotiations was hiving off Gilgit a region Islamabad has long claimed sovereignty over, arguing it seceded from undivided Kashmir prior to independence from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. India, in turn, was to closely integrate Ladakh. Events in both countries have resulted in exactly that outcome: Ladakh became a Union Territory last year, and Gilgit is in the midst of a political process that could lead it to become the fifth province of Pakistan. In meetings with British diplomats, General Bajwa is also believed to have asserted his commitment to peace, noting that Islamabad had not escalated support to jihadists after India rolled-back Kashmirs special status last year. New Delhi is more than entitled to be sceptical of these promises; similar professions, after all, were made just before the Kargil war and 26/11. The fact is, however, that Kashmiri jihadists are under-trained and grossly under-equipped. This suggests the ISI has gone at least some way in turning-off the terror pipeline. Prime Minister Singhs hand-picked envoy, Ambassador Satinder Lambah, and General Musharrafs interlocutors, Ambassadors Riaz Muhammad Khan and Tariq Aziz, held over 200 hours of discussions on the draft agreement, during 30 meetings held in Dubai and Kathmandu. Lambah was also flown to Rawalpindi on a Research and Analysis Wing jet as negotiations reached an advanced stage, travelling without a passport or visa to ensure the meetings remained secret. For Prime Minister Modi, the risks of authorising such an enterprise will be evident. His expansive investment in the relationship with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, after all, brought no real dividends, and ended with the Pakistan Army organising an informal coup detat against his negotiating partner. There are, however, clear incentives to take a chance. In Kashmir, violence persists at levels not dissimilar to those seen in every year since 2014 levels not intense enough to threaten India seriously, but adequate to bog down the administration and political system. Troops along the Line of Control continue to trade fire on a near-daily basis, an expensive exercise which history demonstrates has done little to deter cross-border terrorism. Neither New Delhi nor Islamabad is any closer, today, to a decisive victory in Kashmir, than they were in 2014. Will talking work? If past history is a guide, probably not but probably is not certainly. Although the passions aroused during the savage struggle ruled out genuine reconciliation, the historian Vojtech Mastny has written of Stalins secret outreach to Nazi Germany, the enormous exertion of both belligerents was conducive to comparing the assets of imperfect peace with the liabilities of elusive victory. The time has come for such a dispassionate analysis to begin in both New Delhi and Islamabad. Every week our Holiday Hero Neil Simpson takes an in-depth look at a holiday topic, doing all the legwork so you dont have to. This week: attractions where rain wont stop play this summer. A staycation inevitably means facing Britains wayward weather head-on, but attractions all across the country are now reopening and ready for those rainy days when the beach is not an option. And with experiences ranging from the thrilling to the fascinating, were not just talking theme parks. Wet and wild: Learn new skills at The Wave surf centre in Bristol However, many have had to cut visitor numbers because of social distancing restrictions. On the plus side, this will mean they will be less crowded and guided tours should feel more personal. But it also means booking may be essential, so check before you turn up. Here are seven of the top wet-weather options. Step into the Stone Age amid the stalactites and stalagmites of Kents Cavern in Torquay. Small guided tours take you through a labyrinth of caves formed 2.5 million years ago, where youll pass skeletons of Ice Age animals and experience the big blackout in the deepest chamber (kents-cavern.co.uk). Some cities were built on coal, steel or wool. York was built on chocolate. Get a taste at Yorks Chocolate Story and see why the rivalry between Joseph Rowntree and George Cadbury inspired Roald Dahls Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Expect fun facts, including theories of why the chocolate apple didnt succeed but the chocolate orange did. You still get to taste the goodies, but now theyre wrapped in takeaway bags (yorkschocolatestory.com). Pick up the pace in the Lake District at the Lakeland Motor Museum where theres a replica of Donald Campbells 1967 jet hydroplane Bluebird K7. He set seven water speed world records in it before his final, fatal attempt on nearby Coniston Water. The full story of speed is told through dozens of classic cars and motorbikes at the museum. Or look at caravans from the 1940s on to see how staycations have changed (lakelandmotormuseum.co.uk). Gin-lovers can enjoy complimentary cocktails in Hampshire at the end of the Bombay Sapphire Distillery Tour. Guides explain how ten ingredients and an infusion process fill its distinctive blue bottles. A world of chocolate fun: You still get to taste the goodies at Yorks Chocolate Story, but now theyre wrapped in takeaway bags Visitors also go inside the sites glasshouses, one of the countrys lesser-known architectural wonders, which were designed by Thomas Heatherwick, the man behind the cauldron at the London 2012 Olympic Games. bombaysapphire.com Theres more stunning architecture in Hull where you can dive down into The Deep, one of the worlds most spectacular aquariums. Its corals, tropical fish and turtles can help if youre really missing that Caribbean holiday. Want to help preserve the oceans? Head to the gift shop or go online for reusable face coverings painted with sharks, rays and turtles (thedeep.co.uk). Dinosaurs and Derry Girls compete for attention in Belfast at the newly reopened Ulster Museum. The former are represented in a selection of 70 million-year-old teeth and bones, plus an impression of dinosaur skin thats so rare it attracts visitors from around the globe. The Derry Girls, stars of the Channel 4 sitcom, pop up in the Culture Lab exhibition that explores the citys resurgence (nmni.com). Finally, if dont mind getting really wet, head to Bristol and ride The Wave. The inland surfing lake features environmentally friendly turbines that can roll out waves from 2ft to 6ft to suit beginners and experts alike. Wetsuits, boots and boards are provided, and families can book group lessons (thewave.com). One way or another, the world is changing and those who fail to get on board will be left behind. That was the stark message from participants in two virtual forums this week that addressed the pervasive issue of anti-Black and Indigenous racism and its many toxic offshoots. The first an interview with author/activist Desmond Cole hosted by the Kitchener Public Library focused on defunding police and painted a dire picture of life for racialized communities if local politicians dont do something besides bleed empathy and hold more consultations. The second an anti-racism town hall hosted by the Region of Waterloo that garnered criticism for failing to weed out non-racialized speakers and insisting that people of colour relive personal trauma in a public setting showed how much ground there is to cover, not just to effect meaningful change, but to create a basic level of understanding. I think it could be seen as challenging, as well as less legitimate and disrespectful, to allow individuals who dont have experience of these particular life and death issues when it comes to racism, to weigh in on how to dismantle a persistent system which literally benefits them, noted community activist Ruth Cameron, an advisory member of the African, Caribbean and Black Network of Waterloo Region. Cameron, who speaks in carefully modulated sentences that say precisely what she means, is a formidable presence, an astutely determined anti-racism advocate who quietly but firmly holds her ground in the face of adversity. If youre a member of regional council, you need her on your side. And not just her. Once again theres this creation of a trap where the first step in tackling anti-racism work begins with placing the burden of proof on BIPOC individuals, noted Lang Ncube, referring to Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities. Like Cameron, Ncube is an advisory member with the ACB network. Its insulting that we have to sit here and prove that racism exists through our experiences when the proof presents itself every single day. Its been well documented, she pointed out, that racism impacts my Black life within health care, education, employment, housing, economic mobility and every other facet of our society. What we need to shift our focus to now is: Where do we go from here? The forums marginalized voices were powerful: stories of neglect and despair, harassment and surveillance, condescension and exclusion in a region that prides itself on being a bastion of fair-minded inclusivity. Well, thats the white narrative. As anyone who tuned in to these public forums could quickly discern, the regions racialized communities especially Black and Indigenous experience life in a much different way. We are people, noted Marjorie Knight, a Cambridge resident of Jamaican descent, trying to squeeze a lifetime of pain into the allotted 10 minutes. We live our lives, strive to succeed and were held back at every level. If our children cannot succeed in school, they will not succeed in work or get what they want in life. You could see a clear divide between younger advocates for change whose palpable urgency spilled from every emotional declaration and those who have endured racist slings and arrows for a lifetime and speak in a tone of grim resignation. The younger generation is tired of us, noted Carl Cadogan, executive director of Reception House Waterloo Region, noting he is himself sick and tired of being sick and tired. They havent seen a lot of changes in the last 30 years. Theyre not as patient as we are. What was striking is how tragically similar these narratives were, a shocking window into a toxic alternate reality most white people dont know exists. These were not radicals or agitators making outrageous demands, unless you consider heartfelt pleas for basic human rights outrageous. These were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, educated and not, whose lives have been traumatized by white-centric institutions especially police that are blissfully unaware of the harm they inflict, or simply dont care. White privilege versus scorched-earth survival. As author/activist Cole pointed out earlier in the week, racism didnt fall from the sky two months ago when George Floyd had his life snuffed out by Minneapolis police. It was just the first time many in the white majority bothered to pay attention. There are a lot of questions right now, notes Ncube, who emerged from the regions forum feeling that even if the structure was flawed, important voices had been heard. But the region prides itself on being innovative, so we have the perfect opportunity of creating and re-envisioning models that can work. Should politicians choose to deflect, defer and delay as the regional Titanic veers into another consultation iceberg or issue claims of Sorry, its not our jurisdiction its hard to predict what will happen next. During his talk about defunding police and replacing them with a community-friendly model that doesnt target Black and Indigenous people Cole didnt pull any punches about one possible option. Local politicians who say they dont have jurisdiction over policing are lying, he insisted of a complicated system that sees provincial oversight of regional budgeting decisions. If they were really concerned about jurisdiction they would make a huge amount of noise to the provincial and federal government. It is their responsibility, if they believe what were telling them, to show us the legal pathway to get it done. The problem is, they dont believe what were telling them, so there needs to be more agitation and resistance. Agitation and resistance. Words with provocative connotations. Depending on how deftly politicians navigate the complex algorithms of modern-day race relations, they may become an integral part of Waterloos Regions future. She was the cute-as-a-button blonde who voiced the character of Boo in the 2001 animated hit Monster's Inc when she was just five-years-old. But the young actress who appeared in the Pixar film has stepped away from the spotlight following a health battle and has now transformed into a bodybuilder. 'I have dreadlocks and tattoos now, so (I look) very different,' Mary Gibbs, 24, told hosts Kylie Gillies and Larry Emdur while doing a live cross to The Morning Show from her home in Pasadena, USA on Friday. All grown up! Mary Gibbs was the adorable five-year-old who voiced the role of Boo in the 2001 smash hit Monster's Inc (left) but now she is a 24-year-old bodybuilder with dreadlocks (right) Mary revealed it was actually a complete accident that she went on to star in the film alongside veteran actors Billy Crystal and John Goodman. 'My dad was a storyboard artist on the movie. Originally, they just needed a little girl to draw. So he brought me in just for that,' she explained. 'As the movie progressed, they needed someone for scratch dialogue. But the directors thought I was doing great and wanted to try it out for the whole movie,' she added. Starring role: In Monsters, Inc. she played Boo (pictured) who follows professional monsters Mike and Sulley back to Monstropolis after they fail to scare her Twist of fate: Mary revealed it was actually a complete accident that she went on to star in the film alongside veteran actor Billy Crystal (pictured) Mary was diagnosed with scoliosis as a teenager and went on to overhaul her life and fitness routine following major surgery. 'In 2012, I had a 10-vertebrae spinal fusion from scoliosis,' she said. But with the help of weightlifting and yoga, she was soon in better shape than ever. 'I was able to do a handstand after two months. A year later, I was able to deadlift 250 pounds,' she explained. 'Now, its definitely limitless,' she added. Overhaul: Mary was diagnosed with scoliosis as a teenager and went on to overhaul her life and fitness routine following major surgery While Mary had a small voiceover role in hit 2015 animated film Inside Out she says she has no plans to star in any future movies. In Monsters, Inc. John and Billy voiced the roles of professional monsters Sulley and Mike, who scare children to harvest power for the power plant they work at. After being unable to scare Mary's character Boo, she cheekily follows them back to Monstropolis where hilarity ensues as they try to return her home. John and Billy reunited last year to film a new animated TV series for Disney Plus called Monsters at Work which reveals what happened to their characters at the end of the original film. The Midland County Sheriffs Office and district attorneys office reported the arrests of three additional nurses Friday afternoon, bringing the total to five who have been charged in connection with the death of an inmate at the Midland County jail in July 2019. Adeola Adesomi, Lilian Okeri, Kelly Robins, Timothy Forbush, Jr. and Flor Estrada have been charged with criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and tampering with a government record, according to a joint press release from Sheriff David Criner and District Attorney Laura Nodolf. A grand jury returned indictments for the individuals on July 15, following a year-long investigation by the Texas Rangers, the release states. The inmate, 30-year-old Savion Hall, was arrested on June 21, 2019 for an alcohol or drug offense, according to a custodial death report filed with the Texas Attorney Generals Office. He died on July 19, 2019, a week after he was transferred to the hospital because of low oxygen levels. Hall had a known medical condition that affected his breathing and was receiving breathing treatments, according to the custodial death report. Estrada was the first to be arrested, and a copy of her indictment was obtained by the Reporter-Telegram Friday morning. Estrada allegedly failed to maintain proper medical records pertaining to Halls treatment, resulting in his death, her indictment states. She also allegedly made a false entry on Halls treatment flo-sheet, which would detail the date and time of any drugs administered. Hall was receiving a nebulizer treatment, according to Estradas indictment, but it does not specify what drug he was receiving or provide information about his illness. Copies of the other individuals indictments were not yet available Friday afternoon. Estrada, Forbush and Robins are being held at the county jail on $250,000 bond. Bond information for the others was not yet available. All five were contracted nurses and not county employees, according to Nodolf. 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Both Sabah chapters of Umno and Bersatu today staked claims over their rights to field candidates in the upcoming state elections, which would likely overlap. In a statement today, Sabah Bersatu head Hajiji Mohd Noor (above) said that the party has identified 45 out of 73 seats available. This included eight seats which were won on an Umno ticket in 2018, but the lawmakers have since defected to Bersatu, which did not field any candidates during the last Sabah polls. Coincidentally, Hajiji's statement followed a report by China Press citing Sabah Umno head Bung Moktar Radin stating that his party will be fielding candidates for 32 seats that "traditionally" belonged to the party. Bersatu and Umno are allied at the national level. Their relationship in Sabah is currently uncertain. Prior to the dissolution of the state assembly on Thursday, both parties were sitting on the opposition bench. Sabah Umno, according to Bung (above), will discuss seat allocation with its BN allies PBRS and MCA tomorrow, while Hajiji said Sabah Bersatu is slated to fine-tune election preparations sometime in the coming week. The Sulaman assemblyperson who defected from Umno in 2019, promised that Sabah Bersatu will hold discussions with Umno and BN to ensure a joint victory. On Sabah Bersatu's manifesto, Hajiji said it will focus on reviving the state's economy following the Covid-19 outbreak and ensuring the rights of Sabahans are protected. "We will ensure that the people of Sabah feel safe, secure and comfortable, and live harmoniously. "We are confident that Bersatu will be the best alternative (to the Warisan government) which will be accepted by the majority to lead Sabah," he added. The state election will have 73 seats up for grabs, up 13 from the polls in May 2018. Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion at this hour. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times. Eid-ul-Adha amid Covid-19: India wakes up to glimpses of Muslims offering prayers on Bakrid With lockdown restrictions eased in parts of the country, devotees were seen visiting mosques while maintaining social distancing and wearing masks as preventive measures to keep Covid-19 at bay. Read more here. Trump says hell act to ban TikTok in US as soon as Saturday As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States, Trump said. Read more here. Sushant Singh Rajputs favourite line was goosebumps aa rahe hai, would say it 5 times a day: Amit Sadh Remembering his friend Sushant Singh Rajput, Amit Sadh says his favourite line was goosebumps aa rahe hai. I think of him everytime I have goosebumps, Amit says. Read more here. Karnataka woman pawns mangalsutra to buys TV for childrens on-air classes A woman in Gadag district of Karnataka mortgaged her mangalsutra to buy a television set for her children. Watch. Facebook rolls out Messenger Rooms shortcut on WhatsApp Web After beta testing on WhatsApps mobile app, Messenger Rooms shortcut is now available on WhatsApp Web. Find out more about Messenger Rooms here. Sea otters form a raft and float in water, video is amazing Glacier Bay National Park saw otters forming a raft and float in the water. Find out more here. MS Dhoni has lost a bit of fitness, is past his best: Former BCCI selector Former India all-rounder Roger Binny feels it is time for MS Dhoni to make way for the younger generation, believing the former India captains fitness is on the wane and that he no longer is the same impact player he once was. Read more here. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON With the Chinese People's Liberation Army not showing any sign of moving out from the Finger area, the China Study Group met this week to discuss the present situation in the eastern Ladakh sector. IMAGE: Army vehicles moving from Khardung La pass in Leh. Photograph: ANI Photo The CSG includes important members of the government including external affairs minister S Jaishankar, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval along with representatives of the military and other government agencies concerned. "During the CSG meeting, held around July 28, the situation in Eastern Ladakh sector was discussed. India is now firm on the point that it will first seek complete disengagement by Chinese from all friction points including the Finger area," sources said. In the military talks, India has not been asking for de-escalation as India has also deployed close to 40,000 troops in the eastern Ladakh sector where they are facing the Chinese side. The PLA has amassed close to 40,000 troops opposite Indian territory in eastern Ladakh. The CSG is one of the topmost bodies in the government which provides directions to the military and diplomats on the stand to be taken during talks with the Chinese and also take a stand on the points and demands raised by the Chinese side. After the massive build-up by China on the Indian border, the Indian Army has also moved its mountain divisions from two locations along with armoured columns deployed around Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, the sources said. With own deployments matching the Chinese deployments, India is now not in a hurry to deescalate and wants that the Chinese should honour their commitments made during the Corps Commander-level talks held on July 14-15 and go back to their permanent locations. In the Finger area, the Chinese side had started disengagement after the last talks but the process was completely stopped after 2-3 days there. The four friction points include Patrolling Point-14, PP-15, PP-17-PP-17A and Finger area. India is preparing for the long haul as it has started stocking for the harsh winters approaching the Ladakh area. For winter deployment, the Army already has a sizeable stock of clothes and habitat for troops as the Indian army deploys troops at the world's highest battlefield Siachen glacier and is prepared. For additional requirements, the force is in the process of placing orders for additional tents and shelters from indigenous as well as foreign vendors. The time for summer stocking is on and we are going to get the additional cabins and tents by that time, the sources. Months of June, July, and August are considered to be the best time for stocking winter rations and ammunition. The snowfall is expected to start soon in the Eastern Ladakh area where the temperature is already low. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Kurt Kunz (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1 2020 Today, Switzerland celebrates its national day amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which is not only a severe health crisis but also has a deep and threatening impact on livelihoods and development prospects of people around the world. A national day is a time of reflection. Solidarity, especially in times of adversity, and broadly shared principles that guide us on our way to move forward are part of it. This year, in Indonesia, we decided to hold a virtual celebration, which is unprecedented and exciting for all of us. A crisis makes us aware of how much we depend on each other. This goes beyond national borders. The pandemic underscores the importance of a strong and reliable multilateral system, a point that was emphasized by Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations last June, when he stated that we need a coordinated response to overcome such crises together. 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 The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Fla., released the photo Graham Ivan Clark, 17, after his arrest Friday, July 31, 2020. Clark is accused of hacking Twitter, gaining access to the account of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and many others. Clark was able to scam people around the glove of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. (Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office via AP) A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen were identified by authorities Friday as the hackers who earlier this month took over Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office will prosecute him as adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, hackers sent out bogus tweets on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. "There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence," U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a news release. "Today's charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived." Although the case against the teen was also investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren explained that his office is prosecuting Clark in Florida state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate. He added that Clark was the leader of the hacking scam. "This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and he'll be prosecuted here," Warren said. Security experts were not surprised that the alleged mastermind of the hack is a 17-year-old, given the relative amateur nature both of the operation and the hackers' willingness afterward to discuss the hack with reporters online. "I think this is a great case study showing how technology democratizes the ability to commit serious criminal acts," said Jake Williams, founder of the cybersecurity firm Rendition Infosec. "I'm not terribly surprised that at least one of the suspects is a minor. There wasn't a ton of development that went into this attack." Williams said the hackers were "extremely sloppy" in how they moved the Bitcoin around. Williams said it did not appear that the three used any services that make cryptocurrency difficult to trace by "tumbling" transactions of multiple users, a technique akin to money laundering. He also said he was conflicted about whether Clark should be charged as an adult. "He definitely deserves to pay (for jumping on the opportunity) but potentially serving decades in prison doesn't seem like justice in this case," Williams said. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media company's employees into giving them access. It said hackers targeted "a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack." "This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems," the company tweeted. In this Wednesday Nov. 6, 2013, file photo, the Twitter logo appears on an updated phone post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Twitter says the hackers responsible for a recent high-profile breach used the phone to fool the social media company's employees into giving them access. The company revealed a few more details late Thursday, July 30, 2020 about the hack earlier this month, which it said targeted "a small number of employees through a phone spear phishing attack." (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter's systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington, D.C., were able to identify two of the hackers by analyzing Bitcoin transactions on the blockchainthe ledger where transactions are recordedincluding ones the hackers attempted to keep anonymous, federal prosecutors said. Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or other electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information. Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later "given the ongoing law enforcement investigation." The company has previously said the incident was a "coordinated social engineering attack" that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. It didn't provide any more information about how the attack was carried out, but the details released so far suggest the hackers started by using the old-fashioned method of talking their way past security. British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number. "When the worker called the number they might have been taken to a convincing (but fake) helpdesk operator, who was then able to use social engineering techniques to trick the intended victim into handing over their credentials," Clulely wrote Friday on his blog. It's also possible the hackers pretended to call from the company's legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said. Fazeli's father said Friday he hasn't been able to talk to his son since Thursday. "I'm 100% sure my son is innocent," Mohamad Fazeli said. "He's a very good person, very honest, very smart and loyal." "We are as shocked as everybody else," he said by phone. "I'm sure this is a mix up." Attempts to reach relatives of the other two weren't immediately successful. Hillsborough County court records didn't list an attorney for Clark, and federal court records didn't list attorneys for Sheppard or Fazeli. Explore further Twitter says hackers used phone to fool staff, gain access 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Looking for something new to stream this weekend? Nominations for the 2020 Emmy Awards are out, so why not catch up on the contenders youve missed? You can stream a number of them on Philo, a live and on-demand TV streaming service that is currently offering a 7-day free trial. Better Call Saul: AMCs Breaking Bad prequel, following the evolution of a struggling small-time lawyer with a shady past into a slick criminal defense attorney, nabbed two nominations one for Outstanding Drama Series and one to Giancarlo Esposito for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, for his role as drug kingpin Gus Fring. Killing Eve: BBC Americas dark spy thriller about the obsessive cat-and-mouse game between a British intelligence expert (Sandra Oh) and a ruthless assassin (Jodie Comer) chalked up four nominations one for Outstanding Drama Series, two for leads Comer and Oh for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and one to Fiona Shaw (a.k.a. MI6 Russia Desk head Carolyn Martens) for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Black-ish: ABCs timely comedy focuses on an affluent Black family grappling with daily life struggles and bigger sociocultural issues about race and identity. Stars Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross garnered nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series respectively for their work on past seasons of the show. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: Noah tackled the not-so-small challenge of replacing Jon Stewart as host of the news satire program on Comedy Central back in 2015 and has been gaining fans and accolades ever since among them, a 2020 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Variety Talk Series. Drunk History: Also in the running for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series, the half-hour Comedy Central series invites celebrity storytellers to knock back a few drinks, then spin a story about a notable piece of the past while guest stars attempt to re-enact it in a docudrama. RuPauls Drag Race: The now iconic VH1 show nominated for Outstanding Competition Program packs plenty of drama (and sequins) as drag queens vie for a chance to make herstory in a series of over-the-top challenges, from lip-synching to designing outrageous outfits. How can I watch Emmy Awardnominated programs on Philo? Philo currently offers 61 top-rated television channels for $20/month, plus premium add-on channels including EPIX and STARZ. In addition, Philo offers live TV, unlimited DVR, on-demand, and content from top programmers available on web browsers, iOS, iPad, FireTV, and Roku. TikTok Washington: Technology giant Microsoft is in advance talks to acquire TikTok's US operations, according to a media report, even as President Donald Trump said his administration is considering to ban the popular Chinese-owned video app. "We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok," Trump told reporters at the White House. India has banned as many as 106 Chinese apps, including TikTok, a move welcomed by both the administration and the lawmakers. Advertisement Donald Trump "We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options. But a lot of things are happening, so we'll see what happens. But we are looking at a lot alternatives with respect to TikTok," Trump said in response to a question. In recent weeks, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused TikTok of collecting personal information of Americans. "India has banned 106 Chinese apps, including TikTok that threatened its citizens' privacy and security." Advertisement Media reports also said the Trump administration will soon order ByteDance to divest of its ownership of TikTok's US operations. "In its current form, TikTok represents a potential threat to personal privacy and our national security. I applaud the Trump Administration for taking this critical step, but we must do more than simply remove ByteDance from the equation," Senator Marco Rubio said. TikTokMeanwhile, Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers calling for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Zoom and TikTok for reported violations of Americans' civil liberties and of their close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Advertisement "Based on numerous reports, we are extremely concerned that Zoom and TikTok have disclosed private information about Americans to the PRC and engaged in censorship on behalf of the Chinese government," the Senators said. "As tens of millions of Americans turn to Zoom and TikTok during the Covid-19 pandemic, few know that the privacy of their data and their freedom of expression is under threat due to the relationship of these companies to the Chinese government," they wrote. By PTI PATNA: The Mumbai Police is assisting the sleuths from Patna visiting the metropolis to probe the death of Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput, Bihar's Director General of Police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey said on Saturday, dubbing the allegations of misbehaviour as "rumours". Speaking to reporters, he said the Bihar Police is capable enough to investigate the matter and has recorded statements of a number of persons. Our team is camping in Mumbai. It has already examined and recorded the statement Rajputs close friend Mahesh Shetty. It also recorded the statement of his ex-girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, his sister Mitu Singh, cook Ashok, Niraj, and Dr Chavda (Dr Kersi Chavda), who treated Sushant for depression, Pandey said. Some more persons will be examined in connection with the alleged suicide, he added. Pandey said the Bihar Police wants all medico-legal evidence related to the case handed over to it, asserting that it will bring out the truth at the earliest. A four-member team of the state police is in Mumbai to probe the suicide after it registered an FIR at the Rajiv Nagar police station here on July 25 based on a complaint lodged by Rajput's father KK Singh. Our team had a meeting with Mumbai's Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) on Friday evening. The DCP assured of cooperation. Initially, there was some confusion and non-cooperation, Pandey told reporters here. Stating that the allegations of Mumbai Police's misbehaviour with the Bihar Police personnel were "rumours", Pandey said the local police there helped the sleuths from the eastern state reach its destinations. He said that the Mumbai Police did so as probably it did not want the Bihar Police to encounter the media. Pandey said the Bihar Police wants the forensic science laboratory reports, inquest report, post-mortem report and relevant CCTV footage in order to facilitate the probe. The Bihar Police also wants details of those who were examined by the Mumbai Police and what they have said in their statements, the top police chief said. Replying to a question, he said, Why would we ask for a CBI probe. Bihar Police is capable enough for probing the case. If needed, an IPS-rank officer may be sent to Mumbai to lead the investigation. The chorus for a CBI inquiry into the death, which happened on June 14, is growing with parties cutting across the political lines in Bihar, demanding that the central investigating agency take up the case for a fair probe. The Bihar Police team reached Mumbai on July 27 and began its probe. The FIR was lodged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including those pertaining to abetment of suicide and fraud. In his FIR, the father accused actor Rhea Chakraborty, who is said to have been in a relationship with Rajput, of having used his sons standing in Bollywood to promote her own career, trying to drive a wedge between him and his family, getting him fed with medicines for mental illness with the help of conniving doctors and blackmailing him with threats of making his medical history public to tarnish his public reputation. The bereaved father has also alleged that at least Rs 15 crore was withdrawn from his sons bank account to which Chakraborty and her family members had gained access and that barely a week before Rajput hung himself to death at his Bandra residence, the actress had visited his house and stolen his laptop, ATM card and other important documents. San Francisco, Aug 1 : Short video-sharing app TikTok is reportedly in talks to sell its US business to Microsoft. The talks are in an advanced stage, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Friday which cited people familiar with the discussions. Completion of such a transaction could make Microsoft a big player in the social media space as TikTok is hugely popular among the youth. But the app, owned by Chinese unicorn ByteDance, is facing a lot of scrutiny in the US, especially after getting hit with a ban in India in June. According to a report in The Hill, US President Donald Trump on Friday unveiled his plans to ban TikTok in the US using emergency economic powers or an executive order as early as Saturday. The app is already banned in India. The announcement made to reporters aboard Air Force One came hours after news broke about a possible transaction between Microsoft and ByteDance. The popularity of TikTok has heated up the social media war in the US with rivals like Instagram and YouTube testing services that offer TikTok-like functionalities. Earlier this week, TikTok unveiled a plan to offer creators $2 billion globally in the next three years as. The TikTok move came after the media said Instagram is reportedly offering financial incentives to some popular TikTok creators in a bid to make them use Reels, a video-music remix feature that the Facebook-owned platform plans to unveil this month in the US. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 13:26:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, July 31 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump visited the state of Florida on Friday as Hurricane Isaias is approaching its southeast coast. "It's pretty severe nevertheless. A lot of water coming in. It's approaching the Florida coast," Trump said during a roundtable with administration and state officials in Belleair, Florida. "I ask all of those in the path of the storm to follow the guidance of your state, local, and tribal officials," he added. Isaias, a Category 1 hurricane, is currently impacting The Bahamas and is expected to approach the southeast coast of Florida before tracking up the East Coast as far north as New England next week. The maximum sustained winds are near 80 mph (130 km/h) with higher gusts, according to the latest public advisory from the U.S. National Hurricane Center late Friday night. "Additional strengthening is expected through early Saturday, and Isaias is forecast to remain a hurricane for the next couple of days," the advisory said. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency on Friday for counties in the path of the hurricane. During the roundtable with Trump, DeSantis urged residents to get seven days of food, supplies, and medicine. "There could be some power outages. And it's an ongoing, very fluid situation," he said. In a tweet Friday night, the governor said he's requesting a pre-landfall emergency declaration from the White House for Florida. The hurricane will come as coronavirus infections continue to surge in the "Sunshine State," which has reported more than 470,000 cases and nearly 7,000 deaths. The number of new cases reached nearly 9,000 on Friday. Florida, Trump's home state, is widely considered a key battleground state for this year's presidential election. In 2016, Trump won Florida with a 1.2-percent margin, but most polls have shown him trailing former U.S. Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Enditem Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Kyodo News) Sapporo, Japan Sat, August 1, 2020 11:10 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ad8e1c 2 World Japan,Muslim,cemetery Free Despite a rise in the number of foreign residents in Japan who practice Islam, cemeteries offering burials in accordance with the Quran remain sparse, with Muslims struggling to gain understanding of the need for new sites from locals in a country where cremation is the norm. While Japan is home to an estimated 200,000 Muslims, a figure likely to grow as the country accepts more foreign workers, there are currently only seven locations for Islamic interment. "It would take money, time, and effort to get buried in my native country, and it isn't realistic," said a 57-year-old man from Pakistan who resides in Sapporo. The man, who came to Japan 32 years ago, is married to a Japanese woman with whom he has two children and has no plans of leaving the country. As there is a belief in the resurrection of the dead, Islam dictates that believers be buried because the soul needs to return to the physical body, according to the Japan Muslim Association. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the central government has not set regulations for burials and leaves municipalities to establish their own rules on issues such as the distance of sites from residential areas and rivers. As of fiscal 2018, over 99 percent of bodies in Japan were cremated. According to the Japan Islamic Trust, Japan has no burial sites for Muslims at all in the northeastern Tohoku region or west of the Chugoku region. "The body often must be moved to distant cemeteries, which can damage the corpse or result in high transportation fees," said the trust's director general, Qureshi Haroon. One of the seven sites is a regular cemetery in Hokkaido in the coastal town of Yoichi. But Yoichi Reien offers only very limited space for burials -- just four to five free spaces -- leaving Towfik Alam, chairman of the Hokkaido Islamic Society, "incredibly worried." Although the society had planned to create a cemetery in Otaru that would follow Hokkaido's protocols such as being at least 110 meters away from a residential area, the project was abandoned last summer after it failed to gain support from residents. Read also: 'It has even changed death': Virus disrupts burials in Turkey "Residents were worried about the hygiene of burials, among other aspects," a city spokesperson said. Meanwhile, there are plans to build a cemetery for Muslims in Oita Prefecture, but it too has been facing pushback from locals who are worried about water pollution. Hirofumi Tanada, an honorary professor at Waseda University with extensive knowledge of Japan's Muslim community, says accommodating the needs of practitioners of not just Islam but a range of religious traditions has become more important since Japan amended its immigration law last April to accept more foreign workers. "The problem regarding burials is just one example," he said. Topics : Japan Muslim cemetery An unconscious 42-year-old man was pulled from a channel in a bay near Ship Bottom Beach on Tuesday afternoon by a person on a jet ski, eyewitnesses said. The identity of the man was not immediately known by people on a reef about 400 yards off the beach who responded to help him, a man who saw the incident said. NJ Advance Media learned of the incident Thursday from a Facebook post. Ship Bottom Police confirmed that they responded to the incident to perform CPR before state police reached the scene. He was brought to the beach by a boat and was unconscious, Ship Bottom Police Director Brendan McIntyre told NJ Advance Media. We performed CPR with the lifeguards and we got a pulse back. State Police Trooper Alejandro Goez said State Police responded to the incident at a sand bar off of 17th street, but by the time a trooper arrived, the victim had already been put in an ambulance where he would be taken to Southern Ocean Medical Center in Manahawkin. Goez did not have an update on the victims condition other than the fact that he is still at the hospital as of Friday afternoon. Goez said the victim suffered a medical episode but the police report did not contain further specifics. He was unable to provide any information about the victims identity beyond his age. Ive never seen anything like it and hope to never again, said Ken Manning, 50, who was on the reef with a crowd of others who had used their boats to access the beach there. This kid on a jet ski was screaming his head off, help, help. The person on the jet ski saw the man floating unresponsively, grabbed his arm and pulled him through the water to the nearby reef, Manning said. Manning said the victim was not in good shape, when he was put on to the deck of a boat and a witness placed a phone call for help and continued CPR compression on his chest. An ambulance arrived on the beach within 10 minutes and Manning said the victim was put into a small boat and a woman driving it ran it aground on the beach, yards from the ambulance, and attendants sprinted to his aid. That kid was second to none, Manning said. There were probably 25 or 30 boats out there on the reef. There were people pumping him, holding him, holding jet skis and simply saying prayers. One human being helping out another. Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust. Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. Facing an $85 billion state deficit and $83,738 pension liability per household, the California Supreme Court denied public employee rights to engage in pension spiking. Unionized public employees in California and 12 other states had been successful over the last four decades in finding ways to artificially inflate total pay as their members approached retirement age in order to spike lifetime monthly pension payments. The 2019 compensation for the average California public sector miscellaneous employee was $99,000 in pay, plus $32,000 in benefits. Police averaged $129,000 and $52,000 in benefits; while firepersons average $162,000 and $52,000 in benefits. That contrasts with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculation that the California private sector average compensation was $61,290 in pay and $12,520 benefits. Government payments flow into public sector pension plans according to average hours worked and overtime authorized. But public sector unions have made access to overtime a right of senior employees. As a result, the highest paid employees can work enormous amounts of overtime in their final years to push up their pension pay basis. Transparent California reported that 80,500 retired California public employees received a pension of $100,000 pension last year, up 24.5 percent from the prior year. Unionized public employees in California and 12 other states had been successful over the last four decades in finding ways to artificially inflate their total pay as they approach retirement in order to spike the size of lifetime monthly pension payments. State and local governments make huge pension contributions according to average hours worked and overtime authorized. But public sector unions have made access to overtime a right of senior employees. As a result, the highest paid employees could work enormous amounts of overtime in their final years to push up pension pay. According to Transparent California, there were 80,500 retired California public employees receiving a $100,000 pension last year, up 24.5 percent from the prior year. Californias top annual pension of $416,608 went to Curtis Ishii, the 64-year former top fixed income investor for the California Public Employees Retirement System. Facing a nation-high $42 billion deficit from the Great Recession a decade ago, progressive Gov. Jerry Brown rammed a law through the state legislature in 2012 prohibiting pension spiking. But the issue has been tied up in the courts since the $8.8 billion Alameda County Employees' Retirement Association; $9.3 billion Contra Costa Employees' Retirement Association; and Merced County Employees' Retirement Association sued the state based on the state constitutions Contract Clause Referred to as the California Rule, public employees argued for 40 years that state constitutions prohibited making laws to circumvent obligation of contracts regarding earned pension benefits, no matter how the employee gammed the system to get it. With the California Supreme Court unanimously upholding the section of the law prohibiting pension spiking, the pensions for future public employee hires will now be capped at $110,000 for employees who participate in Social Security and $130,000 for fire fighters, police and teachers that do not participate in Social Security. Although state and local governments will still have to bargain with unions for current employee contribution rates, new hires will be required to pay half of the normal pension costs. Miscellaneous employees as the largest category of workers, will to wait until their 67th birthday for maximum retirement benefits, rather than the current age 62 for most workers. Future police, firefighters and prison officers will have to wait until age 57 to qualify for maximum benefits, versus age 50 for many current safety employees. Sure, it might be warm Wednesday, but what about the rest of the week? Heres some of what happened on Thursday that you might have missed. Ford Motor said it earned $1.1 billion in the second quarter as a large one-time gain in the value of its investment in an autonomous driving company more than offset losses in its main business. Without the gain, from its stake in Argo AI, Ford lost $1.9 billion excluding interest and taxes. The result was better than Fords earlier forecast of a pretax loss of $5 billion. United Airlines warned its pilots that it might need to expand planned furloughs if demand for flights remained deeply depressed and a vaccine was not mass produced by the end of next year. The airline previously said that it could furlough up to one third of its pilots, or 3,900 people, this year and next. Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S., said that Peacock, its new streaming product, attracted 10 million sign-ups in its first three months. There are two main stories at the heart of Kathleen MacMahon's third novel, Nothing But Blue Sky. One naturally muscles its way to centre stage: that of David Dowling, a television journalist whose life is torn apart when his wife, Mary Rose, is killed in a plane accident. The message here is that things can come from leftfield. Life can be business as usual and then that one-in-a-million thing can happen, and the world can capsize around you. (Don't we know it, cries the pandemic-stricken reader.) In David's case, unlikely things keep happening. His life touched by the Nice attacks, the Bataclan tragedy, the bombing of a cafe in Jemaa el-Fnaa in Morocco and more. But until the death of Mary Rose, he never considers himself vulnerable to the forces of chance. He reckons that even for those who are close to such incidents, "it was still almost impossible to beat the statistics and become the victim of a terrorist attack". His scepticism serves the purpose of making the reader believe in the often implausibly random occurrences in the book. We rail against his doubt, and nod our heads when, after Mary Rose's death, he realises: "The only number that counts is one. One person, in one place, at one moment in time." The death of a wife as the catalyst for a protagonist's inner change is a slightly "plotty" plot device, but here the world is built so carefully and the characters rendered so believably that it works. The narrative turns around David's return to Aiguaclara, a village on the Costa Brava where he and Mary Rose used to holiday each year. "The hope I had, in going back," he tells us, is that "in Aiguaclara there might be some memory of our lives together that I had until then forgotten." The Spanish village, with its "slash of sandy beach" and "shock of Batik shore" serves its purpose as a place of pilgrimage and healing. There, David reflects on his former life, discovering things he never knew or considered about his wife, and learns to come to terms with life without her, David's story, in a way, is a fairy tale. It begins with death but goes on. Following the death of Mary Rose, the things that come from leftfield are full of hope and wonder. He strikes up an unlikely friendship with a woman whose life is also marked by loss. A past lover gets in contact with life-changing news. If chance can ruin your life, it can also mend it, his story seems to say. There is optimism. There can be a happily ever after. But what of that second story, hiding modestly beneath? The story of Mary Rose. Unlike David, who is a cynic and a grump, she is a bright and cheery optimist. She is a neonatal nurse who brings joy to all who cross her path, an ideal daughter and sister and a loving wife. She is, you could say, the archetype of the perfect woman. Mary Rose does not have David's luck. The only things that come out of leftfield for her are bad. She longs to be a mother but can't. She is terrified of flying and ends up dying on a plane. David thinks he loves her, but in truth he loves her as an idol and not as a human being. At one point, he describes her admiringly as she lies on the hotel bed: "With her fair hair streaked like seaweed across her face, she was a mermaid trapped in my nets. I could hardly believe she was mine to keep." Of course, like a mermaid, like a sleeping beauty, the defining aspect of Mary Rose's fairy tale is that she is trapped. She doesn't have a voice, she doesn't have any agency; she is, for the whole book, dead. Video of the Day It is only in death that Mary Rose has any power over David; only by dying that she can make him come to the realisation that she was suffering after years of trying in vain to have children; a desire about which he was indifferent. Her death changes his life by making him a better person, but there is no redemption for her. This central trap hangs over the book. There's something tainted about the optimism afforded to David, since it is never gifted to Mary Rose. David's luck, his friend Deborah remarks, is like "life's last hilarious joke, at the expense of women". Indeed, this might be the definition of a fairy-tale ending: a joke at the expense of women. The clash of David's and Mary Rose's stories adds an interesting layer to an already compelling book. The colour may change, depending on how you look at it. Black Families Together, an effort to address systemic racism and the inequities for Black people in Worcester, is planning a virtual town hall to address concerns regarding education, police reform and diversity hiring. The town hall is at 6 p.m. on Monday. It will be live on Zoom and will be streamed on www.wuty979fm.org through the efforts of the Alliance Media Group, according to a news release. Stacey Luster said Black Families Together started meeting in June, offering space for Black people who live or work in Worcester to assess how theyre feeling during a time of unrest in the country. Black Families Together is not a group where people need to sign up to be a member, Luster said in a phone interview, but rather a vehicle for Worcesters Black community to come together and reflect on the issues of the day and develop a consensus regarding priorities. Priority areas thus far include Black business ownership, education, police and criminal justice reform, young adult leadership, disparate health outcomes and Black community empowerment. There have been three or four meetings so far, one with upwards of 250 people, Luster said. Different residents have been in attendance each time. Mondays town hall will be structured with presentations from Black Families Together members including Luster, Cassandra Bensahih, Celia Blue, Sha-Asia Medina and Reverend Clyde Talley. Worcester officials invited to the town hall are City Manager Edward Augustus Jr., Mayor Joseph Petty, Superintendent Maureen Binienda, Police Chief Steven Sargent, Commissioner of Health & Human Services Dr. Mattie Castiel, Jayna Turchek of the Office of Human Rights, Congressman James McGovern, Worcester State University President Barry Maloney, Quinsigamond Community College President Luis G. Pedraja, members of the Worcester City Council, members of the Worcester School Committee and the Massachusetts legislative delegation. Luster said the officials have been invited to listen. Augustus, Petty, Binienda and Sargent have said they will attend the town hall, according to Luster. This is just the beginning, Luster said. This is us sharing what we consider to be priorities and then we want to follow up with the people who have the authority to make changes that can improve the quality of life for the community. The town hall comes after months of racial unrest across the country. Following the death of George Floyd in police custody in May, there have been conversations throughout the nation about justice and how Black people are treated in America. In recent weeks in Worcester, a Black Lives Matter mural has been painted downtown, a city councilor has called for police body cameras to be implemented by next year and members of the community tried to reallocate police funds for the fiscal 2021 budget. Related Content: Residential evictions are set to resume across Ontario on Tuesday. Mayor John Tory said he wished he had magical powers to stop them. There is no need to resort to magic. Tory has legal power under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act (EMCPA) to implement an eviction ban in Toronto. The EMCPA allows the mayor of any municipality in Ontario to declare a citywide state of emergency. Mayor Tory declared an emergency in Toronto on March 23. It remains in effect. When Tory declared the emergency, he acquired a new legal power under the EMCPA. The power is defined in Section 4 of the legislation. Section 4 says the mayor may take such action and make such orders as he considers necessary and are not contrary to law to protect the health, safety and welfare of the inhabitants of the city. This is an extraordinary power. It is broad, elastic and entirely in Torys hands. The power is designed this way because it is meant to be used in an emergency, when swift, radical action may be required to prevent serious harm. The power is broad enough to allow Tory to ban evictions in this city. There is one important limit on the emergency power: Mayor Tory cannot act contrary to law. The term contrary to law as it appears in the EMCPA is not defined in the legislation and has not been interpreted by a court. Yet Tory and others claim these three words leave him powerless to stop evictions. They make two arguments to this effect. First, they say a municipal eviction ban is contrary to law because landlord-tenant matters fall under the provinces exclusive jurisdiction. This is inaccurate. The City of Toronto regulates landlord-tenant matters already. Under Chapter 354 of the Toronto Municipal Code, the city requires all landlords who operate apartment buildings in Toronto to keep those buildings clean, well-maintained and pest-free. The city enforces these standards and prosecutes landlords who breach them. Jurisdiction over landlord-tenant matters is thus shared between the city and the province. A municipal eviction ban may stretch the citys jurisdiction, but that kind of stretching is precisely what the EMCPA permits. The second reason Tory and others give for refusing to ban evictions is that doing so, they say, would frustrate the purpose of the provincial law governing evictions. The provincial law theyre talking about is the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA). Nowhere in the RTA does it say that the laws purpose is to facilitate mass evictions during an emergency. Nowhere does it say that the laws purpose is to make thousands of people homeless in the middle of a global pandemic, in a city where shelters are overwhelmed, where homeless encampments are growing, and where the risk of the COVID-19 virus spreading in these and surrounding areas is disproportionately high. It cannot be the laws purpose to wreak havoc on a society in this way. In fact, the opening section of the RTA states that its very first purpose is to provide protection for residential tenants from unlawful evictions. A declaration that evictions are unlawful in Toronto for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency is therefore entirely in keeping with the purpose of the RTA. There is no frustration. Outside the context of emergencies, the Supreme Court of Canada has analyzed municipal laws using the impossibility of dual compliance test. The test deems a municipal law invalid if compliance with it would necessitate the breach of a provincial law. A municipal eviction ban easily passes this test. Landlords who comply with the ban do not thereby contravene the Residential Tenancies Act, because that act does not require landlords to evict anyone. The bottom line is this in an emergency, the citys legal powers are meant to be used to protect people. They are not meant to be hidden behind or whittled down through artificially restrictive interpretations of the law. Mayor Tory should use the power the law gives him to implement an eviction ban in Toronto. AUSTIN, Texas The deadly confrontation between an armed motorist and an armed protester during a street demonstration in downtown Austin over the weekend began when the motorist made a turn toward a crowd of marchers and came to a stop. The protester was Garrett Foster, 28, a former aircraft mechanic for the U.S. Air Force who wore a bandanna on his face and carried an AK-47-type rifle on a strap in front of him. The driver who fired the fatal shots has now been identified as Daniel Perry, 33, an active-duty sergeant with the U.S. Army and a driver for ride-hailing company Uber who had just dropped off a customer nearby. Days after the shooting that stunned Austin, details of the encounter remain in dispute, with different points of view from the police, demonstrators and Perry, who has not been charged with a crime. Foster was at the demonstration with his fiancee, Whitney Mitchell, a quadruple amputee who uses a wheelchair. Foster was white, and Mitchell is Black. The two of them had frequently attended protests against police brutality in Austin. Demonstrators who witnessed the confrontation have said in interviews that Perry was driving aggressively in the direction of the protesters and that Foster approached the vehicle with his rifle pointed downward. At that point, they said, Perry pulled out a handgun and shot him. But in a statement released late Thursday evening, Perrys lawyer disputed that version of events. Perry did not know that a Black Lives Matter demonstration was taking place when he turned onto the street, said the lawyer, F. Clinton Broden. He said Foster approached the car and motioned with his rifle for Perry to lower the window, and Perry complied because he believed Foster was associated with law enforcement. As Perry realized that Foster was not a police officer, Foster raised the rifle toward him, Broden said in the statement. It was only then that Sergeant Perry, who carried a handgun in his car for his own protection while driving strangers in the ride-share program, fired on the person to protect his own life, he said. Broden said the police had interviewed witnesses who were marching with Foster and who had confirmed that he had raised his rifle in a direct threat to Sergeant Perrys life. Immediately after the shooting, he said, a person in the crowd began firing on Perrys car, so he drove to safety and immediately called the police. Fosters family said they were certain that he had not threatened the motorist. Everyone who was standing around said Garrett never raised his weapon, his mother, Sheila Foster, said in an interview Friday. That man took away one of the best people on this planet. A person who appeared to be Perry had posted in the past on Twitter about using violence against protesters. The Twitter account has since been deleted. In June, President Donald Trump posted a warning to protesters the day before his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, writing on Twitter that 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! The person who appeared to be Perry responded on Twitter: Send them to Texas we will show them why we say dont mess with Texas. In another tweet in June, he wrote that shooting someone in their center of mass, or chest area, was the best way to take the person down. Broden defended his clients tweets, saying they were being taken out of context by protesters. I think theyre being misused to serve an agenda, Broden said, adding that Perry supports First Amendment rights and has defended those rights as a member of the military. Fosters comments before the shooting are also being scrutinized. Earlier that evening at the demonstration, Foster was interviewed by an independent journalist on Periscope about why he brought his rifle, and he said that all the people that hate us were too afraid to stop and actually do anything about it. One police official who criticized that comment on social media has since apologized. The official, Kenneth Casaday, the president of the Austin police officers union, wrote on Twitter that Foster was looking for confrontation and he found it, but he later apologized in another tweet for my offensive choice of words. Austins police chief, Brian Manley, said that investigators were told that Foster was shot after he pointed his rifle at Perry. During the initial investigation of this incident, it appears that Mr. Foster may have pointed his weapon at the driver of this vehicle prior to being shot, Manley told reporters Sunday. Manley said that a person in the crowd who had also opened fire the gunfire that Perry had reported to the police had done so after hearing the gunshots and seeing the car drive away. Perry called 911 after leaving the scene and told dispatchers that he had shot someone who had approached him and pointed a rifle at him. He was instructed to pull over. Both he and the person in the crowd who shot at the vehicle were interviewed by investigators and released. They both had state-issued handgun licenses. Broden said Perry has fully cooperated with the police following the shooting and he continues to do so. Perry, who is stationed at the Fort Hood Army base in Killeen, Texas, and served in Afghanistan, was driving for Uber as a way to make extra money, his lawyer said. We simply ask that anybody who might want to criticize Sergeant Perrys actions, picture themselves trapped in a car as a masked stranger raises an assault rifle in their direction and reflect upon what they might have done if faced with the split second decision faced by Sergeant Perry that evening, Broden said in the statement. Fosters mother said her son enlisted in the Air Force in the weeks after he graduated from high school in 2010 in the Dallas suburb of Plano, where he grew up. Months later, he and Mitchell became engaged when they were both 19. In a matter of weeks, their lives changed Mitchell collapsed at her grandmothers house. Her organs began to fail as an infection caused septic shock, a life-threatening condition, Sheila Foster said. All four of her limbs were amputated. Garrett Foster spent two years in the Air Force but was discharged and began taking care of Mitchell. The couple lived in a house in North Austin that they renovated to accommodate her wheelchair and her health needs. From the moment he got out, two years after he went in, he never left her side, Sheila Foster said. He brushed her teeth. He combed her hair. He did her makeup. During a telephone conversation she had with her son about a week before his death, his mother expressed concern that the couple could be exposing themselves to danger by participating the demonstrations, which she knew he had been attending with his rifle. She asked her son who would take care of Mitchell if he were put in jail. She said her son replied: Mom, its not going to happen. Im not stupid. I know how to use a gun. Im not going to point my gun at anybody. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Hong Kong (CNN)Hong Kong will postpone legislative elections due to be held in September because of the coronavirus outbreak, the city's leader said Friday. In a news conference, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the move to postpone the Legislative Council elections, slated for September 6, was the most difficult decision she had made in the last seven months. She added that she had the support of the Chinese central government in making this decision. Lam said the delay was needed to protect public health and guarantee fairness in the election. Infections from the virus have quickly risen in recent weeks, after falling to zero daily transmissions in June, and health officials have warned of a potential crisis if it is not brought under control. But pro-democracy figures had greeted news of a possible delay to the key polls with dismay, accusing the government of wanting to avoid a potential loss following China's imposition of a new national security law on the city, banning secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. Opposition parties had aimed to ride a wave of discontent with the government to a historic victory in the semi-democratic legislature, where just under half the seats are controlled by so-called functional constituencies, which represent business and society groups and are typically pro government. A recent primary election designed to narrow down the number of pro-democracy opposition candidates attracted more than 600,000 votes, far more than the 170,000 or so organizers were hoping for. The turnout attracted the ire of Beijing, however, which suggested the vote was illegally interfering with the upcoming poll. Last year, pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory in local council elections. A similar result in the legislative council could put them in a position to force a constitutional crisis by blocking the budget and pressuring Lam to resign. Both the Chinese and Hong Kong governments have suggested such a plan could be illegal under the new national security law. This week, a dozen pro-democracy candidates were barred from standing for election, including prominent activist Joshua Wong. In a statement, the Hong Kong government said it supported the decisions by returning officers to "invalidate 12 nominees for this year's Legislative Council (LegCo) General Election." It said the candidates had been barred on the grounds that they would not uphold the Basic Law, Hong Kong's de facto constitution, and suggested more could be disqualified in future. The government said it "respects and safeguards the lawful rights of Hong Kong people, including the right to vote and the right to stand for elections." Several letters posted online by disqualified candidates from returning officers informing them of their decision cited previous opposition to the security law as a reason for the move. "The excuse they use is that I describe (the security law) as a draconian law, which shows that I do not support this sweeping law," Wong said. Another disqualified candidate, Dennis Kwok, was reportedly barred because of his having expressed an intention to use his position as a legislator "in such a way as to force the government to accede to certain demands," effectively the job of an opposition lawmaker in most democratic countries. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which represents lawmakers in multiple countries including the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, said the disqualifications, as well as the delay to the election, "represent unacceptable obstructions of the democratic process in Hong Kong and raise further concerns about the erosion of rights and freedoms in the city." Source: cnn 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 Authoritarian governance, the perennial plague of mankind, emits its poison by controlling the common man and woman Author William H. Adams, MD seeks to empower the very people defining our society in Medical Practice and the Common Man and Woman: A History ($72.49, paperback, 9781631296154; $81.99, hardcover, 9781631296161; $9.99, e-book, 9781631296178). Adams has abridged his three-volume work The Natural State of Medical Progress (Liberty Hill Publishing, 2019) into this more streamlined volume. Using medical advances as the gauge for societal progress, he identifies the features of Western Civilization that have allowed medicine to reach its current success, as well as the threat hanging over it. Authoritarian governance, the perennial plague of mankind, emits its poison by controlling the common man and woman, said Adams. William H. Adams, MD, FACP, DCMT (London), began his search for the natural state of medical practice while on the staff of a large municipal hospital in New York City. Dissatisfied by aspects of medical practice as incorporated in recent decades, he continued the search after retirement which, after twenty years, has culminated in this three-volume testimonial to the role of group freedom in human progress. ### Xulon Press, a division of Salem Media Group, is the worlds largest Christian self-publisher, with more than 15,000 titles published to date. Medical Practice and the Common Man and Woman is available online through xulonpress.com/bookstore, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 13:41:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The following are the highlights of China's business news from the past week: -- INDUSTRIAL PROFITS Profits of China's major industrial firms rebounded in the second quarter (Q2) as business activities continued to pick up. In Q2, profits of industrial companies with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan (about 2.86 million U.S. dollars) rose by 4.8 percent year on year, reversing the 36.7-percent decline in Q1, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday. -- PMI The purchasing managers' index (PMI) for China's manufacturing sector rose to 51.1 in July from 50.9 in June, the NBS said Friday. It is the fifth month in a row that the figure remained in the expansion territory. A reading above 50 indicates expansion, while a reading below reflects contraction. The PMI for China's non-manufacturing sector came in at 54.2 in July, down from 54.4 in June. -- AIIB ANNUAL MEETING Jin Liqun has been elected to a second term as President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) by the bank's Board of Governors. The election result was announced by the Chair of AIIB's Board of Governors during the bank's fifth annual meeting on Tuesday. The AIIB is a multilateral development bank with a mission to improve social and economic outcomes in Asia. Headquartered in Beijing, the AIIB began operations in January 2016 and has now grown to more than 100 approved members worldwide. Enditem Actor Amitabh Bachchan has expressed condolences at the death of his friend, politician Amar Singh. Amitabh took to his blog to talk about him. Struck with grief, bowed head, only prayers are left. Close life, close relationship, the soul is no more, he wrote on his blog. Amitabh also shared a picture of himself with his head bowed. Amar Singh died in Singapore where he was undergoing treatment for kidney-related ailments. Singh, 64, had undergone kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time. He was admitted to a hospital in Singapore some eight months ago. Amar Singh is survived by his wife Pankaja Singh and two daughters --Drishti and Disha. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer He counted megastar Amitabh Bachchan and his family as friends before they had a falling out. Bachchans wife and actor Jaya Bachchan remains a Rajya Sabha member of the Samajwadi Party. However, in February this year, Singh took to Twitter to regret his overreaction against Amitabh Bachchan. Today is my fathers death anniversary and I got a message for the same from Senior Bachchan ji. At this stage of life when I am fighting a battle of life and death I regret for my overreaction against Amit ji and family. God bless them all, Singh had said on Twitter. . Follow @htshowbiz for more MS Vidyanandan By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Working on the frontline to aid the state in its fight against the pandemic, they are as much at risk of contracting Covid-19 as any other health worker.Yet, over 600 medical students who chose the states government hospitals for the mandatory one-year house surgency are neither paid anything nor covered under the governments free insurance coverage. These young interns, who studied medicine in foreign countries or private medical colleges in India, are currently posted in general hospitals across the state and are engaged in Covid-19 treatment. Yet, they do not even get the free food or accommodation that is offered to volunteers at first-line treatment centres. Many of us hail from middle-class families and have availed loans for our studies. I myself took `8.5 lakh as loan and have not repaid anything. What will happen to my family if I die of Covid? asked a 26-year-old who did not wish to be identified. His co-worker said the revised treatment protocol has increased their families risk of infection. Since self-isolation after Covid-19 duty has been done away with for us, our families are at risk. It is sad the government considers our lives less worthy than our counterparts in government medical college hospitals (GMCHs), said the co-worker. Interns at GMCHs are students who studied there. They get a monthly stipend of `25,000 and have now been included in the governments `50 lakh insurance coverage for regular staff.However, those at general hospitals are working on one-year unpaid internships with neither a risk allowance nor any insurance coverage. In terms of Covid duty, house surgeons in GMCHs and general hospitals do the same work - in the general outpatient (OP) department, the Covid-19 triage to screen symptomatic patients, isolation wards and Covid wards. They are also sent for swab collection in vulnerable areas. House surgeons at general hospitals complain that they are at high risk of infection as they do not wear PPE in the general OP. Recently, four interns assigned for swab collection of 300 persons at Kinfra had to face a alarming situation wherein donors gathered around the collection centre without maintaining social distancing. The risk is high when we are posted on the field. People may not maintain social distancing, thereby risking their lives and ours, said a student. The house surgeons want the government to provide them with risk allowance and insurance coverage. you flee with a car, but without the loot: Four men were attacked on Friday afternoon in Berlin-Neukolln, a Postbank branch in a Department store. Previously, they have tried to snatch a member of a money Transporter crew money, such as the police spokesman Thilo Cablitz announced in the evening. the robber put according to him, even Mace. In the Bank branch should be filled in according to the police, just a money machine. The employee of the money transport company fought back against the robbers, so that they took finally to his heels. After the RAID were handled according to police sources, twelve injured. Four of them came, according to the fire Department to the hospital to be there to receive out-patient care. The injured are to be Bank customers. At 13.30 hrs, the distress call was received by police and firefighters. police are searching for offenders The tradition of the house were rich at the Hermann place was with a red-white barrier tape cordoned off. More than a dozen police cars, officials with bullet-proof vests post themselves, special forces searched the building. Initially, there was conflicting information from witnesses. Some wanted to have seen that robber in the multi-storey Department store fled, others said that they had ran out. Of acute danger, the police went first. Police spokesman Cablitz said: "We investigate in all directions." After the robbers and the getaway car a dark Audi was still wanted by the police in the evening. "We have a perpetrator descriptions," said the police spokesman. The investigators do not have to get out from under that mark and vehicle match. Behind the barriers onlookers stood. The traffic was totally blocked on this hot afternoon in Berlin. However, in the shops across from the entrance, no one has seen anything. "It was surprisingly calm," said a kiosk employee. You've only just noticed with the arrival of the police. Updated Date: 01 August 2020, 00:19 As educators prepare for an unprecedented school year, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos message to them is clear: You have obligations to fulfill, my expectations are high, and dont assume Ill lift major federal requirements. DeVos has seized the spotlight with a persistent push for schools to offer full-time, in-person instruction for 2020-21, mirroring President Donald Trumps demands for schools to physically reopen. In the process, shes directly challenged educators to show theyre working toward making that happen. Whether that comes across as tough love or hard-hearted during the pandemic depends on how education leaders, advocates, and the general public view the various challenges local schools face. But its far from the only time shes pushed educators in the last few months to put their shoulder to the wheel without expecting new short-cuts or constant pats on the back. The long-term strategy DeVos and her team take towards the bully pulpit and long-standing federal mandates (many of which have bipartisan support) might be dictated by the pandemics length and intensity, especially given the shaky relationship between her and many state and local education officials that at times has been publicly hostile. While its premature to make blanket declarations about what federal requirements for accountability, services, and other matters should be lifted from schools, it will be important to avoid hard-line positions yet also focus on vulnerable childrens needs, said Laura Jimenez, the director of standards and accountability at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. We need a little common sense when it comes to this stuff, said Jimenez, who worked at the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama administration. Any one answer for all of the schools in the nation doesnt make a ton of sense. To Sandy Kress, a former education adviser to President George W. Bush, a certain level of distrust between local education officials and Washington about mandates and flexibility is normal. But he said some of the intransigence on both sides over what must or must not be expected and done during the pandemic is horribly irresponsible. Instead, Kress argued, they should work together to determine whats needed to address crucial issues like learning loss. Show me your plans, and then lets talk about waivers that are necessary to make those plans work, he said, describing his philosophy of how the department and school leaders should work together. No, Im not granting waivers like candy. But on the other hand, Im not telling you to go away and do the best you can and gird up. Kids Cannot Continue to Be Held Hostage During the spring, as nearly all public schools nixed in-person learning in favor of remote instruction and in some cases focused on reviewing material students had learned before, DeVos urged schools to teach new material to students. We can do hard things, DeVos exhorted educators in early April on a conference call with reporters. When given the politically fraught opportunity by Congress to recommend that schools should get significant flexibility from the main federal law for special education, DeVos definitively declined to do so. In recommending a few narrow waivers from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, DeVos said in late April, There is no reason for Congress to waive any provision designed to keep students learning. With ingenuity, innovation, and grit, I know this nations educators and schools can continue to faithfully educate every one of its students. And then theres federally mandated testing and related matters. In the first phase of the pandemic in March, DeVos quickly gave states waivers that allowed them to cancel spring exams and let states carry over accountability data from the 2018-19 year for the 2019-20. The unprecedented disruptions to student learning amid mass school closures in the last part of the academic year probably made such decisions from her inevitable. But recently, her team made it plain to states not to expect to get those waivers again next year. Thats despite interest expressed this summer by states like Georgia and South Carolina. There are so many benefits to testing, and it allows for some transparency about how schools are performing and the issues we need to address, that our instinct would be to decline those waivers, Jim Blew, assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development, told reporters in July . When asked for notable flexibility the department has provided to schools aside from the March testing waivers, spokeswoman Angela Morabito responded that in April, DeVos made waivers available dealing with career and technical education, how funding could be used for technology training and distance learnings, and donating medical supplies to hospitals and public health agencies. DeVos is in regular contact with state leaders about pandemic-related relief from federal mandates, Morabito said: These conversations are ongoing, and any decision on future testing or other waivers will be announced in due course. She also reiterated DeVos expectation that action must triumph over alarm in schools. The secretary has seen pockets of an innovative, can-do spirit in many places, Morabito said. But she added, Kids cannot continue to be held hostage to other peoples fears or agendas. The CDC has released guidance on how to reopen safely. This is what the secretary expects of every school, aside from exceptions due to local health circumstances and individual needs. Not Easy Territory Providing schools new flexibility from federal law even during the pandemic doesnt automatically follow neat partisan patterns. For example, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a landmark civil rights law. While school districts made the case for some easing of IDEA requirements, allowing schools to opt out of key parts of the law would have triggered a surge of protest from advocates and others who dont necessarily agree with each other, or DeVos, on other big education policy and political issues. DeVos has power to waive some elements of federal K-12 law beyond testing requirements, although its limited in several respects, especially when it comes to how schools use federal money. In June, as the economy worsened, DeVosa veteran critic of the idea that school spending is the key ingredient to student outcomesand her team indicated that they might look at least somewhat differently on waiver requests dealing with K-12 funding. In a document providing information about waivers states could request from the requirement that they maintain their education spending at certain levels in order to tap CARES Act coronavirus aid, the Education Department repeatedly noted what the law does not define, which had the effect of stressing the flexibility states have on this front. At one point this document states that the department was providing States with principles that provide flexibility in demonstrating how they define support for elementary and secondary education. In general, DeVos response to schools urgent financial needs during the coronavirus comes across as clearly punitive, said Jimenez. If youre going to require a public entity to do something, youve kind of got to give them the resources to do it. Every opportunity shes had, shes taken public money away from public schools, Jimenez said. She pointed to DeVos mandate on equitable services for private school students as a way DeVos had improperly shortchanged public schools Staying Silent Not an Option? DeVos also has to keep Congress in mind. Taking a laissez-faire approach and handing out a string of waivers on major issues like testing theoretically might draw criticism from lawmakers of both parties. For example, many Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill typically think testing is an important component of what schools should do, albeit not for identical reasons. Yet by the same token, theres room for both Congress and the Trump administration to provide narrow, time-limited relief on a variety of topics, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Just as DeVos has indicated that it is premature to issue such a waiver now, it is also premature to definitively claim there will be no need for any such flexibility within the current school year, she said. Both Jimenez and Kress suggested ways leaders could meet the pandemics challenges, without seeking blanket waivers or abandoning the idea of accountability altogether. Typical, federally mandated accountability systems probably arent going to be fully possible for 2020-21, Jimenez noted, especially when it comes to things like absenteeism. And the idea of a traditional summative assessment shouldnt be taken for granted next year. Yet she said scaled-back tests that still provide usable information for system-level actors, especially about disadvantaged students, should get strong consideration from states and districts. Its hard to say right now which waivers, but there are going to have to be some waivers, Jimenez said. And even though accountability-driven consequences for schools might not be feasible, schools should be expected to rely on diagnostic tests to help them determine where students are and how much they subsequently improve, Kress said. Would we be looking for some growth during the year, especially for growth for disadvantaged kids? Would we be looking for growth for kids who had serious learning loss? This is a discussion that has to be held, he said. Ultimately, these decisions and discussions about federal mandates might hinge on whether President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, wins the November election, and if DeVos stays on for a second Trump term. Yet Jimenez suggested that it might not be fair to ask educators to wait for a Biden administration to begin asking for more clarity. If Biden were to win, for example, states might be gearing up for some type of spring testing just as he sends his nominee for education secretary to the Senate in January or February of next year. State and local leaders, she noted, will want some kind of direction from DeVos and the department before then. It would be hard for her to stay silent for very long, she said. BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister announced Friday he was calling early elections, doubling down on a key promise at a time when the country faces deep challenges. Mustafa al-Kadhimi said the new polls would be held next June, almost a year before the current parliamentary term was scheduled to end. Kadhimi took power in May, replacing a prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, who resigned amid a bloody crackdown against protesters demanding his ouster. The announcement, in reality, puts the onus for holding fresh elections onto Iraq's competing political factions because they must reach a consensus over a new election law, and parliament will need to agree on its own dissolution. It was unclear whether Kadhimi would run for a second term if the early elections take place. Two other political leaders who had sought to become prime minister before Kadhimi had failed to win broad backing from Iraq's divided political scene, and lawmakers from a crucial parliamentary bloc backed by Iran said they agreed to Kadhimi's selection only if he would not run for reelection. In a 13-minute televised speech, Kadhimi made a point of addressing the country's intellectuals and youth protesters. "Your free will will make this an Iraq of hope, not an Iraq of chaos and conspiracies," he said, urging them to organize themselves politically if they wanted to achieve change. The United Nations mission to Iraq welcomed the call for early elections. "Properly conducted credible, free, fair and inclusive elections can re-energize the political system and build public confidence, giving the people a voice and realizing their aspirations for better representation," said Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N.'s highest official here. In the space of two months, Kadhimi has faced the daunting task of trying to restructure an Iraqi economy based almost entirely on oil revenue, which has plummeted due to the coronavirus pandemic. He has also clashed with Iran-backed militias as he seeks to prevent Iraq from becoming a battleground for clashes between the U.S. and Iran. Confronted with an array of forces aligned against him, including corrupt and well-armed groups, Kadhimi has tried win support from Iraqis through near-daily images showing him going about his business, meeting voters, visiting state institutions, and holding talks with religious leaders. On Iraqi social media, posters often joke that his photographer holds the country's most exhausting job. Although widespread protests have not resumed, scattered demonstrations are occurring once again, this time protesting economic failure and chronic power shortages during a heat wave, with temperatures in Baghdad reaching 125 degrees Fahrenheit last week. "Will elections by themselves address people's concerns about Iraq's political system? I don't think so," said Sajad Jiyad, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, citing deep-rooted vested interests across Iraq's political parties - and often backed by armed groups - which have long stymied much-needed reforms. "That's really the greater issue here, rather than when elections are going to happen." Early elections have been a key demand of the protest movement, along with accountability for months of violence used against the protesters, including live ammunition and heavy tear gas canisters fired by riot police and Shiite Muslim militias into crowds of young men and women. On Thursday, Kadhimi's spokesman, Hisham al-Dawoud, said that a government committee was investigating the deaths of some 560 protesters and security forces killed during the unrest that began Oct. 1. He said authorities would register "all victims of the protests as martyrs," entitling their families to each receive roughly $8,400 in compensation. Those payments, Dawoud admitted, would likely cover little more than the cost of funerals, burials and initially getting families back on their feet. "Nothing will bring them back," he said of the protesters. Hours later, the country's interior minister, Othman al-Ghanimi, said three members of the security forces would face trial for their roles in the death of two protesters in central Baghdad on Monday. "They have been suspended and the investigation is ongoing," the minister stated. - - - The Washington Post's Mustafa Salim contributed to this report. Scorcher Senior - BHPian Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Trivandrum, KL Posts: 4,905 Thanked: 6,932 Times The Cake Story The Hunt. Rewind back to a random late night 'car guy' conversation few months from now, for some reason we were on the topic of Defenders and DQ was telling me how he'd fancied having one for the longest time but somehow a good one's always eluded him. We were sharing back and forth some tasteful Defender builds from around the world and geeking out on this seemingly agricultural looking truck through much of the night. Went to bed that day thinking it would make the guy really happy if I somehow manage to help him find one. Come next day and I casually asked around a few people if they know of any good examples that they've come across and mostly the replies were either no or they'd lead me to some heap of metal that's half sunken into the ground. Then I thought, what the heck, I'll just go ahead and ask the guy who has the best Defender that I know of and see if he knows of any that's come up, that's totally went under my radar. *enter BHPian anish9000* Got on the phone with Anish the next day and the news from his side also wasn't very promising. He informed me that he also hasn't come across any good examples in a while, but he agreed to get back to me if he does come across one. Another day or two go by and Anish and I were casually chatting on WhatsApp when I quite candidly said how badly I want to help this friend get a nice Defender and in that very moment he says, if you want it that badly you can have mine. I was like cos I never thought he had any intention of letting go of his Defender that I didn't even bother to ask him for it in the first place. But here seeing my enthusiasm, he'd given in and just offered me his actual one. The Truck. Little run down on the truck itself, It's a mid-noughties Land Rover Defender 110 with a TD5 engine, a manual gearbox and a 9 seater specification. The car was a Red Cross release and hence was a legitimate import with a well documented history and I kid you not, a list of modifications that very nearly ran into 3 digits. Best of all, the car was TN regd which would make life a lot easier for all of us since DQ has a base in Chennai. I immediately got back to DQ with the news and he was also quite elated that we finally found a Defender worthy of the collection. Things progressed fast after that and just as we were about to seal the deal and all excited to get the truck home when *BOOM* the pandemic struck, the country went into lockdown and all of the state borders were shut. As impatient as we were to have it down in KL, we decided to wait it out until the situation relaxes and not to put anyone involved at risk. So as soon as the nationwide lockdown lifted and the state borders gradually started opening back up, we immediately arranged for it to be trucked home, albeit with at most safety and caution. Here is the night anish9000 and cityvic personally loaded the car onto the truck, locked and handed over just the key to the driver for it to be as 'contact less' as possible. Big thanks, Boys! Fast forward a few days and this hunk of English metal finally touched down on KL soil and right away was parked up at the now 'old' garage and was left untouched for the next 48 hours before it was finally brought home. Sigh! The new normal. At this point DQ has now had the car now for a few days, he's driven it around and absolutely loves it to bits but one thing that he had decided the moment we finalized the buy was that the visual mods were just tad too extreme for his liking and would want to 'depimp' it immediately as we got it down. The Depimping. First order of business was to get rid of all those stickers and the chequered metal plates off of the car and that was no light task as those were riveted on and were leaving back scars on the aluminium skin on removal which meant a fair bit of metal work and a respray also became necessary. The stock wheels were also now painted in silver, thus ending the 'Yesudas' phase as I jokingly called it. Finally after an accelerated schedule, the truck got back home looking as fresh as the day it rolled off the production line. Also note the new UK style plates which I feel is a nice nod to it's English roots. The DQfication. This would come as a surprise to absolutely no one. While all this was happening our man was equally busy on the interwebs browsing through many a part catalogues to now go and make it his own, no car of his' would be signed off without a sprinkle of the fairy dust from him and couple weeks later few gift boxes gets flown in from 'Twisted Automotive' out in the UK. He had decided to give the truck a modern fascia and the parts from Twisted included a brand new radiator grille, a new shorter and more aggressive bumper with integrated LED DRLs and a new set of rather retro fashion wheels, also new LED lamps all around, a new set of Cooper AT tyres and a few other bits and bobs. Some of which you'd be amused to learn he installed it himself at his home garage. Yes, the man works on his cars too! So without further ado, for the first time, I present to you this new addition to the 369 Garage in all its glory as it sits today! ..and this coincided perfectly with his birthday when his fam decided to surprise him with a cake that has since inadvertently announced the arrival of the truck to the social media. Sure enough this won't be it's final avatar and I shall try to keep y'all filled in as more things happen to it. I'll leave you guys with a lil' trinket Anish threw in, a nice HUE166 keyring that finishes off the truck perfectly! Here's me wishing him great memories and adventures with his new truck and being glad I could be a tiny part of 'The Carguy's Carguy' achieving one of his car goals. The End. Now that a good chunk of the country has wished Dulquer on his birthday, thought I'll share a lil' story about how his now Instagram famous birthday cake came to beRewind back to a random late night 'car guy' conversation few months from now, for some reason we were on the topic of Defenders and DQ was telling me how he'd fancied having one for the longest time but somehow a good one's always eluded him. We were sharing back and forth some tasteful Defender builds from around the world and geeking out on this seemingly agricultural looking truck through much of the night.Went to bed that day thinking it would make the guy really happy if I somehow manage to help him find one. Come next day and I casually asked around a few people if they know of any good examples that they've come across and mostly the replies were either no or they'd lead me to some heap of metal that's half sunken into the ground.Then I thought, what the heck, I'll just go ahead and ask the guy who has the best Defender that I know of and see if he knows of any that's come up, that's totally went under my radar.*enter BHPian anish9000*Got on the phone with Anish the next day and the news from his side also wasn't very promising. He informed me that he also hasn't come across any good examples in a while, but he agreed to get back to me if he does come across one.Another day or two go by and Anish and I were casually chatting on WhatsApp when I quite candidly said how badly I want to help this friend get a nice Defender and in that very moment he says, if you want it that badly you can have mine.I was likecos I never thought he had any intention of letting go of his Defender that I didn't even bother to ask him for it in the first place. But here seeing my enthusiasm, he'd given in and just offered me his actual one.Little run down on the truck itself,It's a mid-noughties Land Rover Defender 110 with a TD5 engine, a manual gearbox and a 9 seater specification. The car was a Red Cross release and hence was a legitimate import with a well documented history and I kid you not, a list of modifications that very nearly ran into 3 digits. Best of all, the car was TN regd which would make life a lot easier for all of us since DQ has a base in Chennai.I immediately got back to DQ with the news and he was also quite elated that we finally found a Defender worthy of the collection. Things progressed fast after that and just as we were about to seal the deal and all excited to get the truck home when *BOOM* the pandemic struck, the country went into lockdown and all of the state borders were shut.As impatient as we were to have it down in KL, we decided to wait it out until the situation relaxes and not to put anyone involved at risk. So as soon as the nationwide lockdown lifted and the state borders gradually started opening back up, we immediately arranged for it to be trucked home, albeit with at most safety and caution.Here is the night anish9000 and cityvic personally loaded the car onto the truck, locked and handed over just the key to the driver for it to be as 'contact less' as possible. Big thanks, Boys!Fast forward a few days and this hunk of English metal finally touched down on KL soil and right away was parked up at the now 'old' garage and was left untouched for the next 48 hours before it was finally brought home.Sigh! The new normal.At this point DQ has now had the car now for a few days, he's driven it around and absolutely loves it to bits but one thing that he had decided the moment we finalized the buy was that the visual mods were just tad too extreme for his liking and would want to 'depimp' it immediately as we got it down.First order of business was to get rid of all those stickers and the chequered metal plates off of the car and that was no light task as those were riveted on and were leaving back scars on the aluminium skin on removal which meant a fair bit of metal work and a respray also became necessary. The stock wheels were also now painted in silver, thus ending the 'Yesudas' phase as I jokingly called it.Finally after an accelerated schedule, the truck got back home looking as fresh as the day it rolled off the production line. Also note the new UK style plates which I feel is a nice nod to it's English roots.This would come as a surprise to absolutely no one. While all this was happening our man was equally busy on the interwebs browsing through many a part catalogues to now go and make it his own, no car of his' would be signed off without a sprinkle of the fairy dust from him and couple weeks later few gift boxes gets flown in from 'Twisted Automotive' out in the UK.He had decided to give the truck a modern fascia and the parts from Twisted included a brand new radiator grille, a new shorter and more aggressive bumper with integrated LED DRLs and a new set of rather retro fashion wheels, also new LED lamps all around, a new set of Cooper AT tyres and a few other bits and bobs. Some of which you'd be amused to learn he installed it himself at his home garage. Yes, the man works on his cars too!So without further ado, for the first time, I present to you this new addition to the 369 Garage in all its glory as it sits today!..and this coincided perfectly with his birthday when his fam decided to surprise him with a cake that has since inadvertently announced the arrival of the truck to the social media.Sure enough this won't be it's final avatar and I shall try to keep y'all filled in as more things happen to it.I'll leave you guys with a lil' trinket Anish threw in, a nice HUE166 keyring that finishes off the truck perfectly!Here's me wishing him great memories and adventures with his new truck and being glad I could be a tiny part of 'The Carguy's Carguy' achieving one of his car goals.The End. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES TORONTO, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Loncor Resources Inc. ("Loncor" or the "Company") (TSX: "LN"; OTCQB: "LONCF") announces that, further to its July 9, 2020 press release, it has closed a first tranche of its non-brokered private placement financing (the "Financing") for 8,000,000 common shares of the Company (the Offered Shares) at a price of Cdn$0.50 per Offered Share for gross proceeds of Cdn$4,000,000. The Company expects to close the balance of the Financing (up to 2,000,000 common shares of the Company at a price of Cdn$0.50 per share for gross proceeds of up to Cdn$1,000,000) within the next few weeks. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the Financing for a drill program on the Adumbi gold deposit at the Companys Imbo Project and for general corporate purposes. A total of 3,390,000 of the Offered Shares were purchased by certain insiders of the Company. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act), or the securities laws of any state of the United States and may not be offered or sold within the United States (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or pursuant to an exemption from such registration requirements. About Loncor Resources Inc . Loncor is a Canadian gold exploration company focussed on the Ngayu Greenstone Belt in the North East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the DRC). The Loncor team has over two decades of experience of operating in the DRC. Ngayu has numerous positive indicators based on the geology, artisanal activity, encouraging drill results and an existing gold resource base. The area is 220 kilometres southwest of the Kibali gold mine, which is operated by Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD). In 2019, Kibali produced record gold production of 814,000 ounces at all-in sustaining costs of US$693/oz. Barrick has highlighted the Ngayu Greenstone Belt as an area of particular exploration interest and is moving towards earning 65% of any discovery in 1,894 km2 of Loncor ground that they are exploring. As per the joint venture agreement signed in January 2016, Barrick manages and funds exploration on the said ground until the completion of a pre-feasibility study on any gold discovery meeting the investment criteria of Barrick. In a recent announcement Barrick highlighted six prospective drill targets and are moving towards confirmation drilling in 2020. Subject to the DRCs free carried interest requirements, Barrick would earn 65% of any discovery with Loncor holding the balance of 35%. Loncor will be required, from that point forward, to fund its pro-rata share in respect of the discovery in order to maintain its 35% interest or be diluted. Story continues In addition to the Barrick JV, certain parcels of land within the Ngayu Belt surrounding and including the Makapela and Adumbi deposits have been retained by Loncor and do not form part of the joint venture with Barrick. Barrick has certain pre-emptive rights over the Makapela deposit. Adumbi and two neighbouring deposits hold an inferred mineral resource of 2.5 million ounces of gold (30.65 million tonnes grading 2.54 g/t Au), with 76.29% of this resource being attributable to Loncor via its 76.29% interest in the project. Loncors Makapela deposit (which is 100%-owned by Loncor) has an indicated mineral resource of 614,200 ounces of gold (2.20 million tonnes grading 8.66 g/t Au) and an inferred mineral resource of 549,600 ounces of gold (3.22 million tonnes grading 5.30 g/t Au). Resolute Mining Limited (ASX/LSE: "RSG") owns 27% of the outstanding shares of Loncor and holds a pre-emptive right to maintain its pro rata equity ownership interest in Loncor following the completion by Loncor of any proposed equity offering. Additional information with respect to Loncor and its projects can be found on Loncor's website at www.loncor.com. Qualified Person Peter N. Cowley, who is President of Loncor and a "qualified person" as such term is defined in National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release. Technical Reports Additional information with respect to the Companys Imbo Project (which includes the Adumbi deposit) is contained in the technical report of Minecon Resources and Services Limited dated April 17, 2020 and entitled "Independent National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report on the Imbo Project, Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo". A copy of the said report can be obtained from SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov . Additional information with respect to the Companys Makapela Project, and certain other properties of the Company in the Ngayu gold belt, is contained in the technical report of Venmyn Rand (Pty) Ltd dated May 29, 2012 and entitled "Updated National Instrument 43-101 Independent Technical Report on the Ngayu Gold Project, Orientale Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo". A copy of the said report can be obtained from SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov . Cautionary Note to U.S. Investors The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") permits U.S. mining companies, in their filings with the SEC, to disclose only those mineral deposits that a company can economically and legally extract or produce. Certain terms are used by the Company, such as "Indicated" and "Inferred" "Resources", that the SEC guidelines strictly prohibit U.S. registered companies from including in their filings with the SEC. U.S. Investors are urged to consider closely the disclosure in the Company's Form 20-F annual report, File No. 001- 35124, which may be secured from the Company, or from the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. Cautionary Note Concerning Forward-Looking Information This press release contains forward-looking information. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future (including, without limitation, statements regarding the closing of the balance of the Financing, drilling by Barrick under the joint venture agreement with the Company, drilling by the Company on the Adumbi deposit, potential gold discoveries, mineral resource estimates, potential mineral resource increases, drill targets, exploration results, and future exploration and development) are forward-looking information. This forward-looking information reflects the current expectations or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to the Company. Forward-looking information is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking information, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, failure to complete the balance of the Financing, the possibility that drilling programs (by both Barrick and the Company) will be delayed, activities of the Company may be adversely impacted by the continued spread of the recent widespread outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel strain of the coronavirus (COVID-19), including the ability of the Company to secure additional financing, risks related to the exploration stage of the Company's properties, the possibility that future exploration (including drilling) or development results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future, failure to establish estimated mineral resources (the Companys mineral resource figures are estimates and no assurances can be given that the indicated levels of gold will be produced), changes in world gold markets or equity markets, political developments in the DRC, gold recoveries being less than those indicated by the metallurgical testwork carried out to date (there can be no assurance that gold recoveries in small scale laboratory tests will be duplicated in large tests under on-site conditions or during production), fluctuations in currency exchange rates, inflation, changes to regulations affecting the Company's activities, delays in obtaining or failure to obtain required project approvals, the uncertainties involved in interpreting drilling results and other geological data and the other risks disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in the Company's annual report on Form 20-F dated April 6, 2020 filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is provided and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, 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. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking information are reasonable, forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such information due to the inherent uncertainty therein. For further information, please visit our website at www.loncor.com, or contact: Arnold Kondrat, CEO, Toronto, Ontario, Tel: + 1 (416) 366 7300. When Moka Dawkins, a Black and Indigenous trans woman, was arrested Thursday and held overnight by Toronto police, dozens of community members followed and demanded her release. Not Another Black Life organizers shared updates on social media throughout the night, until Dawkins was released from police custody Friday afternoon. Just know that Im just an individual in all of this, Dawkins said to the crowd of supporters outside 55 Division. The struggle still goes on for peoples cousins, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, mothers and fathers. Dawkins lawyer Adele Monaco told the Star, Its heart wrenching to see how she was treated, clearly uncalled for, [it] should not have happened that way. Monaco could not reveal details about the case because it is before the courts, but based on what she knows, said: One would have not expected that she would have been held for bail. She added that her team cited cases where because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people were not being detained even for more violent offences. I cannot reconcile in my mind why she was held, Monaco said. According to a Toronto police press release, police were called to investigate alleged threats and assaults between two individuals. After which Dawkins was charged with assault, uttering threats and failure to comply with probation. According to people at the demonstration it was a roommate of Dawkins who called the police alleging an assault. Toronto police would not confirm citing privacy issues. In the U.S., instances of white people calling the police on Black people for activities like birdwatching, swimming, barbecuing and sitting in a Starbucks, have brought attention to the potential dangers and violence that comes with calling law enforcement on Black people. Where Dawkins is concerned, the situation is made all the more complicated by the fact that she is a Black trans woman who has been imprisoned before. Dawkins had previously been arrested and was convicted of manslaughter in 2018 for the death of Jamie Foster. Dawkins said Fosters 2015 killing was self defence, saying he came after her with a knife and she thought he was going to kill her. She was sentenced to eight years in prison and, accounting for time served, was released late last year. She has since spoken with Global News and HuffPost about her experience being incarcerated at Toronto South and Toronto East Detention Centres, both mens facilities. Previously incarcerated trans women, like Dawkins, will always face criminalization due to their past history and be more easily seen as the provoker or violent person, according to Monica Forrester, executive director of Trans Pride Toronto and Transitioning Together. Forrester said that in her own experience as a trans woman working in community service for over 20 years, she has still had her integrity questioned, dealt with transphobia, and has been reduced, or devalued for doing sex work. Its an issue Dawkins lawyer said she called attention to at the hearing this morning. Monaco said the handling of this case demonstrates the lack of sensitivity and insight that most police officers have in relation to people such as Dawkins who are Black, Indigenous and transgender. Outside of 55 Division as supporters awaited Dawkins release, people spoke positively of her and welcomed her with hugs. I think it was a really solid expression of community and willingness to fight for Moka and alongside her, said Ellie Ade Kaur, a sex workers rights advocate who was camped out. Theres no tenderness, theres no listening going on, Munera Yusef said about the way Dawkinssituation was being handled by police. Yusef, 24, visited the group of supporters last night and was just planning to drop off drumsticks and noisemakers. She wound up staying the whole night and travelled from 14 Division to 55 Division when Dawkins was moved. I didnt even know who Moka was at all, but the entire time I felt what a good person she was, Yusef said. Nobody would show up like this for anyone who didnt have a good heart. President Donald Trump said late Friday he plans to ban Chinese-owned TikTok from operating in the United States, the latest sign of the administration's increasingly strident stance on China and its tech companies. "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. Earlier Friday, Trump was considering signing an order forcing China's ByteDance to sell off the U.S. portion of TikTok over national security concerns, according to people familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. One of the individuals confirmed Microsoft was in the lead to acquire the popular platform's U.S. service. While the order was originally expected to be signed Friday, it may fall through, the people warned. The president was also considering other approaches, including designating TikTok under an executive order that allows the president to exclude national security threats from U.S. networks. Late Friday, the president told reporters he was not in favor of a deal to let a U.S. company buy TikTok's U.S. operations. Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to ban TikTok. "Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that," he said, referring to emergency economic powers. The order that would force a sale, which stems from a national security investigation, is fairly rare but has been used by Trump as recently as March, when the president ordered a Chinese company to sell its stake in a U.S. hotel-software company. Last year, the Trump administration used it to demand the Chinese owners of gay dating app Grindr give up control of the company. If Microsoft does acquire TikTok, it would make it a major rival to Facebook, Google's YouTube and other tech giants overnight, dramatically reshaping the U.S. social media landscape. The decision to force a sale comes amid growing concern among U.S. officials that the Chinese government could access users' private data, something that prompted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to say earlier this month that the United States is "certainly looking at" banning TikTok. Branches of the U.S. military, including the Army and Navy, have banned the app from government issued phones. The Pentagon urged its employees last year to uninstall the app due to security concerns. On Friday, Trump reiterated that option. "We may be banning TikTok," Trump told reporters before leaving for Florida. "We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options. But a lot of things are happening, so we'll see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok." TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide declined to comment on the expected order, but she said they are "confident in the long-term success of TikTok." Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw declined to comment. Bloomberg News first reported the news on the divestiture. The other order the government could apply is the 2019 International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which effectively bans any communications tool that is a national security threat to the United States. If Trump uses the "full force" of the remedies under the executive order, said Stewart Baker, a former National Security Agency general counsel, "No American could work for them. The app store couldn't make them available. American advertisers couldn't pay them for ads. It would be economically devastating for them." TikTok has continually insisted that it does not hand over information to the Chinese government. "We have never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked," McQuaide said earlier this month. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency body whose powers were strengthened by 2018 legislation, recommends to the president whether certain proposed takeovers should be rejected, and whether completed takeovers should be reversed, on national security grounds. CFIUS began investigating an acquisition by Beijing-based ByteDance after lawmakers asked the government to step in over national security concerns. ByteDance bought karaoke app Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with TikTok, launching the app to mass popularity in the United States. James Andrew Lewis, vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said foreign companies usually take the hint when they think a demand from the U.S. government will be coming. "Usually everyone gets the message and takes action without waiting for formal government action," he said. Buying TikTok could reshape the Big Tech landscape, giving Microsoft a strong foothold in the U.S. consumer market with one of the world's fastest growing social media platforms. Unlike many of its competitors, Microsoft does not have a creative social media company to sow brand recognition with younger users, though the Redmond, Wash.-based company does own professional networking site LinkedIn. While the acquisition could raise some antitrust eyebrows, regulators haven't typically blocked acquisitions of business lines that are dissimilar from what a company already does. Microsoft also has deep ties with the U.S. government, most recently winning the Pentagon's JEDI cloud computing contract. Microsoft as a buyer could help quell administration security concerns about TikTok data. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called out TikTok as a rival during a congressional antitrust hearing earlier this week, at which Microsoft was noticeably absent. TikTok has tried in recent months to convince U.S. users and regulators of its strong ties to the country. It emphasizes that it has hundreds of employees in the United States and even hired former Disney executive Kevin Mayer to be its new chief executive in May. On Wednesday, Mayer pledged the company will allow U.S. regulators and privacy experts to take a closer look under its digital hood, offering them the ability to "examine" its underlying software code in response to claims it is handing off data to the Chinese government. The app, which lets users create and post short videos with music and other effects, has surged in popularity even more during the coronavirus pandemic as people search for at-home activities and distractions. Teens are especially active on TikTok, creating videos showcasing their dancing, pranks and cooking skills. This is the latest in a string of moves by the Trump administration to counter Chinese tech giants. Tension has already come to a head over Chinese telecom giant Huawei, the world's largest provider of mobile network gear - a field from which U.S. companies are largely absent. The United States calls Huawei a security risk, which the company denies, and has undertaken an international lobbying campaign to persuade other countries not to buy from Huawei. The Trump administration has also targeted other Chinese companies, restricting trade with more than a dozen it accuses of supplying surveillance gear in the western province of Xinjiang, where U.S. officials and human rights groups say China's ruling Communist Party is holding Muslims in mass detention camps. The Trump administration has also previously used CFIUS to scrutinize, block or reverse Chinese acquisitions. In March, Trump ordered a Chinese company to divest all ownership of a U.S. hotel-software company, saying the Beijing investor could harm U.S. national security. A written order from the president's office suggested the administration was concerned about Chinese access to StayNTouch's hotel-guest data. The order, which followed a CFIUS review, instructed the Chinese company to immediately to refrain from accessing any of StayNTouch's hotel-guest data. The Chinese company, Beijing Shiji Information Technology, acquired StayNTouch in 2018, saying the U.S. company's software was used in connection with 90,000 hotel rooms globally. After the order was issued, Beijing Shiji said it was "not a threat to U.S. security in any way." "We offered a range of significant proposals to mitigate any concerns the U.S. government might have, including further restricting access to guest data and appointing an independent monitor to ensure these protections. Unfortunately, those offers were rebuffed," the company said at the time. In 2018, after a CFIUS review, Trump ordered Singapore-based Broadcom to abandon its $117 billion bid for the U.S. semiconductor company Qualcomm, blocking what would have been one of the biggest technology deals in history. A full presidential order isn't always required to block or reverse a deal. Lawyers familiar with CFIUS reviews say the national security committee can tell a foreign company: sell the asset or the president will issue an order. That appears to be what happened last year, when the Trump administration forced a Chinese company to sell its majority stake in a U.S. health-care-data company, PatientsLikeMe. When Pompeo said earlier this month that TikTok might be banned, frantic users took to the app to bemoan its potential demise and urge followers to find them on other social media sites. "I really hope that this will not happen," one user said in a video. "All the videos, all the memories of you. This can't be true." Hong Kong police order arrest of exiled activists: China state media WORLD: Hong Kong police have ordered the arrest of six pro-democracy activists living in exile on suspicion of violating the national security law, Chinese state media reported late yesterday (July 31), but the citys force refused to comment. Chinese By AFP Saturday 1 August 2020, 01:22PM Hong Kong police are seeking to arrest Nathan Law (C) and five other democracy activists now living in exile, Chinas state television reported. Photo: AFP The six included prominent young campaigner Nathan Law, 27, who recently relocated to Britain after fleeing Hong Kong. Hong Kong police officially ordered the arrests of six trouble-makers who have fled overseas, CCTV state television said. Law called the charges trumped-up and said his only crime is that he loves Hong Kong too much. The arrests, the disqualifications, the wanted bulletins - these are indications of our need to remain active on the global stage, Law said on Facebook. That Hong Kong has no place for even such moderate views like ours underscores the absurdity of Chinese Communist rule. I hope... that all of you can stand strong to resist the white terror rather than succumb to self-censorship, he added. A crackdown on Hong Kongs democracy movement has increased apace in the month since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the restless city. The law targets subversion, secession, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces with up to life in prison, but critics said it was a legal weapon to silence dissidents and criminalise certain political views. It would be the first time the citys police have used the extraterritorial power in the new law to go after activists who are not in the territory. Besides Law, the other activists sought include former British consulate staffer Simon Cheng, pro-democracy campaigner Samuel Chu and pro-independence activists Ray Wong, Wayne Chan and Honcques Laus, according to CCTV. Hong Kong police is targeting a US citizen for lobbying my own government. I might be the first non-Chinese citizen to be targeted, but I will not be the last, Chu said on Twitter. If I am targeted, any American, any citizen of any nation who speaks out for HK can-and will be-too, he added. The report said the six were sought for incitement to secession and collusion with foreign forces. However, in an email to AFP, the Hong Kong police said they do not comment on media reports. Beijing has said the law will restore stability after last years huge and often violent pro-democracy protests. But it has also hastened the unravelling of Hong Kongs political freedoms and autonomy, supposedly guaranteed for 50 years after the 1997 handover from Britain. In just a month since the new security law came into effect, a dozen leading pro-democracy campaigners have been disqualified from running in legislative elections and four students have been arrested on suspicion of inciting succession with social media posts. Jaipur, Aug 1 (UNI) Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday said if Congress high command forgives rebel MLAs, then he has no problem in accepting them. "If high command forgives, then I will hug them (rebels). Congress party has given so much. I have remained chief minister for three times. I am loyal to my party and will do whatever it wants," Mr Gehlot stated in Jaisalmer. Mr Gehlot on Saturday morning returned to the state capital Jaipur, after an overnight stay in Hotel Suryagarh in Jaisalmer where his loyalist were shifted on Friday morning from Fairmount hotel in the outskirts of Jaipur, in an attempt to prevent poaching and keep MLAs intact till the commencement of Assembly session from August 14. "Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to play a big game. They have tasted blood after toppling the governments in several states. Since, Governor's order for assembly session, they have increased horse-trading rates. But in Rajasthan, they will not succeed," the Chief Minister alleged. Mr Gehlot said he has informed everything to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged his intervention to save the democracy. On BJP's questioning the shifting of MLAs if they are loyal, Mr Gehlot said," They (BJP leaders in Rajasthan) are new in politics." He questioned why Vasundhara Raje, former chief minister and senior BJP leader, is mute on developments. "Where is she?, he asked. He said though MLAs will be staying at Jaisalmer Hotel but still they are free move. "They are not in cage like rebels in Manesar hotel. They will visit a temple and tour places in Jaisalmer and free to go wherever they want." As per sources, the MLAs have been asked to remain in Jaisalmer till August 14. Talking about COVID-19, Mr Gehlot said he will today write a letter to the Prime Minister, asking him to convene another video-conference as the number of cases are rising. "Though cases are rising in Rajasthan, but situation is totally under control. We are conducting over 25,000 tests daily, but look at other states with low level of testing," he said. Since, 19 Congress MLAs, including former Sachin Pilot, rebelled against Mr Gehlot leadership and left the desert state for Manesar Hotel in BJP-ruled Haryana, Gehlot loyalists were holed up in Fairmout hotel in the outskirts of the pink city. Fearing anymore movement of the legislative, Mr Ghelot government repeatedly asked Governor Kalraj Mishra for bringing the Assembly in session urgently to "claim majority" which was accepted by the Governor on Thursday night. Retaining majority in the House is not only crucial for Mr Gehlot, who has been challenged by Mr Pilot, but also for the Congress, as it recently lost Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh in the same manner. UNI PS SB 1752 SAN JOSE (BCN) San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo announced Friday that he would be named a plaintiff and join a lawsuit with San Jose and other jurisdictions to prevent President Donald Trump from excluding undocumented residents from the 2020 Census. Liccardo said by not counting individuals fully, the White House would be in clear violation of the 14th Amendment. "In San Jos, and under the U.S. Constitution, everyone counts," Liccardo said. "It is astounding that 132 years after we wiped the abhorrent 'three-fifths' clause from Article I of our U.S. Constitution, and as our nation yearns for racial equity, we have a Presidential Administration seeking to return to the days prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment." On July 21, the president released a memorandum directing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which overlooks the Census Bureau, to discount undocumented residents and count certain immigrants when determining congressional seats. The lawsuit alleges that the Presidents memorandum violates the Equal Protection Clause's prohibition of intentional discrimination against persons of color in the 14th Amendment, the Enumeration Clause of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution and the Census Act. It was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the city of San Jose, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, King County in Washington and Arlington County in Virginia. Other individual plaintiffs include Zerihoun Yilma and Lovette Kargbo-Thompson. In Santa Clara County, nearly 10 percent of the population is undocumented, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center study. "This blatantly racist decree from the president cannot go without a strong and fervent challenge from those who seek to sustain our nation's Constitutional protections," Liccardo said. The lawsuit can be viewed here: https://lawyerscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-07-27-1-Complaint.pdf 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. Visitors flock to Bowral for its antique stores, cafes and crisp air, but a road project to relieve traffic congestion in the town has sparked a wave of opposition. The upgrade of Station Street has even enraged Southern Highlands socialites. Skye Leckie, wife of retired television executive David Leckie, calls it "the logging of Bowral". "I'll tie myself to anything," says Skye Leckie, who is campaigning against the trees' removal with Janet Storrier. Credit:Wolter Peeters "It's causing quite a lot of angst," she says of the plan to remove eight pin oak trees and build two lanes of traffic in each direction. "I don't need another damn roundabout with traffic lights. Why would you replace the beautiful pin oaks with that?" Ms Leckie, 61, says she will chain herself to one of the oak trees if necessary. "I'll tie myself to anything," she says. "I've lived homeless, I walked Kokoda, so of course I'd tie myself to a tree." Penn students, faculty, staff, and community members rally during a protest on the 3600 block of Walnut Street. Read more As a product of both Philadelphia public schools and the University of Pennsylvania, Anea Moore knows the disparity between the education systems in the city. The 22-year-old, who grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, still shudders at the conditions of the bathrooms at Penrose School, and remembers the cockroaches at Masterman. One time, she said, her classroom ran out of paper on the third day of school. At Penn, as a first-generation low-income student, Moore said, she saw how the schools wealth and resources opened doors around her, but questioned why the money largely remained on the Ivy League campus while families like hers struggled in the surrounding city, where a quarter of residents live in poverty. Every summer, Philadelphia students go home to experiences that directly counter their experiences at Penn, said Moore, a 2019 Rhodes scholar now pursuing social policy studies at the University of Oxford. Its contradictory if the university is investing in them only, but doesnt invest in their homes, in their families, in their public schools. Moore, who graduated from Penn last year, is one of the hundreds of Penn students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community members who have joined the growing call for the university to make payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) to support Philadelphia public schools. Like other nonprofits in Philadelphia, Penn is exempt from paying property taxes. For years, the university has faced calls to make voluntary payments instead. The issue is more pressing than ever, activists say, as the confluence of the coronavirus pandemic and a national reckoning over racism has laid bare wealth and racial inequities in the city. Paying PILOTs, they say, has become an issue of both racial and economic justice. READ MORE: $29.6 billion of Philly real estate is exempt from property taxes. Should nonprofits be asked to pay up? Proponents say funding from Penn would help to close resource gaps in the public schools, which enroll primarily low-income students. And in Pennsylvania, where school funding is heavily tied to property taxes, they say nonprofits should contribute to the surrounding city. This week, Philadelphia Jobs With Justice, Penn for Community Justice, and a group of faculty mobilized to join the call for change and seek answers from the universitys board of trustees. Their proposal asks Penn to pay the city 40% of what it would owe if it paid property taxes, estimating that would have meant at least a $36.4 million contribution in 2016-17. The School Districts budget for next year is about $3.5 billion. More than 400 people posted to social media, using the hashtag #DearDavidCohen, to make a direct plea to David L. Cohen, chair of the Penn board, to reconsider voluntary payments. Alumni pledged to withhold donations until the university agreed to make payments to the public schools. Sixty-eight Penn faculty and staff members delivered letters requesting to meet with the board over PILOTs, and more than 900 staff and faculty members have signed a petition created in June calling for the university to make payments. READ MORE: Penn professors call for university to pay taxes to support Philly schools On Friday, the groups rallied in front of the Inn at Penn, honking car horns and taping signs to the building on campus where the board meets. They pointed to the districts estimates of $125 million to remove environmental hazards from Philadelphia school buildings, a lack of librarians and counselors, teachers paying for supplies from their own pockets, and the growing school budget deficit caused by the coronavirus shutdown as urgent needs for more funding. Penns trustees, said Graduate School of Education professor H. Gerald Campano, are denying our citys children, teachers, and staff millions of dollars they need and deserve. A university spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Friday. In early July, Cohen told The Inquirer that Penns position against PILOTs, based on the unique characteristics of Philadelphias tax structure and Penns enormous contributions to the city and to education, has been made clear over the years. The petition only rehashes prior arguments and Penns position has not changed. On Friday, in an email to The Inquirer, Cohen said he stood by his statement, saying, These issues have been fully analyzed and discussed by the administration and the board. Penn has a duty to support the city at large, Moore said, beyond the universitys support of the Penn Alexander School or investments in University City. Instead of just investing in the students, she asked, why not invest in everyone standing beside them? The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the citys push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org. Jat wrote: Could you please explain why D is the right answer ? Nick90 Magoosh Test Prep Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. William Butler Yeats (1865 1939) Mike McGarryEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. William Butler Yeats (1865 1939) Signature Read More Investors are preparing their portfolios for a potentially rocky patch in US stocks, worried that a dramatic rebound in equities may stall amid dimming economic data and rising political uncertainty. Most money managers are wary of cutting equity exposure too drastically in a market that has rallied more than 40% since late March and stands near all-time highs despite widespread economic devastation and a global coronavirus pandemic. Still, the continued divergence between stocks and the real economy has worried some investors. US growth took its worst hit on record in the second ... Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) National government officials met on Saturday evening to discuss the call of the medical community to return to stricter quarantine measures amid the surge in COVID-19 cases, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said. Roque said Cabinet secretaries, National Task Force officials, Senate health committee chair Bong Go and One Hospital Incident Command Chief Leopoldo Vega convened to take up the matter and will submit recommendations to the President. The spokesman also added that the officials already spoke with organizations such as the Philippine Medical Association, the Philippine Nurses Association and the Philippine Association of Medical Technologists before their meeting. President Rodrigo Duterte earlier ordered the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to hear out the concerns of healthcare workers who are calling for a two-week-long enhanced community quarantine. 'We need to listen' Vice President Leni Robredo emphasized the need to answer the health workers' "distress call." "We need to listen, so that we can start rising from this crisis," she said in a statement. Senators Ping Lacson, Sonny Angara and Nancy Binay also expressed support to the medical frontliners. "Putting human lives on top of all considerations is a no-brainer, given the choice," said Lacson. On the economy However, it may not be as easy as it sounds, according to an expert. Jonathan Ravelas, Chief Market Strategist of BDO Unibank, said the country, most especially Metro Manila, cannot go back to ECQ given the possible repercussions on the economy. "Naiintindihan natin na talagang hirap na 'yung mga frontliner, pagod na sila, pero wala tayong kakayahan para bumalik tayo sa ECQ," Ravelas told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Weekend. [Translation: We understand that our frontliners are tired and having a hard time but we cannot afford to go back to ECQ] However, Ravelas agreed that non-essential businesses should remain closed to control the rise in cases. He said this in response to the Trade Department giving the go signal to reopen gyms and internet cafes to help restart the economy. Senator Cynthia Villar argued that reverting to stricter measures would be unnecessary if healthcare workers would do better in their jobs. "Hindi na siguro, pagbutihin nila trabaho nila," said Villar, adding that people would also die of hunger if the government closes the economy again. [Translation: I don't think it is needed, they should do better in their job.] Why the ANSI 87.1 Standard Matters When Choosing Proper Eye and Face Protection as Hard Hat Accessories Protective gear must be chosen by understanding and complying with the information contained in ANSI/ISEA Z87.1. Whether choosing eye and/or face protection safety equipment as standalone gear or as integrated hard hat accessories, protective gear must be chosen by understanding and complying with the information contained in ANSI/ISEA Z87.1American National Standard for Occupational and Educational Personal Eye and Face Protection Devices. ANSI/ISEA Z87.1-2020 is the sixth and most recent version of the voluntary industry consensus standard for eye and face protection. While it is a voluntary standard, it is codified by OSHA and requires employers to provide appropriate eye and face safety gear conforming to industry standards. While much of the standard is essentially the same as previous iterations, it does allow for some relaxed optical criteria in some cases where a more stringent, historically imposed requirement isnt necessary. However, most apply to non-industry operations such as first-responder, firefighting and military personnel. Industrial applications should still have an appropriate hazard assessment done for selecting the proper eye and face protection gear. This will also help determine if eye and face protection equipment is used as a standalone product or in conjunction with head protection as a hard hat accessory or add-on component. Additionally, emerging technologies not anticipated by the writers of past editions are taken into account in the 2020 version. This includes, but is not limited to, tolerances for automatic darkening welding filters, and determining the testing requirements for minimum coverage area with regards to head form testing of gear submitted by safety equipment manufacturers. What the ANSI/ISEA Z87.1-2020 Means for You as an Industry Professional Proper eye and face protection are essential for keeping workers from harm on the jobsite. A hazard analysis and safety assessment will provide the information needed, determining the potential hazards in the workplace. Once completed, you can use this standard to determine the products that meet the criteria for the hazards found and documented. This article originally appeared in the August 2020 issue of Occupational Health & Safety. Rajasthan BJP president Satish Poonia on Saturday attacked Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, saying he does not trust his MLAs and lacked the numbers to prove majority in the assembly. The government is in a five star hotel in Jaisalmer. He has no trust in his ministers and MLAs. Therefore, they are holed up in the hotel amid tight security, Poonia said. This situation would not have arisen if Gehlot had the numbers, Poonia told reporters at the party office here. The BJP chief said it was the infighting within the Congress which was to blame for the situation, rather than his party. Taking a dig at the state government, Poonia said though the law and order situation is deteriorating, its legislators were enjoying the stay at a five star hotel. The MLAs loyal to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had remained confined to Fairmont hotel in Jaipur since July 13 before being flown to Jaisalmer amid a power tussle between the CM and his former deputy Sachin Pilot. They are expected to stay in Jaisalmer till the beginning of the assembly session from August 14. The Congress has accused the BJP of playing a major role in the rebellion by Sachin Pilot and 18 other party MLAs. It has accused the saffron party of indulging in horse-trading to topple the state government. A hurricane ripped shingles off roofs and blew over trees as it battered the Bahamas before heading to the Florida coast. Officials in Miami are closing beaches, marinas and parks ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Isaias. Miami mayor Carlos Gimenez said 20 evacuation centres were on standby that could be set up with COVID-19 safety measures. He said: "We still don't think there is a need to open shelters for this storm, but they are ready." Mr Gimenez added that social-distancing measures meant each person in a shelter would need 40 square feet and there would be no cafeteria-style dining. Florida governor Ron DeSantis said the state was "fully prepared for this and any future storm during this hurricane season", with stockpiles of personal protective equipment, generators, bottled water and meals ready to be distributed. But he urged people to have seven days' of food, water and medication on hand and said state-run coronavirus testing sites in the areas where the storm could hit would be closed. He said: "Our sites, because they're outdoors with tents, if it were to get 40-, 50-mile-per-hour winds, it would just collapse." Authorities in North Carolina ordered the evacuation of Ocracoke Island, which was slammed by last year's Hurricane Dorian, starting on Saturday evening. Isaias had maximum sustained winds of 85mph early Saturday and some strengthening was possible later on Saturday, the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami said. Trevor Basden, director of the Bahamas meteorology department, told people to "continue to hunker down". Two islands, Abaco and Grand Bahama, were battered by Dorian, a category five storm that hovered over the area for two days and killed at least 70 people. People are still living in tents on both islands and they have now been evacuated. People living in the eastern end of Grand Bahama were also being moved. Paula Miller, Mercy Corps director for the Bahamas, said that while the islands can normally withstand strong hurricanes, some have been destabilised by the coronavirus pandemic and the damage caused by Dorian. Story continues She said: "With everything not quite shored up, property not secured, even a Category 1 will be enough to set them back." The country's prime minister, Hubert Minnis, relaxed a coronavirus lockdown as a result of the storm, but imposed a 10pm to 5am curfew. He said supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and hardware stores would be open as long as weather permitted. The Bahamas has reported more than 570 confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 14 deaths. While still a tropical storm, Isaias toppled trees on Thursday, destroyed crops and caused widespread flooding and small landslides in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where hundreds of thousands of people were left without power and water. Officials reported that a man died in the Dominican Republic when he was electrocuted by a fallen electrical cable. In Puerto Rico, the national guard rescued at least 35 people from floodwaters that swept away one woman who remained missing. a Good two weeks after an unprecedented Hacker attack on Twitter accounts of Celebrities has taken the police a 17-Year-old as the main suspects. Against the "mastermind" of the Hacks 30 charge points, said Prosecutor Andrew Warren in the state of Florida. Two other young men are accused of a Prosecutor in California, complicity and aid. The three of them are at risk of a conviction and imprisonment. The 17-Year-old Graham, Ivan C. was arrested on Friday in his apartment in the city of Tampa, as Warren said. He made no resistance. Him, among other things, organised fraud to be now, communication fraud, Hacking and fraudulent use of personal information accused. the attack, the accounts of numerous celebrity had been captured enter, including the Biden of the former American President, Barack Obama, the presidential candidate Joe, the Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, and Tesla chief Elon Musk. Also, company accounts, such as Apple, have been hacked. On the Accounts users in the Tweets were encouraged to send money in the crypto-currency Bitcoin to a specific account which is connected with the promise, the amount double to repay. More than $ 100,000 came together, according to the investigator by a good 400 Transfers. The main suspect is said to have accomplices. The Prosecutor's office in San Francisco in the state of California, where Twitter has its headquarters, said that the 19-year-old Mason from the English seaside resort of Bognor Regis would, among other things, Hacking, fraud and money laundering to the load. The one with the user name "Chae won" well-known man, could face up to 45 years in prison. The 22-year-old Nima F. from the city of Orlando in Florida, online is also known as "Rolex", is accused of aid to the unauthorized Intrusion in a Computer, what for him five years in prison could be threatened. It remained unclear whether they had already been arrested. "There is a misconception within the community of criminal hackers that attacks such as the Twitter Hack could anonymous and without consequences to be carried out," said attorney David Anderson. The rapid law enforcement in this case show, however, that such Actions leave traces behind and quickly consequences have. The Suspects had also made errors, which would have given investigators clues to her true identity, reported the "New York Times," citing court documents. The investigations were supported by the office of the public Prosecutor, according to the Federal police, the FBI and the Secret Service. It will be determined, in order to clarify whether there were more accomplices. Updated Date: 01 August 2020, 14:20 The Kaneshie District Court has warned three Cameroonians who appeared before it over illegal registration in the ongoing voters registration exercise not to run away when it granted them bail. If you run, Ghana will come after you and if you do not come to court, you will be sent to Nsawam Prisons to feel the place, the Court warned. Mrs Eleanor Kakra Barnes-Botchway had granted Herbert Agetembom alias Owusu Herbert Osman, 27, marketer, Japhet Vutsileh, alias Owusu Japhet, 23, virtual artist and Shansline Kole, alias Owusu Shansline, 22, seamstress a GHC20,000 bail with two sureties each. They have been charged for conspiracy to commit crime to wit, registering as a registered voter contrary to Section 23 of the Criminal Act, 1960 (Act 29) and registering as registered voter contrary to Section 24 (a) of Registration of voters Public Elections (Registration Regulation), 1995, (C.I. 12) Agetembom and Vutsileh were additionally charged for abetment of crime, to wit registering as a registered voter contrary to Section 20 of Criminal Act, 1960 (Act 29). All the three denied the charges and were to make their next appearance on Wednesday, September 2, 2020. She also cautioned the sureties to ensure the accused persons came to court anytime they were needed for justice to be served. The Court ordered Prosecution to file all relevant statements including the witness statements before the next adjourned date. Baba Jamal, their lawyer in applying for bail, said the accused persons would appear before the Court anytime they were needed. He said they had people of substance to stand as sureties and that they were ready to defend their citizenship as Ghanaians as well as vindicate themselves and families from the false accusations. Sergeant Apaweh Achana, prosecuting, told the Court that Mr Joseph Yamoah Bentil, an Assemblyman and resident of Kotobabi was the complainant in the case. He said the accused persons were Cameroonians and lived at Lapaz near the New Market and on July 28, 2020, at about 1100hours, while he was stationed at the Kotobabi Global Evangelical Church Registration Centre as an agent, he became suspicious of Shansline during her registration process. Prosecution said he raised a protest about her nationality and together with witnesses, alerted the police patrol team to assist. He said when Shansline was asked, she confessed being a Cameroonian which led to her arrest as well as Agetembom and Vutsileh, her guarantors. Investigations revealed that the guarantors had earlier registered under the guise of Owusu Herbert Osman and Owusu Japhet at the Kotobabi Prempeh Hotel and the Christ Church of Grace Pig Farm Two Registration Centres, respectively on July 20 and 28. 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 96-year-old university student in Sicily graduates with top honours. Giuseppe Paterno, aged almost 97, has graduated with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and History, receiving top honours from the University of Palermo. Paterno, a former railway worker, became Italy's oldest university graduate after enrolling in a course in his native Palermo three years ago, reports Reuters. Stepping up to receive his diploma and the laurel wreath traditionally awarded to Italian graduates, Paterno was met with warm applause from his teachers and fellow students more than 70 years his junior. A widower for many years, Paterno was also applauded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren during the ceremony on 29 July. Paterno took an old-fashioned approach to his studies, using a manual typewriter for his essays and eschewing the internet in favour of studying from printed books. Italy's oldest university graduate told Reuters that despite receiving only basic schooling as a child, he retained a lifelong desire to learn, graduating from high school at the age of 31. Knowledge is like a suitcase that I carry with me, it is a treasure - Paterno said - I understood that it was a little late to get a three-year degree but I said to myself lets see if I can do it. After growing up in poverty, Paterno joined the navy, serving in world war two, before settling down with his family and spending his entire career working on the railways. Focusing his thesis on his hometown of Palermo, Paterno was hailed by the university as "an example for younger students." The rector of the university, Professor Fabrizio Micari, thanked Paterno for the "extraordinary example of life, culture and determination that he gives to all of us." Who knows, maybe I could carry on for the two years and get my Masters - Paterno told Reuters - after all, my mother Giovanna lived until she was a 100 years old, maybe I can do it as well. AkzoNobel breaks ground on its green manufacturing site at Amata Industrial Park On July 30, AkzoNobel, the leading global paints and coatings company, officially kicked of the construction of the expansion of its Amata site as part of its continuous investment in technology and capacity. The plant's innovative sustainability features include solar power generation infrastructure (solar panel installations), rain water harvesting systems, solvent recovery systems, as well as high elimination of raw material packaging scraps through raw material bulk management processes and systems. AkzoNobels site in Amata was launched in 2011 as a strategic industrial wood coatings manufacturing site to supply coatings to manufacturers throughout Southeast Asia. In addition to wood coatings, the site services other segments of AkzoNobels performance coatings, including coil coatings for the steel structure industry. This expansion is part of AkzoNobels continuous drive towards manufacturing excellence and the implementation of advanced technology in the industry. The construction of the adhesives plant has been completed and the facility is now ready for production, while the marine and protective coatings plant is scheduled to be completed and to start production in January 2021. The expanded site will be a comprehensive multi-coatings manufacturing site with state-of-the-art technology, allowing for the real time monitoring of the manufacturing system and automated recipe control. With our global network, regional engineering excellence, and local insights, we want to continuously deliver world-class quality products and innovation to our customers, said Frederic Moreux, Asia operations director. This investment reaffirms the companys commitment to growth in Vietnam. With the recent upgrades and this expansion, the Amata site will serve well as a multi-functional manufacturing site to support our future business growth in the region. The forum aims to advance trade and economic connection between Vietnam and Europe, preparing for enterprises on both sides to embrace the EVFTA The forum was broadcast live to 27 domestic and foreign locations such as Hanoi, the southern provinces, and economic and commercial counsellor's offices of the Vietnamese embassy in Europe. According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Europe has seen bilateral trade turnover increasing by 14 times since 2000, from $4.1 billion to $56.45 billion. On the contrary, Vietnam's export turnover to Europe surged to $41.54 billion last year, expanding 15-fold from $2.8 billion. In the first five months of 2020, 26 of the 27 European countries invested a total of more than $21 billion into 2040 projects, increasing $553 million over the same period last year. Deputy Minister Vuong said that the figures prove Europe to be a leading trade partner of Vietnam over the past three decades, ranking as the second export market after the United States. After 10 years of negotiation and careful consideration, as well as completing ratification procedures, the EVFTA will officially come into effect on August 1, 2020, benefiting the business communities of both sides. The EVFTA is the first agreement that Europe has signed with a developing country in Southeast Asia. This new-generation agreement also provides Vietnam with unprecedented benefits. For example, Vietnam commits to eliminate import duties on 48.5 per cent of tariff lines, equivalent to 64.5 per cent of EU exports. After seven years, import taxes on 91.8 per cent of tariff lines will be removed by Vietnam, equivalent to 97.1 per cent of EU exports. After 10 years, the elimination rate will be 98.3 per cent of the total tariff lines, equal to 99.8 per cent of the EUs exports. Similarly, nearly 100 per cent of Vietnams exports to the EU will see import tax eliminated after 10 years. So far, this is the highest level of commitment a partner has given Vietnam in a trade agreement. The two sides have committed to open and welcome investment into new areas like trade, sustainable development, and government procurement, in addition to attractive fields like banking and finance, digital trade, and logistics. The agreement expands the market for export products, especially competitive products such as tropical products, seafood, automobiles, and materials for footwear, textile, and garment. It also offers European investors priority in the Vietnamese market. The World Bank forecasts the global economy to fall by 5.2 per cent in 2020, including a 7 per cent fall in developed countries and 3 per cent in emerging and developing markets. Deputy Minister Vuong stated that, It is anticipated that COVID-19 and its impacts will last long into the future. The EVFTA will enhance the investment and trade partnership between Vietnam and Europe. However, we have to frankly admit that the agreement is not the only hope for the Vietnamese economy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The true conditions for a breakthrough will come principally from our inner strength and enterprises determination to renew themselves." The United States nuclear power sector has been in steep decline for years. Even though nuclear energy, which produces zero greenhouse gas emissions, stands to have a huge advantage as the world moves toward decarbonizing the global energy industry, U.S. nuclear just cant catch a break. While the nuclear energy sector is booming in countries like Russia and China, which are constantly adding new plants to their fleets, nuclear energy plants in the United States have been shutting down or relying on hefty government subsidies just to stay afloat. In a domestic energy sector absolutely flooded by cheap natural gas from the West Texas shale revolution, nuclear just hasnt been able to compete for years. Whats more, the sector has largely failed out of public and political favor as nuclear energy has become largely associated with high profile disasters like the tragedies as Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. Now, the nuclear sector has received yet another blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, and now many experts are wondering whether the industry can weather the storm. And while many other countries are creating green stimulus packages that lend a hand to sectors like wind, solar, and nuclear as part of their post-coronavirus economic recovery plan, the United States has not followed suit, and is therefore likely missing out on a major energy opportunity. But now, the United States has unveiled new plans that may launch the countrys failing nuclear industry into the stratosphere. Literally. This week Time reported that the U.S. wants to build nuclear power plants that will work on the moon and Mars, and on Friday put out a request for ideas from the private sector on how to do that. Related: How Are Low Car Sales Impacting The Metals Market? This request was made by the U.S. Department of Energy, which put out a call for the construction of a fission surface power system that would enable humans to survive for extended periods of time in outer spaces decidedly inhospitable environment. The Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility in eastern Idaho, the Energy Department and NASA will evaluate the ideas for developing the reactor, Time writes. The Idaho National laboratory has been leading the way in the U.S. on advanced reactors, some of them micro reactors and others that can operate without water for cooling. Water-cooled nuclear reactors are the vast majority of reactors on Earth. The small nuclear reactors that have long been touted here on Earth as the future of cheaper, more reliable, and safer nuclear plants, will be key for bringing nuclear energy to space. Small nuclear reactors can provide the power capability necessary for space exploration missions of interest to the Federal government, the DOE wrote in its notice published last Friday. The DOE has formulated a two-phase plan, along with NASA, U.S. contractors and Idaho National Laboratory affiliate Battelle Energy Alliance to bring nuclear into the space age. The first phase of the plan consists of developing a reactor design that would be suited to the moon and Mars. The second phase is developing a test reactor, and then a beta version that will actually be sent to the moon for testing. This will require the development and construction of a flight system and landing apparatus to make the delivery possible. If all goes according to plan, phase two will be ready for launch in just over five years. The goal is to have a reactor, flight system and lander ready to go by the end of 2026. These first reactors will not be very powerful, as far as nuclear plants go. The reactor must be able to generate an uninterrupted electricity output of at least 10 kilowatts. The average U.S. residential home, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours per year, reports Time. The Energy Department said it would likely take multiple linked reactors to meet power needs on the moon or Mars. While these first reactors alone may not change the world here on Earth, they will set an incredible--and, almost in equal measure, frightening--precedent for moving our Earthly industries--especially higher risk ones--to space. When it comes to energy, in just a few short years, the sky will no longer be the limit. By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Safehaven.com: A moto-taxi driver moves through a street flooded by rain brought by the outer bands of Hurricane Isaias, in the Tabarre district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, early Friday, July 31, 2020. Isaias kept on a path early Friday toward the U.S. East Coast as it approached the Bahamas. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) Forecasters declared a hurricane warning for parts of the Florida coast Friday as Hurricane Isaias drenched the Bahamas on a track for the U.S. East Coast. Officials in Florida said they were closing beaches, marinas and parks in Miami-Dade County. Mayor Carlos Gimenez said the county had 20 evacuation centers on standby that could be set up with COVID-19 safety measures. "We still don't think there is a need to open shelters for this storm, but they are ready," he said. Authorities in North Carolina ordered the evacuation of Oracoke Island, which was slammed by last year's Hurricane Dorian, starting Saturday evening. Meanwhile, officials in the Bahamas evacuated people on Abaco who have been living in temporary structures since Dorian as well as people at the eastern end of Grand Bahama. Isaias had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph) late Friday and was expected to strengthen through early Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. The storm was centered about 135 miles (215 kilometers) south-southeast of Nassau in the Bahamas and was moving northwest at 15 mph (24 kph). The hurricane knocked shingles off roofs and tumbled trees as it carved its way through an archipelago still recovering from Dorian's devastation. Bahamas Power and Light Co. cut off power in certain areas for safety. In this image made from video, a large tree toppled by tropical storm winds is seen in Alto Trujillo, Puerto Rico, Thursday, July 30, 2020. Tropical Storm Isaias knocked out power and caused flooding and small landslides across Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic on Thursday as forecasters predicted it would strengthen into a hurricane while moving toward the Bahamas and U.S. East Coast.(AP Photo) Paula Miller, Mercy Corps director for the Bahamas, told The Associated Press that while the islands can normally withstand strong hurricanes, some have been destabilized by the coronavirus pandemic and the damage caused by Dorian. "With everything not quite shored up, property not secured, home not prepared, even a Category 1 will be enough to set them back," she said. The Hurricane Center said heavy rains associated with the storm "may begin to affect South and east-Central Florida beginning late Friday night, and the eastern Carolinas by early next week, potentially resulting in isolated flash and urban flooding, especially in low-lying and poorly drained areas." A hurricane warning was in effect from Boca Raton, just north of Miami, about 150 miles north to the Flagler-Volusia county line. A hurricane watch was in effect south of Boca Raton to Hallendale Beach. A man installs hurricane shutters on a building owned by Suga Development, Friday, July 31, 2020, in Lake Worth Beach, Fla. Forecasters have declared a hurricane watch for parts of the Florida coastline as Hurricane Isaias drenches the Bahamas on a track for the U.S. East Coast. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post via AP) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the state was "fully prepared for this and any future storm during this hurricane season," with stockpiles of personal protective equipment, generators, bottled water and meals ready to be distributed. But he urged people to have seven days with of food, water and medication ready and said that state-run coronavirus testing sites in the areas where the storm could hit will be closed. "Our sites, because they're outdoors with tents, if it were to get 40-, 50-mile-per-hour winds, it would just collapse," he said. "Safety is paramount for that." Miami's mayor said that social-distancing measures prompted by COVID-19 meant each person in shelters needed to have 40 square feet and no more cafeteria-style dining would be allowed. People who are infected with the new coronavirus and need to evacuate will be isolated in classrooms separate them from the general population, Gimenez said. Residents wait in line to fill their containers with gasoline before the arrival of Hurricane Isaias in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen) In Daytona Beach and Polk County, authorities began distributing sandbags and other officials advised people to have emergency provisions at home sufficient for three to seven days. A hurricane warning was in effect for northwest and central Bahamas. "Continue to hunker down," said Trevor Basden, director of the Bahamas meteorology department. Two of those islands, Abaco and Grand Bahama, were battered by Dorian, a Category 5 storm that hovered over the area for two days and killed at least 70 people, with more than 280 reported missing. People are still living in tents on both islands, and officials said crews were trying to remove leftover debris ahead of Isaias. Prime Minister Hubert Minnis relaxed a coronavirus lockdown as a result of the impending storm, but imposed a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. He said supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and hardware stores would be allowed to be open as long as weather permitted. A man carries drinking water for a customer at a water depot store before the arrival of Hurricane Isaias in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen) The Bahamas has reported more than 570 confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 14 deaths. It recently barred travelers from the U.S. following a surge in cases after it reopened to international tourism. Given the pandemic, the prime minister urged young people to stay safe from the approaching storm to respect social distancing measures. "Please do not engage in hurricane or COVID(-19) parties," he said. "It can be devastating." On Thursday, while still a tropical storm, Isaias toppled trees, destroyed crops and caused widespread flooding and small landslides in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where hundreds of thousands of people were left without power and water. Officials reported that a man died in the Dominican Republic when he was electrocuted by a fallen electrical cable. More than 5,000 people were evacuated, and more than 130 communities remained cut off by floodwaters. Wendell Smith unfolds his storm shutters over a window on his Arden Forest home in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Isaias, in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen) Home Depot aisles are stocked with hurricane supplies as Hurricane Isaias approaches South Florida on Friday, July 31, 2020 in Boynton Beach, Fla. Isaias is forecasted to stay east of the coast but it will bring winds and possible coasting flooding. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP) Workers remove chairs from the beach in preparation for Hurricane Isaias, Friday, July 31, 2020, in Miami Beach, Fla. Forecasters declared a hurricane warning for parts of the Florida coast Friday as Hurricane Isaias drenched the Bahamas on track for the U.S. East Coast. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Women enjoy the waves from a high surf, Friday, July 31, 2020, in Miami Beach, Fla. Forecasters declared a hurricane warning for parts of the Florida coast Friday as Hurricane Isaias drenched the Bahamas on track for the U.S. East Coast. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) In this GOES-16 satellite image taken Friday, July 31, 2020, at 8:40 a.m. EDT., and provided by NOAA, Hurricane Isaias churns in the Caribbean. Hurricane Isaias kept on a path early Friday toward the U.S. East Coast as it approached the Bahamas, parts of which are still recovering from the devastation of last year's Hurricane Dorian. (NOAA via AP) In this image made from video, people look at level of Canovanas river following heavy rain caused by the storm in Alto Trujillo, Puerto Rico, Thursday, July 30, 2020. Tropical Storm Isaias knocked out power and caused flooding and small landslides across Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic on Thursday as forecasters predicted it would strengthen into a hurricane while moving toward the Bahamas and U.S. East Coast.(AP Photo) In this image made from video, cars drive through high water on a road in Canovanas, Puerto Rico, Thursday, July 30, 2020. Tropical Storm Isaias knocked out power and caused flooding and small landslides across Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic on Thursday as forecasters predicted it would strengthen into a hurricane while moving toward the Bahamas and U.S. East Coast.(AP Photo) Drivers fuel up at BJ's in Boynton Beach, Fla., as they prepare for Hurricane Isaias on Friday, July 31, 2020. Isaias is forecasted to stay east of the coast but it will bring winds and possible coasting flooding. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP) A red flag flies from a lifeguard station indicating high surf, Friday, July 31, 2020, in Miami Beach, Fla. Forecasters declared a hurricane warning for parts of the Florida coast Friday as Hurricane Isaias drenched the Bahamas on track for the U.S. East Coast. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Pedestrians venture out into the rain brought by the outer bands of Hurricane Isaias in the Petionville district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, early Friday, July 31, 2020. Isaias kept on a path early Friday toward the U.S. East Coast as it approached the Bahamas. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) A resident walks with containers filled with gasoline at Cooper's gas station before the arrival of Hurricane Isaias in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen) Residents cover a window with plywood in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Isaias, in the Heritage neighborhood of Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen) Darrel Duncombe stands nearby as Max Hall cuts a sheet of plywood to use to repair a roof in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Isaias in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen) In Puerto Rico, the National Guard rescued at least 35 people from floodwaters that swept away one woman who remains missing. Isaias was expected to produce 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Explore further Bahamas, Florida brace as new Hurricane Isaias bears down 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Hyderabad: Covid-19 patients may soon be able to have an attendant with them in the hospital. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has written to the chief secretaries of all state governments that a willing attendant of the patient can be cleared to remain in an area earmarked by the hospital. Union health secretary Preeti Sudan said in the letter (dated July 26) that Covid-designated hospitals should create a help desk accessible physically as well as by telephone from where the well-being of patients admitted in hospital can be enquired. Following receipt of the letter, the Telangana health department on Wednesday issued a note to the Director of Health Services, Commissioner Family Health, and Director of Medical Education to implement the instructions from the Centre. In addition, the Centre also directed the states that all Covid-19 hospitals should install CCTV cameras to facilitate patient management and for screening of footage by designated authorities or bodies when remedial action is required. CCTV cameras should also be installed in areas handling the bodies of Covid-19 patients who have succumbed to the pandemic. Further, the states have also been instructed to set up a team of doctors and other experts for inspecting hospitals treating Covid-19 patients. The team will make its recommendations to the state governments. The respective chief secretaries have been told to set up these committees in a week. The Centre said the directions follow a Supreme Court order dated June 19 in a case on proper treatment of Covid-19 patients and a dignified handling of dead bodies, among other issues. On July 29, the world's largest COVID-19 vaccine study commenced with more than 30,000 volunteers receiving the latest test vaccination, according to AP. Every month through fall, the COVID-19 Prevention Network, which is government funded, will roll out a new study of a leading vaccine candidate, each one with 30,000 new volunteers. The hope is to eventually roll out a vaccine for the general public. Hearst Connecticut Media Group is conducting an informal poll asking readers if they plan to get the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available. As of July 31, the majority of poll respondents had voted "no." RELATED: What you need to know about FDA vaccine testing and trials We spoke to the following public health and infectious disease experts in Connecticut to find out if they plan to be vaccinated and why: Virginia Pitzer, associate professor of epidemiology - Yale School of Medicine Dr. Kevin D. Dieckhaus, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, director of Global Health & International Studies - UConn Health Department of Medicine Dr. Richard Martinello, associate professor of internal medicine & pediatrics (infectious diseases) - Yale School of Medicine; medical director of Infection Prevention - Yale New Haven Hospital Note: Answers have been edited and condensed for clarity After he was passed over for several promotions, he filed for a discharge and left the Army in 1956. It wasnt an easy decision for Mr. Armstrong, who was also a World War II veteran, because he had planned to make the military his career. Instead, he moved to the Washington area and worked more than 15 years as an architect for the Department of Housing and Urban Development before seeking an early retirement because of his disability in 1973. The number of coronavirus patients in San Antonio hospitals and intensive care units continued to decline Friday, even as more diagnosed cases and additional deaths from the virus were reported. Mayor Ron Nirenberg announced 550 new cases of COVID-19 and two fatalities. That brings the total number of patients diagnosed with the virus to 40,803 since the pandemic began in mid-March. Bexar Countys death toll from the virus now stands at 349. Theres still a very, very long way to go, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said, but he noted residents efforts to curb the virus by wearing masks, practicing social distancing and avoiding large gatherings are paying off. We hope to be able to continue that trend throughout the month of August. Were going to have to do well if we expect schools to be successful in their opening. Keep up what youre doing today and help us turn this whole issue around. The number of COVID patients hospitalized continues to drop with encouraging consistency, especially since hospitals were nearing their breaking point little more than two weeks ago. On Friday, 926 patients with the virus were being cared for in San Antonio hospitals, a decline of 39 patients in 24 hours. Among those hospitalized, 364 patients were in intensive care units, a decline of 16 from the day before. Thats down from a peak of 1,267 COVID-19 patients hospitalized on July 13 and a peak of 438 patients in ICUs on July 15. More than a quarter of COVID patients in local hospitals were on ventilators to help them breathe 252 people in all. About 15 percent of staffed patient beds at San Antonio hospitals remain available, the highest percentage in nearly a month, while 53 percent of ventilators still are ready for use. On ExpressNews.com: Gov. Abbott, GOP leaders weigh in on school reopenings this fall The latest victims to die from the virus were an Anglo woman in her 70s who died at Metropolitan Methodist Hospital and an Anglo woman in her 60s who died at Northeast Methodist Hospital. Both had underlying medical conditions. Recovery rates in Bexar County remain strong. More than three-quarters of people who tested positive for the virus 76 percent have recovered since the pandemic began, according to numbers posted earlier this week. But the public needs to remain on guard, said Dr. Junda Woo, medical director of Metropolitan Health District. We are seeing an overall decline, Woo said, but noted that doesnt mean this trend will continue. Weve seen in other areas where its plateaued or its rebounded. If we want to have schools open and then stay open, we need to keep on doing what weve been doing. The city said three COVID testing sites will be open to the public starting today and will remain open throughout the month of August. Two of those are walk-up testing locations that will be open every day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dont require appointments. They are Cuellar Community Center at 5626 San Fernando St. and Ramirez Community Center at 1011 Gillette Blvd. The third testing site, at Freeman Coliseum, requires patients to schedule an appointment first by calling 833-213-0643. This site will be open for appointments from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. City officials Friday reminded people getting tested to assume they have the virus until they get their test results back and to sequester themselves in a room at home away from others living in their household. Patients also are advised to use a bathroom separate from their family members during this time. They shouldnt go to work until they receive their test results, city officials said. Those having a tough time finding a safe place to isolate themselves away from vulnerable people in their household are urged to call 311 so the city can help them make other living arrangements. A person experiencing a prolonged fever, difficulty breathing or chest pains should call his or her medical provider or 911 if an emergency occurs. More than 420,000 cases of the virus and more than 6,500 deaths have been reported across Texas. On ExpressNews.com: Retail therapy thriving during the COVID-19 era in San Antonio Harris County continues to lead the state with the most diagnosed cases and the most deaths from the virus among all Texas counties. Dallas County is ranked second statewide in both categories. Only four of Texas 254 counties havent recorded any cases of the virus. Deaths related to COVID-19 have occurred in 202 Texas counties about 80 percent of all counties across the state. Comal County, the home of New Braunfels, also is seeing some encouraging trends. County officials reported only 14 new cases of the virus Friday, the smallest daily increase recorded since June 11. That includes seven confirmed cases and seven probable cases. That brings Comal Countys total patients diagnosed since the start of the pandemic to 2,144. The large majority of those patients live in the New Braunfels area. Public health officials reported 54 COVID patients have died in Comal County since the pandemic began four months ago. That includes 32 patients who had been living in long-term residential care facilities. On Friday, 56 Comal County residents sick with the virus remained hospitalized. More than half of all patients who have tested positive for the virus in Comal County 1,154 people, or 54 percent of all those diagnosed with COVID have recovered. Peggy OHare covers demographics, the census and occasionally crime and general assignment stories in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Peggy, become a subscriber. pohare@express-news.net | Twitter: @Peggy_OHare Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena, 37, was working for the US government in Mexico when he was abducted, tortured and killed by cartel members in February 1985. The lead investigator in his death believes a CIA agent was involved in his murder A new Amazon docuseries claims that a CIA agent was involved in the torture and death of DEA operative Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena, 37. Camarena, 37, was working for the US government in Guadalajara, Mexico when he was abducted, tortured and killed by cartel members in February 1985. His disappearance made international headlines in February 1985, and sparked fury from the Reagan Administration, who effectively shut down the southern border in a bid to pressure Mexico to catch the culprits. But while several Mexican drug lords were eventually convicted over Camarena's brutal slaying, the new docuseries - titled The Last Narc - contends that at least one US government official was also involved. The Last Narc features testimony from Hector Berrellez - the American man who led the investigation into Camarena's killing. He sensationally claims that famous CIA agent Felix Rodriquez 'partially conducted Camarena's interrogation and torture because the US government feared that he was about to stumble on a much larger conspiracy'. According to The Daily Beast, The Last Narc asserts that 'the CIA was in bed with the cartels, moving guns, drugs and cash through them in order to covertly fund Nicaragua's anti-communist Contras.' Former CIA agent Felix Rodriquez is pictured. He has previously denied having anything to do with Camarena's torture or death The Last Narc features testimony from Hector Berrellez - the American man who led the investigation into Camarena's killing. He sensationally claims that famous CIA agent Felix Rodriquez 'partially conducted Camarena's interrogation and torture because the US government feared that he was about to stumble on a much larger conspiracy' Several other people also involved in the investigation into Camarena's death also back up Berrellez's claims in The Last Narc. However, it's not the first time Berrellez has claimed the US government was involved in the crime. Back in 2015, he told LA Weekly that one witness who was present during Camarena's torture told him: 'The whole case stinks, and if you don't step away you'll stink, too. Your own government killed him.' At the time, a CIA spokesman responded to the claims, saying: 'It's ridiculous to suggest that the CIA had anything to do with the murder of a U.S. federal agent.' Rodriguez himself has also repeatedly denied having any involvement in Camarena's death, according to Matter. However, 35 years on, rumors that the US government was complicit in the DEA agent's death continue to persist. Camarena is pictured with wife Mika and two of their sons shortly before his death. In February, Mika told USA Today that she would not be surprised if a CIA employee had a hand in her husband's death The torture and murder of US DEA agent Kiki Camarena made international headlines and led to pronounced tensions between the US and Mexico Camarena was later portrayed in hit Netflix show Narcos, played by Michael Pena (pictured) In February of this year, USA Today published a report claiming 'US Justice Department agents and prosecutors have obtained statements from the witnesses implicating a CIA operative and a DEA official in the plot to torture and murder Camarena'. The statements allegedly came from three men who worked as security guards for Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo - a drug lord who was eventually convicted of ordering Camarena's death. Gallardo, known as 'The Godfather', remains behind bars for his role in the murder. Camarena's widow and the mother of his three sons, Mika, told USA Today that she would not be surprised if a CIA employee had a hand in her husband's death. 'I want the truth to be out. At this point, nothing would surprise me.' Camarena's disappearance made worldwide headlines in February 1985, and sparked fury from the Reagan Administration Mika Camarena is pictured meeting Ronald Reagan at the White House shortly after her husband's death Camarena was abducted on February 7 1985, and his remains were discovered a month later following a massive manhunt. Investigators later learned that he was brutally tortured for more than 30 hours. Camarena's captors beat and burned him, before using a power tool to drill into his skull. He was likely injected with drugs to ensure he remained conscious throughout the ordeal. The search for Camarena's killers was 'the largest in DEA history' and, eventually, Gallardo was indicted for his role in the murder. Two associates, Ernesto 'Don Neto' Fonseca and Rafael Caro Quintero, were also convicted. But in 2013, Quintero was released from jail on a technicality, and is now on is now on the FBI's most-wanted list, with authorities offering a $20 million reward for his capture. Meanwhile, alleged henchmen Rene Verdugo and Juan Matta-Ballesteros were also jailed for their involvement, before a judge disputed forensic evidence and threw out their convictions in 2017. Camarena's case recently received renewed interest after it became the center of the new Netflix series Narcos: Mexico, with Michael Pena playing the lead role. US Outraged at Pakistan Killing of Citizen on Trial For Blasphemy By Ayaz Gul July 31, 2020 The United States has denounced the killing inside a courtroom of a naturalized U.S. citizen on trial for blasphemy in Pakistan. Tahir Ahmed Naseem, a 47-year-old resident from Illinois, was shot several times in front of the judge during a Wednesday hearing in the northwestern city of Peshawar. He was on trial for allegedly claiming to be a prophet of Islam, a crime punishable by death under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. "We are shocked, saddened, and outraged that American citizen Tahir Naseem was killedinside a Pakistani courtroom," the U.S. State Department said in a statement issued on Thursday. The judicial proceedings against Naseem had been under way since 2018, when he was arrested for allegedly claiming to be the "last messenger of God" in online conversations with his Facebook friends in Pakistan. "Mr. Naseem had been lured to Pakistan from his home in Illinois by individuals who then used Pakistan's blasphemy laws to entrap him," the U.S. statement lamented. It noted that the U.S. government had been providing consular assistance to the victim and his family and "called the attention of senior Pakistani officials to his case to prevent the type of shameful tragedy that eventually occurred." Pakistani police swiftly arrested the young assailant, who later took responsibility for killing Naseem for having committed blasphemy and for being an enemy of Islam. "We grieve with the family of Mr. Naseem. We urge Pakistan to immediately reform its often-abused blasphemy laws and its court system, which allow such abuses to occur, and to ensure that the suspect is prosecuted to the full extent of the law," the U.S. State Department said. Security is usually tight around the court during cases related to blasphemy offenses because it is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan. Police said an investigation was underway to determine how the assailant managed to carry the weapons into the courtroom. Sam Brownback, U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, said he was disturbed by reports that a U.S. citizen was murdered while standing trial for blasphemy. "We call on @PakPMO and the Government of Pakistan to ensure the perpetrator is held accountable and investigate this egregious courtroom security lapse," Brownback tweeted. The latest act of violence associated with Pakistan's blasphemy laws has renewed calls for reforming them to prevent their misuse and to deter such incidents. But attempts by successive governments to reform the laws have failed under pressure from Islamic groups in the country. Domestic and international human rights groups maintain blasphemy charges are often fabricated by influential people in Pakistan to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal feuds with rival Muslim groups. Dozens of people are known to have been killed for allegedly committing blasphemy in Pakistan. Even mere accusations in certain instances have triggered mob lynchings of suspected blasphemers. The victims include doctors, teachers, lawyers and high-profile political figures. In a landmark 2018 judgment, the country's Supreme Court acquitted a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, of blasphemy charges after she spent eight years on death row in a case that drew global attention. Bibi has since secured asylum in Canada along with her family, to escape death threats from Islamists in Pakistan after her acquittal. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The World Vision Ghana (WVG), a Christian Child-focused and Community-based Organisation, has disclosed that some 484 children suffered from various forms of violence over the last three months. Mr Dery Gregory, the Child Protection and Advocacy Manager of WVG, said according to its field monitoring report between March and June 2020, on violence against children, gender-based violence against women and girls in WVG operational districts in the country. The occasion was the World Day Against Human Trafficking in persons at Krachi West District of the Oti Region, which was under the theme, "Committed to the Cause - End Child Trafficking now, COVID-19 is real." He said out of the number Krachi East and West accounted for a total of 26 of child trafficking cases, 169 cases of teenage pregnancy and 20 cases of non-maintenance incidences reported to state agencies. He said close to nine million children have been affected as the government attempted to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr Gregory said statistics available from World Vision International showed that 65 and 85 million children globally had suffered various forms of violence during the complete and partial lockdowns in 177 countries. He said WVG would continue to invest in the protection of children through collaborative intervention with government and key actors to collectively minimise the incidence of child trafficking and other violence against children. He said WVG would ensure children have access to quality education, water and improved sanitation in deprived communities. "Notwithstanding, the government has what it takes to fulfil the commitment to children," he said, adding that government should not only be the first to sign onto international treaties, declarations and protocols. Mr Gregory commended the Regional Coordinating Council and all key actors for working assiduously to bring Ghana's rating to tier 2 by the United States government on the human trafficking watch list and called for support for agencies involved in fighting the nefarious activities. He said human trafficking is carried out for exploitation which includes prostitution, sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery, child marriage and similar practices for the removal of organs (human parts to safe a dying rich person somewhere). Mr Gregory urged the government to strengthen the capacity of agencies responsible for protecting children and vulnerable people to rescue, arrest and prosecute perpetrators of child trafficking. ACP Alex Kojo Wowolo, the Divisional Police Commander of Krachi West, said the Police would continue to arrest perpetrators involved in Human Trafficking all over the Region. He said the Police were going through challenges with the judicial system within the Oti Region, adding that trafficking in persons was a serious crime and a grave violation of fundamental human rights of children. Mr Wowolo expressed the hope, the establishment of Circuit and High courts would be fast-tracked as the lower or Magistrate courts are limited by status to handle child trafficking cases. Nana Ofosu Appiah, Twafohene of Kete-Krachi admitted that human trafficking was being practised in some communities in the District with impunity and pledged the support of traditional authorities to stop the practice. He said human trafficking was a dehumanizing practice, which should be condemned and the perpetrators punished severely and appealed for continuous support for the antihuman trafficking task force to rescue victims. Nana Appiah assured World Vision Ghana that the Krachi Traditional Council and Civil society were committed to working with the frontline workers of State and private institutions to end human trafficking in the District and Ghana at large. 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 America's first crewed spaceship to fly to the International Space Station in nearly a decade returned safely to Earth on Sunday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. The mission, carried out jointly by NASA and the private company SpaceX, demonstrated that the United States has the capacity once more to send its astronauts to space and bring them back. The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour splashed into the water off Pensacola, Florida at 2:48 pm (1848 GMT), trailed by its four main parachutes. It was the first water landing for a crewed US spaceship since the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. "It's truly our honor and privilege," said pilot Doug Hurley, who was joined on the mission by commander Bob Behnken. "On behalf of the NASA and SpaceX teams, welcome back to planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX," replied SpaceX's Mike Heiman, to laughter in the control room. - Uninvited visitors - A flotilla of civilian boats swarmed the landing zone as a recovery ship sped to the scorched capsule and hoisted it aboard with its crane. The Coast Guard said it had warned people to stay away from the capsule but "numerous boaters" ignored the requests. The "capsule was in the water for a good period of time," said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, "the boats just made a beeline for it." The hatch opening was delayed as a team worked to stop a potentially dangerous leak of rocket fuel vapor. "What's not common is having passers-by approach the vehicle at close range with nitrogen-tetroxide in the atmosphere... We need to make sure we?re warning people not to get close to the spacecraft in the future," Bridenstine said. Around an hour after splashdown, the astronauts exited the capsule and headed for shore on a helicopter. They were reunited with their families in Houston, where they walked off a plane -- in apparently good physical shape and upbeat spirits -- at a military base. Addressing a socially distanced welcome ceremony in a hangar, Behnken, a veteran of the Space Shuttle program, praised the SpaceX team behind the successful mission. "There's something special about having that capability to launch and bring your own astronauts home," he said. A visibly excited SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the mission heralded a new era. "We're going to go to the Moon, we're going to have a base on the Moon; we're going to Mars," he said. "I'm not very religious but I prayed for this one." - Space autonomy - President Donald Trump -- who had travelled to Florida for the capsule's launch two months ago -- hailed its safe return. "Thank you to all!" he tweeted. "Great to have NASA Astronauts return to Earth after very successful two month mission." The United States has had to rely on Russia for rides to space since the last Space Shuttle flew in 2011. The mission is also a huge win for Musk's SpaceX, which was founded in only 2002 but has leap-frogged its way past Boeing, its main competitor in the commercial space race. The US has paid the two companies a total of about $7 billion for their "space taxi" contracts, though aerospace giant Boeing's efforts have floundered. - Atmospheric re-entry - The Crew Dragon capsule performed several precisely choreographed sequences in order to return home safely. First, it jettisoned its "trunk" that contains its power, heat and other systems, which burned up in the atmosphere. It then fired its thrusters to maneuver into the proper orbit and trajectory for splashdown. As it re-entered the atmosphere at a speed of around 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), it experienced temperatures of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1900 degrees Celsius). It deployed two sets of parachutes on its descent, bringing its speed down to a mere 15 mph as it hit the Gulf of Mexico. Endeavour will now undergo a six-week inspection to certify the vessel as worthy of future low-Earth orbit missions. The next mission -- dubbed "Crew-1" -- will involve a team of four: three NASA astronauts along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency mission specialist Soichi Noguchi. Launch is set for late September, and the crew is due to spend six months on the space station. Astronaut Douglas Hurley exiting the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft following its recovery off the coast of Pensacola NASA's first crewed mission since 2011 A number of civilian boats swarmed the landing zone as a recovery ship sped to the scorched capsule and brought it aboard In this file photo taken on May 30, 2020 NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (R) and Doug Hurley prepare for lift-off to the International Space Station This NASA video frame grab image shows SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft with NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken watching an infrared view of the International Space Station on their screens after undocking from it Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 00:06:43|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HOHHOT, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of contestants from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Army set off for Moscow, Russia for the International Army Games 2020 on Saturday. They started the journey from Manzhouli, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for the competitions in Russia, and will be followed by more batches of contestants from the PLA Army and Air Force. The International Army Games 2020 will be held in multiple countries including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka from Aug. 23 to Sept. 5. All Chinese contestants will compete in Russia, where they will participate in six competitions such as tank biathlon, scouting competition and airborne troops competition. Enditem Washington Once a coronavirus vaccine is approved as safe and effective, Americans should have widespread access within a reasonable time, Dr. Anthony Fauci assured lawmakers Friday. Appearing before a House panel investigating the nation's response to the pandemic, Fauci expressed "cautious" optimism that a vaccine would be available, particularly by next year. "I believe, ultimately, over a period of time in 2021, that Americans will be able to get it," Fauci said "I don't think we will have everybody getting it immediately," he explained. But "ultimately, within a reasonable time, the plans allow for any American who needs the vaccine to get it." Federal health authorities are carrying out a plan dubbed Operation Warp Speed to manufacture 300 million doses of a vaccine on a compressed timeline. Fauci said a quarter-million people have expressed interest in taking part in studies of experimental vaccines for the coronavirus. He said that 250,000 people have registered on a government website to take part in trials, which are pivotal for establishing safety and effectiveness. Not all patients who volunteer to take part in clinical trials are eligible to participate. Fauci was joined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Dr. Robert Redfield and Health and Human Services testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Giroir acknowledged that currently it's not possible for the U.S. to return all coronavirus test results to patients in two to three days. He blamed overwhelming demand across the nation. Many health experts say that COVID-19 results are almost worthless when delivered after two or three days because by then the window for contact tracing has closed. The latest government data shows about 75 percent of testing results are coming back within five days, but the remainder are taking longer, Giroir told lawmakers. At a time when uncertainty clouds the nation's path forward, Fauci, Giroir and Redfield are calling on Americans to go back to public health basics such as social distancing and wearing masks. A study by scientists from the University of Southampton has examined the chances of catching COVID-19 in a train carriage carrying an infectious person. Chinese high-speed rail. Image Credit: Rickyd / SHutterstock Based on high-speed routes in China, researchers from WorldPop found that for train passengers sitting within three rows (widthwise) and five columns (lengthwise) of an infected person (index patient) between zero and ten percent (10.3) caught the disease. The average rate of transmission for these 'close contact' travelers was 0.32 percent. The study, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Academy of Electronics and Information Technology, and Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, also showed that passengers traveling in seats directly adjacent to an index patient suffered the highest level of transmission, with an average of 3.5 percent contracting the disease. For those sitting on the same row, the figure was 1.5 percent. Attack rate of COVID-19 per different seats/co-travel time on train. The 'attack rate' for each seat - the number of passengers in a given seat diagnosed with COVID-19, divided by the total number of passengers traveling in the same seat - increased by 0.15 percent for every hour that a person traveled with an index patient. For those in adjacent seats, this rate of increase was higher at 1.3 percent per hour. Interestingly, the researchers found that only 0.075 percent of people who used a seat previously occupied by an index patient went on to contract the disease. Details are published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. The WorldPop team, experts in population mapping, used sophisticated modeling to analyze anonymized itinerary and infection data relating to train passengers on China's high-speed G train network. This included those who had COVID-19 at the time of travel and their close contacts (who showed symptoms within 14 days of travel). The data, covering a period between 19 December 2019 and 6 March 2020, included 2,334 index patients and 72,093 close contacts. Their travel times ranged from between less than an hour to eight hours. Lead investigator, Dr. Shengjie Lai, comments: "Our study shows that although there is an increased risk of COVID-19 transmission on trains, a person's seat location and travel time concerning an infectious person can make a big difference as to whether it is passed on. The findings suggest that during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to reduce the density of passengers and promote personal hygiene measures, the use of face coverings, and possibly carry-out temperature checks before boarding." The researchers conclude that given the attack rates estimated for passengers in the same row as an index patient, a safe social distance of more than one meter is required for one hour spent traveling together. After two hours of contact, they consider a distance of less than 2.5 meters may be insufficient to prevent transmission. Director of WorldPop, Professor Andy Tatem adds: "Our research is the first to quantify the individual risk of COVID-19 transmission on public transport based on data from epidemiological investigations of disease cases and their close contacts on high-speed trains. "It shows that the transmission risk relates to not only the distance from an infected person, but also the time in their presence. We hope it can help to inform authorities globally about measures needed to guard against the virus and, in-turn, help to reduce its spread." Amid Covid-19 pandemic, India woke up on Saturday to glimpses of Muslim devotees arriving at mosques and offering prayers to mark the second most important Islamic festival - Eid-ul-Adha. With lockdown restrictions eased in parts of the country, devotees were seen visiting mosques while maintaining social distancing and wearing masks as preventive measures to keep Covid-19 at bay. The mosque authorities at various places ensured checking body temperature of the devotees and provided them with hand sanitiser. Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended his wishes on the occasion and hoped the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered. Eid Mubarak! Greetings on Eid al-Adha. May this day inspire us to create a just, harmonious and inclusive society. May the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered, the prime minister tweeted. Eid Mubarak! Greetings on Eid al-Adha. May this day inspire us to create a just, harmonious and inclusive society. May the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 1, 2020 Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was seen offering prayers at his residence on Saturday morning. The minister wished everyone on the occasion and said that the pandemic has not dampened the spirits of the devotees. The world is facing the corona crisis but it has not dampened the spirits of people. People are praying today keeping their safety in mind. There is no lack of passion in offering prayers, Naqvi said. Also read: Eid al-Adha - Not even a 100 animals sold at Manimajra goat market this year due to Covid-19 Punjab: Devotees in Amritsar offer prayers at Khairuddin Mosque amid light rainfall on the occasion of #EidAlAdha pic.twitter.com/S5e1OZMqsX ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 With lockdown restrictions considerably eased in the national capital, several mosques, including Jama Masjid and Fatehpuri Masjid in Delhi, held the prayers today on the auspicious occasion. Devotees on Saturday morning offered namaz at Delhis Jama Masjid on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha. We have ensured strong arrangements here. In fact, we have ensured a safe environment in several big and small mosques on this occasion. namaz will be offered at 6:05 am, said Sanjay Bhatia, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) was quoted by news agency ANI. I feel really good to be here on this occasion. Everyone followed lockdown norms and even Muslims had earlier offered namaz at their home, they followed all the rules and regulations. We are still adhering to the rules, said a devotee. Delhi: People exchange greetings after offering prayers at Jama Masjid on #EidAlAdha, today. pic.twitter.com/gRxw98BgR6 ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 The Covid-19 lockdown had led to the closure of religious places, including mosques, due to which Muslim devotees were unable to pray in mosques on Eid-ul-Fitr in May. The Centre had allowed religious places to reopen from June 8 under Unlock 1. Under Unlock 3 guidelines, religious functions and other large congregations continue to be prohibited. Eid-ul-Zuha, more commonly known as Bakr-Eid, is the festival of sacrifice observed on the tenth day of the Dhu al-Hijjah which is the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar. Also known as Bakrid, the sacrifice feast, the festival is marked by sacrificing an animal, usually a sheep or a goat to prove their devotion and love for Allah. Post the sacrifice, devotees distribute the offering to family, friends, neighbours and especially to the poor and the needy. On the West Side shortly before 2:45 a.m., an unidentified woman was fatally wounded in the 4500 block of West End Avenue, in the citys West Garfield Park neighborhood. She was discovered on the back porch of a residence with gunshot wounds to the back. She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Police said there were no witnesses to the shooting. To put the ideas of the plan into action, many more institutions have to be set up It is useful to remember that the New Education Policy 2020 of the Narendra Modi government is nothing more than a blueprint for the future of education from the pre-school stage to higher research, and it has been couched in bureaucratese, which will delight the mandarins in the corridors of powers, but it will remain a baffling document of plans and planned institutions crystallised in acronyms that will only deter ordinary people from understanding what is being sought to be done. To put the ideas of the plan into action, many more institutions have to be set up -- from the National Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (NCPFEECE) to a National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, a National Curricular Framework for School Education (NCFSE), which is to be developed by National Centre for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a National Assessment Centre, PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), setting up Gender Inclusion Fund and Special Education Zones, National Professional Standard for Teachers (NPST), State School Standards Authority (SSSA), School Quality Assessment and Accreditation Framework (SQAAF). A bureaucratic warren is what is in store for twenty-first century school education. Then comes the substantial part of what the NEP 2020 wants to be the content and mode of teaching in schools. The idea has been suggested that teaching up till at least Class 5, and preferably up till Class 8 and beyond in the mother tongue/local language/regional language. There will enough quibbling about these categories, and conflicts and confrontations are sure to follow. There is vague talk about holistic development of learners by equipping them with key 21st century skills. There is this curious bit about offering Sanskrit as an optional subject at all levels of school and higher education, which can raise the hackles of liberals as a tacit right-wing Hindutva agenda. What is to be done with Sanskrit is indeed a problematic question. In nineteenth and early twentieth century school curriculums of grammar schools and public schools in Britain, Latin, with its intimidating grammar, was a nightmare for students. It is a well-known fact that Winston Churchill, Britains legendary wartime Prime Minister now facing protests over his racist biases, dropped out from Harrow, which happens to be Jawaharlal Nehrus alma mater as well, because he could not handle Latin and therefore could not go to either Cambridge or Oxford universities for his college education. Somewhere, those pushing for Sanskrit must have sensed that there would be howls of protests all over if Sanskrit was made a compulsory subject. So, the framers of the policy document have sensibly kept it as an optional subject. The critics will continue to inveigh against it as a sly attempt to further the reactionary agenda of right-wing Hindus. Culture wars and ideological wars are par for the course in the framing of educational policy, and they need to be fought fairly and vigorously on all sides. Instead of the sly and half-hearted insertion of Sanskrit as an optional subject at all levels, the framers should have argued in the open about the importance if not the usefulness of Sanskrit, but they would have been hard put to defend that Sanskrit alone represents Indian culture because the liberals would argue, and rightly too, that every language in India, including English, represents and reflects the culture of India because these languages are used by the people of the country. It would have been better if Sanskrit had been made part of the proposed National Institute of Pali, Persian and Prakrit, along with Arabic, because it too is a classical language of long standing in India. There is every likelihood that those conservatives who mooted Persian might have confused it with Avesta and Pahlavi, the pre-Islamic forms of Persian! To cover up the tracks of Sanskrit bias, it is stated: Other classical languages and literatures of India also to be available as options. And this is followed by the assurance: No language will be imposed on any student. Sanskrit as an optional subject is already being taught in schools, colleges, and universities along with other classical languages like Pali, Prakrit, Persian and Arabic, along with other languages and literatures, including foreign ones. It is this surreptitious attempt to bring in Sanskrit with the unstated false argument that it is the mother of other Indian languages in the country that gives the Hindu right-wing game away. The ideas mooted for higher education have been in circulation for at least a decade now. For example, the Prof Yashpal committee had recommended a single authority for higher education, it had suggested the four-year undergraduate course which aligns it with the American system, and the suggestion that foreign universities will be allowed to set up campuses in India have been in the pipeline from the days of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The credit system and the multi-disciplinary approach is again part of the American way. There need not be any quarrel over switching over to the American system from the British, because in any case most Indian students going abroad for higher studies nowadays prefer the American universities. There is great emphasis in the document about numbers, about quantity more than quality, not that quantity is any less important. It has been stated that the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education should go up from 26.3 per cent in 2018 to 50 per cent in 2035. It is a figure that should be tracked because it would be the one that would show whether India is moving towards becoming a developed economy, because the economy is driven by knowledge and technology. Again, the framers could have avoided the grandstanding by declaring the goal of making India a knowledge superpower. It seems to have been overlooked that churning out engineers, MBAs and university graduates alone will not turn India into a knowledge superpower, not does it mean anything to have an Indian campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There was talk of cultivating critical thinking from the school level onwards, but that can only happen when the rigidities of blinkered nationalism are thrown out of the window. 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 "Regional security and stability can be achieved only within the framework of regional cooperation," Rouhani said in a phone conversation with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported. Tehran, Aug 1 (IANS) Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said regional security can be attained through regional cooperation, semi-official Fars news agency reported. The Iranian president also called for development of relations with Qatar without any limits. He expressed the hope that the joint Iran-Qatar economic commission will convene again after the decline of the novel coronavirus pandemic, leading to further promotion of bilateral economic relations. For his part, the Qatari emir said Qatar attaches special importance to development of ties with Iran. --IANS rt/ Shatta Wale's estranged militant, Joint 77 has solidarized with Samini after the latter expressed disappointment in Stonebwoy and his bond with Shatta Wale. Samini posted a video on social media scolding the two artistes, particularly his prodigy, Stonebwoy. According to him, he expects Stonebwoy to tell Shatta Wale to settle his conflict with him (Samini) first before they could go ahead with any peace project they have between themselves. ''Stonebwoy, you know how me and you dey. I dey expect that this thing wey you people plan that you go link me and tell me say this is wagwan. I don't expect Bandana to be the one that linked me to tell me about it. ''I expect my son, Stonebwoy, to tell Shatta Wale that until he finishes what he started with, he can't come down to his level to come and clash him because it is not his fight. It is not his beef yet. I come from 2003/2004 with you, Bandana, when you did 'Moko Ho' and I did my album with 'Linda' on it. So, how do you then come to clash my son who came out in 2008 or something? And how is that even fair? How is that a fair comparison?'' he fumed. Hopping on the issue, Joint 77 stated Samini has voiced the truth about the character of his former boss. He said figuratively that he has ''scars in his hands'' resulting from his relationship with Shatta Wale but has decided to hush up on some things. He added that he has ''poured his blood'' for Shatta Wale but what he got was for him to make people think he (Joint 77) is a bad person. In a fit of anger, he said in an Instagram post; ''What he (Samini) dey talk, me I know cos I've been around for some time. You dey get what I dey try tell you; yeah. Sometimes when somebody dey try make you look like bad person, it dey pain. It dey pain, so some of you people, you do ah you fo relax. If you don't know some things, don't talk''. Video below: View this post on Instagram Good morning A post shared by Joint77 (@joint77_official) on Jul 30, 2020 at 3:39am PDT Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video ALBANY Shortly before Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sat down with local officials in Savannah, Ga., in mid-July to offer advice on combating the coronavirus, he met briefly with the citys mayor, Van Johnson. Johnson, a Brooklyn native, lamented that he wasn't able to see his mother, who still lives in New York City. Cuomo had recently announced a quarantine order for visitors traveling from states with high infection rates, Georgia included. Well, she can come see you but if youre going to see her, then youre going to have to quarantine, Cuomo explained. Do you mind telling her that? Johnson said. So they called her up. She said that they loved and appreciated the governor for what he was doing and how he had protected New York," Johnson recalled. "And he basically said, You know, this is going to keep everybody safe.'" Cuomo had brought Johnson a cheesecake from Juniors famous Brooklyn fare alongside personal protective equipment and medical supplies. The trip had been quickly organized; the governors team had reached out to their Savannah counterparts on a Friday to set up the Monday visit. Were just excited that we have the partnership, Johnson said. When you want to win, you team up with winners. You follow the playbook of winners. Nobody follows the playbook of those who lost." It was in a press conference in Savannah, before a group of reporters who hadnt been asking questions of this governor almost daily for the past five months, that Cuomo would admit for the first time that New York had made a lot of mistakes during its coronavirus response. He declined to elaborate. Back in New York, the trip was less of a hit. Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente was frustrated that the governor hadnt visited his county, where officials were struggling to buy medical supplies. Look, Im all for helping other areas, but not when we need help first, Picente said. Others pointed out that Cuomo would be exempt, as an "essential worker," from the same quarantine order that he had explained to Johnsons mother. The Savannah trip may have backfired, said former state Assemblyman John McEneny, a longtime Albany historian. In some ways, the trip offered a portrait in miniature of Cuomos overall handling of the pandemic. Over the past 140-odd days, he had become not only New Yorks governor, but Americas governor a steady counterweight to a federal response that has been criticized as muddled and often contradictory. With unprecedented executive powers augmenting his usual top-down management style, Cuomo's administration toiled for months to bring New Yorks infection rate down, wrestling with the thought of 30,000 lives lost and hundreds of thousands sickened. But the same tactics that helped flatten the states curve would unnecessarily complicate its reopening processes and, some say, worsen the spread among New Yorks most vulnerable. In interviews, more than 30 current and former Cuomo associates, as well as friends and longtime political observers, described a crisis response that, for better or worse, will likely be remembered as the most consequential period of the governor's four-decade political career. When historians and academics assess New Yorks response to the coronavirus pandemic, they will judge the efficacy of Cuomos decision-making. This is what he was born for, said Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa. I think that this was the thing that he spent his whole life working up to. Everything he'd ever done prepared him for this moment. 'The man and the hour' On the 54th day that Cuomo delivered a daily coronavirus briefing, he talked about his paternal grandmother. The briefings had included several monologues about his family: his concern for his elderly mother, his pride in his three daughters, his love for his brother, Chris, who had tested positive for the virus. But April 24 was the first day the public heard him mention Mary Cuomo, whose words he invoked as he offered a lesson about humans under pressure. You really get to see people and get to see character when things get hard," he said. "And when the pressure is on ... you really get to see the true colors of a person and see what they're made of. ... The weaknesses explode or the strengths explode. In the governors case, both have been on full display in the five months since New York announced its first confirmed case of coronavirus. The thing about Andrew is that his greatest strengths become his weaknesses. That is, of course, the definition of a Shakespearean flaw, said Michael Shnayerson, the author of "The Contender," a 2015 biography of the governor. He pushes too hard he pushes people too hard, he pushes a situation too hard. Cuomo is demanding and progress-driven, a firm leader whose micromanager tendencies come to the fore in a crisis. This is a governor famous for showing up, often in a signature windbreaker or parka, to address a flood or blizzard in any corner of the state. No emergency is too small. His days begin at the crack of dawn and end long after dark. He interrogates his team about the information and policies they present to him and if you dont have the facts, youre (screwed), said a former aide. He doesnt curse, but he can undress you with a look, said Joe Spinelli, a senior adviser to the governor who also worked with his father, the late Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. Early in the coronavirus crisis, it was clear that these traits the same ones that vexed legislators and often evoked public criticism could prove beneficial. He privately negotiated with the state Legislature in late February, before New York had even confirmed its first case, to secure $40 million in response funds, as well as enormous executive power allowing him to single-handedly suspend many laws with the stroke of a pen. Later, he worked to ramp up testing capacity and arm-twisted federal officials to set up temporary hospitals. In normal times, Cuomo could go for months without holding a news conference at the Capitol. He began hosting them daily, shooting into the national spotlight via cable news livecasts; he was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and profiled in Vanity Fair. (He would not be interviewed for this article.) The high profile prompted #Cuomo2020 and #DraftCuomo hashtags and the coinage of the term Cuomosexual for those intrigued by his bachelor status. The briefings at times revealed a more unguarded man who told New Yorkers to say I love you before it was too late, a divorced dad who recounted conversations hed had with his adult daughters about mistakes hed made in the past. The pandemic marked the first time two generations of Cuomos had lived in the Executive Mansion since Gov. Mario Cuomo's era. He often alluded to his father, even hiding Easter eggs in the form of quotes from A.J. Parkinson, a fictional pundit to whom Mario Cuomo would attribute bromides he didnt want attached to his own name. Parkinson was quoted multiple times during the crisis: "Today we must consider an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere"; "Don't pass the buck without passing the bucks"; and "I respect elected officials who aren't typical politicians." ("There was only one Mario, but Andrew comes so goddamn close, you cant believe it," said radio host Bill O'Shaughnessy, a longtime Cuomo family friend.) This wit and openness represents "the real Andrew Cuomo," according to Jerry Goldfeder, a prominent election lawyer who worked with Cuomo when he was state attorney general. Even former enemies offered praise: When we needed it, he was providing the right voice and, in many cases, the right leadership, said Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, Cuomos 2018 Republican opponent for governor. The man and the hour met, said Harold Holzer, a family friend and former Mario Cuomo aide. And now, while states across the South and elsewhere are reeling from COVID-19, New York's positive test rate has remained at roughly 1 percent. But the state's respite and what critics have described as a midsummer Cuomo victory lap comes after great suffering. At the height of the pandemic in mid-April, no fewer than 800 people were dying every day. Even amid the current spike elsewhere, New York's total death and infection numbers still tower over those of every other state. Including probable COVID-19 deaths in New York City, the state has recorded more than 30,000 fatalities linked to the illness roughly double the toll in New Jersey, the state with the second-highest mortality rate. Texas and Florida have recorded about 6,000 deaths apiece. Those statistics make it all the more remarkable that Cuomo's daily briefings 111 in a row, followed by frequent calls and appearances in more recent weeks made him a venerated national figure. His image of competence and straight talk stood in contrast to President Donald Trump, who has been criticized for downplaying the virus and sparring with his own medical experts. The American public was getting so many conflicting kinds of information that they didnt know what to think. It was mostly obfuscation, said Norman Adler, a former Albany lobbyist who has known the Cuomos for decades. So here comes Andrew, and hes not for the most part obfuscating, and that was comforting to people. Even when it was bad news, it was done in a way that made people think, OK, I understand. 'There were no rules' After the March 1 announcement of New York's first confirmed coronavirus case a woman in her 30s who had traveled to Iran Cuomo urged calm, noting that the state had gone through viruses that are, frankly, more frightening than this. With 76 confirmed cases a week later, Cuomo declared a state of emergency. The first death from COVID-19 was announced March 14. Although California and Washington state had responded to the pandemic first, the tsunami that hit New York was unprecedented. The governor "had to figure out how you navigate that storm, and there were no rules," said Jay Jacobs, the head of the states Democratic Party and a longtime Cuomo ally. "He laid the groundwork. He created the road map for other states to follow. There were early missteps with potentially fatal consequences. Cuomos history of feuds with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio led to a mid-March argument over whether the mayor could impose a shelter-in-place order a term that elected officials in California's Bay Area had not shied away from, but Cuomo said was likely to cause panic. His resistance to such a directive lasted five days, delaying a move that public health experts say could have saved lives in the city and elsewhere. Steve Bisson/AP In early April, de Blasio announced that New York City schools would close for the school year, only to see Cuomo swoop in and announce that such a decision was his alone to make. The conflicting messages caused confusion but didnt keep city schools open. A Democratic legislator speaking on condition of anonymity attributed the fight to a refusal to allow anyone else to get attention or credit. Cuomo would later show reluctance to hand over power to other local government officials across the state. Ahead of the phased reopening of some areas in mid-May, the governor announced control rooms composed of local leaders would oversee reopening in the state's 10 regions. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. It quickly became apparent that the control rooms would actually have no real decision-making capacity. Instead, orders came directly from Cuomo and his team, many times without input from the local leaders, who scrambled to absorb and enforce directions that they had received at the last minute. Local leaders pleaded with the governors office to hand over more agency in the reopening process. Their requests were often met with silence, or, occasionally, a phone call from a senior member of the Cuomo administration who would promise improved communication that never came, local officials said. As the reopenings continued and the infections declined, Cuomo's messaging could tip over the edge from encouraging to bizarre. He directed staff to construct a foam mountain intended to represent the infection curve. The same metaphor informed a political poster filled with inside jokes from coronavirus briefings and cartoon drawings of his team and his daughters even his German shepherd, Captain that the state would sell for $11.50 a pop. About 34,000 were sold. Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images Critics noted that the mountain was made up of economic hardship and sickness, and accused Cuomo of putting himself at the center of the narrative. My father is a foothold in that mountain, and I just find it unseemly, said Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, whose father died of the virus in April. Cuomo senior adviser Rich Azzopardi said the poster was meant to portray a cautionary tale for the rest of the country. The death toll has affected Cuomo personally, those close to him said, and he worries greatly about the prospect of a second wave. But even those numbers have presented a point of contention and provided other states with a lesson in what not to do. Cuomos handling of the virus in nursing homes, in particular, has fallen under withering scrutiny: More than 6,500 residents in those facilities have died of the virus, and critics say the Cuomo administration is partially to blame. At issue are two directives issued early on in the crisis. The first allowed COVID-positive but asymptomatic employees to continue working in the long-term care facilities; a second barred nursing homes from turning patients away solely because they had coronavirus. Both orders were later rescinded or altered, but the Cuomo administration has insisted that its actions were in line with federal recommendations. The second order, issued March 25, has been the subject of the heaviest criticism. At the time, Cuomo had been deeply concerned about the availability of hospital beds grim models had projected a need for 140,000 beds at the apex and it was generally understood that nursing homes could properly care for sick patients. (In the end, the state at the peak of the crisis needed about 18,500 beds.) Instead, critics say the order likely sent COVID-positive patients into the care facilities, where the virus, in Cuomos own words, spreads "like fire through dry grass. The governor has defended the order by pointing to federal guidance and, in recent weeks, to a self-absolving report from the state Department of Health asserting that, because of the timeline of the outbreaks, the directive could not have been the main source of spread in the homes. The report relied on data unavailable to the public and was touted to have been peer-reviewed," though the assessment was completed by hospitals with state contracts. Cuomo has dodged questions about whether there should be an independent review, though the state Legislature plans to hold hearings on the subject. 'We lived through this' When asked about nursing homes or other potential errors during the crisis response, Cuomo has at times berated reporters or blamed their institutions for furthering political agendas. Those were some of his weakest public moments, those interviewed said, when Cuomo's frustration got the best of him over perceived unfair reporting or an inability to convince people of a narrative he had constructed. ("We respect tough reporters and we hope they respect tough public servants," Azzopardi said. "We also believe in speaking honestly and directly, and that includes taking issue with the occasional editorial stance of a newspaper especially when the facts are on our side.") He doesnt handle criticism, said Adler, the former Albany lobbyist. I think some people would have some sympathy, maybe, if there was some logic, said Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay. At the time, no one really knew what was going to happen, but God forbid you have to admit mistakes from time to time. Polls indicate that the criticism hasnt affected the public's perception of the governor. His favorability rating shot to 77 percent in April, his highest ever, and has remained in the mid-60s since, according to Siena Research Institute polling. In May and June, he maintained a 76 percent approval rating for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic; in March, it hit 87 percent. An analysis released Thursday by the COVID-19 Consortium suggests that the public is more likely to favorably view an executive who has taken decisive action to quell the spread of the coronavirus. Despite months-long campaigns from Republicans on nursing homes and people taking apart every single action that we took at various points, people don't care," said DeRosa, the governor's secretary. "They say, We lived through this with him. He got us through this, and we are not going to forget that. And no one's going to rewrite that history. If the governor has any regrets, or if he has taken pause at any point during the pandemic, he has not shown it though he has floated the idea of writing a book on his experiences. He is adept at interacting with the press and skillfully dodges any questions that would prompt much in the way of self-reflection. He came close, once, at a July news conference in New York City, when a reporter asked Cuomo what question he would offer if he were sitting on the other side of the table. He joked about his poster at first, and then paused, letting seconds lapse as he chewed over the question. How are you doing through all of this," he decided, "and when you look back, what do you think? By that point, thousands of New Yorkers had died, leaving as many grieving families and friends. New York had made great progress but watched in horror as other states called in refrigerator trucks to store dead bodies, a tragedy Cuomo had experienced just months before. The daily briefings had waned but the work had not. Perhaps all of those things ran through the governors mind at that moment. He declined to answer his own question it was, he said, too personal for that setting. Send not to ask for whom the poll bell tolls: It tolls for thee This Wednesday the masses will be streaming to the twice delayed polls to elect the Government of their choice in a pandemic atmosphere ridden with COVID fear and regimented by a list of health guidelines.Before the sacrificial demonic altar of a microscopic virus that has bedeviled the nation and still forages the blighted landscape for prey, the people will be, literally, voting with their lives to send 225 intelligent men and women of calibre, moral rectitude and integrity to Parliament to foster, safeguard and promote Lankas sovereign interests and make dawn a better future for her people. But is there such a breed of honest stout hearts on the polls menu this 5th of August? Or only some regurgitated, bunch of squashed cabbage leaves rotten to the core, recycled and served tossed up with a new salad dressing? If there were an equal temper of lionhearts on the election fare, it would certainly have been worth braving the COVID plague and imperiling life itself to see returned to Parliament an honourable tribe of men and women worthy of the nations trust and confidence. But is there such a breed with the required pedigree that will improve the bloodstock of the House? Alas, it would have been easier to have found a pin in a haystack than to have found even one sterling character among the old condemned stock of Diyawannas inmates, who now, masquerading as paragons of virtue, offer themselves for re-election to enact a repeat performance to double their spoils. So why bother to vote? Why vote for known drug lords, for illegal ethanol importers, for race bookie owners, for multi-million fraudsters, for those facing serious criminal charges, for the corrupt, for the scum of the earth? Why does the majority Lankan electorate, steeped in the moral tenets of Buddhism that specifically advice to shun bad company, continue to elect the undesirables, the notorious and the infamous as their honourable leaders and trust them with their purse for safekeeping as if evil possessed a macabre fascination and a deep seated attraction on the collective conscience of the Sinhalese? Do they suffer from a death wish syndrome that urge them to hand over the key to their treasure chest and the reins of their future to the unscrupulous, in the manner chicken in a farm yard entrust the security of the coop to the foxes? One reason is that if the two major political parties nominate dirty rotten scoundrels as their candidates, the discerning voter is limited by the scarcity of choice. To overcome this limitation and to prevent scoundrels being given nominations, PAFFEREL initiated a voluntary scheme in March 2015, called the March 12 Declaration, whereby all political parties publicly pledged on the same platform to follow a set of minimum criteria in selecting candidates for all future elections and to desist from choosing anyone not within these parameters. In the midst of the media blitz, party secretaries duly signed the document, duly promising only clean candidates will receive party nominations for the years August 17 general election; and hopes soared that the new Parliament to be elected that year, and all Parliaments to come thereafter, will finally be riff-raff free, with Les Disreputables barred entry and their evil and sin shut out. But the promise of the March 12 Declaration was never to blossom; its pledge transgressed, without remorse. As nomination day neared, it soon became apparent that political parties, with the SLFP in particular, had no intention of honouring its publicly sworn pledge to present to the masses selection only those with clean hands. So why bother to vote? When it has been billed as one of the most lackluster elections ever held in Lanka, with its ultimate winner held by the ruling party to be a forgone conclusion? So cocksure is the odds on hot favourite the SLPP on winning the race that it no longer dwells on the trivial detail of being the first past the winning post but focusses on the broader picture, calculating by how many furlongs the runner up will lag behind. In its elusive quest to sweep the polls with a two third majority and win power supreme, it hasnt bothered to issue the traditional election manifesto. As its founder chairman G.L. Peiris confidently said last Wednesday, the party would use the same election manifesto that was used for the Presidential Election 2019. The fight on the sidelines is between Ranils UNP and Sajiths SJB. While Ranil promises an economic grand design to uplift Lanka from the COVID doldrums, Sajith plans to handout a cool 20,000 bucks each to all Lankans in the manner Britains Boris plans to pay 80 percent of salaries of workers till the economy gets back to normal. As G.L. Peiris said in January this year: Manifestos of political parties are not really meant to be implemented. So why, if scoundrels throng the nominated list, if the winner is already a foregone conclusion, if an internecine war has split the UNP and uncertainty hovers as to whom to choose, if social mingling at polling booths increases COVID fears, if no faith can be kept in political promises, why, oh why, bother to vote and return the same corrupt set to wealth and power, with those who contest being the only beneficiaries of the whole exercise? Find the answer as to why voting is imperative in the words of Election Chief Deshapriya who said in June: A country governed by officials may shine for a short period but will end up in a dictatorship. A country which does not have a Parliament consisting of elected representatives of the people is not democratic. Democracy is expensive. Dictatorship is cheap. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolute. Your vote counts to maintain the proper balance So, to paraphrase Donne, send not to ask for whom the poll bell tolls: It tolls for thee. Leader of the Seanad Regina Doherty has expressed her horror about a case in which a healthcare worker raped a patient in her 70s who has Alzheimers. Ms Doherty took to Twitter to comment that the man should be castrated and never see the light of day again. The nursing home employee was given an 11-year prison sentence after admitting to the rape of the woman. The man had previously worked in healthcare for 15 years before he attacked the patient and Mr Justice Paul McDermott yesterday described his crime as an egregious breach of trust by a qualified and experienced healthcare worker. In relation to the mans 11-year prison sentence, former Social Protection Minister Ms Doherty commented on Twitter: I know this probably isnt politically correct but this man should be castrated and never see the light of day again. The victim of the attack was found in a distressed state in her bedroom after the incident occurred in the early hours of April 3. CCTV footage showed the healthcare worker entering and leaving the victims nursing home bedroom at around 3am on that morning. The woman was reported to be upset but coherent and gardai arrested the man, who in his 50s, 11 days after her attack. The man first denied the attack but after his DNA matched that of a sample found on the victim, he pleaded guilty to her rape. He had no previous convictions. Speaking in the Central Criminal Court, the womans daughter said that their mothers attacker single-handedly destroyed our mams life. Mr Justice Paul McDermott described the effect on the victim as devastating. The victim now faces feelings of depression, suicidal thoughts, nightmares and a lack of safety, he said. The womans daughter said that her family could not even hug her mother after the incident. We always said we will dread the day she loses her memory, but now one day we hope she wakes up and doesnt remember, she said. Pastor accused of sexually abusing minor while assigned to Liberty parish LIBERTY, MO (KCTV) - On Friday, the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph released a "Notice of Credible Allegation of Abuse" that happened when a pastor was assigned to a Liberty parish. Father Alan Hartway is accused of sexually abusing a minor while he was an associate pastor at St. James Parish. Follow-up on charges and yet another cleric who was moved across the country before finally confronting legal challenge . . . Read more: India on Thursday tacitly warned its neighbours as well as the Indian Ocean nations of the debt trap diplomacy of China. History has taught us that in the name of development partnerships, nations were forced into dependence partnerships. It gave rise to colonial and imperial rule. It gave rise to global power blocks. And, Humanity suffered, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, taking a subtle dig at the predatory lending practices of China. Modi was speaking through video-link at a ceremony to mark the inauguration of the new building of the Supreme Court of Mauritius at the capital of the Indian Ocean nation, Port Louis, on Thursday. He joined Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth to virtually inaugurate the building, which New Delhi helped build with a grant of $ 28.12 million. The Prime Minister underlined the distinction between the ways India and China supported development projects in other countries albeit without directly referring to the Communist country. He cited examples of Indias support to development projects not only in Mauritius and neighbouring countries, like Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal and Afghanistan, but also in Niger in Africa and Guyana in South America. READ: China's latest outreach to Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan makes India worried The Prime Minister said that Indias approach to development was mainly human-centric and it wanted to work for the welfare of humanity. India is making development partnerships that are marked by respect, diversity, care for the future, and sustainable development, he said, adding: For India, the most fundamental principle in development cooperation is respecting our partners. He said that sharing of development lessons was the only motivation for New Delhi to support pursuit for prosperity in other nations. That is why our development cooperation does not come with any conditions. It is not influenced by political or commercial considerations, said the Prime Minister. Beijing has been bankrolling a large number of infrastructure projects in several countries in the South Asia and Indian Ocean region as well as in Africa, as part of its Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), thus building strategic assets across the continents. But Chinese President Xi Jinpings ambitious cross-continental connectivity initiative also came under criticism from around the world for exposing the smaller participating nations to the risks of being caught in debt traps. Even as its Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) is engaged in a stand-off with the Indian Army along its disputed boundary with India in eastern Ladakh, China has renewed its bid to further spread its tentacles in South Asia and Indian Ocean region. It has of late been offering new loans and economic packages to support not only development projects, but also to help smaller nations to deal with the Covid-19 crisis, including to Indias neighbours like Sri Lanka and Maldives, even as they are finding it difficult to come out of the debt trap the Communist country already put them in with BRI projects. Beijing over the past few months nudged Prime Minister K P Sharma Olis Government in Kathmandu to sour its relations with New Delhi by ratcheting up Nepal-India boundary dispute. It is reaching out to Kabul to extend its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project to Afghanistan. It is also offering loans to the tune of $6.4 billion for several infrastructure projects across Bangladesh, apart from expanding the ambit of its trade concession to the least developed nation. The following individuals were either recently charged in Walworth County Circuit Court or recently made their initial court appearance. Jose O. Portillo Amparo, 26, Whitewater, has been charged with second-degree sexual assault and strangulation and suffocation at a residence in Whitewater. If convicted, he faces up to 46 years in prison and $110,000 in fines. William R. Budych, 51, Lake Geneva, has been charged with operating under the influence-fourth offense and operating with a prohibited blood alcohol content-fourth offense, following a traffic stop in Delavan. If convicted, he faces up to 12 years in prison and $20,000 in fines. Jeffrey M. Burdick, 44, Elkhorn, has been charged with possession of a firearm by a felon and disorderly conduct in an alleged domestic violence incident. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years and three months in prison and $26,000 in fines. Mauricio A. Castaneda, 45, Williams Bay, has been charged with operating under the influence-fourth offense. If convicted, he faces up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Alexis J. Cloute, 38, Janesville, has been charged with burglary and theft in a residence in Whitewater. If convicted, she faces up to 22 years and six months in prison and $50,000 in fines. Hannah Cobb, 19, Janesville, has been charged with attempting to flee or elude an officer, obstructing an officer, two counts of misdemeanor bail jumping, operating a motor vehicle while revoked, possession of THC and possession of drug paraphernalia in the town of Lyons. If convicted, she faces up to seven years and four months in prison and $44,000 in fines. Jordan L. Cordova, 25, Beloit, has been charged with substantial battery and disorderly conduct at a business in Whitewater. If convicted, he faces up to four years and three months in prison and $11,000 in fines. Cody J. Denius, 18, Elkhorn, has been charged with robbery with use of force, misdemeanor battery, and possession of THC at a park in Elkhorn. If convicted, he faces up to 16 years and three months in prison and $61,000 in fines. Timothy R. Holmes, 27, Beloit, has been charged with attempting to flee or elude an officer, driving or operating a vehicle without the owners consent and two counts of bail jumping in Sharon. If convicted, he faces up to 19 years in prison and $40,000 in fines. Gerald R. Hopewell, 45, Janesville, has been charged with bail jumping for allegedly failing to appear in court in Elkhorn. If convicted, he faces up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Karly L. Badame Krkljus, 26, Lake Geneva, has been charged with bail jumping, misdemeanor bail jumping, operating while revoked-second offense and possession of drug paraphernalia. If convicted, she faces up to seven years and 10 months in prison and $23,000 in fines. Nicholas M. Halloran, 34, Chicago, has been charged with possession of narcotic drugs and possession of THC, following a traffic stop in Williams Bay. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison and $11,000 in fines. Kevin W. Henschel, 40, Jefferson, has been charged with battery to a law enforcement officer, resisting an officer and disorderly conduct in Whitewater. If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison and $21,000 in fines. Johnathan E.C. Linden, 42, Elkhorn, has been charged with bail jumping and disorderly conduct. If convicted, he faces up to six years and three months in prison and $11,000 in fines. Glenn Moorehead, 53, Elkhorn, has been charged with operating under the influence-fourth offense and operating while revoked. If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison and $12,500 in fines. Yenifer L. Castro Morales, 26, Delavan, has been charged with substantial battery involving an alleged domestic violence incident in Delavan. If convicted, she faces up to three years and six months in prison and a $10,000 fine. Aaron J. Morgan, 38, Delavan, has been charged with possession of a weapon by a felon and disorderly conduct at a resident in Delavan. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years and three months in prison and $26,000 in fines. Carl E. Nietupski, 58, Chicago, has been charged with attempting to flee or elude an officer in Lake Geneva. If convicted, he faces up to three years and six months in prison and a $10,000 fine. Seth M. Pfister, 21, Elkhorn, has been charged with a sex offender registry violation. If convicted, he faces up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Caroline Streuli, 20, Williams Bay, has been charged with battery to a law enforcement officer, throwing or discharging bodily fluids at a pubic safety worker, resisting an office and two counts of disorderly conduct in an alleged domestic violence incident. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years and nine months in prison and $32,000 in fines. Barrett L. Terhark, 26, Wautoma, has been charged with bail jumping and resisting an officer at a business in Lake Geneva. If convicted, he faces up to six years and nine months in prison and $20,000 in fines. Skyler M. Volbrecht, 24, Twin Lakes, has been charged with bail jumping and misdemeanor retail theft at a store in Delavan. If convicted, he faces up to six years and nine months in prison and $20,000 in fines. Joseph Zamora, 35, Burlington, has been charged with child enticement involving an 11-year-old boy in the town of Bloomfield. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. 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. The Bimal Gurung and Binoy Tamang faction of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) have distanced themselves from the tripartite meeting called by the Union Home Ministry to review the GTA system on August 7. Bimal Gurung GJMs statement came following the ministry's invitation for the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) review meeting to be held along with a team of bureaucrats from West Bengal. A letter from the Ministry of Home Affairs, which has been going viral on social media since this afternoon, entitled Meeting to review the issue related to Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. I would like to clarify that we have repeatedly called for talks with the central government for a lasting political solution - not to review the GTA system. The last review meeting of the GTA was held on January 29, 2015. There is no justification for holding a review meeting of that provision five years later today. All of us CA members including the Chief Executive of GTA resigned from GTA on June 23, 2017, the statement reads. BJP has also mentioned in its resolution letter about a permanent political solution and recognition of the remaining eleven caste groups as tribes. There is no mention of GTA anywhere in the BJPs resolution letter. it further reads. Distancing the Bimal faction from the viral letter, the statement added that the faction has nothing to do with the letter and we will not be attending this GTA review meeting. The Home Ministrys letter inviting the parties to talk on the issue has created confusion as it failed to specify which GJM faction - Bimal or Binoy - has been invited. Adding to the confusion, it was also unclear if the BJPs Hills alliance partner- Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) is invited in the meeting or not. The bone of contention is not who will attend the meeting, it is the issue of the meeting. We are not happy with the GTA formula because it did not fulfil the aspiration of the Gorkhas because it failed in all fronts. We are interested on permanent political solution in the hills which was promised by the Central government and permanent solution is carving Darjeeling out of Bengal for a separate Gorkhaland, Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) leader and MLA from Darjeeling, Neeraj Zimba told News 18. Further responding on why GNLF is not invited in the tripartite meeting, Zimba added that I promised people that we will not support anything which will go against the Gorkhaland movement and if things continue like this then I will be left with no other options but to resign. Further stating that the meeting would not benefit the prime agenda, Binoy Tamang, GJM said, we have decided not to attend the meeting because Gorkhaland is not included as the agenda of the meeting, we are not interested. The move comes after a two-member delegation of GJM (Bimal Gurung faction) including Nima Tamang and Dr. Binu Sundas met the Union Minister for Home Affairs, Amit Shah in New Delhi. Here, the delegates reminded Shah about BJPs commitment towards Gorkha (a separate state) as stated in the sankalpatra. The Gorkhaland movement was spearheaded by Subhash Ghisingh with violent agitation in 1980s but his movement suffered a setback after Bimal Gurung rebelled and broke out to form his own party - Gorkha Janmukti Morcha - on October 7, 2007. The rift in GJM is out in open since August 31, 2017 after Binay Tamang was removed as a Chief Coordinator for going against Bimal Gurungs wish in calling off the indefinite strike (then) in the Hills. Texas CPS refuses to remove homeschool parents from abuse registry after dismissing case Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Homeschool parents in Texas are still fighting to get their names removed from the states child abuse registry seven months after the states child protective services agency dismissed their case and returned their 4-year-old son. Daniel and Ashley Pardo are appealing a decision last month by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to refuse their request for the agency to ensure that their names are removed from the Child Abuse and Neglect Registry. The Pardos son, Drake, was removed from their home in June 2019 after the family missed a DFPS-facilitated meeting at Dallas Childrens Medical Center that the parents were not informed of and subsequently accused of child medical abuse. The case against them began after a doctor reached out to DFPS with concerns that the parents were seeking unnecessary medical treatment for their son even though the doctor had never met the family in person. The familys advocacy team at the Texas Home School Coalition argued that the DFPS failed to meet the legal requirements needed for an emergency removal and failed to inform the parents about the meeting in which they were punished for not attending. Last December, the agency dropped its five-months long case against the family and a Kaufman County Judge signed an order ending the agencys case against the family. But over half-a-year since the cases dismissal, Ashley and Daniel Pardo still find themselves listed on the states child abuse registry. According to THSC Public Policy Director Jeremy Newman, the DFPS agency in late June denied a request from the family to change a determination they made in the familys case file that is causing the parents to be named on the list. According to Newman, being placed on the child abuse list can make it more difficult to find jobs, secure housing, and can prevent them from being able to do certain types of volunteer work. The way that it normally works is the CPS conducts their investigation in the original case. When they are finished with their investigation, they put in what is called an official CPS finding in the familys file, which is basically to say, This is CPS opinion on what they found, Newman explained. There are a couple of different ones they could put in there. The one that gets you on the registry is if they put in reason to believe. It means that there is reason to believe that abuse or neglect took place. If they put that in your file, it automatically places you on the child abuse registry. According to DFPS, an individual might be included in the registry when an investigation results in dispositions of either reason to believe or confirmed. An individual will not clear the central registry check if that individual is an alleged perpetrator in an open child abuse or neglect investigation being conducted by DFPS, reads an article in a background-check handbook produced by DFPS. Newman said it's common for DFPS to make such a determination against families and for families to challenge the determination once their case is over. Its also pretty common for CPS to overturn that for families, he said. The interesting thing here is that cases end a lot of different ways. Very few cases ended the way that the Pardos' case ended, where parties mutually agreed that the case should be over and CPS argued to the court that the case should be dismissed because they now felt comfortable with Drake being left at home with his parents and with them making joint medical decisions. But after that, the family still finds themselves on the abuse registry. According to THSC, DFPS has the sole authority to place families on the registry and does not need consent from a judge. The agency can do so regardless of whether a parent has been found guilty of abuse or neglect. Newman explained that after cases like these end, family attorneys will ask for the investigative files DFPS has built against their clients, which can take some time to receive. Once you receive that, you know the status of what their finding is against you and you can file an internal appeal within CPS asking them to overturn it, he said. However, the advocate said that the familys formal challenge last month asking DFPS to overturn their reason to believe determination has been denied. That first challenge is with an internal reviewer who works at CPS, Newman said. They basically said, Yep, we think our original decision was reasonable and so we are going to leave it how it is. The family lost that. That was no huge surprise because it was such a high profile case that we expected that if they were to ever deny a family it was going to be this one. The family appealed this week to the Office of Consumer Affairs, which is a supposedly independent office that also works within the DFPS and is tasked with reviewing these types of complaints the second time around. That is what the family is appealing to right now, Newman said. From everybody he has talked to, he gathers that most families tend to win at that first level of appeal to get their name off the list. It is such a high profile case that they would basically have to admit error to take them off the list at this point, the homeschooling advocate suggests. We raised this throughout the original case that it seemed like they [DFPS] were all about saving face all the way through. My sense is we are going right back to that same place. If they take the family off the list, what they are saying is, We never had reason to believe abuse or neglect occurred in the first place. Newman warned that many families might not even know they are on the list until it comes back to bite them. It can be on a background check. It can prevent you from lots of types of employment, especially anything that would require any type of security clearance or working with children, he said. Its a black mark on your record. What it basically says is that if you are on this list, you are a child abuser. Should DFPS deny the Pardo familys second appeal, Newman says that the family can file a lawsuit against the agency. We are plowing ground that has not been plowed very many times before, he said. The demographic of people that go into a CPS case usually cannot afford to defend themselves in the first place and can almost never afford to get this far in the process and go to court afterward if this doesnt work out. I am actually waiting on a dataset from CPS to tell me how often this happens. Newman warns that part of the problem is that the way the system is set up eats a family who is guilty or a family who is innocent. You dont have to be guilty, he said. [The Pardos] werent guilty and at the end of the day, they got their child back. But they still had to go through this six-month nightmare and cost over $100,000 and took the entire state of Texas, it seems like, to defend them. Last year, The Houston Chronicle/NBC News published a series of investigative articles highlighting a Texas legal and medical system that sometimes struggles to differentiate accidental injuries from abuse. The news outlets analyzed 40 cases in Texas and interviewed 75 attorneys, doctors as well as two dozen current and former CPS employees. Under this system, children are sometimes taken from seemingly caring parents, while others are left in situations that, in rare cases, turn out to be deadly, an NBC News report from September 2019 reads. Parents managed to regain custody in most of the cases reviewed by reporters, in some instances after additional medical findings or reports from outside experts raised doubts about the initial abuse determination. MILAN, Aug. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr ZinX has launched their Patent Pending Zinc + Hinokitiol Oral Spray across Amazon EU today. This is the first time a Zinc Ionophore oral spray combination has been available to the EU market. "A combination of Zinc Salts and Hinokitiol can be applied as an inexpensive, effective and safe alternative approach to fight respiratory viruses." - Dr Nikola Kolundzic, Kings College London Dr ZinX Patent Pending Ingredient Combination: Zinc + Hinokitiol Following wide publication and support from President Trump for the use of a Hydroxychloroquine + Zinc Combination, Zinc has come under increasing interest. Currently Hydroxychloroquine is only available through a prescription from a Doctor. This makes the launch of the Dr ZinX Oral Spray in the EU even more interesting given its status as a cosmetic, allowing doctors to issue it freely to patients, without need for a prescription. Anti-Viral Role of Hinokitiol: Hinokitol has been found to increase the cellular import of Zn2+ and to be effective in the combat with RNA viruses such as influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus and picornaviruses. Hinokitiol is a tropolone compound with a seven-membered carbon ring and an isopropyl side chain. Zinc ion is of vital importance as a cofactor for various cellular processes and viral proteins. Metallothioneins regulate the intracellular concentration of free Zn2+. Intracellular Zn2+ concentration disrupts the replication cycle of certain RNA viruses. - MD MSci Marija Petkovic Role of Hinokitiol in Inflammation: Early evidence suggests that Hinokitiol has a role in dampening the immune response and preventing excessive inflammation. The culture of T lymphocytes generated from the spleen of mice resulted in reduced proliferation of lymphocytes and reduced expression of the inflammatory cytokine interferon gamma (IFN-) which has a strong role in inflammatory diseases and autoimmunity. It has also shown that it up-regulates p21, a regulatory cell cycle inhibitor. The inhibition of this molecule results in malignant proliferation of T lymphocytes and autoimmunity. For Press Inquiries Contact: [email protected] Related Files Dr ZinX Infographic 2.jpg Dr ZinX Patent Infographic.jpg Related Images dr-zinx-patent-pending.jpg Dr ZinX Patent Pending Dr ZinX Patent Pending Ingredient Combination: Zinc + Hinokitiol Related Links Dr ZinX Amazon Page SOURCE Dr ZinX KYODO NEWS - Aug 1, 2020 - 11:15 | Feature, All Despite a rise in the number of foreign residents in Japan who practice Islam, cemeteries offering burials in accordance with the Quran remain sparse, with Muslims struggling to gain understanding of the need for new sites from locals in a country where cremation is the norm. While Japan is home to an estimated 200,000 Muslims, a figure likely to grow as the country accepts more foreign workers, there are currently only seven locations for Islamic interment. "It would take money, time, and effort to get buried in my native country, and it isn't realistic," said a 57-year-old man from Pakistan who resides in Sapporo. The man, who came to Japan 32 years ago, is married to a Japanese woman with whom he has two children and has no plans of leaving the country. As there is a belief in the resurrection of the dead, Islam dictates that believers be buried because the soul needs to return to the physical body, according to the Japan Muslim Association. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the central government has not set regulations for burials and leaves municipalities to establish their own rules on issues such as the distance of sites from residential areas and rivers. As of fiscal 2018, over 99 percent of bodies in Japan were cremated. According to the Japan Islamic Trust, Japan has no burial sites for Muslims at all in the northeastern Tohoku region or west of the Chugoku region. "The body often must be moved to distant cemeteries, which can damage the corpse or result in high transportation fees," said the trust's director general, Qureshi Haroon. One of the seven sites is a regular cemetery in Hokkaido in the coastal town of Yoichi. But Yoichi Reien offers only very limited space for burials -- just four to five free spaces -- leaving Towfik Alam, chairman of the Hokkaido Islamic Society, "incredibly worried." Although the society had planned to create a cemetery in Otaru that would follow Hokkaido's protocols such as being at least 110 meters away from a residential area, the project was abandoned last summer after it failed to gain support from residents. "Residents were worried about the hygiene of burials, among other aspects," a city spokesperson said. Meanwhile, there are plans to build a cemetery for Muslims in Oita Prefecture, but it too has been facing pushback from locals who are worried about water pollution. Hirofumi Tanada, an honorary professor at Waseda University with extensive knowledge of Japan's Muslim community, says accommodating the needs of practitioners of not just Islam but a range of religious traditions has become more important since Japan amended its immigration law last April to accept more foreign workers. "The problem regarding burials is just one example," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 14:02:52|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Committed to ensuring food safety, China has redoubled efforts to bring safe and healthy food to dining tables in the country amid the global COVID-19 outbreak, rolling out measures to improve supervision of imported and home-produced food. As COVID-19 continues to spread globally, cluster outbreaks have been reported in several overseas food-processing enterprises, putting cold-chain products under close scrutiny of Chinese authorities. In a move to cut off possible virus transmission via imported food, China's customs authority in July halted imports from three Ecuadorian shrimp producers, ordering frozen products from these firms to be returned or destroyed after samples from the inner wall of a container and product's outer packaging tested positive for the virus. Though the test results don't mean the virus could infect people via food, they exposed loopholes in companies' food safety regulations, said Bi Kexin, head of the import and export food safety bureau of the General Administration of Customs. Li Ning, a researcher with the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, said that food posed a low transmission risk, but there was a possibility of transmission if the food-processing environment was contaminated or workers got infected. Regarding food safety as an important task of the Communist Party of China and the government at all levels, China has called for the strongest measures, the most rigorous standards, the strictest supervision, the most severe punishment for violators and the most serious accountability system for food safety. Faced with rising global COVID-19 cases, the task of ensuring farm-to-fork food safety entails more comprehensive containment measures. The country has been stepping up efforts to keep a close eye on both imported food and food-related industries at home. IMPORTED FOOD TRANSMISSION BLOCKED To cut off overseas virus transmission channels, China intensified inspection and testing of imported food in the cold chain. As of July 9, the country's customs officers had tested 227,934 samples of imported cold-chain food, official data showed. Mechanisms to facilitate coordination and information sharing have also been put in place, while food dealers have been requested to take immediate steps once a problem is spotted. "Be it imported or home-produced, food sold in the domestic market should be strictly supervised according to law," said Dang Qianying, an official with the State Administration for Market Regulation. China's inspection of imported food is in line with international standards and regulations, and won't interrupt normal international trade, said Li Xingqian, director of foreign trade department of the Ministry of Commerce, stressing that food businesses should observe guidelines jointly issued by the World Health Organization and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization at this special time. Such steps were aimed at protecting people's health, Li said, adding that Beijing's COVID-19 outbreak in June has sparked public concerns over the risk of the virus being transmitted from imported refrigerated food. Despite stricter food supervision and inspection, China will remain committed to expanding imports, and promoting agricultural trade has always been an integral part of the country's opening-up policy, Li said. Official data showed that food and agricultural imports of the country have grown rapidly this year despite COVID-19 disruptions. During the January-May period, import of agricultural products rose 9 percent year on year, 17 percentage points higher than the country's total imports during the period. China welcomes quality and safe food from all over the world, and stands ready to conduct in-depth cooperation with other countries to promote food safety and the healthy development of global food trade, Bi said. NO STONES UNTURNED AT HOME As food safety supervision concerns every bite of food of the country's 1.4 billion people, and the public's health and lives, Chinese authorities at all levels have prioritized food safety in public health, urging greater efforts to reduce threats. In response to COVID-19, the country has clamped down on illegal wildlife trade and consumption, and tightened supervision of the food industry, covering employees, environment and logistics. To reduce public health risks, China has banned illegal wildlife trade and consumption. It announced in July to gradually close all live poultry markets. People in the food industry were the focus of anti-virus efforts. Beijing, for example, started large-scale nucleic acid testing on workers in farmers' markets, catering and delivery industries in the wake of the outbreak in its Xinfadi wholesale market, to stem virus transmission in food-related business activities. Given that food delivery workers tend to be more frequently exposed to other people and thus face higher health risks, the country has specifically issued anti-virus guidelines for them, requesting them to keep a social distance of at least 1 meter, choose contactless means of delivery and put food in separate areas. Supervision of food market has been intensified across the country, especially in places with a large population. In south China's Guangdong Province, one of the country's economic powerhouses, COVID-19 prevention inspections were conducted extensively, covering local farmers' markets, retail and wholesale markets for aquatic products, and supermarkets. Also under the spotlight was domestic cold-chain food logistics. To regulate the sector, China has implemented a national regulation, outlining compulsory requirements for all links of cold-chain food, including production, processing, transportation and sales. While resorting to the toughest measures to prevent food safety problems at source, supervise all links and control risks, China in 2016 also pledged to establish a more unified and authoritative supervision system. The country issued a guideline in 2019, aiming to tighten food safety supervision "from the farmland to the dining table" and further build up capacities to ensure whole-chain food safety and quality. According to the guideline, the country will establish a preliminary food safety supervision system based on risk control and supply management by 2020, be capable of basically bringing major food risks under control, and elevate food safety conditions to a level commensurate with the target of finishing building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Enditem The South East will finally have its own University by January 2022 and it will include a Wexford campus. That was the message relayed to local TDs and Senators during a meeting held on Monday afternoon in which representatives from Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) and IT Carlow discussed their plans for the future. Senator Malcolm Byrne chaired the meeting and he said that it had been very positive on all sides. 'The Institutes have clearly indictated their plan to lodge their application by year end with a view to achieving designation as a University of the South East by January 2022. It is planned to meet with Minister for Education, Deputy Simon Harris, later this week,' said Senator Byrne. Joining the Senator were Wexford TDs Verona Murphy, Paul Kehoe and James Browne, and Deputy Murphy said approaching the development as a unified team was key to ensuring it got over the line. 'It was a good meeting, very positive, all the South East TDs came together with WIT and Carlow IT and we looked at it from a mainstream approach,' said Deputy Murphy. 'The good news is we expect the Technical University for the South East to be up and running by January 2022. We'll be taking further meetings on a regular basis with representatives so we can get a firm roadmap permanently in place.' The subject of a new Wexford campus has been the source of much debate in recent months and tensions between IT Carlow and elected representatives had occasionally ran high. But Deputy Murphy said those issues had been resolved and everyone was now focusing on looking ahead to the futre. 'I've been talking to Paula Mulcahy (President of IT Carlow) about the Wexford campus and she's actually meeting with Wexford County Council tomorrow with regards to a site, and says she expects the planning permission to be in place by the end of this year,' said Deputy Murphy. 'It's very, very positive, I'll be speaking to her again after tomorrow's meeting.' Referring to previous discourse, which saw IT Carlow brand comments made by local councillors as 'unhelpful', Deputy Murphy said, 'There's a been a lot of misrepresentation, but if we're going to enage as a cohort we need to do it in a mainstream way and get the job done.' Although Deputies Brendan Howlin and Johnny Mythen were unable to make the meeting, Senator Byrne said everyone was now singing from the same hymn sheet. 'We all want to achieve a multi-campus University of the South East, including with a Wexford campus,' he said. 'And this University will have a regional, national and international impact. 'The fact that this is a cross-party, cross-constituency group of Oireachteas members is really positive and we are all working together. Brendan Howlin and Johnny Mythen could not make the meeting but both have been involved in the process and we are committed to the overall goal.' Meanwhile the governing body of IT Carlow have identified a preferred site in Wexford town for their new campus. Last week, Mayor of Wexford Cllr Leonard Kelly met with President of the College Dr Patricia Mulcahy and VP for Corporate Affairs Cormac O'Toole to discuss the progress being made on the project and received assurances that things are now moving in the right direction. 'It is progressing,' Cllr Kelly said. 'The IT have identified a site of 30 acres in Wexford and they are now carrying out their own feasibility studies. While Cllr Kelly refused to be drawn on the location of the site, it's reported that a green field site at Killeens was among the favoured destinations for the new Wexford campus, both from the point of view of Wexford County Council and the college. Following on from the announcement of a new 1,000 student post primary school and a new Educate Together Primary School to be built in Wexford, Cllr Kelly said that all three create a unique opportunity for Wexford, particularly if all three could be constructed on one multi-faceted 'educational campus'. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Amar Singh as an energetic public figure who was known for his friendships across many spheres of life while expressing his condolences on the passing away of the former Samajwadi Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP. Amar Singh died on Saturday in a Singapore hospital, as per reports. Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his friends and family, PM Modi tweeted Saturday evening. WATCH | Amar Singh passes away in Singapore; tributes pour in from political world Moments ago, defence minister Rajnath Singh, too, had described Singh, his fellow politician from Uttar Pradesh, as a leader with friends in every political party. Also Read: Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh dies at 64 Saddened to know about the passing away of senior leader and MP Amar Singh. In his public life, he made friends in every political party, Rajnath Singhs tweet said. Rajnath also said that Amar Singh was full of energy and humorous in nature. Only a few days ago on July 10, Amar Singh had tweeted a warm birthday wish for Rajnath Singh. Warm birthday greetings to our senior leader & honorable defence minister Shri @rajnathsingh ji. Pray for your long and healthy life in service of the nation., his tweet said. 64-year old Singh has been ill for a very long time and was undergoing treatment in Singapore for the past few months. He had been regularly going to Singapore for treatment of a kidney ailment he suffered about 10 years ago. On March 2, he had posted a video message on Twitter to end speculations of his death. Tiger Zinda Hai, he had written in his short message accompanying the video. After leaving Samajwadi Party in 2010, Singh founded Rashtriya Lok Manch in 2011 and unsuccessfully fielded candidates in UP assembly polls in 2012. In 2014, he joined Jat leader Ajit Singhs party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal. However, in his later days, he was quite supportive of Prime Minister Narendra Modis leadership. Recently, he had also expressed his support for Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. He supported several key decisions made by the Modi government. Most recently he had hit out at the Congress party for questioning former chief justice of India, Rajan Gogois nomination to Rajya Sabha. ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) President Donald Trump says he will take action as soon as Saturday to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States. Trump made the announcement to reporters Friday on Air Force One as he returned from Florida. As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States, Trump said. U.S. lawmakers have raised intelligence and privacy concerns about the companys ownership. The company has denied allegations that it shares user data with the Chinese government. The move comes as Trump has ratcheted up tensions with China during the coronavirus pandemic and stalled trade negotiations between the two nations. The companys operations in the U.S. has been under review by the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, I have that authority. ___ Miller reported from Washington. Downtown Berkeley Struggles as University Implements Distance Learning BERKELEY, Calif.Right beside the University of California, Berkeley, is downtown Berkeley. Lined with small shops, cafes, and restaurants, Shattuck Avenue normally bustles with people and vehicles; however, it has been quiet since March. UC Berkeley has announced that its summer sessions and fall semester will be remote due to COVID-19. With the absence of students on campus, Downtown Berkeley businesses continue to see fewer visitors than normal. Some of these businesses are temporarily closed, while others struggle to stay open. In our lunchtime, it used to be crazy busy. We used to [have] here 10, 12 employees per shift before. Now theres like 2, 3, and its not even that busy, Nikita Adhikari, general manager of Organic Greens Salad & More, told The Epoch Times. The salad place is right across from the campus and used to serve a lot of students. Some businesses in Downtown Berkeley are temporarily closed. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times) John Caner, CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association, estimates that University-related staff, faculty and students make up a quarter to half of Downtown business. Other schools doing remote learning in the fall, such as Berkeley City College and Berkeley High School, also contribute significantly to Downtown Berkeley before the pandemic. Caner said few businesses are permanently closed; more are temporarily closed. But that doesnt mean the students arent coming back. Some of them will come back and do online in Berkeley, and some have stayed in Berkeley; we dont know how many, Caner told The Epoch Times. But thats definitely going to impact the businesses. Restaurants make up most of Downtown Berkeley and are an affordable jackpot for hungry students. Fabrizio Cercatore, founder of Passione Pizza, informed The Epoch Times via email that students make up 70 percent of the restaurants business. With the school closed and the closure of all the businesses that are functioning for the university, there are not enough people in downtown Berkeley right now, Cercatore wrote. Cercatores business closed on July 27 and plans to reopen in January 2021. A hand sanitizer station for public use. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times) According to Roscoe Skipper, owner of the restaurant Corso Berkeley, the restaurant closed on July 1 and plans to reopen when theres a vaccine. Their customers consisted mostly of teachers and administration rather than students. We couldnt make a go of it without Cal, Skipper told The Epoch Times in an email. John Samaras, co-owner of Cafe Nostos, said his wife and partner help him run the cafe. They only have 30 percent of the number of customers they had before. He said he has two types of customers on a daily basis: those who live in the neighborhoodthose are the most loyaland students, who make up about 3040 percent of his business. His business did takeout when the pandemic hit. It did not close, and he plans to keep it open when the fall semester starts, too. He said they spend a lot of time working for free, but people appreciate that theyre open. The alternative is to stay homebe closed and stay home and go crazy. So we figured we provide this service, sense of continuity here, normalcy, and [it] keeps us busy, Samaras told The Epoch Times. He said their landlord does not pressure them about rent, so they only have to worry about utilities and food purchases. A business in Downtown Berkeley. (Daren Chou/The Epoch Times) Mike, owner of Royal Ground Coffee, told The Epoch Times that they are normally very busy with all kinds of peoplestudents, faculty, tourists, and residents. Now most of his customers are local residents. They still have the same number of employees, but they work for 8 hours instead of the usual 12. He said they are not making any money at all and have just enough to pay the employees, rent, utilities, and taxes. Everybody [tries] to survive, but how long can you try? he said. Dorothee Mitrani, owner of La Note Restaurant, informed The Epoch Times via email that distance learning has impacted their business by at least 50 percent. Their restaurant did not close, and they plan to stay open when the fall semester starts. The Downtown Berkeley Association launched a Dine3Times promotion to help the struggling restaurants. Participants can photograph three receipts from different restaurants between July 20 and Aug. 30. Then they will receive a poster and be entered to win a meal for two valued at $50. In Berkeley, indoor retail was allowed to reopen in June, and outdoor dining was permitted on July 15. On July 21, UC Berkeley announced that it will start the fall semester with distance learning, but it is preparing to use other methods of learning when conditions allow. Shilajit Mitra By Express News Service Anu Menons film rounds out what can be called the Vidya Balan motherhood trilogy. In 'Tumhari Sulu' (2017), she played a housewife and mother who takes up a job as a late-night radio host. In 'Mission Mangal' (2019), her ingenuity as a homemaker facilitates a scientific breakthrough. And now, in 'Shakuntala Devi', she plays a mathematician whose globe-trotting journey all but cripples her relationship with her daughter. Out on Amazon Prime, the biopic has the same frolicking quality as the previous two films. Yet, the emotional baggage here is markedly heavy something the film struggles to carry off till the end. In 1930s Bangalore, a five-year-old Shakuntala is deemed a child prodigy. Her father, a lion tamer and magician, seizes the opportunity, keeping her out of school to perform variety math shows across town. Shakuntala grows up without a proper childhood, shadowed by the death of a sibling and the servile silence of her mother. She grows to hate her family, and, after a freak incident with a firearm, flees to London. There she flourishes into a world-renowned genius, stunning academicians around the world and earning a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. Shakuntalas rise as a mathematician, astrologer and author is undercut by her growing struggles as an individual. She reacts unpredictably to heartbreak with comic intensity or prompt indifference. Her marriage to Paritosh (Jisshu Sengupta), an IAS officer from Calcutta, crumbles when she moves back to London and takes custody of their daughter, Anu. Sanya Malhotra makes a great match for Vidya their violent blowups diffuse the films outwardly feel-good vibe. 'Like Tumhari Sulu', 'Shakunatala Devi' examines the fallout between ambition and maternal duty. Its a pertinent topic, but the film wont stop hammering its viewers. The parallels between Anu and Shakuntala are laid out in bold strokes. They both hate their mothers. They both had troubled childhoods for opposite reasons. They both marry a supportive husband. You deserve the Nobel prize for looking after your daughter, we hear them both retort. When Anu has her own child, shes assailed by the same parental guilt as her mom. Even for a biopic, this constant nudging gets annoying. Anu Menon and co-writer Nayanika Mahtani celebrate Shakuntalas individualistic spirit, but do not let Anu grow out of her shadow. Likewise, the lighter moments are a hit-and-miss. Sachin-Jigars soundtrack is relentlessly woozy. The complex number crunching is visualised via pop-up animations (Super 30, another film about a math whiz, ran this trick to the ground). The film retains the mystery of Shakuntalas lightning-fast brain; in a sequence, scientists run scans on her head and come up short. We are also introduced to her myriad quirks: from her habit of bringing up her C-Section to running a failed election campaign against Indira Gandhi. Skipping between timelines, Vidya rarely loses her poise, throwing her head back and chortling broadly. Am I correct? she asks excitedly from time to time though the response is clear. It may sound like an odd comparison, but the film reminded me of Hirokazu Kore-edas The Truth (2019). In it, Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche play a mother-daughter pair coming to terms with their disparate personalities. Shakuntala Devi charts a similar space, but caves under the same sentimentality it sets out to examine. Like most Hindi films, it strikes out for reconciliation at all costs, ignoring the years of bitterness, hurt and neglect. It paints a bright picture, but not a revealing one. Director: Anu Menon Cast: Vidya Balan, Sanya Malhotra, Amit Sadh, Jisshu Sengupta Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video A Queensland man who beat his partner and assaulted his young son chased them down in a car carrying seven guns when they tried to flee, police allege. The 35-year-old Mount Isa man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has appeared in court charged with 16 crimes, including multiple assaults and dangerous conduct with a weapon. Some of the seven guns found in the back of a car being driven by the Mount Isa man. He was arrested at a Mount Isa service station on Thursday afternoon, two days after "an alleged serious domestic violence incident" on a remote property near Dajarra about 150 kilometres south of the mining town on Wednesday night. Police allege the man's partner threw herself in front of her son to protect him while he was being attacked. Can't allow every person who thinks of some solution to COVID-19 to file petition: SC Faith vs safety in burials: COVID-19 remains in dead bodies for 9 days says Centre Sushant Rajput death: Ball in SCs court as Bihar, Maharashtra police fight it out India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Aug 01: The death of Sushant Singh Rajput is taking several turns and now both the Maharashtra and Bihar police want to be heard by the Supreme Court before any decision on the FIR is taken. Sushant Singh Rajput's death probe: Why Maharashtra and Bihar police are locking horns|Oneindia News While Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister, Sushil Kumar Modi has demanded a CBI probe, the Enforcement Directorate registered a money laundering case. On the other hand, Maharashtra Chief Minister, Udhav Thackeray attacked the BJP for criticising the Mumbai police on its probe. The Mumbai police has questioned scores of film personalities and critics and recorded the statement of 40 persons. In this backdrop, Sushant's father, K K Singh filed an FIR alleging abetment to suicide with the Bihar police. He also named Rhea Chakraborty in the FIR. Sushant's death case: Maha govt files caveat in actress Rhea Chakrabortys plea in SC While K K Singh cited his age for filing the case in Bihar, Rhea moved the Supreme Court seeking transfer of the case to Mumbai. This led to Sushant's father, the Mumbai and Bihar police filing caveats, seeking to be heard first before any ex-parte interim order is passed. The ED while registering a money laundering case against Rhea and her relatives cited the FIR by the Bihar police, which prima facie showed siphoning off of Rs 15 crore bellowing to the Rajpur family. In this connection, Rhea would be questioned by the ED. The Bihar police filed the FIR against six others under Indian Penal Code Sections 106 (abetment to suicide), 341 (wrongful restrain), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house) 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating). Sushant's father has alleged that Rs 15 crore in his son's account had gone missing. On June 6, less than a week before he allegedly committed suicide, Rhea had gone to his place and taken away many of his belongings, including cash, ATM card, important documents and his laptop. Rhea, however in a video statement released through her lawyers denied the allegations and said that the truth shall prevail. I have faith in the judiciary and God she said and added that she believes that she will get justice. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Saturday, August 1, 2020, 9:02 [IST] Sushant Singh Rajputs sister Shweta Singh Kirti has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to immediately look into the case while affirming the familys faith in Indias judicial system. The actor died on June 14 with the Mumbai Police investigating the case. Earlier this week, Sushants father KK Singh filed an FIR in Patna against the actors girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty for abetment to suicide. I am the sister of Sushant Singh Rajput and I request an urgent scan of the whole case. We believe in Indias judicial system & expect justice at any cost. @narendramodi @PMOIndia #JusticeForSushant #SatyamevaJayate, Shweta wrote on Instagram. The letter reads, Dear Sir somehow my heart says you stand by the truth. We are from a very simple family. My brother had no Godfather when he was in Bollywood nor do we have anyone right now. My request to you is to immediately look into this case and make sure that everything is handled in a sanitized way and no evidence is tampered with. Expecting justice to prevail. Amid demands for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the death of 34-year-old actor, Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said on Friday that he deplored attempts to question the efficiency of the Mumbai Police in handling the investigation. The state police and Mumbai Police are fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. They are Covid-19 warriors and not to trust them is an insult to them. I would like to tell all Sushant Singh Rajputs fans that they should trust Mumbai Police and pass on whatever information you have (about the case) to them, he said. A Bihar Police team is in Mumbai on the basis of the complaint of the actors father. In his FIR, he has accused Rhea of having befriended his son in May 2019 to further her own career. He has also alleged that there were unexplained transfers from his sons bank account involving actor Rhea Chakraborty and six others. As the Enforcement Directorate filed a money laundering case against Rhea and others, the 28-year-old actor issued a video statement saying she believed truth will eventually prevail. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Holding Eid prayers at Dublin's "iconic" Croke Park is a powerful symbol of religious unity during the pandemic, an Islamic leader has said. Two hundred worshippers - socially distanced and surrounded by empty terraces - rolled out their prayer mats at the 82,000-seater stadium synonymous with Irish identity. Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri, from the Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council, delivered part of his speech in Irish and paid tribute to Ireland's tradition of welcome and inclusivity, with "cead mile failte". At the manicured grass pitch normally used to host major matches, he said: "This pandemic has brought with it some blessings. "If not for this pandemic, we probably would not have been here. If it was not for this pandemic our communities would not have been united. We understand as humans we are in this together and we are having the same challenges." Croke Park was made available by the GAA to facilitate social distancing on a special religious day for Muslims. Expand Close Socially distanced worshippers who attended Eid prayers at Croke Park / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Socially distanced worshippers who attended Eid prayers at Croke Park Leaders of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths in the city attended, as well as senior Government officials. "We are all showing together a message of peace, a message of unity, a message of humanity," Dr Al-Qadri said. He added that many people are putting their lives at risk working in the health service, and paid tribute to Dr Syed Waqqar Ali, the eighth healthcare worker in the State to die from Covid-19, earlier in July. After a month of fasting for Ramadan, Eid is normally a time for Muslims to meet, pray and celebrate. Yesterday's Eid al-Adha falls later in the year than Eid-al Fitr. Sacrifice It commemorates the willingness of the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God. The religious leader said Ireland had demonstrated it is an open and accepting society following his request to use Croke Park. "This is a country that is proud of its diversity and embraces those who become part of the society. Which place is most iconic and symbolic? Of course it is Croke Park," he added. He said the ceremony had sent out a strong message that Ireland is a country of cead mile failte - 100,000 welcomes. "No matter your differences, no matter how different you are, once you come and live here and become part of the society, this island of Ireland has this unique ability to adopt you in a way that you become part of society," he said. He referred to St Patrick, the Romano-British missionary who spread Christianity and has become synonymous with Irishness. Dr Al-Qadri said Croke Park is part of Ireland's DNA, something every person has been brought up with. He added that yesterday's event was the first complete broadcast on state television, RTE, of Eid in a non-Muslim majority country. The deputy commander of the Islamic Republic's law enforcement has complained that his forces are "really left single-handed" in policing "moral security" of the Iranian society. Meanwhile, Isfahan's governor has announced that he intends to award a residential unit to officers and volunteers in charge of "promotion of virtue and prevention of vice." The term, also known as "enjoining good and forbidding wrong," is a Quranic expression calling the faithful to propagate good deeds and condemn wrong-doing. However, the Quranic term does not say people have the right to "enforce" the recommendation. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)-run Tasnim news agency cited the Deputy Commander of Iranian police Brigadier General Qassem Rezaei as saying on Thursday, July 30, the law enforcement forces have been left alone in maintaining moral security of the society. This claim can be disputed, since many so-called volunteers stop women in the streets and shame them to cover themselves more fully. The state has allowed pious Muslims to enforce its dress code. On the other hand, so many women flout the rules that perhaps the existing manpower is not enough to enforce hijab rules. In a meeting with the representative of the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader, General Rezaei lambasted other state bodies for not cooperating with the police on that matter, adding, "Nobody is helping the police, save volunteers and the members of Baseej, (Basij - the IRGC's militia). Since the downfall of the pro-West Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been struggling to force Iranian women to respect what it calls "Islamic dress code." While Iranian women were free to choose to wear a hijab during the Shah's reign, the Islamic Republic has done its utmost to force them to relent to compulsory hijab. To achieve this this, it has established select units to enforce compulsory hijab and other "Islamic ethics." The Gasht-e Ershad forces (literally the Guidance Patrol) are currently the principal agency tasked enforcing Iran's Islamic code of conduct in public. Nevertheless, on many occasions there have been clashes between the patrol officers and the people defending women accused of having a "loose hijab." In February last year, a group of Iranians attacked a morality police van in Tehran after the Guidance patrol agents detained two young girls for not properly covering their heads, local news outlets reported. The Islamic Republic government's official news agency, IRNA, reported on February 15, 2019, "Officers fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd who tore off one of the patrol's van doors. The group prevented the officers from driving the women away, IRNA added citing an unnamed law enforcement official. According to the police source, the standoff ended when the girls were released from the van. Video of the incident showed people honking their car horns in apparent protest. A man is heard shouting, "Let them go!" as a group of people surrounds the van. The sound of gunshots is then heard. Meanwhile, the Governor of Isfahan, Abbas Rezaei, has announced that he intends to present 24 residential units to those in charge of "enjoining good and forbidding wrong," provided they did not already own a house. This will simply encourage individuals to harass women on the streets and report on them to perhaps qualify for a free house. Out of choice or reluctance, all Iranian women wear hijab by law. Still, many resent the regulations related to completely they cover their heads and bodies. For the past four decades, Iranian women have been struggling to assert their freedom regarding hijab. "It's not only a question of wearing a headscarf. The question is also thousands of overt and undercover morality-police forces who ambush everywhere to catch you if your scarf is a little bit slipped away from your hairline," said a young lady from Tehran. President of the United States Donald J. Trump has announced that he will ban the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok in the U.S., either by signing an executive order or by using emergency economic powers as soon as Saturday, Aug. 1. Is Trump Banning TikTok? According to USA Today, the president announced late Friday, July 31, to the reporters aboard the Air Force One on his way home to the White House from Florida. Trump's threat to ByteDance, TikTok's owner, comes after the scandal that the app is involved in regarding how they handle the personal data of their users and that the U.S. government believe it is a threat to their national security, especially as the app has around 80 million active members in the country. Reuters had sources familiar with the matter and said that the announcement followed a "frantic negotiation" between ByteDance, the White House, and the potential buyers of the app, including tech powerhouse Microsoft. According to one of the sources, the company has failed to make a deal that would shed the app's operations in the country. Read Also: Elon Musk's Mysterious Neuralink Chip Could Make You Hear Things That Were Impossible to Hear Before The Pressure of Selling the App One of the news outlets' sources also said that they are having a hard time making a deal because of the company's expected valuations of TikTok, which is more than $50 billion and the company's insistence that they maintain a minority stake in the app. ByteDance, as well as Microsoft and the U.S. Treasury Department that handles the government panel reviewing the company's ownership of TikTok declined to make any comment, but a spokesperson for the app did share a brief statement. "While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok," the spokesperson for the app said. It can be remembered that the U.S. Navy and even the hacktivist group Anonymous have encouraged the public to delete the app and stop using it as the app is allegedly harvesting personal data from its users. Besides that, the app is also involved in a recent issue with Triller, a competitor of the app. Facing an Infringement Complaint In a report by Business Insider, Triller Inc. sues the app for apparent patent infringement for copying their patented technology that uses audio tracks to edit multiple videos, and they had it patented back in 2017, two years after they filed for the patent when the app was founded. Based on the report, Triller's lawyers ask for damages and ask the court to file an injunction against ByteDance to prevent the company from further infringement of their patents. The complaint has already been filed Wednesday, July 29, in the U.S. District Court for the Western Division of Texas as the company has offices in the state's capital, Austin. Furthermore, Mike Lu, Triller's CEO, has claimed that their rival is paying some creators to "actually not post on Triller," which is a move he describes as "neither ethical nor legal." Besides the patent infringement complaint, Lu also plans on adding an antitrust violation against TikTok. Read Also: China's Navigation Satellite Network is Complete: Its High Degree Accuracy Can Rival U.S. GPS This article is owned by TechTimes. Written by: Nhx Tingson 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. New Delhi: The Indian government has included the Korean language to the new National Education Policy among other foreign languages like Japanese, Thai, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian will be taught at the secondary level. The government also pointed out that foreign language vocabulary should be updated in the text books and other printing materials. The suggested foreign languages in this regard are Korean, English, French, German, Hebrew and Japanese. In this matter, Shin Bong-kil the ambassador of the Republic of Korea to India said I think Indian government`s decision about adding Korean as foreign language for secondary level can be considered as a symbolic measure to focus on the importance of India-Korea relations." Kim Kum-pyoung, the director of Korean Cultural Centre India (KCCI) said we plan to intensively foster Korean language teachers to deal with Korean language demands in India, and will work hard so that Korean language is adapted as regular subject in Indian national academic aptitude test for university admission. Korean language was not recommended as a foreign language in the first draft by the National Education Policy preparation committee in 2019. The KCCI has consistently put its effort to build the base for the adaption of Korean language as a subject in India. Under this process Korean Cultural Center now has MOU with 105 schools where the center is providing Korean culture experience and Korean language demonstration classes. In 2015, the Korean language demonstration class started with 2 schools only and now it has increased to 17 schools where 3 schools have already accepted Korean language as school`s regular subject. This was even before the National Education Policy announcement. Currently, KCCI is preparing to open Korean Language Teacher Training Course with 23 Korean language teacher candidates, who are selected for a 15-week intensive course which will run from August 17 to December 24. These Indian teachers will then be sent to schools and colleges. Also, KCCI is opening a 15-week online free hobby class for Korean language from August 18. Bengaluru, Aug 1 : Many local mosque committees have embraced technology to guide Karnataka Muslims through the Bakrid prayers as a good number of them have chosen to stay back at home to celebrate the festival this year amid the Covid pandemic. "Lots of mosques are conducting the prayers on Zoom app for Muslims to do the festival namaz at home as many Muslims are not coming out for Bakrid because of the pandemic," said city-based devotee Zaheer to IANS. Besides the Zoom online video-conference prayers, several mosques have also made YouTube videos for the faithful on how to do a Bakrid special namaaz. One such video says, 'Eid ki Namaz ka tariqa' and is available on YouTube. Another such video, 'Eid-Ul-Adha ki Namaz Ghar par Kaise Pade', demonstrated how to read the Bakrid namaaz at home. "A lot of YouTube videos like these are being uploaded so that it will be easy for people to pray at home," said Zaheer. Many people were already aware of these kinds of procedures, as they used it in the Ramzaan festival which went by recently in the lockdown amid the pandemic. Unlike the usual everyday namaaz, Zaheer said the ritual differs a little for the festivals such as Ramzaan and Bakrid. The Jamiat-i-Ulama organization of Davangere district and the Ihata-e new masjid in the town's Chowkipet have disseminated a slide explaining the step-by-step procedure to do the namaaz. Meanwhile, Zaheer said that most of the people he knows are not going to a mosque or sacrificing an animal. "Nobody is sacrificing in my family. Situation is such that they don't want to create unnecessary panic. It is allowed in Islam, at a later point of time you can sacrifice," he said. Considering the spike in Covid infections in the southern state, the state government has prohibited public prayers on Bakrid day in Idgahs or public spaces. It has also banned sacrifice of animals in public spaces and asked people concerned to only sacrifice them at registered abattoirs. Though the state has allowed Muslims to pray at mosques following Covid guidelines, the state Waqf Board on Friday appealed to all the faithful to celebrate Bakrid at home. On Friday, Karnataka recorded 5,483 new Covid infections, increasing the state's tally to 1.24 lakh. By Express News Service RANCHI: The tribal community in Jharkhand has alleged that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) was conspiring to brand tribals as Hindus in connivance with BJP leaders. Various tribal groups have decided to launch a nationwide campaign against VHP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to create an awareness against the conspiracy hatched by the two right-wing outfits. The VHP is carrying out a drive to collecting soil and sacred water from 2100 religious places in Jharkhand. This is a direct attack on identity of tribals and their culture. We have called a nationwide conference in February next year during which a campaign will be launched against VHP, RSS and other outfits, said academician Karma Oraon. The arrangement brings the Trump administrations investment in coronavirus vaccine projects to more than $8 billion. The French drugmaker Sanofi said Friday that it had secured an agreement of up to $2.1 billion to supply the US federal government with 100 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine, the largest such deal announced to date.. This multiagency effort, known as Operation Warp Speed, is placing bets on multiple vaccines and is paying companies to manufacture millions of doses before clinical trials have been completed. The global need for a vaccine to help prevent COVID-19 is massive, and no single vaccine or company will be able to meet the global demand alone, Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president and global head of Sanofi Pasteur, the companys vaccine division, said in a statement. Also on Friday, the European Union said it was working on a deal with Sanofi to buy up to 300 million doses of potential vaccines to distribute to citizens in its 27 member countries. The announcements came two days after a deal with the British government to supply up to 60 million doses of the vaccine. Financial details of those deals were not disclosed. Under the US deal, Sanofi and its partner, the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, will receive federal funding to pay for clinical trials as well as for manufacturing the vaccine. Sanofi said the deal also includes an option for the company to supply an additional 500 million doses. The company expects to begin clinical trials to test for safety in September, followed by late-stage efficacy trials before the end of this year. Sanofi said it could apply for regulatory approval in the first half of next year. If the vaccine is successful, it would be made available to Americans at no cost, other than what providers charge to administer it, the federal government said in a statement. The head of Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui, is a former GSK executive who as of May held just under $10 million in GSK stock. Slaouis financial ties to some of the companies that are pursuing coronavirus vaccines have raised questions about conflicts of interest. Slaoui is not a federal employee, instead working under a $1 contract that exempts him from federal rules that would require him to list his outside positions, stock holdings and other potential conflicts. Slaoui said in an interview in May that he was determined to avoid any conflicts of interest, but that his GSK stock represented his retirement from 29 years at the company, and that he had told federal officials he would not take the job if he had to sell it. Sanofi and GSK did not say how much of the federal money would go to each company, only that Sanofi would receive the most. GSK did not comment on whether Slaoui had recused himself from negotiations over the deal. A senior administration official said that all agreements were negotiated by federal acquisition professionals and that Slaoui did not play a role in the negotiations. A handful of other vaccine candidates are already in late-stage clinical trials, and some, such as AstraZeneca and Moderna, have said a vaccine could be ready before the end of this year. Sanofis coronavirus vaccine relies on a protein-based technology that the company already uses to produce an influenza vaccine. It is similar to a technique used by another company, Novavax, that will receive up to $1.6 billion from the defense department and the Department of Health and Human Services to develop its experimental vaccine. GSK is supplying the Sanofi vaccine with an adjuvant, an ingredient used in many vaccines that boosts the immune response. Sanofi is also developing a separate vaccine in partnership with Translate Bio that uses so-called messenger RNA to provoke an immune response in the body. That vaccine is expected to enter clinical trials in the fall. As a French company, Sanofi has had to carefully navigate the geopolitics of vaccine development. In May, the companys chief executive, Paul Hudson, faced backlash after he said the United States would get the largest number of doses because they were investing the most. The remarks caused the company to backpedal, explaining that We have always been committed in these unprecedented circumstances to make our vaccine accessible to everyone. Katie Thomas c.2020 The New York Times Company Its all about realme and the squad this whole month of August as the lifestyle companion of the youth launches the realme Fan Fest. With all the fun activities, amazing promos and several prizes that realme Philippines has in store for its fans, August is going to be in bright yellow for the fastest-growing smartphone brand and the realme squad. realme Philippines will be rolling out exciting online promos, sale events and even a music festival for its fans! On the back of the successful launch of seven new smartphones and a stronger AIoT and accessory line-up in the first half of the year, realme Philippines is keen on expressing its gratitude to its fans through a month-long series of festivities. realme Philippines also sees this as an opportunity to boost optimism and reinforce empowerment among its squad members amid the current quarantine protocols and social limitations. In just over a year and a half, realme Philippines was able to soar because of the overwhelming support it receives from the realme Squad. We are very grateful for the confidence our fans give our products. This fuels us to offer more devices that elevate the tech-lifestyle experience of Filipinos. As gratitude, we hope we get to spread joy this August through the realme Fan Fest! shares realme Philippines VP for Marketing Austine Huang. Among the main activities lined up in the realme Fan Fest are the Forever 21 Fashion Challenge, 8.8 online sale, realme Mobile Legends Cup Season 3, and the realme Music Fan Fest. Forever 21 Fashion Challenge True to its commitment to being a trendsetter not just in terms of technology but also aesthetic, realme has maintained its core of contemporary design across all its products. Concretizing this further is its partnership with international street fashion giant Forever 21. From August 6 until August 26, fans can join the Forever 21 Fashion Challenge by showing off their fashion style in a TikTok transition video. Official entries must have the hashtags #realmeForever21 and #realFashion. A realme device and several F21 accessories would be given away during the announcement of winners on August 26. 8.8 Online Sale On August 8, realme will be participating at the highly anticipated 8.8 sale events of online shopping apps Lazada and Shopee. Fans will be enjoying discounts as high as 30 percent and some other great deals on realmes smartphone and AIoT lineups. This includes even the latest devices it has recently launched such as the flagship star-shooter realme X3 SuperZoom. realme Mobile Legends Cup realme smartphones are among the most powerful in the mobile gaming market. Cementing its position in this industry is realmes strong partnership with Mobile Legends developer Moonton. Capitalizing on this partnership and aiming to foster camaraderie among its gaming fans, realme will be officially launching the third season of its inter-community tournament, the realme Mobile Legends Cup, on August 12. realme Music Fan Fest To cap off the month-long celebration with a bang, realme will be gathering top musical artists in the country in an online music party! The realme Music Fan Fest is a free virtual concert happening on August 28. More details about this will soon be announced. It is truly a downpour of fun, excitement and camaraderie this August with all the activities lined up for realme Fans but lots more are yet to be revealed. Maybe new tech-lifestyle partners? More online challenges and prizes? FOMO no more by staying updated on all things realme! We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Containing COVID-19 is rightly our countrys priority at present, but another public health threat opioid addiction still looms large in much of the country. Over the past decade Nebraskans, to their credit, have joined together multiple times to take action against it. The latest step came this week with action at the State Legislature. Sen. Sara Howard of Omaha won final approval for her proposal to create a state fund for money Nebraska may receive from a federal Department of Justice lawsuit against opioid manufacturers accused of deceptive advertising. The verdict or settlement will set the exact use of the money, which will surely be directed to address opioid addiction. Howards bill requires an annual report on how the funds were distributed and the outcomes achieved. During her eight years in the Legislature, Howard, the current chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee, has worked with colleagues on a variety of bills to address the opioid problem. Such work builds on initial steps taken in 2011 when Howards mother, Gwen a state senator at the time sponsored legislation to begin a prescription drug monitoring program in Nebraska. Connie Culp, the first US recipient of a partial face transplant, has died at age 57, according to Ohio's Cleveland Clinic, where she underwent the delicate operation nearly 12 years ago. The health center listed no cause of death in its tweet on Friday, quoting one of her doctors, Frank Papay, as saying she was a "great pioneer." "Her decision to undergo a sometimes-daunting procedure is an enduring gift for all humanity," added Papay, head of the clinic's dermatology and plastic surgery institute. Culp was grievously wounded in 2004 when her husband shot her and then turned the gun on himself. The gun blast shattered Culp's nose and cheeks, the roof of her mouth and her right eye. His wounds were far less extensive than hers, and he was later jailed for seven years over the attack. Culp had 30 surgeries before undergoing transplant surgery in 2008 at the Cleveland Clinic -- an intensely complex procedure that took 22 hours over two days. The mother of two went on to speak out about domestic violence and to offer encouragement to others who underwent face transplants, including Charla Nash, the Connecticut woman who was mauled by a pet chimpanzee. A transplant can help recipients -- often victims of accidents, violence or rare genetic disorders -- to resume basic tasks such as breathing, eating and speaking, and it restores important non-verbal communication through smiles and frowns. But the operation, performed around the world only a few dozen times, can mean a life-long struggle to stop the body rejecting the implanted organ. Immunosuppressant drugs, which help stop such a rejection, can leave the person vulnerable to infections and cancers. Dallas Wiens, a Texas man whose face was gravely burned by a high-voltage wire while he was working on a church roof, underwent the first US full-face implant in 2011. Though permanently blinded, he is now able to speak on the phone and has regained his sense of smell. The recipient of the world's first partial face transplant, Isabelle Dinoire of France, died of cancer in April 2016, 11 years after her groundbreaking operation. Doctors said her body had rejected the transplant. Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic -- (L-R) Dr. Risal Djohan, Dr. Daniel Alam, Dr. Francis Papay and Dr. Maria Siemionow -- completed the operation on Connie Culp in December 2008 Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 08:25:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia exported 426,073 tons of milled rice in the first seven months of 2020, up 38 percent from 308,013 tons over the same period last year, Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon said on Friday. China remained the biggest buyer of Cambodian rice, he said, adding that the kingdom shipped 155,327 tons of milled rice to China during the January-July period this year, up 26 percent over the same period last year. He added that the kingdom also exported 144,247 tons to the European market during the period, up 38 percent, and 57,064 tons to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) market, up 44 percent. In sum, the kingdom's rice exports to all destinations during the first seven months of this year were on the rise, the minister said, adding that the Southeast Asian nation shipped rice to 57 countries and regions. Ngin Chhay, director general of agriculture at the Ministry of Agriculture, said recently that the COVID-19 pandemic had driven high demand for Cambodian rice. He predicted that the country's rice export to the international market is expected to reach 800,000 tons in 2020, an estimated rise of 29 percent from 620,106 tons last year. Cambodia produced about 10 million tons of paddy rice last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. With this amount, the kingdom saw paddy rice surplus of about 5.6 million tons in equivalent to 3.5 million tons of milled rice. Enditem The document says there are still more than 150 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel including the 130 members of the quick-reaction force in the Portland area. Among them are more than 110 Border Patrol agents, more than 30 members of Special Response Teams and more than a half-dozen air support specialists. The figures do not include additional personnel from the U.S. Marshals Service, part of the Justice Department, and the Federal Protective Service, another arm of DHS. A mother has been arrested by the Tema Regional Police Command for alleged having a hand in the death of her two young children at Tema Manhean in the Greater Accra Region. The mother of the children, Abigail Agbubia, aged 28 years, was arrested and detained by the Police to help unravel circumstances leading to the death of the children. According to Chief Inspector Dede Dzakpasu, Tema Regional Police Acting Public Relations Officer, the Tema regional Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had information that two children had been found dead at Tema Manhean at about 1730 hours on July 30, 2020. Chief Inspector Dzakpasu added that crime scene team officers and investigators found the motionless bodies of a boy and a girl aged two years and eight months respectively, in a wooden structure when they visited the scene. She indicated that preliminary inspection on the bodies revealed no marks of assault but their mouths and nostrils were however found foamy. Police, she added, retrieved a bottle containing some liquid substance which would be sent to the Police forensic laboratory for examination. The bodies of the children, she said, were conveyed to the Police Hospital where they were confirmed dead by a medical officer and send to the hospital's morgue for autopsy. Chief Inspector Dzakpasu said the Tema Regional Police Command was appealing to the general public especially residents of Tema Manhean to give relevant information on the death of the children. Anybody with any information should kindly contact the Crime Officer on telephone number 0244287775", she said. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video This comes in the backdrop of a heated debate that reportedly ensued at a closed-door meeting of Congress Rajya Sabha MPs Days after the generational divide in Congress was bared after young turks blamed the UPA-II for party's decline, several senior leaders including Shashi Tharoor and Anand Sharma have come out in defence of former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the party's interim president Sonia Gandhi. This comes in the backdrop of a heated debate that reportedly ensued at a closed-door meeting of Congress Rajya Sabha MPs. According to some media reports, some younger leaders of the party challenged Singh's legacy as prime minister by stating that it was the UPA-II government that had "spoilt" the partys prospects in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. As the details of the heated debate made headlines, several members of the old guard came out in support of Sonia and former prime minister Singh; some went a step ahead and expressed their displeasure with Rahul's loyalists. Manmohan, meanwhile, reportedly stayed silent throughout the exchange as younger members of his own party raised questions on his leadership and policies. Old vs New Guard According to a report in PTI, some young MPs, including Rajeev Satav, the AICC in-charge for Gujarat, are learnt to have asked at the meeting for the link between the UPA government's performance and the Congress's electoral downfall to be reviewed. The young guard, including Satav, KC Venugopal and a few other leaders have reportedly demanded that those who were part of the last UPA government should take the blame for the Congress's rapid decline. Sources told the news agency that demands for resolving the leadership issue in the Congress were also raised at Thursday's meeting, with younger members pushing for the return of Rahul while the old guard maintaining that they weren't opposed to the proposal but needed more clarity from the Gandhi scion on the direction he wishes to take after assuming charge of the party. NDTV, quoting internal party sources said, the clash reportedly began when veteran Congress leaders flagged their concern about the party's failure to capitalise on topics that seem to have haunted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government this year. The seniors called for more introspection and debate within the party to underscore why it failed to exploit the Modi government's perceived missteps on issues such as the economy, coronavirus and the standoff with China. The Hindu reported that Chidambaram's observations about the party being unable to garner public support despite government's failures, elicited a similar retort from Venugopal. The younger members, defended Rahul saying the leader had been constantly engaging on social media over these issues. They instead demanded introspection from seniors and asked if the cause of Congress' decline didn't lie during the years of the UPA rule. Rahul had quit the Congress top post after the party's debacle in the 2019 general elections -- the second time in a row. Sonia had stepped in to take over the role in the interim till the party decided on a new presidential candidate. But over a year later, there seems to be no agreement on a non-Gandhi member heading the grand old party. Senior leaders defend Manmohan, Sonia Reacting to the discontent within, former Union minister Manish Tewari on Friday said while it is valid to ask if the UPA caused the decline in the Congress's fortunes, it is also important to determine if the UPA was sabotaged from within. "Was UPA responsible for the decline in Fortunes of Congress in 2014 is a valid question and must be gone into? Equally valid is was UPA sabotaged from within? 2019 defeat must also be analysed," he wrote on Twitter. BJP was out of Power for 10 yrs 2004-14. Not once did they ever blame Vajpayee or his Govt for their then predicaments In @INCIndia unfortunatly some ill -informed s would rather take swipes at Dr. Manmohan Singh led UPA govt than fight NDA/BJP. When unity reqd they divide. Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) August 1, 2020 Tewari said no charge against the Congress-led UPA has stood the test of law even after six years of its relinquishing office. His reference was to the alleged corruption in the 2G Spectrum allocation, which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) used as a major poll plank against the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Shashi Tharoor and Milind Deora also defended the party seniors saying that those who were taking swipes at Singh and Sonia were ill-informed. I agree with @ManishTewari & @milinddeora. UPA's transformative ten years were distorted & traduced by a motivated & malicious narrative. There's plenty to learn from our defeats & much to be done to revive @INCIndia. But not by playing into the hands of our ideological enemies. https://t.co/Ui6WUlBl3F Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) August 1, 2020 Anand Sharma posted a long Twitter thread detailing the achievements of the Congress rule and arguing how UPA had fallen "victim of a grand political conspiracy and malicious disinformation campaign of the BJP." He said that the Congress must be proud of Singh's policies, adding that BJP cannot be expected to give Singh his due credit but he expected better from his own party colleagues. Congressmen must be proud of UPA's legacy. No party disowns or discredits it's legacy. Nobody expects the BJP to be charitable and give us credit but our own should respect and not forget. (11/11) Anand Sharma (@AnandSharmaINC) August 1, 2020 Some senior leaders chose to air their discontent on 'team Rahul's' attacks more clearly. The Telegraph quoting senior Congress leaders anonymously, reported that the old guard admits that the two sides have been keeping their truce because of senior leaders' maturity and their unwavering commitment towards Sonia and the party. "What if we hit back openly? The seniors include people who worked with Indira Gandhi and many with Rajiv Gandhi. They built the party with their blood and toil for 40-50 years. The young have neither shown that kind of commitment, nor talent. Two most precious young leaders have gone to the BJP and three to four are in doubtful category. We are not going anywhere. If Rahul Gandhi wants to poison us, he can say so openly. Minions should not be unleashed to humiliate us," The Telegraph quoted an unnamed senior leader as saying. The Congress has seen youngsters getting "disenchanted" with the prevailing power structure in the party with former MP and a long-time Rahul Gandhi confidante Jyotiraditya Scindia quitting to join the BJP this year. Another young turk Sachin Pilot, the former deputy chief minister of Rajasthan, has raised a banner of revolt against his own government in the state, causing consternation across the rank and file of the grand old party. The Congress, however, dismissed reports of rift within the party, terming them "fiction" and a product of the "BJP's propaganda factory". Asked about the prevailing anxieties between the older and younger leaders, party spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill said, "As a spokesperson of a national party, we only reply to facts and not fiction." "The stories about internal rumblings in the Congress party and the fight between the young and old guard is a figment of imagination, fiction and a product of the BJP's propaganda factory, merely unleashed in the market to cover their faultlines and failures in the health infrastructure and national security of the country," he said at a virtual press conference. Shergill said rather than focussing on the "so-called internal fights" of the Congress, which do exist, it would be better if the BJP concentrated on the coronavirus and the country's fight against China. "The Congress is united. We will emerge stronger in 2024 and silence all our critics," he said. Asked about the demands for introspection, Shergill said the party has neither shied away from introspecting on its electoral losses nor from taking responsibility. "Whether it is a win or a loss, the Congress has always introspected and will introspect on its poll strategy, election wins and losses. We have always taken victory with humility and learnt from our losses," he said. With inputs from PTI Khabarovsk (Russia) (AFP) - Locals say a struggle for democratic freedoms is unfolding in the far eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk, where the arrest of a popular governor has unleashed massive protests. "Sometimes I feel like crying with joy when I see everyone so united," 21-year-old student Yekaterina Ishchenko told AFP. For the last three weeks, she and thousands of other residents of the city 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) east of Moscow have taken to the streets, with another huge rally due on Saturday. For Ishchenko, this is her first taste of political activism. Tens of thousands attended a rally last weekend, according to journalists and activists, while police put the figure at just 6,500. Such protests are rare in the region seven time zones away from the capital, where most opposition protests take place. They were sparked by the arrest on July 9 of regional governor Sergei Furgal. Investigators accused the 50-year-old former businessman of ordering two contract killings and an attempted murder 15 years ago. He was flown to Moscow where he is being held in custody. His supporters see the probe as aimed at removing an overly independent politician, elected in 2018 after standing against an incumbent from the ruling party backing President Vladimir Putin. "It's a slap in the face for us. We voted for him!" said 72-year-old pensioner Marina Beletskaya. Furgal is a member of the nationalist party LDPR which is generally loyal to the Kremlin. He became a popular governor, with supporters describing him as energetic and ready to listen. Locally, his level of popularity rivalled Putin's. - Conflict with Moscow - "After we elected Furgal, the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District was moved from here to Vladivostok," said 22-year-old Victoria Sakharova, a sales assistant, referring to the port city on the Pacific coast. "This was clearly because we elected an opposition candidate." Story continues Around the size of Turkey, the Khabarovsk region has a population of just 1.3 million. One factor fuelling protests is long-standing resentment among residents who feel ignored by Moscow. Added to this are the economic worries in this region bordering China where metallurgy, coal mining and forestry are the main areas of employment. State media has largely ignored the protests but more independent outlets have described the events positively. In a recent editorial Vedomosti daily called the protests a "new symbol" representing opposition of "regions against the centre". Some protesters shout slogans expressing anger at Putin. Khabarovsk was one of those least supportive regions in a July 1 vote on changing the constitution to allow Putin to extend his rule. The "yes" vote was 15 percent below the national average. - Sent from Moscow - In a bid to appease the protesters, Moscow appointed a new acting governor from Furgal's LDPR party, Mikhail Degtyarev. But the 39-year-old MP, known for proposing wacky bills, has faced a chilly reception. He made matters worse by claiming not to "have time" to meet protesters and alleging they received backing from foreign "provocateurs". "We should have chosen a local person to replace him ourselves. But instead we were sent someone who only knows Khabarovsk from 5,000-ruble banknotes," said Sakharova. The banknote (worth $68) depicts views of the city. In a sign that the scale of the protests may have spooked the regional authorities the police have shown unusual restraint, allowing the protests to go ahead and only detaining a handful of people. Even Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week praised the police's forbearance while unauthorised protests are usually quickly broken up in Russia. "We still fear they'll arrest us," said 47-year-old protester Yury Petrov. "We're living through a moment of democracy but it will doubtless be fleeting." video-rco/alf/er First it was care workers to blame. A chief nurse gets removed from briefings for criticising the government. Then its the scientists to blame and they get told not to make political statements. They are being set up by Matt Hancock anyway who mentioned following the science seven times in a BBC interview this week. Now its our fault or Bame people, according to the execrable Craig Whittaker. Lets be clear, this is toxic psychopathology exemplified by denial, projection and displacement. Youre to blame for these increases, Johnson you and the rest of your inept, incompetent, thick (educated but not intelligent, there is a difference), socially lapsed government. Everything done too late, everything done as a knee-jerk reaction, and best characterised by your utterly childish, five-year-old catchphrases: hands, face, distance, dooby-doo, clap hands. Grow up, take proper responsibility, apologise and stop being hypocrites. This is why nobody believes or respects you and you will all go down in history as the worst government ever. Richard Kimble Leeds Half-truths Integrity in politics needs to be restored, but the success of half-truths and evasions means it will not be done by the electorate. For reasons that I suspect lie in poor education, a lack of curiosity and instant media, voters do not seem to be willing to make the effort that is needed to hold politicians to account. They succumb to confident assertions that fit their preconceptions or wishful thinking. Could a campaign backed by journalists to get every MP to sign-up to a charter that they will not accept half-truths and evasions have success? It needs to be non-partisan and led by individuals of high moral standing so an MP would find it hard to refuse to join. Once they are signed up to it then an independent body needs to ask them to join in challenging every clearly documented half-truth and evasion uttered by every politician and government spokesperson. The government acts with the consent of parliament so those MPs voting for the government are complicit in any half-truth or evasion if they do not say otherwise. Could this give them the backbone to do so? Jon Hawksley London World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty U-turn confusion I may have more faith in following the science if the scientists proposing it did not do complete U-turns, as in the case of Professor Graham Medleys suggestion that we may have to close pubs so that we can reopen schools. This is the same member of Sage who argued not for lockdown, but for seeking herd immunity as practised in Sweden. With the scientists contradicting themselves, is it any surprise that the rest of us are so confused? Leo Thomas Manchester The mask of Boris Please can someone explain to me why Boris Johnson has not been wearing a mask in many of the photos Ive seen of him recently? We are being told to wear them. Also, is he exempt from the distancing rules, surely touching elbows doesnt meet the requirements? Still, I expect he and Dominic Cummings are different to us. Paul Sheldon Address supplied Secret thoughts of Obama and Cameron I read John Rentouls thought-provoking column (1 August) about the secret thoughts of Barack Obama and David Cameron in regard to their ostentatious successors. Trump and Johnson are both mavericks with a keen liking to surround themselves with yes men and women. The very idea of postponing the presidential election is preposterous, but it seeds the idea into the minds of worried Republicans and their voters. I wonder about David Cameron, whose complacency that the Remain vote was a done deal has led us down this dire path of torturous uncoupling and now strained talks with the EU. He and Obama must indeed shake their heads in bemusement, the latter being so often stymied by vested interests. But there is now hope with Joe Biden, who if canny with his choice of running mate could half Trumps longed for tenure, which would issue a massive sigh of relief from the rest of the free world. Obama and Cameron are probably pragmatic men who do not toss and turn every night, but roll with the dice and pray for better and less divisive times ahead. And amen to that, especially during a pandemic with a virus which has no regard for political affiliation. Judith A Daniels Great Yarmouth, Norfolk Hospital admissions rise While the government brings back lockdown measures in some parts of the country, I would ask if hospital admissions are going up? The government must expect the number of infections to go up as lockdown is released if infected people are young and healthy what does it matter? The true measure of whether lockdown should be reinstated can only be judged by hospital admissions and once they start creeping up, action must be taken. Keith Jacques Address supplied Research by the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project estimates that as many as 23 million U.S renters could be at risk of eviction by the end of September. In California, the analysis estimates that nearly 4 million renters could be at risk, roughly a quarter of all renters in the state. If this is allowed to happen, it will put families at greater risk of losing the place they call home at a time when the public health crisis requires most of us to stay home. And we are rapidly approaching what will be for good or ill a defining moment. The supplemental unemployment benefits and stimulus payments from the Cares Act have helped mitigate the loss of income and allowed many households to continue paying rent. But as these benefits expire and eviction moratoria around the country also expire, we now face an eviction cliff. As members of the Capital Markets and Infrastructure Subcommittee of Gov. Gavin Newsoms Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery, we are working together across industries, geographies and political affiliations to identify solutions for Californians to recover safely and equitably, with a focus on communities hit hardest by the pandemic. While this recovery planning work is ongoing, what has been clear for months is the essential role that housing stability plays in both our public health response and our economic recovery. Now is the time for bipartisan leadership in Congress to produce a new federal relief package so that our neighbors facing economic hardship because of the pandemic are able to stay in their homes and weather this pandemic. In addition to the flexible aid to states and local governments the Task Force has long championed, it is critical that the new federal relief package include an extension of supplemental unemployment benefits, robust rental assistance, and housing preservation capital investments to prevent a repeat of the speculation that occurred during the great recession and keep families in their homes. Supplemental unemployment benefits should be continued at $600 per week. One chamber has already proved it is possible to pass the relief our country needs. Thanks to the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House-passed Heroes Act included $915 billion in state and local aid, as well as $100 billion for renters assistance, $75 billion for homeowners assistance and a robust eviction ban. Now is not the time for either reducing the level of assistance to families in need or for implementing an administratively complicated new benefits program that will only delay further support, as Senate Republicans proposed doing this week in the Heals Act. This legislation also fails to extend the federal eviction moratorium that expired over the weekend. The COVID-19 and economic crises have compounded the preexisting housing crisis in California and across the country. Even before the pandemic, families across California were struggling to afford safe, stable housing. Renters are particularly vulnerable to financial hardship. They have lower incomes, smaller rainy-day funds, less access to credit, and less job stability. This disproportionately burdens Black and Latinx households as well as undocumented immigrants, who are often excluded from income and rental assistance programs. Moreover, housing is fundamental to vital recovery. Homeowners and families who rent rely on a stable economy to garner the wages needed to pay their rent and mortgages. Property owners rely on their renters to pay their mortgages and maintain their businesses. That is why both enhanced unemployment benefits and a federal eviction moratorium not only are relief measures but also promote economic growth and stability. Enhanced unemployment benefits in particular have been repeatedly mischaracterized as holding back the recovery in employment and output, when exactly the opposite is true. By providing targeted actions for unemployment and direct housing assistance, we have the opportunity to protect consumers, prevent displacement, and help stabilize the economy which are critical to our efforts to protect public health and ensure a just recovery that benefits all Californians. Lourdes Castro Ramirez (California Business, Consumer Services & Housing Agency), Emile Haddad (FivePoint Holdings LLC), Robbie Hunter (State Building & Construction Trades Council of California) and Cynthia Parker (Bridge Housing) are co-chairs of the Capital Markets and Infrastructure Subcommittee of Gov. Gavin Newsoms Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 20:42:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TEHRAN, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Iranian agents have captured the head of a "terrorist" group based in the United States, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence announced, quoted by Tasnim news agency on Saturday. Fars news agency has identified the captured as Jamshid Sharmahd, leader of the Tondar group, linked to the royalist Kingdom Assembly of Iran, based in Los Angeles, U.S. The group has been involved in a series of armed attacks inside Iran in last years, the report said. Enditem International community praises Lee Teng-hui (update) ROC Central News Agency 07/31/2020 08:49 PM Taipei, July 31 (CNA) The international community on Thursday mourned the passing of Taiwan's former president Lee Teng-hui (), who succumbed to multiple organ failure at the age of 97, lauding him for his role in leading Taiwan onto the path of democracy. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement on Thursday (EDT), offering his "sincere condolences" on Lee's passing on behalf of the American people. His statement said that Lee, as Taiwan's first democratically elected president, helped put an end to decades of authoritarianism and ushered in a new era of economic prosperity, openness, and rule of law in Taiwan. "During his 12-year tenure, Lee's bold reforms played a crucial role in transforming Taiwan into the beacon of democracy we see today. He cemented the deep friendship between the United States and Taiwan," the statement said. The U.S. will honor President Lee's legacy by continuing to strengthen its bond with Taiwan and its vibrant democracy through shared political and economic values, the statement added. Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo expressed his deep sorrow at Lee's death in short remarks in front of his official residence on Friday. "President Lee is someone who had contributed significantly to Japan-Taiwan friendly relations," he said. "President Lee had a special sentimental connection to Japan. He brought freedom, democracy, human rights and other universal values to Taiwan, and laid the foundation for Japan-Taiwan relations," he said, adding that many Japanese people felt a close affinity with Lee. The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto U.S. embassy in the country, flew the U.S. national flag at half-mast and described Lee as a "reformer, partner, and friend of the United States." "Taiwan's astonishing transition from martial law to full democratization in a little over a decade took place under President Lee's leadership, and forms the foundation of the U.S.-Taiwan partnership that has brought so much benefit to the Indo-Pacific region and the world," the AIT said in a statement on Friday. The AIT also said President Lee's success in transforming Taiwan into a beacon of freedom and democracy, and in cementing the U.S.-Taiwan friendship, will be felt by many future generations. Meanwhile, the British Office Taipei, United Kingdom's de facto embassy in Taiwan, issued a Facebook post, quoting a Foreign Office spokesperson as saying that the Foreign Office is saddened to learn of the death of Lee. Lee is someone who "played a crucial role in Taiwan's transition from operating under martial law in the 1980s to a full democratic process in 1996," the spokesperson said. "Dr. Lee should be credited for playing a big part in the vibrant democracy and society that Taiwan's people enjoy today," the spokesperson said. The Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, the North American country's de facto embassy in Taiwan, praised Lee's leadership for Taiwan's rapid economic transformation during the early 1990s that cemented Taiwan's status as one of Asia's four tiger economies. "We pay tribute to the achievements of Dr. Lee and the people of Taiwan in establishing a prosperous and democratic society based on universal values and the rule of law," it added. The Australian Office in Taipei, Australia's de facto embassy in Taiwan, bade farewell to Lee in a Facebook post. "We are deeply saddened at the passing of Dr. Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's first democratically elected leader," the office said. "We honour his enormous contributions to Taiwan's democratisation, economic development and to human rights. This legacy lives on in the vibrant society that is Taiwan today," it further said. The New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office Taipei, the de facto New Zealand embassy in Taiwan, said in a Facebook post that Lee "played a critical role in the democratization of Taiwan" and his passing will be deeply mourned. The European Economic and Trade Office (EETO), also on Facebook, said Lee "played a pivotal role in Taiwan's transition from authoritarianism to a vibrant democracy rooted in the rule of law and the protection of human rights." "His legacy will continue to inspire the people in Taiwan, Asia and the world," the EETO said. The French Office in Taipei, the Netherlands Office Taipei, the Belgian Office Taipei and the Polish Office in Taipei also made similar statements in mourning Lee's passing and lauded his legacy in transforming Taiwan from an authoritarian regime into a democracy. Eswatini, Taiwan's only diplomatic ally in Africa, said in a Twitter feed that Lee contributed in advancing Eswatini-Taiwan relations and lauded his life as one that was "spent in the service of the people." The Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, in a press statement, recalled his two meetings with Lee and regarded him as a "personal friend" and "an ally of the Tibetan people." "His contribution to Taiwan's democratic development was an exceptional achievement. Today, Taiwan is a vibrant and prosperous democracy with a rich cultural heritage," the press statement said, quoting Dalai Lama. "Perhaps the best tribute we can pay him is to remember his courage and determination and emulate his dedication to democracy," the press statement said. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), as of Friday afternoon, a total of 206 political figures and institutions from 45 countries have expressed their condolences on the death of Lee, by issuing statements, writing letters, posting messages on social media or flying their flags at half-mast. The MOFA said it sincerely thanked these friends from the international community for their comforting words. (By Emerson Lim) Enditem/cs NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Visitors of the Army-2020 international military and technical forum will be able to see the Vityaz-D unmanned deep-sea submersible that submerged to the Mariana Trench in the Pacific on May 8, Advanced Research Foundation CEO Andrei Grigoryev told TASS on Thursday. Visitors of the Army-2020 international military and technical forum will be able to see the Vityaz-D unmanned deep-sea submersible that submerged to the Mariana Trench in the Pacific on May 8, Advanced Research Foundation CEO Andrei Grigoryev told TASS on Thursday. Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link The autonomous unmanned deep-sea submersible Vityaz-D is seen in the port of Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast. (Picture source: Yury Smityuk/TASS) "The forum will feature a number of our developments, including the Vityaz-D. This will be the vehicle that submerged to the bottom of the Mariana Trench on May 8, 2020," the chief executive said. The Vityaz deep-sea submersible became the worlds first fully autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle that reached the World Oceans deepest point. This occurred at 10:34 p.m. Moscow time on May 8. The submersible operates with the help of its onboard control system that implements control algorithms without a human operator. The submersible can independently bypass obstacles along its course, including exit from limited space using artificial intelligence elements in its control system. The Vityaz-D deep-water submersible is capable of operating at maximum depths in the World Ocean. It comprises the autonomous vehicle, a deep-sea bottom station and control post equipment. The submersibles shipborne equipment provides for information exchange of the carrier vessel with the underwater vehicle and the bottom station in real-time through a sonar channel. The system is fully made of Russian components. Copyright 2020 TASS Navy Recognition. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Modi has accused Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray of attempting to save people allegedly responsible for actor Sushant Singh Rajputs death under pressure from ally Congress, a party he claims has been patronizing the Bollywood mafia. Sushil Modi also repeated his allegation that the Mumbai police was not cooperating with the Bihar police team in the city to investigate Rajputs live-in partner Rhea Chakrabortys alleged role in his death. Uddhav Thackeray is under pressure from the Bollywood mafia patronised by the Congress, therefore he is bent on saving all those responsible in Sushants (death) case. How will Congress show its face to people in Bihar, Modi said in his tweet. Modis comments assume significance since Bihar is slated for assembly elections later this year and the Congress party is part of the opposition alliance in Bihar. Modis reference to Bollywood mafia also reflects the popular sentiment associated with a campaign started after Rajputs death against alleged culture of nepotism in the Mumbai film industry, which purportedly blocks outsiders like Rajput from progressing in their careers. On Friday, Uddhav had defended Mumbai polices investigations and asked anyone with evidence in Sushant case to come forward. He also urged against using this case as an excuse to create friction between Maharashtra and Bihar. Mumbai Police is not inefficient. If anyone has any evidence they can bring it to us and we will interrogate and punish the guilty. Please do not use this case (Sushant Singh Rajput death case) as an excuse to create friction between Maharashtra and Bihar, Thackeray was quoted as saying by ANI. However, Sushil Modi has said that Rajputs case is not the first instance of alleged discrimination against Bihar. He tweeted to say that there were attempts to block the return of migrant workers from the state from Maharashtra during the lockdown. Complaints of ill-treatment of people from Bihar also used to be received earlier but the current Uddhav government, surviving on the crutches of Congress and NCP support, has crossed all limits. During lockdown, attempts were made to stall the return of labourers from Bihar, Modi alleged in another tweet. Quite tellingly, Modi also described Sushant SIngh Rajput as a son of Bihar while accusing Mumbai police of not cooperating with Bihar police. Modi said that almost all parties are in favour of a CBI probe in the case, which has been opposed by Maharashtra government. A budding actor, Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead in his Bandra flat on June 14. It was suggested to be a case of death by suicide but soon allegations started to surface indicating he could have been driven to take his life due to circumstances including stalling of his movies by big production houses in Bollywood. While Mumbai police has been questioning film personalities in its probe, Sushants family in Patna filed a case of abetment of suicide against Sushants live-in-partner and actor Rhea Chakraborty, accusing her of mentally harassing Sushant and of diverting Sushants money among other allegations. The family has also accused Mumbai police of attempting to derail the probe by focusing on Bollywood biggies instead of Rhea. The family is also opposing Rhea Chakrabortys plea to transfer case filed against her in Bihar to Mumbai. Chief Executive of the Private Enterprises Federation, Nana Osei Bonsu says government has not done enough to help lessen the impact of COVID-19 on private businesses. Nana Osei Bonsu who was speaking on the Townhall Talk Show on Asaase Radio99.5 argued that businesses in Ghana have not received adequate support to aid them to survive the economic impact of the global pandemic. Where is the support system for businesses to take care of their employees? Where is the support system for businesses to create the PPEs, face masks, sanitizers, and where is the support system for businesses to create virtual platforms to engage their workers in virtual discussions? So these are times that are very trying, and upsetting the way that businesses normally operate because this is unplanned and you know businesses survive on predictability. They survive on a plan, so if this unplanned budget is laid upon the already difficult income streams, then you know what I mean by the damaging impact of COVID-19 he averred. His comments were in response to a question posed to him by Host of the show, Kofi Abotsi about the impact of the novel coronavirus on local businesses, and governments efforts to support businesses. Nana Osei Bonsu said Ghanaian Businesses are at the grassroots level with little or minimal procurement power, explaining that the capacity to procure the necessary tools and equipment including laptops and data to engage staff who may be at home due to to the pandemic is expensive. He said Because of the kind of systems that we have, the internet access by some businesses to be able to reach every employee at any time. The social distancing that is required, so we have introduced a shift system where two come in today and two come in tomorrow, there is no coordination. So were trying our best to meet the dangers of the pandemic, were trying our best to do business but its not easy. Were adopting, but slowly and like I said, the constraint is the access to internet and the consistency on the internet, that is one of the precarious conditions we find ourselves and the cost element as well. The PEF Chief Executive Officer bemoaned the high cost of internet in Ghana, particularly the cost overheads of telecommunications since most employers now engage their staff mostly on phone and virtually saying I have to be talking to my employees on the phone consistently, I have to be on the internet 24/7, they have to be on the internet 24/7, so the cost element on the other side is the consistency and the quality of the service and this is why we have to find ways collectively, not only government but private sector to ensure that now that COVID has leveled the playing ground, government should recognize the immediate need to emphasize on the availability of internet at the highest level. In April this year, government rolled out a six hundred million-cedi (GH600m) package as soft loans to Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in the country, as part of measures to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the private sector. President Akufo-Addo who announced this also indicated that the loan was to be repaid within two years with a one-year moratorium. The Minister for Finance has been directed by me to prepare, for approval by Parliament, a Coronavirus Alleviation Programme to address the disruption in economic activities, the hardship of our people, and to rescue and revitalize our industries. He will, then, immediately make available a minimum of one billion cedis (GH1 billion) to households and businesses, particularly small and medium scale enterprises he said at the time. 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 Enniscorthy Municipal District Council has agreed to support Clohamon Community Group with its plans to refurbish the old schoolhouse as a community centre and develop a playground on the site. The group was one of two that submitted expressions of interest to the local authority's community department in response to calls for such expressions under the 2020 Town & Village Renewal Scheme. The other submission was from Tombrack National School for the construction of a footpath and the development of a biodiversity trail. Addressing last week's monthly meeting of the local authority, District Manager Ger Mackey said both submissions were of a very high standard. 'Both proposals were well presented and showed good community involvement,' he said. Mr Mackey said he examined both projects and ranked them in accordance with the scheme's scoring matrix, resulting in the Clohamon project getting the nod of approval. Of the 973 licensed-liquor establishments Pennsylvania State Police Liquor Control Enforcement Officers visited Wednesday and Thursday, two received notices of violation of the state liquor code, and 32 were warned. Officers are ensuring that businesses are abiding by COVID-19 mitigation requirements, which include social distancing, masking, and other health and safety requirements of the liquor code. Compliance checks are unannounced and are focused on areas where coronavirus transmission rates are higher. Establishments in Altoona and Punxsutawney received the notices of violation. The notice of violation is an administrative citation that informs the licensed liquor establishment of the violation. Names of establishments given the notice are withheld during an investigation by the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement. Here are the of locations and the number of warnings issued Wednesday and Thursday: Pittsburgh: 8 Punxsutawney: 7 Philadelphia: 4 Erie: 4 Allentown: 3 Wilkes-Barre: 3 Harrisburg: 1 Altoona: 1 Williamsport: 1 Among other requirements, all businesses and employees in the restaurant and retail foodservice industry authorized to conduct in-person activities are mandated to: Require all customers to wear masks while entering, exiting, or otherwise traveling throughout the restaurant or retail foodservice business (face masks may be removed while seated). Further, employees are required to wear masks at all times. Provide at least six feet between parties at tables or physical barriers between customers where booths are arranged back to back. Ensure maximum occupancy limits for indoor and outdoor areas are posted and enforced. Violators may face administrative citations by the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement. Continued violations put an establishments liquor license at risk, either through the citation process or upon application for renewal. More information is available on the enforcement page of the state police COVID-19 portal . Complaints regarding licensees not complying with COVID-19 mitigation mandates may be directed to the BLCE at 1-800-932-0602 or reported through the BLCEs online complaint form . READ MORE Heres how to apply for Pa.s $18-$22 per hour COVID contact tracing jobs Pa. COVID surge shows signs of slowing, with rate of new infections, hospitalizations down slightly Ocean City, Md. will now require visitors to wear masks on the boardwalk: reports United States President Donald Trump has said that he will act to ban TikTok as soon as on Saturday, amidst reports of American technology giant Microsoft being in advanced talks to acquire the popular Chinese-owned video app. Trump, talking to reporters travelling with him aboard Air Force 1 from Florida on Friday, said he could use the emergency economic powers or an executive order to ban TikTok in the United States. As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States, he said. Referring to the emergency economic powers, the President said: Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that. Trump also made it clear that he was not in favour of a deal to let a US company buy TikTok's American operations. Trump further told reporters that he planned to take action against the popular video-sharing app as soon as Saturday. Earlier at the White House, Trump said: "We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options. But a lot of things are happening, so we'll see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok. India has banned as many as 106 Chinese apps, including TikTok, a move welcomed by both the Trump administration and the US lawmakers. The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that Microsoft, headed by Indian-American Satya Nadella, is in advanced talks to acquire the US operations of TikTok. The deal could run into billions of dollars. "A deal could be completed by Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, and the talks involve representatives from Microsoft, ByteDance and the White House. Talks are fluid, and a deal may not come together," the report said. China-based ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok. In recent weeks, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused TikTok of collecting personal information of Americans. "India has banned 106 Chinese apps, including TikTok, that threatened its citizens' privacy and security," he told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday. Media reports also said the Trump administration will soon order ByteDance to divest of its ownership of TikTok's US operations. "In its current form, TikTok represents a potential threat to personal privacy and our national security. I applaud the Trump administration for taking this critical step, but we must do more than simply remove ByteDance from the equation," Senator Marco Rubio said. "Moving forward, we must establish a framework of standards that must be met before a high-risk, foreign-based app is allowed to operate on American telecommunications networks and devices," Rubio said. Meanwhile, senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General John C Demers calling for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Zoom and TikTok for reported violations of Americans' civil liberties and of their close ties to the Communist Party of China. "Based on numerous reports, we are extremely concerned that Zoom and TikTok have disclosed private information about Americans to the PRC (People's Republic of China) and engaged in censorship on behalf of the Chinese government," the senators said. As tens of millions of Americans turn to Zoom and TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic, few know that the privacy of their data and their freedom of expression is under threat due to the relationship of these companies to the Chinese government, they wrote. "Of particular concern, both Zoom and TikTok have sought to conceal and distract from their meaningful ties to China, holding themselves out as American companies. This concealment is alarming Chinese tech firms are notoriously bound to draconian intelligence laws, media regulations, and extrajudicial pressure that compels them to censor and spy for China's state security services," the senators added. US President Donald Trump said on July 31 that he would sign an executive order as soon as on August 1 to ban TikTok in the United States, ratcheting up the pressure on the popular short-video app's Chinese owner to sell it. The move would be the culmination of US national security concerns over the safety of the personal data that TikTok handles. It would represent a major blow for TikTok's owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, which became one of only a handful of truly global Chinese conglomerates thanks to app's commercial success. Trump's announcement followed frantic negotiations on Friday between the White House, ByteDance and potential buyers of TikTok, including Microsoft Corp. They failed to produce a deal that would result in the Chinese company shedding the app's U.S. operations, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks are expected to continue in the coming days. While Microsoft already owns professional social media network LinkedIn, it would face fewer regulatory hurdles in acquiring TikTok than its more direct competitors, such as Facebook Inc, one of the sources said. But ByteDance's valuation expectations for TikTok of more than $50 billion, and its insistence on retaining a minority stake in the app complicated deal talks, another source said. "Not the deal that you have been hearing about, that they are going to buy and sell... and Microsoft and another one. We are not an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) country," Trump said. It was not immediately clear what authority Trump had to ban TikTok, which has up to 80 million active monthly users in the United States. It was also not clear how the ban would be enforced and what legal challenges it would face. ByteDance, Microsoft and the U.S. Treasury Department, which chairs the government panel that has been reviewing ByteDance's ownership of TikTok, declined to comment. "While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok," TikTok said in a statement. As relations between the United States and China deteriorate over trade, Hong Kong's autonomy, cybersecurity and the spread of the novel coronavirus, TikTok has emerged as a flashpoint in the dispute between the world's two largest economies. Last week, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs unanimously passed a bill that would bar U.S. federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices. It will be taken up by the full Senate for a vote. The House of Representatives has already voted for a similar measure. ByteDance has been considering a range of options for TikTok amid pressure from the United States to relinquish control of the app, which allows users to create short videos with special effects and has become wildly popular with US teenagers. ByteDance has received a proposal from some of its investors, including Sequoia and General Atlantic, to transfer majority ownership of TikTok to them, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The proposal values TikTok at about $50 billion, but some ByteDance executives believe the app is worth more than that. ByteDance has also fielded acquisition interest in TikTok from other companies and investment firms, Reuters has reported. ByteDance acquired Shanghai-based video app Musical.ly in a $1 billion deal in 2017 and relaunched it as TikTok the following year. ByteDance did not seek approval for the acquisition from CFIUS, which reviews deals for potential national security risks. Reuters reported last year that CFIUS had opened an investigation into TikTok. The United States has been increasingly scrutinizing app developers over the personal data they handle, especially if some of it involves U.S. military or intelligence personnel. Ordering the divestment of TikTok would not be the first time the White House has taken action over such concerns. Earlier this year, Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd sold Grindr LLC, a popular gay dating app it bought in 2016, for $620 million after being ordered by CFIUS to divest. In 2018, CFIUS forced China's Ant Financial to scrap plans to buy MoneyGram International Inc over concerns about the safety of data that could identify U.S. citizens. Valuable Startup ByteDance was valued at as much as $140 billion earlier this year when one of its shareholders, Cheetah Mobile, sold a small stake in a private deal, Reuters has reported. The startup's investors include Japan's SoftBank Group Corp. The bulk of ByteDance's revenue comes from advertising on apps under its Chinese operations including Douyin - a Chinese version of TikTok - and news aggregator app Jinri Toutiao, as well as video-streaming app Xigua and Pipixia, an app for jokes and humorous videos. Some of the company's other overseas apps include work collaboration tool Lark and music streaming app Resso. TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, a former Walt Disney Co executive, said in a blog post on Wednesday that the company was committed to following U.S. laws, and was allowing experts to observe its moderation policies and examine the code that drives its algorithms. A truck company employee has been charged with manslaughter over the horror crash that killed four Victorian police officers earlier this year. The 49-year-old father from Frankston, southeast Melbourne, was arrested at his workplace on Saturday morning and has spent the day being quizzed by cops. He has since been charged with four counts of manslaughter and is expected to appear before an out of sessions court hearing tonight. Victoria Police said the charges followed an extensive three-month investigation into the April 22 crash that killed officers Lynnette Taylor, Kevin King, Glen Humphris and Joshua Prestney. The four officers were killed on duty when a truck driven Mohinder Singh Bajwa veered across the freeway and hit them. A 49-year old man from Frankston, southeast Melbourne, was arrested on Saturday after the death of four Victoria Police officers in a horror freeway crash (pictured) in April Senior Constable Kevin King (pictured, far left), Constable Glen Humphris (second from left), Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor (second from right) and and Constable Josh Prestney (far right) all died in the crash Richard Pusey (pictured) was arrested on April 23, one day after the fatal crash which killed the four police officers after they pulled him over for allegedly speeding They were in the process of impounding a Porsche 911 owned by mortgage broker Richard Pusey. Pusey was allegedly driving his luxury car at 149km/h on Melbourne's Eastern Freeway, near Kew, when he was pulled over by police. He was hit with a slew of charges after allegedly filming and taunting a dying police officer at the crash scene before running away. Public funerals were held for all four officers after the tragedy, which marked the single greatest loss of police life in Victoria's history. Singh, the driver of the Connect Logistics' refrigerated chicken truck that ploughed into the group, has been charged with culpable driving and is now facing 20 years behind bars. Police allegedly found drugs and an ice pipe in the cabin of his truck. Singh has said he is genuinely sorry and saddened about the deaths of the four officers. The trucking company involved in the fatal accident has been penalised for safety breaches, including truck defects and using fatigued drivers. New South Wales Police launched a probe into Connect Logistics and have now issued the Western Sydney business with 35 infringement notices. Traffic and Highway Patrol inspected 61 heavy vehicles and trailers at Wetherill Park, Marulan, Wagga Wagga and Pine Creek over a week-long period in May. Pusey, a 41-year old mortgage broker (pictured in a court sketch) avoided being struck by the truck because he'd been urinating off to the side of the road Mohinder Singh Bajwa, 47, (pictured) the driver of the Connect Logistics' refrigerated chicken truck that ploughed into the group of officers, has been charged with culpable driving Police also raided three NSW properties linked to two of the trucking company's managers in May. Victoria and NSW police searched the Connect Logistics head office in Riverstone in Sydneys northwest and two homes in nearby Kenthurst. Police allege Pusey, 41, was speeding while under the influence of methamphetamine and cannabis. Pusey is accused of filming the scene on his mobile phone instead of helping Senior Constable Lynette Taylor as she lay dying. The three male officers were already dead. Police allege Pusey took photos and videos of the scene before he fled on foot and uploaded the images to social media. Mr Bajwa - pictured with his wife - is now facing 20 years behind bars for the horror smash Pusey, of Fitzroy, was charged with 12 offences include driving at a dangerous speed, reckless conduct endangering life, destruction of evidence, perverting the course of justice, failing to remain at the scene after a drug test and failing to render assistance. He was arrested a day after the crash on April 23 and was hit with a further two charges in June, including behaving in an indecent or offensive manner and committing an act outraging public decency. Pusey appeared in Melbourne Magistrates' Court on July 16 facing 15 charges. The 41-year-old avoided being struck in the crash as he'd been urinating off to the side of the road. At a June hearing Magistrate Jo Metcalf labelled Pusey's alleged filming of the graphic crash scene as 'highly intrusive and morally repugnant' but noted it was not illegal. Emergency services trying to remove Pusey's Porsche 911 (pictured) from the scene the day after a fatal crash on Eastern Highway in Kew Pusey's 15 charges include driving at a dangerous speed, reckless conduct endangering life, destruction of evidence, perverting the course of justice, failing to remain at the scene after a drug test and failing to render assistance As high-profile apartment towers and mixed-used projects by Newark natives Shaquille ONeal and Queen Latifah continue to attract headlines and win approvals, Mayor Ras J. Baraka and the citys West Ward councilman hosted a virtual town hall meeting Thursday night to shine a light on lesser-known developers whose work on a more modest scale can stabilize and improve at-risk neighborhoods. Last week, the City Council approved long-term tax abatements for large projects involving ONeal and Latifah: his a 33-story apartment tower in Newarks downtown section that, with 370 unites, is the citys largest development; and hers a mixed-used project known as RISE that will include 76 apartments, a fitness center and retail space. But in a Zoom meeting on the citys Facebook page Thursday night, Baraka, West Ward Councilman Joseph McCallum and city development officials put the focus on a half-dozen builders with ongoing or planned projects within the West Ward Neighborhood Development Plan, which promotes residential and commercial growth in a 21-block area between South Orange Avenue and West Side Park. In the four years since the plan was introduced by McCullum and later adopted by the council, the city has been condemning and acquiring blighted or abandoned West Side properties and selling them at low cost to qualified developers with plans to build what are mainly single- and multi-family dwellings. The area is characterized by a high foreclosure rate and a disproportionate share of so-called underwater properties, that is, homes valued at less than what is still owed on their mortgage. While there are stable and well-maintained properties, others are in dire disrepair, with many blocks punctuated by vacant lots. Those conditions make the neighborhood ripe for the kind of infill developer, as one of them, Narelle Myke of New Age Investment Properties LLC, described herself and other participants in Thursdays town hall. Myke, who was born into a Bronx family of electricians and carpenters, was one of the few participants not from Newark, and the only from outside New Jersey, though she lives in the state now. I really grew up watching family members fixing and building things, said Myke, who so far has completed a brick single-family home, is working on a contemporary, and has plans for a trio of 3-family contemporaries under the development plan. In brief remarks from his home at the start of the Zoom conference, Baraka welcomed the group of what he called, Black and brown developers, women develops, that are out here, that are either trying to get into development or are there already as part of what were trying to do in a kind of holistic way in the city, and were starting here in the West Ward. Some great people around here, and you dont need to hear me, you need to hear their stories. Theyre doing some outstanding things in the city, Baraka said, before handing off to McCallum. I think it was about two years ago, almost exactly, that I met with these developers, and they had great ideas, and its good to see that they have persisted and persevered, and that they are ready to rock n roll, McCallum said. There was some red tape, and things take a long time were working on that also so we wish these developers the very best of luck and we know that theyll be successful. Developers of Newark's West Ward were introduced by Mayor Ras Baraka, lower right, and other officials during a Zoom meeting on the city's Facebook page Thursday night.Zoom via Facebook The citys deputy mayor for housing and economic development, Allison Ladd, played a video highlighting the neighborhoods development opportunities and its existing assets, including West Side Park and West Side High School. Jerrah Crowder, who heads Newarks affordable and sustainable housing office, said the city was seeking development, in a comprehensive way, not necessarily what weve seen in the past 20 years or so, by inviting developers of varying levels, with tools to achieve those goals. He introduced Siree Morris, a Newark native and Rutgers civil engineering grad, who turned a job loss several years ago into an opportunity to strike out on his own as a developer. Morris main project is the most ambitious of the group, a five-story building on 16th Street, with a total of 33 units, including eight 1-bedroom apartments and 25 with 2 bedrooms. He also has plans for another 16 units on six lots he bought from the city. Im Newark though and through, and I dont plan on going anywhere, Morris said. Eugenia Hamlett told the group she previously had worked as a city contractor rehabilitating senior housing units before going into the development business with her husband. Hamlett, who credited New Jersey Community Capital with backing her, said her two current projects are a six-unit building and a two-family house, while her plans include 2- and 3-family houses and an 11-unit building on 16th Street. Hamlett showed strikingly different before and after photos of one house she had rehabbed, and said she would be excited to live in a home she was developing, a sentiment Crowder said was rare among Newark developers up to now. Im thrilled when I think of all the opportunities in the West Ward, Hamlett said. I truly believe that with us together, working as a group, we can truly make an impact on improving and modernizing the housing stock in the west ward. A developer from Orange, referred to and billed on his Zoom name tag only as Benedict, said he just closed on his first lots this week, and looked forward to building several 3-family houses on South 14th Street. This is my first time building from the ground up, he said, noting he had done near-complete rehabilitation work in the city. But with the several disabilities that some of these properties have had, its almost like building from the ground up. Anton Campbell said he and his development partner began as landlords, but were eager to turn their eight lots in the development area into 3-family homes with open floor plans, a housing trend he said was uncommon for the West Ward. We really appreciate the opportunity, he said. Newark native Jamilah Muhammad of Rising Plains LLC said she started as a real estate agent at age 18 before eventually doing development projects in Newark, Irvington and Jersey City. Her plans include a 2- and 3-family houses and a 20-unit project that will include 3-bedroom apartments with their own washer and dryer. She invited other women to get into the development field. Dont be afraid, she said. Come to the meetings. Ask a lot of questions. Several of the 242 people Crowder said had tuned into the livestream asked questions of their own. Would the units be affordable? Yes, said Hamlett, with her 2-bedrooms at about $1,400 for residents making half the areas median income. Morris added that renters approaching him directly would not pay any fees. Were the developers hiring? Maybe, Hamlett said. Were always looking for good framers. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Service your Hyundai at Carter County Hyundai. Local Hyundai dealership in Ardmore has various service coupons available. Included in these coupons at Carter County Hyundai is a free Hyundai Multi-Point Inspection coupon. Customers can take their vehicle in to the service and maintenance department, where the expert Carter County Hyundai service team will inspect the vehicle and notify shoppers if there is anything that needs attention. This coupon expires on September 27. The dealership also has other service and maintenance coupons available, including $100 off clutch replacement, a $99.95 cooling system inspection and refill, $30 off a timing belt replacement and a free wash and vacuuming of a vehicle with the purchase of any other vehicle service. These maintenance coupons work to assist customers with more expensive services that customers can utilize. However, much like the free Hyundai Multi-Point Inspection, these service specials will only last until September 27, so customers are encouraged to check out the coupons at http://www.cartercountyhyundai.com sooner rather than later. The team at Carter County Hyundai would be happy to assist any customers with their automotive questions and has a variety of new and pre-owned Hyundai models available for customers to choose from. Shoppers who are interested in finding their new Hyundai vehicle are encouraged to contact the dealership at 580-319-4949 or by visiting at 616 Holiday Drive in Ardmore. Cord Blood Banking Services Market Research Report by Storage (Private Cord Blood Bank and Public Cord Blood Bank) - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 New York, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Cord Blood Banking Services Market Research Report by Storage - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913972/?utm_source=GNW The Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market is expected to grow from USD 20,619.46 Million in 2019 to USD 40,440.11 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.88%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Cord Blood Banking Services to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: Based on Storage, the Cord Blood Banking Services Market studied across Private Cord Blood Bank and Public Cord Blood Bank. Based on Geography, the Cord Blood Banking Services Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market including AMAG PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., AMERICORD REGISTRY LLC, CHINA CORD BLOOD CORPORATION, CORD BLOOD AMERICA, INC, CORDLIFE GROUP LIMITED, CORDVIDA, CRYO-CELL INTERNATIONAL, INC., CRYO-CELL INTERNATIONAL, INC., CRYOHOLDCO DE LATINOAMERICA, S.A.P.I. DE C.V., and ESPERITE N.V.. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Cord Blood Banking Services Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19: COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market during the forecast period? 3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market? 4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market? 6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913972/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Story continues CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 Huawei has become the biggest maker of smartphones after rivals took a hit from the Covid crisis. The Chinese company, whose brand ambassadors include Wonder Woman film star Gal Gadot, shipped 55.8million phones in the second quarter of this year, outpacing Korea's Samsung for the first time. Samsung's 53.7million smartphone shipments were a 30 per cent fall on the same period last year. Screen star: Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot is an Huawei ambassador More than 70 per cent of the phones produced by Huawei, which is barred from operating large parts of Britain's 5G network, were sold to Chinese customers. Canalys, the research company that compiled the data, said coronavirus was a key factor. Its senior analyst, Ben Stanton, said: 'This is a remarkable result that few people would have predicted a year ago. Samsung has less than 1 per cent market share in China, and has seen its core markets, such as Brazil, India, the US and Europe, ravaged by outbreaks and lockdowns. 'Huawei has taken full advantage of the Chinese economic recovery to reignite its smartphone business.' Huawei's main business is designing equipment to connect buildings to broadband, in which it is the world leader. But amid security concerns about its links to the Chinese Communist Party, Boris Johnson last month said he would strip Huawei out of the UK's 5G network by 2027, having given it the green light in January. No one deserves to be abused, nor stay with an abuser. Some, if not many, are well aware of this facteven the abusedbut yet still struggle to walk away from the situation in no fault of their own. But some things are inexcusable (read: domestic violence) even if it comes to someone whom you may deem as your life partner. One woman was finally able to summon her courage in an effort to bring hope to those who need it. I have been beaten up and mentally hurt by the one that I thought is my life partner It took Belle Loh, a woman in Malaysia, two months to open up about her distressing experience as a victim of domestic violence. Dear all I know I have been silent for quite some time and I would like to share this with everyone, Loh wrote in a Facebook post (24 Jul). The post was accompanied by a series of videos and pictures detailing the abuse incident that allegedly took place on 27 May 2020. Loh said she returned home at 10pm on 27 May to find her husband drunk and high on drugs. He also started being aggressive. I have been beaten up and mentally hurt by the one that I thought is my life partner, she said. Image source: Facebook screengrab Huge bruises on the underside of Lohs arm as well as swelling around her eyes were observed. Image source: Adapted from Facebook/Belle Loh Apart from the physical abuse inflicted on Loh, Lohs husband also threw her clothes out of their house. Image source: Facebook screengrab The corridor was filled with a huge pile of Lohs clothes strewn across the floor. Image source: Facebook/Belle Loh In one of the videos uploaded, Lohs husband could be heard hurling a string of verbally abusive messages which appeared to be directed to Lohs father. You want to tell me that you want two thousand when your f***ing father doesnt even earn one thousand? Loser, f***ing f***! Only knows how to do his funny s***. F*** him! This f***ing loser, Ill kill him! Story continues The violence did not end there. According to Loh, her husband has harassed her family members and even labelled them as cheapskate. Loh also shared some screenshots of a text message conversation between her and her husband, who wants Loh to return the ring and phone he gifted her. Image source: Facebook/Belle Loh Image source: Facebook/Belle Loh From their conversation, the couple is presumably looking into a divorce. In the screenshots, it can be seen that her husband had consulted with his lawyer on the division of assets. My lawyers said you cant sell whats mine, Lohs husband warned Loh against keeping or selling the ring. According to him, the ring is a gift on condition that they are married. Otherwise, Loh will not get to keep it. He also backed up his words after further consultation with his lawyer: if you try to sell it without my approval that is against the law and can be used against you in the case (sic). Just give it back along with my phone and you and your dad can get a job and earn that money yourselves, he said. A Lifelong Trauma From this harrowing incident, Loh shared: No women deserve to be beaten up by a man. She urged those who are victims of abuse to please speak up about it because it is not a joke or something that you should be ashamed of (sic). Being abused is not something that you could just brush off but it is a lifelong trauma that I have to deal with (sic). Simple Reporting Goes a Long Way Since the start of the circuit breaker period, Singapore has reported a 22 per cent increase in reports of family violence-related offences, according to the Singapore Police Force (SPF). If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse and facing distress, do not hesitate to report such cases to the Police. In case of immediate threat, you can call the police at 999 or go to your nearest neighbourhood Police Post or Centre for help. You may also contact your nearest Family Service Centre for help, or dial the below helplines if you need someone to talk to: AWARE: 1800 777 5555 Samaritans of Singapore: 1800-221 4444 Singapore Association for Mental Health: 1800-283-7019 Care Corner Counselling Centre (Mandarin): 1800-353-5800 You can view Lohs full post here. For Loh, it might have been two months before she spoke up, but for some others, it could have been years of suffering in silence. We hope that the sharing of Lohs account of her experiences would help those facing similar situations to gather courage and hope in stepping out from the shadow of their abusers. ALSO READ: Woman, 39, Arrested After Bloody Fight With Husband in Punggol Flat 9-year-old South Korean Girl Jumps to Neighbours Balcony to Escape Abusive Parents The post Malaysian Woman Opens Up About Domestic Abuse, Urge Victims Like Her To Speak Up appeared first on theAsianparent - Your Guide to Pregnancy, Baby & Raising Kids. The governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, has urged residents to observe set guidelines to prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) amid electioneering campaigns as death toll for the virus in the state hits 82. Speaking to journalists in Benin City, Mr Obaseki called for caution to protect the states aged population, who are most vulnerable to the virus. Mr Obaseki said: We have one of the highest death rates from COVID-19 in Nigeria. 75 per cent of those who have died from COVID-19 are our older citizens. This mortality rate is of serious concern to the state government, because many of these deaths could have been prevented if citizens adhered to COVID-19 prevention regulations. I am therefore urging everyone to observe the guidelines to prevent the spread of coronavirus such as regular hand washing under running water and use of alcohol-based sanitiser; and avoiding gatherings with a large number of persons. Political activities leading to the governorship election on September 19 have commenced. I appeal to everyone to exercise caution and observe the regulatory guidelines for prevention of COVID-19 during electioneering campaigns, the governor said, according to a press statement made available to PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday. Meanwhile, the states Commissioner for Health, Patrick Okundia, reaffirmed the governments commitment to contain the pandemic across all communities in the state and protect the people. READ ALSO: Mr Okundia, who expressed worry over the alarming spate of community spread of the virus, said: Edo has now recorded a total of 2, 292 confirmed cases, 10, 555 suspected cases and 82 deaths, while 1,800 persons have been discharged from various isolation centres in the state. The commissioner reassured that contact tracing and line-listing activities are on-going in all affected LGAs in the state, while active case search and Persons of Interest (POI) tracking are ongoing in all the 18 LGAs. Mr Okundia added: Two toll-free lines for COVID-19 response have been introduced by the Edo State Government to strengthen the initial lines from the State Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO) distributed at the onset of the outbreak. If you have any COVID-19 symptoms, please call 08001235111 or 08002200110 for assistance. Malta, the beautiful Mediterranean island archipelago, has now re-opened its borders for visitors of selected countries, including the UAE. Malta International Airport officially re-opened for commercial flights in the beginning of July to a select list of countries that are considered safe, which states that passengers coming from those countries can enter Malta without quarantine or any special permits. The list of safe-corridor countries was further extended on July 15, and the UAE has been included in the list alongside other safe countries like Japan, Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea, as well as other Mena countries like Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. With the annulment of travel restrictions, Malta is back as a prime destination for Middle Eastern tourists with its fair weather, crystalline beaches, and Mediterranean flair. Families of the region can escape the summer heat and the post-lockdown anxiety to enjoy sightseeing in one of Europes most intriguing islands. The Maltese islands are home to beautiful beaches, diverse archaeological sites, world-famous diving spots, one-of-a-kind natural phenomena, delicious food, and much more. Additionally, several events are scheduled throughout the coming months for visiting enthusiasts like, the Mdina Grand Prix for classic cars, the Rolex Middle Sea Race organised by Royal Malta Yacht Club, and XTERRA Gozo Trail Run. - TradeArabia News Service Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 00:05:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NAIROBI, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The number of COVID-19 cases in Kenya reached 21,363 on Saturday after 727 tested positive for the disease in the last 24 hours. Mutahi Kagwe, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Health, said that 696 Kenyans and 31 foreigners were confirmed positive after 6,371 samples were tested, bringing the cumulative tests to 310,330. He said that 23 patients, among them a 16-year-old, had succumbed to the disease in the last 24 hours, raising the national toll of fatalities to 364. "We are increasingly seeing younger people passing away," said Kagwe, adding that strict adherence to containment measures like wearing face coverings, hygiene and social distancing is key to reduce infections and deaths. The cabinet secretary said that 254 patients had recovered from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 8,419. He said that Nairobi remained the pandemic's hotspot though infections were rapidly spreading in rural counties amid lifting of travel restrictions. Meanwhile, Kenya resumed international flights on Saturday as senior officials stressed that solid measures had been put in place to avert the risk of imported COVID-19 cases. James Macharia, cabinet secretary for Transport said that travellers from foreign countries will be required to provide proof of their coronavirus free status besides taking temperatures and uploading a mobile application to enhance contact tracing. He said the government will constantly review protocols governing resumption of international flights due to the evolving nature of COVID-19 pandemic. Enditem Jessica Biel shocks the world with news of her giving birth to her second baby with Justin Timberlake back in July. Fans didn't even know she was pregnant until news broke out that their second bundle of joy had arrived. Brian McKnight confirms this new baby news, as reported by In Touch Weekly. Their eldest son Silas, recently just turned 5 and while Biel had expressed her greetings through social media, there was no sign that she was pregnant at all. Women's Day Australia however has a theory that this second baby was the exact reason why Jessica Biel was compelled to allow Timberlake back into her and SIlas' lives after she already shunned him for getting "handsy with co-star Alisha Wainwright." Said turn of events even had pictures, making fans believe that this was the end of Justin Bieber and Jessica Timberlake's marriage of eight years. But nope, it was not. And they have even expanded their family! According to new sources close to Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, this second baby saved their already ruined relationship. It is not sure if this is a good or bad thing, since marriage relying on babies to save it often does not work. "No one can understand how Jessica got through that pregnancy as effortlessly as she did," a longtime friend said. Allegedly, the baby was conceived around the same time he was "sleazing up to his co-star in New Orleans." Biel was naturally hurt about the whole thing but she was unaware that their second baby was already in her belly. The source said that with Jessica not knowing she was pregnant when the hurtful pictures came out, it is a miracle that Biel was able to deliver a healthy baby last month, given all the stress that she had to deal with, including the trauma born from the situation. The source said Biel was hardly a robot that did not feel the brunt of that "cheating." The source said, "she was absolutely devastated, but it's fairly safe to say it was a big factor in her decision to take him back. It literally was a case of 'forgive and beget'." The source added that fortunately, Biel truly loves being a mom and the second baby expanding their little family was a dream come true. Otherwise, she would not dream of taking back Justin Timberlake. It is also Justin Timberlake's dream. While he did not say they were expecting whenever he had interactions with the media in the past months, he did say that he wants to have as many kids as possible through the years of marriage with Biel. In 2018, he told Zane Lowe on Beats 1 that he loves parenthood because even if he fails at one point, he can do it again the next day and correct it. His only hope is to have all his kids grow up good human beings. Silas, their firstborn, is a prime example that nobody has to worry about their parenting skills. The boy is said to have a knack of being funny like his father. READ MORE: Britney Spears NEEDS Help: Fans Believe She's Sending Distress Signals To Them Saucy, naughty and women behaving badly" - that is how Lesley Manville describes TV series Harlots, which is set in brothels in 18th century London. The powerful period drama was made for US streaming service Hulu, and first aired back in 2017. Manville (64) agrees it has been "hidden away" (it was only available to watch in the UK on a subsidiary called Starzplay) and is delighted all three series are coming to BBC Two. Ahead of the show's launch here, the Brighton-born actress is keen to stress it is a family drama, as well as being about prostitutes (a job one in five women in central London had during the Georgian era). Inspired by stories of real women, it follows Margaret Wells (Samantha Morton) and her daughters, as she struggles to reconcile her roles as mother and brothel owner. When her business comes under attack from Lydia Quigley (Manville) - a madam with a ruthless streak - Margaret must fight back, even if it means putting her family at risk. "At the centre of Harlots is this fantastic rivalry between Lydia Quigley and Margaret Wells; they've just got this historical feud that will not go away," elaborates Manville. "There are delicious exchanges between them - and looks. It's these two formidable characters who just can't bear the other one to have the upper hand so there's this great clash of minds and status and, yeah, there's some really cracking stuff for Samantha and I to get our teeth into." Of the fascinating characters, she follows: "There's a complexity to their relationship too, because Lydia brought Margaret up, to a degree; she's known her since she was a child. "So, there's a sort of love and tenderness that's so buried beneath it all, but there is real passion going on between the two of them as well. It's steeped in so much painful history; the pain of being - which Margaret was - a young girl being put out to prostitute herself." Manville is someone Nottingham native Morton has admired hugely since starting out at The Royal Court Theatre, in London, where "you'd hear about Lesley". Expand Close Samantha Morton as Margaret Wells Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Samantha Morton as Margaret Wells "Lesley is a legend. For me she's up there with Meryl Streep, she's a British icon," gushes Morton, star of TV series such as The Walking Dead, and films including Minority Report. "She's phenomenal on stage and in TV. She's just insanely talented. So, I was really nervous at the first read-through; it was, like 'I'm in a room with Lesley Manville! Try and act cool, try and act like you know what you're talking about'. "You always feel like you're winging a bit anyway - well, I do!" But Manville was so "lovely and welcoming and caring" that Morton "felt safe with her", she recalls. "You could then have loads of fun with those scenes, because if you do feel safe with another actor, then you can really let rip and allow the director to direct in different ways." What also stands out about Harlots, as Morton acknowledges proudly, is that it is "a show that is produced by women, written by women, directed by women, and starring women". "It's not that men get it wrong; sometimes they do. Sometimes women get it wrong. But I think Harlots were a little bit different in how we approached shooting sex scenes. "It was all from the female gaze and therefore, one would hope, and certainly what I saw, was that the actors were treated with a huge amount of dignity. "I mean, there often is that anyway. I've done hundreds of sex scenes where it's closed set, where people aren't allowed near the monitors." However, chatty Morton is incredibly and refreshingly candid about "awful" experiences she had as an actress during the earlier years of her career. The mum-of-three, who is married to film editor Harry Holm, recalls working on 90s ITV drama Band Of Gold, about a group of sex workers in Bradford, in which she played Tracy Richards. "I was 16, and I would be sobbing in my trailer because of certain things I'd have to do, and the really lovely wardrobe girls would say, 'Listen, if you'd just put corn plaster on your nipples then you won't have to show your boobs'." She continues, thoughtfully: "I think, in hindsight, some of what I had to do on Band Of Gold was navigated by people that just didn't know any better; there was no malice, they were just treating me like another worker bee. "They wouldn't say to 30 crew - all male pretty much - 'Can you leave the set please?' These were the days when people were smoking on set. "It was just a very different world." She confides she "got a reputation quite quickly for being a bit tricky, because I came from Nottingham, I came from a bit of a rough background, and the only way I felt I could hold my own was being a bit tough back". In general, the "industry is changing for the better", she says. And things changed for her as she became more successful, and could talk to her agents about different ways of filming, such as asking for a body double. "Saying no to something you're uncomfortable with is okay because it's where you can work out ways to do it so that everyone's happy - I now know that," she adds. When asked about the sex scenes in Harlots, Manville suggests "some of the loveliest bits of Harlots are when you go behind the scenes of Margaret Wells's house". "You see Margaret being a mum, and you see her daughters being young girls, and you see other prostitutes with their babies and just trying to be good mothers," follows the affable star, who has one son from her marriage to ex-husband, actor Gary Oldman. "It's a very broad view of it, which I think is partly why I think this show is so rounded... "I don't want people just to watch this, and think, 'This is great, we're going to see lots of women having sex and it's all prostitutes and Georgian London'. "Yes, it is about that, but it also is a feminist view of it all." Series one and two of Harlots will air back to back on BBC Two from Wednesday, 9pm Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has removed a third statue of Christopher Columbus from the streets, a week after taking down more prominent monuments to the controversial Italian explorer. The latest statue of Columbus to go down was located at Drake Fountain on 92nd Street at South Chicago and Exchange avenues, and was far less well-known than its brothers in Grant Park and Arrigo Park. Even as national controversy mounted over Columbus statues in public places, the South Chicago monument had largely escaped public notice until a Sun-Times report noted its existence earlier this week. According to the city, the statue of Columbus was dedicated in 1892 and was believed to have been the first in Chicago. Following public safety concerns over planned demonstrations similar to the one in Grant Park two weeks ago, the city has temporarily relocated the Christopher Columbus statue at Drake Fountain in the South Chicago neighborhood until further notice, Lightfoots office said in a statement. This temporary relocation is part of an effort to prevent individuals from pulling down statues in an extremely dangerous manner, which has created unsafe situations for protestors and police, as well as residents of the surrounding community. Lightfoot ordered statues of Columbus removed from Chicagos Grant and Arrigo parks early last week, hoping to avoid another high-profile confrontation between police and protesters. The mayor drew criticism from those who believe she caved to activist demands, but she defended the move by saying it was necessary for public safety. She has also promised that the removal of Columbus statues would only be temporary, spurring criticism from progressive aldermen who say they dont want to see them reinstalled. Lightfoot also said that the city would soon announce a formal process to assess the monuments, memorials, and murals across Chicagos communities, and develop a framework for a public dialogue to determine how we elevate our citys history and diversity. The city reiterated the point on Friday. Chicagos statues of the explorer have become the center of a heated controversy for Lightfoot, who has opposed taking down statues of the Italian explorer on the grounds that it would be erasing history. She also has rejected calls to rename the Columbus Day holiday. Columbus has been condemned by activists around the country who point to the Italian explorers mistreatment of Indigenous people after he landed in the Americas in 1492. As Gov. Ned Lamont toured Waterfords Millstone Power Station in April 2019, after resolving an impasse over the nuclear plants electricity rates, Rob Kaye was flipping the switch on a new solar array on the roof of his Nod Hill Brewery in Ridgefield. Cut to this week during the noon hour on a sunny day: Those solar panels soaked up enough sun to cover 60 kilowatt hours of power used by the brewery. Across much of the rest of Connecticut, meanwhile, businesses and households consumed a couple million kilowatt hours of electricity generated by Millstones twin nuclear reactors. That split sheds a bit of light on the gap the region faces in the eventual phase-out of Millstone, which at more than 2,100 megawatts of capacity is New Englands single largest source of electricity. Thats most likely more than a decade away, with its oldest reactor licensed through 2035 and the other one 10 years beyond. But some nuclear plants have closed early as Millstones operator Dominion Energy threatened to do so two years ago and anyway, it will take years to replace that much output. With that in mind, where is the states power mix heading and how fast will it get there? The debate matters now because Connecticut faces choices between allowing new, gas-powered plants and rapidly expanding solar, wind and other renewable sources to fill the future nuclear gap. Lamonts administration brokered new power purchase agreements for Dominion to continue supplying Connecticuts two major utilities for the coming decade. The governor cited at the time the alternative scenario of rolling blackouts while replacement plants were rushed into construction. More recently, this past week, he expressed hope that offshore wind power will eventually take up much of the slack. All the while, solar has been making gains, but thats a long, costly road to replace Millstone, whose twin reactors produce power equal to Connecticuts four largest natural gas plants in Bridgeport, Middletown and Oxford, according to information on file with the Energy Information Administration. Adding up gradually Connecticuts collection of rooftop and utility-scale solar arrays today amounts to about 230 megawatts of capacity at summers peak in July with nearly 300 more megawatts more to come by 2030, according to estimates by ISO New England, the Springfield, Mass. entity that oversees the regions power grid. Other sources are being added as well notably natural gas plants, but also one or more wind farms eyed for off the New England coast that could add up to the power output of Millstone, in optimal conditions; and if cleared for construction, new power lines feeding a steady supply of electricity from hydroelectric dams in Canada. Added together, an 800-megawatt wind farm planned south of Marthas Vineyard coupled with Connecticuts expected solar adds and a 650-megawatt natural gas plant would get the state within range of Millstones output. Yet more wind farms are under consideration as well as the Canadian hydro power lines with the possibility of an extra 1,200 megawatts for the larger New England grid. Unpredictable weather patterns create energy security risks in the words of ISO New England for wind and solar power. That problem will persist until utility-scale batteries can store excess energy for use on calm or cloudy days, cost-effectively. But the risk of an over-reliance on natural gas has been exposed as well the past several years, given the tendency of prices to spike during cold snaps as power plants compete with industry and household suppliers for purchases. And environmental groups cite the effects of fracking, a major source of natural gas. The increased renewables on the grid in New England are going to provide energy to Connecticut to displace the gas thats currently being burned in Connecticut. And in the future...it could also be providing it to replace Millstone, said Paul Peterson, a Vermont-based energy analyst long with Synapse Energy Economics. Its a question of all the resources on the grid. Rays push renewables over top In a momentous milestone between January and April that went largely unnoticed amid the pandemic, for the first time this year the United States generated more electricity from renewable sources than from the nations fleet of nuclear power plants, according to EIA estimates in June. Connecticut generates less than 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Through April this year, the state had seen a 26 percent boost in electricity from solar panels dotting the states properties since the start of 2019, according to EIA data, slightly ahead of a 21 percent gain in the U.S. as a whole. Pushing renewables over the top nationally were the combined wattage of small scale photovoltaic installations like the Nod Hill Brewery system. Founding partner Rob Kaye estimates the brewery is saving close to $10,000 a year on its electricity bill, factoring in all capital and financing costs and offsetting subsidies to install the array. Going solar has had an additional benefit as a promotional draw in marketing the brewery he created three years ago with son Dave Kaye. Nod Hill drafts include a beer called Stellar Rays. Not only a socially conscious thing to do and a good PR thing as well... I thought it could save us money, Rob Kaye said. When you add all those three elements to it, for me I feel its been a home run. For now, installations like Nod Hills are small-ball in the early innings for renewable resources to replace the dominance of natural gas and nuclear. About half of New Englands electric load is generated by natural gas, with Millstone and Seabrook Station in New Hampshire kicking in about 30 percent of the regions power on average from the process of nuclear fission. Orange-based Avangrid has now taken up the challenge of importing hydro power generated by dams on the St. Lawrence River in Canada. Avangrid aims to stretch transmission lines along new towers on a 150-foot-wide corridor running 145 miles where its Central Maine Power subsidiary has existing lines. Eversource Energy abandoned a similar effort last year after opposition from opponents of the route it planned to carve through the White Mountains in New Hampshire. While utility-scale solar projects are subject to similar logjams a major project in New Milford is stalled over a debate on managing water runoff as a result of clear-cutting trees municipal building departments in Connecticut have been for the most part rubber-stamping the large majority of applications for rooftop installations on homes and businesses. ISO New England expects that the states under its jurisdiction will contribute sufficient generation capacity to approximate their own consumption. As of this year, the agency lists 2,100 significant sources of electrical generation capacity in New England. That includes 130 sources in Connecticut, ranging from Millstones twin reactors with combined nameplate capacity exceeding 2,100 megawatts; to a diesel generator in Norwalk that the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative uses to augment the citys electricity supply. The regions transmission system does allow for geographic diversity of resources a retiring resource in Massachusetts could be replaced by a resource in Maine, for example, ISO New England spokesperson Matt Kakley stated in an email response to a query. This process is designed to ensure supply and demand are balanced in the region, and does not include some of the other factors that the states may weigh, such environmental or economic attributes of particular resources. Wind catches water in 2019 Wind turbines overtook hydro power last year in the United States as measured by electricity produced for consumption, EIA data shows. That was a significant milestone given the nations continued reliance on historic dam systems like the Tennessee Valley Authority; New Yorks Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant, which produces more power than Millstone; or Grand Coulee Dam in Washington that has triple that output as the nations largest hydroelectric installation. Among the projects on the board, the Park City Wind farm would rise off the southern New England coast as a joint venture of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, with construction to be staged from Bridgeport. And Eversource Energy is working with Denmark-based Orsted on its own offshore wind farm proposals, while proposing on Friday an initial step toward accompanying battery storage for as much as 50 megawatts of power. On a windy day, Park City Wind would have roughly equal the electric output of the CPV Towantic natural gas plant completed two years ago in Oxford, while eclipsing PSEGs Bridgeport Harbor facility that cranked into gear last August powered by natural gas. Avangrid has gone all-in on renewables, creating a separate subsidiary a dozen years ago based today in Portland, Oregon. Avangrid Renewables now operates the third largest fleet of wind farms in the nation. The Park City Wind project would add just over 800 megawatts to the New England grid, with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management expected to issue a final decision in December on whether to approve the project. Our intent is to deliver the project as quickly as possible ... and we know now that it cannot be earlier than 2023, said Avangrid Renewables CEO Alejandro de Hoz, speaking in April on a conference call. Were going to do our best to do it as quickly as possible in that frame ... Its certainly too early, because of all the moving parts, to say exactly when it will be. Even as it pushes ahead with Vineyard Wind and other wind farms along the Atlantic shelf, Avangrid is now looking to hook up New Englands grid to hydro power generators in Quebec via its New England Clean Energy Connect proposal Such additions continue to be offset partially by power plant retirements, however, whether to phase out plants with higher levels of pollution PSEGs coal-fired plant in Bridgeport is scheduled to go offline next year, with another large plant outside Boston slated for retirement in 2024 or replace others that have older and inefficient turbine designs. Just over a year ago, Entergy retired its Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., leaving New England with two remaining nuclear plants in Millstone and Seabrook. Next up in the Northeast is Indian Point Energy Center on the Hudson River about 30 miles west of Danbury, with operator Entergy retiring one reactor in April and the remaining unit scheduled to go offline nine months from now. ISO New York had replacement capacity lined up years ago and anticipates no impact on electricity supplies for the New York City and Hudson River valley regions. A pretty significant cushion As Lamont took office in 2019, Dominion Energy was threatening to initiate the closure of Millstone, as continued decline in natural gas prices gave those plants a competitive pricing edge. Last September, the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority approved commitments by Eversource and the United Illuminating utility operated by Avangrid to purchase electricity from Millstone for 10 years. Connecticut ratepayers got a July preview of the increase, with the component of their bills containing the Millstone rate roughly doubling to 3 cents a kilowatt hour, amounting to about a $15-a-month increase for the household using 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in the summer months. Then on Friday, PURA suspended the rate hike. A Dominion spokesperson described the company as certainly interested in reaching a new accord come 2029. There is a process to extend those licenses for another 20 years with the NRC that would have to be completed before they are extended, Dominions Ken Holt said in an email. We are committed to operating Millstone through to the end of the current power purchase agreements which expire in 2029. Natural gas prices have continued to drop precipitously, with the result of pushing some drillers and fracking companies into bankruptcy. Connecticut has a commitment from NTE Energy to build a 650-megawatt plant in Killingly, with a spokesperson indicating that the company is aiming for construction to begin later this year. The price for solar panels and related systems, meanwhile, is down more than 70 percent the past five years according to Taylor Binnington, senior policy analyst in the Hartford office of the Acadia Center, an environmental group. Binnington and Peterson collaborated on an Acadia Center report last month suggesting New England could cut its reliance on natural gas power plants to 10 percent of the regions electricity consumption by 2030, with renewables filling in the gap assuming no shortfall from an early retirement of Millstone. In the cases of Indian Point and Pilgrim, the capacity was there, and Binnington and Peterson see the same trajectories in play for phasing out others with renewables. Thats a piece of the puzzle here not every megawatt has to be replaced by another, equal megawatt, Binnington said. Theres a pretty significant cushion already built in. Includes prior reporting by Katrina Koerting and Luther Turmelle. Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds public approval rating for how she has handled the new coronavirus pandemic is the lowest of any U.S. governor, according to a new survey. Just 28% of Iowans said in July that they approve of the way Reynolds is handling the coronavirus outbreak, according to the survey. Thats lower than any other governors pandemic response approval rating in the latest report, and a sharp plummet from the 54% of Iowans who in the same survey in April said they approved of Reynolds pandemic stewardship. The national average of governors pandemic response approval ratings is 51%. The survey is part of the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Publics Policy Preferences Across States, a joint project of Northwestern, Harvard, Rutgers and Northeastern universities. The project has been surveying Americans on the pandemic since April. For the most recent report, the project surveyed more than 19,000 Americans across all 50 states from July 10 to July 26. The margin of error for Iowas results is plus or minus 6 percentage points. Reynolds pandemic response approval rating fell from 54% in April to 36% in May. It held steady there at 36% and 37% over the next two surveys, then dropped again to 28% in the July survey. That number puts the Republican governor on par with Republican President Donald Trump: 29% of Iowans approve of the presidents handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the survey. However, unlike Reynolds, Trumps approval rating in Iowa, while similarly low, is also on par with the national average: 32% of Americans approve of Trumps handling of the outbreak. The other governors near the bottom of the pandemic response approval pile include Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (30%), Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (34%), Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (36%), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (38%), Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (38%), and Hawaii Gov. David Ige (39%). All are Republicans except Ige, who is a Democrat. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, had the highest pandemic response approval rating, 76%, in the July survey. He was followed by Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott (75%), New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo (71%), Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo (71%), and Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker (70%). One of the studys co-authors surmised the approval ratings favor governors who have been more cautious in their pandemic response efforts. In general, governors that have sought to reopen have been out in front of their citizens. Theyve moved faster than the public was comfortable moving, Matthew Baum, the Marvin Kalb professor of global communications at Harvards Kennedy School and a co-author of the study, told The Hill. The governors who are doing really well are the ones that have acted most proactively. Reynolds first order of widespread business closures was on March 17. She began loosening those restrictions in some parts of the state just more than a month later, on April 27. Erin Murphy covers Iowa politics and government for Lee Enterprises. His email address is erin.murphy@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter at @ErinDMurphy. Person of the week ... was UK transport secretary of state, Grant Shapps. One minute he was in Spain; the next minute he wasn't in Spain. Unfortunate chap, Shapps. Off he had gone on the family's jollies and was rudely interrupted by the need to take part in an urgent call with other chaps who hadn't gone away or were heading off for a Skeggy staycation. "Look, can't we delay this quarantine thing for a couple of weeks? I've got a suntan I need working on." "No, sorry old chap, the PM's been told he needs to appear decisive. And that means a couple of hours notice. Get on a plane asap, and then you can seem decisive as well." "If you insist. Is the PM paying for the flight to be rearranged?" "What!? You're the transport sec, you sort it out." Three cheers ... For the Royals. At least someone was flying the flag (most definitely a Spanish one) for Majorca and Balearics tourism. The Queen Mother and Princess Elena, who won't be able to attend the Palma bullfight this summer as there isn't one, were the advance guard for this royal national tourism - the King and family will be following, and it is understood that they will be showing vacationing solidarity by visiting Minorca and Ibiza/Formentera as well. Meanwhile, the cost of Balearic government maintenance at the Marivent must have shot up, what with the need for all the health measures. A big boo ... For not submitting oneself to a coronavirus test in light of a known outbreak. The ones in question were "young people" who did nothing for allaying fears that "young people" are a principal source of outbreaks by refusing to be tested after positives were registered at a club in Valencia. Clubs do appear to be problematic in this regard, the Catalonia government finally having decided to close them again. Measures adopted by the Balearic government are very unfortunate for club owners and employees and for the clientele. Increasingly, however, the government is being vindicated. Patrons in Ontario looking to dine out at restaurants, bars and even boat tours will soon need to provide their names and contact information under a new law intended to improve COVID-19 contact tracing, raising some concerns with a privacy expert. The regulations come into effect next Friday and require everyone remain seated unless they're picking up food or going to the washroom. Their names and contact information will also have to be kept on file for 30 days. "It seems every week we do get a whole new list of protocols that are put into place. Some of them reasonable, some of them not so reasonable, but we've been able to negotiate happy mediums for most of those protocols," said Bob Firestone, owner of the Blue Cactus Bar & Grill in the ByWard Market. Business has been picking up at his restaurant, with a packed but physically distanced patio most evenings. He plans to abide by the rules, likely by writing down the names and contact information of people as they're seated, and then transferring that information into a computer database the next day. Stu Mills/CBC End to anonymity, says expert That raises some concerns for Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa. She understands why the government is introducing the regulations, after an uptick in cases linked primarily to bars, but believes it means the end to anonymous dining at least for now. "I think for many people that has implications both for their privacy and perhaps also for their freedom of association," she said. But she also points out it's a balance. "Those are our fundamental rights that are important to us, but our rights under the [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms] are always balanced against other competing public interests, and in this case the competing public interest is controlling the spread of COVID-19." Privacy laws dictate how to collect, destroy data Story continues She said these companies have to abide not only by the new rules, but existing privacy laws. That means ensuring employees are trained on how to collect people's information and dispose of it properly after the month is up. "You can't just scribble the names down and leave the sheet of paper sitting at the front entrance way. You have to securely store the information," she said. "You don't toss lists in the garbage. If they're handwritten lists, you shred them, or if they're on a computer, you make sure the file is properly deleted." Stu Mills/CBC There's also what she terms "the human factor" making sure employees or anyone else don't misuse the information for their own purposes. As of Friday, people could also download a new COVID Alert app that lets users know if they've been in close proximity with someone who has been infected with the novel coronavirus. Scassa points out the app and the collection of people's personal information are overlapping measures. If one fails such as if someone doesn't bring their phone with them to the bar or doesn't have it turned on the other should help health officials get in touch with those people. For Firestone, he hopes the weather remains good, business continues to pick up and people remain vigilant. "Everybody's got to work collectively to follow the rules so we can all come to work on a daily basis and not feel nervous that we're going to get shut down." BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images President Donald Trump has, for the first time, publicly suggested delaying Novembers presidential electionan unprecedented measure that is beyond the powers of the president. In his latest tweet pushing his entirely unproven pet theory that mail-in ballots somehow make elections more susceptible to voter fraud, Trump wrote that holding the election during the raging pandemic would be dangerous and mulled whether it would be best to Delay the Election until people can vote properly, securely and safely. Despite his posturing, Trump has absolutely no legal power to follow through on the proposal to delay the vote. His incendiary tweet came minutes after the Commerce Department announced the U.S. economy had just suffered its worst quarter on record. It has long been predicted that Trump would try to discredit the election. Last week, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden warned donors that the president will attempt to indirectly steal the 2020 election by poisoning his base against the idea of mail-in ballotsa voting method that more people than ever are expected to use to minimize the risk of catching the novel coronavirus. Hitting back at Trumps suggestion, the frontrunner to be named Bidens running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, wrote, Donald Trump is terrified. He knows he's going to lose to Joe Biden. It will require every single one of us to make that happen. We will see you at the ballot box on November 3rd, President Trump. The Data Proves Mail-In Voting Is Safe From Fraud & COVID-19 Trump has been obsessed with the idea that mass voter fraud is undermining American elections for years, despite him and his family making full use of the service. He blatantly lied after the 2016 general election, claiming that millions of illegal votes helped Hillary Clinton defeat him in the popular vote. The Trump administration made a very public push to try and find voter fraud with a 2017 commission, only for the panel, led by Trump ally Kris Kobach, to flame out amid controversy and a lack of results. Story continues The presidents attacks on election integrity have only grown more pronounced during the coronavirus pandemic, with mail-in ballots becoming a healthier way for people to vote during the public health crisis. But that potential benefit has done little to quell Trumps rage towards potential fraud, even though he has been unable to prove or show evidence that mail-in votes would lead to the kind of widespread fraud that hes baselessly publicizing. Trumps tweet was met with shock Thursday morning by both election law experts and voting-rights advocates. The president has no authority whatsoever to delay the election, said Josh Douglas, an election-law professor at the University of Kentucky. Its an attack on the legitimacy of our democracy. Its something that every elected official, Republican and Democrat, should speak out against. All it does is undermine peoples faith in the legitimacy of our elections. What Trump is doing is really scary, Douglas said, pointing to the concern that it would seemingly lay the groundwork to potentially contest an election that he loses. Theres absolutely no evidence that theres any sort of massive fraud from absentee balloting or mail-in voting, Douglas said. And hes doing this weird thing where hes trying to say that absentee voting and vote by mail are different when there are different flavors of vote by mail, but its the same thing. Raising conspiracies about voter fraud has become common at times for the president, especially in states that are critical to his winning re-election. On the night of Wisconsins disastrous primary in April, where an attempt was made to delay the contest over health worries, the president raged again about voter fraud, falsely telling reporters, You get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebodys living room signing ballots all over the place. And in May, Trump tweeted a threat to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path! because he thought the state had sent absentee ballots to more than 7 million people. That was quickly mocked by the states chief election official, who noted Trump was incorrect. We sent applications, not ballots. Just like my GOP colleagues in Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, tweeted. But Thursdays tweet took the election attacks from the president to a new level. Across the globe we see autocrats and dictators who rig elections and promote chaos to maintain their grip on power, but this has never happened in American democracy, said Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. And our rules are clear and the Constitution does not give the president any power to delay or postpone an election. The Trump campaign responded to the uproar following the presidents tweet by sending out a statement deriding Democrats and the concept of universal mail-in voting, saying, the President is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting. 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. A man assaulted a delivery driver who later transpired to be his former schoolmate, a court has heard. Matthew Grogan (22) of Bramley Terrace, Applewood Village, Swords, Co Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm at Applewood Square, Swords, on October 25, 2019. Grogan also pleaded guilty to unauthorised use of a motor propelled vehicle at Thornleigh Terrace, Swords, on November 4, 2019. He has 42 previous convictions, including convictions for robbery, burglary and theft. Detective Garda Karen Duffy told Garret Baker BL, prosecuting, that on the date in October, Nikita Olijniks was on his way to make his final delivery while driving in a car with his girlfriend. Det Gda Duffy said Mr Olijniks got out of the car to make the delivery and was walking towards the address when he heard his girlfriend screaming. He turned to see Grogan in the driver seat of the car, another person also in the car and a third person acting as a lookout. Mr Olijniks threw the delivery at one of the culprits, opened the driver side door and punched Grogan two or three times in the face. Mr Olijniks was hit in the back of the head by another person and fell to the ground. The court heard that the person who had ordered the delivery observed Mr Olijniks being kicked in the head by Grogan. Det Gda Duffy said that on the date in November, a car owned by Jennifer Kilbride went missing and was observed by a friend of hers being driven by Grogan. Ms Kilbride's friend blocked the car with his van and pulled Grogan out of it, who was later arrested. In interview with gardai, Grogan said he knew the car was stolen and that he had been told to drive the car to a particular location by people to whom he owed a drug debt. Grogan told gardai that he knew Mr Olijniks as they had attended the same school and asked them to convey his apologises. He said he only realised he knew the injured party after the assault. Patrick Jackson BL, defending, said his client did not intend to use violence on the night in October and did not expect the victim's girlfriend to be in the car. Counsel said that at the age of 16 his client discovered that his father was serving a life sentence in prison and that he had siblings of whom he had been previously unaware. He said it was around this time that Grogan commenced using drugs. Judge Karen O'Connor ordered a probation report and adjourned the matter for finalisation on October 7, next. S Kumaresan By Express News Service CHENNAI: Dormant Congress cadres plunged into action, especially on social media, soon after Khushbu tweeted on Thursday that she welcomed the NEP-2020. It has been a hot topic among the Congress cadres and social media activists ever since. It all started after Khushbu tweeted on Thursday and was retweeted by hundreds of NEP supporters. Besides, the screenshot of the tweet was widely circulated in hundreds of WhatsApp groups and Facebook accounts by the BJP supporters. Sensing trouble, Khushbu again tweeted, Sanghis can relax, pls do not rejoice. I am not moving to BJP. My opinion might be different from my party but I am an individual with a thinking mind of my own. Yes, #NEP2020 is flayed n flawed at some places, but I still feel we can look at the change with a positivity. I prefer to see the positive aspects n sit n work on the negative ones. We have to offer a solution to the problems n not just raise voices. Opposition also means to work for the country's future. I would like to take a leaf out of #Atal ji's life n #UPA where we have worked. READ HERE | Congress leader Khushbu Sundar expresses support for New Education Policy 2020 In another tweet, she said, My stand on #NEP2020 differs from my party n I apologize to @RahulGandhi ji for that, but I rather speak the fact than be a head nodding robot or a puppet. Everything is n cannot be about agreeing to ur leader, but about being courages to voice ur opinion bravely as a citizen. Even after Khushbu made her stand clear, more and more Congress cadres and left-wing activists cornered her in the cyber world saying that she is getting ready to move towards BJP. In this melee, TNCC president KS Alagiri interfered and castigated the actress without mentioning her name and he tweeted, Congress is a worlds biggest democratic political party. We can speak any controversial subject within the party forum. It will be welcomed. If we speak in a public forum it is called indiscipline. Indiscipline comes from frustration. Yoga is the best medicine to cure. GK Muralidharan, state general secretary of farmers wing of Congress, spoke to TNIE, It seems she has decided something. I dont know what it is. It is learned that during the last six months she has retweeted various things which were against the Congress policy and principles. So, not only I but also all the Congress cadres and leaders felt that she was signalling us about her next move Thats why our cadres are severely reacting against her in the social media. One of the state-level Congress functionaries who dont wish to be named said, To please the Muslims, the BJP is ready to offer plump posts to well-known Muslim personalities. Hence, Khushbu might have been thinking over to achieve it so she did like these. Early on in the pandemic, Papua New Guinea, like Australia and New Zealand, was doing well in its fight against the coronavirus. The country closed its border on March 24, instituted lockdowns and began a series of measures to keep COVID-19 at bay. It worked. Until July 16 it had only 16 confirmed cases and no deaths. But then the virus escaped a testing lab in the main general hospital in Port Moresby infecting at least four health workers. The Mount Hagen provincial hospital's emergency ward. The PNG government is worried about COVID-19 spreading from Port Moresby to the provinces. Credit:Louise Kennerley Within 14 days, there would be 72 confirmed cases and two deaths sparking a renewed effort to avert a meltdown of the country's precarious health system should the number of infections break out of the city. Some 87 per cent of PNG's 8.9 million population live in rural areas. This summer marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the Lone Star Flight Museum is looking back at the historical American milestone by hosting several summer camps this August that help kids explore the roots and future of aeronautical engineering. Now Playing: Lone Star Flight Museum Flight Engineering summer camp helps kids explore the roots and future of aeronautical engineering. Video: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle The camps are offered at three different age groups and are limited to 10 children per class: Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 00:07:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BAGHDAD, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi Oil Ministry said on Saturday that it exported more than 85 million barrels of crude oil in July, bringing in revenues of over 3 billion U.S. dollars. Iraq's total exports of crude oil during 31 days of July reached 85.66 million barrels with an average of 2.76 million barrels per day, a ministry's statement said, citing statistics of the State Organization for Marketing of Oil. The average selling price for crude oil in June was about 40.7 dollars per barrel, the statement added. "The crude oil revenues has witnessed an increase in July compared to the past few months, despite the reduction in production and export rates in compliance with the OPEC Plus agreement," the statement quoted Asim Jihad, the ministry spokesman, as saying. Iraq, OPEC's second-largest producer, is scheduled to cut exports to 2.8 million bpd of crude oil as part of its commitment to the OPEC Plus agreement that aimed to help bolster oil prices in the world markets since their collapse in April due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to the ministry statement, about 82.7 million barrels were exported from Iraq's central and southern oil fields via Basra ports, while about 2.7 million from the northern province of Kirkuk via the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, in addition to exporting 261,894 barrels of crude oil to the neighboring Jordan during the month. Iraq's economy heavily relies on the exports of crude oil, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the country's revenues. Enditem China has called for coronavirus testing to be conducted at wholesale markets across the country. The move comes around a month after an outbreak in Beijing, which has been linked to a major wholesale market there. China ordered local authorities to do regular coronavirus testing at these sites on Thursday. Following a spike in cases in the capital in June, officials said the trading sections for meat and seafood in Beijings wholesale food market had been found to be severely contaminated with the virus. They said the areas low temperature and high humidity may have been contributing factors. Beijings outbreak was linked to Xinfadi food centre, which houses warehouses and trading halls in an area the size of nearly 160 soccer pitches. On Thursday, travel restrictions were put in place on people coming in and out of Xinjiang regions capital city as part of efforts to contain an outbreak there. Urumqi has been at the centre of the new wave of infections in mainland China, accounting for 96 of 105 confirmed Covid-19 cases reported on 29 July. Non-residents seeking to leave the city will have to test negative in both nucleic acid and antibody tests before they can leave if they have been in the city for 14 days or more, Vice Mayor Song Yajun said during a daily briefing. He added that residents should not leave Urumqi unless necessary. Urumqi will also mandate 14-day quarantine for people arriving in the city from high-risk Covid-19 areas, the vice mayor said. Others entering the city will need to show proof of a negative test within the past seven days, among other requirements, which vary depending on where they are coming from. The number of new cases in mainland China is still well below the peaks seen in February, but the resurgence underscores the challenge in stamping out the disease. China has reported more than 84,200 coronavirus infections to date. The number of deaths stood at 4,634 on Friday. Additional reporting by Reuters Amid souring tensions between India and Nepal, the latter has now invoked the 1947 tripartie agreement on Gurkha soldiers calling certain provisions 'questionable', demanding revision from India in collaboration with the UK; foreign minister also spoke on India's China standoff claiming the real challenge in de-escalation process lies with India's border issues with Nepal. Nepal has called for a revision of the 1947 tripartite agreement on Gurkha soldiers claiming it has become redundant and urged the United Kingdom and India to discuss the issue. In a virtual discussion Foreign Policy of Nepal in changing Geopolitical context organised by the Nepal Institute of International Relations on Friday, Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali called on Britain and India the two other signatories of 1947 tripartite agreement on Gurkhas to start discussions. Gorkha recruitment is a legacy of the past. It has various aspects. It opened the window for Nepali youths to go abroad. It created a lot of jobs in the society in the past but in the present context, some provisions in the agreement are questionable. So we should start discussions on its various objectionable aspects, Gyawali said. Also read: US presses Pak for legal reform over killing of Tahir Naseem Also read: Massive anti-Pak protests erupt in Sindh against state terrorism The 1947 tripartite agreement has become redundant, he added. He said that Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had raised the issue during his meeting with the Theresa May when she was the British Prime Minister. During his official visit to the UK last year, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had formally raised the question about the tripartite agreement and the bilateral deal with the UK and India. So lets start from that point and we will gradually cover from this issue because it has multi-faceted aspects, Gyawali added. The 1947 tripartite agreement signed between Nepal,India and Britain assures that all perks, remuneration, facilities and pension schemes for Nepalis serving in the British and Indian Armies will be equal to those of British and Indian nationals. However, the Gurkha veterans have alleged the agreement to be discriminatory against them. During the discussion, Gyawali also said that the manner in which partnership between China and India will move and the way they manage their differences will set the future of Asia and the region. The rise of China and aspiring rise of India as well, how they engage with themselves, how their partnership will move on and how they manage their differences will definitely set the future of Asia, at least in this region, Gyawali said. Referring to Eastern Ladakh, he said India and China were trying their best to reduce tensions but the challenge is there. After the Wuhan summit, the partnership between India and China was deepened but nowadays, there are tensions after the Galwan valley clash. Though both countries are trying their best to de-escalate the tension, however, the challenge is there, he added. Speaking on the row with India following Nepal publishing a new map containing Indian territories of Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura, Gyawali said discussions were not being held due to conditions created by coronavirus. We tried to formally restart diplomatic negotiations and engagements but then COVID-19 pandemic broke out and everything got halted. Amid the pandemic, India published its 8th edition of political map back in November 2019. It comprised Nepals territory of Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura. Definitely, Nepal opposed it through political statement and diplomatic notes, he said. We, time and again, asked our Indian friends to formally start the diplomatic negotiation to settle these problems. We proposed the possible dates as well but our proposal was not responded timely. India responded by saying that the negotiation will be started only after COVID-19. However, we saw close engagements amid the COVID pandemic between India and China, India and Australia, India and the US and many more. Hence, we had no choice but to publish the map including the regions which are an integral part according to the Sugauli Treaty. To make it legitimate, we amended the constitution with unanimity, he claimed. Also read: US lauds EU for its first-ever cyber-sanctions framework Sudhir Suryawanshi By Express News Service MUMBAI: Despite strong demand from BJP to hand over the Sushant Singh Rajput death case to the Central Bureau of Investigation, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has reiterated that the Mumbai police are efficient to investigate the case. Maharashtra Parliamentary Affair minister Anil Parab said that the Mumbai police are investigating the case at the right direction. There are many people particularly on various television channels claiming that they have this and that proof in connection with Sushant Singh Rajput case? I personally urge them to come forward and submit the details to the police. If they will don't come forward, we have got these people statements and the police will call them and try to seek details, said Parab. He said that Mumbai police are compared with the Scotland police so it will be unfair to run an anti-Mumbai police campaign on social media and show distrust over them. We have to give them sufficient time to probe the case. A senior NCP leader said that the central government should not encroach the rights of the state government by handing over a very important case to CBI. Earlier the Elgar Parished case was probed by the Maharashtra police but immediately after the change of guard in the state, this case was given to National Intelligence Agency (NIA). In Palghar case also, the same demand was raised. We condemn this type of functioning that will undermine the importance of the state in the federal structure. We cannot give every case to CBI and NIA or any central agency just because it is a non-BJP government in Maharashtra. Everyone has to follow the law of the land, he said and added that Mumbai police has cracked several international level cases in the past. Sources in Mumbai police said they informed the Bihar police that if they continue to interfere, then they will not be allowed and actions will be also taken against them. The Sushant Singh Rajput case is in the Supreme Court. Let the court decide who should probe the case, whether it is Bihar police or Mumbai police, or it should be handed over to the CBI. We should wait for the final judgment of the court, said a senior police officer. Popcorn and Inspiration: Films that uplift the soul Not Rated| 1h 52min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir Film noir, the classic genre of crime and mystery films, isnt usually considered uplifting. However, these films can be very entertaining and sometimes, surprisingly, inspiring. One such film is The Asphalt Jungle (1950). German criminal mastermind Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) arrives in a Midwestern city after his release from jail. He immediately visits bookie Cobby (Marc Lawrence) with a plan for a major heist. Fifty-thousand dollars will finance a jewelry store robbery yielding over $1 million in profit. Cobby helps him choose the heist team, including safecracker Louis Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), driver Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), hooligan Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), and financial backer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern), plus Doc. Each man wants the money for a different reason, and each has a different grudge. Ciavelli supports a wife (Teresa Celli) and baby, who are unaware of his dishonesty. Gus is a hunchback who runs a bar and protects petty criminal Dix. Dix was raised on a Kentucky farm, which his family lost after his father died. He started stealing to bet on horse races, hoping to earn enough money to buy back the farm. Emmerich is a successful lawyer who, unknown to anyone, has gone bankrupt. He has an adoring invalid wife (Dorothy Tree) but maintains a mistress (Marilyn Monroe). The plan becomes complicated when Emmerich agrees to finance it, although he is broke. He tells private detective Bob Brannom (Brad Dexter) his double-crossing scheme. He will convince Cobby to supply the initial $50,000. Then, promising to fence the jewelry, Emmerich will persuade the crooks to give him the jewels, go abroad, and sell them to start a new life. Brannom agrees to help for half of the profit. Meanwhile, Cobby pays corrupt policeman Lt. Ditrich (Barry Kelley) to keep his bookie joint open, even bribing him to forget seeing Doc. The crime is committed, but who will escape? Theatrical release poster for the 1950 film The Asphalt Jungle. (Public Domain) What Is Film Noir? The term film noir is used primarily to describe 1940s and 50s black-and-white films with dark subjects and cinematography featuring dark alleys, dimly lit streets, and other nocturnal backdrops for the often-criminal characters shady activities. Noir, French for black or dark, presumably applies to films with such moral coloring. French critic Nino Frank is often credited for coining this term in 1946. However, the term was used earlier. William Ahearn revealed in The Death of Film Noir: On the Streets of Paris that some French 1930s films were called film noir. For instance, in his 1938 review of Le Puritan, Francois Vinneuil called it the film noir, plunging into debauchery and crime. Does plunging into debauchery and crime define American film noir? Many said that because of the crime and violence in these American 1940s and 50s films, the films had flouted the Motion Picture Production Code. The Code served as Hollywoods guidelines for film decency that were strictly enforced 19341954 by its director Joseph I. Breen and his staff, according to Thomas Dohertys Hollywoods Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration. However, not every black-and-white crime movie is a film noir in the sense of its morality. In fact, the classification is based merely on opinion, since classic films werent intentionally made as such. This term didnt reach America until the mid-1950s or later. As film scholar Chris Fujiwara writes, earlier films makers didnt think of them as films noir; they thought they were making crime films, thrillers, mysteries, and romantic melodramas. The nonexistence of noir as a production category during the supposed heyday of noir obviously problematizes the history of the genre. It seems that film noir is a misleading, ambiguous term that is applied too eagerly. One should judge films individually, not try to label them. Crime Doesnt Pay If any movies are films noir, The Asphalt Jungle certainly is. It is frequently cited as an example of the genres criminal focus, for which people call noir notorious Code-violators. However, the Production Code did not forbid crime in films. It only forbade its glamorization, depictions likely to inspire imitation, and scenarios that created sympathy against the law. The Code, written by Martin J. Quigley and Father Daniel Lord in 1930, states: The sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin. This film properly handles its characters crimes and sins. They never look right or justified. The climactic jewel theft is too complex to be imitated, and the criminals who execute it are unsympathetic. Calculating Riedenschneiders weakness is lust for beautiful, young women, whom he obviously uses for selfish pleasures. Safecracker Ciavellis family makes him less likeable, since his crimes endanger them. Emmerichs infidelity is despicable, and he is so corrupt that he plans to betray his criminal cohorts and leave both his wife and mistress. Cobby, Gus, and Brannom are greedy, bitter men just out for themselves. Only Dix inspires sympathy. His sad past and determination to buy back his home are very relatable. While Cobby and Ciavelli think he is just a hooligan, Doc realizes that he is a man of honor. One Code passage applies to Dix: Sympathy with a person who sins is not the same as sympathy with the sin or crime of which he is guilty. We may feel sorry for the plight of the murderer or even understand the circumstances which led him to his crime: We may not feel sympathy with the wrong which he has done. While we wish Dix had found happiness, his crimes doom him. As the film ends with three criminals imprisoned and four dead, crime clearly doesnt pay. Sterling Hayden plays the only sympathetic criminal, Dix Handley, in The Asphalt Jungle. (Public Domain) Police Brutality and the Jungle Police brutality, a phrase frequently used in current headlines, is depicted in this film. Crooked cop Ditrich constantly neglects his duty by ignoring crimes for bribes. He sets the plot in motion by not reporting his discovery of Doc, allowing him to plot the robbery. Later, he pressures Cobby to confess the crimes details. Ditrich wont accept bribery now, seeing his chance to become a hero. Unable to intimidate Cobby with words, Ditrich slaps him repeatedly, beating him into sobbing submission. Under the Code, corrupt officials required punishment. Therefore, Ditrich goes to jail. Afterward, Police Commissioner Hardy (John McIntire) tells reporters that the jobs dirt corrupts perhaps one out of a hundred officers. The other ninety-nine are honest men trying to do an honest job. One policemans violence against a criminal should not discredit all police. Hardy switches on police radios, saying: We send police assistance to every one of those calls, cause theyre not just code numbers on a radio beam. Theyre cries for help. People are being cheated, robbed, murdered, raped. And that goes on 24 hours a day, every day in the year. And thats not exceptional; thats usual. Its the same in every city in the modern world. But suppose we had no police force, good or bad. Suppose we had [switching off the radios] just silence. Nobody to listen, nobody to answer. The battles finished. The jungle wins. The predatory beasts take over. Think about it. The Asphalt Jungle Director: John Huston Starring: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe, Marilyn Monroe Rating: Not Rated Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Released: June 1, 1950 (USA) Rated: 5 stars out of 5 Tiffany Brannan is an 18-year-old opera singer, Hollywood historian, travel writer, film blogger, vintage fashion expert, and ballet writer. In 2016, she and her sister founded the Pure Entertainment Preservation Society, an organization dedicated to reforming the arts by reinstating the Motion Picture Production Code. South Korean beauty giant Amorepacific has seen double-digit drops in revenue Notably, Amorepacific has witnessed a dramatic decrease of 93.2 per cent compared to its performance a year earlier. The company said in a regulatory filing that it posted KRW36.2 billion ($30.4 million) in operating profit for the quarter, compared with KRW110.4 billion ($92.56 million) last year. Revenue fell 24.7 per cent to KRW1.18 trillion ($989.18 million). Operating income for the April-June period was KRW35.2 billion, down 59.9 perc ent from a year ago, the company said in a regulatory filing. Sales fell 24.2 per cent to KRW1.05 trillion ($880.2 million), according to Yonhap. Amorepacific is the largest South Korean beauty conglomerate with various brands such as Innisfree, Sulwhasoo, Laneige, and Etude. The giant is present in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and more. Amorepacific once harboured ambitions of using the Southeast Asian market as a stepping stone for its vision to become a "Great Company" and ensure its beauty predominance in Asia. Previously, the group predicted that its cosmetics market in 10 countries of Southeast Asia would grow to KRW6.2 trillion ($1.2 billion) by 2020. Currently, Amorepacific has an extensive network in major cities of Vietnam, such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Besides, the South Korean player aims to invigorate its online business in the region by cooperating with e-commerce giants such as Lazada. The Nagaland government landed itself in a soup when it posted non-IAS officers as district magistrates or deputy commissioners in six of its 11 districts, in contravention of the All India Service Rules. The Centre has come down on the state government like a ton of bricks for misgovernance. According to sources, the department of personnel and training (DoPT) has written to Nagaland chief secretary Temjen Toy pointing out the contravention and also observing that there was no dearth of suitable IAS officers for the state government to take such a step. It is said that nine active IAS officers have been posted to ex-cadre or subordinate posts instead of as deputy commissioners. Apparently, Rule 9 of the IAS Cadre Rules states that cadre posts shall not be filled by a non-IAS officer barring a few exceptions, and it shall only be a temporary solution that requires the state government to take prior approval of the Centre. Interestingly, the state governor, R.N. Ravi, too, has written to chief minister Neiphiu Rio about initiating transfers only after prior approval of the governor. Seems like the start of a political battle, with babus as pawns. Kerala babus fall from grace The gold smuggling racket unearthed in Kerala has created a major controversy and a senior IAS officer staring at the abrupt end of his once brilliant career in the civil service. At the centre of the episode is M. Sivasankar, principal secretary to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan as well the state information technology secretary. Perhaps sensing that the scandal could be used to undermine his office, Vijayan was the first to demand an inquiry into the case, and promptly removed Sivasankar from the two posts that the babu held in the government. The accused babu now faces a probe into his connection with the main accused in the smuggling of 30 kg of gold. According to sources, Sivasankar wielded immense clout in the government and is widely credited with pitching Kerala as an ideal destination for investment. Known as a no-nonsense and hands-on babu, Sivasankar played a crucial role in the governments flagship projects such as providing high-speed Internet connectivity in the state and the Startup Mission, among others. This makes his fall even harder to comprehend for many of his colleagues. Lavasa can breathe easy, so can government The appointment of election commissioner Ashok Lavasa as vice-president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has clarified several things. Lavasa who was next in line to become chief election commissioner after the retirement of chief election commissioner Sunil Arora in April 2021 will now resign to take up his new assignment. He will be the first sitting EC to get another appointment before completing his term. The other EC Sushil Chandra will now be a natural claimant for the next CEC. The move also clears the deck for the government to appoint another ex-babu to the poll panel. Curiously, Lavasa apparently wasnt aware of his new appointment although many international institutions do not announce appointments unless the respective government is on board with the decision. A former Haryana cadre IAS officer who also led finance, environment, forests and civil aviation ministries, Lavasa has had a rocky relationship with the government once he became EC. He was the lone dissenter in the poll panel when it gave clean chits to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah for alleged poll violations in last years general elections. He and his family had to face a slew of IT notices for alleged misdemeanours. The new appointment will likely make Lavasa a relieved man. It may also come as a relief for the government to see a dissenter exit the poll panel at a time when critical state elections are coming up next year. Share a babu experience! Follow dilipthecherian@Twitter.com. Lets multiply the effect. The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month rose 28 percent from July 2019, satellite data showed Saturday, fueling fears the world's biggest rainforest will again be devastated by fires this year. Brazil's national space agency, INPE, identified 6,803 fires in the Amazon region in July 2020, up from 5,318 the year before. The figure is all the more troubling given that 2019 was already a devastating year for fires in the Amazon, triggering global outcry. That has put pressure on Brazil, which holds around 60 percent of the Amazon, to do more to protect the massive forest, seen as vital to containing the impact of climate change. The fires are largely set to clear land illegally for farming, ranching and mining. Activists accuse Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right climate change skeptic, of encouraging the deforestation with calls to open up the rainforest to agriculture and industry. On July 30 alone, satellites detected 1,007 fires in the Amazon, INPE said. That was the worst single day for fires in the month of July since 2005, said environmental group Greenpeace. "More than 1,000 fires in a single day is a 15-year record and shows the government's strategy of media-spectacle operations is not working on the ground," Greenpeace spokesman Romulo Batista said in a statement. Bolsonaro has deployed the army to fight the fires, but activists say that does not go far enough to address the causes of the problem. Fires increased 77 percent on indigenous lands and 50 percent on protected nature reserves from July 2019, Greenpeace said, showing how illegal activities are increasingly encroaching on those areas. Fire season in the region typically runs from around June to October. Exacerbating the situation this year, experts say the resulting smoke risks causing a spike in respiratory emergencies in a region already hit hard by COVID-19. Brazil has more infections and deaths from the new coronavirus than any country except the United States: more than 2.6 million and 92,000, respectively. INPE data had already showed it was a record-breaking July for fires in the Brazilian Pantanal, the largest tropical wetlands in the world. There were 1,684 fires there last month, more than triple the number in July 2019. In a politically turbulent Hong Kong, the decision to postpone legislative elections for the first time since the citys return to China is likely to fan flames even further. Citing a recent surge in coronavirus cases, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced on Friday evening that elections for seats in the citys legislature will not go ahead on the scheduled date of Sept. 6. Such is the sensitivity of the issue, though, that Lam spoke for 30 minutes before revealing that the hotly contested elections would instead be held a whole year later, on Sept. 5, 2021. Lam said she is invoking emergency powers to push back the date and that the delay is "supported" by Beijing. Lam described it as "the hardest decision I have made in the past seven months, adding that it was "necessary" to "protect public health, people's lives and guarantee fairness of the election. Hong Kong is currently in its third and most widespread wave of infections with more than 1,800 cases over the last three weeks. Lam noted that the pandemic has forced other places to delay elections, including the United Kingdom and the Australian state of New South Wales. However, elections in Singapore and South Korea have gone ahead. Former legislator Emily Lau told ABC News that the government is using the coronavirus outbreak as an excuse to delay an election that would have dealt pro-Beijing heavyweights a crushing defeat. MORE: Trump suggests delaying 2020 election, a power designated to Congress "Who is Carrie Lam trying to fool?" said Lau, who served as a lawmaker for 25 years after becoming the first woman to be elected in 1991. "Pro-Beijing political parties and candidates are worried they will lose the election very badly, like they lost in the district council election last year," said Lau. The move comes on the heels of a controversial decision to bar 12 pro-democratic candidates from taking part in the election. Story continues Among the disqualified candidates are prominent activist Joshua Wong and Civic Party leader Alvin Yeung. PHOTO: Pro-democracy activists Ivan Lam, Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow arrive to the Eastern Court for hearing in Hong Kong, China July 6, 2020. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters) Before the disqualifications, the pan-democratic camp was expected to gain a historic majority in the legislature from the momentum of the protests last year, as well as the unpopularity of the National Security Law. On Wednesday night, police arrested four people aged 16-21 on suspicion of being involved in an online group that pledged to fight for Hong Kong independence, something that is illegal under the new law. For Emily Lau, these recent developments are a clear sign that China is breaking promises made in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. "This policy of One Country, Two Systems, under which Hong Kong should enjoy a high degree of autonomy, human rights, the rule of law and personal safety. I think thats all gone out of the window. It is a very, very sad day for Hong Kong. Prior to Lams announcement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that if the September elections were postponed "it will be another marker that will simply prove that the Chinese Communist Party has now made Hong Kong just another communist-run city." MORE: As Trump suggests delaying election, White House condemns Hong Kong for postponing its own vote In postponing the elections, the Hong Kong government now faces a constitutional conundrum. The Basic Law only allows for a two-week delay. Lam may need Beijing to step in to amend the citys mini-constitution to allow the current legislature to serve for one more year. To make matters more complicated, some of the candidates who were disqualified are incumbent lawmakers. The question becomes: Will they be allowed to stay? Hong Kong legislative elections postponed, democrats cry foul originally appeared on abcnews.go.com DALLAS Braemar Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (BHR) on Thursday reported a loss in funds from operations in its second quarter, after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier. The results matched Wall Street expectations. The Dallas-based real estate investment trust said it had a funds from operations loss of $25.1 million, or 58 cents per share, in the period. The average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for a funds from operations loss of 58 cents per share. Funds from operations is a closely watched measure in the REIT industry. It takes net income and adds back items such as depreciation and amortization. The company said it had a loss of $46.3 million, or $1.41 per share. The hotel owner posted revenue of $12.9 million in the period, falling short of Street forecasts. Four analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $16.5 million. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, the companys shares hit $2.44. A year ago, they were trading at $9.12. _____ This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on BHR at https://www.zacks.com/ap/BHR By Online Desk After Rajya Sabha MP and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh passed away after a prolonged illness on Saturday in a Singapore hospital, condolences poured in from all corners to mourn his demise. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and a host of senior party leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, condoled the Rajya Sabha MP's death. While Sonia Gandhi sent her condolences to Singh's family, Rahul Gandhi along with other party leaders took to Twitter to express grief. "I am saddened to hear about the sad demise of Amar Singh ji. My condolences to his family and loved ones," Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet. I am saddened to hear about the sad demise of Amar Singh ji. My condolences to his family and loved ones. Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 1, 2020 Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel said he was anguished to hear about the passing away of Singh. "He will always be remembered as a valued colleague and wonderful human being. My condolences to his family and well-wishers," he tweeted. Anguished to hear about the passing away of Amar Singh ji. He will always be remembered as a valued colleague and wonderful human being. My condolences to his family and well wishers. Ahmed Patel (@ahmedpatel) August 1, 2020 President Ram Nath Kovind in a tweet wrote that Singh was a 'man of many parts and an able parliamentarian'. "Sad to hear of the demise of senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Shri Amar Singh. A man of many parts, Singh was an able parliamentarian. Condolences to his family, friends and well-wishers," Kovind wrote. Sad to hear of the demise of senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Shri Amar Singh. A man of many parts, Singh was an able parliamentarian. Condolences to his family, friends and well-wishers. President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) August 1, 2020 Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also expressed his grief and said that Singh was a renowned politician and social worker and that his demise was an irreparable loss to politics and society. He prayed for peace for the departed leader and for strength and courage for the bereaved family. Meanwhile, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Pratap Sarangi also extended their condolences. "Deeply saddened to learn about the passing away of veteran leader & Rajya Sabha MP #AmarSingh. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved family. May his soul rest in peace," Patnaik tweeted. Deeply saddened to learn about the passing away of veteran leader & Rajya Sabha MP #AmarSingh. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved family. May his soul rest in peace. Naveen Patnaik (@Naveen_Odisha) August 1, 2020 BJP leader and Union Petroleum, Steel Minister Dharmendra Pradhan described Singh as a seasoned politician. "Saddened to learn about the passing away of seasoned politician and Rajya Sabha MP, Shri Amar Singh ji. My deepest condolences to his family and friends in their hour of grief. May God grant eternal peace to the departed soul. Om Shanti!," Pradhan tweeted. Saddened to learn about the passing away of seasoned politician and Rajya Sabha MP, Shri Amar Singh ji. My deepest condolences to his family and friends in their hour of grief. May God grant eternal peace to the departed soul. Om Shanti! Dharmendra Pradhan (@dpradhanbjp) August 1, 2020 Singh, 64, was reportedly undergoing treatment in Singapore for kidney related ailments and was in ICU, with his family by his side when he took his last breath. (With PTI inputs) A lawyer for the man accused of fatally shooting Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster in Texas has identified his client as an active-duty sergeant in the Army, and released a statement saying the shooting was an act of self-defense. Sgt. Daniel Perry shot 28-year-old Foster in downtown Austin July 25 at a late-evening protest, according to Perry's attorney, Clint Broden of the Dallas-based firm Broden Mickelson. In a statement, Broden said Perry had been working for a ride-share service when he turned right onto Congress Avenue and encountered the protesters. Foster, who was seen carrying an "AK-47-style" assault rifle, motioned to Perry to roll down his driver's-side window, then raised his rifle at him, according to Broden's statement. The Washington Post first published the statement in full. The law firm did not immediately respond to Military.com's request for additional comment. Law enforcement officials have not publicly identified the shooter in the case. Read Next: Marines Suspend All AAV Water Ops As Search for 8 Missing Troops Continues "It was only then that Sgt. Perry, who carried a handgun in his car for his own protection while driving strangers in the ride share program, fired on the person to protect his own life," the statement continues. Army Lt. Col. Chris Brautigam, a spokesman for 1st Cavalry Division, out of Fort Hood, Texas, confirmed to Military.com that Perry was an active-duty sergeant assigned to 1st Cav. "Any questions or information requests related to the ongoing Austin Police investigation should be addressed to the Austin Police public information officer," he said. "The unit continues to cooperate with the Austin Police Department in their ongoing investigation." Brautigam did not confirm any additional career specifics for Perry, but Broden's statement said he had served honorably for eight years, deployed once to Afghanistan and "has been the recipient of numerous [A]rmy awards and commendations." Foster also had a history of service; he was a former Air Force flight mechanic who received an early discharge to provide full-time care to his fiancee, Whitney Mitchell, a quadruple amputee. There is some disagreement among witnesses regarding what took place in the confrontation. Witnesses told the Austin American-Statesman that Perry's car had appeared to accelerate into the crowd, and also that Foster had his weapon pointed down. "In a Facebook Live video of the hours-long march, a car honking is heard before two volleys of gunshots, a total of eight rounds, were unleashed. Several screaming protesters immediately took cover," according to the American-Statesman report. The statement from Perry's attorney offers a different view. "Immediately after Sgt. Perry fired on the individual who raised the assault rifle toward him, a member of the crowd began firing on Sgt. Perry's vehicle," it says. "Sgt. Perry drove to safety and immediately called the police. He waited for the police to arrive and fully cooperated with the police following the shooting and he continues to do so." Austin Police Chief Brian Manley confirmed to reporters on Monday that the driver of the car had called 911 and turned himself in. Perry was initially taken into police custody but later released. Another individual identified as shooting at Perry's vehicle was also questioned and released, Manley said at the time, according to a Washington Post report. Both, he noted, had a license to carry. "Sgt. Perry and his family deeply sympathize with the loss and grief being experienced by Mr. Foster's family. Sgt. Perry is devastated by what happened. Nevertheless, that does not change facts," according to the statement. "The simple fact is that Sgt. Perry reasonably perceived a threat to his life when ... We simply ask that anybody who might want to criticize Sgt. Perry's actions, picture themselves trapped in a car as a masked stranger raises an assault rifle in their direction and reflect upon what they might have done if faced with the split second decision faced by Sgt. Perry that evening." Austin police officials have said the investigation into Foster's killing remains active. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. Related: Air Force Veteran Shot and Killed in Austin Protest Recently, Pratigya actor Anupam Shyam was admitted in ICU at a Mumbai hospital. He is currently being treated for kidney infection and his family had earlier asked the film and television industry for financial help. Sonu Sood, Manoj Bajpayee and Shaleen Bhanot had offered financial help. Now, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has extended his help to the actor. Apparently, he has asked the UP government officials to help the actor. As per ANI report, besides providing financial aid, the Chief Minister is also praying for the actor's speedy recovery. ANI tweeted, "UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed senior officers to extend all possible support to TV actor Anupam Shyam Ojha who is unwell & undergoing treatment at a hospital in Mumbai. Ojha is a native of Pratapgarh district: Chief Minister's Office." Also, as per UNI report, the ailing actor has got financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh from independent MLA from Kunda Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya for his treatment. Anupam's brother had revealed that Anurag collapsed during dialysis and they rushed him to Lifeline Hospital immediately. He had said that the actor is in ICU. Anurag also said that the actor could not get a good treatment due to financial crisis. He had informed his friends about his health and has also reached out to Being Human through their website. Anurag also added that he even got a call from the Bollywood actor Manoj Bajpayee, who said he will look into the matter. Well, we hope the actor gets the required help and recovers soon. Also Read: Pratigya Actor Anupam Shyam Admitted In ICU; Actor's Family Seek Financial Help Also Read: Shaleen Bhanot Visits Anupam Shyam In Hospital; Offers Him Help Fintan Warfield says that a torrent of homophobic and transphobic abuse he suffered on Twitter led to an in-person attack outside Leinster House last week. The 28 year old senator, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, has called on social media networks to take action against online harassment before they are forced to by law. He has set his Twitter and Instagram social media profiles to private following the incident. It comes as Childrens Minister Roderic OGorman recently said he was the victim of a far-right social media pile-on by groups using misinformation to play on concerns about child protection issues. The Green Party politican described a homophobic element to the online abuse he received. He said his predecessor Katherine Zappone had been subjected to similar attacks for being gay and because she did not have children Advertisement Many of Mr Warfields political colleagues have expressed solidarity with the senator. Deep in the psyche of people there is a sickness. A sickness that eats into humanity, soul & ability to love and let live. They take their self-loathing & hate and aim at others. Its easier to target hate at others than do the work on yourself. I love my friend @fintanwarfield pic.twitter.com/yUMUGTLaCS Senator Lynn Ruane (@SenLynnRuane) July 31, 2020 Throughout the 20th century, the United States was the largest global exporter of most grains and oilseeds, including corn, wheat, and soybeans. In recent years, other countries and regions have grown in importance the Black Sea has become a major player in corn and wheat and South America has emerged as a leading global supplier of soybeans. Specifically, in the last several years, Brazil has overtaken the United States as the worlds largest producer and exporter of soybeans. Brazil emerged as a significant soybean producer during the 1970s and 1980s, as different varieties of soybeans more adaptable to the Brazilian climate were introduced. Over the decades, production moved from the southern Brazilian states of Parana and Rio Grande do Sul into the Center-West region and states like Moto Grosso. The Center-West now produces about half of the soybeans in Brazil. Why Brazil? Several factors allowed Brazil to emerge as the global leader in soybean production and exports. First, Brazil simply had a significant amount of usable and relatively inexpensive land on which to grow crops. Production growth in the United States has been driven predominately by yield growth since the 1980s, while Brazil production growth has been driven by both yield growth and land under cultivation. Thus, Brazil has multiplied its production by a factor of eight, while United States production has grown by 130 percent. Second, Brazil was lacking the underlying infrastructure to move physical product and spent years investing in roads and railways to solve the issues. The famous BR-163 highway, connecting Mato Grosso to the Amazon river and export ports, was finally completed in 2019, and will likely lower the cost of bringing Brazilian soybeans to market. In addition to Brazilian investment, China has been involved in the funding of railway projects that could further benefit the production and export of Brazilian soybeans. As Brazils influence in the soybean market has grown, so too has the importance of the risk factors faced by producers in the United States and Brazil Story continues A Smaller Share for the US Although the United States continues to produce and export more soybeans each crop year, the pace of both production and exports is much lower than the growth from Brazil. A few decades ago, the United States was responsible for about 80 percent of the entire worlds soybean exports. In crop year 2019/2020, the U.S. only accounted for about 29 percent of global soybean exports, while Brazil accounted for 37 percent. Therefore, even though both countries are continuing to grow their exports, a larger share of the global export pie is being captured by Brazil. In general, both the United States and Brazil find destinations for their soybean exports. Global demand continues to grow, especially in China, and that growth will likely allow both countries to continue to expand production. This is helped by the fact that the production cycles of the United States and Brazil are staggered through the year Brazil usually harvests soybeans in and around March while the United States harvests in October and November. The U.S. trade war with China broke down the usually steady price relationship between U.S. and Brazilian soybeans Therefore, Brazil tends to supply Chinese soybean demand from March through October, and the United States exports soybeans to China from October through March. Additionally, the price relationship between U.S. soybeans and Brazilian soybeans is usually stable. However, in times of disruption, such as during the U.S.-China trade war that started in 2018, the relationship between U.S. soybean prices and Brazilian soybean prices breaks down. To address such shakeups in the market, a product that would facilitate price discovery and price risk management between U.S. and Brazilian soybeans benefit the market significantly. First, hedgers with any exposure to Brazilian soybean price movements will have a direct tool to offset their risk. Though the Chicago Board Of Trade CBOT Soybean futures contract remains the global benchmark, Brazil is now the largest soybean producer and exporter in the world, and a derivatives contract that tracks the regional price is needed. Commercial firms with facilities in the United States, China, and/or Brazil will be able to trade the spread and manage their exposure across the globe or use one contract during the relevant harvest and export months. Lastly, a tool will be available to use in times of market interference or disruption when the Brazil-U.S. soybean basis is less stable, such as during a trade war. As Brazils influence in the soybean market has grown, so too has the importance of the risk factors faced by producers in the United States and Brazil. Weather, trade, and other common risks take on global importance, and each have a material impact on the price of the worlds soybeans. About Alison Coughlin Alison Coughlin is Director of Commodity Research and Product Development at CME Group. She is based in Chicago. The post Brazil Has Become The Worlds Top Soybean Producer appeared first on Emerging Market Views. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Kurt Kunz (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 08:38 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ad1ae6 3 Opinion SwitzerlandEmbassy,switzerland Free Today, Switzerland celebrates its national day amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which is not only a severe health crisis but also has a deep and threatening impact on livelihoods and development prospects of people around the world. A national day is a time of reflection. Solidarity, especially in times of adversity, and broadly shared principles that guide us on our way to move forward are part of it. This year, in Indonesia, we decided to hold a virtual celebration, which is unprecedented and exciting for all of us. A crisis makes us aware of how much we depend on each other. This goes beyond national borders. The pandemic underscores the importance of a strong and reliable multilateral system, a point that was emphasized by Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations last June, when he stated that we need a coordinated response to overcome such crises together. Read also: Swiss doctor pans plastic visors after COVID-19 hits restaurant workers Switzerland provides US$400 million to the global efforts to combat COVID-19 and its consequences. The funds are channeled through a number of international organizations, allowing them to redeploy and increase funding for their national programs, as is the case in Indonesia. Several Swiss companies in Indonesia either provided grant funding or offered other substantial services to support the government and communities in combatting COVID-19. Switzerlands international commitment has its roots in our own experience. Our cultural diversity, political institutions and traditions in particular the populations participation in democratic processes federalism and consensual democracy are at the same time guiding themes of Swiss foreign policy. In the coming years, Switzerlands foreign policy will focus on peace and security, prosperity, sustainability and an open and secure digital space. Switzerland is a longstanding, trustful and reliable partner in the search for sustainable solutions to global challenges. We seek to become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the period 2023-24 in order to further contribute to a peaceful, rules-based international order and to make international bodies more efficient. Switzerland wants to be A plus for peace. The UNs 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets universally agreed and ambitious goals in the social, economic and environmental spheres. These goals knit us together, and I appreciate the strong partnership that exists between Switzerland, Indonesia and ASEAN. Sustainability is a consistent theme in our relations. It is a guiding principle of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed between the countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and Indonesia. Sustainability is also at the heart of Switzerlands bilateral economic cooperation and development program, which contributes to inclusive and sustainable economic development in Indonesia. Through our projects in the areas of small and medium enterprise (SME) development, tourism promotion, sustainable urban development as well as public financial management, we support the country in achieving its development priorities and in responding to the current challenges posed by COVID-19. We are particularly proud to continue our collaboration with Indonesia in the area of skills development, which we started almost 50 years ago by setting up the Politeknik Mekanik Swiss, today known as POLMAN Bandung. Mutual support is another key feature of our relations. In mid-July, the Indonesian House of Representatives approved the bilateral Agreement on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters; said Agreement is still under consideration in the Swiss parliament. The Agreement creates a basis in international law upon which justice authorities of our two countries can cooperate to detect and prosecute criminal activities, in particular crimes such as corruption and money laundering. Read also: Indonesia-Swiss MLA: Tool to combat tax crime, recover stolen assets Indonesia is located on the ring of fire, making it particularly vulnerable to natural disasters triggered by geological and climatological hazards. Switzerland has been a trustworthy partner in times of need, be it after the 2004 tsunami in Aceh or 2018 in Palu, Central Sulawesi. Last week, I signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in disaster management with Lt. Gen. Doni Monardo, head of the National Disaster Management Authority (BNPB), and I look forward to the activities that will be conducted. Sustainability and mutual support are also key features of our sectoral dialogue partnership with ASEAN. We work together on data collection: In order to achieve the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, governments need to focus their activities based on reliable indicators. We work together on technical and vocational education and training (TVET): Teaching relevant skills improves livelihoods and productivity. We work together on climate change: The tree we planted at the ASEAN Secretariat in February symbolizes the 10-year partnership on social forestry and climate change. We work together on human rights: We will only find sustainable solutions if everyone is free to express their opinion and governments listen. The COVID-19 crisis, a more fragmented political and economic order and the urgent necessity to protect our environment and natural resources pose us many challenges. The National Day is an opportunity to reflect on how to move forward together with our partners in Indonesia and ASEAN. *** The writer is Swiss Ambassador to Indonesia, Timor-Leste and ASEAN. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Topics : SwitzerlandEmbassy switzerland A Council Bluffs man convicted of being in possession of child pornography will be spending years behind bars. Michael Brandstrom, 29, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Christina Goodgame Ebinger to 30 years imprisonment for producing child pornography and 10 years for being in possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Iowa. The sentences will run consecutively one after the other. The federal sentence, court records show, is running concurrently, or simultaneously, with the defendants prison sentence in Pottawattamie County for third-degree kidnapping and committing lascivious acts with a child. Following release, court records show Brandstrom is required to complete 15 years of post-release supervision. He is also being ordered to pay a $200 special assessment to the Crime Victims Fund and $10,500 in restitution to numerous victims. The charges stem from an investigation initiated by local law enforcement after a mother reported her 4-year-old child missing from their apartment in Council Bluffs on Sept. 2, 2019. As Council Bluffs Police officers searched the apartment complex, Brandstrom brought the missing child out to them, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. Brandstrom was reportedly nervous when questioned by the police, his story was not consistent as to why he did not contact police when he located the child and the childs shirt was inside out. Brandstrom had taken the child into his apartment without the consent of his or her mother and the child disclosed that Brandstrom took pictures of the minor in his bathroom. A search warrant was executed on Brandstroms apartment and a laptop and two cell phones were seized for forensic analysis, court records show. The analysis of the devices revealed a large number of child pornography images and videos, including those of the child he kidnapped. The analysis of the laptop computer also identified communication Brandstrom had with children from another country where he attempted to sexually exploit them. This investigation was conducted by the Council Bluffs Police Department and United States Secret Service. The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Iowa and the Pottawattamie County Attorneys Office. Herman Cain dies at 74 after battling COVID-19: 'He has gone to be with the Lord' Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Herman Cain has died at 74 after being hospitalized with the coronavirus. Cains death was announced Thursday on his website by editor Dan Calabrese who said the conservative businessman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate had gone to be with the Lord. Herman Cain our boss, our friend, like a father to so many of us has passed away, Calabrese said in the blog post. We all prayed so hard every day. We knew the time would come when the Lord would call him home, but we really liked having him here with us, and we held out hope hed have a full recovery. Survivors include his wife, Gloria Etchison, and his two children, Melanie and Vincent, Calabrese said. Cains death was also confirmed on his official Twitter account. You're never ready for the kind of news we are grappling with this morning. But we have no choice but to seek and find God's strength and comfort to deal, the tweet reads. You're never ready for the kind of news we are grappling with this morning. But we have no choice but to seek and find God's strength and comfort to deal... #HermanCainhttps://t.co/BtOgoLVqKz Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) July 30, 2020 Cain, who was co-chair of Black Voices for Trump and survivor of stage 4 colon cancer, announced his COVID-19 infection on July 2, just over a week after attending a rally for President Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to a statement posted to his social media accounts at the time, he did not require a respirator and was awake and alert when he checked in to the hospital. Please join with us in praying for Mr. Cain, and for everyone who has contracted the coronavirus as well as their families, it said. Cains social media accounts occasionally provided updates on his condition. A message on July 5 said he was making progress and that more encouraging news was expected to come soon. On July 10, another tweet said Cain himself described his status as cruise control, because the progress is slow but his breathing is getting stronger every day. Make no mistake: He is improving! This is a tough virus, but we serve a tougher God. Herman wants to get back in action soon, so please continue praying, another tweet said. Before moving into Republican politics and eventually becoming a presidential candidate, Cain had been a business executive and board chairman of a branch of Kansas Citys Federal Reserve Bank. Last year, Trump briefly considered picking Cain as his nominee to join the Federal Reserve Board. Throughout his career, Cain was open about his Christian faith and how it defined his life. "Faith has been a big part of my life, all of my life. I joined the Baptist Church at the age of 10. It's the same church my parents joined in the mid-1940s, he said, according to Deseret News. "Our parents took us to church," he said. "They were involved in the church. We got involved in the church. As I got older, my faith grew. You have to develop your own level of faith as you get older. It has always been a big part of my life." Cain said his faith "was really tested in 2006 when I was diagnosed with stage-four cancer, but my faith helped me get through that experience. It has always been a big part of our lives and it always will. It shapes my values." Several high-profile figures mourned Cain's death on social media. Herman Cain embodied the American Dream and represented the very best of the American spirit, tweeted White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Our hearts grieve for his loved ones, and they will remain in our prayers at this time. We will never forget his legacy of grace, patriotism, and faith. Herman Cain embodied the American Dream and represented the very best of the American spirit. Our hearts grieve for his loved ones, and they will remain in our prayers at this time. We will never forget his legacy of grace, patriotism, and faith. Kayleigh McEnany (@PressSec) July 30, 2020 Fox News correspondent Sara Carter tweeted, "Im going to really miss him. Praying for his family in their time of sorrow. He was a great American." Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said Friday that he has sought to ease allies' concerns about the U.S. military becoming involved in law enforcement actions in response to nationwide protests. "As we talk to other countries and other militaries, we have that discussion to make sure they understand that the purpose of the U.S. Army is to protect the nation, not police the nation," he said. "We should leave policing the nation to law enforcement." Read Next: 1 Marine Dead, 8 More Missing After AAV Accident Off California Coast "When it comes to the military, we need to do the right thing, the right way, in all circumstances," McConville said in response to questions at a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum on the Army's role in the Indo-Pacific region. He had been asked whether the turmoil across the nation is affecting the "U.S. brand" overseas and possibly raising questions among allies about military-to-military partnerships. "We did not deploy regular Army troops" in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere during disturbances, McConville stressed, although such units were briefly poised at bases on the District's outskirts in early June. "As far as employing regular Army troops" for domestic law enforcement, "that's only to be done as the absolute last resort. Even the National Guard should only be employed as a last resort," he added. In the Indo-Pacific region, the Army's top priority is developing long-range, precision-fire artillery and missiles to counter China, and securing basing rights from allies for the weapons systems, McConville said. "We know we need long-range precision fires," including extended-range artillery, he said, adding that the Army will seek to protect the weapons systems should defense budgets decline in coming years. To back up the long-range weapons, "We're standing up a new organization. It's called multi-domain task forces that provide the ability to do long-range precision effects," McConville said. Where the new weapons would go in the region has yet to be decided, he added. "That's something we're still working on," he explained. "As far as the exact positioning, we do have some capability in the extremely long-range precision fires to give us certain effects, but that capability as far as exact positioning is still being determined." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Related: Guard Major Questioned About Plans to Fly Army Helicopters Low over DC Protesters Finally, in addition to new resources and greater collaboration, we call for a booster shot of empathy and grace. For Richmond to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice for its children, to paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we all must dedicate time and emotional energy toward truly understanding each others lives. In short, we need to listen more and assume less. And we need to extend each other grace. All Richmonders are struggling to navigate both COVID-19 and our countrys 400 years of racism all while managing the daily turbulence of life in this era. We, the adults from our City Council to our General Assembly to the two of us need to care for one another if were going to have any shot of creating a healthier future for the next generation. Without care, collaboration and courageous investment, we cant dismantle the inequities of yesterday. To create a new normal of justice, opportunity and happiness for our children, we have to newly embrace and truly enact the change our kids deserve. New Delhi, Aug 1 : The all-important Governing Council meeting of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to take place on Sunday. And all the eight franchises are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the meeting as they look to move into the final stages of preparations for the league to be played in the UAE this time round due to COVID-19 pandemic. While IPL Chairman Brijesh Patel has already said that all minute details with regards to the conduct of the cash-rich league will be discussed in Sunday's meeting, franchises have told IANS that the four major areas of focus for them are confirmation of the tournament and schedule, the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) with an eye on the coronavirus, confirmation of availability of overseas players and finally the logistical plan with regards to family travel. Confirmation of the tournament and schedule: While there have been talks here and there about the BCCI requesting the government for permission on the hosting of the league in the UAE and getting the necessary approvals, some of the franchises are still waiting for the final clearance before getting done with the visa and necessary travel plans. Also, on and off, there have been talks about an extension in the window of the league. "We are yet to get the final word on the tournament which will then see us get our visas done. We need to understand that at this point in time which is the category under which we shall apply for visas. This is something that the BCCI will have to guide us with," an official of a franchise said. Another official said that there have been quite a few reports in the media about an extension of dates. "While we initially read that Patel had confirmed the September 19-November 8 window, there have been talks of having the final on November 10. So, we do need a final clarity along with an idea on the days we are getting between matches and which are the venues we are playing at," the official explained. Standard Operating Procedures: With an eye on the coronavirus pandemic, teams want a clear guideline on the dos and don'ts. "We are yet to get clarity when it comes to what is allowed inside the bio-bubble and what is not. If there will be more than one team in a hotel. How do we go about it if players want outside food? Will we have a team for that separately? Also, what happens if someone has to leave the bubble for an emergency, what will be the procedure for induction or if an injured player is replaced, how does that player join the rest of the squad? Will he then have to undergo quarantine even though UAE rules don't call for quarantine measures if he has a negative report. "We have quite a few questions and hopefully the answers will come with the GC meeting. Also, if the BCCI medical team will be the final word or the franchise medical teams will be in-charge of the respective teams," a team official said. Availability of foreign players: While England and Australia are expected to play a bilateral series till September 15, the West Indies players along with some of the foreign stars will be busy till September 10 with the Caribbean Premier League. Not to forget that South African players have their own problem as the increase in cases has seen the federal government restrict air travel. And so, franchises want a clarity on these matters. "Will the English and Australian players miss the first round of games as they come from the UK to Dubai? What about the players coming in from playing in the CPL? Will they need to be handled differently? But most importantly, we need a word on the status of the South African players because all of us have players from there who are integral parts of our teams. We have had informal talks about flying all of them into UAE on a chartered plane, but the final call depends on the BCCI's directives on the same," an official explained. Logistical planning with eye on family: Franchises are more or less convinced that the players deserve to have at least their immediate family with them for a short span of time through the 60-day period. Five franchises have told IANS that it would be a plus keeping in mind the interest of the players. "We are told that there will be a cap on the number of people who will be allowed to be with each of the eight teams. But we would like to hear from the BCCI on whether the players can be allowed to have their wives and girlfriends for a short span of time as going out of the hotel isn't an option. "Also, some clarity is needed on the total group allowed per team because you do need net bowlers and people to help with conducting training. If UAE as hosts will be providing the training personnel or how do we need to plan around the members cap -- these are things we are hoping to get clarity about tomorrow," an official of an IPL team said. Latest updates on IPL 2020 Wilkes-Barre, PA (18701) Today Variable clouds with snow showers. High 34F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 40%.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low around 20F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Transparency about police disciplinary investigations has been hard to achieve, often blocked by powerful unions. ProPublica has sped up the process in New York by circumventing a judge's order and publishing thousands of formerly secret discipline records. A federal judge barred The City of New York and its Civilian Complaint Review Board from releasing the data, issue similar restrictions to the New York Civil Liberties Union. Since ProPublica was not named, they published what others could not. Via their announcement: The database lists active-duty officers who've had at least one allegation against them substantiated by the CCRB: That's about 4,000 officers out of the NYPD's 36,000-member force. Unions for city police officers, firefighters and corrections officers have sued New York City to stop the disclosure of most of these and other disciplinary records. The unions objected to the release of any cases other than "proven and final disciplinary matters." That would exclude the vast majority of complaints against officers. Photo by Jiarong Deng from Pexels Manama Sea food lovers in the King- dom are free to put delicious shrimps back on their menu, starting today. Authorities had lifted a six-month ban on shrimping, which began on February 1 to help replenish stocks. The news also brings much-needed relief to fisher- men who were reeling under the hardships brought by the coronavirus pandemic. The Agriculture and Marine Resources Agency of the Minis- try of Works, Municipal Affairs and Urban Planning yesterday in a statement confirmed the lifting of the ban, starting today. The annual shrimping, ear- lier four-months, was extend- ed to six-months based on the finding that shrimps need at least six months to reach ma- turity and reproduce. The move in line with the decision of the Minister of Works, Municipal Affairs and Urban Planning Esam Khalaf is as per Resolution No. (18) for the year 2020. The government announced the six-month mor- atorium on shrimping, locally called Rubyan at the start of February this year. By PTI SINGAPORE: Three persons, including two children who returned from India, have tested positive for COVID-19 in Singapore, the health ministry has said, as the number of coronavirus infections in the country rose to 52,512. A 13-year-old boy, who is a permanent resident here, and a 28-year-old woman on a dependant's pass arrived from India on July 19, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said. They were asymptomatic and were tested while on stay-home notice. The third case is a six-year-old Singaporean girl who arrived from India on July 3. The three imported cases were reported on Friday. Singapore on Saturday reported 307 new coronavirus cases, taking the country's total count to 52,512. The new cases include one community case, who is a Singaporean, said the MOH. The rest 306 were foreign workers living in dormitories. There were also five imported cases who had been placed on stay-home notices upon arrival in Singapore. There are currently 136 confirmed patients hospitalized while 5,551 are isolated and cared for at community facilities for mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19. In all, 46,491 COVID-19 patients have fully recovered from the infection. One of the most memorable couples in 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After history is Angela Deem and Michael Ilesanmi. Angela has finally returned to Nigeria, and this time shell be marrying Michael. Before traveling, Angela had to go through a painful procedure after her doctor found unusual cells. This week, Angela sits down to tell Michael something, and shes most likely going to fill him in on her health scare. Angela Deem has a procedure with laughing gas to rule out cancer Angela Deem and Michael Ilesanmi | deemangela via Instagram Angela has to endure an endometrial biopsy at her gynecologists office. After going to the doctor a few weeks ago, she was told they found unusual cells and need to rule out cancer. The painful ordeal is obviously very nerve-racking for her, as it would be for anyone going through something like that. Angelas doctor says that the biopsy is done with a tiny tube that goes up through the cervix to get a sample. Angela lays down, and starts to scream from the pain. The doctor finally goes with the nitrous oxide, or laughing gas option, and it definitely helps ease the tension. The doctor says that nitrous oxide isnt usually necessary for this procedure, and she also mentions that shes never had to use it during one before. It seems to be helping Angela though, and she laughs and asks why they didnt use the stuff in the first place. Even after the procedure, Angela cant stop laughing from the laughing gas. At least Angela was able to get through the whole thing, but now she has to tell Michael. Michael and his family want him to have kids RELATED: 90 Day Fiance: Fans Discuss 1 of the Most Talked About Moments Between Angela Deem and Michael Ilesanmi Michael is in his early 30s, and Angela is 54. Michael and his family want him to have children, and Angela has even gone to a fertility clinic to learn about her options to see if she can tote a baby for Michael. Its a serious concern for the couple. However, this realization that she could have cancer is in the back of her head, and it could change their immediate plans for a family. Will Michael want to stay with Angela if this keeps her from being able to carry a child? Can their relationship survive this stressful situation? Will Angela tell Michael about her health scare? In a preview for the upcoming episode, Angela sits down with Michael to tell him something serious during her stay in Nigeria. It seems like its going to be about the procedure she recently had. Before we plan this wedding, I need to talk to you about something serious, Angela says to Michael. I think you have the right to know now. Angela takes a deep breath before going forward. Im really afraid and concerned it could mess up our relationship, Angela tells the cameras. Its unclear exactly what this serious talk is regarding, but its most likely in reference to Angelas health scare. Of course, Michael should know about whats going on, so he can be by her side while she navigates whats happening. Did Angela get the results yet? That isnt yet known either. Its possible that she still doesnt know the results of the procedure, but shes filling Michael in on whats going on. Hopefully, this conversation will be good for Angela, since shes clearly nervous to talk to Michael about it. (Newser) One of the key figures in the impeachment hearings for President Trump says his testimony effectively ended his careerbut for telling the truth, he has no regrets. In a new op-ed in the Washington Post, retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman reiterates that he stepped down from his military post after more than two decades due to "a campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation by President Trump and his allies," which he believed forever stymied his career. He points out that other public servants who didn't get the big headlines he did met the same fate, leaving the Trump administration with "their integrity intact but their careers irreparably harmed." He notes the "personal turmoil" he endured and laments the state of the union, weakened by the coronavirus pandemic and economic collapse "while the president publicly bemoans his approval ratings." story continues below "At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation's values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment," he writesexcept, he adds, "there is another way." He notes the "loving support of tens of thousands of Americans" he received in the face of attacks on his character, "a chorus of hope that drowns out the spurious attacks of a disreputable man and his sycophants." And he's optimistic for his own future and that of the nation, pledging to do all he can to push for accountability from leadership, advocate for wise national-security policy, and promote public service. "To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream," Vindman writes. "I believe that in America, right matters. I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans." Read Vindman's entire piece here. (Read more Alexander Vindman stories.) (Photo credit: Kathreen Absuelo) The Fuse Venture Partners team from left: Bobby Wagner, Kellan Carter, Cameron Borumand, Satbir Khanuja and John Connors Fuse Venture Partners launched to invest in Seattle-based, companies that develop software to reinvent the modern economy. Founded by General Partners Kellan Carter and Cameron Borumand, Fuse Venture Partners is an early-stage, venture capital fund investing in Seattle-based Seed and Series A B2B technology companies. The firms founding team also includes Venture Partner and Seattle Seahawks captain Bobby Wagner, as well as Senior Operating Partners John Connors and Satbir Khanuja. Nader Naini, Managing Partner at Frazier Healthcare Partners, and Gary Rieschel, Founding Managing Partner at Qiming Venture Partners, will be senior advisors to the fund. Carter and Borumand both come from Ignition Partners, a 20-year-old, early-stage enterprise software-focused venture capital firm. Ignition has been an early backer of some of the largest outcomes in enterprise software including Docusign, Splunk, Cloudera, Heroku, Zenprise, Parse, Xamarin and Xensource. As Operating Partners, John Connors and Satbir Khanuja will provide support to Fuse portfolio companies through their wide networks and business growth expertise. FinSMEs 31/07/2020 Mali's government said late on Friday that three new judges have been appointed to the Constitutional Court in the latest bid to resolve a weeks-long political crisis that has rocked the West African country. Numerous attempts have been made to mediate the crisis, but an opposition alliance that has led mass protests has refused to budge on its main demand: the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The current tension was sparked in April, when the Constitutional Court tossed out 30 results from a long-delayed parliamentary election -- a move that significantly benefited Keita's party. The West African bloc ECOWAS last week announced a plan to end the crisis which, among other things, called for the "quick recomposition" of the Constitutional Court so that new judges could sort out the electoral dispute. Keita then announced a "de facto dissolution" of the court. During a meeting with the president on Thursday, members of the Superior Council of Magistrates "agreed on three names, which will therefore be appointed," Justice Minister Kassoum Tapo said in a video broadcast on Friday. Under the constitution, the main governing body for magistrates appoints three judges to the court, while the president also appoints three, as does the national assembly. But the Superior Council also proposed that the national assembly give up its right to pick three judges, and instead choose "from a list of six or seven people proposed by civil society" groups, the minister said. Since the president had "agreed to give up his constitutional prerogative" to appoint three members, "there is no reason the same thing cannot be asked of the national assembly," Kassoum said, adding that it was a "very intelligent" solution. Changing the Constitutional Court, which has the last word on electoral matters, is only one part of efforts to break the impasse. The ECOWAS plan also calls for a new vote for the 30 disputed seats, but 29 of the 30 MPs whose election victories are in question have refused to step down. West African leaders also suggested a new unity government be formed -- but all plans that do not involve Keita leaving have been spurned by Mali's opposition June 5 Movement. The loose alliance of opposition groups and religious leaders has been channelling deep anger over a dire economy, perceived corruption and a brutal jihadist conflict. Protests ratcheted up into a crisis on July 10 when an anti-Keita rally turned violent, with 11 people dying in clashes with security forces over several days, marking the bloodiest political unrest the former French colony has seen in years. Search Keywords: Short link: The Tenement Museums union files a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after 76 employees were laid off. [Hyperallergic] Weeks after New Yorks primary election, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney claims a decisive winning margin of over 3,700 votes. But challenger Suraj Patel is not conceding. [AM New York] A white candidate for City Council in District 1, Maud Maron, has come under fire from Black legal aid lawyers, who say her views on school integration are racist. [Daily News] More streets are being designated for outdoor dining, including Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge streets, Pell Street between Bowery and Mott streets and Avenue B between East 3rd and East 4th streets. [Gothamist] Daredevil Tattoo reopens on Division Street! [NY1] Amanda Cohen of the Lower East Side restaurant, Dirt Candy, testified before a congressional committee, warning that the American restaurant industry is on the verge of collapse without robust federal aid. [NY1] An Choi, the Orchard Street Vietnamese restaurant, has closed. [Eater] Video: How Chinatown restaurants are adapting in the COVID-19 era. [The New Yorker] Community Board 3s August meetings: A request to create a pedestrian plaza and Orchard and Broome streets, East River waterfront updates, the latest on efforts to rezone the Two Bridges area. [CB3] Pakistan Army and Pak spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence with the support of China is planning to declare Karachi a federal territory to usurp its resources, Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Altaf Hussain said. Pakistan Army and ISI along with China have completed its nefarious design to declare Karachi a federal territory to usurp its resources, a statement quoted Hussain as saying. Hussain remarks come in response after Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that he has asked the Army to assist the authorities in cleaning up in the aftermath of the rain in Karachi. According to the nefarious design, under the guise of the task of cleaning the city, Karachi is being handed over to the Army, Hussain said. He said that federal ministers of PTI government are making open statements in the favour of nefarious design of Army to take Karachi in the control of Islamabad. Rather than to give more autonomy, rights and power to Karachi, Imran Khan-led government is trying to take into federal control of this megacity, is strongly condemnable, the MQM leader said. Altaf Hussain called people to come forward to foil this conspiracy of Army and Pakistan government. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.1 Trend: Armenia obstructs negotiation process for peaceful settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by its recent provocative actions, Chairman of Azerbaijan-Bulgaria Friendship Group at the Bulgarian Parliament of the 44th convocation Hamid Hamid said. Hamid made the remark in his letter addressed to Head of Azerbaijan-Bulgaria Inter-Parliamentary Working Group at Azerbaijans Parliament Rauf Aliyev, Trend reports on August 1. The chairman stressed that recently the international community has witnessed the growth of tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan, this time on the border between the countries in the direction of Azerbaijans Tovuz district, strongly condemning the military provocation committed by the Armenian armed forces. "The latest provocative actions of Armenia should be regarded as a threat to the projects of the East-West Transport Corridor and the Southern Gas Corridor being implemented by Azerbaijan and its European partners. These projects play an exceptional role in strengthening the energy security of Europe, including Bulgaria. This provocation is aimed to create a threat to energy security and economic benefits not only of the region, but of the whole Europe," he said. Hamid, guided by the fundamental norms and principles of international law, four UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) and the Joint Declaration on the Strategic Partnership between Azerbaijan and Bulgaria from 2015, expressed full supports of the territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan, which is a reliable member of the UN, OSCE, European Council, as well as a respected partner of the EU and NATO. "I would also like to remind the results related to the policy of the EU Foreign Ministers Council on the "Eastern Partnership" after 2020, which also enshrines the principle of "common obligations to create a space of universal democracy, prosperity and stability". This provides for general obligations in connection with the rules based on international law, in particular, territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty, as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and the OSCE Charter of Paris," the MP said. At the same time, he reminded that the four resolutions of the UN Security Council require the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. The European parliamentarian in his letter stressed that the international community must condemn in the harshest form the occupation policy of Armenia against Azerbaijan and the provocative actions committed by it on the border. He noted that in order to prevent the transformation of the incident into a hotbed of war, the international community should soon intervene. "I express my solidarity with Azerbaijan, looking forward to the restoration of the country's territorial integrity within the internationally recognized borders. In addition, I express my condolences to the families of those killed during the incident, and wish the wounded a speedy recovery," Hamid concluded. LAS CRUCES A former sheriffs deputy in southern New Mexico was arrested Thursday on tampering with evidence charges after detectives say a cleaning crew found boxes of guns and case files at his foreclosed home. Former Dona Ana County sheriffs deputy Vincent Lopez was taken into custody following an investigation that began in May when the crew stumbled upon bags of evidence, firearms, ammunition and case files, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports. On May 23, a crew went to clean a foreclosed home in Las Cruces to prepare the house for resale, police said. Authorities report that when the cleaners entered the house, they found boxes containing bags of police evidence and scattered pages of police case files. The cleaning crew gathered some of the scattered paperwork into a box and called authorities. Authorities said the piles of evidence in specific cases had never been entered into the Dona Ana County Sheriffs Office evidence station. When a Las Cruces officer arrived at the home, he found evidence including a shotgun and black semi-automatic handgun with the bottom receiver, as well as boxes of case files in a bedroom. The officer looked through some of the case files and found that they were from Dona Ana County Sheriffs Office specifically from cases Lopez worked, authorities said. Lopez, 54, told Las Cruces detectives the evidence was related to a multiple-rape case and a hostile working environment at the sheriffs office, according to court documents. Las Cruces Police Sgt. Pete Skowronski also reports that he found some evidence near a fireplace that was full of ash, which raised concerns that some of the case files were being burned. Lopez was charged with nine counts of tampering with public records and nine counts of tampering with evidence, and booked into the Dona Ana County Detention Center on a no-bond hold. Online records dont list an attorney for Lopez. OTTAWA - The head of the UN World Food Program says the COVID-19 crisis has dramatically increased the number of starving people in Latin America, which could trigger a refugee exodus to North America if not addressed. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 1/8/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The head of UN World Food Program says the COVID-19 crisis has dramatically increased the number of starving people in Latin America, which could trigger a refugee exodus to North America if not addressed. David Beasley, the new executive director of the World Food Programme, speaks to The Associated Press during an interview in Rome, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Gregorio Borgia OTTAWA - The head of the UN World Food Program says the COVID-19 crisis has dramatically increased the number of starving people in Latin America, which could trigger a refugee exodus to North America if not addressed. David Beasley, the agency's director, issued the warning as the Royal Canadian Air Force began Saturday to prepare to end its nearly two-week mission in which a mammoth C-17 Globemaster transport crisscrossed Central and South America and the Caribbean delivering tonnes of medical supplies. Beasley said there has been a 269 per cent increase in food insecurity in the region since the pandemic struck. Beasley tells The Canadian Press that 4.7 million people were already "marching to the brink of starvation" before the pandemic but now that number has risen to 16 million. Beasley praised Canada for lending the Globemaster and nearly three dozen personnel to work in tandem with the WFP and World Health Organization to deliver supplies throughout the region from a newly built hub in Panama. However, he said unless the world answers the biggest humanitarian crisis in the World Food Program's history, people will die and economic and political upheaval will ensue. The agency is launching a six-month US$4.9 billion appeal to help feed 138 million people in 83 countries. Since the pandemic struck there have been serious food-insecurity increases in west and central Africa (135 per cent) and southern Africa (90 per cent). Beasley says tackling the problem will also mean spending hundreds of millions of dollars more to battle the rising hunger in Canada's Western Hemisphere backyard. "The first thing is: let's do what's good; let's do what's right. And if that's not good enough, do it out of your national-security interest," Beasley said in an interview. "If patterns of experience are of any indication, if the economic deterioration due to COVID continues as it is, and we don't have safety-net programs in place, I don't see how you don't have mass migration," he added. "You won't have a mass migration today, tomorrow, but you will have it soon." The region was already struggling under the weight of Venezuela's political and economic crisis. Prior to the pandemic, the UN estimated that six million Venezuelans would flee their country by the year's end, as its economic, health and education systems collapsed. Neighbouring countries such as Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador have been bearing the brunt of the influx. While those countries have been welcoming, COVID-19 has added an extra layer of strain and Beasley said the leaders of those countries told him last week they are extremely worried. "This is why the international community has to step up. Otherwise there's going to be chaos," he said. "And we have a vaccine for this chaos it's called food." The former Republican governor of South Carolina visited Ottawa in mid-March, meeting multiple Canadian politicians right before the pandemic slammed normal activities to a halt. Beasley would test positive for COVID-19 himself days later, touching off a short-lived panic and rush of testing among the MPs and officials he saw; he's since recovered. Beasley was in Panama last week as part of a six-country tour, where he met Lt.-Col. Adam Pentney, the commander of Canada's military airlift. He also met with Pentney's crew as they loaded tonnes of personal protective equipment, medical supplies and other humanitarian supplies onto the Globemaster. "That C-17 is a workhorse and it is a blessing in a time when we need it most. As you can imagine, we're extremely grateful to the Canadian government for providing this support," said Beasley. "It was a beautiful sight. It was absolutely magnificent because that's life-saving humanitarian support. It shows what happens when the world collaborates." Pentney said the C-17 mission is the first time he has been part of such a large humanitarian relief effort so close to home. "It's in a region where we don't often get to visit," Pentney said in a telephone call from Panama this past week, where he was preparing to pilot the Globemaster's final mission himself. Friday's mission to Guatemala was to be its last before the start of weekend preparations to the bring the plane and the 31 people supporting it back to Canada. "My message to Canadians is they can be very proud of the support that's being provided and the work that's being done to look after our global neighbours," said Pentney. "The pandemic is very real here. Canada does have a role and a presence here in our backyard and we're happy to be able to contribute to that." Pentney said he didn't know if another Globemaster crew would be returning. But Beasley said he's ramping up his fundraising efforts to target another group of donors because he said governments around the world are already strapped because of the pandemic. "We're in the worst crisis since World War Two and it's time for the billionaires to step up and say, 'We care about humanity, we care about planet Earth' because we are at a crossroads on this planet right now," said Beasley. "The billionaires, especially those that are making billions because of COVID, they need to step up. We're taking about millions of people dying." This report by The Canadian Press was first published August 1, 2020. We want Mahatma Gandhi's India, people of Kashmir cannot live with Godse's India: Mehbooba Mufti Chidambaram terms extension of Mehbooba Mufti's detention abuse of law, assault; Calls for release India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Aug 01: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram condemned the extension of PDP's Mehbooba Mufti's detention, saying the decision of the Jammu and Kashmir administration was an "assault" on people's constitutional rights. The Peoples Democratic Party's chief has been held in detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA) since August 5, 2019. The Union territory's administration has extended her detention by another three months. Chinese and Australian envoys to India spar over South China Sea Taking to Twitter, the former Union Finance Minister questioned how the 61-year-old former chief minister, who he said is a "protected person under security guard round the clock", can be a threat to public safety. US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news "The extension of the detention of Ms Mehbooba Mufti under PSA is an abuse of law and an assault on the Constitutional rights guaranteed to every citizen," a tweet read. "She rightly rejected the offer to release her on conditions which any self-respecting political leader would refuse. One of the reasons given for her detention - the colour of her party's flag - was laughable," he said. China warns India against review of One China Policy He also questioned why Mufti cannot speak against the abrogation of Article 370 and whether it was not a "part of the right to free speech". "I am one of the Counsel appearing in a case in the SC challenging the abrogation of Art 370. If I speak against Art 370 - as I must - is that a threat to public safety? We must collectively raise our voices and demand "FREE MEHBOOBA MUFTI IMMEDIATELY," Chidambaram added. The detention order of the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister was scheduled to lapse on August 5. Mufti is among 20-odd political leaders in the Valley who continue to remain under detention. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Saturday, August 1, 2020, 13:09 [IST] Updyke had paid $8,580 in restitution payments as of Thursday night, according to court documents. Updyke's daughter-in-law Marsha Updyke said in a social media post that Updyke was a passionate, family man who carried a gun, wore boots, loved attention and was misunderstood at times, according to a report by the Associated Press. "You will be missed by so many," the post reads. "You touched the lives of people, saved people during your time as a DPS officer, you brought life to events and parties. You brought smiles to faces and gave love to people and animals." "Your presence on earth will be missed, but your spirit will live forever!! We look forward to seeing you again one day!" The oaks Auburn tried and failed to save the trees, then decided to replace them in 2015. The oak on Magnolia Avenue did not survive the transplant and was replaced in July 2015. The new tree was then damaged in 2016 by a fire after Auburns win against LSU. Jochen Wiest later pleaded guilty to setting fire to toilet paper hanging from the tree. President Ilham Aliyev exchanged greetings for Islamic holiday of Eid-al Adha or Qurban Bayram with Iranian and Afghan presidents on July 31. On July 31, Aliyev made a phone call to President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani. The head of state congratulated Rouhani and the brotherly people of Iran on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, and extended his best wishes for prosperity. Hassan Rouhani thanked for attention and congratulations, and extended his best wishes to the head of state and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of the holiday. Ilham Aliyev and Hassan Rouhani expressed their confidence that the friendly relations between the two countries would continue to develop successfully in political, economic, cultural and other areas. The issues of the implementation of the North-South transport corridor were discussed as well. Both sides noted the strategic importance of the project and hailed the measures taken. They also exchanged views over the work to be done in this area. The presidents also discussed the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, stressing the importance of joining efforts in this regard. The decision was made to organize videoconferences on the pandemic between the two countries` officials. On the same day, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Mohammad Ashraf Ghani telephoned President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. Ghani congratulated and wished peace to President Ilham Aliyev and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. The head of state thanked for attention and congratulations, and extended his congratulations and best wishes for peace and tranquility to his counterpart and friendly people of Afghanistan on the occasion of the holiday. The president of Afghanistan extended his condolences over the death of Azerbaijani servicemen and civilians in the clashes that happened after Armenia`s provocation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, adding that Afghanistan stood by Azerbaijan on this issue. Ghani reaffirmed his country`s support for Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity. President Ilham Aliyev thanked for this brotherly position, praising Afghanistan`s support for Azerbaijan during the border clashes both directly and as part of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. During the phone talk, the heads of state hailed the development of the bilateral relations, and expressed confidence that the decisions adopted at the recent videoconference between the presidents of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan would be implemented. Eid al-Adha 2020 in Azerbaijan began on the evening of July 30 and will end on August 1. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 17:52 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066aebf98 4 National South-Sumatra,police,murder,rape,assault,domestic-violence,criminal-investigation,criminal-charge Free Police officers detained an 18-year-old identified as Jef on Thursday for allegedly stabbing his 49-year-old stepfather Johan in Muara Lakita subdistrict, Musirawas regency, South Sumatra. Jef allegedly stabbed his stepfather because the man had regularly raped his sister and beaten his mother. Kompas.com reported that Jef and his mother were initially going to report Johan to a nearby police station. However, Johan allegedly stopped them while they were on their way. During the ensuing commotion, Jef stabbed Johan multiple times with a knife that he was carrying, killing Johan. Jef reportedly fled the crime scene. Read also: Victims of domestic violence struggle to access help during quarantine After receiving a report of the attack, Muara Lakitan Police chief First Insp. M. Romi dispatched a team to investigate. Jef was persuaded to turn himself in to the police on Friday. We have apprehended him. During the interrogation, he admitted to his action of killing the victim by stabbing the victims chest with a knife, Romi said on Friday, as quoted by kompas.com. He added that his office had transferred Jef and the evidence related to the crime to the Musirawas Police for further investigation. (mfp) Bengaluru: BJP President Amit Shah on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modis demonetisation move has given opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee sleepless nights. Friends, people who are hurt are those whose black money has gone for a toss. The demonetisation move has given sleepless nights to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Mamata, Arvind Kejriwal, and also they have lost shine on their faces, he said at the BJPs Other Backward Classes rally here. ..Till November 7, opposition parties BSP, SP and Congress, and also leaders like Mamata, Arvind Kejriwal, were questioning Modijis steps to bring back black money, but after November eight midnight, they changed their tone and started to ask why did he do this (demonetisation), he said. Slamming the opposition for joining hands to oppose demonetisation, he said: There is a flood-like situation where you find one tree in the middle, on which a rat, cat, mongoose and snake have climbed to save themselves from the raging water, flowing below, he said. Interestingly, the mongoose and the cat are not eating the snake and the rat - they all have joined hands against Modis fight against black money and corruption, he said. Shah, however, expressed his gratitude towards Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for supporting Modis efforts to fight corruption and black money. I want to express my gratitude towards Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for supporting Modijis fight against black money and corruption, he said. Referring to the Congress government in Karnataka, Shah alleged that the Siddaramaiah government was the most corrupt in the country and urged the people of the state to root out the present one to elect BJP under the chief ministership of B S Yeddyurappa, which would make the state one of the top states in its five-year rule. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Graced with geological wonders and unbridled beauty, riding in the Black Hills is almost transcendental. This magic is a big reason riders come from the four corners of the earth to ride here each August during the Sturgis Rally. Whether youre a seasoned veteran or a first-timer, one of the best ways to see this beautiful country, share some camaraderie, and support charitable causes is to join in one of the Buffalo Chips Legendary Rides. Over the past 13 years the Legends Ride presented by GEICO Motorcycle has established itself as one of the most preeminent events of Sturgis. From Aerosmiths Steven Tyler to R. Lee Gunny Ermey, a long list of celebrities have graced the ride over the years. The 2020 Legends Ride Road Captain is Academy Award-nominated actor Tom Berenger. Best known for his roles in Platoon and Major League, Berenger is a diehard rider whos selflessly lent his support to the Legends Ride for years. A few years back Berenger shared a funny story of his first motorcycle, a 450cc Honda, and how on one of his first rides he hit an oil patch, fishtailed and went down. Being chased by a German Shepherd on the same motorcycle was another fond memory. Its little pearls like this that make this signature ride special. The Legends Ride begins in the historic Wild West-themed town of Deadwood. Its a street party at the new Outlaw Square in front of the Silverado-Franklin Hotel & Casino as music fills the air, motorcycles roll in, and celebrities begin to arrive and mingle with the crowd. The girls from the International Bikini Team, long-time supporters of the Legends Ride, have a knack for fostering a festive spirit. So do the kids of the Black Hills Special Olympics who show up every year. Their excitement is unbeatable, and the Special Olympics is one of the main benefactors from the benefit ride. To date, the Legends Ride has raised over a half million dollars for local charities and organizations, and overall the Buffalo Chip has raised nearly a million dollars through all of its charitable endeavors. This year The Chip aims to break the million dollar mark as magnanimity is always the pervasive spirit surrounding the Legends Ride. This years ride takes place Monday, August 10, and begins at 11 a.m. in front of the historic Franklin Hotel in Deadwood. The 2020 charities are Special Olympics South Dakota Rapid City Flame and the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum & Hall of Fame. In addition to Berenger, this years special guests include actor/musician Sean McNabb (Sons of Anarchy/Dokken), former Green Bay Packer star lineman Earl Dotson, and a veritable Whos Who of custom motorcycle builders, from Cory and Zach Ness to the always colorful Rick Fairless, to Jerry and David Covington and many more. Plenty of riders out there are race fans. If you love to ride your motorcycle and love NASCAR, the 2nd annual Rusty Wallace Ride is tailor-made for you. Wallace, a NASCAR ironman who won 55 races competing in 16 straight seasons, has invited some of his racing buddies and NASCAR friends to come hang out and support his second annual charity ride. The legendary list includes NASCAR Vice Chairman Mike Helton, Clint Bowyer, Walker The Legend Evans, Don The Snake Prudhomme, and Steve Wallace. The day will kick off with a party at Black Hills Harley-Davidson and an opportunity to meet the special guests and maybe even get an autograph or two. The riders will mount up for a brand-new route this year, one picked out by Wallace himself. Everybody will meet back up at the Buffalo Chip for a private reception including food and drinks. A silent auction will be held with incredible items up for grabs including a Daytona 500 replica hood autographed by the 2020 Daytona 500 starting grid. The incredible motorcycle Cory Ness of Arlen Ness Enterprises customized for Rusty Wallace, a 2020 Harley-Davidson FLXH Street Glide, will also go to its new owner as the bike is being sold off for charity. This years list of Rusty Wallace Ride charities include South Dakota Special Olympics Rapid City Flame, All Kids Bike and the NASCAR Foundation charities. Grab a ticket and well see you Wednesday, August 12, at Black Hills Harley-Davidson off Exit 55 in Rapid City at 10 a.m. For 11 years now, the Biker Belles Ride & Celebration has been empowering women motorcyclists. When we created the event in 2009, wed hoped it would change peoples lives for the better, and its amazing to see over a decade later how much it truly has. I cant wait to see where the Biker Belles takes us in the years to come, and I hope you will join us on the journey, said Biker Belles Program Manager Toni Woodruff. The immersive event includes its signature Morning Ride, a scintillating run from Deadwood on scenic Hwy 385, Nemo Road, and Vanocker Canyon. The ride will be led by co-captains Savannah Rose and Diva Amy Skaling and ends at the Buffalo Chip CrossRoads. There, women vendors, Comfort Zone pampering courtesy of Diva Amy, and mixing and mingling with some of the motorcycle industrys pioneering women awaits. The Women & Wheels Bike Show kicks off not long after, giving riders a chance to showcase their prized motorcycles. A catered lunch follows, as does a symposium with Jody Perewitz, Lena Fairless, emceed by Sturgis Hall of Famer Marilyn Stemp. At the conclusion of the event, Biker Belles are invited to join other women riders attending the rally for the Womens Rider Turnout at the CrossRoads. It happens to be the 19th amendments centennial, and currently women make up about 19% of riders. Sounds like cause for celebration, right? A drone will record the group and show the riding world what 19% looks like in real-time. Just like the other two rides, charity is the underlying cause behind Biker Belles, and 100% of funds raised this year will go to three South Dakota-based charities that benefit women-related causes - Helping with Horsepower, the Strider Education Foundation, and the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum & Hall of Fame. The 2020 Biker Belles begins at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, August 12, at The Lodge in Deadwood and wraps up at the Buffalo Chip CrossRoads at 2 p.m. For all you history buffs out there, the Western Frontier Motorcycle Rides take you on a journey to the places history was made in the Black Hills, including the gravesite of Jonathan Buffalo Chips White, the campgrounds namesake and a protege of Buffalo Bill Cody. As you stop at spots like the Hoover General Store, Slim Buttes Overlook and the Spur Creek Saloon, local historian Paul Mitchell regales you with tales of Chief American Horse, Buffalo Chips and the Battle of Slim Buttes, mixing in stories about the US Cavalry, Cavalry scouts, Sioux Chiefs, Buffalo Bill Cody, and the Pony Express, too. Participants also get a chance to channel their inner Wild West spirit with some antique rifle shooting. The Cowboy Action Shooting experience includes shooting two single-action revolvers, a lever-action rifle and a double-barrel shotgun. If the thought of bigger, more crowded rides put you off, the Western Frontier Motorcycle Rides might be more up your alley because its limited to 20 people. Since groups are small, luckily theres two chances to take part, Tuesday, August 11 and Thursday, August 13. The rides start early, 8 a.m. to be exact, and begin and end at The Chip The Sturgis Buffalo Chip has made giving back to the local community a priority via its annual rides. Buffalo Chip President Rod Woodruff said he heard all too frequently how the rally never did anything for the local folks. This misnomer couldnt be further from the truth. The biker community is a benevolent community, evident by the support it annually shows through the Buffalo Chips legendary rides. You must be logged in to react. Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Hillyer appealed for support to his fellow Republicans, arguing that the party was successful because it was not stuck in the past. Republicans had succeeded, he said, because they were progressive, because we had the courage to pluck out, from the overwhelming mass of prejudice in which it was buried, a principle of eternal truth; dared boldly to inscribe it on our banners and to march to battle with the watchword of universal freedom. The state has issued back-to-school guidance specific to vocational and technical high schools, suggesting that districts should prepare outdoor workspaces and modify programs to keep students collaborating on a project at least 3 feet away from each other, among other measures. In late June, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released its initial guidance to schools, asking districts to create three plans for the upcoming year: in-person learning; a hybrid model of in-person and online classes; and fully remote education. Those initial measures require districts to keep students at least three feet away from one another in a traditional classroom and require students and staff to wear face masks. Vocational and technical programs include a significant amount of student collaboration. In new guidance released this week, DESE says that group projects must be modified so that students can still work collaboratively while wearing masks and keeping a distance of 3 feet at minimum. Students should minimize sharing equipment, the guidance says, but sharing is permitted with additional safety considerations, like students washing hands or sanitizing before and after use of an item. Outdoor workspaces are preferable, according to the guidance, and must be outfitted with required safety equipment like a fire extinguisher and first aid kit, among other items. Face shields are not considered a replacement for eye protection, according to DESEs guidelines, and technical programs should follow industry guidelines on using gloves. The department suggested that districts designate a Safety September to focus on safety training and new protocols to help stop the spread of the virus. For service-related programs, like early education, culinary arts and cosmetology, DESE has issued specific guidance that it expects to be in place for the first two months of the school year: Culinary arts programs should limit dine-in customers to staff and students and set up online ordering for curbside pickup for others, and should set up disinfecting stations. Students should not participate as direct caregivers in early education programs for the first two months, limiting childcare to teaching staff. Students also should not visit offsite childcare centers. Cosmetology sites should only serve classmates and staff at first and should use mannequins. Haircuts and other services are permitted if individuals are not face-to-face. Automotive technology and automotive collision programs must serve the public by appointment only to limit interaction and should create drop-off and pickup procedures, like key drop boxes. They should also create online payment systems. Students in graphic communication and marketing programs should use virtual operations with customers and provide appointment-based services only, as well as create pickup procedures. Any customers or visitors must wear a face mask at all times, per the DESE guidance. DESE noted that all career/vocational technical education programs must follow the states workplace and industry guidance related to coronavirus health and safety. Exploratory programs to introduce students to vocational and technical areas must also be revised. The guidance suggests that timelines be shifted for students who arent able to complete in-person requirements during the school year. While exploratory programs should be in school, if they are online, DESE suggests using video presentations from alumni and business owners, career interest surveys and other methods. Clinical sites for health careers are not currently accepting students because of coronavirus, the guidance indicates. Co-op places and internships are limited to seniors only. DESE Commissioner Jeff Riley announced earlier this week that the school year will start two weeks later than planned, giving districts additional 10 days to prepare. The decision followed discussions with the Massachusetts Teachers Association, AFT-Massachusetts and the Boston Teachers Union. Related Content: July 31, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - When International Court of Justice (ICC) Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, confirmed last December that the Court has ample evidence to pursue a war crimes investigation in occupied Palestine, the Israeli government responded with the usual rhetoric, accusing the international community of bias and insisting on Israels right to defend itself. Beneath the platitudes and typical Israeli discourse, the Israeli government knew too well that an ICC investigation into war crimes in Palestine could be quite costly. An investigation, in itself, represents an indictment of sorts. If Israeli individuals were to be indicted for war crimes, that is a different story, as it becomes a legal obligation of ICC members to apprehend the criminals and hand them over to the Court. Israel remained publicly composed, even after Bensouda, last April, elaborated on her December decision with a 60-page legal report, titled: Situation in the State of Palestine: Prosecution Response to the Observations of Amici Curiae, Legal Representatives of Victims, and States. In the report, the ICC addressed many of the questions, doubts and reports submitted or raised in the four months that followed her earlier decision. Countries such as Germany and Austria, among others, had used their position as amici curiae friends of the court to question the ICC jurisdiction and the status of Palestine as a country. Bensouda insisted that the Prosecutor is satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to initiate an investigation into the situation in Palestine under article 53(1) of the Rome Statute, and that the scope of the Courts territorial jurisdiction comprises the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza (Occupied Palestinian Territory). However, Bensouda did not provide definitive timelines to the investigation; instead, she requested that the ICCS Pre-Trial Chamber confirm the scope of the Courts territorial jurisdiction in Palestine, an additional step that is hardly required since the State of Palestine, a signatory of the Rome Statute, is the one that actually referred the case directly to the Prosecutors office. The April report, in particular, was the wake-up call for Tel Aviv. Between the initial decision in December till the release of the latter report, Israel lobbied on many fronts, enlisting the help of ICC members and recruiting its greatest benefactor, Washington which is not an ICC member to bully the Court so it may reverse its decision. On May 15, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, warned the ICC against pursuing the investigation, targeting Bensouda, in particular, for her decision to hold war criminals in Palestine accountable. The US slapped unprecedented sanctions against the ICC on June 11, with President Donald Trump issuing an executive order that authorizes the freezing of assets and a travel ban against ICC officials and their families. The order also allows for the punishing of other individuals or entities that assist the ICC in its investigation. Washingtons decision to carry out punitive measures against the very Court that was established for the sole purpose of holding war criminals accountable is both outrageous and abhorrent. It also exposes Washingtons hypocrisy the country that claims to defend human rights is attempting to prevent legal accountability by those who have violated human rights. Upon its failure to halt the ICC legal procedures regarding its investigation of war crimes, Israel began to prepare for the worst. On July 15, Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, reported about a secret list that was drawn up by the Israeli government. The list includes between 200 and 300 officials, ranging from politicians to military and intelligence officials, who are subject to arrest abroad, should the ICC officially open the war crimes investigation. Names begin at the top of the Israeli political pyramid, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his current coalition partner, Benny Gantz. The sheer number of Israeli officials on the list is indicative of the scope of the ICCs investigation, and, somehow, is a self-indictment, as the names include former Israeli Defense Ministers Moshe Yaalon, Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett; current and former army chiefs of staffs Aviv Kochavi, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot and current and former heads of internal intelligence, the Shin Bet Nadav Argaman and Yoram Cohen. Respected international human rights organizations have already, repeatedly, accused all these individuals of serious human rights abuses during Israels lethal wars on the besieged Gaza Strip, starting with the so-called Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9. But the list is far more extensive, as it covers people in much more junior positions, including lower-ranking military officers and, perhaps, even officials involved in issuing various types of permits to settlements and settlement outposts. Israel, thus, fully appreciates the fact that the international community still insists that the construction of illegal colonies in occupied Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the transfer of Israeli citizens to occupied land are all inadmissible under international law and tantamount to war crimes. Netanyahu must be disappointed to learn that all of Washingtons concessions to Israel under Trumps presidency have failed to alter the position of the international community and the applicability of international law in any way. Furthermore, it would not be an exaggeration to argue that Tel Avivs postponement of its plan to illegally annex nearly a third of the West Bank is directly linked to the ICCs investigation, for the annexation would have completely thwarted Israels friends efforts aimed at preventing the investigation from ever taking place. While the whole world, especially Palestinians, Arabs and their allies, still anxiously await the final decision by the Pre-Trial Chamber, Israel will continue its overt and covert campaign to intimidate the ICC and any other entity that aims to expose Israeli war crimes and to try Israeli war criminals. Washington, too, will continue to strive to ensure Netanyahu, Gantz, and the 200 to 300 other Israeli officials never see their day in court. However, the fact that a secret list exists is an indication that Tel Aviv understands that this era is different and that international law, which has failed Palestinians for over 70 years, may, for once, deliver, however a small measure of justice. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Post your comment below See also The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Mr Bernard Anbataayela Mornah, the People's National Convention (PNC) Parliamentary Candidate for the Nadowli-Kaleo Constituency in the Upper West Region, has asked for Allahs blessings for the Muslim community in the constituency as they celebrate Eid ul Adha. He said Eid ul Adha in the Islamic calendar marked a very significant occasion, which emphasized the need for sacrifices to Allah and Humanity. "I fervently pray that Allah Almighty grants each one of us the grace and encouragement to sacrifice all the worldly desires we have to follow his path as prescribed by the Holy Book (Quran)," he said. Mr Mornah made the statement in a press release issued in Nadowli and copied to the Ghana News Agency. Mr Mornah said, "the Quranic account of Allah directing His servant (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son (Ishmael) is one that nobody should lose sight of in his/her daily life". "The substitution of Ishmael by God with a ram shows that our willingness to sacrifice will bring us the good we least expect. This ought to be a guide to each of us as we celebrate this festival of sacrifice," he said. Mr Mornah called on the citizenry of the constituency to not only put aside their interest and desires but work collectively to elect him as their Member of Parliament (MP) in the December 7, 2020, general elections, to bring the kind of development they need. "I am optimistic that with our sacrifices and with Allah Almighty on our side, our constituency shall develop in leaps and bounds," he said. "As MP for the Nadowli/Kaleo constituency, I assure you of my unflinching quest to improving the lot of my people as well as offer effective representation both within the House of Parliament and without," he assured. He entreated every citizenry to adhere to all mandatory COVID-19 safety protocols while celebrating the Eid ul Adha. 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 The main contractor on the refurbishment project that turned Grenfell Tower into a death trap ahead of the June 14, 2017 inferno completed their evidence to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry this week. On July 20, Rydon contractor manager, Simon Lawrence, admitted the company used cheaper, more flammable Aluminum Composite Material (ACM) cladding rather than zinc-based materials, producing a cost savings of 419,627. The following day, Lawrence was presented with a witness statement from David Gibson, head of capital investment at Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation (KCTMO)which managed the tower on behalf of the local Conservative council. He claimed Lawrence said the plastic-filled panels would create no problem because the materials used were completely inert and would not burn at all. The meeting accepted his assurances in this regard and nothing came to my notice subsequently prior to the fire to question that these assurances were not accurate. Grenfell Tower destroyed following the blaze Lawrence denied the claim, insisting, I wouldnt give technical assurances unless I had that information from the designers or specialists. Rydon was committed to cost cutting. Lawrence admitted using Essex boy patter in trying to persuade KCTMO to use cheaper face-fixed ACM. This was rejected because the cassette-form Reynosa PE (Polyethylene) had a smoother exterior look, which was more aesthetically acceptable. Ironically, the Reynoband had a worse fire-safety rating than the cheaper fixed versiona fact Lawrence said he was unaware of. Lawrences final day of testimony on July 22 was dominated by evidence of Rydons contentious relations with Grenfell residents and subcontractors. Residents alleged threats and harassment from Rydon employees and the KCTMO, including builders swearing, use of abusive and sexually explicit conversations. For his part, Lawrence described residents critical of the work as persistent and aggressive, labeling them rebels. He told the inquiry there were several very vocal, dare I say aggressive residents. One named was Edward Daffarn, a co-leader of the Grenfell Action Group (GAG). GAG later predicted, eight months before the tragedy, that due to the neglect of their landlord the block could be catastrophically destroyed by fire. In 2014, Daffarn complained to KCTMO that neighbours had reported the TMO intend to smash down the door of any tenant or leaseholder that fails to cooperate with the installation of new heating systems or windows. How Rydon viewed tenants is clear from an email revealed by the inquiry, from Lawrence to a contractor fitting window surrounds with combustible material. The surrounds would play a major role in the Grenfell inferno. Lawrence wrote, We are under massive pressure from the rebel residents about our quality of work so far their complaints are unfounded, but I need to ensure our finish is good quality, especially on the show areas. Lawrence did criticize what he described as poor surveying and cheap, incompetent subcontractors. Nevertheless, he gave the contract providing window surrounds to S D Plasteringa firm run by his own former manager at Rydon, Mark Dixon. Instead of packing the gaps around the windows with non-combustible fiber of Rockwood insulation, Dixons firm used combustible foam boards, which the inquiry concluded contributed to the fire. Lawrence admitted he failed to read the bill of works showing S D Plastering planned using Celotex panels. This did not meet the safer specification and breached building regulations. Rydon project manager, Simon OConnor, replaced Lawrence on the stand the next day. Despite working for the firm since 2002, Grenfell was OConnors first job as project manager, and the only time he had worked with cladding. An entire culture within corporations, built up over decades, which viewed regulations as impediments to reaping greater profits was evident in his testimony. Of building regulations, OConnor was aware that they were there, but not familiar of them in detail. He was unaware cladding had caused fires, and of the existence of Approved Document B, the main Building Regulations document outlining safety requirements. His grossly exaggerated CV stated he was responsible for all operations on site, including co-ordinating design and management of subcontractors. OConnor told the inquiry, No, I wouldnt be qualified to co-ordinate design; I wouldnt know where to begin. He explained he hadnt completed HNC Building Studies, also listed on the CV. Saying this was the first time he had viewed it along with the tender document, OConnor concluded it wouldve been [compiled by] someone like the bid writers or marketing team at Rydon. Although OConnor arranged a monitoring programme for each subcontractor to be reviewed on a monthly or weekly basis, he said he wouldnt necessarily go to these. He assumed all materials brought on site were safe, but left that responsibility to subcontractors, and had no system for them to report deliveries to Rydon. OConnor, who resigned in 2015 due to the pressure of the project, gave his evidence hidden behind a screen in accordance with the vulnerable witness protocol, to protect his mental health and well-being! On Monday, Rydon site manager David Hughes was questioned about his approval of swapping the installation material used on the Tower. Hughes maintained he gave permission for Harley Facades to substitute Kingspan K15 insulation for the more usual Celotex RS5000 in December 2015 or January 2016. However, purchase orders and photographic evidence show that the Kingspan had already arrived in May and September 2015. The manufacturer of Kingspan observed their product was used without our knowledge, as part of a combination for which it was not designed, and which Kingspan would never recommend. Hughes claimed, They are so similar to me, my knowledge and experience, that I didnt see it as an issue. Ive never heard insulation described in terms of combustible or non-combustible. Fire risk assessor Carl Stokes, who inspected Grenfell in 2016, reported, Following discussion with representatives at Rydon... my understanding on leaving the tower after my inspection was that the actual cladding was compliant with the building regulations. However, Hughes did identify possible problems with the smoke control aspect of the extract system during his May 2017 end of defects inspection two weeks before the tragedy and reported it to installer J.S. Wright. Documents in the public domain indicate collusion between the board of the KCTMO and Stokes, who had been KCTMOs fire risk assessor for seven years, over the suppression of the fact that Grenfell Tower had failed basic fire safety checks. Stokes was employed by the KCTMO on the recommendation of housing official Janice Wray who, according to reports, stated Stokes was willing to challenge the fire brigade on our behalf if he considered their [safety] requirements to be excessive. On Tuesday, Stephen Blake, Rydons refurbishment director, answered questions regarding his long relationship with KCTMO, and in particular, his long professional relationship with its director of assets and regeneration, Peter Maddison. The day before Rydons interview with KCTMO regarding the companys Grenfell bid, Blake emailed Rydons legal representative: At the Housing conference we had meetings with senior representatives from K+C... we have been informally advised that we are in pole position [to win the lucrative refurb contract]ours to lose. Rydon won the Grenfell contract in 2014 because its cost-cutting bid was by far the cheapest. Its final bid was 9.2 millionwith rival Durkans bidding 9.9m and another firm, Mulalley, 10.4 million. The following day, the inquiry examined the design of window cavity barriers. The 2012 fire in the Taplow tower block on Camdens Chalcots Estate had the same ACM cladding as Grenfell, and used the same cladding subcontractor, Harley Facades, with Rydon as principal contractor. Harley later produced a report on the fire, concluding that firebreaks in the window prevented flames spreading between flats. Blake himself was on the distribution list of the report, which included a picture of him pointing to the firebreaks. He admitted he never checked with Harley or the architects about barriers on Grenfell. After many delays, the inquiry was halted on Thursday for a further five weeks to allow for summer holidays. Despite everything said by Rydon and the other companies involved in the refurbishmentrevealing criminality that resulted in Grenfell Tower being unsafe for human habitationthe Inquiry has granted immunity to all who testify so that statements they give to the inquiry cannot be used as evidence against them in a future prosecution. To achieve justice, the Socialist Equality Party repeats its call for an end to all collaboration with this judicial fraud. Grenfell supporters should call for the inquiry to be terminated immediately. The demand must go out for those responsible for social murder to be arrested, charged and put on trial. Today, Tom Selleck is best known for playing the New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in the CBS crime show Blue Bloods. Yet, before spearheading one of the networks most successful programs, the actor starred in Magnum P.I., which turned Selleck into a household name. Before and throughout Magnum P.I., Selleck boasted just enough recognition, a lot of charm, and Hollywood good looks to boot. In short, the actor almost snagged a handful of memorable roles that went to other actors for various reasons. Tom Selleck | Silver Screen Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images 1. Tom Selleck nearly played Indiana Jones instead of Harrison Ford When Raiders of the Lost Arc came about, George Lucas (the man behind the story) had already worked with Harrison Ford on the Star Wars movies. Lucas explained that he didnt want Ford to become what Robert DeNiro is to Martin Scorcese, as Business Insider explains. Lucas and director Steven Spielberg agreed that a fresh face would be a positive and unexpected turn. RELATED: Blue Bloods Star, Tom Selleck Opens Up About Taking a Break From Fame After Magnum P.I. The production company set up a screen test with Tom Selleck. He nailed it. Lucas and Spielberg agreed that Tom Selleck was a perfect fit, and the two readied to shoot the movie with Selleck as the lead. There was only one problem: Selleck had already filmed the pilot for Magnum, P.I., and he couldnt get out of the contract. The production company tried to talk with the network, and casting remained unconfirmed for about a month until Selleck had to walk away from the action-packed archeologist role. 2. Tom Selleck nearly played Mitch Buchannon in Baywatch While it may be difficult to imagine anyone else playing Baywatchs Mitch besides David Hasselhoff, the role nearly went to Tom Selleck. As EOnline notes, Tom Selleck was offered the leading role in the show, yet he reportedly turned it down because he did not want to be seen as a sex symbol. RELATED: How Tom Sellecks Son, Kevin Selleck, Rose to Stardom Before Disappearing From Hollywood While Tom Selleck reportedly denied the role due to the nature of the part, he has been considered a sex symbol in Hollywood for quite some time. However, jumping into a bathing suit and running in slow-motion down the sand definitely paints a different picture than fighting crime and walking around in short shorts. 3. Tom Selleck was reportedly considered for Bruce Wayne in Tim Burtons 1989 Batman movie According to ScreenRant, several actors were considered for Bruce Wayne in Burtons 1989 Batman. While the role eventually went to Michael Keaton, Tom Selleck was on the list of possible players, alongside Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Dennis Quaid, and Charlie Sheen. Mel Gibson was offered the role before Michael Keaton was, yet he had to turn it down due to Lethal Weapon 2. From Mitch Buchannon to the one only Bruce Wayne and Indiana Jones, Selleck had a few almosts that could have sent his career spiraling in various different directions. Yet, thanks to the way events played out, hes now on television screens as Frank Reagan. In a searing brief to the court, federal prosecutors urged a judge not to release the man responsible for the still-infamous kidnapping scheme that led to the death of an Exxon executive in an affluent New Jersey suburb 28 years ago, calling his offenses among the most horrific crimes this office has ever prosecuted. They said Arthur Seale, now 73 and serving a 95-year sentence, should die in prison. Arthur Seales motion for compassionate release shows that he is the same self-aggrandizing sociopath who shot and kidnapped Exxon executive Sidney J. Reso, tortured Mr. Reso until he died, and then tortured Mr. Resos family for 47 days by his repeated attempts to collect ransom, wrote assistant U.S. Attorney R. David Walk Jr. His motion is filled with falsehoods about his crimes and self-pitying excuses; even after 28 years in prison, he still has not accepted full responsibility for what he did. Seale, who said he suffers from hypertension, hearing loss, osteoarthritis, glaucoma, and hernia surgery, has asked to be released from prison at Devens, a federal medical center in Massachusetts, citing his age, his health issues and the spread of COVID-19 among other inmates in the facility. Resos family, in a separate letter to U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson in Trenton, urged that Seale remain behind bars. The loss of our father was not just a moment in time. It is not just about his absence from our lives. He didnt die of cancer, a car accident or old age. He died in a box, in a coffin, all alone, they wrote. The trauma resulting from his kidnapping and murder, from our knowledge of what he endured, has had and continues to have profound and lasting effects on us. The family, in their two-page letter, said that Seale has access to medical care, to movement, to contact with others, to air circulation all things he deprived our father of. His basic human needs are being met. He is not experiencing anything close to the sub-human conditions he subjected our father to. He is not worthy of the courts compassion. Even if he were to be released from federal custody, Seale still faces a life sentence on separate state charges for the murder of Reso. A former Hillside police officer, Seale and his wife, Irene, pleaded guilty in 1992 to charges in connection with the widely publicized abduction of Reso, a 57-year-old Exxon executive. The couple heavily in debt and living far beyond their means had planned to kidnap Reso and hold him for a $18.5 million ransom. Seale, after leaving his job as a cop, had worked for Exxon in Florham Park as a security manager and a directory of home addresses of Exxon executives was later found in Irene Seales car. The scheme went bad from the start. After staking out Resos home on the morning of April 29, 1992, Seale waited in a parked white rental van while his wife, posing as a jogger, watched for their victim and then signaled her husband that he was leaving. Reso, who had stopped briefly outside his Morris Township home on his way to work to pick up the morning newspaper, was confronted at gunpoint. In a struggle as Seale sought to force him into a wooden box in the back of the van, he was shot in the forearm. Then as they sped away, Seale forgot to leave the ransom note. Wounded, left shackled and bound with duct tape over his mouth and eyes in the box that was put into a hot, Warren County self-storage facility, Reso died four days later. The botched crime sparked one of the largest kidnapping investigations in the nations history. After Resos death, the Seales drove his body to the Pine Barrens, where they buried him in a shallow grave. They then spent weeks posing as members of a radical environmental group in an effort to collect a ransom. They were finally arrested by the FBI in the parking lot of a rental-car agency in Hackettstown. Irene Seale agreed to cooperate with authorities, leading them to the body. Arthur Seale would later plead guilty to federal charges of extortion, weapons possession, conspiracy and mail fraud. A week later, he pleaded guilty to kidnapping and felony murder charges in state court. Arthur Seale being brought into federal court in Trenton in 1992.Star-Ledger file photo In his application for compassionate release, Seale, who earned a doctorate in consulting psychology from Capella University while in prison, said he had changed his life around. I cannot change what I did, he wrote in an application filed before Judge Thompson. The past is unchangeable. But I hope I have demonstrated sincere remorse for my crime and a lasting attempt at atonement. But federal prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito charged that Seales motion was filled with falsehoods about his crimes and self-pitying excuses. Even after 28 years in prison, he still has not accepted full responsibility for what he did, they wrote. His 20-page motion contains no expression of regret for the incredible pain that he caused to Mr. Reso and the Reso family. Rather than showing any compassionate for the many people he hurt deeply, he pities only himself for receiving a sentence he wrongly believes was too long. At the same time, they rejected Seales characterization of his medical issues, calling him far from a helpless invalid who last year had been running a yoga group two times a week and a Pilates group twice a week. He does not have severe medical problems putting him at high risk from COVID-19, and he is well cared for in a Bureau of Prisons medical facility, they wrote, noting that only two of the approximately 900 inmates at Devens has gotten COVID-19. They added: Coronavirus is not a get of jail free card for every inmate over 65 or with other risk factors. They told the court that no matter Seales medical condition and COVID-19 risks, a person who commits an amoral, brutal, and vicious kidnapping and murder should not be released from prison after serving less than one-third of his sentence. Walk noted as well that Judge Garrett Brown Jr., who sentenced Seale in 1992 in the federal charges of the case, had contemplated that Seale would die in prison. My intent is that you never be free, the judge said at the time. Irene Seale was released from prison in 2010, after serving 17 years behind bars. The Reso family, in their letter, said regardless of the degrees Seale earned in prison and his good works there, regardless of his ailments and aging, and regardless of the presence of COVID-19, his sentence remained just and should be served in full. This is his opportunity to work at redemption, and his work is not done. It is far from completed, they wrote the judge. He can continue the work where he is and where he should remain for the entirety of his life. Local journalism needs your support. Subscribe at nj.com/supporter. Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Samsung Electronics Co will halt operations of its last computer factory in China, the South Korean tech giant said on Saturday, the latest manufacturer to shift production from the world's second-biggest economy. Companies are rethinking their production and supply chains amid rising Chinese labour costs, a U.S.-China trade war and the blow from the Covid-19 pandemic. Around half the 1,700 employees on contract at Samsung Electronics Suzhou Computer will be affected, excluding those involved in research and development, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday, citing a ... By PTI NEW DELHI: The high-level Group of Ministers (GOM) on COVID-19 has agreed to the health ministry's proposal to allow the export of indigenously made ventilators. The decision was taken as India continues to maintain a progressively declining low rate of fatality among COVID-19 patients, which currently stands at 2.15 per cent, "which means fewer numbers of active cases are on ventilators", the Union health ministry said in a statement. As on July 31, only 0.22 per cent of the active cases were on ventilators across the country, it stated. The health ministry said the GoM's decision has been communicated to the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) for further action needed to facilitate the export of indigenously manufactured ventilators. "Now with the export of ventilators having been allowed, it is hoped that domestic ventilators would be in a position to find new markets in foreign countries," it said, adding that there has been substantial growth in the domestic manufacturing capacity of ventilators. Compared to January, there are more than 20 domestic manufacturers of ventilators. A prohibition/restriction on the export of ventilators was imposed in March to ensure domestic availability of the machines to effectively fight COVID-19. All types of ventilators were prohibited for export vide DGFT notification with effect from March 24. The country's total number of recoveries from COVID-19 has surged close to 11 lakh, while the case fatality rate has declined from 3.33 per cent in mid-June to 2.15 per cent, the lowest since lockdown was clamped in March, the Union Health Ministry said on Saturday. In the global platform, India continues to register and maintain the lowest COVID-19 mortality rate, it said and asserted that this is a testimony to the focused, coordinated, pre-emptive, graded and evolving "test, track, treat" strategy and efforts of the Centre, states and Union Territories. With 36,569 patients discharged in 24 hours, the total number of recoveries has jumped to 10,94,374 on Saturday and exceed active COVID-19 cases by 5,29,271. There are 5,65,103 active cases in the country at present, according to health ministry data updated at 8 am on Saturday. "The recovery rate stands at 64.53 per cent," the ministry said. "Emphasis on early detection through aggressive testing and effective clinical management of the hospitalised cases have resulted in the continuously falling case fatality rate (CFR), indicating that India has been able to successfully contain the fatality rate of COVID-19," it said. While the CFR has been kept low, successful implementation of effective containment strategy, aggressive testing and standardised clinical management protocols based on a comprehensive standard of care approach have resulted in a consistent addition of more than 30,000 recoveries daily, the health ministry said. It also said that three-tier hospital infrastructure with seamless patient management has ensured prompt triaging and treatment. As on Saturday, there are 1,488 dedicated COVID hospitals with 2,49,358 isolation beds, 31,639 ICU beds, 1,09,119 with oxygen support and 16,678 ventilators. Also, 3,231 dedicated COVID Health Centres with 2,07,239 isolation beds, 18,613 ICU beds and 74,130 oxygen-supported beds and 6,668 ventilators have been made operational. Moreover, 10,755 COVID Care Centres with 10,02,681 beds are now available to combat COVID-19, the ministry said. The Centre has also provided 273.85 lakh N95 masks and 121.5 lakh personal protective equipments (PPEs) and 1083.77 lakh hydroxychloroquine tablets to the states, Union Territories and central institutions so far. India saw a record single-day increase of 57,118 infections, pushing India's COVID-19 tally 16,95,988 on Saturday, while the death toll climbed to 36,511 with 764 people succumbing to the disease in the same period. Audit of the Multi-Sectoral Partnerships (MSP) Program to Promote Healthy Living and Prevent Chronic Disease at the Public Health Agency of Canada Final Report: February 2020 Table of contents List of acronyms BOP Branch Operation Plan FAF Funding Approval Form HPCDP Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention ISHLCD Integrated Strategy on Healthy Living and Chronic Diseases LOI Letter of Intent MSP Multi-Sectoral Partnership PHAC Public Health Agency of Canada SGBA+ Sex and Gender-Based Analysis Plus TBS Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat Executive summary What we examined The Multi-Sectoral Partnerships ( MSP ) to Promote Healthy Living and Prevent Chronic Disease Program was launched in 2013, with the aim of advancing innovative solutions to public health challenges. The Program brokers multi-sectoral partnerships and provides co-funding to recipients in order to test and scale up the most promising primary prevention interventions that address common modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases. By engaging with multiple sectors of society, partners can leverage knowledge, expertise, and resources to work towards the shared goal of producing better health outcomes for Canadians. We examined the management control framework in place to support program delivery from 2014-15 to 2018-19, specifically: Governance Risk Management Internal Controls Monitoring of Program Performance Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis Plus ( SGBA+ ) The audit focused on the priority areas of the Integrated Strategy on Healthy Living and Chronic Disease. The MSP Program funded projects under Mens Health, Canadian Breast Cancer Initiative, Canadian Diabetes Strategy, Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease Program, and Healthy Living Fund programs. It also examined projects, both approved and in development, created under the new Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat pilot on Generic Terms and Conditions, which was officially launched on April 1st, 2017.Footnote 1 Why its important Since 2013, the MSP Program has invested approximately $112 million in support of over 49 projects, which together have leveraged an additional $92 million in investments, involved 400+ partners from across a range of sectors and industries, and used innovative funding models. Innovative and experimental programming can include higher-risk endeavours, yet is expected to lead to sustained approaches to reducing major chronic diseases. What was found Overall, we found that the management controls for the MSP Program were generally working as intended; however, there were weaknesses found in controls for the Programs governance, risk management, and monitoring. We also found that SGBA+ was not sufficiently documented to demonstrate how it was incorporated into relevant processes of the MSP Program. Management controls were effective in the following areas: The Program appropriately reviewed outputs, outcomes, and budgets contained within the Letters of Intent (LOI) and detailed proposals; and Project activities and deliverables, as well as close-out of agreements were, for the most part, appropriately monitored and corrective actions were taken on the results of recipient audits and site visits. Within the context of Grants and Contributions ( G&Cs ) management within PHAC , we found management controls were weak in the following areas: The Programs governance did not have fully defined roles and responsibilities for its key activities or relevant stakeholders, lacked a formalized human resource plan, did not have a documented approval process in place at the proposal review stage, was missing terms of reference for the oversight committees, and did not document how monitoring of the Programs ability to meet strategic objectives was taking place; Risk management at the Program level was not being exercised in a consistent manner; Service standards were not being met, or did not exist for some Program activities, in order to be able to monitor performance against standards, and the conflict of interest process was inconsistently applied; There was no risk-based project monitoring strategy for innovative funding agreements; and The incorporation of SGBA+ into the MSP Programs processes was not documented, and Program expectations were not communicated to applicants in relation to target populations. The areas for improvement noted in this audit report will further strengthen the management practices of the MSP Program and, more broadly, Grants and Contributions management. A: Introduction Program context According to the World Health Organization ( WHO ), non-communicable diseases (commonly known as chronic diseases in Canada) are increasingly complex health challenges. In Canada, more than a fifth of the population over the age of twenty is living with at least one major chronic disease, such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or chronic respiratory disease. Physical inactivity, unhealthy eating, tobacco use, the problematic use of alcohol, and exposure to unhealthy built environments are all common modifiable risk factors for chronic disease. Footnote 2 Obesity is also considered to be a key driver of chronic diseases in Canada, where one in three children are overweight or obese, and over one in four adults are obese. Over 150,000 Canadians die annually from diseases that are preventable. Chronic diseases are also responsible for a high rate of morbidity, associated reductions in quality of life, and negative impacts on communities and the economy. Chronic diseases and other illnesses cost the Canadian economy $190 billion annually, including $122 billion in indirect income and productivity losses, and $68 billion in direct health care costs. Footnote 3 In May 2012, the World Health Assembly endorsed the first global target to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable disease by 25 percent by 2025. Member states also came to an agreement on a comprehensive global monitoring framework. Footnote 4 The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development increased this global target to one-third (33 per cent) by 2030. In 2005, the Public Health Agency of Canada ( PHAC ) received $300 million for five years, and $66.7 million every year in ongoing funding, for the Integrated Strategy on Healthy Living and Chronic Disease ( ISHLCD ), which represents PHACs foundation in the area of healthy living and chronic disease prevention. The aim of the ISHLCD framework was to ensure that Canada had an integrated approach to addressing major chronic diseases by focusing on common modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases, as well as through complementary disease-specific work. The framework consisted of three pillars: promoting health, preventing chronic diseases by minimizing risk, and early detection and management of chronic diseases. The Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Equity ( CCDPHE ), within the Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention ( HPCDP ) Branch, leads PHACs chronic disease prevention activities. Footnote 5 Grants and Contributions are jointly managed between the Centre for Grants and Contributions ( GGC ) and program staff. The Transfer Payment Business Process developed by PHAC outlines the key steps in G&Cs operations and management. The process is more fully described in the G&Cs Business Management Model ( BMM ), which also documents the accountability and responsibilities of programs and the CGC for key aspects of the G&Cs life cycle. The CGC, located within Office of the Chief Financial Officer, supports the administration of PHACs G&Cs programs. CGC is responsible for the administration of contribution agreements, payments, financial oversight, and recipient audits. CGC developed a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), information, and tools to assist staff across the Agency in making informed decisions concerning the management and monitoring of G&Cs programs and agreements. Program staff at headquarters is responsible for overall program management, which includes stakeholder engagement, program design, assessment of funding requests, funding decisions, monitoring of the agreement and deliverables, and assessment of program outcomes. Funding for the Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention Multi-Sectoral Partnerships (MSP) Program is provided through the ISHLCD. PHACs MSP Program was launched in 2013, with the aim of advancing innovative solutions to public health challenges. The Program provides co-investments to partners for testing and scaling up the most promising primary prevention interventions, with the goal of improving health overall, while reducing health inequalities among population groups where necessary. Program approach Overall, the Program focuses on a multi-sectoral approach to address complex social issues, whereby each project must include partnerships from both the private and not-for profit sectors, such as governmental organizations, academia, industry, and communities. By engaging multiple sectors of society, partners can leverage knowledge, expertise, and resources in working towards the common goal of producing better health outcomes for Canadians. Since 2013, the MSP Program has invested approximately $112 million in support of over 49 projects, which leveraged an additional $92 million in investments and involved over 400 partners from across a range of sectors and industries. The Program uses a continuous intake approach for project submissions. Rather than using a specific proposal deadline, the Program uses an open solicitation process and a two-step review process for incoming detailed proposals. The first step is the receipt and review of Letters of Intent (LOI), followed by the receipt and review of detailed proposals. This intake approach generally involves a high degree of co-creation between program officials and project proponents. Consistent with the multi-sectoral approach, the Program also requires project partners to secure matched funding, identified as a ratio of 1:1, of financial or in-kind contributions from non-taxpayer funded sources to be eligible for funding from the Program. There is no other program within the Government of Canada that has both a continuous intake with a two-step review process, and a multi-sectoral approach specifically focusing on private sector matched funding. The MSP Program also makes use of outcome-based funding models in its project design, as set out under the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariats (TBS) new Generic Terms and Conditions for Innovative Uses of Transfer Payments Pilot. Footnote 6 Such funding models focus on innovative financing tools, based on the achievement of concrete results and goals, rather than traditional funding that is based on tasks and activities. The Program also identified a series of physiological and psychological measures related to common modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases (e.g., blood pressure, body mass index), which are used as performance indicators to tie payments to recipients successful achievement of project results. B: Findings, recommendations and management responses Footnote 7 Governance Governance is a set of rules and practices by which management ensures coordination, leadership, and accountability. Ultimately, the application of good governance contributes to the effective and efficient realization of strategic and organizational goals. We expected to find appropriate governance in place and operating effectively to provide strategic and operational direction for management of the MSP Program. We found that the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Equitys ( CCDPHE ) Strategic Plan and the Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Preventions ( HPCDP ) Branch Operational Plan ( BOP ) clearly articulated the Programs strategic direction. We found the Program had detailed annual operational and resource plans that were integrated into the BOP . The Program identified challenges related to staffing capacity in terms of both personnel numbers and skill sets, and provided examples of how these challenges were currently being addressed. However, we found the Program did not have a human resources ( HR ) plan. The Programs annual operational plan, which was integrated into the 2018-19 BOP, included some components of an HR plan, such as training costs and plans for staffing in that year. However, it did not include succession planning, knowledge transfer, and workforce gap analysis. The Branch committed to, in the most recent BOP, developing a branch-level HR plan and a capacity and gap assessment. While these initiatives have yet to be completed by the Branch, the Program should align its HR strategy with that of the Branch to ensure effective use of resources and ensure the Programs ability to attract and retain the talent needed to achieve its operational objectives and meet its unique and innovative mandate. The Program, as part of the Partnership and Strategies Division, went through a large reorganization in 2018, resulting in the Program operating through four new teams that were established in September 2018. Each team focused on the following different program areas: policy, partnerships, project operations, and impact analysis. Given this large-scale change, the teams roles and responsibilities were not always clear. For example, the performance measurement unit, which was in a different division than the Program, had an important role in the review of detailed proposals, related to establishing project and program performance targets, yet their role was not identified in how they complement the four teams, or their role within the Letters of Intent ( LOI ) and proposal review process. We found that the roles and responsibilities of the project operations team, by contrast, which dealt mostly with contribution agreement ( CA ) monitoring, were the most understood and followed. By not having defined roles and responsibilities, there is a risk of confusion and duplication of roles between the four teams, leading to program inefficiency. The Program had a Review Committee that made the final decision to accept or reject LOIs. We reviewed minutes from committee meetings that documented the discussions and decisions taken to approve or reject the LOIs. Once this review committee approved an LOI, the applicant was invited to submit a detailed proposal based on the initial LOI. There were no terms of reference governing the Review Committees responsibilities. We expected to find a similar process in place for the review of the detailed proposals. While we could track the back-and-forth interactions between the Program and applicant relating to proposal information, a documented approval process or concurrence was not present prior to moving the proposal to the Funding Approval Form ( FAF ) stage. The FAF stage is when key program and branch officials, along with the Agencys Chief Financial Officer, sign off on the decision to provide funding to an applicant. Having an oversight mechanism, such as a Review Committee at this stage in the process, would provide a forum for discussions to be held and decisions to be made and documented on a specific project before moving to the FAF stage. In addition, having an independent reviewer, or other mechanism like this committee, could help deter any actual or perceived conflicts of interest. Finally, we could not determine how the Program ensured oversight of its strategic outcomes, specifically that it was meeting its strategic objectives of experimentation and scaling up of projects, developing strategic partnerships, and ensuring the funding of innovative projects. Oversight of strategic partnerships was intended to be covered through the Partnership Check-up process, but this process was still in development during the examination phase of this audit. Without documented evidence of such oversight, it is difficult to determine how the Program monitors and makes the changes necessary to help them achieve their strategic goals. Recommendation 1 The Vice-President, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, should: develop a Program-level human resource plan finalize roles and responsibilities for the four teams, as well as that of the Performance Measurement team develop terms of reference for existing oversight committees document the decisions stemming from the Programs proposal review stage monitor the progress of the Programs achievement of strategic objectives Management response Management agrees with the recommendation. We will develop a Human Resource (HR) Plan for the Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention - Multi-Sectoral Partnerships (MSP) Program that identifies current and future human resources needs and related considerations necessary for the achievement of MSP program objectives. In consultation with the Centre for Grants and Contributions, we will develop and implement a Program Charter and Business Management Model for the MSP Program. Together, these documents will clarify roles and responsibilities of all key actors, set terms of reference for oversight committees, establish procedures for documenting proposal review decisions and will both clarify the strategic objectives of the program, and specify how progress against these strategic objectives will be monitored. Risk management Risk management is an integral component of good management that supports organizations in making informed decisions for allocating resources, mitigating threats, and proactively capitalizing on opportunities. Risk management is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a process that is tailored to the organizational environment, including its mandate, structure, operations, and related constraints. We expected to find a risk management process in place where management identifies, assesses, and manages the risks that may preclude the achievement of its objectives. As highlighted in the November 2018 - Audit of the Management of Grants and Contributions at Public Health Agency of Canada, the Agency focused its risk management processes and activities at the individual or agreement levels, and not at the program level. The following recommendation was made in the audit: The Chief Financial Officer, supported by the Office of Strategic Policy and Planning, collaborates with the Vice-Presidents of the HPCDP Branch, HSIB, and IDPC Branch to develop a formalized process for documenting, monitoring, updating, and reporting risks and risk management strategies at the G&Cs program level, in accordance with the IRM, and to be implemented within the Vice-Presidents respective program area. In line with the finding which led to the above recommendation related to the Agencys G&Cs program functions as a whole, we found that the MSP Program, similarly, did not have a risk management process in place where management identifies, assesses, and manages possible program-level risks that may preclude the achievement of its objectives. The Program identified certain risks in an ad hoc manner, and was in the process of addressing them. For example, the Program recently developed a risk framework that would allow it to conduct its own risk assessments and establish mitigation measures to ensure identified risks were managed. The Program identified some risks, but did not assess their level, nor did it assign related mitigation strategies. Without an established risk management process, the Program may not be able to identify all major risks, nor implement a strategy to address them, which may affect it meeting its objectives. Overall, the Program conducted informal risk management activities, and efforts were being made to more systematically identify, assess, and manage program risks. This process should be finalized and incorporated into the Agency-wide risk management process. Recommendation 2 The Vice-President, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, should implement the Programs specific risk management framework, while ensuring that it is aligned with the work being done to address Recommendation 3 of the Audit of the Management of Grants and Contributions. Management response Management agrees with the recommendation. In consultation with the Centre for Grants and Contributions, we will develop and implement an MSP-specific risk management framework that aligns with recommendation 3 of the Audit of Management of Grants and Contributions at the Public Health Agency of Canada. This program-specific risk management framework will be incorporated into the Program Charter and Business Management Model for the MSP Program, and will include a process for assessing and communicating an overall risk tolerance for the MSP Program. Internal controls Letter of Intent and proposal review The Programs review process consisted of two principal stages. The first was an initial screening to ensure the LOI was complete. Once this was done, a detailed review of the LOI took place. After the LOI had been reviewed and accepted, the applicant was then sent an Invitation to Submit a Funding Request ( ISFR ), which was an in-depth version of the LOI. This led to the second review stage, where the Program reviewed the proposal in order to determine if the project should be funded. During this stage, the Program might have co-created projects with applicants, by helping with the design and with identifying potential investors, in order to ensure that the project reaches an optimal state and secures all necessary matched funds before program funding is approved. Appropriate LOI and proposal review, in accordance with the established process, ensures that applicants receive a fair and accurate assessment of their project idea. This includes appropriate review of the projects target population and specific activities to ensure they are in alignment with the Programs objectives. As part of these assessments, each reviewer is required to sign a Conflict of Interest Form ( COI ) before reviewing either an LOI or a detailed proposal to ensure an unbiased and accurate assessment of the project. This process requires reviewers to self-identify any real, apparent, or potential conflict of interest, allowing management of the conflict in a manner that upholds the public interest. Within the context of the Programs matched funding requirement and open solicitation process, the efficient review of LOIs and detailed proposals is an important factor for ensuring that external partners remain committed to providing applicants with matched funds or other supports. It also enables applicants and partners to plan projects better, to ensure that detailed project proposals remain relevant and can be advanced in a timely manner, and helps the Program maintain its image as a reputable partner. Communicating and adhering to established service standards for applicants can be beneficial in ensuring the efficient review of LOIs and detailed proposals. Service standards are an important element to ensuring the quality of the services provided, as they help clarify expectations for clients and employees, enable performance management, and support client satisfaction. We expected to find a process in place for the efficient and appropriate review and approval of LOIs and detailed project proposals. In order to determine if the review of LOIs and detailed proposals was carried out in an appropriate and efficient manner, we tested a sample of LOIs and detailed proposals that had been rejected or accepted, as well as detailed proposals under review. Details on the population and samples are outlined in Table 1 below. Table 1: Number of LOIs and Detailed Proposals Reviewed Type Population (2014 to 15) to December 31, 2018 Sample Footnote * LOIs were not found on file for some projects, as the Program had directly asked the applicant to submit a detailed proposal instead of an LOI. Return to footnote * referrer Total samples tested: 74 LOIs reviewed Rejected LOIs 130 50 Accepted LOIs 38 Footnote * 24 Total samples tested: 43 proposals reviewed Accepted proposals with a Contribution agreement 42 27 Proposals under review when testing started 7 5 Proposals not accepted (no contribution agreement) 16 7 Proposals under the new TB Generic Terms and Conditions 4 4 Through a review of these samples, we found that the controls for reviewing the LOIs and detailed proposals were generally followed, with minor discrepancies that were presented to management for correction. Conflict of interest forms We reviewed the COI process for both the review of LOIs and of detailed proposals that the Program had implemented, in addition to the G&Cs Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) COI process. We noted that PHAC employees involved in the review of these documents did not always follow the Programs own policy guidelines of signing a COI disclosure form each time they conducted a review. The Program stated that they required the use of an external reviewer to take part in the review process, as a further measure to support impartiality during LOI and Proposal review. We noted that this requirement was not always followed. Given the design of this innovative program, project proponents must collaborate and obtain cash or in-kind support from various public and private sector entities across Canada. Program staff are also involved in the co-creation of projects. This involvement in the project through co-creation, while innovative, creates the risk of a real or perceived conflict of interest. Requiring employees conducting reviews to sign a declaration of COI at the time of the review would help reduce this risk. Recommendation 3 The Chief Financial Officer should update the Grants and Contributions Standard Operating Procedures related to conflict of interest requirements for dealing with higher risk projects such as innovative funding agreements or innovative projects. Management response Management agrees with the recommendation. CGC will update the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure appropriate procedures and tools are in place so that any real or perceived conflict of interest are identified and appropriately considered. Service standards: LOI Service standards are timelines that are established and committed to, usually based on predetermined norms for completing a certain step or process. They allow for improved performance measurement capabilities and planning. The Program established a service standard of 45 calendar days for the LOI review process and posted this on their public website. No service standards exist for the proposal review phase. As noted in Table 3, we found that for the past four-and-a-half years, the average review time of 68 calendar days was above the set standard of 45 days. We noted that during the same period, the number of LOIs received and reviewed decreased from 58 in 2014-15 to 26 in 2017-18, yet the average review time for the LOI did not change significantly. Based on this information, we can conclude that the Program should review their processes to establish realistic service standards that are communicated through the Programs website. Table 2: Average number of days to review a letter of intent Fiscal year Average days to review a LOI by fiscal year (total average: 68 days) Number of LOIs sent to the Program each fiscal year Footnote * Average review calendar days after initial screening Return to footnote * referrer Footnote ** This average of 84 calendar days includes one LOI review that took the most number of days to review, at 204 days, and an LOI that took the least number of days to review, at 33 days. At least four LOIs included in this average were only approved conditionally, based on budget considerations. Return to footnote ** referrer 2014 to 15 69 Footnote * 58 2015 to 16 85 Footnote * 46 2016 to 17 52 Footnote * 27 2017 to 18 65 Footnote * 26 April 2018 to December 2018 84 Footnote ** 24 Service standards are an important element for measuring the quality of services provided and ensuring client satisfaction. Given that the Program has, in most cases, not met its advertised 45 calendar day service standard, there is the risk that the Programs delays in reviewing LOIs and detailed proposals may negatively affect an applicants ability to efficiently plan their projects and successfully negotiate for funds from external partners. It could also prolong the proposal review process even after an LOI has been approved. Service standards: Proposal We found that the Program did not monitor its performance, nor did it have service standards for the proposal review stage. Through our examination of detailed proposals that were reviewed over the period of 2016-17 to 2018-19, we noted that the average review time from receipt to issuance of the acceptance letter was 374 calendar days, with times ranging from 80 days up to 1,227 days. The factors that may have contributed to the average review time of 374 calendar days included: the finalization of the budget and securing of matched funds which took the longest time, averaging 316 days; the Programs finalization of the FAF, averaging 78 days; and the completion of review forms, averaging 48 days. Recommendation 4 The Vice-President, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, should validate the Branchs service standards, and align the Programs business processes and monitor the Programs achievement against these standards. Management response Management agrees with the recommendation. In keeping with the significant work we have already completed to review our business processes and assess user experience, we will validate external service standards and related business processes, with adjustments made as necessary to support consistent achievement and monitoring of service standard targets. Service standard targets, related business processes, and monitoring procedures will be incorporated into the Program Charter and Business Management Model for the MSP Program. Monitoring of program performance Monitoring of recipient performance The Directive on Transfer Payments requires that departmental management exercise a level of monitoring that is commensurate with the risks of the programs, the value of the funding in relation to administrative costs, and the risk profile of the recipients. Ongoing monitoring of recipient performance enables re-assessment of risk based on changes in the recipient environment and remediation of identified deficiencies, thus contributing to the overall success of the project. We expected that recipient reporting and close-out of agreements were appropriately monitored, and that the results of recipient audits and site visits were used to take appropriate corrective action when required. Contribution agreement reporting requirements The frequency and nature of recipient reporting requirements are outlined in Appendix C of Contribution Agreements (CA). Reporting requirements include a variety of financial documentation, such as audited financial statements and general ledgers, and non-financial documentation, such as quarterly progress reports and annual progress reports. We expected to find reporting requirements, as outlined in Appendix C, that would allow program managers to appropriately monitor recipient progress. We reviewed whether recipient reporting requirements were included in the Grants and Contributions Information Management System (GCIMS), which is managed by the Centre for Grants and Contributions, to allow for appropriate and timely monitoring. We noted that six declaration of income forms and three progress reports were not on file for the 27 agreements reviewed. Furthermore, an instance was identified where a payment was issued to the recipient prior to their signing the CA, even though the Programs policy states that costs cannot be incurred before a CA is signed. While several reporting requirements were not collected, the progress of project activities was continuously monitored using other methods (refer to the next section, Project Activity Monitoring). This provided assurance that payments were made based on expected project progress. Overall, increased effort is required to ensure that all reports are submitted for review on a timely basis to support management in fulfilling their responsibilities. Project activity monitoring The Treasury Board of Canadas Directive on Transfer Payments requires that departmental managers ensure that the level of monitoring of recipients reflects an assessment of program-specific risks, value of funding in relation to administrative costs, and the risk profile of the recipients. We expected to find that project activities were appropriately monitored, based on the level of risk identified in their monitoring strategy which is based on Agreement/Recipient Risk Assessment Tool (ARRAT) results. We found that a risk-based monitoring strategy for grants and contributions was in place, with applicable tools and that was applied to all projects. However, no specific strategy or tools were in place for innovative funding agreement projects within the MSP Program, even though the latter were more complex, with a higher degree of risk. Through a review of files, we found there was no standardized process to monitor recipients. There were varying monitoring tools on file for each case, but no standard set of documents. The risk assessments on file identified which recipients should undergo a recipient audit and site visit, with no indication of the frequency of the monitoring. As a result, it was difficult to determine if the level of monitoring was appropriate and aligned with the risk profile of the recipient. Of the 27 files reviewed, there were three that had no monitoring or documented communication with recipients. Recipient audits and site visits We expected to find that the results of recipient audits and site visits were used to identify issues and take corrective action. Recipient audits were conducted for all high-risk recipients. We reviewed seven recipient audits and found that the results of these audits were used to identify recoverable amounts owed to PHAC and, in all cases, those amounts were recovered. We noted that the Program introduced clauses in recently-signed CAs that allow for recipient audits to be used to verify that the matched cash funding from partners, as identified in the partner support letters, was both received and spent on the PHAC-funded project. We found that site visit plans were developed for each fiscal year, based on three strategies. However, the Program stated that plans were not always followed due to financial constraints and staff shortages. Of the 25 site visits planned for the period in scope (2016-17 to 2018-19), we found that seven had been conducted as planned, and five had been conducted on an ad hoc basis. Of these 12 site visits, four did not have Project Monitoring Checklists (PMC) on file as required. Special issues or recommendations were not identified in the PMCs that were completed, and therefore no corrective actions were required following the site visits. Project close-out We expected to find that all final reports were obtained from the recipient before a project was closed out, as required in the CAs. We also expected that any accounts receivable were set up by the Program and paid by the recipient before a project was closed out. Of the 27 projects tested, we found that all of the agreements had been closed out, with some minor control weaknesses. We noted that two recoverable amounts (accounts receivables) were identified, set up, and paid by the recipient before their project was closed, in line with expectations. The minor control weakness noted above is related to deliverables that are required as part of the CA reporting plan and need to be obtained before a project is closed. We found that three projects out of the 27 sampled did not have final reports on file, two projects did not have their evaluation reports, and one project did not have its final accounting of expenditures. Overall, we found that the reporting and close-out of agreements were appropriately monitored, despite some control weaknesses. Although the Program monitored project activities throughout their life cycle, there was no risk-based monitoring strategy for the monitoring of complex innovative funding agreements, nor was there a program risk tolerance level that could help with the establishment of a monitoring strategy. We also found that, while agreements were monitored and closed out appropriately, there was room for improvement in ensuring that all recipient documentation required under the agreements was obtained. Corrective action was taken, as identified in the recipient audits and site visits, but there was room for minor improvement in the monitoring process for site visits. Recommendation 5 Recommendation 5: The Chief Financial Officer should update the Grants and Contributions Standard Operating Procedures to include a risk-based project monitoring strategy for innovative funding agreements that is structured around results and outcomes, rather than activities and outputs, with payments tied to the achievement of pre-determined performance expectations. Management response Management agrees with the recommendation. PHACs risk-based monitoring strategy will be updated to include provisions to support the monitoring of results and outcomes for innovative funding arrangements. Recommendation 6 Based upon the newly-developed, risk-based project monitoring strategy for innovative funding agreements, the Vice-President, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, should implement a risk-based project monitoring strategy for innovative funding agreements that aligns with the MSP Programs overall risk tolerance. Management response Management agrees with the recommendation. We will implement a risk-based project monitoring strategy for MSP agreements using innovative funding models. This risk-based project monitoring will align with the newly developed MSP Program risk tolerance , and will take into consideration factors such as level of funding subject to payment on outcomes, among others. Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis Plus (SGBA+) SGBA+ is an analytical process used to assess how diverse groups of women, men, and non-binary people may experience policies, programs, and initiatives. Many other identity factors may also play a role, such as race, ethnicity, religion, age, and mental or physical disability. We expected to find that SGBA+ had been incorporated into the life cycle of the Programs activities, as outlined in the Agencys SGBA+ guidance. We found that there has been greater effort to address specific and identified sex and gender gaps, as applicants were asked to identify their projects target populations in their detailed proposals, and the Programs staff members have all completed mandatory SGBA+ training. We did not find evidence that SGBA+ had been integrated in the Programs processes; for example, that SGBA+ factors were considered during the proposal review stage, or that SGBA+-related criteria were included in the reporting structure for project outputs and outcomes. While SGBA+ has been completed for healthy eating (December 2017), for smoking (October 2018), and for sedentary behaviour and physical inactivity (November 2018), the results of the analysis have yet to be converted into a program-level analysis that can be used to assess SGBA+ in future project proposal submissions. We did not find evidence of inclusion of these SGBA+ principles in the analysis completed during the review of target populations, as identified in project Letters of Intent (LOI) or detailed proposals. Nor did the Program have set criteria or expectations for assessing the applicant with regards to SGBA+. Finally, we did not find evidence that the Program had made applicants aware of SGBA+ reporting requirements once their proposal had been approved. As such, SGBA+ indicators were not integrated into the reporting structure for project outputs and outcomes, including progress reports and annual reports, thus making it difficult for the performance measurement team to consistently gather and report on this information. Although most interviewed project applicants, recipients, and partners were aware of the Programs website, they had difficulty finding relevant information on priorities, strategic directions, and target populations related to SGBA+, and would have liked a clearer indication of the types of projects the MSP Program seeks to fund. While the Program is committed to encouraging experimentation and avoiding limitations for the intake of innovative projects, we did not find sufficient documented evidence of how SGBA+ was incorporated into relevant MSP Program processes, or how project funding decisions addressed common modifiable risk factors for chronic disease in the most vulnerable populations. Recommendation 7 The Vice-President, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch should integrate SGBA+ into the Programs processes, and ensure that related expectations are communicated to applicants. Management response Management agrees with the recommendation. In consultation with the Centre for Grants and Contributions, we will integrate SGBA+ into MSP program processes at all relevant stages (including program objectives, project assessments and selection decisions), performance measurement and evaluation, and knowledge transfer. We will develop and implement a Program Guide for the MSP Program that communicates SGBA+ expectations externally. C: Conclusion Overall, we found that the management controls for the MSP Program were generally working as intended; however, there were weaknesses found in controls for the Programs governance, risk management, and monitoring. We also found that SGBA+ was not sufficiently documented to demonstrate how it was incorporated into relevant processes of the MSP Program. Management controls were effective in the following areas: The Program appropriately reviewed outputs, outcomes, and budgets contained within the Letters of Intent (LOI) and detailed proposals; and Project activities and deliverables, as well as close-out of agreements were for the most part appropriately monitored and corrective actions were taken on the results of recipient audits and site visits. Within the context of Grants and Contributions (G&Cs) management within PHAC, we found management controls were weak in the following areas: The Programs governance did not have fully defined roles and responsibilities for its key activities or relevant stakeholders, lacked a human resource plan, did not have a documented approval process in place at the proposal review stage, was missing terms of reference for the oversight committee and did not monitor whether the Program was achieving its strategic objectives; Risk management at the Program level was not being exercised in a consistent manner; Service standards were not being met, or did not exist for some Program activities, in order to be able to monitor performance against standards and the conflict of interest process was inconsistently applied; There was no risk-based project monitoring strategy for innovative funding agreements ; and The incorporation of SGBA+ into the MSP Programs processes was not well documented, and Program expectations were not communicated to applicants in relation to target populations. The areas for improvement noted in this audit report will further strengthen the management practices of the MSP Program and, more broadly, Grants and Contributions management. Appendix A: About the audit Audit objective The objectives of this audit were to provide reasonable assurance that management controls were working as intended, and that Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis Plus was being integrated into the life cycle of the Program. Audit scope The scope of this audit focused on the structures, processes, and activities in place from April 2014 to December 2018, and included the examination and assessment of governance mechanisms, risk management, internal controls over the application phase, as well as monitoring of the Programs performance. Audit approach The audit was conducted at the Public Health Agency of Canadas Headquarters (HQ) and included processes in place and activities carried out by the MSP program and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO). The principal audit procedures included, but were not limited to: walkthroughs and interviews with PSD and CGC (OCFO); review of documentation, policies, standards, guidelines, and frameworks related to grants and contributions; detailed testing of related controls over MSP activities; and, analysis of findings from interviews, enquiries, document reviews, and detailed testing. Statement of conformance This audit was conducted in conformance with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, as supported by the results of the Office of Audit and Evaluation's Quality Assurance and Improvement Program. Appendix B: Lines of enquiry and criteria Audit of the Multi-Sectoral Partnerships Program to Promote Healthy Living and Prevent Chronic Disease Criteria Sub-criteria Appropriate governance is in place for the Program. 1.1 There is an operational and human resource plan for the Program that aligns with the centre and branchs strategic objectives. 1.2 Accountabilities and responsibilities are established and followed for the Programs management and delivery. 1.3 The Program is supported by appropriate oversight committees, with documented terms of reference. Management identifies, assesses, and manages the risks that may preclude the achievement of its objectives. 2.1 Internal and external risks related to program activities are identified and assessed. 2.2 Risk mitigation strategies are identified and implemented. Efficient and appropriate review and approval of project proposals takes place. 3.1 Proposals are reviewed against appropriate criteria in an efficient manner. 3.2 The sustainability of outputs and outcomes, and compliance to program terms and conditions are challenged. 3.3 The project budgets are challenged. 3.4 Funding is approved against appropriate criteria in an efficient manner. Recipient reporting and close-out of agreements are appropriately monitored. 4.1 Funding agreements are monitored and closed out against appropriate criteria. 4.2 The results of the recipient audits and site visits are used to take corrective action. Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis Plus is incorporated into the life cycle of the Program. 5.1 The Program uses SGBA+ to determine the target populations. 5.2 The target populations are communicated to applicants. 5.3 Proposals are approved if they clearly identify how they meet the needs of the Programs SGBA+. 5.4 For approved recipients, the inclusion of sex and gender is considered by the Program as they monitor project performance and outcomes. Appendix C: Scorecard Audit of the Multi-Sectoral Partnerships (MSP) Program to Promote Healthy Living and Prevent Chronic Disease at the Public Health Agency of Canada Criterion Risk rating Footnote 8 Risk remaining to Program objectives without implementing recommendation Recommendation number Definitions of risk levels: Minimal risk Minor risk Moderate risk Significant risk Major risk Appropriate governance is in place for the Program. 3 The attraction and retention of qualified staff for current and future needs may be at risk without appropriate Program HR planning; Confusion of roles and responsibilities after a reorganization risks program efficiency; There is a risk of oversight committee members not understanding their roles and responsibilities due to the absence of or incomplete terms of reference; Senior management may not understand how and what decisions were made in the review of project proposals due to undocumented decisions; and The Program may not be able to meet its objectives as it is not monitoring the achievement of its strategic objectives. 1 Management identifies, assesses, and manages the risks that may preclude the achievement of its objectives. 2 There is a risk to the Programs costs, performance, and reputation, as well as possible delay or inefficiency due to the absence of a program-level risk management process. 2 Efficient and appropriate review and approval of project proposals takes place. 3 There is an increased risk of reputational loss or impact to the Agencys reputation due to the real or perceived conflict of interest occurring within the Program, due to the inconsistent application of a robust conflict of interest process. 3 Efficient and appropriate review and approval of project proposals takes place. 3 There is a risk to the Programs reputation from the possible negative effect on an applicants ability to efficiently plan their projects and successfully negotiate for funds from external partners due to the Programs inability to respect service standards, or to not have established service standards for some processes that leads to delays in the Program reviewing LOIs and detailed proposals. 4 Recipient reporting and close-out of agreements are appropriately monitored. 3 There is a risk of potential misuse or ineffective use of funds or not meeting the grant and contribution program objectives, due to inconsistent or inadequate monitoring of innovative funding recipients, as there is not a standard operating procedures in place for risk-based project monitoring for innovative funding agreements that, by their nature, are high-risk agreements. 5 Recipient reporting and close-out of agreements are appropriately monitored. 3 There is a risk that there is inconsistent or inadequate monitoring of all recipients, leading to potential misuse or ineffective use of funds, or not meeting the Programs objectives, due to there not being a risk-based monitoring strategy for innovative funding agreements. 6 Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis Plus is incorporated into the life cycle of the Program. 4 There is a risk of not addressing common modifiable risk factors for chronic disease in the most vulnerable populations, due to the Program not fully incorporating SGBA+ into relevant processes. The Program risks inefficiency in its review process and not targeting identified populations by not communicating to applicants the priority of the common modifiable risk factors for chronic disease in the most vulnerable populations. 7 Related links Enforcement or education? Two Niagara Falls politicians have a different approach on how they want to see people not following COVID-19 guidelines and rules dealt with. City Coun. Carolynn Ioannoni said the time for education has come and gone, and its now time to take tougher measures to protect residents during the pandemic. With Niagara Regions mask bylaw now in effect, and Niagara in Stage 3 of the provinces economic recovery plan, shes calling for more enforcement for those who dont follow the rules and proper guidelines. In an email Wednesday addressed to Mayor Jim Diodati and chief administrative officer Ken Todd, and sent to councillors and members of the media, Ioannoni cited a recent video of Niagara Falls going viral showing the inability in the tourist corridor to be safe. Residents are worried, she said. Parents are worried about their kids going to work in the tourist area and possibly getting sick, or they themselves working in tourism and taking it home to their family. Ioannoni said she understands clearly the city reopened for the sake of the economy, but what the city is doing is not working. What benchmark has been set that would prompt your (Back to Business) committee to taking stronger action than education? she asked. We are six months into this pandemic and if people dont understand by now what has to be done to stop the spread, further education is futile. Ioannoni said the Niagara Region mask bylaw that went into effect Friday has to be paired with social distancing which is not really happening in many places in the city. Residents who are health compromised do not feel safe going out into their own community and neither do seniors, or families for that matter. How do we answer the residents who are calling and messaging and asking us when we are going to take tougher measures to keep their families safe? Are tougher measures even being contemplated? After the recent video showing large crowds of people gathering along Clifton Hill, many not physically distancing or wearing masks, Diodati announced the city would implement an on-street campaign with Crush the Curve ambassadors in bright yellow shirts offering hand sanitizer and masks, while encouraging people to maintain safe physical distancing. Thus far, Diodati has preferred education over strict enforcement. During an announcement earlier this week that weekend GO train service is resuming, he said: Id rather have an ambassador come up to me in a friendly way than a bylaw enforcement officer with a ticket book, so hopefully its going to be effective. But if it isnt, weve got ticket books just in case, so lets hope everybody buys into the program. In an interview, Diodati said he believes we still need to make education and awareness our No. 1 tactic. There are not enough bylaw, public health and police officials to ever try to enforce one ticket at a time with tens of thousands coming every weekend, he said. A lot of people might see it as a cash grab, they might see it as a negative welcome to Niagara Falls. Weve got tourists coming from out of town that maybe dont fully understand that we have a mandatory mask bylaw. Diodati said strict enforcement is always an option if its necessary, but it should never be our first option. Our staff are empowered to do it if need be, but thats not how we lead. The objective is compliance over conviction because our ultimate objective is to get everyone to follow the rules and the way you do that is you educate, make them aware, he said. Somebody shows up from the GTA and they dont have their mask, so their first exposure to our mandatory mask bylaw is a ticket? They still dont have a mask, so how have we made it any safer by giving them a ticket versus our approach, we give them hand sanitizer, we ask them if they have a mask or need a mask, let them know about the mandatory mask bylaw, and show them what two metres is. That is the proactive, customer-service approach to compliance. Not going around with a stick, were going to go around with a carrot. The opposition National Democratic Congress Flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama, has condemned what he calls the discriminatory use of military personnel by President Akufo-Addo to disenfranchise Ewes and other non-Akans. His statement comes on the back of a report in which some military personnel are accused of preventing Ewes in Banda from taking part in the ongoing voter registration exercise. In a post on his Facebook page, Mr Mahama described the actions of the government as dangerous. The road President Akufo-Addo is taking our beautiful country through, using the military and party thugs to stop people from exercising their right to register and vote in the upcoming December elections, is dangerous and unacceptable. There have been many reports and video evidence, like the one in this post, of the Presidents deployment and discriminatory use of soldiers to target our brothers and sisters in the Volta Region and wherever there are settlements of Voltarians and non-Akans, he added. The former president also indicated that such acts will not be permitted should he be voted into power. Executive power must not be used to foment ethnic discrimination and abuse as is happening under Nana Akufo-Addo. These calculated acts of dehumanisation, disenfranchising Ghanaians and stripping them of their citizenship must end. They will surely never happen under a new NDC administration because we will foster a spirit of peace and unity in our nation. As Commander-in-Chief, I will not use our military in such a partisan manner to terrorise our own people, and in matters that are purely civil and dwell in the very heart of our constitutional democracy. Nana Addo justifies military deployment along borders President Akufo-Addo, in an address to the nation on Monday, June 29, 2020, justified the deployment of military personnel along the country's borders saying it was in the best interest of the country. He said the deployment was to save the country against the intrusion of foreign nationals who have the potential of jeopardising Ghana's democracy and health efforts in these crucial moments. The longstanding deployment of security personnel, especially the military, along our borders is another dimension of this process of guaranteeing the peace of the nation. Ghana's Minister for Defence, Dominic Nitiwul also assured Ghanaians of the Ghana Armed Forces' unalloyed allegiance and service. According to him, the military will not compromise the safety of Ghanaians for the interest of any individual, political party or tribe. citinewsroom Jacksonville Noon Rotary Club President Craig Albers called to order the July 24 meeting of Jacksonville Noon Rotary Club at noon. The Pledge of Allegiance was recited, followed by Sharon Zuiderveld playing America on the piano. The following volunteers were thanked: Greeter Kathryn Grady; Cathy Jo Littleton Wahl, who gave the invocation; pianist Sharon Zuiderveld; and note taker Anne Jackson. Announcements: Members are asked to complete the survey they received via email. The Polio Plus jar is on the front table. There will be no noon meeting July 31. We will meet at 5 p.m. at Hamiltons instead. Visitors were welcomed! Micki Galloway was the guest of Phyllis and Keith Lape. Madelyn Coats accompanied her mother, Amy. Jan Fellhauer was the guest of Nancy Thorsen. Jan Fellhauer was named as the newest Paul Harris recipient. Karen Walker explained the significance of the Paul Harris Award to new members and guests. Nancy Thorsen presented Jan to the club. Cathy Jo Littleton Wahl introduced Dr. Barbara Farley. The group was able to hear an interesting presentation on happenings at Illinois College. Dr. Farley discussed the effects of COVID-19 on IC, the unfortunate closing of MacMurray College, new initiatives and the upcoming year. Micki Galloway won the 50/50 drawing. The Four-Way Test was recited and the meeting was adjourned at 1 p.m. Submitted by Anne Jackson Arenzville UMC UMW Night Circle Arenzville United Methodist Churchs United Methodist Womens Night Circle met July 8 at the church fellowship hall. The group listened to two songs, America the Beautiful and God Bless America by David Phelps. President Lisa Clinton opened the lesson time with prayer. Linda Stinson read a daily devotion, Take Time to Watch the Sunset, before beginning the lesson. Linda was lesson leader for Ephesians 21:11-22 We Are One. After the lesson, the March minutes were read and approved. The treasurers report was given with a good balance and Red Bird Mission needs to be sent $126 for our next six months pledge. Roll call was answered with seven members. Correspondence was read from Leslie Bates Neighborhood House, New Life International Water Purifiers, our Daily Bread and missionary Fran Pearce. Judy Rhoads told us there would be no more shoe ministry. There was no new business so the prayer list was read and updated. The Aug. 12 meeting will be at the church fellowship hall with Lisa Clinton as lesson leader for Prisoner and Preacher from Ephesians 3. The meeting closed with prayer. Submitted by Sue Farmer Jacksonville Area Genealogical and Historical Society Jacksonville Area Genealogical and Historical Society has continued receiving queries and emails during the COVID-19 pandemic. The societys library has been closed to avoid suffering and passing on the affliction to others. Some board members are checking the library and mail and answering questions, but in-person visits are not encouraged. Members are working at home to collect obituaries and historical articles and photos for the collection. Mrs. Ron Nichols has written the newsletter, which was mailed for the first quarter. Therrese Schroeder is taking care of bills due and dues received. The society hopes COVID-19 cases and deaths will stop so regular operation may begin again. Inquiries came from Margaret Powell of Virginia state, who wanted to buy a copy of Simmons family history. Sherrie Reynolds wishes to know when her residence on Beecher was built. A member of the Dodsworth family supplied a page with two burials he discovered once were in Dodsworth Cemetery. There are no stones in place now for Edward and George Wilson. Another request was for relatives of anyone in the Merica family who were here and mentioned in the 1878 Morgan County History. Between 1830 and 1900, there were seven Merica marriages to people with the last names Mick, Williamson, Turley, Johnson, Daugherty, Figg and Stockton. Laurie family information is wanted by people who then plan to visit Jacksonville. Life member Ron McGinnis of San Rafael, California, has written for a copy of a letter from William C. Posey that was printed in a Lexington paper and was instrumental in their move to Jacksonville. Mr. McGinnis family came from Paris, Kentucky, in 1828 and purchased land from Isaac Dial in Morgan County. The society is sorry to lose members Power, Stansfield, Dahman and Alkire. We have recently received a letter from William Springer, telling of his family connections. We are glad to learn Millie Walters is recuperating at her home. Board members will be advised when it is decided to hold a board meeting. Business will be selection of officers for 2021 and information on the will of Mrs. Alkire. For the latest, see here We appreciate the swift actions of law enforcement in this investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case progresses. For our part, we are focused on being transparent and providing updates regularly.For the latest, see here https://t.co/kHty8TXaly July 31, 2020 On July 15th, 2020, Twitter faced a huge privacy issue in history were 130 accounts were hacked. The attackers initiated a massive bitcoin scam, which was very soon noticed by Twitter, FBI, and other agencies. Since then, an investigation has been operational, which led the security agencies to three suspected hackers. Amongst the three hackers, one was a teenage boy aged 17 years Graham Clark, a resident of Tampa, Florida. He is believed to be the 'mastermind' behind the entire attack and is also the one who was successful enough to enter the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Elon, Apple, and more.After Clark's arrest, two more hackers named Nima Fazeli in Orlando and Mason Sheppard in the UK were arrested, Fazeli aged 22 years and Sheppard aged 19 years. Both of the hackers use aliases as 'Rolex' (Fazeli ) and 'Chaewon' (Sheppard). The FBI confirms that both individuals are in custody and being interrogated. An unidentified minor from California also confirmed to the agencies that they sold the access of Twitter accounts to Chaewon. Whereas, Clark said that he got access to Twitter's internal tools with the help of a Twitter employee who worked in the IT department of Twitter. Fazeli is currently in prison for five years, along with a fine of $250,000. On the other hand, Sheppard is being charged for different cases including, money laundering, wire fraud, and computer intrusion. His expected punishment is 20 years of jail with a $250,000 fine. However, these two hackers are considered to be the middlemen of the entire attack. The hacker with username 'Krik#5270' is the main man. The federal agencies are unsure whether Clark is 'Krik#5270' or not.According to the chat log of Discord, Kirk#5270 called himself an employee of Twitter.Twitter appreciated the services that are working on the case. FBI however, states that the investigation is still going on, and they are in search of more suspects. Their goal is to reach the core of the case and expose every single being involved in this highly illegal act. By PTI MUMBAI: The Bihar police, who are in Mumbai to investigate an "abetment to suicide" case related to the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, said they were keeping a watch on his friend and actress Rhea Chakraborty. The four-member Bihar police team arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday to probe the 'abetment to suicide' case registered against Chakraborty and others in Patna. On Saturday the team visited the Bandra police station in connection with the investigation. When asked whether Chakraborty would be interrogated, an official of the Bihar police said, "It is not required as of now. But she is under our watch." Another member of the visiting team said they have sent notice to Chakraborty under CrPC sections, asking her to cooperate with the police in the probe. He also said that the Mumbai police was cooperating with them in the investigation of the case. ALSO READ | Sushant Singh Rajput's death: SC to hear Rhea Chakraborty's plea on August 5 Krishna Kumar Singh (74), Rajput's father, had lodged a complaint against Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, for alleged abetment to suicide, in Patna on Tuesday. The case was registered under various IPC sections including 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 306 (abetment of suicide). Singh has accused Chakraborty, a budding TV and film actor, of having befriended his son in May 2019 with the intention of furthering her own career. Rajput was found hanging in his suburban Bandra apartment on June 14. Meanwhile, a Mumbai police official said that the visiting team has recorded the statements of six persons as part of the probe. "Till now, the police team from Bihar has met the late actor's friends, colleagues and relatives. They have recorded the statements of six persons- Rajput's sister, who stays in Versova, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, a cook, his friends and colleagues," the official said. ALSO READ | Maharashtra caveat in SC, ED files case against Rhea Chakraborty The police team is also likely to question the members of Rajput's staff, he said. "They gathered information about Rajput's various bank accounts and also visited the banks to look into the financial transactions," he said. The visiting team had on Friday visited the Crime Branch office to submit an application seeking assistance from the Mumbai police in probing the case. As a large number of media persons gathered at the spot, the Andheri police personnel took the officers of the Bihar police in their vehicle for safety. A video of the Bihar police team being taken into the vehicle surfaced on social media with the netizens criticising the city police for their alleged mismanagement. When asked about it, the official said, "The issue was about the safety of the Bihar police personnel. The city police put the team members inside a van and dropped them at a safe place." In advertisements for a planned housing development near the Grand River, Losani Homes boasts that life in Caledonia moves a little slower. But construction of 218 detached homes and townhouses on McKenzie Road hasnt moved at all since a group from Six Nations of the Grand River occupied the site two weeks ago, saying the project violates Haudenosaunee sovereignty. This is Six Nations territory and its going to remain Six Nations territory, said Skyler Williams, who has been camped out at McKenzie Meadows since July 19, when protesters spray-painted their new name for the site 1492 Land Back Lane on an excavator, flew Six Nations and Mohawk Warrior flags, and put up a barricade of pylons and piping. The self-described land defenders are against a development that Williams said was approved without consultation or accommodation in any real way with the members of Six Nations. On Friday, over a dozen protesters stood opposite officials from the Hamilton Sheriffs Office and the Ministry of the Attorney General, who delivered a Superior Court injunction ordering the group to leave. In its motion to the court, property owner Foxgate Developments Inc. said it has obtained all necessary approvals and spent significant monies and efforts to prepare to build, with the occupation causing delays and hardship to homebuyers. The injunction orders protesters to take down any structures, flags and banners, vacate the site, and not disrupt future work. The occupiers do not have the backing of Six Nations elected council, which received 42.3 acres of land and $352,000 in cash in exchange for its support of the development. In a statement, elected council said the developers were not legally obliged to accommodate Six Nations, but did so in deference to ongoing land claim disputes along the Grand River, referred to as the Haldimand Tract. Williams said the elected council is a tool of the Canadian government that is unsupported by the majority of band members, and as such does not have a legitimate mandate to speak for Six Nations. Its a slap in the face that an arm of your own government is enforcing foreign laws on a territory that isnt theirs, he said. Our communitys divisions have been perpetuated by the government for the last 100 years. We need to have that space and time to be able to come together as a community and have that singular voice. Without that, there shouldnt be any unfettered development going on right up to the doorstep of our community. The occupation of the site near the infamous Douglas Creek Estate lands, which were occupied by Indigenous protestors in 2006, drew the ire of Haldimand council. In a statement, the county asked the OPP to enforce the law and take all necessary actions to end the occupation. In a tweet, Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Toby Barrett suggested that anyone occupying the site and delaying construction could face mischief charges. Williams puts the blame for ongoing land disputes on successive governments that have done nothing but perpetuate this problem. If I was the developer, Id be suing the feds and the province immediately, he said. On Friday, with uniformed OPP officers looking on, MacDonald read out the court order and taped it to a pylon at the barricade. A court date is set for Aug. 7. In the meantime, Williams said, the injunction changes nothing. We have no intention of going anywhere. As one who over the years has been interested in documenting both well-known people with Chattanooga connections and civil rights history, I was surprised I never realized one of the black civil rights giants had actually spent time here. Not until I saw an editorial about the Rev. C.T. Vivian and his time in Chattanooga in last Sundays Times Free Press did I realize this man who was considered one of the most significant leaders in the mid-20century fight for racial equality called Chattanooga home. And that is in addition to the fact that I had mentioned his name in a story I wrote back in 1993 for the Chattanooga News-Free Press on the local ties to the famous 1963 civil rights march on Washington, D.C. The problem was that I had not heard of him in 1993, and I did not realize he was or would be a well-known civil rights minister after 1963. And I was not sure I was that familiar with him a few days back, either, before his death on July 17, the same day as the popular U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose continued high-profile work made him more familiar to todays citizenry. But this man who helped integrate the public places in Nashville through the sit-in movement and took part in the Freedom rides to integrate buses traveling across state lines had spent a couple of years here in the early 1960s before going to work for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He went on to be involved in other civil rights-focused projects in later years and in 2013 was presented with a pretty prestigious award -- the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- by President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony. After seeing the nice detail on his life here last Sunday in the editorial, apparently by Clint Cooper, I wanted to see what else I could find. With the help of Suzette Raney in the local history section of the Chattanooga Public Library, I was able to find that the first year he was listed in the Chattanooga City Directory was in 1962, which means he could have arrived as early as 1961 after the information was gathered. Listed as Cordy T. Vivian, he was the pastor at Cosmopolitan Community Church, which was then located at 1624 E. 3rd St. He had replaced the Rev. G.S. Groom. The church building has apparently been torn down, as that address would now be a parking area of the Hamilton County Juvenile Court. The Rev. Vivian, who was then in only his late 30s, lived with his wife, Octavia, and family at 924 Fort Wood Street, Ms. Raney said. The home, located a little west and up the hill from Central Avenue and just past some UTC Greek houses, appears to be the same bungalow-style cottage that would have been there in the early 1960s. His wife at the time was a welfare worker with the Tennessee Department of Public Welfare. Also while they were in Chattanooga, his wife gave birth to their youngest son, Albert. They had to use the black hospital, Carver Memorial Hospital, on what was then West 9th Street along the slope of Cameron Hill before it was torn down in 1962 during urban renewal and freeway construction efforts. Erlanger Hospital at that time was still in its last months of being segregated, and the discovery made Rev. Vivian push for integration at Erlanger. He was also active with voting efforts for black people while here. In my 1993 story, I referenced a 1963 story saying a busload of black citizens from Chattanooga led by the Rev. Vivian and the Rev. W.H Thompson of New Emanuel Baptist Church went to Washington. Some 35 local residents had left the Tennessee Voters Council office on East Ninth Street (now East M.L. King Jr. Boulevard) the day before the famous March on Washington event that culminated with Dr. Kings I Have A Dream speech. Mr. Vivians work in the area of voting was why Dr. King asked him to become the director of affiliates (or chapters) with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which pushed for black civil rights through non-violent protests and demonstrations. I happened to find a little more about Rev. Vivians time in Chattanooga through a more-than-four-hour video interview he did with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch in 2011 for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. At about the 2-hour-and-50-minute mark in the interview that is available online, he talks a little about his work in Chattanooga and how it led to Dr. Kings attention and eventual recruitment of him. He told Mr. Branch that he came to Chattanooga to pastor and build a church and its membership like he had done in Nashville, although the Nashville church was apparently not the situation he wanted. He said after arriving here, he met a pastor of another church a block away, and they struck up a dialogue about their interests in publishing church newspapers regarding their causes and their efforts to join with fellow publisher Jesse Hill of Atlanta. The other local pastor had good statistical information regarding black voting in Chattanooga, but the Rev. Vivian said the man was not so well liked, and the mobilizing efforts had not gone forward. With his successful efforts with the sit-in movement and other efforts in Nashville, Mr. Vivian became a natural leader here of that effort. He also saw from the stats that Chattanoogas black population was ripe to begin contributing more to electing local officials more responsive to the black community. I said, What are we standing still for? Rev. Vivian told interviewer Taylor Branch. So we got together and began to plan real action. Before it was over, we ended up electing three-fifths of the City (Commission). He might have been talking about the 1963 election, when the City Commission included Mayor Ralph Kelley, and commissioners George McInturff, James Bookie Tuner, Dean Petersen and A.L. Chunk Bender. He actually said their mayor of choice did not get elected, but, unless he was referring to another city election, Mayor Kelley was considered in hindsight a popular and responsive mayor among the black community for that time. Rev. Vivian in the interview also brought out an interesting-and-honest point that it was common at that time to pay blacks, who comprised 20 percent of the city voting total, to vote for someone. He decided to encourage the local black citizens to take advantage of that, but in a way that benefited them more. My basic speech was that theyve been making a fool out of you by buying you as though you were slaves, so lets make a fool out of them, he told Mr. Branch. Take their money and keep it. They cant pay you what they owe you, but vote like you want to. It was that kind of thing that helped us win. Rev. Vivian was not around long enough to see it, but black Chattanoogans would begin to serve on the City Commission with John Franklin beginning in 1971. And two decades later they would begin serving on the City Council in multiple numbers after the form of government was changed by court order to allow for representation by districts. Those early 1960s efforts as well as his efforts organizing black voters throughout Tennessee while in Chattanooga soon caught the attention of SCLC staff member Dorothy Cotton, who told Dr. King about him. As a result, Mr. Vivian soon began working with the SCLC in Atlanta. That's how Martin knew how influential I could be, Rev. Vivian proudly said of his time in Chattanooga in his interview conducted when he was in his mid-80s. His recent funeral did not get as much attention as did Congressman Lewis, and his time in Chattanooga is little documented in biographical sketches compared to his overall work. But Chattanooga can take pride that this respected man who stood up for racial justice and tried to make the country more whole was for at least a brief time a resident contributing positively to the towns gradual transformation. Jcshearer2@comcast.net The Editorial Board on tech Read some of the Washington Post Editorial Boards recent opinions on technology policy and techs role in society: See more opinions from the Editorial Board. Sign up to get editorials, along with other Opinions pieces, in your inbox six days a week. Cropped Youtube video screenshot, FDRV, 30 May, 2020 In response to a skyrocketing violent crime rate in New York City, Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Shea have proposed a package of responses. One of those is to institute more gun "buy backs". Here is some background leading up to this proposal. In 2020, New York City has instituted controversial reforms in their criminal justice system. One of the changes is the elimination of cash bail for most "non-violent" criminal offenses. The law also released information on witnesses before trial. Most Democrat politicians were for the law, which was touted as a way to treat poor people more equitably. Disorder and illegitimate violence in the city has significantly increased with the riots/protests and a mixed response by Mayor de Blasio. The Mayor and others have blamed the "catch and release" bail system. Bail is supposed to guarantee the defendant will show up for court appearances. In much of the country, it is used as punishment by process, where politically incorrect defendants sometimes sit in jail for months or even years at a time. From politico.com: ... ..... The two attorney general candidates squaring off in November have raised more money than any of their predecessors in the past two decades at this point in the race. Democrat Raph Graybill took in $371,893 in cash as of June 15, and Republican Austin Knudsen received $191,709. Its not the sort of million-dollar totals seen in top-ticket races, but it stands out compared to other years: Going back to 2000, no other Montana attorney general race has seen as much fundraising by the two primary winners at this point in the election. The latest reports were compared to the same reporting periods in previous years. Past totals were adjusted for inflation. The next highest totals were seen in 2008, also an open seat year, when Democrat Steve Bullock and Republican Tim Fox sat at about two-thirds of the cash donations that Graybill and Knudsen are reporting. Chris Muste, associate professor of political science at University of Montana, said the current numbers point to a years-long trend in growing campaign costs. Whats more notable, he said, was the fundraising gap between the two candidates. Graybill has nearly double the cash donations Knudsen has. Both candidates are relatively young and not widely known to the average Montanan, Muste added. So these are big numbers, and its even more impressive because this is a year when there are a lot of other races, and so a contributor who wants to support candidates is looking at this huge array of opportunities to donate their money, Muste said. The November ballot will feature every statewide office, plus seats on the Public Service Commission and a contested Montana Supreme Court race. Thats on top of U.S. House and Senate races and the presidential contest. Graybill is a first-time candidate who qualified to run by just a couple of months, due to the five-year practice law for Montana attorneys general. He beat primary opponent Kim Dudik 57% to 43%. Bullock, now a term-limited governor, endorsed Graybill, which likely gave him a leg up in fundraising, according to Muste. Graybill works as Bullocks chief legal counsel. Knudsen was first elected as a state representative in 2010 and served two terms as Speaker of the House. Hes now serving his first term as Roosevelt County Attorney, in his home county in the northeast corner of the state. Knudsen beat primary opponent Jon Bennion 60% to 40%. Knudsen endorsed Rep. Greg Gianforte for governor early on, which likely helped him win over the conservative base of Republican primary voters, Muste said. Knudsen has collected donations from farmers and ranchers, members of the oil and gas industry, a federal PAC affiliated with Reynolds Tobacco Company, Charter Communications and beer and wine distributors, among others. Graybill's donors include labor unions, attorneys and former Montana Supreme Court justices Patricia Cotter, Mike Wheat and Terry Trieweiler. The attorney general position has been used more and more in recent years as a tool by states to push back against presidential policies. Multistate lawsuits have spiked under the Trump administration, according to Paul Nolette, an associate professor at Marquette University, who tracks the lawsuits. The attorney general position can also serve as a pathway to the governors office, as it did with Bullock and Marc Racicot. After the governors office, the attorney general race likely tops the priority list for both major political parties in the state, said Muste, the UM professor. Both state parties really care about this office, he said. After the primary, the Cook Political Report shifted the race from leaning Republican to tossup, saying Republican primary voters chose a "more conservative nominee with less crossover appeal, while Democrats are hoping to benefit from the tailwind of outgoing Gov. Steve Bullock's U.S. Senate bid this fall." Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 A 30-year-old Moldovan man pleaded guilty this week for creating the FastPOS malware that infected PoS systems worldwide. The Moldovan citizen Valerian Chiochiu (30), aka Onassis, pleaded guilty on Friday for creating the infamous FastPOS Point-of-Sale (POS) malware. Chiochiu was a member of the Infraud global cybercrime organization involved in stealing and selling credit card and personal identity data. According to the DoJ, the activities of the ring tracked as Infraud Organization, caused $530 million in losses. The group is active since 2010, when it created in Ukraine by Svyatoslav Bondarenko. The platform offered a privileged aggregator for criminals (10,901 approved members in early 2017) that allowed to buy and sell payment card and personal data. The Infraud Organization used a number of websites to commercialize the data, it implemented a classic and efficient e-commerce for the stolen card and personal data, implementing also a rating and feedback system and an escrow service for payments in digital currencies like Bitcoin. The main website was a crime forum that was founded in 2010, it first operated at infraud.cc and infraud.ws. Chiochiu sold the FastPOS malware on the forum, it first appeared in the threat landscape since 2016. The malware was first spotted by experts at Trend Micro, it was dubbed FastPOS because of its ability to quickly exfiltrate harvested data. FastPOS PoS malware has a modular structure that includes a memory scraper component and a Key Logger. The components FastPOSs new version is sporting are: Serv32.exe creates and monitors a mailslot and sends its contents to the C&C server Kl32.exe keylogger component (32-bit) Kl64.exe keylogger component (64-bit) Proc32.exe RAM scraper (32-bit) Proc64.exe RAM scraper (64-bit) When card data are captured on the infected system they are not locally stored, but they are directly transferred to command and control servers in clear text. The malware was used by threat actors to target both enterprises and SMBs in several countries across the world, including the United States, Brazil, France, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The FastPOS malware was usually served via compromised websites, via VNC access using stolen credentials or brute-force attacks, or through a file-sharing service. In February 2018, the US authorities dismantled the Infraud Organization and Chiochiu stopped his activity. At the time, the Justice Department announced indictments for 36 people charged with being part of the crime ring. At the end of June, Sergey Medvedev (aka Stells), one of the two Infraud administrators, pleaded guilty for his role in the crime organization. Chiochiu will be sentenced on December 11. Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs hacking, FastPOS) Photo: (Photo : How College Students Can Lower their Anxiety ) All over the world, people are reeling from the effects of this pandemic on their mental and emotional health. No one is exempt from the chaos and insecurity of these uncertain times, which is especially true for college students. The fall 2020 semester is just around the corner, but many questions still remain unanswered. Millions of students do not know if they will return to campus, take digital classes remotely or plan for a combination of both. This lack of clarity-not to mention, fears about a second wave of COVID-19 in the months ahead-can lead to heightened stress and anxiety. Before the outbreak, an estimated one in five college students were likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness, notes the Psychiatry Research Journal, and this number is projected to increase as the virus continues to upend most areas of life. Between the social disconnect or isolation, the loss of a structured routine, the graduation delays, the university housing closures, the financial worries, and the disruption of classes, work-study programs or internships, there is so much to feel anxious and overwhelmed about. But you do not have to suffer alone or without resources. Here are some ideas to manage anxiety even as you brace for an unpredictable fall semester. Take a Social Media Detox if Necessary. New data on this pandemic seems to emerge with each scroll and swipe of your newsfeed. But instant access to information is not always a benefit. The rate at which headlines spread and change across social media platforms is dizzying, and the human brain cannot process these latest updates as quickly as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter crank them out. Heavy social media consumption can decrease social interactions, cause dependency on notifications, and lead to depression or anxiety over time, points out HealthMarkets. If your mood is affected by too much scrolling, establish these boundaries to avoid unhealthy social media use: Turn off the notification alerts on your devices, so you will not be tempted to check your screen when it chimes or vibrates. Fill your social network with content that is positive, inspirational and purposeful. Unfollow anything that makes you feel anxious. Balance your social media usage with real-world conversations and relationships. This can be difficult right now due to physical distance, but instead of a Snapchat DM, coordinate a phone or FaceTime chat. Know Your Financial Support Options If you have lost income from a part-time job or work-study position due to COVID-19, you might be concerned about how to afford tuition, housing and other expenses once your school does reopen. This is why it's crucial to understand what kind of monetary assistance is available to you. Under the federal CARES Act, student loan borrowers and financial aid recipients are entitled to relief if they-or their parents-have been financially impacted by the virus. In addition, if you started a work-study before the university closure, some of these programs will compensate for remote work. Federal Student Aid advises contacting your school to discuss the options. Utilize Telehealth Counseling Services While many colleges have indefinitely chosen to suspend their mental health services, some offer virtual counseling as part of the student fees you paid last semester. A visit to the "campus resources" tab on your school's website should tell you if telehealth counseling is accessible free-of-charge. However, if this is not a current option for you, a number of therapists offer sliding-scale payments based on what each client can afford, so use this online directory to locate a telehealth counselor in your area. In addition, if you start to feel desperate and need immediate support or crisis intervention, the following hotlines are free, and many are available 24/7. Allow Yourself to Escape with a Book Sometimes mental and emotional self-care comes in the form of a break from reality (and from Netflix too). This does not mean you live in denial or become out of touch-it just means that you need some occasional distance from what triggers your stress and anxiety. With these summer months spent mostly indoors, now is the time to lose yourself in a pleasure read. Whether you love a fictional suspense thriller, a motivational self-help guide or a famous culture shifter's personal memoir, this essential summer book list from EPOCHClemsonStudentLiving will keep your mind off those anxious thoughts and focused on a more constructive, enjoyable pastime. As a college student, how are you handling the uncertainties of this COVID-19 pandemic? Have you experienced an increase in anxiety as questions about the fall semester continue to loom? What resources, activities or coping mechanisms help you lower that feeling of anxiety? Share your feedback in the comment section below! Meghan Markle suffered another defeat as her court battle against British tabloids continues. The Duchess of Sussex has just lost the first part of her lawsuit against Associated Newspapers. This is after the London High Court demanded to strike out part of her privacy case. As a result, the former Hollywood actress had to pay $88,000 (67,000) in legal fees as part of their agreement, according to Daily Mirror. The legal action came after the runaway royal sued the publication for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement. Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, both under Associated Newspapers, reproduced parts of Meghan's handwritten letter sent to her estranged father Thomas Markle months after her royal wedding with Prince Harry in May 2018. Her legal counsel stated that the action done by the publications was merely to satisfy their readers' "curiosity." Markle's camp also accused the British tabloids of publishing "false" and "derogatory stories about her." Meanwhile, a spokesperson from the newspapers said that they stand by their reporting while slamming the ex-royal's statement. "The Mail on Sunday stands by the story it published and will be defending this case vigorously. Specifically, we categorically deny that the Duchess's letter was edited in any way that changed its meaning," the representative said. Meghan Markle Keeping Friends' Identity Amid Lawsuit Battle Aside from her recent lawsuit update, Duchess Meghan is also waiting for the court's decision to keep the identities of her five friends anonymous. The said friends gave an anonymous interview to People magazine regarding the former royal's relationship with her father. The Duchess of Sussex's legal team attended the High Court in London earlier this week and argued that Meghan's friends have the right to not disclose their names as part of confidential journalistic sources and the protection of their privacy. "To force the claimant, as the defendant urges this court to do, to disclose their identities to the public at this stage would be to exact an unacceptably high price for pursuing her claim for invasion of privacy against the defendant in respect of its disclosure of the letter," Meghan's representative Justice Warby stated. The controversial article published on February 2019 titled "Meghan Markle's Best Friends Break Their Silence: 'We Want to Speak the Truth" shared interviews from five people who were described as "an essential part of Meghan's inner circle." The said group opened up to set the record straight regarding Meghan's experience with the royal family and her falling out with her father. "As for Meghan's father, who has said he can't reach Meghan, he knows how to get in touch with her," said one longtime friend of Meghan. "He's never called; he's never texted. It's super-painful." Megha Markle Clueless About Her Friends Interview with People Magazine For what it's worth, the 38-year-old duchess insisted that she had no clue that her friends had spoken to People to give their side of the story. To clear things out, the five women might be invited to High Court next year to testify in Meghan's privacy trial against the British tabloids. READ MORE: Meghan Markle Frustration: Why Meg Got SUPER Emotional Because of a Necklace The annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca is a time for celebration, not least among Somalia's livestock herders and traders who export millions of livestock to feed pilgrims. But this year coronavirus restrictions mean the Hajj is a small, largely Saudi affair, and Somalia's economy is suffering. "Business is bad," said Yahye Hassan who works in the capital Mogadishu's largest livestock market where the pandemic has suppressed trade. "The effect of coronavirus is apparent," said Hassan. "The Arab countries are not in need of animals from Somalia, and the nomadic people who would bring the livestock to town for trading are reluctant due to the fear of infection." "There is a major decrease in demand," confirmed Nur Hassan, another Mogadishu-based livestock trader, who said the shortage of domestic and foreign buyers was catastrophic, while supply had also seen a dip as herders stay away. - Less Hajj, less livestock - The Hajj, which began last week, is mandatory for all Muslims, who are physically and financially able, to undertake at least once in their lifetime and involves pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca and its Grand Mosque. But this year Saudi authorities have restricted the Hajj to those already inside the country -- fewer than 10,000 domestic pilgrims are expected, compared with the two million mostly foreign visitors who attended last year -- effectively cancelling the annual ceremony for most. Saudi demand accounts for nearly two-thirds of Somalia's annual livestock exports, according to the World Bank, which reports that more than five million sheep, goats, camels and cattle were shipped northwards from Somali ports through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia in 2015. Exports are predicted to be sliced in half this year, primarily due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. "The Hajj cancellation has massive implications on the lives and livelihoods of the Somali population," said Ahmed Khalif, Somalia country director at the Action Against Hunger charity, adding that livestock accounts for around 60 percent of household income in the largely rural country. "It is a blow to the Somali pastoralist households particularly, who heavily survive on livestock exports to Saudi." Up to three-quarters of Somalia's export earnings come from livestock, said Khalif, making the foreign sale of animals a crucial lifeline for Somalia's economy. The annual Hajj is normally a reliable boom time for herders, but not this year. "The livestock exports happen all through the year, but the majority -- 70 percent of live animals -- happen during this Hajj season," said Khalif. - Lower prices, higher costs - The evaporation of exports has meant an oversupply in local markets where prices have dropped dramatically, with camels going for $500, half their usual price, according to Khalif. Good news for a relatively small number of well-off consumers, but a disaster for the majority of livestock-keepers who rely on sales to buy food, pay back debts and cover basics such as school fees. Making matters even worse, keeping animals for longer than expected is a drain on limited resources, said Isse Muse Mohamed, a livestock trader in the port town of Eyl, who warned of "widespread effects" for the economy. "Keeping hundreds of goats and sheep for an extra year will obviously incur costs, including the salary of the keepers," he said. "This is a real crisis." Falling incomes, increasing costs and the loss of the Hajj market are hitting owners such as Adow Ganey, in the southern town of Hudur. "When the family wants cash for necessary items, like sugar and clothing, we used to take one or two goats to the market," he said, "but this year things have changed: we have to sell more goats to get the cash we need." For some of Somalia's livestock herders and traders, already assailed by decades of conflict and political instability, ever tighter cycles of drought and an ongoing locust plague, the cancellation of the Hajj may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. "We have never seen such a situation," said Abdqadar Hashi, a livestock exporter in the city of Hargeisa, "it's affecting everybody." Decatur and Macon County speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Jul. 31, 2020 Up until now, the so-called serology tests on the market, also known as antibody tests, only indicate whether Covid-19 antibodies are present in the blood, indicating that at some point in the past, the individual had been exposed to the virus. Many antibody tests are unreliable. The F.D.A. has had to chase after some manufacturers and distributors to get them off the market. There is not yet a scientific consensus as to what level of antibodies are needed to confer immunity, or how long such immunity might last. The two new Covid-19 serology tests, the ADVIA Centaur COV2G and Attelica COV2G, are from Siemens. Dr. Timothy Stenzel, the director of the F.D.A.s Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health, said in a statement, Being able to measure a patients relative level of antibodies in response to a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection may be useful as we continue to learn more about the virus and what the existence of antibodies may mean. There are still many unknowns about what the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies may tell us about potential immunity, but todays authorizations give us additional tools to evaluate those antibodies as we continue to research and study this virus. Controlling screen time in the face of a pandemic. With remote work, remote school, remote camp and everything else remote, screens are dominating our lives. Here are some ways of thinking about it, whether you want to cut back or simply come to terms with the increased usage. Exactly a year after he was abducted from his home in Kaduna by unknown assailants, a social media personality, Abubakar Idris, popular for his frequent denunciation of Kano State Governor, Umar Ganduje and his policies, has not been found. Idris, who is better known as Dadiyata, has been missing since August 2nd, 2019, when unidentified men seized him from his residence in Barnawa neighbourhood of Kaduna State. According to the police, Dadiyata was returning home at about 1 a.m. when some armed men, breached his houses security, and took him away in his BMW car. One year after, he and the vehicle have not been found. Initially, Dadiyata, 34, a lecturer at the Federal University Dutsinma, Katsina State, was suspected to have been arrested by agents of the dreadful State Security Service (SSS). His Wife, Haneefa, dragged the SSS Kaduna command, the Commissioner of Police and the state government, to court seeking the unconditional release of her husband and payment of the sum of 50 million in damages. But both the SSS and police denied arresting him. There have there been severe concerns, especially from his family, on what might have been Dadiyatas fate since no security outfit has claimed to know his whereabouts. One year after, his captors have also not demanded a ransom. Some Nigerians, however still believe Dadiyata was abducted in connection with his views about the government. Below are tweets BREAKINGTIMES gathered from Twitter, demanding for his release: @bulamabukarti: Exactly one year today, Dadiyata was abducted from his house in Kaduna. His wife related to BBC Hausa the trauma they go through everyday. His two little kids keep asking when will Dad return from his journey. His elderly parents continue to cry and pray. Theyre devastated. Its unfathomable how a Nigerian would disappear just like that. We must continue to do everything we can to get Dadiyata reunited with his family. There must be no place for this kind of impunity. Those that abducted Dadiyata will pay the price. If not now, definitely later. Its unfathomable how a Nigerian would disappear just like that. We must continue to do everything we can to get Dadiyata reunited with his family. There must be no place for this kind of impunity. Those that abducted Dadiyata will pay the price. If not now, definitely later. Bulama Bukarti (@bulamabukarti) August 1, 2020 @I_Am_llemona: Today marks the 365th day since @dadiyata was forcefully abducted from his home. In that one year, his family has suffered untold anguish as they have looked for any info about their father, son, brother. Pray for him please. Pray for him. Today marks the 365th day since @dadiyata was forcefully abducted from his home. In that one year, his family has suffered untold anguish as they have looked for any info about their father, son, brother. Pray for him please. Pray for him.#WhereIsDadiyata pic.twitter.com/Wiptutp4OV Igala Alan Shore (@I_Am_Ilemona) August 1, 2020 @GhenhisKhan: So today marks 1 year that a citizen of Nigeria resident in Kaduna state under the watchful eyes of @elrufai went missing . @dadiyata is one year missing. #WhereIsDadiyata ? @hrw @ChidiOdinkalu @savndaniel @dondekojo: Kaduna Governors critic was abducted and weve never heard from him since. Heres the Governors son talking about consequences . One year later #WhereIsDadiyata @sadiqsans: Dadiyata, a family man, blogger and a government critic was forcefully abducted at his residence at barnawa, Kaduna state last year. Little or no effort was made by the government to rescue him. We ask #WhereIsDadiyata and demand #justicefordadiyata A federal lawsuit has exposed astronomical infection rates at a privately run immigrant detention facility in Farmville, Virginia. The Farmville Detention Center, which has been run since 2010 by the for-profit Immigration Centers of America (ICA) on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has reported that 290 out of 312 inmates have tested positive, along with eight staff members. The facility has three times the infection rate of the second-most overrun immigrant detention facility, according to the Washington Post. Inmates at the prison relate a horrific but typical pattern of abuse, neglect and torture, made all the more inhumane by the unchecked spread of COVID-19. According to Christian Alberto Santos Garcia, one of the plaintiffs, I believe that if the facility keeps being run in this wayno air conditioning, dust everywhere, dirty air, terrible food that we cannot eat, not being allowed doctor visits, not being given any medicineI will not get better. Temperatures in Virginia have broken 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day for the past two weeks. The lawsuit further argues that the prison has violated its own policies by allowing transferring inmates from prisons with known outbreaks to mingle with other inmates and spread the disease. Court documents explain that in June, 74 inmates transferred from prisons in Arizona and Florida, both of which were known to have high infection rates, and two-thirds of these detainees would indeed be positive when they were eventually tested. Rather than being taken to a jail in Caroline County for 14 days of quarantine they were simply put into the general population in Farmville. Plaintiff Garcia told the court in documents given to the media that The bunk beds are so close to each other that it feels like we are practically sleeping in the same bed. In response, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and the states two Democratic senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, appealed to the Trump administration to get the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to intervene. The senators write jointly: The Farmville ICE facility and surrounding community now face a dire situation where almost every detainee at the Farmville facility has tested positive for COVID-19. This presents a clear risk to individuals within the facility but also endangers the broader community as facility staff and released detainees have interaction with the general public. The feckless character of the entire Democratic Party in the face of Trumps vicious anti-immigrant policy is on display in the pleading letter sent by the two Democrats. This is further exposed in comments by Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, legal director of the Immigrant Advocacy Program for the Legal Aid Justice Center, to the Post. Sandoval-Moshenberg, who represents some of the plaintiffs, pointed out that the state has authority to act on its own, because the facility is not on federal property. It exists as a local jail in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Sandoval-Moshenberg said. Northam is treating it as if it were the Pentagon. ICE responded by downplaying the severity of the outbreak, absurdly claiming that only one inmatejust 0.3 percent of those infectedwas hospitalized, and that all but three were asymptomatic. All detainees, it said, had received appropriate medical care, although the agency did not detail of what that consisted. According to the Virginia Health Department, the number of coronavirus cases in surrounding Prince Edward County has doubled to 289 in just the past month. Officials in the town of Farmville, which receives a portion of the profits Immigration Centers of America generates by operating the facility, have evaded calls for comment. Farmville is also the location of two universities, Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College. The inhumane character of the treatment being dealt to detainees is demonstrated by the prisons policy of quarantining transferred inmates in the nearby county jail for two weeks. Amid the catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak, prisons in the US have proven to be an especially deadly vector for the coronavirus, reporting nearly 82,000 cases and at least 735 deaths. Rather than protecting local populations from dangerous immigrants, as the Trump administration claims, privately-run facilities like Farmville in fact are working to spread COVID-19. Prison Director Jeffrey Crawford claimed in his deposition that ICE lied about the infection rates at the transferring prisons. When I was alerted to the detainees impending transfer, I inquired about their level of potential exposure to COVID-19 at their previous facilities. In response, ICE stated that there were no active COVID-19 cases at the Arizona facility and that there were very few cases at the Florida facility. If true, this leaves wide open the possibility of willful ignorance on Crawfords part. The prison has also obstructed joint efforts by the state Health Department and the National Guard to conduct testing. It canceled an event scheduled for July 21 and rejected offers to reschedule. The inaction on Northams part is consistent with his administrations prior collaboration with Trumps anti-immigrant scapegoating. The World Socialist Web Site reported in August 2018, shortly after Northam was elected as part of a blue wave of Democratic victories that were in large part the result of popular revulsion at Trumps agenda, about his administrations whitewashing of the gross physical and mental abuse of immigrant minors at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center. In that case, the prison was sued for allegations that staff kicked and punched children, put them in solitary confinement for weeks at a time for minor infractions, or none at all, tied minors to restraining chairs for days on end, stripped children naked and put them in harnesses, mimicked the sensation of suffocation by gagging children with spit masks, forced drugging and inadequate and toxic food. Northam appointed a panel at the Department of Juvenile Justice to investigate the allegations, which promptly concluded that the prison was in compliance with applicable regulations and certification standards and thus no evidence of abuse or neglect was found. Northams prostration before the Trump administrations fascistic immigration agencies, even as the president has voided fundamental democratic rights and deployed shock battalions drawn from ICE to put down peaceful protests, demonstrates that there is no constituency in either the Democratic or Republican Party that is interested in defending the US Constitution. An asteroid has been named after renowned Chinese scientist, educator and outstanding social activist Qian Weichang, according to a statement by the Shanghai University. A ceremony was held at the university on Thursday to mark the 10th anniversary of his death and to officially announce the naming of Asteroid Qianweichang, which was approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in February. According to an IAU communique, the asteroid, coded 283279, was discovered on May 16, 2007, by astronomers with the NEO Survey Program at the Purple Mountain Observatory in east China. Qian Weichang, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was born in 1912 and died in 2010. The founder of mechanics in China, he discovered the Qian Weichang equation and systematically developed the theory of large deflection of circular thin plates. The scientist taught at universities in Beijing and Shanghai for decades, and once served as the president of Shanghai University. Asteroids are the only celestial bodies that can be named by their discoverers. The naming is recognized as an international and permanent honor. For all the legitimate focus on rising U.S.-Chinese tensions, this summer's sleeper surprise for the West is more likely to emerge from Vladimir Putin's Russia. That's because the built-in contradictions between Russia's international ambition and domestic rot that have always characterized Putin's rule, now into its 21st year, are coming to head in a manner that provides him both greater opportunity and peril. The brutal effectiveness of his thugocracy state is increasing, with a military modernization that includes a newly detected test of anti-satellite space weapons, highly publicized advances in hypersonic technologies, and worldwide intelligence operations that effectively employ advanced technology and a lower-tech army of mercenaries. At the same time, the weakness of his demographically aging, economically ossifying Covid-hit country continues to grow in the wake of lower oil prices. The World Bank projects a 6% decline in Russian GDP in 2020 in a country that already had 12.3% of its population, or 18 million people, below the poverty line. Greater opportunity for Putin presents itself in a United States that's distracted by the coronavirus spread, its own economic downturn, racial upheavals, polarizing November elections and divisions with and within Europe. With the chance that his friend President Donald Trump might lose the November election, Putin could calculate that now could be the time to seize new opportunities. The peril is symbolized by surprisingly large and enduring protests in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, which continued this weekend. New Levada polling shows that 45% of Russians say they approve of the recent wave of anti-Kremlin protests, and Putin opponents are looking to convert this energy into something more. What's difficult to predict is whether an August surprise or one at any time ahead of U.S. elections in November would grow more from Russia's strength, its weakness, or more likely some combination of the two. It has been times like these in the past when matters had seemed sour for Moscow that Putin has turned to adventures abroad to solidify his domestic control. So should one be watching for a surprise of the sort of the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008, the seizure and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war from 2015 to the present, or more electoral and disinformation activity in Europe and particularly around U.S. elections this November? On that front, the first indicator could be Russian response to the Belarus election a week from Sunday on Aug. 9. Janusz Bugajksi of the Center for European Policy Analysis reckons that Putin could use "the pretext of growing unrest in Belarus and the disputed presidential elections" as a chance to act as national liberator with the "looming prospect" of the absorption of Belarus into Russia. Following the arrest this week of 32 Russians at a sanatorium near Minsk, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko accused the Kremlin-linked Wagner military contractor of sending 200 of its mercenaries to destabilize his country ahead of his election, where he faces a challenge from three opposition groups. What's clear is that Putin's relations have soured dangerously with Lukashenko, who has resisted Russia's efforts to effectively merge the two states into a Moscow-dominated union. Lukashenko has been reaching out to Europe and the United States, including a February visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Most of all, Putin will resist any further erosion of Kremlin power in its own region that would be prompted by a tilt either by Lukashenko or his opposition toward Western institutions or allegiances, akin to Georgia and Ukraine. Some analysts say Putin's appetite for such an adventure has run its course. That's unlikely, however, until he experiences more painful pushback than he has thus far from the United States, Europe or others. In an interview with "Axios on HBO" this week, Trump said he hasn't confronted Putin with intelligence that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump spoke to Putin this Tuesday, one of at least eight times he's done so since the intelligence landed in the President's Daily Brief in late February If past performance is any indicator of future outcomes, don't join the wishful Western thinkers who believe that Russia's economic pain and domestic opposition has advanced so far that Putin is in greater danger than are his adversaries. If anything, he has been encouraged by his string of international advances in the face of little pushback and, like the schoolyard bully who hasn't yet felt a serious blow, he will continue his life's work of undoing the wrong of Soviet collapse in any way available to him. A powerful new book by Financial Times correspondent Catherine Belton, "Putin's People," "demonstrates how the future president made full use of KGB methods, contacts, and networks at each stage of his career," writes Anne Applebaum in a review of the book in The Atlantic. No less a source than Russian businessman Vladimir Yakunin, who with Konstantin Malofeyev helped set up organizations across Europe that would promote alternatives to democracy and European integration, told Bolton it was all about restoring Russia's "global position." Angela Stent, a consistently wise American expert on Russia, writes that despite its limited economic capabilities, Russia could become "an even more influential international player." That's in part because of growing doubts about U.S. reliability among allies. Despite the prevalent view in Washington of Putin as a thuggish dictator, his global partners including a number of senior Mideast officials with whom I've spoken see him as a reliable, pragmatic leader with whom they can do business. They'd rather deal with Russia in Syria than Iran, and they'd rather have Russia in Libya than Turkey. As to the prospect of a summer bombshell, Stent writes, "It has been the case throughout Russian history, things appear to be stable until suddenly they are not. Putin likes to surprise, as was clear from his hastily arranged referendum. But he himself could face unanticipated challenges to his plan to stay in power indefinitely." As for this August, however, my bet would be that if there is a surprise, it will be one of Putin's choosing. Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president & CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States' most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked at The Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant managing editor and as the longest-serving editor of the paper's European edition. His latest book "Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth" was a New York Times best-seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his look each Saturday at the past week's top stories and trends. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. Sushant Singh Rajput Death: Bihar Police Visit Cooper Hospital To Secure Actor's Postmortem Report, Fail To Get Information Pastor Chuck Salvo delivers his sermon to the congregation during the drive-in service at On Fire Christian Church in Louisville, Ky. on April 5, 2020. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images) Religious Liberty Advocates See Rough Road Ahead Due to Pandemic, but Mostly Optimistic About Future Wins News Analysis Pastor John MacArthur is among Americas best-known conservative evangelical preachers, so many were shocked by his recent decision to defy California Gov. Gavin Newsom and open his church for services. More than 1,000 congregants attended the following Sunday. The Sun Valley congregation was not the first in California to defy Newsoms ban, but the decision drew national attention, thanks to MacArthurs conservatism and prominence. Newsoms order amid the CCP virus pandemic reinstated a prior ban on church meetings inside and outside, and closed bars, gyms, indoor dining in restaurants, hair salons, museums, and zoos for the indefinite future in 30 counties. Thousands of Protestant and Catholic churches voluntarily refrained from in-person meetings when the nation went into lockdown in March, with most going to digital gatherings through May and into June. But congregants chafed as the weeks dragged on, and numerous skirmishes erupted when aggressive state governors and municipal leaders pushed beyond limits that seemed justified by the threat. Prominent among such skirmishes was Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshears ban on church gatherings, along with criminal penalties for violators. First Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas-based nonprofit devoted to defending First Amendment religious freedoms in court, defeated Beshears order when a U.S. District Court ruled that if social distancing is good enough for Home Depot and Kroger, it is good enough for in-person religious services which, unlike the foregoing, benefit from constitutional protection. Churches but Not Casinos Banned The Kentucky victory was one of numerous similar First Liberty wins in recent months, but then came the U.S. Supreme Courts July 24 rejection of a Nevada congregations request for an emergency restraining order against Gov. Steve Sisolaks ban on church meetings with more than 50 people. The ban didnt apply to Nevadas many gambling casinos. The Nevada decision was extremely disappointing, not only because it was bad law, but it was a blow to religious freedom, Focus on the Family Judicial Analyst Bruce Hausknecht told The Epoch Times in a July 30 interview. The fact that the Supreme Court could affirm religious freedom in recent cases and then turn around and say Nevadas governor can favor casinos over churches is just mind-boggling, he said. Hausknecht was referring to three other recent Supreme Court decisions, in which the justices strongly affirmed the right of religious groups to compete for government grants, to consider religious principles in hiring and firing employees, and the exemption of religious groups from Obamacares contraceptive mandate. But policies stemming from the CCP virus pandemic will continue to spark litigation on vital religious freedom issues, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Vice President for Appellate Advocacy John Bursch told The Epoch Times on July 30. A lot of ministers and priests and rabbis are kind of reaching a tipping point. You know, everybody in March immediately jumped on board with whatever governors were saying had to be done to protect public health, Bursch said. But as the crisis has continued, they are watching restaurants and casinos and amusement parks like Disney World, all these things open up with appropriate social distancing and masks. But then churches are being told that they shouldnt open, or if they do, only with highly reduced numbers, so were starting to see some civil disobedience, and I think that is probably warranted. Government by Decree First Liberty President Kelly Shackleford told The Epoch Times a key factor in recent and coming religious liberty litigation is that courts have shown too much respect for gubernatorial decrees and orders. Theres a whole set of arguments and things that no courts have really gotten into yet, which they should, which is they should not be treating these orders the same way they treat a legislative act, Shackleford said. The reality is they should be given much less respect because, with the legislative process, you go through all this sausage-making, where everybody gets to look at it, different people get to testify, where you question everything, you change, you mold, you react to the different situations. After you go through all this process and get something through, you have kind of considered everything, but these orders are like somebody sitting in their basement coming up with rules, and some of them are crazy, and to give them the same kind of deference is wrong and I think the courts need to analyze that. Shackleford and Bursch agreed that the Nevada decision shouldnt be viewed as decisive, because Chief Justice John Roberts intensely dislikes granting emergency orders that prevent a full judicial consideration of issues. The case is still percolating in the lower courts and could well return to the High Court for comprehensive consideration. All three advocates expect more significant victories on behalf of the free exercise of religion. Oh, I would certainly hope so, and the one that I would suggest keeping an eye on for the fall is [Fulton v. City of Philadelphia] that involves Catholic Social Services. The city terminated their license to do adoption and foster care work even though there are more kids that need placement, Bursch said. They are doing it because they hate the Catholic Churchs religious beliefs. I think we are going to see a fairly significant Supreme Court opinion at the end of the term that vindicates the faith-based agency. Bursch also expects some of these [CCP virus] cases will quickly find their way back up to the Court. Contact Mark Tapscott at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc New Delhi: Amidst the stalemate in Parliament over scrapping of high value currency notes, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan expressed hope on Monday that the House will start functioning within a "day or two" as both the central government and opposition parties want debates and discussions to continue. "I am trying. I am repeatedly requesting as well. I hope that it (Parliament) will function. When both the parties, the ruling party and the opposition, are ready for discussion, both want discussion, under which rule it has to be done, that has to be discussed. I think in the next one or two days, it will start (functioning)," she said. Both Houses of Parliament have witnessed minimal work after the winter session began on November 16 after a united opposition continued to disrupt proceedings over hardships caused to the people due to demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Asked whether repeated adjournments amounted to snatching away of the rights of MPs who want to speak on important topics, Mahajan said she has been trying to conduct the Question Hour despite the noise and MPs' right to speak should not be taken away. Also Read: Parliament day 9 | Demonetisation debate in RS: Black money is in real estate, share markets, securities, bullion market, says Anand Sharma "That is why I am trying. Whichever MP wants to speak, their right should not be snatched away from them. That is why you might have seen that I try to run the Question Hour session. I also do not like that there is so much noise in the House and I am trying to continue with it. "Today also I tried as some people had requested me that they want to speak on important issues in the Zero Hour. I have been trying for the last two days. Those members who come to Parliament, their rights should not be snatched away," she told reporters outside Parliament. She said that it is an "ongoing" process to reach out to the government and the opposition parties as they too want discussion and asserted that she is also willing to take the initiative to bring everybody together and talk to them. Also Read: Rahul Gandhi asks PM Narendra Modi to participate in demonetisation debate in Parliament "Why not? I will definitely do that and I have been doing so as well. Attempts are going on. It is an ongoing process. At one point, I am quite sure that everybody will accept something...," she said. Asked whether the decision on disallowing the adjournment motion would be revisited, Mahajan said, "Let us see. We want that House should run. For that let us see what happens. I will have to talk to both of them (government and opposition). Both of them are ready for discussion. Under which rule, all of them have to decide together. Not only one person can decide," she said. FULL COVERAGE: WINTER SESSION OF PARLIAMENT For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Torgbiga Adamah III, Makorsor of Somey has lamented that the concept of 'chief fisherman' was undermining the traditional chieftaincy institution. He appeals to the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MoFAD) to consider scrapping it. Torgbiga Adamah III deemed the concept of enstooling chiefs for a section of the working public as disturbing and said there was the tendency of these chief fishermen arrogating powers that were not backed by law to themselves. He said seeing themselves as equals to traditional authorities because there's hardly re-election for new people making their (chief fishermen) reign limitless. Torgbiga Adamah made the appeal, when Rev Johnson Avuletey, Deputy Volta Regional Minister and Mr Elliot Edem Agbenorwu, Municipal Chief Executive for Ketu South led a delegation from MoFAD to pay a courtesy call on him at Agbozume. The visit saw the sector Minister inform the Chief of the distribution of subsidised outboard motors to beneficiaries in the traditional area as part of the President's Fishing Input Support Scheme for fishers. It also discussed Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing practices that threatened the sustainability of the fishing industry. The Makorsor of Somey said issues of IUU fishing practices were still prevailing despite all the efforts at ending them because the chief fishermen who was to regulate the activities of their fellow fishers at the various landing beaches are themselves interested parties in the trade. He said illegal fishing could be a thing of the past as well as misunderstandings surrounding management and sale of premix fuel to fishers, if traditional leaders were involved, but chiefs don't have a say in activities, when it comes to fishers, because they already have their chiefs who are the chief fishermen. Mrs Elizabeth Afoley Quaye, Minister, Fisheries and Aquaculture Development doubted if the Ministry instituted the chief fisherman concept to warrant any attempt to scrap it and noted that Torgbuiga's appeal would be considered nonetheless. She said government would soon launch a collaborative fishing management policy, which would have all key stakeholders in fishing communities including; chiefs working together to safeguard the fishing industry. On premix, the Minister said committees were formed at the various landing beaches to empower fishermen to run the premix fuel stations and use proceeds from sales of the fuel to develop the fishing communities. She urged the committees to seek the consent of District Chief Executives and traditional leaders in those communities before carrying out projects. ---GNA TOKYO, July 31 (Reuters) - A Japanese ruling party policy committee on Friday approved a proposal for Japan to have the capability of halting ballistic missile attacks within enemy territory, a document showed. The proposals, crafted by the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) defence policy committee including former defence minister Itsunori Onodera and other influential former high-ranking defence officials, also call for Japan to have defence capability on par with the cancelled Aegis Ashore missile defence sites. The LDP will give the recommendations to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as early as next week, which will then be considered by Japan's National Security Council in August as it formulates Japan's latest defence policies. Japan's Ministry of Defence could decide on specific equipment purchases by the end of the year ahead of their annual budget request, government officials told Reuters. (Reporting by Tim Kelly Editing by Chang-Ran Kim) SIOUX CITY -- Even though she just graduated with honors from East High School, Nicole Essig is called "mom" by some of her closest friends. "If your car stalled out in the middle of night, I'm usually the first person everyone seems to call," the Sioux City native said with a laugh. That might be because the 18-year-old is unusually mature for her age. After all, both she and her fraternal twin sister, Shelby, had to grow up in a hurry. Their mother, Char Essig, died of breast cancer when the girls were 4. For the most part, they were raised by their father, Clint. "I have memories of mom," Essig said, "but, mostly, it was me, my sister and my dad." However, it was Char Essig's early death that inspired her daughter's interest in the medical field. Based upon essay questions, personal recommendations and a stellar academic performance, Nicole Essig was selected to receive a $40,000 scholarship from the Kind World Foundation. It's the highest monetary post-secondary award the local nonprofit group annually presents. Essig will use the scholarship to attend the University of Iowa in the fall. "I will initially go for a neuroscience degree before branching into psychology," she said. "There is still a stigma attached to mental health and I want to change that perception." It's a good thing Essig isn't afraid of hard work. Throughout her high school years, she had to juggle work as well as homework. "Luckily, I liked my job as much as I like school," Essig said. "So it didn't seem too bad." This pluckiness endeared her to the Kind World Foundation. Since 2009, the Kind World Foundation, founded by former Gateway executive Norm Waitt Jr., has awarded nearly $3 million to hundreds of high school seniors from eight metro schools: Sioux City East, North, West and Bishop Heelan, South Sioux City, Dakota Valley, Sergeant Bluff-Luton and Elk Point-Jefferson. "The Kind World Foundation was created for deserving students like Nicole," Marcia Waitt, the organization's scholarship and education program chairman, said. "We are so proud of her." So is Essig's family. She will be the first member of her family to attend a university. Essig admitted that, due to COVID-19 concerns, her senior year didn't go off as planned. Plus, her classes this fall at the University of Iowa will likely be divided between in-person classwork and online education. But that hasn't dampened her enthusiasm. "I'm really excited about going off to school," Essig said. "I'm a bit nervous but mostly excited." Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 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. The Assam government has made preliminary plans to reopen educational institutions on September 1 but the final decision will depend on the directives of the Centre, state Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Saturday. All teachers and employees of the schools will have to get themselves tested, and the Education and Health departments will coordinate the efforts for the tests that will be conducted from August 23-30, the minister said while addressing a press conference here. We have drawn up a preliminary plan for reopening schools but it is still open for further discussions with parents and other stakeholders, and will be implemented only in accordance with the directives of the Union government, Sarma said. Schools will remain closed for students up to Class 4 till September-end, he said. Classes will be held in open spaces such as the playground or courtyard of the school for students of standard 5-8, he said. The classes will be divided into sections of 15 students and only these many students can attend classes at a time, he said. Students of standard 9 and 11 will attend classes in their classrooms for two days a week with 15 students being present at a time. Those in standard 10 and 12 will attend classes four days a week. Only 15 students will be present at a time in a classroom and classes will be held for only three hours in a day, the minister said. Efforts will be made to ensure maximum social distancing with schools initiating shift systems with a particular class coming at an allotted time of the day, he said. At the degree level, classes will be held only for the final semesters while for the post-graduate students, the universities will take a decision. All these proposals will be put up on the website of the Education Department and people are welcome to give their suggestions till August 20, Sarma said. We will work on these suggestions but also wait for the Centres directive before taking a final decision, Sarma said. The minister further said that the Secondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA) and Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) have also been asked to consider either reducing the syllabus or providing maximum options in the question paper so that students do not face any difficulty if a portion of the syllabus has not been covered. Educational institutions in Assam are closed since March 20, following the outbreak of the coronavirus. The 2020 governorship candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, said he was criticised by the former national chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole, in the last Edo governorship election because he was in a different political party then. Mr Oshiomhole, who was recently ousted after an acrimonious battle with his protege turned political enemy, state governor, Godwin Obaseki, had described Mr Ize-Iyamu as a bad choice for Edo people then. Mr Oshiomhole was captured in different video clips deriding Mr Ize-Iyamu, the then PDP candidate, in a bid to sell the candidacy of his then political ally, Mr Obaseki, in 2016. Godwin has worked for the people of Edo using his brain, using his creativity quietly, with the economic team he built using his network of friends without demanding one naira, he said in one of the videos. He questioned Mr Ize-Iyamus education and political background, citing some inconsistencies. With the exit of the incumbent governor from the APC to the PDP and the emergence of Mr Ize-Iyamu as the APCs 2020 governorship candidate, Mr Oshiomhole has now retracted his statements on Mr Ize-Iyamu. He now describes Mr Obaseki as a bad product who should not be re-elected by the state electorate. Obaseki is MoU (Memoranda of Understanding) governor, but Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu is a man of God, who will ensure good governance in Edo State from November 12 this year. I have made my honest mistakes. Only God is perfect. I am now 68 years old. I have come to apologise for the mistake of supporting Obaseki in 2016. I am in Edo State to repair my mistakes, he pleaded as he knelt before some monarchs in the state less than a week ago. Oshiomhole needed to abuse me- Ize-Iyamu In his interview with Vanguard newspaper, Mr Ize-Iyamu laid bare his relationship with the immediate past APC national and other matters around the forthcoming Edo governorship election. He said that Mr Oshiomholes comment against him in the 2016 campaign was nothing but a political gimmick necessary at that point in time. He cited instances of when the latter praised him after the election. READ ALSO: Yes, Oshiomhole threw punches at me in 2016, but people tend to have short memory. Oshiomole was at Ben Idahosa University, when I was being given a doctorate and he spent over one hour praising me for my contributions in his government and the role I am playing in the state, he told Vanguard newspaper. So, if during the campaigns for the 2016 governorship election he was abusing me because I was on the other side, what do you expect? Of course, he needed to abuse me, especially when he didnt have a good product. You can imagine how Governor Obaseki started his campaign for the forthcoming election. They placed a big screen on Ring Road in Benin, where everybody passes and one would have thought that all he would be playing on that kind of screen are achievements of his administration in the last four years. Instead of that, he is playing about the governor of Kano State, Mr Ize-Iyamu added while he downplayed Mr Obasekis campaign strategies. The EU announced Friday that it had struck a deal with French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi for 300 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine. The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm which negotiated the agreement, said it would allow all 27 member countries to purchase the vaccine once it was proven to be safe and effective. The announcement comes on the same day the US government said it would provide up to $2.1 billion to Sanofi and GSK for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, as the world continues to battle the pandemic. As official data revealed coronavirus lockdowns had caused a devastating 12 percent economic contraction in the EU in the second quarter of 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was doing everything it could to help find a vaccine. "We are in advanced discussions with several other companies," she said in a statement, adding that Europe was investing in a "diversified portfolio of promising vaccines". This increases our chances to obtain rapidly an effective remedy against the virus." June date? Sanofi hopes to seek marketing authorisation from the European Medicines Agency for a vaccine in June next year. The French government welcomed Friday's announcement as a "decisive step". "This future contract will allow each EU member state to order the vaccine under good conditions once it has shown enough proof of its effectiveness and safety," the French government said in a statement. Six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 17 million people, with global daily cases now approaching the 300,000 mark. Europe death toll Europe overall has nearly 210,000 deaths from 3.2 million cases, and with infections rising again in several countries there are fears a "second wave" of the pandemic could be on the way. The highly restrictive lockdowns enforced to deal with the pandemic earlier this year has caused economic turmoil and an effective vaccine may be the only long-term solution to the highly contagious respiratory disease. New Delhi: Day 9 of Parliaments Winter Session is likely to continue in a stalemate as the opposition parties plan to stage a biggest protest yet on the issue of currency ban. Declared as Jan Akrosh Diwas, Monday will witness Bharat bandh call from selective parties while others plan to take out marches across India. Divided as the opposition may be in strategy of protests outside Parliament, inside they plan to unite against the ruling NDA government and continue demands of a clarification from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. In the morning opposition parties are scheduled to hold a meeting at around 9:30 am, while PM Modi will meet senior ministers at 10:30 am. Also read | Live updates on Jan Akrosh Diwas | Recap of Day 8 of Winter Session | Rahul Gandhi asks PM to join debate Here are the live updates: #Govt needs to list how many ppl & who all bought shares more than Rs 5 crore, gold, foreign exchange in last 1 & half months: Anand Sharma #Black money is in real estate, share markets, securities, bullion market #Rajya Sabha adjourned for the day amid ruckus #If PM makes a big announcement; protocol is that PM gives statement on 1st day of Parl.;1st time that PM hasn't followed that: GN Azad in RS #Banking Act, Constitution don't give PM or FM the power to deprive people access to their own money or ration it: Anand Sharma in RS (2:20pm) #Lok Sabha adjourned till Tuesday 11:00am #Finance Minister Arun Jaitley moves amendment in taxation law in Lok Sabha (2:03pm) #Houses reumse session at 2:00pm #You want PM to come to Lok Sabha for this debate then he will and he will make an intervention: HM Rajnath Singh in LS #Lok Sabha adjourned till 2pm (12:20pm) #If you have a complaint on implementation then we are ready to debate,don't doubt our integrity: HM Rajnath Singh in LS #More than 70 people have died, and more than 1000 people have been injured: Mallikarjun Kharge,Congress in LS #Rajya Sabha adjourned till 2pm #In meeting of 18 opposition parties we decided to hold Jan Akrosh Diwas not Bharat Bandh. PM is responsible for Bharat Bandh: GN Azad in RS #Rajya Sabha adjourned till 12 noon as opposition demands PM's presence & uproar overcurrency ban continues (11:50am) #Opposition including DMK, CPM, Congress and RJD protesting in front of Gandhi statue in Parliament #MPs protests in Well as Rajya Sabha resumes session (11:45 am) #Lok Sabha adjourned till 12:00pm (11:20am) #Rajya Sabha adjourned till 11:41am amid demands of apology from PM #Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha sessions begin (11:00am) #Let PM come and talk to us inside the house: Rahul Gandhi on PM's remarks against opposition #Delhi: Rahul Gandhi chairs strategy meeting of Congress Lok Sabha MPs #This oppn protest is against 125 crore people of the country who have whole heartedly supported #DeMonetisation : Jitendra Singh,MoS,PMO #Opposition meeting ends, parties to demand apology from PM for his remarks against opposition : Sources (Read full story here) #PM Modi reaches Parliament (10:30am) #Opposition should debate in both houses of the parliament, we are ready.Why are they running away?: Ananth Kumar #Senior opposition leaders Anand Sharma, Jyotiraje Sindhia, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Derek O Brian, Sudip Bandopadhyay arrive for Opposition party meeting (9:40 am) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. On Friday, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, testified before Congress and repeatedly praised United States President Donald Trump for his coronavirus policies that the medical expert said had saved the lives of Americans. Getting on the same side The policies include Trump's call to ban international flights from several countries including China, the UK, and the rest of Europe along with the administration's quarantine policy called "Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread" implemented in March which was later extended to last for 30 days. According to the New York Post, Fauci appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Response and stated he participated in and approved of all of the policies Trump implemented which he believed had all aided the country in saving countless lives. Representative Steve Scalise from Louisiana, the top Republican on the committee, questioned Fauci on each policy during the hearing, asking the doctor of the effects of the policies on the American nation. Scalise admitted he and Fauci had several disagreements previously and asked the medical expert if there were internationally-respected doctors involved in the making of the policies, which Fauci confirmed. When asked if he and President Trump had agreements with the policies, Fauci revealed that they were on the same side on all of the implemented decisions. Also Read: Trump Urges US Congress to Stop Evictions, Pass Stimulus Checks, Protect Citizens Previously, Fauci also praised Trump for his, albeit late, wearing of a face mask amid the coronavirus pandemic, as reported by NY Daily News. In a tweet, Fauci told news media outlet NPR that he was very pleased with the United States president's decision to join in fighting against the deadly virus by wearing a face mask in public and that it was a message that would be conveyed to the American people. Recent arguments President Trump has, in recent weeks, been in constant arguments with the medical expert about the coronavirus pandemic and the steps that the government has taken to ensure the safety of its citizens. Fauci had also commended Trump for his short but crisp briefings about the coronavirus. The medical expert said the US president has now started to convey messages that are paramount to the safety of the nation and in curbing the spread of the deadly virus. Trump had called the public to wear face masks after months of refusing to wear one himself, saying that the coronavirus pandemic will get worse before it gets better and staying away from large gatherings and keeping social interaction to a minimum. In a previous phone call, Fauci revealed he urged Trump to take a more conservative approach in his speeches about the COVID-19 crisis. The director said the conversation he had with the US president was excellent and productive where they both encouraged each other of the things that need to be done now. Despite widespread criticism from Trump supporters and allies, Fauci stated he believes he had not done any wrong in advising the president about the measures that must be taken amid the coronavirus crisis. Related Article: US Presidential Race: Trump Claims Mail-In Voting may Delay Election Results for Years @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Can President Trump postpone the next presidential election? The short answer is no, as the timings are up to Congress, not him; the longer answer is that he might just pull it off, through a mixture of political manoeuvrings, legal chicanery and general bullying. Since the coronavirus crisis, this unexpected question has been raised a few times. Covid-19 and the successive waves of infections in some states has meant that some local authorities have made provision for a massive expansion in mail-in voting, to avoid personal contact and spreading the virus. This level of non-personal voting would be unprecedented, and Trump, among others, has voiced concerns though postal voting has not suffered a particularly high incidence of fraud in the US. Mr Trump warns of litigation possibly from his own lawyers in such circumstances. A more cynical reason why the president has raised again the prospect of a delay is that he is on course to lose. A delay would mean Covid-19 passing, a recovering economy and a rally-driven fresh sense of momentum. India faces a huge skill gap when it comes to skill training. According to the data related to the gap in skills training released by Census 2011, 104 million new employees would need skills training and 298 million of the current workforce would require additional skills training by 2022. As per the Census in 2011, out of the 121 crore population, about 2.68 crore persons are disabled which is 2.21% of the total population. Addressing barriers faced by the differently abled, would not only unlock their potential but would also help them in contributing to the world. With sustainable development goals the Government has made various focused initiatives for inclusive development of the differently abled through free online skills training programs. According to the report on Disabled Persons in India-A statistical profile 2016, the National Policy for Persons with Disabilities (2006), recognizes that, Persons with Disabilities (PwD) are valuable human resources for the country. The policy seeks to create an environment that provides equal opportunities, protection of their rights of the differently abled along with full participation in the society. The economic well-being of a nation can be augmented by creating entrepreneurial opportunities for a sustainable livelihood of the differently abled through skilling, up- skilling and re-skilling. One such initiative under PMKVY is by offering skill certifications. The sole objective of this initiative was to enable a large proportion of youth in India to take up industry skill training for securing a better livelihood. Skill Council for Persons with Disability (SCPwD) is one such organization that was created with a National Vision of skilling Persons with Disability and offering them meaningful industry relevant skill based training. However, with the pandemic there has been a rise in the social connect and low personal connect due to which the already existing infrastructure of education is undergoing a sea change. The HRD ministry is trying its best by offering free skills training to the differently-abled, helping them bag better paying jobs, across rural and urban India. Efforts have been made to blend distance learning with practical skills along with innovation of inexpensive online methods to impart knowledge and skills. Government and private academic institutions along with corporates are collaborating to offer best industrial training and skill programs at low-cost in EDU Tech, FMCG, Automobile and telecom startup companies. While the Pandemic has hit at its peak, online platforms have given new avenues to the differently abled to explore vivid job opportunities and mainstream career options of their choice to be a part of the mainstream society. FINANCIAL ANALYST/ RELATIONSHIP MANAGER- This is a great option for those with hearing disability or with those who are visually impaired. This job role offers individuals a liberty to communicate with their clients directly and offer business or portfolio guidance. In the times of pandemic becoming a financial analyst can be a great opportunity for many who are differently abled. For being a qualified FA / RM would be BA, BCom, Bachelor of Science (Bachelors degree in accounting/ finance/ economics), having strong analytical and data gathering skills, good business acumen, knowledge of markets and portfolio investment and financial modelling. HEALTH SERVICES MANAGER/ ADMINISTRATOR- This administrative job in the healthcare institutions such as clinics/ path labs and hospitals does not require mobility. The mode of communication is monotonous and not vibrant. The job profile does not demand long hours of standing or mobility from one place to the other. Also during the time of pandemic this role has gathered tremendous demand due to the lack of health service managers in hospitals. Qualification for this is having a qualified degree in Bachelor of Arts (BA) / Bachelor of Science (BS), high school graduation from a renowned institution. The job description would include the person to be involved in front desk patient query handling, online query handling of the patient and form filling and data entry management. HEALTH INSURANCE AGENT -A great mainstream career opportunity for those who have visual imparity or have a hearing disability. Being a health insurance agent is a great option at the time of pandemic with more and more demand rising and the focus of the retail customer to be covered under a secure health policy. Qualification required is to be a graduate from an eligible institution, a High school graduate certification, must have a proven sales ability and must qualify and pass an examination conducted by the IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority). COUNSELLOR-This job role suits best for those who have already experienced lifes challenges and have learnt to live with the challenges of their disabilities. Qualifications would be BEd from a renowned institution, graduate in any discipline and the candidate must be good in communication. (The author is Mr. Prashant Agarwal, President of Narayan Seva Sansthan. Views expressed here are personal.) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen was among dignitaries who paid their respects to Lee Teng-hui at a memorial service on Saturday. Vice-President Lai Ching-te and Japan's chief representative to Taiwan Izumi Hiroyasu also attended the ceremony at the historical Taipei Guest House. "Japan and Taiwan both lost a person that was very important to each of them. My heart is filled with sorrow. He laid the foundation for this free and democratic Taiwan of today," Hiroyasu said. Taipei Veterans General Hospital said Lee died on Thursday evening at the age of 97 after suffering from infections, cardiac problems and organ failure since being hospitalised in February. Hsu, was one of many residents who also came to pay tribute to the former president. "Today, I come from Taichung to express my gratitude and respect," she said. The presidential office and other governmental buildings are flying the national flag at half-mast to mourn the death. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 13:57:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia reported no new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, marking the third consecutive day without new cases, the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases (NCCD) said Saturday. "We tested a total of 306 people for COVID-19 yesterday, including two suspected cases of COVID-19 in Zamiin-Uud soum of Mongolia's southeastern province of Dornogovi and the results were all negative," Dulmaa Nyamkhuu, head of the NCCD, said at a daily press conference. Meanwhile, five more patients have recovered from the disease, raising the total to 230, Nyamkhuu added. Mongolia has registered a total of 291 confirmed cases, which are all imported, mostly from Russia, according to the center. No local transmissions or deaths have been reported in the country so far. Enditem Every name on the BrandBucket marketplace is exclusively listed with BrandBucket. That means that all of our sellers are very responsive, making for quick domain transfers. A dedicated BrandBucket agent will manage your domain transfer from beginning to end, ensuring a secure and easy transaction. 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WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The top Democrats in Congress were to meet Saturday with two top Trump aides to try to reach a deal to pump more money into the U.S. economy to ease the coronavirus' heavy toll, after an essential lifeline for millions of unemployed Americans expired. Congress for the past several months has been unable to reach an accord for a next round of coronavirus relief, in a pandemic that has killed more than 150,000 Americans and brought on the sharpest economic collapse since the Great Depression. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were to meet with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows beginning at about 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) at the Capitol, according to an aide familiar with the planning. Congress has so far agreed on about $3 trillion in coronavirus relief. Pelosi on Friday said she rejected an offer by Republican President Donald Trump's administration to continue the $600 payments for another week, saying such a move would only make sense "if you are on a path" toward a deal. "We're not," Pelosi told a news conference. White House officials took their own hard line, accusing Democrats of refusing Trump's proposals to extend the jobless benefit and a moratorium on home evictions that expired last week. "What we're seeing is politics as usual from Democrats on Capitol Hill," Meadows - a former Republican House member - told reporters. The House in May passed a $3 trillion deal that addressed a wide range of coronavirus responses, including more money for testing, for elections and support to financially strapped state and local governments. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday unveiled his own $1 trillion package, which met immediate resistance both from Democrats, who called it too small, and from members of his own party, who said it was too costly. Trump, scrambling to prop up a struggling U.S. economy as he runs for re-election in November, has been pushing for another bill. Story continues In a meeting on Thursday night between top White House officials and congressional Democratic leaders, negotiations focused on an extension of the $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits, which Americans who lost jobs because of the health crisis have been receiving in addition to state jobless payments. According to a person familiar with the closed-door negotiations, the White House proposed continuing the $600 weekly unemployment payment for one week, which Pelosi and Schumer rejected. The White House then proposed reducing the $600 weekly payment to $400 for the next four months. While that was a move toward Democrats' demands, the source said they rejected it as insufficient. The source, who asked not to be identified, said the White House also hinted it could embrace a deal without the legal protections from lawsuits for companies and schools that McConnell has said must be included. On Thursday, Senate Republicans tried, without success, to pass a bill reducing the jobless benefit to $200 per week. (Reporting by Richard Cowan, Susan Heavey and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown) Buckle up for the brightness. Late in the evening, around 11:15 p.m., Mars ascends the eastern heavens in the Pisces constellation. The Red Planet seems bright now at about -1.1 magnitude, bright enough to see from the city, and strengthens to -1.5 magnitude near Aug. 20 and -1.7 magnitude at months end, according to the observatory. Since Mars is relatively close to Earth now, by October and November, our neighboring planet will be as bright as Jupiter. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) New York, United States Sat, August 1, 2020 12:02 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066adca73 2 People Ghislaine-Maxwell,Jeffrey-Epstein Free Documents about dealings between Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were publicly released on Thursday by a US court, where the British socialite faces criminal charges she aided the late financier's sexual abuse of girls. Among the materials released were email correspondence between the pair in early 2015, including an email in which Epstein told Maxwell she had "done nothing wrong." US District Judge Loretta Preska had ordered the documents' release by Thursday, saying the public's right to see them outweighed Maxwell's interests in keeping them under seal. However, two depositions remain under seal after Maxwell filed an emergency motion with the federal appeals court in Manhattan earlier on Thursday to keep them from becoming public. That court has yet to rule, and the depositions will remain sealed until at least Monday. Lawyers for Maxwell have said that in one of those depositions, filed in April 2016, Maxwell was asked "intrusive" questions concerning her sex life, and that its release could make it "difficult if not impossible" to get a fair trial. The second is a deposition by an unnamed Epstein accuser. Lawyers for Maxwell did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the documents were unsealed. The cache of documents released on Thursday and the depositions that remain under wraps were part of a now-settled 2015 civil defamation lawsuit against Maxwell by Virginia Giuffre, who said she was underage when Epstein kept her as a "sex slave" with Maxwell's assistance. A lawyer for Giuffre did not immediately respond to a similar request. Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997, and committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath. She was arrested on July 2 at a home in New Hampshire where prosecutors said she had been hiding out. Maxwell has been held in a Brooklyn jail after a judge denied bail, calling her a flight risk. Her criminal trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein was found hanged at age 66 last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty. CORRESPONDENCE Pending appeals by Maxwell, Preska had ordered the release of more than 80 documents in all, including flight logs from Epstein's private jets; and police reports from Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a home. Among the materials released on Thursday were January 2015 emails between Epstein and Maxwell, who were identified respectively as "jeffrey E" and either "Gmax" or "G Maxwell." "You have done nothing wrong and i woudl urge you to start acting like it," Epstein wrote on Jan. 25, 2015. "go outside, head high, not as an esacping convict. go to parties. deal with it." Epstein sent the email a day after Maxwell said she would appreciate it if another woman, identified by a single name only, "would come out and say she was your g'friend - I think she was from end 99 to 2002." Maxwell's lawyers have sought to distance their client from Epstein in their unsuccessful effort to win bail. In a July 10 bail request, the lawyers said the media had shifted their focus to Maxwell following Epstein's death, "wrongly trying to substitute her for Epstein-even though she'd had no contact with Epstein for more than a decade," had never been charged with a crime or been found liable in civil litigation, and had always denied allegations of misconduct. Other unsealed materials included emails from Giuffre to the FBI in 2014, including when she expressed interest to the FBI in pursuing a case against Epstein and proving "how much pedophilia occurred by Jeffrey and the many other monsters he obliged w underage girls." Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput was found hanging inside his room at his Bandra residence in Mumbai on June 14. While the initial reaction to his death was that he had committed suicide, the probe into his death has opened up a pandora's box with a new theory emerging each day. Here's a look at what all has happened in the Sushant Singh Rajput case investigation so far. The Dawood connection Initially it was said that Sushant was murdered by Dawood Ibrahim who had cleverly carried out the act. But the theory did not hold ground for long. Nepotism Sushant Singh Rajput died by suicide and there was a flood of condolences from the industry stalwarts and colleagues of the actor. One was from Karan Johar who stated that he regretted not being able to reach out to the actor when he needed him the most. This enraged his fans who said Karan, along with his elite Bollywood mafia gang, had actually looked down upon Sushant and even made fun of the actor on national television (his favourite TV chat show Koffee With Karan). Bollywod actress Kangna Ranaut was back with her nepotism charge. She was unsparing in her criticism of the big production houses who she said showed preferential treatment to star kids. Renowned filmmaker Shekar Kapur came out in the open to join the nepotism campaign saying there were times when he let Sushant cry on his shoulder after he lost movies to star kids. During investigation of the case, it was found that Sushant had lost 7 movies even after signing the contract. This prompted the Mumbai police to summon big wigs of all the top production houses for grilling. From Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Mahesh Bhatt to Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar, the police had asked all the top Bollywood filmmakers to share their contracts with Sushant. Apoorva Mehta, the CEO of Karan's Dharma Productions met the cops with the contract so did the YRF too which sent a copy of the Sushant contract. The production houses were asked to explain the reason behind replacing Sushant with other actors after signing him up for their movies. Depression The Mumbai police started recording statements of Sushant's family, friends and colleagues in the industry. While actress Rhea Chakraborty who he was living in with the actor up until a week before his death claimed that the actor was being treated for depression, while Sushant's ex-girlfriend Ankita Lokhanda claimed that she always knew Sushant as a happy-go-lucky person and that there was no way he was depressed. Rhea demands CBI probe Rhea Chakraborty put out a tweet seeking CBI probe into Sushant Singh Rajput's death. She also asked the case to be transferred from Bihar (Sushant's native state) to Mumbai saying the actor's father KK Singh could use his influence to tamper with the case. However, Sushant's family came forward to file a counter. His father filed a caveat in Supreme Court not to allow the actress' petition to be heard. Sushant's family contended that somebody in Mumbai Police was helping the actress. Sushant family files FIR against Rhea Sushant Singh Rajput's father filed an FIR against Rhea Chakraborthy and also accused Rhea of blowing up his son's money to lead a lavish lifestyle. He also said that the actress had taken with her laptop, jewellery, cash and credit cards from Sushant's home after she broke up with him on June 8, 2020. 'Rhea, family lived off Sushant's money' The money angle prompted media to dig up more dirt on Rhea. A leading English news channel accessed Sushant's bank statements which showed that Sushant's bank balance had plummeted from a whopping Rs 4 plus crores to just over a crore in a matter of two months. On the other hand, his statement reportedly showed details of transactions which apparently was for Rhea and her brother. This included their flight tickets, hotel stay, tuition fee and shopping expenses. Sushant friends' testimonies Meanwhile, Sushant's best friend Mahesh Shetty, who was one of the persons who the actor called in the last few hours before his death, claimed that Rhea was a control freak who changed his staff after she took charge. In fact, in a sensational expose, Sushant's bodyguard who was fired just a few days before his death revealed that Rhea would throw parties at Sushant's expense where the invitees would be her family and friends. He also said that Sushant never attended these parties as he was sick and would mostly be resting in his room. He also said that Sushant's family had never visited him in the recent days and held Rhea responsible for this. Another filmmaker friend of Sushant from Bihar, Sandip, ruled out the suicide angle saying Sushant had clear plans for his life and knew exactly what he wanted. He also said that he wanted to leave the film industry to take up for farming in Coorg (Karnataka). However, he stated that Sushant was not in touch with any of his friends over the last few months. Sushant death turns political in Bihar With the impending elections in Bihar, politicians are now using the issue for their vote bank demanding a transparent probe into Sushant's death. ED slaps PMLA In a latest development, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed a money laundering case on the basis of an FIR filed by the Bihar Police, according. Sushant's father KK Singh has accused Rhea and her family of abetting his son's suicide. It may be recalled that the central probe agency had sought Bihar police FIR and after studying it, the ED has decided to slap charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). They said an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) has been filed against the accused named in the Bihar Police FIR that includes Chakraborty, her family and six others. Rhea and the others are likely to be summoned for questioning soon. Satyamev Jayate: Rhea While Sushant's father claimed that Rhea had transferred 15 crores from his account to an unrelated account. Rhea Chakraborty finally broke her silence and posted a video message stating truth will prevail and all the allegations against her of abetting Sushant's suicide were false. 'Sushant family pressurising me' In another interesting development, Sushant's friend and flatmate sent an email to the Mumbai police accusing the actor's family of forcing him to release a statement against Rhea Chakraborty. In his email, Siddharth Pithani has stated that he was under immense pressure to say things about Rhea that he was not even aware of. He said that he received conference calls from Sushant's family members and an unknown number on July 22, in which they asked him questions regarding Rhea's expenses during her stay at Mont Blanc apartment (in Bandra) with the late actor. With the ED stepping in, the case has now only gotten bigger. It appears even the nepotism campaign has been diluted. Nanoreactor strategy generates superior supported bimetallic catalysts Supported bimetallic catalysts are an important class of catalysts in heterogeneous catalysis. They can be applied in various fields, such as electrocatalysis, biomass conversion, and hydrogen production. However, traditional impregnation and immobilization methods for synthesizing supported bimetallic nanoparticles (BNPs) are often uncontrollable, thus creating BNPs with non-uniform particle size, low alloy degree and inhomogeneous distribution on the supports. The result is poor catalytic performance and low metal utilization. To improve the performance and efficiency of the supported BNPs, Prof. WANG Guanghui and Prof. JIANG Heqing from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Prof. LIU Jian from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of CAS, recently proposed a nanoreactor strategy for scalable synthesis of the supported ultrafine BNPs. This strategy introduces high-quality seeds (Pd nanoclusters) and Au ions into the nitrogen-doped mesoporous polymer (NMP). The NMP is used as a nanoreactor for the seeded growth of PdAu BNPs in solid state during thermal reduction. "The synthesized Pd 1 Au 1/4 BNPs are very uniform in diameter with an error of 0.5 nm, and are homogeneously dispersed in the NMP support," said Prof. WANG. The Pd 1 Au 1/4 /NMP sample showed enhanced catalytic performance in formic acid (FA) dehydrogenation compared with the monometallic analogues Pd/NMP and Au/NMP. "The enhanced activity can be attributed to the electronic interaction between Pd and Au in the Pd 1 Au 1/4 BNPs. In addition, the electronic interaction could be adjusted by changing the composition of PdAu BNPs during synthesis," said Prof. JIANG. Moreover, the PdAu/NMP product can be molded into a monolith by a pellet press under mild pressure (1.0 bar) without any binders, due to its coral-like structure. The monolith contains abundant macropores which can be of benefit for mass transfer in a liquid reaction. Notably, the monolith of Pd 1 Au 1/4 /NMP still exhibits considerable activity in FA dehydrogenation with a TOF value of 3684 h-1 at 333 K, and can be recycled five times without mass loss and changes in activity. Many other supported Pd-based BNPs (diameters ranging from 2-3 nm) have also been synthesized using this method, including PdRu, PdCo, PdNi, PdZn, PdAg and PdCu BNPs. This proposed nanoreactor strategy provides an effective route for synthesizing various supported bimetallic catalysts. These catalysts are promising for applications in green and sustainable catalytic processes. ### This study was published in Materials Today on July 30. It was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, QIBEBT and the DNL Cooperation Fund, CAS. This story has been published on: 2020-07-31. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Even teleprompter could not take so many lies: Rahul's dig at PM Modis Davos speech PM CARES Fund: No curb on use of PM's name, photo, image of flag, emblem, PMO tells HC Rajasthan Crisis: PM should stop this 'tamasha' in the state, says Gehlot India oi-PTI Jaipur, Aug 01: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get the alleged attempt to topple his government stopped and said he is open to welcoming back the Congress rebels led by Sachin Pilot. Answering queries from reporters, Gehlot said if the Congress high command forgives the dissidents, he will embrace them. Since the power tussle between him and Sachin Pilot resurfaced this month, the Congress veteran has used harsh words against his former deputy, once even referring to him as "nikamma" or useless. 5% reservation for more backward classes in Rajasthan judicial service Gehlot said he will do whatever the Congress leadership wants and gave the party the credit for becoming the Rajasthan chief minister thrice. The chief minister was on his way back to Jaipur after an overnight stay at Jaisalmer's Suryagarh resort, where loyalist MLAs have been shifted ahead of the assembly session from August 14. The Congress has accused the BJP of playing a major role in the rebellion by the now sacked deputy chief minister and 18 other Congress MLAs who are threatening his government. "We have no quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government. "Modi should get stopped whatever is going on in Rajasthan," the chief minister said outside the hotel where the MLAs were shifted Friday. Gehlot and the ministers are likely to spend most of their time in the state capital as the Congress tries to keep its numbers intact in Jaisalmer. He claimed that democracy is under threat in the country is and the Union Home Ministry is after his government in the state. He repeated the charge that the "rate" for trying to lure MLAs away has gone up after the announcement of the assembly session. Reacting to BJP state president Satish Poonia's statement over the shifting of Congress MLAs to Jaisalmer, Gehlot called him a new leader who wants to take on former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. He commented that Raje has ?disappeared? from the scene. Poonia had mocked the Congress, asking if the Gehlot loyalists will next move further westward across the border into Pakistan. MLAs from the Congress and its allies had remained confined to Fairmont hotel in Jaipur since July 13 before being flown to Jaisalmer on chartered flights. They are likely to visit Tanot Mata temple near the Pakistan border and some other places during their Jaisalmer stay, expected to continue till the assembly session begins on August 14. Gehlot recalled that he had informed Narendra Modi about the political situation in the state through a letter and a telephone conversation. He said he will write another letter to Modi asking him to call a video conference of all chief ministers again to review the COVID-19 situation. He said adequate testing for coronavirus is not taking place in some states while Rajasthan has increased its testing capacity to 40,000 per day. "We have done excellent Covid management in the state. The recovery rate is good, the death rate is less than 1 per cent,? he said. Including the rebels, the Congress has 107 MLAs in the 200-member assembly. The BJP has 72 MLAs. The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) says scores of people were arrested and detained across Zimbabwe as authorities mounted an unprecedented clampdown on protests by pro-democracy campaigners, opposition political party members and ordinary citizens voicing concern over rising corruption and a worsening economic and political crisis in the troubled southern African nation. In a statement, the lawyers group said in Bulawayo, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and other enforcement officers on Thursday arrested four people - Advent Mathuthu, Amandlenkosi Mathuthu, Tawana Muchehiwa and Tendai Masotsha - on allegations that they had generated and distributed some flyers promoting a protest on Friday. Amandlenkosi, Mucheiwa and Masotsha were later released without a charge preferred against them while Advent, who was represented by Mehluli Dube of ZLHR appeared before Bulawayo Magistrate Tinashe Tashaya facing charges of inciting public violence. Magistrate Tashaya set free Advent on bail and he returns to court on 19 August. Tashaya also granted bail to Mzingaye Matthew Thaka, who appeared before him on charges of public violence as defined in section 36 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. In court, prosecutors told the magistrate that the 21 year-old man, who was represented by Lison Ncube of ZLHR, incited some members of the public when he allegedly held a one-man demonstration carrying a placard that was calling for the release of detained freelance journalist Hopewell Chinono and Transform Zimbabwe party leader Jacob Ngarivhume and also calling for the respect of rule of law. He returns to court on 19 August 2020. ZLHR has filed an urgent court application seeking an order to compel the ZRP to bring to court Mucheiwa within 72 hours. At the same time, Collen Dhlamini of Bulawayo, who operates a printing service, was also arrested for allegedly printing some flyers allegedly promoting the Friday protest. Dhlamini, who is represented by Mehluli Dube of ZLHR, will be summoned to appear in court. Thirty-one year-old Sanele Hanana of Bulawayo was also summoned by the ZRP following a break at her residence by some suspected state security agents carrying guns, who were looking for her husband. Hanana, went to the police station accompanied by her lawyer Kholwani Ngwenya of ZLHR, where a statement was recorded from her. In Plumtree, in Matabeleland South province, ZRP arrested Nhlalo Ndlovu, Precious Sibanda, Ephraim Ndlovu, Thabo Tshangule, Mudisi Moyo and one person only identified as Xolani on allegations that they were inciting people to protest and charged them with malicious damage to property. The six persons, who were represented by Jonathan Tsvangirai of ZLHR were released on summons with the police indicating that they will summon them to appear in court at a date to be advised. In Zvishavane in Midlands province, police arrested Givemore Makandire and charged him with contravening section 36 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act for allegedly inciting public violence through printing flyers promoting the Friday protest. In Kwekwe in Midlands province, police arrested 40 year-old Tinei Siziba and charged him with disorderly conduct as defined in section 36 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act for allegedly wearing a mask written #zanupfmustgo. Siziba was represented by Brian Dube of ZLHR. In Harares Helensvale suburb, police arrested Tsitsi Dangarembga, an internationally-acclaimed writer and filmmaker together with Judy Barnes and detained them at Harare Central Police Station for allegedly contravening section 37(1)(b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act by participating in a gathering with intent to promote public violence, breach of peace or bigotry. The duo is represented by Charles Kwaramba and Paidamoyo Saurombe of ZLHR. ZRP also arrested MDC Alliance political party spokesperson and lawyer, Fadzayi Mahere, together with Jessica Drury, Simon Drury, Tinashe Murapatsa, Nyasha Musendu, Tinotenda Muswe and Josee Lots in Mt. Pleasant suburb and detained them at Harare Central Police Station for allegedly contravening section 37(1)(b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act by participating in a gathering with intent to promote public violence, breach of peace or bigotry. The seven are represented by Chris Mhike of ZLHR. Human rights lawyer Obey Shava was also arrested and detained at Harare Central Police Station together with his clients Harare West legislator Hon. Joana Mamombe, Cecillia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova at a checkpoint mounted near the ruling ZANU PF party headquarters while they were on their way from Harare Magistrates Court to Harare Central Police Station, where the three victims of abduction and torture were scheduled to report to the law enforcement agents as part of their bail conditions. Shava, Mamombe, Chimbiri and Marova, who were represented by Harrison Nkomo of ZLHR, were detained for close to four hours and subjected to an identification parade, where a soldier alleged that Chimbiri verbally attacked her resulting in her being charged with disorderly conduct and released into the custody of her lawyer. Chimbiri will appear in court next Tuesday. Shava, Mamombe and Marova were later released from police custody without any charge preferred against them. In Arcadia suburb, Paula Besa, a resident of Sunningdale suburb in Harare was also arrested by the police Friday and charged with incitement to participate in a gathering with intent to promote public violence, breaches of peace or bigotry as defined in section 187(1)(a) as read with 37(1)(b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. ZRP claimed that the 26 year-old Besa, who is represented by Tapiwa Muchineripi of ZLHR, staged a protest in Arcadia suburb, where he allegedly held some placards inscribed Respect our Constitution, You can ignore or kill us but you will regret and Hope is our hero. In Mt Pleasant suburb, police also besieged the residence of Regis Chawatama, a lawyer, where they demanded to search his house for some placards allegedly inscribed with offensive and anti-government material. However, the ZRP left the residence without conducting the search as Chawatamas lawyer Kossam Ncube of ZLHR challenged them to produce a warrant of search and seizure authorising them to do so. In Chegutu in Mashonaland West province, Edward Dzeka and Isheanesu Chimunyemba were arrested on Friday 31 and charged with contravening section 37(1)(b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act by allegedly participating in a gathering with intent to promote public violence, breach of peace or bigotry. The duo, is represented by Douglas Chikwangwani of ZLHR. In Masvingo, police arrested Henry Chivhanga, a disability rights activist, who is the Director of Disability Amalgamation Community Trust, and charged him with making unnecessary movement as defined in section 4(a) of Statutory Instrument 83/2020 as read with section 3(a) of Statutory Instrument 110/2020. Chivhanga is represented by Collen Maboke of ZLHR. Masvingo Urban Ward Four Councillor Godfrey Kurauone was arrested by police Friday when he went to Masvingo Central Police Station accompanied by his lawyer Martin Mureri of ZLHR to present himself as part of his bail reporting conditions on a case of insulting President Mnangagwa. Kurauone was charged with criminal nuisance as defined in section 46(2)(v) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act for allegedly posting a video on an unnamed social media platform on 20 July 2020 while singing a song with the lyrics Ichavanhoroondo kana tandererwa kubvisa Mnangagwa. In Karoi in Mashonaland West province, Joel Zilala was summoned by police for interrogation over a report that he allegedly filed to the law enforcement agents requesting that ZANU PF party spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa be arrested and prosecuted for inciting public violence and disturbing peace. Zilala, who was accompanied by his lawyer Unite Saizi of ZLHR, reported at ZRP Hurungwe District Headquarters, where he left his personal details as requested by the law enforcement agents. In a statement, police said they are aware of some people and political groups that are inciting Zimbabweans to revolt against the government. The ZRP claimed in the statement that there are some people, who are said to be armed that are planning to destabilize the country. The ZRP identified one of the people with a South African contact number, who is said to be armed and recruiting people on WhatsApp to rise against the Mnangagwa government. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has described pro-democracy activists as terrorists, saying they are being assisted by the West in attempting to remove a constitutionally-elected government. The Indian Army has started preparing for a long haul of winters in the Eastern Ladakh sector amid a faceoff with the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The snowfall is expected to start soon in the Eastern Ladakh area where the temperature is already low. Ahead of this, the Army has asked its defence attaches posted in embassies in the United States, Russia and Europe to identify warm clothes and snow tent manufacturers as there may be a need for emergency purchases, reported Hindustan Times citing top government officials. Besides placing orders with domestic manufacturers to tackle the winter clothing requirement of the troops in the Eastern Ladakh, the Army has also asked troops other than those stationed on Saltoro ridge and Siachen glacier to give up extreme snow clothing, said the report quoting an Army commander. Explaining it further, the commander said even troops at Partapur and Thoise are allowed Siachen clothing, but the height of the two bases is the same as Leh. So in the worst-case scenario we will ask Partapur and Thoise troops to give up their down jackets, trousers, gloves, boots and goggles to their fellow jawans being posted up on the occupied Aksai Chin front, the Army commander told the publication. Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a bitter standoff in several areas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh since May 5. The situation deteriorated after the June 15 Galwan Valley clashes in which 20 Indian Army personnel were killed and an unconfirmed number of Chinese soldiers died. Microsoft Corp is mulling to acquire Chinese-owned video app TikTok's US operations. The tech giant is in talks with TikTok's parent company ByteDance. The development comes as the US government weighs harsh action against the Chinese app and prepares to force ByteDance to divest its ownership in TikTok over data security concerns. While the (US) government was ready to announce an order as soon as Friday, the decision was put on hold, pending further consideration by President Donald Trump. Talking to reporters on Friday at the White House, Trump said that "we are looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok" adding that his government is "looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok". Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources, that the Trump administration could soon announce a decision ordering ByteDance to divest its ownership in TikTok. Meanwhile, other prospective buyers could also come forward to buy the popular video app. The potential suitors to buy the Chinese app include Microsoft industry peers such as Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, and Facebook. Also Read: Chinese app ban: TikTok says ready to store data locally, denies breach of user privacy There have been reports of US tech giants and financial firms being interested in buying or investing in TikTok as the Trump administration sets its sights on the app. The New York Times and Fox Business, citing an unidentified source, reported on Friday that Microsoft was in discussions to buy TikTok, though Microsoft declined to comment. TikTok issued a statement on Friday saying: "While we do not comment on rumours or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok." ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the US and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikTok's fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and US tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a potential threat. It has said it has tens of millions of US users and hundreds of millions globally. But its Chinese ownership has raised concerns about censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government, and the potential for sharing user data with Chinese officials. Also Read: Investors price TikTok at $50 billion in takeover bid TikTok maintains it doesn't censor videos based on topics sensitive to China and that it would not give the Chinese government access to US user data even if asked. The company has hired a US CEO, a former top Disney executive, in an attempt to distance itself from its Chinese ownership. US national-security officials have been reviewing the Musical.ly acquisition in recent months, while the US armed forces have banned their employees from installing TikTok on government-issued phones. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month that the US was considering banning TikTok. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich is asking Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to revise her public health order to allow visitors who have tested negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours before entering the state to forgo the 14-day quarantine. The governor said during her news conference Thursday there would be several changes to a mandatory 14-day quarantine for those entering New Mexico from out of state, such as exempting those who travel out of state for medical treatments. But she did not mention the type of exemption Heinrich requested. Governors Office spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett said the revised order will come next week. She did not have a comment about Heinrichs request. In a Thursday letter to the governor, the Democratic senator said the pandemic upended whole sectors of the states economy, including the hospitality, tourism and outdoor recreation industries. Creating a safe and responsible pathway for out-of-state visitors to enter New Mexico and amending restrictions for our state parks will ignite local economies, create new jobs and provide an urgent stimulus to New Mexicos hospitality, tourism and outdoor recreation industries, Heinrich wrote. The senator said the measure he wants considered is similar to exemptions used by others states. Heinrich said those states have demonstrated that communities can be protected from the spread of the virus with safe and smart tourism. Before the onset of the pandemic, New Mexicos outdoor recreation industry was one of the fastest growing parts of our economy, Heinrich said. The senator said an estimated 37.5 million visitors spent almost $7.1 billion in 2018. White Sands National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park both reopened to visitors in June with restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus. And out-of-state residents have been among the visitors. Carlsbad Caverns Superintendent Doug Neighbor told the Journal in an earlier interview about 90% of the parks visitors have been from out of state since the caverns reopened June 8, including about 20% from Texas. Our visitors have been compliant, almost all of them wearing masks, he said. The caverns are limited to 25% capacity, or about 550 visitors a day, Neighbor said. As of Friday, Lujan Grishams order exempted airline employees, people performing public safety or public health functions, military personnel, federal employees, those employed by a national defense contractor, emergency first responders, health care workers, people arriving by court orders, those employed or contracted by essential businesses and those traveling to New Mexico to conduct business. CLEVELAND, Ohio Dexter Davis, one of the most respected contemporary artists in the city, was the victim of a road-rage shooting last month in University Circle that has temporarily halted his output, and may shape his work in the future. In an interview with cleveland.com, Davis, 55, spoke for the first time publicly about the July 3 shooting, which left a large caliber round lodged in his lower back, and his plans for eventually returning to his artwork. Doctors have told him its safer to leave the bullet where it is than to remove it surgically, which could cause nerve damage. They said he should recover completely, and that the bullet may eventually work its way out of his back. I think I feel optimistic,' he said. But I still have to deal with this anxiety and the psychological results of when you are involved with something so dramatic. Im in pain,' he added. Its sort of in and out. I wake up in the morning and sometimes my lower back and hips are really stiff. Sometimes it takes a while to get my muscles going. But from the doctors point of view, its healing pretty well. For Davis, the shooting represents a recurrence of trauma that has touched his life repeatedly since he grew up in the low-income, majority Black neighborhood of Hough during the 1960s and 70s. He was two years old during the 1966 Hough Riot. He remembers hearing constant gunfire as a child. When he was eight, a car pulled up and two white men pulled the corpse of a white man out of the trunk and dropped it on the front yard. In a 2016 interview with Case Western Reserve University art historian Henry Adams, Davis said: At the apartment next door to our house there was always an ambulance or a police car. People were always killing each other. Davis said he was jumped and beaten by gang members in 1992 while walking in Coventry in Cleveland Heights. And now hes been shot. The incident was part of the surge of gun violence over the July 4 weekend that saw 27 wounded and three killed in Cleveland. Some law enforcement officials have attributed the uptick in shootings to societal tensions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But from Daviss perspective, the shooting was a reminder that gun violence can flare up anytime, even in University Circle, an island of cultural, medical and educational riches in the middle of a poor, racially segregated city. It was a regular day; everything seems to be normal and then right out of the blue it happens,' he said. Im not in the ghetto or somewhere like that. Im not where Im not supposed to be. Theres no reason for it. And thats what makes it scary in a way. Davis, who also works as a security guard at the Cleveland Museum of Art, had finished his shift at 5:20 p.m. on July 3, when he asked a colleague to give him a lift home to the nearby Larchmere neighborhood. After stopping to use the ATM at the KeyBank on Chester Avenue, near the museum and the Cleveland Clinic, Davis said his friend, who was driving a Toyota Corolla sedan, almost collided with a black SUV on Stokes Boulevard just south of Euclid Avenue, near John Hay High School. The SUV aggressively pursued the Toyota, in which Davis was riding in the rear seat as a health precaution because of the coronavirus pandemic. Davis said he was looking at a woman screaming at them from the open window in the rear of the SUV. All of a sudden they started coming faster,' Davis said. I think were in trouble,' he recalls telling his friend. Thats when I got hit. It was one shot. I was looking out the window. Thats when the bullet hit the back of the car door and it got me. His friend rushed Davis to the Cleveland Clinic emergency room, where doctors stabilized him and had him sent quickly via ambulance to the Level 1 Trauma Center at University Hospitals, several blocks away, where he was treated. A police report recaps Davis s account of the shooting, but does not yet include information on whether detectives have been able to locate surveillance videos from nearby buildings that might help identify the black SUV. Davis said that after additional time off, hell be well enough to return to work at the museum, where his daily contact with great art has given him inspiration and joy, and provided him with numerous memorable conversations with visitors since he joined the institution in 1992. And he hopes to resume making art, which he has made for many years as a way of coping with trauma and exorcising physical and psychic pain. A 1990 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, hes known for making richly textured collages incorporating images of African-style masks, disembodied eyes, imprints of open hands, and torn fragments of his own paintings and drawings. Works such as Twelve Dead and White Light, exhibited in 2011 at the William Busta Gallery in Cleveland, refer to headlines about crime and the muzzle flash of a gun. Daviss work has been collected by the Cleveland museum, making him perhaps the only guard in the institutions history to stand watch over one of his own creations. His art has also been collected by the Cleveland Clinic and Progressive Corp., and was the subject of a 2016 retrospective exhibition at Kent State University, accompanied by a 90-page catalogue written by Adams. Daviss work has been long championed by Busta, who said hell open a small office and exhibit space this fall in Collinwoods Waterloo Arts District, where he plans to show new works by Davis. Davis knows his work in the future will be affected by what hes experienced, but hes not sure how yet. He kept the white shirt he was wearing when he was shot, now stained with blood and pierced by a bullet hole. He said he may use it in a future work. Im really having ideas,' he said. Its something inside me that has to come out. Ill be doing some smaller pieces. I cant do anything big now because I cant move my body the way I want to. Daviss colleagues at the museum and friends have rallied around him since the shooting. Theyve helped with shopping or provided art materials, and they launched a GoFundMe page to help with expenses. As of mid-day Thursday, the account had reached $14,489. Davis feels encouraged, but he speaks wearily about recovery as an all-too-familiar process. When you go through something like this you have to go through a whole process of healing, he said. As part of that process, he reflects on having lived 55 years, and muses about a simple, modest goal. I want to see 56,' he said. Taking it all in her stride; a pageant, a pandemic Having won the Miss Sri Lanka title last year and travelled to London for the Miss World contest, 22- year-old Dewmini Thathsarani talks to Ruqyyaha Deane View(s): View(s): Last October, overwhelmed with surprise and disbelief, 22-year-old Dewmini Thathsarani was crowned Miss Sri Lanka for Miss World after a gruelling few months of hard work and competition. I was only 21 when I entered the contest, I had no idea that I would make it to the top three, Dewmini recalls as she remembers the rush of emotions that flooded her. A hectic pageant schedule which saw her meeting some prominent personalities in the fashion and beauty industry here was what she calls her learning curve. A curve she took advantage of as she set off to London in December to represent Sri Lanka at the Miss World pageant one of the most prestigious by any standards. I had never travelled out of the country before, London was my first ever tour, Dewmini says candidly, remarking that the trip was magnificent.The Miss World Pageant was held during the thick of winter yet London fashion was at its best she tells us it was then she realized why they called London a fashion capital of the world. Apart from being able to make friends with the other 120 participants and learn about different cultures and languages, she talks particularly of her roommate Miss England from whom she learnt much about the rich culture and heritage of the country. The highlight of the Miss World pageant for her were the rehearsals for the competition a fantastic learning opportunity. I still keep in touch when time permits with all my fellow contestants and I know for sure that going back to London someday is on my to do list, she says. She admits that her life has definitely been impacted by the ongoing pandemic as it has many lives and livelihoods of most people in Sri Lanka and around the world. However she takes it in her stride as she feels many life lessons have been learnt through this tough period. I always had the urge to help my country irrespective of winning the title and now I know that the necessity is to first help my community and now I feel it is even more essential to help not only those who are affected by the pandemic but also the less fortunate, Dewmini says emphasizing that as a country we need to support one another to reach our fullest potential. Given the uncertainty of the times, the usual celebrity whirl that accompanies a Miss Sri Lanka title holder has not happened but this unassuming and down to earth beauty from Kandy isnt complaining. Getting involved with worthy projects to rebuild the nation is the right step ahead, she feels. She expresses her gratitude towards her family her pillars of strength and protection along with Tracy Francis who she calls her mentor and trusted friend; and Sangeetha Weeraratne, Asim Younoos and Amilani Perera who helped her on her journey throughout with sponsorships and support. Dawn Cooper is a mother, grandmother, great grandmother and former nurse. She now has another title to add to those: Winner of the August 2020 New Jerseys Heartland Hero Award. The 82-year-old Millville resident said it was a surprise to receive the award, for which she was nominated by her daughter, Laura Cooper. The Heartland Hero awards are monthly recognitions from the website New Jerseys Heartland, an economic initiative from the Pascale Sykes Foundation to promote the four-county region of Cumberland, Salem, Gloucester and Atlantic counties. People send in nominations and a monthly winner is randomly selected from the list of entries. Cooper was raised on a chicken farm in Galloway as a foster child, after being abandoned around 3 years old. She worked on the farm, where her family raised their own animals and grew their own vegetables. So I dont think I saw a (grocery) store until I was out on my own, she told NJ Advance Media, noting she left when she was 18 years old. After graduating from high school, she attended nursing school in Camden and graduated as a registered nurse. It was there that she met her husband, who passed away from cancer in 2002. Cooper worked as a maternity nurse for 32 years at the now-shuttered Newcomb Hospital in Vineland, which closed in 2004, according to a report. But shes also seen tragedy in her time. She overcame the death of her youngest child from atherosclerosis in 2016 and two years later, she helped deliver her stillborn 38-week-old great-granddaughter. Laura Cooper said she nominated her mother for the award because everyday people should be acknowledged as well. I wrote it because you just see all these people winning all these awards and its just nice for someone whos an average person, Laura, 59, said. I thought she deserved it. Cooper received a certificate and a few branded goods from New Jerseys Heartland, including a T-shirt, flip flops and a couple to-go thermoses in the mail. Laura said she was grateful her mother won the award, since she never would have nominated herself for it. Its just nice that the average mom and nurse and teachers and different people are being acknowledged, she said. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. Editors note: The Journal-Courier has been working with a group of business and community leaders to shine a light on the importance of the sometimes behind-the-scenes work taking place to improve the present and build for the future of our hometown. It has been said either you deal with reality or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you. This has never been more true than today when entire communities, businesses and people are forced into an ever-changing new reality. Taking that one step further, if small and mid-sized communities are to survive, they must face the new reality and find ways to build loyalty toward their hyper-local business base. Without that, they will struggle at best and slowly die in the worst-case scenario. In the age of COVID-19, in which government mandated the shuttering of many small businesses while corporate and big box competitors were allowed to remain open, entire districts of small businesses have been devastated. With this being the case in many communities, it is time for communities to fight back and regain control of their destinies. One might ask, how is that done in todays difficult business climate? With creativity. City leaders needs to work with their chambers and their local media companies. They need to come up with creative programs that drive business to their Main Streets, programs that incentivize the local residents to spend their dollars with the hyper-local businesses. Now is the time when real leaders have the opportunity to step to plate and lead within their community. In Appleton, Wisconsin, the downtown association got together and designed a T-shirt that said Downtown Unites, selling thousands at $10 each, reminding people to unite and support their local hyper-local business base. Many media companies around the country have put together plans allowing hyper-local businesses to advertise at very little cost, sometimes for free. They have done this through working with the community leaders and Chambers. Many communities have closed roads to make it possible for local Main Street businesses to move outside onto the sidewalks and streets allowing for social distancing and fresh air. Cities and downtown districts need to be looking for ideas to have markets, dollar days and a host of other potential shopper attracting events that spur traffic. For a constant stream of ideas that may translate into your community, I would invite you to visit the Building Main Street, not Wall Street Facebook page as we add new ideas every week. For those communities that really want to make a splash, there are programs out there that bring the products and services that might normally be found in big cities right to your doorstep. Does your community have their own App or website that is modeled after Groupon or other big market products? One thing that technology has done in recent years is make what was unthinkable for smaller markets just a few years ago very possible today. I could go on and write pages of ideas that would work depending upon the market, but it is more important that you understand the urgency of your actions. COVID-19 has left communities with little room for error. How you react in the coming weeks and months may well determine the destiny of your community. Is your community on the titanic or is your community on a highway to success? Let it be the highway to success. . John A. Newby can be reached at john@360MediaAlliance.net. New Delhi, Aug 1 : Air India pilots have sought an urgent meeting with Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri "to prove the 'duplicitous' claims of the Air India management and the actual ground reality". In a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister on Saturday, the two pilots associations-- Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) and Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) said, "It is once again evident from your interview on national television channel on July 31, 2020 that some officials from Air India's top management are hard at work peddling misleading half-truths about our wages and the current market scenario. Allow us to reiterate that "We are not being paid as per market standards". Reiterating the anomaly, the pilots said that in the name of 'rationalisation', the management has not only cut fixed allowances by 40 per cent but also slashed flying hourly rate by the same amount. "This compounded cut has reduced our wages well below the current market standards. This glaring disparity will exacerbate even more once the flying picks up. The standard industry practice right now is that the total earnings of every employee including pilots have been brought down by 15-35 per cent via fair mechanisms in which the top management contributes from the front", they added. These multipronged pay cuts on flying allowance are not genuine 'cost rationalisation' for the company or anything resembling market standards. While pilots are made to suffer a 60-70 per cent wage cut, the senior management of Air India continues to enjoy full perks and privileges with the minuscule cut of 7.5 per cent on their gross emoluments as a face saving exercise, the pilots said. "We are hopeful that the government will not let down frontline workers and their families who stood by the nation through this pandemic while no other airline in the world was operating flights", they said. "We once again request you to kindly grant us an opportunity to brief you in person with comparative documents to prove the duplicitous claims of the Air India management and the actual ground reality in Air India", the pilots bodies said. They've been happily married since tying the knot in 2009. And Mark Walhberg paid tribute to his wife Rhea Durham as he marked their 11th wedding anniversary with a gushing Instagram post on Saturday. The Patriots Day actor, 49, wrote 'thanks for being my everything' to his wife, 42, as he shared a stunning throwback snap of the couple. Congratulations: Mark Walhberg paid tribute to his wife Rhea Durham as he marked their 11th wedding anniversary with a gushing Instagram post on Saturday The black and white image sees a youthful Mark and Rhea smiling at the camera while lovingly leaning in close to one another. Captioning the snap, Mark penned: 'Happy 11th anniversary just getting started thanks for being my everything infinity and beyond .' The sweet post was soon flooded with several messages from the actor's fans as they congratulated the couple on their anniversary. Earlier this month, Mark took to Instagram to wish a happy 42nd birthday to his wife Rhea. So in love: The Patriots Day actor, 49, wrote 'thanks for being my everything' to his wife, 42, as he shared a stunning throwback snap of the the couple (pictured in 2019) The Boogie Nights star uploaded a sweet snap in which he planted a kiss on his wife's cheek as she beamed at the camera. 'Happy b day baby!! Youre my better half and such a blessing,' he gushed, adding a 'thanks for our [four hearts] little angels.' Mark and Rhea became man and wife after tying the knot at Beverly Hills' Good Shepherd Catholic Church. Tribute: Captioning the snap, Mark penned: 'Happy 11th anniversary just getting started thanks for being my everything infinity and beyond ' The couple actually had their first date at another Catholic church, the iconic 19th century St. Patrick's Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan. 'We met in New York City, while I was doing a press junket. I asked her if she wanted to come out with me, and she said yes,' Mark told People in 2010. 'Then I asked her if she wanted to come to church with me the next morning, and she said yes again. So that was our first date: St. Patricks Cathedral in New York.' 'My better half': Earlier this month, Mark took to Instagram to wish a happy 42nd birthday to wife Rhea, with the Boogie Nights uploading a snap of himself planting a kiss on her cheek The Ted star shared: 'I knew shortly after that she was the one, but I still had to make sure that I was able to be the man I needed to be.' The duo share four children - daughters Ella, 16, and Grace, 10, as well as sons Brendan, 11, and Michael, 14. They had three of their four children by the time they decided to get married after being romantically involved for years. Wedded bliss: Mark and Rhea became man and wife after tying the knot at Beverly Hills' Good Shepherd Catholic Church (pictured on their wedding day in 2009) Happy couple: 'We met in New York City, while I was doing a press junket. I asked her if she wanted to come out with me, and she said yes,' Mark told People in 2010 'We were like a married couple anyway - we just wanted to make it official. Nothing really changed,' he explained to People. Before her marriage Rhea was a successful model, walking two Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows and covering such magazines as Vogue Paris and Elle. A half-decade ago Mark told Us Weekly that he and Rhea have stayed happily married by making sure to 'Spend quality time together. Really, that's what matters.' Policing and Politics in a Time of Turmoil Commentary The protests and riots of the last two months have produced an unstable alliance of groups with different aims. Some want to use the universal revulsion at the killing of George Floyd to protest police brutality and injustice and to reform the police. Others want to dismantle the police altogether, and to burn down every police precinct in the country. Still others want to ensure a Democratic victory in November and to ensure that President Donald Trump is blamed for whatever happens in the interimand then to retire the whole movement like Occupy Wall Street evaporated or #MeToo and its slogans disappeared overnight once it got too close to Joe Biden. Since the 1960s, police forces have become more professional and better trained. Theres probably not a cop on the street, let alone a commanding officer or union leader, who didnt deplore the horrific death in custody of a black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis. It was the trigger for an explosion of anti-police sentiment in major cities across the country. Heather Mac Donald describes the looting, vandalism, and rioting that followed: On the night of Thursday, May 28, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey ordered the citys Third Police Precinct evacuated as the forces of anarchy descended upon it for a third day in a row. The building was promptly torched, sending a powerful sign that society would not defend its most fundamental institutions of law and order. Soon cities across the country became scenes of feral savagery. The human lust for violence, the sheer joy of plunder and destruction, were unleashed without check. Police officers were shot at, run over, slashed with knives, and clubbed; two current and former law enforcement officers were killed in cold blood. Police cruisers and station houses were firebombed; courthouses were trashed. Looters drove trucks through storefronts and emptied the stores contents into the back of these newly repurposed vehicles of civil war. ATMs were ripped out of walls; pharmacies plundered for drugs. Revolutionaries and Reformists Two months later, the riots continue in several cities across the country. The demand emerged under the leadership of a Marxist-inspired, corporate-funded organization called Black Lives Matter (BLM), to Defund the Police! What does it mean? Among the revolutionaries of BLM and Antifa, it meant what it said; it was what Marxists call a transitional demand, one that serves an agitational purpose in a current situation while linking it to the goal they share as revolutionary socialists, the weakening and overthrow of capitalism. The demand aims not to reform the police forces in order to reduce abuse or to enable them better to serve and protect the residents of the community by maintaining law and order. Its a demand aimed at the heart of the society the Marxists and anarchists seek to destroy. As the Bolsheviks understood it, theres a crucial distinction between the police and the army. Its the revolutionarys task to win over soldiers and gain their sympathy for the revolution. In the case of the police, howeverthose forces of the state that directly confronted poor and working people in their towns and citiesthe task was to beat them up and kill them. To the extent that the demand is met and the police weakened, the forces of revolution are strengthened. This revolutionary motivation might be clear and explicit among the most violent of the anti-police groups, such as Antifa, and the Marxist-inspired leaders of BLM. But many others have participated in or cheered on the protests without aiming to wound or kill police officers. The legacy media like The New York Times have minimized or failed to cover at all the violence of the protests, which they describe as mostly peaceful. But a recent weekend of urban anarchy in Portland involving 5,000 or 6,000, in which rioters threw Molotov cocktails at federal officers, fired commercial-grade mortar fireworks at them, used lasers to target their eyes, and injured more than 20 with fireworks and projectiles, is not by any stretch the peaceful dissent the liberal media present it as. Its true that many people participated in or cheered on the protests for reasons that have nothing to do with revolution. They wanted to express their shock and repugnance at the way George Floyd died and to make sure policing is reformed so that such a horror is never repeated. These are the peaceful protesters, the wall of moms, that Antifa places in the front lines of the demonstrators, a kind of human shield from behind which they launch their projectiles at the police. The Portland Problem The continuing riots and protests in Portland and elsewhere are now a problem for the Democrats who seek to win the presidency in November by blaming everything on the president while absolving of all responsibility the (Democratic) mayors responsible for the police and for law and order in their cities. They have been supporting or covering for the revolutionaries whose goals they do not share. Now this strange coalition includes on one side the mostly urban and suburban white middle class kids, those who, as Victor Davis Hanson describes them in National Review, are, many of them, in college, graduated, or dropped out. They make up Antifa and its affiliates. These are the shock troops, the ones who seem to organize the statue toppling, graffiti, and vandalism, as well as the violence at the demonstrations. Like the revolutionaries of previous upheavalsthe Jacobins, or Bolshevik leaders, or the revolutionaries of the Arab Springthey reflect an overproduction of elites, an excessive expansion of higher education in a world that did not need so many lawyers, Hanson says. Such skills or credentials as todays Jacobins acquired did not render them employable. As Hanson puts it, they are the new superfluous elite, in that their college investments brought them neither prestige nor money, but only debt and sloganeering memorized from the sermons of their tenured and comfortable lounge professors. History shows that when would-be, self-important elites are in surfeit and extraneous, they grow volatile. The Dilemma for Democrats The revolutionaries serve a useful if temporary function for the Democrats insofar as the party and its media are able to pin the blame for the mayhem on Trump and present themselves as the agents of a return to order and stability once Biden is elected. But that line is less persuasive each day the riots continue. Concern for black lives and police misconduct, a concern shared across the political spectrum, has less and less to do with the protests and riots. At the same time, the nature of the rioting as a criminal enterprise rather than peaceful protest is inescapably obvious. The leader of Portlands NAACP, writing in the Washington Post, described his citys two months of nightly protests as white spectacle and as having been co-opted by groups with their own agendasWhat are antifa and other leftist agitators achieving for the cause of black equality? A black Portland police officer commented that there were more blacks and minorities on the line with him than among the demonstrators. U.S. Congressman Jim Banks (R-Ind.) said protesters concerns covered a wide range of more or less unrelated issues, such as Medicare for All, climate change, immigrant rights, and homelessness. Concern for black lives and the mistreatment of George Floyd was not prominent among them. The demand to defund the policeand so make poor black lives even less safe, leaving residents at the mercy of informal policing by violent gangs and drug dealersis not one that appeals to many blacks, even where there is anger and distrust toward police officers. Its a slogan that affluent liberals in low-crime neighborhoods can endorse enthusiastically without feeling their safety is at risk. But, as Jill Leovy graphically shows in her study of murder in the ghetto, blacks who live in poor neighborhoods have long suffered from neglect and the underfunding of police. Further police reform is needed, but too often takes the form of misguided initiatives that are ineffectual or overzealous, treating law-abiding citizens as criminals while neglecting the task of solving serious crimes. When the police withdraw or are pulled back from solving serious crime in high-crime neighborhoods in response to highly publicized inquiries and waves of anti-police sentiment, crime rates surge and violence increases, especially the rate of black-on-black homicide, the main victims of which are young black men. The failure of the Democrats in this areawhere they control the police forces of the major citiesto do more than pass the buck becomes ever more evident. They fail to address long-standing issues within the cities or among police forces they control, to restore order and protect citizens, or even to acknowledge the violent nature of the riots that all can see on their screens on a nightly basis. The extent to which the millions of dollars donated to BLM by corporations and individuals are well spent looks increasingly questionable, whether the money goes to support Democratic Party candidates in elections or revolutionary socialists in the streets. Paul Adams is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Hawaii and was a professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University. He is the co-author of Social Justice Isnt What You Think It Is and has written extensively on social welfare policy and professional and virtue ethics. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Women offered many promises but activists dont hold their breath By Nadia Fazlulhaq View(s): View(s): Parties are boasting of addressing womens issues in their manifestos and at campaign rallies but womens rights activists question whether MPs will keep their promises once elected. Sexual and gender-based violence has increased in our country. This is experienced by women using public transport and in society in general. We will create a society that respects women and aspires to the highest moral and ethical standards to protect girls and women, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramunas (SLPP) election manifesto pledges. The party wants to make it easy for women to be able to report violence or harassment to the nearest police station. A 24-hour emotional support and advisory helpline will be established under the Ministry of Women and Childrens Affairs so that women can contact the centre for support and help, it said. A separate unit within the Police Commission would be set up to take swift disciplinary action against officers who fail to uphold gender equality. The SLPP intends to start a programme to train women for high-demand professions such as nursing. It will also help women entrepreneurs. We will establish and expand financial and business development services for rural women to start their own businesses and cottage industries so that they generate an income through home-based enterprise rather than engaging in employment away from home, the party said. The United National Party (UNP) has promised change to that will see women holding 25 per cent of seats in provincial councils and says under a five-year plan the number of women in senior decision-making positions would be boosted. The Samagi Jana Balwegaya (SJB) says it will work to improve prospects for widows having to earn a livelihood and will press state banks to assist home industries, which will strengthen family units. It will also work to end violence against women and improve health and nutrition. The JVP-led Jathika Jana Balawegaya (National Peoples Power NPP) will change a number of laws to help women: reproductive rights will be deemed womens rights; the Vagrants Ordinance will be abolished; land ownership will be brought in for female-led households; domestic violence laws will be strengthened; so will laws covering abuse in workplaces and on public transport, and sexual abuse. The NPP also proposes 50 per cent female representation in all elections. Although we have submitted proposals for the benefit of women in the country, it is in the hands of the elected parliamentarians to ensure these promises are made, Women and Media Collectives Kumudini Samuel commented. The Collective has sent all parties its suggestions to aid women. They include a pension scheme for migrant workers, the development of policies for female heads of households, expanded legal definitions of rape to include marital rape, and expanded legal definitions of torture to include sexual violence. Definitions of forms of violence against women should include technology-related violence and there should be no suspension of sentences in cases of rape and sexual violence, the Collective stated. There should be gender balance in the appointment to all independent commissions under the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, Ms. Samuel said. Womens groups want a 24-hour womens and childrens desk at police stations staffed by trained officers who are proficient in local languages. They also demand that 3 per cent of the national Budget be devoted to maternal and child health. In the post-COVID scenario, the government should focus on the employment generation of returnee migrant workers and women led households while ensuring there are plenty of opportunities for women in the agricultural sector. After every disaster or calamity, women need to be empowered but governments havent done enough, activist Sherine Samarasooriya said. There are many self-employed women but there is no market for their products. There is a need to appoint more women in the decision-making levels in state institutions, she said. London, Aug 1 : UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has warned that London residents could face another lockdown if they did not main social distancing amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. "We've demonstrated that we're prepared to take the actions necessary to keep people safe," the Metro newspaper quoted Hancock as saying on Friday to Sky News. His comments came after new restrictions affecting 4.5 million people were imposed in parts of northern England on Thursday night due to a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases. Plans to open casinos, bowling alleys and skating rinks on Saturday have been shelved. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said further easing of lockdown restrictions including allowing small wedding receptions will be postponed for at least another two weeks. At a Downing Street press conference on Friday, the Prime Minister said "squeezing the brakes" on reopening could help prevent a repeat of the nationwide lockdown, the Metro newspaper reported. Johnson said the contagion is rising across the UK, with one in 1,500 people having the virus compared to one in 1,800 on July 15 and one in 2,000 on July 2. The Office for National Statistics estimate there are now 4,900 new infections every day up from around 3,000 a day on July 14 and 2,000 a day at the end of June. As of Saturday, the overall number of COVID-19 cases in the UK stood at 304,793, with 46,204 deaths. Time has an elastic property and can fly or crawl, gallop or drag. In the Lewis Carroll classic, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', she asks: "How long is forever?" And the White Rabbit answers: "Sometimes, just one second." Forever is composed of one now after another which can be fleeting - or feel like eternity. A sense of time grinding on and on ad infinitum has been in evidence during the short and troubled life of that banana skin-prone entity known as the current Government. Is it really only a month since the tricycle Coalition was formed? It urgently needs to borrow a set of stabilisers. Already, it feels as if welding it together has been a mistake - the constituent parts are rasping, resisting and pulling in different directions. Some relationships were never meant to be. And the Coalition looks increasingly like a match that lacks stickability. Since it took office, minutes have moved like hours and days like weeks. If this is representative of what's ahead, the 33rd Dail hasn't a hope of reaching its 2025 target date. To say it got off to a poor start is to reach for understatement. And it's still at the honeymoon stage. We're about to enter another period of austerity - some people are experiencing it already - and it is essential to have leaders who are alert to the job. Worryingly, this Government is racking up climbdowns, U-turns, flip-flops and errors of judgment. Internal communications are woeful, leading to missteps and muddles. 'We're all in this together' is the headline message. But that's exposed as an empty formula when pay rises for politicians coincide with stopping the Pandemic Unemployment Payment for people going on holidays. It brands them as spongers when they can't work, through no fault of their own, because of lockdown restrictions. This Government has promise. It managed to push ahead with a stack of stalled legislation, put together a credible plan to reopen the schools and was correct to pause phase four of the roadmap to reopening Ireland. But too many relatively minor fissures are being allowed to turn into gaping cracks. Take the Greens, who haven't sorted out the notion of internal party discipline. Neasa Hourigan voted against the Residential Tenancies Bill - which aims to support renters who lose income because of the pandemic - and promptly resigned as chief whip, while junior minister Joe O'Brien abstained. The whip system could certainly use reform, but if senior Green politicians can't support the Government at this early stage the Coalition's future looks short-lived. A two-month suspension of speaking rights during a six-week Dail recess is a symbolic sanction and won't act as a deterrent. No need for a crystal ball to sense trouble ahead. Green Party culture needs to be recalibrated if it is to remain in government. But is the will to do it strong enough? Meanwhile, the State's finances are under pressure with a 30bn deficit for 2020. Yet Eamon Ryan is convinced he should have eight advisers. To put that in context, there are 16 for the whole of the Stormont administration. As for Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin, they want half a dozen advisers apiece. Could someone explain just what is the point of the civil service? Elsewhere, we have junior ministers bickering over shared advisers. And there is the additional 200,000 a year cost of a Garda car and driver for Simon Coveney. A case can be made that the Foreign Minister needs a car and driver for trips to the North on business. But why not give him the car and driver for those occasions alone? Three super juniors at the Cabinet table are hard to stomach. Isn't it constitutionally irregular? Bunreacht na hEireann stipulates not fewer than seven or more than 15 ministers in the Cabinet. But now we find ourselves with 18 because of super junior inclusion. They don't vote but the Cabinet rarely votes. To all intents and purposes, they are members. To suggest anything different is to reach for Humpty Dumpty language. As he tells Alice, a word means "just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less". So, too many super juniors, advisers, top-ups and perks, and too few servants of the people. But we're all in this together. All the stupidity, tetchiness and ineptitude in evidence over the past month has been avoidable. Together they add up to a sense that time has been dragging for members of the current Dail, with TDs desperate for the summer recess finishing line. That's understandable. These have been wearisome months for everyone, whether politician or citizen. But exceptional times require exceptional levels of focus, dedication and energy. Where did it start to go wrong? Right after the February election when it became clear Mr Martin had no intention of even talking to Sinn Fein, let alone assessing whether there was any common ground, although the public vote gave both parties the same number of seats. And now we're seeing the consequences of that decision play out in Leinster House. Mr Martin is leading an unstable coalition. It has felt like eternity watching it stumble along at a time when the twin challenges of Brexit and the pandemic should be concentrating minds. TDs appear to be bothered by a ghost in the machinery of coalition, or blinded by the light, or overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the challenges they face. And if members of the Government think they are living through tricky days, just wait until the Budget in October - when spending will have to come into closer alignment with income. Major decisions will need to be reached quickly. Tough compromises. This is the simple stuff they're arguing about currently. The Greens aren't the only ones with problems to grapple with over the recess. Fianna Fail has identity issues. Recently, retired district court judge Sean MacBride, a long-time party member, told the 'Derry People' and 'Donegal News' his decision to resign from Fianna Fail was due to being "completely disillusioned". He said: "The party has lost its republicanism and forgotten its social democratic working class roots." He also criticised "totally negative campaigning in the 2020 General Election particularly by the leadership of the party" which "drove Fianna Fail and other voters into the Sinn Fein camp for the first time ever". Too much can't be read into one resignation. But it's obvious the party is not united. Let's hope the summer break can help the Government parties to regain focus - and that includes an avoidance of gaffes and communication deficits, which dilute their attention from the job in hand. As the Mad Hatter tells Alice in Tim Burton's film version of the 'Alice in Wonderland' story: "You were much more muchier. You've lost your muchness. Something's missing." Indeed it is. And Messrs Martin, Varadkar and Ryan need to set about finding it. The move comes as President Trump has intensified efforts to change how census data is used. A memorandum last week from the president said undocumented immigrants should not be counted for congressional apportionment, which legal experts say would be unconstitutional. Civil rights groups said the earlier deadline would also lead to an undercount of populations that are often harder to count, including minorities, undocumented immigrants and low-income families. STORMONT ministers plan to take holidays despite the ongoing Covid-19 crisis - but hope Executive meetings can continue. And most are in favour of the break being taken by Assembly members, revealed in Sunday Life last week, which began on Saturday. Now it has emerged Alliance proposed there should be no recess this year because of the virus and the looming barrage of Brexit legislation but other parties did not agree. Party leader Naomi Long told us: "Whilst our preference would have been to work through July and August, given the context with the recovery from Covid-19 and Brexit coming ever closer, at least the flexibility is there to re-engage the Assembly as and when required." Read More The justice minister, who took a few days in Donegal over the Twelfth and is to 'staycation' locally at the end of this month, added: "We proposed not taking a recess this year at the Business Committee, which decides what the Assembly debates, but that was not agreed. "However, in the end parties agreed to take a recess in August to facilitate Assembly staff taking annual leave. The Assembly can be recalled for urgent business. "The Executive will continue to meet in August and there is an ad hoc committee which can be requested to meet by any minister wishing to make a statement to the Assembly." Agriculture and Environment Minister Edwin Poots believes MLAs deserve a break because of the amount of Brexit-linked work they will be facing. The DUP man, who is not taking a holiday this year, said: "They should take a recess in August as there will be a very intense period for the legislature with a mass of bills associated with Brexit. "These will likely lead to extra and longer sittings aside from the constituency workload." Sinn Fein Finance Minister Conor Murphy will also be taking a 'staycation' in Ireland during August but remains in touch with his office. "He will be available at all times for urgent Executive business, including Executive meetings," a spokesperson said. SDLP Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon backs the continuation of Executive meetings during the recess but plans two weeks holiday herself. "Minister Mallon is taking two weeks leave to be with her husband and three young children - spending one week at home and the other week in a holiday letting in the South," a spokesperson confirmed. "She recognises that public service is not just a job and believes that especially at this time, the public needs leadership, consistent and constant communication and guidance. "Covid-19 does not stop for summer holidays and nor should the Executive. She supports the continuation of Executive meetings during the recess period." A number of others, including Economy Minister Diane Dodds, did not respond to inquiries about their personal and family plans. But the man most regard as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Jim Allister, did confirm he plans to take a holiday "in the United Kingdom". "Jim has no plans to travel outside the country this year," a spokesperson said. New Delhi, Aug 1 : Automobile major Maruti Suzuki on Saturday reported a marginal year-on-year decline of 1.1 per cent in total sales during July 2020. Accordingly, the company's total off-take declined to 108,064 units from 109,264 units sold during July 2019. The total sales include 100,000 units off-take in the domestic market and 1,307 units to other OEM. As per a company statement, exports during the period under review fell to 6,757 units from 9,258 units being shipped out in July 2019. "Maruti Suzuki India Limited posted total sales of 108,064 units in July 2020. This is a growth of 88.2 per cent over June 2020 and a fall of 1.1 per cent over July 2019," "This includes domestic sales of 100,000 units and 1,307 units for o ther OEMs in the domestic market. In addition, the company exported 6,757 un its in July 2020." -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Your tax-deductible gift today powers our reporters and keeps us independent. We rely on you, our reader, not paywalls to stay funded because we believe important news and information should be freely accessible to all. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe Our news is free on LAist. To make sure you get our coverage: Sign up for our daily newsletters. To support our non-profit public service journalism: Donate Now. A Department of Homeland Security memo released Tuesday takes aim at the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, dampening the hopes of some college students. But it's also emboldening the advocates who help these students to carry on with their work. The memo states that no new DACA applications will be approved, and current DACA recipients must pay nearly $500 to renew their permit yearly instead of every two years. It also lays out reasons to dismantle the program -- a devastating and terrifying message for one Southern California college student. "I came from the Philippines when I was seven years old," said a 22-year-old college student who asked to be anonymous because of her immigration status. She's enrolled in the DACA program, which gives her protection from deportation and authorization to work. She plans to transfer from her community college to UCLA in the fall. The DHS memo was tough news for her. "It makes me scared for what the future holds. I know the Trump administration is just going to keep coming [after DACA]," even though, she said, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month against President Trump's attempt to dismantle the program. icon DON'T MISS ANY L.A. CORONAVIRUS NEWS Get our daily newsletters for the latest on COVID-19 and other top local headlines. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy The administration made clear in the memo that the steps it's taking against longtime U.S. residents are part of its broader approach to stop people from immigrating to the U.S. In the memo, Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf wrote: "I am concerned that retaining the policy creates some risk of communicating the contrary message and encouraging such illegal conduct by suggesting a potential for similar future policies." The 22-year-old student said, "Everybody thought, you know, [United States Immigration and Citizenship Services] will start taking applications again, so that new students, new people could apply for DACA." She said last month's Supreme Court ruling gave some of her undocumented friends hope that they could enroll in DACA, but not anymore. ADVOCATES PRESS ON WITH DACA APPLICATIONS Immigrant rights advocates, though, are sending the opposite message. "We are going forward with helping people prepare their paperwork," said Anna Manuel, a staff attorney with the University of California Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Her office helps undocumented college students at all but one of UC's nine undergraduate campuses. She said last month's Supreme Court ruling led more undocumented students than usual to seek help from her office to apply for DACA. Manuel said there's pent-up demand for the program because applications haven't been approved for several years. This week's memo is not law, Manuel said, and its directives could be set aside through a legal challenge. "Or there could be an election [result] in November where it's not moot" to send in DACA applications, she said. So that's leading Manuel and her colleagues to continue organizing webinars and other programs to help students prepare their DACA applications. The process can take months. By one count there are about 75,000 undocumented students enrolled in California's public colleges and universities. Most campuses have hired staff to help support students who are undocumented with academic, legal, and financial help. Fullerton College, which enrolls more than 700 students who are undocumented, is undeterred by the DHS memo. "We still will be providing resources and referrals for [undocumented] students," said Cecilia Arriaza, the director of Fullerton College's Transfer Center. She also oversees Grads To Be, the program that serves students who lack legal immigration status. "You're coming to an educational institution and we ask you about your goals or where you want to transfer," Arriaza said. "But it's hard for students to get to that point if they're worried that they or their parents will be deported." Summer break and the pandemic has made it hard for Arriaza and her staff to check in with students. But she's moving forward with plans to offer a video conference check-in next week to answer students' questions. Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Cecilia Arriaza's name. LAist regrets the error. A priest and a nun pray before the burned crucifix in Managua's cathedral The Catholic community in Nicaragua is left deeply wounded after a man destroys a crucifix in Managuas cathedral with a petrol bomb. By Vatican News Cardinal Leopoldo Jose Brenes, Archbishop of Managua, has described an attack on the citys Catholic cathedral as an act of terrorism. Witnesses say a hooded man entered the Chapel of the Blood of Christ on Friday and threw a Molotov cocktail. The petrol bomb started a fire that engulfed a 400-year-old crucifix housed in the chapel. The blaze was brought under control fairly quickly, and no one was injured. But the attack has left a deep wound on Nicaraguas Catholic community. Crucifix completely destroyed The Archdiocese of Managua released a statement on Friday, calling the attack a premeditated and planned act, carried out by someone with experience in this field. The crucifix was completely destroyed in the fire, which the statement says was in no way accidental, since there were no candles nearby. This was a deplorable act which offends and deeply wounds all Catholics because the damaged crucifix was one of the most loved and venerated by the faithful of Nicaragua. Hatred of the Church The Archdiocese said the attack is just the most recent in a series of sacrilegious acts, violations of Church property, and attacks on churches. These events are nothing more than a chain of events that reflect hatred of the Catholic Church and her work of evangelization. The attacks against the Catholic faith require in-depth analysis, to clarify the intellectual and material authors of this macabre and sacrilegious act. Finally, the statement urges Catholics to respond with faith to the feeling of pain and helplessness we are suffering. Anti-Catholic violence on the rise Vandalism and attacks against Catholic churches in Nicaragua have seen an uptick recently. Consecrated Hosts have been desecrated. Monstrances, offerings boxes, and statues have been destroyed. Stereo equipment and other Church property have been stolen. The situation represents a growing climate of violence and intimidation against Catholics. JPIIs words of comfort Pope St John Paul II once paused in prayer at the foot of the now-destroyed Managua crucifix, and uttered words of encouragement to Nicaraguas Catholics. During his visit to the cathedral in February 1996, the Pope told those present: You desired this church at the heart of the Archdiocese of Managua in which you devotedly venerate the image of the Blood of Christ which arrived from Spain more than three centuries ago and which represents Jesus offering His blood and His humanity to the Father on the cross to be dominated by the Risen Lord in the sign of His victory over sin and death. Do not forget the mystery of death and resurrection when the fatigue, loneliness, or incomprehension of others seeks to diminish your enthusiasm or make your spirit waver. Do not doubt that you are loved by the Lord, and that His love always precedes and accompanies you. His victory serves as a guarantee of ours! Domestic and international air travel helped spread the novel coronavirus in Brazil, a study has found, as tourism bodies push for global travel to resume amid infection resurgences in some countries. The collapse of global tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic has cost the industry US$320 billion, according to the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). The drive to restart the industry has already begun: UNWTO analysis shows that 40 per cent of global destinations have eased restrictions to encourage tourists to return. Brazil, which now has the second-highest number of confirmed cases in the world, reopened to international travel on Wednesday. In Vietnam earlier this week, 80,000 domestic tourists were flown out of the coastal resort city of Da Nang after a local COVID-19 outbreak. Tourism last year supported almost 40 million jobs in India, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. The economic impact of global travel restrictions is too damaging to ignore, UNWTO secretary-general Zurab Pololikashvili says. The dramatic fall in international tourism places many millions of livelihoods at risk, including in developing countries. Governments in every world region have a dual responsibility: to prioritise public health while also protecting jobs and businesses." Zurab Pololikashvili, UNWTO Secretary-General Brazil virus spread However, a study from Brazil emphasises the role of long-distance flights into the country and between Brazilian cities in spreading SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Brazil has one of the worst COVID-19 death tolls in the world. The research into the effects of travel in Brazil, published in Science (23 July), shows that although the country stopped 90 per cent of air travel from March, the virus spread from large urban centres to other regions of the country. While the restrictions reduced the contagion rate known as R in epidemiology by half, it was not enough to drop the R to the ideal number of less than one, according to experts. "Until mobility was reduced, on March 16, Brazil was going through a period of celebration [Carnival] and social meetings that probably spread the first cases," explains Ester Sabino, from the Institute of Tropical Medicine of the University of Sao Paulo and one of the coordinators of the research funded by the State of Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). Lead author Darlan S. Candido, from the University of Oxford's Department of Zoology, tells SciDev.Net that continued long-distance travel within Brazil spread the virus. "Despite the massive reduction in the number of domestic flights, those with the longest distance were less affected and lost fewer passengers, which means that people travelled less but further," he says. The study shows that between late February and early March there were at least 102 international introductions of the virus into Brazil, from 18 virus strains, but only three of them from Europe created a chain of transmission. In Brazil, there have been more than 2.5 million reported cases of COVID-19 and more than 91,000 deaths. Travel links The study traced the trajectory of the epidemic based on the sequencing of 427 viral isolates from Brazilian patients, collected in 85 cities in 18 states. Two types of the virus prevalent in the southern states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were later found in the northern Amazon region, which, in June, became the epicentre of the epidemic in Brazil. The fatality rate in the north doubled that of the country as a whole, reaching 43 per 100,000 people. "These findings emphasise the role of social mobility between states as a key factor in the interregional spread of the virus, with highly populated and well-connected urban concentrations in the southeast region that act as the main sources of virus export in the country," the study authors say. Epidemiologist Paulo Nadanovsky, from Brazil's National School of Public Health, says: "Geography and population size are still believed to be central factors in explaining the evolution of the epidemic, when in fact the central problem is mobility." "The current level of effort to contain the spread of the virus is insufficient. If mobility is not limited, the places that did not have outbreaks will have it," says Nadanovsky, who was not involved in the study. Midland is known as the City of Churches, and these churches are working overtime to find new ways to worship and support their congregations and the community during the coronavirus pandemic. There has been some confusion regarding the ability to worship, given this week's executive order from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that prohibits indoor social gatherings from exceeding 10 people. Churches, however, are still able to hold worship services, Bobby Leddy, Whitmer's deputy press secretary, told the Daily News Friday. "As with the governor's prior orders, a place of religious worship is not subject to penalty when congregants meet for purposes of religious worship," Leddy stated in an email. "Congregants should, however, exercise caution and take all appropriate measures, including wearing a mask when attending services, as the virus can spread easily when large numbers of people meet in a shared indoor space. Midland Reformed Church Midland Reformed Church at 1100 Saginaw Road has three pastors Michael DeRuyter, Brad Vander Waal and Alissa Davis and 250 members. They are currently holding church services outdoors with social distancing and masks. DeRuyter said some members bring their own lawn chairs, while others stay in their vehicles. Services are simultaneously on Zoom and Facebook live. Interestingly, DeRuyter said, across the three platforms we offer, our attendance has been normal for summer worship, ranging from 180-200 members. He said the church understands some members are choosing to stay home to avoid exposure to the coronavirus. We are also asking members to rely on the electronic version of our bulletin, to use disposable communion materials, giving online versus using offering plates, and weve discontinued our childrens programs indefinitely," DeRuyter said. He added the church will not move ahead of the states guidance, and will in fact stick to somewhat more stringent practices. When asked if he was worried about losing members, DeRuyter said he does not worry about things he cant control. There is a solid and growing consensus among U.S. religious scholars that our countrys church has been slowly moving into a new era called post-Christendom. The way we did church in the midst of Christendom, with all of its cultural supports and assumptions, has slowly been becoming less and less effective, prompting many to call for a re-visioning of the church," DeRuyter said. When these issues surface, DeRuyter said, some members will be able to tolerate inevitable changes, some will find pockets of stability for a while longer, and others will thrive as explorers and missionaries, reimagining possibilities for faith communities. Assuming there is a post-COVID time, we will continue to explore how we can serve and love our neighbors, grow together in spiritual, relational and emotional maturity and follow Jesus with creativity and resilience. Some programs will return, but we are leaning into this season of learning and listening about what really matters, DeRuyter added. DeRuyter is thankful he can still connect with those members who are ill or in the hospital and that members of his church have loved and cared for each other through this strange and painful year. Memorial Presbyterian Church At Memorial Presbyterian Church, Senior Pastor Matthew W. Schramm told the Daily News they have 775 members and a staff of 17 full- and part-time positions. Their ministerial staff includes Schramm and the Rev. Dr. Wallace H. Mayton, III, Associate Pastor. Currently, Memorial Presbyterian services including a 9 a.m. contemporary service and a 10:45 a.m. traditional service are being streamed on the church website (mempres.org) and on the churchs Facebook page (@MPCmidland). Schramm said he continues to be amazed by the strong viewership from the members and from those who are new to Memorial Presbyterian Church. On the last Sunday of each month, weather permitting, there is an outdoor worship service on the lawn of the church. Physical distancing is observed at the outside service and members bring their own lawn chairs. Those who need to visit the church during the week, for whatever reason, must stop at check-in sites, which have temperature scanners, masks, sanitizers and a health questionnaire. In addition, the custodial staff continues deep cleaning to make sure the church is sanitized; staff hours in the building have been reduced, with many staff working from home; and in-person meetings are done online. Schramm said many church members have given him positive feedback about the online services, which allow them to view services in the safety of their own homes. We know, he added, while our present circumstances are inconvenient, the safety of our community is far more important. And all of us look forward to when we can safely meet. Schramm said his church has not been worried about losing members and that, in fact, many newcomers are consistently watching the online services. He noted his staff has been reaching out to those who might be isolated or vulnerable at this time. Those experiencing health issues or who are isolated are contacted by staff on a regular basis. When asked about continued donations, Schramm said, Regardless of pandemic or normal worship, consistent giving is necessary to support the mission and vision of our church as a welcoming community of faith for all people. Over the last five months, he said, the church has continued to experience a generous congregation. We have begun accepting tithes and offerings via text messages and on our website, through our internal communication tool/app Realm, and through the mail, Schramm said. Our church wants to strike a balance of hope and care, he added. We have been given a passion for living our faith in community, and community means something different than what we may have traditionally done. Sunrise Baptist Church Philip Miles is the lead pastor at Sunrise Baptist Church, 2138 Jefferson Road, which has 125 members and whose elders include Jim Cross, Kevin Nehrt, John VanderMale, and Nate Yurgaites. The church is open for services, and seating has been rearranged to allow families to sit together at an appropriate distance from other families. Members are also asked to wear masks to protect everyone. Miles said about two-thirds of the normal attendance is typical these days, which he feels positive about because fewer folks are missing than those who are attending. To keep members safe, the church no longer passes out church bulletins or passes offering plates to minimize shared contact. Miles said normally, there is a class breakout time during the services, but now all members remain together during worship time. Weve also done away with any refreshments, and, of course, we thoroughly disinfect the worship space on Saturday before weekend services, he added. Fortunately, Miles said he is still able to make hospital and home visits, if necessary. And he applauded his congregation for being reasonable about all the changes, and amicable in order to make one another comfortable. This way, we can worship together and still be patient and understanding with those who choose to stay home during these times, he added. Miles agreed it was difficult to determine when life would return to normal and that he is concerned that some members might not return after this much time away from the church building. Also, if more members return under the current restrictions, the church will need to reconfigure its space again. Thats why COVID and post-COVID plans are something we wrestle with all the time, he explained. Miles added that generally, his members seem to be taking things in stride. I sense frustration with inconsistency in restrictions and confusion about how to best maintain contact with one another, while respecting the seriousness of the situation, he said. Thankfully, our members are leaning heavily on their faith and realizing this virus, and the situation in which we find ourselves, is under Gods power and that our confidence in Him helps us face these issues without fear, and with the confidence of a deeper, more abiding hope that cant be taken away by a virus. First United Methodist Church First United Methodist Church in downtown Midland is led by the Rev. Anita K. Hahn, the Rev. Jung Eun Yum, and the Rev. Ruth VanderSande, plus a full discipleship ministry and technical and administrative teams. These leaders are busy handling one service in the sanctuary, one in the parking lot, four online, two on MCTV and one on the radio. The church has added two services to its normal worship in order to accommodate members. Members attending are asked to wear masks and to use the hand sanitizers that the church makes available. We dont require people to sing because they are wearing masks, but they cant seem to stop singing, so thats great, Hahn said. Hahn added the churchs indoor service averages 60-70 persons, while the parking lot services generate 25-30 worshippers. Other members are continuing to gather with their families and small groups to worship together. And Sunday nights, which were originally started for a Bible school program, have grown into a multi-generational mix of members. Hahn said the church is aiming for seven worship experiences by mid-September to allow for safe social distancing experiences where the church can engage a variety of people in a variety of community worship experiences. I like to think, Hahn said, that God is leading us in some new and dynamic ways. When asked how people are staying safe in church, Hahn said, Its because we respect each other. And our dedicated staff is working diligently to keep all our facilities safe, she added. One of the things I worry about is keeping our members and visitors safe when they are with us. A high priority for Hahn is visiting church members who are sick or elderly. So, we do our best to reach out to those who are sick, elderly, and those persons badly affected by the flood, she added. While COVID-19 has restricted some in-person visits, the church has continued to call, to make socially-distant visits and to send cards and letters. Staying in touch is critical, Hahn said. Our God was calling us to the neighborhood when COVID hit, and then God tossed us into new relationships with our neighbors when the dams broke, Hahn added. God has brought us to a new place, and we are doing our best to continue to celebrate the gifts that we have as we seek to bring the love and life of Jesus Christ to the folks we do life with. Blessed Sacrament Church Father Rob Howe leads the Blessed Sacrament Church in Midland, which has members from more than 1,500 households attending. They currently offer two Masses per weekend, one at 4 p.m. on Saturday and one at 10 a.m. on Sunday. The Sunday Mass is held outside when weather permits so more people can attend with the proper social distancing, Everyone, per Howe, must wear a mask at church, inside or out. We require social distancing and adhere to all other COVID regulations, he added. The parish center is currently open by appointment only, the number of people is limited, and they must wear a mask in the center also, according to Howe. Currently, Howe said, about one-third of our members are attending church. He expects many of his members are staying home to avoid exposure, and the church is posting recordings of services on its YouTube and Facebook pages for those not comfortable attending in person. Howe added that in addition to requiring members to wear masks and social distance, the church has amended certain aspects of the liturgy to ensure safety and limit exposure to germs, as well as disinfecting the church facilities in between masses. Fortunately, we are able to visit hospital patients provided they are not COVID-positive, and most of our visits occur when the patient is in real need of our connection, unlike normal homebound and hospital visits before this time, Howe noted. In the scheme of things, Howe said members are doing OK. He admitted there is sadness at not being able to gather normally, especially in the case of funerals and weddings. Offering Mass virtually on our YouTube and Facebook pages has helped keep our community together in prayer, and now our outdoor Masses have brought even more of our community together, Howe said. Howe acknowledged there is some concern that members could leave the church because they might be out of the habit of attending Mass. We are especially cognizant of our members who do not feel comfortable or safe gathering due to being at risk of getting sick, he added. We pray we will be able to gather again normally with all our members. Another of Howes concerns is the requirement that the number of parishioners attending church has to be limited. This is so difficult for us, he said. We know its for the safety of everyone, but we are really missing not being able to have coffee and a doughnut with members, or to do an in-person Bible study. We miss being able to be a whole community. The church members are eager to get back to the parish community they love, according to Howe. That much is apparent in the growing attendance at our outdoor Mass, Howe said. The Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote on Friday rejected a request from environmental groups to prevent construction of portions of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. Why it matters: The ruling lets the administration continue building despite pending appeals to a case on whether the administration can use Defense Department funding for border wall construction. "Fridays order means the court is not likely even to consider the substance of the issue until after the November election, while work on the wall continues," the AP writes, noting the court will begin hearing cases again in October. Context: A federal appeals court ruled last month that the administration's use of defense funding for the project was an illegal breach of executive authority. The Trump administration said it would ask the Supreme Court to hear arguments in the case in August, per AP. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote last July that the Pentagon could redirect $2.5 billion to build President Trump's long-promised southern border wall. What they're saying: Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented. "The Court's decision to let construction continue nevertheless, I fear, may operate in effect, as a final judgment," Breyer wrote. "As the government previously explained, halting the construction process during litigation imposes significant costs on DoD, which can be required to reimburse its contractors for the additional expenses that such a delay causes them to incur," government lawyers argued, according to CNN. The bottom line: Friday's decision is a win for Trump, who has made the wall a cornerstone of his presidency and reelection bid. Amid reports that the US was planning to order China's ByteDance to sell popular video app TikTok and tech giant Microsoft was in talks to purchase it, President Donald Trump on Friday said that his administration was weighing action against the popular app, which had been "a source of national-security and censorship concerns". "We are looking at TikTok," Trump told reporters at the White House. "We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options, but a lot of things are happening. So we'll see what ... Dr. Blessing Ogbemudia graduated from Indiana Universitys medical school in May. As he was celebrating with a few friends, he received an anonymous messageon Instagram. It contained an audio clip of someone talking about him. Essentially it was saying that, oh you know Blessing thinks you know hes all that, he just got into medical school because he was Black And you know why he was called Blessing right? Oh because his mother was a crack addict. Ogbemudia was shocked and confused. And he recognized the voice as a white student at the med school. Especially white individuals discrediting Black individuals for their success and attributing it to their blackness, these are things that Ive heard before. But to hear them in the recording, that kind of pierced my soul. He contacted a dean at the school only to find out that they were already aware of the audio clip. That and the fact he hadnt been alerted by school officials made the situation even more heart-breaking for him. Theyve had the audio for probably over a year. In May, he and eight other students sent university officials a letter. It called for a zero tolerance policy for racist statements. They also said such incidents required an immediate suspension or expulsion. Medical school dean Dr. Jay Hess responded that the audio clip was reprehensible. But he said any discipline related to the incident is confidential. He added that the school was taking other steps such as training on bias and reviewing the curriculum. But some are calling for the school to move quicker. Justice delayed is justice denied and Im so tired of the delay its just like lets move. Thats Dr. Victoria Thomas. She did a residency in internal medicine at the school but she didnt see many doctors who looked like her. And she didnt feel like she truly belonged. And its almost as if like, getting us here to check a box is enough. But its not about making sure we feel warm and welcoming Dr. Arielle Russell is one of the people who signed the letter to university leaders. Shes a recent grad of Indianas med school and is doing a residency in anesthesiology there. Shed like to see changes in how medical students are taught. I know that biases play a huge role in how physicians see their patients. A lot of that behavior starts in med school with how they even teach us. Russell says teachers use a lot of patient case studies with stereotypes. And that perpetuates biases that students eventually will take with them into their practice. Fred is a 47-year-old African American living in Chicago who has type 2 diabetes, is obese, has hypertension. Just stuff like by the description you can tell what they were going off of. Ogbemudia sees other challenges, too. He says his white peers do not have to dress well when studying on campus late at night out of fear of being questioned. And they dont have to worry about patients not taking them seriously because of the color of their skin. Theres a lot of things that we face that again our counterparts dont really have to wake up every day and be fearful of these things. One step in IUs improvement plan is creating the position of Chief Diversity Officer. Former pediatrics and dermatology professor Dr. Pat Treadwell was appointed in June and is talking to students about how the school can do better. I was appointed to be a person that students, residents and faculty could come to with concerns about diversity and that I would bring those directly to the dean. Treadwells plans include updating the curriculum to have more emphasis on diversity and health equity. Shes also looking to improve diversity and inclusion within the school. She says the administration hopes to move as quickly as possible while ensuring goals are well thought out and sustainable. I think that improving the climate, I think that is probably a big concern. We wont be perfect in probably within a year, but I hope that things are improved in just a few months. This story was produced by Side Effects Public Media, a news collaborative covering public health. Soldiers of the People's Liberation Army stop a photojournalist from shooting in Tiananmen Square at The Great Hall of People in Beijing on May 25, 2020. (Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images) Report Finds 250 US Collaborations With Chinese Military-Tied Researchers The U.S. academic community has extensively collaborated with Chinese researchers affiliated with the Chinese military, jeopardizing national security, according to a new report. Analysts at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University found 254 papers in which U.S. researchers collaborated with counterparts from seven top universities in China affiliated with the regimes military, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The think tank identified 115 U.S. universities and government-backed research labs that worked with these PLA-linked organizations, collaborating on research topics from new energy technologies to aeronautical engineering. The report released July 30 found instances where the Chinese researchers allegedly tried to conceal their ties to the defense institutes. Some Chinese coauthors also appeared to have worked in classified weapons programs, it said. It concluded that such collaborations compromised national security because it allowed the PLA-linked institutions to harvest U.S. S&T [science and technology] research at its source, and divert it to PRC [Peoples Republic of China] defense research and weapons program development. The risks to national security are serious since such diversions could erode or eliminate U.S. military superiority with lethal consequences in the event of an armed conflict, it said. Any collaboration with these defense universities boosted the regimes civil-military fusion strategya military development plan that seeks to integrate private-sector innovations into the PLAs industrial base, the report said. It added that research partnerships are contrary to U.S. national interest even if the relevant research is unclassified, considered basic or fundamental, and is ultimately published in open sources. The findings came as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to counter Chinese state-sanctioned theft of American research. Last week, it ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, accusing of it being a center for espionage. U.S. officials said consulate staff there were involved in numerous efforts over the years to recruit researchers at local biomedical institutions to join Chinese state-backed talent plans, which incentivized them to transfer U.S. intellectual property and know-how to China. The justice department has also brought a spate of prosecutions against Chinese and American researchers for allegedly hiding their ties to Chinese talent plans and work for Chinese universities. Recently, at least four Chinese researchers were arrested and charged with visa fraud, with prosecutors alleging they were actually undercover PLA officers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has interviewed suspected undercover officers in more than 25 cities. In May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring entry to Chinese graduate or higher-level students from organizations affiliated with the regimes civil-military fusion complex. Hoover analysts, however, warned that the regime is likely to try to circumvent the ban by shifting collaboration online or overseas, or by using collectors from entities not caught by the order. The report reviewed papers published between January 2013-March 2019 retrieved from a Chinese state-backed database. The research builds upon earlier work by Australian think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which, in a 2018 report, found that more than 2,500 Chinese military scientists and engineers have traveled abroad to study since 2007, often by masking their military ties. The Hoover report recommended U.S. research institutions increase due diligence on foreign research collaborations, and formulate a set of common ethical standards to ensure partnerships dont aid the military or repressive capabilities of authoritarian regimes. The seven Chinese universities referred to in the report are among the leading science and technology institutions in the country and have a long history of supporting the Chinese military, it said. They are known as the Seven Sons of National Defense. The report found Chinese coauthors who have worked on projects for the various branches of the PLA, classified weapons development programs, as well as for major Chinese state-run defense companies. In an apparent effort to mask their ties to the regimes defense programs, some Chinese researchers used innocuous English labels such as state key laboratory instead of the Chinese term national defense key laboratory to describe their affiliations, the report found. In other instances, some Chinese coauthors didnt list any curricula vitae on their faculty webpages, it added. The report also found that researchers from several national laboratories of the Department of Energy published papers with counterparts from six of the seven Chinese defense universities. Some Chinese students from those universities filed dissertations that claimed to have been supported by the National Health Institute and the U.S. National Science Foundation, it said. Our findings stand as monuments to a colossal failure of vision that has prevented the U.S. research enterprise from appreciating the risks that such collaborations posed and from adopting appropriate safeguards of its own accord, the report said. Too little has changed in that regard, and many of the same vulnerabilities persist. The head physician of the 40th hospital in Kommunarka, Denis Protsenko, said that when Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived at the clinic to check the condition of patients, no one recognized him, since the head of state was wearing a protective suit. According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the visit was not prepared in advance - Protsenko himself found out about the impending arrival of a representative delegation only when he saw missed calls from the head of the Ministry of Health and the mayor of Moscow. Announcement of Periodic Review: Moody's announces completion of a periodic review of ratings of KapitalBank, JSCB Global Credit Research - 31 Jul 2020 London, 31 July 2020 -- Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") has completed a periodic review of the ratings of KapitalBank, JSCB and other ratings that are associated with the same analytical unit. The review was conducted through a portfolio review in which Moody's reassessed the appropriateness of the ratings in the context of the relevant principal methodology(ies), recent developments, and a comparison of the financial and operating profile to similarly rated peers. The review did not involve a rating committee. Since 1 January 2019, Moody's practice has been to issue a press release following each periodic review to announce its completion. This publication does not announce a credit rating action and is not an indication of whether or not a credit rating action is likely in the near future. Credit ratings and outlook/review status cannot be changed in a portfolio review and hence are not impacted by this announcement. For any credit ratings referenced in this publication, please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for the most updated credit rating action information and rating history. Key rating considerations are summarized below. Kapitalbank JSCB's (Kapitalbank) B3 long-term local and foreign currency deposit ratings are solely based on the bank's b3 Baseline Credit Assessment (BCA) and do not include any external support uplift. Kapitalbank's BCA reflects the bank's (1) low dependence on market funding along with well-diversified customer deposits; (2) good liquidity buffer; (3) relatively weak capital adequacy compared with peers, as well as (4) rapid loan book growth and modest profitability. The bank's performance will be affected by the slow economic growth in Uzbekistan this year worsened by the global spread of the coronavirus which will continue to exert pressure on the bank's profitability and asset quality of all Uzbek banks. Story continues This document summarizes Moody's view as of the publication date and will not be updated until the next periodic review announcement, which will incorporate material changes in credit circumstances (if any) during the intervening period. The principal methodology used for this review was Banks Methodology published in November 2019. Please see the Rating Methodologies page on www.moodys.com for a copy of this methodology. This announcement applies only to EU rated and EU endorsed ratings. Non EU rated and non EU endorsed ratings may be referenced above to the extent necessary, if they are part of the same analytical unit. This publication does not announce a credit rating action. For any credit ratings referenced in this publication, please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for the most updated credit rating action information and rating history. Petr Paklin Vice President - Senior Analyst Financial Institutions Group Moody's Investors Service Limited, Russian Branch 7th floor, Four Winds Plaza 21 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya St. Moscow 125047 Russia JOURNALISTS: 44 20 7772 5456 Client Service: 44 20 7772 5454 Yaroslav Sovgyra, CFA Associate Managing Director Financial Institutions Group JOURNALISTS: 44 20 7772 5456 Client Service: 44 20 7772 5454 Releasing Office: Moody's Investors Service Ltd. 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New Delhi: Advocating a three-pronged shift in Indias strategy vis-a-vis Communist China, Dr Abhishek Singhvi on Saturday (August 1, 2020) said that New Delhi has to invest in building military capability, diplomatic heft by aligning with like-minded groupings such as Quad, and inflict economic injury to China, all to instil fear in Communist Chinas mind towards its Asian neighbour, against the Ladakh conflict backdrop. At a webinar organised by Law and Society Alliance, Dr Singhvi said that India and its polity has to grow beyond local party politics to usher in a single-minded, focused, and unified response to the China challenge. India and China are two swords in one scabbard called Asia. There has to be forced respectability between the two. In the real world, both respect and outward likeability are consequences of fear. The need is to generate fear about India in China. Only this is going to set the equilibrium between the two giants, said Dr Singhvi. He opined that India should leverage and exploit the global anti-China sentiment and the unprecedented wave of anger that has swept across even those nations like Australia that had tilted towards China in the Pacific region under former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. "Indias power to name and shame China has always been less understood and even less considered. That naming and shaming China across the world is a vital tool in Indias armory and I will expect India to unleash a blitzkrieg in which it should name and shame China on the global fora with forthrightness," added Dr Singhvi. "Look at United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. I might not agree with him on everything but his forthrightness on China should be applauded," expressed Dr Singhvi. Quoting Singaporean former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the Congress politician said, "China is not going to become a liberal democracy and if it did, it would collapse." Strongly proposing that India should work towards leveraging its ties with Tibet and Taiwan, the Indian parliamentarian said the divinity and glory of His Holiness the Dalai Lama needs to be given the right place that he deserves in India, and New Delhi must unhesitatingly enhance diplomatic relations with Taiwan. We have increased our trade from US$66 million to US$6 billion with Taiwan in the recent past. Foxconn, Winstron, and Megatron are Taiwanese companies that have great potential in India. Our shyness towards Taiwan needs to be dropped. We are underestimating the power of frequent and multiple messaging, said Dr Singhvi. He concluded by saying, Today, China is not the problem but the Chinese Communist Party is. More than the party, Xi Jinping is the problem." Three-time FA Cup winner Theo Walcott says it's 'complete rubbish' to suggest that Premier League players don't care about the competition. The FA Cup was once regarded as a prestigious trophy but has since seemingly lost its appeal in a crowded calendar, with top sides electing to field their second string to prioritise the Premier League. Arsenal, however, have a vested interest in their Wembley clash with Chelsea on Saturday as a victory for Arsenal will also secure them a place in next season's Europa League after missing out on qualification through their Premier League finish. FA Cup winner Theo Walcott insists that Premier League players do care about the competition The Gunners will also be looking to build upon their all-time record number of FA Cup wins, raising the total to 14. Former Arsenal winger, Walcott, has three FA Cup wins to his name and insists that passion for the competition is still alive. The 31-year-old, who now plays for Everton, told Talksport: 'Being an English player it was always been dream to play in the FA Cup, let alone win it three times. 'People say the love of the FA Cup is not there anymore, but that's complete rubbish in my opinion, it's a cup that every player looks back on and wants to win. Mikel Arteta is gearing up his Arsenal side for their FA Cup final against London rivals Chelsea Walcott, who now plays for Everton, says winning three FA Cups has stuck with him for life 'I'm one of the lucky players to have won it, and there are guys in the Everton dressing room who would bite off my hand to be in the a same situation. 'Just looking back at all my shirts, not many players swap shirts anymore but I've obviously been around a long time and I look back at the 2005 and 2006 shirts, I've got a shirt from Leighton Baines that I managed to get him sign, little things like that mean so much to me. 'They might not mean much to anybody else, that's fine, but I can show these to my kids, the medals as well, that's what it's about. 'The memories will always stick with me, scoring a goal in an FA Cup final and winning it with such class [beating Aston Villa 4-0 in 2015], scoring in the Carling Cup final as well, you ask any kid and that's what they want to do.' Jurgen Klopp and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer were criticised this season for undermining the FA Cup The FA Cup is the only competition that gives little smaller clubs with less finances the chance to knockout the cream of the Premier League, to create history and visit the stadiums that would normally be out of reach. Though Jurgen Klopp and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer have been criticised this season for undermining the competition and fielding a weakened team. Subsequently, the newly crowned Premier League champions were knocked out by Chelsea in the fifth round, while Manchester United were beaten 3-1 by the Blues in the semi-finals. President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States will ban TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing app that is facing an international ostracism over national security concerns after it was shuttered by India last month, along with 58 others that were followed by many more. TikTok is also reported to be in talks to sell itself to Microsoft or other companies. As far as TikTok is concerned were banning them from the United States, Trump told reporters. adding he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order. Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that, he said referring to emergency economic powers. Earlier in the day, he had said he was weighing other options. ByteDance, the parent company could be forced to divest TikTok by the powerful Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the New York Times reported Friday. Negotiations are under way. The president could also issue an executive order invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which he referred to, to bar certain apps, such as TikTok, from American apps stores. Or, he could add TikToks parent company to an entity list barring it from buying Americans products without a license. The decision is expected over the weekend. The Trump administration has been weighing some kind on action against Chinese apps, as stated earlier by the president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as a part of administrations broader effort to force the Chinese government to change their behavior. Among other thing, the Trump administration has led a growing international boycott of Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE, calling them a national security threat. It has also announced a slew of sanctions and trade restrictions over Tibet, Hong Kong and Uighurs of Xinjiang province. If you choose to quarantine on campus with us ... we will deliver meals and urgent mail to your room, provide access to WiFi and Philo TV streaming, etc, the announcement says. Students must stay in their rooms and not interact in-person with anyone else, including other students, for any reason except for urgent medical care and COVID testing during the quarantine period. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Emilie Delwarde (Reuters) Paris Sat, August 1, 2020 13:30 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066adfc0f 2 News travel,France,COVID-19-test Free France's busiest airport was on Friday preparing to start testing passengers for COVID-19 on arrival from high-risk countries, a move that could reduce the need for quarantine measures causing pain to the tourism industry across Europe. From around 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, Paris public hospital official Benjamin Paumier will lead a team of about 30 testers working out of a makeshift space near baggage reclaim at Charles de Gaulle airport. Anyone landing from one of 12 countries identified by the French government will be required to visit the testers. One worker will record their contact details, then direct them to a colleague who will insert a swab into their nasal passage to gather a sample for testing. Travellers are then allowed to continue their journey. Test results will come through between 24 and 48 hours later, when travellers will be contacted by public health workers. "The test (results) are not available immediately. We don't know if someone is positive or negative," Paumier told Reuters at the airport. "But the objective is to follow these people, especially those who are positive, to follow them up, and find out who they've been in contact with." Read also: France will require face masks indoors as virus picks up Quarantine queried With fears around Europe of a second wave of the coronavirus epidemic, some governments have advised against travel to high-risk destinations, or told travelers they must quarantine themselves on their return. That has prompted anger from some holidaymakers, and the travel and tourism industry, who say it is a blunt instrument. Travel executives have proposed testing on arrival as a way to curb the epidemic without disrupting travel plans. Charles de Gaulle airport has been trialing the testing - on a voluntary basis - near a bureau de change in the arrivals area. Paumier supervises a team of around 15 workers which has been testing close to 1,000 people per day. But from Saturday morning, Paumier said, "we'll have a team two times bigger than we have here because we will have a workload that's much bigger." Vincent Lemire, 47, volunteered to take a test on Friday after flying in from Tel Aviv. Israel is among countries whose travelers will be subject to compulsory testing from Saturday. "It seems logical," Lemire said about the new rules. "You know you have passports, customs, baggage. And now you have tests." (Newser) As schools start to slowly reopen after summer break, a red flag has emerged out of a Georgia summer camp on how quickly the coronavirus can spread among children. A CDC report out Friday documents COVID-19 transmission and infection at an overnight camp in the Peach State, which WSB-TV has confirmed is the YMCA's Camp High Harbour, located in Rabun County along Lake Burton. The alarming finding: that of the 597 attendees at the camp, 344 of them had virus test results available; of those, 260 came back positivemeaning 44% of the camp's children, trainees, and staff became infected. The first documented case came on June 22, when a teen worker who'd attended an orientation the week before started developing symptoms; two days later, a positive test result was confirmed. Campers started being sent home on June 24, and the camp closed on June 27. story continues below More than half of kids ages 6 to 10 were infected, while children ages 11 to 17 saw a 44% infection rate. One-third of those ages 18-21 came down with the virus. CDC officials say their findings show the virus "spread efficiently" at the camp, "resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups," despite the camp having in place many of the recommended safety protocols. The study takes special care to note this was an overnight camp, and that "relatively large cohorts sleeping in the same cabin and engaging in regular singing and cheering likely contributed to transmission." It also says that use of face masks among the kids "was not universal," though staff had to wear them. A Johns Hopkins epidemiologist tells the New York Times the study shows the need for social distancing, masks, adequate ventilation, and best practices for hygiene in schools when they open. (Read more Georgia stories.) Locals say a struggle for democratic freedoms is unfolding in the far eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk, where the arrest of a popular governor has unleashed massive protests. "Sometimes I feel like crying with joy when I see everyone so united," 21-year-old student Yekaterina Ishchenko told AFP. For the last three weeks, she and thousands of other residents of the city 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) east of Moscow have taken to the streets, with another huge rally due on Saturday. For Ishchenko, this is her first taste of political activism. Tens of thousands attended a rally last weekend, according to journalists and activists, while police put the figure at just 6,500. Such protests are rare in the region seven time zones away from the capital, where most opposition protests take place. They were sparked by the arrest on July 9 of regional governor Sergei Furgal. Investigators accused the 50-year-old former businessman of ordering two contract killings and an attempted murder 15 years ago. He was flown to Moscow where he is being held in custody. His supporters see the probe as aimed at removing an overly independent politician, elected in 2018 after standing against an incumbent from the ruling party backing President Vladimir Putin. "It's a slap in the face for us. We voted for him!" said 72-year-old pensioner Marina Beletskaya. Furgal is a member of the nationalist party LDPR which is generally loyal to the Kremlin. He became a popular governor, with supporters describing him as energetic and ready to listen. Locally, his level of popularity rivalled Putin's. - Conflict with Moscow - "After we elected Furgal, the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District was moved from here to Vladivostok," said 22-year-old Victoria Sakharova, a sales assistant, referring to the port city on the Pacific coast. Furgal will face trial on murder charges / AFP "This was clearly because we elected an opposition candidate." Around the size of Turkey, the Khabarovsk region has a population of just 1.3 million. One factor fuelling protests is long-standing resentment among residents who feel ignored by Moscow. Added to this are the economic worries in this region bordering China where metallurgy, coal mining and forestry are the main areas of employment. State media has largely ignored the protests but more independent outlets have described the events positively. In a recent editorial Vedomosti daily called the protests a "new symbol" representing opposition of "regions against the centre". Some protesters shout slogans expressing anger at Putin. Khabarovsk was one of those least supportive regions in a July 1 vote on changing the constitution to allow Putin to extend his rule. The "yes" vote was 15 percent below the national average. - Sent from Moscow - In a bid to appease the protesters, Moscow appointed a new acting governor from Furgal's LDPR party, Mikhail Degtyarev. But the 39-year-old MP, known for proposing wacky bills, has faced a chilly reception. He made matters worse by claiming not to "have time" to meet protesters and alleging they received backing from foreign "provocateurs". "We should have chosen a local person to replace him ourselves. But instead we were sent someone who only knows Khabarovsk from 5,000-ruble banknotes," said Sakharova. The banknote (worth $68) depicts views of the city. In a sign that the scale of the protests may have spooked the regional authorities the police have shown unusual restraint, allowing the protests to go ahead and only detaining a handful of people. Even Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week praised the police's forbearance while unauthorised protests are usually quickly broken up in Russia. "We still fear they'll arrest us," said 47-year-old protester Yury Petrov. "We're living through a moment of democracy but it will doubtless be fleeting." video-rco/alf/er - Jacktone Opondo, Millicent Wanjiru and John Karuku have been allegedly defrauding unsuspecting M-Pesa operators of their cash - The suspects approached M-Pesa agents as dealers in pretext of selling sim cards and other products at discounted prices - They then switched the agents' M-Pesa phones before flushing their float in the process Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) offices in Kiambu and Nakuru counties have arrested three suspected mobile money transfer fraudsters. According to the DCI, Jacktone Opondo, Millicent Wanjiru Maina and John Karuku Kabue had been defrauding unsuspecting M-Pesa operators of their cash. READ ALSO: Long queues at JKIA as hundreds of Chinese nationals prepare to leave Kenya READ ALSO: US, UK join list of countries cleared to resume flights to Kenya The detectives first pounced on Opondo at his house located at Egerton in Njoro area in Nakuru county while in possession of over 3,000 Safaricom cards. The serious crimes team then furthered their operations to Juja in Kiambu county where Millicent and John were nabbed at Muigai Inn, the duo being Opondo's accomplices. "It has been established that the gang has been getting ID numbers from a loans app known as Scoppe, and thereafter using the same to illegally register the acquired sim cards," stated DCI. To execute their alleged fraud, the suspects approached M-Pesa agents as dealers in pretext of selling sim cards and other products at discounted prices. They then switched the agents' M-Pesa phones before flushing their float in the process. In May, police three suspects in a phone-related syndicate believed to be operating in Nairobi. READ ALSO: Senator Johnson Sakaja raises alarm, claims undercover police officers are trailing him READ ALSO: MP Nyoro claims Raila texted allies asking them to reject new revenue sharing formula The three suspects, Ian Kinanga, Jefferson Bosire and Kevin Oroko, were arrested by detectives at a residential apartment in Juja town, Kiambu county. Both Kinanga and Bosire were confirmed to be university students while Oroko is a software developer with a local bank. Cases involving online and banking fraud are on the rise in Kenya with mobile banking being the most targeted even as service providers warn customers against using public Wi-Fi for internet transactions. READ ALSO: US, UK join list of countries cleared to resume flights to Kenya One such case was where a customer lost KSh 540, 000 from her bank account. The victim was having dinner at a hotel in Eldoret town when two men and a lady joined him in his table after which the lady requested the victim to send her KSh 2,000 in her Airtel line as she gave him the same amount in cash. Upon further investigation, he realised KSh 400,000 was transferred to various phone numbers and an additional KSh 140,000 sent to a suspect's bank account. It is suspected that the fraudsters had mastered the victim's PIN as he made the transaction before swapping his line. Another aggrieved customer who identified herself as Faith Wanjiku accused Equity Bank of stealing over KSh 900,000 from her account. Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. I did not sacrifice Ayeiya, family wants 21 million as compensation - Wakimani of Churchill Show -TUKO TV. Source: TUKO.co.ke Kerala gold smuggling case: State BJP demands Chief Minister's resignation India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 01: BJP legislator in Kerala, O Rajagopal on Saturday began a one-day fast at the party's state committee office demanding the state Chief Minister's resignation over the recent gold smuggling case. The fast is part of the protests by the BJP seeking the resignation of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan as he was "morally responsible" for the gold smuggling through diplomatic baggage. BJP national general secretary BhupendraYadav inaugurated the fast throughvideo conference and state party chief K Surendran presided over the meeting. The saffron party has also decided to organise a virtual rally in the capitalcity and it will be inaugurated by former state president Kummanam Rajashekharan. Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Muslims in Kerala celebrate a low-key Bakrid Union Minister V Muraleedharan has also decided to observe a fast at his residence in New Delhi on August 2 seeking the resignation of the chief minister. US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news The state governmenthas been under heavy criticism on the gold smuggling issue after two former employees of the UAE Consulate here were arrested along with a few others. The opposition parties have been alleging that the chief minister's office was involved in the matter, a claim which has been dismissed by the state government. Restaurant serves COVID-19 curry and naan; Image viral The NIA and the Customs have questioned senior IAS officer M Sivashankar, who was also the former principal secretary and the IT secretary in the state in connection with the case. He was suspended after reports about his alleged close contacts with a few of the accused. However, even after being questioned multiple times, Sivasankar is yet to be arraigned as an accused in the case. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Saturday, August 1, 2020, 14:08 [IST] When the first witness at the Victorian governments inquiry into the states COVID-19 hotel quarantine scandal starts talking on Thursday morning, it will have been 40 long days since Premier Daniel Andrews first announced the probe. Each day in this pandemic feels like a month thats what the Premier always says but time goes by all the more slowly when you dont feel youre getting the full picture. So if this inquiry, which is due to report on September 23, was an exercise in kicking the can down the road to a point where the story is old news, it hasnt worked. As Victorias second surge has escalated to horrific levels and with the state on the brink of an even tougher lockdown, the desire to know how we got here is stronger than ever. MIAMI (AP) A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin, authorities said Friday. The 17-year-old boy was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorneys Office will prosecute the case. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Meanwhile, Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. The hacks led to bogus tweets being sent out July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence, said U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California in a news release. Todays charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived." Although the case against the teen was also investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren explained that his office is prosecuting the teen in Florida state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate. This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and hell be prosecuted here, Warren said. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media company's employees into giving them access. It said hackers targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack. This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems, the company tweeted. After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter's systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or other electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information. Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later given the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The company has previously said the incident was a coordinated social engineering attack that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. It didnt provide any more information about how the attack was carried out, but the details released so far suggest the hackers started by using the old-fashioned method of talking their way past security. British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number. When the worker called the number they might have been taken to a convincing (but fake) helpdesk operator, who was then able to use social engineering techniques to trick the intended victim into handing over their credentials, Clulely wrote Friday on his blog. Its also possible the hackers pretended to call from the companys legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said. ___ Associated Press Writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1 New York, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "3D Printing Material Market Research Report by Type, by Form, by Technology, by Application, by End User - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05939283/?utm_source=GNW The Global 3D Printing Material Market is expected to grow from USD 1,385.69 Million in 2019 to USD 4,652.36 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.36%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the 3D Printing Material to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: Based on Type, the 3D Printing Material Market studied across Ceramic, Metal, Plastic, Laywood, Paper, Bioinks, and Wax. Based on Form, the 3D Printing Material Market studied across Filament, Liquid, and Powder. Based on Technology, the 3D Printing Material Market studied across DMLS, FDM, SLA, SLS, Binder Jetting, MJF, and Polyjet. Based on Application, the 3D Printing Material Market studied across Manufacturing, Prototyping, and Research & Development. Based on End User, the 3D Printing Material Market studied across Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Construction, Consumer Goods & Electronics, Healthcare, and Education. Based on Geography, the 3D Printing Material Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global 3D Printing Material Market including 3D Systems Corp., Advanc3d Materials, Advanced Powders and Coatings, Arkema S.A., Cookson Precious Metals, CRP Group, Envisiontec GmbH, EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems, Exceltec, Exone GmbH, Formlabs, GE Additive, Legor Group, LPW Technology Ltd., Maker Juice, Royal DSM N.V., Stratasys Ltd., Taulman 3D, TLC Korea, and Toner Plastic. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the 3D Printing Material Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19: COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global 3D Printing Material Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global 3D Printing Material Market during the forecast period? 3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global 3D Printing Material Market? 4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global 3D Printing Material Market? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global 3D Printing Material Market? 6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global 3D Printing Material Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05939283/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Indonesia's famous holiday island, Bali, has officially re-opened to domestic tourists. Five months after Indonesia belatedly confirmed its first coronavirus case on March 2, 3360 people have been infected in Bali and 48 people have died, with 47 new cases reported on Friday. A trickle of visitors leaves little business at a quiet Bali mall. Credit:Amilia Rosa The island had initially reported low case numbers but in recent weeks infections have risen. With the tourism sector smashed by the pandemic - occupancy rates in hotels have dropped to an average of one to two per cent - the island has thrown open its doors for locals to return. US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he will ban popular video sharing app TikTok in the country on security concerns that the service could be used by China to gather intelligence. Trump stated that he was considering signing an executive order in this regard as soon as Saturday. Talking to reports on Air Force One, Trump said, "As far as TikTok is concerned, we are banning them from the United States... I will sign the document tomorrow." The move comes following the news of Microsoft Corp's exploratory talks with the TikTok's parent company ByteDance. The US government has been probing potential national security risks owing to the Chinese company's control of the app. Trump gave a hint on Wednesday when he told reporters that his government is considering a ban on TikTok. Earlier in July, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also hinted that the Trump administration was mulling to bar the app over privacy concerns. Also Read: Microsoft in talks to buy TikTok's US operations from ByteDance US politicians have time and again been criticising TikTok, of being a threat to national security because of its ties to China. ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the US and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikTok's fun, goofy videos and ease of use have made it immensely popular, and US tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a potential threat. It has said it has tens of millions of US users and hundreds of millions globally. But its Chinese ownership has raised concerns about censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government, and the potential for sharing user data with Chinese officials. Also Read: Chinese app ban: TikTok says ready to store data locally, denies breach of user privacy TikTok maintains it doesn't censor videos based on topics sensitive to China and that it would not give the Chinese government access to US user data even if asked. The company has hired a US CEO, a former top Disney executive, in an attempt to distance itself from its Chinese ownership. US national-security officials have been reviewing the Musical.ly acquisition in recent months, while the US armed forces have banned their employees from installing TikTok on government-issued phones. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month that the US was considering banning TikTok. Loading "Three cases (in a postcode) doesnt signal there are only three cases in a postcode. There could well be more you dont know about," Professor Bennett said. "To suppress local transmission, masks just make that bit of difference. But it has to be Melbourne-wide or we will get another flare-up." The data shows that the highest infection rates are in Melbourne's north-west corridor, something which has been apparent long before the data was broken down by postcode. The darkest spot on the map is the tiny 3022 postcode that takes in the suburbs of Ardeer and Deer Park, in Melbournes west, where there are 20 cases per 1000 people thats about 20 times higher than the rest of the state. This area had 64 active cases as of July 31, which translates to about one in every 50 residents. But this postcode is where Estia Aged Care facility is located, the centre of an outbreak linked with 104 cases. The data is broken down according to a person's registered place of residence, not where they were infected or where they are currently living. It's possible that some of the Estia staff live in 3022, but others likely live in nearby postcodes. Many of the postcodes that have high rates of infection house large outbreaks, or adjoin areas that do. Little River, between Melbourne and Geelong, currently has a rate of almost seven active cases per 1000 residents. But keep in mind this area has nine active cases and a relatively small population of 1319, which means one or two additional cases there can have a sizeable impact on its infection rate. I deliberately excluded areas with fewer than 1000 residents from the map for this very reason. Also, the most recent population estimates we have for postcodes are from 2016, so if any area has grown substantially since then it means its infection rate on the map may be overstating the true extent of the virus' spread to some degree. Heres a slightly different way of looking at the data on infection rates across Victorian postcodes. Ive arranged the states postcodes with more than 1000 residents in a line from lowest known active case rate to highest: All the greyed out areas are places where there arent any active cases right now, mostly ones in rural or regional Victoria. The red areas are places where there is at least one known active case. Loading Those 10 narrow black bands at the end correspond to the 10 postcodes that were locked down in late June because of what Premier Daniel Andrews, at the time, called an "unacceptably high" rate of community transmission (that is, infections that cannot be traced to an existing case or outbreak). These 10 postcodes are almost two weeks further into lockdown than the rest of Greater Melbourne and Mitchell shire, but as you can see from the graphic most still have amongst the highest rates of active cases. Collectively there were 140 active cases in these areas on July 3; four weeks later that number had increased to 875. But these are just two data points we dont know if those numbers have been going up and up in that time, or if they peaked some time ago and are now on the way down. Loading Professor Bennett said community transmission had driven outbreaks in aged care facilities and workplaces in many areas with high infection rates, which was now, in turn, generating further community transmission. "There are all these internal dynamics in epidemics you need to take into account," she said. "Its the nature of the beast. The more community transmission, the more likely there is someone positive to take it into an aged care home. Then youve suddenly got a large number of cases, some of which is fed back into the community as well. "Its a cycle." During Saturday's daily coronavirus update, Premier Daniel Andrews said public health officials were working their way through the data on community transmission numbers to decide on the state's next step. "You cant be certain there isnt even further community transmission, even more mystery cases out there," he said. "That is in some respects our biggest challenge. "Nobody wants to see large numbers reported in any context, but if you can track back where the origin was then they are in a wholly different category to community transmission or mystery cases," he said. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1841 coronavirus cases in Victoria where community transmission is the suspected infection source, but the true number is higher because of the amount of time it takes to carry out these investigations. [Coronavirus] is a stubborn thing. There is no doubt about that it is a wicked enemy. You need compliance, that people are doing the right thing," the Premier said. Victoria's coronavirus state of play: July If you have any questions about the data, please leave a comment on this article or send me an email (craig.butt@theage.com.au), and I will do my best to respond. UPPER THUMB Early in the morning, people begin to rise with the sun, waking up and preparing for the day. Some, however, have been laboring all night. Hospital workers are the ones in need of personal protective equipment that, according to Thumb-area hospitals, was in short supply during the early stages of the pandemic. When the coronavirus hit, many hospitals in the rural region of Huron County were not equipped for the amount of supplies they ended up needing. Some of our cleaning supplies, we had to switch because we cant get them anymore, said Danielle Blaine, director of marketing at Hills and Dales General Hospital in Cass City. She said obtaining PPE was very difficult early on. We had a lot of trouble and a lot of time was spent trying to secure supplies, she said. Blaine said they were able to secure some supplies through a regional healthcare group, but their normal vendors didnt have enough to go around and eventually production stopped altogether. Everybody wanted everything, and they just didnt have enough," she said. "And then manufacturing was shut down, so they werent making those supplies. So it took a little bit of time for them to get caught back up to the need." Tuscola County has been among the hardest hit of Michigans Thumb communities. As of Thursday, the county had reported 273 COVID cases and 27 deaths. But those numbers are low compared to neighboring Genesee County, which has seen nearly 10 times as many cases and deaths. Dave Wohl is vice president of population health, also with Hills and Dales. He said its understandable urban hospitals get the larger share of PPE. There wasnt a lot of COVID up here in the rural areas, so rightly so, the priority for supplies should have been diverted toward the hotspots, he said. Though, as coronavirus cases begin showing up in communities that were previously unaffected, Wohl said hospital admissions could rise. He said by nature, rural hospitals cover large geographic regions, thus patients come from far away, and so do supplies. In a rural area, were responsible sometimes for as many people, but theyre so far away that we dont have the staffing the larger hospitals do and we definitely dont have the supply chain, he said. We are measuring our PPE every day. Huron County has so far had just over 100 coronavirus cases and three deaths. Clark Ramsey is the manager of marketing, communications and business development at Scheurer Hospital in Pigeon. He said they were in a good position at the start of the pandemic. Our manager of emergency preparedness had us in a strong position so that when we needed, we could open up the war chest and we had a lot of PPE on hand so that we could move forward with the proper precautions, he said. However, as time persisted, the number of cases increased, and supply availability decreased. Ramsey said about 80% of the nations PPE originates from China, and because of the initial outbreak in that region, exports came to a quick halt. When the shutdown began, there were a lot of unknowns at that point, so it was really all hands on deck, where can we get these supplies from any possible corner of the world we can get them? Ramsey said. The Thumb Region is not alone in its struggles, as other rural areas have shared similar disparities. Dr. Joe Santangelo, chief quality and safety officer for Munson Healthcare in northern Michigan, said PPE supplies are limited and some completely out of stock. For some supplies, its just a matter of cost and thats something we can work through," he said. "But some items we cant even get at all no matter what the price. Many rural hospitals used grants to purchase PPE and loans to cover other expenses, allowing several to remain financially stable. Nonetheless, some government officials think Michigan was severely underfunded by the federal government. In a report by U.S. Senator Gary Peters from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Michigan was found to be one of five states hit the hardest by the virus, but was federally funded the least. Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania had between 20,000 and 50,000 coronavirus cases, and received approximately $20,000-$60,000 per state. New York, being an outlier, had 170,000 cases and received $10,000. Conversely, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Alaska had 200-400 coronavirus cases and received $260,000-$330,000 in each state. Peters also referenced a 2019 analysis that showed about 25% of rural hospitals in the state were at high risk of closing. Now, about a year later, several hospitals are experiencing high capacities. As cases begin to rise again, some hospitals said they are prepared though concerns remain. Santangelo said supplies are always a concern at Munson Health as they expect increasingly more patients. We know that we have more cases coming," he said. "How do we manage the supply we have without knowing when were going to get more?" Ramsey at Scheurer Hospital said he is confident they have enough supplies. He said many new companies began to create more supply for the world, and so moving forward, this will continue to help. We had a large mass of new manufacturers go online with much larger capacities to produce resources and protective equipment of sorts, so we certainly feel that we do have enough resources on hands, he said. Wohl from Hills & Dales said they are maintaining enough PPE, but avoiding overstock as they expire after about a year. I don't think any real facility is in a position financially to keep a huge stockpile and gamble, he said. It's great if you need it, but if you don't need it then you waste a lot of money and our margin is so thin right now that a warehouse full of PPE that we throw away could be three or four employees' jobs. In areas like the Thumb, community members often volunteer to help serve local businesses. In this case, it was hospitals. Ramsey said Scheurer received some of this kindness. We had an army of sewers from across the region sew about 3,000 masks for us out of cloth, and anything else that we possibly could find, he said. We were able to kind of get through that critical mass because during that same time we were reaching out to local manufacturers and local industry and just being able to manufacture shields at a local basis here. Wohl from Hills & Dales said the community of Cass City has been incredibly supportive through the process as well. They have been making masks and donating different protective equipment or even bringing goodies in every now and then, he said. Wohl said they are thankful for that support that comes with living in a rural community. Supply concerns linger in some rural hospitals, but as they have a chance to restock and learn more about the coronavirus many said they feel better prepared for a possible second wave of the pandemic. The submarine support ship HOS 'Dominator' has joined the search for seven Marines and one Sailor, who have been missing since their amphibious assault vehicle sank in 600 feet of water Thursday. One Marine has already been confirmed dead and two more injured after the vehicle sank in the water at around 5:45pm near San Clemente Island in Los Angeles County. The Marines have suspended the use of the amphibious assault vehicles in water while they are inspected. One sailor and 15 Marines were inside the 26-ton military vehicle when it sank into the Pacific Ocean. Eight were rescued from the water, but the other eight remain missing and are presumed dead. One Marine was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla where he died. Two injured Marines were taken to San Diego-area hospitals where one is in critical condition and the other is stable. The search for seven Marines and one Sailor continues after an amphibious assault vehicle sank off the coast of Southern California on Thursday The vehicle took on water at around 5.45pm while 15 Marines and one sailor were inside near San Clemente Island in Los Angeles County. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit is seen during training on Monday The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit said that they have notified all the families of the Marines and Sailor involved in the tragic accident. The search for the remaining service members continued Saturday with HOS 'Dominator' joining Navy, Marines and Coast Guard efforts. The Marine Expeditionary Force is the Marine Corps' main warfighting organization. There are three such groups which are made up of ground, air and logistics forces. Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, said during a press conference at Camp Pendleton that all their AAV's will undergo a review. 'All AAVs across the fleet will be inspected,' said Gen. Berger, USNI News reports. 'This is to ensure out of an abundance of caution that we take the time, give the time to the recovery and find out what actually happened. [AAV] units can continue to train ashore. Well wait until we have a better picture.' Pictured: A U.S. Navy MH-60 Seahawk lands aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD-8) during ongoing search and rescue relief operations The US Navy, Marines and Coast Guards were joined by submarine support ship HOS 'Dominator' to help with search efforts this weekend. Pictured: Naval Air Crewman (Helicopter) 2nd Class Joseph Rivera, a search and rescue swimmer assigned to the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island , looks out of a U.S. Navy MH-60 Seahawk while conducting search and rescue relief operations following The AAV sank while leaving Clemente Island for amphibious warship USS Somerset, and is believed to have dropped down in 600ft of water But it's unclear how long the wait will be because the sheer depth of the AAV's descent into the water complicated matters. Gen. Osterman added that the AAV 'is really below the depth that a diver could do. 'So we are working and we really owe an incredible gratitude and thanks to our Navy and Coast Guard brethren whove helped us in this endeavor. They are actually working with us to provide assets that can basically get down and take a look at the AAV.' Lt. Gen. Joseph D. Osterman, the I Marine Expeditionary Force commander, added: 'We are continuing search and rescue operations,' 'We have not leaned into recovery operations. We are still looking for the seven Marines and one sailor who we have not yet found.' At the moment, military officials have not classified the mission as a recovery and are still actively involved in a search-and-rescue operation The identities of the service members have not been disclosed, but an official said their ages likely ranged from mid-30s to as young as 18-years-old Pictured: HOS Dominator, part of the US Navy Military Sealift Command Search and rescue options began immediately after the AAV sank. At the time of the accident, the Marines had been training on San Clemente Island and were returning to the amphibious warship USS Somerset. 'An immediate response was provided by two additional [AAVs] that were with them. as well as a safety boat,'said Osterman. The island, which sits about 78 miles from Camp Pendleton, is managed by the Navy and houses a number of training facilities. The New York Times reports that two nearby amphibious vehicles witnessed the AAV sink and were able to positively identify the exact location. 'The adjacent A.A.V.s watched it go down, and at 26 tons, the assumption is that it went down to the bottom,' said Lt. Osterman. Two nearby AAV's witnessed the accident and were later able to help locate the exact area where the ship sank The Marines have suspended the use of AAV's on Friday and they vehicles were undergo inspections He estimated that oldest service member aboard was in their mid-30s and the youngest was near 18-years-old. The Marines and Sailor were wearing combat gear and flotation devices at the time. 'This mishap is under investigation. We will share the results of it once it is complete,' said Gen. Berger. There are about 800 AAVs in the Marine's inventory and each weighs 26 tons and can carry up to 21 people. In 2017, 15 Marines were injured when a AAV they were training in caught fire at Camp Pendleton. Marines have utilized the vehicles to move troops from water to land since the 1970s. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit said that they have notified all the families of the Marines and Sailor involved in the tragic accident Synopsis: Lootcase is a complete family entertainer. The duration of the film is lengthy with a run-of-the-mill script but it can be overlooked for the blazing performances. It is a light watch full of quirky one-liners and perfectly-timed jokes. Here's our take on the film What happens when a quintessential middle-class man, striving hard to fulfill his familys desires, stumbles upon a bag full of cash? Well, that is where the story of this much-awaited comedy drama begins. Also, there is no denying the fact that, Rajesh Krishnan, the director of this film, has brought together the perfect ensemble cast including Kunal Kemmu, Rasika Dugal in lead roles, and Ranvir Shorey, Vijay Raaz and Gajraj Rao among others in pivotal roles. In this two-hour-twelve-minute film, produced by Fox Star Studios, a middle-class printing press operator Nandan Kumar (played by Kemmu) stumbles upon an unattended suitcase full of cash in a dingy street while returning from a late-night shift and immediately walks away with it, after he asks Last time pooch raha hoon, kiska suitcase hai? and there comes no reply. This brings us to the main plot of the film where life takes an unexpected turn for the print staffer Nandan because of bringing home the ill-gotten cash left abandoned on the street Soon, this gets followed by mayhem where a Nat-Geo fan don (played by Vijay Raaz), an utterly corrupt politician (played by Gajraj Rao), and a strict cop (played by Ranvir Shorey) get on the trail in search of the missing suitcase oops lootcase. Then ensues the roller-coaster ride of a hilarious journey. Heres the trailer Kunal Kemmu has an impeccable screen-presence and is absolutely relatable as a man next door. Similarly, Rasika Dugal, as versatile an actor she is, has done complete justice to the role of a homemaker, Lata, who keeps nagging her husband for not earning enough Well, what happens after Nandan brings home the bag full of cash? Does Lata find out about that? What do they do with the money? Well, you will have to watch the film to get answers to these questions. In fact, whats more interesting is that every supporting character has an unique personality of their own. Like Rao, the corrupt politician, who manipulates his aides for his own benefit by blackmailing them every now and then; Raaz, the don who is insanely obsessed with National Geographic channel as he keeps drawing inferences from the jungle for his life problems; and Shorey, the cop who we dont know if is good or bad till the end of the movie. Dont worry we arent going to give you any spoilers. The cat and a mouse chase between Nandan and the gangsters, who leave no stone unturned to find the suitcase, makes for the gripping narrative. However, a fast-paced storyline and a not-so-lengthy plot would have created a better impact for us - the viewers! Besides, some portions were bland too with slow-moving screenplay and cliche comedy. All in all, the realistic portrayal of an unexpected short-lived joy of a middle class man, who deals with an ungrateful workplace, a nagging wife and everyday struggles of life, makes us laud Kunal Kemmu. There was no dearth of good acting in this film because of such a promising cast. In most parts, Rao and Raaz totally stole the show with their seasoned acting. However, I'd like to pinpoint that the music wasn't that impressive. Once you finish watching the film you'd hardly remember any lines from the songs. Also, in my opinion, it would have been a delight to watch Dugal in more shades than one. It is definitely a one-time-hilarious-watch for the weekend with your family. You can stream it on Disney Plus Hotstar. In a U.S. election year that has seen the coronavirus pandemic upend primary voting as well as the conventions of both the Democrat and Republican parties, Joe Biden's vice-presidential choice might be more widely anticipated than in past election years. The Democratic presidential candidate's campaign hasn't finalized a date for naming a running mate, but three people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans said a public announcement likely wouldn't happen before the week of Aug. 10. That's one week before Democrats hold their convention to officially nominate Biden as their presidential nominee. Biden said in May that he hoped to name his pick around Aug. 1 and told reporters this week that he would "have a choice in the first week of August." He notably stopped short of saying when he would announce that choice. He has promised to pick a female running mate and in the wake of the George Floyd protests and subsequent conversations about representation in roles of power, there has been hope in some Democratic quarters that he will choose a qualified Black woman. Running mates are often announced on the eve of a convention. As Biden prepares to make his choice, a committee established to vet running mates has provided him with briefing materials. Biden will likely soon begin one-on-one conversations with those under consideration, which could be the most consequential part of the process for a presidential candidate who values personal connections. WATCH l Biden has several considerations to assess in his VP pick: John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt's vice-president from 1933 to 1941, once said the job wasn't "worth a bucket of warm piss," because of its often ceremonial role in the large shadow of the president. But with the likes of Biden and Dick Cheney in recent years, each of whom had decades of D.C. experience, the authority and scope of the role has expanded. Story continues The vice-president is called upon to break tie votes in the Senate and is first in the line of succession should a president become incapacitated or not be able to fulfil their duties. The need for a vice-president to be ready to immediately occupy the Oval Office and Biden will turn 78 in late November has meant that the vast majority in modern times have had previous congressional experience, with the exceptions of ex-governors Nelson Rockefeller and Spiro Agnew. These factors could prove too formidable for Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Stacey Abrams, an ex-Georgia gubernatorial candidate who served in the state's House of Representatives from 2007-17, accomplished Black women mentioned as potential candidates who have not served on Capitol Hill. Political scientists have long debated how much the choice of vice-president moves the needle in a significant way in terms of votes, but there are considerations to the selection. Barack Obama, still relatively new to Washington, wanted an experienced hand and mentor in Biden, while Donald Trump sought to shore up support from reluctant conservatives by picking evangelical Christian Mike Pence. There has never been a female vice-president in the U.S., with previous candidates Geraldine Ferraro (1984) and Sarah Palin (2008) a part of losing tickets. Here's a snapshot of some of the women who have been floated as possible candidates in multiple reports from political journalists in the U.S.: Tammy Baldwin Senate Television/ The Associated Press Baldwin, 58, has a lower profile than the likes of potential candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, but outranks them in terms of congressional seniority. After spending a few years as a lawyer in a private practice, Baldwin bounced from her state's assembly to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1999 and then the Senate in 2012. Baldwin represents Wisconsin, thought to be one of the competitive states from the 2016 election that Biden will likely need to wrest from Trump to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to become president. While a Baldwin pick could disappoint those hoping Biden selects a person of colour, it could also inspire LGBTQ voters Baldwin made history as the first openly gay woman to serve in Congress. Rep. Karen Bass Greg Nash/The Associated Press Biden has often lamented the loss of a bipartisan spirit in Congress. The calm Bass who considers herself a progressive but has earned praise from liberals and largely avoided attacks from arch-conservative politicians and commentators could therefore be an appealing choice. Bass, 66, is a five-term congresswoman. Prior to coming to Washington, she was the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the California state assembly. Her committee assignments in D.C. have reflected a broad base of subjects that would serve an administration well homeland security, global human rights, the internet and intellectual property among them and she is currently the Congressional Black Caucus chair. Bass has spent most of her life in Southern California, raised by working-class parents and coming of age during tumultuous times with the Watts riots in the mid-1960s and the 1968 assassination of candidate Robert Kennedy, the first political campaign she volunteered on. Prior to her political career, she worked as a physician's assistant and community organizer. Rep. Val Demings Mandel Ngan/The Associated Press The Floridian Demings, 63, has raised her profile significantly in the past year by serving on two committees that played crucial roles in the House's impeachment of Donald Trump, the judiciary and intelligence panels. Demings, the youngest of seven children, was a social worker before joining the police academy, rising through the ranks and becoming the Orlando Police Department's first female chief in 2007. It was a challenging post and one prone to criticism as the force has grappled with a long record of excessive-force allegations, including during her tenure, which ended in 2011. In her second crack at trying for a seat in the U.S. House, she won in 2016. Her husband, also a former police officer, is mayor of Orange County in central Florida. As it has been since 2000, Florida is expected to be fiercely contested for its 29 electoral college votes, the third-highest haul of any state. Sen. Tammy Duckworth Erin Scott/Reuters Duckworth, 52, has a compelling personal story and would help bolster the Biden campaign's national security credentials. She is a Purple Heart recipient who lost her legs when an army helicopter that she was co-piloting was shot down in Iraq in 2004. Born in Thailand, from there Duckworth's life has taken an Obama-like geographic path, moving to Indonesia, Hawaii and Illinois. WATCH l Trump, Biden trade barbs: She served in both the Illinois and Obama governments in various posts before launching a successful bid for a House seat in 2012, with a further victory four years later seeing her reach the Senate. While picking Duckworth could blunt criticism that the Democrats are a party of "coastal elites," Illinois has safely been in the Democratic column in presidential elections since 1992, and Duckworth has not been on the forefront of civil justice issues like Harris and Bass. While some of the VP candidates have grandchildren, Duckworth is mother to two children under the age of six. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Eddie Moore/The Albuquerque Journal/The Associated Press While she hasn't received as much attention as some candidates, Lujan Grisham is as qualified as any. New Mexico's governor since 2019, she previously worked as her state's health secretary, potentially making her a key point person in a Washington administration that would still have to be focused on the coronavirus. In between those those state duties, she was in D.C. as a member of U.S. House between 2013 and 2018, including two years when she led the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The Pew Research Center estimates the number of eligible Latino voters this year is expected to reach 32 million, with a significant presence in competitive Florida and Arizona. Trump grabbed just eight per cent of the Black vote in 2016 but took a healthier 28 per cent of the Latino vote, making Lujan Grisham, 60, a potentially savvy strategic choice. Lujan Grisham's personal story of persevering after tragedy would likely resonate with Biden, who lost his first wife and baby daughter in a 1972 car accident. Lujan Grisham became a single parent after her husband collapsed while jogging in 2004, dying of a brain aneurysm at 45. Sen. Kamala Harris Alexander Drago/The Associated Press Harris jousted forcefully with Biden in early presidential debates last year. But since dropping out of the race, she's appeared with him in online fundraisers and recently headed a campaign event in North Carolina, a battleground state where Harris's dual appeal to Black voters and college-educated white women could boost Democratic prospects. Harris, 55, has gained a reputation for effective questioning of reluctant witnesses at Senate committee hearings, reflecting her legal background. Before coming to Washington as a senator in 2017, she served as California's attorney general and San Francisco's district attorney. That could make her just as credible a candidate for U.S. attorney general as vice-president. The daughter of parents from Jamaica and India, Harris spent her high school years in Montreal. Susan Rice WATCH l Susan Rice on her career, connection to Barbara Frum: There is no greater candidate in terms of understanding how a U.S. administration can operate than Rice, who grew up in Washington with parents who worked in government and think-tank roles. In the mid-1990s, she was nominated to serve as assistant secretary of state for African affairs in President Bill Clinton's administration. Rice, 55, then spent the first four years of the Obama administration as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and then as his national security adviser, co-ordinating closely on many issues with Biden, then vice-president. As with any candidate, Biden has to assess the risks and drawbacks of his choice. In Rice's case, she has never been an elected politician and more than any woman on the list has been a lightning rod for right-wing media figures who have sought to accuse her and the Obama administration of wrongdoing in the deadly Libya embassy attack and in the prosecution of Trump associate Michael Flynn. Rice also has a Canadian connection. Prior to her political service, she worked between 1990 and 1992 at McKinsey & Company at their Toronto office, with her now-husband Ian Cameron a producer at that time for CBC host Barbara Frum. Rice told CBC News last year that Frum, shortly before her death in March 1992, encouraged the relationship with Cameron at a pivotal moment: "She really was a catalyst in my thinking of what mattered." Sen. Elizabeth Warren Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Warren, a Massachusetts senator and leading progressive, also competed directly against Biden in this presidential cycle, taking several weeks to endorse him after bowing out of the race. Any doubts of a rift have since been laid to rest. Warren frequently hosts campaign events for Biden, including one recent fundraiser that brought in $6 million US. A longtime academic and long ago a registered Republican Warren rose to public prominence from appearances as a personal finance expert on Dr. Phil and at congressional inquiries. She has a keen focus of pocketbook issues and helped inspire the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren, 71, has traded verbal jabs with Trump she has attacked him for being a "wannabe tyrant," while he's mocked her claims to Indigenous ancestry. She apologized for mistakenly misrepresenting her ancestry earlier in life; a DNA analysis showed evidence of a Indigenous ancestor as far as 10 generations back. While Warren's recent decades have been spent at Harvard or on Capitol Hill, she was raised in a churchgoing Methodist family in Oklahoma. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Michigan Office of the Governor/The Associated Press Whitmer, 48, has raised her national profile by forcefully advocating for her state of Michigan during the early, chaotic days of the pandemic. She criticized the Trump administration's response in providing medical equipment and supplies, and has consistently scored higher than the president in approval ratings measuring leaders' actions during the health crisis. As with Lujan Grisham, it may annoy her state's citizens to see her depart for Washington after only becoming a governor in January 2019. And she does not have her New Mexico counterpart's resume, with extensive political experience within her state but not in D.C. But unlike Lujan Grisham, Whitmer comes from a state that is up in the air for the Democrats on Nov. 3. Trump won Michigan with a margin of slightly less than 11,000 votes in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. The United States has reached an agreement with two major drug companies to secure plentiful supplies of a future vaccine against the coronavirus, as cases of the disease keep rising there and in other parts of the world. DEATHS AND INFECTIONS * For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser. * For a U.S.-focused tracker with state-by-state and county map, open https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T in an external browser. * Eikon users, see MacroVitals (cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?navid=1592404098) for a case tracker and a summary of developments. AMERICAS * U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said talks with the White House on a coronavirus aid bill were far from a deal on Friday, as federal unemployment benefits that have been an essential lifeline for millions of Americans expired. * Two major drug companies will supply the U.S. government with 100 million doses of an experimental vaccine, the Trump administration said on Friday, as the nations top health agency predicted that fatalities would rise in the coming weeks. * Mexico surpassed Britain as the country with the third-highest coronavirus death toll on Friday, as the pandemic reaches new milestones in Latin America and threatens to disrupt efforts to reopen the regions economies. EUROPE * Russias health minister is preparing a mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus for October, local news agencies reported on Saturday, after a vaccine completed clinical trials. * Poland reported its highest number of new cases for a third day in a row on Saturday with 658, the Health Ministry said. * British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would postpone the next stage of lockdown easing for at least two weeks due to a pick-up in infection rates. ASIA-PACIFIC * Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte ordered his coronavirus task force to address the concerns of more than a million doctors and nurses who called for reviving strict lockdowns after a third day of record infections. * Australias second most populous state, Victoria, reported 397 cases of the new coronavirus on Saturday, down by more than a third from Friday, but authorities said they are considering further restrictions as numbers remain worrisome. * South Korean authorities arrested the founder of a secretive Christian sect at the centre of the countrys largest outbreak of COVID-19 infections on Saturday for allegedly hiding crucial information from contact-tracers and other offences. * Japans stately traditional kabuki theatre resumed performances after a five-month break, with musicians in masks, actors farther apart on stage and only half the usual number of seats. MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA * Egypt reported 321 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, the health ministry said, the lowest figure since May 3. MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS * Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc said on Friday they are in advanced discussions to supply up to 300 million doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine for the 27-country European Union. * Merck & Co said on Friday it plans to advance an antiviral treatment for COVID-19 into large studies in the coming weeks. ECONOMIC FALLOUT * More than half of the roughly 9 million British employees who were put on furlough during the lockdown have already returned to work, the Resolution Foundation think tank estimated on Saturday. * Chiles President Sebastian Pinera announced $4.5 billion in additional stimulus spending to help soften the blow of the pandemic. * Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd said it will offer a voluntary scheme to its Hong Kong-based pilots who are approaching retirement age to leave the group early, in a continued effort to cut costs amid the pandemic. (Compiled by Frances Kerry) Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor " " We humans are pretty good at pointing fingers at anyone other than ourselves. iStockphoto/Thinkstock Humans love to play the blame game. Adam blamed Eve. Hitler blamed the Jews. When something bad happens, it's always someone else's fault. Such is the life of a scapegoat. The practice of scapegoating is older than old. During Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Israelites used two goats to symbolize their sins. One was sacrificed to appease God, while the second was slain to pacify Azazel, an evil spirit. In an act of religious symbolism, a priest conveyed the sins of the Israelites to the goat meant for Azazel. The unlucky goat was then tossed off a cliff [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica]. Advertisement The first human scapegoats were mostly convicts or other outcasts. They often were herded together and forced to march down the street imbued with the sins of the rabble. They then were forced out of town and stoned to death [source: Campbell]. Despite its long history, the word "scapegoat" apparently originated in 1530, when the Oxford-educated William Tyndale translated the Bible into English [source: Campbell]. Little did Tyndale know he would be called a scapegoat, too, when Thomas More blamed him for the Peasants' War in Germany. Scapegoating allows humans to point the finger at others instead of accepting the consequences of their actions. These targets usually are outsiders, a person or group who can be readily dehumanized, and they come in all stripes: political, religious, artistic and sporting. Get ready to meet 10 of the world's most famous scapegoats. After getting rid of this store, Parkson will have only one store left of the eight it operated at the 2012 peak of its 15-year career in Vietnam. The unit to be disposed of, Parkson TD Plaza shopping centre in Haiphong city, is to be transferred from Parkson Vietnam the legal entity of Parkson Retail Asia in Vietnam to Thuy Duong Construction & Trading JSC for a cash consideration of $10 million. Parkson TD Plaza in Haiphong city is to be transferred to Thuy Duong Construction & Trading JSC The transaction still waits for official approval by Parkson Retail Asias shareholders, who will vote at the next irregular meeting. Thuy Duong Construction & Trading JSC also owns the TD Plaza building where the Parkson TD Plaza shopping centre is located. After transferring Parkson TD Plaza, Parkson Vietnam will focus on the operation and management of Saigon Tourist Plaza its last remaining outlet in Vietnam and the first store it opened in Vietnam in 2005. As a subsidiary of Parkson Holdings Bhd., Parkson Retail Asia was one of the first international retailers to enter Vietnam in 2005. By 2012, Parkson built a network of eight stores in Vietnam's major cities by 2012. Five of these were directly owned by Parkson, including Parkson Hung Vuong and Parkson Flemington in Ho Chi Minh City; Parkson Long Bien, Parkson Keangnam, and Viet Tower in Hanoi; and Parkson TD Plaza Shopping Centre in Haiphong city. The remaining three were Saigon Tourist, Paragon, and CT which were leased and managed by Parkson. However, Parkson's business in Vietnam has been gradually slowing down since 2014 when the retailer started to lose the upper hand to newcomers who built multi-functional trade complexes to better meet the demands of different visitors. Parkson, meanwhile, targets higher-income buyers with fashion and commodities only. The retailer was forced to gradually close its stores, starting with the centre at Keangnam Hanoi Landmark in 2015. This was followed by Parkson Paragon in 2016, Parkson Viet Tower in 2017, Parkson Flemington in 2018, and Parkson Cantavil An Phu at the end of 2018. In order to survive, in April 2019, Parkson renovated its Saigon Tourist Plaza from a shop and go to an all-in-one destination. With its fresher facade and transformed retail mindset, this store is now receiving good visitor traffic and has drawn in a steady base of large-scale tenants, including famous fashionista Uniqlo and Muji. Los Angeles, CA - July 31, 2020: More than 33,000 nursing home residents have died of Covid-19 and nursing occupancy rates at historic low levels reports the director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI). "The Covid-19 virus has created greater awareness of the need to plan for future care needs. But what people want is the ability to receive care in their own home," explains Jesse Slome, director of the long-term care insurance organization. "You won't break through today if you can't show prospects how they can remain safe at home." Slome was conducting an ongoing program for insurance professionals who market long-term care products. According to Slome, current occupancy at the nation's skilled nursing facilities slid to 78.9% compared to 84.4% in April 2019 and 84.7% in February, before the coronavirus spread nationwide. "I've referred to long-term care insurance as nursing home avoidance planning," Slome adds. "Today more than previously, it's important for individuals to understand that the majority of long-term care insurance claim benefits pay for care at home. That percentage will only grow." Slome urged the agents to begin their presentations acknowledging the importance of in-home care coverage. "If there are home care or short-term care policies available in your state, I'd begin by acknowledging that you educate consumers about their home care and long-term care insurance options," Slome shared with the group. "Talk about long-term care insurance options that have no deductible period for home care," Slome advised. "Or, explain how some options will even allow a family member to provide care." To learn more about long-term care planning and to connect with local specialists visit the Association's website or call 818-597-3227. Please register or log in to keep reading. No credit card required! Stay logged in to skip the surveys. After months of belittling or opposing the use of masks against the novel coronavirus, Republican politicians are coming around. Even President Donald Trump, who has scorned masks, now promotes them in scripted briefings. Instead, Trump and his proteges have drawn a new line: Theyre against requiring people to wear face coverings. I want people to have a certain freedom, Trump argued in a Fox News interview on July 19. But one important constituency disagrees with Trumps position: Republican voters. Advertisement Public opinion within the GOP has shifted in favor of masks. In a Navigator survey taken in late May, Republican voters said they were pro-mask, not anti-mask, by a margin of 24 percentage points. By July, that margin had grown to 38 points. In the May survey, 24 percent of Republicans said they generally didnt wear masks; by July, that number was down to 13 percent. The July Navigator survey also asked voters to choose between two statements: that there is too much shaming of people for not wearing masks or that people who dont wear masks in public places are putting others at risk and deserve to be called out. Most Republicans chose the latter statement. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Republicans dont just support masks. They support mask mandates. Two weeks ago, in an AP/NORC poll, a two-to-one Republican majority (58 percent to 27 percent) endorsed requiring Americans to wear face masks when theyre around other people outside their homes. Seventy percent of Republicans said that as schools reopened, requiring all students and staff [to] wear face masks was essential or important. In a Yahoo News poll released on Friday, 57 percent of Republicans said it should be mandatory to wear a mask in public, and 65 percent said it should be mandatory to do so in states with large numbers of new COVID-19 cases. If youre a member of Congress, you might assume that opposing a federal mandate, as opposed to state or local mandates, is the safe position in the GOP. But youd be mistaken. In a mid-July Fox News poll, 55 percent of Republican voters said the federal government should announce a national mask-wearing order for indoor spaces. Last week, in a Harvard CAPS/Harris survey, two-thirds of Republican voters endorsed a national mandate making it mandatory to wear masks in public to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Advertisement Advertisement You might assume that opposing a federal mandate, as opposed to state or local mandates, is the safe position within the GOP . But youd be mistaken. This support for mandates is more than symbolic. Republicans say theyre willing to enforce such orders with fines or incarceration. In a Politico/Morning Consult poll taken two weeks ago, 58 percent of Republican voters said their own states should impose a mask mandate in public spaces, where not wearing a mask could be punishable by fine or jail time. In the Harvard/Harris survey, 57 percent of Republicans endorsed local governments imposing fees for anyone who does not wear masks in public spaces. Even Trump fanswho are generally more hostile to masks than Republicans as a whole aretend to favor mask mandates. In the Fox News poll, most voters who approved of Trumps job performance backed a national order requiring masks indoors. In the Morning Consult poll, most Trump approvers endorsed a mask mandate punishable by fines or jail. In the Harvard/Harris poll, most voters who said they had cast ballots for Trump in 2016 supported local governments imposing fees for anyone who does not wear masks in public spaces. In the Yahoo News poll, 59 percent of people who said they would vote for Trump in 2020 agreed that states with large numbers of new COVID-19 cases should require masks to be worn in public places. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement State surveys show the same pattern. Two weeks ago, in a Quinnipiac poll of Texas, 64 percent of Republicans endorsed Gov. [Greg] Abbotts order that requires most people in Texas to wear a face mask in public at this time. In Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has refused to issue such an order, 60 percent of Republicans said people in Florida should be required to wear face masks in public. In Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp has sued local officials to stop them from requiring masks, 68 percent of Republicans favored requiring people to wear face masks when they come within six feet of others in public places indoors. Republican acceptance of mask orders isnt unlimited. The Georgia poll, taken by Monmouth University, asked a separate question about an outdoor ban requiring people to wear face masks when they come within six feet of others in public places outdoors. Republicans opposed that idea, 52 percent to 40 percent. But whites narrowly supported it, as did voters in Trump counties, and Georgia voters as a whole backed it by 30 percentage points. Likewise, in the earliest July poll on mask mandates, 56 percent of Republicans rejected the proposition that everyone should be required to wear face masks in public. But by every other measure, the voters on whom Republican politicians relywhites, white men, white non-college voters, and rural votersendorsed that proposition. Masks are good. They significantly reduce transmission of the virus. And because they prevent the wearer from infecting othersas opposed to protecting the wearer from an infection he or she might otherwise choose to riskthey should be required. But if that argument doesnt persuade your governor, your senators, or your state representatives to support a mandate, show them the polls. If they arent moved to protect others, maybe theyll do it to protect themselves. For more of Slates news coverage, subscribe to What Next on Apple Podcasts or listen below. BERLIN, July 31 (Reuters) - The German defence minister said on Friday that she would hold talks after the summer with the premiers of states affected by U.S. plans to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany to see how the national armed forces can help those regions. "Regarding the regrettable plans to withdraw U.S. troops, I will, at the beginning of the parliamentary session after the summer, invite the premiers of the states affected to discuss how the Bundeswehr can support the affected regions," Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in a statement. "We're bearing German and European interests in mind. The truth is that a good life in Germany and Europe increasingly depends on how we ensure our own security," she added. The U.S. military on Wednesday unveiled the troop withdrawal plans, in fallout from President Donald Trump's long-simmering feud with Berlin but said it will keep nearly half of those forces in Europe to address tension with Russia. (Reporting by Michelle Martin; editing by Thomas Seythal) Floridas coronavirus report on Saturday included 179 more resident deaths and 9,642 new COVID-19 cases, as the state kept away from the record-setting numbers of the past few days. Health officials the previous day reported 257 deaths from disease complications, the most during the pandemic. These are fatalities that happened in recent weeks, but took time to confirm for the COVID-19 tally. While the newly reported cases is a jump from the 9,007 infections listed on Fridays report, its the seventh straight day of fewer than 10,000 cases. And its much better than the previous Saturday, when the Department of Health reported 12,199 new cases. The one-day peak was 15,300 infections on July 12. The test results reported on a single day typically reflect tests taken over several days. The state has tallied 480,028 cases and 7,144 deaths to date, classifying COVID-19 as the states deadliest infectious disease. In 2019, there were 2,703 deaths attributed to the flu and pneumonia in Florida. SOUTH FLORIDA South Florida, which accounts for 29 per cent of Floridas population, reported 4,711 new cases in the past day, or 48.9 per cent of the daily total for the state, according to the state Department of Health. Broward County: 1,386 new coronavirus cases were reported Saturday, bringing the total to 56,797. A total of 767 people have died, 33 more than reported Friday. Palm Beach County: 580 new cases were reported, bringing the total to 33,854. A total of 848 people have died, 18 more than reported Friday. Miami-Dade County: 2,745 new cases on Saturday, bringing the total to 121,207. A total of 1,663 people have died. Thats 36 more than reported Friday. TESTING AND THE POSITIVITY RATE Florida says it has swabbed 3.68 million people since the pandemic began, and 13 per cent have been positive. Florida has had the third-highest number of COVID-19 tests in the country tied with Texas behind California (7.8 million) and New York (5.9 million). Florida reported an 11.1 per cent positivity rate for tests statewide in the previous 24-hour period, a slight increase since Friday. In South Florida the rates are: 16.2 per cent for Miami-Dade, which is up a hair since Friday; 12.8 per cent for Broward, an increase of two percentage points over the previous day; and 8.8 per cent for Palm Beach County, which is similar to the past day. The daily positivity rate is a key figure, since its one of the numbers that indicates the prevalence of the disease in the population. In May, Floridas positivity rate was about 5 per cent, and state officials say they want it to drop back down under 10 per cent. Coronavirus testing sites across South Florida, including those run by the state, closed Friday, because of concerns about the region experiencing the effects of Hurricane Isaias. COVID-19 testing in other parts of the state will not be interrupted by the storm. Impacted testing sites are expected to reopen by Wednesday. HOSPITALIZATIONS The number of people being treated for COVID-19 at hospitals on Saturday decreased statewide and in South Florida, records show. The total stood at 7,965 as of 11:30 a.m., according to the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration. About 24 hours earlier, the same report listed 8,223 patients. Miami-Dade County has the most people hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of the new coronavirus: 1,739 patients, a decrease of 19 since Friday. Next is Broward with 1,165, down by 41 since Friday. Palm Beach County has 496 patients, a decrease of 30. A different report, from the state health department, shows 26,972 Florida residents have been hospitalized since the start of the pandemic. Thats an increase of 12,147 patients since July 1, when the total was 14,825 hospitalizations. Officials say the most vulnerable to hospitalization and death are people older than 65 or those who have underlying health concerns such as weakened immune systems, diabetes or obesity. The state this week began promoting a virus-fighting initiative called One Goal One Florida. Its objective is to unite Floridians and urge them to work together in the fight against COVID-19. Residents are asked to: Protect the vulnerable, including the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions. Practice proper hygiene, including washing your hands. Practice social distancing by avoiding closed spaces and crowded places. Wear a mask if you are in close contact with others. DEATHS Statewide: The official COVID-19 death total for Florida reached 7,144 on Saturday. That figure includes 122 people who were not residents; ; officials changed that after listing 123 nonresident deaths on Fridays report. The three South Florida counties account for 3,278 deaths, which is 45.9 per cent of the state total. Seniors: At least 3,024 deaths have occurred in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, a figure that represents 43.1 per cent of the state total for coronavirus deaths of residents. Miami-Dade County has the highest number of long-term care facility deaths, with 607, or 20.1 per cent of the total. Palm Beach County had 342 deaths, or 11.3 per cent, and Broward accounted for 216 deaths, or 7.1 per cent. Nationwide: Florida has reported an average of about 179 deaths per day, or 1,250 total over the past seven days. After the states recent surge of fatalities, Floridas death rate now ranks 19th compared with other states that is 31 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Controls COVID Data Tracker. New York City has the highest death rate with 280 deaths per 100,000. California is at 23 deaths per 100,000 and Texas 22 deaths per 100,000. California and Texas are the most populous states in the country, followed by Florida and New York. Read more about: Thousands of people protested against coronavirus restrictions in the centre of Berlin on what opponents of social distancing rules described as Freedom Day. Some demonstrators held up homemade placards describing the pandemic as a false alarm despite more than 211,000 cases and 9,200 deaths in Germany since the start of the outbreak. Others claimed they were being forced to wear a muzzle or chanted: Were here and were loud, because we are being robbed of our freedom. One protester even showed opposition to a possible vaccine by calling for a reliance on natural defence instead. Police estimated that around 17,000 people attended the demonstration, titled The End Of The Pandemic Freedom Day. The crowd whistled and cheered as it marched from the Brandenburg Gate through the citys Tiergarten park. Lockdown measures have been eased gradually since April but social distancing rules remain in place and people are required to wear masks in public transport and shops. However officials are concerned about a rise in the infection rate nationwide over the past week, with 955 new cases reported on Friday. Germanys public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute, said there had been many smaller outbreaks linked to family events, leisure activities and workplaces and also people returning from travel abroad. The number of new cases reported daily has been increasing since last week, the RKI said in its update on Saturday. This development is very concerning and will continue to be monitored very closely by the RKI. A further worsening of the situation must be avoided. The RKI warned that the general public had to be committed to decreasing transmission by observing social distancing and hygiene advice and wearing a face mask when necessary. Additional reporting by agencies. A British boy is fighting for his life in hospital after plunging 26ft from cliffs on the holiday island of Formentera. The unnamed boy, who had just turned 13, suffered a 'severe' head injury and was pulled from the sea unconscious, according to health officials. He is understood to have been taking part on a trip with an outdoor activities firm at the time of the incident. Emergency responders said the boy plunged from a height of around 26ft, but some local media reports claim he fell from as high as 50ft. Emergency responders were scrambled to the scene after the 13-year-old boy fell from a height of 26ft Emergency teams are pictured about at the scene of the incident Firefighters rushed to the scene along with local police, Civil Guard and paramedics mobilised by a regional government-run emergency response centre. After being pulled from the sea, the boy was rushed to a nearby jetty so he could be transported to hospital. He was initially taken to Formentera Hospital before being transferred by helicopter to a second hospital on another of the Balearic Islands. Hospital sources confirmed today he was in intensive care with 'multiple injuries.' Officials initially said he had been taken to Son Espases Hospital in Majorca, although one well-placed source said he was in a private clinic in Ibiza. The circumstances surrounding the incident, which happened around 1.30pm on Friday in Punta Prima on Formentera's north coast are under investigation. The boy's family own a holiday home on the paradise island, and the teenager is believed to be a twin. The spot where the incident occurred is by steps below the Hotel Club Punta Prima where youngsters have been filmed in the past jumping into the sea from cliffs. After being pulled from the sea, the boy was rushed to a nearby jetty so he could be transported to hospital The circumstances surrounding the incident, which happened around 1.30pm on Friday in Punta Prima on Formentera's north coast are under investigation There was no immediate suggestion the British boy had jumped from height, with officials describing a 'fall' in their initial reports. Staff at the hotel said they were aware of the incident but confirmed the child was not staying at the establishment. A spokesman for the Civil Guard in Majorca confirmed: 'We are investigating the circumstances.' A well-placed source added: 'The injured youngster is a 13-year-old British boy.' A local health source said in the aftermath of the incident: 'The boy who has fallen is a youngster who is of foreign nationality. 'He fell from a height of around eight metres (26 feet). The spot where the incident occurred is by steps below the Hotel Club Punta Prima where youngsters have been filmed in the past jumping into the sea from cliffs 'He was taken to Formentera Hospital and then transferred by helicopter to Son Espases Hospital in Majorca. 'He has suffered a serious head injury and is in a critical condition.' Another health official later said he was in a private clinic in Ibiza. On Wednesday a 38-year-old Brit was badly hurt after leaping from a cliff into the sea in Ibiza. Shocked onlookers recorded the moment the thrill seeker jumped into the water at a beauty spot called Cap Negret near the party resort of San Antonio. He suffered multiple injuries and was admitted to intensive care at Can Misses Hospital in Ibiza before being moved on Thursday to a traumatology unit. The unnamed man was initially said to have suffered broken bones and a severe spinal injury, although officials later said no evidence of a spinal problem had been found. Police on Saturday conducted raids at various locations in Patiala district and arrested four persons wanted in connection with the hooch tragedy that claimed at least 84 lives in Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur besides recovering huge amounts of lahan (raw material to make liquor). A team led by Patiala range inspector general of police (IGP) Jatinder Singh Aulakh and senior superintendent of police (SSP) Vikramjeet Singh Duggal conducted the raids at Rajpuras Jhilmil Dhaba and Banurs Green Dhaba. Those arrested are Prem Singh, owner of Azad Transport, his accomplice Bhinda, Green Dhaba owner Gurjant Singh and Jhilmil Dhaba manager Narender Singh. They were handed over to the Tarn Taran police. The police recovered 200 litre lahan from Jhilmil Dhaba and 200 litre diesel-like liquid from Green Dhaba. Also, the police seized 950 litre lahan from Rajpura and Ghanaur areas and registered five FIRs. The names of the two eateries had also surfaced when an illicit distillery was unearthed at Ghanaur of Rajpura on May 14. The police then conducted raids at these premises but failed to make any recovery. Bhinda was wanted in the case and was on the run since then, a police official privy to the investigation said. SSP Duggal said the arrests were made on the basis of inputs received from Tarn Taran police. It was found in the preliminary probe that the raw material for making illegal liquor was transported from these dhabas. A detailed investigation is on as how they run the business, he said. The Ghanaur illegal distillery busted on May 14 was using ethyl alcohol (ENA), which is used to make sanitiser. The accused were diluting the chemical to make liquor and were selling around 1,000 cases of liquor a day. Amrik Singh, sarpanch of Khanpur Khurd village, whose wife is a zila parishad member affiliated with the Congress, was among those arrested in the case. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON By PTI WASHINGTON: India has received a strong bipartisan support from members of the US Congress against the recent Chinese military aggression in Ladakh. Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a bitter standoff in several areas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh since May 5. The situation deteriorated after the June 15 Galwan Valley clashes in which 20 Indian Army personnel were killed and an unconfirmed number of Chinese soldiers died. In the last few weeks, dozens of lawmakers, across the aisle, both on the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate and outside the Capitol have praised India of standing strong against the Chinese efforts to grab Indian territories. "I call on China to end its military aggression. This conflict should only be settled through peaceful means," Congressman Frank Pallone, one of the senior-most Democratic lawmakers, said on the floor of the US House of Representatives, joining other lawmakers in condemning the recent Chinese aggression along the LAC in India's Ladakh region. A strong supporter of the India-US relationship, Pallone, founder and Co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, has been a member of the US Congress since 1988. At a time when there is a bitter political divide in Washington DC, influential lawmakers from both the GOP and Democratic Party have been supporting Indian stand against China. "In the months leading to this clash, the People's Republic of China (PRC) military reportedly amassed 5,000 soldiers along this boundary and that clearly meant to redraw longstanding resettled borders by force and aggression," Pallone claimed. Support to India against China has come in the form of tweets, public speeches, House and Senate floor, letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India's Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, and Congressional resolutions. Several lawmakers have also made a call to Sandhu to express their outrage against China. A day earlier, Sandhu received a call from Republican Senator Cory Gardner from Colorado to express his condolences on the loss of lives of Indian soldiers at the LAC. "The US-India relationship is broad, deep, and growing - and we discussed how vital the cooperation between our nations is to countering common challenges and aggression in the region and upholding a rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific," said Gardner, who is also the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia. Sandhu, who has been meeting top American lawmakers, virtually, on a daily basis has received multiple Congressmen and Senators expressing their strong support to India against China. "India has made it clear, it will not be bullied by Beijing," Senator Marco Rubio said after his call with Sandhu. Senator Rick Scott, weeks ago, wrote to Prime Minister Modi to commend his fight against the Chinese aggression. "As you continue to stand strong against Communist China and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi, I want to offer help in any way I can to the Republic of India, the world's largest democracy and our ally. The US will always defend our allies and those fighting for freedom. Please do not hesitate to reach out if there is anything you need in this fight," Scott said. Congressmen George Holding and Brad Sherman, co-chairmen of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, along with several other lawmakers including Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna wrote a letter to Sandhu to express extreme disappointment over the events that took place in the Galwan Valley. They said over the last few months, the Chinese authorities have been acting with impunity and have attempted to transgress on the LAC. "We are disappointed that China has been acting in contradiction to their agreements with India, in their attempt to change the status quo and challenge Indian troops at the border," the Congressmen wrote. Led by Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi and co-sponsored by several others including Ro Khanna, Frank Pallone, Tom Suozzi, Ted Yoho, George Holding, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Haley Stevens and Steve Chabot, the House of Representatives has passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which says China should work toward de-escalating the situation along the LAC with India through existing diplomatic mechanisms and not through force. Another NDAA amendment, moved by Congressman Chabot along with Indian-American lawmaker Ami Bera said India and China should work towards de-escalating the situation along the LAC. The amendment expresses its concern over the growing territorial assertiveness of China. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor alleged that for the sake of grabbing territory, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) appears to have instigated the most violent clash between China and India since those nations went to war in 1962. "I am extremely concerned by the ongoing Chinese aggression along the LAC. China is demonstrating once again that it is willing to bully its neighbours rather than resolve conflicts according to international law," said Congressman Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. "China has resumed its submarine intrusions in the Japanese contiguous zones and picked deadly fights with India at high altitude," alleged Senator Tom Cotton. Ameriabank, in cooperation with Visa payment processing system, has announced a special campaign aiming to promote tourism in Armenia and surprise and delight its customers preferring noncash payments. Ameriabank cardholders who will make at least 15 non-cash* transactions in the period starting August 1 and ending September 30, 2020, using their Visa Classic or Visa Gold cards will get a chance to participate in the draw held by Ameriabank and win two of 500 Ameria Tour tickets. The qualifying payments should be for at least AMD 5,000 or its equivalent in foreign currency. The following winners will be selected randomly via Random.org out of the eligible Bank customers having performed non-cash transactions: 20 entrants will receive a 3-day stay for 2 persons at 20 top hotels of Armenia 250 entrants will receive Ameria Tour tickets, each for 2 persons The Ameria Tour draw will take place on October 15 at 3:00 p.m. and will be live streamed on Ameriabanks Facebook page. * Utility payments, card-to-card payments and account-to-account transfers do not qualify as non-cash transactions. For full information on the terms and conditions of Ameria Tour draw, please visit . Ameriabank CJSC Ameriabank is a dynamically developing bank and one of the major and most stable financial institutions in Armenia. Ameriabank CJSC is a universal bank offering corporate, investment and retail banking services in a comprehensive package of banking solutions. For full information, please visit www.ameriabank.am or call (+37410) 56 11 11. A rare bat which has only ever been found in Ireland once before seven years ago has been recorded flying around the Wicklow Mountains National Park in Glendalough. A Greater Horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) has been recorded by ecologist Nick Marchant on a number of occasions this summer in Glendalough. It's the first time the species has been found in County Wicklow. The only other sighting of the species in Ireland was in Wexford in 2013. Nick's first encounter with the Greater Horseshoe bat was completely unexpected and took place at 11.30 p.m. at night as he was carrying out a volunteer survey of the area. 'It came as a complete surprise. The Greater Horseshoe bat isn't associated with Ireland and the only other sighting was seven years ago when bat surveyor Paul Scott came across one of the bats in the cellar of an old house. Generally, they like to hibernate underground in places like caves, mines and cellars. The first time I recorded the Greater Horseshoe in Glendalough was at 11.30 p.m. when one flew right in front of me in the darkness. I had a bat detector which allows you hear the bat's ultra-sound signal. Greater Horseshoe bats have a very distinctive sound which is impossible to miss.' The Greater Horseshoe bat is one of the largest species found in the U.K. where it is resident. It has been described as being similar to a small pear in size. Its nose as the name suggests is shaped like a horseshoe. While it's fur is reddish-brown on its back and cream underneath. How this Greater Horseshoe bat came to Glendalough remains a mystery. The nearest known colonies are across the Irish Sea, at least 150km away in Pembrokeshire in Wales. 'Usually they live in colonies but you could have single bats travelling long distances and ending up in somewhere like Glendalough. The odd Greater Horseshoe bat might be exploring further and there could be more visiting Ireland in the future. Glendalough and its mature woodland is a great habitat for other species of bats. It's the sort of habitat they like. They only come out at night, and on any one night in Glendalough you can find hundreds of bats, all of different species,' added Nick. Like all bat species found in Ireland and Britain, Greater Horseshoes are nocturnal and insectivorous, feeding on moths and larger beetles like dung beetles and cockchafers. Bat Conservation Ireland have asked that anyone surveying bats on the east coast of Ireland and using auto-id functions on their full spectrum bat detectors should make sure that Greater Horseshoe bat is enabled. President Buhari President Muhmmadu Buhari has promised that all ongoing investigations into previous and new corruption cases would be thoroughly pursued. The President made the promise on Friday in his message to Nigerians after the private Eid prayers held with his family and aides at the forecourt of the State House, Abuja. He expressed regrets that some public officials charged with trust in the fight against the menace of corruption by past and present administrations had abused the trust placed in them, adding that his administration emplaced the special investigative commission to ensure all cases are probed. He also assured that there would be more resources for the countrys military, police and other security agencies to deal with the unwanted security situation in some areas of the country. On the issue of corruption, President Buhari, in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said that all past and present cases will be fully investigated. This is why we put the commission (of investigation) in place. There has been abuse of trust by people trusted by the previous administration and this administration, he said, stressing that all of such cases will be uncovered and firmly dealt with by his government. On the specific case of the Niger Delta, the President decried the wastage of the resources earmarked for the betterment of the lives of the people of that region, lamenting that corruption had been unhelpful in that regard, especially if you recall there is the 13 per cent derivation. He also warned against the vandalization of oil pipelines in the oil- producing areas which often results in environmental pollution. Those who are blowing pipelines and interfering with the production of petroleum products are hurting their people more than the rest of Nigerians because majority of their people are fishermen, fisherwomen and farmers. Now if they pollute the land and the waters, the fish goes into the deeper sea where the people cannot go and they cannot grow anything. They are hurting their immediate communities more than any other thing, the President further noted. Assessing the state of security in the country, the President described the situation, particularly in the North West and the North Central parts of the country as very disturbing. President Buhari said that while much had been achieved, security wise, from the situation he inherited in 2015, more still needed to be done. He said considering the security situation on ground when he came to office, Nigerians know that we have done our best. However, what is coming out of the North West and the North Central is very disturbing. Responding to a specific question on the performance of the Service Chiefs which recently, he said needed to get better, the President said that the Military, the Police and other security agencies are working hard. We are making available resources to them to even do better, he assured, adding that from the reports I am getting, they could do much betterthey could do much better. But we are keeping them on the alert all the time to do their duties, he said. Asked what he wished for Nigerians as they celebrate the Eid El-Kabir, the President said I wish Nigerians the best of luck. In the Eid-Kabir sermon, the Imam has said it all, we want security, prosperity and well being of all Nigerians. We want Nigerians to be very conscious of their country. Sweetshop owners, who were relieved by the governments decision to reopen confectionaries on the eve of Raksha Bandhan, have reported poor sales amid the Covid-19 pandemic. While a few said business was slowly coming back on track, others said they had never witnessed such slowdown in the market during Raksha Bandhan and the festive fervour was conspicuously missing from the markets. Punjab Halwai Association president Narinder Pal Singh Pappu said, The decision taken by the state government to open sweet shops on Sunday will help the sector move past the slowdown. Initially, we were expecting low sales. Only 30-35% material is being prepared in comparison to last year, but business has improved ahead of Raksha Bandhan, as residents have started purchasing sweets. We are taking all precautions to avoid spread of infection. However, few shopkeepers said they were still witnessing an unprecedented slowdown in the countdown to the festival. The owner of Amanz Sweets, Model Town, Shamsher Singh, said,We have been in business for around 12 years now, but have never witnessed such a poor response during Raksha Bandhan. Fear has gripped the residents and only around 25% people have bought sweets in comparison to the past . Shopkeepers are hoping for better sales on Sunday. Owner of Chawla sweets in the Field Ganj area Mohinder Pal Singh said, We have only received a 25%-30% response. Festive fervour is missing from the markets. We hope residents step out of their homes on Sunday and an increase in sales is witnessed. Social distancing a rare site Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singhs appeal to distribute free masks with sweets received a lukewarm response. While city-based shops were seen distributing masks, shopkeepers in the interior refrained from doing so. Also, social distancing norms were not followed. While shopkeepers were avoiding crowding inside the shops, residents waiting for their turn outside the shops ignored social distancing. Pappu said,The association has asked every shopkeepers to distribute free masks with sweets and take all precautions required to control spread of disease. Dozens of doctors' groups on Saturday warned that the Philippines was losing the coronavirus fight, urging President Rodrigo Duterte to tighten a recently eased lockdown as cases surged and hospitals turned away patients. Eighty medical associations representing tens of thousands of doctors signed the open letter as the country posted another record nearly 5,000 new cases on Saturday, pushing the total to more than 98,000. "Healthcare workers are united in sounding off a distress signal to the nation -- our healthcare system has been overwhelmed," the letter said. "We are waging a losing battle against COVID-19, and we need to draw up a consolidated, definitive plan of action." An increasing number of health workers have fallen ill or quit their jobs, while some packed hospitals are now refusing to admit new patients, it added. The health department earlier said 34 health workers are among those who have died of the disease in the Philippines. Total deaths stood at 2,039 as of Saturday. The government has blamed poor compliance with health protocols for the sharp increase in infections. The country imposed one of the harshest lockdowns in the world in mid-March, that kept people at home except to buy food and seek health treatment. But the government recently loosened the restrictions to allow people to return to work after predictions that the Philippine economy will fall into recession, with millions of jobs already lost. In the open letter, doctors urged Duterte to put the capital Manila and surrounding provinces back under "enhanced community quarantine" until August 15 to give the country time to "refine our pandemic control strategies". In response, Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque initially said the government was balancing the health and economy of the nation and that it was now looking at stepping up other strategies after the lockdown "served its purpose". But hours later Roque issued a new statement saying the government will consider their proposals. "Your voices have been heard. We cannot afford to let down our modern heroes," Roque added. Health department officials earlier this week acknowledged hospital bed availability was drying up and the government has had limited success in hiring new doctors, nurses and other health care workers. The letter said contact tracing was "failing miserably" and public transport and workplace settings were often unsafe. Lei Alfonso, an official of the Philippine Society of Public Health Physicians, told a news conference on Saturday that the developments "will push us to the brink to become the next New York City, where Covid-19 patients die at home or (on) stretchers". President Duterte on Thursday called on Filipinos to keep faith in his ability to swiftly procure a vaccine to be produced by China, a key supporter of his rule. Vietnam added 28 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday evening, including 26 local infections and two imported cases, bringing the national tally to 586, the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control announced. The country documented a total of 40 COVID-19 patients on Saturday, a drop from the record spike of 82 cases reported the previous day. The 28 cases confirmed on Saturday evening are aged between 9 and 86. Among them, two are imported cases that have been quarantined in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh after arriving from Indonesia on Wednesday. The other 26 are local infections including 18 in Da Nang, five in the central province of Quang Nam, two in Ho Chi Minh City, and one in the northern province of Thai Binh. Nineteen of these infections can be traced to Da Nang Hospital while seven all residing in Da Nang have unclear epidemiological information. Vietnam has logged a total of 586 COVID-19 patients since the pandemic first hit in January, 373 of whom have recovered. Three COVID-19 patients have died in the Southeast Asian country, partly due to severe underlying health conditions. Vietnam reported its first community-based case after 99 days on Saturday last week. Since then, 142 local infections have been documented, all can be linked to Da Nang, which is the country's COVID-19 outbreak epicenter now with more than 100 cases in the community. The coastal tourist city entered 15 days of enhanced social distancing on Tuesday, with nonessential services shuttered and residents banned from gathering in large groups in public places. The municipal administration on Saturday ordered mass COVID-19 testing for high-risk residents Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The congressional spending spree thats followed the coronavirus lockdown has obligated our children and grandchildren to trillions in debt that wont be paid off easily. The blame for this doesnt lie with the Trump Administration but goes back over many years because Congress, no matter which party was in charge, has failed to consider seriously the financial obligations its put on future generations. Its not just Social Security and Medicare that could bankrupt us when they reach the tipping point where more retirees are living longer and healthier than the workforce can afford to support. There are other problems we can already see coming over the horizon that arent being addressed. Take the issue of the public and private pension plans current and future retirees are counting on to provide for them in their golden years. Many are now badly underfunded and, if they crash, it will make the Great Recession look like a small market correction. Both Washington and the states have for too long allowed pension plans to exist in the private and public sectors that were simply concentrated wealth under the control of so-called experts whod keep it safe. Except they havent. Illinois could default anytime over the pressure created by its pension obligations to retired state workers. The truth is these plans have been abused and raided for decades. More than once the workers have been left with nothing unless someone or something stepped in with a bailout. Alternatives exist now, like Roth IRAs and 401Ks that anyone can open. Employers can contribute to these plans, even match what their employees invest, which makes them preferable to the defined benefit plans of the past. They dont leave everyone exposed to a potential taxpayer-funded bailout if they go bankrupt, and they give workers who participate a significant measure of control over their retirement finances. For all the good thats come with reform since the 1970s, theres still a lot wrong with the existing system that needs to be fixed. There are currently about 1,400 pension funds that, as defined by the federal Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), are collectively bargained plan(s) maintained by more than one employer, usually within the same or related industries, and a labor union. There are more than 10 million workers whove invested in them in everything from mining to manufacturing to trucking. They constitute a powerful voting bloc and theyre worried that their plans are underfunded and in financial trouble. Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, a leading advocate multiemployer plan reform, estimates theyre underfunded by more than $638 billion while the PBGC, the government guarantor for pension plans, is projected to become insolvent in less than five years. Can you say problem? Polling commissioned by the Retirement Security Coalition in swing states where control of the Senate over the next two years may be decided in the next election found voters care deeply about this issue. In Michigan, where the latest polls show the race very tight between incumbent Democrat Gary Peters and GOP challenger John James, a whopping 70 percent of the more than 440,400 people surveyed agreed these plans are endangered and in need of reform. Similar numbers come from states where other Senate races will help determine control of the chamber like Iowa, North Carolina, and Georgia. The data suggests Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who runs the Senate and presumably wants to continue doing so over the next two years needs to make the issue more of a priority if he wants to keep his current job. Portmans proposed a set of commonsense reforms for multiemployer plans that at least deserve a hearing preferably before retiree benefits start getting cut and the demand for a bailout starts. The Senate needs to get moving. Peter Roff is a senior fellow at Frontiers of Freedom and a former U.S. News and World Report contributing editor who appears regularly as a commentator on the One America News network. Email him at RoffColumns@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @Peter Roff Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Agriculture officials have captured their first Asian giant hornet this month in Washington State - and are in a race against the clock to find the rest before mating season starts. The Washington State Department of Agriculture revealed in a press release that the Asian giant hornet, nicknamed 'murder hornet', was trapped on July 14. Officials set up bottle trap near Birch Bay in Whatcom County and, following a review at WSDA's entomology lab, confirmed the hornet's species on July 29. This is the first hornet detected in a set trap, rather than found in the environment like the last five confirmed sightings in Washington. 'This is encouraging because it means we know that the traps work,' Sven Spichiger, managing entomologist for the department. said in the press release. 'But it also means we have work to do.' The Washington Department of Agriculture announced that officials captured their first Asian giant hornet (pictured) in a bottle trap in Watcom County Now, agriculture officials have just two months to locate the rest of the invasive species and remove them from Washington before mating season. The department said that by mid-September the Asian giant hornet colony will begin reproducing new queens and drones. 'Destroying the nest before new queens emerge and mate will prevent the spread of this invasive pest,' the department said. The WSDA said they will search for Asian giant hornets with infrared cameras and place extra traps to capture the insect alive. 'If they catch live hornets, the department will attempt to tag and track them back to their colony. Once located, the agency will eradicate the colony,' the department said. Agriculture officials now have just around two months to find the rest of the Asian giant hornets in Washington before mating season begins mid-September Pictured: Washington State Department of Agriculture entomologist Chris Looney displays a dead Asian giant hornet (bottom) a sample sent from Japan and brought in for research, next to a native bald-faced hornet (top) collected in a trap WSDA added that in addition to the traps set up by the department, citizen scientists and others have placed more than 1,300 traps throughout the state. 'If it becomes established, this hornet will have negative impacts on the environment, economy, and public health of Washington State,' the department website read. The Asian giant hornet first arrived to the United States last year when there were two confirmed sightings near Blaine, Washington. Asian hornets have a dark brown or black velvety body, have a yellow or orange band on the fourth segment of the abdomen and have yellow-tipped legs. They are typically around two inches long. Asian giant hornets are more than double the size of honeybees, and have a wingspan measuring more than three inches. Asian giant hornets are also known as 'murder hornets' because of their potentially deadly stings and aggressive attacks on prey Pictured: Two Asian giant hornets were placed on a notebook to show the large size of the insect Asian giant hornets are more than double the size of honeybees, and have a wingspan measuring more than three inches The species got their nickname 'murder hornet' because of their potentially deadly stings and aggressive attacks on prey. The hornet has a large stinger filled with venom that contains neurotoxin, which is capable of causing both cardiac arrest and anaphylactic shock. Beekeeper Conrad Berube told The New York Times he was recently attacked by a swarm of the 'murder hornets' on Vancouver Island. 'It was like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh,' Berube stated, adding that he was left bleeding from the attack. Berube was stung seven times and was lucky to be alive. But while the hornets can be deadly to humans, entomologists are more concerned that they could kill off bee populations in North America. The WSDA said that Asian giant hornets attack and destroy hives- sometimes in a matter of hours. 'The hornets enter a "slaughter phase" where they kill bees by decapitating them. They then defend the hive as their own, taking the brood to feed their own young,' the department said. The bee population has been on a concerning decline for years and their eradication could have detrimental affects on the environment. A survey by the U.S. National Agriculture Statistics Services showed that the population declined from six million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million hives in 2008, a 60 per cent reduction. New Delhi: Ten days before its first online open-book exam (OBE), Delhi University on Saturday began the second phase of mock tests for final-year students. The first phase of mock tests conducted between July 27 and 29 consisted of generic questions while those that began on Saturday, and will continue till August 4, were based on real version and single paper of each program of final semester/year of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes of the current batch. Students took to social media on Saturday to complain of issues they faced during the papers. I was previewing my answers and when I opened the second file, someone elses file was showing, tweeted a final-year student of Faculty of Law, Delhi University. Students, however, said they faced fewer technical glitches this time as compared to the two previous mock tests. Utkarsh Singh, a final-year undergraduate student at Satyawati College, said, Several students faced issues with the server today as well. Though I wrote my papers, I wasnt able to submit because the site doesnt work well on the phone and I couldnt access my laptop at that moment. So many of my batch mates just dont want to appear for these mock tests anymore because they are exhausted. Dean (exams) Vinay Gupta said they had not received any such complaints. Mock test may be considered to test the portal and to prepare for the final exam. At this difficult time, we are trying to facilitate the students and to get the system robust, he said. The first mock test held on July 4 was riddled with glitches. Lakshita Sethi, a final-year undergraduate student of Shri Ram College of Commerce, said, Though there werent any technical issues this time, we had to scan and upload pages one by one instead of compiling into one file. That can be a time-consuming process. On the final day, it can be a challenge and it would have been better if we had more time to practice. Many students opted out of the tests on the first day as they said it wouldnt help them much. Amreen Kohli, a final-year undergraduate student of Gargi College, said, I didnt appear for the test because it wouldnt help me. Since our paper pattern changed this year, we should have mock tests for all papers but the administration is just holding the mock test for just one paper that too in my case, it isnt a high-stakes subject. The varsity had announced OBE exams for final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students as a one-time measure due to the Covid-19 crisis. DU teachers and students have been protesting against the open book online exams for over two months now, and demanding cancellation of final-year exams. Despite the opposition, DU has scheduled the online exams between August 10 and August 31. On Thursday, the university submitted in the Delhi High Court that of the 182,237 final year students who had registered for online exams, around 70,101 had logged in for the first phase of mock tests that started from July 27. Of these, 39,159 (21.4%) students attempted the exams and only 22,372 (12%) could submit their answer sheets. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In 2002, Madeleine West was lucky to survive a horrific bus accident on Sydney's Oxford St that nearly claimed her life. And 18 years later, the 40-year-old has returned to the site of the crash for the first time. Documenting the experience in a piece for Stellar magazine, the Neighbours star detailed how she spent four hours frozen in fear as she sat at the Darlinghurst bus stop where she sustained her injuries. Going back: Madeleine West (pictured) was lucky to survive a horrific bus accident on Sydney's Oxford St that nearly claimed her life. And 18 years later, the 40-year-old returned to the site of the crash for the first time, documenting the experience in Stellar Madeleine explained she felt 'trapped in the paradox of fight or flight' for four hours and 35 minutes as she tried to face her fear. She wrote: Absurdly, it is the hissing of the brakes that sends my heart racing and pulse thrumming. My fists are clenched and my nails dig into my palms with a force that threatens to draw blood. I can't breathe. 'A strange noise catches my attention. A shallow, pained keening. The cry of an injured animal or frightened child. It's coming from me.' Horror: Madeleine explained she felt 'trapped in the paradox of fight or flight' for four hours and 35 minutes as she tried to face her fear She went on: 'There is no way the anger and agony can be silenced, and I begin to weep. Snotty, hiccupy, the choked hysterics of a little kid terrified out of their wits. Apt, really, because that is how I feel and look' She went on: 'There is no way the anger and agony can be silenced, and I begin to weep. Snotty, hiccupy, the choked hysterics of a little kid terrified out of their wits. Apt, really, because that is how I feel and look.' A woman named Karen, a stranger to the actress, saw her distress and comforted her until she was able to calm down. 'Finally, the bus comes that does not elicit terror, and as it rolls away, I turn to her and simply say, 'Thank you'.' Shocking: At the age of 22, Madeleine was hit by a bus while waiting on a footpath at Oxford Street in Sydney. In an previous Instagram post, Madeleine shared a photo of her injuries The actress said she sustained: 'Three skull fractures radiating from the orbital structure around my left eye, one running beneath the brain shelf. This little bugger remained stubbornly open for some time, leaking air bubbles into my cerebral fluid and cerebral fluid into my mouth.' Pictured in 2002 Madeleine says while she has made strides towards facing her fears, she admitted: 'To this day, I still go weak at the knees at the sight of a bus.' At the age of 22, Madeleine was hit by a bus while waiting on a footpath at Oxford Street in Sydney. In an previous Instagram post, Madeleine shared a photo of her injuries, and in a news.com.au interview, pulled no punches while describing them. Recovery: She went on to explain that she made a full recovery - albeit with a 'bundle of scars, a bit of a stutter and a dodgy eyebrow' She explained: 'Three skull fractures radiating from the orbital structure around my left eye, one running beneath the brain shelf. 'This little bugger remained stubbornly open for some time, leaking air bubbles into my cerebral fluid and cerebral fluid into my mouth.' Madeline - who described how the impact caused her brain to 'ricochet' inside her skull like a 'ball between Nadal and Federer' - says police later told her the accident caused her makeup to leave an almost perfect imprint of her face on the bus. Madeleine says while she has made strides towards facing her fears, she admitted: 'To this day, I still go weak at the knees at the sight of a bus' She went on to explain that that the fractures closed after 'several days' and, thankfully, she made a full recovery - albeit with a 'bundle of scars, a bit of a stutter and a dodgy eyebrow'. Since March, the former Underbelly star and her six children have been staying at her home in Byron Bay amid the coronavirus pandemic. Madeleine shares Phoenix, 14, Hendrix, 12, Xascha, nine, Xanthe, eight, and six-year-old twins Xalia and Margaux, with her ex-partner Shannon Bennett. Kim Kardashian shared throwbacks of herself trying on her wedding dress after denying reports she was 'torn' about leaving her husband Kanye West. The snaps were posted as part of Kim's 46th birthday tribute to fashion designer Riccardo Tisci, who was the brains behind her wedding dress when she married Kanye in Florence six years ago. The 39-year-old included several pictures that showed the behind-the-scenes process of being decked out in her sumptuous white bridal gown. Happy day: Kim Kardashian posted a string of Insta Stories pictures this Saturday wishing a happy 46th birthday to Riccardo Tisci; they are pictured with her husband Kanye West One snapshot showed her topless in her undergarments as Riccardo and another gentlemen spread some white lace in front of her in preparation for the full outfit. Kim could be glimpsed taking a full-length mirror selfie in her wedding dress as Riccardo, who is now creative director of Burberry, stood by. The reality TV bombshell was also seen with a smile on her face as she chatted on the phone while modeling her gown. Kim and Kanye married at the iconic Forte Di Belvedere overlooking Florence in May 2014, reportedly paying 300,000 for the use of the venue. Remember when: The Italian fashion designer was the brains behind Kim's wedding dress when she married Kanye in Florence six years ago Fab: She included several pictures that showed the behind-the-scenes process of being decked out in her sumptuous white bridal gown While posting to her Insta Stories that day Kim also included a handwritten note her late father Robert Kardashian wrote to her brother Rob. The letter was addressed 'To my Son' and quoted Proverbs 19:17: 'He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and He will reward you for what you have done.' Kim's elder sister Kourtney Kardashian posted a photograph of the same note to her own Insta Stories this Saturday. The wedding throwbacks come amid Kim's marital trouble with Kanye, with whom she shares four children - North, seven, Saint, four, Chicago, two, and Psalm, one. Making it happen: One snapshot showed her topless in her undergarments as Riccardo and another gentlemen spread some white lace in front of her in preparation for the full outfit Chitchat: The reality TV bombshell was also seen with a smile on her face as she chatted on the phone while modeling her gown Although there are rumors Kim is 'torn' about whether to divorce Kanye her representative told MailOnline the reports are 'absolutely not true.' Kim flew to Wyoming early this week for marriage crisis talks with Kanye and then returned home to Los Angeles while he stayed put. After his presidential campaign rally on July 19 in which he tearfully revealed he and Kim considered aborting North, he launched into a days-long string of Twitter rants denouncing his wife and his mother-in-law Kris Jenner. Sensation: Kim could be glimpsed taking a full-length mirror selfie in her wedding dress as Riccardo, now creative director of Burberry, stood by 'Love you forever': Kim shared a heartwarming throwback with Riccardo in formal wear He accused Kim of trying to have him committed and of having an inappropriate relationship with the rapper Meek Mill. Kanye, who referred to his mother-in-law as 'Kris Jong-Un' in one of his outbursts, also posted and deleted a tweet claiming he was 'trying to divorce' his wife. Last week Kim, who was reportedly livid that he shared the abortion story publicly, made a statement saying the family was 'powerless' to intervene in Kanye's bipolar disorder issues inasmuch as he is an adult. Committed: Earlier this week, Kardashian proved her work ethic is unparalleled, after she headed straight to a photo shoot for her SKIMS line after a tense marriage crisis with the rapper Sexy: On Sunday, she shared multiple sultry shots of herself in the form-fitting shape wear, which showed off every inch of her famous curves Kanye suspended the tweetstorms last Saturday, apologizing to his wife 'for going public with something that was a private matter.' However a few days after his crisis talks with Kim he broke his silence on the social media platform this Friday. 'I cried at the thought of aborting my first born and everyone was so concerned about me... Im concerned for the world that feels you shouldnt cry about this subject,' wrote the Power rapper. Bliss: Kim looked sensational in just a pair of black underwear He followed that up with a Tweet that claimed: 'There is a tactic of 4 Ds Distract Discredit Dismiss To Destroy.' Kanye continued in the same tweet: 'I am quite alright Take a second and think about what is being projected here.' Earlier this week, Kardashian proved her work ethic is unparalleled, after she headed straight to a photo shoot for her SKIMS line, amid the emotional time. 'To my Son': While posting to her Insta Stories that day Kim also included a handwritten note her late father Robert Kardashian wrote to her brother Rob On Sunday, she shared multiple sultry shots of herself in the form-fitting shape wear, which showed off every inch of her famous curves. In addition to posing in just a pair of black underwear and joggers on SKIMS' Instagram account, the brand shared several more of her stripped down to even less in front of varying backgrounds. The ads encouraged her 182 million followers to try her 'classic and comfortable' bralette, which she dubbed a 'summer staple.' The past year has been hard for Melike Aierken, and its just gotten worse. Amid an immigration application to allow her husband to come to Canada from Albania, Aierken was last week admitted to hospital in Montreal. She has thyroid problems and must wait an indeterminate amount of time for the results of a biopsy on her liver. Until her release Thursday, her two children, ages four and nine, were staying with a friend in lieu of any family in the city. Her medical troubles are not over and the stress of another hospital stint with no firm options to care for her children weighs heavily on her, as does the lack of a regular presence of a father in her childrens lives. The kids miss their father, she told the Star through a translator in a video interview in which she frequently fought back tears. Their father misses the kids. Its a difficult story and one thats unfolding in the lingering shadow of Americas military prison, Guantanamo Bay, where years ago Aierkens husband was once held. Originally from Chinas far-western Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Aierken moved to Canada with the help of her father more than a decade ago. Shortly after coming to Canada, she met Ayub Mohammed online, a Uighur living in Albania. The two eventually married and started a family. For the next few years, Aierken lived in both Canada, where she gave birth to her daughter, and Albania, where she gave birth to her son. Both children are Canadian citizens. In 2014, they decided to move to Canada for good and began the immigration process for Mohammed. Aierken came back for good in 2016, though she has made two short visits to see her husband since then. But the family hit a snag that year when Mohammeds application was denied by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, leaving Aierken with the lingering worry her family might never be reunited. The denial was quashed in federal court and is being reassessed by the government department. Mohammeds PR bid was rejected on security concerns labelling him a possible member of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, a terrorist organization with the stated aim to establish Xinjiang as a sovereign state. He said he was kidnapped in Pakistan while there for a short time waiting to continue on to the U.S. shortly after 9/11 and sold to the U.S. military to collect a bounty and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Mohammed was cleared of any wrongdoing by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal and released in 2006 to Albania, because international legal non-refoulement principles prevented his return to China where he faced persecution. Currently, oppression of the Uighur minority in the country has escalated into internment camps, forced sterilization and forced labour, according to reports from newspapers and research institutions. They let him go because he was innocent, Aierken said of her husband. If he was guilty, they never would have let him go. Aierken nonetheless thinks it was time Mohammed spent in Guantanamo Bay thats keeping her husband out of Canada. Mohammeds case is one of a few in which Uighurs who were held in Guantanamo Bay, and cleared of wrongdoing, are trying to reunite with family in Canada. Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uighur Rights Advocacy Project, said in three such cases the men are being victimized a second time by not being granted permanent residency. He believes it is due to the spectre of their Guantanamo Bay detentions. I dont believe there is any security risk or threat for our safety, he said. Basically, Canada is pushing them to prove themselves innocent (of) the sins they have never committed. IRCC said it does not comment on immigration cases due to privacy concerns. How long the process for Mohammeds immigration bid will take is unknown, Aierken said, leaving her in a state of flux and worry. Last weeks admission to hospital has amplified Aierkens stress as she awaits the results of a biopsy and fears another stint in care. Last week, a friend was able to take care of the children but she said she doesnt know whom she will turn to if she needs help again. Its a big responsibility taking care of children, especially during a pandemic, she said. They might be able to look after them for a few days, but long term I dont have anyone else. I dont have a plan. Read more about: Heartland star Amber Marshall gives sneak peek at series quarantine special, filming on her farm Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Beloved television series Heartland will release an exclusive quarantine special episode on the streaming service UP Faith & Family where actress Amber Marshall shares what it's like to film on her family's farm. The UP Faith & Family Heartland exclusive will follow Amy Fleming (Amber Marshall) as we relive the most special, most memorable, fan-favorite moments from the past 13 seasons of 'Heartland,' including an insider look at how the many stunts on the show come together, reads a description of the Aug. 11 episode. Marshall filmed the special on her farm during the quarantine lockdown and has remained positive in the midst of it all. During the special the Canadian native shares helpful tips on how people can make the best of the most difficult of times. And behind-the-scenes bloopers from the longest-running one-hour drama in Canadian television history will also be included in the exclusive episode. The following is an edited transcript of The Christian Posts interview with Marshall in which she talks about filming the special in her home and how she and her family are managing life during the quarantine. Christian Post: What was it like shooting this special at home? Marshall: This has obviously been an incredibly unique year for all. It is in times like this that we learn so much about ourselves and those around us. I have spent so many years on the Heartland set that I often take for granted what goes into making each scene so special. On my own farm it is just me and the animals during the day (my husband works long hours away from the house), so shooting video can be a bit of a challenge sometimes. I purchased a phone tripod to allow for a more hands-free environment and had to depend on the weather for my quality of lighting and sound. My animals are all very comfortable with me so filming with them was the easy part. The hard part was trying to get my message across before they completely took over the shot. I enjoyed including different animals in the segments as I believe that they always lighten the mood and bring a smile to those watching. CP: How has your family been spending time during the quarantine? Marshall: Life has not changed a whole lot on the farm. There are still daily chores that need to be done and we have the space here to not ever feel confined. I think having a routine is the most important part. My husband, Shawn, was lucky to remain working through this time and I keep very busy with life on the farm. I took on projects that Ive been wanting to do for a while (like painting my house and purging my closets) and spent more time enjoying the animals. Since both Shawn and my family live a 40-hour drive away we dont get to see them often normally, so this has not seemed like a prolonged time away. We also dont spend much time in town, so being asked to stay home was not seen as negative. CP: What do you hope viewers take away from the Heartland quarantine special? Marshall: I love the history and the longevity of Heartland. Being able to look back over the seasons and admire the time we have spent together over the past 13 years. I hope viewers are transported into the world of Heartland and the magic that surrounds it. We always refer to Heartland as a breath of fresh air. Watching the horses and the vistas come to life on screen can transport viewers to that place of tranquility and sincerity. This is something that is needed more than ever. Season 13 of the popular family drama Heartland is now available on UPtv, and fans can catch up on all 13 seasons on UP Faith & Family now. For a man who has swung from a 2,700ft building, clung to the outside of a plane taking off and learned to hold his breath underwater for six minutes, a parachute jump doesnt represent a Mission: Impossible, even at the age of 58. Tom Cruise, who famously likes to perform his own stunts, last week threw himself out of a helicopter 10,000ft over the over the Oxfordshire countryside for the latest movie in the franchise. Two of the other cast members joined him in the skydive after filming on Mission: Impossible 7 resumed following a Covid shutdown. Tom Cruise, who famously likes to perform his own stunts, last week threw himself out of a helicopter 10,000ft over the over the Oxfordshire countryside for the latest movie in the franchise Two of the other cast members joined him in the skydive after filming on Mission: Impossible 7 resumed following a Covid shutdown Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie has promised at least three obscene stunts as the franchise continues, admitting that even hes terrified of his own plans. Cruise has been practising his stunts during lockdown, and has been seen racing around dirt tracks on a motocross bike and piloting a helicopter. The actor broke his ankle while filming a stunt for the last Mission: Impossible movie in London three years ago, but that hasnt dampened his enthusiasm for daredevil action. He later recalled how he sustained the injury when his foot hit a wall during a heart-stopping rooftop chase involving co-star Henry Cavill. Cruise has been practising his stunts during lockdown, and has been seen racing around dirt tracks on a motocross bike and piloting a helicopter I knew instantly my ankle was broken, he said. But I really didnt want to do it again so just got up and carried on with the take. [After the shot] I said Its broken, thats a wrap, take me to hospital, and everyone got on the phone and made their vacation arrangement. Cruise who is planning to shoot a future movie on board the International Space Station personally lobbied Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden for permission to allow shooting to restart on Mission: Impossible 7, despite the coronavirus crisis, but with a reduced crew. It is now due for release in November next year. Last week it was revealed that McQuarrie wanted to blow up a 111-year-old bridge in Poland as part of the shoot, much to the consternation of locals. City Editor Tom Roeder is the Gazette's City Editor. In Colorado Springs since 2003, Tom has covered the military at home and overseas and has covered statehouses in Denver and Olympia, Wash. His main job, though, is being dad to two great kids. Facebook A Connecticut man allegedly decapitated his landlord after he was told he needed to move out over overdue rent, police said. Jerry David Thompson was arrested and charged with murder for allegedly beheading his landlord, Victor King, who rented him out a room in his home in Hartford, Connecticut. The altercation between the pair first started after the Hartford Police Department responded to a 911 phone call from Mr King, 64, on Saturday. He told police his 42-year-old roommate, Mr Thompson, was waving a sword at him in a threatening and terrorising manner over a rent dispute, according to an arrest warrant. Mr King gave police his contact information after discussing the incident. It was unclear if the police ever spoke to Mr Thompson. Then police received a call from a neighbour and a separate friend on Sunday asking for a wellness check on Mr King as they both were worried about his safety. Police entered the residence on Sunday afternoon to discover Mr King dead with his body badly slashed and covered in bloody bedding. A medical examiner suggested Mr Kings injuries were consistent with a large edged weapon, according to CNN, and noted lacerations to the landlords right arm, upper chest and across the neck causing decapitation. Police questioned Mr Thompson, who refused to answer any questions or speak. He then wrote on a piece of paper that a paper in glove compart in Jeep is all you need, police said. After obtaining a search warrant, investigators discovered paperwork in Mr Thompsons vehicle that suggested he believed he was a sovereign citizen or an individual not subjected to any statues and can interpret laws in their own way. Mr Thompson appeared in court on Tuesday and reportedly refused to speak to his public defender. He will be held in jail in lieu of $2m bond and is expected to again appear in court on 15 August. Jim Banks, a cousin of Mr King, described his relative as one of the good guys when speaking to the Hartford Courant. Story continues One that would never hurt a soul, he said. One that would always reach out and help others. He was pleasant as can be. Always seemed to be happy. He was just a joy to be around. Read more Key Trump impeachment witness says coming forward ended my career Impeachment witness accuses Trump of bullying- follow live Court papers detail Prince Andrews alleged sex with Epstein victim If Trump loses, the battle for the Republican Partys soul will matter Turkey and Azerbaijan are conducting joint military drills amid ongoing clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Turkey sent US-made F-16 fighter jets to Azerbaijan for joint exercises, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry announced today. The joint military drills began Wednesday and involve planes and helicopters throughout Azerbaijan, Turkeys state-run Anadolu Agency reported. Border clashes erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan this month in the Tavush-Tovuz area; Azerbaijan's Tovuz region is home to a strategic energy pipeline. The flare-up is part of a wider territorial dispute between the two Caucasus nations known as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The area is disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan and there have been several skirmishes there since the end of the Soviet Union. Turkey and Azerbaijan have a historically close relationship and Azerbaijani is a Turkic language. On Thursday, Turkeys Defense Ministry tweeted one nation, two states and shared a video of a joint military drill. Turkey and Armenia have tense relations, which is largely due to their disagreement on the Armenian genocide during the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. This refers to the forced killing and expulsions of Armenian, Syriac and Greek Christians at the time, which Turkey denies constituted a genocide. By Angie Teo, Subrata Nagchoudhury and Samar Hassan JAKARTA/KOLKATA/CAIRO (Reuters) - Masked and socially distanced to fight the coronavirus, Muslims around the world held prayers on Friday to mark the festival of Eid al-Adha, with mosques at reduced capacity and some praying in the open air. Saudi Arabias King Salman bin Abdulaziz, 84, whose country is home to two of Islam's holiest sites, tweeted holiday congratulations a day after leaving hospital in Riyadh. The Haj pilgrimage is being held in the country with attendance drastically reduced. In Istanbul, Muslims held Eid al-Adha prayers at Hagia Sophia for the first time since the historic building was reconverted to a mosque this month following a court ruling revoking its status as a museum that drew criticism from Western countries. In Lebanon, devastated by economic crisis, many found it hard to afford traditional Eid customs. In Tripoli, the country's second city, there were no decorations or twinkling lights, and no electricity to power them. Instead, a large billboard read: "We're broke." Around the world, the festival had to fit in with the realities of the coronavirus. In Indonesia, the religious ministry asked mosques to shorten ceremonies, while many cancelled the ritual of slaughtering livestock and distributing meat to the community. Instead sheep, goats and cows were being killed in abattoirs to mark the 'Feast of the Sacrifice', celebrated by Muslims to commemorate Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail at God's command. "This year's Eid al-Adha is very different from previous years because we need to follow health protocols as we perform prayers, like maintaining social distancing," said Devita Ilhami, 30, who was at the Sunda Kelapa mosque in Jakarta. She said they had to bring their own prayer mats, with markers on the ground to show where they should be laid. Elsewhere in Asia, Muslims including in Thailand and Malaysia prayed in or outside mosques wearing masks. Story continues In Malaysia, while some mosques cancelled the ritual of slaughtering livestock, 13 cows were killed in the traditional way, but under rules limiting the number of animals and people at the Tengku Abdul Aziz Shah Jamek mosque in Kuala Lumpur. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani attended prayers in Kabul. Islamist Taliban militants say they will observe a three-day ceasefire for the holiday, offering some respite from weeks of violence. In India, where Eid will be celebrated mostly from Saturday, several states have eased coronavirus restrictions to allow worshippers to gather in mosques in limited numbers. "Only small groups of worshippers will be allowed into mosques," said Shafique Qasim, a senior cleric at the Nakhoda mosque in the eastern city of Kolkata. (Reporting by Angie Teo in Jakarta and Subrata Nagchoudhury in Kolkata; Additional reporting by Lim Huey Teng in KUALA LUMPUR and Derek Francis in BENGALURU; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Giles Elgood) A series of court documents from a 2015 case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the close friend of deceased sex offender and well-connected financier Jeffrey Epstein, were unsealed and released to the public on Thursday by a New York City federal judge. District Judge Loretta Preska of the US Court for the Southern District of New York ruled against Maxwells motion to block the release of the documents from the lawsuit filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was a teenager when she was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein. Giuffre sued for defamation after Maxwell claimed that she was lying about her abuse by Epstein. In releasing the documents, Judge Preska said, In the context of this case, especially its allegations of sex trafficking of young girls, the court finds any minor embarrassment or annoyance resulting from Ms. Maxwell's mostly non-testimony ... is far outweighed by the presumption of public access. Among the documents releasedthe first of three batchesis a deposition Giuffre gave on May 3, 2016 during her defamation case. In the course of her testimony, Giuffre said that Maxwell, after meeting her at the Palm Beach estate of Donald Trump, Mar-a-Lago, brought me in for the purpose of being trafficked, by Epstein. She also said, You have to understand that [Epstein] and [Maxwell] are joined at the hip, okay? Giuffre also said of Maxwell, Shes the one who abused me on a regular basis. Shes the one that procured me, told me what to do, trained me as a sex slave, abused me physically, abused me mentally. Shes the one who I believe, in my heart of hearts, deserves to come forward and have justice happen to her more than anybody. Being a woman, its disgusting. Among the individuals Giuffre said that she was directed by Maxwell to have sex with are Prince Andrew, attorney Alan Dershowitz, former Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and MIT scientist Marvin Minsky (deceased). Giuffre also said during the deposition that she saw former US President Bill Clinton at Epsteins private Little St James Island. Giuffre also mentioned another prince and another individual who was a large hotel chain owner, because she was unable to remember their names, saying, Im sorry. This is very hard for me and very frustrating to have to go over this. I dontI dont recall all of the people. There was a large amount of people that I was sent to. The documents also include an email exchange between Maxwell and Epstein. Epstein claims his innocence and provides Maxwell with a set of talking points that she might use to defend herself against the allegations. Maxwell, Epstein wrote, had been the target of outright lies, innuendo, slander, defamation and salacious gossip and harassment, and she should fight back against false allegations of impropriety and offensive behavior that I abhor and have never ever been party to. In another message, Epstein wrote, You have done nothing wrong and I (would) urge you to start acting like it. He told Maxwell to go outside, head high, not as an (escaping) convict. go to parties. Deal with it. Maxwell opposed the release of the documents from the 2015 lawsuit, arguing that they would damage her defense in the current federal case. Judge Preska did agree to delay the release of some of the court documentsincluding the transcript of Maxwells own depositionuntil Monday so that Maxwells lawyers would have time to file an appeal on the order to unseal them. Other documents that were not released were medical records along with the identities of several Jane Does who have accused Epstein of sexual abuse but have not made themselves known publicly. Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested by the FBI at her secluded mansion in New Hampshire on July 2 and charged with six counts against her for assisting in Epsteins trafficking of teenage girls as young as 14. She is currently being held in the Brooklyn Detention Center awaiting a trial scheduled to begin in twelve months. Maxwell was denied bail on July 14 by US District Judge Alison Nathan on the grounds that she was a flight risk given her international connections and significant personal wealth. Federal authorities have also reported that Maxwell is considered a suicide risk and they claim that, as a high-profile inmate, she is being monitored closely by jail personnel. Jeffrey Epstein was arrested approximately one year ago, was also denied bail and was being held in the Manhattan Correctional Center lockup awaiting his trial when he was found dead in his cell under unexplained circumstances. Despite evidence that Epstein was strangled to death in his cell on the morning of August 10, 2019, the New York medical examiner determined his death to be a suicidal hanging with orange prison bedsheets. Significantly, Epstein was found dead one day after the release of 2,000 documents related to his sex ring in the same Virginia Roberts Giuffre defamation case against Ghislaine Maxwell in 2015, which was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum in 2017. Right-wing journalist Mike Cernovichwho submitted the lawsuit with the support of the Miami Herald that ultimately forced the unsealing of the Epstein and Maxwell court papershas pointed out that the documents show how the FBI had evidence of Epsteins criminal sex ring for years and did nothing. Cernovich reposted a tweet by Twitter user Techno Fog that says, Heartbreaking - The minor victim was asking the FBI for the evidence (photos and videos) they seized from Epstein. Why? So she could prosecute her civil case. The post includes a screen shot of a released email from Virginia Roberts to FBI agent Christina Pryor on April 16, 2014 that says: I was wondering if you remember me from Sydney Consulate, I am a victim in the investigation from the Jeffrey Epstein case and was wondering if you could tell me if I would be able to get ahold of any of the pics and/or videos that the FBI might have confiscated from any of Epsteins residences? Also, can I ask if you might have any of the flight logs that include my name in them to be sent to me as well. Its all for evidential purposes and would prove a many of things to help my case. Bernell Trammell speaks with writer Adebisi Agoro during an interview in Milwaukee, Wis., on July 23, 2020. (Adebisi Agoro/The God Degree) Killing of Trump Supporter May Not Have Been Politically Motivated Man who interviewed him on day he was shot speaks out One of the last people to speak with Bernell Trammell, the President Donald Trump supporter who was shot dead last month, says hes not sure whether the killing was politically motivated. The support of Trump might make him a target, especially where he was that in the area, writer Adebisi Agoro told The Epoch Times. Thats the total opposite political view of everybody else in the neighborhood. Still, only an investigation will provide answers as to whether Trammell was shot because he held signs in public supporting the president, Agoro added. Trammell, 60, was shot in broad daylight on July 23. Images of the suspect show a man bundled in heavy clothing despite the hot weather, riding a bicycle to and from the scene. A male who police officers believe murdered Bernell Trammell in Milwaukee, Wis., on July 23, 2020. (Milwaukee Police Department) Police officials said theyre investigating the homicide and havent yet discerned a motive. The Wisconsin Republican Party called for U.S. Attorney Matthew Krueger to look into the murder, pointing to Trammells open support of Trump. No American should fear for their personal safety because of where they live or their political affiliation, Andrew Hitt, chairman of the party, said in a statement. Gerard Randall, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Partys African American Council, added: I have no doubt that were Mr. Trammell advocating support for Planned Parenthood, Joe Biden, or the American Civil Liberties Union, there would be a thunderous clamor for justice from the political left. Kruegers office didnt return a voicemail. Agoro said he was happy to see that people were calling for a federal investigation into Trammells death, noting the rising murder rate in Milwaukee and the number of unsolved crimes. Just to see anybody make a deal. To see anybody say they want to call for a federal investigation into the death of a black man in Milwaukee, I put my hands up to that, he told The Epoch Times. Because theres so much violence going on, and so many mothers or so many parents and so many family members just have to deal with it. Its like waking up and going to the grocery store. I just hope something can happen. Both homicides and non-fatal shootings have soared in Milwaukee this year, with the former up 85 percent and the latter up 64 percent as of July 28, according to the Department of Justice. Trammells killing came just days before the Trump administration expanded Operation Legend, a program aimed at helping to combat violent crime, to Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland. U.S. Attorney Matthew Krueger. (U.S. Attorneys Office) More than 25 federal investigators from agencies including the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service were designated to Milwaukee. They help state and local investigators combat violent crime, including crimes involving firearms and drug trafficking groups. Ten of the agents will immediately provide assistance while the others will be assigned over the coming year to provide permanent assistance. This is a long-term commitment, a sustained effort, to make Milwaukee a safer place to live, Krueger, the U.S. attorney, told reporters at a press conference this week. Trammell would hold signs in support of various causes, such as Christianity, combating gun violence, and the pro-life movement. At times, hed signal his support for elected officials or candidates, including Lena Taylor, a Democrat state senator who ran for mayor. Agoro saw Trammell out with signs supporting Trump. The writer later went online and saw a picture of Trammell holding one Trump sign that said Vote Trump 2020 for the Black Community. The picture was circulated widely, drawing a large number of negative comments. Trammell didnt use the Internet. People were talking about the man. So personally, me, being that I seen him in the community before doings things that people in the community supported, I felt that him not being an Internet person, just needed to have a fair share, a fair side to tell his story because he was being dragged online, Agoro said. President Donald Trump returns to the White House in Washington on July 27, 2020 (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images) The writer, who runs a website called The God Degree, set up an interview with Trammell and went by his office the morning of July 23. I am encouraging Afro-Americans from all walks of life and culture here in Wisconsin, particularly here in Milwaukee, to vote Donald Trump for this year. Trump 2020, Trammell told Agoro. He said he believed Trump is a sign of the times. Support for the president stemmed from Trumps hiring of Omorosa, a black woman, and sitting down with rapper Kanye West to have a real conversation. After the interview, Agoro went home and prepared to edit it. While he was online, he saw the man hed just spoken to was wounded in a shooting. Trammell was soon declared dead. I guess shock is what I can think of now because it didnt hit me, because its hard for it to be so real when an hour-and-a-half before this happened, I met a person for the first time that I would say is a unique person in his worldview, in his thinking, different from the rest, Agoro said. The writer said the killing illustrates the extent to which black men struggle to have their voices heard. Its sad that this man is gone. It is, to me. Because I think he was very knowledgeable and a wealth of information. He had a lot of stuff to share, he said. It gives America now a chance to look into the complex dichotomy that is the mind of the black man in America specifically. Because I thinkthis is from my perspectiveit just feels as if even in the political narrative thats going on now, that the voice is not the voice of the men in the African American community. 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. Just six months ago on Thursday, January 30, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus and the disease it caused, COVID-19, a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). As the Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted then, we dont know what sorts of damage [it] could do if it were to spread in a country with a weaker health system. We must act now to help countries prepare for that possibility. For all these reasons, I am declaring a PHEIC over the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries. Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems that are ill-prepared to deal with it. The WHO declares Public Health emergency of International Concern [Credit: Fabrice Coffrini] At the time of the PHEIC declaration, there were 7,818 total confirmed cases worldwide, with only 82 cases of COVID-19 without any fatalities outside of mainland China across 18 countries. Dr. Tedros, during the press briefing, also warned, this is the time for science, not rumors. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma. Despite the warning, the wealthy nations of the globe squandered the time that was bought by the lockdowns imposed by China to prepare for the epidemic by imposing flight restrictions and border closures while healthcare and public health infrastructure remained in shambles. It was only on March 11 that the WHO characterized the COVID-19 epidemic as a pandemic. The number of cases outside of China had risen 13-fold, and the number of cases had reached 118,000 across 114 countries, with 4,291 people who had lost their lives. At the WHOs press briefing on Thursday, remarking on the declaration of PHEIC, Dr. Mike Ryan acknowledged that public health systems across the world responded slowly to implementing a comprehensive strategy to bring the pandemic under control. The capacity to do surveillance, an integrated response is not there, he said. We need to look really hard to our assumptions of the existence of systems that did not prove correct. Since then, the pandemic has wrought a trail of devastation that continues to rage in defiance of national borders. The daily cases of COVID-19 have reached a seven-day moving average high of 260,028. There are more than 17.7 million cases with close to six million active cases. Total deaths are approaching 700,000 globally, with a seven-day moving average of 5,655 fatalities per day. Three days running, more than 6,000 people have died. Much of the recent fuel to the coronavirus acceleration has been the demand by the markets and the financial oligarchs to reopen commerce even while community transmission remained hot, and health experts warned incessantly that such measures would be ruinous. Initially, Italy bore the brunt of the pandemic followed quickly by New York City. France, the United Kingdom, and Spain followed. The continent accounts for 2.87 million cases and over 203,000 deaths. Despite the massive efforts to bring the pandemic to a grinding halt, reopening efforts have led to resurgences in Spain, Germany, and France again while the Ukraine and Russia are attempting to fend off their initial foray with the virus. Many of the stateless and most impoverished in Russia are facing uncertainties, including ethnic minorities, the homeless, and those recently released from prisons. They account for more than 35,000 people. The United States continues to lead as the global epicenter of the pandemic with 4.7 million cases and nearly 157,000 deaths. Though cases have plateaued at a high of almost 70,000 cases per day, the fatality rate has been climbing, reaching nearly 1,500 three days running. According to covidexitstrategy.org, The pandemic that has seen a record number of deaths in the sunbelt states is pushing north through the Midwest states. Yet, federal and state officials have begun an effort to hide the real statistics, making the tracking of hospitalizations and cases impossible. In a recent development in Georgia, 260 children, teens, and staffers, out of 344 tested, were found to be positive for COVID-19 while attending an overnight camp. More than half those testing positive were children ages 6 to 10. Masks were not required for the children. The massive cluster highlights the fact that children are very susceptible to the virus and should be considered contagious if infected. This will add to the growing return-to-school catastrophe that has the nation on edge. Yet, Director of the Centers for Disease Control Dr. Robert Redfield continued to endorse the reopening of schools while unable to provide clear guidance as to how to achieve sufficient measures to ensure the safety of teachers, staff and students. During the US House of Representatives special select committee investigation into the Trump Administrations response to the pandemic, Admiral Brett P. Giroir acknowledged to lawmakers that getting COVID-19 testing back to a turnaround time of 48 to 72 hours is not a possible benchmark we can achieve today, given the demand and the supply. Yet his attempt to paint an optimistic scenario only fell on bewildered ears. Testing shortages continue to hamper efforts on the ground. Dr. Fauci, in his opening statement, assured the hearing that he was cautiously optimistic that the Moderna mRNA vaccine would be successful. The vaccine trial was ushered in with pomp and circumstance as this week began the phase three trial intending to enroll 30,000 subjects to prove the efficacy of the vaccine. However, the United States has positioned itself to bring all viable vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 under its control. Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline reported that the US government would provide them up to $2.1 billion to fund their development and manufacturing of their experimental COVID-19 vaccine. As part of this quid pro quo, they will provide the US with 100 million doses with an option to procure up to 500 million doses. They are expected to begin trials in September. On top of the Moderna vaccine, the US through Operation Warp Speed has also invested $1.2 billion in UK-based AstraZenecas vaccine with the assurance of 300 million doses. Washington has also announced the purchase of 100 million doses of German-based BioNTechs vaccine, created in collaboration with Pfizer, for $1.95 billion. Brazil, India, Chile, South Africa, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina are only a short list of countries hard hit by the pandemic whose economies remain in disarray and which are unable to provide adequate care to the poorest in their countries. Japan, Israel, Lebanon, and Hong Kong are facing a record number of new cases after they had suppressed infections to single digits. In Australia, the rising tide of cases forced officials to impose restrictions on Melbourne, a city of more than 5 million. Experience with the 2009 swine flu demonstrated that vaccine distribution would not be based on the allocation of resources to the most in need or essential, but to those that can pay. The majority of nations will be forced to negotiate for vaccines for millions of inhabitants in the midst of the expected winter surge. The six months of the public health emergency of international concern has demonstrated capitalisms total inability to deal with the threat of infectious disease and other critical threats to mankind. Sushil Kumar Modi Patna: Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi flayed the Mumbai police for its handling of actor Sushant Singh Rajput's suicide case. Sushil Modi said the CBI should take over the case as the Mumbai police was putting obstruction in way of fair investigation by the Bihar police on complaint lodged by the actor's father. Advertisement Sushil ModiModi, who had called on Rajput father at his residence here last month to offer his condolences, tweeted "Mumbai police is putting obstruction in way of fair investigation by Bihar police in Sushant death case. "Bihar police is doing its best but Mumbai police is not cooperating. BJP feels that CBI should take over this case". Although the actor was found hanging from the ceiling of his apartment in Mumbai, the Bihar police got involved in the investigation after it lodged an FIR based on a written complaint by his father last week in which startling allegations were levelled against Rhea Chakraborty, an actress with whom Rajput was said to have been in a relationship. Advertisement Rhea Chakraborty Meanwhile, the JD(U) headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar asked Chakraborty to cooperate in the investigation. Notably, Chakraborty has filed a petition in the Supreme Court questioning the jurisdiction of Bihar police in the matter and seeking transfer from Patna to Mumbai of the case of abetment of suicide and fraud lodged against herself by Rajputs father. Patna: Sushant Singh Rajput's sister Shweta Singh Kirti on Saturday (August 1) took to social media and penned down an open letter appealing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene in the death case of the 'Kai Po Che' actor. In the letter, Shweta requested the Prime Minister to ensure that no evidence is tampered with in Sushant's death case. Expressing her concern to the Prime Minister in the note, she asked him to look into the case immediately. "I am sister of Sushant Singh Rajput and I request an urgent scan of the whole case. We believe in Indias judicial system and expect justice at any cost," Sushant's sister Shweta Singh Kirti tweeted on Saturday morning. "Somehow my heart says that you stand with and for truth. We are from very simple family. My brother had no godfather when he was in Bollywood nor do we have anyone right now. My request to you is to look into this case and make sure that everything is handled," she said in another tweet. Sushant, 34, was found dead at his Mumbai residence on June 14. Rajput's father Krishna Kumar Singh (74) has filed an abetment to suicide case against his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and six others, including her family members with the Bihar Police, for alleged abetment to suicide. KK Singh has accused Rhea, a budding TV and film actor, of having befriended his son in May 2019 with the intention of furthering her own career. The Patna case was registered under various IPC sections including 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 306 (abetment of suicide). The Mumbai Police, which is already investigating Sushant's death, have questioned several people from the film industry, including Aditya Chopra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, in connection with the case. An uncrewed Russian Progress 76 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station's Pirs docking compartment on the station's Russian segment at 1:45 p.m. EDT The cargo spacecraft is delivering almost three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the Expedition 63 crew members who are living and working in space to advance scientific knowledge, demonstrate new technologies, and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. Progress 76 will remain docked at the station for more than four months, departing in December for its deorbit into Earth's atmosphere. On-Orbit Status Report 76 Progress (76P) Launch and Docking: 76P launched today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 9:26 AM CT carrying food, fuel and supplies. Following a 2-orbit rendezvous, the vehicle successfully docked to the ISS Docking Compartment 1 (DC-1) Nadir Port at 12:45 PM CT. The crew then performed leak checks, opened hatches, and began cargo unloading. Payloads Cell Biology Experiment Facility-L (CBEF-L): The crew performed a CBEF-L re-configuration change from MHU-5 mouse mission back to the nominal configuration. Cell Biology Experiment Facility-L (CBEF-L) is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) new subrack facility, which is an upgraded facility of the original Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF) currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS). CBEF-L provides new capabilities with additional new resources such as Full High Definition video interface, Ethernet, 24 VDC power supply, and a larger diameter centrifugal test environment. By using the original CBEF and CBEF-L as one facility for the same experiment, the payload user is provided with an upgraded experimental environment that can handle the processing of more experimental samples for a wider array of experiments. Fluids Integrated Rack/Light Microscopy Module (FIR/LMM)/CDM changeout: As a continuation of the CDM experiment, the crew installed the ninth of the ten experiment modules on the FIR/LMM. Capillary-Driven Microfluidics in Space (Capillary Driven Microfluidics) examines the drawing of fluids into a tiny narrow tube in microgravity. Results may improve current mathematical models and understanding of microfluidic systems and improve fluid control in various devices. Diagnostic devices require separation of blood cells and plasma, which have different densities, and the absence of sedimentation and buoyancy-driven convection in microgravity improves the efficiency of this separation. Space Acceleration Measurement System-II (SAMS-II): The crew replaced the Electronics Enclosure (EE) inside SAMS RTS Drawer 2 (RTS/D2) with a stowed spare. Space Acceleration Measurement System-II (SAMS-II) is an ongoing study of the small forces (vibrations and accelerations) on the International Space Station (ISS) resulting from the operation of hardware, crew activities, dockings and maneuvering. Results generalize the types of vibrations affecting vibration-sensitive experiments and structural life of ISS. Investigators and structural analysts seek to better understand the vibration environment on the ISS using SAMS-II data and assessing station loads and dynamics. Systems Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER) Test Module Checkout: The crew performed a check out of the SAFER and Test Module seals. During the activity the crew measured the regulator pressure under flow and no-flow conditions, performed a leak check, and measured the relief valve crack and reseated pressure to satisfy the two year on-orbit maintenance requirements. Amine Swingbed Removal: Today the crew removed the Amine Swingbed from EXPRESS Rack 8 (LAB1P4). Select hardware was salvaged as spares and the remaining components and hardware were transferred to HTV9 for disposal. Water Processor Assembly (WPA) Microbial Check Valve Remove and Replace (R&R): As part of preventative maintenance the crew replaced the WPA Microbial Check Valve (MCV) located in Node 3. Replacement of the MCV is required every 4 years. In order to access the WPA, the crew had to remove the newly installed Urine Transfer System (UTS) from the front of the rack. The ground requested feedback from the crew to determine the easiest method for removing the UTS in the future. Completed Task List Activities: Node 3 Port Endcone Reorganization EVA Tool Stow (on-going) Today's Ground Activities: All activities are complete unless otherwise noted. USTO OPM to -XVV prior to 76P Docking Ground Support for 76P Docking RS Thruster Maneuver to TEA after 76P docking Node 3 CDRA Half Cycles (4 total) Look Ahead Plan Friday, 7/24 (GMT 206) Payloads: HRF Saliva and Urine Collect (NASA) FIR/CDM Plate Changeout (NASA) MSRR Z-book Battery (NASA) Astrobee Off (NASA) SPECTRUM Powerdown (NASA) Systems: N2 PPA PFMC Removal EDR2 Launch Structure Removal EVA Loop Scrub EHS Benzene CMS Ops CMS Orthostatic Intolerance Garment (OIG) Fit Check Saturday, 7/25 (GMT 207) Payloads: HRF Saliva Collect (NASA) Systems: Crew Off Duty Sunday, 7/26 (GMT 208) Payloads: HRF Saliva Collect (NASA) Systems: Crew Off Duty Today's Planned Activities: All activities are complete unless otherwise noted. HRF Generic Blood/Urine/Saliva Collection & Processing Crew Departure Preparations for Return to Earth Water Processor Assembly (WPA) Microbial Check Valve Remove and Replace Health Maintenance System (HMS) ISS Food Intake Tracker (ISS FIT) JEM Stowage Audit SAMS-RTS/D2-EE R&R Cell Biology Experiment Facility-Left (CBEF-L) Configuration Change Monitoring - No.07 thermostat temperature in MRM2 and maintaining unobstructed area near inlet/outlet vents (Report to MCC) Checking cover closure on SM windows 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14. Note 8 Station Support Computer (SSC) System Vent Cleaning On-board training (OBT) Crew Dragon Departure Conference ISS HAM Radio Power Down in Columbus & Service Module 76P Staging Bag Deploy Capillary Driven Microfluidics Plate Changeout MPEG2 Multicast Test via Ku-band (Activation/Deactivation of TV data and MPEG2 Multicast controls) Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER) Checkout USOS Window Shutter Close Glacier & Polar Desiccant Swaps Food Physiology Fecal Sample Processing Preparation for Progress 444 Docking Progress 444 Docking to DC1 In-Flight Maintenance Amine Swingbed Removal Activation of MPEG2 Multicast TV Monitoring Equipment Activation of MPEG2 Multicast Recording Mode on Central Post SSC Closing Applications and Downlink of MPEG2 Multicast Video via OCA Progress 444 and DC1 Interface Leak Check Metal Oxide (METOX) Regeneration Flight Director/ISS CREW CONFERENCE DC1- & Progress- Hatch Opening Progress 444 air sampling using -1 analyzer Progress 444 Deactivation Environmental Health System (EHS) Grab Sample Container (GSC) Sampling Operations Progress 444 (DC1) time-critical, priority, and US cargo transfers and IMS Ops ASEPTIC. Hardware transfer from Progress to MRM1 CONSTANTA-2. Hardware transfer from Progress and setup in - No.07 at +4 deg C BIOMAG-M. Transfer FAKTOR PL from Progress and insertion for incubation in - No.04 at +29C Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. Coronavirus outbreak: PM Modi wishes nation on occasion of Bakrid, devotees celebrate Eid-ul-Adha India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Aug 01: With more than seven months into the novel coronavirus pandemic, the spirits of Muslim devotees across the world is high to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha that is celebrated today. On Saturday, India woke up to glimpses of devotees arriving at mosques, offering their prayers to make the second most important Islamic festival. With lockdown restrictions eased in parts of the country, several devotees were seen visiting mosques while maintaining social distancing and wearing masks as preventive measures to keep COVID-19 at bay. The mosque authorities at various places were seen ensuring body temperature check of the devotees and providing them with hand sanitiser. Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Muslims in Kerala celebrate a low-key Bakrid Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended his wishes on the occasion and hoped the "spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered". "Eid Mubarak! Greetings on Eid al-Adha. May this day inspire us to create a just, harmonious and inclusive society. May the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered," PM Modi said in a tweet. Also, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was seen offering prayers at his residence on Saturday morning. The minister also wished everyone on the occasion and said that the pandemic has not dampened the spirits of the devotees. "The world is facing the corona crisis but it has not dampened the spirits of people. People are praying today keeping their safety in mind. There is no lack of passion in offering prayers," Naqvi said. US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news With lockdown restrictions considerably eased in the national capital, several mosques, including Jama Masjid and Fatehpuri Masjid in Delhi, held the prayers today on the auspicious occasion. Coronavirus outbreak: Mizoram govt extends lockdown till August 31 to curb the spread of COVID-19 The lockdown had led to the closure of religious places, including mosques, due to which Muslim devotees were unable to pray in mosques on Eid-ul-Fitr in May. The Centre had allowed religious places to reopen from June 8 under Unlock 1. Eid-ul-Zuha, also known as Bakr-Eid, is the festival of sacrifice observed on the tenth day of the Dhu al-Hijjah which is the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar. The sacrifice feast, the festival is marked by sacrificing an animal, usually a sheep or a goat to prove their devotion and love for Allah. Islamabad, Aug 1 : Pakistan and Afghanistan have traded allegations over a deadly border firing incident that caused casualties on both sides, it was reported on Saturday. In a statement late Saturday, the Foreign Office here said that Pakistani troops had responded to firing by the Afghan forces, reports Dawn news. "Pakistani Force did not open fire first and responded in self-defence only," it said while rejecting Afghan allegation of firing at the civilian population. Information Minister Senator Shibli Faraz said certain people had tried to cross the Chaman border forcibly and at the same time gunshots were fired from the Afghan side. The incident took place on Thursday after an unruly mob attacked the Frontier Corps offices and a quarantine centre at the Chaman border crossing following a protest over restrictions on pedestrian crossing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the ensuing clash, four people were killed. Afghan authorities had claimed that 15 people were killed in Spin Boldak due to the shelling. Meanwhile, Afghan media reports said that forces acted while the unrest was happening on the Pakistani side. "Pakistani forces reportedly opened fire on the protesters. In response to Pakistani security forces, the Afghan border forces came in action and exchanged fire with Pakistani forces," Dawn news quoted the Afghan Islamic Press as saying in a report. According to a statement from the Afghan defence ministry, Chief of General Staff of the Afghan Armed Forces Gen Muhammad Yasin Zia ordered "befitting response" to Pakistani troops. He directed provision of small and heavy weapons to the Afghan forces deployed along the border. The Afghan National Security Council, meanwhile, in a statement said the matter would be pursued through relevant channels and "required action" will be taken. The Ontario Ministry of Education says it will not renew its contract with We Charity and will investigate any expenditures to date. Alexandra Adamo, a spokeswoman for Education Minister Stephen Lecce, says the Ontario government is deeply concerned and troubled by the allegations that have been made against WE. In an email, she says this is taxpayer money and hard working people in the province deserve to know that their money is delivering value. Adamo says the allegations, which she did not specify, raise serious questions. On June 18, the ministry announced that it would give WE Charity $250,000 for a year-long education program that aims to nurture empathy and compassion in students and increase student outcomes in academic engagement, workplace readiness, and citizenship. Adamo said she believes that education may be the only Ontario ministry that has funded WE. "These allegations raise serious questions," she wrote in an email Friday. "That is why the Ministry of Education has been directed to not renew the contract with WE and to investigate expenditures to date." Earlier Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he knew there would be problems with perception over having WE Charity run a $900-million student-volunteer program, but he believed there was no conflict of interest because his family would not benefit. The prime minister testified Thursday that he didn't learn WE had been chosen by the public service to run the program until May 8, shortly before the arrangement was to be taken to cabinet for approval. Trudeau said that's when he put the brakes on the deal. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said he doesn't buy Trudeau's account. Several sponsors have cut ties with the WE brand, including Royal Bank of Canada, Loblaw Companies Ltd., Good Life Fitness and Virgin Atlantic Airways, although WE has called the moves a mutual agreement. Shelley Anne Lewis (left), 43, was allegedly Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend for three years during 1999 to 2002, the Mail on Sunday understands A secret girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein identified in bombshell court papers is a Manchester-born publisher turned spiritual entrepreneur who took scores of flights on the paedophiles Lolita Express private jet. In a previously sealed email, alleged Epstein madam Ghislaine Maxwell named a woman called Shelley as the millionaires girlfriend between 1999 and 2002, during which time sex-trafficked teenager Virginia Roberts alleges she was coerced into having sex with Prince Andrew. He vehemently denies the allegations. The Mail on Sunday understands that woman is Shelley Anne Lewis, 43, who grew up in Cheshire and once worked in the contemporary art department of Christies auction house in New York. She now runs a firm that hosts yoga retreats in the US having previously owned companies offering lifestyle guru courses to clients who wished to heal from their past. There is no suggestion that Ms Lewis was involved with, or aware of, any criminality, but she could now be approached by prosecutors or lawyers acting for Epsteins victims to see if she can assist them. Last night, one of those lawyers said: Ms Lewis may have information which could be valuable and which could aid victims who are seeking compensation from Epsteins estate. We would urge her to tell the FBI what she knows. In an email to Epstein in January 2015, released last week as part of a tranche of documents compiled in a defamation case brought by Ms Roberts, Maxwell, 58, wrote: I would appreciate it if shelley would come out and say she was your gfriend I think she was from end [19]99 to 2002. In a previously sealed email, alleged Epstein (left) madam Ghislaine Maxwell (right) named a woman called Shelley as the millionaires girlfriend between 1999 and 2002, during which time sex-trafficked teenager Virginia Roberts alleges she was coerced into having sex with Prince Andrew Epstein did not question the assertion that Shelley was his girlfriend during that period, simply replying: Ok with me. Flight logs appear to show that Ms Lewis was a frequent passenger on Epsteins private jets, often travelling only with the US financier, who apparently took his life last August while awaiting trial for child sex offences. Destinations included New York, where Epstein had a 55 million townhouse, and Little St James, his private island in the Caribbean that has been dubbed Paedo Island. Ms Lewis was 22 in 1999 when it is understood she met the then 46-year-old businessman in New York, where she worked for Christies. She deleted all her social media profiles shortly after the release of the court documents on Friday, but in previous interviews she has described how she was helped by a mentor in New York who was so original in all his thought processes that he couldnt even see the box. My already inquisitive and curious nature evolved. I supposed it gave me a kind of anything is possible mentality. In the mid-2000s, Ms Lewis published a childrens book, A Key To The Heart, which was praised by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling and former US First Lady Laura Bush. Ms Lewis later told how she had a spiritual awakening. The website for The Equanimity Expert, one of Ms Lewiss firms, says: After an experience of direct awakening at age seventeen, Shelley Lewis has been on the path of inner transformation ever since. Now as a wellness entrepreneur and inner beauty expert, living and working in NYC and London, she actively holds Sacred Space, helping clients heal from their past and envision their future. A former colleague last night expressed shock at Ms Lewiss links to Epstein, saying: Shelley was always very well connected and beautiful. Flight logs appear to show that Ms Lewis was a frequent passenger on Epsteins private jets, often travelling only with the US financier, who apparently took his life last August while awaiting trial for child sex offences. Destinations included New York, where Epstein had a 55 million townhouse, and Little St James (above), his private island in the Caribbean that has been dubbed Paedo Island I am shocked and saddened. Ms Lewis, who divides her time between London and New York, owns an 800,000 apartment with her sister in West London. She did not respond to requests for comment. Her father Brian, a retired millionaire businessman, said he felt very sad for Epsteins victims, but added: Ive not seen my daughter for ages. I have no idea what she would want to say. Other documents in the newly released 650-page cache make for chilling reading. In one, prosecutors claim that Maxwell, the daughter of shamed publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell and a long-time friend of Prince Andrew, secretly filmed under-age girls being abused. They include Ms Roberts, who is identified as Jane Doe #3. In addition to participating in the sexual abuse of Jane Doe #3 and others, Maxwell also took numerous sexually explicit pictures of underage girls involved in sexual activities, a document alleges. She shared those photographs, which constitute child pornography under federal laws, with Epstein. The government is apparently aware of and in certain instances possesses some of these photographs. The court papers repeat Ms Robertss claims that she was sex trafficked to Prince Andrew three times, including when she was just 17 at Maxwells London mews house. Maxwell facilitated Prince Andrews acts of sexual abuse by acting as a madam for Epstein, they allege. The Prince has repeatedly denied her claims and any wrongdoing. After the release of the documents, a source close to Andrew said: Allegations are not the same as facts, which is the essential premise on which justice works. Lets see if these allegations stand up, because precious few about the Duke do. Meanwhile, the contempt in which Maxwell is accused of viewing her alleged victims is laid bare in Ms Robertss 89-page deposition. In it, she describes how her father drove her to Epsteins 25 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, the day after she met Maxwell at Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago private beach club. Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire pedophile, allegedly trafficked underage girls to Prince Andrew (left) and other high-powered figures in order to gather incriminating evidence against them so that he can use it for blackmail. Court papers alleged Andrew assaulted then-underage Virginia Roberts Giuffre (right) on at least three separate occasions At the time, Ms Roberts was 16 and working as a locker-room attendant. She says she was lured to Epsteins mansion with the promise that a wealthy benefactor would pay for her to become a massage therapist. Recalling the day, Ms Roberts said: Ghislaine answered the door She stepped out, shook hands with my dad, told him shed look after me and shed make sure I get a ride home. My dad left and I went inside with Ghislaine. Within an hour, Ms Roberts claims she was being brutally assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell in an upstairs bathroom. Maxwell is also accused of boasting during a trip to Paris, where Epstein had another home, of how proficient she was at procuring girls for her millionaire friend. She walked up to a French girl to show me how easy it was for her to procure girls, Ms Roberts claimed. Little St James Island, in the Caribbean (pictured), was owned by Epstein and was where Roberts alleges the orgies took place I wasnt very good at it. So she walked up to her. Within five minutes she had her number and that girl came over later that night to the hotel and serviced Jeffrey. My whole life revolved around keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy. Their whole lives revolved around sex. Maxwell is awaiting trial after being charged with six counts of child abuse allegedly committed between 1994 and 1997. She denies the claims but if convicted faces up to 35 years in prison. She is on remand at Manhattans Metropolitan Detention Center after bail was denied. Her trial is scheduled for next July. Her lawyers have been fighting to keep secret further documents. They are reported to contain graphic and embarrassing details about the socialites sex life. A judge has ruled they can stay sealed for now but is expected to publicly release them within weeks. Unexpected place for a baptism! Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A "beach revival" is underway in Southern California in what some say signals the beginning of a new Jesus movement. Over 200 Christians recently gathered on the shore in Huntington Beach to worship God, hear the Gospel and learn how to share the Good News with others. It first began as a vision God gave to its organizers, Parker and Jessi Green, four years ago. In the vision, the couple saw thousands of people being baptized along Huntington Beach Pier and large numbers of people receiving Christ, according to the Saturate OC website. In January, Jessi Green sensed God say to her that He was shaking everything that could be shaken and that it would feel chaotic at first, she said in an interview Monday with The Christian Post. Read more at: https://www.christianpost.com/news/beach-revival-underway-in-so-calif-a-return-to-a-gritty-raw-gospel-jesus-people-movement.html Pakistans security forces on Friday shot dead five militants of the outlawed Balochistan Republican Army and claimed to have thwarted a terrorist attack in the countrys Punjab province. The terrorists were also involved in the killing of five personnel of the law enforcement agencies. The intelligence-based operation, jointly conducted by the counter-terrorism department of Punjab and intelligence agency ISI in Rajanpur, some 400 kms from Lahore, led to the killing of five terrorists of the Balochistan Republican Army, counter-terrorism officials said in a statement. The security forces received a tip-off that eight heavily-armed terrorists were present at Arbi Tibba road in Rajanpur and were planning to attack government installations and law enforcement agencies in the province. Five terrorists were killed in the shootout while three managed to escape, they said. One improvised explosive device, three submachine guns, two pistols, four kgs explosives, four detonators and ammunition have been recovered from their possession. According to initial investigation, the terrorists had been involved in the last years attacks on the security personnel in which five officials were killed. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON By Express News Service CHENNAI: The number of daily COVID-19 fatalities in Tamil Nadu soared to a new high on Saturday, with 99 more people dying of the virus, while the state recorded 5,879 fresh cases. With 1074 new cases, Chennais tally touched 1,00,877. With this, the tally in Tamil Nadu is 2,51,738, while the toll is 4,034. Of the deaths recorded on Saturday, 27 are from Chennai and 10 each from Madurai and Coimbatore. The recovery rate too is high in the state as 7,010 were discharged, taking the total number discharged to 1,90,966, which is higher than the 56,738 active cases. Among those who died, 90 had co-morbidities and the majority were aged above 60. Among those with co-morbidities, most had diabetes and hypertension. While Chennai is now just contributing one-fifth of the states total cases, the cause for concern comes from the rising cases in the districts, especially those neighbouring the city. Kancheepuram, Chengalpettu, Tiruvallur and Vellore, which are close to Chennai, have together contributed 1184 cases, slightly higher than the citys tally itself. Theni, Tiruvannamalai, and Virudhunagar show an upward trend in cases. With 60,580 tests done on Saturday, the total number of people tested across the 121 labs in the state is 26,18,512. The states positivity rate is at 9.6 percent. Atilis Gym owners Frank Trumbetti (left) and Ian Smith kick down wooden boards covering the entrance to the facility in Bellmawr on Saturday. Law enforcement officials boarded up the entrance and arrested the owners Monday after they defied a court order to stop operating the gym in violation of state coronavirus restrictions. Read more Owners of the Atilis Gym in Bellmawr kicked down the plywood boards covering their business doorway Saturday morning and ushered in dozens of clients for workouts, the latest move in a months-long standoff with government officials over New Jerseys coronavirus-related restrictions. Owners Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti allowed 40 to 50 customers to work out in the gym at once, which Smith said was less than 25% of the buildings capacity. As customers waited in line Saturday morning, many said they couldnt wait to get back to their regular workouts. Smith acknowledged it was likely that law enforcement would soon arrive to force them to close again, as has happened several times since Atilis reopened in May. At a meeting Tuesday, Bellmawr officials will consider revoking the gyms business license, according to a letter Smith received. Gov. Murphy has weaponized the police force against us over and over, Smith said. I think he looks foolish, the way hes treating us hes pulling out all the stops. You have to ask, How far will one man go to destroy a small business? Atilis, which has become a symbol of the frustration some residents and small-business owners feel over the states ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, closed in March along with other gyms, restaurants, and a range of businesses that were ordered to cease operation to control the virus spread. In May, riding a wave of publicity from a tour of several Fox News appearances and support from Atilis members, the owners opened the gym. The fight has escalated: Last month, they were held in contempt of court after a Superior Court judge in Camden ruled that Atilis must comply with an executive order by Gov. Phil Murphy that limits indoor gym use to individual training sessions. READ MORE: A Bellmawr gym reopened despite Gov. Murphys orders. The owners were issued a citation but plan to continue operating. Smith and Trumbetti took the doors off the hinges to prevent the state from changing the locks again. On Monday they were arrested, each charged with contempt, obstruction, and violation of a disaster-control act. The Camden County Sheriffs Office boarded up the entrance to the gym. Around 8 a.m. Saturday, Smith and Trumbetti kicked and forced in the boards as supporters and gym members cheered them on, then replaced the doors on their hinges. Several dozen people watched from the parking lot, many waving American flags and listening to patriotic music blasting from speakers in front of the gym. Several attendees had traveled from other parts of New Jersey, and some waved anti-Murphy signs or wore pro-Trump accessories. At one point, after a song expressing support for President Donald Trump, Smith asked a supporter who was managing the music to ensure that no partisan music be played. Not everybody is on the same page, he said. We dont talk politics in the gym. READ MORE: A judge says Bellmawrs Atilis Gym can remain open if it follows states guidelines. The owners say thats not going to happen. Smith said he and Trumbetti spent thousands of dollars implementing safety regulations based on what other gyms have been asked to follow. Inside the air-conditioned facility, clients receive contactless temperature screenings, are asked to sign waivers, and are given their own bottles of spray disinfectant to use while moving among machines. Masks are not required, unlike in gyms that have reopened in neighboring states such as Pennsylvania. Smith said that an air purifier has been installed and that no COVID-19 cases have been traced to the facility despite logging more than 13,000 visits from members in recent weeks. You can do this safely, he said. You cant say that all gyms have bad ventilation. Some might but to put them all in one category shows you dont understand discrepancies and nuance. It shows youre not actually interested in helping small businesses. READ MORE: Atilis Gym owners arrested for violating N.J. coronavirus orders Atilis members who used the gym Saturday said the owners were doing a good job of managing the health risks of working out. Joe Wickersham of Audubon, who worked out Saturday morning, said it was big enough inside for members to keep their distance. Its great what theyre doing, and its a shame it came to this, said Wickersham, 55. Obviously, the governor is just picking and choosing what businesses can open. Kangana Ranaut claimed to have heard two bullet sounds near her residence in Manali on the night of July 31, 2020. The actress feels this may have been a ploy to intimidate her for picking bones with many in Bollywood and the politics, following her claims about Sushant Singh Rajput's mysterious death on June 14, 2020. The police in Manali, on the other hand, believe it to be a 'case of stray noise'. The local cops in the hill town haven't found any concrete evidence in preliminary investigations, but have deployed a team at Kangana Ranaut's residence nevertheless. They will continue to investigate the matter further. Three police constables have been deployed at Kangana Ranaut's residence at Manali overnight, and a probe into the matter has been launched. Kangana Heard A Cracker-Like Sound, Then Felt It Was A Gunshot Speaking to The Times of India, Kangana Ranaut said she heard a cracker-like sound first at around 11:30 pm, and the second one sounded more like a gunshot. When she enquired with her security about the matter, he was of the opinion that it must be children playing with crackers. But Kangana thought that he must have never heard a bullet sound and so he wouldn't know. She further claimed that the five people who were with her felt that indeed it was a bullet sound and so they called the police. It Was Right Opposite Her Room "I have heard the sound of a bullet and I think it was definitely a bullet, very intently fired twice, two shots with a gap of about eight seconds between them. And it was right opposite my room. So it seems like someone was behind the boundary walls, there's a jungle and a water body there," she told TOI. Police: No Chemical Trace, Bullet Empties Or Cartridges Found Gaurav Singh, the Superintendent of Police, Kullu, told TOI, "A team headed by a DSP rank officer was rushed to the spot immediately. Nothing concrete came out as, prima facie, it appears to be a case of stray noise created by landlords or farm keepers, who are on night vigil to protect their orchards and farms from wild animals. The area has a lot of farms. Also, forensic experts were with the team, but no chemical trace, bullet empties or cartridges were recovered." Kangana's Reasoning Kangana continued, "I do feel that, you know, because I have made a political comment on people who are known for their goondagardi. So, this may have been a small-time alarming call for me that okay, you know, don't talk like that about us or something like that... to me seems like that, because such an activity has never happened here before. And I have witnesses who have also heard it along with me." ALSO READ: Ankita Lokhande Opens Up On 'Movie Mafia And Nepotism' Angle In Sushant Singh Rajput's Death Kangana Ranaut added, "I think some local people may have been hired to come near my place, you know, it is not difficult to pay someone seven-eight thousand rupees here and assign them something like this. To do this to make a statement on the day I called out the chief minister's son - I don't think it was a coincidence. People are telling me that they will now make your life miserable in Mumbai. Well, I don't have to be in Mumbai, they are doing it here also. Is there open goondagardi in this country? This is how Sushant must have been frightened. But I will continue to ask questions." Kangana Ranaut has been staying in her new Manali home since the March 2020 lockdown amid the Novel Coronavirus pandemic. ALSO READ: Team Kangana Ranaut Says Many Things Are Done To Silence The Actress, But Death Doesn't Scare Her Many children will be left behind, teachers charge By Chrishanthi Christopher View(s): View(s): Teachers have accused the government of handicapping many children with its plan to limit attendance in larger schools when classes recommence on August 10. The plan to stagger school attendance for institutions with more than 200 pupils is unrealistic and discriminatory, the Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) said, saying the government had failed to consult key stakeholders over its strategy to avert coronavirus infection in schools. The plan follows guidelines set out by health authorities. Accordingly, all schools with fewer than 200 students will be opened five days a week, with Advanced Level students expected to stay back after 3.30 p.m. to enable the syllabus to be covered due to time lost during the coronavirus lockdown. Schools that have more than 200 pupils will have to stagger classes, with the result that students in those institutions would only be able to have two or three days of school a week. The government said this would enable schools with space restrictions to maintain a 1m distance between students. When schools reopen on August 10, Monday classes will be held for grades 1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 and 13. On Tuesday, grades 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13 classes will be held, and on Wednesday, classes will be held for grades 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Both on Thursday and Friday grades 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 will operate. This will continue until further notice from the Education Ministry. Analysis of the timetable shows, grades 4 and 9 will only have school for two days a week. Kurunegala Royal College teacher, R.M. Ratnayake said some rural schools have a student population just above 250 and up to 300, with enough space to meet the 1 metre distance in classrooms. The teachers are ready to teach them, he said. The governments plan does not provide a level playing field to all children, Mr. Ratnayake said: while some children would attend school all five days of a normal week others would have only two or three days. The children will feel they are being discriminated against, he said. Mr. Ratnayake said the government had drawn up the plan without considering the availability of space in each school. This has been hurriedly prepared to open up schools for election propaganda. We were not consulted, he said. Education Ministry Secretary M.H.M. Chitrananda refuted the claim that school authorities were not consulted. He said that although proposals were requested no-one had come forward. The main objective had been to adhere to health guidelines. Also, we are focusing only on the students who are sitting exams in September, he said. Advanced Level exams are scheduled to be held from September 7 to October 2. The Grade 5 Scholarship exam, scheduled to be held on August 3, has been postponed to September 13. CTU Vice President Theeban Arokiyanathan, who teaches at Muthuthambi MV in Jaffna, said it was difficult for teachers to keep discipline in classrooms over the COVID-19 distancing regulations. He said Jaffna people did not take the dangers of the spread of the virus seriously. Therefore, the children are difficult to discipline regarding the health guidelines set out by the COVID-19 Taskforce, he said. Even if the teachers are able to discipline them to follow health protocols we are not sure whether they follow it when we are not around. School attendance among Jaffna students had been very poor in the past two weeks. It is only around 60 per cent, Mr. Arokiyanthan said. The Ministry of Education said schools would not open next week because of the election. Education Minister Dullas Alahapperuma said since Monday is a public holiday and the election is on August 5 (Wednesday) schools can be closed for the week. With around 1,000 schools being used for election activity and vote-counting expected to continue well into Thursday the schools will be handed back only on Friday. Exclusion comes after Nairobi announced passengers from Tanzania would not be allowed to enter Kenya. Tanzania has banned Kenyas national carrier from flying into the country, the latest move in a deepening row between the two neighbouring countries. The Tanzanian Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) said Kenya Airways flights were being banned on a reciprocal basis after the Kenyan government decided against including Tanzania in a list of countries whose passengers would be allowed to enter Kenya when commercial flights resumed on Saturday following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions. Tanzania has noted its exclusion in the list of countries whose people will be allowed to travel into Kenya, TCCA Director General Hamza Johari said in a letter sent to Kenya Airways on Friday. The Tanzanian government has decided to nullify its approval for Kenya Airways (KQ) flights between Nairobi and Dar/Kilimanjaro/Zanzibar effective August 1, 2020 until further notice, Johari wrote. This letter also rescinds all previous arrangements that permit KQ flights into the United Republic of Tanzania. Kenya Airways chief executive Allan Kilavuka said on Saturday he was saddened by the letter and hoped the situation would soon be resolved. The spat between Kenya and Tanzania erupted soon after the outbreak of the pandemic in East Africa, when Kenya blocked Tanzanian truck drivers from entering the country, fearing they would spread the disease. Tanzania has taken a controversially relaxed approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic and began reopening the country two months ago. President John Magufulis refusal to impose lockdowns or physical distancing measures, and to halt the release of figures on infections since late April, has made him a regional outlier and caused concern among Tanzanias neighbours and the World Health Organization. Magufuli declared Tanzania free of coronavirus in June, thanking God and the prayers of citizens for what he said was the defeat of COVID-19. Separately on Saturday, Kenya Airways resumed international commercial travel after grounding flights for more than four months due to the pandemic. A ceremony took place at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in the capital, Nairobi, with inaugural flights to the United Kingdom and Ethiopia. Kenya has so far registered 20,636 confirmed coronavirus cases and 341 related deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The rumor of Hyun Bin and Song Hye Kyo getting back together has currently risen when some media outlets in China has spread the speculations. Last July 31, the Chinese portal Wang Yi love channel stated that recently, a citizen released a picture of two people, presumably Hyun Bin and Song Hye Kyo having a walk with a dog in the middle of the night, on the internet. Plus, there is also one more photo. The media also reportedly claims that the two people are living under the same roof. There were also rumors circulating that some netizens even gave assistance to Hyun Bin and Song Hye Kyo to purchase a new home in Yangpyeong earlier this year. It is said that the ex-couple dated in this specific place (Yangpyeong). Another netizen claimed that there was video that was released by a friend of Song Hye Hyo that contains the actress' voice with a male voice that some even assumed that it was Hyun Bin's voice because it sounded similar. However, Chinese media eventually revealed that the photos uploaded by the netizen have already been erased from Instagram. Going back to the past in the year 2008, Hyun Bin and Hye Kyo Song were linked together after acting in the Korean drama The World They Live In. Then, after a year, the onscreen couple went from reel to real, officially announcing and admitting that they were indeed dating. Sad to say, that their relationship didn't work out and they broke up in 2011 just before the actor entered for his mandatory military service. Both representatives of the stars explained that the cause of the breakup was due to hectic schedules and "overwhelming stress caused by public attention." Hyun Bin and Song Hye Kyo "did not have time to deal with such problems." She recently confirmed her budding romance with The Chainsmokers' Andrew Taggert, 30. And Chantel Jeffries proved to be a total prize on Friday afternoon in a series of sultry bikini snapshots uploaded to her Instagram. The 27-year-old model flaunted her incredibly fit physique in a bright red two piece suit as she lounged in a hammock that hovered over a pool. Bikini babe: Chantel Jeffries proved to be a total prize on Friday afternoon in a series of sultry bikini snapshots uploaded to her Instagram Chantel's tresses were visibly damp and she appeared to be sporting a minimalist makeup look as she flashed her hazel eyes at the camera. She had two gold chains with different charms fastened around her neck. 'Hot sauce is really just pepper juice,' wrote Jeffries in her post's caption. Chantel returned to Instagram later in the day to show off another one of the stylish bikinis she brought along with her on her current trip to Aruba. Fitness fiend: The 27-year-old model flaunted her incredibly fit physique in a bright red two piece suit as she lounged in a hammock that hovered over a pool In the brief Instagram Story video, the DJ happened to be modeling one of the highly sought after pieces from fellow model Emily Ratajkowski's swimwear line. Chantel rocked the Las Olas Top and Bottoms in the seventies inspired pattern referred to on the official Inamorata Swim site as Rust Figure Stripe. Jeffries added her own personal flare to her swim silhouette by tying a Fendi scarf around her hips. Her hair was tied up into a ponytail as she filmed herself in her hotel's bathroom mirror. Look two: Chantel returned to Instagram later in the day to show off another one of the stylish bikinis she brought along with her on her current trip to Aruba On trend: In the brief Instagram Story video, the DJ happened to be modeling one of the highly sought after pieces from fellow model Emily Ratajkowski's swimwear line Retro: Chantel rocked the Las Olas Top and Bottoms in the seventies inspired pattern referred to on the official Inamorata Swim site as Rust Figure Stripe Chantel has been using her trip to Aruba with pal Sarah Snyder as the perfect excuse to live out her ultimate Summer fantasies amid COVID-19. The trip seemed to be in celebration of Snyder's birthday, which Jeffries brought to the attention of her 4.6million followers. 'Not us acting shocked when we take a cute pic,' she wrote. 'happy birthday.' The BFF duo donned matching Dior bucket hats as they posed in the picturesque sand in their bikinis. Aruba buddies: Chantel has been using her trip to Aruba with pal Sarah Snyder as the perfect excuse to live out her ultimate Summer fantasies amid COVID-19; Chantel and Sarah pictured on Thursday Style twins: The BFF duo donned matching Dior bucket hats as they posed in the picturesque sand in their bikinis Chantel Jeffries confirmed her relationship with The Chainsmokers' Andrew Taggart, who she was first seen dancing with in February, over Instagram on Monday. The couple put their mutual affection on full display with a passionate kiss, as they enjoyed an evening at The Barn at Nova's Ark on Friday in Watermill, New York. In the tender snap, Chantel could be seen wrapping her arms gently around Andrew and pulling him close. New Zealand ordered the creation of an independent military watchdog Friday after an inquiry found senior officers repeatedly misled government ministers about a special forces raid in Afghanistan. The inquiry, co-chaired by former prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, found no misconduct by elite SAS troops during the 2010 raid, which was carried out with US air support. But it criticised the military for subsequently dismissing claims that civilians were killed during the operation, even though there was evidence suggesting up to five non-combatants died, including a girl aged 8-10. Attorney-General David Parker said the conduct undermined fundamental tenets of democracy, including the principle that the civilian government controls the military. "New Zealanders will be shocked at some of the conclusions reached by this report," Parker said of revelations that senior officers knowingly made false statements to ministers, media and the public. He said the government had accepted recommendations in the 400-page report, which took two years to compile, calling for the appointment of an independent director-general of defence to ensure the military was held accountable. "We've got to the bottom of a pretty murky situation," Parker said. "That sort of transparency can give the New Zealand public confidence that the armed forces are properly within the control of government and they're not a law unto themselves." Parker said New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel failed to correct statements that it knew were incorrect and even edited reports coming out of Afghanistan to remove references to the possibility that civilian casualties had occurred. NZDF chief Air Marshal Kevin Short admitted "inaccurate statements were made" but denied there was an orchestrated cover-up. "NZDF acknowledges and regrets these mistakes," he said. "If we are to maintain the trust and confidence of the people we serve, we must be accountable... I will ensure this happens." The inquiry was launched after a book entitled "Hit and Run" was published in 2017 accusing the SAS of staging the raid in the northern province of Baghlan as a "revenge attack" after insurgents killed a New Zealand soldier in the area. The inquiry rejected the book's claims, adding: "Regrettably, NZDF's response appears to have been affected by a degree of personal animosity towards the authors". New Zealand sent a reconstruction team and a small special forces contingent to join the NATO-led operation in Afghanistan in 2003. The deployment lasted a decade and resulted in the deaths of 10 NZDF personnel. New Zealand sent a reconstruction team and a small special forces contingent to join the NATO-led operation in Afghanistan in 2003 Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 21:49:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TOKYO, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The number of COVID-19 cases in Japan increased by 1,536 to reach 37,925 on Saturday amid a resurgence of infections across the country, according to Japan's health ministry and local governments. The total number of infections excludes 712 from the virus-hit Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama earlier in the year. The new daily additions surpassed the 1,000 mark for the fourth straight day on Saturday after a record number of 1,578 new infections were confirmed on Friday. Authorities in large cities have been forced to re-impose restrictions on some businesses to address the spike. The Tokyo metropolitan government confirmed 472 new cases of infections on Saturday, marking a record daily increase for the third straight day after 463 were logged Friday. The cumulative total for Tokyo stood at 13,163 on Saturday. The capital had raised alert for the outbreak in mid-July to the highest of the four levels, meaning "infections are spreading." Governor Yuriko Koike warned Friday that Tokyo may declare an emergency for the capital despite the full lift of a state of emergency by the Japanese government in late May. Following Tokyo, Osaka Prefecture recorded 195 new cases, while Aichi reported 181 new cases. Tokyo's neighboring prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba reported 58, 74 and 73 new cases on Saturday respectively, the latest figures showed. The death toll in Japan from the pneumonia-causing virus currently stands at a total of 1,026 people, including 13 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The health ministry also said there are currently 87 patients considered severely ill with ventilators or in intensive care units. The ministry added that in total, 25,588 people have been discharged from hospitals after their symptoms improved, according to the latest figures released Saturday. Enditem Doctors have been urged to avoid using 'judgemental', 'threatening' or non-medical terms such as 'chunky' when treating obese patients. A new language guide from the charity Obesity UK says the way clinicians talk to obese or overweight patients can have a profound impact, leading to stigma and discrimination. In the report, one patient describes their humiliating experience of a doctor grabbing their belly fat and 'jiggling' it during an appointment. A new language guide from the charity Obesity UK has urged doctors to avoid using 'judgemental' or non-medical terms such as 'chunky' when treating obese or overweight patients The patient, who was at the doctors to discuss suspected endometriosis, was being examined on the table and was stripped naked from the waist down. They recalled how, 'the doctor grabbed a handful of my belly fat, jiggled it about and announced to the nurse, "she needs to get rid of THIS first".' Another patient who went to the doctor with chest pains was told to go home and look in the mirror as that was what was wrong with [them] - instead of being treated. Later that night, they were rushed to hospital as they couldn't breathe and were diagnosed with bronchitis. The charity, Obesity UK, says they hear on a daily basis how badly people living with obesity are spoken to and treated. Their guide, Language Matters: Obesity, is aimed at doctors to help them use more appropriate and helpful language when interacting with patients with obesity. It outlines examples to doctors of what to avoid saying, and what to try instead. The guidance says doctors should avoid using 'threatening' phrases such as telling patients: 'If you don't lose weight you will end up with your leg chopped off, or just plain dead.' One patient in the report described their humiliating experience of a doctor grabbing their belly fat and 'jiggling' it during an appointment It urges doctors to avoid 'using non-clinical terms, which can be disrespectful, judgemental and inappropriate' such as: 'You're a bit on the chunky side, shall we say.' Instead it suggests that doctors say: 'Some people with your symptoms, find that losing a bit of weight and a little exercise can be helpful.' The guide says that talking about 'some people', rather than 'you' avoids attributing blame on the patient and also says doctors should try 'asking permission to discuss weight'. Other recommendations include that saying 'you just need to eat less' is unhelpful. The guidance explains the reason why this choice of language is wrong, saying: 'People living with obesity have lower levels of and/or are insensitive to the hormones that give pleasure from food and cause satiety afterwards. 'As a result, the main symptom of obesity is hunger, even after eating. 'Telling a person living with obesity to eat less is like telling a person with asthma to breathe less.' David Strain, of the University of Exeter medical school, who co-led the project to produce the guidance, speaking to The Times said: 'There is general agreement that living with obesity is associated with a stigma. 'Words can burn, and contribute to the problems, meaning people may be far less willing to seek support. 'As healthcare professionals, we have the opportunity to address this stigma, in leading by example with our words and actions, to promote the best health outcomes.' According to the NHS website, a person with a BMI of over 30 is considered to be obese. In England, 29% of adults are living with obesity, which is a risk factor for a range of secondary conditions such as type two diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancer. Figures published earlier this year show that there record numbers of patients being taken to hospital because of obesity. Hospitals in England are being flooded with 2,400 obese patients a day - up almost a quarter in a year. Health officials have warned the obesity crisis is likely to have worsened during the pandemic, with millions of children stuck at home and doing less exercise. Boris Johnson launched an anti-obesity strategy this week, with plans for restaurant and takeaway chains to be forced to publish the calories in every meal they serve. Proposals also include a watershed for adverts for certain foods, and the end of promotional deals on unhealthy foods. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- President Donald Trump said he planned to taking action as soon as Saturday to bank TikTok, a popular Chinese-owned social media app that has experienced storms of national security and censorship concerns in recent months. As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States, Trump told reporters on Friday, the Associated Press reported. Trump is reportedly weighing options that include forcing the apps owner, ByteDance, to sell the company. Fox Business first reported that tech-giant Microsoft and other companies are in talks to purchase the company, thus allowing the app used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide to survive in the U.S. The transportation Safety Authority (TSA) in Feb. said it barred its employees from using TikTok to create social media posts for the agency after Sen. Chuck Schumer sounded the alarm regarding security concerns. The TSA said in a statement to the Associated Press that a small number of TSA employees have previously used TikTok on their personal devices to create videos for use in TSAs social media outreach, but that practice has since been discontinued. It was not immediately clear how advanced the talks were between Microsoft and ByteDance; however, Trump resolutely said he imminently planned to use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce an action against the app. I have that authority, he said. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. On July 24, a federal grand jury indicted Brian A. Mohr of Grand Island on charges related to the receipt and possession of child pornography. In light of the federal indictment, the Hall County attorneys office has dismissed its case against Mohr, a former teacher at Northwest High School and Grand Island Central Catholic. The case against Mohr in Hall County District Court was dismissed considering primarily the differences between sentencing structure in the federal and state criminal justice systems, according to a news release from Deputy Hall County Attorney Sarah Hinrichs. In the federal system, a criminal defendant will serve roughly 80% of an imposed prison sentence as compared to the 50% of an imposed prison sentence a criminal defendant would serve at the state level. The Hall County Attorneys Office determined the ends of justice are best served by allowing the case against Mohr to proceed in Federal Court, unencumbered by our offices prosecution. Mohr, 38, was arrested by Grand Island police in January. He was charged Jan. 15 with 11 counts of possession of child pornography. The federal charges result from the same investigation that was carried out earlier this year. Though Sameera Reddy has been a part of several industries varying from Bollywood, Tollywood (Bengali) and south, the actress is best known for her role in Tamil film Vaaranam Aayiram. Her role as Meghna in the Tamil movie has indeed left many teary-eyed. With many remembering her even today as Meghna, the actress penned a heartfelt note about the beautiful role she played in the musical romantic drama. Sharing a video clip of the song 'Nenjukkul Peidhidum' from Vaaranam Aayiram, she said that the character is a magical part of her career. She wrote, "my MIL asked me why ppl refer to me as 'Meghna' & I told her it's because she is the most magical part of my career and she will forever be a part of me." Well, we are sure her special note on the blockbuster movie might have taken the fans and followers of the actress and the movie, down the memory lane. The 2008 movie directed by Gautham Vasudev Menon featured Suriya in the lead role. Sameera Reddy essayed the role of Suriya's ladylove, whose tragic death shatters him. The movie also has Simran, Divya Spandana and Prithviraj essaying important roles. On a related note, Sameera Reddy has been garnering appreciation for her posts on motherhood. Her recent picture flaunting her grey hair won many hearts on social media. She has rendered support to mothers who are going through depression, after she revealed in an interview how she went through postpartum blues and quarantined herself for months. With regards to films, the actress was last seen in 2013 Kannada film Varadhanayaka directed by Ayyappa P Sharma. Helmed by N Lingusamy, her last Tamil movie is 2012 release Vettai, which also stars Madhavan and Arya in key roles. Sameera Reddy Breaks Down As She Worries About Anxiety Among Children During Lockdown Suriya Starrer Soorarai Pottru To Not Release In 2020? He has jetted to Marbella to perform with his band at best pal Elliott Wright's restaurant. And James Argent appeared in high spirits as he rode his motorbike after a boat ride on Friday. The former TOWIE star, 32, flew to Spain after his bitter break-up with his on-off girlfriend Gemma Collins, 39. Happy: James Argent appeared in high spirits as he headed out in Marbella on Friday Arg, who has flown to Marbella with ex Lydia Bright's sister Romana, cut a casual figure in a white T-shirt, red loafers and green patterned shorts. He held a designer Louis Vuitton man bag in the crook of his arm and held a pair of black shades. Arg, who is still yet to gain his full driving license, picked up a scooter to travel around the city. Zoom zoom: Arg, who is still yet to gain his full driving license, picked up a scooter to travel around the city The appearance comes after Argent and recent ex Gemma ended their relationship in July after she revealed a string of abusive messages, purportedly sent to her by the TV personality prior to their split. It's understood James had made derogatory remarks abut her weight after she suggested that he had bought another woman dinner. The series of texts began with Gemma saying: 'What man pays for another woman!!!', while Arg responded by saying: 'Insensitive.' Born performer: The reality star has jetted to Marbella to perform with his band at best pal Elliott Wright's restaurant Clearly riled, the blonde said: 'And the woman that saved your life has to pay for herself!!!' Her next message was masked, but her now-ex responded: 'You are supposed to be treating me you hippo.' Moments later, Gemma uploaded another series of messages, where he sent her a plane emoji in reply to a picture of flight details. 'I'll take a mate, I'm not booking it. You said you would be a gentleman!', she penned, before he shockingly said: 'YOU FAT F**K. IVE JUST LOST ANOTHER 2000' (sic). He didn't refer to what he had lost 2000 of. The self-proclaimed diva has decided to take some time off social media, citing that she was 'devastated' and 'heartbroken' by the exchange. Sunshine: While Arg has gone to Marbs, his ex Gemma Collins flew to Mykonos to heal her broken heart after their bitter split (pictured earlier this week) However after returning to the UK from her own Tenerife getaway, Gemma apologised to her former beau for releasing the messages. In a screenshot obtained by MailOnline, the Diva On Lockdown star contacted her fellow reality star in the early hours of the morning. She wrote: 'I am sorry about putting the messages up, I was just so hurt you suggested an open relationship, it didn't look like a joke when you typed it. 'I was so upset but I shouldn't have put the messages up, that was anger on my part which was wrong. I am so sorry about that x.' (sic) It's been a tough year for Argent, with him recently admitting that he is a cocaine addict and that he had overdosed twice last year before hitting rock bottom over Christmas and calling his friend and former co-star Mark Wright for help. He checked himself into a 10-week bootcamp at The River rehab facility in Thailand earlier this year where he kicked his habit and lost five stone in the process. Mr Yemmanuel Angmortey, Executive Director of Centre for Leadership and Executive Training Ghana (CLET Ghana), has said businesses need to be adaptable to change in order to survive and be relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic era. He said times were changing and required businesses to adapt to the changing times to be able to meet the needs of consumers and the ever-evolving world market. If you are a production company and you want to make profits, you need to take advantage of emerging Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) market and produce nose masks and face shields which are in high demand now. So as a business, you need to shift to that line of production to keep going in the pandemic, he said. He made these remarks at a CLET Ghana and Yemmanuel Angmortey Worldwide Leadership summit on the theme: The Science of Startup Leadership. He said managing a successful enterprise required effective leadership,that included; making the right decisions even in times of challenges and reiterated that in evolving to meet the needs of the consumer market, businesses should not compromise on their values. Mr Angmortey said businesses needed to have short, medium, and long term goals, adding that, business goals should not always be in the long term. Most businesses only have long term goals, neglecting short and medium terms. However, you need all the three in order to be successful. You need to have goals that give you short term results, as well as medium term and long-term results, he said. He advised entrepreneurs to be resilient and have passion in everything they did, saying, with passion and perseverance they were bound to succeed. 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 In a shocking incident, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday, July 31 recommended people to use gasoline as a disinfectant for face masks. In a televised address, Duterte asked people to go to the gas station and disinfect their face covering with some drops. He also stressed that he was not joking and was very serious about his advice. While calling his dangerous technique 'true', Duterte asked the public to go to a gas station and have 'some drops'. He further stressed that he is 'not joking' or 'kidding' about it. This is not the first time that the outspoken leader gave such advice, as just last week, Duterte was reported to have made a similar remark about using petrol on masks if cleansing agents were unavailable. Soon after his advice, the Philippines Presidents spokesperson claimed that it was a joke and reminded the public that Duterte 'often says things in jest'. READ: Philippines Takes 'major Step' Toward Using Nuclear Power For Electricity Needs Meanwhile, Jose Santiago, President of the Philippine Medical Association, while speaking to a media outlet said that one can not use gasoline as a disinfectant. Santiago added that inhaling the gasoline may cause harm and could lead to more problems like respiratory disease. After Dutertes comments, several opponents also blasted him and called his advice dangerous. Senator Risa Hontiveros urged people not to try it home and reiterated that gasoline and diesel should not be used in disinfecting. READ: Philippines President Duterte Issues Warnings To Criminals And China Trumps dangerous claim on disinfectants Duterte is not the only leader to make such dangerous claims, Earlier this year US President Donald Trump also suggested using 'disinfectant injections' against the COVID-19 infection. Trump also made a cure claim of using disinfectants and ultraviolet light to root out COVID-19 infection. Trump said, And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, there a way we can do something by an injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so itd be interesting to check that. So, that youre going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. READ: Philippines Foreign Ministry Defends President Duterte's Anti-terrorism Law Before US READ: South China Sea Dispute: Philippines Asks China To Comply With 2016 Arbitral Ruling Advertisement Former MEP Nigel Farage blasted today's Afrikan Emancipation Day march through London, describing the event as 'divisive' as protesters dressed in paramilitary-style clothing took part in the event. Hundreds of demonstrators brought Brixton to a halt as they marched through London to mark Afrikan Emancipation Day. The coalition of action groups - led by Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide and the Afrikan Emancipation Day reparations march committee - took the drastic action to 'make themselves heard' in a bid for reparations from the UK government. Among the groups of people marching were one group, dressed in black and equipped with what appeared to be anti-stab vests. One protester was wearing a balaclava, while another, angrily confronted police officers telling them to f*** off. The Metropolitan Police said three people have been arrested during this afternoon's demonstration. Responding to the event, Mr Farage said: 'Terrifying scenes in Brixton today. A paramilitary-style force marching in the streets. This is what the BLM movement wanted from the start and it will divide our society like never before.' However, co-leader of the Green Party Jonathan Bartley responded to Mr Farage's intervention. He tweeted: 'You are just trying to create division. But these people in Brixton today know that love and justice will conquer the fear and hate that you peddle. Hope is what people need right now and they are showing the pathway toward it.' Activists block Brixton Road as they march through London's streets to mark Afrikan Emancipation Day despite restrictions One of the protesters was wearing a balaclava. He was marching with a group of people stating FF Force attached to what appear to be anti-stab vests Former MEP Nigel Farage described photographs of today's demonstration in Brixton as 'terrifying' claiming a 'paramilitary-style force marching in the streets' Scotland Yard said one man was arrested on suspicion of affray, another on suspicion of assault on an emergency worker and a woman was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated assault. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor in charge of the policing operation today said: 'The gatherings today have been largely peaceful and we thank our communities for working with us to ensure the voices of the community could be heard safely and done so responsibly to ensure the safety of all.' According to Scotland Yard: 'Officers have been present throughout the day working with the community organisers and speaking to those attending to allow for a successful day without anti-social behaviour or violence, resulting in just three arrests made. 'Conditions had been imposed on the demonstrations. These included for attendees to congregate in three specific areas within Brixton and for the demonstrations to conclude at 20:00hrs. 'These conditions were authorised following intelligence that some attendees had intended to block the A23 the primary road running through Brixton. This would have caused significant disruption to those local residents and surrounding areas.' All three remain in police custody. The march was led by Iman, the Forever Family Force and the Slow Boys, on motorbikes as it made its way through Brixton The demonstrators joined hundreds of others marking Afrikan Emancipation Day in Windrush Square, Brixton this afternoon A large police presence surrounded the protesters who marched through the centre of Brixton this afternoon One female protester wearing combat fatigues, a FF Force top and beret was seen on video confronting several police officers. She warned one officer against pushing her. Who are Forever Family? One of the group participating in todays demonstration was Forever Family. Several members of the group marched wearing anti-stab vests. According to the groups social media announcements: We are forever family united in building a self sufficient and stable community. Creating a hub and avenues for funding, business start-ups, grants and investing. We believe in putting back in using all our experience and resources to deliver results. We value the safety of our senior and junior generation. Their voices will be the motivation in what we stand for. Advertisement Several police in the area were dealing with members of the public while a couple of officers appeared to be making an arrest. The woman approached the police van and was blocked by several officers who were protecting the back of the vehicle. Anyone approaching the police was pushed back. Several of the protesters were filming the incident. One of the protesters tried to start a chant no justice, no peace and then launched an expletive-laden rant accusing the police of being racist. Other groups involved included the Forever Family Force and the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford campaigners. A number of demonstrators temporarily blocked Brixton Road at the junction with Acre Lane, forcing cars and buses to stop and turn around. Protesters, including some from Extinction Rebellion, occupied the middle of the junction until they were told to get back on to the curb by police officers. Three people - holding signs saying 'mask up' and wearing visors - handed out face masks and hand sanitiser to those attending. The main group, Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide, want the government to create an All-Party Parliamentary Commission for Truth and Reparatory Justice. Crowds of people listened to music in Windrush Square - where the event began - watched speeches and observed a three-minute silence to mark the event, which is in its seventh year. A coalition of groups were involved in the event on Saturday, including Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide, the Afrikan Emancipation Day reparations march committee and the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford campaigners. The Rhodes Must Fall campaigners want the statute of colonialist Cecil Rhodes removed from Oriel College in Oxford. While Rhodes was not involved in the slave trade he exploited black Africans working in his diamond mines and believed in the supremacy of the English. Protesters, floats with speakers and people on motorbikes spilled out onto Brixton Road shortly before 4pm and began to march to nearby Max Roach Park. Groups of protesters carried home made signs calling for action on ongoing racial violence Among the groups protesting in Brixton today were these motorcyclists riding varying styles of high-powered machines Protesters supporting the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee Protestors blocked the main road running through Brixton, saying they took drastic action 'to make themselves heard' The Metropolitan Police began dispersing crowds from the Brixton demonstration at 8pm Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March The annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March is part of a campaign calling for the UK to make amends for the enslavement endured by generations of African people. The march this afternoon marks its seventh year as a means of drawing attention to their cause. The event marks the passing of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act, which came into force on 1 August 1834. Campaigners argue that the millions of pounds in compensation paid to former slaveholders as a result of the Act, without similar recompense for freed slaveholders, cemented and increased racial injustices that are still felt today. Advertisement Protesters then began marching down Brixton Road towards Max Roach Park, blocking the road and stopping traffic. The event marks the passing of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act, which came into force on 1 August 1834. Campaigners argue that the millions of pounds in compensation paid to former slaveholders as a result of the Act, without similar recompense for freed slaveholders, cemented and increased racial injustices that are still felt today. Antoinette Harrison, who lives in nearby Clapham, attended the event to march with her cousin and her cousin's children. On why she joined the event, the 38-year-old said: 'We are tired. 'And I was just saying, our parents have gone through, we're going through this, and I don't want our next generation to. It's got to come to an end.' She added: 'What's lovely about it is there's such unity. 'It's not just the one race, like it was back in the day, now it's whites, blacks, Hispanics - everyone.' Asked if she had any concerns about coronavirus while attending, Ms Harrison, who has been protesting since earlier in the summer, said: 'This is a pandemic - racism and not having justice.' The protesters aimed to lock down Brixton because 'WE/they are not being HEARD' in their demand for the UK Government to establish the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice. The event aimed to promote the necessity of stopping the genocide and ecocide of African people and their environments, Extinction Rebellion activists said. A curfew and other restrictions had been imposed on the planned demonstrations to stop people blocking main roads or planning illegal music events, Scotland Yard has said. The Metropolitan Police on Friday said that blocking the road will cause 'serious disruption' to Brixton and the surrounding area because it is used by hundreds of bus routes and thousands of motorists. It said that it is imposing a number of conditions on the demonstrations within areas such as Windrush Square, Max Roach Park and outside Brixton Police Station. They must not spill into nearby roads and they must finish by 8pm. The force said that the time limit was set so that officers could separate those attending the demonstrations from people attending other gatherings or unlicensed music events. Demonstrators brought Brixton to a halt and are urging the government to establish an inquiry for truth and reparatory justice A man takes part in the seventh annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March in Brixton this afternoon Stop the Maangamizi is one of the organisations dedicated to bringing about reparations on the day slavery was abolished Police were on scene as demonstrators marched through Brixton this afternoon to mark Afrikan Emancipation Day Protestors brought Brixton to a halt on Afrikan Emancipation Day despite police restrictions imposed ahead of the event Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, speaking ahead of the event today, said: 'The decision to impose conditions on an assembly is never taken lightly and is made following a vigorous assessment of the information available to us. 'We have no intention of infringing upon a responsibly-organised community event. 'We only require that this is done in a way that makes use of Brixton's open spaces and leaves the main road through Brixton open to other Londoners. 'In recent weeks we have policed a number of UMEs (unlicensed music events) in which loud music is played at night, disrupting local residents and posing a real threat both to property and the officers who attend to disperse them. 'We received information that there are those intending to come to Brixton on Saturday to purposely cause disruption, and to confront police officers. 'This is in stark contrast to the feel of the events that will take place earlier in the day and is in opposition to the wishes of the local community.' The Yard added that gatherings of more than 30 people will be in breach of the Health Protection (Coronavirus) Restrictions and its decision to impose conditions did not mean the assembly in breach of these regulations was authorised by police. People were on hand to issue masks and hand gel to those in attendance as people seemingly breached social distancing The march was carried out a coalition of organisations who joined to raise awareness of the cause for reparations The Metropolitan Police said they worked with the local community to allow them to express their right to protest Motorcyclists supporting the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee take part in a march from Windrush Square to Max Roach Park in Brixton, London, this afternoon An Extinction Rebellion protester supporting the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee takes part in a march from Windrush Square to Max Roach Park in Brixton, London Demonstrators praised the unity of the march as different groups came together to march for Afrikan Emancipation Day Demonstrators gathered in Windrush Square, in Brixton, before marching through the streets with signs and banners Police had imposed restrictions and a curfew ahead of the event over fears the demonstration would cause severe disruption Several speeches were delivered to the crowd in support of the campaign and promoting Afrikan Emancipation Day The Metropolitan Police confirmed that today's event passed off peacefully with three people arrested Who are Stop the Maangamizi: We charge genocide/ecocide The group are campaigning for the government to establish an All-Party Parliamentary Commission for Truth & Reparatory Justice on Britain's history of slavery. The term Maangamizi, is a Swahili word for Holocaust, according to Professor Maulana Karenga. As well as raising awareness of Britain's colonial past, the group claim that black people in the UK still suffer significant discrimination and face economic deprivation and a lack of opportunity. The group believes that Britain became a wealthy society having exploited African people and claim that their ancestors should receive restitution. Protesters claim descendants of slaves in Britain should receive reparations for their ancestors' suffering Advertisement TNPSC Group 4 Exam 2018 - Answer Key Download. Answer key group d 2018 download. RRB Kolkata Group D Paper Solutions 2018:-. RRB Group D Question Paper 2018 Candidates looking for RRB Group D 2018 Question Paper can get it from this page. RRB Group D Answer Key 2018 (Official Answer Key) Railway Recruitment Board will release RRB Group D answer key 2018 today, on January 11, 2019. Candidates can check below the date for. 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Railway Recruitment Board is one of the major recruitment agencies of our country. RRB Group D Answer Key 2018-19 Live Updates: HSSC Group D Question Paper PDF 17, 18 November 2018 ,Haryana Group D Answer Key 2018 (17, 18November) Haryana Group D Answer Key Exam 17, 18 November 2018 Download . APPSC Group 2 Key 2018 will be available soon to Download. Railway Recruitment Board released RRB Group D Answer Key 2018, on January 11 2019. Once the Railway Group D Answer Key will be published on the official website it will be publically. Instructions for Downloading the RRB Group D Answer key 2018: The Railway Board released the RRB Group D 2019 Answer Key on March 10, after announcing Group D Result on March 04, 2019. Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) will also release RRB Group D Question Paper with answers. RRB Group D answer key 2018: RRB Group D answer key 2018 link has been activated on the official site of Railway Recruitment Board.You can check the Railway Group D answer key 2019 from the direct link given below. Belfasts LGBTQ Pride parade is being held online this year with a virtual celebration instead of the usual colourful street parade. The citys 30th LGBTQ celebration was postponed due to the pandemic and an online event will be broadcast instead from 1pm on Saturday at facebook.com/belfastpride. Last years parade was the biggest to date with more than 50,000 people taking to the streets. Expand Close Curtis Lee from Co Antrim -says he will enjoy celebrating Pride at home this year. Handout pic (Curtis Lee/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Curtis Lee from Co Antrim -says he will enjoy celebrating Pride at home this year. Handout pic (Curtis Lee/PA) Curtis Lee from Co Antrim said while he enjoyed being in Belfast for last years parade, he put on his rainbow colours and celebrated at home this time. He said: It is definitely not the same feeling compared to being out and about in Belfast itself for the Pride parade. The people and the atmosphere around the city is what makes it special each year for me. But have got to make the most of what we have so I am celebrating at home from Ballymena by watching the virtual parade and having a few drinks later on this evening. Happy #Pride Belfast - Love from all of us at @TRPNI. We look forward to celebrating with you at 1pm during the @belfastpride virtual parade! Check out https://t.co/y9OEfHwfzG for the live feed. pic.twitter.com/Q1icJ5Vt7K The Rainbow Project (@TRPNI) August 1, 2020 For 2020, the organisers have asked people to send in a short video instead about how they are celebrating. Parade hosts Trudy Scrumptious and Gareth Woods will present a four-hour live show featuring the best of the videos sent in. From 7pm, an online Party In The Square will take place featuring music and talent from Northern Irelands LGBTQ community. Happy #Pride Belfast 2020 This Pride will be unrecognisable but it doesnt have to be unremarkable!!! Safe stay whatever you get up to & a huge thank you from us to all our #RainbowHeroes Heres a short message from our @queergreens pic.twitter.com/pOjhJVr0l6 Green Party NI (@GreenPartyNI) August 1, 2020 Public Health Agency spokeswoman Fiona Teague said Pride is an opportunity to highlight and celebrate the organisations working to support the health and wellbeing of the LGBTQ community. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions we, like so many other supporters, are unable to take part as usual in the Pride parade. We want to send a message of support to the LGBTQ+ community and let them know there are support services available for their needs, and to not struggle on their own with whatever they are going through. Research has shown that overall, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender community are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and other mental health issues due to discrimination and social isolation. Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said Pride is a chance to reflect on positive changes for the LGBTQ community in Northern Ireland. In a video posted on Twitter, Ms Long said: While we will certainly miss having the gathering of the Pride parade, it is still nevertheless very important that we focus on what we have achieved over the past few years as a community and what we can achieve in the future by working together. Obviously we have had big wins with equal marriage but we still have work to do to ensure those in civil partnerships can transfer them to be marriages if they wish to do so. The first same-sex marriages in Northern Ireland took place in February. For one extremely lucky lobster, death via boiling pot was not in its future. A rare blue American lobster was found last week at a Red Lobster restaurant in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where staff fished out the crustacean from a package of live lobsters and saved it from winding up on a dinner plate, NPR reported. "At first it looked like it was fake," culinary manager Anthony Stein told NPR. "It's definitely something marvelous to look at." MONSTER FISH: Fishing in the city? Here's what lurks in Houston's Brays Bayou Staff kept the lobster, which they named "Clawde" in honor of the restaurant chain's mascot, safely tucked away in a tank before it was transferred to the Akron Zoo. "We kept [it] in the tank and just made sure that nobody took him in the back for dinner," server Angie Helbig told NPR. The Akron Zoo said in a Facebook post Tuesday that its famous blue lobster is actually a girl and changed its name to "Clawdia." ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Fishing during coronavirus pandemic comes with a catch "Clawdia underwent a vet exam on Sunday, where our team was able to determine that she was indeed female," the Zoo said in the Facebook post. "She does have a few bumps and bruises from her journey. The next few months are critical for Clawdia as she prepares for her annual molt, a time that is very vulnerable for lobsters of any color." There are mixed opinions on the exact rarity of the blue lobster, with some saying catching one is a one in a two million chance, according to the BBC. Per the BBC, bright blue lobsters get their color from an overabundance of a specific protein that is caused by a genetic abnormality. Regardless, many fisherman consider blue lobsters a symbol of good fortune. For Clawdia, it seems luck was certainly on her side. An artists impression of the proposed new building to be constructed in Enniscorthy Technology Park Wexford County Council has agreed to sell the long term leasehold interest in two sites at Enniscorthy Technology Park at Killagoley. The matter was brought before the attention of Enniscorthy Municipal District Council at their monthly meeting yesterday in County Hall. The land in question was acquired from the Health Service Executive at a cost of 18,000 per acre and at yesterday's meeting the local authority members agreed to sell the long term leasehold to Moyne Point Ltd, a company with an address at Brownswood, Enniscorthy. Site one measures 3,477 acres, and is to be sold to the development company for 288,040, by way of a lease for 500 years at a nominal rent of 1 per annum. Moyne Point Ltd will also have the option to purchase site two, which measures 2.96 acres, for 205,484. However, .445 acres of the site one and .797 acres of site two will be dedicated to the construction of construction site stabilising retaining walls. The purchaser is to use the site to construct a modern, business technology unit in accordance with planning permission and the purchaser will hold the option to purchase site two which measures 2.96 acres, of which .797 acres will be dedicated to the construction of a site stabilising retaining wall. At yesterdays meeting Director of Services, Tony Larkin, informed the members that he expects construction to begin at the park later this summer. The members were also informed that negotiations are also at an advanced stage with another company to take site three; the park currently is divided into seven sites. 'This is a great development, said Mr Larkin. 'The fact that a company is willing to invest millions on offices in the new Tech Park is a great boost for Enniscorthy,' he added. The Cathaoirleach of Enniscorthy Municipal District Council, Cllr Barbara-Anne Murphy, also welcomed the move and emphasised that the Enniscorthy building will be 'the first passive office building on the island of Ireland'. Reacting to the outcome of the talks IFA President Tim Cullinan said that while a deal was needed, the funding provided for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) over the next seven years is not consistent with the EUs aspirations for farming as part of the European Green Deal. On the one hand the Commission wants farmers to take costly actions to implement the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies, but on the other hand they dont want to provide the necessary funding, he said. The overall allocation for CAP is down approximately 9% at constant prices, compared to the previous seven years. The Government will need to come forward with significant co-financing to protect payments, he said. What farmers will want to know is how these figures, together with national co-financing from the Government, will translate into payments at farm level, he said. The Taoiseach now needs to give a clear commitment to all farmers that their payments will at least be maintained in real terms during the transition in 2021/2022 and beyond when the new CAP comes into play, he said. These talks were difficult with push back from the so-called frugal countries reducing funding for rural development from the recovery fund from 15bn to 7.5bn during the talks, he said. While there is a ring-fenced additional allocation for Ireland under rural development of 300m, the Government will need to provide significant National co-financing to support these programmes, he said. An essential aspect of the outcome is the creation of a 5bn contingency fund for Brexit. Depending on the Brexit outcome this may not be sufficient, but it is an important acknowledgement that some sectors and Member States will need aid if there is a poor outcome to the Brexit talks, he said. Meanwhile, ICMSA President, Pat McCormack, said what was already clear was that agriculture has taken a hit compared to the previous programme period of 2014-2020 and it will be necessary for the Irish Government to supply three basic metrics immediately to allow proper consideration of the funding deal concluded. Firstly, we need a country by country allocation, secondly, we need to know by how much Irelands overall allocations under Pillar I and Pillar II are down and, thirdly and most importantly now, we will need to know how our Government intends to make up that reduction, said Mr. McCormack. The ICMSA President said that we appeared to have arrived at the kind of illogical swings and roundabouts solution he had warned against. Theres no point whatsoever in Ireland getting more funds under a COVID heading to be distributed amongst larger commercial businesses affected by the pandemic, if weve lost the same or greater under a CAP heading that would have been distributed amongst farm families and through them into the wider rural economy. Were no better off nationally and, in fact, all weve done is sign off on an arrangement that diverts money from the economically most disadvantaged areas to sectors and areas that are often more economically developed. ICMSA is clearly stating that farm families have taken a hit and it is incumbent upon the Irish Government to explain how they intend making good that reduction and - before its even suggested - expecting farmers to do more for less is simply a non-starter, said Mr. McCormack. by Biju Veticad Mukaluvilayil Sameul Sunil dreams of building 1,000 of them in the coming years. House prices in the country have tripled. The academy, rewarded by the government for its initiatives, also helps the disabled, students and orphans. It also runs programs of food support and distribution of drinking water to poor families. Pathanamthitta (AsiaNews) - A retired zoologist is completing the construction of her 175th homeless shelter, a real record and a great example of altruism. Mukaluvilayil Sameul Sunil, ex-professor at the Catholicate College of Pathanamthitta (Kerala), has been heavily involved in social work and committed to providing education of the poor for the past 15 years. The house currently under construction will be donated to a local family. By the end of this year, Prof. Sunil plans to complete 200 shelters for the poor: her dream is to build 1,000 in the coming years. I started building my first home for the homeless driven by the difficulties of a student of mine. Volunteers from the National Service Scheme and some of my colleagues contributed to the project, "said the academician to AsiaNews. With prices rising, it has become increasingly difficult to buy a house in India. Sunil points out that 15 years ago a small house of about 55 sq m cost 1,500 euros; now 4,500 are needed. To limit construction costs, in addition to supervising the project, she also designs the home. She started his academic career in 1995, at the age of 36 and is considered a stimulating educator, who has taught her students the importance of love and attention to others. Her social commitment is not limited to building shelters for the homeless. She gifted 278 wheelchairs to people with motor disabilities, and glasses for the blind. She supported 90-100 students with annual scholarships, and helped 25 orphaned children in the local district. With the Karuthal project, Sunil supplies 200 poor families of rice and food every month. Her latest commitment is "Jeevamritham", an initiative to distribute drinking water to the poor of the villages around Pathanamthitta. The zoologist received the Naree Sakthi Puraskar, the highest civilian honor in India for a woman, established by the ministry of the Union for Child Development in 2018. Sunil has used the cash prize for various charitable purposes and for the construction of the homes to donate to the needy. She also receives great support from the family. The 150th house was built thanks to a fund created by her son. Samsung has launched a new UV sterilizer with wireless charging that can be used to disinfect Galaxy smartphones, Galaxy Buds and smartwatches. It will be available for purchase from next month for Rs 3,599. "The UV Sterilizer is a perfect and compact device to keep our personal daily belongings germ free, protected and disinfected," said Mohandeep Singh, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India. The device has been manufactured by Samsung C&T, a partner of the Samsung Mobile Accessory Partnership Programme (SMAPP) and is designed to fit a variety of device sizes so you can sterilize many of the products you use the most. According to tests done by two independent certification institutes, Intertek and SGS, UV Sterilizer effectively kills up to 99 per cent of the bacteria and germs that includes E Coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans. UV Sterilizer can be accessed with a single button that switches the device on and off. The device automatically switches off after 10 minutes, allowing users to sanitize their belongings. The box comes with dual UV lights that sterilize both the top and bottom surface of items that are placed inside. It comes with a 10W Wireless Charger that can charge smartphones, Buds or other devices, and charging continues even after sanitization is done. France will require COVID-19 tests at airports for travelers coming from 16 countries, including the US, France 24 reported referring to the French PM Jean Castex. Individuals who test positive will have to comply with a 14-day quarantine. France closed flights to the US and Brazil, allowing entry into the country only in case of special circumstances. According to the PM's order, persons arriving in France will also have to carry a certificate of a negative COVID-19 test, made no earlier than 72 hours before departure. Two years after a permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to pass through a national forest was struck down, a new plan will soon be unveiled. The U.S. Forest Service plans to release a draft report on the pipelines environmental impacts to the Jefferson National Forest by September, according to a notice published Thursday in the Federal Register. Public comments will then be taken, with a final decision expected by years end. Plans call for the natural gas pipeline to come into the forest in Monroe County, West Virginia; cross the state line into Giles County; burrow under the Appalachian Trail at the top of Peters Mountain; and continue southeast toward Montgomery County. Trees have already been cut to clear a 125-foot-wide right of way along a 3.5-mile stretch of the forest. In July 2018, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Mountain Valleys permit, ruling that federal agencies were too accepting of the companys assurance that running a huge, buried pipeline along steep slopes would not cause significant problems with erosion and sedimentation. They basically caved in to the pipeline company, said Diana Christopulos, who is leading opposition efforts for the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club. We have no evidence that theyre going to follow the rules they already had. There have been problems with erosion both during construction and after it stopped in the forest, according to environmental compliance reports filed with FERC. The 4th Circuits decision ended construction in federal woodlands until the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management could reconsider their 2017 approval of the pipelines passage through the national forest. Completion of an environmental impact statement is part of that process. It was also the first in a series of major legal setbacks for Mountain Valley. Permits for the pipeline to cross nearly 1,000 streams and wetlands were suspended in late 2018, following a legal challenge by Appalachian Mountain Advocates. And in October 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a stop-work order after yet another lawsuit claimed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not take adequate steps to protect endangered and threatened species in the pipelines path. All three sets of permits must be re-issued if Mountain Valley is to complete the project by early next year a goal the company stuck to this week. MVPs current construction plan incorporates sufficient tie-in work and activity that will allow for construction to progress into the early winter, company spokeswoman Natalie Cox said, provided that the Fish and Wildlife Service acts soon and FERC then lifts its stop-work order. The Federal Register notice was the most detailed public account of the Forest Services plans since its permit was revoked two years ago this week. Since then, there have been new developments that must be taken into consideration in drafting a supplemental environmental impact statement, the notice said. One factor is the listing of the candy darter, a colorful fish found in streams along the pipelines right of way, as an endangered species, the Jefferson National Forests public affairs office said Friday in response to questions from The Roanoke Times. There have been no changes to the pipelines route through the forest, an email from the office said. However, Mountain Valley no longer plans to use Pocahontas Road and other Forest Service roads to access construction areas. Instead, it will use the pipelines already established right of way. Pocahontas Road, and the top of Peters Mountain several miles away, were the scenes of the first tree-sits, held by opponents in 2018 to block tree-cutting for the project. Those aerial blockades are gone now. But a tree-sit in eastern Montgomery County, along a wooded slope that has yet to be cleared, will soon enter its third year of resistance to what opponents say is an unneeded pipeline that will contribute to climate change. 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. Even with the day-to-day uncertainty in our current world, the big four tech giants keep making sure that businesses are in a position to fulfill the demands of millions of consumers, said Zach Hoffman, the CEO of Exults Digital Marketing. In a congressional group hearing on Wednesday, the CEOs of tech giants Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook joined together to answer questions about their companies competitive tactics and strategies - monopoly power. Following this testimony, the big tech companies reported earnings late Thursday afternoon. The earnings report comes at an interesting time for the big four tech giants, as they have remained the subject of the government antitrust investigation for over a year now. According to a CNN Business article, Wednesdays hearing was the largest hearing since Microsoft's Bill Gates went to Washington in 1988. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos admitted during a hearing that he cannot guarantee no one has ever successfully violated the companys policy on preventing Amazon employees from accessing seller data. This comes in wake of a Wall Street Journal report earlier this year that found employees accessing the data to help Amazon develop competitive products under their own brand. Prior to that, Amazon had stated to Congress that it does not access sales data to assist in-house product development. Both Facebook and Google-parent Alphabets CEOs were asked questions on whether their platforms are biased. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to questions about 2012 internal emails he sent about buying Instagram because he saw them as a threat at the time. Google CEO Sundar Pichai denied Representative David Cicilline allegations that Googles search algorithm consistently prioritizes its own sites. As for Apple CEO Tim Cook, he was let off easy. He was only asked a few questions about whether Apple favors certain developers on its App Store. While many have complained about Apples developers, there were hardly any questions on the App Stores guidelines and requirements for developers. Despite this, Congress itself wont be able to do much more than regulate the members of Big Tech. With no return to normal yet in sight and the current state of consumer behavior heavily geared towards digital services, the big four were predicted to continue growing and dominating the market. Even with the day-to-day uncertainty in our current world, the big four tech giants keep making sure that businesses are in a position to fulfill the demands of millions of consumers, said Zach Hoffman, the CEO of Exults Digital Marketing. Amazons domination of the global eCommerce industry appeared to have no signs of slowing down, as the company reported Q2 earnings on Thursday that massively out-performed expectations. The multinational tech behemoth reported $10.30 earnings-per-share on revenues of nearly $88.9 billion, surpassing analysts $81.56 billion revenue estimates. Amazons Q2 2019 reported a $63.4 billion revenue, representing a 44%+ growth clip from last year. Amazonalong with others in the eCommerce industryhas seen much of their success from the previous quarter carry over into Q2. While responses to the ongoing pandemic continue to vary across the globe, the concepts of shelter-in-place and work-from-home remain prevalent among a majority of consumers, fueling the market for online shopping. For the third fiscal quarter of 2020, Apples $2.58 earnings-per-share on revenues of $59.7 billion beat analysts expectations of $52.6 billion of revenue with earnings-per-share of $2.07. The California-based tech giant, Google Alphabet Inc., reported $10.13 earnings-per-share on revenues of nearly $38.3 billion. Analysts estimated $37.34 billion, slightly beating sales expectations amidst the pandemic. However, revenue was down by 2% from $38.94 billion in the 2019 Q2 earnings report. For the first time ever, Google reported a decline in year-over-year quarterly sales. Despite many businesses pausing ads on Facebook in protest, Facebook reported a $1.80 earnings-per-share on revenues of nearly $18.7 billion, surpassing analysts' estimated $17.4 billion revenue. Facebooks revenue increased compared to the $17.74 billion in the 2020 Q1 earnings report. The reported fruition of the techs big four comes as no surprise to Exults, an agency specializing in digital marketing, including Google Ads and Facebook Ads marketing platforms. These perspectives are diverse. For Laing, showing work from her Buddens series, this means visualising the traces humans leave in the landscape and the impact they have, while Clancys Undercurrent project investigates the way First Nations histories are physically and metaphorically covered up. Michael Cook presents images from his Invasion series, portraying First Nations people and indigenous fauna as invaders in central London, flipping the colonial narrative. Hoda Afshar, pictured in her Melbourne studio, travelled to Manus Island in 2018. Credit:Joe Armao Afshar, who was born and grew up in Teheran and has been living in Australia since 2007, working and lecturing in photography, also tells a story of truth: how one culture seeks to subjugate the other. The ideas for Remain were born out of exchanges and conversations she had with Boochani in which he shared many ideas and pieces of writing. She decided to transpose these thoughts into an artwork, and when she arrived on Manus, the first thing that struck her was the beauty of the island. I have been to other tropical islands before but I have never seen anything like that, Afshar says. At the same time, she heard the terrible stories told by the men she met there. The contrast between what I was listening to and the beauty of the island was the most disturbing thing I experienced. Immediately I thought that is what I should bring into the work the contrast between the beauty and the trauma. She knew this was risky: having followed the social media accounts of some of the men, she worried that trolls might react to images of them moving about the island in freedom. Through conversation with the men, they were all saying What freedom? An island can be a prison. They are in the middle of nowhere. The fact they were all calling it a green hell was a testament to that. Remain begins with Boochani standing by a waterfall, telling a story. This was one of the first places he took Afshar when she arrived on Manus. Behrouz didnt tell me where we were going. It was the second day, when we started filming. When we arrived, I was mesmerised by the beauty of it. He jumped in and swam and he came back and said Do you know where we are at? This is where Kamil Hussain died. Behrouz Boochani in a still from Remain. Credit:Courtesy Hoda Afshar and Milani Gallery One of about eight detainees who died on Manus, Hussain had recently been released to freedom. Afshar records this story and others throughout the film, responding with a delicate, powerful sequence of images. The experience of Remain was influenced by a previous photo-based work called Behold, in which Afshar photographed gay men in Iranian bathhouses. Both are concerned with ideas around recognition and visibility, the desire to be seen, she says. The narrative of a lot of people remains untold or misrepresented. What I wanted to do was to bring people close to their stories and pain, make people feel compassionate towards them. "Not sympathy sympathy to me is quite dangerous. It is like taking someone elses pain for no purpose; it only makes you feel better about knowing but nothing changes. When you feel empathy and compassion, you decide to act on it in whatever way possible. While speaking with the men on Manus, Afshar became intrigued by stories of Processing Centre staff from Australia who had complained about the refugees situation and demanded changes. They were immediately sent back to Australia and dismissed and not allowed to go back, Afshar says. They were not allowed to talk about what they witnessed because of the confidentiality agreement they signed with the government of Australia. Remain, by Hoda Afshar. Credit:Courtesy Hoda Afshar and Milani Gallery She is now completing a work about whistleblowers, to be exhibited next year as part of the PHOTO 2021 festival. She has tracked down some of these people and explored through her artwork the way they have had their lives and families jeopardised by speaking out. At first it was really hard to believe that in a liberal, democratic system, such things can happen, but also it reminded me of another piece of writing by Behrouz in which he said if Australian people close their eyes to the suffering and plight of the refugees on Manus and Nauru, to remember it is like a cancer growing its roots and coming to your house one day soon. It's little surprise the new work is infused with an aesthetic adapted from Greek tragedy. In all the Greek tragedies, the main figure is the one who struggles with law and morality, she says. To me, whistleblowers are modern tragic figures. Advertisement Maharashtra's Covid-19 tally is now higher than Mexico which has 408,449 cases, ranking 6th on the Worldometer, the global corona dashboard. This comes a day after the state overtook Peru.According to Thursday's figures, there was one death roughly every 5 minutes and a stupendous 464 new cases every hour.The state recovery rate, however, increased for the fifth consecutive day, zooming up from 59.84 per cent to 60.37 per cent on Thursday, while the current mortality rate stood at 3.58 per cent.The Health Department said that of the total cases till date, 148,150 are active.Also on the positive side, 8,860 recovered patients returned home on Thursday - the highest till date - taking the total number of discharged patients to 248,615.In terms of deaths, Mumbai was again overtaken by Pune which shot to the top with 83 deaths.With 53 more deaths, Mumbai's toll shot up to 6,300 and the number of corona cases increased by 1,208 to 113,199 now.There were also 30 fatalities in Thane, 11 in Nanded, 10 each in Solapur and Satara, nine in Nashik, eight each in Raigad and Jalgaon, seven in Ahmednagar, six in Aurangabad, five each in Palghar and Ratnagiri, four in Latur, three each in Kolhapur, Sangli and Osmanabad, two in Nagpur, and one each in Dhule, Nandurbar, Amravati, Buldhana, Parbhani, and Washim.The MMR (Thane division) remains on the edge, although the daily toll dropped to two digits for the first time in over a week, at 96, taking the toll to 9,510 while 3,499 new cases took up the tally to 236,422.Thane district's cases have risen to 91,784 with 2,525 fatalities to emerge as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.Pune district now has 86,225 cases, with the death toll increasing to 2,028 on Thursday.With 103 more fatalities, the Pune division's death toll has reached 2,662 and the case tally touched 98,802.Nashik division has 1,162 fatalities and 32,593 cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 585 deaths and 16,780 cases, Akola division with 245 fatalities and 7,121 cases, Kolhapur division with 221 deaths and 8,712 cases, Latur division with 216 fatalities and 5,126 cases, and Nagpur division with 80 deaths and 5,865 cases - the only division now in the sub-100 death figure range.Continuing the trend for the second week, all the eight divisions recorded fatalities on Thursday, while Chandrapur maintains its status as a zero Covid death district.Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased to 904,141 now, while those in institutional quarantine went down to 40,546.Source: IANS Celebrations of Eid al-Adha were subdued in most parts of Uttar Pradesh on Saturday following the imposition of weekend lockdown in view of the coronavirus pandemic. In Lucknow, markets remained shut in prominent areas such as Hazratganj, Aminabad, Gomtinagar, Indiranagar, Latouche Road, Alambagh, Hewett Road, Aliganj and Gudumba. There was also less movement of people on the streets of the state capital. Imam of Lucknow Eidgah Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali told PTI, Only five people offered namaaz at Lucknows Eidgah. Most people offered namaaz at their homes, and also did qurbaani in their homes. Ninety per cent of people completed their prayers in the early morning itself. By and large, there was silence in most parts of the city. In Pratapgarh and Gorakhpur as well the Eid festivaities were rather subdued as people stayed indoors and celebrated the festival in their homes itself. In Allahabad, people offered namaaz while observing social distancing and prayed for the eradication of novelcoronavirus, while the festival was celebrated in a very subdued manner in Barabanki as well. Another month passes. The coronavirus pandemic marches on. And Americans struggling amid the economic fallout once again have to worry as their next rent checks come due today. Many left jobless by the crisis are already behind on payments. And the arrival of August brings new anxieties. A supplemental $600 in weekly federal unemployment benefits that helped many pay their bills is set to expire as July ends, with Congress bogged down in disagreement over a new round of aid. Also set to end, unless lawmakers intervene, is a federal moratorium on evictions that has shielded millions of renters though some Americans remain protected by similar state and local actions. The Associated Press reconnected with renters first interviewed ahead of their April payments. Four months later, some have returned to work. One saw her church step in to cover her rent. Some found landlords willing to negotiate, while others are still looking for relief. Sakai Harrison tried to make it as a personal trainer and designer but his gym shuttered early in the pandemic, and after weeks of struggling to both pay the rent and put food in his fridge, he knew what he had to do. He moved to another apartment for greater stability. In May, he left his apartment and its $1,595 monthly rent. When the first of the month rolls around, his new place costs about $400 less and its larger. This is the biggest silver lining Ive ever seen, he said. Hes training with a few one-on-one clients, and hes launched a boot camp with a dozen more. This week, he met four of them at a park, where they did lunging squats, pull-ups, and a military-like crawl. Harrison then led them into a gym for dumbbell exercises. They didnt wear masks for virus protection - Harrison says they take precautions, but pointed out that the state doesnt mandate face coverings. Harrison modeled the proper form and pace, corrected the men when needed, and gently teased when they tired or slowed down. Some shot barbs back, and Harrison smiled. Hes charging clients slightly less than he got at Blink Fitness in New York, but that amounts helping him develop an apparel brand. Hes taking orders for a line of shoes, T-shirts and hats. Barring another shutdown, Harrison said, Ill be fine. Financial challenges keep piling up for Roushaunda Williams months after she lost her job of nearly 20 years tending bar at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. Potential reopening dates for the hotel have been pushed back, Williams said, and hospitality jobs remain scarce. She anticipates being unable to pay her $1,900 rent by September especially if Congress doesnt reauthorize the weekly $600 in additional unemployment aid as part of a new relief package. Williams, 52, said she asked the management company that owns her apartment for a rent reduction or other help. So far, shes been told her rent will just accrue if she cant pay. The Illinois governor recently extended a moratorium on evictions into August. Still, Williams worries about debt piling up while shes unemployed. Ive exhausted my savings, she said. So I dont have a safety net at all now. Jas Wheeler once hoped to ride out the pandemic and return to work at a bakery. Not anymore. Wheeler, 30, is immunocompromised and fears going back to the bakery would increase risk of infection. The former social worker started working at a small grocery store that pays less but allows more room for social distancing. Wheeler took the gig in anticipation of losing the $600 weekly unemployment aid. That money ensured Wheeler and their wife, Lucy, could afford their $850 monthly mortgage payment. The couple closed on their house the same day Wheeler was laid off in March. Wheelers wife kept her jobs, but money remains tight. Theyve sold a car and are growing some food. The unemployment without the enhanced benefit is not enough to live on at all, Wheeler said. Were broke. Though the pandemic took away Itza Sanchezs two incomes, it has strengthened her faith. The mother of two says the generosity of her church has saved them from hunger and eviction. Sanchez fell behind on rent when she stopped selling homemade tamales and collecting scrap metal over fears of contracting the virus. By mid-July, she owed about $950 in unpaid rent. Thats when Sanchez got a notice to vacate the mobile home where her family lives. She was spared when her church sent $800 directly to the landlord. Now shes trying to scrape together $460 for Augusts rent. She gets food donations from church. The school system delivers lunches for her children, 11 and 7. An immigrant from Honduras, Sanchez isnt eligible for unemployment benefits. In this crisis we have moments of anguish, and one feels desperate, Sanchez said. But I have been blessed so far. For Andrea Larson, life took an unexpectedly good turn. She lost her sommelier job in mid-March, when restaurants closed. She was just getting by on unemployment, but worried about choosing between losing benefits or going back to an unsafe restaurant job. Then a former boss offered her a spot at a new restaurant. While Larson still fears the virus, she appreciates that her employer spent a lot of money to make sure people are extremely safe. At her duplex, a plumbing disaster forced her to live in a construction zone for a couple of months. But she counts that as luck: She didnt have to pay rent. Jade Brooks and her family have counted on an eviction moratorium to get them through the pandemic. Still, 22-year-old Brooks worries: How long will it last? Brooks mother hasnt found find full-time work since losing her insurance-company job. And Brooks doesnt get paid enough as a hospital switchboard operator to cover rent recently raised to $2,075 monthly for their two-bedroom apartment. Her family had an August eviction hearing scheduled in court after they refused to pay the $265 increase. Then the governor extended the eviction ban until mid-October, giving temporary relief. It kind of gave me extra hope to figure things out, instead of jumping into the fire, said Brooks, who lives with her mother and an 8-year-old cousin. Brooks hopes the extra time gives her mom a chance to find work, and perhaps theyll negotiate a new lease rather than go to court. After two months of missing payments as part of a rent strike, Neal Miller and his housemates heard from their landlord. To their surprise, he agreed to reduce the monthly $1,500 rent for their home on Chicagos West Side. Millers share is now $150, down from $400. Miller, 38, said his landlord gave the impression that hed prefer some income from the house over nothing at all. Millers last stable job was as an adjunct professor at Loyola University. During the pandemic, hes patched together odd jobs dissertation editing, bookkeeping for a psychiatrists office. He said lower rent cuts the pressure: We are definitely in a unique situation by the response we got. Tnia Morgans family has grown by one since the pandemic upended their lives. The birth of a grandson, her youngest daughters first child, June 25 was a rare blessing during a spring and summer otherwise filled with stress. I love his smell. I love his smile. I love everything about him, said Morgan, who shares a townhouse with her newborn grandson, her daughter and a nephew. She needed something to celebrate. Her income plummeted after she lost her hotel banquet-hall job in March. Bills pile up monthly. Four rent checks have come due since then. Morgans landlord lets her pay what she can. She estimates thats been nearly half what shes owed since April. Food stamps help feed her family. She says shes tried in vain to sign up for unemployment benefits. Her only income comes from working for a food delivery service. Its not much, she said, but its better than not having anything. Ruqayyah Bailey has lost much of her independence and wants to get her life back on track. Bailey, 31, has autism. Until March, she lived in her own apartment, worked part time as a cashier at a St. Louis cafe and attended college. The coronavirus tossed all that structure out the window. Bailey could no longer get the one-on-one tutoring that helped her thrive in college. The cafe closed. With no money coming in, she moved back in with her mother. The cafe reopened in June, but Bailey now works just four hours a week. Shes signed up for seven hours of college classes but isnt sure shell get tutoring. She uses savings to pay bills and worries about losing her weekly $600 in extra aid. I am completely stressed, Bailey said. I dont know how to pay my bills. Im not sure how Im going to able to get back into my apartment. Jason W. Still spent nearly three months without work before he went back to cooking at a high-end restaurant. Still, 30, returned to the kitchen when it reopened in early June. Before then, his wifes job in the legal marijuana industry and Stills unemployment checks helped assure they never missed a rent payment. Still is back to working 40 hours a week. But he wonders whether thatll last, as COVID-19 infections surge in the U.S. Its terrifying to me to be in a service industry that can just shut down again at any time, he said. Tinisha Dixon scraped money together to cover her $1,115 monthly rent for April and May. Since then, shes been unable to pay. Dixon, 26, shares a downtown apartment with her partner and their five children. Before that, Dixon was homeless. Now she worries daily about her family ending up on the street. Dixons partner works as a security guard, but reduced hours have shrunk his earnings to about $800 a month. Dixon said she worked briefly at a coronavirus testing site, but relying on her partner for rides interfered with his job. Before the pandemic, Dixon says, her landlord had begun taking legal steps to evict them. Im pretty overwhelmed trying to get everything situated, not knowing how long I can hold out here, she said. Eli Oderberg remains out of work. He lost his job at an energy company in a wave of mid-April layoffs sparked by the pandemics economic fallout. Oderberg, 36, once worked on apps to track spills and leaks. Now he receives unemployment benefits as he sends out resumes and interviews for new jobs. He said hes been a runner-up for several positions but hasnt been hired. Oderberg and his wife, Katie, have been making their mortgage payments. Shes on unemployment after losing her retail job. Shes also pregnant, and the couple fears running out of money after the baby arrives. They also have a 5-year-old daughter. Im trying to get a good balance so I can enjoy my family, he said. And I keep reminding myself there are a lot of people in a much worse situation. Flash China stands ready to work with other countries on the basis of mutual respect, openness and inclusiveness, equality and mutual benefit to carry out international cooperation in space and share the fruit of aerospace development, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday. Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks after the official commissioning of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3) Friday. "Beidou not only serves China, but also serves the world," Wang said. After the completion of the Beidou system, it will provide global users with a range of services, including global short-message communication, basic navigation and international search-and-rescue services, Wang said. He added that more than 200 countries and regions are covered by the system's services, with more than 100 million users and 200 million cases of service provision per day, while more than half of the countries in the world have begun to use the system. "China's space endeavor forms an important part of mankind's peaceful exploration and use of the outer space, and it is entirely intended for peaceful purposes," Wang said. The universe is vast enough to permit the joint exploration and cooperation of all countries, Wang said, adding that China is willing to make contributions to promoting human civilization and social progress, and building a community with a shared future for mankind. Exclusive: Portugal telcos won't use Huawei for core 5G networks though no government ban Woman uses a mobile phone outside a Huawei store with a 5G sign in Beijing By Sergio Goncalves LISBON (Reuters) - The three companies who dominate Portugal's mobile phone market said they would not use Huawei [HWT.UL] technology in their core 5G networks despite the government not banning the Chinese group from supplying critical infrastructure. NOS , Vodafone and Altice - which together serve nearly 100% of Portugal's mobile customers - all said they had decided not to use Huawei kit in the core systems of their 5G networks, which covers servers, gateways and routers that forward traffic to the antennas. The question of whether or not to use Huawei for next-generation mobile networks has become a major issue in Europe amid intense diplomatic pressure from the United States to ban the Chinese group. The Portuguese government has so far not taken a stance, but Infrastructure Minister Pedro Nuno Santos told Reuters it has "no 'a priori' issues with any manufacturer." Nuno Santos revealed that a group created by the Portuguese government to assess risks and cybersecurity issues relating to 5G had completed its work and had not drawn any conclusions directed against any particular supplier. Huawei did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Core mobile networks carry higher surveillance risks because they incorporate more sophisticated software that processes sensitive information such as customers' personal data. A NOS spokeswoman said the company "will not have Huawei equipment in its core network" and will choose the "best partners" for each of the network's components. At Vodafone Portugal a spokeswoman said of the parent group: "Vodafone announced that its core 5G network won't include Huawei in its different operations, so naturally, Vodafone Portugal is no exception." HISTORIC PARTNER Vodafone Portugal "has been working on preparing its 5G network with its preferred and historic partner Ericsson ," the spokeswoman said. Story continues Altice Portugal CEO Alexandre Fonseca set out a similar stance as early as March, saying the company hadn't even included Huawei in its current core mobile telecoms networks. Altice Portugal said its position remained the same. Neither company gave a reason for not using Huawei in their core networks. Their stances potentially leave the door open for them to use Huawei in non-core parts of the 5G rollout. The three telecom groups' decisions regarding Huawei allows the Portuguese government - for whom China is a key business partner and the United States is also a major ally - not to take a stance. Nuno Santos confirmed he had "heard Huawei would be left out" of core 5G networks but added: "It has nothing to do with the options or impositions of the Portuguese government, which in this matter is absolutely aligned with the European orientation." The European Commission has urged European Union member states to take urgent action to diversify their 5G suppliers, a move set to shrink Huawei's presence in Europe. The EU strategy includes reducing dependence on countries and telecoms operators from a single supplier. Huawei competes with Finland's Nokia as well as Sweden's Ericsson. Portugal postponed its 5G spectrum auction for six months to October due to the coronavirus pandemic. The government in neighbouring Spain has not taken a position, though Telefonica said it would gradually remove Huawei from the core network for technical reasons. Huawei was among a list of operators included in 5G pilot projects unveiled on Thursday, but not the only one or the main one. (Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; Additional reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Jason Neely and David Holmes) When you sit down and read the Scriptures, do you ever rewrite them to fit todays world? One of the best examples of reworking the Scriptures is Clarence Jordans Cotton Patch Gospel. Jordan -- who was a Georgia farmer, Greek scholar, and a founder of Habitat for Humanity -- recast the words of Jesus, Peter, and Paul in the language and culture of the South in the 1950s and 60s. His retellings are still popular. Taking a Biblical text and using your own words to rewrite it is a great spiritual exercise. Thats what Ive done this month. I chose these passages because I am puzzled why so many people -- especially some Christians -- rebel at the idea of wearing a face mask. What would Jesus say to us today if he walked into one of our Bible studies or churches? Heres my take on that. THE GOOD SAMARITAN This is one of the most famous of Jesus parables. Its in Luke 10:25-37. Here we go: Jesus dropped in on a Bible study in Helena one day. An especially sanctimonious man was leading it. When he saw Jesus he stood up and asked him a question. What do I need to be saved? After a few moments of conversation, and wanting to impress Jesus with his Bible knowledge, the man suggested the way to be saved was to love God and to love ones neighbor as yourself. Jesus replied: Thats right. Do those things and youll have a full and faithful life. But the man had a holier-than-thou chip on his shoulder and pressed Jesus, So, whos my neighbor? Well, Jesus said, I have a story that will help you understand. "During the COVID pandemic a recently retired man was hiking down Mount Helenas 1906 Trail when he turned his ankle and fell. It was his first outing since chemotherapy. He lay there, dazed and propped up against a tree. Fortunately a hiker came along. The injured man, being immunocompromised, asked if his would-be helper had a face mask. Face mask? the hiker blurted out with obvious contempt. This COVID crap is a hoax. He high-stepped his way past the man and disappeared down the trail. Not much later a second hiker showed up. The injured man asked him the same question. Hell no, he said. This face mask BS violates my individual rights. He turned his back and was gone in a heartbeat. Then a third hiker came across the injured man. I really need help getting down the trail, the injured man said. But Im over 65 and a cancer survivor. I'm pretty vulnerable. Did you bring a face mask? Yes, I do, the third hiker said. He then put it on. The injured man reached in his pocket and retrieved his mask and put it over his face. We do this for each other, the hiker said. Thats right, the injured man replied. My mask protects you and your mask protects me. He then helped the man up and together they hobbled down the trail. Let me take you to Urgent Care, he said when they got to the bottom of the trail. When they got there the hiker told the nurse, Take good care of this fellow. Hes got a bad sprain. Ill wait here till hes fixed up. Then Ill drive him home." Jesus then asked the sanctimonious Bible teacher: What do you think? Which of the three was a neighbor to the man hurt along the trail? I guess it was the third guy, he said sheepishly, the one who respected his vulnerability and helped him down the trail. To which Jesus added, Go and do the same. And, by the way, wear your face mask. JESUS AND PETER BY THE SEA In the Gospels, Peter is our Lords Number One man. Yet Peter had the uncanny ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. To undo his three-fold denial on Good Friday, Jesus asked Peter three questions in the John 21 resurrection story. After they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Peter said to him, Yes, Lord. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Wear a face mask during this pandemic. Jesus said to him again a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter replied, Yes, Lord. You know that I love you. He said to him, Wear a face covering. Jesus said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was saddened because he asked him a third time. He said to Jesus, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Wear your face mask. SHEEP AND GOATS The pearable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25:31-46 has been called Jesus Last Will and Testament because it bequeaths his ministry to the lost, the least, and the overlooked to his followers. Jesus said to those at his right: I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was homeless and you lent me a room, I was cold to the bones and you gave me clothes, I was ill and you stopped to see me, I was in jail and you came to visit me, I was vulnerable and you wore a mask. Jesus told them, Whenever you did one of these things to someone in danger or overlooked you did it to me. He then addressed those on the other side: I was hungry and you did nothing, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was homeless and you gave me no place to stay, I was cold as an iceberg and you gave me no clothes, I was sick and in jail and you never visited, I asked you to wear a face mask and you cursed me. Jesus wrapped up his parable, saying: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was in danger or neglected, that was me. You failed to do it to me. THE IMPLICATION What is Jesus saying about wearing face masks? He often concluded his parables, saying: Let anyone with ears to hear, listen! The Very Rev. Stephen Brehe is the retired Dean of St. Peters Episcopal Cathedral in Helena. Idris Elba is set to star in new drama Concrete Cowboy, which is set on the streets of Philadelphia. The Luther actor, 47, was seen riding a horse alongside Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin, 18, in new still from the film, which were released on Friday. The film is inspired by the real-life Fletcher Street Stables, a black community's cowboy culture which has existed in Philadelphia for more than 100 years. Exciting project: Idris Elba rode a horse as he starred in new Philadelphia drama Concrete Cowboy alongside Stranger Things' Caleb McLaughlin, in stills released on Friday In snaps from the drama Idris could be seen atop a horse in full cowboy gear, which saw him team an open denim shirt with a pink neckerchief and Stetson hat. Beside him Caleb could also be seen riding along, and he donned a white vest top and hat to transform into his character Cole. In the film Caleb plays the part of a 15-year-old who is taken to live with his estranged father Harp - played by Idris - as he discovers the city's cowboy traditions. The upcoming American drama, directed by Ricky Staub, is based on the novel Ghetto by Greg Neri, and will be released in September. New release: The film is inspired by the real-life Fletcher Street Stables, a black community's cowboy culture which has existed in Philadelphia for more than 100 years It comes as Idris led the winners at the TV BAFTAs 2020 on Friday night with viewers noting 'more diversity' across the ceremony after the BAFTA Film Awards were criticised earlier this year. The actor thanked the Academy for 'finally recognising' him as he was virtually reunited with his Luther co-star Ruth Wilson and presented with the Special Award. The Special Award presented to Idris honoured his exceptional career and his commitment to championing diversity and new talent in the industry. Upon accepting his gong, the actor said: 'Thank you, first of all thank you BAFTA for giving me this opportunity and FINALLY recognising [me]... I'm joking, very proud!' Special Award: It comes as Idris led the winners at the TV BAFTAs 2020 on Friday, as he earned the Special Award for his exceptional career and his commitment to championing diversity Earlier this year, the British Academy of Film and Television came under fire and was criticised for featuring all-white acting nominees and all-male directors - #BAFTAsSoWhite trended worldwide on social media. The actor, writer, director and producer received video messages from Matthew McConaughey, Taraji P Henson, Ruth Wilson and Grace Ofori-Attah for his gong. He said in his thank you speech, via Zoom, that his role in a Crimewatch reconstruction in the 1990s was 'the first rung on the ladder' for his career, adding: 'A lot of actors don't like to admit they did Crimewatch but I'm not embarrassed!' He also revealed the highlight of his career was playing Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom in 2013. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 22:34:31|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Romain Alessandrini (1st R) of Qingdao Huanghai FC celebrates with his teammates after scoring during the second round match between Shijiazhuang Ever Bright FC and Qingdao Huanghai FC at the postponed 2020 season Chinese Football Association Super League (CSL) Suzhou Division in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, Aug. 1, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Bo) SUZHOU, China, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Romain Alessandrini scored a brace to help Qingdao Huanghai draw 2-2 with Shijiazhuang Ever Bright in the battle of two newly-promoted teams in the Chinese Super League (CSL) here on Saturday. Striker Oscar Taty Maritu gave Ever Bright a 1-0 lead with a header from Zang Yifeng's corner in the 35th minute. But under pressure from Huanghai's rapid counter-attack, Stoppila Sunzu failed to clear and Alessandrini equalized from close range four minutes later. The Zambian center-back made amends in the 74th minute, rounding off a commanding performance with a header from Matheus Leite Nascimento's pinpoint corner. Ever Bright seemed to have sealed the victory, but Alessandrini scored Huanghai's equalizer with a left-footed curling shot from distance in the 86th minute. Ever Bright next faces Wuhan Zall, while Huanghai takes on Shanghai SIPG. Enditem Clashes between police and protesters were absent Friday from downtown Portland for the second straight night, a sharp contrast to recent weeks that saw federal officers gas crowds nightly. State police took over federal courthouse security Thursday as part of a plan to phase federal officers out of Portland. Calls for calm also increased among demonstrators at the same time. The relative calm has allowed state troopers to remain almost entirely out of sight. Demetria Hester leads a group of self-identified mothers who have become a fixture at the protests. She led a march to the demonstrations Friday and remained there for hours, calling out people whose actions might provoke police. At the start of the night, Hester reminded the crowd they had gathered in unity in the Black Lives Matter cause. Hester called the crowd woke, and said, We wont go back to sleep. More than 2,000 people turned out at the 65th consecutive day of protests against violence, anti-Black racism and heightened use of force by federal officers. Fridays demonstrations got underway around 8 p.m. Most people gathered on the waterfront and marched later to the federal courthouse. Only a few stood in front of the building itself. Sunflowers, a recently adopted emblem at the protests, were tucked into the fence surrounding the building. No police officers were in sight. A car parade arrived in the heart of demonstrations around 9 p.m. Cars honked to the rhythm of the Black Lives Matter! Speeches started at the steps of the local Justice Center, next to the federal courthouse. By that time, about 500 people had gathered in the area. Speakers at the rally reiterated their grievances over what they consider a disproportionate law-enforcement response to protesters, particularly in recent weeks. The value of human life matters more than graffiti on a building, one person said. Human life matters more than rattling a fence. Speeches also continued on the waterfront three blocks away. Eric Knox, Benson High School girls basketball coach, described his pride in seeing current and former players speaking out for Black Lives Matter. Knox said he sees parallels between hip hop and protesting, including keeping true to yourself and the movement. Hester led those gathered at the waterfront to meet the rest of the crowd already at the Justice Center around 9:40 p.m. The combined crowd exceeded 1,000 people. The crowd filled Southwest Third Avenue in front of the Justice Center and half of Chapman Square, the park behind it. Around 10 p.m., many people in Hesters group moved to the front of the courthouse fence to form a symbolic barrier. A group of veterans soon joined them. One mothers group member, Faith Lightsy, said people should consider ways to help the movement and the nightly protests in Portland. All Black lives matter, all the time, Lightsy said. By 10:30 p.m., the crowd had grown beyond 2,000 people. The atmosphere remained calm even as more people gathered in front of the federal courthouse fence, the sight of nightly clashes with federal officers. The crowd grew after the Justice Center rally ended around 10:40 p.m. The mothers group who gathered there earlier tied balloons to the fence. By 11 p.m., there were few signs, if any, of destruction or actions that have drawn police out in the past, such as blinking lights, lasers, fireworks and objects hurled over the fence. Chants and drum beats filled the air. Police kept away. When three young people started hitting the fence with homemade shields, Hester walked by with a megaphone and told them their actions do not help the broader movement. We are peaceful, she said, repeating her message a couple of times. The people stopped briefly after she called them out. By 11:30 p.m., tensions between protesters and police remained nonexistent. Officers had not emerged from the courthouse. A few people had thrown a handful of bottles over the fence over the course of nearly an hour. A single firework crackled around 11:40 p.m. Some people in the crowd used megaphones to deliver speeches and lead chants. One person used one to shout in support of police, Blue lives matter! By midnight, the size of the crowd had dropped below 1,000. For at least the second straight night, Gary Floyd, 51, used a megaphone to rally the crowd. Floyd said he is from Louisiana and said he had been in Portland for several days after first traveling to Seattle. He led the crowd in chants of Black lives matter! and urged people to raise their fists in solidarity. This is a sign of power. We all have that power, Floyd said. As long as you have this, theres nothing in that building, or anybody in that building, can do. Around 12:30 a.m., the crowd spotted an officer standing on an upper deck of the federal courthouse. The sight energized the crowd and led at least one person to shine lights toward the officer. Just before that, someone had started a very small fire in the middle of Third Avenue. Two people seized the new energy in the crowd and climbed over the courthouse fence and ran the length of the area behind it, before climbing out the other side. The actions led people in the crowd to argue over keeping peace. By 12:45 a.m., about 200 people remained in front of the courthouse, and about 150 people were in the surrounding streets and parks. The atmosphere mellowed after the burst of energy. Most people chanted, cheered and stood around to see what might unfold. Hester led chants of I cant breathe! Several people sat in a circle around the small fire, campfire style, feeding the fire with newspapers and then a piece of plywood. Within 15 minutes, a handful of people stepped in to extinguish the fire. Fridays demonstrations marked the second straight night of relative calm. Video footage shared on social media after Oregonian/OregonLive journalists left showed the crowd that remained gathered around a second bonfire in the middle of Third Avenue around 2 a.m. Several people delivered speeches and encouraged people to chant, Black lives matter! The group of protesters had dwindled to a few dozen by around 2:30 a.m., Portland Police said Saturday morning. There was no police interaction throughout the night, police said. Both Thursday and Friday nights were entirely different from weeks of recent demonstrations, during which federal officers often deployed tear gas and issued recurrent warnings in response to fireworks, lights and thrown items. Oregon State Police Superintendent Travis Hampton said the agency has committed to at least two weeks in Portland. State police commanders will direct troopers during the protests, and Hampton said he will oversee the overall response from an incident command center with Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell. Portlands protests began after the Minnesota police killing of George Floyd on May 25. The downtown demonstrations are often among several daily Black Lives Matter protests throughout the metro area. A small crowd gathered near West Burnside Friday evening for a firefighters for Black lives protest. Organizers brought supplies, such as paper, paint and duct tape, for people to make signs. Attendees held up their signs as cars passed on Burnside. A fire engine from Portland Fire and Rescue Station 3 drove past and rang a bell in support. Madison Smalstig, Dave Killen and Jim Ryan of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report. Piper McDaniel; @piperamcdaniel Everton Bailey Jr.; ebailey@oregonian.com; @evertonbailey Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. A lecturer and communications specialist, Prof. Kwame Karikari, has called on media organisations to bar political party communicators and politicians, who use hate speech, from speaking on media platforms. He said hate speech had the potential to fuel atrocities, hence the need for the media to "firmly and uncompromisingly draw the line for hate speech." Prof. Karikari made the call yesterday when the Media Foundation For West Africa (MFWA) engaged political party communicators on how to promote an issues-based and decent language campaign as the political parties gear up for the 2020 general election. The engagement brought together representatives of political parties including the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Convention People's Party (CPP) and the People's National Convention (PNC). Also in attendance were representatives of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), such as the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) and the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA). Issues that were discussed included the impact of insults and indecent expressions on political fortunes, the media's role in curtailing hate speech and indecent expressions during elections. Rules Taking a look at the rules of engagement, Prof. Karikari said: "The media must lay down very clear rules of engagement against unethical behaviour, indecent expressions and hate speech. He noted that hate speech was usually stronger because it is hate expressed towards individuals or groups because of their identity. He added: You should banish, reject and disallow users of hate speech from your platforms without apology. If it is the newspaper, we have to edit out those unethical expressions and block them out. We must encourage the public also to condemn and reject hate speech." Political violence Prof. Karikari decried the norm where the NDC and the NPP failed to condemn acts of violence perpetrated by their members. "It is quite demeaning of our national sense of responsibility and abject disrespect for our values as self-respecting citizens, when the two dominant political parties make it a culture not to condemn but actually shield, protect and hail their members who commit violent acts during elections," he stated. The communications consultant, therefore, called on the media to condemn politicians and political activists who support perpetrators of violence. Abusive language The Executive Director of the MFWA, Mr Sulemana Braimah, also lamented the growing use of abusive language by some radio show hosts. Describing the development as "worrying," he stated that the media were supposed to be the gatekeeper that sanitised the airwaves of abusive language. Call Mr Braimah, therefore, called on media practitioners to uphold the ethics of the journalism profession in the discharge of their duties. At the end of the engagement, the representatives of political parties and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) pledged their commitment to upholding the guidelines outlined in the "Elections Communication Guide" compiled by the MFWA. The guide seeks to address the interrelated roles of political party communicators, members of the public and more importantly, media owners and practitioners in promoting civil political discussions, in prosecuting issues-based campaigns and ultimately ensuring the efficacy and sustainability of Ghana's democracy. The Elections Communications Guide provides a brief direction on the need for, and ways of avoiding insult and other indecent expressions in election-related and general political communication. Source: Graphiconline.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 Epilepsy is a wide-spread neurological disorder that affects around 50 million people worldwide. It is characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures, which are sudden bursts of electrical activity in the brain. There are many different types of seizures, and a person with epilepsy can experience more than one type. Clinicians today use EEG measurements, with electrodes either placed on a patient's scalp or inside the brain, to identify when and where a seizure begins. But these measurements alone do not always provide enough information to understand the type of seizure and make optimal decisions regarding treatment. Now, an international team of researchers led by Aix-Marseille University in France and the University of Michigan has proposed a new classification system of seizures based on a deep understanding and mathematical modelling of brain oscillations. "It represents the first objective and unbiased taxonomy of its kind", says one of the lead authors, HBP-scientist Prof. Viktor Jirsa from Aix-Marseille University. The researchers used "bifurcation theory" - a method commonly used in fields such as physics and engineering - to analyze data from over a hundred patients across the globe. Researchers from the University of Melbourne and Monash University, both in Australia, the University of Freiburg in Germany, and Kyoto University in Japan also contributed to the work. Seizures with similar properties were categorized into groups. They found sixteen types of seizure dynamics - or 'dynamotypes' - with distinct characteristics. "Similar to the periodic table of elements in chemistry, we demonstrated the existence of a clear classification system of seizures", says Jirsa. The system could lead clinicians to a better understanding of seizures and how they should be treated. "Seizure types react differently to treatments. For instance, some seizures can be stopped through electric stimulation, others not, dependent on their dynamotype. The systems scientific basis is theory work developed around the Epileptor, a central epilepsy model we developed in the Human Brain Project that is also at the heart of a large clinical trial running now", the researcher explains. Classification, however, is not explanation. There is much work ahead of us to better understand epilepsy mechanisms. This is where EBRAINS will play a key role, as it provides the tools connecting cellular, network and brain imaging signals aiding in mechanism discovery. " Prof. Viktor Jirsa, HBP-Scientist from Aix-Marseille University EBRAINS is a new shared digital brain research infrastructure for the European Union that the Human Brain Project (HBP) is building. Within the HBP, Jirsa and his team had first begun adapting the open network simulator The Virtual Brain towards applications in epilepsy. The work has laid the foundations for project EPINOV ("Improving EPilepsy surgery management and progNOsis using Virtual brain technology") a multi-year project involving more than a dozen French hospitals that is funded by the French state. EPINOV tests whether the use of the personalized HBP modeling technology for epilepsy networks can improve surgery preparation in drug-resistant patients. July 31, 2020 Amsterdam, the Netherlands Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, today announced that it has received the report from the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy and is providing an initial response. In April, 2020, Philips received a letter from the subcommittee, requesting information about Philips hospital ventilator activities in connection with the contracts for the delivery of 10,000 Trilogy Universal ventilators and 43,000 EV300 ventilators to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Philips has cooperated with the subcommittees information requests. Philips is supporting healthcare providers in the U.S. and globally to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, said Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips. We have been transparent about our production ramp up plans, pricing and allocation policies. We have cooperated and delivered the requested information to the subcommittee. We do not recognize the conclusions in the subcommittees report, and we believe that not all the information that we provided has been reflected in the report. I would like to make clear that at no occasion, Philips has raised prices to benefit from the crisis situation. Philips is proud to make its contribution to combatting the pandemic through its acute patient care and diagnostic products. As the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic started to transfer to the west in February of 2020, Philips reached out to various governments around the world to discuss how to collaborate to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Philips is investing over 100 million dollars in 2020 in the production ramp up of acute care products to diagnose, threat, manage and monitor COVID-19 patients. From March, 2020 onwards, Philips has achieved a massive fourfold increase of ventilator production in just five months, adding three production lines in the U.S. as well as hundreds of jobs. Philips employees in the factories in Western Pennsylvania and California are working around the clock to produce these ventilators. Story continues The EV300 contract Philips is on track with the production and delivery of the 43,000 EV300 hospital ventilators according to the April 2020 contract with HHS. The list price of the specific bundle of the EV300 ventilator plus roll-stand and accessories, as selected by HHS, is over $21,000 and is being provided to the U.S. government for $15,000. The agreed price reflects a discount, while taking into account part of the higher costs for the expedited delivery schedule. The BARDA R&D contract The contract that Philips entered with HHS/BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) in 2014 to develop a stockpile ventilator, which was yet to be developed and manufactured, was chiefly a research and development contract. Tied to this contract, BARDA requested a one-time purchase option for 10,000 of these units be included in the contract for a price considerably lower than commercial prices. Philips is producing and delivering this ventilator to HHS in line with the agreed delivery schedule. For further information, please contact: Ben Zwirs Philips Global Press Office Tel.: +31 6 15213446 E-mail: ben.zwirs@philips.com Derya Guzel Philips Investor Relations Tel.: +31 20 59 77055 E-mail: derya.guzel@philips.com About Royal Philips Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips generated 2019 sales of EUR 19.5 billion and employs approximately 81,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter . Forward-looking statements This release contains certain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of Philips and certain of the plans and objectives of Philips with respect to these items. Examples of forward-looking statements include statements made about the strategy, estimates of sales growth, future EBITA, future developments in Philips organic business and the completion of acquisitions and divestments. By their nature, these statements involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to future events and circumstances and there are many factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. VIJAYAWADA: In a major development, Andhra Pradesh Governor Biswa Bhushan Harichandan on Friday approved the bill approving three capitals for AP and another one repealing the AP Capital Region Development Authority (APCRDA) Act. The approval brings mega relief to the ruling YSR Congress and delivers a big jolt to the Telugu Desam (TD) and other Opposition parties which had been fighting for the Capital at Amaravati. The Governors decision paves way for establishment of the Executive Capital at Visakhapatnam, Judicial Capital at Kurnool and Legislative Capital at Amaravati. The AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Bill, 2020, and the AP Capital Region Development Authority (Repeal) Bill had been pending with the Governor for the past few days for legal opinion. While the Legislative Assembly had passed the bills twice, they could not get approval from AP Legislative Council, which is dominated by the opposition Telugu Desam. In a sudden development on Friday, Governor Harichandan approved the two bills. According to highly placed sources, the YSRC government is now planning to celebrate Independence Day officially at Visakhapatnam on August 15. It also lay the foundation stone for the Executive Capital on the same day. According to norms under Article 197 (1) and (2) of the Constitution, the Bills are deemed to have been passed after one month of being sent to the Governor for assent. After wide-ranging legal consultations, Harichandan decided to give his assent to the two legislations. YSRC chief whip in the Council Ummareddy Venkateswarlu lauded the Governors approval of both the bills. He said the development of three capitals will bring development in all regions of the state. BJP MP and party's Andhra Pradesh incharge G.V.L. Narasimha Rao welcomed the decision and maintained that Harichandan took the decision as per his constitutional mandate. There is no connection between the Centre and the Governors decision, he clarified. He asserted that BJP is in support of the capitals being distributed. The AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Bill, 2020, and the AP Capital Region Development Authority (Repeal) Bill, 2020 were passed by the Assembly on January 20 and again on June 16. They were not cleared by the Legislative Council both the times. Council Chairman M.A. Sharif used his discretionary powers to refer the two bills to select committees for wider examination. But the committees were not constituted for all these months. All Opposition parties, including the TD, lobbied to get the two bills rejected and wrote several letters to the Governor. They claimed that as the issue of three capitals is pending with the High Court, that they should be referred to the President. They further asserted that the proposal of three capitals and repeal of APCRDA were in violation of the AP Re-Organisation Act, 2014, which envisaged only one capital. The Jagan Mohan Reddy government brought in the Decentralisation Bill to give shape to its plan of having three capitals. Further, the government proposed to divide the state into various zones and establish zonal planning and development boards for all round development of the state. The APCRDA Act was passed on December 22, 2014, for development of the state capital post bifurcation with a specific area demarcated as the capital region. The then Telugu Desam government acquired 34,000 acres of land through APCRDA under a land pooling scheme for establishing the capital at Amaravati. Last week they returned to work together by taking part in a promotional day of filming for their upcoming book Once Upon A Tyne. And Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly appeared to be getting ready to enjoy another day of filming together as they were seen stepping out in London on Friday. The Geordie duo, both 44, looked relaxed as they made their way through the capital together, arriving separately so that they could maintain social distancing. Relaxed look: Ant McPartlin kept things casual in double denim as he joined dapper Declan Donnelly for day of filming in London on Friday Ant opted for a casual chic look for the occasion as he paired a denim shirt with black jeans and a pair of white trainers. While Dec made sure to colour-coordinate his ensemble by teaming a chequered white shirt with black trousers and white trainers. Dec appeared to be in good spirits upon arrival at the studios as he smiled brightly and chatted away with a friend. Enjoying himself: Dec appeared to be in good spirits upon arrival at the studios Apart: The Geordie duo looked relaxed as they made their way through the capital together, arriving separately so that they could maintain social distancing Looking sharp: Dec made sure to colour-coordinate his ensemble by teaming a chequered white shirt with black trousers and white trainers Low-key: Ant wore a pair of chic shades to round off his look Their outing comes after ITV confirmed its flagship show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Outta Here! would return for a 20th series on Thursday. It was also announced that a special one-off documentary called I'm A Celebrity: A Jungle Story, which will celebrate the very best moments of the show's stellar 19 year history. In May it was reported that show bosses were holding crisis talks to save this year's show amid the pandemic. According to The Sun, insiders were unclear whether the show would go ahead later this year after the TV industry was thrown into chaos by COVID-19. In good spirits: Dec was seen smiling brightly and chatted away with a friend on the way to the studios where he and Ant were meant to film Beaming: Ant also seemed to be excited to get back to work with Ant as he smiled in delight Back in action: Last week they returned to work together by taking part in a promotional day of filming for their upcoming book Once Upon A Tyne A source at the time said: 'I'm A Celebrity is six months away but bosses are holding meetings about how they can ensure it still goes ahead in the current climate. A raft of measures are being looked at. 'One of the most recent plans was to employ a crew that is 95 per cent made up of Australian workers to overcome the issues surrounding flying to different countries and the quarantine restrictions. 'This would mean a lot of the shows UK crew missing out on their annual big gig but ITV are having to seriously consider every option.' The insider added that due to the changing nature of the pandemic, every possible situation was being planned for. Best bits: Earlier on, the channel confirmed the show would return for its 20th series and announced a one-off documentary called I'm A Celebrity: A Jungle Story 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: 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: 28:
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It was no surprise that the whole-of-country commitment to contain the pandemic, which had remarkable success, disrupted the economy and diverted attention from everything else, including from poverty alleviation. Transportation was interrupted. Some farmers could not return to their lands for the planting season. Rural migrant workers could not return to their jobs. The development of rural industry, such as breeding and processing, was retarded. Sales of agricultural products were depressed. In addition, healthcare issues and economic distress made some new people become poor and some formerly poor people fell back into poverty. Moreover, local officials were understandably distracted from fighting poverty to fighting COVID-19 and still they worry about sporadic outbreaks or second waves. Though obstacles are being surmounted, with the time lost and the economy hurt, the Chinese government would have ample reason to postpone the poverty-eradication target date beyond 2020. Everyone would understand a delay. No one would cast blame. But, on March 6, at a large-scale virtual symposium on poverty alleviation, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a clarion call that the goal to lift all rural residents living below the current poverty line out of poverty by 2020 must be realized as scheduled. He called the goal a "solemn pledge" made by the Party to the people. To appreciate President Xis driving motivation, one must understand the context of this special year, 2020, the long-set target date for ushering in the moderately prosperous society which is the first of the two great centenary goals that compose what President calls the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The original formulation of the moderately prosperous society defined it in quantitatively precise terms: doubling of the 2010 GDP per capita by 2020. President Xi enhanced this definition by asserting that China could not claim to be a moderately prosperous society, no matter how high its GDP per capita, if even one Chinese citizen remained in absolute or extreme poverty. It was a powerful prescription that rang true and set national policy. Therefore, the moderately prosperous society cannot be achieved in 2020 unless all extreme poverty is eradicated by the end of the year. This is what has intensified the final push, made more challenging, of course, by the pandemic. In Chinese Premier Li Keqiangs Work Report of the Government, presented in the opening session of the delayed National Peoples Congress, he prioritized stabilizing employment and ensuring living standards, and winning the battle against poverty by eradicating poverty among all rural residents and in all poor counties. Specific measures include: boosting consumption of products from poor areas; supporting businesses involved in poverty alleviation; ensuring rural migrant workers from poor areas have stable jobs; chartering trains to take migrant workers back to their urban jobs; providing follow-up support to people relocated from inhospitable areas; and deepening collaboration on poverty alleviation between eastern and western regions. Looking to the future, the government called for monitoring and assisting people who fall back into poverty and for promoting rural vitalization to help people who have risen out of poverty move toward prosperity. A poverty reduction survey will be conducted nationwide to quantify results and identify issues, especially in guarding against fraud. I consider the pandemic as a kind of stress test of the poverty alleviation system. Difficulties sharpen distinctions between what works and what does not, whom you can depend on and whom you cannot. A concern: When officials are pressured to meet their firm objectives in a compressed period of time, some may cut corners or fudge numbers. I applaud the State Council's Poverty Alleviation Office for its independent checking and inspecting, avowing that if there is any false reports or fraud, officials will be held accountable and dealt with seriously, so that the results of poverty alleviation can stand the test of history and the people. The greater the transparency of government, the greater the confidence in government. At this sensitive time in international communications, I find that Chinas poverty alleviation campaign is the single most powerful story to undermine foreign stereotypes and biases about China. When I tell the story of Chinas poverty alleviation offering my first hand accounts, having myself travelled in the poorest areas of the country and witnessed the process in action up close and personal many foreigners are surprised to learn that China as a country, and President Xi as its leader, have made poverty alleviation of highest national importance. What I stress at this time, when the world is so focused on the coronavirus and recognizes how China has contained the pandemic through rigorous and lockdowns and strict procedures is that the Party-led system that was successful in containing the coronavirus is the same Party-led system that is eradicating extreme poverty. So, what can the world learn from China success in poverty alleviation? First, each country is different. Each culture has a different history, culture, nature of its people. We cannot take programs from one country and impose them on another country. However, the principles are what's important. And China's principles of poverty alleviation are clear. Number one is the absolute commitment of the leadership of the country. President Xi has said, I have spent more energy on poverty alleviation than on anything else. This sends a powerful message to officials at all levels, indeed to the entire country. So, this is the first lesson to learn: the senior leader of the country needs to make the overall mission of poverty alleviation a priority. We think of poverty programs in terms of measures, mechanisms and procedures. And indeed, China has pioneered micro businesses, education, relocating whole villages, eco-compensation, and social security. These can be adapted to other countries, as can the Party-led organizational system of implementing poverty alleviation through five levels of local government (provincial, municipal, county, township, village). But what's critically important for all countries to recognize in the fight against poverty is the critical importance of motivating officials to make poverty alleviation a priority. This can come only from the top down. This is the big lesson that China shows the world. Chinas poverty alleviation mission, lifting some 900 million people out of poverty, is a historic achievement, to be remembered for the ages. (Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal With three campuses, including locations Memorial, The Woodlands, and West University, along with a brand-new facility being constructed in Upper Kirby, Xavier is ready to provide parents with any style of learning they feel most comfortable with to start the school year. The private schools emphasis on individual learning has set them apart from the national reconciliation over the reopening of schools Xavier has incorporated elements of virtual learning since the schools inception in 2007, officials said. Related: Spring Branch ISD pushes back start of school However, the private school, which focuses flexibility and accommodation of needs, unveiled its plan for education during a pandemic. My goal, said Xavier founder Richard De La Cuadra, is that we will be starting Aug. 24. We are very aware that many of our families are eager to have school back in their lives, so finding a way to do it safely is paramount. Transitioning to Xaviers newly purchased property at 3100 Weslayan Street should help solve part of that dilemma, according to Cuadra. Their new 13,000-square-foot location is double the size of their West U location and will allow their students to socially distance when starting the new year in a hybrid in-person and online model. All elementary, middle school and Arrowsmith a rigorous, customized curriculum that works to strengthen weak cognitive linkages students will begin class at the new location in late August. High school classes will remain active at the current West U campus until Sept. 30. All students should be in the new space by Oct. 1. We are in a unique position, being a very small private school, said Cuadra. I think we have more opportunities that larger districts do not have. That is to provide what our families request. Xavier is a full-service K-12 private school that offers year-long enrollment with personalized curriculum and low teacher to student ratios, Cuadra said. Many of their students require or prefer one-on-one engagement due to being diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety or depression. Some of the students also require a flexible schedule because they are talented in performance arts and compete on a national level. Their students sometimes miss portions of school as a result of their health or extracurricular activities so Xavier creates programs for them to immediately catch up with the class or never fall behind in the first place. They will, put their academics on hold for a week until they heal, said Cuadra, and then devise a program for them so they can catch up to the class. Xaviers West U location, its largest location, has around 30 faculty members for about 140 students so their teachers, like ninth and 12th grade English teacher Erin Keith, are normally able to provide detailed personal attention to their students whether in-person or online. But COVID-19 disrupted the learning practices of students and teachers across the county and Xavier wasnt immune to having to quickly adapt their entire curriculum to online education. On HoustonChronicle.com: Abbott clarifies legality of local orders that barred schools from opening If you were my student, I would know exactly how you work, said Keith. I would know whether you work better in the morning or afternoon. I would know what kind of literature you hated, and when I needed to intervene a little more intensely. The students knew they needed extra time, according to Keith, as many of the students were raised with a diagnosis or a label that can initially feel like an academic detriment. I think we probably overgeneralize and under diagnose this idea that these kids have learning disabilities in a certain subset because I think all of us have a deficit somewhere, said Keith. And if you look back to when you were younger, it would be so much cooler if you had someone there to say lets look at this together. Xaviers teachers had to sacrifice some of their free time to accommodate for each student over Zoom, as many had to work from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. I think the teachers learned that the way to do this most effectively was to just be available, said Keith. Whether that meant running zoom meetings all day long and letting kids pop in or having extended hours or working on a Sunday because you knew that some of the students have part-time jobs and they work through the week. There was a learning curve, Cuadra added, but it was not as steep as many other schools would have experienced. We feel well-positioned to do online learning and also recognize not every kid can be successful through online learning, so we have to create an opportunity for the kids who need the human to human interaction. ryan.nickerson@hcnonline.com Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Home Regional News East Outcry in several cities after 39-year-old father of three was killed at point-blank range in Lisbon. Lisbon, Portugal Anti-racism protests have continued in Portugal a day after hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the capital, Lisbon, to demand justice for a Black Portuguese man who was murdered a week ago. Bruno Cande Marques, a 39-year-old actor and father of three children, was shot four times at point-blank range on a busy street in the Moscavide area of Lisbon on July 25 and died instantly. A suspect, a white man in his 70s, was arrested at the scene. Carrying placards reading, No justice, no peace and Racism is colonial heritage, demonstrators including members of Bruno Candes family on Friday staged a rally outside Lisbons National Theatre, where a large banner of the murdered man was hanging from. Similar protests were held on Saturday in the cities of Porto and Braga, with protesters and anti-racism campaigners saying the killing was motivated by racial hatred. Earlier in the week, local media quoted witnesses as saying that the alleged murderer had used racist slurs and threatened Cande Marques days before the murder, as well as on the same day. During their earlier confrontation, a witness said the suspect had told Cande Marques, I have weapons at home from the colonies, and Im going to kill you. Police have not confirmed what the motive was behind the attack, but local media quoted commissioner Luis Santos, of Portugals Public Security Agency, as saying on Sunday that, None of the witnesses we questioned at the scene mentioned racist comments. The police comments raised concerns among activists and anti-racism groups. Normally, the PSP refrain from making public statements until formal legal decisions have been made, Cristina Roldao, a Black rights campaigner and sociologist, told Al Jazeera. So, why have they broken with convention now? Sociologist Cristina Roldao at the vigil for Bruno Cande on Friday [Ana Mendes/Al Jazeera] Bruno Candes family said they had also been disappointed by the reaction of the Portuguese media who had focused overwhelmingly on details of his life, while next to nothing is known about the suspect. They have been raking through details of Brunos life, Andreia Araujo, Candes niece, told Al Jazeera. The family just want to see justice done properly. Protesters at the Lisbon vigil echoed the same call. It makes me so sad, said Joao Tristany, a musician of Angolan-Portuguese heritage. Everything about the case is so obvious, and still theyre just looking for reasons to justify why Bruno Cande was killed. Are we ever going to see a case of racism dealt with properly here by the authorities? Were sick of this. Portugal has a sizeable Afro-descendent population and a long colonial history in Africa, having only conceded independence to its former colonies in 1975. Tens of thousands of Portuguese people were involved in the large-scale programmes to settle former colonies such as Angola and Mozambique, and many were involved in the colonial wars that were fought against their independendence from 1960-1975. In Guinea-Bissau, where Candes family are from, dozens of young people also amassed outside the Portuguese embassy last week, lying down on the ground in protest. Several high-profile figures attended Fridays vigil, including Portuguese politician Beatriz Gomes Dias [Ana Mendes/Al Jazeera] A 2016 report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination criticised the persistence of Afrophobia and institutional racism in the country, including hate crimes against minorities. Experts said that although the Portuguese penal code makes both racism and hate crimes punishable by law, this is rarely applied. In practice, Portugals capacity to process cases as racism or hate crimes is practically zero, said Roldao. Most of the state institutions in Portugal still say and believe that there is no racism in Portugal. So, if theres no racism, nothing can be called out as racist. In June, a Vidas Negras Importam Black Lives Matter protest held in the wake of George Floyds murder by police in the United States was the biggest anti-racism demonstration to have ever taken place in Portugal. The generation born here, like me, wont be told to go back to where we came from, said Geovani Djanco, a 26-year-old community organiser raised in the suburbs of Lisbon by his Bissau-Guinean parents. Portugal has a serious problem, and we wont be told we have to be grateful and keep quiet. This is my country too, and its my responsibility as a Portuguese citizen. Mandya, Aug 1 : A 21-year-old BBM student stabbed mother to death because she objected to his going out to meet friends, said an official, here on Saturday. "Manu Sharma stabbed his mother to death after a petty fight as she objected to his going out to meet friends and also some other issues," Mandya Superintendent of Police (SP) K. Parasuram told IANS. Mandya is 100 km southwest of Bengaluru. Sharma's mother didn't approve of him going out to meet friends during the lockdown. "She also didn't like him talking to a girl related to the family," he said. Sharma was also said to be depressed as he couldn't make it to the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. On Wednesday, he wanted to go out to meet his friends. But his mother objected to that and scolded him. "Following a petty quarrel, in a fit of rage, Sharma beat the mother and stabbed her to death. He then fled the spot," Parasuram said. Later, when his younger brother arrived home, he saw the mother in the pool of blood and alerted everybody. The police arrested Sharma on Thursday under IPC Sections 302 and 201. He is in judicial custody and said to be remorseful over the matricide. One or two confirmed cases in a single classroom would require those classes to close for 14 days, with all students and staff members ordered to quarantine. The rest of the school would continue to operate, but if two or more people in different classrooms in the same school tested positive, the entire building would close for an investigation, and might not reopen for two weeks depending on the results. In California, where schools in two-thirds of the state have been barred from reopening in person for now, state guidelines call for a school to close for at least 14 days if more than 5 percent of its students, faculty and staff test positive over a two-week period. Chicago, the nations third-largest school district, has proposed a hybrid system for reopening that would put students into 15-member pods that can be quarantined if one member tests positive. School buildings should close if the city averages more than 400 new cases a week or 200 cases a day, the plan states, with other worrying factors like low hospital capacity or a sudden spike in cases taken into account. In Indiana, where the middle school student tested positive on Thursday in Greenfield, an Indianapolis suburb of 23,000 people, the virus began to spike in mid-June, and the caseload has remained relatively high. This week, Indianapolis opted to start the school year online. The Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation, with eight schools and 4,400 students, gave families the option of in-person or remote learning. At Greenfield Central Junior High School, which the student with the positive test attends, about 15 percent of the 700 enrolled students opted for remote learning, said Mr. Olin, the superintendent. It was overwhelming that our families wanted us to return, he said, adding that families needed to be responsible and not send students to school if they were displaying symptoms or awaiting test results. Students are also required to wear masks except when they are eating or for physical education outside, he said and as far as he knew, the student who tested positive was doing so. By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The infamous bus that served as the final campsite for doomed adventurer Christopher McCandless could be preserved as a museum piece under a plan announced on Thursday by Alaska officials. The University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks has offered to house the bus, removed by the state last month from its six-decades-long resting site near Denali National Park. The 1940s-era bus had been an attraction for fans of the 1996 book Into the Wild and the 2007 movie of the same name. Over the years, hundreds trekked out to spend time at the abandoned bus, where McCandless spent 114 days before dying of starvation in 1992. Many of those making pilgrimages to the site put themselves at risk, prompting the state to airlift the bus from the trail made famous by the 24-year-old McCandless. Two hikers drowned during river crossings. Others have been rescued after becoming injured or stranded. In February, five Italian tourists, one with frostbitten feet, were rescued, and in April a stranded Brazilian tourist was helicoptered out. The museums offer allows the state to memorialize all those who took shelter in the bus while avoiding the specter of profiteering from tragedy, Corri Feige, Alaskas natural resources commissioner, said in a statement. "I believe that giving Bus 142 a long-term home in Fairbanks at the UA Museum of the North can help preserve and tell the stories of all these people, Feige said. It can honor all of the lives and dreams, as well as the deaths and sorrows associated with the bus, and do so with respect and dignity." (Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Edwina Gibbs) "Free Britney Spears" has made rounds lately, hinting that not all is well with the pop star. According to her fans though, this is not the true indication of their idol's plight. Fans believe that Britney Spears has been sending them distress signals and they want to do something about it. They just do not know how. According to her fans, Britney Spears have now resorted to utilizing coded messages on social media to tell them that she needs help, as reported by Women's Day Australia. As they call for her freedom, Britney Spears wants to remain as if she is not distressed about everything but she truly is. How were the fans able to derive this assumption? A source shared that fans have noticed that when they started to question her well-being on social media, particularly in Instagram, they would throw in random suggestions like,"wear yellow if you need help." They were not sure Britney Spears were reading comments or if she would even follow what they said, but she did! Sure enough, the source revealed, fans noticed that she would post random videos of herself dancing in yellow. While not avid fans would think this is one of her crazy episodes, true fans know that the popstar must be sending them a cry for help. The source added that this was not the only example as there had been several in the past weeks. Maybe every weird video of Brinety Spears actually has a meaning. This concern for Britney Spears' well-being comes as fans are working hard to secure for Britney Spears the control of her business and personal affairs. It can be remembered that since 2007, her career, and her corresponding financials were placed in the hand of legal guardians. This is called conservatorship and fans want it ended so Britney Spears can start to have more freedom and more life! they believe that Spears' mom Lynn would be a better person to help Britney Spears with her finances instead of professional conservator Jodi Montgomery. According to the members of the #FreeBritney movement, their idol is trapped in a controlling and abusive legal arrangement, which is in reality, restricting her civil rights. Fans could not understand why even though Spears is deemed capable of earning millions through her talent, she cannot be trusted to make decisions in life, such as driving a car, leave her home, have her own lawyer to represent her rights, and even vote, the Guardian reported. Good thing though that she is in California, where laws have changed about voting by people placed under a conservatorship. Unlike other jurisdictions, Britney Spears is allowed to vote here because there is an assumption that she is competent unless provided otherwise. Meanwhile, Britney Spears continue to spark mental health concerns by her own posts. Could this be her sending out distress signals or she is truly distressed? According to the Blash, when she said she wants to live on a pink planet and live the Earth, even stating her desired pink planet destination is called GJ504b, fans cannot help but worthy. But what can they do? The same worry and concern was sparked when Britney Spears posted a bikini photo with whole body henna art, and captioning it with "I guess I'm demanding attention!!!" That sounds like a sarcastic remark to us, but some believe she could be truly needing some help! READ MORE: Katy Perry Fights Taylor Swift: How Did Their Feud Start? NEW DELHI: While the holy town of Ayodhya is being decked up and preparations are in full swing ahead of the Ram Temple Bhoomi Pujan on August 5, the ancient city has a unique visitor these days. His name is Dev Parashar. After watching the popular Zee News show DNA, which is hosted by the channel's Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Choudhary, this ten-year-old embarked on a noble mission to visit the homes of martyrs, who made supreme sacrifice for the sake of the motherland. Dev Parashar's goal is to visit the homes of at least 11,000 martyrs, meet their families and collect soil from their homes. After visiting a martyr's house, Dev Parashar, who has now become popular as Little Soldier, places a tricolour on the rooftop of the house. Dev Parashars family says their boy got this inspiration after watching an episode of the extremely popular Zee News show DNA aired on July 2, 2018. During the show, its host Sudhir Chaudhary had appealed to the countrymen to express solidarity with the families of the martyrs, help them and show them that the whole country stands with them. So far, this Little Soldier has visited the homes of 1600 martyrs across the country. Besides paying a visit to the martyrs home and placing a tricolour, he also cleans various memorials built in the honour of these brave sons of 'Mother India.' Dev Parashar has now reached Ayodhya with the soil collected from the homes of some martyrs in an earthen pot. The soil collected from the martyrs homes has been handed over to the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which is overseeing the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Prakash Sharma, a close associate of Trust secretary-general Champat Rai, said that this soil will be used during Bhoomi Poojan as a mark of respect to the martyrs who made supreme sacrifices in keeping the sovereignty of the nation. It may be noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and some selected dignitaries will attend the ground-breaking ceremony in Ayodhya on August 5. The construction of the Ram temple will formally begin after the Bhoomi Pujan ceremony during which the PM will lay the foundation stone of the temple. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will on Sunday (August 2) visit Ayodhya to take stock of preparations for the Ram temple foundation stone laying ceremony. Grand preparations for Ram Temple 'Bhoomi Pujan' are underway across Uttar Pradesh. On August 4-5, prayers will be held in Mathura, Kashi, Chitrakoot, Prayagraj, Gorakhpur and Naimisharanya and texts of Akhand Ramayana will be recited. Diwali-like celebrations will be held at these major pilgrimage sites to celebrate the foundation ceremony of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. UP CM Yogi Adityanath has given instructions in this regard to authorities to take stock of preparations. On July 31, priests dispatched the soil of the Yamunotri Dham, the water of the Yamuna river and the Brahma Kamal flower that grows in the Himalayan region for the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The priests handed over the things to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad office-bearers, who will carry them to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, Yamunotri Mandir Samiti secretary Kriteshwar Uniyal said. The soil of Gangotri Dham and the water of the Ganga were also sent by speed post on Tuesday, Gangotri Mandir Samiti president Suresh Semwal said. The apex court, on November 9 last year, had directed the central government to hand over the site at Ayodhya for the construction of the Ram temple. Silver screen, meet face screen. Friday marked the first day in months that multiplex movie theatres in Hamilton Cineplexs Mountain location and Landmarks Jackson Square location among them opened their doors to the public. The reopenings came after Ontarios chief medical officer of health gave the green light to movie theatres to expand their capacity from 50 people per entire building to 50 people per auditorium. The openings come with a hitch masks are mandatory. It is mandatory to wear a non-medical face covering while on the premises, read a news release from Landmark Cinemas. Guests may remove face covering to enjoy concessions when seated in their auditorium. Landmark also asks moviegoers to stay home if they feel sick and arrive no sooner than 15 minutes before showtime. There will also be enhanced cleaning between screenings. Cineplex is reopening just 25 locations across the province for now. The Mountain location is one of those, according to Cineplexs website. The company says that in any community where masks are mandated, guests are required to wear them in the theatre. In Ontario, scheduled showings include new movies My Spy, The Invisible Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as classics including Jaws and Jurassic Park. Tickets are just $5. At Landmark, classic movies including Jurassic Park and Dirty Dancing are just $5, dropping to $2.99 on Tuesdays. Independent Hamilton movie theatres have already opened their doors. The Playhouse Cinema at 177 Sherman Ave. N. and the Westdale at 1014 King St. W. reopened last Friday when Hamilton entered Stage 3. Under Stage 3, gatherings of 50 people are allowed inside and 100 people are allowed outside. Cineplex reopened 45 of its locations earlier this summer in other provinces where distancing restrictions were loosened. The Northern Governors Forum on Friday acknowledged the death of elder statesman and leader of the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Pa Ayorinde Fasanmi. Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, Governor Lalong of Plateau State in a condolence message described the death of Fasaranti as a great loss to the Yoruba nation and Nigeria as a whole, giving his enormous contributions to the political development of Nigeria. Lalong noted that Pa Fasanmi played an active role in the enthronement of democracy and its sustenance through his roles as a legislator in the first and second Republics where he advocated for good governance, justice, and equity. While praying God to grant his soul eternal rest, the governor condoled with his family, friends, political associates, and followers. The Ministry of Information and Communications launched a communications programming platform called Stringee on July 31 in Hanoi. At the launching ceremony The communications platform-related comprehensive technology solution allows businesses to communicate with customers on mobile phone apps or websites without the use of another app such as Zalo, Skype, or Messenger. Businesses also need not invest in building software with communications features. Stringee is among other Made-in-Vietnam digital platforms selected by the ministry with the aim of promoting comprehensive and wide-ranging digital transformation in terms of economy and society, contributing substantially to realising goals in the National Digital Transformation Programme. According to Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Hung, Stringee is the only platform in Vietnam that can provide full infrastructure and features similar to solutions from foreign countries. The platform currently provides about 2.2 million minutes of calls a day to some 45 million users nationwide. In the context of the problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are accelerating digital transformation efforts in order to cut costs and maintain operations to survive and recover, Hung said. He called on Vietnamese digital businesses to fully tap into opportunities and develop more digital platforms serving comprehensive digital transformation in different fields. The formation of communications platforms in general and Stringee in particular is expected to drive Vietnamese businesses to improve the quality of their customer care and competitiveness./.VNA Chinese churches under duress Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Amid the coronavirus outbreak, poor Christian villagers in China have been ordered to renounce their faith and replace displays of Jesus with portraits of Chairman Mao and President Xi Jinping or risk losing their welfare benefits. Religious liberty magazine Bitter Winter reports that in April, officials with China's Communist Party visited believers homes in Linfen, a prefecture-level city in the northern province of Shanxi. While there, they ordered residents who receive social welfare payments from the government to replace crosses, religious symbols, and images in their homes with portraits of China's communist leaders. If Christians resisted the order, officials annulled their subsidies. All impoverished households in the town were told to display Mao Zedong images, a local pastor told Bitter Winter. The government is trying to eliminate our belief and wants to become God instead of Jesus. Read more at: https://www.christianpost.com/news/china-orders-christians-to-take-down-crosses-images-of-jesus-worship-communist-leaders-not-god.html By PTI PATNA: The Uddhav Thackeray government in Maharashtra is under pressure from the "Congress-funded Bollywood mafia", and this is the reason for it being hell- bent to save all elements connected with death by suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said on Saturday. Making a scathing attack at the grand old party, the senior BJP leader asked, "What will the Congress show to the people of Bihar?" In a series of tweets in hindi, Sushil Modi vented his anger on the Shiv Sena led coalition ministry in Maharashtra for creating hurdles for the visiting Bihar police team to probe the 34-year-old actor's death. "Uddhav Thackeray is under pressure from the Congress- funded Bollywood mafia, so its bent on saving all the elements responsible in the case. What will the Congress show to the people of Bihar?" the BJP leader said in a tweet message. He said that the Bihar government would ensure that family of the departed Patna-born filmstar get justice. "The Bihar government not only ordered an inquiry, but also filed a caveat in the Supreme Court, requesting that Bihar's side be heard while hearing Rhea Chakraborty's petition," he tweeted. "The state government will go to any extent to bring justice to Sushant," he said in another tweet. The suicide of the budding actor has left millions of Biharis shocked and saddened, so almost all parties want a CBI probe into the case,Sushil Modi, who had visited Rajput's home here to console his father last month, said. He slammed the Maharashtra police for its indifferent attitude towards the investigating Bihar police team in the case in which an FIR has been lodged in Patna on the basis of a written complaint of Rajput's 74-year-old father KK Singh on July 25. "Now the Bihar Police, which came to investigate the death of Bihar's son Sushant Singh Rajput, is not getting the support of Mumbai Police," he said pointing out some earlier incidents when people of Bihar were subjected to misbehaviour in the western metropolis. "Earlier in Maharashtra, people of Bihar used to get complaints of misbehaviour, but now the Uddhav government, based on the crutches of the Congress-NCP, has reached its limit," he said. "During the lockdown, the withdrawal of Bihari labourers from Maharashtra was disrupted. Now the Bihar Police, which came to investigate the death of Bihar's son Sushant Singh Rajput, is not getting the support of Mumbai Police," he added. The BJP leader has already sought a CBI probe into the actor's death. By Express News Service VISAKHAPATNAM: In yet another major mishap in Visakhapatnam, 11 workers were killed and at least four others injured when a heavy crane collapsed on them at Hindustan Shipyard Ltd on Saturday afternoon. Confirming the deaths to The New Indian Express, Malkapuram Circle Inspector Kuna Durga Prasad said the relief operations were still going on and the exact number of casualties is yet to be ascertained. The accident happened when the cable of the crane reportedly got snapped during loading operations at the shipyard. Ambulances were rushed to the spot to shift the injured. The police also joined the rescue operations. The toll is likely to go up as some more persons were said to be trapped under the debris of the crane. It is not immediately known how many workers were present at the site when the crane collapsed. Meanwhile, a tense situation prevailed at the shipyard with family members of the workers reaching there to know about the safety of their kin. Shipyard and police officials are not allowing anyone inside the premises and are taking up rescue operations. These are the schools that have canceled classes for Jan. 18 Some school districts across the county are virtual today. Others will make up the snow day. Letters to the Editor View(s): Elections: Kudos for COVID-19 preparations, but what about the old and handicapped? The painstaking efforts being made by the Election Commission to ensure that the general election is held despite the prevailing COVID- 19 pandemic is much appreciated. I would like to make one further request to the Commission, namely, to direct that the polling stations provide some relief to the aged and handicapped persons who come to vote. Owing to the protective measures that would be taken to prevent the spread of the virus, the queues (for men and women) are bound to be long and slow moving, and the voters would have to spend perhaps hours waiting for their turn to enter the polling station. It would therefore be most helpful if the old and physically handicapped voters are allowed to form a separate queue so as to enable them to cast their votes without much delay. L.Wijesinghe Dehiwala Celebrating Haj in the true spirit of the festival Muslims around the globe are celebrating a second festival during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first was Ramadan and the second is the Haj Festival. Festivals are for celebrations and merriment for any community but this festival is going to be different because the entire world has been suffering from the effects of the deadly Coronavirus that has vastly impacted human life across the world. Muslims celebrate this festival to remember the sacrifices of Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismael. Prophet Ibrahim had a strong faith in his Creator and was ever ready to sacrifice anything and everything to obtain the absolute and utmost satisfaction of His God Almighty Allah. He had to surmount all trials and tribulations which the Almighty gave him as a test but conquered all tests with much sacrifice and patience. His life and sacrifices teach present society how to face hardships and difficulties with courage and determination. At first God decreed Prophet Ibrahim leave his beloved wife Hajar and infant son Ismael in the desert placing faith in the Almighty. Allah safeguarded them. The second trial was to sacrifice his son Ismael but God saved his son by giving him a lamb to sacrifice. Today all the rituals of Haj undertaken by devotees who annually travel to Mecca and Medina from every nook and corner of the world revolve around these great sacrifices made by prophet Ibrahim and his family. The Haj pilgrimage is the one of the five pillars of Islam which should be performed by wealthy and healthy Muslims but the unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 has led the Saudi Government to ban devotees from other countries performing Haj in the holy city of Mecca. Muslims in Sri Lanka have a huge responsibility to accomplish all the rituals during the Haj festival as per the health guidelines given by the Health Ministry and authorities. It is mandatory that every citizen of Sri Lanka wears a face mask, maintains social distance and washes his hands when going out to protect themselves and others around them from the coronavirus. People should be vigilant and be aware of the situation in the country and the world. The World Health Organisation has warned countries about a second wave of COVID-19. It would be better if people avoid visiting their relatives and friends during this Haj festival and completely avoid shaking hands and hugging friends and relatives in the mosques and homes. Basically the concept of Haj festival teaches us patience, tolerance and brotherhood. Hence, to honour the concept of Haj, sacrifice grand celebrations and family gatherings so as to save people and stop the spread of COVID-19. Eid Mubarak to all! M.Jalaldeen Isfan Via email No redress for the likes of us On December 28 last year my husband and I met with an accident travelling in a trishaw. The driver was speeding and hit a motorcyclist on Galle Road, Ratmalana. He was remanded at the Mount Lavinia Police Station and a Police report was filed. Thanks to the onlookers and a very efficient 1990 ambulance service we were picked up from the pavement and rushed to the Accident Ward of the Kalubowila Hospital. My 84-year-old husband suffered fractured fingers on his right hand and deep lacerated wounds that required suturing and a five-day stay at the Surgical Ward No 25. After his discharge I had to take him several times to the clinic. Sadly my husband expired in March 2020. Although he did not die of his injuries, the accident deteriorated his mental and physical health. I was given a form for insurance by a leading insurance company but after seeing the diagnosis card they told me Im not entitled to compensation because he was treated in a Government hospital. I told them after a road accident the first thing we think of is a Government hospital. So for victims like us there is no redress unless we are warded privately, even though the accident was caused by a careless driver of a large company. Victimized Living amidst Coronavirus Global health crisis A battle of pandemic Rapidly spreading Coronavirus In the world scenario Catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic Mutation of virulent RNA virus A threat to human beings Spreads through droplet infection Panic is pandemic Fear, anxiety and panic Strategy to fight corona- virus Medical emergency management Swift and drastic measures Symptomatic and supportive treatment Prophylaxis measures Demarcation of hot spots Contact tracing and quarantine Social distancing and isolation Epidemiological survey Disease surveillance programmes Wash hands with soap Wearing face mask Restriction of public gatherings Immune booster herbs Controlled breathing Yoga and meditation Enhances immunity Stand for each other Dr.Vettivel Sakthivel Tellippalai By Marcelo Rochabrun BRASILIA (Reuters) - LATAM Airlines will fire "at least" 2,700 workers in Brazil, including pilots, its Brazilian arm said on Saturday, as the bankrupt carrier struggles to cut costs and cope with an industry collapse due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, LATAM Brasil said it opened a voluntary redundancy process on Friday which will run through Aug. 4, after which a further minimum 2,700 jobs will be cut. The announcement followed the breakdown in talks with the SNA union over workers' pay, the statement said. O Globo and O Estado de S. Paulo newspapers had reported the redundancies earlier on Saturday. LATAM said it pays its pilots and crew more than its rivals in Brazil, and the pandemic has forced it to "match industry practices." The layoffs are the latest in efforts to downsize Latin America's largest airline. Before the novel coronavirus outbreak, the airline had 43,000 workers worldwide, with most of them in Brazil and Chile. LATAM is seeking to restructure $18 billion in debt. When it filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection in May, it was the world's largest airline to date to seek an emergency reorganization due to the pandemic. (Reporting by Jamie McGeever and Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Paul Simao) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Almost 100 people gathered at the Historic Sandy Ground Museum in Rossville Saturday to take part in a historically-significant walk retracing the steps of the Underground Railroad from the South Shore to Stapleton. The walk, entitled: First of August Celebration, Path of Liberation, was co-organized by the Young Leaders of Staten Island, La Colmena and the Staten Island NAACP Youth Council as an effort to both commemorate the Sandy Ground site and educate about the Islands role as an integral stop in the Underground Railroad. Local artist Miriam Fox with some of her paintings on display in the 3rd Place coffee shop in the Market Square Local artist Miriam Fox is drawn to old buildings and historic monuments so it's little surprise that she is getting involved with Heritage Week which takes place during the month of August. Finding inspiration in old photographs, Miriam she carefully recreates scenes from the past in detailed pen and ink drawings, bringing history to life for viewers who see familiar places in a new light. A self-taught artist, Miriam had her first solo exhibition earlier this year in Dundalk library which proved a real launching pad for her budding career. 'I've been very busy and it all happened by chance after Mary McHugh saw my drawings on Facebook and asked me to exhibit them in the library,' she explains. 'After the exhibition in the library, I was contacted by Alison Harvey of the Heritage Council to do some cartoons of Dundalk for a children's colouring competition, and I have just finished working on a project with Lorraine McCann in the County Archives.' Working closely with the heritage and archive services also led to Miriam realising that this is the area in which she wishes to specialise. 'I love finding old photographs - I can take a few weeks to find the oldest photo of a building or landmark- and then I'll spend one to two weeks drawing it,' she explains. 'Sometimes I'll work on two or three drawings at a time, moving from one to another. I love to capture every brick, stone, pillar or column.' When drawing she becomes totally immersed in her work. 'I can get up at 5am and it will be 12 noon when my husband will ask me if I've had any breakfast and I won't even have realised the time.' Miriam had already planned the first of her exhibitions, a display of 20 framed prints of her original drawings, which can be seen in The 3rd Place Coffee House on Dundalk's Market Square, when she got the opportunity to embark on a much bigger project for Heritage Week. The result is 'History Brought to Life' which takes its name from comments which viewers left in the guestbook for her first exhibition in the library back in February. For this project, she is exhibiting 43 of her fine art mounted Giclee prints of her historic drawings in The Marshes Shopping Centre, as well asin Dundalk and Ardee branch libraries. 'At the time I was planning the project, I didn't know what buildings would be open, so I asked Sean Farrell, the manager of The Marshes, if I could have an exhibition there, and he very kindly agreed. I also wanted to show my work in Ardee as I have several drawings from around there and they are being displayed in the large windows of the library. As the library in Dundalk is now open again to the public, I thought it would be a good idea to have an exhibition there as lots of people come in and out to use the library.' Each print will be accompanied by an information card detailing the history of the building depicted as she finds people love to learn more about the scenes they are viewing. She has also worked with Conor Thorne ff Frame & Art Ireland (Dealg Design Ardee) to create a 'History at Your Doorstep' map of the county which is surrounded by 22 drawings of historic landmarks from the mid and north Louth area. 'It's been a lot of work but we are delighted with the finished project for National Heritage Week,' she says, explaining that the map is based on old 16th century map of the county which she found during her research. As part of the project, videographer Steven Larkin is making a video of the exhibitions and uploading it to the National Heritage website where it will be available to view during Heritage Week. Her drawings mainly feature historic buildings, castles, churches and monuments of Louth but there are also a number of scenes from Dublin as well as a portrait of Florence Nightingale as a tribute to the wonderful work being done by nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is very grateful to all those who have assisted her in preparing for the exhibition, including CTI Business Solutions who are supplying the exhibition stands for The Marshes. Miriam's prints are available to purchase in O'Brien's gift/stationary shop, Ardee. The signing of the Korean-Japanese Treaty, Japan Punch, March 1876 By Robert Neff The cover of Japan Punch, November 1882 Charles Wirgman (1832-1891) is an unlikely witness of Korean history especially considering, as far as I know, he never visited the country. But his view of the peninsula from afar is, nonetheless, interesting and entertaining. He arrived in Japan in 1861 and spent the rest of his life in Yokohama illustrating and writing often satirically about Japanese society. Like many artists and writers, he apparently struggled to make a living and was forced to augment his income by teaching art and English tutoring. In 1862, he began publishing Japan's first monthly magazine Japan Punch. For the most part, his witty sketches (often accompanied by captions in various languages) were readily appreciated by the small foreign community except, of course, those who found themselves the target of his satirical pen. So much time has passed that many of his caricatured subjects are not so readily identifiable now but one can imagine that when they were published, few, if any, had any doubt as to their identities. But his observations weren't confined just to the expat community in Japan. He also commented on affairs outside Japan including Korea. Following the Unyo incident on September 10, 1875, and the subsequent destruction of Korean fortifications on Ganghwa Island two weeks later by the Japanese navy, a war between Korea and Japan seemed inevitable. The foreign diplomatic community in Yokohama. Japan Punch, May 1871 The Korean government explaining the Imo Mutiny to the Japanese government, Japan Punch, September 1882 In February 1876, a Japanese fleet of warships and transports anchored off the coast of Jemulpo. Over the next couple of weeks, a treaty was drawn up and ratified between the two countries opening Korea to Japan. Wirgman's sketch portrays the officials of both countries dancing with joy. Following the Imo Mutiny in Seoul in July 1882, Wirgman took the opportunity to demonstrate through one of his sketches that China was still controlling Korea from behind the scenes. When the Korean delegations arrived in Japan, Wirgman and his pen were there. Judging from the sketch, he was more pleased to meet them than they were to meet him. Wirgman encounters the Korean delegation in Japan. Japan Punch, October 1882 One of his sketches "The Nippon Race Club [and] the Korean jock" shows a Korean official starting out on a horse and returning in a jinrikisha. A little over a year later, 50 jinrikishas were exported to Korea and were, for a short time, popular with the upper class and foreigners. Many, however, were destroyed during the anti-foreign sentiment following the unsuccessful coup attempt by Korean progressives in December 1884. When the Korean delegation left Japan, Wirgman took a parting shot. He portrays them as leaving Japan quite satisfied and obese all smoking cigarettes and carrying bags of money an open bottle of alcohol raised in celebration of their success. It is said that the pen is mightier than the sword and, as we shall see tomorrow, Wirgman wielded his pen like a gladiator when it came to Western especially British policy involving Korea. A Korean official in the "Nippon Race." Japan Punch, October 1882 The Korean delegation returning home. Japan Punch, January 1883 Bikini season is officially here and Emily Ratajkowski is ready to make a splash. The actress, 29, showed off her statuesque physique as she posed in a bright blue bikini from her own swimsuit collection, Inamorata. Emily was piling her hair up into a bun as she posed with her back towards the camera, with her perk behind on full display. Bottom's up! Emily Ratajkowski showed off her statuesque physique as she posed in a bright blue bikini from her own swimsuit collection, Inamorata Retailing at $85, the tiny, string bikini bottoms left very little of Emily's backside to the imagination. Since founding Inamorata Woman in 2017, Emily has been heavily promoting the line on her social media accounts, where she models everything from swimsuits to lingerie. The actress has not let the coronavirus pandemic stop her from looking her best. Emily was spotted Friday working a chic ensemble while out in New York City. Back in the city: Ratajkowski headed back to her old stomping grounds and made the streets of NYC her catwalk as she headed to lunch on Friday The former UCLA student wore a red and yellow floral patterned mini skirt, that she teamed with a dark brown leather crop top. With a plunging neckline and puffed long-sleeves, the top added shape to her outfit. Opting for comfort, she added grey lace-up sneakers to her look as she walked down the sidewalk. Adding shape: The former UCLA student wore a red and yellow floral patterned mini skirt, that she teamed with a dark brown leather crop top. With a plunging neckline and puffed long-sleeves, the top added shape to her outfit Sensible shoes: Opting for comfort, she added grey lace-up sneakers to her look as she walked down the sidewalk For accessories, she wore thick gold hoop earrings, a gold choker and matching pendant necklace. While she covered her eyes in in chic brown cat eye sunglasses, she opted to not wear a face mask despite a New York state mandate requiring face coverings in public. Though, Emily did carry a white mask in her hand, as she chatted with a friend on her walk. Lunch date: She seemed to be headed to lunch as she later shared snaps on social media from a covered patio table, to Instagram The model also left her hair up in a sleek bun with pieces framing her face and she carried a white leather shoulder bag with her essentials. She seemed to be headed to lunch as she later shared snaps on social media from a covered patio table, to Instagram. Seated next to a wire fence and road blocks, she enjoyed a meal in a makeshift patio as cities look for ways to increase businesses despite dining regulations. Accessories: For accessories, she wore thick gold hoop earrings, a gold choker and matching pendant necklace She and her husband Sebastian Bear-McClard fled New York City while it was the American epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic and flew to Los Angeles on April 15. The Centers For Disease Control And Prevention had issued an advisory on March 28 asking 'residents of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to refrain from non-essential domestic travel for 14 days effective immediately.' However in late June as COVID-19 cases spiked dramatically in California, Emily and Sebastian crossed back to New York. Later: Emily added a standard face mask to her ensemble, which did not detract from her killer street look Dog mom: She was also seen with her beloved German Shepherd mix and a dogwalker friend A council worker was sacked after he accidentally played a video of a woman having noisy sex on his phone during a meeting - then claimed it was the sound of a goose. David West - an electrician for Redditch Borough Council, Worcester - was seen 'frantically' tapping on his mobile after opening a message containing footage of a woman having an orgasm. The staff briefing was interrupted by the loud sound of 'three to four sexual moans' coming from his phone, lasting up to 30 seconds. David West, an electrician for Redditch Borough Council, Worcester, was seen tapping his phone after opening a message containing footage of a woman having an orgasm during a council meeting in Redditch Town Hall (pictured) An employment tribunal heard some staff broke into laughter as more than 100 colleagues were stunned by what they heard. But when Mr West was asked to explain himself, he created an 'implausible story' claiming the noises had been a video a friend sent him of a 'goose honking'. The tribunal heard inappropriate noises burst across Redditch Town Hall at 'full pelt' when Mr West inadvertently opened the WhatsApp message. It did accept that the video was played accidentally, but that the noise was 'fervently disputed'. Reports said: 'The council's position is that sounds were of a sexual nature and were the sounds of a female in the act of sexual intercourse having an orgasm. 'Mr West attempted to stop the sound by 'frantically tapping the screen' and he says in doing so, he deleted the message in its entirety from the phone.' Mr West was asked to explain himself and he created an 'implausible story' claiming the noises had been a video a friend sent him of a 'goose honking' Council bosses launched an investigation - but found that no members of staff said it sounded anything like a goose. Guy Revans, head of environmental and housing property services said Mr West 'concocted a rather implausible story to try to avoid any consequence for what had happened'. After Mr West was sacked for the incident in January 2019 he sued the council, claiming he had been a victim of unfair dismissal and breach of contract. A tribunal held in Birmingham dismissed his claims and rejected his version of events. It ruled that 'on the balance of probabilities' the sounds were of a sexual nature and not of a goose, and that Mr West was the only person who thought a bird had made the noise. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 03:31:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BUENOS AIRES, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Argentine president Alberto Fernandez asked residents on Saturday to stay at home, as cases and deaths from COVID-19 are on the rise in the country. "Every 24 days, the number of deaths doubles, and we have to take that into account," the president told Buenos Aires-based radio station "El Destape." He added that the quarantine, which began on March 20, has been successful in allowing the country time to prepare for a larger number of cases, but that citizens must remain cautious. "The only way to avoid infections is to stay at home. There is no other way, because when circulation increases, infections grow," he explained. The Argentinean president stated that his administration had a set of plans to reactivate the post-pandemic economy, and he would "speak with the provincial governors to try to help the plans make a better regional impact." According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Argentinean economy could experience a drop of as much as 10.5 percent this year due to the pandemic. Argentina, which recently extended the national quarantine to Aug. 16, has registered a total of 191,302 cases, with 3,558 deaths since its first case of COVID-19 was reported on March 3. Enditem Belarusian security services arrested Russians on Wednesday, said they were on a mission to destabilise the country. The Kremlin has asked ex-Soviet ally Belarus to release 33 Russian men detained in Minsk over an alleged plot to organise riots before next months presidential elections. Belarusian security services on Wednesday arrested the group of Russians, saying they were mercenaries on a mission to destabilise the country in the run-up to the August 9 polls. Belaruss KGB security service said the men were members of the Wagner group, a notorious private military firm reportedly controlled by an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. We hope that in the very near future this incident will be explained by our Belarusian allies and that the citizens will be released, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. He added that the groundless detention of Russian citizens does not quite fit the parameters of allied relations. Belarus investigators said the men were working with prominent opposition critics Sergei Tikhanovsky and Mikola Statkevich who have both been jailed and barred from contesting the ballot. Peskov confirmed the Russian men were employees of a private security company who were staying temporarily in Belarus before travelling onwards to Istanbul. They missed their plane, he said. They had tickets to Istanbul. A senior Belarusian investigator said in televised comments that the mens plans for onward travel were just an alibi, Tut.by news site reported. As the investigation has found out, they did not plan to fly there (to Istanbul), the head of the investigative team, Alexander Agafonov, was reported as saying in an interview with national television. The men gave contradictory answers, he added. Eleven of them said they intended to fly to Venezuela, 15 to Turkey, two to Cuba and one to Syria. One did not know where he was flying to and the rest refused to testify, Agafonov said. During a massive campaign rally in the capital Minsk on Thursday, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya the leading rival to Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko denied claims the opposition was working with Russian mercenaries to incite mass unrest. Tikhanovskaya, who is married to the jailed blogger Tikhanovsky, said people only wanted a fair election. She said Russian private contractors might have been using Belarus as a transit point for a long time and questioned the timing of this weeks arrests. ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A new emergency order in Anchorage will stop indoor service at restaurants and breweries, restrict gathering sizes and require people to work from home if possible to limit the spread of COVID-19. Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz announced Friday that the order would go into effect Monday and will last until Aug. 30. By waiting for four weeks, we should see be able to judge whether these measures are helping to reduce transmission or whether we need to do additional steps, Anchorage Health Department Medical Officer Bruce Chandler said. The newest regulation requires bars and nightclubs be closed except to provide takeout or delivery service. The order also limits indoor gatherings to 15 people and outdoor gatherings with food and drinks to 25 people. Outdoor gatherings without food and drinks are limited to 50 people. Berkowitz also extended the city mask mandate requiring face coverings for all indoor and outdoor gatherings. In the last week, health officials reported an increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases. Anchorage had 494 confirmed COVID-19 cases this week, up from 187 cases the week before. The number of infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected with the virus without feeling sick. Anchorage opened five new testing site locations around the city, including at two churches and a library. Municipal manager Bill Falsey said all of the new locations are free and do not require a doctor referral. Were encouraging anyone with even mild symptoms, or who thinks they may have been exposed to go to those sites to get COVID tested. Well also test people who are asymptomatic if they feel like they have been exposed, he said. The coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, but can also be detected in people without symptoms. For some especially older adults and people with existing health problems it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. Jaipur, Aug 1 : Amid the ongoing political crisis in Rajasthan, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot seems to be adopting a soft approach against the rebels from the Sachin Pilot camp, as he openly announced on Saturday that he will forgive and embrace them if they apologise to the party high command. Speaking to the media in Jaisalmer, the Rajasthan Chief Minister said that if those who were engaged in the conspiracy to destabilise the government in Rajasthan confess to the party high command and are forgiven, he would also embrace them. Gehlot also attacked Union Home Minister Amit Shah, saying he always contemplates ways and means of toppling elected governments. He said, "I take Amit Shah's name repeatedly because he always remains on the front. No matter whether it is Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Manipur or Arunachal Pradesh -- he leads from the front for BJP every time." "Out of compulsion, we have to say that what has happened to you Amit Shah? How can you think of toppling the government all the time? What will happen to the country if there is no democracy," Gehlot asked. The Rajasthan CM further said, "If elected governments start getting toppled, how can democracy survive in India? We are running a campaign to save democracy in the whole country." Gehlot also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should intervene and stop the horse trading show being run in the state. He also made a scathing attack on Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and said that he should resign on moral grounds as his name has appeared in the Sanjeevani Cooperative Society embezzlement case. On BJP state President Satish Poonia's remark that where will the CM go with his MLAs from Jaisalmer as Pakistan comes next, Gehlot said, "These are new leaders who want to compete with Vasundhara ji (former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje). There is a clear cut competition among them... Rajendra Singh Rathore, Satish Poonia and Gulabchand Kataria. Kataria is a good man as he speaks a little less. He abuses us when he comes in front of the media. So they all seem to be weak leaders and no one knows where Vasundhara ji has disappeared." SEYMOUR A mother and son from Monroe and a teen from Derby were identified by police Saturday as the victims of two separate, serious crashes in town Friday. The first crash happened shortly before 4 p.m. Friday in the area of 179 Roosevelt Drive. The crash catapulted a vehicle into the Housatonic River with two people still inside. Tim Willis, of the Seymour Fire Department, said the Roosevelt Drive call was a large, complex scene with responders from many jurisdictions. Seymour Assistant Fire Chief Chris Edwards called for additional resources to the scene quickly, Willis said, and firefighters immediately worked to reach the vehicle. They commandeered a residents boat and crews entered the water in both life jackets and rescue suits, Willis said. The fire department used a winch to drag the SUV closer to shore, where Willis said a female victim and male victim were rescued from the vehicle. Initial dispatch reports indicated they were pulled from the vehicle around 4:30 p.m. Dive teams confirmed there was no one else inside, Willis said. Officials later confirmed the two victims pulled from the SUV in the river died. On Saturday, Deputy Police Chief Roberto Rinaldi identified the victims as 54-year-old Connie Crowell and her 22-year-old son, John Crowell. They lived in Monroe. Rinaldi said medics gave the two medical care on scene, but resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful and they were both pronounced dead at the scene. Crews remained on the water investigating for hours Friday night. The investigation continues. Rinaldi asked any witnesses to call 203-881-7638. But once crews cleared from the Housatonic River call, there were two more crashes in Seymour on Friday night one of which involved a fatality, the fire department said. Around 10:30 p.m., fire units and medics responded to Clinton Road to help police on scene with a crash. Willis said a vehicle had gone off the road and rolled over. One male victim was trapped inside the car, Willis said. He said medics pronounced the individual dead at the scene. Fire crews remained on scene to remove the victim from the wreckage until about 4:30 a.m., Willis said. Rinaldi identified the victim Saturday as 18-year-old Richard Ciardi of Derby. Initial investigation shows the vehicle Ciardi was operating was traveling southbound on Clinton Road when, for an unknown reason, the vehicle crossed overinto the northbound lane, struck a tree and went down an embankment, where it came to a rest, Rinaldi said. He said this crash remains under investigation as well, and asked any witnesses to call 203-881-7610. They split in 2015 but keep a close relationship as they co-parent their three children. And Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick enjoyed Friday afternoon together in Malibu as they stopped by some shops and enjoyed cold drinks. The Poosh founder donned a casual street-style outfit in black bicycle shorts and a periwinkle blue button-up top. Easy Friday: Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick enjoyed Friday afternoon together in Malibu as they stopped by some shops and enjoyed cold drinks Kourtney, 41, teamed her look with grey lace-up sneakers and dark rectangular sunglasses. Keeping a stylish look, her raven colored locks were slicked back into a sleek bun. She enjoyed a sip from her cold drink as she walked back to her car, and went without a face mask despite local guidelines. Street style: The Poosh founder donned a casual street-style outfit in black bicycle shorts and a periwinkle blue button-up top Comfort: Kourtney, 41, teamed her look with grey lace-up sneakers and dark rectangular sunglasses She was joined by Scott, 37, who she shares sons Mason, 10, and Reign, five, and daughter Penelope, seven, with. The Talentless brand founder donned a yellow button up with large blue polka dots. He added to his look with white Nike sneakers and black shorts. Sleek: Keeping a stylish look, her raven colored locks were slicked back into a sleek bun Mask ftree: She enjoyed a sip from her cold drink as she walked back to her car, and went without a face mask despite local guidelines Scott looked cool with a black cap, he wore backwards and dark sunglasses. They seemed to be enjoying the Malibu area as Kourtney has been renting a mansion over looking the water, this summer. Earlier in the day, Kourtney shared a snap with her friend and TikTok star Addison Rae at her Malibu beach house She joked 'My husbands girlfriend and I exchanging stories.' Local: They seemed to be enjoying the Malibu area as Kourtney has been renting a mansion over looking the water, this summer His look: Scott looked cool with a black cap, he wore backwards and dark sunglasses. Scott looked cool with a black cap, he wore backwards and dark sunglasses Their outing also comes amid reports Scott has reunited with Sofia Richie, 21, after splitting in May. A source revealed to People that this time around the 37-year-old Talentless founder and the 21-year-old daughter of Lionel Richie are 'taking things slow.' '[They are] trying to make things work while taking things slow,' explained the insider, as the pair continue to spend quality time together. On Tuesday, a source confirmed to Us Weekly that Scott and Sofia were 'hanging out again romantically' and that their relationship was 'back on.' Getting close: Earlier in the day, Kourtney shared a snap with her friend and TikTok star Addison Rae at her Malibu beach house She joked 'My husbands girlfriend and I exchanging stories' Family: Kourtney shares sons Mason, 10, and Reign, five, and daughter Penelope, seven, with Scott Scott and Sofia reunited for the first time on Saturday, since ending their nearly three-year relationship in May. The pair - who first began dating in 2017 - grabbed lunch at Nobu restaurant in Malibu, before heading to a pal's low key Fourth Of July party at the beach. 'They seemed happy together but more friendly than romantic,' a source told People of their get together. Scott and Sofia's break-up occurred in May, shortly after Scott's brief rehab stint at a Colorado treatment facility in late April. Last month, a source told People that Sofia was 'still processing the breakup' and having a hard time doing so. Back together: Earlier this month, it was reported that Sofia and Scott have gotten back together, after having ended their nearly three-year relationship in May. 'It was a serious relationship, not some fling, and she was there for Scott through some tough times. It hurts to see all the speculation about Scott and Kourtney, but she is so young and gets so much attention. She'll be totally fine,' the insider explained. Sofia and Scott started dating in the fall of 2017 about two years after he split with Kourtney. Recently, Scott, Kourtney, and their three children, sons Reign, five, and Mason, 10, and seven-year-old daughter Penelope, have been spending a lot of quality time together, taking a family trip to Utah for Scott's birthday and most recently a trip to Wyoming together. One Houston doctor didn't hold back when expressing his frustration and annoyance toward the spike in Texas. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joseph Varon, who works at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, told KTRK-TV he's fighting two COVID-19 wars, and one is especially hard to treat. "My motto has been, you know, at the present time, I'm pretty much fighting two wars: a war against COVID and a war against stupidity. And the problem is that the first one I have some hope about winning. But the second one is becoming more and more difficult to treat. Why do I say that? Because people are not listening. Whether it's backed up by science or just plain old common sense, people are not listening throughout the country," Varon told the TV station. Varon oversees UMMC's COVID-19 unit, and said people choosing to completely disobey the guidance put forth by health officials you know, like wearing a mask and social distancing makes the fight that much harder. COVID KILLER: UH researchers create filter to 'catch and kill' virus instantly Chron.com reported Friday that the Houston region is at 100,786 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of state data. The death count is at 1,597. The entire state of Texas currently sits at 425,119 cases and 6,465 deaths. The Department of State Health Services recently began reporting deaths based on death certificates instead of reports from individual counties, which further confirmed that the virus is deadlier for people of color. A 21-year-old Roanoke man admitted responsibility Friday for the fatal shooting of a man he had met to buy marijuana. Trayvone Raycron Kasey, who also admitted involvement in a second death, faces spending the rest of his life in prison. In pleading guilty to federal charges, he became the second of four defendants convicted in U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullens takedown of a violent street gang operating in northwest Roanoke. Kasey placed his signature on a prosecution narrative that said he met Markel Trevon Girty, 23, near the Lansdowne public housing complex in February 2018 to buy about an ounce of marijuana. At some point during the encounter, Kasey shot Girty in the chest at close range, took the marijuana and left the area, the narrative said. Girty began driving and was speaking to a 911 operator to report he had been shot when he lost control and crashed his vehicle, the narrative said. An EMS crew found him unresponsive. The Roanoke man was pronounced dead at a hospital. His mother shared her grief a few days later, telling The Roanoke Times that Girty had worked a variety of jobs including cleaning houses, cleaning carpets and watching children at the YMCA. He had a girlfriend and was the father of a child born a few days after his death, Amy Girty said at the time. Kasey appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski Thursday on a videoconference from the Western Virginia Regional Jail. Among his admissions, he agreed that he was a member of the Roanoke branch of the Rollin 30 Crips. The government charged four men in fall 2018 with responsibility for a series of violent acts and drug and gun crimes in what Cullen said was a crackdown on the Rollin 30 Crips. The prosecution is also about the 2017 shooting death of Nickalas Lee, 17. Kasey agreed that the prosecution narrative correctly placed him at the scene of that killing also and described his role in it. The narrative gave this account: Lee was in hot water with the gang over a belief that he had associated with members of a rival gang. The same was true for another person identified in court only as D.F. Sean Denzel Guerrant, identified by authorities as the leader of the Rollin 30 Crips, ordered Lee to kill D.F. But at the time and place when the killing was supposed to occur, D.F. fled. Kasey and alleged gang member Demonte Rashod Mack turned on Lee and fired guns as Lee fled. They chased him down, at which point Mack shot Lee in the back. Police found Lee alive but he died a short time later. Guerrant and Mack have pleaded not guilty. They are scheduled for trial Oct. 5 at the Poff federal building. The trial is scheduled to run four weeks. In carrying out his obligations under a plea deal, Kasey pleaded guilty to murder in connection with Lees death, gun charges related to Girtys death and Lees death, robbery of Girty, and two conspiracy charges. Urbanski told Kasey that he will automatically be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison without chance of release, except under one circumstance. That would occur if prosecutors formally determine after the trial that Kasey provided the government with substantial help in winning the case and ask the court for leniency for Kasey as a result. In a previous hearing, Chauncey Dion Levesy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. His plea deal, which was signed in August 2019, capped his sentence at 20 years. 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. "I've always been someone who has felt compelled to serve. It's the main reason why Brittany and I came to New Orleans. That was a time when I really wasn't sure if I would ever play football again. But I knew that I had a chance to be a part of something much greater than myself. The last 15 years in New Orleans have been some of the proudest and most rewarding moments of our lives. And we tried to dedicate ourselves to creating a lasting legacy of hope, love and progress, especially in this city. Going back to my comment on June 3, to think for a second that New Orleans or the state of Louisiana or the black community would think that I was not standing with them for social justice, that completely broke my heart. It was crushing. Never ever would I feel that way. I recognize that I missed an opportunity that day. I had an opportunity to talk about and emphasize the social injustices that exist for our black community and our need as a country to support them and to advocate for systemic change. And my lack of awareness in that moment hurt a lot of people. Now there are three key things I want to make very clear. No. 1, I will always stand for the flag because of what it means to me and to honor all those who have sacrificed, who have served and died for our country and all those who have struggled to move this country forward. Second, I acknowledge and respect anyone who chooses to kneel or any other form of peaceful protest to bring attention to the social injustices and systemic racism that so many have endured and continue to endure in our country. I will always support and advocate for the black and brown communities in the fight for social injustices. Always. Third, I'm the same person now that I've always been. I'm someone who cares deeply for people in my community, New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, people everywhere. I'm someone who will always address the inequities and disparities that exist. I'm someone who has great empathy for those who are hurting, struggling, or victims of injustice. And I'm someone who feels a great sense of responsibility to serve and to lead and to bring true equality to everyone." The Supreme Court building in Mauritius is the first India-assisted infrastructure project within the capital city of Port Louis. The landmark project has been completed amidst the Covid pandemic, with a grant assistance of USD 28.12 million from the government of India, a statement of the ministry of external affairs said. New Delhi, July 30 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi while inaugurating Mauritius Supreme Court building through a video conference on Thursday, said that India's development cooperation with its regional partners was unconditional and without any quid pro quo. Inaugurating the building jointly with Prime Minister of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth, Prime Minister Modi during his video address said, "India's development cooperation does not come with any conditions, nor is it influenced by any political or commercial considerations." The indirect reference to unconditional development cooperation in the region was a dig at China which is known to be predatory and imperialistic in all its development projects in foreign countries. The core principle for development cooperation, PM Modi said, "is respect for our partners and the central motivation is sharing of our development lessons." Prime Minister Modi said that the development cooperation with Mauritius is at the heart of India's approach to development partnerships. Noting the importance of human-centric approach as the underlying philosophy of India's development cooperation, he commended the role of people-oriented infrastructure projects in further cementing the close ties between India and Mauritius. This, he emphasized, distinguishes the Indian development cooperation as marked by the core values of 'Respect', 'Diversity', 'Care for the Future', and 'Sustainable Development'. Prime Minister Modi said that the new Supreme Court building with modern design and state-of-the-art facilities will be a fitting seat for the Mauritius judiciary, and a symbol of cooperation as well as shared values of India and Mauritius. He also pointed out that the project had been completed on schedule and at a cost below initial estimates. In line with India's vision of 'SAGAR - Security and Growth for All in the Region', the new Supreme Court building demonstrates India's role as a reliable partner of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean region as also India's steadfast commitment to strengthen the future-oriented partnership between the two countries. Noting that India takes pride in the achievements of the people of Mauritius, Prime Minister Modi expressed his confidence that the India-Mauritius partnership is destined to soar even higher in the coming years. Prime Minister Jugnauth expressed his deep appreciation for India's support for the project as reflective of the close ties of friendship and cooperation between the two countries. "Our country, our people are grateful for your support," he told PM Modi. Quoting PM Modi's Prayagraj speech in March this year, PM Jugnauth said that his government held the same values and vision of 'sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas' (Together, for everyone's growth, with everyone's trust). "Today's event bears out the depth of our determination and commitment to our modernization endeavour for the well being of our people. This is sacred for us and I know, Modi ji, that we both share this philosophy," PM Jugnauth said. He noted that the construction of the Supreme Court Building with Indian assistance is a new milestone in the modernization of infrastructure in Mauritius and will help make the Mauritius justice system more efficient, accessible and inclusive. --IANS aat/skp/ This page requires Javascript. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. U.S. Calls On Belarus To Hold Free Elections, Expresses Regret Over Lack Of OSCE Observers By RFE/RL's Belarus Service July 31, 2020 The United States called on Belarus on July 30 to conduct its upcoming presidential election in a free and fair manner as it expressed disappointment over the lack of Western observers to monitor the vote. Belarus will hold a presidential election on August 9 in what is shaping up to be a tough race for incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka, an authoritarian leader who has been in power since 1994. Belarus, whose elections consistently have been deemed neither free nor fair by Western observers since the late 1990s, did not invite the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in time to monitor the vote. "We deeply regret that the OSCE will not have the opportunity to send observers to see this election," George Kent, who serves as deputy assistant secretary overseeing policy toward Belarus, told RFE/RL in an interview on July 30. The senior State Department official said the United States has "raised the issue of having observers, as well as our desire to see the elections conducted freely and fairly." Lukashenka has cracked down on the opposition during the campaign, with the arrest of hundreds of people, including activists and bloggers as well as some candidates. Nonetheless, opposition candidate Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya still attracted tens of thousands of supporters at a rally in Minsk on July 30 as her campaign gathers steam. Tsikhanouskaya joined the race after her husband, a candidate, was arrested. Kent said the United States has expressed concern over the detainment and harassment of journalists and has raised the topic with Belarusian officials. "We do raise these issues because I think they are at the core of any successful society," he said. Freedom of the press is critical, he said. Citizens need information so they can make decisions about their society. The conduct and the outcome of the elections could have a profound impact on Minsk's relationship with foreign countries, including the United States. Washington imposed sanctions on Belarus in the 2000s over human rights abuses, including a crackdown on political opponents. While some of the sanctions were eased after Belarus released political prisoners, their full removal requires "additional steps in opening and democratizing to give Belarusians the chance to express their opinions," Kent said. The easing of sanctions enabled the United States to ship earlier this year its first tanker of oil to Belarus. A second tanker is currently on its way. Another step forward in warming relations will come next month when the countries are expected to exchange ambassadors for the first time in 12 years. The new Belarusian ambassador to the United States will arrive in the middle of August, while the U.S. Senate is expected to confirm Julie Fisher, a top State Department official for Europe, as the new U.S. ambassador to Belarus after her hearing on August 5. Belarus, wedged largely between NATO nations and Russia, has historically had close ties to its large neighbor to the east. Russia has propped up the economy of Belarus with cheap oil and gas exports. However, the bilateral relationship has been strained ever since Russia forcibly annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, raising concerns in Belarus about its own sovereignty. Minsk has since rebuffed efforts by Moscow to consummate a planned union state that was first conceived more than 20 years ago. Kent said the United States wants Belarus to remain a sovereign nation and that Minsk should have the right to choose its own geopolitical trajectory. Warmer ties with the United States and its allies should not preclude a friendly relationship with Russia, he said. "Even as the U.S. has looked to normalize our relationship, we do not expect nor do we pressure Belarus to make a choice between East and West. That would be a false choice," Kent said. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-belarus- elections-observers/30758145.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 The Trump administration on Friday announced it would dramatically increase U.S. immigration fees in multiple categories, including a first-ever fee for asylum applicants and an 80% increase for naturalization services. The new fee structure, unveiled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), is expected to take effect October 2. The cost of online naturalization applications is increasing from $640 to $1,160. There will also be a $50 fee for asylum-seekers. The agency, which has closed offices and suspended most services during the pandemic, has said it faces a significant revenue shortfall that could trigger furloughs. Earlier this year, the agency requested $1.2 billion in emergency funds from Congress. USCIS is required to examine incoming and outgoing expenditures and make adjustments based on that analysis, Joseph Edlow, USCIS deputy director for policy, said in a statement to the press. He added, These overdue adjustments in fees are necessary to efficiently and fairly administer our nations lawful immigration system, secure the homeland and protect Americans. According to USCIS, the new rule supports payroll, technology and operations to accomplish its mission. Experts said the United States now joins Iran, Fiji and Australia in imposing a fee on asylum-seekers. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, a Washington nonprofit that advocates for immigrants, decried the added financial burden on newcomers, who are also charged a fee for an initial work permit. The USCIS fee rule continues the Trump administration's attacks on asylum seekers: - First-ever fee ($50) for asylum - For the first time, requires asylum seekers to pay to apply for an initial work permit, even though they're not allowed to work before thenat the cost of $550. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) July 31, 2020 Earlier, the agency removed a proposed $275 renewal fee for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients. U.S. immigration fees have risen dramatically in recent decades. In the 1990s, the fee to apply for naturalization was under $100. USCIS does not operate like most federal agencies as it receives funds mostly from fee collection. President Ilham Aliyev exchanged greetings for Islamic holiday of Eid-al Adha or Qurban Bayram with Iranian and Afghan presidents on July 31. On July 31, Aliyev made a phone call to President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani. The head of state congratulated Rouhani and the brotherly people of Iran on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, and extended his best wishes for prosperity. Hassan Rouhani thanked for attention and congratulations, and extended his best wishes to the head of state and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of the holiday. Ilham Aliyev and Hassan Rouhani expressed their confidence that the friendly relations between the two countries would continue to develop successfully in political, economic, cultural and other areas. The issues of the implementation of the North-South transport corridor were discussed as well. Both sides noted the strategic importance of the project and hailed the measures taken. They also exchanged views over the work to be done in this area. The presidents also discussed the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, stressing the importance of joining efforts in this regard. The decision was made to organize videoconferences on the pandemic between the two countries` officials. On the same day, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Mohammad Ashraf Ghani telephoned President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. Ghani congratulated and wished peace to President Ilham Aliyev and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. The head of state thanked for attention and congratulations, and extended his congratulations and best wishes for peace and tranquility to his counterpart and friendly people of Afghanistan on the occasion of the holiday. The president of Afghanistan extended his condolences over the death of Azerbaijani servicemen and civilians in the clashes that happened after Armenia`s provocation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, adding that Afghanistan stood by Azerbaijan on this issue. Ghani reaffirmed his country`s support for Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity. President Ilham Aliyev thanked for this brotherly position, praising Afghanistan`s support for Azerbaijan during the border clashes both directly and as part of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. During the phone talk, the heads of state hailed the development of the bilateral relations, and expressed confidence that the decisions adopted at the recent videoconference between the presidents of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan would be implemented. Eid al-Adha 2020 in Azerbaijan began on the evening of July 30 and will end on August 1. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio -- A South Euclid police cruiser was struck by gunfire early Thursday morning, police say. The officer driving the cruiser and a University Heights resident the officer was helping out with a ride were not injured in the incident. The shooting happened about 1:30 a.m. on Cedar Road, just west of Washington Boulevard, according to a news release from University Heights police The officer was providing a courtesy ride for the resident as the cruiser was riddled with bullets, the release says. Police have made no arrests in the incident. Investigators so far have been unable to determine if the police cruiser was specifically targeted, the release says. Police expect to release more information at a later time. Read more crime stories on cleveland.com: Five former students of Cleveland School of the Arts sue school board, alleging sexual abuse by teacher Case against Cleveland Mayor Frank Jacksons great-grandson will stay in juvenile court, judge rules Man fatally shot on Akrons Kenmore Boulevard Three Brunswick police officers fatally shot man after he stabbed his 57-year-old mother to death, police say Pregnant woman loses child after being shot in stomach in Cleveland Mumbai: Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh will on Saturday (August 1) address a press conference in Mumbai on the death case of Sushant Singh Rajput. According to reports, the conference will be held at around 5:30 pm today. State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had earlier opposed the CBI investigation into the death case of Sushant Singh Rajput saying Mumbai Police probe was sufficient. On Friday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray rejected the demand of a CBI probe into the actor's death, saying he deplored attempts to question the efficiency of Mumbai Police in handling the probe into the matter. CM Uddhav stated that Maharashtra Police is capable of probing the case, an assertion which comes in the backdrop of the growing clamour for a CBI probe into the actor's death here in June. He also lashed out at former CM Devendra Fadnavis, saying the BJP politician had doubted the credibility of the Mumbai police in handling the case despite being Chief Minister for five years. On July 31, Fadnavis stated that the Enforcement Directorate should register an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) in connection with the money laundering angle in the death case of Rajput. "There is a huge public sentiment about handing over the case to the CBI, but the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state has been reluctant to do so," Fadnavis stated. Meanwhile, a four-member team of Bihar Police, which is currently in Mumbai to probe the death case of Sushant Singh, will record statements from actors who worked with 'Chhichhore' star till his last movie, ANI quoted sources as saying. An FIR was filed by Sushant Singh Rajput's father KK Singh (74) against actor Rhea Chakraborty in Bihar in connection with the death case under several sections including abetment of suicide. Rajput was found dead at his Mumbai residence on June 14. A case was registered by Mumbai Police and is being probed. According to Mumbai Police, statements from almost 35-40 people have so far been recorded into the matter, including those of Rhea Chakraborty, Mahesh Bhatt, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Aditya Chopra apart from personal staff of the late actor. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 21:24:33|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TEHRAN, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The number of COVID-19 cases confirmed in Iran rose to 306,752, after 2,548 new cases were registered in the last 24 hours, state TV reported. In her daily briefing, Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, said out of the new cases, 1,067 have been hospitalized. The pandemic has so far claimed the lives of 16,982 Iranians, up by 216 in the past 24 hours, she said. So far, 265,830 infected have recovered and been discharged from hospitals in Iran, while 4,011 remain in critical condition. Currently, 15 out of 31 Iranian provinces are at high risk or in alert situation, she said. 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 visited Iran for a month-long mission to help Iran fight the pandemic. Enditem KOLKATA: The Gorkhaland Territorial Authority on Saturday announced the extension of coronavirus-induced lockdown in the GTA-administered for a period of seven days, till August 8, 2020. The extended lockdown will remain effective in the GTA region covering Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal till August 8. The GTA had on July 8 passed an order restricting the entry of tourists in Darjeeling Hills till July 31 to contain the spread of coronavirus in the area. The order was passed by GTA chairman Anit Thapa. The GTA had earlier restricted the entry of tourists in Darjeeling hills from March 19 to April 15, to contain the spread of the deadly virus. In a notification, the administration appealed to clubs and other institutions within the district to refrain from holding any events, which require large gatherings of people and also maintain social distancing. Darjeeling, which is one of the major tourist destinations of West Bengal has remained closed since March 19. GTA is an Autonomous District Council for the Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas of the state. No elected official wants to be the one to crack down on a good time because of a coronavirus resurgence in their region, but local leaders have power to do so. As Gov. J.B. Pritzker continues to pressure officials in places seeing outbreaks, those leaders will have to make some decisions. Republican officials and downstate residents have called for local control in their response to the pandemic since the Democratic governor began issuing his first executive orders regarding COVID-19 in March. Pritzker rejected the local approach for months and only revealed a regional plan to control the virus in mid-July, splitting the state into 11 areas. He took another step away from his original concept in the past few weeks when he put the onus on municipal and county leaders within the regions to stem the spread of COVID-19. "All of this gets to the very difficult situation that governors are in right now," says Wendy Parmet, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston who specializes in public health law. They're desperate to prevent a reemergence of the virus and they're operating in a toxic messaging environment where every decision could cost them politically, Parmet said. On top of it all, they face a barrage of lawsuits. It's no wonder governors might try to "devolve some of the political onus" onto local leaders, she added. In Illinois, it's what they have asked for, and the governor has obliged. Now it's up to local governments to decide how to go about wielding their newfound power. Legality of local COVID-19 rules But how much power do cities and counties have to implement their own rules? It all depends. The only constant is that state law preempts county rules, just like federal law preempts state law, Parmet said. St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency director Herb Simmons expressed doubt this week about how to legally implement restrictions on businesses and activities that put the public more at risk of catching coronavirus. "Everybody is looking at St. Clair County saying, 'You've got to do this, you have to shut this down, you have to do that,'" Simmons said Wednesday during a news briefing. "We're waiting for the guidance from the powers that be in the state -- IDPH ... They can tell me all day long what we need to do, but how can we do it legally?" As the region's population center, the St. Clair County has driven up the percentage of tests coming back positive, the metric state officials use to determine when they'll step in to impose restrictions. On Friday afternoon, the metro-east region had an overall 7.7% positivity rate, the highest in the state, and St. Clair County reported an 8.8% daily positivity rate. Leaders in other counties already have put new measures in place that apply to all residents. In Perry County, hospitals and nursing homes temporarily suspended visitors, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. In Jackson County, the state's attorney allowed local food ordinances to enforce COVID-19 guidance at restaurants and bars. Randolph County has also taken steps. The county contributes heavily to the region's positivity rate due in part to an outbreak at a mental health center in Chester, the county seat. As of Thursday, the county daily positivity rate was 7.6%, according to the Randolph County Health Department. Randolph health officials have the ability to close or quarantine a specific place, such as the Chester Mental Health Center, said Angela Oathout, the county's public health administrator. They can also void liquor and business licenses. But when it comes to ordering establishments like bars and restaurants to alter how they do business, they leave it up to municipalities. For instance, if the city of Chester wanted to develop an ordinance mandating indefinitely that all bars and restaurants must close by 10 p.m., they could, Oathout said. East St. Louis officials implemented a curfew to do just that. Randolph County officials favor working with establishments rather than closing them altogether, she added, because bars aren't the only reason COVID-19 is spreading. Backyard get-togethers and big parties on private property, primarily with people younger than 40, have caused an uptick in new cases. "We as a local health department have said, you know, it's not fair for the small business owners to be constantly taking the hit. Is there something else we can do?" Oathout said. Alternative measures might include removing stools from the bar, limiting capacity, shortening hours, requiring masks and enforcing social distancing. The health department also provides personal protective equipment to any business that needs it. But the county is also playing hardball. Health department staff call and send certified letters to violating establishments, providing guidelines and a reminder of their authority. "We're basically making it very clear the next step after his letter is I will be in touch with the state's attorney," Oathout said. "We're going to make those offenders accountable." Politics of local control Counties are allowed to make their own rules for a reason, says Randolph County Board of Commissioners Chairman Dave Holder. It prevents the state or federal government from intruding on people's lives unnecessarily, said Holder, a Republican who works as an accountant in addition to serving as chairman. The pandemic changed his opinion a little, Holder said. "Generally speaking, I always believe that local control is the better approach in as many situations as possible," Holder said. "This is not a normal situation. This is something we have never dealt with before." Given the lack of preparation, Randolph officials were glad they could look to experts at the state level for guidance, Holder said. The governor consults with doctors and epidemiologists at Illinois' top universities to inform his office's decisions. "Perhaps the state has done too much with their control, but it's hard to criticize them because not having any precedent to work with, it's hard to know what they should have done," Holder said. Governors struggled to find the balance between ruling with a heavy hand and allowing local control during the early months of the pandemic. While few lawsuits have succeeded nationwide, some have pushed governors to soften their approach or hurry reopening. In Illinois, dozens of lawsuits have called Pritzker's executive orders into question. "Every one of them is a scratch on the fender of the governor's car," Parmet said. "(Litigation) is a way of packaging the objections to the governor's orders in constitutional language, which in the U.S. is the language of law, but it's also the language of politics and organizing." In one lawsuit, state Rep. Darren Bailey, R-Xenia, won a ruling from a Clay County judge who said the governor's orders are void. Giving up executive control to localities is a smart tool governors can use to defend themselves. The approach represents both a political and a legal strategy called "the least restrictive alternative," Parmet said. In the context of Illinois and the virus, it means trying the less restrictive solution of local control before re-imposing statewide orders that apply to everyone. "Facing as much litigation as the governors are facing, it's helpful for them as a litigation matter and as a constitutional matter to say that they only came in when it was the least restrictive alternative," Parmet said. The downside of local control is that it can lead to inconsistency in messaging. If one Republican county chairman suggests masks aren't needed, and a neighboring Democratic chairman says the opposite, which one are people who live just a few miles from each other supposed to believe? "The problem of course is that in this messaging environment, in this political partisan toxic messaging environment, persuasion only goes so far," Parmet said. "And the virus doesn't know county boundaries." Pritzker signs orders allowing prison transfers, extending disaster proclamation Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- The mutual trust between China and Sierra Leone has been further consolidated and elevated in the two countries' cooperative fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday. He made the remarks in a phone conversation with Sierra Leonean Foreign Minister Nabeela Tunis, noting that China and Sierra Leone are good friends that share weal and woe and have always supported each other firmly. Recalling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, Wang said that China took the lead in offering help and fought against the virus with its African brothers and sisters side by side. Facing the present COVID-19 epidemic, the Chinese and the Sierra Leonean people have once again got united and been cooperating and helping each other, hence further consolidated and elevated the friendship and mutual trust between the two countries, Wang said. For the time being, the global epidemic situation remains grim, Wang said, adding that China is ready to continue to provide Sierra Leone with urgently needed anti-epidemic supplies and technical support and to carry out medical cooperation to fight against the epidemic. China is also ready to sign agreement with Sierra Leone as soon as possible on implementing the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) within the G20 framework, accelerate bilateral cooperation projects and help Sierra Leone resume work and production and recover the economy, Wang added. Noting that next year marks the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic ties between China and Sierra Leone, Wang proposed the two sides soundly plan for future cooperation and promote the bilateral relations constantly to higher levels. Wang pointed out that under the pandemic's impact, the uncertainty of the international situation has become more prominent. Unilateral bullying undermines international solidarity and politicizing the epidemic will only do harm to others and oneself, he added. China is willing to work with African countries, including Sierra Leone, to safeguard international laws and the authority of the United Nations, and secure international equity and justice as well as the common interests and legitimate development rights of developing countries. For her part, Tunis sincerely appreciated China's long-term assistance to Sierra Leone, noting the support from China is very important. China is a reliable partner, she said, adding that Sierra Leone cherishes the traditional friendship with China and has been consistently supporting China's righteous stance. The friendship between Sierra Leone and China enjoys the public support and the strong effective cooperation between the two countries can defeat any challenge, Tunis said. In recent years, the cooperation between the two sides has borne fruits and their consensuses have been actively implemented, both demonstrating the high-level Sierra Leone-China relationship, the African minister said. Sierra Leone is willing to take the opportunity of the 50th anniversary of the two countries' diplomatic ties to deepen the bilateral exchange and cooperation in all areas, and create a milestone of their bilateral relationship. The two sides also exchanged views over the international and regional issues of common concern. After witnessing an elderly pedestrian struck down by a truck, a Philadelphia police officer lay down on the scorching road to comfort the dying woman in her final moments. The victims family is calling the officer a guardian angel. On July 21, 80-year-old Maryalice McGrath was crossing an intersection in Port Richmond, Philadelphia, when she was hit by an oncoming truck. Maryalice, a lifelong resident of Port Richmond, was on her way home, reports WPVI. Officer Frank Lynch was driving behind the truck that hit Maryalice and attested that neither the elderly pedestrian nor the truck driver saw the other one coming. I immediately looked in my side mirror and I saw Maryalice laying in the crosswalk, recalled Lynch, who works for the Philadelphia Police Departments Neighborhood Services Unit. Its been over a week now and I still get a little choked. Something that I dont want to relive again. Approaching the intersection at Aramingo Avenue, Philadelphia (Screenshot/Google Maps) Lynch called for an ambulance but quickly determined that Maryalice was not going to survive. He braved the burning asphalt and lay down in the street next to the elderly woman, offering her what company and comfort he could in her final moments. The selfless police officer was later treated for burns at the local hospital. Maryalice was a dedicated member of her local church, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and sang in their adult choir, according to her obituary. Mourners were invited to send flowers to Maryalices church, or alternatively, plant a tree in her memory. Nativity BVM Church (Screenshot/Google Maps) Maryalices niece, Molly Quinn, expressed gratitude to Officer Lynch for staying with her aunt in her last moments. She didnt drive many places, Molly said, but she did walk often and she had gone that day to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. I think he was there for a reason and he was her guardian angel, she added, and he went above and beyond the call of duty by just lying in the street next to this poor woman when she needed him. But Lynch simply believes its his duty. Im sure its going to take more time for me [to return to the intersection], Lynch explained, but I still have a job to do and Ive got to keep doing that. On July 30, Lynch shared a Facebook post. Ive been reading everyones comments and trying to keep my composure during this ordeal, he wrote. It was a horrible thing to happen to such a loving sweet woman. Many of the comments used to describe me was the word hero, he added. I was nothing but a compassionate human being who stayed with Maryalice in her remaining time on this Earth Id like to take this time and thank ALL of the officers that helped that day I couldnt have done what I did without all of their help. Finally, Lynch implored the public to have empathy for the devastated man who had driven the truck that hit Maryalice. I do not know his name, Lynch wrote, but keep him in your prayers. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc Weekend Sunrise presenter Matt Doran has revealed that he's in mandatory self-isolation at his Sydney home for 14 days. Absent from Saturday's program, the 36-year-old told host Monique Wright that he dined at The Apollo restaurant in Potts Point last month, which has since closed for cleaning after a number of positive COVID-19 cases. Matt, who received a negative test result on Friday, said his main concern was for his mother Paula Doran, who he lives with and suffers from chronic anemia. Quarantine: Weekend Sunrise's Matt Doran (pictured), 36, revealed on Saturday's program that he's in mandatory self-isolation for 14 days at his Sydney home, after coming into close contact with a COVID-19 case at a Sydney restaurant Appearing on the program via Zoom, Matt revealed that he enjoyed a solitary meal at The Apollo sometime between July 15 and July 25. 'In my case it was a staff member there [who tested positive], there's now been at least six confirmed cases from that restaurant,' he said. The journalist got a test for COVID-19 'first thing', and is now 'in the middle' of 14 days of self-isolation at home. Restaurant: Appearing on the program via Zoom, Matt revealed that he enjoyed a solitary meal at The Apollo restaurant in Potts Point (pictured), sometime between July 15 and July 25 While Matt admitted it's 'certainly' frustrating to be holed up at home, his main concern is for his mother Paula Doran, who suffers from chronic anemia. Paula, who has been living with Matt, has since moved out to a Sydney hotel while Matt completes his mandatory self-isolation. 'She's very unwell with chronic anemia, so any suggestion of COVID-19, particularly from me, is just the worse case scenario,' he said. Cautious: While he received a negative test result on Friday, the journalist is 'pretty cautious' as you could start showing symptoms 10 or 12 days later. Pictured with co-host Monique Wright Matt also revealed that despite getting a negative test result back, he's 'pretty cautious' as you could start showing symptoms 10 or 12 days later. Late on Monday, NSW Health put out an alert for The Apollo restaurant, urging anyone who visited from Thursday 23 to Saturday 25 July to get tested and quarantine for 14 days. Anyone who attended the venue is asked to watch for symptoms and get tested if symptoms appear. Family: While Matt admitted it's 'certainly' frustrating to be holed up at home, his main concern is for his mother Paula Doran (pictured), who suffers from chronic anemia The Apollo restaurant will remain closed until August 10 for deep cleaning. On Saturday, New South Wales recorded 17 new cases and the first death in nearly three months. There are 102 active cases being treated in the state. A Chinese armored vehicle participates in the International Army Games 2018. (mod.gov.cn/Photo by Yuan Kai) HOHHOT, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of contestants from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Army set off for Moscow, Russia for the International Army Games 2020 on Saturday. They started the journey from Manzhouli, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for the competitions in Russia, and will be followed by more batches of contestants from the PLA Army and Air Force. The International Army Games 2020 will be held in multiple countries including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka from Aug. 23 to Sept. 5. All Chinese contestants will compete in Russia, where they will participate in six competitions such as tank biathlon, scouting competition and airborne troops competition. State TV aired footage of Mr. Sharmahd interspersed with footage from the moment of the 2008 explosion at the Shiraz mosque. Mr. Sharmahds face appeared swollen and the style of the footage resembled that used in one of the more than 350 coerced confessions that a rights group says the broadcaster has aired over the last decade. The Intelligence Ministry has not said what charges Mr. Sharmahd will face. Prisoners earlier accused in the same attack were sentenced to death and executed. The Kingdom Assembly of Iran, known in Farsi as Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran, and Tondar seek to restore Irans monarchy, which ended when the fatally ill Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi fled the country in 1979 just before its Islamic Revolution. The California-based groups founder disappeared in the mid-2000s. Iranian intelligence operatives in the past have used family members and other tricks to lure targets back to Iran or to friendly countries to be captured. An alleged Iranian government operative who is accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill Mr. Sharmahd disappeared in 2010 before facing trial in California, likely having returned to Iran. According to a 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable from London, later published by WikiLeaks, a Voice of America commentator said that same operative had earlier been in contact with him. The British antiterror police later warned the commentator that he had been targeted by the Iranian regime, the cable said. The two cases represented a clear escalation in the regimes attempts to intimidate critics outside its borders, and could have a chilling effect on journalists, academics and others in the West who until recently felt little physical threat from the regime, the cable said. Mr. Sharmahd last appeared in an online livestream video on Dec. 29, according to his groups website, speaking in Farsi while sitting in a black chair in front of a black background. The girlfriend of a surfer who was savagely mauled by a shark has issued a moving Facebook post thanking the total strangers who saved his life. Phil Mummert, 28, was attacked by a five-metre-long shark while surfing at Bunker Bay, south of Perth, on Friday, leaving him with a gaping wound on his right thigh. The great white shark who attacked the surfer and snapped his surfboard in half in the process, taking a chunk out of his leg. His girlfriend, Mish Wright, provided an update on social media and shared images of the surfer in good spirits while recovering at Bunbury Hospital. Phil Mummert, 28, (pictured, right) was attacked by a five-metre shark at Bunker Bay but was saved by fellow surfers promoting his girlfriend Mish Wright (left) to thank his rescuers Ms Wright shared images of Mr Mummert (pictured) recovering at Bunbury Hospital while in good spirits 'I just want to let everyone know that Phil is doing okay,' Ms Wright said. Ms Wright recounted the inspiring efforts of his fellow surfers who immediately paddled towards Mr Mummert and took him to shore. 'I honestly dont know how a person can see a total stranger getting attacked by a four-metre great white shark and swim towards to save him so we are beyond grateful to everyone that helped save Phils life,' she said. 'So lucky that Phil got away with his life and limbs and beyond lucky that we live in such a kind and caring community. 'So thankful for everyone who carried him to shore and for the ones that held his leg together for half an hour while waiting for the ambulance. 'Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,' she said. Mr Mummert (pictured with emergency services and the surfers who rescued him) hit the great white with his surfboard and the five metre shark bit his board and right thigh Witnesses said Mr Mummert's shark bite (pictured) was up to 150mm deep after he was attacked during a surf trip One of Mr Mummert's rescuers recounted how quickly the brutal attack unfolded. 'He's just sitting on his board and the next thing you know we just heard someone go "shark",' one of Mr Mummert's rescuers told Nine News. 'I turned around and I've just seen this white (shark) kind of breach and it had already smashed, hit Phil. 'It just obliterated his board, it was just floating there like icicles.' The five-metre great white shark also bit Mr Mummert's board in half (pictured) during the attack on Friday The surfer said some of the gashes in Mr Mummert's leg were 150mm long. A helicopter was sent to the popular beach and the surfer was airlifted to Bunbury Regional Hospital. Mr Mummert's mother, Jennifer, said on Friday he was still in hospital and would undergo surgery in either Bunbury or Perth. 'They are waiting for the surgeon to have a look,' she told The West Australia. 'He's awake and he hasn't lost too much blood. He's been incredibly lucky. Mr Mummert was attacked on the southeast coast of Western Australia (pictured) on Friday A group of surfers came to Mr Mummert's (pictured) aid and paddled him to shore after the shark attack Another surfer who came to Mr Mummert's aid, Jess Woolhouse, said it was a 'life or death' situation. 'We all sort of made an effort to get him onto the board and start heading in just sort of yelling and trying to splash the water,' he explained. Mr Woolhouse said a group of six or seven people had also formed on the beach and it was a community effort to help Mr Mummert to shore. He explained Mr Mummert was in good spirits and his bleeding was staunched before the 28-year-old was airlifted to hospital. Ms Wright (pictured right with Mr Mummert) wrote a heartfelt message to her boyfriend's rescuers and said she was 'beyond grateful to everyone that helped save Phil's life' A Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development statement said they were investigating the attack. 'DPIRD is working with local authorities to coordinate responses,' the statement read. The beach has been closed and DPIRD officers will be conducting patrols. There has been a spate of shark attacks on the east coast in recent months including five fatalities this year. Miami A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen were identified by authorities Friday as the hackers who earlier this month took over Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office will prosecute him as adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. Hackers sent out bogus tweets on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. "There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence," U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said. "Today's charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived." Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren explained that his office is prosecuting Clark in Florida state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases when appropriate. He added that Clark was the leader of the hacking scam. "This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and he'll be prosecuted here," Warren said. Security experts were not surprised that the alleged mastermind of the hack is a 17-year-old, given the relative amateur nature both of the operation and the hackers' willingness afterward to discuss the hack with reporters. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media company's employees into giving them access. It said hackers targeted "a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack." Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter's systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington, D.C., were able to identify two of the hackers by analyzing Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain, federal prosecutors said. Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later. TORONTO (AP) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday he did not intervene to make sure a charity his family did paid work for would win a government contract. Trudeau has apologized and said again that he should have recused himself from a Cabinet decision to award a contract to administer money to students having trouble finding work due to the pandemic. The prime minister made a rare parliamentary committee appearance. The almost billion-dollar program came under scrutiny after it was revealed that We Charity, an organization Trudeaus family has worked for, was chosen to administer it. Trudeaus wife, brother and mother have been paid a combined $300,000 Canadian (US$221,000) for speaking at a number of WE events. We Charity received no preferential treatment, not from me, not from anyone else, said Trudeau, who noted it was the government public service that recommended the government award the contract to We Charity. I did absolutely nothing to influence that recommendation. Trudeau said when he learned that We Charity was recommended he pushed back. "When the issue of We came forward my concern was to push back on it, to delay it from Cabinet so that more due diligence could happen. Looking back on it it would have been better for perception's sake that I had simply stepped away and not been involved at all," Trudeau said. None of this program was going to benefit any members of my family. Canadas ethics commissioner is investigating Trudeau over the matter. It is the third ethics investigation Trudeau has faced. Under pressure, the government and the charity on July 3 terminated their deal. Students could volunteer up to 500 hours of work with community organizations to earn the maximum $5,000 Canadian (US$3,668) toward their postsecondary education costs. Canadas federal ethics commissioner said Trudeau violated conflict of interest rules in 2016 when he vacationed over Christmas at the private Bahamian island owned by the Aga Khan. He was not sanctioned or penalized. Story continues Trudeau will weather this scandal because the public is preoccupied with the pandemic, said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. But Wiseman said Trudeau's popularity has taken a hit and he expects support for the opposition Conservatives to rise significantly after they select their new leader in the fall. He said it's possible there could be rumblings within Trudeau's own party to select a new leader next year if the Conservatives overtake the Liberals in the polls. The Liberals are still the default option for the largest number of Canadians. However, by the time of the next election, probably in 2022, Trudeau will have been prime minister for seven years, have a fair amount of baggage, and there will be more appetite for change," Wiseman said. He might very well decide to step down before then but certainly not this year or because of this current scandal. Independent observers say the Modi governments brutal policy towards J&K has only decimated the pro-India constituency in Kashmir Valley Srinagar: Jammu & Kashmirs separatist camp has been in a state of stagnation since August 5 last year when the central government cancelled the states special status and bifurcated it into two Union Territories. While the mainstream political leaders have been by and large silent, even the key faces in the separatist camp, whose writ once raast sections of the Muslim population in the Kashmir Valley, have failed to play any predictable or even customary role in Kashmiri politics during the past one year. This has put the entire separatist camp in disarray and left its supporters dispirited and bewildered. Weeks after the New Delhi moved in on J&K last year, it was widely rumoured in the Valley and beyond that some of the separatist leaders who had been detained signed bonds to secure their release. As also reported by sections of the media, the detainees, mostly politicians from both mainstream and separatist camps, were offered a release by New Delhi on the condition that they signed a bond agreeing to cease political activities. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Kashmirs chief Muslim cleric and chairman of one faction of the Hurriyat Conference, whose name figured in these reports, was quick to deny that he had taken oath not to indulge in any political activity. He claimed that apart from putting him under house detention, the authorities had severed his phone and internet connections, making him incapable of communicating with people. Even after the lapse of one year, the separatist leadership remains in the doldrums, unable to guide their supporters on the issues they once used to insist were a matter of life and death for Kashmir and its people. They issue occasional guarded statements but one swallow does not a spring make. In June, separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani quit his faction of the Hurriyat Conference. The move is seen by many as escapism. But sources close to the nonagenarian leader said that his hanging up his boots had more to do with his being sidelined in decision-making and underhand disparagement of his role within the amalgam. Geelani, in an open letter, claimed that his repeated requests to meet up for evolving a strategy to face up to the post-5 August 2019 situation were not conceded by his close aides. He also spoke of financial irregularities within the amalgam and, if the sources are to be believed, some of his colleagues were hobnobbing with the government authorities of which he wanted to steer clear of before they could bring disrepute to him and undo his sacrifices. The Modi 2.0 government came face to face with several formidable adversaries in J&K, one of them being separatists. In its first line of attack, almost the entire Jamaat-e-Islami's J&K leadership was jailed. Soon the right-wing party was banned by the Union Home Ministry for five years after declaring it an unlawful association. Then the sword was raised against other prominent separatist parties and their leaders like JKLF and its chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik to make the vocal section of the separatist camp completely inactive. Most of them were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on charges of money laundering and are currently lodged in Tihar jail. Simultaneously, the military campaign against militants was toughened and made widespread. As per official statistics, more than 250 militants including a couple of dozen commanders have been killed since August 5 2020. While the security forces see these killings a major achievement, the BJP government at the Centre insists it has broken the Kashmir jinx and kept its promise of eliminating militancy in the erstwhile state. Syed Salauddin, chief of formidable militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, recently admitted to the militants suffering heavy losses and the situation not being good at all. Independent watchers, however, say the Modi governments brutal policies towards J&K have, on the one hand, only decimated the pro-India constituency in the politically sensitive Valley, and, on the other, provoked the rise of a young generation with a die-hard attitude. To handle it might not be an easy task. The not-so-good human rights situation in J&K has already prompted various international organizations and, also some countries other than Pakistan, to call for corrective measures. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) Frontline healthcare workers feeling the strain of attending to still-increasing COVID-19 patients are urging the government to reimpose strict movement restrictions in Metro Manila and its nearby regions for two weeks. Several medical societies have asked President Rodrigo Duterte to place Mega Manila back to enhanced community quarantine from August 1 to August 15, noting that the countrys healthcare system is already overwhelmed, and the medical professionals are already burned out. We propose that the two-week ECQ be used as a time out to refine our pandemic control strategies, Philippine College of Physicians President Mario Panaligan said in an August 1 letter supported by other health organizations. Mega Manila is composed of Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, and Mimaropa. READ: Metro Manila, Cebu City placed under GCQ Pagod na pagod na po kami. Hindi lang physically but mentally as well. Marami po sa amin ang nagkakasakit ng COVID-19, Philippine College of Physicians Vice President Encarnita Limpin said separately in a briefing on Saturday. [Translation: We are exhausted, both physically and mentally. Most of us are already getting infected with COVID-19.] Dr. Aileen Espina of the Philippine Society of Public Health Physicians shared Limpins sentiment, saying the medical professionals are suffering from the mental burden of the pandemic. Your voices have been heard Hours after the health workers briefing, Duterte ordered the Inter-Agency Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases, the policy-making body in the governments COVID-19 response, to act on these concerns immediately. Your voices have been heard. We cannot afford to let down our modern heroes. This is our commitment, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement. Roque, who is also spokesperson of the coronavirus task force, said that they will discuss the concerns of the medical societies in their upcoming meeting. For its part, the DOH said in a statement it was in dialogue with our medical frontliners to discuss the best steps forward, and in so doing we will ensure to strike a balance among all the important factors that we have to take into account. 'Losing battle' The groups recommended that the two-week time out be used to address healthcare workforce deficiency, failure of case finding and isolation, failure of contact tracing and quarantine, transportation safety, workplace safety public compliance. They said: We are waging a losing battle against COVID-19, and we need to come up with a consolidated plan. Health workers are also asking the government to reconsider its decision of allowing the gradual reopening of internet cafes, gyms, establishments offering personal grooming and aesthetic services, review and tutorial centers, businesses offering pet grooming services as well as drive-in cinemas. These proposed solutions can have far-reaching effects once implemented, they said. The Department of Health announced on Friday a record-high of 4,063 new infections, bringing the national case count to 93,354. Limpin noted the steady increase in cases, and she said this means that the preventive measures are not working. The U.S. government will pay $2.1 billion to Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for COVID-19 vaccines to cover 50 million people and to underwrite the drugmakers' testing and manufacturing, the companies said on Friday. The drugmakers also said they are in advanced discussions to supply up to 300 million doses of the experimental vaccine for the 27-country European Union. The U.S. award is the biggest yet from 'Operation Warp Speed', the White House initiative aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to fight COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The deal, announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense, works out at a cost of around $42 per person inoculated. That is almost identical to the $40 per patient the U.S. agreed to pay Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE when it inked a nearly $2 billion deal for 50 million courses of that potential vaccine last week. The Sanofi-GSK deal is for 100 million doses, at two per person, and gives the U.S. government an option to purchase an additional 500 million doses at an unspecified price. Sanofi and GSK plan to start clinical trials for the vaccine in September. Sanofi executive Clement Lewin said the companies had not yet agreed with the U.S. on a specific price for the additional doses. GSK said in a statement that more than half of the total funding will go into further development of the vaccine, including clinical trials, with the remainder used for a manufacturing ramp-up and delivery of doses. The two companies' inoculation is combination of a vaccine based on Sanofi's flu shots and a complementary technology from GSK called an adjuvant, designed to improve the vaccine's potency. Sanofi will receive the bulk of the proceeds from the deal. It marks the second contract for the Franco-British pair's vaccine candidate after they agreed earlier this week to supply 60 million doses to the British government. Reuters reported last week that Pfizer's deal was expected to set a pricing benchmark for future deals between drugmakers and governments. Moderna Inc and Pfizer began two 30,000-subject trials of COVID-19 vaccines on Monday that could clear the way for regulatory approval and use by the end of 2020. Also read: Pfizer, BioNTech to supply 120 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Japan Announcement: Moody's update on Sovereign calendar issuers Global Credit Research - 31 Jul 2020 London, 31 July 2020 -- Moody's Investors Service is releasing this update regarding the EU Sovereign Rating calendar activity scheduled for 31 July 2020 to provide additional clarity on EU sovereign rating activity. This update is provided as a service to the markets and does not constitute a formal rating action publication. For the latest and most complete information regarding the issuers listed, including the full formal text related to any credit rating action releases, please see the individual issuer pages found at www.moodys.com. RATINGS THAT WERE UPDATED FOR ISSUERS ON THE CALENDAR FOR 31 July: Moldova, Government of https://www.moodys.com/MoldovaGovernment RATINGS THAT WERE NOT UPDATED FOR ISSUERS ON THE CALENDAR FOR 31 July: Germany, Government of https://www.moodys.com/GermanyGovernment Moody's Sovereign Release Calendar designates two dates for the potential release of both solicited and unsolicited sovereign credit rating actions, in accordance with EU Regulation 462/2013 ("CRA3"). It includes sovereign issuers that are covered by a Lead Analyst based in the EU, as required by CRA3 and, in order to provide greater market clarity, it also includes EU sovereign issuers that are covered by Lead Analysts based outside of the EU. The Sovereign Release Calendar is available at: https://www.moodys.com/SovereignReleaseCalendar NOTE TO JOURNALISTS ONLY: For more information, please call one of our global press information hotlines: London +44-20-7772-5456 , New York +1-212-553-0376 , Tokyo +813-5408-4110 , Hong Kong +852-3758-1350 , Sydney +61-2-9270-8141 , Mexico City 001-888-779-5833 , Sao Paulo 0800-891-2518 , or Buenos Aires 0800-666-3506 . You can also email us at mediarelations@moodys.com or visit our web site at www.moodys.com. This publication does not announce a credit rating action. For any credit ratings referenced in this publication, please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for the most updated credit rating action information and rating history. Story continues Alastair Wilson MD-Global Sovereign Risk Sovereign Risk Group Moody's Investors Service Ltd. 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By Izabella Ge Bay City News Foundation A Palo Alto high school student has developed a new, and melodic, way for parents to keep fidgety and stir-crazy kids occupied during quarantine. Inspired by a successful songwriting class she hosted with her local elementary school (as well as living with her restless and frustrated 10-year-old sister), Julia Segal, 17, came up with a creative, musical solution to fill the time. Her creation, dubbed Quarantunes, organizes musically talented teens who are willing to teach free, online music lessons in exchange for optional donations to medical efforts fighting the spread of the coronavirus. Initially, Segal envisioned recruiting friends and classmates to become teachers for a local organization that mainly catered to the Palo Alto area, but she quickly realized that "there are kids everywhere in the country that are looking for ways to be occupied." Propelled by word of mouth, newspaper coverage and social media, Bay Area teens informed friends living in other parts of the country about Quarantunes, and the organization's rapid growth quickly exceeded Segal's expectations. "I thought there was an extent to which it could grow organically," she said, "(but) people from other countries (joined)," including teens from India, Russia and Spain. Since its founding in early April, Quarantunes has more than 130 teachers who collectively offer more than 5,000 lessons to 500 students. And, perhaps even more impressive, the organization has raised more than $25,000 in donations, all of which benefit the CDC Foundation. The response from teachers and students alike has been overwhelmingly positive. Quarantunes has provided an opportunity for teachers to give back to their community and has allowed children to become invested in learning music, rather than being glued to computer games and Netflix. "This whole experience has been fulfilling and lifesaving because I now have time to do the things I need to for work and my kids are occupied," said Margarita Golod, a Bay Area resident whose two children take lessons from Quarantunes teachers. "It's been good for my kids to see this example of young adults who are positively influencing other children and families." Teenagers who volunteer their time are happy to share their love of music and express gratitude for an immensely rewarding experience. For piano teacher Tyler Liu, an incoming University of California, Berkeley freshman, "it's a great opportunity to give back to the community and make kids feel happy about checking out music." Madelynn Hardke, a voice teacher from Oakland, added that "even if you aren't able to be there in person, just being able to sing with somebody makes kids so excited about learning music." Beyond helping children grow their passion for music, teachers are developing a newfound appreciation for their own musical experiences and the teachers that helped them. "You take for granted how much you've learned," said Liu. "When you teach it, you have to find new ways to express that." To be sure, getting Quarantunes up and running required hard work, and it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Early on the biggest challenge, Segal said, was not having a system in place. Much of the work, including scheduling and texting teachers for headshots, was done manually by Segal and Lisa Kopelnik, the organization's chief communications officer. "We were the marketing team, the communications team, everything all in one," said Kopelnik. "Julia and I would wake up at 7 (a.m.) and go to bed at 11 (p.m.). The first couple weeks were crazy; we were emailing hundreds of schools, music programs and making sure all the lessons were running smoothly." Chief Operating Officer Naama Bejerano, who will be attending Stanford University this fall, is responsible for the organization's logistics. She said it took time to establish smooth communication among board members and teachers, especially as Quarantunes grew beyond the Bay Area. "Communicating with people when they live all over, teach different things and have different availabilities was initially a challenge," recalled Bejerano. "That wasn't something we thought of at the beginning." And many of the problems that arose were not the sort of things that the high school students running Quarantunes had encountered before. "One teacher quit without any notice," Segal said, "so we had to reassign 20 students, but there were not enough teachers. "There had been a lot of points where we had to stop and think how to prevent this situation from occurring (again)," said Segal. "Each of the obstacles served an important purpose as learning experiences that were necessary to running an organization." Over time, systems were put in place to keep things running smoothly. Quarantunes adopted a policy that requires teachers to provide two weeks' notice before quitting, while an online schedule app, called Picktime, eliminated the need for manual scheduling. Since establishing a strong foundation, however, the focus has shifted towards ensuring accessibility for all students, as well as scaling the organization to become a truly national or, perhaps, international platform. "For me the most important part was to ensure that all students have equitable access, regardless of financial barriers or barriers in terms of disability," Kopelnik said. "A lot of times music lessons tend to be accessible only if you have the money," added Bejerano. "By breaking down those barriers, making pay optional and opening it up to all students, Quarantunes is able to spread music in a time like this." Allison Briscoe-Smith, an Oakland-based psychiatrist whose daughter takes songwriting and singing lessons with Quarantunes, praised the platform's accessibility as a "mini revolution of providing high-quality training and instruction to kids who might not get it." Another key factor in Quarantune's accessibility is its instrument donation program, which delivers musical instruments to students' homes if they meet financial requirements and live within an hour of Menlo Park. Several Bay Area music stores have also partnered with Quarantunes to donate instruments for free; while teachers and students are also given the option of donating old instruments. And furthering its goal for every child to have access to the platform, Quarantunes also trains teachers to work with children with different abilities, with instruction by an expert in special education. What began as an idea shared between friends has blossomed into a full-fledged organization that caters to children around the world. Currently, Quarantunes is scrambling to find enough teachers for its influx of students, but the hope is to serve thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of young people interested in music. Quarantunes currently offers a range of lessons including piano, strings, wind and brass, as well as songwriting composition. And thanks to overwhelming interest, the organization started offering lessons in other art forms such as drawing and painting. But the group's biggest lesson goes beyond any specific instruction. Quarantunes proves "that young people are able to address big problems," said Briscoe-Smith. "Every kid involved is an activist working to solve this big problem about COVID-19." For more information, people can visit https://www.quarantunes.site. 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. Kremlin urges Belarus to release 33 detained Russians Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 5:49 PM Russia has urged Belarus to immediately release 33 Russian private security contractors detained on terrorism charges, dismissing the accusations against them as bogus. "The unwarranted detention of the 33 Russian citizens doesn't fit into the framework of the allied relations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a conference call with reporters on Friday. "We expect our Belarusian allies to clear up this incident immediately and release our citizens," he said. Peskov further explained that the Russian citizens had been en route to an unspecified country when they were detained after missing a connecting flight to Istanbul at the airport in the Belarusian capital of Minsk. "They have done nothing wrong and carried no illegal items," he added. On Wednesday, Belarus arrested the employees of private Russian military contractor Wagner, accusing them of plotting terror attacks in Belarus amid the country's presidential election campaign. The allegations represent an unprecedented escalation of tensions with neighboring Russia. Some observers see the move as a campaign stunt by Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko, who seeks a sixth term in the country's presidential election, set for August 9. The 65-year-old president is campaigning to maintain his post amid mass opposition protests and the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic. Belarusian election officials have barred Lukashenko's two main rivals from running in the presidential election next month. The move sparked mass protects in Minsk, with police detaining more than 250 people. Relations between Minsk and Moscow initially soured last year after the two sides failed to agree on an oil supply contract for this year. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said incomplete shutdown is among factors contributing to the surging COVID-19 cases in the country. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made the remarks at a House subcommittee hearing when asked why Europe has been able to largely contain the virus while the United States has seen a rise in new cases, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. "If you look at what happened in Europe, when they shut down or locked down or went to shelter in place ... they really did it to the tune of about 95 percent plus of the country," Fauci said. "When you actually look at what we did ... we really functionally shut down only about 50 percent in the sense of the totality of the country," he said. The senior expert also told lawmakers that he is "cautiously optimistic" that the vaccine being developed by Moderna and his agency will be successful. The US COVID-19 cases reached 4.49 million with over 152,000 fatalities as of 10.35 Eastern Time on Friday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University (JHU). --IANS rt/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Moscow: Moscow has called for the release of 33 Russians arrested in Belarus ahead of the country's presidential elections. The Kremlin insisted the men were private security guards who missed their flight, but when they were arrested three days ago, Belarus described them as Russian mercenaries bent on fuelling unrest in the country. Belarusian KGB officers detain a Russian man in a sanitarium outside Minsk, Belarus. Credit:AP The men were arrested at a hotel near Minsk, the capital, and charged with plotting acts of terror. Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader of 26 years who faces what is arguably the country's most contested presidential race since the fall of the Soviet Union has claimed that the men, identified as employees of Wagner, the Russian military contractor, were sent to foment a revolution ahead of the August 9 election. But while the number of hospital patients is up, the most serious cases are remaining steady, hovering around 60 people in area intensive care units and about 25 to 30 on ventilators, according to task force counts. Younger people hospitalized A key to that change is that people younger than 40 are making up a larger number of hospitalizations and are less likely to have complications, Dr. Alex Garza, head of the task force, said in a briefing Friday. That change is also fueled by improved treatments and a falling number of admissions from people living in nursing homes, Garza said. Long-term care residents now make up about 4% of hospitalizations compared with more than 50% earlier this spring, he said. Garza also addressed the issue of testing backlogs but said preventive strategies like wearing a mask and limiting gatherings was the solution. Were not going to test our way out of this pandemic, he said. As everybody knows, were overloaded with the number we can test, but the best way to cure that is to get our cases down. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 19:27:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WINDHOEK, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Maggie Karipi launched her Chinese kitchen accessories business on Friday, at a time when umemplymen rate is high amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The 37-year-old Namibian woman said she decided on Chinese kitchen accessories, because the industry in China has been flourishing and evolving over the past decade, and currently it is continuing to expand at an exponential rate. "China's kitchen appliances market has expanded considerably over recent years. Advances in urbanization, the real estate market, and smart home appliances are all seen as conducive to the development of the kitchen appliance market," she said. Karipi said the idea to open the shop came from her close friend from China named Huang Bingqing. "Huang said I know a lot of people, can easily make new friends and that selling is something that I am very good at. I am also a parttime sales representative. I have the skills to do this job successfully. Huang would order the items in China and I would sell them here in Namibia. She has great style when it comes to kitchen accessories and Namibians love them," Karipi said. Karipi currently sells from her home. She said her business provides the perfect platform to help curb the spread of the deadly virus. "Clients are safe. Clients are few at once. There is no risk of large gatherings like at shops that are located at shopping malls. Clients hands are sanitized at the gate before they enter the shop and again when they leave. I have a great air conditioner which makes the wearing of face masks easier. Clients are also required to fill the logbook at the entrance," she said. Karipi sells a variety of kitchen accessories such as knives, chopping boards, kitchen scissors, measuring spoons, pasta strainers, can openers, blenders, tea pots, frying pans and pots. Faced with job losses and severe salary cuts across different sectors after the economy was heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, some Namibians, like Karipi, seek opportunities in China. An unemployed youth Miles Shipwata said more young Namibian people are seeking business opportunities from China. Shipwata said in hush times like this it is a good idea for unemployed people to find ways themselves and make an earning. "The Namibian unemployment rate is high. During the pandemic many people are struggling to find jobs, so it makes me happy to see youngsters finding ways to earn an income," Shipwata said. Malissa Shilongo, 20, said she sells human hair bought from China. "I am now selling the hair here in Namibia. The hair in China is for sale at an affordable price and it is a product that Namibians likes to buy," Shilongo said. Shilongo who started her business three years ago said her business has grown and she today employs two youngsters. "My business is going well. I had no other choice but to start my own business because I could not find a job here in Namibia. It was very sad because I had to go from one closed door to another," Shilongo said. Shilongo further urges other Namibians who are jobless to find other ways so they can put food on the table. Statistics from Namibia Statistics Agency shows that the unemployment rate of Namibians between the ages of 15 and 34 years has increased from 43.4 percent recorded in 2016 to 46.1 percent by the end of 2018, while the unemployment rate of those aged between 19 and 34 stands at 44 percent. Enditem Three persons, including two children who returned from India, have tested positive for Covid-19 in Singapore, the health ministry has said, as the number of coronavirus infections in the country rose to 52,512. A 13-year-old boy, who is a permanent resident here, and a 28-year-old woman on a dependants pass arrived from India on July 19, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said. They were asymptomatic and were tested while on stay-home notice. The third case is a six-year-old Singaporean girl who arrived from India on July 3. The three imported cases were reported on Friday. Singapore on Saturday reported 307 new coronavirus cases, taking the countrys total count to 52,512. The new cases include one community case, who is a Singaporean, said the MOH. The rest 306 were foreign workers living in dormitories. There were also five imported cases who had been placed on stay-home notices upon arrival in Singapore. There are currently 136 confirmed patients hospitalized while 5,551 are isolated and cared for at community facilities for mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for Covid-19. In all, 46,491 Covid-19 patients have fully recovered from the infection. Who are we? Are we going to build back better? Or are we going to transition to greatness? Are we fighting for the soul of America? Or are we undergoing a tremendous epoch that emphasizes America First and excludes everyone else? Personally, I would like to go out to dinner, hug family and friends without worrying about getting or giving COVID-19, spend a few dollars without anxiety, see a movie, go to a concert and deal with the news without a clenching feeling in the stomach. But that all seems out of reach right now. Quietude, without constant outrage, would be excellent. But we are called to more profound issues. Should we be the conscience of the world, sticking up for and demanding human rights? Or should we be in it for what we as a country can get, mostly material? Should we strive to make people around the world respect and admire our country? Or should we settle for being an object of pity, a remembrance of things past. Are we going to sacrifice now for a better future for our children? Or are we going to tell children they are on their own and good luck. Dont get sick. Educate yourself. Look out for your little sister and brother. Cinch your belt tighter. Hope you can get a good job someday. Are we going to tell parents they have to choose between their jobs or watching over their children? Are we going to help the struggling middle class and small-business owner or give another round of tax cuts to the wealthy so they can buy a baby blue Lamborghini and more stock? Will we offer refuge to persecuted families from other lands seeking a part of the American dream? Or just announce that dream is dead. Doors shut. Are we going to ensure that every eligible American can vote, vote safely and have that vote counted? Or are we the country that will do our best to make sure that the rich and well-off, with currently approved skin tones, are the ones who control the future. Are we going to do everything we possibly can to keep foreign interference out of our elections? Or just accept that the foreign hackers are here, well entrenched, welcomed by those in power and active. So what. Are we going to continue to be that country whose top law enforcement official sends jackbooted thugs into cities to beat up protesters and snubs his nose at members of Congress questioning his actions? Or are we going to realize that law and order and the Constitution, including the First Amendment, are compatible. Will we be the people who provide proper personal protective gear for medical workers and first responders? Or will we be the country that tolerates corruption running rampant in procurement and contracting, advocates ineffective and dangerous treatments and assures people all is well when it isnt. Will we hold everyone to the same rule of law or will we permit the powerful and favored few to become wealthy beyond imagination at our expense? Are we going to rebuild our roads, bridges, ports and electric grid? Or do we spend the money on big corporations, hoping they will build a little in exchange for becoming too big to fail? Are we going to help save the world from extreme temperatures, famines, droughts, flooding, plagues and dramatic loss of species? Or will we work with other nations to stop manmade damage to the environment. Do we want to close our borders to those who werent born Americans? Or do we want to encourage young scholars to come to America, study in our universities, learn our culture and help make more corners of the Earth better off, giving back to us as much as they get along the way? Do we want to know that what our political leaders tell us is the truth, even when it is unpleasant, or continue to shrug our shoulders at what we are told because everyone knows it is all lies. Do we want continued outrage and drama and titillation? Or do we seek measured response, competence, fairness and civility. Really, people. Who are we? Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may send her email at amcfeatters@nationalpress.com. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Hundreds of elephants that died mysteriously in Botswana's famed Okavango Delta probably succumbed to natural toxins, the wildlife department said Friday. The landlocked southern African country has the world's largest elephant population, estimated to be around 130,000. Around 300 of them have been found dying since March. Authorities have so far ruled out anthrax, as well as poaching, as the tusks were found intact. Preliminary tests conducted in various countries far have not been fully conclusive and more are being carried out, Wildlife and Parks Department boss Cyril Taolo told AFP in a phone interview. "But based on some of the preliminary results that we have received, we are looking at naturally-occurring toxins as the potential cause," he said. "To date we have not estabished the conclusion as to what is the cause of the mortality". He explained that some bacteria can naturally produce poison, particularly in stagnant water. Government has so far established that 281 elephants died, although independent conservationists say more than 350. The deaths were first flagged by a wildlife conservation charity, Elephants Without Borders (EWB), whose confidential report referring to the 356 dead elephants was leaked to the media early in July. EWB suspected elephants had been dying in the area for about three months, and mortality was not restricted to age or gender. Several live elephants appeared weak, lethargic and emaciated, with some showing signs of disorientation, difficulty in walking or limping, EWB said. Tests are being conducted at specialist labs in South Africa, Canada, Zimbabwe and the US. More than 80 people have died in recent days after drinking toxic bootleg alcohol in the Indian state of Punjab, officials and reports said Saturday. The people died in three districts of the northern state and police have arrested 25 people, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Hundreds of people die every year in India from poisoned alcohol that is made in backstreet distilleries and sells for as little as 10 rupees (13 US cents) a litre. An official told AFP that 11 people had died in Gurdaspur district. Press Trust said Saturday the illicit booze had claimed 12 lives in the neighbouring district of Amritsar and 63 lives in Tarn Taran. Other deaths were suspected in recent days but could not be proved as the bodies had been cremated without a post-mortem examination. Punjab state chief minister Amarinder Singh said Friday he had ordered a special inquiry into the deaths and "anyone found guilty will not be spared". The Indian Express newspaper said one of the suspects had died in Amritsar district after consuming the illegal liquor and that his wife had been arrested for selling the alcohol. The case came after authorities in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh said on Friday that nine people had died after drinking alcohol-based sanitiser. The victims drank the sanitiser as a substitute for alcohol which has been restricted during a coronavirus lockdown in India. Twitter executives rebuffed a request from the Israeli government to remove tweets from Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calling for the genocide of the Israeli people, the New York Post reported. In a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Israels Minister for Strategic Affairs Orit Farkash-Hacohen called for the company to uphold its own hate speech policy and remove antisemitic tweets from Khamenei calling Israel a cancerous growth to be uprooted and destroyed. But in a response, Twitters Vice President of Public Policy Sinead McSweeney said the aforementioned screed did not violate their policies. Presently, our policies with regards to world leaders state that direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on current affairs, or strident statements of foreign policy on economic or military issues are generally not in violation of the Twitter Rules, McSweeney wrote in a letter. Shortly after demonetization in November 2016, a video purportedly showing him smiling at a derogatory comment against Prime Minister Narendra Modi by an unidentified person fetched Amar Singh an FIR at the City Kotwali police station in Uttar Pradeshs Azamgarh. The Samajwadi party leader wasted no time to file a counter complaint against the person uttering the comments and went on to dub demonetization as a courageous move. Contrary to his partys stand, Singh who had been re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in May that year, went ahead to praise the policy decision, although with a footnote about the weakness in its implementation. While his party colleagues trained their guns on the PM, Singh went around declaiming how proud he was to have Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. These statements marked the beginning of Amar Singhs outreach towards the PM and the Bharatiya Janata Party with which he had a turbulent past. In 2008, Singh was accused of conspiring and masterminding the cash-for-vote scam to bribe some MPs to cross vote ahead of a confidence vote in the Lok Sabha. The politically expedient Singh was unperturbed when he breached the Samajwadi Party line to support the BJP on a host of issues from the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya to the abrogation of Article 370 that gave Jammu and Kashmir its special status. By 2017, when signs of estrangement between him and his mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav were evident, he seemed to make the most of the speculation about his joining the BJP. Singhs warming up to the BJP was visible after the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 2017, when he lashed out at Akhilesh Yadav for aligning with the Congress, accusing him of corruption and failing to offer development in the state. His public outburst against the Yadav scion led to a second expulsion from the party, which was announced at the national convention. He was earlier expelled for anti-party activities in 2010. In 2018, a period of exile from the public eye, partly on account of his failing health, ended when his presence at PM Modis event became the talking point. While lashing out at his political opponents for secretly kowtowing with industrialists, PM Modi referred to Singh and how he could disclose the details of those meetings. Basking in the attention, Singh later told mediapersons that he will give out the names when the time is ripe. Lab khulenge to utar jayegen chehre saare (Masks will slip when I open my mouth), he said to a television channel. The PMs comment reignited speculation of Singhs entry into the party fold. But Singh kept up the guessing game, neither denying nor giving cues about his next move. In 2019, a BJP ally, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) even offered him a ticket to contest from Azamgarh, a borough of the Yadavs and a seat then represented in the Lok Sabha by Mulayam Singh. Singh, declined. He would reply to posers about his joining date by claiming he was only a supporter of PM Modi. There was a lot of speculation about him joining the BJP and it was usually triggered by his presence at BJP events. When he was seen at the three-day lecture series by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, the rumour gained strength, said a BJP functionary not wishing to be quoted. When asked if his role in the 2008 cash for votes scandal was a reason for the party to keep a distance, the functionary said, There are many reasons but did not elucidate. Singh also found a way to worm his way into the good books of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; not only did he support the demand for a Ram Temple at Ayodhya, but also donated his ancestral house in Azamgarh to the RSS. Aware of the many sobriquets he earned during his political innings, Singh while speaking during the debate on the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill in Rajya Sabha on August 5 last year said, he could not be called a dal badloo or a party hopper. I did not leave the party, though I was expelled twice, he said on the floor of the House and proceeded to support to the BJP. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Centre on Friday told the Supreme Court five states, including Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tripura and Karnataka, have not complied with the courts order to pay salaries to doctors and healthcare workers (HCWs) who are at the frontlines of the battle against the coronavirus. A bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan, which was hearing a doctors petition on difficulties faced by HCWs, ordered the states to release salaries to its HCWs within a week and fixed August 10 to hear the matter. According to the governments affidavit, the five non-compliant states were issued three reminders on the top courts order. READ| Frontline warriors fighting govts Covid battle work with no pay Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also told the bench that these states have failed to comply with its orders on timely payment of salaries. However, the court reminded the solicitor that the central government was not powerless in such a situation. You are not helpless. You have to see that the order is followed. You have the power under the DM Act, the bench told Mehta. In a separate application by United Residents and Doctors Association, the court was also informed that the management of some hospitals and institutes are treating mandatory quarantine of doctors as a period of leave. On deduction of salaries, the court noted: How can their salaries be cut for going on compulsory quarantine after the duty? Mehta accepted this point, said it needed no further argument and promised to look into it. We will see to it that it (quarantine period) is included as part of the duty. Mehta acknowledged that hospitals cannot be allowed to deduct salaries of doctors for their period in quarantine and assured to get back with instructions on this. The SC had on June 17 ordered states to pay salaries to all HCWs and said non-compliance will be treated as a criminal offence under the Disaster Management Act. Ron Eldridge was pumping gas at work when the 59 year old's boss told him about a government risk recognition program to reward Manitoba's front-line workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 31/7/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Ron Eldridge was pumping gas at work when the 59 year old's boss told him about a government risk recognition program to reward Manitoba's front-line workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. His happiness at learning about the "hero pay" that would relieve some of the stress at home soon faded. The Portage la Prairie man discovered he needed to apply for the payment by computer. "I thought it was a good idea, but my boss gave me a number to call because my wife and I are basically seniors and we cant afford computers, Internet and that stuff," Eldridge said. "The government said 'if you cant get a computer to apply, then I guess you dont get it'." JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Ron Eldridges wife, 70, has a lot of medical problems and he had to cut his hours down at work to be home with her, he said. The hero pay would help them a lot. The province announced on Wednesday 78,442 people will receive the $1,377 payment from the program. The application was available online on all government portals, it said. "I told the government I'm not going to run out and spend money I don't have on a computer or Internet," said Eldridge. "We can't even afford cable and they want me to go out and buy a computer to apply for it, like no." Eldridges wife, 70, has a lot of medical problems and he had to cut his hours down at work to be home with her, he said. The hero pay would help them a lot. The government said 'if you cant get a computer to apply, then I guess you dont get it'. Ron Eldridge "Were behind in Hydro, were basically living off Kraft Dinner and peanut butter and jam sandwiches and stuff like that to make ends meet. Every cent we can get helps and I qualify for that." When it comes to having trouble applying for the risk recognition program online, an associate computer science professor at the University of Manitoba said she wouldnt be surprised if more people were having the same issues as Eldridge. "Some older adults havent really spent their working lives using computers," said Celine Latulipe. "Just generally using a computer, never mind getting online to the Internet is a bigger challenge for them. They dont know the common 'click here, use your mouse and move your cursor there' and thats hard for them." Latulipe added that a lot of times seniors will have seek out help while using a computer. 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. "Right now, it can also be harder for older adults to and seniors to get help," she said. "A common place they could go to get help is a public library and the public libraries havent been open. Or they might get help from someone they know, but they are trying to social distance and might not feel safe either." Although some seniors may have problems signing up for the federal-provincial program online, a 2016 StatsCanada survey shows seniors are increasingly using the Internet. In 2013, 52.40 per cent of seniors used the internet; in 2016 that number increased to 68.20, the survey said. The StatsCanada survey also measured how seniors aged 65 and older viewed technology and compared that to non-seniors aged 15 to 64. 55.8 per cent of non-seniors said the internet always helps them communicate with people, while only 22.5 per cent of seniors felt that way. Only 16.7 per cent of seniors believed the internet saved them time, while 39.8 per cent of non-seniors said it always saves them time. The application for the hero pay is closed, but Eldridge said he called Portage la Prairie MP Candace Bergen Thursday morning and they opened a case file to try and help him access the risk recognition program payment. kellen.taniguchi@freepress.mb.ca It's one of Sligo's most popular visitor attractions but like many in the sector it has been a difficult year and even more so for those who rely on international visitors to keep their business running. For Ballymote based Eagles Flying, it's been incredibly tough. Having reopened on July 10th, lots of Irish based tourists have been visiting. But, the forecast for the next few months is not looking too good. Lothar Muschketat, of Eagles Flying, says the income they receive each year is just about enough to cover the costs of the sanctuary. Now that they have lost at least half of their income for the year, the next few months are uncertain. "People are delighted that we're open, they're happy that they can go out and do something. Most people who came to us are repetitive business," Lothar told The Sligo Champion. "It is slower than I anticipated because the word is not really out that we are open even though we do some publications on the internet. "We lost roughly 50% of our annual turnover and 100% is just enough to survive usually so it is challenging. We will not catch up with our figures. "The way it goes, we have no international tourism, by the end of August when people are back to work and when children are back to school, the numbers will drop dramatically to next to nothing I would say. "Maybe at the weekends we will have some but at the weekends, I don't know. Irish tourists were our main business. About 70% of our visitors are Irish, but 30% is also money." Eagles Flying close each year for the winter, and that in itself means the off season is tough financially. With no financial assistance available from the government, Lothar says they were left eight months without any income, aside from an online fundraising campaign. "For us it was even harder because we closed in November. That means we had eight months with no income and all the bills to pay. "Even insurance, even though we didn't need them we had to pay all the money and that's why we are in the red now. We couldn't even get a loan. "The government did not pay any grant money to businesses. We weren't able to get a loan because we are non-profit. We were left without any help." Changes have had to be made to the daily shows at Eagles Flying due to the Covid-19 restrictions, but they can still go ahead. "The most important one is that we cannot offer indoor shows. Generally, we would have indoor shows on rainy days, which cannot be done now due to the regulations. "Our business actually focused on hands-on experience, where people can touch animals, birds, etc and have the snakes wrapped around them and they can feed the animals. "The raccoon, I used to have the raccoons pick-pocketing people, I would put food in their pocket and she would pick the food out. "That's not possible now. It's not a big, big thing. But it gets great feedback. If I tell people that we cannot do the same programme we usually do they say that it's fine and they are happy." He's not giving up, but he is hopeful that there will be some sort of financial assistance from government as these difficult times continue. "Never lose hope. But realistically we will have one more month of business. We might have people during the week. "My hope is still that the government will eventually allocate funds for small and medium sized businesses who are nearly destroyed, that they can at least get a little bit of money that can help them survive. "Just yesterday I spoke to a lady in Clare, who runs a bus company and she said she has no international business and most likely she will not survive. This will happen to many tourism related businesses in Ireland." There have many complaints, emanating not least from the White House, about "fake news" in the political arena. I noticed the term recently arising in connection with the coronavirus. The charity, Christian Aid, has set out to expose misinformation about the virus. In an article earlier this month entitled, 'Coronavirus fake news: How Christian Aid is tackling it', the charity cites some examples: 'Injecting disinfectant into the body might kill coronavirus'; 'coronavirus only affects white people'; ginger, garlic and even alcohol can 'prevent or cure coronavirus'. Examples of the charity's efforts to combat misinformation were given from Nigeria, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar, including promoting correct information and details of preventative steps against the virus through radio advertisements and social media in Nigeria and Nepal; working with local partners in Bangladesh to develop a "a fake news tracking sheet" which is then shared local doctors; and tackling stigma in Myanmar around coronavirus as well as distributing soap. Fake news about coronavirus has been surprisingly widespread. In June, the BBC reported that according to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, some 649 posts "were reported to Facebook and Twitter, including false cures, anti-vaccination propaganda and conspiracy theories around 5G". Facebook said: "During March and April we placed warning labels on around 90 million pieces of content related to Covid-19 and these labels stopped people viewing the original content 95% of the time." Twitter commented that it was prioritising the removal of Covid-19 content "when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm", with the organisation's automated systems having challenged "more than 4.3 million accounts which were targeting discussions around Covid-19 with spammy or manipulative behaviours". There have also been reports of various scams, such a providing false online maps of coronavirus infections which in fact, once clicked on, install malicious programs of people's computers, or offering counterfeit protection equipment. Then again, there have been people making bogus phone calls, luring the unsuspecting into giving banking details. Stormont health minister Robin Swann said last month that his department's medicines regulatory group had been made aware of "fake medicine" for the treatment of Covid-19 having been illegally imported into Northern Ireland. Mr Swann added: "I urge the public not to be fooled by online offers for medical products." At the same time, chief medical officer Dr Michael McBride described the risk to the public due to unlicensed medicines as "significant" and urged the public to be vigilant. What all of this says to me is that, very sadly, there are many unscrupulous people who will stoop so low as to try to take advantage of the vulnerable in these extremely difficult circumstances. The contrast with the many, many people who have put their own lives on the line in order to care for the sick is stark. One is reminded of the words in the Gospel of John "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." (John 3: 19) May people everywhere be moved, not to harm or take advantage of others in the midst of this pandemic, but truly to care for others. Canon Ian Ellis is rector of St John's, Newcastle, and a former editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette Chron.com is following the latest headlines on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Houston area. Friday marked the third-highest day for new COVID-19 cases and the second-highest day for new deaths since the pandemic began, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of state data. From Thursday to Friday, Texas added 11,283 new cases and is now at 436,402 cases total. The state's death count increase by 642 to 7,107. The Houston Chronicle reached out directly to Texas county officials for the latest confirmed death counts due to The Texas Department of State Health Services' decision to change the way it counts deaths. The positive test rate rose to 12.12 percent and the state's rolling average for new cases is now at 8110.6. As of Friday evening, there were 9,336 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in Texas hospitals. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: 'Im just so, so tired' COVID taking emotional, physical toll on Houston health care workers The Houston region added 2,642 new cases and is now at 103,428 cases total. The region reported 67 new deaths that brought the death count up to 1,664. Harris County reported 2,114 new cases and is now at 72,964 cases total. NOTE: The numbers included in this report represent a one-day change in data from Thursday, July 30 through Friday, July 31. It is still unclear how many of the state's new cases can be attributed to jail inmates from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The Houston Chronicle's analysis of COVID-19 case data now includes probable and pending cases. This change is based on interviews with multiple public health officials and epidemiologists, as well as in line with CDC guidelines on reporting. DSHS is now using death certificate data for its counts of COVID deaths, leading some Texas counties to have dramatically higher counts than others and some counties to have higher numbers than state figures. rebecca.hennes@chron.com Calif. AG files new child rape charges against leader of 1M-member church La Luz del Mundo Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment New charges of child rape were filed against Naason Joaquin Garcia, leader of the La Luz del Mundo megachurch, four months after an appeals court dropped a criminal case against him. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra refiled the charges this week and added at least six additional felony charges each against the 51-year-old leader of the Mexico-based church which claims to have a membership of more than a million globally and the 37-year-old co-accused, Alondra Ocampo, the Los Angeles Times reported. The new complaint includes 36 felony charges for alleged crimes that occurred between June 2015 and April 2018. Prosecutors alleged that Garcia, who is known among his congregants as an apostle of Jesus Christ, committed sex crimes against five women and girls, according to KTLA5. The earlier complaint that had been dropped in April included more than two dozen felony charges, including human trafficking, production of child pornography, and rape of a minor. Garcias 25-year-old assistant Susana Medina Oaxaca is also facing charges but was released on bail. Azalea Rangel Melendez, another accused, remains at large as authorities have not been able to locate her, the LA Times reported. While the earlier case against him was dismissed, Garcia has remained in custody since June 2019. When Garcia was arrested last year, his congregation was standing by him and dismissed the allegations as false. The apostle of Jesus Christ has always adhered to the law and demonstrated full respect to governmental institutions and the dignity of all persons. The church categorically rejects each and every allegation made against him, the church said in a statement at the time. We trust in the principles of justice that govern our legal system in the United States and specifically in the state of California. Our legal system establishes a presumption of innocence that is guaranteed to all persons; which establishes that all persons are innocent until proven guilty, it added. A group of girls were told that if they went against Garcias desires, they were going against God, according to the earlier criminal complaint. Children were told to perform flirty dances for Garcia while wearing as little clothing as possible. Garcia also once gave a group of children a speech about a king having mistresses and stated that an apostle of God can never be judged for his actions. In last years hearing, a witness told the court that the church leader had pornography material that depicted the crimes, the Times reported. Crimes like those alleged in this complaint have no place in our society. Period, Becerra said at the time. We must not turn a blind eye to sexual violence and trafficking in our state. At the California Department of Justice, we will do everything we can to prevent and combat these heinous crimes so that our communities are safe. If you see something, report it and we will vigorously pursue justice. A 1995 study described La Luz Del Mundo as a Pentecostal movement that takes elements from Mexican culture as well as the dominant Catholic culture. It also described the church as being authoritarian with strategic ties to Mexican politics. REDUCTION AHEAD: Nike Inc. is the latest company to reveal job cuts at least 500 workers will lose their jobs in its Beaverton, Ore., headquarters. In a state filing Thursday, Nike said it will be reducing its world headquarters in Beaverton by at least 500 employees. The layoffs, which were first reported by the Portland Business Journal, will start to go into effect Oct. 1. Last week, Nike outlined a series of senior leadership changes and the planned job cuts without specifying how many employees would be affected. At that time, the company said it expects to incur between $200 million and $250 million in employee termination costs. In June, the company rolled out its Consumer Direct Acceleration, a digitally empowered phase of Nikes strategy to unlock long-term growth and profitability. The recent leadership changes were said to be in support of that. This permanent reduction in workforce will include members of Nikes corporate leadership team and some corresponding executive assistants, according to the layoff notice to Oregon officials signed by Nikes vice president of Total Rewards Kim Lupo. The scaling back will also include the permanent closure of Nikes child-care centers, which will impact 192 staffers. A Nike spokesman noted via e-mail Thursday night that the company is shifting its child-care strategy and is launching a new child-care benefit beyond its world headquarters and across the U.S. The child-care benefit will expand from hundreds to thousands of employees, including for the first time, staffers in retail, distribution centers and air manufacturing innovation. In Thursdays state filing, Lupo wrote, Nike will provide the job titles and number of affected employees in each impacted job category upon request, once determined. Nike lost $790 million in its most recent quarter. The company, like other major retailers, was forced to close stores due to the pandemic shutdown. To try to build sales, the brand is playing up the digital side of its business and is gathering more consumer data to develop more specialized products. The juggernaut has also been realigned to focus on three categories mens, womens and kids. Story continues As of the end of May, Nike had 75,400 employees globally, including retail and part-time employees, according to the companys annual report. Earlier this week, a Nike spokesman declined to specify how many employees work in its home city. Best of WWD Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Kabukicho, a 1-kilometer square commercial area on the northern side of Tokyoas JR Shinjuku Station, is reputed to be Asiaas largest adult entertainment zone, with an estimated nighttime working population of 23,000 (based on 2014 figures). The adventurous, bored and curious are drawn by the thousands each evening to the neighborhoodas bars, cabarets, karaoke establishments, pachinko parlors, cinemas, retail outlets, hotels and an impressive variety of Japanese and international restaurants. This exotic mix also includes some 250 host clubs, where female customers can relax in the company of young men. Many of Kabukichoas businesses permit or encourage closeness, or even intimacy, between customers and their employees, so perhaps, not surprisingly, the district has been identified as a hot spot for COVID-19 cluster infections. Weekly Playboy (Aug. 10) notes that the nearby National Center for Global Health and Medicine, which conducts PCR tests for Shinjuku Ward, recorded nine positive cases in April, 37 in May and 226 in June. Then, in the first eight days of July, the figure soared to 249. aOne cause of the spread was host clubs,a an employee of Shinjukuas Public Health Office told the magazine. aSeveral people tested positive, but when we conducted tests on all their colleagues, only 3.7 percent tested positive. By contrast, more than 30 percent of workers at the restaurants where the hosts and their customers go to eat tested positive. aFrom July, more cases have been found among salaried workers, students and unemployed people, so infection has now spread among the general population.a Even more than local hospitals, itas Shinjukuas Public Health Office thatas said to be staggering under a heavy workload. aEvery time a person tests positive, it requires a mountain of paperwork,a the public health employee said. aThe work had been manageable with around 20 or 30 staff, but, from July onward, on some days we have been getting 100 positives a day. Things here are getting desperate.a Alia Bhatt has shared two cute new pictures of her cats on Instagram. Edward and Juniper look stunning in the pictures shared by the actor. Juniper, a gorgeous black cat, is seen sitting on a table, looking right into the camera for its shot. Edward, a furry white Persian, is seen relaxing on Alias bed. She captioned the photos saying, When all else fails turn cat paparazzi. Commenting on her post, photographer Manav Mangalani even offered Alia a job. Nice click...you can join my team...welcome, he wrote. Shilpa Shetty commented, Awwwww. Juniper joined Alias family only recently. She shared a picture of the new cat with herself and sister Shaheen Bhatt on Instagram. This girl duo just became a girl trio. Meet our new baby Juniper. Her skills include biting, selfie-taking and being generally adorable, she wrote. Alia is a big fan of cats and is often seen advocating for animal rights. Talking to Hindustan Times Brunch about her love for cats, Alia said in 2017, Shaheen used to rescue stray cats from our building and around, and bring them home. We used to give them up for adoption. Sometimes, we kept them because we got so attached to them. So, I always had these little pets around me as a child. Your pet becomes a reflection of who you are, whether its a cat or a dog. Edward is playful and energetic because Im like that. Im not an introvert, so he isnt either. They pick up your vibe, she had said. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer Alia currently lives with her sister Shaheen in Mumbai. She was also living with her boyfriend, actor Ranbir Kapoor during the coronavirus lockdown. Earlier this week, she took to Instagram to share a picture with Shaheen. Pink sunset and a cool breeze, thoroughly enjoyed by two sweet peas, wrote the actor as she shared the selfie on Instagram. The beautiful picture them smiling for the camera. . Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Fuzia: Riya Sinha and Shraddha Varma - India, US We truly believed that virtual working will be the future of work What happens when a bright teenager full of ideas and ideals about empowering women comes together with a marketing professional with an MBA and corporate experience? You get a vibrant and quickly expanding online platform for women, with tens of thousands of users, millions of social-media followers, and uncountable employment opportunities generated. Thats the story of Fuzia, founded five years ago by Riya Sinha, now an 18-year-old student of University of California at Berkeley, and run by Mumbai-based Shraddha Varma, now 31. Social enterprise Fuzia - Ria Sinha and Shraddha Varma It is a global online womens networking community and a talent showcase platform for creativity, built through the advent of virtual hiring. Since the past five years, this has been our core model as we truly believed that virtual working will be the future of work, say the founders. In the age of lockdowns and work-from-home, their vision was indeed prescient. Currently a team of 30 passionate women who work remotely from different parts of the world, Fuzia is essentially an online community and user-content-driven platform that helps young women see their strengths, develop self-confidence, learn from their peers and become independent leaders. Members can post their work samples and get opportunities to earn through suitable work assignments, internships and projects. Their clients are companies and individuals around the world who have tied up with Fuzia for its members talent and expertise especially in social-media marketing, executive branding and campaign management. At present, the online networking community has over 50,000 members with over four million followers on social media. There is no age or geographical restriction to join Fuzia; however, their users are typically aged 18 to 30, and hail primarily from countries like India, Pakistan, the USA, Bangladesh, Morocco and Egypt. They also come from various professional backgrounds and sensibilities, and are able to generate an income sitting at home. Skilling is an important part of Fuzias work. Their in-house experts collaborate with social-media influencers and entrepreneurs from all fields and organise interactive live Q&A and training sessions to help women start their own ventures. They also help them to become financially independent by providing them freelancing and internship opportunities for their skills. Our aim is to make profit with a purpose. Five percent of the revenue that we earn from our Fuzia talent projects is dedicated towards the cause of women empowerment and skill development, say the founders. They add, Our determination and belief is to celebrate women and their creative zeal so that they can live their dreams. We all deserve to shine. Woman TV and Women Entrepreneurs Helpline: Shweta Saxena - Pune In many cases, a woman entrepreneurs finances are controlled by her husband Social enterprise Shweta Saxena Though Shweta Saxena is a certified clinical psychologist, she was always drawn to the cause of women empowerment more than clinical psychology. While running the Notts Mums non-profit support group for lonely multicultural mums in the UK till 2017, she realised that there were many women burdened by suppression, carrying their stories silently inside them. I decided to initiate a platform where women could share their powerful stories fearlessly and with pride, says Shweta, who launched Woman TV in 2018 after moving to Pune. Shweta uses the non-profit, web-based platform to interview inspiring women, and has featured over a thousand women so far. After noticing that many of these women had the potential to be entrepreneurs but lacked that little push, information, support and motivation by their tribe, she further launched Women Entrepreneurs Helpline (WEH), a Facebook group to support new entrepreneurs in various areas like market research for their branding, financial planning, awareness about government schemes for MSMEs and female entrepreneurs. Interestingly, not all the 12,000 followers who follow her channel are entrepreneurs salaried workers and homemakers follow the group too for tips and as a networking platform. Women entrepreneurs in India face specific challenges, such as lack of financial independence despite running profitable businesses, says Shweta. In many cases, the finances are still controlled by the womans husband even if he may not be involved in her business. There are social obstacles too, says Shweta. While a woman is struggling to adapt to her role as an entrepreneur, her family makes it even more difficult for her by constantly reminding her of her other roles in the family. Lack of sufficient family support before or after marriage hampers her business journey and delays her success too. But Shweta believes women have learnt to live with these challenges, and rebuild their lives around them. She hopes that, as more women step up to work, society will gradually give credit where its due, regardless of gender. Also, we need to give the woman sufficient space and not suffocate her with over-interference or unwanted advice! No relationship gives anyone the authority to rule over a woman or monitor her every move, she says. Though the Indian government offers several schemes and training opportunities for women entrepreneurs, not many are aware of them. This is where WEH plays a business-buddy role, says Shweta. WEH also works as a platform for women to support each other. Women can promote other womens businesses on their social media, buying their products without asking for any discounts or freebies, and even by mentoring new entrepreneurs through their own experiences. Girl Power Talk: Rachita Sharma - India, USA, Mexico Why does ones purpose of doing good have to be separate from building a real company? Rachita Sharma An enterprising young woman with fire in her belly thats the first impression Rachita Sharma leaves on you. My passion in life is to create a community that supports and uplifts young women, says the 24-year-old CEO and co-founder of Girl Power Talk. My lifes mission is to be an agent of change by providing young women more opportunities and a better path for achieving their full potential. Girl Power Talk is our vision in action. Raised in Mathura, Rachita completed her BSc in mathematical sciences from the University of Delhi and then did her MBA from Thapar University, Chandigarh. She began working early on during her college years and travelled widely. She is now the chief marketing officer of New York-based Blue Ocean Global Technology, which offers online reputation management services to organisations worldwide. Its sister concern Girl Power Talk supports its operations by leveraging digital technology to improve efficiency and profitability for clients spread across North America and Europe. In the process, they offer young women, and men, a platform to grow, develop and reach the world stage. We at Girl Power Talk recognise the importance of gender equality and actively seek those with extraordinary potential, says Rachita. Through her conversations with young professionals and students, she learned that only a minuscule proportion of college graduates receive offers from employers willing to invest in their personal development. The reality of the demographics is that the vast majority of companies view young Indians as replaceable and expendable. Sameer Somal and I launched Girl Power Talk with a vision to hire, nurture, and help young people build confidence and interpersonal skills. The real mission is to change lives, one person at a time, says Rachita, who was awarded the Most Promising Woman in IT Award by Aatm Nirbhar Womens Association Trust earlier this year. The for-profit enterprise trains its community of young people in exceptional soft-skills, technical knowledge, and purpose in life. The team is trained to create and promote top digital assets that accelerate the growth of a companys brand equity. They consult clients on digital transformation and provide comprehensive reputation management services. They have recently set up base in Mexico, and are now planning to offer a fellowship programme for young leaders in Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines. I was determined to celebrate gender diversity and create an organisation that uplifts women with real opportunities, says Rachita, who is a chairperson for the All Ladies League, a network for women in 150 countries. Why does ones purpose of doing good have to be separate from building a real company? Besides, I believe that we can accomplish more in terms of a positive social impact if we are profitable. The companys success exemplifies the benefits of investing in malleable young leaders, she says. She explains that while many companies give back and try to reverse-engineer women in leadership once they achieve success, Girl Power Talk begins with the end in mind. Young women in positions of influence and affluence will forever be a hallmark and core feature of the organisation, she signs off. Victoria has recorded 397 new coronavirus cases and three more deaths with harsher lockdowns looming within days. State premier Daniel Andrews announced the figures on Saturday with 37 linked to outbreaks and 360 currently under investigation. A man and woman in their 80s and another woman in her 90s have died overnight, raising the state's death toll to 116. The figure comes as new modelling shows COVID-19 cases are doubling every 16 days in the state with worrying predictions as many as 1,000 daily cases could be recorded by mid-August. Victoria is tipped to announce nearly 400 new coronavirus cases with harsher lockdowns potentially on the horizon (pictured, a clinical waste removal personnel at St Basil's Homes for the Aged in Fawkner, Melbourne) Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured, arriving at the press conference on Saturday) said on Friday has said he cannot lift lockdown, which is set to end in mid-August, in Melbourne and Mitchell Shire when COVID-19 cases are so high Victoria recorded 397 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday Only on Thursday, Victoria recorded the highest ever daily spike of COVID-19 cases in the country with 723 cases and 13 deaths. University of NSW's Kirby Institute mathematical biologist Deborah Cromer admitted to The Australian the virus had not been contained. 'I would have to say it is not under control at this point.' According to the projection, 723 new cases could be recorded next Friday, 899 new cases marked on the following Wednesday and 1,118 cases tallied the Monday afterwards. There are 5,743 active cases and Victoria's total deaths now number 113, bringing the national figure to 197. The postcode with the most active cases is 3029 with 346 cases across Hoppers Crossing, Tarneit and Truganina in Melbourne's west. Police Minister Lisa Neville said on Saturday more than 200,000 police checks had taken place across the state while more than 452,000 car checks were carried out. She noted some Victorians were still breaking restrictions and labelled the behaviour as 'appalling'. 'The overwhelming majority of Victorians every day are doing the right thing,' she said. The state's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton confirmed a New Zealand-style lockdown, which saw all businesses except for essential services closed, was being explored (pictured, clinical waste is disposed at Epping Gardens Aged Care Facility in Epping, Melbourne) Military personnel patrol the Epping Gardens Aged Care Facility in Epping, Melbourne Clinical waste removal personnel work at the St Basil's Homes for the Aged in Fawkner, Melbourne 'However, we are still continuing to see appalling behaviour. I'm fed up with it, Victorian Police are fed up with it.' Ms Neville noted among the fines handed out was a driver who tried to enter Wodonga for a Big Mac. Another person was fined for driving from Melbourne to Ballarat to get some 'fresh air' while another driver went from Werribee to Springvale for their grocery shop. Mr Andrews said community transmission remained a top priority and cited 49 'mystery' cases. 'Those community transmission cases are of greatest concern to us. 'The challenge is that they are a mystery and this is all about trying to know as much as you possibly can, as much intelligence and evidence and data as you possibly can.' Opposition leader Michael O'Brien said there should be harsher punishments for breaching isolation rules such as monitoring bracelets and higher fines (pictured, a resident is taken into an ambulance at St Basil's Homes for the Aged in Fawkner, Melbourne) Melbourne locals pictured wearing face masks during a walk along Morell Bridge on July 24 Military staff monitor a Melbourne aged care facility as it grapples with an outbreak of COVID-19 Health officials are also weighing up whether stay-at-home orders in place across Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire are doing enough. Experts are working over the weekend to analyse infection data from the first half of Victoria's six-week lockdown. The state's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton confirmed a New Zealand-style lockdown, which saw all businesses except for essential services closed, was being explored. Melbourne and Mitchell Shire are about halfway through stage three restrictions which are due to end in mid-August. 'We cannot open up with these numbers, we cannot open up with significantly less than these numbers,' Premier Daniel Andrews said on Friday. His warning came after it was revealed that an alarming number of Victorians with COVID-19 are not staying home, with more than 100 referred to police. New modelling shows COVID-19 cases are doubling every 16 days in the state with worrying predictions as many as 1,000 cases could be recorded by mid-August (pictured, a clinical waste removal personnel at St Basil's Homes for the Aged in Fawkner, Melbourne) A Melbourne local walks past Australian Defence Force personnel as the city continues to trudge through stage three lockdown Australian Defence Force personnel and public health officials visited more than 500 homes of positive cases on Thursday, but one in four were not there. Mr Andrews said there was no excuse for people who have tested positive not to isolate. Opposition leader Michael O'Brien said there should be harsher punishments for breaching isolation rules such as monitoring bracelets and higher fines. Muslims marking the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha over coming days have been encouraged to socially distance and wear masks. 'I just want to encourage everyone to make positive decisions when it comes to how they choose to celebrate their faith over this important time for that community,' Prime Minister Scott Morrison told 2GB radio. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaros dependence on the military to govern is grating on the military itself. Interviews with a dozen active-duty and retired high-ranking officers show members of the Armed Forces, who initially viewed joining their comrade in office as a chance to shape policy after years on the sidelines, now worry his erratic behavior and a spiraling public health crisis could turn public opinion against them. While the military isnt about to split with the administration, theres growing push-back across the ranks, including officers within the government, to define clearer boundaries. Having military in the government cant be confused with having the institutional support of the Armed Forces, Ret. General Sergio Etchegoyen, who was Brazils top security official under Bolsonaros predecessor, said in an interview. That lack of understanding is generating discomfort. Over a third of Bolsonaros cabinet hails from the military, which now plays a greater role in government than at any other time since Brazils brutal dictatorship ended in the 1980s. Known as the Presidential Palace Generals, they include the active-duty general serving as health minister and the retired four-star general who is vice president. Bolsonaro himself is a former army captain. And thousands more soldiers and officers also work in lower-level government jobs, according to Brazils Audit Court. Recalling a Coup Their involvement has kicked up memories of a bloody coup during the Cold War. Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes took to live TV on July 14 and accused the Armed Forces of associating itself with a genocide as roughly 7,000 people die each week from the virus while Bolsonaro argues against quarantines. At 2.66 million cases and almost 92,500 deaths, Brazil trails only the U.S. as the worlds worst hot spot. The Presidential Palace declined to comment for this article. The active-duty and retired officers interviewed, some of whom asked for anonymity, say a main concern is that close ties to Bolsonaro risk tarnishing a carefully rebuilt image as defenders of democracy. The Armed Forces is consistently named one of Brazils most trusted institutions, according to Datafolha polls. They go on peace-keeping missions abroad, help quell violence in gang-controlled neighborhoods and guarantee security at major events. A key role many army officials are now playing is trying to ease tension over some of Bolsonaros most controversial moves and forge valuable political alliances. When investors threatened in July to pull funding if the Amazon wasnt protected from illegal logging and fires, it was Vice President Hamilton Mourao, a retired general, who promised to combat deforestation. Growing Unease Ret. General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz is among ranking officers openly voicing growing unease with the more extreme elements of the administration and the blurring of government branches. Santos Cruz served almost a half century in the army and led peacekeeping missions in Haiti and Africa, but he only lasted six months in Bolsonaros cabinet. He was fired last year as government secretary, which acts as a liaison in Congress, for clashing with the presidents sons and calling for moderation. He argues that radical ideological groups end up dragging down the Armys image. The Armed Forces have amassed a lot of prestige in the eyes of the population; they transfer that prestige to the government by participating in it, Santos Cruz said in an interview. Conversely, the Armed Forces may be seen as responsible for the administrations failures. The Health Ministry has turned into a flash point in the discussion. General Eduardo Pazuello took over the ministry in mid-May after former health chief Luiz Henrique Mandetta, a doctor who pushed for fast social-distancing measures, was fired for publicly sparring with his jobs-first boss. Mandettas replacement, Nelson Teich, who was also a doctor, quit after just 29 days when Bolsonaro wanted him to issue a blanket blessing on the use of chloroquine. Once in charge, Pazuello quickly obliged, recommending the controversial malarial drug and backing off calls for quarantines. In the months since, Pazuello has also recruited at least nine military officials to fill top slots vacated by health experts, bringing the total to at least 20 within the agency. Trying to Disengage Raul Jungmann, who served as defense minister under the previous administration, said Pazuellos role leading the coronavirus fight while still an active-duty general is causing tension and duress among the ranks. Fellow generals are demanding Pazuello switch to reserve duty or quit his post at the ministry, according to the interviews with officers. Vice President Mourao, in an interview with news website UOL on July 15, hinted that Bolsonaro may replace him. The army is fighting a rear guard to disengage its image from the Bolsonaro government, said Octavio Amorim Neto, a political scientist specializing in civil-military relations, who teaches at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, one of Brazils top universities, in Rio de Janeiro. Once the pandemic hit, they began to see their adventure of returning to the center of politics as extremely costly. The health ministry didnt respond to requests for comment. Checks and Balances Besides Mendes, two other Supreme Court justices have slammed the military for enabling Bolsonaros authoritarian impulses. They accuse the president of trying to undermine democratic checks and balances as his family is dogged by multiple graft probes. Bolsonaro has said the investigations are politically motivated and that he and his allies have done nothing wrong. Some of the active commanders interviewed also pushed back on the notion that divisions in government are being breached or that the military has any intention of taking power. The Armed Forces, being state institutions, support the current government as was done in all previous governments, Defense Minister Ret. General Fernando Azevedo said. But the president himself has threatened to directly disobey court orders and joined rowdy rallies calling for a military intervention outside the Supreme Courts headquarters in Brasilia. His son, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, told a far-right website that an institutional rupture was only a matter of time after federal police raided dozens of properties associated with influential government allies in May. Radical Factions In many ways, it was only natural that Bolsonaro would lean so heavily on the military while in office, said Ret. Army General Paulo Chagas, who stumped for the president in his 2018 campaign. With no major party affiliation and snubbed by the nations business and intellectual elite, the long-time congressman turned to his brothers in arms to help him govern. He needed people he could trust, Chagas said. In the end, the Armed Forces, which hoped to set a steady course for Bolsonaros administration, has instead been deployed to solve the problems of the most radical Bolsonaro factions, said Amorim Neto, the civil-military relations specialist. Society cant comprehend whos governing and whos serving in the Armed Forces, said Perpetua Almeida, a deputy in the lower house who proposed a bill baring active-duty military from taking posts in the administration. The person responsible for that confusion is President Bolsonaro. At a gloomy Downing Street press conference yesterday, Boris Johnson was unable to deliver to usual good news of a slight relaxation of lockdown rules, moving the country a step back to normality. After seeing spikes in infection rates across the country, and having to reimpose some measures on Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, the Prime Minister conceded any further easing would face a delay of at least two weeks. The government's chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, went a step further by warning: 'We have probably reached near the limit or the limits of what we can do in terms of opening up society.' He instead explained that the Government and the public would have to decide on some 'difficult trade-offs' to keep the virus under control and still be able to do things like reopen schools. So, what are these future trade-offs likely to be? Face masks: Tightened Already mandatory on public transport and in retail stores, the rules on wearing a face covering is to be expanded to almost all indoor public spaces. Wearing one will become mandatory in cinemas, museums and places of worship from August 8, on top of supermarkets, banks, takeaway outlets, and post offices where it is already being enforced. Offices, which are deemed private indoor spaces, will be exempt along with bars and restaurants. Boris Johnson yesterday promised that the police will be would be playing a much bigger role in enforcing the rules on face masks, as well as breaking up large gatherings. But both the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, and the National Association of Police Chiefs said they expected shop owners and local councils to enforce the rules in the first instance Those who flout the rule face a fine of up to 100. Already mandatory on public transport and in retail stores, the rules on wearing a face covering is to be expanded to almost all indoor public spaces Weddings: Cancelled Wedding receptions of up to 30 people which could have been held from today cannot take place. Ceremonies can go ahead, with restrictions, but there will be no party afterwards. Any celebration after the ceremony must be limited to six people outdoors or the members of two households indoors. Mr Johnson apologised but added: 'We simply cannot take the risk.' Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said the infection data suggests 'we have probably reached near the limit of what we can do in terms of opening up society'. Graham Podesta said his daughter Jamie, whose wedding is today, was in floods of tears following the announcement. 'We have to tell people who are travelling not to travel, people who have booked into Travelodge, not to do that, it's just a whole nightmare,' he said. Beauty services: Postponed Close-contact beauty services, such as facials, make-up application, eyebrow shaping and eyelash treatments, have been banned for another two weeks. Hair dressers are allowed to remain open. Beauty salons were allowed to open on July 13 but only for treatments away from the face, such as manicures and body massages. Close-contact beauty services, such as facials, make-up application, eyebrow shaping and eyelash treatments, have been banned for another two weeks Casinos and bowling alleys: Postponed Casinos and bowling alleys, which were due to open their doors for the first time in months tomorrow have been told to remain closed. It is feared that playing items such as poker chips and bowling balls would be difficult to clean thoroughly and regularly enough. However, Boris Johnson urged workers to return to work as planned from next week. Return to offices: Yes Mr Johnson has in recent weeks moved away from the Government's work from home advice, encouraging people to return to the office where possible. From today people will no longer be told to work from home where possible, and are instead being advised to take a decision jointly with their employers. However, a Mail audit found hundreds of thousands of civil servants are still working from home two weeks after Boris Johnson urged workers to get back to the office to help save the economy. Ministerial departments in Whitehall are said to be 'ghost towns' with some seeing just 2 per cent of staff arriving at work this week. Just a few dozen staff were seen entering the offices of the Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions each day. The once bustling offices can hold a total of 3,500 employees. Reopening schools for the next academic year in September 'should be a national priority', according to the prime minister Back to school in September: A priority Reopening schools for the next academic year in September 'should be a national priority', according to the prime minister, even if that means sacrificing other freedoms. Teaching unions and MPs have raised concerns over the crucial months of learning that pupils have missed out on. Professor Whitty said that decisions would have to be made about what to prioritise: for example, by allowing schools to reopen in September at the expense of other things. 'The idea that we can open up everything and keep the virus under control is clearly wrong,' he said. 'We are at the outer edge of what we can do and therefore choices will need to be made.' Staycations: To the beach! Pressed on whether he had 'cancelled summer', Mr Johnson said: 'I dont think so. And I would encourage people still to think of wonderful staycations here in the UK.' The Prime Minister says he hopes a 'brief staycation' could creep into his diary, although he is working 'flat out' to prevent a second wave. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said he will visit Cornwall this summer for a short break. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps had to cut short a holiday in Spain earlier this month after new quarantine restrictions were imposed on returning travellers - and Michael Gove cancelled his plans to go to Ibiza. However, there are concerns that any restrictions placed on parts of the south coast like Bournemouth or Cornwall could scupper people's holiday plans and deliver a further blow to Britain's tourism industry. Mr Johnson denied he had 'cancelled summer' and encouraged people to book domestic holidays Winter The public is being warned there will be major challenges during the winter 'where everything is against us'. Professor Whitty said the summer was being used to 'test how fast we can open up', with the advantage that people can gather outside. 'There are clearly big disadvantages to opening things up in the winter months where everything is against us,' he added. The biggest covidiots have been exposed trying to dupe police and sneak across closed state borders with a number of bizarre excuses. Drivers have tried to talk their way out of a fine by telling officers they wanted a breath of fresh air, groceries and even a Big Mac. Others were more methodical and used fake paper number plates on their cars or claimed they were in the middle of a medical emergency. One driver even said they were a 'sovereign citizen' and stood above the law. Daily Mail Australia has compiled a list of some of the most bizarre excuses drivers have given authorities for trying to cross the border. The biggest covidiots have been exposed trying to dupe police (pictured, a checkpoint is set up at the Queensland and New South Wales border at Coolangatta on July 23) Authorities monitor a checkpoint along the Queensland and New South Wales border (pictured on July 23) New South Wales and Victoria border New South Wales closed its border with its neighbouring state in early July. Drivers who attempt to cross the barricade without a permit risk fines of up to $11,000 and six months imprisonment. Though that hasn't stopped a number of drivers from taking their chances. A 63-year-old man tried to leave Echuca and drive into Moama before he was caught. The man allegedly refused to hand over his identification over claims he was a 'sovereign citizen' - which is someone who believes they are above the law. Police escorted the man into the New South Wales town and took him straight to the local police station where they charged him. Another driver faced Albury court after he tried to enter Corowa. The court heard he allegedly refused police help for a permit and claimed COVID-19 was fake and that the border closure was 'unlawful'. A different driver was caught travelling from Melbourne to Wodonga. They told officers they had made the 320km journey because they wanted a Big Mac. Another person drove 115km from Melbourne to Ballarat because they wanted to get some 'fresh air'. One driver drove from Werribee to the other side of Melbourne's Springvale to allegedly do their grocery shopping. A man managed to make it as far as Sydney after he caught a flight from Melbourne. He was found without a permit and allegedly told authorities he needed to make the trip to care for his children - he has none. A police officer patrols a border check along at a New South Wales and Queensland checkpoint A driver told officers they had made the 320km journey because they wanted a Big Mac (stock image) New South Wales and Queensland border Queensland has kept its border closed with Victoria and is now turning back anyone from Greater Sydney as more COVID-19 hotspots crop up in the New South Wales capital. Though since March, officers have thwarted a number of drivers and their attempts - some more creative than others - from trying to enter the state. A driver was stopped at the border after authorities discovered paper licence plates were attached to his car. They discovered a warrant had been issued for the man and a quick sweep of the vehicle uncovered stolen plates, green leaf materials and a glass pipe. He was charged with two drug and property and one traffic offence. A New South Wales driver was found passed out in a car parked behind Broadbeach Police Station. He allegedly could not tell Queensland police why he was in the state, other than to party and buy drugs. Authorities handed him a COVID-19 penalty infringement notice. Another driver was turned away at the border in June though tried to get through another crossing in July while a New South Wales woman tried to enter the sunshine state twice by bus. She was turned back, though not discouraged, and tried to enter twice more through another checkpoint before she received a COVID-19 penalty infringement notice. Queensland has kept its border closed with Victoria and is now turning back anyone from Greater Sydney (pictured, cars crossing Queensland border on July 10) Victoria and South Australia South Australia closed its border to Victoria in early July in a bid to avoid any risk of the COVID-19 outbreak crossing into the state. One Victorian man allegedly drove into the state because they were starting a new job while another driver allegedly sped through a checkpoint with blacked-out number plates. A group said their friend needed urgent treatment for a possibly fractured ankle when they tried to drive their ute into the state. A mother-of-eight hid in the back of a truck and managed to make it as far as Mount Gambier before a tip-off led to her arrest. She fronted court and was handed a suspended prison term. Overpoliced and underprotected. Thats the painful paradox of being Black in Canada. Thats why Black protest is not just imperative for Black survival in Canada, but a precursor to Black successes that have benefited folks beyond Black communities. Defiant, daring and public resistance of Black people in Canada has led to many of the most significant legal and social reforms that have shaped Canada for the better. It was the Black-led civil-disobedience campaign of restaurant sit-ins by Bromley Armstrong, Ruth Lor, and Hugh Burnett in Dresden, Ont., that caused this province to outlaw segregation in commercial and residential establishments with the passing of the 1954 Fair Accommodation Practices Act. This campaign was instrumental in inspiring the establishment of Ontarios Human Rights Commission in 1962, leading other provinces to establish the same. Relatedly, while many Canadians beam at the fact that a Black woman, Viola Desmond, is on our $10 bill, few remember that her stand against segregation in Nova Scotia in 1946 was illegal and led her to be violently arrested, detained and jailed. Canada now celebrates having one of the western worlds most progressive immigration and refugee systems, seeing it as a bedrock for the flourishing of a national policy and social ethic of multiculturalism. But Canadians forget that it was hundreds of Black Caribbean immigrants, many of whom were train porters, domestic servants and mine workers, who in the 1960s led public demonstrations and lobbied Canadian government officials to eventually get our country to significantly reduce the racist provisions that were meant to make and maintain this stolen Indigenous land as a white mans country. While now outdated and overdue for reform, Ontarios current policing and police oversight laws, including the establishment of the Special Investigations Unit, were also born directly out of Black protest against recurring killings with impunity of Black people by white police officers. These protests were largely driven by fierce and fearless advocacy of the Black Action Defence Committee, commonly regarded as the Black Lives Matter-Toronto of the late 1980s through to the early 2000s. The same point can be made about pivotal human-rights advances that have been made in education, sports, child welfare, healthcare and housing. Within these and other sectors, large and small Black protests beat the path for social reforms that have benefited all people. And yet still, Black folks remain overpoliced and underprotected by these very same institutions we helped make better. Overpoliced and underprotected by the very same non-Black communities that have directly benefited from having fairer schools, more equitable and representative workplaces, less aggressively invasive child-welfare societies, and somewhat less racist and more accountable policing systems. Because of historically ardent and ongoing Black protest, Canadians enjoy a standard of human rights and level of inclusion, equity and diversity that would likely be substantially more deficient than they currently are if those protests never occurred. The irony is that this same social standard of well-being that formed out of Black struggle is used to delegitimize continued expressions of Black protest. Whether its Black Lives Matter activists pouring pink paint on monuments to purveyors of Indigenous genocide and anti-Black racism, or Black parents protesting stubbornly systemic anti-Black racism at the Peel Board of Education, or Black employees of the provincial public service literally and figuratively being sick of having to be twice as good to get half as far as their non-Black counterparts, anti-Black pushback persists. This pushback is always a slap in the face to Black communities. It is a reminder that Canadians too easily forget that much of our countrys progress has been spurred by protests emanating from Black pain and suffering. If this fact was truly recognized and respected in our country, there would be no need for a Black Lives Matter movement in Canada. Canadians seem to only want the fruit of Canadas progressive successes without appreciating the Black struggle, suffering and sacrifices at the root of many of them. But the tradition of Black people in Canada has never forgotten that If there is no struggle there is no progress as once said by Frederick Douglass. And so with Aug. 1 and Emancipation Day arriving, to support and inspire continued Black freedom fighting in Canada, I leave these words from a poem from one of Canadas greatest civil rights lawyers, the late Charles Roach: Struggle to be free Stand fast for your right To equal liberty Live a life of sharing Our mission is to serve For when we stand up for our rights We bring freedom to the world Roughly 8,000 people were selected for New Jerseys $100 million rental relief fund, the highly anticipated lottery that 60,000 applied for in July, the Department of Community Affairs said. Winners for the COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program were alerted through email Thursday if they were pre-approved for the assistance, DCA spokeswoman Lisa Ryan told NJ Advance Media. The federally funded relief was New Jersey renters first opportunity for financial aid toward rent, four months after the coronavirus pandemic sparked the economic fiasco that led to peoples inability to make payments, and the countrys second highest unemployment rate. To be found eligible, applicants who were selected must return the forms and documents in their acceptance email to the DCA by Aug. 7, Ryan said. Once the DCA receives it, the agency will determine if they renter is eligible for the assistance. The pool of money will provide up to six months of rental assistance to the winners, who will be reviewed at the three month mark to ensure eligibility for the second half of the program. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage If people are found ineligible or there is still money left over, more renters in need could be chosen from the lottery. Nearly 30% of the pot of funds is allocated to provide families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness with up to 12 months of rental assistance, Ryan said. The agency works with each county Homeless Management Information Systems to find these families. The majority of initial rental payments for eligible applicants will be sent out in the month of September, to cover rent starting on Aug. 1. Tenants will be required to contribute 30% of their income to rent, while the state covers the other 70% and pays the landlord directly. Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order on March 29 that forbids lockouts and utility shutoffs due to nonpayment of rent, known more commonly as the eviction moratorium. While some federal protections expired with the CARES Act on July 25, renters in New Jersey are protected from being locked out until at least Oct. 5, or 60 days after the expiration of the state of emergency. Murphy also enacted a a rent freeze for 36,000 homes, and encouraged landlords to have compassion with tenants struggling to make payments, especially if those landlords are able to defer their mortgage payments. The application had strict eligibility requirements renters had to fall below an annual income threshold, and it was only available to renters who have been unable to pay their rent as far back as March due to a loss in income because of COVID-19. The DCA said 60,838 applied for in-demand fund. Housing advocates said the money is just a drop in the bucket. Theyve pointed to Houstons $15 million rental fund for a city of 2.3 million people, which was claimed within two hours of opening. The DCA did not comment on whether another fund would be created. Residents can also apply for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program for help with utility costs. The program recently received $29 million through the CARES Act. The New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, which provides funding for affordable housing, has also expanded its programs to include renter and pre-foreclosure housing. Counseling is also available for renters who need to approach their landlord for help. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips " " Glen Hyde, pictured here, set off on a voyage through the Grand Canyon for a honeymoon with his wife, Bessie. The trip was ambitious, but it didn't go as planned. public domain History has no shortage of unsolved mysteries, and people have no shortage of interest in them. In this episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, Holly Frey and Tracy V. Wilson keep us guessing with two creepy and true stories. But we'll start with one: the mystifying disappearance of a pair of newlywed adventurers. When Glen and Bessie Hyde married in 1928, they had decided their idea of a honeymoon wasn't mai tais and all-inclusive resorts. Glen was an experienced boater, and the couple thought that boating the entire length of the Grand Canyon would be not just fun, but maybe even pioneering. "Up to that point, only 45 people had managed to travel the full length of the Grand Canyon by river," Holly says. "And a woman had never done it Bessie wanted to be the first, and Glen wanted to be the fastest." Advertisement On Oct. 20, 1928, the pair started its journey without life jackets, mind you. They met up with a few people along the way, including a mid-November rendezvous with Emery Kolb, a famous photographer and seasoned boatman who had a studio near the Grand Canyon. Kolb said that Bessie seemed ready to quit the journey, but Glen encouraged them to head out the next day. Adolph G. Sutro, grandson of a notable former mayor of San Francisco, embarked on the journey with the couple for several miles and was the last person to see them, on Nov. 18. When the newlyweds didn't make it to Needles, California, by their planned arrival date in December, a massive search ensued. The military called in aerial surveillance and Native American trackers were employed, and the search party reached the Hydes' abandoned boat on Dec. 24. But the mystery was far from over. Instead of a mess of a wreck, there was a perfectly intact scow. All the supplies were accounted for, neatly packed and organized. And the location didn't quite necessitate an emergency evacuation either. "They had made it 600 miles on the Green and Colorado rivers," Tracy says. "The boat was found just 46 miles from the mouth of the Grand Canyon, and according to the details of the journal, they had actually been ahead of schedule." Neither of the Hydes' bodies has ever been found, but some tantalizing leads have cropped up. When a river guide named Georgie Clark died in 1992, her friends found a marriage certificate for Bessie and Glen Hyde in one of her drawers, as well as a birth certificate listing her name as Bessie DeRoss. But while provocative, there's been no substantiation of the documents. "A number of historians have weighed in on it and after closer investigation they really don't feel like this is the real deal," says Holly. The Hydes' tidy disappearance is an eerie puzzle, but Tracy and Holly recount another unsolved mystery that proves even more creepy. A murder on an isolated farm is scary enough, but what about one where the murderer might have been secretly living with the victims for months? Listen to this episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class to see if you can solve the crime. Now That's Interesting There are plenty of commercial boating companies happy to ferry you (safely) through the Grand Canyon, including through the "Killer Fang" Falls Rapid at mile 232, where it's speculated Glen and Bessie may have died. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.1 Trend: A rally in support of the Azerbaijani state and army will be held in Israels Tel Aviv on August 9, Azerbaijans State Committee for Work with Diaspora told Trend on August 1. According to the committee, the rally will be organized by the Head of "Azerbaijan House in Israel" Nehemiah Shirin Michaeli and held in front of the Armenian Center and the municipal Armenian church. The Head of the Israeli Office of International Center for Multiculturalism, political observer of the Jerusalem Post newspaper Arye Gut noted that the Azerbaijani diaspora is planning to hold a large-scale action of solidarity in Israel for the first time. The rally participants will bear the flags of Azerbaijan and Israel, and posters with "Karabakh is Azerbaijan!", "Karabakh is ours, and will be ours!" slogans. Law enforcement officials will also be at the rally. According to Gut, preparations for the rally show the high level of relations between Azerbaijan and Israel. "This historic event will take place despite on protests of Armenia and its patrons to holding the rally. It will be a historic day in terms of mobilizing the Azerbaijani diaspora in Israel," he said. Appealing to the Jewish immigrants from Azerbaijan living in Israel, he called on them to actively participate in the event. SILVER SPRING, Md., July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Epidiolex (cannabidiol) [CBD] oral solution for the treatment of seizures associated with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) in patients one year of age and older. Epidiolex was previously approved for the treatment of seizures associated with two rare and severe forms of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) and Dravet syndrome (DS). This is the only FDA-approved drug that contains a purified drug substance derived from cannabis. It is also the second FDA approval of a drug for the treatment of seizures associated with TSC. CBD is a chemical component of the Cannabis sativa plant. However, CBD does not cause intoxication or euphoria (the "high") that comes from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). It is THC (and not CBD) that is the primary psychoactive component of cannabis. "The FDA continues to believe the drug approval process represents the best way to make new medicines, including any drugs derived from cannabis, available to patients in need of appropriate medical therapy such as the treatment of seizures associated with these rare conditions. This paradigm ensures new therapies are safe, effective, and manufactured to a high quality that provides uniform and reliable dosing for patients," said Douglas Throckmorton, M.D., deputy center director for regulatory programs in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "The agency is committed to supporting rigorous scientific research on the potential medical uses of cannabis-derived products and working with product developers who are interested in bringing patients safe and effective, high quality products." TSC is a rare genetic disease that causes non-cancerous (benign) tumors to grow in the brain and other parts of the body like the eyes, heart, kidneys, lungs, and skin. TSC usually affects the central nervous system and can result in a combination of symptoms including seizures, developmental delay, and behavioral problems, although the signs and symptoms of the condition, as well as the severity of symptoms, vary widely. TSC affects about 1 in 6,000 people. Epidiolex's effectiveness for the treatment of seizures associated with TSC was established in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial where 148 patients out of a total of 224 in the study received Epidiolex. The study measured the change from baseline in seizure frequency. In the study, patients treated with Epidiolex had a significantly greater reduction in the frequency of seizures during the treatment period than patients who received placebo (inactive treatment). This effect was seen within eight weeks and remained consistent throughout the 16-week treatment period. The most common side effects that occurred in Epidiolex-treated patients with TSC in the clinical trial were: diarrhea, elevated liver enzymes, decreased appetite, sleepiness, fever, and vomiting. Additional side effects for patients with LGS, DS, or TSC include: liver injury, decreased weight, anemia, and increased creatinine. Epidiolex must be dispensed with a patient Medication Guide that describes important information about the drug's uses and risks. As is true for all drugs that currently treat epilepsy, including Epidiolex, the most serious risks may include an increase in suicidal thoughts and behavior, or thoughts of self-harm. Patients, their caregivers, and their families should be advised to monitor for any unusual changes in mood or behavior, such as worsening depression, suicidal thoughts or behavior. Patients, caregivers, and families should report behaviors of concern immediately to healthcare providers. Epidiolex also caused liver injury in some patients. Most cases were generally mild, but a risk of rare, but more severe liver injury exists. More severe liver injury can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, fatigue, anorexia, jaundice, and/or dark urine. The FDA granted Priority Review designation for this application. The approval of Epidiolex was granted to Greenwich Biosciences Inc., of Carlsbad, California. Media Contact: Lindsey O'Keefe, 240-731-9982 Consumer Inquiries: Email or 888-INFO-FDA The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products. SOURCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration Related Links http://www.fda.gov You never forget your first show dog. For Martha Hilbers, it was a dog named Taffy. The Hooper woman was still in grade school when her parents got her the little Shetland sheep dog. I was so excited and anxious to start working with her, she said. Only a couple years old, Taffy already had endured a rough past. Shed come from a place where a neighbor had picked on the little dog and threw balls at her. She was scared of men, mainly, Hilbers remembered. But Hilbers kept working with the timid animal, taking her to parks and dog shows. She eventually came out of it and I won my first showmanship class with her. She was a good dog, Hilbers said. Years later, Hilbers was at a show again this time as superintendent of the dog show at the Dodge County Fair in Scribner. A small group of dog owners and their canines waited patiently before for the show started Friday afternoon. Among the competitors was Catharyn Mahon, 14, of Fremont and her yellow Labrador retriever, Lilly. The 4-year-old dog eagerly jumped high for a treat before the competition. Later, Catharyn demonstrated how Lilly could jump over a hurdle or make her way through a colorful cloth tube on the agility course. Catharyn enjoys participating in the dog show. I think it makes Lilly look really pretty when we show and she loves it, Catharyn said. She has fun and shes always whining when we get to the show. Shes so excited. And the pup made several of what Catharyns mom, Liz, described as kangaroo jumps before the competition. Initially, Lilly would jump she was fed, Liz said. Catharyns brother, Kaleb Ream, 11, then actually taught Lilly to jump like she did on Friday straight up in the air. Meanwhile, Hilbers hovered over paperwork, greeted competitors and talked to show judge Tasia Weiland of Herman. As a youth, Hilbers showed dogs, cats and rabbits in 4-H. She later served as a judge at county fairs across the state. She was asked to judge the dog show for the Dodge County Fair. Then she was asked to run the dog show. Shes enjoyed it. I love doing it helping the kids and being with the dogs, Hilbers said. She recalled how her interest began. Hilbers had been anxious to be involved in 4-H after seeing her older sister, Nancy, participate. She was eager to train Taffy and, even years later, is happy that she was able to help the pup with a tough past. She trusted me enough that we were able to overcome her fear of men and people being mean to her, Hilbers said. Taffy wouldnt be Hilbers last dog. Hilbers parents bought two sibling Shelties. Hilbers got a Sheltie named Misty and her sister got one named Zach. They showed the dogs at the Cuming County Fair. She was very smart, Hilbers said of Misty. I could teach her almost anything. Hilbers couldnt get Misty to retrieve a ball. After all, Shelties are herding dogs, but Hilbers and Misty earned Reserve Grand Champion honors in obedience at the Nebraska State Fair in 1999. Misty lived to be 15 years old. On Friday, the Hilbers children Klayton, 15, Chaise, 12, and Raelin, 8, were getting ready to participate in the dog show with their German shorthaired pointers. Hilbers explained that her husband, Greg, likes to hunt so that played a factor in choosing what type of dogs to get. Klayton likes 4-H. It teaches you good leadership skills and how to have patience with animals, because they dont always listen to you, he said. But when Klayton calmly told his dog, Jade, to sit, the canine readily obeyed. Martha Hilbers believes youth can learn a lot from showing animals. They learn to respect their animals and other people like the judges, she said. Theyve got to talk to them (judges) and listen to them. Hilbers also believes 4-Hers get to meet and make new friends through the organization and its events. She smiles when thinking how she taught her friend Angela Paeper Sanderson of Thurston how to show animals. Theyd end up competing against each other at the fair, but Hilbers noted that it was friendly competition. Before Fridays competition, Hilbers mom, Sue Leimer of Uehling, helped set up the agility course, making the dog show a three-generation family event. And for Hilbers, it all started with a shy Sheltie named Taffy. 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. Staff at the Ellen DeGeneres' Show are 'freaking out' over the slew of allegations surrounding the titular host and her executives, and fear it could spell the end of the hit show. Insiders familiar with the show culture say the team is worried that allegations of a toxic work environment will force the longtime host to call it quits. And the show was rocked again this week after dozens of former staff made allegations of sexual assault against show producers. 'Staffers are texting and calling each other freaking out as they fear Ellen [DeGeneres] will quit or that the show will be cancelled,' a source told Us Weekly. 'The show feels done. It's going to be very hard to turn this around.' The insight comes as DeGeneres herself may soon be looking to call it quits amid claims she perpetuated a toxic work environment, DailyMail.com can reveal. Insiders familiar with the show culture say the team is worried that the sexual assault and toxic work environment allegations will convince the host to end the show DailyMail.com, can reveal that Ellen DeGeneres is telling executives at Telepictures and Warner Bros that she has had enough and wants to walk away from the show An insider at Telepictures tells DailyMail.com that the host is telling executives at Telepictures and Warner Bros that she has had enough and wants to walk away from the show. 'She feels she can't go on and the only way to recover her personal brand from this is to shut down the show,' they said. 'The truth is she knew what was going on, it's her show. The buck stops with her. She can blame every executive under the sun but Ellen is ultimately the one to blame.' On Friday, Ellen was nowhere to be seen as her wife Portia de Rossi was pictured out in Los Angeles amid the drama. The 47-year-old Australian actress - who has been married to Ellen since 2008 - went solo as she took the couple's three dogs for a walk. Portia failed to raise a smile as she shielded her eyes behind dark sunglasses while making her way to her car with the canines. On Friday, Ellen was nowhere to be seen as her wife Portia de Rossi stepped out in Los Angeles amid the drama The 47-year-old Australian actress - who has been married to Ellen since 2008 - went solo as she took the couple's three dogs for a walk Portia failed to raise a smile as she shielded her eyes behind dark sunglasses while making her way to her car with the canines. Where's Ellen? Portia has not spoken publicly on the scandal surrounding her wife's hit talk show Executive Producers of the Ellen DeGeneres Show Mary Connelly (left), Andy Lassner (center), and Ed Glavin have been accused of fostering a hostile work environment. 'If anyone had come to her or those three vile EPs [executive producers] to complain, they would've been fired,' a staffer said It comes as staff at the show are hitting back at her for shifting the blame to her executive producers in an apology memo sent this week. 'Don't think for a minute anything she has said in that apology means anything. She created and then enabled this toxic culture to go on for so long,' one staffer, who spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity, said. 'If anyone had come to her or those three vile [executive producers] to complain, they would've been fired.' 'Inside Telepictures we've had enough of her. She is a phony who does not practice what she preaches,' our Telepictures source said. 'The behavior of her show executives has been appalling, but [Ellen] is no better. In fact, she is the worst. It's outrageous that she is trying to pretend that this is all a shock to her. The fish rots from the head, and Ellen is the head.' Our Telepictures insider claims that Ellen 'hates coming to work' and 'struggles to be nice to people and has utter contempt for her audience.' 'She has been phoning it in for so long, and only staying for the money and celebrity it affords her,' they said. 'We've dealt with her BS for so many years, she's not innocent at all, she's not nice and the show is not filled with happiness.' The claims of Ellen's toxic work environment were revealed earlier this month by one current and 10 former employees of the daytime talk show who accused the three executive producers, Ed Glavin, Mary Connelly and Andy Lassner, of 'bullying.' Ellen came out with an apology after it was announced earlier this week that her show was now subject to a probe by WarnerMedia which will look into 'staff experiences on set'. However our source claims that the backlash may cloud the show's success in the future and it could be time to end things. 'At this point, there's really no way to save the show from this PR nightmare, so Ellen leaving may be the only way for this entire mess to go away. 'While it is our most profitable show in daytime, we no longer make the money we used to make from the show, as we have to pay her tens of millions of dollars per year to show up.' The insider says Telepictures will need to develop a new show and star quickly to take over the lucrative timeslot that Ellen currently holds. 'We thought our problems were with the cast upheaval at The Real, we had no idea that Ellen would implode during quarantine,' they added. In addition to these claims, the show was rocked again on Thursday when three dozen employees of the daytime talk show alleged that senior executives who work behind the scenes groped and kissed staffers, solicited one of them for oral sex, and were 'handsy with women.' Jonathan Norman, a co-executive producer, is alleged to have 'groomed' a former employee by taking him to concerts and showering him with other gifts and perks before attempting to perform oral sex on him. Kevin Leman, the show's head writer and executive producer, is alleged to have solicited oral sex from an employee. Others say they witnessed Leman grope another colleague. And Ed Glavin, an executive producer, allegedly 'had a reputation for being handsy with women,' according to former employees. The former staffers told BuzzFeed News that they believe the host knew that several of her senior showrunners and producers were alleged to have committed sexual misconduct against junior-level employees. DailyMail.com has reached out to the three men for comment. Warner Bros., the studio that runs the show, has declined to comment on the sexual harassment allegations, citing an ongoing internal investigation. 'She feels she can't go on and the only way to recover her personal brand from this is to shut down the show,' a source said of Ellen contemplating quitting her show. She's pictured on her show with 17-year-old pop star Billie Eilish Executive producer Andy Lassner tweeted with confidence on Thursday that 'nobody is going off the air'. He was one of the three executive producers accused of fostering a hostile work environment Executive producers (left to right) Jonathan Norman, Kevin Lenman and Ed Glavin were accused by over 30 former employees of sexual misconduct Ellen recently sent her staff a memo in which she wrote she was 'taking steps... to correct' issues with her employees after several complaints and an internal investigation into the supposed toxic working environment was launched. 'On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen Degeneres Show would be a place of happiness - no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry,' Ellen said in the memo. BULLYING, RACISM AND A 'TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENT': THE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST ELLEN Ten former and one current member of Ellen's staff alleged they were bullied, fired for attending family funerals or taking sick leave, while one woman claimed to have walked off the job after facing comments about her race. 'That 'be kind' bulls*** only happens when the cameras are on. It's all for show,' one anonymous staff member said. Staff said they were told not to talk to DeGeneres herself while she was on set, and that the day-to-day running of the show was left to producers. The employees said they did not have first-hand experience of DeGeneres being unpleasant, but said she needs to take more responsibility for how her employees are treated. However, allegations have mounted from other sources against the host herself - sparked by a Twitter thread from comedian Kevin T. Porter Calling DeGeneres 'notoriously one of the meanest people alive', he asked people for 'the most insane stories you've heard about Ellen being mean'. The tweet received 2,600 replies and saw Porter give $600 to an LA foodbank, after promising to donate $2 for every legitimate mean story. Claims included that staff are required to chew gum before speaking to her because of her 'sensitive nose', and that she polices staff lunch orders and bans anyone from eating fish or meat. Separately, security worker Tom Majercak - who was assigned to be Ellen's bodyguard at the 2014 Oscars - said she was 'sly' and 'demeaning' to him. 'Ellen is the one person that I've been assigned to - and I've been assigned to quite a few celebrities - that has never taken the time to say hi to me,' he said. 'She's not the person she portrays to be that she's playing off of society.' Advertisement 'As we've grown exponentially, I've not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I'd want them done. Clearly some didn't,' she added. 'That will now change and I'm committed to ensuring this does not happen again.' But multiple staff members at the show tell DailyMail.com they are not buying Ellen's apology and are calling on her to call it quits. One staffer said, 'She's only addressing this now because the publicity is so bad for her and her BS brand of happiness and kindness. Ellen can throw everyone else under the bus, but the buck stops with her. 'Whenever she'd tell viewers to choose kindness, I'd throw up a little in my mouth because she always chose the opposite,' they added. Among the allegations was one made by a Black woman who claimed she suffered a number of 'microaggressions,' her request for a raise was ignored and she was accused of 'walking around looking resentful and angry' after asking for staff members to undergo diversity and inclusion training. Another former employee alleged they were fired after taking medical leave for one month following a suicide attempt. Even Everybody Loves Raymond actor Brad Garrett chimed in Thursday in a tweet, saying, 'Sorry but it comes from the top @TheEllenShow. Know more than one who were treated horribly by her. Common knowledge.' Our source said: 'She was happy to put her name on the show, yet she let those three executive producers do whatever they wanted. The fish rots from the head and Ellen and the three of them are now rotting.' They also claimed Ellen and her executive producers will be on a 'witch hunt' now to find who spoke out against them. 'Don't think for a second that there won't be a witch hunt to find out who went public with the worst kept secret in television,' they said. 'Ellen is mean. She'll want vengeance for all of this coming out.' A popular claim that has circulated is that staff members were instructed not to speak to Ellen, and our source corroborated that claim. 'She kept herself isolated from the staff. You can't go up and talk to her, heck, you can't even get within a mile of her on the lot,' they said. Current employees are now calling on Ellen to call it quits. 'Warner Bros should cancel our show or swap her out for a fun celebrity host. Viewers have been fed lies for years. The Ellen you see on TV is disingenuous and inauthentic. She's a horrible person who has done nothing to support 99% of the people who work for her. 'Yet they won't cancel it as all they care about is money and the show is a cash cow. 'It's time for Ellen to leave TV. She's done enough damage. They should replace her with someone wonderful like Jen Aniston. She's always a dream when she comes by - gracious, kind and funny and we're actually allowed to look her in the eyes!!' Everybody Loves Raymond actor Brad Garrett chimed saying in a tweet, 'Sorry but it comes from the top @TheEllenShow. Know more than one who were treated horribly by her. Common knowledge' Employees have claimed they were instructed not to talk to her if they saw her in the building Now former staffers have accused Ellen of 'turning a blind eye' to rampant sexual misconduct by senior-level producers on her hit daytime TV talk show A source initially told Buzzfeed that the executive producers feel that 'everybody who works at The Ellen Show is lucky to work there: 'So if you have a problem, you should leave because we'll hire someone else because everybody wants to work here.'' Executive Producer Andy Lassner tweeted with confidence on Thursday that 'nobody is going off the air'. Our source said: 'Many of us have a theory that Ellen behaves this way as a mechanism to protect herself. She was so damaged when her sitcom was canceled after she came out that she chose to keep people at a distance in order not to get hurt should this show be canceled. Yet 17 seasons later it's still on the air and she's so powerful now she thought she could do whatever she wanted.' One staffer told DailyMail.com: 'Even though our show is crumbling around us, it's liberating for everything to come out into the open.' Since the start of the pandemic, students have suffered from the consequences of the lockdown and restrictions. The issue of closed borders was just one of the problems the Association of Luxembourg Student Unions Acel had to deal with. Acel stood up for students and tried to negotiate the best possible conditions for them. The association has received a number of complaints from Luxembourgish students since the start of the pandemic. Many of them have been severely impacted by restrictions imposed by the countries in which they were studying. The president of Acel, Sven Bettendorf, stated: "We noticed a clear lack of information as well as a lot of uncertainty. Many were afraid and asked themselves how they could continue their studies, or if they could return to Luxembourg. This was obviously a big issue and we tried to inform as many students as possible and help them make decisions like if they should stay in Luxembourg or at their place abroad". Border closures have massively impacted students' mobility. Those studying in Germany have been affected the most. Thanks to cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, information pertaining to the closures was provided to these students as quickly as possible. However, a letter from Acel to the German Ministry of the Interior remains unanswered to this day. Another problem: Covid-19 has forced many students to extend their studies by a semester. The association reached an agreement with the Ministry of Higher Education, which granted affected students short-term financial help as well as an additional grant for those who have had to extend their studies. "Grants have been extended allowing for longer studies due to students being forced to prolong their studies because of the corona crisis. There were a lot of problems there, e.g. students not being able to write their exams, or collect their ECTS. This forced many of them to extend their studies at their respective universities which in turn required action here in Luxembourg to give them the opportunity to stay longer". Another subject on Acel's agenda was fixed-term contracts. A number of students were not allowed to go to work during the crisis and were refused payment by their employers. Acel advised students to insist on their rights, as the law is on their side. Both parties to a fixed-term contract have to respect their agreement. The association stated that it wants a joint European solution to the problem. As Acel's vice-president, Benjamin Kinn, explained: "A uniform solution, first of all in Germany in order to avoid every federal state doing as it pleases. Even inside Germany regulations differed from state to state and this is why we would prefer to see a European solution. I mean France had a completely different set of rules during the corona crisis, you had to print out and fill in a document in order to leave your flat". Students were reminded to contact Acel if they have any questions or problems. Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot Jaisalmer: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get the alleged attempt to topple his government stopped and said he is open to welcoming back the Congress rebels led by Sachin Pilot. Gehlot said that if the Congress high command forgives the dissidents, he will embrace them. Advertisement Ashok GehlotGehlot said he will do whatever the Congress leadership wants and gave the party the credit for becoming the Rajasthan chief minister thrice. We have no quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government. "Modi should get stopped whatever is going on in Rajasthan, the chief minister said. Advertisement He claimed that democracy is under threat in the country and the Union Home Ministry is after his government in the state. Ashok Gehlot and Sachin PilotGehlot recalled that he had informed Narendra Modi about the political situation in the state through a letter and a telephone conversation. He said he will write another letter to Modi asking him to call a video conference of all chief ministers again to review the Covid-19 situation. Advertisement He said adequate testing for coronavirus is not taking place in some states while Rajasthan has increased its testing capacity to 40,000 per day. Coronavirus We have done excellent Covid management in the state. The recovery rate is good, the death rate is less than 1 per cent, he said. On August 5, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the first foundation brick for the Ram temple in Ayodhya, India will look forward to a fresh start. A new beginning beyond the protracted, communally charged Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute. An issue which had somewhat constricted the countrys socio-political discourse for about four decades. However, away from politics, the legal battle over the piece of land in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid once stood, will surely go down in history as one of the longest ones of our country. On November 9 last year, the Supreme Courts five-judge bench headed by the-then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi delivered its historic judgement in the case that has continued to surface and linger on in some form in different courts from the time of Indias independence in 1947, and before that for almost 90 years during British rule. The SC in a unanimous verdict ordered for handing over of the disputed 2.77-acre land to a trust that would handle the construction of the temple. The trust was to be constituted by the central government. As the top courts verdict finally brought closure in the matter, the legal ups and downs, manoeuvrings, and decisions, all have become part of history. Here is a timeline of how the dispute began and how it gradually moved to the Supreme Court, which in turn brought about the conclusion. THE BEGINNING 1857: It was the year of Indias first struggle for independence against the British Raj. However, the seeds of another controversy were sown quietly some 130 km from Lucknow in Faizabad district. The temple town of Ayodhya fell under this district. A petition was submitted before the magistrate of Faizabad by Maulvi Muhammad Asghar, the muezzin of Babri Masjid, alleging that the eastern part of the courtyard of the mosque had been forcibly taken over by the Mahant of Hanuman Garhi. Hanuman Garhi was an important centre of religious life in Ayodhya, especially for Vaishnav Bairagis. The complaint by the muezzin marked the beginning of a legal dispute over the place. However, it was still several years before the land on which the mosque stood was to be officially declared as disputed land. 1859: The British government made its first intervention in the matter, while hearing the petition filed in 1857 and keeping in mind the regional conflict. The administration got a wall built that separated the places of worship for Muslims and Hindus. The Hindus got entry to the courtyard through the east gate, while the Muslims had access to the mosque from the northern side. 1860-1884: During this period, the Muslim side filed similar petitions like it did in 1857 and complained about the increasing interference of some local seers and sadhus and illegal occupation of land. These petitions were made in 1860, 1877, 1883 and 1884. All of them were rejected. 1885: The first legal representation was made by someone from the Hindu side. Mahant Raghubar Das filed a suit to gain legal title to the land and for permission to construct a temple on the chabutara (raised platform) in the eastern courtyard. The petitioner claimed himself to be the mahant of the janmasthan (birthplace) of Lord Ram and said the chabutara was the Lords birthplace. Hence, according to this first representation, the 'chabutara' and not the land where the actual mosque stood, was claimed to be Rams birthplace. 1886: The suit filed by Das was dismissed. However, rulers of the day had started seeing it as a Hindu-Muslim controversy of significant proportion. 1870-1923: As the dispute spread further, several official publications of the time started taking note of it. It was even mentioned in some of the gazettes published at the time. A stone marker reading No 1 Ram Janmahoomi was placed at the main entrance of the mosque. FROM BRITISH RAJ TO INDEPENDENT INDIA Dispute Intensifies December 22-23, 1949: On the intervening night of December 22-23, idols of Ram and Lakshman were placed inside Babri Masjid. A crowd built up and started performing 'kirtan' (religious songs) inside the mosque. December 29, 1949: A judge of Faizabad district court declared Babri Masjid a disputed property and ordered that status quo be maintained. Muslims were barred from entering the mosque and its main gate was locked. Hindus got permission for darshan from a side gate and four pujaris were employed with access to idols. January 16, 1950: A member of the Hindu Mahasabha, Gopal Singh Visharad, filed a civil suit, seeking permission for worship without obstruction and permanent ban on removal of idols. 1959: The Nirmohi Akhara filed a suit claiming that the entire structure be transferred to it as it was a temple and not a mosque. December 18, 1961: The Sunni Central Waqf Board filed a suit demanding that Babri Masjid be handed over to it. February, 1986: Locks of Babri Masjid opened by orders of the district judge of Faizabad. 1987: Suits withdrawn from Faizabad and transferred to the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court. The suit filed by Visharad became the number one suit. Another suit (number two) was filed by Paramhans Ramchandra Das (withdrawn later). The third suit was the one filed by Nirmohi Akhara and the fourth one was by the waqf board. 1989: Ram Lalla himself became a party. The fifth suit was filed by one Deoki Nandan Agarwal in the name of Ram Lalla Virajman. Agarwal filed it as a sakha (friend) of Ram Lalla. DEMOLITION AND THEREAFTER December 6, 1992: Babri Masjid demolished by thousands of Hindu kar sevaks (volunteers) even as helpless security forces watched the structure being brought down. Two FIRs were filed the same day. One of them (crime number 197) was lodged at 5.15pm against the lakhs of karsevaks for the offence of demolition. The second FIR (crime number 198) was filed against eight individuals, namely LK Advani, MM Joshi, Uma Bharti, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, VH Dalmia, Vinay Katiyar and Sadhvi Ritambhara. They were accused of making provocative and inflammatory speeches before the demolition. The cases were filed at the Ram Janmabhoomi police station. December 16, 1992: The Centre formed the one-man commission of Justice Manmohan Singh Librahan to look into the sequence of events leading to the demolition and all the facts and circumstances relating to the events that transpired in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid Complex on December 6. January 7, 1993: The President of India, through an ordinance, issued orders for acquisition of certain areas around the disputed site. It was later re-enacted as an act of Parliament. On the same day of issuing the ordinance, the President also referred it to the Supreme Court for its advisory opinion. 1993-2002: Hearing gained pace in the title suit case in the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court. A long-drawn battle began as parties concerned started presenting their arguments. August 1, 2002: Focus shifted back to the title suit as the high court ordered the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to initiate excavation at the disputed site. Dec 2002-August 2003: ASI began excavation at the disputed site on December 30, 2002. It did a preliminary survey and submitted its report to the ASI director general. It suggested a variety of anomalies ranging from 0.5m to 5m in depth that could be associated with some ancient and contemporary structures. On the basis of the preliminary findings, a detailed digging and examination was started. The ASI submitted its report in two volumes before the court in August 2003. VERDICT THAT NO PARTY ACCEPTED July 26, 2010: A three-judge bench of the Allahabad High Court, comprising Justices SU Khan, Sudhir Agarwal and DV Sharma, reserved their order on the Ayodhya land title suit. September 30, 2010: The three-judge bench delivered the much-awaited judgment. The court divided the disputed land equally between the three major parties concerned, i.e., the Sunni Waqf Board, Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla Virajman. However, none of the parties was satisfied with the verdict. MATTER IN SUPREME COURT May 9, 2011: Appeals against the high court orders came up for mentioning in the Supreme Court. Almost all the parties concerned filed appeals against the high court order. Later, the apex court put a stay on the HC order. 2011-2016: Its a period of comparative quiet even as voices in the political arena continued to rise for a judgement in the case pending before the SC. FINAL COUNTDOWN 2017-2019: First, under Chief Justice Deepak Misra and then, under CJI Ranjan Gogoi, the apex court shifted focus towards the title dispute case. Justice Misra retired in 2018 before regular hearing in the case could begin. 2018: After assuming office in October 2018, CJI Ranjan Gogoi expressed his willingness for a speedy hearing and judgment in the long-pending case. January, 2019: The CJI constituted a five-judge bench, including himself, to begin hearing in the case. LAST EFFORTS AT MEDIATION March 2019: The Supreme Court bench hearing the Ayodhya matter constituted a three-member mediation panel, comprising (retired) SC judge FM Khalifulah, Art of Living head Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and senior advocate and trained mediator Sriram Panchu. August 2019: On August 2, the mediation committee informed the Ayodhya bench that the parties concerned had failed to reach an agreement. The Supreme Court then fixed August 6 for commencement of day-to-day hearing in the matter. DAY-TO-DAY HEARING October 16, 2019: Starting August, the bench regularly took up daily hearings of the case for 40 days. October 16 was fixed as the last date for the parties to submit their argument. The legal battle that had continued in courts of independent India for almost 70 years reached culmination with hearing being completed in the countrys top-most court. JUDGEMENT DAY November 9, 2019: Five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justice DY Chandrachud, SA Bobde, S Abdul Nazir and Ashok Bhushan deliver the much awaited judgement in the case. It was a unanimous decision. The bench ordered for allocation of the entire disputed land of 2.77 acres for the construction of a temple. The union government was to constitute a trust to oversee it. The court in its judgement observed that archaeological evidence from the ASI showed that Babri Masjid was constructed on a structure whose architecture was indigenous and non-Islamic. The court also said that Muslim parties including the Sunni waqf board had failed to establish the exclusive possession of the disputed land. The bench also ordered for allocation of 5 acres of land to the waqf board in the district of Ayodhya itself, for the possible construction of a mosque. Even as the way for temple construction was cleared, the court also ruled that the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and its desecration in 1949 was in violation of the law. U.S. Forces received a brazen notice from the Chinese air force after it sent a warning to the U.S. Navy. This bold move indicates that China is not intimidated by U.S. presence. The PLA Air Force had live firing exercises in the South China Sea. A small number of jet fighters flew in Woody Island as a response to US exercises in the area. The naval drills and freedom of navigation exercises conducted by the US Forces have made China more jittery according to SCMP. During the exercises conducted by the People's Liberation Army Southern Theatre Command, 3000 missiles were used to simulate attacks on other ships. State media in China touted the exercises, but they were secretive over the exact location. The CCTV website posted the images of the drills with JH-7 bombers and J-11B fighter jets. In actual encounters with U.S. planes, the crafts will be heavily armed and loaded with more fuel, making the drills more plausible in an actual combat scenario. Washington slams China's claims The U.S. slammed China's illegal maritime claims in the South China Sea. China is hungry for resources and is willing to clog up shipping lanes and monopolize resources for all the ASEAN nations, as their own sovereignty. Chinese military leaders are threatening more exercises that involved targets that don't fire back, according to Reuters. One Hong Kong-based military commentator, Song Zhongping, said the exercises are targeted at the US FONOPs that have been sailing with impunity while the PLA took a step back. They are even saying that Chinese bombers are trained to battle against U.S. combat air patrol screens that protect American ships. Also read: Vanessa Guillen's Killers Burn, Pour Cement on her Corpse to Cover Up Their Crime China also developed the non-stealth J-16, which is another upgrade over the JH-7. More drills of the PLA will be held to deal with the more advance American airplanes as tension escalates between the two nations. Zhou Chenming, associated with the Yuan Wang Military Science and Technology Institute in Beijing said that naval drills and air force drills will prep the PLA to repel forces like the U.S. Navy and Air Force with the latest and modern technologies, as mentioned in Yahoo. American naval forces have the most advanced aircraft carriers and combat ships with nuclear-powered submarines, and the stealth craft like the F-22, B-2, F-35 as the most capable war weapons deployed. The touted J-20 has not been tested or documented despite the claims. It can match the F-15 which has gotten an upgrade to the F-22 Raptor. Also, the rumored replacement for the J-20, another stealth plane, is in planning stages only. There are many factors that give the PLA Air Force a disadvantage. For one, they have no catapults that can launch fully loaded jets which shortens the range and combat capacity of Chinese planes. Another is the PLA Airforce needs the airbases in the purloined islands in the SCS to refuel and rearm. U.S. Carrier strike groups have all the support for its air wing, even electronic warfare, and aerial refueling as well. Comparison between the J-11B and the F-15 which is updated to the F-15X, plus the F-18 Super Hornet that has not been put to the test. Related article: Man Fatally Shoots Wife and Mother-In-Law Because of a Misplaced Gun Magazine @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. By National Weather Service Aug. 01, 2020 | 09:11 AM | PADUCAH July and August are undisputedly the hottest months of the year in Paducah. Both months have average highs of 89 or 90 degrees all month long, with no real break in the heat until the second half of September.That makes the temperatures this week all the more remarkable.The National Weather Service expects Paducah's first day in August to fall well short of even 80 degrees, at around 76. Sunday and Monday should return to the low 80s, but then much of the rest of next week could again stay in the comfortable 70s all day.Those numbers are actually in the neighborhood of the all-time marks for cool August temperatures. Each of Paducah's coldest highs for the first week of the month are in the 70s, and the NWS forecast looks to be within a few degrees of the marks for Tuesday and Wednesday (see link below.)Nightly lows this week could also be 10 to 15 degrees below normal, even as low at the upper 50s on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. However, the all-time lows for Paducah of 54 and 52 degrees look to be safe for the time being. On the Net: Arunachal Pradesh on Saturday reported its highest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases as 107 more people, including 40 security personnel, tested positive for the disease, taking the state''s tally to 1,591, a Health Department official said. Of the fresh cases, 22 were reported from the Capital Complex region, 38 from Changlang district, 14 from East Siang, 12 from East Kameng, 11 from Namsai, four from Longding and one each from Lower Dibang Valley, Lower Siang, Tirap, Papum Pare and West Kameng, State Surveillance Officer Dr L Jampa said. "Forty security personnel of various central paramilitary forces -37 from Changlang and one each from Papum Pare, Namsai and Tirap - are among fresh patients," he said. All, barring three, are asymptomatic and have been shifted to COVID Care Centres, Jampa said. A total of 91 patients were discharged from various hospitals on Friday, he said. Arunachal Pradesh now has 670 active cases, while 918 people have recovered from the disease and three died of it. The Capital Complex region, comprising Itanagar, Naharlagun, Nirjuli and Banderdewa areas, has the highest number of active COVID-19 cases at 247, followed by Changlang (120), East Siang and Namsai (39 each), Tirap (36), East Kameng (35), Tawang (29) Papum Pare (49), Tirap (43), Tawang (29) and West Siang (27), the official said Arunachal Pradesh witnessed a spurt in coronavirus cases after the residents of the state started returning from other parts of the country during the nationwide lockdown. A total of 1,400 people have tested positive for the infection in July, Jampa said. The state government has conducted 81,865 tests for coronavirus so far, he added. Arunachal Pradesh reported its first COVID-19 case on April 2 and the patient recovered from the disease on April 16. The state registered its second case on May 24. When a coronavirus lockdown confined Malaysians to their homes, street traders selling durians moved their pungent produce online -- and have been enjoying an unexpected spike in demand. Grown across tropical Southeast Asia, the durian is hailed by aficionados as the "king of fruits" due to its creamy, golden flesh and bittersweet flavour. But detractors complain of its overpowering smell, comparing it to rotting food or stale vomit, and it is banned in many hotels and on public transport. The traditional roadside stalls where Malaysians have for decades enjoyed the smelly fruits were, along with most other businesses, forced to close during the lockdown. Motorbike and car deliveries were still allowed, however, and companies such as Dulai Fruits Enterprise turned to social media to market their frozen durians. Managing director Eric Chan said he had been sceptical the move would work as Malaysians typically prefer fruit fresh, and a previous bid to sell them online had limited success. But the company has seen roaring trade, with Chan telling AFP: "By the fifth day of our sales, we (had) hundreds of orders every single day." Durians in Malaysia can cost more than 60 ringgit ($14) a kilogram, and there are 137 officially registered varieties ranging from "Musang King" to "Black Thorn" and "Red Prawn". Durian trader Top Fruits has been selling prepared durian in sealed, 300-gram (10-ounce) packs on Facebook, and was making about 80 deliveries a day during the lockdown, which began mid-March. Managing director Tan Sue Sian said customers had come to see the advantages of having the fruit delivered to their door. "You don't have to worry about your car being smelly" after transporting the fruit, said Tan. - 'Here to stay' - Online sales of the fruit in Malaysia have since slowed after restrictions were eased at the start of May, as durian lovers gradually returned to outdoor stalls. Malaysia has seen a relatively small outbreak of COVID-19, recording almost 9,000 cases and 124 deaths. Online orders are still only a fraction of business for durian traders, with the bulk going to exporters -- the fruit is particularly popular in China -- and local shops, but they are hopeful about future prospects. "There is room to grow, and room to grow fast," Tan said. Lindsay Gasik, who has written a number of books about the fruit, said it was about time that buying durians online took off. "I think once the supply chain and logistics got into place, people realised that it wasn't that difficult to sell durians online," she told AFP. She said aside from making it easier for people to get their durian fix via deliveries, online selling was also exposing them to more varieties and farms. "It isn't just a better situation for customers, it is also for the farmers," she said. "Selling durians online is definitely here to stay." In a world and a nation that some days seem as though theyve gone mad, Im spending a disproportionate amount of time wondering how and when well get through this global pandemic and national upheaval, and what well look like when we come out on the other side. Because I do believe we will come out intact, even though now and then my faith wavers. And I wonder: -- Are we crazy for sending children, teachers and support staff back to their classrooms? I ask that question because Ive noticed that when school boards, state and federal education officials, politicians and health experts hold press conferences to announce their plans to reopen schools, theyre all wearing face masks and standing or sitting at least six feet away from each other. Ive been a kid and youve been a kid, and teachers have been kids, and all those officials and experts have been kids, too. Can we really expect teachers to be able to corral children and corral a coronavirus at the same time? So yes, I wonder if we should be reopening schools right now, and I wonder if the public understands that these best-laid reopening plans are ideas and contingencies, not guarantees. As the late Dwight Eisenhower -- Supreme Allied Commander in World War II and then president of the United States -- said, In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. The key, as Eisenhower knew and were about to find out, is how schools react and adjust once the battle begins. -- I wonder, too, if anybody in his or her right mind accepts the suggestion that we might want to delay the November elections. The United States has held elections in good times and in bad times, during a civil war and two world wars, in a worldwide depression, while cities burned and our troops were mired in Southeast Asia in a war that our leaders knew we would not win, after earthquakes and hurricanes and during a global flu outbreak that killed more than half a million Americans. Postpone the elections? No. Just no. -- Permit me to also wonder why some people wear their masks below their noses. Hello-o-o? Were they not paying attention in basic high school biology? Maybe not, or maybe thats their way of acting like a petulant child who thinks to himself or herself, OK, Ill wear a mask because you say I have to, but anytime I think youre not looking, I wont wear it correctly, so there. -- Perhaps I have saved the worst for last: I wonder if I can forgive myself for the times Ive failed to vote. Truth is, back when I worked full time and commuted to a nearby city and had children to hurry home to and an elderly mother to check on and a husband who traveled for a living, every once in a while I didnt make it to the polls before they closed at 7 p.m. I had lots of excuses, as you can see, but as he eulogized the late Congressman John Lewis the other day, former President Barack Obama called me out: We cannot treat voting as an errand to run if we have some time, he said. We have to treat it as the most important action we can take on behalf of democracy. Hes right. It is that important, and what I did was irresponsible -- not to mention hypocritical, too, seeing as how I was an editorial writer who frequently scolded readers for low voter turnouts. I wont do it again. People like John Lewis fought to extend voting rights and access to all Americans, and our forebears fought and bled to protect our democratic ideals. When we do make it to the other side of this global pandemic and national upheaval -- and we will -- may we all remember that its up to each one of us to exercise those rights and honor those ideals. Frances Coleman is a freelance writer living in Baldwin County, Alabama. Email her at fcoleman1953@gmail.com and like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/prfrances. An inspection of a privately run old-age home in outer Delhis Nihal Vihar on Friday night has revealed that 19 senior citizens were housed in unhygienic and pitiful conditions, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) said on Saturday. The inspection was carried out jointly by the women and child development (WCD) minister Rajendra Pal Gautam and DCW chief Swati Maliwal. The two had visited the shelter home after receiving a complaint on the 181 womens helpline. The team, on reaching the shelter saw that 19 senior citizens, many of them specially abled, were living in a small room There was no separate living space for men and women, and several of them were forced to share beds, a statement from the DCW said, while adding that many inmates had defecated in their bed. A DCW member said one elderly inmate allegedly told them that she was tied and beaten by the shelter home officials when she tried to leave to her daughters home. The woman was immediately rescued from the home and was safely sent to her daughter, the DCW said. Minister Gautam said he has directed the social welfare department to rehabilitate the residents and are also verifying the details of the owner of the home. The residents will be moved either to the Dwarka or Rohini old age home facilities over the next two days. We will take strict action against the owner of the home, he said. A senior police officer, who did not wish to be named, said a police team went to check the premises on being alerted by the DCW. But no inmate filed a formal complaint. In one case, we arranged to transfer an elderly woman to her daughters house, the official said. The old age home is located in Chander Vihar, outer Delhi. Bittoo (goes by a single name), who manages the home, said he started running the shelter for the destitute and abandoned elderly people around 10 years ago. I took this room on rent and made it into a home. A DCW team raided the home on Friday after which the police also came. I dont take any money from any individual or organisation to run the home. Some well-wishers donate ration and other items. All these allegations of beating up the elderly and keeping them here forcefully are completely wrong. There are many whom we rescue from the streets. There are some who have been abandoned by families. We do not have enough money and are able to provide our inmates meals only twice a day. We had sought help from local politicians, but none came forward, Bittoo, who manufactures and sells printing material to make a living, said. Susheel Malik, vice-president of the trust that runs the home, said theirs is a non-profit organisation . The allegations are completely false. Men and women sleep in different beds and are cared for. Some are too old and unwell that they defecate the bed, but the caretaker cleans them up each time, he said. . SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Advertisement Muslims around the world continue to celebrate Eid al-Adha as they slaughter livestock amid scaled back festivities because of the coronavirus pandemic. Today marks the second of the four-day Feast of the Sacrifice, which coincides with the last days of the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. Eid al-Adha commemorates Muslims' belief that prophet Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, before God replaced his son with a ram to be sacrificed instead. Many Muslims who can afford it sacrifice cattle as part of the celebrations, as well as camels, goats, sheep or rams. Muslim devotees slaughter cattle during the Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice, in Lahore Muslims attend prayers at a mosque in Peshawar in Pakistan. Eid al-Adha is the holiest of the two Muslims holidays celebrated each year and it marks the yearly Muslim pilgrimage Hajj to visit Mecca People struggle to control a bull for slaughtering for Eid al-Adha in Karachi, Pakistan Muslims wearing face masks prepare to slaughter a cow during an Eid al-Adha festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia The meat is distributed to the poor to commemorate the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, but the economic crisis means that many cannot afford livestock. Rule of the sacrifice include that the animal can only be slaughtered after the Eid prayer, and that is has to be an adult at the time it is slaughtered. Water should also be offered to the animal before the time of the slaughter, and every animal that is sacrificed must be completely healthy without any physical defects. The coronavirus has cast a shadow over this Eid, with fears of another spike in infections prompting authorities to warn people to minimise movement, avoid cattle markets and refrain from public gatherings to witness the slaughter of sacrificial animals. Pakistani muslim devotees slaughtering cows after offer Eid al-Adha the Festival of Sacrifice (Qurbani) prayer at Jamia Naeemia Mosque in Lahore Children look on at the ritual sacrifice at the at Jamia Naeemia Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan Blood fills the atrium of the at Jamia Naeemia Mosque in Lahore Dead cattle are lined up on the ground as other live animals are hauled in to be slaughtered A bull bucks as it is sacrificed at the at Jamia Naeemia Mosque in Lahore Eid al-Fitr, marked in May, was followed by a spike in Covid-19 infections with new daily cases. Mosques have imposed strict hygiene rules to prevent the virus from spreading at Eid prayers, while families in many countries are unable to gather as they normally would. Kosovo and the United Arab Emirates have also closed mosques to limit the spread of the virus. In Lebanon, Muslim worshippers prayed in mosques under tight security, despite a partial lockdown imposed Thursday that will continue until August 10. A man checks a cow's head after slaughtering it during the sacrificial Eid al-Adha festival in Banda Aceh A Kashmiri Muslim butcher holds head of a sheep after slaughtering it during Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha in Srinagar Men gather to slaughter a camel in celebration of Eid al-Adha in Peshawar in Pakistan The pandemic has pushed millions of people around the world closer to the brink of poverty, making it harder for many to fulfill the religious tradition of purchasing livestock. In Somalia, the price of meat has slightly increased. Abdishakur Dahir, a civil servant in Mogadishu, said that for the first time he won't be able to afford goat for Eid because of the impact of the virus on work. 'I could hardly buy food for my family,' Dahir said. 'We are just surviving for now. Life is getting tougher by the day.' Butchers load a truck with meat from livestock during Eid Al-Adha on in Baku, Azerbaijan A man helps slaughter sheep for Eid al-Adha, which typically sees meat distributed to the poor, in Kabul, Afghanistan Pictured above, devotees prepare to sacrifice a camel in Lahore as part of their celebrations Muslim devotees prepare to slaughter a camel during the Eid al-Adha or the 'Festival of Sacrifice' in Peshawar Muslim pilgrims keep their distance as they walk around the holy Kaaba while performing the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca's Grand Mosque, which coincides with Eid al-Adha People transport a goat by rickshaw for the start of Eid al-Adha in Mumbia, India, which is taking place in the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic which has pushed many people closer to poverty Iranians buy sheep at a livestock market in Tehran today in order to slaughter them for Eid al-Adha A man carries a sacrificial goat which is typically shared out to celebrate Eid al-Adha in Denpasar, Indonesia The hajj pilgrimage has also been drastically impacted by the virus. Last year, some 2.5 million pilgrims took part, but this year as few as 10,000 pilgrims already residing in Saudi Arabia were allowed to take part. The Saudi Health Ministry said there have been no cases of the Covid-19 illness among this year's pilgrims. The government took numerous precautions, including testing pilgrims for the virus, monitoring their movement with electronic wristbands and requiring them to quarantine before and after the hajj. Pilgrims were selected after applying through an online portal, and all had to be between the ages of 20 and 50 years old. Sheikh Abdullah al-Manea, member of the Supreme Council of Senior Scholars of Saudi Arabia, used the hajj sermon Friday to praise the kingdom's leadership for their 'wise decision' to limit the number of pilgrims and protect human life. 'We thank the positive role of Muslims around the world that have complied with the regulations of the country to protect them from the spread of this virus, which leads to the protection of Mecca and Medina,' the sheikh said. NHS hospitals have been warned they could face a fine if they are not at 90 per cent of their usual capacity levels by October. The NHS will still be able to access private hospital beds until March, but a letter from NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens, said health services must aim to deliver a huge increase in care in NHS hospitals. The letter sets out plans to address as much of the NHS's waiting list as possible before winter and to reduce the NHS alert level from four to three, The Times reported. Data from NHS England last month revealed that only 54,550 patients were admitted to hospital for treatment in May, which was a fraction of the 295,000 recorded this time last year. NHS hospitals have been warned they could face a fine if they are not at 90 per cent of their usual capacity levels by October A lot of routine care was paused due to the coronavirus pandemic and hospitals are currently thought to be running around 60 per cent of their usual capacity. Thousands of non-urgent operations were cancelled at the peak of the pandemic and analysts revealed the NHS faces an 'enormous challenge' in catching up with the backlog of patients whose treatments were postponed. Sir Simon's letter, co-signed by chief operating officer Amanda Pritchard outlines that hospitals should aim for 80 per cent of last year's capacity in September. This will then rise to 90 per cent in October. A target of 100 per cent from September was outlined for outpatient first appointments and follow-ups. These can be done virtually or face-to-face. This year, 1.45 million patients have had to wait at least 18 weeks to start hospital treatment for routine operations such as hip and knee replacements. This is the worst since 2007 and more than double last May. Thousands of non-urgent operations were cancelled at the peak of the pandemic and the NHS faces an 'enormous challenge' in catching up with the backlog of postponed treatments Patients waiting for cancer treatment have also faced long waiting times with 47.9 per cent of diagnosed patients not starting life-saving treatments within two months. At the end of June, hospital bosses warned the coronavirus crisis could mean the NHS are unable to return to normal for as long as four years due to the treatment backlog. Experts said they believed the waiting list for operations could rise from 4.2 million people to 10 million by the end of the year. Group chief executive of Warwick hospital, George Eliot hospital in Nuneaton and County hospital in Hereford Glen Burley said: 'It could be four years before waiting times get back to pre-Covid levels. We could see that. Its certainly years, not months.' NEW YORK and TORONTO, July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. ("iAnthus" or the "Company") (CSE: IAN) (OTCQX: ITHUF), which owns, operates, and partners with regulated cannabis operations across the United States, reports its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2019. The Company's Financial Statements for the year ended December 31, 2019 and the related Management's Discussion & Analysis can be accessed on the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website. Additional Business Updates Mutual Termination of Acquisition The Company and WSCC, Inc. ("Sierra Well") announce the mutual termination of the merger agreement previously announced on September 19, 2019. As a result of the prolonged timeline to achieve the necessary conditions to close combined with the adverse market conditions surrounding the industry and broader economy, the Company and Sierra Well agreed that it was in the best of interest of both parties to terminate the transaction. Pursuant to the terms of the agreement, no termination fee was payable by either party. Q1 2020 Interim Filings Update The Company had previously announced on July 15, 2020 that it had failed to file its interim financial statements for the quarter ended March 31, 2020, the management's discussion and analysis related thereto and the related certificates required by NI 52-109 (the "Interim Filings") prior to the filing deadline on July 14, 2020. As a result, the Company continues to be subject to a cease trade order (the "CTO") issued by the Ontario Securities Commission on June 22, 2020. The CTO affects trading in all securities of the Company by securityholders of the Company, in each jurisdiction in Canada in which the Company is a reporting issuer and will remain in effect until such time as the Company has filed the Interim Filings. If the Interim Filings are made within 90 days of the date of the CTO, such filings would constitute the Company's application to have the CTO revoked. The Company expects to file the Interim Filings on or before the 90-day deadline. Receipt of Statement of Claim A proposed class action was issued on July 23, 2020 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto against iAnthus, iAnthus' former CEO and iAnthus' CFO, by Blue Sky Realty Corporation. The plaintiff seeks to certify the proposed class action on behalf of all persons, other than any executive level employee of the Company and their immediate families, who acquired the Company's common shares in the secondary market on or after May 30, 2019, and who held some or all of those securities until after the close of trading on April 5, 2020. Among other things, the plaintiff alleges statutory and common law misrepresentation, and seeks an unspecified amount of damages together with interest and costs. The certification motion and leave to proceed motion for a secondary market claim under the Securities Act (Ontario) have not yet been scheduled. The Company intends to vigorously defend this claim. About iAnthus iAnthus owns and operates licensed cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensary facilities throughout the United States, providing investors diversified exposure to the U.S. regulated cannabis industry. Founded by entrepreneurs with decades of experience in operations, investment banking, corporate finance, law and healthcare services, iAnthus provides a unique combination of capital and hands-on operating and management expertise. iAnthus currently has a presence in 11 states and operates 36 dispensaries (AZ-4, MA-1, MD-3, FL-16, NY-3, CO-1, VT-1 and NM-7 where iAnthus has minority ownership). For more information, visit www.iAnthus.com COVID-19 Risk Factor The Company may be impacted by business interruptions resulting from pandemics and public health emergencies, including those related to COVID-19. An outbreak of infectious disease, a pandemic, or a similar public health threat, such as the recent outbreak of COVID-19, or a fear of any of the foregoing could adversely impact the Company by causing operating, manufacturing, supply chain, and project development delays and disruptions, labor shortages, travel, and shipping disruption and shutdowns (including as a result of government regulation and prevention measures). It is unknown whether and how the Company may be affected if such a pandemic persists for an extended period of time, including as a result of the waiver of regulatory requirements or the implementation of emergency regulations to which the Company is subject. Although the Company has been deemed essential and/or has been permitted to continue operating its facilities in the states in which it cultivates, processes, manufactures, and sells cannabis during the pendency of the COVID-19 pandemic, subject to the implementation of certain restrictions on adult-use cannabis sales in both Massachusetts and Nevada, which have since been lifted, there is no assurance that the Company's operations will continue to be deemed essential and/or will continue to be permitted to operate. The Company may incur expenses or delays relating to such events outside of its control, which could have a material adverse impact on its business, operating results, financial condition, and the trading price of the Company's common shares. Forward Looking Statements Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including concerning COVID-19 and the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in iAnthus' periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will, could, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, potential, believe, should, our vision" and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements relating to the Company's financial performance, business development and results of operations, the expectations of management with respect to the anticipated filing of the Interim Filings and statements relating to the expected outcome and defence of the statement of claim. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. iAnthus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and iAnthus does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. SOURCE iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. Related Links https://www.ianthuscapital.com/ MOSCOW Russia is preparing to start a mass vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus in October, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Saturday, RIA news agency reported. The minister, who did not give details about the vaccine to be used, said doctors and teachers would be the first to be vaccinated. A source told Reuters this week that Russias first potential COVID-19 vaccine, developed by a state research facility, would secure local regulatory approval in August and be administered to health workers soon after that. Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor The National Institutes of Health is investing $248.7 million in new technologies to address challenges associated with COVID-19 testing (which detects SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus). NIH's Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative has awarded contracts to seven biomedical diagnostic companies to support a range of new lab-based and point-of-care tests that could significantly increase the number, type and availability of tests by millions per week as early as September 2020. With national demand estimated to be millions more tests per day above current levels, these technologies are expected to make a significant contribution to expanding the nation's testing capacity. RADx moved incredibly quickly to select promising technologies through its 'shark tank' approach, investing in technologies that could boost America's best-in-the-world COVID-19 testing capacity by millions more tests per day. These technologies will help deliver faster results from labs and more and more test results within minutes at the point of care, which is especially important for settings like schools and nursing homes." Alex Azar, HHS Secretary The seven technologies use different methods and formats and can be performed in a variety of settings to meet diverse needs. Four of the technologies introduce innovations in laboratory-based testing technologies including next generation sequencing, CRISPR and integrated microfluidic chips that could dramatically increase testing capacity and throughput while reducing the time to receive test results. Three technologies use platforms to provide nucleic acid and viral antigen tests that can give rapid results at the point of care, such as offices, manufacturing facilities, childcare centers, nursing homes and schools. Additionally, some of the tests offer more convenient sampling, such as saliva testing. The companies range in scope from small start-ups to large publicly held organizations. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been working with NIH and RADx external advisors to provide general advice on test validation and is prioritizing the review of emergency use authorization (EUA) for tests supported by RADx. The companies awarded today have either received EUA from the FDA for their COVID-19 test or have applications in process. The RADx initiative has enabled some of the nation's most creative biomedical device inventors to ramp up development of their testing technologies at unprecedented speed. The innovations selected to date represent the diverse types of promising technologies that will serve the nation's testing needs." Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., NIH Director NIH launched RADx on April 29, 2020, just days after receiving an emergency supplemental appropriation of $1.5 billion from Congress to support innovative technologies to make millions of rapid COVID-19 tests per week available to Americans by the fall. At that time, Dr. Collins issued a nationwide call to science and engineering's most innovative minds. An overwhelming response ensued, culminating in more than 650 applications to date. Hundreds of experts from government, academia and industry, including the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering's (NIBIB) Point-of-Care Technology Research Network (POCTRN), are contributing to the RADx process by evaluating applications, providing core technical and clinical resources and guiding project teams. NIH selected approximately 100 of the best concepts to enter an intense one-week "shark-tank" technology evaluation process. Thirty-one of these projects made the cut and moved to Phase 1, a rigorous four to six-week period of initial technology validation. The seven tests announced today are the first to be chosen for scale up, manufacturing and delivery to the marketplace through RADx. More than 20 companies remain actively engaged in meeting Phase 1 milestones and will be considered for Phase 2 awards in the coming weeks. In addition, dozens of promising concepts continue to move through the RADx "innovation funnel" and may be selected for Phase 1 and/or Phase 2 funding. "This is an exciting milestone," said Bruce J. Tromberg, Ph.D., director of NIBIB and leader of RADx Tech, one of four components of the NIH RADx initiative. "It will increase U.S. testing capacity exponentially over the next few months. These and other technologies emerging from our RADx pipeline will guide patient care and inform public health measures to stop the spread of the virus and leave us better equipped to address future pathogens and other diseases." The following companies have achieved key RADx milestones and will receive support for manufacturing and scale up. Point-of-care tests Mesa Biotech, San Diego The company's Accula SARS-CoV-2 test employs a hand-held RT-PCR device and a compact, single-use cartridge that detects viral RNA at the point of care. Results can be read from the removable cartridge in 30 minutes. Quidel, San Diego The Quidel Sofia SARS Antigen FIA test kit, a lateral flow immunoassay, is used with Sofia and Sofia 2 Analyzers in point of care settings, such as a doctor's office or pharmacy. There are currently thousands of Quidel analyzers in place across the United States and HHS has identified this technology for use in nursing homes. The analyzers give electronic results within 15 minutes. Talis Biomedical, Menlo Park, California The Talis One COVID-19 point of care test is a multiplexed cartridge used with the compact Talis One instrument. The test detects SARS-CoV-2 through isothermal amplification of viral RNA and an optical detection system, returning a result in under 30 minutes. Lab-based tests Ginkgo Bioworks, Boston Ginkgo Bioworks is scaling up using significant automation for handling samples and high-throughput, next-generation sequencing technologies to process tens of thousands of individual tests at once. Working with universities, schools, public or private companies, and local communities, Ginkgo Bioworks will provide end-to-end sample collection and report results within 24-48 hours from sample receipt. The company is expected scale up to 50,000 tests per day in September 2020 and 100,000 per day by the end of the year. Helix OpCo, San Mateo, California Helix will ship standardized kits in bulk for the collection of nasal swabs to public health departments, health care systems, employers and other customers to collect tens of thousands of samples that can be processed at once and within 24-48 hours, in very high volumes, using a combination of sophisticated automation processes and the use of next generation sequencing technologies. Helix is expected to process up to 50,000 samples a day by end of September 2020 and 100,000 samples per day at the end of the year. Fluidigm, San Francisco Each BioMark HD microfluidics platform has the capacity to process thousands of SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests per day with a primary focus on saliva samples. With many existing Fluidigm instruments in clinical and research labs throughout the United States, scale up and deployment of their advanced integrated fluidic chips can provide tens to hundreds of thousands of new tests per day in fall 2020. Mammoth Biosciences, Inc., South San Francisco, California The Mammoth Biosciences SARS-CoV-2 DETECTR assay uses CRISPR technology, which provides a simpler workflow and significantly faster turnaround time compared to conventional laboratory PCR tests. This high-throughput solution can result in a multi-fold increase in testing capacity in commercial laboratories. Decolonize this place! Decolonize the university! Decolonize the museum! In the past few years, decolonization has gained new political currency inside the borders of the old colonial powers. Indigenous movements have reclaimed the mantle of decolonization in protests like those at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access pipeline. Students from South Africa to Britain have marched under its banner to challenge Eurocentric curriculums. Museums such as the Natural History Museum in New York and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels have been compelled to confront their representation of colonized African and Indigenous peoples. But what is decolonization? What the word means and what it requires have been contested for a century. After World War I, European colonial administrators viewed decolonization as the process in which they would allow their imperial charges to graduate to independence by modeling themselves on European states. But in the mid-20th century, anticolonial activists and intellectuals demanded immediate independence and refused to model their societies on the terms set by imperialists. Between 1945 and 1975, as struggles for independence were won in Africa and Asia, United Nations membership grew from 51 to 144 countries. In that period, decolonization was primarily political and economic. As more colonies gained independence, however, cultural decolonization became more significant. European political and economic domination coincided with a Eurocentrism that valorized European civilization as the apex of human achievement. Indigenous cultural traditions and systems of knowledge were denigrated as backward and uncivilized. The colonized were treated as people without history. The struggle against this has been especially central in settler colonies in which the displacement of Indigenous institutions was most violent. As India completes one year since the abrogation of Article 370, Pakistan will observe one-minute silence across the country to extend 'Solidarity' to Kashmiri people, in yet another attempt to rake up the Kashmir issue. Mass rallies and peace walks are planned on the day, according to Radio Pakistan. Last year, Pakistan made several attempts to intervene in the Kashmir issue, with Pakistan PM Imran Khan nominating himself as the 'ambassador' of the Indian state. A moment of silence for these 3.. pic.twitter.com/ZTzuAyhvQ5 Naila Inayat (@nailainayat) July 31, 2020 READ | JKNC spokesperson Ruhullah Mehdi resigns from post, day after Omar Abdullah's decision Netizens call out Pak's sham efforts Great ! If u r silent for a year , all world terrorism issues will get automatically solved !!! Thats perfect (@Thats_Perfect22) August 1, 2020 Half an hour reduced directly to 1 min? Sandeep Sapre (@SandeepSapre2) August 1, 2020 1 minute is a good start. Why don't they observe a lifetime of silence? Sheila (@sheila22941708) July 31, 2020 Pakistan's failed attempts to rake up Kashmir issue Since India abrogated Article 370, Pakistan has not stopped raising the issue at international platforms, despite several unsuccessful attempts. This, despite India making it clear more than once that the issue is India's internal matter. While Pakistan continues to sponsor cross-border terrorism in the valley, Pakistan PM Imran Khan has levelled serious allegations on the Indian government and has even peddled fake news about India forces in the valley. Khan has repeatedly fearmongered and peddled fake news on Kashmir's ground situation. He has also faced defeat on an international scale after he called for global mediation into the bilateral issue. READ | J&K admin revokes PSA against Shah Faesal & 2 PDP leaders; all released from detention Abrogation of Article 370 In 2019, the Government of India abrogated Article 370 - that gave special rights to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated it into two Union Territories - J&K and Ladakh. Prior to the announcement of the decision in the Parliament on August 5, Centre placed the mainstream political leaders of J&K in preventive detention. Additional 38000 troops were moved in the Kashmir Valley ahead of the decision, as Centre said that there was security threat from Pakistan. READ | Omar Abdullah won't contest any J&K assembly polls till it remains a Union territory PSA revoked Almost after seven months of detention, the Jammu Kashmir administration released NC chief J&K Farooq Abdullah, his son and former J&K CM Omar Abdullah, former IAS officer Shah Faesal and others. However, some leaders including PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti is still in detention. The Centre also issued new domicile laws and is gearing up for the delimitation process of the newly bifurcated Union territories - Jammu- Kashmir and Ladakh. READ | Priyanka Vadra cordially accepts Omar Abdullah's correction amid furious Baghel strife Congress president Sonia Gandhi and a host of senior party leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, condoled the demise of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh on Saturday. Singh, 64, who once wielded immense influence in power circles as a close aide of Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, died in Singapore where he was undergoing treatment for kidney-related ailments. While Sonia Gandhi sent her condolences to Singh's family, Rahul Gandhi along with other party leaders took to Twitter to express grief. "I am saddened to hear about the sad demise of Amar Singh ji. My condolences to his family and loved ones," Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet. Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel said he was anguished to hear about the passing away of Singh. I am saddened to hear about the sad demise of Amar Singh ji. My condolences to his family and loved ones. Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 1, 2020 "He will always be remembered as a valued colleague and wonderful human being. My condolences to his family and well-wishers," he tweeted. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad also said he was saddened by Singh's death. "He was a fighter throughout his life and he fought for his own life from the hospital bed till his last breath," Azad said in a statement he shared on Twitter. May God grant Singh a place at his feet, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said in her condolence message. "I express my deepest condolences to his grief-stricken wife and daughters," she said in a tweet in Hindi. Deputy leader of Congress in Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma described Singh as "a multi-faceted and intensely engaging persona" who had wide-ranging interests from business, cinema, music, and politics. "He made friends across the political spectrum. Good friend and implacable foe. Amar Singh will be missed by all who came in his contact," he added. Singh had undergone a kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time. He was admitted to a hospital in Singapore some eight months ago. Local, state and federal authorities discovered more than 50 people inside two stash houses within a property in the Canta Ranas neighborhood in west Laredo, according to law enforcement officials. U.S. Border Patrol agents said that the 51 found inside two dwellings in the 3900 block of Santa Isabel Avenue were all in the country illegally. For a few weeks now, fans and celebrities have been demanding for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Sushant Singh Rajput's death case, as many feel that it's a planned murder and not a suicide. Sushant Singh Rajout was found hanging in his Bandra residence in Mumbai on June 14, 2020. The Mumbai Police is currently investigating the matter and has already recorded the statements of people who were close to Sushant. The case took a new turn on July 26 when Sushant Singh Rajput's father Krishna Kishore Singh registered a first information report (FIR) against actress and Sushant's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty in Patna. An FIR was registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 'abetment to suicide'. A four-member police team from Bihar is currently in Mumbai to probe this case. Now, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has said that he is open to recommending a CBI probe into Sushant's death if the actor's father wants it and requests the state government for it. He also said that there is no question of a tug-of-war between the Bihar and Mumbai Police while investigating Sushant's death case. According to PTI, Bihar minister Sanjay Kumar Jha, who's a close aide to Nitish Kumar said, "The Chief Minister will definitely act if demand for a CBI inquiry comes from the family of Rajput." Meanwhile, ANI reported that according to Bihar Police sources, the Bihar Police team visited Cooper Hospital in Mumbai to seek Sushant's post-mortem report. However, they were not able to get the information, the reason of which is not known. Recently, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said that there won't be any CBI probe in Sushant's death case, as the Mumbai Police is still carrying out the investigation. The Supreme Court of India also rejected a plea requesting for a CBI investigation in the matter. The apex court said that the police must be allowed to do their job instead. Watch this space for the latest update on Sushant Singh Rajput's death case. ALSO READ: Sushant's Death Case: Bihar Police Records Statements Of Six People; To Question Actor's Co-Stars ALSO READ: Sushant's Friend Smita Parikh Claims The Late Actor Was Anxious After Disha Salian's Demise 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 Vietnam recorded its first two deaths from Covid-19 on Friday after winning plaudits worldwide for one of the most successful national responses to the pandemic. The country of 96 million had gone 100 days without infection before an unexpected cluster of new cases of unknown origin surfaced in the popular central resort city of Danang a week ago. A 70-year-old man became Vietnam's first fatality from Covid-19 early on Friday, followed hours later by a 61-year-old man, the health ministry said. Both appear to have contracted the disease in Danang. The health ministry also reported 82 new infections, 26 of which were imported, marking the Southeast Asian country's biggest single-day jump. The total number of cases now stands at 546. Hanoi started mass coronavirus testing on Thursday. By noon on Friday, 21,732 people had been tested in the capital, the Hanoi Centre for Disease Control said. Around 21,000 tested negative, it said, without elaborating. Hanoi on Thursday also banned large gatherings and urged tens of thousands of domestic travelers to report to authorities. It shut bars and nightclubs, extending those closures to street food stalls and karaoke lounges from midnight on Friday. Late on Friday, Hanoi authorities said restaurants and supermarkets could remain open but must implement social-distancing measures. Feeling sexy, anyone? Specifically, those of child-bearing age? How quickly we moved from the fetishisation of sourdough starter and athleisure-wear stage of the pandemic, to the part where we urge fecund people to get it on, to help bail us out of this mess. Last week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg fronted the National Press Club to outline the governments plan to support Australians through the crisis and beyond. Right up top, he acknowledged that women have experienced higher job losses than men and young people have also been badly affected, making up more than one-third of all jobs lost. The youth unemployment rate, he continued, had jumped to its highest in 20 years. Best foot forward for the economy. None of these statements had a particularly aphrodisiacal effect, but the Treasurer strove on. He noted that unlike previous recession recoveries, this time around we cant rely on migrant flow to boost growth annual population growth is expected to slow to just 0.6 per cent in 2020-21, which is the lowest it has been since the First World War. Having seduced his audience with these sexy statistics, he remarked that while he wouldnt go the full Peter Costello and tell Australians to have one for the mother, one for the father and one for the country, people should feel optimistic, and the more children we have across the country, together with our migration, we will build our population growth and that will be good for the economy. The Disaster Tourist challenges the reader to evaluate our curiosity about traumatised communities and landscapes that appear exciting for their unpredictability and history of ruin. In this fortnightly column, Pages From The Wild, Urvashi Bahuguna looks at accessible, engaging books from around the world, on the environment and ecology. *** Yun Ko-eun's The Disaster Tourist (2020) follows a travel company in Korea, named Jungle, which specialises in guided tours to areas that have been struck by natural disaster in the recent past. Published originally in 2013 in Korean, the novel has been newly translated into English by Lizzie Buehler. The protagonist, Yona Ko, who has spent most of her twenties and early thirties working at Jungle, is one of the curators of these unorthodox travel experiences. Like her colleagues, she scans the news and social media for disasters that may draw the attention of future clients. She scopes out earthquake-hit regions and tsunami-ravaged coasts for ones that show promise. Yona chooses locations that can be groomed into disaster tourism destinations with week-long itineraries that include homestays with the locals, visits to the site of the volcanic eruption which resulted in over a hundred fatalities or the river affected by severe and on-going water pollution, shopping for local ware and (sometimes) relief work related to the disaster. After her boss sexually assaults her, she finds herself isolated at the company and reassigned to clerical tasks. When she turns in her resignation, Jungle offers her an all-expenses-paid trip to convince her to stay. She can choose from any of their underperforming experiences and review the trips viability for the company. They sell it to her as an opportunity for rest and travel, and she relents. The Disaster Tourist isnt always an elegantly plotted novel but it is an endlessly fascinating one. What experiences do we seek when we think weve had all the usual ones? Is it a misplaced desire to experience the full gamut of reality that draws people to landscapes with storied scars and places of palpable poverty? A premise that at first sounds slightly exaggerated or outrightly satirical gradually grows into something familiar and resonant as the reader confronts the ways in which travel can feel educational and humbling while being voyeuristic and patronsing. Yona chooses to accompany a group to an island nation, located south of Vietnam, named Mui where a substantial portion of the ground had caved in some years ago killing several people in the vicinity. But of late, Mui had begun to wane in popularity with disaster tourists. Rain had filled the sinkhole which had been a previously dread-inducing chasm at one hundred and eighty meters deep. The travellers include an educator who has brought her five-year-old daughter along to teach her about the world and a student who has come in the hopes of ethically visiting a disaster site and volunteering towards rebuilding the community. It is apparent that the cynicism with which Jungle views their clients is different from the way these people view themselves. While Jungle sees them as people in whom they must evoke empathy, excitement, fear and gratitude, the reality is that the travelers see their reasons as unique and intrinsically linked to their specific stories. The group in Mui spends a night in a village in rooms on stilts on the water which are described as typical housing for the area. What appears to be a fairly innocuous interaction between the locals and the tourists is revealed to rest on fragile and masked foundations when Yonas camera goes missing and all the local homes are unceremoniously searched. There is no question as to which group has been implicitly accused. When the camera turns up elsewhere, the travel group descends into discomfort where privilege is angrily and briefly discussed before the conversation dies out. A series of unexpected circumstances leads to Yona designing a new tour through Mui which she attempts to show in broader light to future tourists by including the islands mangrove forest, which can be traversed by boat and the resident strangler fig trees, which are strong enough to have broken through the concrete nearby. But a more sinister plan is at work in the island with vast amounts of money and employment at stake. One of the puzzling absences in the novel is a lack of engagement with the growing climate crisis. Though extreme climate events form the backdrop of the novel, there is no sense amongst the travellers that the disasters, whose aftermaths they have sought out, are increasing in frequency and intensity the world over and that they or their descendants will likely live to experience a comparable event closer home. While The Disaster Tourist is an intriguing read about capitalisms ability to monetise everything including climate disasters, the novel doesnt quite live up to its marketing as an "eco-thriller". Instead, it challenges the reader to more robustly evaluate our curiosity about traumatised communities and landscapes that appear exciting for their unpredictability and history of ruin. What does a community lose even if they do financially benefit in some ways? What compromises are they forced to make during these visits for the sake of offering an authentic experience to a tourist? By Trend The government relaxed restrictions on the working hours of restaurants, cafes and similar establishments on Tuesday, Trend reports with reference to Daily Sabah. The Interior Ministry ordered governorates in 81 provinces to allow those businesses to return to their regular routines before the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the implementation of restrictions. They will be able to operate within the hours specified in regulations and licenses issued before the pandemic, which made its foray into Turkey in March. After months of closure, restaurants and cafes reopened last month and were allowed to keep customers until 10 p.m. This was later extended to midnight. Turkey confirmed 931 new COVID-19 cases and 17 deaths in the past 24 hours, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Monday. The total death toll has reached 5,508, while recoveries reached 203,002 with 992 additions, according to data shared by Koca. Over 43,000 tests were given over the last day, while the total tests conducted have reached 4,316,781. Koca noted that Istanbul, the capital Ankara, southeastern provinces Gaziantep and ?anl?urfa and the northwestern Bursa province recorded the highest number of cases in the past three days, while northeastern Artvin and Bayburt provinces, eastern Tunceli province and northwestern Bilecik and Edirne provinces recorded the lowest numbers. Over the past week, the virus outbreak in Turkey appears to be stabilizing with less than 1,000 cases a day, after struggling with rising cases that plagued its normalization process that went into full swing last month. Increasing caseloads have been linked to the public's failure to comply with new rules, including wearing masks and maintaining social distance. Although Turkey eased a string of restrictions, from weekend lockdowns to intercity travel, the mask requirement and social distancing rules remain in place. Security forces routinely conduct inspections in crowded areas and mete out warnings to those without masks, sometimes imposing fines. NEW YORK, June 30, 2017 (Xinhua) -- New York city's Mayor Bill de Blasio (C) arrives for a press conference outside the Bronx Lebanon Hospital in New York, the United States, on June 30, 2017. Two people were killed, including the shooter and a docto Image Source: IANS News New York, Aug 1 : New York City officials said that schools will not reopen for in-person instruction unless the city's coronavirus infection rate remains below 3 per cent on a seven-day rolling average. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday announced that the city would be watching the positivity rate for COVID-19 in NYC to determine if schools can reopen and stay open for the 2020-2021 school year. "We will not reopen our schools unless the city's infection rate is below 3 per cent," he said, Xinhua news agency reported. The city's infection rate has remained steady at around 2 per cent for several weeks, and was at 1 per cent on Friday. School leadership and staff are reviewing school space and making necessary repairs and adjustments to ensure safe conditions for in-person student learning this fall. "The city will prioritize free testing for school-based staff with 24-hour turn around time results at any of the 34 city-run testing locations," New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said. "School-based staff members are also encouraged to opt into monthly COVID-19 testing which is critically important." New York City released a detailed plan for returning students to class late Thursday, hours before New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's Friday deadline for the state's 700 school districts to submit their plans for review. Cuomo said he would decide whether schools in the state would reopen in the fall in the first week of August. Firefighters never know what they might get called out to. For example, on Saturday morning Niagara Falls firefighters were called out to a driving range on Lundys Lane where an owl was stuck in its safety mesh. Firefighters were able to successfully get the owl down and it eventually flew away uninjured. Firefighter Justin Canestraro was the one who freed the owl from a bucket high up on an aerial truck. I cant ever say that Ive had an owl stuck in a net before, he said. The early-morning guys out at the driving range saw something stuck in the net and thats when they started making calls. Canestraro said the fire department often gets calls from the public and sometimes they have to tell people thats kind of out of our realm, its not what we do. For this situation, when you call the humane society and they dont know what to do, and other animal rescue places, and theres not much they can do until they get the animal down we help when we can, he said. Canestraro said the toughest part for the crew was safely getting a big aerial truck positioned to perform the rescue. Once we got the vehicle down there and got it set up safely, we just brought our special medical shears up with us, he said. We kind of had a plan that we were going to wrap it in a towel and take it down, but we realized it was only really trapped by its one talon it was still trying to fly away, so after about a minute of cutting mesh away from its talon, it kind of nicely flapped its wings and went to the ground. Canestraro said the crew wondered if it was going to have to call the humane society to come and get the owl, but after a brief time of looking at the firefighters and getting its bearings straight it took off and flew away into a big maple tree. It flew away totally fine. It looked healthy and strong. The Week In Russia: The Death Of An Anti-Perestroika Icon And A Wagnerian Riddle In Belarus By Steve Gutterman July 31, 2020 The fears of a perestroika foe who has died at age 81 have echoes in President Vladimir Putin's political planning, and Russia's intentions in Belarus face new scrutiny after Kremlin-linked mercenaries are arrested and the embattled authoritarian who is arguably Putin's closest foreign ally accuses Moscow of a plot to destabilize elections. Protests persist in Khabarovsk, and an American ex-Marine is sentenced to nine years in prison in what the U.S. ambassador calls an "absurd" ruling in a trial over a drunken incident last summer whose crucial details are in dispute. Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward. 'Breakthrough' Blues Nina Andreyeva didn't like perestroika, and neither does Vladimir Putin, apparently. Andreyeva, a St. Petersburg chemistry instructor who rocketed to fame when she railed against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reform program in a letter published in the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossia in March 1988, died on July 24 at the age of 81. Andreyeva's letter, which included a defense of dictator Josef Stalin and was the first real criticism of perestroika (reconstruction) in the tightly controlled Soviet press, became a kind of manifesto for opponents of Gorbachev's reforms. Possibly ghostwritten by someone with a dog in the political fight of the late Soviet era -- which at the time, of course, was not known to be the late Soviet era -- the letter remained a topic of discussion and debate as change picked up speed and spun out of Gorbachev's control. Its publication came three years before the hardline communist coup of August 1991, which was aimed at turning back the reforms and preserving the Soviet Union but ended up accelerating the country's disintegration and preceded its demise that December. Andreyeva's name later receded into the blurry background of those momentous times, as Russia moved on into the 1990s and then segued into the Putin era as the Kremlin bells struck midnight and the year 2000 began. When that era may end is unclear, and Putin has ensured that it could potentially last until 2036 by securing a constitutional amendment that allows him to seek two more six-year terms after 2024. The fear of perestroika -- the fear of too much change too fast, a restructuring that could leave him out of the ruling structures -- may have prompted him to open up the most direct path to many more years in power, Aleksandr Baunov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center and editor in chief of its website, wrote in a July 30 article. 'A Flamboyant Change Of Heart' Despite a few hints in the weeks before the amendment setting Putin's presidential term count to zero instead of four was proposed in March, the move surprised many who had parsed his comments for years and concluded that he was far more likely to step down in 2024 -- or earlier -- and preserve power by other means. Putin is often described as pragmatic, but Baunov suggested that in this case, he had a "flamboyant change of heart" brought on by fear of "ushering in a perestroika 2.0." With real incomes dropping and economic growth underwhelming even before the coronavirus pandemic and now expected to shrink at least 6 percent, the biggest contraction in more than a decade, polls show that "the Russian public no longer values 'stability' and the status quo as much as it did a few years ago," Baunov wrote. "The public is increasingly hungry for change." As a result, Putin has taken to using the word "breakthrough" to describe what Russia needs. But this word "suggests a break with the past," Baunov wrote -- and Putin does not want a break that is big enough or clean enough to leave him in the past. To put it in terms perhaps appropriate for a Saturday morning, Putin knows Russia needs a breakthrough but fears he will end up like Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner's unfortunate cartoon nemesis -- busting though a barrier only to find that he has gone off the edge of a cliff on the other side and is suspended in midair, legs windmilling furiously over the abyss. "The limiting factor now is that Putin and his inner circle fear change could get out of hand," Baunov wrote. He suggested that this was a major factor in Putin's decision to quash "tandem" partner Dmitry Medvedev's hopes for a second term -- along with the hopes of those Russians who saw Medvedev as the candidate of change and reform, at least in relative terms -- and return to the Kremlin himself in 2012 after four years as prime minister. This time, the political analyst concluded, "the paradox is that by choosing what he regards as the safest option both domestically and geopolitically, Putin may condemn Russia to a new period of stagnation --and thereby become the unwitting godfather of the very perestroika he seeks to avoid." Persistent Protests The people's hunger for change is evident in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, where people have been protesting for three weeks -- in numbers ranging from the hundreds to the tens of thousands -- over the arrest of now-former regional Governor Sergei Furgal. In fact, they voted for change in 2018, when they elected Furgal -- now charged with involvement in two murders and an attempted murder in 2004-05 -- by a large margin over the Kremlin-backed incumbent from the United Russia party, which dominates politics nationwide but is unpopular. Those two characteristics, dominance and a low or decreasing level of popularity, may now be shared by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the long-ruling Belarusian president who is facing the challenge of his career in an August 9 election that is expected to hand him a sixth term -- at least officially. Despite a clampdown in which top would-be challengers have been barred from the ballot and in at least two cases jailed, while many other people have been detained during demonstrations, large crowds have gathered in cities and towns nationwide to back Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is essentially running as the candidate of the united opposition. Tens of thousands of people rallied in Minsk on July 30. The already remarkable run-up to the least predictable election in Belarus since Lukashenka took office in 1994 took a turn for the bizarre this week when authorities in a country that is one of Russia's few allies and arguably has closer ties to Moscow than any other arrested 33 alleged contractors from the Kremlin-linked private military company Vagner and accused them of planning "to destabilize the country" ahead of the election. Broadly, the Belarusian state's narrative -- telegraphed by Lukashenka just days earlier, when he predicted that "professional soldiers, bandits" would be dispatched abroad to foment a revolt in Belarus -- was that the mercenaries were there to mount a Moscow-backed coup. Such a suggestion fits well with one of the tacks the authoritarian leader has frequently taken in the past few years to seek to rally support: by saying or insinuating that Russia is eager to swallow up Belarus. The Russian ambassador to Minsk said that the men had been en route to another country and had missed their flight, and several analysts and experts on paramilitary groups including Vagner said the evidence at hand indicated it was unlikely that they were on a mission inside Belarus. Widespread disbelief of the Belarusian state's claims did not stop Lukashenka from using the incident -- whatever its true nature -- as a blunt tool in the presidential campaign. On July 30, a day after the arrests were announced, the state Investigative Committee issued a statement linking the mercenaries with two jailed opposition leaders Mikalay Statkevich and Tsikhanouskaya's husband, Syarhey Tsikhanouski, both of whom it said face charges of plotting riots, a crime punishable by up to eight years in prison. No Urge To Merge If the contract soldiers were merely transiting through Belarus, the question remains as to whether Russian authorities might have been in on a plan to use the incident in a bid to tame the Belarusian opposition and shift momentum in the election. Russia's intentions regarding the vote are murky, but for the next few years the safest bet for the Kremlin could be to have Lukashenka remaining in power, albeit weakened by growing public dissatisfaction. Also, it may be worth noting that if the mercenaries were not in Belarus in the capacity that Lukashenka suggested -- as part of a Russian influence campaign or takeover plot this does not reverse more than 15 years of both overt and shadowy evidence that Putin's Kremlin wants more influence over Belarus. Since the start of his fourth term in 2018, Putin has been pressing Lukashenka to integrate the countries more closely in a Union State that has existed largely on paper since the 1990s. Lukashenka has balked, perhaps recalling the time in 2002 when he was the one pushing for a tighter merger and Putin called his bluff, proposing speedy integration but making clear that it would turn the Belarusian leader into little more than a provincial governor. A suggestion that more aggressive designs on Belarus exist in the Kremlin came on the same day as the arrests of the alleged Vagner fighters were announced, when the political-analysis Telegram channel R.Politik cited an unnamed source as saying that purported Vagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and the influential secretary of Putin's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, have been working "on a project that explores the idea of completely integrating Belarus into Russia's territory." Such a plan sounds awfully ambitious, given the trouble Putin seems to be having with more modest integration efforts -- R.Politik commented that it sounded like the kind of thing "typically pushed by Putin's hawks" and that Putin might not be "ready to opt for full integration, given that such plans may result in mass protests in Belarus." But the source's statement may have been meant to serve a purpose amid the current tension -- as an echo, for example, of Putin's warning to Lukashenka in 2002. A 'Preposterous' Case There have also been questions about the purpose of Russia's prosecution of Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine who was taken to a Moscow precinct house after a drunken night out with his girlfriend and others in August 2019, and was later charged with endangering the lives of the officers who took him to the station. On July 30, Reed was handed a nine-year prison term -- a "ridiculous" conviction and sentence following a trial in which the prosecution's case and the evidence presented against Mr. Reed were so preposterous that they provoked laughter in the courtroom," U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan said in statement. Sullivan said that he had spoken to Reed's father, Joey Reed and "assured him that we will not rest until Trevor is freed and returns home to the United States." The Russian government may be hoping that, when Reed is freed and returns home, it will be as part of a swap for Russians behind bars in the United States: Kremlin critics, lawyers, and observers have charged that Moscow is using Americans like Reed and Paul Whelan, an American who was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison in June on an espionage charge he denies, as pawns for potential use in prisoner exchanges or other geopolitical deals. "It all looks like a provocation designed to obtain a certain resource that can be used later in international negotiations," Russian lawyer Ivan Pavlov was quoted as saying by The New York Times. "This can be a bargaining chip." Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/week-in-russia -death-andreyeva-anti-perestroika-icon- vagner-riddle-belarus/30759332.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 There is a reckoning to be had around our public schools. The suffering and disruption caused by the pandemic have laid bare the extent to which we have taken our neighborhood public schools for granted. It is impossible to name one other place where, under normal circumstances, a child of any ZIP code can learn from caring professionals, play, exercise, make friends and eat three meals. That same child might ride a bus to and from school. The child might be enrolled in an after-school enrichment program or receive medical or psychological services at school. Our public schools serve a vital and profound democratic purpose. They are no less critical to our democracy than the voting booth. A new generation of leaders, scientists, inventors, artists and more will trace their love of learning and humanity back to a teacher who saw their unlimited potential. Yes, we have taken our schools for granted. But we can right this wrong by demanding our state leaders put students first. As we consider how to open schools in the fall, we can start by prioritizing the voices of our teachers, students and parents. Our team at the Urban Education Institute attempted to do this by surveying close to 2,000 students, parents and teachers in eight local school systems. The school districts represent some of the largest and most diverse in the city: East Central, Edgewood, Harlandale, Judson, Northside, North East and Southwest. The Centers for Applied Science and Technology, or CAST, also participated. You can find our first research brief and the breakdowns by district on our website at uei.utsa.edu. Results showed some expected trends: Teachers need substantive technology training only 5 percent said they had any online instruction experience. Parents want more academic engagement, and students are eager for creative lessons and connections with friends. We also discovered surprising similarities in the foundational concepts between learning in the classroom and through a tech device away from campus. For example, teachers surveyed overwhelmingly indicated they worry about one of their most essential tasks: authentically connecting with students to motivate and engage them. A top recommendation teachers had for fall learning was time blocked on their schedules to establish a social-emotional connection with their students. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio school districts still struggle with the citys segregated past One elementary school instructor put it this way: The beauty of this (pandemic) happening in the end of the year was we had already established relationships and connections with the kids. If we start off the next school year (doing distance learning only), we wont have that. Something will have to happen that helps that relationship with students so they can be productive. Our research found that our community was in a state of emergency last spring, and it has likely only gotten worse. The largest share of teachers (45 percent) said their caregiving responsibilities increased during the pandemic. We also found that 26 percent of public school families reported there were times during the stay-at-home requirement when they ran out of food and did not have money to buy more. These are challenging times for our nation and our local community. When it comes to our schools, we must prioritize their interests in how we fund them and how we defer to their local expertise. It is not only the right thing to do. It is in our self-interest. Mike Villarreal is director of the Urban Education Institute at University of Texas at San Antonio. Petersburg Independent School District received a $102,638 Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) grant from the Texas Workforce Commission. Superintendent Brian Bibb said the funds will be used to purchase equipment for the districts welding program. Petersburg was one of 41 public school institutions including public community colleges, public technical institutes, public state colleges and independent school districts to receive grants totaling $8,261,090. The JET program, according to a news release from TWC, provides funding for equipment to develop CTE programs or courses that help train students for high-demand occupations. The welding program at Petersburg is relatively new. It was added to the districts career training education tracks about two years ago with the goal of helping interested students earn welding certifications. Were trying to grow that, said Bibb. Our ag teachers are wanting to do more project-based learning. The grant funds will be used to purchase a ceiling hoist, a drill press, a metal hand saw and Clear Touch Interactive displays. The items will help the welding program and the ag program, in general will help students earn training in occupations including welder, cutter, solder and brazer, according to the news release. Bibb said there has been demand among kids to join welding program but part of what really drove the district to expand its agriculture education offerings was the community. Obviously, in our community, ag is very important, Bibb said. Weve got a lot of families that own farmland. Most of our kids grow up coming from that background. Most of the kids that attend Petersburg ISD will eventually go through a welding class, he noted. Taking part in the CTE programs like the welding certification program allows them a chance to leave Petersburg ISD with a marketable skillset. The career readiness opportunities the district is able to offer are credited to its relationship with South Plains College, Bibb added. We wouldnt have been able to do this without the help of South Plains College, he said. There are some components to this that you have to have that relationship. Here are the rest of the JET grant recipients as listed in the news release: Community, Technical and State Colleges Alamo Community College District-Palo Alto College - $262,105- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 100 students with training in the occupation of transportation, storage, and distribution manager. Alvin Community College - $256,309- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 200 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. College of the Mainland - $77,282- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 150 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. Dallas County Community College District-Cedar Valley College - $265,492- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 196 students with training in the occupation of electrical and electronical engineering technician. Del Mar College - $283,381- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 414 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. Frank Phillips College - $282,589- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 80 students with training in the occupation of control and valve installer and repairer. Laredo Community College - $292,846- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 197 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. Lee College - $100,857- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 200 students with training in the occupation of petroleum pump system operator, refinery operator, and gauger. Ranger College - $282,420- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 130 students with training in the occupation of electro-mechanical technician. Temple College - $115,726- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 135 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. Texarkana College - $187,499- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 207 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. Texas State Technical College - $193,094- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 140 students with training in the occupation of electrical and electronical engineering technician. Independent School Districts Benavides ISD - $267,890- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 126 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Boles ISD - $70,519- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 55 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Cleburne ISD - $90,388- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 126 students with training in the occupation of bus & truck mechanic & diesel engine specialist. Community ISD - $300,000- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 125 students with training in the occupation of electro-mechanical technician. Corpus Christi ISD - $284,976- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 680 students with training in the occupation of licensed practical and licensed vocational nurse. Danbury ISD - $262,863- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 166 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. El Paso ISD - $72,886 - The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 265 students with training in the occupation of computer network support specialist. Huntington ISD - $176,032- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 154 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. La Feria ISD - $238,545- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 232 students with training in the occupation of health technologists and technician. La Joya ISD - $247,126- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 130 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Lancaster ISD - $233,939- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 130 students with training in the occupation of electrical and electronical engineering technician. Laredo ISD - $266,906- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 150 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Mercedes ISD - $192,833- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 60 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Newton ISD - $282,851- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 79 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Palestine ISD - $196,168- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 200 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD - $269,624- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 140 students with training in the occupation of automotive service technician and mechanic. Point Isabel ISD - $280,954- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 126 students with training in the occupation of licensed practical and licensed vocational nurse. Raymondville ISD - $171,855- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 140 students with training in the occupation of registered nurse. Rio Grande City CISD - $285,049- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 80 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Rio Hondo ISD - $227,269- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 76 students with training in the occupation of health technologist and technician. Rockwall ISD - $130,399 - The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 689 students with training in the occupation of dental assistant. San Antonio ISD - $121,809- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 200 students with training in the occupation of electrical and electronical engineering technician. San Benito CISD - $218,491- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 85 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. San Diego ISD - $47,168- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 76 students with training in the occupation of electrical and electronical engineering technician. Silsbee ISD - $281,578- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 125 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Skidmore-Tynan ISD - $61,525- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 90 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Tahoka ISD - $43,639- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 28 students with training in the occupation of welder, cutter, solder and brazer. Weslaco ISD - $235,570- The grant will help purchase and install equipment to provide 140 students with training in the occupation of automotive service technician and mechanic. Jakarta, Aug 1 : Another pilot whale was found dead on a beach in Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara on Saturday, an official said. The mammal was recovered by residents on the Liebore beach of Sabu Raijua district, a senior police officer said. The animal is likely one of the 11 pilot whales which were hit by the currents on the Lie Jaka beach on Thursday, the police officer said. Ten of the herd died and one survived for the moment, Xinhua news agency reported. The one found dead on the Liebore beach on Saturday was likely the survivor, the police officer said. "It was found dead with wounds in many parts of its body," he said, adding that the residents helped dig a pit to bury the dead whale. Last week, a giant 23-metre blue whale was beached near a coast in East Nusa Tenggara province. Whales have been frequently washed onto the coast in Indonesia, a vast-archipelagic nation, and many of them were rescued by the local residents and officials, by pushing them back to the sea. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment To this day, in protests across America, crowds will taunt policemen with the words, Hands up, dont shoot! These words were allegedly uttered by my namesake Michael Brown before he was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri by white police officer Darren Wilson in 2014. The fact that witnesses attest that Brown never uttered such words is immaterial. The myth has been enshrined. Browns death, which sparked weeks of rioting and helped spawn the BLM movement, is something I am reminded of virtually every single day. And I mean that literally. Thats because, a few years ago, a colleague of mine suggested that I sign up for Google Alerts, letting me know when my name was mentioned somewhere in the news. Out of curiosity, but with full knowledge that there are many different Michael Browns in the news, I signed up for this free service. And for years now, virtually without break, there are at least 4-5 articles a day mentioning the death of Michael Brown. He has been codified as a martyr. His name is mentioned side by side with Eric Garner and George Floyd and other blacks who have died at the hands of the police. He died as the innocent victim of white police brutality. His last words were, Hands up, dont shoot! The stories are always the same. It doesnt matter that local authorities did not find sufficient evidence to convict Officer Wilson of manslaughter, let alone murder. It doesnt matter that a lengthy, expensive investigation led by President Obamas Attorney General Eric Holder also did not find evidence to convict Wilson. (Bear in mind that this investigation did find evidence of racism in the local police department. Yet it did not find evidence that Wilson used excessive force in his encounter with Brown.) And it wont matter now that St. Louis Countys top prosecutor, Prosecuting Attorney William Bell, himself black, has not found sufficient evidence to convict Wilson after a 5-month investigation. The myth will live on. It has been codified. In Bells own words, "'My heart breaks' for Michael's parents. 'I know this is not the result they were looking for and that their pain will continue forever.'" Yet it was the result of his investigation, just as it has been the result of every investigation conducted to date. There is no clear evidence to convict Wilson. As explained by Larry Elder in a Prager U video, Federal investigators from the Department of Justice found no credible evidence that Brown ever raised his hands in a dont shoot gesture or in any way heeded the officers commands for him to surrender. The federal report concluded that witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it Investigators also concluded Brown never uttered the now iconic phrase. Again, from the report: The media has widely reported that there is witness testimony that Brown said 'dont shoot' as he held his hands above his head. In fact, our investigation did not reveal any eyewitness who stated that Brown said 'dont shoot.'" As stated on the United States Department of Justice website on March 4, 2015, The Justice Department announced the findings of its two civil rights investigations related to Ferguson, Missouri, today. The Justice Department found that the Ferguson Police Department (FPD) engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the First, Fourth, and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. The Justice Department also announced that the evidence examined in its independent, federal investigation into the fatal shooting of Michael Brown does not support federal civil rights charges against Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. If any report would have found evidence against Wilson, it was this one, and yet it did not. And now, another lengthy investigation has come to similar conclusions. But whats my purpose in bringing this up? Well, truth does matter, doesnt it? And theres something wrong with building a movement on a lie (although, sadly, many a movement has been built on a lie). Still, its only fair to ask if drawing attention to the mythological aspects of Browns death wont diminish the real suffering of men like George Floyd. Actually, in many cases, the reverse is true. There are people who have become hardened to the charge of police brutality because of the Ferguson lie. They are more inclined to dismiss the true and real because of the false and mythological. And without compelling video evidence, as in the case of George Floyd, they are prone to say, Right. Just like Michael Brown. Just like Hands up, dont shoot. I dont believe it. This is similar to the lie about Matthew Shepard, who has become the icon of anti-gay brutality. Some conservatives write off much of the narrative of gay suffering because Shepards brutal death was drug-related, not gay-related, even though laws have been enacted in his name. Plus, the false narrative distracts from the deeper issue of drugs and crime. As stated by gay activist John Stoltenberg, Keeping Matthew as the poster boy of gay-hate crime and ignoring the full tragedy of his story has been the agenda of many gay-movement leaders. Ignoring the tragedies of Matthews life prior to his murder will do nothing to help other young men in our community who are sold for sex, ravaged by drugs, and generally exploited. They will remain invisible and lost. So, the myth about Shepards tragic death distracts from the deeper tragedies that surrounded his life and the lives of other young, gay men. Do I have hope that these lies will actually die? To sound a rare note of pessimism, no, I do not. But now that yet another investigation does not find sufficient evidence to convict Darren Wilson, its worth a try. By rejecting the false narratives, we can focus on the truthful ones. And those do deserve our attention. WASHINGTON The retirement of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key figure in the impeachment of President Donald Trump, becomes official on Saturday. Vindman submitted his retirement request July 7, one day after his promotion to colonel had been approved by the Pentagon, according to an Army document. His request was approved for retirement effective Aug. 1. In a statement July 8, Vindman cited "bullying, intimidation and retaliation" from the White House for his decision to retire, according to a statement from his lawyer David Pressman. Because he did not receive an assignment as a colonel, he will retire at the lower rank of lieutenant colonel, according to the Army. An Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, Vindman had seen his promotion to colonel delayed this summer, a hold-up that some viewed as retaliation for his impeachment testimony. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert for the National Security Council, testifies on Nov. 19, 2019 before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in a public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into allegations President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., had expressed concern that Vindman's promotion had been affected by pressure from the White House. She demanded a response, in writing, from Defense Secretary Mark Esper about the promotion. She blocked more than 1,100 military promotions until she said she was assured the Pentagon promised not to interfere in Vindman's promotion to colonel. Army Undersecretary James McPherson confirmed in a letter to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., that Vindman was screened by the inspector general and criminal investigation command and no adverse information was found. McPherson stated that Vindman's name was on a list of officers approved for promotion by Defense Secretary Mark Esper on July 6. Vindman testified last fall that he was alarmed by Trumps July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to open investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who had business interests in the country. That conversation triggered Trump's impeachment, and Vindman became a key witness in the House Democrats' probe. Story continues An expert on Ukraine for the National Security Council, Vindman was fired after Trump's acquittal by the Senate. Trump called him "insubordinate." The Army reassigned Vindman to a base outside Washington. "America has thrived because citizens have been willing to contribute their voices and shed their blood to challenge injustice," wrote Vindman in a Saturday tweet along with a link to an Op-Ed he wrote in the Washington Post. "It is in keeping with that history of service that, at this moment, I feel the burden to advocate for my values and an enormous urgency to act." On July 25, the one-year anniversary of the phone call, Vindman tweeted that he rests well "knowing I did my duty." One year since The Call. Much has changed for me and so much more has changed for our country. I rest well knowing I did my duty. #readthetranscript #values #hererightmatters Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) July 25, 2020 This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lt. Col. Alex Vindman retires, cites bullying over Trump impeachment Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday said the Centre has accepted the suggestion of the Chhattisgarh government to change five mines in the state put up for commercial coal auctions with three other new mines. "The coal Ministry has accepted the suggestion of Chhattisgarh government to change five mines with other three new mines put under commercial coal auctions in the state," Joshi said. Presently, nine mines have been put up for commercial mines auction in Chhattisgarh. Joshi, who is on a visit to Chhattisgarh, also met Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. "The meeting was very positive, progressive and open minded. We have discussed issues related to coal and other minerals in the state. Chief minister has also given some good suggestions on DMF (District Mineral Foundation) and NMET (National Mineral Exploration Trust) on which we will consider positively," he added. During their meeting, it was also decided "to get a proposal by a committee comprising of Coal India (CIL), Chhattisgarh government and MAHAGENCO officials in 15 days for shifting of a railway line of Chhattisgarh East Railway Ltd (CERL)." Joshi said commencement of commercial coal mining will start a new era of growth and development in Chhattisgarh. Under commercial coal mining, the state will fetch minimum Rs 4,400 crore revenue in a year and and additional minimum premium of Rs 2,000 crore. It will also create around 60,000 additional jobs. Besides, commercial coal mining will contribute around Rs 25 crore to the various DMF funds of the state which can be used for inclusive development of regions surrounding coalfield areas. "Chhattisgarh will be the key beneficiary of this biggest and boldest reform ever taken in coal sector. Commercial mining will unlock unprecedented opportunities to transform the coal sector by ushering in additional capital investments, latest mining technologies, employment generation, orderly development and ultimately leading to self-reliance of the country in coal requirement," Joshi said. The coal minister also reviewed the performance of South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) with the company's top officials and discussed coal evacuation issues with railway officials. He acknowledged the hard work put in by Coal Warriors in the last few months amid the coronavirus pandemic. Also, he interacted with representatives of sponge iron and steel industry and took their feedback on various issues pertaining to the sector. The minister said state-owned CIL has planned a capital expenditure of Rs 26,000 crore in the state over the next four years. "SECL's holding company, Coal India Ltd (CIL) has planned Rs 26,000 crores capex for developing infrastructures across Chhattisgarh in the next four years," Joshi said. Highlighting the efforts of the government in building new infrastructure for rapid and smooth coal evacuation, Joshi said Chhattisgarh East Railway Ltd (CERL), a joint venture of SECL, IRCON and CSIDC, is developing a rail corridor. CERL has incurred more than Rs 2,000 crore capex till date. The CERL rail corridor is meant for meeting the logistics challenges foreseen on account of coal evacuation to meet the growing coal needs of the country and providing the region with passenger train connectivity. This corridor has a total length of 193 kms and is being developed in two phases. "The phase I is from Kharsia to Dharamjayagarh with a route length of 131 kilometres while the Phase II with route length of 62 kilometres will further join Dharamjayagarh with Korba with a spur upto Gare-Palma block of coal mines," the minister said. In the first phase, a 43-km long section from Kharsia to Korichapar has already been commissioned for goods traffic. Stressing upon the importance of coal mining for Chhattisgarh, the minister said the state has the largest coal mine in Asia and it plays crucial role in fulfilling the power demands of country, according to a coal ministry statement. Coal mining also helps Chhattisgarh in fulfilling its aspirations for growth and development, he said. In the last four years, more than Rs 13,200 crore has been paid to the state as part of statutory levies by SECL. Moreover, with enhanced coal production, SECL will pay around Rs 22,900 crore as revenue to the state's exchequer in the next four years. A former Flybe pilot from Co Down has told how he still has ambitions of a return to the skies - despite landing a new job delivering food orders. Stephen Lynn (29) had only been in the cockpit as a fully qualified pilot for 10 months when the airline went bust in March. The young Holywood man had just spent 100,000 on an 18-month pilot training course in Spain where he lived for the duration before joining Flybe in Belfast. On the night of March 4, Stephen lost his job as the company entered administration, just as he was sat in Edinburgh airport waiting to refuel to return to Belfast. A few months later, Stephen is one of the lucky ex-Flybe crew to find employment and has swapped his 30-tonne plane for a three-tonne van delivering food orders for Streamvale Farm based at Dundonald. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Streamvale's popular open farm, which receives thousands of visitors a week, closed to the public. To maintain an income to help feed the animals, farm director Chris Wilson started an online food shop selling fresh milk and other dairy products, and later expanded by selling fruit, veg, bakery and meat products from local suppliers. Although he enjoys the driving experience, Stephen is longing to get back in the air and has already applied for other pilots' jobs, hoping to be based at Belfast City airport once more. He recalled the moment he realised he was out of work. "It was a real shock to us when the news of Flybe going bust came through," said Stephen. "I was actually sitting in the plane at the gate in Edinburgh airport trying to refuel to return to Belfast when I first realised. "All we were told was that there was a problem and we would not be refuelled. It was only when I switched on the mobile phone that the real bad news came through. "In the end I had to wait for another plane coming up from London that had enough fuel on board to take my passengers back to Belfast. We swapped aircraft and I was the third last Flybe flight to land in Belfast that night." Lockdown meant there was no chance of Stephen getting another job, so he returned to stay with his parents who were shielding. "I actually just had sale agreed my first home in Holywood when the Flybe news hit so I had to pull out of it in the end," he explained. "I stayed at home locked down with my parents for a few months when my friend Chris Wilson from Streamvale Farm asked me to run a few deliveries as the demand for his food rocketed. "I started with Chris at the start of July and am now working four days per week delivering food to most areas of Northern Ireland. "Although we have real early 5am starts, I am really fortunate to have found a job as many of my former Flybe crewmates are still unemployed. It says a lot when some of them who are pilots with 40 years' experience cannot even get a job stacking shelves in a supermarket." He added: "As much as I enjoy it I need to get back in the air to follow my passion as a pilot. "My starting salary at Flybe was 29,000 per year so I still have a lot of that training fee to recoup. I have applied for a job at Stobart Air which would mean being based at the City airport again, so fingers crossed I get it." Skilled workers and international student graduates were invited to apply for a provincial nomination from Manitoba Manitoba PNP draw invites 199 immigration candidates Skilled workers and international student graduates were invited to apply for a provincial nomination from Manitoba Manitoba PNP draw invites 199 immigration candidates Skilled workers and international student graduates were invited to apply for a provincial nomination from Manitoba Manitoba PNP draw invites 199 immigration candidates Skilled workers and international student graduates were invited to apply for a provincial nomination from Manitoba Shelby Thevenot Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Manitoba held its 95th Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) draw on July 31. The Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP) issued a total of 199 Letters of Advice to Apply (LAAs) to immigration candidates. LAAs are invitations for immigration candidates to apply for a provincial nomination for permanent residence in Canada. Manitoba issued invitations under the following three immigration streams: Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs Out of the 199 LAAs issued in this draw, 15 were given to candidates with profiles in the federal Express Entry system. Manitoba has so far issued LAAs to 2,833 immigration candidates in 2020. Manitobas EOI system Immigration candidates need to register an Expression of Interest (EOI) with the MPNP to receive an LAA through the Skilled Workers in Manitoba and Skilled Workers Overseas categories. Under Manitobas system, such candidates are ranked out of 1,000 points for human capital characteristics such as their English or French language skills, education, work experience, Manitoba connections, and other factors. In todays draw, successful candidates needed a score of at least 475 points to obtain an LAA under the Skilled Workers in Manitoba stream. Skilled Workers Overseas candidates needed a minimum score of 764 points. About Manitoba immigration streams The Skilled Workers Overseas Category and Skilled Workers in Manitoba categories allow the province to nominate skilled workers who can support Manitobas labour market needs. People who are overseas need to have an established connection to Manitoba. This can be demonstrated through close family ties or friends in the province, previous experience in Manitoba, or an invitation under one of the MPNPs Strategic Recruitment Initiatives. Candidates do not need to be physically present in Manitoba at the time of the application to be eligible. Successful candidates in the Skilled Workers in Manitoba category must meet certain criteria, such as having a full-time permanent job offer from an employer in Manitoba. International students that graduated from an educational institution in Manitoba may receive an LAA under the International Education Stream if they have in-demand skills. Express Entry Manitoba Express Entry manages applications for three federal immigration streams: Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP), and Canadian Experience Class (CEC). Eligible candidates are ranked on the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) which gives them a score based on human capital factors such as age, work experience, education, and language ability. The highest-scoring candidates are issued Invitations to Apply (ITAs) through regular federal Express Entry draws. If the 15 MPNP candidates, who received an LAA in the July 31 draw, successfully receive the provincial nomination they will be awarded an additional 600 CRS points. The extra points effectively guarantee that the candidate will be selected in a subsequent Express Entry draw. Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs 2020 CIC News All Rights Reserved Red Bull is close to extending its agreement with Formula 1 to host the annual Austrian GP. In March, we reported that the Red Bull Ring owner was yet to decide whether to keep hosting the sport at its circuit in Spielberg beyond 2020. "It will be decided by the end of the year or the beginning of 2020," Dr Helmut Marko said at the time. Since then, the circuit kicked off F1's post-corona shutdown era with back-to-back 'ghost races', with that concept now setting the standard for the rest of the 2020 calendar. The result appears to be the prospect of a new race contract for 2021 and beyond. "We are in the final phase," Marko told Kronen Zeitung when asked about the contract negotiations. When asked if the deal will be for three or five years, as per speculation, the Austrian official smiled: "You are not far wrong." (GMM) EDucaTION Girl Scouts of Northeastern New York Dr. Kristen Navarette appointed chair of the board of directors. Navarette is currently medical director for the Center for Environmental Health at the state Department of Health. Navarette earned her medical degree and completed training in pediatric medicine from Albany Medical College. She also has a master's degree from the University at Albany and bachelor's degree from Siena. Navarette joined the Scouts as a Daisy, is a Gold Award recipient and serves as her daughter's troop leader. She is a national delegate for GSNENY which represents 8,500 Girl Scouts in 15 counties. THE OLANA PARTNERSHIP Caroly Keogh joined as the director of education and public programs. Keogh previosly worked as manager of school, youth and teen programs at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At Olana, she will be in charge of the new Family Explorer Tours and Distanced Learning plan. The tours are quarter- mile walks along designed landscape, which highlight unique architecture at Olana. It is designed for children 5 and older. Keogh has a master's degree in art history from City College and a bachelor's in art history from New York University. Olana is the former home of artist Frederic Church (1826-1900). The 250-acre property integrates his ideas about art, architecture, landscape design and environmental conservation. FINANCIAL BESTPASS Tom Fogarty appointed as chief executive and to the board of directors. President and chief strategy officer John Andrews appointed as the chair of the board. Fogarty was most recently president and chief operating officer at Regulatory DataCorp Inc. where he spent 11 years. He has more than two executive experience in the software, technology and data industries. Andrews has been president since 2009. He will continue to lead the company's partnership and innovation efforts. Bestpass is a payment platform provider in toll management for commercial fleets. HEALTH CARE MOHAWK AMBuLANCE SERVICE Ashley Viscariello joined as human resources generalist. Dezire Jones joined as scheduling coordinator Erika Nicolella, Danielle Sherow and Jaqueline Harding joined as billing specialists. Nicolella, Sherow and Harding are graduates of SUNY Schenectady's medical billing and coding program. TWIN COuNTY RECOVERY SERVICES Jennifer Wuerz joined as assistant executive director. Wuerz has helped build key corporate and community partnerships and cultivated funding relationships throughout the Hudson Valley. She is knowledgeable in board governance and has experience in organizational change management. Twin County helps people afflicted with substance abuse across the region with a specific focus on Columbia and Greene counties. NONPROFITS Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Abby Ingraham joined as the director of development. She has worked for non-profits for the past decade, most recently as director of associate memberships and partnerships at Northeastern Retail Lumber Association in East Greenbush. Prior to that, she was senior account executive for the World Cleaning Industry Association. Ingraham has a bachelor's degree in communications from Saint Rose. PROFESSIONS TULLY RINCKEY Ryan Thompson joined the firm as senior counsel, practicing out of Buffalo and New York City. Thompson will lead the Title IX practice group. He previously served as the first full-time Title IX coordinator and civil rights officer at Niagara University. He also has been an investigative journalist, crime reporter and editor for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Cambridge Chronicle. At Niagara, he investigated or supervised dozens of sexual assault, misconduct and discrimination/harassment investigations. He is a pre-approved sexual misconduct investigator for United Educators, a liabiltiy insurance and risk management services provider for K-12 schools and colleges. Schools must be in compliance with 2020 Title IX regulations that were released on May 6 when they open for the fall session. SERVICES PALETTE Katie Alois joined as director of community development, also known in the company as a resident unicorn. She will handle event planning and membership questions at the company's new location in Schenectady. Alois has a bachelor's degree from the University at Albany and was a cadet at West Point for two years. She helped at an archaelogical site in Cyprus and served as the Yelp Albany community ambassador. She served on the opening team for Rivers Resort and Casino and has also worked at Franklin Alley Social Club, Druthers Schenectady and The Cuckoo's Nest. Palette is a female-focused cafe, event venue and coworking space that celebrates culture, shared ideas and connections. Rick Clemenson A form two Gold track General Arts 5 student of Oyoko Methodist Senior High School in the Eastern Region has died. The deceased, Ms Jennifer Naa Doku Bolar, died on Thursday, July 30, 2020. A statement issued by the Head of Public Relations Unit of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Cassandra Twum Ampofo, on Friday, July 31, 2020, said Jennifer, after writing the last paper of the semester exams on Thursday, 30th July 2020, reported sick to the school nurse and while she was being attended to, she collapsed and was rushed to St. Joseph Hospital. According to her, the deceaseds aunt who works at Koforidua was immediately informed, pointing out that Jennifer unfortunately died on arrival at the emergency ward. She expressed the condolences of the management of GES to the family of the deceased, saying GES is still waiting for the hospital authorities for the cause of death. Source: Graphiconline.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 The Green Tribunal has rapped the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) over compliance of conditions mentioned in environmental clearances granted for projects, saying the mechanism for monitoring environmental norms is inadequate. The green panel said compliance of conditions of must be monitored on periodical basis, atleast once in a quarter. A bench headed by Chairperson Justice A K Goel said there is poor monitoring and there are huge gaps in laying down of conditions and its enforcement. It asked the to review and strengthen the mechanism for the purpose. The tribunal took note of an affidavit filed by the ministry which mentioned that there are certain proposals to strengthen the monitoring mechanism. The said that this only shows insensitivity to the vital constitutional obligation despite repeated directions. "Repeated plea of merely having such proposals, without effective enforcement on the ground can hardly be held to be satisfactory. Counsel for the MoEF states that there has been further meaningful steps, after filing of the affidavit but the same could not brought on record. "We cannot accept such a statement. If steps have been actually taken, we fail to understand why the same could not be produced atleast during the hearing. We record our dissatisfaction at the attitude of the MoEF on the subject," the bench said. It directed the ministry to take effective steps to discharge its constitutional obligation to advance 'Precautionary' and 'Sustainable Development' principles and also the 'Public Trust Doctrine'. "We need not repeat the observations with regard to the acknowledged deficiencies in the existing mechanism which urgently needs to be remedied. Let affidavit of compliance be filed before the next date by e-mail," the bench said. The matter is listed for hearing on December 17. The directions came when the green panel was hearing a plea moved by petitioner Sandeep Mittal seeking stricter mechanisms to ensure compliance of conditions mentioned in environmental clearances granted for projects. Laying down conditions for EC based on appraisal is not enough unless compliance thereof is duly monitored and ensured with a view to achieve the said object, the plea said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Like his father-in-law, who refused to sell his private company when he entered the White House, Kushner has retained partial ownership of his family-run real estate business, Kushner Companies. While he relinquished day-to-day control of the company, the arrangement has drawn criticism from government ethics experts, who say it opens the doors to conflicts of interest and possible influence from foreign entities. 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... The Presidency has reacted to the call by President Muhammadu Buharis nephew, Mamman Daura, that zoning of the Presidency should be jettisoned for competence. Mr Daura, an influential and controversial figure in the Presidency, made his position known last week in an interview with the BBC Hausa, triggering widespread condemnation. He said the zoning formula which had been adopted for over two decades in the election of the countrys leader, has failed. Nigerias political leadership has since 1999 been rotated between the southern and northern parts of the country. The unwritten arrangement has played a key role in determining who emerges the president in the largely ethno-religious sensitive nation. Southern political leaders expect it will be the turn of the region to produce the president in 2023 when Mr Buhari, from the north-west state of Katsina, completes a second term. In its reaction earlier, the apex Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, insisted that it would be the turn of the South, particularly the Southeast, to produce the president in 2023. The organization warned that equity should not be sacrificed on the altar of parochialism since it was the rotation sentiment that produced the incumbent. In its first public reaction to the controversy, the Presidency said on Saturday that Mr Dauras comments did not reflect the views of the Buhari administration. It is important that we state from the onset that as mentioned by the interviewee, the views expressed were personal to him and did not, in any way, reflect that of either the President or his administration, spokesperson Garba Shehu said in a statement. The statement suggested Mr Daura was quoted out of context. Read the full statement released by Mr Shehu: STATE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE MALAM MAMMANS VIEWS ARE HIS OWN, AND HE HAS SAID SO PRESIDENCY We have received numerous requests for comments on the interview granted by Malam Mamman Daura, President Muhammadu Buharis nephew to the BBC Hausa Service. It is important that we state from the onset that as mentioned by the interviewee, the views expressed were personal to him and did not, in any way, reflect that of either the President or his administration. At age 80, and having served as editor and managing director of one of this countrys most influential newspapers, the New Nigerian, certainly, Malam Mamman qualifies as an elder statesman with a national duty to hold perspectives and disseminate them as guaranteed under our constitution and laws of the land. He does not need the permission or clearance of anyone to exercise this right. In an attempt to circulate the content of the interview to a wider audience, the English translation clearly did no justice to the interview, which was granted in Hausa, and as a result, the context was mixed up and new meanings were introduced and/or not properly articulated. The issues discussed during the interview, centred around themes on how the country could birth an appropriate process of political dialogue, leading to an evaluation, assessment and a democratic outcome that would serve the best interest of the average Nigerian irrespective of where they come from. These issues remain at the heart of our evolving and young democracy, and as a veteran journalist, scholar and statesman, Malam Mamman has seen enough to add his voice to those of many other participants. Garba Shehu Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity) Advertisements August 1, 2020 Cainteoiri Chill Mhantain, the Heritage Office of Wicklow County Council and Wicklow Municipal District have joined forces to display the prevalence of the Irish language in Wicklow town. The project will highlight this often overlooked aspect of our heritage via an online photographic exhibition for Heritage Week and the organisers are seeking the public's help to gather images. Simply send in photographs showcasing examples of the Irish languages in Wicklow town today, or in times past. The submissions received will be archived on Wicklow's community heritage website, and a selection will be displayed in an online exhibition as part of Heritage Week 2020. National Heritage Week takes place from August 15 to August 23, and this years theme is 'Heritage and Education: Learning from our Heritage'. Cainteoiri Chill Mhantain is a voluntary Irish language group based in Wicklow Town whose aim is to promote the language through community classes and Irish language events. Ciara Wadden, organiser of the project and co-chair of Cainteoiri Chill Mhantain, said: 'The Irish language is present all over Wicklow town. It appears on road signs, historical sites and landmarks, shops and other buildings. It is hoped that taking the time to notice and document the presence of Irish all around us will give participants a greater awareness of, and connection with our Irish cultural heritage,' Deirdre Burns, Heritage Officer with Wicklow County Council, said: 'The focus has moved away this year from hosting physical events to showcasing heritage projects. The new approach is designed to promote the sharing of experience and knowledge and to complement the good heritage work happening in communities all over Wicklow. Projects can comprise researching an aspect of heritage on your doorstep, sharing or re-learning a heritage skill, or exploring an aspect of Ireland's educational heritage.' The deadline for submissions is August 7. Visit heritage.wicklowheritage.org to submit your images. The results of projects can be presented in a format that can be shared widely, for example an online talk or exhibition, a video, podcast or oral history recordings. Isaias weakened to a tropical storm on Saturday and looked a bit ragged as it moved closer to South Florida. But that may not last long. Florida is next in Isaias path, and the National Hurricane Center said the storm may strengthen to a hurricane again as it slowly approaches the coast early Sunday. Hurricane warnings continued along Floridas east coast on Saturday night, and the hurricane center urged those in Isaias path to finish their preparations as soon as possible. The official forecast path suggests the center of Isaias will skirt along Floridas east coast tonight through Monday. Isaias could turn more to the northeast starting Monday morning and approach the South and North Carolina coasts as a tropical storm by late Monday or early Tuesday. Isaias could then move close to the mid-Atlantic coast on Tuesday and move near or over Massachusetts by early Wednesday. Isaias has been slowing down all day. As of 10 p.m. CDT Saturday, Tropical Storm Isaias was located about 80 miles east-southeast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and was moving northwest at 9 mph. Isaias had 70 mph winds, down from 85 mph earlier today. The hurricane center said some re-strengthening will be possible and Isaias could become a hurricane again early Sunday while it passes over the warm Gulf Stream waters. Forecasters said Isaias would begin to weaken again by Sunday night. Winds were picking up in South Florida on Saturday night. The hurricane center said that a Weatherflow site in Morningside Park in Miami recently reported a wind gust to 41 mph. An unofficial observing station on Great Harbour Cay in the Bahamas reported a wind gust of 40 mph. The hurricane center said Isaias will approach the southeast coast of Florida tonight and move near or along the east coast of Florida Sunday and Sunday night. On Monday and Tuesday, the center of Isaias will move quickly from offshore of the coast of Georgia into the southern mid-Atlantic states. Hurricane and tropical storm conditions will continue to spread through the northwestern Bahamas through tonight, forecasters said. Hurricane conditions will reach Florida on Sunday and spread northward through Sunday night. Heres a look at the watches and warnings in effect as of Saturday: A hurricane warning is in effect for ... * Boca Raton to the Volusia/Flagler county line on Floridas east coast * Bimini, the Berry Islands and Grand Bahama Island (the hurricane warning has been dropped for Eleuthera, New Providence, Andros Island and the Abacos Islands as of 7 p.m. CDT) A storm surge watch is in effect for... * Jupiter Inlet to Ponte Vedra Beach in Florida A tropical storm warning is in effect for... * North of Ocean Reef to south of Boca Raton in Florida * Lake Okeechobee * Volusia/Flagler county line to Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. A tropical storm watch is in effect for... * North of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., to South Santee River, S.C. More watches or warnings may be coming northward along the East Coast on Sunday as Isaias is expected to move northward near or over the southeast and mid-Atlantic coasts early next week, the hurricane center said. Storm surge is a concern. Two to 4 feet of surge will be possible along Floridas east coast from Jupiter Inlet to Ponte Vedra Beach, where the storm surge watch is in effect. One to 3 feet of surge will be possible from North Miami Beach to Jupiter Inlet as well. The northwestern Bahamas could also get 3-5 feet of storm surge today and tonight. Then theres the rain. The Bahamas could get 4 to 8 inches of rain from Isaias, and Cuba 1-2 inches. South and parts of Central Florida could get 2-4 inches, with isolated areas getting up to 6 inches. That rain will spread northward, with northern Florida and southeast Georgia potentially getting 1-2 inches. The Carolinas and mid-Atlantic states could get 2-4 inches, with isolated areas getting 6 inches, the hurricane center said. The hurricane center is also watching two other areas in the Atlantic. Tropical Depression 10 has fizzled out west of Africa and weakened to a remnant low as of late Saturday. And theres another tropical wave in the central Atlantic 600 miles east of the Leeward Islands. This one has a medium (60 percent) chance of development. The hurricane center said that wave could become a tropical depression by early next week. The disturbance is expected to turn northwestward and then northward and will pass north of the Leeward Islands by the middle of next week. President Donald Trump widened his attack on the prevalent mail-in voting on Thursday evening, saying that the new process of voting could possibly slow down the release of the presidential election results Trump tweeted that elections results should be released on the night of the election, not days, months, or even years after. A couple of hours before, Trump proposed delaying the November's presidential election in order for the citizens of America to safely and securely vote amidst the coronavirus pandemic and ended up being rejected by the Republicans in Congress. At an evening press conference, Trump cleared himself, saying he does not want to see changes on the schedule of Election Day, rather he does not want to see a dishonest election. He uttered that he does not want to delay the voting while explaining that he wanted to have the election, but was reluctant to wait for months and discover that the ballots will be lost and will invalidate the election, The New York Post reported. The US President uttered that the country will be mocked across the world, knowing that the new process of voting, mail-in voting, does not work. He added that only stupid people will not know about the consequences of mail-in voting and some people do not like to talk about it, but in reality, they know what mail-in voting could end up with. Trump has been arguing for weeks that if all ballots will be mailed to all voters by the states, the ballots will be gathered by the Democrats, notwithstanding recent years' prosecutions for a couple of voter frauds. He uttered that the possibilities of some countries forging the ballots could not be disregarded. Read also: Obama Supports Donald Trump in Calling for End to Filibuster Rules in Government According to BBC, the president's claim that election results will be delayed is a prevalent fear in Washington, with government officials and journalists having cold feet on a replay of recounts during the 2000 election, which was resolved after about five weeks by the US Supreme Court. Last week, Kayleigh McEnany, Press Secretary of the White House, brought up the current voting in New York utilizing the mail-in ballots and called it as a dark omen for November, adding that it will become an absolute catastrophe. According to McEnany, about a month have passed after the voting and until now some of the winners of that election were still not named. She added that Gov. Cuomo made a decision to pre-pay postage for the ballots, and what it meant was the Post Office failed to place a postage stamp that took note of the date of the ballots. McEnany uttered that for about a month, they have been gathering ballots without a postmark date. She continued, saying that as of the moment they have discovered that in Queens, around 19 percent of the ballots were rejected and 28 percent of the ballots in Brooklyn have been rejected as well. On Monday, July 27, the counting of the preliminary election ballots has finally been finished by the New York State Board of Elections, which took nearly five weeks after the June 23 Election Day. Related article: Donald Trump Suggests Delaying Presidential Election Due to Possible Fraudulent Results in Mail-In Voting @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Schneider Electric, a global leader in digital transformation of energy management and automation, has made major strides in its sustainability goals, exceeding the year-end target and taking the overall performance for avoiding primary resource consumption to just over 126,000 metric tonne. Each quarter, Schneider Electric publishes 21 indicators from the Schneider Sustainability Impact (SSI) which measures their progress towards their sustainability commitments from 2018-2020. These objectives are closely aligned with the United Nations (U.N) Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and summarize the extra-financial performance of the Group. Announcing its financial and extra-financial year results, Schneider Electric said this quarter, its Schneider Sustainability Impact had reached a 7.71 out of 10 score and was confident that it would meet the end of year target through the programmes they have in place. Gilles Vermot Desroches, Sustainability Senior VP at Schneider Electric, said: "The crisis will not compromise the achievement of our sustainability goals for 2020. We will keep the bar high for our 2030 commitments: to embark our worldwide ecosystem to fight climate change and uphold our responsibilities towards inclusive growth." "As we continue to respond to those most in need through the Tomorrow Rising Fund - more than one million people so far in 65 countries - our focus for H2 is supporting the recovery of education and training programs. I want to give a special thanks to our employees who are giving so much of their time volunteering to support our local partners," he added. On its future outlook, Olivier Blum, Chief Strategy & Sustainability Officer at Schneider Electric, said: "This year is pivotal. Whilst Earth Overshoot day has moved to August 22, more than three weeks later compared to last year, we know there is more to do to build a safer, greener and truly inclusive world. Collectively, we need to contribute." "This is why we have collaborated with like-minded companies on initiatives such as the CEO Initiative for Europes Recovery, Reform and Resilience," noted Blum. "Supporting recovery post Covid-19 is one step but the aim is green recovery for all. The future relies on innovation that brings digital and energy together to fight climate change everywhere, for everyone," he added. This article by Paul Szoldra originally appeared on Task & Purpose, a digital news and culture publication dedicated to military and veterans issues. The Navy will discharge two San Diego-based sailors found guilty last month of smuggling immigrants who had illegally crossed the southern U.S. border with Mexico in exchange for cash. Petty Officer 3rd Class Jaiale J. Alvarado, an information systems technician assigned to the USS Bonhomme Richard, pleaded guilty on June 9 to charges that he transported "aliens within the United States" for private financial gain on two separate occasions near Jacumba Springs, Calif. in Sept. 2019, according to a copy of the charge sheet provided by the Navy. He was sentenced to 45 days confinement, demotion to seaman recruit, and a bad-conduct discharge. On June 30, Petty Officer 3rd Class Ralph Joseph T. Carolino pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy and was sentenced to 45 days confinement, demotion to seaman apprentice, and a bad conduct discharge. Carolino, a boatswain's mate assigned to Naval Base San Diego, had conspired with a person he knew as "Ryan" to pick up and transport "individuals traveling on foot" near the border town of Tecate, Calif. on two separate occasions in June and July 2019 for private financial gain, according to the charge sheet, which was also provided by the Navy. The military in southern California has seen a number of human smuggling incidents in recent years. In July 2019, two U.S. Marines were pulled over in Jacumba and arrested by U.S Customs and Border Protection for shuttling people from Mexico further into the United States. Two of the three immigrants found in the car with the Marines told officers they had agreed to pay $8,000, about three times more than the service members' monthly pay. The investigation dramatically expanded weeks later, after the Marine Corps announced human trafficking and drug charges against two dozen Marines at Camp Pendleton. Many of the cases later fell apart after a video surfaced showing they were arrested and called a "cancer" by their commanding officer in front of an 800-person battalion, which a military judge ruled was an unlawful violation of their rights. Most of the Marines were later dealt with through administrative separation, outside the military court system, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. In 2018, a California National Guard soldier was arrested for allegedly smuggling three Mexican nationals in exchange for at least $6,000, according to USA Today. Border patrol agents have apprehended nearly 260,000 people who attempted to cross the southwestern border since Oct. 2019, according to statistics from Customs and Border Protection. The agency arrested more than 851,000 immigrants during the previous fiscal year. A Navy spokesman could not immediately answer questions regarding the services' efforts to discourage human smuggling or whether there had been an increase in such incidents. This article originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter. More articles from Task & Purpose: Marine Corps to consider promotion of one-star general who used his aide as a personal servant Flanked by pistol-packing generals, Kim Jong Un appears ready to drop the hottest diss track of 2020 Smedley Butlers fiery speech to World War I veterans is still relevant today Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Coastal NSW faces the possibility of a third bout of wild weather in less than a month as insurance advisers warn the risks from multiple storms are being underestimated. Authorities are continuing to assess the damage from back-to-back big low-pressure systems that forced the evacuation from homes at Wamberal to Sydney's north and stripped sand away from many beaches. Central Coast Council alone estimates it has spent more than $100,000 on emergency repairs, and is rushing to import 600 storm-proof bags from Japan that are capable of containing four tonnes of material each. But Risk Frontiers, a natural hazards research centre, said the risks from the storms on assets such as coastal roads and property are being underestimated because they are typically treated as single events. Since east coast lows come in clusters, the impacts are magnified. The first of the two recent storms packed total wave energy hitting the coast with a ferocity expected about once every four years, or some 54.8 gigajoules per metre. The second was less extreme, but still packed a severity expected once each year at an estimated total energy of 11.8 GJ/metre, according to research by Thomas Mortlock, senior risk scientist. Advertisement "If treated as a single storm, the total energy was around 66.6 GJ/m, which is equivalent to the amount of erosive potential that could be expected of a single east coast low of a return period of approximately seven years," Ryan Crompton, managing director of Risk Frontiers, said. Loading Data going back to the 1850s shows east coast lows, particularly the high-impact ones, tend to come in clusters. Since beaches typically don't have time to recover lost sand in time for the following storm - or storms - the resulting cumulative risk needs greater attention by planners, Risk Frontiers said. The recent combination "demonstrates how there can be an underestimation of coastal risk by assuming all [lows] drive independent erosion responses", the consultancy said in a briefing note. "If the cumulative erosion potential that exists with clustered ... events is not incorporated into coastal hazard planning, then we may continue to under-appreciate the importance of event clustering," it said. Dr Crompton said that, while programs in NSW today were guided by the Coastal Management Manual that refers to storm clustering as an important facet of erosion risk, it was still "down to the individual plans as to the extent which this is considered in design criteria". "Addressing this problem is of particular importance given future sea level rise projections which will exacerbate the risk," he said. Advertisement Mitchell Harley, a coastal researcher at the University of NSW said the clustering was relevant to understand the present erosion issues at Wamberal, Collaroy and Stockton, near Newcastle. Dr Harley, though, said coastal planning has had to take into account the possibility of big storms in close succession. He noted the largest and fourth-biggest storms of the past 50 years hit within a fortnight of each other in 1974, and planners had to take into account the erosion risks of a repeat. However, the so-called set backlines established in the wake of those tempests run through the middle of houses at Wamberal, implying that those threats remain serious if such events recurred. For next week, though, weather models are uncertain about which way several possible lows might travel. The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting one low is more likely to be further south than the two recent ones, and have more impact on the Victorian coast. A second low, forming late next week will most likely bring rain to inland regions rather than batter NSW beaches. Advertisement Coastal engineer Angus Gordon (seated) and UNSW researcher Mitchell Harley assess the impacts of the recent storms on Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. Credit:Nick Moir Ben Domensino, a senior forecaster with Weatherzone, said if the second of those two lows formed in the Tasman Sea, "you can expect coastal erosion impacts". With a large pool of cool air moving across from the west, there is the potential for "a dynamic set-up" once it reaches the warmer air over the Tasman Sea. "We just won't know for a few more days," he said. Eric Belzer, a Wamberal resident stands at the beach-side end of his home. The Central Coast Council approved his redevelopment plan only if he move his house closer to the sea than his existing one, he says. Credit:Nick Moir Eric Belzer, a Wamberal resident of 30 years, said residents were increasingly frustrated by delays on getting approval to build a seawall. While acknowledging the main obstacle remains determining who pays for the wall - that the council expects will cost $20,000 per metre - Mr Belzer said planning rules were inconsistent. The council approved an application to rebuild his 1950s cottage even though it assumed a wall was in place. They also rejected his plans to shift his new house several metres towards the back of his property, pressing him instead to shift it forward. The compromise approved will bring his house one metre closer to the beach. The government on Friday announced it would set up a taskforce to settle on "a long-term solution to the coastal erosion issues" at Wamberal. Popular YouTube channel and website The Black Experience Japan features interviews with dozens of black residents of Japan. Launched in 2017 by Laranzo aRanzoa Dacres, a Jamaican living in Japan, The Black Experience Japan interviews people from a wide variety of backgrounds, from a man who afound exactly what he needed in Japana to Tsietsi Monare, a meteorologist and weather anchor for NHK, Japan's national broadcaster. The website and YouTube channel got its start in 2017 following the launch of Ranzo's documentary aThe Truth About Being Black in Japana, in which he answers common questions he gets asked as he goes about daily life in Japan. In this video, Fukuoka residents Ruth, from Kenya, and Grace, from Tanzania, talk about how they arrived in Japan, what it is like to work at a traditional Japanese-style pub or izakaya, mastering the Japanese language at a high level, and how Japan shows athere's life beyond a white-supremacy narrative.a President Donald Trump said late Friday that the U.S. is going to ban the popular social media app TikTok. Scrutiny has continued to surface for the app, which frequently features people lip-synching and dancing in short videos, due to its ties with China and concerns over U.S. security. Please log in to keep reading. Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Hurricane Isaias travels through the Atlantic as Florida and the Bahamas brace for disaster. As of August 1, Saturday, 2 AM, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) reports that the storm was roughly 115 miles away south-southeast from Nassau, the Bahamas. It was monitored to be moving northwest with a speed of 14 mph. You can track the hurricane here. So far, the NHC says it has 85 mph sustained winds; it is expected to go over the Bahamas central region on Saturday morning, and then near or over the northwestern Bahamas during the latter part of the day. It is then anticipated to go near Florida's east coast on the afternoon of Saturday up to Sunday. Last Thursday, the exterior of the storm barreled Puerto Rico before going to the Dominican Republic. READ: Storm-Proofing Miami Could Cost 4.6 Billion Dollars According to the NHC, Bahamas has imposed a hurricane warning for the central and northwestern parts of the country; Florida has as well, in the Brevard-Volusia County to Boca Raton line. Hurricane Isaias is anticipated to have rain of up to eight inches in the Bahamas, while it may be up to six inches in east-central and southern Florida, including the mid-Atlantic and Carolina states. Georgia and northeastern Florida, NHC said, may get rain up to two inches. Possible Flooding The heavy rains can cause a storm surge, and, combined with the tide, may flood normally dry locations as rising waters move inland. In Florida, the water can reach four feet above the ground, and five feet above Bahamas' normal tide level. In the Carolinas and possibly Virginia, heavy rainfall can cause flooding as well. State of emergency Even if the hurricane's exact path is not known, many states are preparing for it. Roy Cooper and Ralph Northam, governors of North Carolina and Virginia, respectively, have declared a state of emergency last Friday in their respective jurisdictions, ahead of the arrival of Isaias. Dave Kerner, mayor of Palm Beach County, relayed that a zone will be evacuated. This area primarily has mobile homes, and residents will be offered six shelters on the morning of Saturday. These shelters will be in middle schools, high schools, and a recreation center. The Effect on Pandemic Activities State-supported walk-up and drive-thru testing sites in Florida have been closed last Thursday in expectation of the storm. According to Mayor Kerner, Palm Beach is prepared. Temperature checks will be conducted in the shelters, and evacuees will be divided into family units. They will be given masks as needed, and the police will help ensure social distancing. Bahamian authorities also set up shelters, with at least ten shelters readied with supplies in New Providence. The government also activated the Royal Bahamas Defense Force and health ministry personnel. In 11 counties in Florida, testing sites will stay open, most of which are located on the Panhandle or west coast, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management. According to the division, all sites are anticipated to be opened by 8 AM on August 5. In Miami, testing has stopped, and will likely remain shut down till Tuesday or maybe Wednesday, according to Mayor Francis Suarez. He says an information gap of four to five days will occur. READ NEXT: Hurricane Aftermath Leaves Mangrove Forests More Resilient to Sea Level Rise Taliban Group Says Completed Release of 1,000 Afghan Prisoners Under Agreement With US Sputnik News 12:54 GMT 31.07.2020 KABUL (Sputnik) - The Taliban movement has completed the release of 1,000 Afghan prisoners as per the Doha deal agreed with Washington, Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Qatar, said on Friday. "According to the Doha Agreement, in which the Islamic Emirate promised to release 1000 prisoners in exchange for 5,000 prisoners, this number was completed by us today," Shaheen said. Earlier in the day, the Taliban completed the process by releasing 82 prisoners in the Afghan provinces of Herat, Farah, Ghor, Nimroz, Zabul and Balkh, the spokesman added. The Afghan government and the Taliban committed to releasing each other's prisoners 5,000 and 1,000, respectively as part of a peace deal negotiated by the group and the United States in the Qatari capital of Doha on 29 February, with the outlook to launch intra-Afghan talks. Kabul has so far freed only 4,400 detainees, according to the Taliban. Earlier this week, Shaheen said that the Taliban would release the remaining Afghan prisoners before the Muslim sacrifice festival of Eid al-Adha, which starts on Friday, as a goodwill gesture. The movement expects the peace talks with the Afghan government to start in August following the release of the prisoners. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bengaluru continues to be worst affected by the pandemic. On Friday, out of the 5,483 cases that the state reported, 2,220 were from the capital. 84 new Covid deaths were also registered. Since the first week of July Karnataka has been witnessing a spike in the number of Covid positive cases with the numbers breaching 5,000 mark The health experts have sounded warning bells saying that the cases are expected to rise in the coming days. "As the city and the country is opening up under Unlock 3.0, there has been a spike in the number of cases and yes, the cases are expected to rise. Though one can say that the recovery rate has improved over the months, the rise in cases can also be attributed to the improper social distancing etiquette of the public at large and not wearing masks properly," Dr Suriraju. V, MD Regal hospital. Since the first week of July Karnataka has been witnessing a spike in the number of Covid positive cases with the numbers breaching 5,000 mark nearly everyday. The recovery rate of the state that was at 33% a few days ago is reported to have improved and reached 40% on July 31. In order to manage Covid suspect maternity hospital patients, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has started hiring gynecologist, pediatrician, anesthetist, general physician, MBBS doctors and staff nurse for 6 months. Meanwhile, there have been reports coming in from Ambedkar Medical College, Shampur about the lack of electricity, unclean ward and bathrooms. Some patients have alleged that the bed sheets are not changed. Responding to complaints on the wards and bathrooms being unclean, a staff at the hospital said that the cleaning is done four times a day. "It is not like cleaning is done after every few minutes. The cleaning staff comes four times a day," a staff said. With a spike in the number of Covid cases, the public health officials want the government to give attention to the spike in the number of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) violations. It has come to light that other than the police and health departments the government bodies such as Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), urban local bodies, education and district collectorate have not uploaded the statistics on the website that was meant to track COPTA violations. There are several departments (KSRTC, Police Department, Urban Local Bodies, RDPR, Education, District Collectorate etc) implementing COTPA violations in their respective jurisdictions and all the violation reports are scattered leaving the state with no proper data for policy formulation. According to statistics by the police department, the state registered 7,231,381 cases of violation of COPTA from January to May 2020. Bengaluru reported 2,063,350 cases followed by Mysore with more than twenty thousand In this April 6, 2020 file photo, a customer wearing a mask carries his purchases as he leaves a Target store during the coronavirus pandemic in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (Mark Lennihan/AP Photo) Target Requires Its Customers to Wear Masks Starting August 1 All of Targets employees are already required to wear face coverings, but starting August 1, Target customers will be required to wear a mask to shop in all of its stores. The company says it will provide disposable masks at entrances to customers who dont have one. A Target store in a file photo. (Illustration Shutterstock) The disposable masks will be free-of-charge. The retailer notes nearly 90-percent of its stores already required masks or facial coverings because of local and state regulations. Target says young children and those with underlying medical conditions are exempt from the mask mandate. The CNN Wire contributed to this report. Russia will resume flights to and from Switzerland on August 15, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said in a statement on Saturday, Trend reports citing TASS. "The crisis center for coronavirus prevention headed by Tatyana Golikova has decided to mutually resume international flights to and from Switzerland starting on August 15. Flights between Moscow and Geneva will be carried out once a week," the statement reads. "Down with the Wall of Moms!" "Death to the Leaf-Blower Dads!" In George Orwell's classic novel "1984," members of the Outer Party stood in front of their telescreens daily to revile Big Brother's enemies and exult in his power. "Long live Boss Trump!" Just so Fox News' excited coverage of Portland, Oregon's Wall of Moms in their COVID-19 masks and bicycle helmets confronting Trump's mercenaries in full combat gear. A second group calling themselves Leaf-Blower Dads are using lawn equipment to force tear gas barrages back in the faces of the storm troopers who fired them. Classic American ingenuity, if you think about it. Also a reminder that in Portland, the majority of dangerous, violent "anarchists" Boss Trump warns against are unarmed women and suburban men with yards and garages who know their way around Home Depot. But they're not having an invasion of Trump's personal Gestapo: paramilitary forces wearing no insignia, with no badge numbers or names, and accountable to nobody. People are coming out in thousands to defend their community from an invasion. There's also a Wall of Vets, and Teachers Against Tyrants. That's why Portland's mayor, Oregon's governor and its two U.S. senators have demanded the federal agents' removal. They'd had the situation under control before the troops arrived. Which is not to nominate protest leaders for sainthood. There are opportunists and fools of every political persuasion. Also, history teaches, provocateurs are all too willing to smash windows, loot and burn for purposes of their own. During rioting at the Chicago Democratic convention in 1968, some of the angriest hotheads turned out to be cops impersonating anti-Vietnam War activists. In Portland, however, Boss Trump's crowing about his agents tear-gassing Mayor Ted Wheeler as he addressed protest marchers ("They knocked the hell out of him," he boasted on Fox News) was received with contempt: the boasting of a flabby blowhard who's hidden behind bodyguards all his life. He has approximately the same chance of winning Oregon's electoral votes as I do -- and I'm not on the ballot. If that offends you, dear reader, riddle me this: What would have been your reaction if a phalanx of anonymous, masked federal agents had assaulted, say, a Tea Party demonstration during the Obama administration? If you're a conservative, it might be like Paul Rosenzweig's, a career Republican who was one of Kenneth Starr's keenest sleuths in the Great Bill Clinton Sex Investigation. Writing in The Atlantic, he argued that invading Portland "is a complete corruption of conservative ideals. There is nothing conservative about unconstitutional police activity, and there is nothing conservative about unilateral federal intervention in state affairs. Those are the acts of an authoritarian." Rosenzweig and co-author Arthur Rizer also quote Tom Ridge, former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush: DHS "was not established to be the president's personal militia." See, while prating about being a "law and order president," Trump is doing everything he can to provoke violence, hoping it will frighten suburban voters into holding Joe Biden somehow responsible -- despite Biden's history as a pro-cop liberal throughout his long career. He's also hoping to somehow distract voters from the 150,000 Americans who have died because of his negligence and incompetence in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, when Richard Nixon successfully played the "law and order" card in 1968, Lyndon Johnson was president. Nixon's opponent was Vice President Hubert Humphrey. So far, polls show that Trump has had no success convincing anybody outside his hardcore base that others are responsible for the violence he's working so hard to provoke. But there are three months to go, and discord is spreading across the country. Seattle; Oakland; Louisville; Aurora, Colorado, etc. Rival groups are carrying guns and itching for a fight. In Austin, a man carrying an AK-47 was shot to death by a man in a car suspected of trying to run civil rights marchers down. The mayor of Richmond, Virginia, has alleged that "white supremacists marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter" violently disrupted an otherwise peaceful protest. The only things restraining Trump are his cowardice and fear of getting caught. "Rightly or wrongly," writes my man Charles Pierce in Esquire, "this puts the responsibility on the protestors themselves. ... (I)t's time for the burning of police stations and other acts of violence to stop. It's time for folks to stop hurling themselves mindlessly into the face of faceless law-enforcement." Way past time, actually. In Portland (and elsewhere), activists could foil Trump by simply staging demonstrations some distance from federal property. Let the Trump Troopers gas each other. Activists need to shout down apostles of violence and turn vandals and arsonists over to legitimate law enforcement. Above all, emulate John Lewis, the great civil rights icon, who understood the folly of rioting and the overwhelming moral authority of nonviolent mass resistance. Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can email Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Champaign, IL (61820) Today Mostly cloudy skies. High near 45F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Cloudy skies. Low 27F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible. TikTok stars are bidding farewell to the popular video-sharing app after President Trump announced he was banning the Chinese-owned platform on Saturday, amid national security concerns. The social media outlet, where users can create 15 or 60 second videos, has grown wildly popular among young people over the last year and is estimated to be used by more than 80million Americans. As news of the ban broke on Friday, TikTok stars rushed to say their final goodbyes to the app where they found celebrity status, asking fans to follow them on Instagram or YouTube instead. Scroll down for video TikTok mega-star Dixie D'Amelio, who boasts 32 million followers, uploaded a video of herself reacting to the demise of the app Skin care guru Hyram, who gained a following after sharing tips on beauty and skin care products, shared a farewell video to 5.4millon followers on Friday The D'Amelio sisters, Dixie, 18, and Charli, 20, are among young stars who have made a career from TikTok, after videos of their dances went viral. Charli (left) is currently the most-followed user on the app, with 75.1million fans Among them was popular skin care guru SkincarebyHyram, who has amassed 5.2 million followers in recent months by sharing videos of his beauty and skincare tips. 'Goodbye y'all. You have all made my life incredible for the last five months. I'll miss our memories, seeing your beautiful faces and all the laughs,' he said in a video. 'Remember: Keep that skin GLOWING.' TikTok mega-star and singer Dixie D'Amelio, also uploaded a video of herself reacting to the demise of the app, staring blankly at the camera as her song 'Be Happy' played in the background. Dixie, 18, and sister Charli, 16, from Norwalk, Connecticut, became two of the most popular users on TikTok, which they joined last summer, after videos of their singing and dancing went viral. Charli, who is yet to react to the ban, is currently the most-followed star on TikTok, boasting 75.1 million followers, while her older sister has 32 million. The girls have been known to make videos with fellow TikTok celeb Addison Rae, who is followed by 53.3million users. Addison, 19, took to Twitter after learning the news, asking followers to 'send flowers pls'. TikTok has propelled the careers of many young social media users including Addison Rae, who is followed by 53.3million users and has created videos with Kardashian sisters Addison took to Twitter to react to the news of the platform being banned Earlier this year, 16-year-old Charli D'Amelio (pictured on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon) became the first TikTok star to land a Super Bowl commercial when she appeared in an ad for Sabra Hummus Popular TikTokers Tony Lopez and Michael Le, also known as JustMaiko, each shared videos asking fans to find him on other social media platforms before the app shuts down for good. 'Well s**t. F**k. Follow me on Instagram I guess. This might be it,' Lopez said. The shuttering of the app will not only be a loss to the millions of fans joined to participate in viral trends, but it has sparked concerns for those who now use it to make a living. Tik Tok has produced a community young celebrities, many of whom have been able to make careers as influencers after landing lucrative sponsorships with brands. Earlier this year, Charli D'Amelio became the first TikTok star to land a Super Bowl commercial when she appeared in an ad for Sabra Hummus. As for getting paid for social media content, the teenager reportedly charges up to $100,000 per post, according to Cosmopolitan. Charli and Dixie have also partnered with Hollister and makeup brand Morphe in the last few months alone. The same goes for Addison Rae, who joined TikTok last July and has since amassed a massive following, with 3.1billion likes, and has been featured in videos with the Kardashians. Michael Le, also known as JustMaiko (left) has amassed 34.5million followers through his popular dancing videos. He and fellow TikToker Tony Lopez shared videos asking followers to find them on other social media platforms before the app shut down for good 'If TikTok actually gets banned please support your favorite creators and follow them on all other social platforms immediately. Your support means more than you know,' one Twitter user said on Friday. TikTok has raised concern among worldwide and U.S. officials for its potential threat to security, along with claims that the Chinese government is using the technology to spy on citizens. On Friday, Trump said the popular video-sharing platform could be barred as soon as Saturday by executive order or through use of emergency economic powers. 'As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States' he told reporters on Air Force One as he returned from Florida. 'Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that [emergency economic powers].' The president also made clear he did not support an American company to purchase TikTok's U.S. operations after an earlier report claimed Microsoft was 'in talks' to acquire the platform. Trump told reporters he could ban TikTok in the U.S. as soon as Saturday, while traveling back from Tampa on Air Force One Friday TikTok's wide popularity among American teens has brought scrutiny from U.S. regulators and lawmakers who fear their personal information could fall into the hands of government officials in Beijing Sources told The New York Times on Friday that a deal was in the works, but it was unclear where the two firms stood. At the same time, reports had claimed Trump was planning to order TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance to give up ownership of the platform. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters the White House, ByteDance and potential buyers of TikTok, including Microsoft failed to produce a deal that would result in the Chinese company shedding the app's U.S. operations. The talks are expected to continue in the coming days. Twitter users reacted to Trump's decision to ban TikTok, which has produced a number of young stars who now rely on it for their livelihood Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday said the app was being looked at by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks. ByteDance has consistently denied any links to the Chinese government. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, 'While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok.' ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the US and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikTok's fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and US tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a competitive threat. A UK worker will change employer every five years on average, according to research. Photo: Getty The traditional idea of company loyalty no longer exists. Fifty years ago, it was common to be hired by a firm and work your way up in the business. In return for 40 years of service, you would retire at 65 and receive a nice present and a pension. Times have changed, however. Although you may stay in your first job for a few years, its likely you will move on to new pastures after a while and continue job hopping every few years. A UK worker will change employer every five years on average, according to research by life insurance firm LV=. In the US, the median number of years that wage and salary workers have worked for their current employer is currently 4.6 years, according to an Economic News Release. The rise of the gig economy means fewer long-term contracts and more ad hoc work too, as well as more people turning to self-employment. But is the loss of company loyalty such a bad thing? Staying put may mean earning less There are plenty of reasons why you might stay in one job for longer than you intended. At the moment, changing jobs simply isnt an option in the current economy and remaining in your position provides some stability. READ MORE: What to do if your contract allows flexible working, but your boss doesn't However, staying in your job simply to be loyal to the company may not pay off financially, research has shown. In 2014, a Forbes report suggested that staying employed at the same company for over two years on average will mean you earn less over your lifetime by 50% or more. This might be a conservative estimate too. A lot of businesses provide larger financial incentives to new hires too, rather than upping the pay of existing employees. According to the US financial services provider Nomura, people who changed jobs earned about 1% more year-over-year than stayers. Although this seems like a minimal amount in lost wages, it adds up over the course of your career. Being too comfortable isnt a good thing Story continues Money isnt the only reason we change jobs. When we start at a new company, were often seeking better opportunities and a chance to develop our skills too. Although this might be possible through an internal promotion, working for different employers is likely to make you more adaptable and give you more varied experience. Not only does this benefit your career, but your employers too. Staying for a decade or more at a job may be a positive thing if you are gaining seniority, building on your skills and developing managerial responsibilities that give you more clout in the company. But sticking to one company without advancing isnt going to do you or any of your future employers any favours. READ MORE: How gender bias affects feedback and performance reviews While being comfortable in your job is usually a good thing, it can sometimes work against you. When you know what you are doing, youre good at it and you feel loyal to your company, you stop seeking new opportunities and chances to develop new skills. Even if you feel secure in your job too, you never know what could happen. After ten years of hard work, you may find yourself facing redundancy in an economic downturn and having to think twice about your career decisions and available opportunities. No matter how loyal youve been to your employer, they may still choose to protect themselves instead of you. 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CONTACT: Company Name: Internet Marketing Company Person for contact Name: Gurgu C Phone Number: (818) 359-3898 Email: cgurgu@internetmarketingcompany.biz Website: http://compare-autoinsurance.org SOURCE: Internet Marketing Company View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/599933/A-New-Guide-Explains-How-To-Get-Accurate-Car-Insurance-Quotes-Online Residents and workers in group homes for people with disabilities face "a looming emergency" due to lack of training in use of personal protective equipment and inadequate preparation to combat coronavirus infection. Outbreaks of COVID-19 similar to those in 87 Victorian aged care homes were likely in the disability care sector unless nurses were brought in for training, according to the director of the Disability Institute at the University of Melbourne, Professor Anne Kavanagh. More than half of disability support workers say they need more training in COVID-19 infection control. Credit:Louie Douvis She said it was "extremely worrying" that many disability support staff working in close contact with clients, and sometimes also working in aged care facilities, had received no training in COVID-19 infection control. Unless "trained medical staff are brought in to work alongside them", Professor Kavanagh said "we will have another aged care crisis and people dying who don't need to be dying". In Victoria there are about 535 group homes and 2500 residents. Ahead of the auspicious occasion of Raksha Bandhan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Rakhi sister from Pakistan, Qamar Mohsin Shaikh has sent the sacred thread to him via post. Shaikh is from Pakistan but is now settled in Ahmedabad after marriage and this would be her 25th Raksha Bandhan with PM Modi. This year she would not be able to meet PM due to COVID-19 crisis, so she decided to send him rakhi via post. READ | 'Modi' Rakhis A Hit This Season As India Boycotts Chinese Products Qamar Mohsin said that she has known PM Modi for the past 30-35 years, long before he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. When Shaikh met PM in Delhi for the first time, he came to know that she belongs to Karachi and has been married in India. PM Modi called me behen (sister). I do not have any brother. So, after two to three years when we again visited Delhi on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan, I tied rakhi on his wrist. Once on Raksha Bandhan, I told him that I will pray for you become the CM of Gujarat. At that time, he laughed, but later when he became the Chief Minister, I told him that my prayers have been answered by God. Later, he even became the Prime Minister," she added. READ | Indore Women To Send Handmade Rakhis To PM Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, & Indian Army 'I pray for his long life" Qamar Mohsin said that her rakhi and book have been received by PM Modi. Even though she could not meet him personally this year due to the Coronavirus crisis, she prayed for PMs good health. "I wanted to tie the 25th rakhi to PM Modi personally but due to COVID-19 crisis I won't be able to, everyone is facing problems. I pray that the next five years go well for him that the whole world recognises the positive decisions he took. I pray for his long life," she said. Raksha Bandhan will be celebrated across India on August 3 this year. READ | Gujarat School Principal & volunteers Collect 12,000 Rakhis For Jawans Serving At Border READ | Amid PM Modi's 'Make In India' Initiative, BJP MP Launches 'Swadeshi Rakhi' Campaign (Image credits: ANI) At least one Jefferson Parish School Board member has joined the voices calling for the system to delay its return to in-person instruction until at least after Labor Day amid rising coronavirus cases and still-developing safety protocols in the schools. Simeon Dickerson, whose primarily Black district includes much of south Kenner and part of the west bank, said Friday he has emailed his colleagues on the board and members of the administration urging them to back the move. Jefferson Parish has the highest number of coronavirus cases in the state; its school system is the only large one in the New Orleans area in which students will return to the classroom before Labor Day. Teachers are scheduled to return to classes Monday; students will return Aug. 12, with students in grades 6-12 going two days per week and doing the other three days virtually. Other large districts in the area, including Orleans and St. Tammany, have pushed students' return to campus into September. "Considering Jefferson Parish has the most COVID-19 cases in the state, and Louisiana has the highest per capita cases in the country, this is the most thoughtful and responsible thing to do," Dickerson wrote in his email. He added in an interview that he has received hundreds of emails, calls and in-person pleas for school to be delayed. "This is affecting our students, their family members, their caretakers," Dickerson said. It's unclear what sort of action the board could or would take. The board will meet Wednesday and Dickerson has support from at least one colleague. Ricky Johnson, the board's other Black member, said he "very much" supported pushing the start of classes back to after Labor Day. Other officials have urged the board and administration to consider a delay. Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said Thursday that while she felt the school system's reopening plan was a good one, she has suggested they consider delaying for a few weeks. 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 +6 Jefferson Parish education workers rally to demand delay in school opening With teachers set to return Monday to the more than 80 campuses in the Jefferson Parish public school system, several dozen gathered outside t "I think there is some value in giving ourselves a little more time, maybe until Labor Day," Lee Sheng told WWL Radio. "A couple of weeks just to see where we are, maybe our numbers go down a little bit." Board Member Larry Dale, however, said he supports the current plan, which includes and all-virtual option for students. So far, more than 18,000 students have applied for the virtual school. Likewise, teachers can apply to work in the system's virtual classrooms, Dale said. "We care very much about the safety of our children and our teachers," Dale said. "We have put a very good plan in place." Dale's confidence in the plan, known as "Start Strong Jefferson," was echoed by Ochsner Health's Pediatric Systems Chair, Dr. William Lennarz, who said his team had worked with the parish on the plan and consults with school leaders frequently. "I do think the plan as Jefferson Parish has outlined has provided an evidence-based safe methodology," he said. The system had to weigh health risks with issues that come when children are out of school for prolonged periods of time, he said. Holding off until Labor Day may not have much effect, he added. "I don't think a delay in education for that period of time is going to make a substantial difference on the risk side, and I do think it further delays the resumption of education which we now know has a very significant negative effect on kids," Dr. Lennarz said. Ryanair has launched a High Court action aimed at setting aside what it claims are International travel restrictions announced by the Government earlier this month. Ryanair claims that the 'restrictions', arising out of the Covid19 pandemic, are unlawful, amount to a disproportionate interference of individual's rights and are detrimental to its business. In its action Ryanair is challenging measures, announced on July 21st last, including that persons not travel outside the Island of Ireland, save for essential purposes, and that everyone holiday at home in 2020. It is also challenging what it says are requirement for persons returning to the state from countries not on a designated green list to restrict their movement and self-isolate for a period of 14 days. Ryanairs claim the measures are mandatory in nature and have the same effect as regulations it says should have, but were not voted on or approved by the houses of the Oireachtais. As a result the airlines says the restrictions are unconstitutional and in breach of the 1970 and 2020 Health Acts, the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Ryanair's action is against An Taoiseach, Ireland and the Attorney General. Aer Lingus Ltd is a notice party to the action. In correspondence opened to the court the state strongly denies the measures challenged, which it says are advisory and not mandatory in nature, are unlawful. It also said there is no basis for a legal challenge against the measures. It said its Covid-19 travel advisory notice in relation to non essential travel are necessary, proportionate and transparent measures designed to deal with the global health emergency. It said that the green list of countries will be reviewed on a fortnightly basis based on advice from public health officials. The airline represented by Martin Hayden SC and Eoin O'Shea Bl, say that the measures are more than just advice from the government regarding travel to and from Ireland. Mr Hayden agreed with Mr Justice Charles Meenan that its case is essentially that the government has introduced what are effectively "mandatory" regulations "under the cloak of advices." The 'restrictions' represent law making by the executive which ought to have been made law by the Oireachtais, counsel said. Without going through the proper processes the measures lack the proper checks and balances counsel added. Mr Hayden said the 'restrictions' have a real effect on people including persons ability to go back to work after returning to Ireland from a country that is not on the "green list of nations" without going into a 14 day self-isolation. There were also insurance implications, counsel added. Counsel added that the government's restrictions have raised serious questions for the entire airline industry in Ireland. As well as seeking orders setting aside the measures Ryanair also seeks various declarations These include a declaration that by announcing the restrictions the Government has unlawfully encroached on the legislative prerogratives of the Oireachtais and has breached articles 6, 40 and 15.2 of the Irish Constitution. It further seeks declarations that the outside the powers and breach laws and articles of legislation including the 1970 Health Act, the 2020 Health Act (Emergency Powers) the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the ECHR. After consider the application Mr Justice Meenan said Ryanair had raised important issues and directed that the application for leave be made in the presence of lawyers for the State respondents. The application was brought on an ex-parte basis, with only one party present in court. The judge said that given the urgency of the case it may be possible to have 'a telescoped hearing,' where both the application for leave and the challenge itself are heard at the same time. The matter will return before the court in mid August. Mr Kingsely Aboagye Gyedu, the Western North Regional Minister, has presented items worth GH7000.00 to the 25-year old farmer who delivered quadruplets at the Bibiani Government Hospital in the Western North Region. The items included boxes of soap, washing powder, baby diapers, wipers, toilet rolls, clothes and cash of 5000 Ghana cedis. The Regional Minister, who doubles as the Member of Parliament for Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai, presented the items to the mother, Princess Ayiemah, at the Bibiani Government Hospital, accompanied by Mr Alfred Amoah the Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai Municipal Chief Executive. Mr Aboagye Gyedu said the gesture was a support from President Akufo-Addo, who upon hearing the historic and good news, decided to help. He said the President received the message with joy and he directed him to present the items to help save the lactating mother from any hardship as she had been blessed with the babies. Mr Daniel Kofi Aboagye, the husband of Madam Ayiemah, who received the items on behalf of his wife and the entire family, thanked President Akufo-Addo and the Regional Minister for the support and said the gesture would go a long way to lessen the burden in the feeding and clothing the babies. Madam Ayiemah, a farmer at Kwao-krom, a community near Sefwi Chirano in the Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai Municipality, told the Ghana News Agency that a scan conducted during her pregnancy revealed she was carrying the four babies, hence she was aware she would deliver quadruplets. She, however, expressed concern that it would be difficult for her to take good care of the babies since she did not earn much from her farming activities. She thanked the President for the gesture and appealed to non-governmental organisations and philanthropists to support her to take good care of the children. 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 CARACAS, July 31 (Reuters) - Two of the six former Citgo Petroleum Corp executives detained in Venezuela were moved to house arrest, veteran U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson said late on Thursday, weeks after he visited the country to seek their release. The former New Mexico governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations traveled to Caracas and met with socialist President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month as part of a private humanitarian mission on behalf of the families of American prisoners in Venezuela. The two prisoners moved to house arrest, Gustavo Cardenas and Jorge Toledo, were among the six arrested in 2017 on charges of embezzlement that the U.S. government and their lawyers say are baseless. Five of the executives of Citgo, the U.S. refining unit of Venezuela's state oil company, have American citizenship. "This is a positive and important first step," Richardson wrote on Twitter. "We are grateful to President Nicolas Maduro and Vice President Jorge Rodriguez for this gesture and for continuing to engage in the productive dialogue on the American detainees ..." Venezuela's information ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Caracas and Washington cut diplomatic ties last year after the Trump administration tightened sanctions on Venezuela in an attempt to oust Maduro, who it accuses of rigging his 2018 re-election. Venezuela's government is also currently holding two former U.S. special forces soldiers, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, who authorities arrested in May for allegedly leading a failed incursion attempt aimed at capturing Maduro. Richardson has a history of working to get Americans released from captivity by hostile governments. He previously was involved in securing U.S. missionary Joshua Holt's freedom from Venezuelan detention in 2018. (Reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas and Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis) Dawn Redlich was in her apartment in Old Town on May 30 watching TV when Portland police used tear gas on protesters outside. It was a temperate night and a little breezy, she said, and gas wafted into her open windows. The night it happened and into the next afternoon I had a real scratchy nose, itchy throat, burning in the eyes, she said. Redlich is one of the many people living in the downtown area experiencing the side effects of more than 60 days of ongoing protests. For two months, protesters have gathered every night to demand an end to systemic racism and police violence in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. Right-wing media and the federal government report that Portland is a city under siege and downtown has become a flashpoint of civil unrest over police violence. If the Federal Government and its brilliant Law Enforcement (Homeland) didnt go into Portland one week ago, there would be no Portland -- It would be burned and beaten to the ground, President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday. For the vast majority of Portlanders, these hyperbolic declarations are demonstrably false. But people living in and around downtown Portland tell a different story, one that includes long nights of explosions and tear gas drifting through windows. Redlich filed a claim against the City of Portland after the tear gas episode, and according to her attorney Michael Fuller, the city has agreed to pay her $500. Another of Fullers clients, Monique Jefferson, also filed a claim against the city after gas entered her apartment near the Portland Art Museum on May 31. According to Fuller, the gas caused severe and ongoing burning in her chest, throat and nose, as well as ear pain. The city agreed to pay Jefferson $1,000. The unprecedented use of tear gas has even prompted regulators to require the city to test stormwater in the area of the protests. Barbara Shaw lives at RiverPlace Condominiums on the waterfront, about half a mile from the federal courthouse and justice center, the focal points of the nightly protests. While she cant see the demonstrations, she said, I can see some smoke rising from that area and often the acrid, irritating aftermath of some sort of explosive material is carried on the wind right into my bedroom. Shaw can also hear the muted sound of explosives nightly, she said. For people experiencing homelessness in the downtown area, the police response to the protests is disturbing and disruptive, said Juliana Lukasik, the senior director of public affairs for Central City Concern, a nonprofit that works with people impacted by homelessness. She said that when the protests were more wide-ranging, the effects of the floating tear gas and the loud noises employed by authorities were especially harmful to people who are living outside in the area of downtown. Now that the response has been corralled into a two-block area, things are somewhat better, she said. But it isnt only the physical issues that worry Lukasik. The anxiety of having this constant fear of the response to the protesters is very, very detrimental to our houseless community, she said. Were deeply concerned, she said. Not by the protesters, the majority of them are peaceful what is incredibly disruptive and triggering is the response. Thomas Chambers lives in KOIN Tower, three blocks from the Justice Center. From his balcony, he can see the nightly demonstrations. It would be nice if the rioting after midnight would stop, Chambers said, but I cant say the noise is all that bothersome. According to Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, federal officials or Portland police have declared unlawful assemblies or a riot in downtown Portland 16 times since July 4. A Portland Police Bureau spokesperson said that agency has declared a riot in downtown nine times since the protests began in late May. What Chambers does find disturbing is the noise of flash bangs set off by police. They sound like little bombs going off, he said, and again, it is after midnight. And the sounds carry. Redlich, who lives 12 blocks from the Justice Center, said she hears flash bangs every night. She also lives close to a helicopter pad, she said, adding that recently she hears helicopters all night long. Redlichs cat and dog are still scared, but I dont feel like its under siege, she said. Redlich, Shaw and Chambers do all agree that downtown feels unwelcoming. Previously, Shaw said, she took advantage of living near the city center by taking classes at Portland State University, exercising at 24-Hour Fitness and visiting the library. I rarely got in my car, Shaw said. Now, I rarely go downtown. Shaw drew a connection between the pandemic and the downtown protests. I dont think that this would be happening if the downtown were functioning normally, she said. The fact that the downtown has blocks of empty commercial buildings with very few people on the street day and night must have created just the right void to allow BLM protests to become destructive political theater night after night. For Redlich, the issue isnt the protests. I think the homeless problem makes me feel more under siege than the protests, she said. She believes somewhat more people are camping on the street during the pandemic, and that people willing to commit crimes downtown are emboldened by the knowledge that police are busy. I keep pepper spray in my pocket, she said. On the night of May 29 into May 30, a peaceful protest turned chaotic, erupting into smashed windows and looting. But since then, Portland police have reported few crimes of opportunity. Issues with burglaries downtown predate the nightly protests. In April, authorities said burglars were targeting downtown businesses that shuttered as the coronavirus pandemic continued. Chambers said he is saddened by the changes hes seen downtown. People worked for decades to build a wonderful city core, he said, and it seems to be disappearing in a matter of months. Even though the coronavirus has closed many downtown businesses, Chambers said he thinks the protests have made things worse. Downtown could be empty, he said, without looking like a war zone. -- Lizzy Acker 503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Syracuse, N.Y. Two people died of Covid-19 since Thursday in Onondaga County, bringing the total number of coronavirus fatalities to 199, County Executive Ryan McMahon announced today. The most recent victims were a woman in her 90s and a man in his 80s, McMahon said. The county has 17 new cases of Covid-19 since Thursday, bringing the total to 3,344 since March, McMahon said. Of the new cases, seven were attributed to community spread; four occurred in households with previous infections; three were blamed on travel from other states (Florida and Georgia); two occurred in senior living facilities (among residents or staff); and one remained under investigation. McMahon said contact tracers in the health department have expressed frustration that some infected people are failing to return their phone calls, and others have provided misleading information. He said county officials will issue subpoenas if necessary to obtain timely information about who has been in contact with an infected person. That information is necessary to quarantine people before they can spread the disease further. The county has not delivered any subpoenas yet, he said. Cooperate with our investigations,' McMahon warned. There are 24 coronavirus patients in local hospitals, four less than Thursday. Four patients are in intensive care. Fifteen patients are awaiting discharge to nursing homes or other senior facilities, pending a negative test result, McMahon said. There are currently 162 active cases of Covid-19 in Onondaga, seven more than Thursday. The number of active cases has declined from a peak of 941 on June 8. According to the state Department of Health, an average of 0.9% of people tested in Onondaga County were positive for the virus during the seven days ending Thursday. Thats about half the infection rate compared with one month ago. Regions that have infection rates below 5% will be allowed by state officials to send kids back to school in September. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Hybrid school reopening plans leave CNY parents scrambling 1st Syracusan injected in Covid-19 vaccine study wants to fix mess were in 9 dead after coronavirus outbreak at Liverpool memory care facility Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com News tips? Contact reporter Tim Knauss of syracuse.com/The Post-Standard: email | Twitter | | 315-470-3023 ZEITGEIST II Speaking of zeitgeist, one of my schoolmates' posted this on Tuesday: "My final message on Facebook. Dear Friends, The fact that you are reading this means that I am dead. As a handful of you are aware, I was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in March 2019 and apparently it finally got the better of me. I've decided not to have a traditional funeral, although my ashes will be sprinkled at the Spit Beach on the Gold Coast at some point. Timing may depend on social distancing requirements depending on how that currently stands but my son Angus will post details here when the time comes for those who may be interested. In any case I'll keep this short ... just wanted to say it's been a privilege knowing each and every one of you, and I wish you all health and prosperity for the future. Fond farewells, Andrew." Farewell, Andrew. And that was a typically classy, interesting sign-off from you. MASKETEERS Peter FitzSimons. Credit:Nick Moir My new photo byline? Well see. But the more I learn about it, the more it seems obvious to me that if everyone in Australia wore some kind of face mask when out and about and made it the "new normal", we could make huge inroads on our rate of infection. True, we have at least our fair share of cretins who carry on as if it was 30 years ago and they were being asked to stop smoking in restaurants, but ... just as they lost that argument because there was such logic behind not polluting public air space, they will lose this argument too and for much the same reason. So far the rate of infection in NSW compared with Victoria has been remarkably low but if it starts to climb, surely between us we can make masks the new normal? Everyone with me? Above 50 per day, we all do it? WHAT THEY SAID "National hubris and belief in American exceptionalism have served us badly. We were not prepared to see the risk of failure." - Martha L. Lincoln, a medical anthropologist and historian at San Francisco State University, in The New York Times on the explosion of the pandemic in the US. "If some people are uncomfortable, they go work out and do whatever. Some people just let out the pants." - Michael Shimunoff at La Moda Custom Tailors in Queens, New York, about the phenomenon of stay-at-home weight gain playfully called the Quarantine 15 by some which has brought an unexpected windfall for tailors. Some said they have seen business rise by as much as 80 per cent, with customers asking for buttons to be moved, waistbands lengthened and jackets made more roomy. "I dont want to see the koala extinct by 2050, I want to see their population doubled by 2050 ... at least another 20,000 koalas [by then]. Koalas are the most iconic example of our mismanagement of the environment and weve got to say 'enough is enough'." - NSW Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean. "I think a bit of symmetry like the number 40 is worth positing on. Happy Birthday today to my favourite achiever in the whole wide world, someone, who despite everything on her plate, still finds time to squeeze lots of fun, love and happiness into our wee family unit. The. Best. xx." Jacinda Ardern's partner, Clarke Gayford, marking her 40th birthday last Sunday on Instagram. "I've actually liked the fact there's not too many people in the city, not too many tourists everywhere you go. It's been really quiet and nice." - Dutch backpacker Sietse Peer looking on the bright side of COVID-19 lockdowns. The 26-year-old arrived here in February, just before the world changed and the borders were sealed. Now he has a four-person dorm room all to himself at the YHA hostel in The Rocks in Sydney. "The idea it [wearing a mask] is an imposition on someones freedom or individual rights, Im not sure I can be convinced of that. That sort of behaviour has to stop. I acknowledge wearing a mask can be difficult and it takes some time to get used to but, in all seriousness, it is just having a mask on." - Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth. "My mother is in her mid-70s, with underlying health issues but she lives at home. Some of the stories we've seen are unacceptable and I wouldn't want my mum in some of those places." - Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews about the state of aged care in his state as COVID-19 rips through nursing homes. "The idea that our carers, that our nurses, are not providing that care, I think is a dangerous statement to make. They are wonderful human beings, and I won't hear a word against them." - Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt about attacks on nursing home staffs. "That's a matter for the Queensland Premier. It would have been nice if she'd told me, but that's fine." - NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian after Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that all of Sydney was a prohibited area for people trying to enter her state. Harris County is restructuring their Flood Control Task Force into a Harris County Community Resilience Task Force, with some northwest Harris County residents calling for broader representation for their region. County commissioners have been holding public hearings and workshops to gather public input on the changes to the task force. Get ready: Hurricane season is here This task force will verify on the prioritization framework that everything is going as promised and, just as importantly, the group will help us and help the (infrastructure resilience team) figure out what should be the next step, what do we do about these drainage challenges, preservation challenges, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said during Commissioners Court. How are we gonna get to a place where were actually resilient from flooding? Bobby Lieb, president and CEO of the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce, said his chamber weighed at the meeting through their position on the Harris Plus Flood Solutions Board chaired by Auggie Campbell. Our interest is that if its truly an infrastructure resilience task force, that there is representation from the entire county, Lieb said. We suggested at least one representative from each watershed. On HoustonChronicle.com: Memorial Parks new Eastern Glades puts visitors in awe Lieb said other needs hed like to see addressed by the task force include maintained technical expertise, as well as the way the force was appointed. The chamber would want appointees recommended to county commissioners for selection, as opposed to commissioners appointing five people who would appoint the rest of the task force. I want to make sure that northwest Houston has representation on that task force, that it doesnt become a lopsided representation in the county, Lieb said. Cypress Creek, sometimes we feel ignored, and so we just want to make sure that interest is represented. If we can get someone from that watershed, that would be a good thing. Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle, who represents northwest Harris County, said during the commissioners court meeting he liked some of the practices included in the restructured task force, including that task force agenda items be submitted eight days prior to the meeting; and for county commissioners to consider an item by the task force, the task force would need to have their reports complete 30 days prior to the meeting. Those two parts there I think are good practices and would allow community input and engagement in those activities, Cagle said. One resident from the Huntwick Forest neighborhood in Champions, Scott Torres, said during a virtual focus group that a lot of his community was concerned reading the changes of verbiage from flood control task force to infrastructure resilience. Their concern is theres not gonna be any focus, or how does this new terminology incorporate flood control, Torres said. What does that mean, youre just going to cut down trees in our neighborhood and build these big, giant swallow holes for water to go into? What does infrastructure resilience mean? Torres also said his community was concerned about the lack of mention of any kind of environment social group programs or environmental social responsibilities to maintain some areas. Chang Chu, one of the facilitators of the meeting with Harris County, said he understood the need to keep focus on flood mitigation despite the name change. Its like creating a constitution, Chu said about the restructuring. Its very difficult to make sure everything is represented, but were trying to do our best to make sure everything is incorporated into the final document. Commissioners Court anticipates voting on finalized bylaws at the August meeting, and task force work is scheduled to begin in the fall. Campbell, who previously served on the last Harris County Flood Control Task Force, said the board recently has been less effective. One reason the Harris County Flood Control bond was so successful is it got community input from each watershed, Campbell said. We believe the new task force will be more effective if each watershed has representation. Increase task force membership from 17 to 23 for all 22 watersheds. Campbell said he thought the task force would provide greater representation the way it is being proposed but had some fear about having the consensus to move projects forward. My fear is if you dont get a consensus and youre not able to move projects forward, this really slows down flood planning and construction because of the way its set up, Campbell said. paul.wedding@hcnonline.com With over 36,500 Covid-19 fatalities, India has the fifth-highest Covid-19 death toll in the world. According to Johns Hopkins Covid-19 tally, the United States has the highest number of Covid-19 fatalities in the world with 153,314 patients losing their battle with the contagion. Brazil comes on the second spot with over 90,000 deaths followed by Mexico (46,688) and the United Kingdom (46,204). When it comes to the total number of coronavirus cases, India stands third on the global tally after the United States and Brazil. However, the government has maintained that Indias recovery rate, around 64 percent, in coronavirus patients is among the best in the world and continues to improve. So far, over 10 lakh patients in India have recovered or been discharged from hospitals. At present, India has over five lakh active cases of Covid-19 across the country. Indias Covid-19 death rate stands at around 2.15 percent, among the lowest in the world. Also read: Another one-day spike of over 57,000 Covid-19 cases pushes Indias tally to nearly 1.7 million India recorded the steepest spike of 57,118 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours. With this, the countrys coronavirus caseload nears 1.7 million. The month of July alone accounted for nearly 1.1 million infections. As per the health ministry, additional 764 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, taking the countrys Covid-19 death toll to 36,511. On Friday, health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said that India achieved more than 1 million recoveries with active cases accounting for only one-third of the total. India is now conducting more than 640,000 tests in 24 hours, taking cumulative tests across the country to nearly 1.9 million, he said. By PTI COLOMBO: Workers at the strategic Colombo Port have stopped work in protest against the privatisation of its Eastern Container Terminal, demanding a "written pledge" from Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa that it would not be privatised by giving it to India. The move comes after the workers last month threatened to go on an indefinite strike to protest against what they called "Indian pressure" to prevent Sri Lanka from developing a deep-sea container terminal of the country's largest and busiest port. "We have brought the whole port to a standstill and want a written pledge from President Gotabaya Rajapaksa that the ECT would not be privatised by giving it to India or anyone else," trade union leader Prasanna Kalutharage said. He said that the workers, who stopped work since Friday, will continue the strike until Rajapaksa meets them and agrees to their demand. "We apologise to the nation as our strike will cause losses to the national economy. But this loss would be multiplied if the ECT is to be privatised. We want the Sri Lanka Ports Authority to manage the ECT," Kalutharage said. The previous Sirisena government had signed a "memorandum of cooperation" (MOC) with India and Japan for a tripartite effort to develop the ECT which is located just next to the USD 500 million Chinese-run Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT). Although the MOC was completed last year, a formal agreement for the terminal development is yet to be signed and the trade unions have been pressing the government to abandon the MOC and develop the terminal as a 100 per cent Sri Lankan venture. Retired Major General Daya Ratnayake, Port Chairman, said the administration was also on the same side as the trade unions. "We too do not want this privatised. It is the policy of the government not to sell any state assets," Ratnayake said. "This problem was created by the last government. But they (trade unions) must understand that problems cannot be solved through strike. These are diplomatic issues which need careful handling," he added. Trade unions have called for expediting the development of the East Terminal and are against handing it over to a foreign country. Colombo Port is the largest and busiest port in Sri Lanka.Located on the southwestern shores on the Kelani River, it serves as an important terminal in Asia due to its strategic location in the Indian Ocean. The SLPP trade unions lead the protest with support from trade unions affiliated to other political parties. The strike comes ahead of the country's August 5 parliamentary elections. Rajapaksa's ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party is seeking two-thirds majority in the 225-member parliament. Signs that President Donald Trump's reelection bid is in crisis grew steadily this past week, one of the most tumultuous moments of a presidency increasingly operating with an air of desperation as it tries to avoid political disaster in November. Campaign officials pulled television ads off the air amid a late-stage review of strategy and messaging. At the same time, Trump publicly mused about delaying the November election, airing widely debunked allegations about fraud that were roundly rejected by Republicans and Democrats. And as the campaign aims to mount a more aggressive defense of Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the president has reverted to touting unproven miracle cures, attacking public health officials and undercutting his own government's push to encourage good health practices. Trump briefly lamented his predicament during a taxpayer-funded event Friday in Florida that doubled as a political rally and a showcase of poor public health practices. "We had an easy campaign, and then we got hit by the China virus," Trump said as uniformed sheriff's deputies stood behind him and a crowd of dozens of supporters huddled before him. Few people wore masks or practiced social distancing. With the president unable to hold traditional rallies and his central economic message no longer relevant, campaign officials are scrambling to assemble a fresh case for his candidacy on the fly. After a six-day pause in advertising, new ads targeting Democratic rival Joe Biden are set to begin airing Monday, according to campaign officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. It's the latest in a long-running attempt to define the former vice president in the eyes of voters before they cast their ballots. But Trump himself is perhaps the greatest impediment to any successful campaign pivot, as the president has rejected calls from Republican allies and lawmakers to project a steady hand during what is shaping up to be another lost summer of self-inflicted setbacks. The turbulent final week of July capped a month that may rank among the most ominous of Trump's term in office, marked by erratic behavior and flashing warning signs. A slew of public polls showed Trump falling further behind Biden, who now leads by double digits nationally; Trump demoted his campaign manager Brad Parscale and replaced him with longtime GOP operative Bill Stepien; nearly 25,000 Americans died of the novel coronavirus, and a record 2 million were infected; Trump canceled the Republican National Convention celebrations; the economic recovery from a record contraction slipped into reverse; and 30 million Americans lost their $600 weekly federal unemployment assistance after the White House and Congress struggled to negotiate a stimulus package. Struggling on multiple fronts, Trump's campaign launched a major shake-up that included a broader review of strategy, spending and messaging while ads came off the air, officials said. Stepien - who officials say has impressed Trump with his command of data - is attempting to get a better sense of how the campaign has been focusing its energy and targeting its resources. Stepien told others he wanted to understand how ad decisions were made and why certain ads were being run, officials said. Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner approved the pause in ads, an official said. Stepien is also reviewing personnel allocation to determine whether structuring the campaign they way Parscale did makes sense. Campaign officials have denied there is any lingering tension over Parscale's demotion. But Stepien's elevation and swift embrace of new tactics amount to a tacit rebuke of the former campaign manager's tenure. The Stepien-led review of spending and strategy comes as a legal complaint this past week accused the campaign and an affiliated fundraising committee of failing to properly report nearly $170 million in campaign spending through firms run by Parscale. The Trump campaign denied any wrongdoing. Campaign officials said that when the pause in ad spending ends Monday, new television spots will aim to brand Biden as a tool of liberal extremists. The negative ads will initially target swing states that have the earliest mail-in voting dates. Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin are among states that begin mailing out absentee ballots to voters more than 45 days before the Nov. 3 election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Michigan, Georgia and Texas are among states where ballots will also begin hitting mailboxes in September. The campaign, which held an all-staff meeting at its Arlington headquarters on Wednesday that one official described as a "call to arms," is operating under a renewed sense of urgency as it becomes clearer that a large portion of the electorate will likely cast their ballots early by mail as a result of the pandemic. That gives Trump even less time to turn things around. But even as Stepien and top campaign aides try to impress on the staff that time is limited, Trump has done little to show he plans to change tactics. Trump's allies say they realize the pandemic will likely be the central issue for voters heading into the election and have urged him to show he is in command of the crisis. The president has instead opted to double down on divisive messaging, reverting to form after briefly appearing to embrace a more serious tone about the pandemic. In recent days, Trump has used his massive social media platform to promote a doctor who falsely claimed Americans did not need to wear masks because the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is a "cure" for the coronavirus. Trump continued to express support for the doctor, Stella Immanuel, after a reporter informed him Tuesday that she had also claimed that alien DNA is used in medical treatments. When pressed, he abruptly ended the news briefing and walked away. Earlier in the same briefing, Trump complained that health officials, including top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci, are popular but "nobody likes me." "Why don't I have a high approval rating?" Trump asked before answering himself: "It can only be my personality. That's all." The president set off a fresh round of drama Thursday when he publicly mused about delaying the election, which he claimed without evidence will be marred by historic fraud. "With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history," he wrote on Twitter. "It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???" A chorus of Republicans and Democrats publicly rebuked him, noting that the president does not have the authority to delay an election. On a strictly political level, Republicans are worried that the president's onslaught against mail-in voting could hamper their efforts to turn out the vote. Trump's attempts to draw a distinction between universal mail-in voting and individually requested absentee voting, while welcomed and encouraged by party officials, have not had the intended effect on Republican voters. GOP party officials have struggled to convince voters to request mail-in ballots. "He has denigrated mail-in voting to the point that Democrats are dominating requests for absentee ballots," said David Wasserman, House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Like Trump's unsubtle attempts to appeal to "Suburban Housewives" and virus-wary senior citizens, his push to discredit mail-in voting underscores the sense of angst in his reelection bid as Biden settles into a comfortable lead. One top Biden campaign official acknowledged that the Democratic campaign strategy is often to stay out of the news when Trump's behavior is particularly inflammatory. Biden's team didn't respond until Thursday evening to the president's early morning missive suggesting that the election should be delayed. "It is absolutely a strategic decision," said a Biden official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign tactics. "We don't let him pull us off of our message and we don't play his game." But some Biden campaign allies believe that the former vice president's operation is being too selective about how it responds to Trump's attacks. Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said that he's been begging top campaign officials to punch back at Trump's ads that wrongly suggest that Biden supports defunding the police. The spots had been playing in high rotation in key swing states before the Trump campaign's recent pause. "Obviously the Trump people have very few arrows in their quiver," Rendell said. But the "law and order" message could work with some voters, he said. Trump, as he often does when he feels under pressure, is preparing to go more aggressively into attack mode. Campaign officials expect a ruthlessly negative race in the final months. "We are doing a new ad campaign on Sleepy Joe Biden that will be out on Monday," Trump wrote Friday on Twitter. "He has been brought even further LEFT than Crazy Bernie Sanders ever thought possible." Stepien has told allies he wants attacks going forward to focus on the liberal figures trying to influence Biden. Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and self-described democratic socialist, has featured heavily in Trump's messaging against Biden. But it's not clear that the strategy is working. Several campaign aides and allies admitted that they have struggled to negatively define the former vice president in the eyes of voters - a long-standing goal for the summer that is quickly slipping out of reach. As Biden has largely remained in his Delaware home due to the pandemic, many of Trump's attacks on his mental acuity, liberal policies and approach to public safety have not broken through. "One thing that we have found in our focus groups is that people just don't know anything about Joe Biden," said Kelly Sadler, the communications director for America First, the official pro-Trump super PAC. America First, which is currently running ads painting Biden as weak on crime, is conducting polling to test which messages might work best against the former vice president in the final stretch of the race. Trump campaign ads set to run in the coming days are also aimed at turning up the pressure on Biden, who the president has tried to brand as "sleepy" before switching to more ominous descriptors such as "corrupt" and "puppet of the militant left." As it goes on the attack in the political realm, Trump's campaign is in a defensive crouch when it comes to the electoral map. Polls show Biden leading across the battleground states and competitive in Republican strongholds such as Texas and Georgia. Trump's campaign, which has already spent $1 billion, is using its hefty war chest to defend Republican territory, including Arizona. America First, the super PAC, has stopped running ads in Michigan, acknowledging that its less likely than other swing states to remain in Trump's column in November, an official said. The group is currently running television spots in North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Stepien has also sought to focus the campaign on securing the most direct path to 270 electoral votes. The campaign, which has also pulled back advertising in Michigan, has gamed out scenarios where Trump loses some of the states he won in 2016 and still ends up victorious. "We only need to win either Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania to win this thing again," Stepien told reporters on July 24. But news that Trump's campaign had paused to reassess its messaging was welcomed by Biden's team, which viewed the move as a validation of the Democrat's more low-key strategy. T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden's campaign, said Trump is losing because "he abandoned the American people" and lacked "any coherent strategy" to address a pandemic that has cost 150,000 lives and millions of jobs. "There," he said in a statement. "Message assessment complete." Dole Food Company today shared the companys most recent update on its efforts to combat Fusarium Tropical Race 4 (TR4), a plant disease that poses an existential threat to bananas, a major staple crop for much of the world. Since the discovery of TR4 in northern Colombia one year ago, Dole swiftly ramped-up its TR4 response plan, implementing site-specific TR4 prevention activities throughout Latin America in coordination with local authorities and international experts to contain and prevent spread. A three-year containment program was immediately implemented in 2019 to ensure biosecurity protocols in every Dole banana farm, as well as those of Doles independent suppliers. Those protocols build upon best practices implemented in the banana producing countries where the disease has been successfully contained and are continually reviewed and strengthened per sitebased upon the farm layout and locationto maximize the effectiveness of the risk-based mitigation plan. Dole also continues to share these best practices with independent growers and to engage with governments, multi-stakeholder initiatives and industry partners to ensure that our actions are coordinated with the wider response, both in Latin America and globally. These efforts require significant investment and as of now there is no evidence that TR4 has spread from the area in Colombia in which it was initially detected. Fortunately to date, the spread of this disease in Latin America has been contained to only the La Guajira region of Colombia, but this issue is not isolated to one region or one banana grower; it affects the entire industry and we must all be vigilant, stated Patricio Gutierrez, Director of Innovation R&D, Dole Tropical Products. Containment alone is not sufficient. We must find ways to move beyond defense and find a sustainable solution to this issue in the long-term. Dole is exploring a number of potential resolutions. One such solution the company is investigating is how to implement safe and approved biological control measures to prevent disease. Additionally, Dole is working closely with research institutions around the world toward developing a disease resistant banana variety through crop improvement and conventional breeding methods. Since 2016, Dole has participated in a consortium working in partnership with the Honduran Research Foundation (FHIA) on the development of banana varieties that are resistant to TR4. Although developing a new kind of banana through traditional breeding is painstaking work, the research team is making good progress and a number of lines are currently being pot or field tested for TR4 resistance. More recently, Dole began collaborating with companies working on precision biotechnology as a means to develop TR4 resistant bananas and is also part of the Global Alliance against TR4 led by IICA and Bayer in collaboration with other large banana stakeholders. When and if either these efforts or the other work being done by third parties succeed, Dole intends to be part of the discussion on how to make the solution available to banana growers worldwide. About Dole Food Company Dole Food Company, Inc., is one of the worlds largest producers and marketers of high-quality fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. Dole is an industry leader in many of the products it sells, as well as in nutrition education. For more information, please visit www.dole.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200731005419/en/ She recently revealed she had lost one stone and five pounds by following her new fitness plan, Active With Amber. And Amber Turner looked sensational as she posed in a plunging pink bikini in a throwback snap of her getaway to Ibiza on Friday. The TOWIE star, 27, showed off her sun-kissed physique in the cherry-printed set which flaunted her ample assets and toned torso. Wow: Amber Turner, 27, looked sensational as she posed in a plunging halterneck bikini in a throwback snap of her getaway to Ibiza on Friday Amber wore her blonde tresses in loose waves over her shoulders and opted for a fresh-faced look with a slick of berry gloss for the outing. The media personality paired her bronzed complexion with a pastel manicure as she posed in front of a pretty pink bicycle at the Wi-ki-Woo Hotel in the Balearic Islands. She captioned the snap: 'This heat got me wishing I was back In Ibiza.' Natural beauty: Amber wore her blonde tresses in loose waves over her shoulders and opted for a fresh-faced look with a slick of berry gloss for the outing It comes as the blogger - who has always boasted a slender figure - stripped down to grey underwear by Calvin Klein to showcase her more toned and ripped frame as she enthused she feels 'better than ever'. The media personality placed the flashback images alongside recent shots of herself to highlight her sculpted abs and perkier bottom on Monday. Detailing her lifestyle overhaul, Amber captioned the images: 'Girls it's here! My Brand new @activewithamber_ : THE TONED BODY PLAN, is now LIVE. Amazing: Amber Turner has unveiled her impressive body transformation in a series of before and after snaps shared to Instagram on Monday 'Whether you did the first plan or this is your first one, you are going to love it! It changed my body so much and I feel the best I've ever felt! 'I've felt so self conscious & really didn't want to post my before pics because i was very unhappy with my body, but wanted to show you guys the power of my plan!' (sic) Revealing she lost weight without the help of a personal gym, the girlfriend of TOWIE co-star Dan Edgar added: 'It's b****y amazing, i did it in my own home, no gym, no PT - Just a set of 4KG adjustable dumbbells! I've lost 1 stone 5 pounds! Incredible: The blogger stripped down to grey underwear by Calvin Klein to showcase her more toned and ripped frame as she enthused she feels 'better than ever' 'So in my new plan you'll find 10 brand new workouts and new styles of training. Brand new healthy recipes, Plus my 5k Kickstart...4 mp3 workouts that you can download to your phone and listen to while you're running. 'I'll be in your ears, alongside some motivating music, guiding you through interval training sessions....and you get all of this for just a one-off payment. 'Whether you're a beginner or a total fitness enthusiast you can do this plan and get so much out of it. Click the link in my bio to get yours!' (sic) A man (30s) is in critical condition after a single vehicle crash took place last night near Dublin Airport. Three men were rushed to Beaumont Hospital after the collision took place on the R108 road near Dublin Airport at 10pm last night. The driver is currently in critical condition and two male passengers, aged in their 20s and 30s, were also hospitalised with non-life threatening injuries. The road was closed for a time for an examination by Forensic Collision Investigators but has since reopened. According to a garda spokesperson, investigations are ongoing. US Sanctions Key Paramilitary Group, Officials Over Abuses in China's Xinjiang Region 2020-07-31 -- The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday sanctioned a key paramilitary group in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and two of its current and former officials, in the latest bid by the Trump administration to end rights violations in the region. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp (XPCC), as well as Sun Jinlong, the XPCC's former political commissar, and Peng Jiarui, its current deputy party secretary and commander, "for their connection to serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang," the agency said in a statement. The sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act block the XPCC, which employs some 12 percent of the region's population and produces nearly one-third of China's cotton, and the two current and former officials from access to the U.S. financial system. They also restrict Sun and Peng from traveling to the U.S. Among the abuses cited by the Treasury Department are reports of "mass arbitrary detention" in the region, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps since April 2017. "As previously stated, the United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers accountable in Xinjiang and across the world," said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The new sanctions are the latest in a series of measures the Trump administration has rolled out in recent weeks against China. Washington and Beijing have been embroiled in a tit-for-tat exchange over issues including trade, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the autonomy of Hong Kong, territorial claims in the South China Sea, and ethnic rights that has seen bilateral relations reach their lowest point in four decades. Washington responds In a statement addressing Friday's sanctions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China's rights violations in the XUAR "rank as the stain of the century," and slammed the XPCC as "directly involved" in implementing measures that include the surveillance, detention, and indoctrination of Muslims in the region. "Today's designations are the latest U.S. government action in an ongoing effort to deter human rights abuse in the Xinjiang region," Pompeo said. "We call on all countries to join us in condemning the CCP's (Chinese Communist Party's) heinous abuse of the human rights of its own citizens, affecting countless families across the world." The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)a bipartisan, federal entity that makes policy recommendations to the president, Secretary of State, and Congresswelcomed the Treasury's designation of the XPCC. "For years, we have advocated for sanctioning the XPCC," USCIRF Commissioner Nury Turkel said in a statement, calling the announcement "a significant step" even beyond sanctions announced earlier this month against senior CCP officials deemed responsible for abuses in the XUAR. "The XPCC is essentially a parallel government in Xinjiang and has been directly involved in implementing the surveillance, mass detention, and forced labor of Uyghurs." USCIRF Commissioner Gary Bauer said the latest round of sanctions "show that the U.S. government is increasingly able to identify and target those Chinese entities most responsible for religious freedom abuses against Uyghur and other Muslims." "Communist China can no longer hide its religious freedom abuses from the world," he added. Earlier measures Earlier this month, the Trump administration leveled sanctions against several top Chinese officials deemed responsible for rights violations in Xinjiang, including regional party secretary Chen Quanguo, who is also the current first political commissar of the XPCC. The move, which marked the first time Washington had sanctioned a member of China's powerful Politburo, was followed by similar sanctions against Chinese officials seen to be responsible for recent heavy restrictions on the autonomy of Hong Kong. China's Foreign Ministry responded with retaliatory sanctions targeting several republican lawmakers, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, and the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China advisory panel. In the latest back-and-forth, the U.S. last week ordered China to shutter its consulate in Houston citing concerns over espionage, prompting China to demand that the U.S. close its consulate in Chengdu over similar allegations. 'Symbol of colonialism' Speaking to RFA's Uyghur Service, Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC), applauded the sanctions as being "of historical significance." "The [XPCC] is a symbol of Chinese colonialism [that] has violently wrested away the most fertile lands and water resources from the people of East Turkestan," said Isa, using the name Uyghurs prefer for their homeland. "It has also exploited the Uyghur people and used them as forced labor, resulting in their abject poverty." The XPCC, or "bingtuan," is a quasi-military organization comprised of 14 divisions made up of dozens of regiments that furthers the CCP's policies of economic development in the XUAR through resource extraction and an emphasis on subordination to central planning. It controls interests that comprise nearly 17 percent of Xinjiang's economy. The Treasury Department said Friday that the XPCC had been designated for being controlled by, or for having acted on behalf of, Chen Quanguo, and for helping to implement his policies in the region. Isa called the XPCC a "criminal organization" that the central government has used to "crush the political, economic, and cultural rights" of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. China's Foreign Ministry had yet to comment on the latest sanctions at the time of publishing, but the move is likely to lead to retaliatory measures from Beijing. Reported and translated by Alim Seytoff for RFA's Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. Copyright 1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content July not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Air Canadas chief executive is calling on the government to ease COVID-19 travel restrictions that he says have created one of the most severe aviation lockdown regimes in the world, preventing the airlines ability to recover amid collapsing demand. Air Canada reported a loss of $1.75 billion in its latest quarterly earnings on Friday, as the COVID-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions prompted the airline to layoff thousands of employees and slash seat capacity by 92 per cent. Revenues in the three month period ending June 30 were $527 million compared to $4.2 billion during the same time last year, a decline of 89 per cent. Todays results underscore the tremendous urgency for governments in Canada to take reasonable steps to begin to safely reopen our country and revive aviation, much in the way other countries have been able to, Air Canada chief executive Calin Rovinescu said in a statement. On a conference call with analysts on Friday, Rovinescu pointed to no fewer than four overlapping barriers to travel and economic recovery imposed by the federal government. Those barriers include restrictions on foreign travellers; mandatory quarantine rules for all travellers arriving in Canada; interprovincial travel barriers and government travel advisories to avoid all non-essential travel, a move that prevents travellers from obtaining travel insurance. Together these measures constitute one of the most severe aviation lockdown regimes in the world, Rovinescu said on the conference call with analysts. While needed and appropriate at the outset in March, these constraints still remain in place, unadjusted, despite the availability of more targeted measures that can achieve legitimate public health objectives. And their combined effect has been to decimate the airline business and prevent the possibility of any real recovery at a time of otherwise fragile demand. Travel demand has cratered amid the coronavirus pandemic, with Air Canada carrying less than four per cent of the passengers it carried in last years second quarter. Passenger revenues fell from $4.3 billion last year to $207 million in 2020, a decline of more than 95 per cent. Air Canada is burning through between $15 million and $17 million in cash per day, an improvement from $19 million per day in the previous quarter. Story continues In other jurisdictions, governments have stepped in and offered financial support to struggling airlines. Rovinescu said Air Canada is the only airline amongst the 20 largest in the world that has not received an industry-specific financial support package. Other parts of the world have also had a more rational, I would say, science-based approach to opening markets, he said. But our perspective is that it should be one or both, but it cannot be neither. This is what we continue to be advocating for. Rovinescu said the government made the right decisions in the early days of the pandemic when it did things including closing the Canada-U.S. border to non-essential travel. But the idea that we have stayed in exactly the same position since March is the part that I find unacceptable because we are now migrating from a health crisis into a fairly severe economic crisis if we dont start opening the economy in a more meaningful way, he said. National Bank analyst Cameron Doerksen wrote in a note to clients Friday that travel restrictions, including the 14-day mandatory quarantine rules and closure of the Canada-U.S. border, are the biggest impediment for Air Canada to rebuild its revenues. We do believe that Air Canada has the financial strength to weather the storm for an extended period and may emerge from the crisis in a relatively stronger competitive position, but until restrictions begin to ease, we believe that the upside for Air Canada shares will be limited in the near-to-medium-term, Doerksen wrote. Air Canada has previously called on the federal government to ease travel rules and restrictions. Earlier this month, the airline sent a letter to Transport Minister Marc Garneau and Health Minister Patty Hajdu urging the government to consider a science-based approach to easing travel restrictions. Air Canadas chief medical officer Dr. Jim Chung said the government should replace the quarantine restrictions with more proportionate, evidence-based measures that can achieve public health objectives, while causing less detriment to other public interests and allowing for a measured restart of aviation, similar to what is occurring in other countries. Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android and sign up for the Yahoo Finance Canada Weekly Brief. The leading contenders include Kamala Harris, Karen Bass and Obama national security adviser Susan Rice. Washington: As Joe Biden nears the announcement of his vice presidential choice, the top contenders and their advocates are making final appeals. The campaign hasn't finalised a date for naming a running mate, but three people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans said a public announcement likely wouldn't happen before the week of 10 August. Biden said in May that he hoped to name his pick around 1 August and told reporters this week that he would have a choice in the first week of August. He notably stopped short of saying when he would announce that choice. Running mates are often announced on the eve of a convention. As he prepares to make his choice, a committee established to vet possible running mates has provided Biden with briefing materials. Biden will likely soon begin one-on-one conversations with those under consideration, which could be the most consequential part of the process for a presidential candidate who values personal connections. The leading contenders include California Senator Kamala Harris, California Representative Karen Bass and Obama national security adviser Susan Rice. The deliberations remain fluid, however, and the campaign has reviewed nearly a dozen possible running mates. For Joe Biden, this is crunch time. After all the vetting, all the investigations into the prospective nominees, its now up to Joe. Its personal, said former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who was vetted for vice president in 2008. Its now about his gut feeling. Representatives for Biden declined to comment for this story. The selection amounts to the most significant choice Biden has confronted in his nearly five-decade political career. He has pledged to select a woman and is facing calls to choose the first Black woman to compete on a presidential ticket. Given the historic significance of the moment, some are urging Biden not to let the announcement linger too long. My sense is that the VP himself, having been through this process, is aware of and mindful of not letting people hang out there too long, said Democratic strategist Karen Finney. There certainly seems to be a bit of a media frenzy, and I think we have to be aware that at a point, it becomes unfair to the candidates being considered." As a decision looms, the camps are jockeying for position. Harris' allies mobilized this week after Politico reported that the co-chair of the vetting committee, former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, was concerned about Harris tough debate stage performance and that she hasnt expressed regret. Several California elected officials and labor leaders initiated a call with the vetting team to emphasise that Harris has strong support among labor and political leaders in her home state. The call was organized by Lt Governor Eleni Kounalakis and included the mayors of Oakland, Long Beach and Stockton and former governor Gray Davis. A group of us really felt we needed to organise and speak out and correct the record because she has tremendous support, Kounalakis said. Beyond emphasizing their strong relationships with Harris, they also pushed back against the idea that Harris wouldnt be a loyal partner. Dodd said very supportive things about Harris, Kounalakis said, though she did not give specifics. Biden has sought feedback on his pick from former president Barack Obama, who has provided advice but has insisted the choice is his to make, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations. Biden allies say his wife, Jill, and sister, Valerie Biden Owens, are likely to play a key role in the decision, as they have with many of Bidens biggest political decisions throughout his career. Jill has held online campaign events and fundraisers with virtually all the potential contenders in recent weeks, as has Biden himself, effectively offering the contenders a try-out opportunity with the presumptive Democratic nominee. On Thursday night, Bass joined Biden for a virtual fundraiser that raked in $2.2 million. She has also taken steps to build her national profile, including providing interviews to multiple outlets over the past week. On Friday night, Biden held a virtual fundraiser with Elizabeth Warren, who has also been considered as a running mate. Biden said the event raised more than $1.7 million from over 50,000 grassroots donors. That's about a quarter of the $6 million the Massachusetts senator brought in during her first online fundraiser for the former vice president last month that appealed to higher-dollar donors. We've known each other a long time. Her fearless work for a just America has transformed lives and inspired millions, including me," Biden said. "She is something else. You all know her. Warren said, This is a time of unprecedented crisis. But I wake up every single day with a heart full of hope and here is why: vice-president Biden is meeting the moment, she added. The two talked for nearly an hour but did not mention the vice presidential selection process. Some Biden donors have already begun to plan prospective fundraising events ahead of the formal announcement. Bidens team expects his running mate to contribute immediately to his fundraising operation. Of the finalists, Harris is thought to be the most formidable traditional fundraiser, while Warrens ability to attract small-dollar donations from the partys progressive base is also viewed as a major asset. Man, dog pronounced dead after early morning explosion, structure fire near Harbor Springs A man and a dog have both died as the result of an explosion and structure fire early Tuesday morning in West Traverse Township near Harbor Springs. ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Aleksandr Zatulivetrov was once the proud owner of six restaurants in a city thronging with tourists. But four months after Russia introduced lockdown measures, he has put his apartment up as collateral and sold his car to cover rent for the two remaining establishments he hasn't been forced to sell. The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on Russia's small businesses, leaving many struggling to stay afloat amid state support that pales in comparison with packages offered in many Western countries. Zatulivetrov estimates his losses at 5 million rubles ($68,000) and puts the blame squarely on government mismanagement of the crisis. "I always had a clear position: I don't bother the authorities, and they don't bother me. That's the social contract," he said in an interview at Buterbrodsky, a restaurant he runs near the city center that was finally allowed to open this week. "But now they're steamrolling us." Since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, St. Petersburg, his native city, has been transformed. The historic center received a facelift, and businesses boomed in ways not replicated elsewhere: Staid, Soviet-era canteens gave way to vegetarian cafes; boutique hotels replaced drab lodgings; and bars proliferated to serve visitors that flock here each summer to witness the famous White Nights and the midnight sun. But stay-at-home measures imposed in late March, just as the tourist season was set to begin, have threatened the survival of many of those new locales and forced others to improvise. Some introduced delivery services; others went underground, drawing down shutters and operating through word-of-mouth. But few avoided a collapse in revenue. In April, a decree by Putin effectively ordered companies to suspend operations while continuing to pay salaries to workers forced to stay home. The situation, and the constantly shifting government guidelines, forced dozens of businesses to close and left many owners struggling to make ends meet. "We're in shock, said Vladimir Konyukhov, a chef who owns stalls selling sushi at two St. Petersburg food courts that remain closed on health grounds. He says his business survived lockdown by opening a delivery service that kept its 50 employees busy and covered 30 percent of their salaries. But after four months, he says, our project finds itself on the edge in terms of revenue and turnover." On a recent afternoon, the pedestrian zones of St. Petersburg were clogged with human traffic. Chairs and tables crowded out the sidewalks of popular side streets. Desperate to maximize revenue, some restaurants introduced service charges and began taking large deposits for table reservations. At Buterbrodsky -- a portmanteau of the Russian for "sandwich" and the surname of famous Russian poet Joseph Brodsky -- a skeleton staff served guests at three small tables positioned outside the entrance, steps from a busy road. Although they employ thousands in large cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, small and medium-sized businesses are responsible for only around 20 percent of Russia's GDP. The economy is dominated by industrial conglomerates and major energy exporters. "Our main problem is we're too used to asking," Zatulivetrov, who says he's negotiating the sale of his other remaining restaurant, My Zhe Na Ty, said of small business. "They pity us, tell us to hold tight, but we're not a major source of income for the city. If we disappear, so what? Others will come." He pointed to the Lakhta Center, an 87-story skyscraper visible from the veranda of Buterbrodsky and home to the St. Petersburg branch of state energy giant Gazprom. "That's the real taxpayer," he said. Dmitry Grozny, a business journalist and former editor of Business Petersburg, a local publication, says the clash between small business and the state in Russia has deeper, systemic roots. "The interaction between the two is very weak in Russia," he said. "Officials and business owners live in parallel realities. The former often see business owners as a bunch of rich people who can sit calmly without work and their complaints about lockdown as simply a manifestation of their greed." St. Petersburg usually plays second fiddle to Moscow, the dynamic capital of 12.7 million that sets the tone for Russia. But when authorities in Moscow, despite reporting a surge of coronavirus infections, announced that indoor dining would open on June 23, St. Petersburg did not follow suit. So on July 20, Zatulivetrov and other small business owners gathered to brainstorm ways they could pressure authorities to let them reopen after four months of lockdown, streaming their event live on Facebook. Maksim Levchenko, whose Fort Group owns 12 shopping malls throughout St. Petersburg, issued a direct appeal to Aleksandr Beglov, the city's powerful Kremlin-backed governor. "If you're a man, if you're a governor, then take responsibility and let us work! Because we have been sitting without work for four months now," he said. Levchenko's overture was widely shared on social media. And Beglov was apparently moved to action. In a televised meeting with officials, he instructed his deputy, Yevgeny Yelin, to petition authorities in Russia's capital for permission to open St. Petersburg's malls and restaurants. "Buy a plane or train ticket, go to Moscow," the governor told Yelin. "Bring back [their] decision on Thursday, latest on Friday. If the decision is negative, I'll go there myself on Saturday." The following day, on July 21, Yelin announced the city would allow shopping malls and indoor dining to open from July 27, though food courts would remain closed and various restrictions would stay in place. But the concession coincided with a new law clamping down on alcohol sales that threatened the closure of hundreds of bars in the city. It also shut out restaurants operating in food courts. "This reopening was meant to be a breath of fresh air, for us to pay suppliers and begin working fully," said Konyukhov, the sushi stall owner. He remains banned from using the venues he traded in before the pandemic. For Konyukhov and other entrepreneurs out of pocket after months of uncertainty, Governor Beglov's vacillation over the question of lifting lockdown exposed his reluctance to take responsibility for controversial decisions. St. Petersburg has been hit hard by the coronavirus, recording over 31,000 cases and 2,023 deaths as of July 30. In mid-June, Yelena Tsereteli, the regional official in charge of small-business development, said 40 percent of small businesses in St. Petersburg would not weather the pandemic. "They keep telling us we need to wait, but there's no official road map," Levchenko said. "Instead, there's a complete indifference. No one wants to take responsibility." For Zatulivetrov, who received calls daily from employees asking to return to work, the July 27 reopening was welcome news. That day, his neighbors hosted a party to celebrate in the courtyard of his apartment building. But while his restaurant is enjoying higher foot traffic, he said he has lost 60 percent of a workforce composed largely of students from outside St. Petersburg and Central Asian seasonal workers who returned to their home countries and now have no way of reentering. The uptick in demand, he said, is temporary. On July 17, Russia's Federal Statistics Service reported that real disposable incomes in the country fell by 8 percent between April and June, the height of lockdown restrictions, representing the largest plunge since the catastrophic default of 1998. Zatulivetrov said anger at government policies was only rising among his employees. "The government had the best chance in years to gain support and love. But the opposite has happened," he said. "Whether we have a second wave [of the pandemic] or not, the real collapse will begin in the fall. People have simply run out of money -- you can see it." She has been enjoying a sun-drenched break in the South of France with her pal. And Suki Waterhouse showcased her incredible figure, as she slipped into a cherry print bikini to go for a swim in the sea on Friday. The model, 28, perfectly co-ordinated her two-piece by donning a paisley print bandana and red-tinted sunglasses. Suki Waterhouse showcased her incredible figure as she slipped into a cherry print bikini to go for a swim on Friday Suki showed off her long legs in the tie-side bikini bottoms, while the balconette top highlighted her toned abs. The fashion maven accessorised her beachwear with gold hoop earrings and brought the book 'Totally my a*s' to read during her sunbathing session. Suki appeared in high spirits as she placed her fluffy towel down to cool off in the sea. She's got style: The model, 28, perfectly co-ordinated her two-piece by donning a paisley print bandana and red-tinted sunglasses Holiday: The catwalk queen has been enjoying a sun-drenched break in the South of France with her pal Looking good: Suki showed off her long legs in the tie-side bikini bottoms, while the balconette top highlighted her toned abs Suki and her pal were pictured giggling as they tried to adjust to the chilly water. The model has jetted off to France with friends but has been dating Robert Pattinson for two years. They were first linked in July 2018 when they were spotted leaving a showing of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again at the trendy Electric Cinema in Notting Hill. All in the details: The fashion maven accessorised her beachwear with gold hoop earrings and brought the book 'Totally my *s*' to read during her sunbathing session Reading materials: Suki prepared to read the collection of critical writings from curator and author Alison M. Gingeras Toned: Suki works hard on her fitness regime and is often spotted running in London with her boyfriend Robert Pattinson Time for a dip: Suki appeared in high spirits as she placed her fluffy towel down to cool off in the sea A bit cold! Suki and her pal were pictured giggling as they tried to adjust to the chilly water In her element: The beauty got into her stride as she enjoyed a swim in the sea They've been known to go on double dates with pals Taylor Swift and actor Joe Alwyn, and keep in touch with each other via FaceTime when their schedules keep them apart. Late last year the couple sparked engagement rumours, after it was reported that they would be spending the festive season at model Suki's family home in west London. The Mail On Sunday reported that Robert had lined up a trip to Iceland as a gift for the model turned actress. Showstopping: Suki cut a striking figure during her day on the beach Fashionista: Suki looked effortlessly stylish for her swim Chit chat: The model spoke to her pal before making her way onto the ladder Easy does it: Suki cautiously approached the ladder ahead of her dip in the water In she goes: Suki carefully lowered herself into the cool waters below Chatting away: The friends appeared deep in conversation as they headed to the beach Sunbather: The model looked ready to soak up the sun But even more exciting was the talk among their friends that the actor may ask Suki's father Norman and mother Elizabeth for their daughter's hand in marriage. 'Suki and Robert are a great influence on each other, which is why he is spending Christmas with the Waterhouses,' a family friend revealed. 'Suki encourages him to be more relaxed and Robert keeps her grounded when she's feeling anxious. 'As they're spending Christmas together, it's the perfect opportunity for him to ask for Suki's hand. Lots of people, including Norman, are hoping that he pops the question.' These rumours were further fuelled when Suki was spotted wearing a gold wedding band in January. Beach babe: Suki looked fabulous in her Cherry print two-piece as she enjoyed the sunny weather Snap-happy: Suki has been keeping her followers updated on her travels by posting lots of holiday snaps to her Instagram Peachy: The stunner displayed her pert posterior in her eye-catching swimwear Taking a dip: Suki looked relieved to finally be in the cool water That conclusion was undercut by an earlier DHS analysis that found there wasnt enough information about the Portland protesters for the department to know how they might be connected to antifa or anarchist groups and what precisely was motivating them. Many of the protests in Portland have been peaceful and in response to police violence around the country. The Tampa office of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, P.A. has added Christopher R. White as an associate in the firms Litigation Practice. White focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation and internal investigations. He previously worked as a fellow at the Public Interest Law Initiative, Alliance for the Great Lakes and as an Employment Law Extern at the Environmental Protection Agency. While in the Chicago office Kirkland & Ellis, he represented national clients in major antitrust cases, international private equity firms in the acquisition of numerous companies both domestically and abroad, and represented C-suite executives of public traded companies in major SEC investigations. White received his J.D., cum laude, from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law where he was the Managing Editor of Northwestern University Law Review and a John Henry Wigmore Scholar, and his B.A., with highest honors, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We are proud of the important recognition that our Tampa Litigation Practice has received and look forward to Chris playing a key role as part of our team, said David B. Weinstein, managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurigs Tampa office and chair of the firms national Environmental & Toxic Torts Litigation Practice. Bringing in young talent like Chris with a proven track record of success is part of our commitment to strategically expanding our presence in the Tampa market and providing our clients with the top level of legal services. White is also active in the Tampa community, where he has been a member of Tampa Connection and was recently appointed to serve a three-year term on the organizations board of directors. Tampa Connection is a local organization that is committed to building Tampa Bays future leaders with programming that emphasizes leadership development, networking skills, and professionalism. About Greenberg Traurigs Tampa Office: Greenberg Traurigs Tampa office represents clients in a broad array of civil and criminal litigation, trial, and appellate practice in state and federal courts including complex and high-stakes trials both in Florida and around the country. Our lawyers also regularly represent clients in labor & employment, real estate, environmental, land development, intellectual property & technology, corporate, bankruptcy & creditors' rights, public finance, tax, and other business planning and transactions. We work closely with our Orlando office to offer clients full-service representation in the region, with our six other Florida offices to provide seamless state-wide representation, and with dozens of Greenberg Traurig offices in the United States and abroad to provide clients with both local expertise and global reach. Five Greenberg Traurig Tampa practices are listed as top-tier by U.S. News Best Law Firms. Lawyers in our Tampa office are recognized in Chambers and Partners USA Guide, Whos Who Legal, The Legal 500 United States, Florida Super Lawyers, Florida Trend magazines Florida Legal Elite, and Best Lawyers in America. About Greenberg Traurig: Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) has approximately 2,200 attorneys 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. One firm worldwide, GT has been recognized for the 13th consecutive year as having the most attorneys listed in Best Lawyers in America, having received a perfect score on the Corporate Equality Index published by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and being identified as Brand Elite for Innovation and Reputation on BTIs Litigation Outlook: Changes, Trends, and Opportunities for Law Firms. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law. National Lampoons Animal House is a 1978 American, comedy film with an iconic scene. Bluto (played by John Bulushi) yells Food fiiiiiiiight!, and a crazy chaos ensues as the students wildly fling food all over the cafeteria. As I listen to CIOs describe how their employees are installing the free, open source Kubernetes software, that food fight scene plays out in my mind. So why is there so much chaos concerning Kubernetes installations? Well, because its freemeaning anyone can install it anywhere and at any time. Remember shadow IT and public cloud? Lets back up and give some context to the current Kubernetes dilemma. I find the current Kubernetes food fight reminiscent of what happened with shadow IT several years ago. Developers were frustrated with the extended length of time it took their central IT organizations to provide them with compute resources, so they headed to the public cloud to obtain the resources they needed quickly and efficiently. Although the developers intentions were good, chaos reigned. Lack of governance and loss of control were the norm. The same thing is happening with Kubernetes todays go-to open source, container orchestration tool. Kubernetes allows you to take containers and put them in the right place and manage them. And because it is open sourceand freelots of people are installing it. Without visibility and control by central IT, three primary problems can occur. 1. The first issue is pretty obvious: security breaches. Numerous analysts have highlighted configuration errors as the primary security risk with Kubernetes. Thats because having many uncontrolled instances makes it nearly impossible to get security right everywhere. Put another way, somebody will get it wrong, possibly grievously wrong! 2. The second problem is more of a hidden one: excess cost. Although the software is free, the resources are not. You still need to run it on something. If you install it on AWS, you need to pay for the AWS services. If you install it on hardware located on premises, you still must pay for that. 3. Lastly, inconsistency is a big issue. And when you have inconsistent processes, lots of problems ensue. In a typical enterprise, each person or group is probably running Kubernetes with different tools. Although the version of Kubernetes that OpenShift provides is the same exact version that AWS provides, there are significant behavioral differences between the two, caused by the Kubernetes configuration and the installed tools (aka, Operators/CSI/CNI plugins, etc.). Kubernetes is flexible and does not mandate which tools you choose to use. Lets say one group in your enterprise likes one vendors networking tools; another group prefers the storage tools from a different vendor. The applications deployed may have poorly understood dependencies on a given vendors networking or storage tools, causing the applications to run differently if the tools are changed. No one wants to introduce this kind of risk, so they wont want to change vendors. In other words, if it works, leave it alone. The result is a big messy food fight between different groups within the enterprise. Gain control by accepting 4 realities The primary mandate for any CIO in the midst of this Kubernetes food fight is to gain control. Now keep in mind that controlling something is not the same thing as stopping someone from using it. Gaining control means finding a way to enable people to use the version of Kubernetes they want AND the vendor they want. Yet, IT still must have visibility and control of Kubernetes across all of the groups throughout the entire enterprise. How do you gain control? You must first accept some key realities: Reality #1. You will manage multiple versions of Kubernetes. You will need to provide multiple versions of Kubernetes across multiple private and public installations. Marketing may want Kubernetes version 1.1.3 on Amazon and your finance group may want version 1.6.6 on Azure. You will need to provide multiple versions of Kubernetes across multiple private and public installations. Marketing may want Kubernetes version 1.1.3 on Amazon and your finance group may want version 1.6.6 on Azure. Reality #2. You will need to manage Kubernetes on different platforms. Different groups within your organization will not only ask for different versions of the Kubernetes distribution, they will want it on the platform of their choice. Some will want it through public cloud providers and some will ask for it within your own datacenter. Different groups within your organization will not only ask for different versions of the Kubernetes distribution, they will want it on the platform of their choice. Some will want it through public cloud providers and some will ask for it within your own datacenter. Reality #3. You will need to be able to upgrade each of these versions independent of each other. Yes, of course this process will be time-consuming. But it is a reality. Yes, of course this process will be time-consuming. But it is a reality. Reality #4. You will need to provide access to data in a consistent manner across your private and public data sources. Even though you have the three realities aboveinconsistent versions, platforms, and processesyou must provide consistency. Before moving forward, every CIO must accept these four realities, or you will waste valuable time and energy fighting them. How to control the uncontrollable Given these four realities, whats a CIO to do? Develop what I like to call a control plane. Just as a control plane in networking is responsible for routing traffic, your IT team must develop a control plane for how you control all the Kubernetes realities. To prepare yourself, you need to ask questions and really understand whats going on. Then you need to develop processes that are consistent with your current models. For example, heres a starting list of some questions you should be asking. How many clusters does your control system manage? How do you consistently maintain identity and access management across multiple vendors Kubernetes clusters? How do you maintain a consistent global namespace for your data fabric across multiple Kubernetes clusters in different geographies on different platforms? How do you secure applications with different versions of Kubernetes running on different public and private infrastructure? How does someone unify logging and monitoring across dissimilar platforms and Kubernetes distributions? As I mentioned, this list is only the beginning. By sitting down with IT and reviewing all control issues, you will likely come up with many more items. Once you identify your issues, then you can start to resolve them. And you accomplish this by developing controls. Stopping the Kubernetes food fight Its time to gain control and stop the Kubernetes food fight. Experts in the container team at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have worked with customers all over the world finding solutions that help gain back control. To solve this issue as quickly as possible, organizations find it helpful to work with people who have been there and done that. To learn more, visit the HPE Ezmeral software page. To read more articles by Robert Christiansen, visit HPE Ezmeral: Uncut. ____________________________________ About Robert Christiansen Robert Christiansen is a key executive in the CTO Office at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, setting the strategy and evangelizing the companys vision. In this role, Robert is dedicated to key global clients and partners, deepening the relationships and aligning the joint technology efforts to improve the way people live and work. Robert is a contributing writer for CIO, Forbes, TechTarget, and numerous industry magazines and is a major contributor to The Doppler, the cloud industrys thought-leadership publication. He is also a keynote speaker at numerous technology and HPE led events, clearly articulating technology shifts while having a great time doing it! Surgical face masks are photographed for illustration photo during the spread of coronavirus. Krakow, Poland on April 24, 2020. The rule of covering the nose and mouth in public places with face masks, carves or handkerchiefs came into force from April 16th. Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images A 54-year-old New Jersey woman, Margot Kagan, was hospitalized after a mask confrontation that occurred at a local Staples on Wednesday. New Jersey authorities are searching for the woman who threw Kagan to the ground after she asked her to put her mask on. According to Hackensack's Police Department's Captain Darrin DeWitt the woman "violently" threw Kagan to the ground and left the store, NBC reported. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. A 54-year-old woman was hospitalized after a violent face mask confrontation after she was thrown on the ground at a New Jersey Staples. NBC News reported that the incident occurred at around 3:19 pm at a Staples in Hackensack, New Jersey, and was caught on surveillance video. The victim, Margot Kagan, who walks with a cane and recently had liver surgery, was using the fax machine when another woman started to use the machine next to her, according to the report. Kagan asked the woman to put her mask on after she saw it was below her mouth, NBC reported. "The suspect became angry and yelled at the victim who picked up her walking cane and pointed it directly at the suspect, coming within inches of the suspect's chest, " said Hackensack Police Department's Capt. Darrin DeWitt, NBC reported. DeWitt said the woman "violently" threw Kagan to the ground and left the scene. According to DeWitt, Kagan was sent to a local hospital and suffered from a fractured left tibia, NBC reported. New Jersey authorities are seeking help from the public to identify the suspect. Hackensack Police NJ (@HackensackPD) July 31, 2020 As of July 27, Staples requires all customers and staff to wearing face coverings. Read the original article on Insider University of Pennsylvania students must take two coronavirus tests and quarantine if they plan on returning to campus for the fall semester, university administrators said Friday. Penn is asking students to take a test before leaving for school and another after they arrive, according to an update posted to the universitys website. They must quarantine in their dorm rooms until they receive the second round of negative test results, said Provost Wendell Pritchett and Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli. International students and those coming from hotspot states have to take a third test, the university said on Friday. Students who test positive should quarantine for 14 days. Staff members will bring food to students dorm rooms while theyre under the shutdown. Penn will be covering the cost of the tests. As we began planning for the upcoming academic year, we were well aware that bringing college students together from across the country and around the world in the midst of a pandemic presented uniquely difficult challenges, Pritchett and Carnaroli said. Anyone who shows symptoms of the coronavirus or came into contact with someone who has it must be tested on campus, starting Sept. 1. The university will be using symptom and contact tracing during the fall semester, Pritchett and Carnaroli said. These arent the only changes to students college lives. Most fall classes will be taught online, with a minimal number of in-person lessons available. Penn is also asking students to refrain from having guests of any kind including family members at their college dorms or apartments in the fall. We know that any change is disruptive, and we are sensitive to the impact on family plans that can occur as the evolving dynamic of the pandemic forces the university to adapt, the administrators said. In the face of this great challenge, we are confident in the dedication of everyone in the Penn family to work together to make this a successful and productive year. READ MORE: Pa. Gov. Wolf addresses rumors, says hes not ordering schools to close COVID-19 obsessed supermarket owner burned down his own business to keep customers safe Capital BlueCross to issue rebate checks months early because of COVID-19 He may be a legend of comedy, famous for hits including Fawlty Towers and A Fish Called Wanda, yet John Cleese says that todays young people barely recognise him. And the reason? The actor blames the BBC for failing to broadcast repeats of Monty Python in the past two decades. The BBC has not put Monty Python out on terrestrial television now for 20 years and young people dont know about it, Cleese, 80, told his fans in a question and answer session. John Cleese has blamed the BBC's refusal to broadcast Monty Python's Flying Circus on terrestrial television means that young people no longer recognise who he is Cleeses complaint comes after Shane Allen, former head of comedy at the BBC, said in a 2018 interview that times had moved on from Pythons six Oxbridge white blokes I used to walk into shops and everybody would recognise me. Now young people have no idea who I am and it seems odd as I think they would enjoy Python. A lot of Python fans took their children to the O2 when we did the reunion there and the young people loved it they came out and said to their parents, I had never heard of these people before. The enthusiasm in America for Python is much stronger than it is in the UK. Cleeses complaint comes after Shane Allen, former head of comedy at the BBC, said in a 2018 interview that times had moved on from Pythons six Oxbridge white blokes. The actor, who celebrated the 50th anniversary of Monty Pythons Flying Circus last year, made his comments during a Q&A with his fans on the website Fanmio. Cleese also opened up about his troubled relationships having forked out more than 25 million in divorce settlements across three failed marriages. In particular, Cleese said he felt like he had been dating his depressed mother his whole life. He added: Sometimes you marry someone because they have in them, at an unconscious level, something about your mother. But he says his fourth wife Jennifer Wade, 48 the jewellery designer he married in 2012 has made him the happiest he has ever been, adding: If you can find the love of your life at 73 there is no point giving up hope. Delhis deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Saturday wrote to Union home minister Amit Shah seeking immediate directions to LG Anil Baijal to allow reopening of hotels and weekly markets in the national capital. Sisodia, in his letter to Shah, wrote that 8 per cent of Delhis business and employment are hit due to the coronavirus disease outbreak. Due to the closure of weekly markets, five lakh families are sitting at home. Now when they are hopeful that with control over coronavirus in Delhi they will get an opportunity to restart their business, binding them under the decision of closure is unfair to Delhis economic situation and hopes of lakhs of people, Sisodia wrote. Also read | Situation remains fragile: Delhi L-G on turning down AAPs Unlock 3 move I request you to change your decision and direct LG to immediately accept the proposal by the chief minister. Delhi government will again send a file on this matter to him on Tuesday ; I request you to ask LG not to stop it, Sisodia wrote in his letter to the home minister. If traders start their business, jobs will be generated, and that the condition of economy will improve, the deputy chief minister wrote in his letter. Sisodias letter comes a day after Baijal rejected the Arvind Kejriwal governments decision to allow hotels and weekly markets to reopen in the national capital, saying the Covid-19 situation continues to be fragile and the threat is still far from over. Baijal on Friday had overturned Aam Aadmi party governments decision to open hotels and allow for weekly bazars under Unlock 3, the third phase of the gradual lifting of curbs announced to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease. The matter was discussed with chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and it was agreed that while there has been improvement, pandemic situation in the capital continues to be fragile and the threat is still far from over. Therefore, a cautious and conservative approach is required, said a source from the Lt Guvs office. See for yourself how and where vaccinations are ramping up, plus how COVID-19 infections and deaths still persist in most states. The National Green Tribunal has junked a plea filed by a company seeking review of its order directing payment of compensation for displacing people, after a huge fire caused by a boiler blast at Dahej in Bharuch district of Gujarat on June 3 resulted in the death of eight workers. The NGT had on June 8 slapped a penalty of 25 crore on Yashashvi Rasayan Pvt Ltd and asked it to pay 25,000 per person for displacement. It said there is no merit in the prayer of the company seeking review and that its order was passed after hearing the parties, and not based on media reports alone. The facts mentioned in the order remained undisputed after opportunity to the applicant before passing interim order, pending giving further opportunity in due course. The order is not based on media report alone, as wrongly submitted. The order was passed after preliminary verification of facts and after notice to the present applicant. Even now, neither the incident is disputed nor lack of adequate safeguards as per statutory mandate are disputed. Statutory onsite and offsite plans and their compliance are not shown. Liability of the applicant is absolute and compensation payable has to be deterrent, the bench said. The tribunal said it is wrong to assume that there is no liability for displacement for 10-12 hours. It is also wrongly assumed that nothing is to be spent for restoration of the environment. The applicant has filed a certificate from Panchayat that the displaced persons were brought back to their residence late night. While authenticity of the certificate is yet to be examined, the affected persons certainly faced trauma, stress and inconvenience in being displaced from their respective houses on account of hazardous activities of the unit in question for which liability cannot be disowned, the bench said. The green panel said the incident took place at 12 noon and displacement at least till late night for at least 10-12 hours, even as per the company. During this period, the affected persons faced trauma, displacement from their houses and all consequential problems. It is too much to contend that they are not to be paid any compensation and such displacement does not cause any physical or mental harm to a person. In our view, such displacement is certainly actionable wrong and any commercial establishment engaged in hazardous activity for commercial purpose is certainly liable to compensate such displaced persons. Displacement was at large-scale creating anxiety, fear, trauma, and misery, the tribunal said. It said some families may have minor children or senior citizens, females who certainly are bound to greatly suffer by such large scale and sudden displacement from their houses. Exact damage is to be fully ascertained but even as per conservative estimate, the amount of compensation of 25,000 to each displaced person cannot, be held to be excessive, even on further consideration, the tribunal said. There is no golden scale to measure such loss and a reasonable estimate has to be the basis. Moreover, the applicant does not deserve any indulgence as it has not moved this Tribunal with clean hands, the NGT said. It said the plea filed by the company is patently absurd as the order clearly and specifically required deposit even if the amount was not to be disbursed. The green panel said it has gone by conservative estimate and liability of the applicant is expected to be more than the said amount. It is against the interest of justice to further delay deposit and disbursement of the amount to the victims of the tragedy as almost two months have passed from the date of the incident, the NGT said. The NGT also constituted a six-member committee headed by former High Court judge Justice B C Patel and sought a report in a month. The committee also comprises representatives of environment ministry, Central Pollution Control Board, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, National Institute of Disaster Management and Head of the Chemical Engineering Department of IIT Gandhinagar. The tribunals order came on a plea filed by NGO Aryavart Foundation through its president alleging that the company failed to follow requisite precautions and safety protocols. The NGO said the company is strictly and absolutely liable for the damage caused to the human lives, human health, property and the environment in violation of environmental norms. At least 50 workers of the chemical factory were injured while eight died on June 3 in the fire caused by a blast in the boiler at Dahej in Bharuch district of Gujarat. About 4,800 inhabitants of the nearby villages had to be moved to safer places on account of the incident. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Pune: At least 400 suspected COVID-19 deaths have gone unaccounted during July in Pune, alleged Mayor Murlidhar Mohol. The Mayor had also raised the issue during his meeting with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday (August 1), when he visited Pune to take stock of the coronavirus situation. Expressing sadness over the ongoing coronavirus situation in the city, Murlidhar said that every month there are at least 400 to 500 deaths of suspected coronavirus patients that are going unaccounted for in Sassoon General Hospital and private hospitals in the city, as per PTI. He alleged, "There are at least 12 deaths of suspected coronavirus patients that are going unaccounted for in Sassoon hospital daily. Similar cases are taking place in private hospitals also." "These deaths remain unaccounted for because the patients are either brought dead to the hospitals or they die immediately after being brought there. "As per the guidelines, no test is conducted on a deceased. But when the doctors take the X-ray of these people, they show symptoms of COVID-19," Mohol claimed. Speaking on his interaction with CM Uddhav, he said that while raising the issue with the CM, he sought steps to stop such deaths. "Early tracing of patients should be done so that they can be given timely treatment and such deaths can be stopped," he added. Following the allegations, Collector Naval Kishore Ram said an inquiry will be conducted into it and a report has been sought from Sassoon hospital. "The staff of the district administration keeps visiting Sassoon hospital and goes through the records. It is unlikely that there is any misreporting or under-reporting in Pune," he said. "There might be some issues related to data entry. But the figure mentioned by the honourable mayor looks impossible. But we will conduct a fair inquiry as I have sought a report from Sassoon," the collector added. (With PTI input) Acting Chops Be it playing a stereotypical Bollywood heroine or packing a punch in roles with a 'voice', Taapsee Pannu has always wooed us with her impressive acting skills. Even when she shared screen space with the acting stalwarts, Taapsee succeeded in making an impact on the audience in her own way. She Never Fears To Experiment Taapsee Pannu is one of the few ones in the film industry who have always stepped out of their comfort zone and picked roles which challenged them as an actor or actress. Be it rom-coms, courtroom dramas or even playing a septuagenarian, the leading lady has always passed with flying colours. "She (Taapsee) has a certain fire in her mind and body. When an intelligent actor chooses the right script and is also good and hardworking, then success cannot elude them. She is not afraid of failure, which is the most important thing for any creative endeavour. If you're afraid then it is over," Pink's director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury had said in one of his interviews. She Walks The Talk Taapsee has always been vocal about women empowerment. She is someone who is always been unapologetically herself. When supporting important causes, the actress makes sure that she walks the talk as well. Reportedly, the actress had once declined an invitation to an event in Jaipur because it was sponsored by a fairness cream brand. Taapsee Does Not Fear To Call A Spade A Spade In an industry where actors often choose to be diplomatic, Taapsee Pannu has always been frank and honest. She has never shied away from calling out even the industry folks on important matters. Her 'Dare-You-Mess-With-Me' Attitude When it comes to trolls, the Thappad actress is known for hitting back at her naysayers with fiery comebacks on social media. Over the years, Taapsee has built a reputation for tackling trolls in a witty manner. "I am very happy that even among my trollers I have a very strong image of a person who gives befitting reply. I don't have a problem with that honestly. It's just that, I was thinking, Why did it come only to me?' Then I realised, it's probably people are not used to seeing a female actor respond," Taapsee had said in an interview with Zoom. A state-of-the-art training vessel proposed for Texas A&M University cleared a key hurdle Friday as the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill for the upcoming fiscal year that included funding for the project. The $389 million, 525-foot vessel would be outfitted with several training spaces, including eight classrooms, a training bridge, lab spaces, and an auditorium. The ship would will be docked at Texas A&M Universitys maritime academy in Galveston and would be able to take 600 cadets out to sea, a vast improvement over the universitys current training ship, the General Rudder, which can only fit 50 cadets. The funding for A&Ms new training vessel was included in the $1.3 trillion package of House appropriations bills with heavy, bipartisan support from Texass Congressional delegation. The bill passed out of the House on Friday and will eventually be considered by the U.S. Senate. The proposed ship is one of a handful of new National Security Multi-Mission Vessels, the U.S. Maritime Administration is developing to replace the aging fleet of training vessels used by the state maritime academies across the country. The maritime academy in Galveston hasnt had its own training ship large enough to accommodate its 300 students since its previous ship, the Texas Clipper II, was converted to a missile defense ship by the Department of Defense in 2005. The academy is currently using a training ship owned by the federal government and operated by the University of California maritime academy to house its full crew of cadets. John Sharp, the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, said in a phone interview Friday that the ship is desperately needed, not only for cadet training, but as a hurricane relief vessel for the Gulf of Mexico. The ship would stand ready to be deployed in the event of a hurricane or other disaster. It could reach any point in the Gulf within a day or two, compared to weeks or more from training ships docked elsewhere in the United States. Sharp noted that after Hurricane Harvey battered southeast Texas in 2017, the state had to rely on other maritime academy ships to bring food and medical supplies to affected areas. If we had our own ship, that ship could be out in blue water when the hurricanes hit and immediately bring in supplies on the Gulf Coast, Sharp said. The new NSMV ship has the capacity to house up to 1,000 federal emergency management workers, serve as a hospital or use its roll-on/roll-off ramp to deliver supplies. Sharp said he was confident that funding for the ship would be included in the final spending package that comes out of Congress, noting it has the strong support of both of Texass senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its spending bill for the 2021 fiscal year. Were hoping Sen. Cornyn and Sen. Cruz will deliver it in the Senate and finally get the ship for Texass needs and Galvestons needs, he said. nick.powell@chron.com FOUR months after rolling out an online mental health therapy service for Manitobans in need of help to cope with COVID-19, the Pallister government says it finally has a formal contract with provider Morneau Shepell. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 1/8/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. FOUR months after rolling out an online mental health therapy service for Manitobans in need of help to cope with COVID-19, the Pallister government says it finally has a formal contract with provider Morneau Shepell. Details of the contract, signed this week, will soon be posted on the provinces website, a government official said Friday, after inquiries from the Free Press. On July 3, the government revealed it had not yet signed a contract with the Ontario firm, after a freedom of information request by the NDP turned up no record of it. The government said at the time it had signed a term sheet a non-binding agreement setting out the basic terms and conditions of the deal with the company, and was working to finalize a contract. Health Minister Cameron Friesen announced the partnership with Morneau Shepell on March 27. A total of $4.5 million was earmarked for the service, which is free to Manitobans. Funding was to last for up to a year. 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. The online therapy program (AbilitiCBT), offered in both English and French, is available to those age 16 and older. Clients are paired with a therapist, lined up by Morneau Shepell, for 12 weeks. The program can be accessed through a smartphone, tablet or computer. As of Thursday, 2,814 Manitobans had registered for it. The government has been criticized for turning to a large firm with a network of therapists across the country to supply the service when it could have contracted directly with local providers. The government said it turned to the company because it could provide therapy right away. On Friday, the NDP said that a subsequent freedom of information request, directed to the Department of Central Services, yielded no record of the term sheet the government spoke about earlier in the month. NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the government needed to explain why it awarded the untendered work to Morneau Shepell without observing normal protocols. Late Friday, a government spokesman said the provincial Treasury Board Secretariat finalized and signed the contract with the company this week. A copy of it will be posted on the governments proactive disclosure website, he said. The government did not reveal what payments, if any, have been made to the company so far. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Image: Shutterstock This is the new normal.- how many times have we heard this phrase? Recently, there has been more change than any of us were expecting or even could imagine was possible. Unfortunately, much of this change has given us steadily increasing levels of uncertainty which has been predominantly negative. Some have lost loved ones, many are experiencing economic pressures and financial stress, and all of us live more restricted lives with a future that is less clear than it was just a short while ago. It is not easy to describe this situation or know how to handle it and the not knowing is a major trigger for anxiety, depression and fear. Thousands of pilots are feeling the pressures of recent job losses through no fault of their own so it is no surprise that stress-levels are high. Psychologists will even argue that the fear of losing a job brings about higher anxiety and stress compared to actually losing a job and with the aviation industry currently experiencing its biggest crisis, there are not many whose mental health is not affected. Undoubtedly, there will be flight crew that have contracted the COVID-19 infection, thus leaving them unable to work in the short-term. As of yet, there is no research to determine the clinical and psychological long-term effects of this disease, therefore certain individuals may be rendered unfit for duty in the future. This is not the first time some of us have faced difficult times. Many of the experienced pilots out there today have worked through other crises such as the Gulf War, 9/11 attacks, global financial crisis and the volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland, to name a few. LinkedIn has recently been flooded with positive messages from pilots who have seen it all before and are preparing to bounce back again. Resilience has become a key trait for pilots. But times are hard now - probably more than they ever have been- and rather than believing resilience on its own will pull us through, pilots need to be responsible and seek help if needed. However, pilots are notoriously bad at opening up. It is traditionally a profession that attracts the more technical-minded, with people who would rather handle machinery than talk about their emotions - so it is not always easy to get us to express how we are feeling. In addition to this, many are worried about the confidentiality of the information we share- especially because talking about the way we feel could easily jeopardise our career and future prospects. Until now, the only form of mental health screening we have is in our annual medical examination - a box-ticking exercise as to whether we are feeling anxious or depressed or are even having suicidal thoughts. As we all know, mental health has, until very recently, been somewhat of a taboo subject, especially amongst pilots. It was not until the unimaginable case of Andrea Lubitz and the fate of Germanwings flight 9525 that the world of aviation began to discuss such a topic and how to address the stigma. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has recently developed the Peer Support Programme (PSP) with the aim of embedding a confidential psychological assessment into the management system and culture of its airlines. The legislation requires European airlines to implement a PSP by August 2020 however this deadline has now been pushed back now until February 2021, due to the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, many airlines worldwide are lagging behind with their efforts to set up such programmes, leaving crew ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues. Additionally, experts are still trying to break the stigma surrounding mental health in aviation, particularly in a global industry where there are a plethora of cultural differences. Broadly speaking, mental health is a blanket term for a person's emotional, psychological and social well-being. The words mental health' themselves seem to be a barrier. If you compare it to physical health', it becomes a lot clearer. The human brain is a muscle; we know it needs help to get stronger but it also needs to be rested. Yet the focus on our mental health is minimised by the majority of airlines and Aviation Medical Examiners (AME) who conduct our regular medicals. In a routine medical, there is no follow-up by a psychologist or psychiatrist unless the pilot requests, which is rarely the case. However, if our blood pressure or cholesterol level is beyond the acceptable scale, then action and a follow up examination would be necessary to pass the medical exam and be deemed fit to fly. Such physiological exams are, of course, not self-assessed; if they were then would we each tell the truth about our weight or perhaps our vision if it meant facing repercussions? Potentially not, yet we are expected to honestly report on our mental health. The question that we need the answer for is, How do we build an organisation where there is the awareness and knowledge to identify and handle cases of pilots suffering with mental health? Life events and psychological stressors can affect anyone. Pilots are not immune to mental ill-health that affects the general population but it is perceived as a weakness to discuss it. It is essential that pilots have an easily accessible route for seeking assistance when under pressure or when symptoms of ill-health first present themselves, so that they can be supported or referred for treatment without fear of reprisal. A known and trusted pilot peer-support system will benefit both the individual by maintaining a fulfilling career and the organisation by supporting a safe operation. Centre for Aviation Psychology director Aedrian Bekker, says that "Normalising the issue, to ensure pilots feel able to seek and obtain support, remains one of the most difficult obstacles. This is not a witch-hunt for suicidal pilots. Carriers and regulators have an interest in ensuring that crews are not suffering from distractions from the common troubles of life, which might result in accidental but potentially hazardous slips during flight operations. Mental health is an important part of overall health and well-being, especially for those working in a safety-critical role. It affects how we think, how we feel, and how we act. It may also affect how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices during an emergency so it is important that the airlines recognise the importance of this and find a way to build the trust of their pilots to feel able to say from time to time that they are perhaps not ok. Because after all, it is ok to not be ok. ***Footnote*** Whilst writing this blog, I came across something called Talk Club (wetalkclub.com). Although predominately aimed at men, its founder, Steve Yates, discusses his way of making people talk about their mental health. Rather than just asking, How are you?, he will ask, How are you out of 10?. He believes this tactic enables someone to reveal their own mental state without actually having to open up immediately. It gives a good indication as to how exactly that person may be feeling within themselves and offers an opportunity to address any issues. If someone is feeling 5 out of 10, what do they need to do to increase that number? What are their trigger points? Perhaps it is as straightforward as simply doing exercise or catching up with a friend for coffee. So, as you are reading this, ask yourself How are you feeling out of 10? shridhar786 wrote: A neighborhood in downtown Pittsburgh has experienced a sharp increase in residential break-ins. The point of entry is always a basement window that is surrounded by bushes or some other object. The neighborhood watchgroup believes these entry points are chosen because they are difficult to view from public thoroughfares such as adjacent streets or back alleys and has recommended trimming all large hedges that obscure basement windows. Which of the following contains a flaw in logic that most closely parallels the one contained in the passage? (A) People who like rabbits can't possibly like dogs because dogs hunt rabbits. (B) Martha's geraniums always die; she must be buying weak geraniums. (C) When it is dark Sandra can't drive. Sandra is not driving, so it must be dark. (D) if priests oppose murder, then all religions must oppose murder. (E) Highly trained dogs can track and this dog can track, therefore it must be highly trained. The logic of the argument is this - Break ins are happening in houses. It is because of a weakness in the house itself - hidden basement window. Clear up the window to avoid break ins.Option (B) reflects the same flaw in logic: (B) Martha's geraniums always die; the reason must be in a weakness in her geraniums. Presumably, if she buys stronger geraniums, they will survive.None of the other options are even close._________________ How to Don and Doff a Face Mask, N95 and Half-Mask Respirator for Returning to Work As workplaces begin to reopen, safety managers are working to ensure their employees have the proper face masks or respirators and know how to use them correctly. Our current environment has introduced the need for face masks and respirators in non-traditional industries. As retailers, corporations, industrial operations and construction sites re-open, safety managers are working to ensure their employees have the proper face masks or respirators and know how to use them correctly. Since some workers are new to wearing face masks and respirators, it is important to review the proper way to don and remove to ensure the best protection for all. If your worksite opts to use a respirator instead of a face mask, we must remember that the occupational use of respirators should follow a written respiratory protection program and meet all local government regulations. In the United States, employers must comply with OSHA 29CFR1910.134 and in Canada, the respiratory program must comply with CSA Standard Z94.4. All programs should include evaluation, training and fit testing. Workers should have the opportunity to handle the respirator, learn how to inspect it, don and remove, have it properly fitted, wear it in a normal air environment and finally, wear it in a test atmosphere. This piece will review donning and removing techniques for the face mask, N95 disposable respirator and the half-face mask respirator. These donning and removing techniques are not meant to be exhaustive. If you have questions, we recommend checking with your supervisor, reviewing the written respiratory program your employer may have in place and checking OSHA1 or CDC2 guidelines. Face Mask For most retailers and companies returning to work, there is a need to ensure employees wear face masks when in public spaces. The role of face masks in this case is to prevent contamination of the surrounding work area when a person coughs or sneezes. There are two versions of face masks: a mask with one or two elastic headbands and a mask with elastic bands that loop over the ears. When donning the face mask, users should follow these steps. This article originally appeared in the August 2020 issue of Occupational Health & Safety. She has been soaking up the sun in Ibiza with her husband Jamie Vardy and their children amid her WAG war with Coleen Rooney. And Rebekah Vardy looked radiant as she stepped off a yacht in the Balearic Islands wearing a printed kaftan and pink Hermes sandals on Saturday. The WAG, 38, appeared relaxed as she made her way onto the shore accompanied by Leicester City striker Jamie, 33, and her son Taylor, ten, from a previous relationship. Glowing: Rebekah Vardy, 38, looked radiant as she stepped off a yacht in the Balearic Islands in a printed kaftan and pink Hermes sandals on Saturday Despite the ongoing 1 million court battle with Coleen, 34, Becky appeared in good spirits as she strolled along the beach. Her floral ensemble highlighted her slender legs, while the mother-of-five also opted for minimal accessories for the outing on the boat. Becky pulled her brunette locks into a neat bun and went without a scrap of makeup as she embraced her bronzed complexion. Relaxing: The WAG appeared relaxed as she made her way onto the shore accompanied by Leicester City striker Jamie, 33, and her son Taylor, ten, from a previous relationship Meanwhile Jamie was seen wearing a black t-shirt and shorts with a backpack and trainers as the family made their way onto the sand. Earlier this week the couple were seen enjoying a day at the beach with their youngest children while her and Jamie's seven-month-old daughter Olivia was not seen. Rebekah and Jamie have Finley, three, and Sofia, five, and Olivia, seven months, together, with Rebekah already having Megan, 15, and Taylor, ten, from previous relationships. Bronzed: Becky pulled her brunette locks into a neat bun and went without a scrap of makeup as she embraced her sun-kissed complexion Jamie also has a daughter, Ella, ten, from his past relationship with Emma Daggett. It comes as Becky is in the midst of the court case and revealed in court documents last week her 'extreme anguish' about being exposed 'to public ridicule and contempt' by Wayne Rooney's wife in the so-called Wagatha Christie case. And Becky is caught up in the coronavirus chaos from last weekend as the government pulled its air bridge with the Spain following a spike in COVID-19 cases. Family: Jamie was seen wearing a black t-shirt and shorts with a backpack and trainers as the family made their way onto the beach (pictured with Rebekah's son Taylor) The government introduced a mandatory 14-day quarantine on anyone returning to Britain from Spain from last Monday in a hastily announced change in the rules at the weekend. The rules apply to all regions of Spain, including the Canary and Balearic islands - though politicians in the latter say they are trying to thrash out a regional air bridge. Spain was one of the worst hit countries in Europe by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 290,000 cases and over 28,000 deaths, however it imposed very strict lockdown measures to contain the spread, gradually easing them earlier in the summer. Spain had been among of a number of 'air-bridge' countries considered to be safe for quarantine-free travel, promoting many stars to book getaways. Coleen was accused of leaking stories to the press by Rebekah last month, after she told in a bombshell legal document how she had been left suicidal by the accusation that she had leaked stories about Coleen and her family. She also claimed in the document drawn up for her libel battle against Coleen that the stress of the scandal had left her fearful of losing her unborn baby and suffering panic attacks that made her too scared to leave her home. The I'm A Celeb star complained of being made a 'scapegoat' by her rival seeking to blame her for stories appearing when in the past Coleen had approved of her friends leaking gossip about her. The full statement: Coleen made these shock claims on Instagram after discovering she had been betrayed by someone close to her and she concluded that it was Vardy's account The document says Rebekah believes she 'has deliberately been made a scapegoat (sic) by the Defendant (Coleen) for past 'leaked' stories.' It points to previous stories about Coleen and Wayne with some 'in particular about their marriage, which have in fact come from the Defendant's friends, at times even with the Defendant's approval.' The paper states that Sun journalist Dan Wootton had said on talkRADIO on October 19 last year that Coleen had 'manipulated the media to tell stories about her own life'. Wootton added that he had 'written many, many stories' about her marriage and 'lots of other things around the Rooneys' that had come directly from friends of Coleen including some told 'with her (Coleen's) approval', says the document. Emotional: Rebekah said that the widespread damage to her reputation was illustrated by research showing her name had become a more popular search term than 'Brexit' on Google in the UK on the day the scandal broke He went on to say on talkRADIO that nothing had ever come from 'any of the Vardys', it adds. Rebekah describes in her document how Coleen's public denunciation of her on Instagram while she was seven months pregnant had 'gravely injured her reputation'. Detailing how Coleen had 'caused her enormous distress and very extreme embarrassment', she disclosed how she had been bombarded with abuse on social media. Rebekah said that the widespread damage to her reputation was illustrated by research showing her name had become a more popular search term than 'Brexit' on Google in the UK on the day the scandal broke. She also claimed that it led to her name appearing 276,822 times on Twitter on the same day, more than triple the number of mentions of Boris Johnson who had had his name published only 80,704 times. Coleen made headlines around the world last October when she made her devastating claim that Rebekah had been leaking stories about her and her family to the Sun newspaper. She released the statement: 'It's been tough keeping it to myself and not making any comment at all, especially when the stories have been leaked, however I had to. Now I know for certain which account / individual it's come from. 'I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It's . Rebekah Vardy's account.' Rebekah immediately denied the claims and has since been fighting to clear her name and demands Coleen withdraw the claims against her. Thoughts: It was claimed that Wayne 'fears it could be embarrassing to him and their family what may come out' during the legal battle between Coleen and Becky Friends say Wayne Rooney has hoped Coleen's WAG war would not get to his stage but he is willing to back his wife in her quest to prove her claims and be vindicated. A source said to The Sun: 'Wayne thinks it's gone too far already and dreads the thought of it reaching court. 'He fears it could be embarrassing to him and their family what may come out. But he knows how important this is to Coleen and will back her.' Another source said: 'Coleen is becoming obsessed with it.' MailOnline has contacted Coleen and Wayne Rooney's representatives for comment at the time of publication. 'Shaheen Bagh is no longer a mere ghetto of lower middle class Muslims.' 'Now, it is a metaphor for resistance, secularism and struggle,' notes Md. Zeeshan Ahmad. IMAGE: Republic Day being celebrated at Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi. Photograph: PTI Photo December 2019 in India, to borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, was indeed the 'winter of despair'. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, by giving religious premise to the secular citizenship law of India, attracted nationwide protests. The State resorted to muzzle democratic protests, led mainly by youth, and more remarkably by women, mostly Muslims. Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement by Ziya Us Salam and Uzma Ausaf is a detailed chronicling of the alpha and omega of those protests, typified more prominently at Shaheen Bagh, a Muslim neighbourhood in New Delhi. Ziya Us Salam and Uzam Ausaf, are seasoned journalists. Indeed, the authors's journalistic acumen and typical reporting style, gets reflected in the book. IMAGE: Protesters at Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi. Photograph: Arun Sharma/PTI Photo Shaheen Bagh is no longer a mere ghetto of lower middle class Muslims, also known for its non-vegetarian eateries. Now, it is a metaphor for resistance, secularism and struggle, it 'became a pilgrimage centre of secular, inclusive India.' The story of these protests could not have been possible without women. A significant reason why the book under review should be read is that it details the saga of the intrepid women, 'They knew from the beginning that it was going to be a long haul. They were fighting for ... very existence.' Arguably, with these protests, India's Muslim women have come of age. Though the book under review does not delve deeper into it with an academic depth, it has quite beautifully written about how this transformation took place. The authors write, '[in the] Shah Bano controversy [1986], there were more skull caps than hijab... during the Babri Masjid rallies and marches, there was a proliferation of bearded and skull-cap wearing men...'. Now the women were in the lead. The fighting spirit of these women could be wrapped in these lines of William Ernest Henley, Invictus: Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. IMAGE: Protesters gather at Shaheen Bagh to oppose the amended Citizenship Act in New Delhi, December 31, 2019. Photograph: PTI Photo Journalistic writings serve many good purposes, particularly, of cataloguing. However, the hastiness with which the book has been written, has left out the cataloguing of the brutal police excesses which were unleashed after mid December 2019 and continues even during the pandemic, mostly in UP and Karnataka, the two BJP ruled states, and in Delhi whose police is under the Union government of the BJP. Various towns of western UP, particularly, Kanpur, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Sambhal, etc, bore the worst brunt of the police crackdown. Many were killed too. Heavy penalties were imposed on the protestors without following the 'due process of law'. Usually, movements are identified by a leadership face. The Emergency (1975 to 1977) was associated with Jayaprakash Narayan, and the Kisan Baburao 'Anna' Hazare-led 'India Against Corruption' (2013). However, the Shaheen Bagh and the allied protests across the country marked a departure from this pattern, 'it [was] completely [a] leaderless, faceless movement'. One of the possible reasons for a longer sustenance of these protests was its non-affiliation with any political party or religious leader. The BJP-led government clearly indicated their intentions, as this period marked a spate of violence and discrimination against Muslims: Lynching in the name of the cow, love jihad... Yet, there was no protest by the Muslims. The BJP, rather than taking this as a re-conciliatory overture, resorted to further oppression, exclusion and disenfranchisement of Muslims, via the CAA. Deepening of Democracy IMAGE: A Shaheen Bagh-like protest in Mumbai. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters Even though the book under review provides some description of few protest-sites, away from Delhi, it glosses over the lesser known villages and small towns, where too, the women and deprived sections of people, valiantly led the protests. One would expect some description of the class location and social composition of the leadership of these mofussil and rural protest sites. Such a description could help understand the nature and potential of politics in the days to come. On these sites too, equally articulate (in both English and regional languages) women leaderships were seen. Video clips of such articulation were circulated on social media. For instance, in Azad Basti (Jamshedpur, Jharkhand), in Muzaffarpur and Gaya (Bihar), in Shah Jamal (Aligarh), Lakhminiya (Begusarai, Bihar), etc, as also many such sites in southern and western Indian towns. Also, these protests were significant, broadly for these reasons: It was perhaps for the first time that outside the campuses, a systematic and sustained protest took place. The women chiselled and honed their leadership skills. It would hopefully help in deepening of democracy in the hinterlands as a new social class emerged who politicised themselves and became more conscious about their political rights. Institutions in a Constitutional Democracy IMAGE: A woman takes part in the Shaheen Bagh protest, January 19, 2020. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters One of the tragedies of independent India has been that it never worked upon its colonially inherited democratic institutions. Over the years, it therefore just kept on degenerating. The erosion of institutions didn't take place overnight. The authors say, 'Most institutions stood compromised, personnel in positions of authority were rewarded not for uprightness but pusillanimity...'. These are just a few among many symptoms. Taking a closer look at the institutional crises, K G Kannibaran in his The Wages of Impunity (2003), writes: '...the court was at pains to point out that on the midnight of 26 January 1950, no new institutions arose, that old institutions were continued with a slight renaming.... This is perhaps the only country whose government at the commencement of its independent existence was lawfully and not politically established.' Institutions just don't protect the Constitution; these also act as the facilitators of Constitutional goals. As Ornit Shani argues in her book How India Became Democracy (2017), 'the institutionalisation of democratic citizenship in India at its inception became ... a key to democracy's survival in the face of its enduring shortfalls and many unfulfilled constitutional promises.' The book under review has few omissions/limitations too, besides its meticulous reporting and incisive analysis of the unfolding of the protest: The authors haven't expended much space in examining and explaining the implications of the CAA-NPR-NRIC. That the CAA is a 'black law' which 'disenfranchises Muslims', is indeed true, but this explanation is just the tip of an iceberg. There is more to the CAA. This issue is so grave that the UN Human Rights Commission described it to be 'fundamentally discriminatory'. IMAGE: Women protest wearing masks at Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi. Photograph: ANI Photo The CAA basically provides fast-track citizenship, by way of naturalisation, to non-Muslim migrants who face 'religious persecution' in their native countries. The privileging of those Hindus, Zoroastarians, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Jains being religiously persecuted in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh -- over Muslims -- and excluding them from the list, is a clear act of 'othering' and disenfranchising Muslims. For instance, Ahmadiyas and Shias persecuted in Pakistan, and Rohingya persecuted in Myanmar, Muslims persecuted in Nepal and Sri Lanka cannot qualify for citizenship in India. Also, what the yardstick would be to measure 'religious persecution' is left unexplained in the CAA. Rohit De et al, therefore comment, '....justification that the CAA offers protection to people facing religious persecution in neighbouring countries, is specious.' The CAA, a faith-based citizenship law, is therefore anti-thethical to the core of the Constitution, against the grain of Secularism, a part of the basic structure, which cannot be amended (S R Bommai, 1994). The contradiction doesn't stop here. The CAA is even arbitrary in the sense that it is devoid of reasonability in regard to the classification made in law (Ali Anwar Sarkar, 1954). Be it the whimsical selection of three countries and six communities, or the blatant exclusion of the Muslims. Pursuant to the Assam Accord (1985) between the central government and the regional parties, in order to purge illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, a fresh National Register for Indian Citizens (NRIC) was to be conducted. Losing documents owing to continuous floods, coupled with the bureaucracy's red tapism, plus, clerical mistakes, rendered many as doubtful - 'D'-- voters. As said, citizenship is a 'bundle of rights'. Not just voting rights, a host of other rights -- ration cards, owning property, getting a passport, etc -- are all determined by one's citizenship. To put it simply, many social, political and economic rights are impending on the citizenship status. It appears that the govevrnment is hell bent on cutting this umbilical cord -- the citizenship status -- and rendering a particular section vulnerable. The nefarious objective of the NRIC and CAA were as follows: NRIC disenfranchises (mostly disadvantaged groups who are more likely to lack documents) and the CAA comes as a safety net to protect all, except Muslims. Hazards of graded citizenship: Myanmar and Israel IMAGE: Women at Shaheen Bagh sing songs and chant slogans of freedom. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo The Citizenship Act 1955 chose the principle of jus soli, birth-based citizenship over jus sanguinie, citizenship based on descent. This notion of citizenship was not constricted rather it was universal, pluralistic and secular in sense. Juxtaposition of the CAA with the lived experience of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, who were termed as 'one of the most persecuted minorities in the world', by the UN (2013), gives a clear picture as to which path India has now charted for its minorities (read Muslims). The CAA effectively creates an institutionalised hierarchical system of citizenship that is predicated on an individual's religion. This reminds one of Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law, which privileges citizenship for 'indigenous races', and excludes the Rohingyas. This ethnic discrimination paved the ground for genocidal violence against the Rohingya. Equally discriminating is Israel's Law of Return, 1952, which is based purely on ethnicity (Israel for Jews) and discriminates against the Palestinians solely for their religion. The Palestinians have been reduced to second class citizens. IMAGE: Muslim women during protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act, National Register of Citizens and National Population Register at Shaheen Bagh. Photograph: PTI Photo At the Shaheen Bagh protests and even other similar protests, those who talked divisively or chanted religious slogans (read over-assertion of religious identity) were outrightly rejected. This aspect does not find a mention in the book under review (see, for instance, Hayaat Fatemah, 'Slogans like 'La Ilaha IlAllah' narrow the scope of anti-CAA protests,' The Indian Express, January 13, 2020). Dalit and Bahujan leaderships, in their localities didn't mobilise for sustained agitation in solidarity with the Shaheen Baghs of India. This is in stark contrast to the protest of April 1, 2018, which they registered when the SC/ST Act 1989 was diluted by the government (Suresh Mahajan vs Union of India, 2018). Does it indicate that good numbers of Dalits have been saffronised in anti-Muslim hatred? This aspect remains unexamined in the book. The Struggle Should Continue? IMAGE: A woman protester prays at Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi. Photograph: Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters The book under review seems to make a case that the Shaheen Bagh protests and many like it, were battlegrounds, where the Idea of India is being contested. This battle was, as the authors write, 'for the protection of the soul of India'. Sunil Khilnani writes (1997), the 'Idea of India is not homogenous and univocal.' 'In fact, no single idea can possibly hope to capture the many energies, angers, and hopes of one billion Indians; India's diversity, to give voice to differing interests ....has [thus far] saved India from the civil conflict...' The Shaheen Bagh protests across India's villages and towns were a battle for the Idea of India, a bid to save its Constitution! Md. Zeeshan Ahmad is a law student at Aligarh Muslim University. Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com TURKEYS Police in an Ocean County, N.J., town broke up a mansion party Sunday night that attracted 700 revelers and clogged neighborhood streets with traffic. Jackson Township police charged three people with violating the governors executive order limiting the size of gatherings, after receiving numerous complaints from neighbors. The 3,700-square foot home had been rented out on Airbnb. The homeowner and two party organizers received summonses for violating the order, which limits outdoor gatherings to 500 people and indoor gatherings to 100 people. State Police Colonel Pat Callahan expressed concern that illegal gatherings will help spread COVID-19 infections. In April, Airbnb temporarily suspended its parties and events allowed rule in New Jersey listings. Pennsylvania SPCA representatives removed 23 dogs and 7 cats from a home in Easton, saying the animals were living amid garbage, dog feces and urine in temperatures reaching 100 degrees or more. Charges against the pet owners are pending, a SPCA spokesperson said. The animals were taken to the Pennsylvania SPCAs Philadelphia headquarters for treatment. All but three adult dogs and three puppies were surrendered to the SPCA. Most are expected to be available for adoption when they are medically stable. Anyone interested can email adoptions@pspca.org. TROPHIES Two police officers went into a burning barn in Bucks County last week and rescued a horse that didnt want to leave its stall. Hilltown Township Officers Matthew Reiss and Kristian Hanus responded to the blaze, which ended up destroying the barn and a shop at Red Wing Farm. As smoke and flames were taking over the structure, they managed to get a rope around the horses neck. With the help of a farm employee, they pushed and pulled the reluctant animal to safety. Reiss body camers recorded the rescue. The officers were among eight people at the scene who required some medical attention. The Hilltown Township Volunteer Fire Co. arrived minutes later, followed by 14 other fire companies and six EMS units. Two Lehigh Valley hospitals received high marks in U.S. News & World Reports annual rankings of healthcare facilities. St. Lukes University Hospital in Fountain Hill and Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Salisbury Township tied for sixth place among hospitals in Pennsylvania. The information used for judging was collected before the COVID-19 outbreak, so the impact of the pandemic and its response isnt reflected in the rankings. Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest received in the top spot in the Allentown region for the seventh straight year, credited with high performance in seven adult specialties and eight procedures and conditions. St. Lukes also placed at the top in the Allentown region, with high marks in five adult specialties and 10 procedures and conditions. Several big box retailers in the Lehigh Valley announced their workers will have Thanksgiving Day off this year. The decisions to remain closed until Black Friday reflected concerns about the coronavirus pandemic; Pennsylvania surpassed 110,000 cases this week. Boscovs, Walmart, Target, Dicks Sporting Goods, Kohls and Best Buy said they would forgo Thanksgiving hours. COVID-19 has required enormous efforts from our associates and theyve more than earned this time off, said Boscovs chairman and CEO Jim Boscov. More than ever, this year has reinforced the importance of family and this decision allows our customers, coworkers and communities to enjoy an uninterrupted Thanksgiving meal. Reports say head of office that compiled intelligence reports on reporters and protesters in US has been reassigned. The head of a Department of Homeland security (DHS) office that reportedly compiled intelligence reports on journalists and protesters amid the continuing demonstrations in Portland, Oregon has been reassigned, according to US media. Brian Murphy, who headed the Intelligence and Analysis Office, has been reassigned within the department, the Washington Post, Politico news site, and ABC News reported on Saturday, all citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. The office had compiled intelligence reports on journalists covering the nightly protests in Portland using a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. A spokesman for DHS on Friday said Secretary Chad Wolf discontinued collecting information involving members of the press after the newspaper published the report. In no way does the Acting Secretary condone this practice and he has immediately ordered an inquiry into the matter, the spokesman said in a statement. The Acting Secretary is committed to ensuring that all DHS personnel uphold the principles of professionalism, impartiality and respect for civil rights and civil liberties, particularly as it relates to the exercise of First Amendment rights. On Friday, Washington Post also reported that the office had obtained and analysed communications of protesters in the city, raising questions about why the agency was monitoring the communications of people taking part in constitutionally protected actions. The report also appeared to contradict previous denials Murphy had made to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In a letter sent to Murphy by Senate Democrats on Friday, they wrote that he had stated on July 23 that his office had had neither collected nor exploited or analyzed information obtained from the devices or accounts of protesters or detainees. Federal agencies withdraw Tensions have been high in Portland since the administration of President Donald Trump in late June sent federal agents to protect federal property and monuments amid continuing protests that have persisted across the country since the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on May 25. The unrest had grown to a fever pitch in recent weeks, amid crackdowns by federal agents in which they fired tear gas and projectiles at gathered crowds and detained some protesters in unmarked vehicles far from federal property. Earlier this week, Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced the federal officers sent by Trump were to begin a phased withdrawal, with state police taking over outside the federal court that has become the centre of protests. Federal officials, however, have pushed back, saying they would not leave the city completely but be on standby in case they are needed. On Friday, Trump tweeted that Homeland Security is not leaving Portland until local police complete cleanup of Anarchists and Agitators! New Delhi: The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has issued social media guidelines, asking its personnel to share their user IDs from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other such platforms, and refrain from criticising the governments policies on these portals, failing which strict legal and disciplinary action will be taken against the defaulters. The fresh guidelines, issued on July 31, will apply to about 140,000 personnel of the force. The force guards airports, Metro services and nuclear and space facilities apart from several sensitive government installations. The latest social media policy, issued by the CISF headquarters, said: In spite of clear guidelines, there have been instances where social media platforms were used by the force personnel to share sensitive information about the nation/organization and to criticize the policies of government. HT has reviewed a copy of the guidelines. Asserting that social media platforms pose a threat to the national security and the general discipline of the force, CISF has asked its men to disclose their user ID of all social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc) being used by them to the department, through (their) respective units/formations. The personnel have also been asked to inform the department in case of any change of the user ID or the creation of a new ID. The CISFs personnel have been strictly asked not to create and use anonymous or pseudonymous User ID. The directive also says that the personnel should not use any social media platform to criticize the policies of the government on any matter. The jawans have been told that social media platforms shouldnt be used as a tool to bypass the chain of command and the proper channel to air the grievances, according to the directive. In case of any violation, strict legal and disciplinary action should be initiated against the defaulters as per existing laws and rules, it added. The CISFs top brass did not respond to HTs calls or text for a comment on the guidelines. The public relations officer was also not available for a comment. An officer who was in favour of the policy said: It doesnt stop anyone from using Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Only the users IDs of personnel are being asked for because often it happens that security personnel are trapped by enemy countries on social media and then forced to divulge sensitive information. Several serving officers in the CISF said that the policy appeared arbitrary. Its better that they should give us a basic phone and a 2G connection otherwise smart phones have no use for us if such policies are implemented, said a company commander in CISF, who did not wish to be identified. Another commandant rank officer said we are mostly away from our families for months and social media is the only source to keep us entertained or express our opinions, which should not be taken away. Former Director General of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) K Durga Prasad said: In a security related job, social media needs to be carefully used. Security personnel cannot equate themselves with civilians. We may say things on such platforms which can inadvertently affect the national security or our job. We have seen a number of cases in the past, when security personnel are targeted on social media by enemy forces. 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. London, Aug 1 : A police officer was injured while attempting to break up a street party of around 200 people in east London celebrating Eid, it was reported on Saturday. Officers were called shortly before midnight on Thursday to Ilford in east London, the Metro newspaper reported. The Metropolitan Police received calls from the public who had spotted a large group of people gathered on the street ahead of Eid. Officers approached the crowd and asked them to go home, but as some people dispersed a fight broke out. Police rushed to break up the fight between the two groups and one officer suffered a head injury in the commotion. One man was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and assaulting an emergency worker. Chief Superintendent Stephen Clayman, of the Met's east area command, said on Friday night that he was "concerned" about the size of the gathering during the coronavirus crisis. "While we accept that celebrations take place, and we have no desire to spoil them for the community, if they descend into violence we absolutely will step in," he was quoted as saying by the Metro newspaper. About one week after the scientists made their case, the WHO modified its stance on aerosol transmission and recognized these tiny droplets may be a bigger issue than previously thought. "It's nothing to be feared, Joseph Allen, assistant professor of exposure assessment science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says about the latest understandings of aerosol transmission. It just means that we have to recognize it's happening so we can apply the appropriate control strategies including how we circulate air in buildings. Different air conditioning systems distribute air in different ways from single window units that cool smaller spaces to complex HVAC systems that regulate temperatures in large buildings. One thing they have in common, however, is that a lot of the air is recirculated, albeit at varying percentages, explains Linsey Marr, the Charles P. Lunsford professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and an expert in aerosol science. And when you recirculate that air, that means that the virus is still sticking around in that building, rather than being replaced by more outdoor air, which presumably is virus-free. There haven't been any confirmed cases of the virus spreading by way of air conditioning units yet, Marr says, but the virus has been found in air-handling ducts in a hospital. (Whether it was enough virus to infect somebody is unclear; the study hasn't yet been peer-reviewed.) An analysis published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also examines the role an air conditioning unit may have played in the spread of the virus in a small, inadequately ventilated restaurant in Guangzhou, China. "There's nothing inherently wrong about air conditioning; it's just when it's done poorly that it's a problem, Allen says. Which is why, as schools and businesses determine the safest course of action for reopening, much of the attention is on making sure buildings and their ventilation systems are as healthy as possible. Your air conditioning at home Running your air conditioning at home shouldn't be a problem, especially if you are with the same group of people you've been exposed to this whole time. One situation where it may be a cause for concern is if you have a big party in your home, Marr says, which you shouldn't be doing anyway. The CDC recommends older adults limit interactions with other people as much as possible to reduce their risk of infection. Plus, in the summer months, the dangers of heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses can't be overlooked, particularly among older adults, says Richard L. Corsi, dean of Portland (Ore.) State University's Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science and an expert on indoor air quality. According to the CDC, air conditioning is the number one protective factor against heat-related illness and death. However, if you are concerned about the quality of air circulating in your home, there are a few things you can do. First: Replace the filters in your air conditioning system, especially if it's been a while. Both Corsi and Marr recommend upgrading to a MERV 13 filter, which removes a high percentage of particles from the air, including droplets and aerosols. If your system won't handle a MERV 13, opt for the highest-quality filter it can handle and be sure to follow installation instructions. If you don't have air conditioning at home, and it's comfortable to do so, open your windows to bring the outdoor air inside. This will help dilute and clear out the trapped air. You can also purchase a portable HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) air cleaner to keep in your home. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends placing it in the area where most people in the household spend their time. Finally: If you're riding in a car with people from outside your household, roll the windows down, Marr says. It makes a huge difference. Cars will usually recirculate the air for air conditioning. The same goes for public buses, which often have windows riders can open. What to do if someone at home is sick If someone in your home has tested positive for a coronavirus infection, it's best to keep them in a separate room, away from others in the household, the CDC says. If that room has windows, open them and consider bringing in a box or exhaust fan, and adjusting it so that the fan blows air out of the window. This keeps air that may contain virus particles from leaking out of the room to the rest of the house, explains William Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at Penn State University. If there's a bathroom attached to the designated isolation space, run its exhaust fan as often as possible. ASHRAE also recommends sealing off air vents and door gaps to keep airborne virus particles from potentially spreading to other areas of the house through the air system. (The ability to do this will depend on the temperature in the room. It's important to make sure the person who is sick is comfortable and doesn't overheat.) Masks, distancing remain important in public buildings Large spaces such as schools, office buildings and nursing homes typically have much more complex air systems that pull in outdoor air to mix with indoor air, and filter what's being circulated with high-efficiency filters. If you frequent a building such as this, and are concerned about ventilation, the best course of action is to ask someone in charge about how the building is adjusting its air operations in light of the pandemic. You can inquire about upgrading filters, for example, or see if there are any adjustments they can do to the system, to the dampers, to bring in more outdoor air and use less recirculated air, Marr says. If you work in a smaller structure with an older air system, opening windows may be the best option. In one document, the transcript of Giuffre's deposition, she describes how Maxwell brought her and her father from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club - where they both worked - to the Epstein mansion, gaining their trust. Giuffre recounts that Maxwell even stripped naked with her the first time she was abused as a minor by Epstein. Virginia Roberts Giuffre during an interview on the BBC Panorama program last year. Credit:AP "So then Ghislaine told me that she wanted me to undress and began to take off my shirt and skirt, my white uniform from Mar-a-Lago, she also took off her shirt and got undressed, and so I was there with just my undies on, and she was completely bare," Giuffre recounted. She detailed how Maxwell took nude photographs of her for Epstein, and described a secret room with the entire wall covered with photographs of nude underage girls who'd been through the Palm Beach mansion. And she alleged that within nine months Maxwell involved her in efforts to procure other underage girls for Epstein. That same transcript also names people who travelled with Epstein. While many of the names have been publicly linked to Epstein before, seeing them in the context of the document was jarring. Giuffre tells of celebrities travelling with Epstein like magician David Copperfield, model Naomi Campbell, former Sony Records president Tommy Mottola and Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of the famed undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in New York in 2005. Credit:Getty Images Giuffre also provides a sworn statement about former US president Bill Clinton visiting Epstein's Little St James Island. "When you say you asked him why is Bill Clinton here, where was he?" Giuffre was asked in her deposition, answering, "On the island." In the newly released 24-page transcript of "Document 16," Giuffre added that two young girls from New York and Maxwell were on the island at the same time as Clinton, who has denied any improper relations. So have the numerous men she identified. The earlier documents also included the names of a number of men whom Giuffre said she and other victims were directed to have sex with, including former US senator George Mitchell, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Hyatt hotels magnate Tom Pritzker, the late scientist Marvin Minsky, modelling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, and prominent hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin. Giuffre has said she was directed to have sex with prominent defence attorney Alan Dershowitz, who previously represented Epstein, as well as Prince Andrew. A picture of Giuffre, Maxwell and Prince Andrew, which Giuffre said was taken by Epstein, has been seared into the public consciousness. All the men have denied the claims, and Giuffre and Dershowitz are suing each other for defamation. Maxwell was arrested on July 2 at a secluded 156-acre estate in New Hampshire that had been purchased in December in all cash through a shell company. She was charged with four counts of sex trafficking of a minor and two counts of perjury, related to statements she made in connection with the Giuffre lawsuit. Her lawyers have argued that the perjury charges come from protected depositions in the civil lawsuit, but they have not provided proof that they were shared and not the product of a subpoena. The criminal sex trafficking charges stemmed from Maxwell's alleged recruitment and grooming of three girls between 1994 and 1997 to be abused by Epstein. In one case, Maxwell allegedly participated in the abuse herself. "Maxwell's presence as an adult woman helped put the victims at ease as Maxwell and Epstein intended," said Audrey Strauss, the acting US attorney in the Southern District of New York, in announcing the charges against Maxwell at a news conference in early July. Alexander Acosta, US Secretary of Labour, held a media conference to defend his role in the Epstein case on July 10, 2019. He later resigned from the Trump administration. Credit:Bloomberg The charges against Maxwell came almost one year after federal prosecutors in New York had brought new charges against Epstein, driven in part by The Miami Herald's Perversion of Justice series, which detailed Epstein's lenient sentence for sex charges a decade earlier. In the wake of the new Epstein charges, then-US Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who as US attorney for Southern Florida signed off on a lenient plea deal more than a decade earlier in a state case that spared Epstein a federal prison sentence, resigned from the Trump administration. A 2015 email unsealed on Thursday between Epstein and Maxwell appears to suggest that Maxwell was "not part of, nor ... (had) anything do with, JE plea bargain." Maxwell has been accused by Epstein's victims of recruiting them for sexual exploitation by Epstein when they were girls, sometimes participating in sex acts along with the multimillionaire. "Without Ghislaine, Jeffrey could not have done what he did," one of the three alleged victims said in a statement at Maxwell's arraignment. "She was a predator and a monster." Maxwell's lawyers argued that federal prosecutors had obtained Maxwell's deposition from the Giuffre lawsuit in violation of a protective order barring it, and other confidential materials from the case, from being shared. They suggested that Giuffre's legal team was responsible for sharing the material, but offered no evidence to support the claim. Legal woes are catching up with Maxwell on numerous fronts. The attorney general of the US Virgin Islands is pursuing a civil enforcement action against the estate of Epstein, who died last August 11 in a Manhattan jail, alleging the estate was an ongoing criminal enterprise that defrauded the islands of tax money. Maxwell has filed a claim against the estate, seeking to have it reimburse her for her legal defence and the costs of hiding and security in the year after Epstein's death. It is widely believed that any serious look at Epstein's business would ensnare his longtime associate Maxwell. A victims compensation fund has recently started operating to help Epstein victims quietly achieve settlements out of court, even as Giuffre and other women seek legal remedies too. The source of Maxwell's wealth is coming under scrutiny. Prosecutors said there were large sums of unexplained wealth and the cash purchase of the mansion where she was arrested was notable. Federal prosecutors say that Maxwell toured the property under the pseudonym Jen Marshall, saying she was a journalist looking for privacy, and her name didn't appear on any of the documents connected to the sale, according to someone with knowledge of the transaction. A "Tucked Away" sign marks the New Hampshire property where Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested. Credit:AP The Maxwell case also figures in national politics. Not only was she friends with Bill Clinton, but Trump created a stir earlier this month when from a White House podium he responded to a question about Maxwell by saying, "I wish her well." The further easing of restrictions in - due to come in this weekend - has been postponed for at least two weeks, amid concerns over an increase in cases. Casinos and bowling alleys will remain shut, with saying it was time to "squeeze the brake pedal", the BBC reported. Wedding receptions of up to 30 people were meant to be allowed as part of the changes but cannot yet happen. Face coverings will be mandatory in more indoor settings, such as cinemas. People attending places of worship will also be required to wear face coverings, in a change that will be applied from next weekend. But planned changes to guidance for those who have been shielding during the pandemic, and advice for employers, will still go ahead. Johnson made the comments during a special Downing Street briefing, where he was joined by England's chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty. Prof Whitty warned that it might not be possible to ease the any further, explaining that the "idea that we can open up everything and keep the virus under control" is wrong. Asked whether it was safe for England's schools to open fully to all pupils in the autumn, he said it was a "difficult balancing act" but "we have probably reached or neared the limits of what we can do in terms of opening up society". The rethink follows new restrictions for people in parts of northern England, after a spike in virus cases. The prime minister said progress against continues, with the daily and weekly number of deaths falling, but warned that some European countries are "struggling" to control it. The UK must be ready to "react", he said. A further 120 people have died with the virus in the UK, according to the latest figures, and 880 new cases have been recorded. Highlighting the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Johnson added: "The prevalence of the virus in the community, in England, is likely to be rising for the first time since May." He said that the reopening of society had always been "conditional" on "continued progress against the virus", but with "numbers creeping up" it was time to "squeeze that brake pedal in order to keep the virus under control". He urged people to "follow the rules, wash our hands, cover our faces, keep our distance - and get a test if we have symptoms", summing the advice up with a new slogan: "Hands, face, space, get a test". --IANS rt/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 03:38:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RABAT, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Moroccan navy have rescued 183 illegal sub-Saharan African migrants off the kingdom's Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, official news agency MAP reported on Saturday. The migrants, including 12 women and two minors, were intercepted in many operations between July 29 and August 1, the agency quoted a military source as saying. They were traveling in several small flimsy boats which were facing trouble in the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates the African continent from Europe. Morocco has become a hub for African migrants who seek to reach Europe for a better life. Enditem Actor Sushant Singh Rajput's sister Shweta Singh Kirti on Saturday made an appeal to Prime Minister demanding justice for her brother who died last month. Shweta posted a brief note on her social media handles, requesting the PM to look into the death case of her brother and ensure that there is no tampering with the evidences. "We are from a very simple family. My brother had no Godfather when he was in Bollywood nor do we have anyone right now. "My request to you is to immediately look into this case and make sure that everything is handled in a sanitised way and no evidences are tampered with. Expecting justice to prevail," she wrote. Sushant was found dead at his Bandra residence last month. The actor's untimely demise was followed by a high-profile investigation by Mumbai Police during which many big names from Bollywood, including filmmakers Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Aditya Chopra, recorded their statements. Over a month after the actor's death, his father lodged a police complaint in Patna on Tuesday against his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, accusing her of abetting the suicide. In his complaint, Krishna Kumar Singh, who had been maintaining a stoic silence over the tragic death of his 34-year-old son, sought to invoke the provisions of the Mental Health Care Act, alleging that the "machinations" of Rhea and her family members had caused his son to crack up, despite a successful career in films, and ultimately drove him to suicide. In her post on Instagram, Shweta also said that she believes in the judicial system and expects "justice at any cost". Ankita Lokhande, who dated Sushant for over six years till 2016 after working with him on hit TV soap "Pavitra Rishta", commented #satyamevajayate on Shweta's post. On Friday, Ankita told a news channel that she stands with Sushant's family in these testing times and wants to know the reason behind his death. "Im saying he was not depressed and if somebody is saying it's suicide, I want to know why. If somebody is saying he was murdered, I want to know who did it? "I am standing with Sushant's family. I also want to know what happened. One thing I am sure is that depression, is impossible for me to believe that it happened," she said. Meanwhile, Rhea broke her silence on Friday evening and released a statement through her lawyers, saying that she had "immense faith" in the judiciary and believes she will get justice. "Even though a lot of horrible things are being said about me on the electronic media, I refrain from commenting on the advice of my lawyers as the matter is sub-judice. Satyamev Jayate, the truth shall prevail," the actor added. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Almost everyone in New Delhi has an Amar Singh story (usually told to them by the man himself), an indication of the kind of connections across party lines that he had in the countrys political capital and also a reflection of the 1990s and the 2000s (his prime years), when coalitions ruled Delhi. Singh is widely credited with having played a role in saving the Congress-led United Progress Alliance government in 2008, by convincing Mulayam Singh Yadavs Samajwadi Party to support it. The messages of condolence that followed his death on Saturday, in Singapore, at the relatively young age of 64, reflect this from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to President Ram Nath Kovind, from Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath to Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav (whose father was Singhs long-time mentor , although Yadav Jr and he did not see eye to eye), and from Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his friends & family. Om Shanti, the Prime Minister tweeted on Saturday. Singh was a Rajya Sabha MP at the time of his death, but he wasnt well for much of the past decade he underwent a kidney transplant in 2011. In the decade before that, sometimes it seemed he was everywhere in New Delhi but also in Mumbai, Indias business hub and home to Bollywood, where Singhs connections extended to top businessmen (he was very close to Anil Ambani at one time and also to the Sahara Groups Subrata Roy) and actors including Amitabh Bachchan, whom he used to refer to as his brother, but with whom he had a falling out, reportedly because the actor didnt visit him in jail. Also read: Amar Singh and the Bharatiya Janata Party - so near and yet so far Singhs family traces its roots back to Azamgarh, but he was born in Aligarh, in 1956; he grew up in Kolkatas Burrabazar (his family was in the locks business) and studied law. He entered politics, like many in India do, through the Congress, but his fortunes changed in the early 1990s when his path crossed that of a man who would go on to become his friend and mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav. By 1996, Singh was in the Rajya Sabha, a nominee of the Samajwadi Party. On Saturday, Akhilesh Yadav tweeted out a photograph that shows Amar Singh with him and Mulayam Singh Yadav and said: On being deprived of Amar Singhjis affection, care, my heartfelt condolences and tributes. Singhs latest stint in the Rajya Sabha was also facilitated by the party he won as an independent, but supported by the party (he was expelled from it in 2010, but made up with Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2015). He was named the partys national general secretary in 2016, but was again expelled from the party in early 2017. He flirted with the Bharatiya Janata Party after that. In 2018, after a period of exile from the public eye following his second expulsion but also partly on account of his failing health, he appeared on stage during a meeting addressed by PM Modi. At the meeting, while lashing out at his political opponents for their nexus with industrialists, PM Modi referred to Singh and said he could disclose the details. Clearly enjoying the attention, Singh later told mediapersons that he would give out the names when the time was ripe. Lab khulenge to utar jayenge chehre saare (people will regret it when I open my mouth) he said to a television channel. But he never joined the party. Singh also worked his way into the good books of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJPs ideological parent; not only did he support the demand for a Ram temple at Ayodhya, but also donated his ancestral house in Azamgarh to the Sangh. He also supported the BJP on both demonetisation and the abrogation of Article 370. While speaking during the debate on the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill in the Rajya Sabha on August 5 last year, he said he could not be called a dal badloo or a party hopper. I did not leave the party, though I was expelled twice, he said on the floor of the House and proceeded to support the BJP. Ironically, it was the same party which he worked against during the 2008 trust vote that the UPA won. Indeed, some would say the story of how the high-profile right-hand man of Mulayam Singh Yadav and friend of Amitabh Bachchan ended up in jail (albeit for just four days) is also the story of how the UPA government won the trust vote in 2008. That stay in jail came after his arrest in a case over allegations that three Bharatiya Janata Party lawmakers were bribed to vote for the UPA in the 2008 trust vote. Singh was acquitted for want of evidence. Singh claimed (and this was subsequently confirmed by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an interview to Karan Thapar) the UPA got in touch with him when the Left parties threatened to cease supporting the UPA over signing the India-US nuclear deal. The best option for Singhs government was to have Mulayam Singh Yadav and his 39 MPs on its side, but this was tricky because the SPs socialist credentials could be hurt if they were seen getting close to the Americans. Singh said that at the time, the SP actually enjoyed a better relationship with the Left parties than it did with the Congress. But the Congresss floor managers knew if there was anyone who could convince Netaji (as Mulayam Singh Yadav is called), it was the flamboyant Singh himself. But for that, Singh would have to forget an old hurt how Congress president Sonia Gandhi ignored him at a meeting she called for potential allies in 2004 at the time of the formation of the UPA. Singh did and some believe that he helped save the government of the day. The UPA would go on to win again in 2009. The return of a dominant party after nearly three decades may have dimmed Singhs political relevance, but this also came at a time when his health was failing. Over the past few months, the always-friendly Singh was ready to forgive. Tweeting from his hospital bed in Singapore in February, while being treated for his long-standing kidney ailment, he said, of his relationship with Bachchan: Today is my fathers death anniversary and I got a message for the same from @SrBachchan ji. At this stage of life when I am fighting a battle of life and death, I regret for my over reaction against Amit ji and family. God bless them all. On Saturday, Bachchan took to his blog to express his grief: Struck with grief, bowed head, only prayers are left. Close life, close relationship, the soul is no more. NEW YORK - Microsoft is in advanced talks to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video app that has been a source of national security and censorship concerns, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity to the negotiations. The potential deal would be a victory for both companies, making Microsoft Corp. a major player in the social media arena and providing relief to TikTok and its parent company, Bytedance Ltd., a target of President Donald Trumps. Trump said Friday that he would take action as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok in the United States. Trumps comments on Friday aboard Air Force One came after published reports that the administration is planning to order Chinas ByteDance to sell TikTok. As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States, Trump told reporters Friday on Air Force One as he returned from Florida. Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, I have that authority. He added, Its going to be signed tomorrow. Microsoft declined to comment. Reports by Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal citing anonymous sources said the administration could soon announce a decision ordering ByteDance to divest its ownership in TikTok. There have been reports of U.S. tech giants and financial firms being interested in buying or investing in TikTok as the Trump administration sets its sights on the app. The New York Times and Fox Business, citing an unidentified source, first reported Friday that Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, While we do not comment on rumours or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. On Saturday it posted a short video from its U.S. General Manager Vanessa Pappas saying that Were not planning on going anywhere. ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the U.S. and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikToks fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and U.S. tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a competitive threat. It has said it has tens of millions of U.S. users and hundreds of millions globally. But its Chinese ownership has raised concerns about the censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government, and the potential for sharing user data with Chinese officials. TikTok maintains it doesnt censor videos based on topics sensitive to China and it would not give the Chinese government access to U.S. user data even if asked. The company has hired a U.S. CEO, a former top Disney executive, in an attempt to distance itself from its Chinese ownership. U.S. national-security officials have been reviewing the Musical.ly acquisition in recent months, while U.S. armed forces have banned their employees from installing TikTok on government-issued phones. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this month that the U.S. was considering banning TikTok. These national-security worries parallel a broader U.S. security crackdown on Chinese companies, including telecom providers Huawei and ZTE. The Trump administration has ordered that the U.S. stop funding equipment from those providers in U.S. networks. It has also tried to steer allies away from Huawei because of worries about the Chinese governments access to data, which the company has denied it has. The Trump administration has stepped in before to block or dissolve deals on national-security concerns, including stopping Singapores Broadcom from its $117 billion bid for U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm in 2018 in an effort to help retain U.S. leadership in the telecom space. It also told Chinas Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. to sell off its 2016 purchase of gay dating app Grindr. Other countries are also taking action against TikTok. India this month banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, citing privacy concerns, amid tensions between the countries. The U.S. governments poor track record in bolstering Americans data privacy more broadly lessens its credibility in taking on Chinese-owned companies, according to Susan Ariel Aaronson, a professor at George Washington University and a data governance and national-security expert. The federal government has not passed broad privacy or data-security legislation despite efforts to do so last year, and the Justice Department has tried to undermine encryption - which makes sure only a sender and receiver can see content they exchange - for law-enforcement reasons. Tech companies have pushed back against that. I continue to be wary of forcing a sale of TikTok without data protection laws they could try to follow, Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer at Facebook who now studies internet security at Stanford University, tweeted on Friday. He added that Microsoft has one of the best child safety teams, which is a larger risk on TikTok right now. Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is the No. 4 digital ad company in the U.S., after Google, Facebook and Amazon. Still, buying TikTok would be a significant change of direction from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadellas focus on workplace software that makes people more productive, said technology industry analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. Unlike Google or Facebook, which dominate the digital advertising industry, Microsoft hasnt been under the intense scrutiny of U.S. politicians and antitrust regulators lately over its market power. Moorhead said that might make it easier to swoop in and acquire TikTok, which poses a competitive threat to social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Googles YouTube and Snapchat. Its an interesting irony that it was Microsoft at the centre of the landmark antitrust case 20 years ago. If the deal goes through, it would definitely make Microsoft a much more competitive advertising system in years to come, said eMarketer analyst Ross Benes. In a July 29 letter to families and staff, when about half of the districts families had answered the survey, District 205 Superintendent David Moyer said about 85 percent of those who replied said they would like their children to receive in-person instruction at least for part of the school week. Dr. Satyavan Saurabh. India has a very rich tradition of imparting knowledge. 'Gurukul' was a type of education system in ancient India in which there were disciples (students) living in the same house with the Guru. Nalanda was the oldest university system of education in this world. Students from all over the world were fascinated and taken aback by Indian knowledge systems. Many branches of the modern knowledge system originated in India. In ancient India, our ancient knowledge has been paramount behind the idea of education as high quality. However, the Indian education system has failed to capitalize on its early edge due to years of financial, financial constraints, and erroneous policies of modern India colonial rule, the brunt of which India has suffered for generations. Today Modi government has brought new education policies for restructuring the education system in India with innovations that will use the Indian demographic dividend to meet Indian needs in the future Fourth Industrial Revolution. The draft of the new education policy was finalized by presenting its report on May 31, 2019, under the chairmanship of the National Education Policy Committee, Dr. K Kasturirangan and it was proposed to implement this policy soon in the budget 2019-20. Today this education policy has been implemented across the country from next year. Due to flaws in the current education policy, a need was felt to introduce this new form. As such the current curriculum does not meet the developmental needs of children. And the current education sector is struggling badly with a shortage of qualified and trained teachers. Currently, most of the early childhood education is imparted through Anganwadis and private-play schools. However, the educational aspects of early childhood have received less attention in this new education policy. The policy recommends developing a two-part curriculum for early childhood care and education. Guidelines for children up to three years old and educational framework for children between three and eight years old. This will be implemented by reform and expansion of the Anganwadi system and co-implementation of Anganwadis with primary schools. The new policy talks of expanding the scope of the Right to Education Act, 2009 for all children between the ages of three to 18 years, which includes early childhood education and secondary school education. The review of recent amendments to the RTE Act on continuous and comprehensive evaluation and no-detention policy has been emphasized. For children up to class eight, schools have been given guidelines to ensure that children are attaining age-appropriate learning levels. Now based on the new policy, board examinations will be restructured to test only the original concept and not to find the topper. These board exams will be on many subjects. Students can choose their subjects and semesters according to their interests, in which they will get the opportunity to study science as well as art subjects. The present structure of schooling has been restructured based on the development needs of the students. In which the 10 + 2 + 3 structure is to be replaced by a 5-3-3-4 design consisting of (i) a five-year foundational stage (three years of pre-primary school and classes one and two), (ii) ) The three-year stage of preparation (classes three to five), (iii) the middle stage of three years (classes six to eight), and (iv) the four-year secondary stage (classes nine to 12). The current education system focuses only on Ratta learning. Now, efforts have been made to reduce the course load to its required basic material. New ways have been found to improve school exams, current board exams force students to focus on only a few subjects, which hinders their all-round development, Indian students do not know how to study happily. In today's method, the test of learning in a formulaic way has caused stress in students. Although the establishment of primary schools in every colony has increased the reach of education, it has driven the development of very small schools but they complicate it. Therefore, in the new policy, many public schools should be brought together to form a school campus. A complex for this would include a secondary school (class nine to twelve) and all the public schools in its neighborhood that provide education from pre-primary to class eight. These will also include anganwadis, vocational education facilities, and an adult education center. Each school campus will be a semi-autonomous unit that will provide integrated education at all stages from the early stage to secondary education. Every effort will be made to efficiently share resources such as infrastructure and trained teachers on a school campus. The shortage of professionally qualified teachers and the increase in the deployment of teachers for non-academic purposes have plagued our education system. For this, according to the new policy, the emphasis has been laid on new recruitment of teachers and they should be posted in special school premises for at least five to seven years. They will not be allowed to participate in any non-teaching activities during school hours. Existing B.Ed. The program will be replaced by a four-year integrated B.Ed. High-quality content, pedagogy, and practical training and an integrated continuous professional development for all disciplines will also be done. Regulation of schools will be conducted separately from aspects like policymaking, school operation, and educational development. Independent state school regulatory authorities will be established for each state that will set basic common standards for public and private schools. To strengthen the policy, the education department of the state will formulate and monitor and supervise the policy. In the new education policy, the emphasis is on research and research, the use of technology, cooperation between different disciplines, cohesion and dialogue, training of teachers, all these will bring positive changes in the education sector of the country. The latest Kasturirangan report or draft new education policy in the education sector shows the need of the hour for improvement in education. The modern Indian education system is crying out for reform. The draft New Education Policy (NEP) is the right time to take stock of its history, achievements, misunderstandings, and chart future education plans for 21st century India. : : 1. , ? 2. ? 3. - 22 4. 5. SCO - , PM 6. 7. 8. 30 26 9. , .? 10. - ? 11. ************************************************************************************ Disclaimer : / [email protected] Manish Sisodia Deputy Chief Minister on Saturday urged Union Home Minister to direct Lieutenant Governor to allow hotels and weekly markets in the national capital to reopen under Unlock 3. It is beyond comprehension what the Centre wishes to achieve by keeping hotels and weekly markets shut in when they have been allowed to open in states with high COVID-19 caseload, Sisodia said in a letter to Shah. The deputy chief minister's letter comes a day after Baijal rejected the Arvind Kejriwal government's decision to allow reopening of hotels and weekly markets in the city under Unlock 3, saying the COVID-19 situation continues to be "fragile" and the threat is still "far from over". Unlock 3 is the third phase of easing of restrictions imposed across the country as part of the coronavirus-induced lockdown. Sisodia said the government will again send its proposal to the LG on Tuesday. "I request you to ask the LG not to stop the proposal. If traders start their businesses, jobs will be generated, and the condition of the economy will improve," said Sisodia, who also holds the finance portfolio. The Delhi government had on Thursday decided to allow hotels, street hawkers to resume operations and do away with the night curfew from 10 PM to 5 AM as part of Unlock 3. It had also decided to allow weekly bazaars to reopen on a trial basis for a week with social distancing and all necessary coronavirus-appropriate measures in place, but the LG intervened before the government could issue an order. In his letter, Sisodia accused the Centre of adopting a "dual policy". "Hotels and weekly markets are open in the whole country, even in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, etc. which have reported the highest number of (COVID-19) cases. It is beyond comprehension what the Centre wishes to achieve by keeping hotels and weekly markets shut in Delhi," he said. He said the COVID-19 situation in Delhi has been "quite under control" over the past one month and things are gradually heading towards normal. "Due to the closure of weekly markets, five lakh families are sitting at home," Sisodia said. "Now when they are hopeful that with the being controlled in Delhi they will get an opportunity to restart their business, binding them under the decision of closure is unfair to Delhi's economic situation and the hopes of lakhs of people," he said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Donald Trump has said that he will ban TikTok in the US. The move could go into effect as soon as today, he told reporters. Speaking from Air Force One as he returned from Florida, he said: "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States." The president said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, "I have that authority" before adding: "It's going to be signed tomorrow." The US has repeatedly indicated that it could ban the app, or undertake other measures, amid escalating tensions with China. While TikTok has insisted that all of its data is stored outside China and has denied rumours of its close relationship with the Chinese government, the Trump administration has insisted that the widespread use of the app could put citizens at risk. India has already undertaken its own ban, for much the same reasons. When that ban was announced at the end of June, it went into effect almost straight away, with the app disappearing from the store and stopping working within 24 hours. Previous reports had suggested that, rather tha banning the app outright, the Trump administration would pressure the app's Chinese owner, Bytedance, to sell TikTok to an American company. It is not clear whether going through with that deal would prevent the most recent indications that the app will be banned outright. Numerous tech companies and financial institutions have been connected with a potential purchase, including Microsoft, which has not commented on the speculation. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, "While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok." TikTok users were also held to be partly responsible for the low turnout at the president's recent rally in Tulsa. While it is unclear how much of a difference those people actually made, reports at the time suggested that posts had encouraged users to sign up for tickets so that they were unavailable to supporters who actually intended to go. The app is said to have as many as 80 million users in the US. Many of those have rallied around the app with posts on the platform under topics such as #SaveTikTok as tensions have mounted. Anxiety among the app's users stepped up earlier this month when the app stopped working properly shortly after secretary of state Mike Pompeo indicated that a ban could be imminent. That led many users to panic that the app had already been blocked. Kids World View(s): The Blue Whale Blue whales are very large. They are listed as an endangered species. A blue whales tongue alone can weigh as much as an elephant. The blue whale can produce a sound that can be detected over 800 km away. A baby blue whale gorges on nothing but mothers milk and gains about 200 pounds every day for its first year. The blue whales heart is about the size of a car. A human can crawl through its major blood vessel. The blue whale is very fast. A mature blue whale weighs the equivalent of 30 adults. The blue whale eats a species of creature called krill. It is believed that 10,000 to 25,000 blue whales live in the oceans of the world. So the blue whales are some of the most amazing creatures in the world. We should protect them. Theshan Harshadewa St. Johns College, Nugegoda Never too late There are five oceans in our world. They are the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Antarctic oceans. The biggest of all is the Pacific Ocean. The smallest is the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic Ocean is the shallowest ocean in the world and home to the Lions Mane Jellyfish. 40% of the worlds oil fields are in the Indian Ocean. It is also the warmest ocean. The Atlantic Ocean is the worlds second largest ocean in the world. It covers 20% of the worlds surface. Greenland the worlds biggest island is situated in the Atlantic Ocean. We humans pollute the oceans a lot. People dump rubbish in to the sea and ships dump oil. Because of this, dump patches are formed. The Great Barrier Reef (the largest living being on earth) is being destroyed due to the irresponsible actions of humans (sea pollution). Thanks to the oceans, we can fulfil most of our needs. Oceans are advantageous to both humans and animals. They are used to produce electricity, as a mode of transport, tourism, extracting salt, fishing etc. Oceans are one of the main sources for the rain cycle. If we pollute the oceans we wont be able to get any of these advantages. Humans can save the oceans if we obey three main rules. They are Reuse, Reduce and Recycle. Reuse is using something again, instead of throwing it away. Reduce means reducing the amount by curtailing something which is unnecessary. Recycle means after you use something, using it for different purpose. If we practice these 3R steps, then we will be able to reduce the amount of garbage annually released to the ocean. There are also the 2T steps, as well. They are Trash and Treatment. Trash means removing rubbish in environmental-friendly way. Treatment means using up the things that you cant recycle. These are ways to keep our planet clean and tidy. We must protect sea creatures as well, as they are part and parcel of the oceans. We all must get together and it is not too late to save our oceans even though we made it a junkyard. Lets save our oceans. Okitha Pathiratne (Grade 7) Royal College, Colombo 7 Books are my friends I read books in my free time. It is my favourite hobby. I usually read English storybooks. It is a very interesting hobby. I have a collection of books in my home. I keep my books in my cupboard. My parents buy me books. I do not miss the exhibitions in my school. I sometimes go to the library and read books. I can improve my knowledge by reading books. I can learn a lot from books. They help me to do my school work too. Books take me to a world of imagination. I do not feel lazy to read books. My favourite book is Cinderella. A good book is a good friend. Methupama Wijerathne (Grade Holy Cross College, Gampaha My favourite person My favourite person is my mother. She always cares about me. She makes me tasty food. She is always working to make our family strong. When I am absent from school she asks my friends mothers to give their books to complete the absent notes. She worries when I am sick and she cares for me. She buys me new clothes and sometimes even toys. She always makes me happy. If I forget to do my homework she remembers and tells me to do it. She loves me and I love her too because of her kindness. She is the best mother in the world. Seneth (Std 6) Jennings Int. College, Nainamadama My family There are four members in my family. They are my father, mother, sister and me. My father works in Vallibel Finance. My mother works in the Peoples Bank. My sister goes to Royal International School. Lasheera Dasanayake (Grade 3) Royal Int. School, Kegalle Trip to Udawalawe Udawalawe, a national park in Sri Lanka is famous for elephants and is located by the Udawalawe reservoir. In the last school vacation I had a trip to see it with my family and cousins. We went to the entrance early morning around 5.30 so that we could see the morning beauty and to see more elephants. We noticed a group of three elephants eating branches of trees. My Grandma said these three elephants are called as a Thunpath Rena (Trio). The mother, baby and mothers sister or another female elephant is called the Thunpath Rena. My Grandma said that when a baby elephant is born, another female elephant in the group also begins to lactate. People believe that milk given by its own mother is not sufficient for the baby. People believe that a Thunpath Rena is as dangerous as a single male elephant called a Thani Aliya. The elephants were playing in the mud with their trunks. We took some good photographs of them. Some baby elephants were very naughty and were spraying soil on to their backs and others with their trunks. We visited Eth Athuru Sevana where disabled elephants were taken care of. We saw caretakers feeding baby elephants with mega milk bottles. This was the most memorable trip I have had in my life. Hirun Kalupahana (11 years) Richmond College, Galle Source: Xinhua| 2020-07-31 22:36:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam announces the postponement of the 2020 Legislative Council (LegCo) General Election of the HKSAR due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, July 31, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Gang) HONG KONG, July 31 (Xinhua) -- In the face of a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, postponing the Legislative Council (LegCo) election scheduled for early September is a timely and necessary move that protects the health of Hong Kong residents and the interests of the Hong Kong society. Considering the hard battle against the virus that concerns the health and safety of over 7 million people in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Friday announced that the 2020 Legislative Council General Election of the HKSAR will be postponed. Hong Kong has reported over 100 new confirmed COVID-19 cases daily for ten consecutive days. The numbers of confirmed cases and deaths rose rapidly. Worryingly, the local cases were so widespread that multiple community infections broke out concurrently, and the sources of many infections are still unknown. The confirmed cases come from different communities and walks of life, making it extremely difficult to trace contacts and break the chain of transmission. The safety of Hong Kong residents is facing severe challenges. Medical practice has proved that avoiding gatherings is one of the most effective ways to prevent the large-scale spread of the epidemic. Among the increasing anti-epidemic measures taken by the HKSAR government, restricting gatherings is a priority. However, as some residents and media have worried, an election inevitably involves crowd gatherings during candidate publicity, canvassing, voting and counting of votes. With confirmed cases spreading all over Hong Kong and a large number of asymptomatic cases "lurking" in the community, the already severe epidemic situation is bound to worsen if the election was to be held as scheduled. Moreover, the HKSAR government has the power endowed by law to postpone the election for one year. The LegCo election is an internal affair of the HKSAR, and the chief executive is tasked with designating its voting date. Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam announces the postponement of the 2020 Legislative Council (LegCo) General Election of the HKSAR due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, July 31, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Gang) An election can be put off. But a life lost is lost forever. At a critical moment like now, all public activities must put life and safety first. Polls conducted by a number of research institutions in Hong Kong showed that a majority of respondents agreed the election should be postponed. It should be pointed out that the postponement will neither affect the normal operation of the body of power of the HKSAR, nor damage the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents in accordance with the law. In fact, postponing elections is a common practice in global epidemic prevention. At least 68 countries and regions decided to postpone national or local elections due to COVID-19. At such an unprecedentedly difficult time, the Hong Kong society should really put aside differences and concentrate on winning the war against the epidemic, supporting the government's anti-virus measures, including the election postponement. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the central government has paid close attention to the health and safety of Hong Kong compatriots. It has provided a large number of masks and anti-epidemic equipment to Hong Kong and fully guaranteed the supply of livelihood materials. Moreover, the central government has vigorously assisted Hong Kong residents stranded in the mainland and abroad to return to Hong Kong. As Hong Kong is having difficulties in expanding nucleic acid testing capacity and quarantining and treating COVID-19 patients, the central government has made it clear that it will provide all necessary support and assistance for the needs of the HKSAR in battling the epidemic to effectively protect the lives and health of Hong Kong residents. With the most solid backing of the central government, Hong Kong's pressing needs to fight the epidemic will be effectively addressed. All sectors of the Hong Kong society should unite as one and fight the epidemic with a scientific and professional attitude. With the great care of the central government, the strong support of the mainland and the firm leadership of the HKSAR government, the epidemic will be brought under control. The tranquility of Hong Kong and the health of its residents will be effectively protected. An Army officer who was a key witness during the impeachment inquiry into President Trump last year and later retired after what he called a campaign of bullying and intimidation by the president and his allies, sharply criticized the administration on Saturday and said he would use his new civilian status to champion national security issues ahead of the elections in November. Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, a decorated Iraq war veteran who served on the staff of the White Houses National Security Council, accused the administration in an op-ed in The Washington Post of using Soviet-style tactics to punish dissenters. He added: At no point in my career or life have I felt our nations values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. In his role as a Ukraine expert on the National Security Council staff, Colonel Vindman was on the July 25, 2019, phone call Mr. Trump had with Ukraines president that became a central element of the impeachment inquiry. Colonel Vindman testified in the House impeachment hearings that it was improper for the president to coerce a foreign country to investigate a political opponent. Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents, Colonel Vindman, whose retirement from the Army after more than 21 years of service took effect Saturday, said in his op-ed. Those who choose loyalty to American values and allegiance to the Constitution over devotion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished. Trump Administration Asks Judge to Seize Boltons $2 Million Book Advance The Trump administration has asked a federal judge in Washington to order the seizure of former National Security Advisor John Boltons $2 million advance plus royalties from his book deal on grounds of violation of clearance procedures. According to a court filing submitted on July 30 and obtained by Bloomberg, the government alleges Bolton broke nondisclosure agreements by proceeding to publish his memoir without successfully completing a pre-publication review of his book to make sure it didnt contain classified information. While Bolton submitted a manuscript of his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, for review by administration officials, he did not receive written clearance to publish, the government said in the filing, as cited by Bloomberg. The report said Bolton was told on several occasions that publishing the book without such authorization would be against the law. Boltons attorney, Chuck Cooper, wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that Bolton cleared his book with Ellen Knight, the National Security Councils senior director for pre-publication review of materials written by NSC personnel. Cooper detailed some of the interactions between Knight and Bolton and said the books review underwent several laborious iterations that ended with what he understood to be a verbal approval but that no formal letter of clearance was provided. We did hear from the White House on June 8. John A. Eisenberg, the presidents deputy counsel for national security, asserted in a letter that Mr. Boltons manuscript contains classified information and that publishing the book would violate his nondisclosure agreements, Cooper wrote, adding that he viewed the White House communications as a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Bolton. In a June interview on ABC, Bolton said his book does not contain classified content and that he submitted his manuscript for pre-publication clearance only out of an abundance of caution. When I wrote the book, to begin with, I was very conscious to avoid putting in anything that I thought could be deemed classifiable, and I didnt think I had to put the book through the pre-publication clearance process for that reason, Bolton said. But we did out of an abundance of caution and then went through four arduous months of making sure there was nothing classified and I believe that strongly today. Trump, who called the books publication totally inappropriate, suggested Bolton could face criminal liability for publishing his memoir, saying, I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean that if he wrote a book and the book gets out, he has broken the law. That would mean that he would have criminal problems. I hope so. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit on June 16 seeking to block the publication of Boltons book, arguing that the book is rife with classified information and that publishing it would compromise national security. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth later rejected the Trump administrations attempt to block the book but criticized Bolton for gambling with national security. He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability, Lamberth wrote in his order (pdf). The judge said that while Bolton may have improperly rushed the publication process, he also believes an injunction is unlikely to prevent irreparable harm to the government given that the book had already been disseminated widely. But these facts do not control the motion before the Court. The government has failed to establish that an injunction will prevent irreparable harm. Its motion is accordingly DENIED, Lamberth wrote in the order. The "mastermind" behind the recent high-profile Twitter hack that compromised the accounts of numerous celebrities has been caught, and he's only 17. The New York Times reports that the Florida teenager was arrested early Friday morning in connection with the incident that brought blue-checkmark Twitter to a standstill on July 15. The FBI also said a second individual was arrested in connection with the hacking. The cyberattack took hold of 130 high-profile accounts, including prominent politicians and celebrities such as Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Tweets were then posted on the compromised accounts soliciting the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The scheme netted the hackers more than $180,000. Florida state officials say that Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was behind the attack that resulted in embarrassment for the social media giant, and wide-ranging security concerns. Federal authorities were already tracking the teen before the July hack, the Times reports. In April, the Secret Service seized over $700,000 worth of Bitcoin from him, according to legal documents. Mr. Clark now faces 30 felony charges, including fraud, and is being charged as an adult. A statement from the FBI San Francisco field office Friday said, "as of today, the FBI and our partners have taken two individuals into custody. They are facing either federal or state criminal charges, including computer intrusion, fraud, money laundering, wire fraud, and identity theft." The suspects were not named in the FBI statement, and the Times did not identify the second person who was arrested. "Our investigation is ongoing," Assistant Special Agent in Charge Sanjay Virmani added. Andrew Warren, the state attorney of Hillsborough County, Fla. told the New York Times, "Working together, we will hold this defendant accountable. Scamming people out of their hard-earned money is always wrong. Whether youre taking advantage of someone in person or on the internet, trying to steal their cash or their cryptocurrency its fraud, its illegal, and you wont get away with it." A Twitter spokesman told the Times, "We appreciate the swift actions of law enforcement in this investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case progresses." Andrew Chamings is an editor at SFGATE. Email: Andrew.Chamings@sfgate.com | Twitter: @AndrewChamings The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of the Philippines of Scout, Assault, and Light Support Boats with armaments and related equipment for an estimated cost of $126 million. The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of the Philippines of Scout, Assault, and Light Support Boats with armaments and related equipment for an estimated cost of $126 million. Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link 10M Assault Boats (Picture source: Willard Marine Inc.) The Government of the Philippines has requested to buy 36 9M Scout Boats (SB); 36 10M Assault Boats (AB); 18 16M Light Support Boats (LSB) along with the following armaments- 156 M240B 7.62x51mm machine guns, 24 M2A1 .50 caliber machine guns and 36 M134D-M, 7.62x51mm, 6-barrel rotary Gatling guns. Also included are sensors and radios to be mounted on the boats including 36 units of Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) 280HD; 399 NFS-NVG/IR Lasers (AN/PVS-14 and AN/PEQ-15); 102 Thermal Imager Scope (handheld); 210 Heavy Thermal Weapon Sights (AN/PAS-13); 90 Harris Falcon III RF-7850M radios; 270 Harris Falcon III RF-7850S radios; boat spare parts; spare engines and engine components; safety and rescue equipment and others. The estimated cost is $126 million. This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a strategic partner that continues to be an important force for political stability, peace, and economic progress in South-East Asia. The proposed sale will improve the Philippines capability to meet current and future threats by force-multiplying the Armys present ability to operate and control both inland and coastal waterways of southern Philippines. The Philippines will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment and support into its armed forces. The principal contractor for the Scout and Assault Boats will be Willard Marine Inc., Anaheim, CA. The principal contractor for the Light Support Boat will be determined through an open competition contract. There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale. Any offset agreement required by Philippines will be defined in negotiations between the purchaser and the contractor(s). Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy has taken cognisance of the accident and has directed Visakhapatnams district collector and the police to take immediate action At least 11 people were killed after an industrial crane weighing over 70 tonnes came crashing down at the Hindustan Shipyard Limited worksite in Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam, according to several media reports. #WATCH A crane collapses at Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. 10 dead and 1 injured in the incident, says DCP Suresh Babu. pic.twitter.com/BOuz1PdJu3 ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 The new crane was erected at HSL about two years ago but was not yet commissioned for regular operations due to a change in contractors. Babu said that the HSL management, with the help of three new contractors, started conducting a trial run of the crane when its cabin and base snapped and collapsed as a dead-weight load was being tested, said Chand. There were no other casualties in the incident. According to a report in Indian Express, the incident occurred during an inspection visit as officials and operators were reviewing its operability. At least six bodies have been recovered and a few survivors rushed to the hospital, as per the report. Another report in Mumbai Mirror stated that the accident occurred during a load-testing inspection. Rescue teams are on site and the officials checking attendance records to ascertain the exact number of people on duty at the time of the mishap, as per the report. Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy, taking cognisance of the accident, directed Visakhapatnams district collector and the police to take immediate action, according to ANI. "We've also ordered inquiry both from within Hindustan Shipyard and also a high-level committee from administration (sic)", Vizag district collector Vinay Chand told ANI. Meanwhile BJP leader Y Satya Kumar expressed his condolences for the victims while appealing for proper treatment for the injured. Heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased in an unfortunate crane accident at the Hindustan Shipyard Limited,Visakhapatnam where a heavy crane collapsed in which 10 people lost their lives Proper treatment must be ensured for those injured,I wish them speedy recovery pic.twitter.com/P564Z9evrP Y. Satya Kumar (@satyakumar_y) August 1, 2020 TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu also expressed shock at the news of the accident and prayed for the safety of thodr impacted. "The news that 10 people were killed by a heavy crane at the Hindustan Shipyard came as a shock. It is said that there were up to 30 people at the site during the accident. I pray to God that they are all safe," The News Minute quoted him as saying. HARRISON, MI A Montana man alleged to have held police at bay in an eight-hour standoff at a Clare County hotel is facing several criminal charges. David M. Wood, 49, has been arraigned in Clare County District Court on three counts of assault with intent to murder, four count of felony firearm, and one count of discharging a firearm in or at a building, according to Clare County Prosecutor Michelle J. Ambrozaitis. The first charge is a life offense, while a felony firearm conviction comes with a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence to be served consecutively with any related stint. The third charge is a 10-year felony. Wood, who resides in Helena, Montana, was at the Quality Inn at 10318 S. Clare Ave. in Clare when police responded there to reports of a domestic disturbance involving a man armed with a handgun about 12:15 a.m. on Monday, July 27. Clare Police Chief Brian Gregory previously told MLive that the suspect Wood was alone when police arrived, with the victim outside. Wood allegedly came to the door when police arrived, confronted officers, and refused to put the weapon down, which led officers to retreat. Shots were fired by suspect into the parking lot where officers were standing, Gregory has said. He was in his room and hallway of (the) hotel. Hotel occupants were escorted from the scene. Negotiations began with Wood with assistance from the Northern Michigan Mutual Aid Emergency Response Team, Clare County Sheriffs Office, and Michigan State Police. Wood eventually surrendered to police after eight hours. The case is still under investigation and more reports are expected to be received, which means that additional charges could be added if supported by those additional reports, Ambrozaitis said in a press release. Wood is being held at the Clare County Jail on a $300,000 cash-surety bond. Read more: Man surrenders after firing shots at police amid 8-hour standoff at Clare motel Police investigating 3 suspicious fires in Clare County - mlive ... Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 06:13:14|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SAN FRANCISCO, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Two aircraft collided in midair Friday morning near the Soldotna Airport on Kenai Peninsula in the U.S. state of Alaska, Anchorage Daily News (ADN) reported. One of the aircraft involved in the crash about two miles northeast of the airport at 8:30 a.m. was a single-engine de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The agency originally described the other plane as a twin-engine Piper Aztec, but it said Friday afternoon that identification was incorrect and the model of the second aircraft had not been identified. Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the crash. The wreckage fell near the Sterling Highway, according to NTSB Alaska chief Clint Johnson. The number of people in the two planes and the extent of their injuries are not available. One person taken to Soldotna's Central Peninsula Hospital by ambulance has died, a hospital spokesman said Friday afternoon. The death of Alaska House Representative Gary Knopp was also confirmed by several of his legislative colleagues. Knopp's wife, Helen, said he had been flying his own plane Friday morning, ADN said in the report. Knopp was a certified flight instructor and registered pilot. He was elected to the Alaska Legislature in 2016 after serving on the Kenai Borough Assembly. He was a candidate in this year's Republican primary for House District 30, according to the ADN report. Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has ordered the U.S. flag and Alaska state flag to be flown at half-staff in honor of Knopp beginning mid-day Friday and ending at sunset on Monday. "The First Lady and I wish to express our heartfelt condolences to Representative Knopp's family as they mourn his untimely passing," Dunleavy said in a statement on behalf of himself and his wife, Rose. "Throughout his 42 years on the Kenai Peninsula, Gary became well known as an avid outdoorsman, a skilled pilot, and a dedicated public servant. His presence will no doubt be missed by those he faithfully served." The Alaska legislative leaders on both sides of the political aisle also expressed their grief over Knopp's loss and extended condolences to his wife and family. Enditem The Guardian The Steelers quarterback is headed to the Hall of Fame. But he was unloved outside Pittsburgh for understandable reasons Ben Roethlisberger almost certainly played his final game in the NFL on Sunday. Photograph: Ed Zurga/AP Ben Roethlisberger is lucky that football legacies are not decided by finales. If Sunday night was indeed Big Bens last ever NFL game, as he has strongly hinted, it wasnt exactly a mic drop. In the 42-21 beatdown by the Chiefs, Roethlisberger struggled with rollouts, and l Fine particulate air pollution is referred to as PM2.5 because the particles are less than 2.5 microns in diameter 40 times smaller than a grain of sand. (Photo : Washington Department of Ecology) Air pollution contributes to as many as 9 million premature deaths worldwide each year twice as many as war, other violence, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Fine particulate matter air pollution is especially dangerous: Microscopic particles readily enter the lungs, bloodstream and brain, with health effects that include infant death, reduced life expectancy for adults, cancer, lung disease and heart disease. Fine particle matter pollution concentrations in the United States have declined by roughly 70% since 1981. However, in a newly published study, we show that the areas that were most polluted in 1981 are still the most polluted today, and the least polluted areas in 1981 are still the least polluted today. Areas that were whiter and richer in 1981 have become relatively less polluted over time. Areas that became whiter and richer between 1981 and 2016 have become relatively less polluted over time. In contrast, the neighborhoods and population groups that were most exposed to fine particle pollution 40 years ago disproportionately low-income and minority communities are still exposed to higher pollution levels. As scholars who focus on environmental economics and public policy, we believe that the persistence of air pollution disparities matters. We care about who is advantaged and disadvantaged. In addition, our results have implications for environmental public policy. To the extent that policy aims to reduce pollution disparities, the job is far from finished. Mapping Pollution at a Neighborhood Scale Researchers have known for decades that air pollution varies across locations due to economic activity, climate and other factors. It is also well documented that lower-income households, people of color and other disadvantaged communities are disproportionately exposed to air pollution. Since research shows that air pollution is associated with early death, lower educational attainment and lower lifetime earnings, these differences promote economic, health and social inequality. What has not been clear is how much air pollution disparities have changed over time. We wanted to understand particulate matter air pollution disparities in a more systematic way, for the entire U.S. over many years. Until recently, the information needed to answer this question simply wasnt available. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency monitors levels of fine particle pollution, known as PM2.5, nationwide. But its monitors offer relatively sparse coverage and are concentrated in disproportionately urban locations. In our study, we leverage newly available data that captures PM2.5 concentrations at more than 8.6 million distinct U.S. locations from 1981 through 2016. These data were constructed from satellite observations and pollution transport modeling, along with pollution monitor records. They provide a detailed year-by-year picture of fine particulate matter concentrations for each of the roughly 65,000 Census tract neighborhoods in the United States. Persistent disparities Our analysis shows that there has been some progress over the past 35 years in reducing gaps between the most polluted and least polluted locations. In 1981 PM2.5 concentrations in the most polluted 10% of census tracts averaged 34 micrograms per cubic meter. PM2.5 concentrations in the least polluted 10% of census tracts averaged 13 micrograms per cubic meter. The difference was 22 micrograms per cubic meter. In 2016 PM2.5 concentrations in the most polluted 10% of census tracts averaged 10 micrograms per cubic meter. PM2.5 concentrations in the least polluted 10% of census tracts averaged 4 micrograms per cubic meter. The difference was 6 micrograms per cubic meter. These reduced gaps likely imply that differences in pollution-induced health, wealth and productivity across locations are also declining. But while pollution gaps have declined for some disadvantaged communities, this hasnt been universal. Next we wanted to see whether specific locations had more or less pollution than other locations, and whether the most polluted locations were the same through time. To explore these questions, we ranked each neighborhood from most polluted to least polluted for every year that we had data. We then evaluated how these rankings changed between 1981 and 2016, and found that they remained remarkably persistent. The most polluted areas in 1981 remain the most polluted areas today, and the least polluted areas in 1981 remain the least polluted areas today. Communities that were disadvantaged in 1981 remain exposed to higher levels of pollution today. If anything, relative disparities have worsened for poorer and Hispanic communities. A disproportionate share of the most polluted areas over the past 40 years are in Southern California, while the least polluted areas are more dispersed across the U.S. As an example, a child born in Los Angeles County in 2016 was exposed to 42% more fine particle pollution than the average child born in the United States, and 26% more pollution than a child born in New York City. A few areas did see improvements or declines in their relative standing. Ohio, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and the Northeast Corridor became relatively less polluted from 1981 through 2016. Californias Central and Imperial valleys, southwestern Arizona, southern Texas and portions of Arkansas and Oklahoma became relatively more polluted. Fairness, Equity and Public Policy Our findings underline the scope, scale and persistence of air pollution disparities in the United States. But if particulate matter air quality has improved over time which should translate into improvements in health, wealth and productivity for most Americans why should we be concerned about relative disparities between some locations and others? In our view, persistent disparities between the most and least polluted communities matter because fairness, equity and justice are relative concepts. We define them based on who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged at any given time. Pollution disparities translate into health, economic and social disparities. For decades, federal and state environmental guidelines have aimed to provide all Americans with the same degree of protection from environmental hazards. The EPAs definition of environmental justice states that no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences. On this front, our research suggests that the United States is falling short. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: City With Worst Air Not Beijing or New Delhi, but Temuco, Chile This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. | Author: Jonathan Colmer, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Virginia and Jay Shimshack, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics, University of Virginia Andrea Kozak-Oxnard New York The writer is a staff attorney at Disability Rights Advocates. To the Editor: I applaud The Times for devoting a special section to disabilities. But it was disappointing not to see any coverage of the daily problems that accompany hearing loss for the millions of people with the condition. I would not claim that hearing loss has the same impact as some of the disabilities discussed. Yet severe hearing loss can present many challenges. I lost my career as a performing musician. In my work as an educational researcher at a university, it compromised my ability to function in meetings. If I go to the doctor or to the hospital, I may miss important communications, particularly when doctors and staff are masked. Hearing loss complicates speaking on the phone, going to dinner in a restaurant, using public transit and many other daily activities. At the Hearing Loss Association of America, we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the A.D.A. and the rights we have gained that have improved our lives. But even those gains required a fight and would not have been accomplished without the advocacy of our predecessor organization, Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing, which led the struggle to have hearing loss covered by the A.D.A. Jon Taylor New York The writer is president of the Hearing Loss Association of America, New York City chapter. To the Editor: I very much appreciated Andrew Solomons essay Invisible Disabilities. I wholeheartedly agree that, at the 30th anniversary of the A.D.A., we need to make the most vulnerable of us visible in order to enforce the application of the A.D.A. to this population. The A.D.A. itself, as Mr. Solomon describes, can too often be a blunt tool, but for those with autism, learning differences, mental health issues or neurological issues, there are often no instruments at all. Because of the stigma commonly associated with invisible disabilities, making those affected leery of disclosing them, it is even more important that there be base-level support available. The history of the A.D.A. has also taught us that the accommodations designed for one community frequently support others. For example, ramps were created for wheelchairs but also support those with strollers and walkers. Days after Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth Pithani claimed the actors family was pressurizing him to give a statement against Rhea Chakraborty to the police, the lawyer hired by his family has questioned his credibility. Vikas Singh, who is representing the actors family, claimed Siddharth was providing information to the family against Rhea Chakroborty till July 25 but later did a volte-face. Till probably July 25, he was talking to the family and trying to help by telling them that Rhea Chakraborty has been instrumental in whatever happened to Sushant, the lawyer told Times of India. Suddenly, he has done a volte-face. I dont know what happened, but I hope the police get to the bottom of the matter soon and find out what role he (Pithani) played in this case and whether he has any information that he hasnt shared. Pithani wrote a mail to the Mumbai Police that he was being asked by the family to mention a transaction of Rs 15 crore allegedly made by Rhea. The email is a part of the petition filed in the Supreme Court by Rhea to transfer the FIR to Mumbai from Patna. It is very surprising. If this was written to only the Mumbai Police, how did it reach Rhea? By now when this mail is coming in public light, Rhea is already mentioned as an accused now in the FIR, so theres no question of the police sharing it with Rhea. If Pithani had sent it to Rhea, his credibility is in doubt. In that case, it was only set up to file it in Court. He went on to say that Pithani was living with Sushant when he died on June 14. This boy (Pithani) was living with Sushant and he was the one who discovered the dead body. So when he found the door locked, he did not open it until Sushants sister came. He waited for one-and-half hours, the lawyer said. Speaking to ANI, Pithani had said on Friday, Sushants family members told me about a Rs 15-crore transaction made by Rhea and asked me to mention this in my statement. I told his family members that I will only tell what I know and believe. They asked me to come to Patna. I met them after Sushants death. But this sudden mode of change, I do not know. After this, I contacted the police and told them everything. They have given me an email address to share the information. I told police that Sushants family is asking me to say some things in my statement. I wish I really know about these transactions. If I knew about it, I would have given the statement. I have no idea about this Rs 15 crore, he said. An FIR was filed by Rajputs father KK Singh against actor Rhea Chakraborty in Bihar under several sections including abetment of suicide. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Prince Harry, Prince William, and Kate Middleton were captured as the picture-perfect vision of threesome unity. But on the contrary, Prince Harry's single days hanging out with the royal couple at official engagements had a less pleasant truth. Such companionship in engagements was before the Duke of Sussex married the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle. According to royal expert Katie Nicholl upon discussing Prince Harry and Markle's memoir, she underscored Prince Harry felt in a third wheel position and playing a gooseberry to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. He was regularly in attendance in events with the Cambridges prior to his marriage with the former "Suits" actress in May 2018. Nicholl discussed extracts from "Finding Freedom" penned by Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie. She indicated that the pressed adored the suggestion that the trio was a power team, but Prince Harry felt that his role was as a "spare wheel," reported Knowledia. She said, "At points (in time), I even heard him complaining that he felt like the gooseberry, the third one along at the date. He never quite fitted in." Prince William and Middleton might have made the best efforts for Prince Harry to feel that he belonged in their staunch team, but he had always wanted to be his own person, indicated Meaww. The royal correspondent shared that the Duke of Sussex had been unhappy for a long duration in carrying out royal duties as the 6th heir to the British throne. Also Read: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Were Happy Before This Disastrous Phone Call The former royal anticipated to discover a new purpose for himself before he met his American actress wife, reported Tounesna News. For the memoir, numerous palace sources set forth to the two writers. They provided inside accounts regarding the Sussexes' journey towards departure as senior working members of the royal family. Nicholl, the writer of "William And Harry: Behind The Palace Wall," believed that "Meghan has very much been the catalyst in giving him that confidence to break free from William and Kate, and to break free from that trio dynamic, which was at times cozy and convenient, but actually wasn't really what he wanted." Nicholl stated that one recurring theme in the new biography was Prince Harry's feelings of being a spare wheel. The royal expert cited the biography that Markle changed his identity issue. She explained that while Markle has been widely alluded as the catalyst for the renouncement of royal duties and eventually relocating to the United States, the duke was the driving force behind their stepping down. Markle reportedly offered him new confidence, but Nicholl believes that Prince Harry has in truth wanted out for a long while. She observed that Markle was not rightfully being credited by the public for providing Prince Harry confidence. The former royal couple is currently residing in Los Angeles with one-year-old son Archie since the advent of "Megxit." With Markle's presence, Prince Harry found a partner to support him and a companion in public royal appearances instead of playing the third wheel to Prince William and Middleton. Megxit was deemed a historic move that has been unparalleled in the royal family's history. The British press relentlessly condemned Markle for allegedly being a bad influence on the prince. Related Article: Prince William, Kate Middleton Denies Claims that Royal Family Shunned Prince Harry, Meghan Markle @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. More than half of furloughed employees have already returned to work ahead of the scheme being phased out from Saturday, new research suggests. The Resolution Foundation said reports that nine million workers remained furloughed are 'wide of the mark'. From August 1, firms have to contribute towards the cost of furloughed workers by paying their employer National Insurance and pension contributions. Commuters are pictured above in London. More than half of furloughed employees have already returned to work, according to new research The think-tank said its analysis suggests that the peak number of furloughed workers was almost eight million in late April. Millions of furloughed staff have since returned to work, either fully or as partially furloughed part-time workers, meaning that fewer than 4.5 million employees are now furloughed, said the report. The foundation said the peak and subsequent fall in the number of workers on the Job Retention Scheme demonstrates its success in protecting firms and employees during the lockdown's introduction and easing. One senior economist at the Resolution Foundation called on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to phase out support for hardest hit sectors more slowly Dan Tomlinson, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: 'The Job Retention Scheme has supported around a third of the private sector workforce at some point since lockdown began, protecting family incomes and preventing catastrophic levels of unemployment. 'But, with the number of furloughed workers having peaked in late April, it is misleading to say that nine million workers are currently furloughed. Over half of these workers have now returned to work as lockdown restrictions have eased. The true figure is below 4.5 million. 'But while furloughing is currently far less widespread than commonly claimed, there are still millions of employees without work, particularly in the hospitality and leisure sectors. These workers face a heightened risk of unemployment as the JRS starts to be phased out from today. 'The Chancellor should reduce this risk by phasing out support for these hardest-hit sectors more slowly.' Federation of Small Businesses chairman Mike Cherry said: 'One in five small firms have been forced to let staff go over the last three months. Even with critical emergency measures in place, jobs are sadly being lost in the here and now. 'As we look to the autumn, it's clear that we cannot afford to pull up the business support drawbridge any time soon. 'Giving firms 1,000 for every employee they bring back from furlough is welcome, but Job Retention Bonus funds won't manifest until next year - jobs are being lost today. 'In addition to job retention, the Chancellor should be looking at job creation.' A Treasury spokesman said: 'We said at the start of the crisis that we couldn't save every job - but it's clear that the furlough scheme has saved millions of them - and now many people who've been furloughed are able to return to work. 'That's good for the economy but more importantly it's good for individuals, their families and communities.' Wildlife tourism is popular among travelers as it provides an opportunity to get close to species that they would not ordinarily encounter. Popular wildlife tourism activities include safaris, dolphin and whale watching, gorilla tracking, and visiting conservation centers. In recent years there has been a rise in eco-tourism and sustainable travel that aims to protect wildlife and the environment. However, not all areas of the wildlife tourism industry are following suit and many species are at risk due to bad tourism. Read on below to find out which animals are threatened by bad tourist practices. 8. Coral Big school of Yellowfin goatfishes (Mulloidichthys vanicolensis) above the coral reef of Fakarava, with silhouettes of divers on the blue. Image credit: Kristina Vackova/Shutterstock.com The Great Barrier Reef, located off north-eastern Australia in the Pacific Ocean, is home to 400 types of coral. It is the worlds largest coral reef collection. The tourism industry has had a detrimental impact on the Reef, snorkelers and scuba divers have caused damage to the coral species. When divers explore the area, they sometimes kick up sand and sediment, which smothers the coral causing it to die. Divers and snorkelers may accidentally kick the coral or take a piece as a souvenir - this causes long-term damage to the reef. In 2016, 30% of the Great Barrier Reef perished due to a number of factors, including badly managed tourism. A further 20% was damaged in 2017. 7. Orangutans A group of tourists photographing a baby orangutan at the Gunung Leuser National Park in Indonesia. Image credit: Dennis van de Water/Shutterstock.com Indonesia is famous for its orangutans, a critically endangered species that are native to the Indonesian island of Borneo and Sumatra. Some tours run excursions into the jungles, where tourists are able to come into close contact with the primates. This can cause many problems for the species. Frequent feeding by tourists causes the orangutans to become aggressive in instances where they are not fed. Feeding the orangutans also puts them at risk of contamination and poor health. The repeated contact with humans has resulted in high infant mortality rates due to diseases and poor motherhood skills, which indicates tourism is having a negative impact on these already endangered animals. 6. Tigers Safari vehicles with tourists observing tigers in the wild. Image credit: Travel Stock/Shutterstock.com Safaris and game drives are popular amongst tourists as it is an opportunity to see exotic animals in their natural habitat. However, studies have shown that tigers suffer psychological stress due to wildlife tourism. If the animals are subjected to prolonged stress, their survival and reproduction will be at risk. Elevated stress hormones can also negatively impact tigers' growth and immunity. It is important for tourist vehicles entering the parks to be regulated and human disturbances should be greatly minimized to conserve the existence of these already endangered animals. 5. Green turtles Tourists photographing green turtles in a Hawaiian beach. Image credit: Benny Marty/Shutterstock.com The endangered green turtle can be found in more than 80 countries, including Costa Rica and Australia. Many tourists visit the coastlines to catch a glimpse of the animals, especially during the nesting season, where they can observe the turtles during the day time. However, the large number of tourists concentrated in these areas has a negative impact on the lives of the turtles. Habitat degradation through tourism development is a common occurrence; trash is often left behind on beaches and badly managed tour groups can sometimes harass the nesting turtles. Some unregulated turtle hatcheries efforts are also extremely damaging to the green turtle population. They are often run by volunteers, rather than experts, and have incorrect knowledge in regards to the turtles life cycles and biology. 4. Dolphins Image credit: Lerner Vadim/Shutterstock.com In 2018, research led by the University of Otago found that there is growing evidence to suggest that whale and dolphin-watching activities can have an adverse effect on the animals. Spinner dolphins have been particularly affected as they rest and sleep in shallow waters during the day time. When tourists visit these areas, they disrupt the resting patterns of the dolphins. Repeated sleep and rest loss could eventually cause a decline in population and displacement. Marine parks are also a threat to dolphin populations. Marine parks are a tourist attraction that can greatly impact dolphin populations. The Taji hunt in Japan sees more than 1,700 dolphins either slaughtered or sold to aquariums and marine parks. 3. Gorillas Mountain gorilla at Bwindi National park, Uganda. Image credit: Claudio Soldi/Shutterstock.com In 2020, a study was published by researchers at Ohio University that showed the risk that tourists pose to endangered mountain gorillas. The mountain gorillas are an endangered species found only in eastern Africa. Around 40% of the remaining mountain gorilla population is found in southwestern Ugandas Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The Park attracts tourists from all over the world, but the close proximity between humans and animals is a great risk. Researchers have found that gorillas are particularly susceptible to human diseases and the transmission of respiratory infections causes up to 20% of sudden deaths in gorillas. Poorly managed tour groups do not observe distancing rules; the study found that this rule was violated in over 98% of the examined tours. 2. Lions Captive lions suffer a lifetime of exploitation. Image credit: Pieter Oosthuizen/Shutterstock.com In South Africa, there are more captive than wild lions. Only 32% of the countrys lion population lives in free-roaming wildlife reserves. Lions are bred specifically to be held captive for commercial use, to be used as photo opportunities for tourists wanting a once in a lifetime experience. Lion cubs are often drugged in order for tourists to take photos with them, but when they become adults, they are too dangerous to have contact with humans and are either euthanized or kept in crowded captive conditions, sold to inhumane zoos or lion farms. These holding facilities have a severe impact on lions well-being and have no conservation benefit. 1. Galapagos tortoise Galapagos giant tortoises being observed by tourists. Image credit: Fotos593/Shutterstock.com The Galapagos Islands are home to an abundance of wildlife found nowhere else in the world. In recent years, the islands have seen an increase in tourists, which has led to increasing demand for accommodation and subsequent habitat degradation. Tourists leaving litter and the increasing number of ships traveling between the islands and the mainland pollutes the waters and impact marine life. Tourists also unwittingly introduce foreign species to the archipelago, seeds, or spores attached to clothing could create an invasion that threatens the existence of endemic species. The famous Galapagos tortoise is at risk as human interaction alters their behavioral patterns, which has a detrimental impact on the tortoises. The former assistant superintendent of Cromwell Public Schools who resigned last year amid accusations of an inappropriate relationship with a superior and a hostile work environment has been arrested in connection with a boat licensing scheme, police said. Krista Karch, 48, of Essex, was arrested Tuesday and charged with second-degree forgery, conspiracy to commit second-degree forgery, third-degree telephone fraud and fourth-degree money laundering, police said. Karch did not immediately respond Saturday to messages seeking comment. Monroe Police Lt. Stephen Corrone said Karch, along with Orlando Dominguez, 41, of Bridgeport, were arrested following an investigation into a complaint his department received on Feb. 26 about the sale of a motor vehicle with a fraudulent title. Dominguez was arrested Wednesday and charged with second-degree forgery, conspiracy to commit second-degree forgery, first-degree forgery and third-degree telephone fraud, police said. Monroe detectives, with assistance from the Bridgeport Police Department, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Department of Motor Vehicle Commercial Vehicle Safety Division, developed several suspects, Corrone said. While executing search warrants, Corrone said police found evidence that pointed to a larger, well-organized counterfeiting organization. The investigation found that Dominguez produced counterfeit Connecticut and New York car titles, auto insurance cards, U.S currency, emissions paperwork and boating certificates, Corrone said. Corrone said investigators also learned that Karch is authorized by the state DEEP to provide boating licensing classes. Corrone said Karch was not providing the classes. Instead, she was working with Dominguez, who arranged for forged boating certificates to be sold to individuals without the need of the required eight-hour class, Corrone said. Dominguez and Karch were each released on $2,500 bond and are both due in state Superior Court in Bridgeport on Sept. 23. Karch resigned from her position with the Cromwell schools in February 2019. She and former Superintendent John T. Maloney Jr. were placed on leave as the Board of Education announced it was initiating an investigation into complaints of a hostile work environment. The investigation stemmed from an anonymous letter that said the environment led to the departure of numerous staff and teachers. The letter also alleged that Karch and Maloney were engaged in an inappropriate personal relationship, according to a report on the matter from Hartford-based law firm Shipman & Goodwin. The two resigned after they were seen together in a restaurant and were not transparent about the incident when confronted by the school board, officials said. Staff writer Jeff Mill contributed to this story. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com. Regarding Trump cant stop the vote (Editorial, July 31): Not only is the presidents suggestion to delay the November election a bad idea of the week, its his most fascist statement of the year. We live in a democracy where election day can only be changed by Congress, not an authoritarian-minded chief executive. And as for President Trumps tweet that mail-in voting will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA, my reaction is that the greater embarrassment to the USA has been the entire presidency of Donald Trump, since Jan. 20, 2017. Frank Campbell, Oakland Reap what you sow Its sad and unsurprising to read Virus strikes Brazils first lady, ministers (July 31). The countries with the most coronavirus cases and deaths, worldwide, are the U.S. and Brazil. And both countries leaders were dismissive of the seriousness of this health scourge, and called for reopening their economies before it was safe to do so. And while I hope Brazils first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, and other government officials recover quickly, the health crisis there and in our country are prime examples of a biblical saying that both nations leaders dont understand: You reap what you sow. Fiona MacPherson, San Jose Diabolical hypocrisy Im mystified by conservatives who decry renaming schools named after imperfect historical figures. They all seem to believe that history should not be erased. I have to ask: Where have they been when kindred religious conservatives so ardently sought to erase certain long-standing numerical designations? Evidently, many pious souls blanch at the sight of a mere three-digit number 666 which they link to the Antichrist or Satan. They so lamented the existence of Route 666 which New Mexico locals nicknamed The Devils Highway that they persuaded the government to renumber it as Route 491 in 2003. Similarly, former President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan successfully petitioned to change the address of their post-presidency home in Bel Air from 666 to 668 St. Cloud Road. Yet, conservatives now want to retain school names that honor documented racists? What diabolical hypocrisy! Denise Hochfeld, Albany Nations fairy tale Regarding Honor past heroes (Letters, July 30): As young people in grade school, we have all been misled about the true nature of our social system as well as the real character of our nations early presidents. We have been given a highly romanticized interpretation of our nations history and its so-called heroes like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and even Abraham Lincoln. We were not told of the brutal and totally unjust wars against the native people and that most of them were slaughtered in the most cruel ways. And we were given almost mythological accounts of the Founding Fathers that they never lied, totally hated and opposed slavery, and lived almost as religious saints. Recently, the explosion of police killings of hundreds of young African Americans all over the United States has forced us to confront the naked truth about human rights and the actual actions of our nations earlier leaders and supposed heroes. Naturally, this disclosure seems too bitter for many of us to accept. The more conservative among us are going into denial and clinging to the original golden past we were taught. However, we cant turn back and continue to accept this nations fairy tale. Rama Kumar, Fairfax A path for voters This letter seeks to correct a significant inaccuracy in All adults aboard a Caltrain fix (Editorial, July 30). The measure that the San Francisco board passed directs all revenue to Caltrain for use by the Joint Powers Board as required by SB797. The funds would be held in a special escrow account under the sole and absolute control of the (Caltrain) JPB Board, and could only be used on eligible Caltrain operating and capital expenditures. As to the question of legality, the city attorneys office has reviewed San Franciscos Caltrain proposal and determined that it is legal. Lets not forget that the central issue here is not legality but governance, and that a timetable and process for agreeing on the future governance of Caltrain should have been addressed by the Caltrain board already. With San Franciscos Caltrain resolution, we have a path to letting voters decide on funding and the path to more equitable representation, toward the Caltrain we all want and deserve. Supervisor Shamann Walton, District 10 Supervisor Aaron Peskin, District 3 San Francisco Mean-spirited GOP Regarding President opposes virus aid for cities (July 30): The president and his Republican sycophants bristle at the prospect of bailing out local governments, which have suffered devastating loss of revenue in the COVID-19 shutdown. Why would the Republicans be so mean-spirited? In light of the nationwide struggle for racial justice, lets recall that a large proportion of public employees are Black as well as other minorities who were shut out of the private sector due to Jim Crow discrimination. But surely the racial composition of the public workforce cannot explain the Republican reluctance, as that would be overtly racist. There must be some other explanation. Paul Rude, Berkeley Rebuke the pastor Regarding S.F. priest decries skipping Mass due to fear of virus (Front Page, July 30): It was with great horror and distress that I read the article quoting the pastor of Star of the Sea. His remarks were not just in opposition to all of contemporary science, they were spoken with complete insensitivity to all those who have suffered with COVID-19, or have lost friends and family to that disease. His dismissal of the pandemic, and survival-mandated adherence to public health orders, while preaching his own political agenda, is irresponsible and portrays a shepherd who would rather lose his flock to disease than allow any questioning of that agenda. His prior remarks, claiming that those who voted for former President Barack Obama had committed a grave sin contrasts with church teaching on conscience, and rightly leads others to question church tax exempt status. His distribution of pamphlets asking children about sexual practices, his banning of females from the altar, and these latest remarks suggest a significant disturbance that should mandate referral for psychological evaluation. His preference for shaming others is dangerous. Those statements are in direct opposition to Gospel teachings, and those of Pope Francis. To have any credibility, the archbishop must rebuke this pastor. Gary Solak, San Francisco A divided country Listening to former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and especially Barack Obama eloquently eulogize the late Georgia House representative and heroic civil rights icon John Lewis made me realize how diminished and divided our country has become under President Trump. The current president did not deserve to be at this memorial service, having repeatedly criticized Lewis over the past few years. And lets face it, Trump has never been able to offer effusive praise to anyone except himself. A flight carrying 170 Australians from the world's third biggest coronavirus hot spot has landed in Adelaide. Malaysia Airlines flight MH8461 arrived in South Australia from New Delhi on Saturday morning. The flight had 170 Australians on board who were all subject to health tests and screening upon arrival. Malaysia Airlines flight MH8461 arrived in Adelaide from New Delhi on Saturday morning All passengers will be forced into mandatory hotel quarantine for 14-days to ensure they don't have the deadly COVID-19 virus. A Facebook group called Australians Stuck in India has done a survey and found that more than 2,000 people are trying to get back to Australia. India has recorded 1.7million positive coronavirus tests since the pandemic began as the country struggles to combat the virus. There are currently four active cases of coronavirus in South Australia. The state has suffered four deaths. South Australia and Western Australia have offered to help with quarantining people returning from overseas as Victoria shuts is borders due to a surge in cases. Victoria is struggling through a second wave of COVID-19 cases and recorded 397 new cases on Saturday and three deaths. Travellers board buses at Adelaide Airport in Adelaide, Monday, April 20, 2020 Premier Daniel Andrews hinted at further restrictions and an extension to the stay-at-home order after the state announced a shocking 694 cases on Thursday. Mr Andrews said community transmission remained a top priority and cited 49 'mystery' cases. 'Those community transmission cases are of greatest concern to us. 'The challenge is that they are a mystery and this is all about trying to know as much as you possibly can, as much intelligence and evidence and data as you possibly can.' Melbourne and Mitchell Shire are halfway through stage three restrictions which are due to end in mid-August. The stage three restrictions allow residents to leave their homes for essential reasons such as exercise, care, attending school or purchasing essential items. It is also mandatory to wear a face covering in public and anyone flouting this rule risks a $200 on-the-spot fine. Victoria could go into strict Stage 4 lockdown from Wednesday after initial attempts to control a deadly second wave failed. (people wearing masks in Melbourne pictured on July 19) Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured, arriving at a press conference on Saturday) is expected to send Victoria into a strict stage four lockdown on Wednesday The state could go into strict Stage 4 lockdown from Wednesday after initial attempts to control a deadly second wave failed. The state is set to close all but essential businesses and send high-school students back to learning from home. They are expected to be the harshest restrictions that Australia has seen and will be similar to the lockdown imposed by New Zealand. The announcement is expected on Sunday and will see nearly all cafes, restaurants and shops closed for a further six weeks, The Australian reported. Victoria recorded 397 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday (pictured). A stage four lockdown will see nearly all shops close and high school students back to learning from home Exercise will still be allowed under the new restrictions but Melbourne residents must continue to adhere to the mandatory mask rule (people exercising in Melbourne pictured) Only supermarkets, pharmacies and service stations will be allowed to stay open across Melbourne and key regional areas of Victoria. Residents will likely be restricted to their own suburbs and further limits will be imposed on the numbers allowed in supermarkets. Cafes and restaurants are likely to continue to provide takeaway services. Police will also step up their checks and increase patrols to stop potential breaches. Licence-plate recognition technology will be used to identify non-essential travellers. It is expected construction sites will remain open and tradies will be given special consideration to access hardware stores. Public transport will also be continue in a limited capacity and outdoor exercise may continue while following the existing rules on wearing a mask. The decision to move to stage four restrictions and its announcement rests on the Victorian Government and Premier Daniel Andrews. New Delhi, 1 Aug : Fresh serological survey for Covid-19 has begun in the national capital on Saturday. It was confirmed by Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain. "It's a technical process and will be conducted across the capital. We want to find out the change since the last survey," Jain said. The last survey, conducted in June, had shown 22.86 per cent of the 21,387 people surveyed had developed anti-bodies against Covid-19. It also meant what percentage of the population was infected and had recovered. Under the new survey, 150 teams will collect around 15,000 blood samples between August 1 and August 5 as per the Health Department guidelines. It's aimed at enumerating people who must have developed IgG (Immunoglobulin G) anti-bodies, indicating their exposure to coronavirus. It will also help ascertain whether the capital is moving towards the herd immunity. A Health Department official said the results were expected by August 15. The survey will be carried out in all the 11 Delhi districts. Each team, comprising ASHA (accredited social health activist) workers, an auxiliary nurse midwife, a phlebotomist or a lab technician and a community volunteer, will collect 25-40 blood samples a day. Eighteen state health department labs have been authorised to process the samples. To ensure participation of people from all age groups, 25 per cent samples will be collected from those below 18 years, 50 per cent from 18-49 years and the rest from the people 50 years and above. As per the Health Department, the highest number of samples (2,200) will be collected in the northwest district, followed by the west (2,145) and the central (1,548). The least 885 samples will be collected from the New Delhi district. The people whose samples were taken in the first survey will not be approached and it will include only those who have no symptoms. The earlier serological survey was conducted between June 27 and July 10 by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). Most people surveyed didn't know they were infected. After this, the Delhi government decided to conduct serological survey every month to gauge the level and the number of people with antibodies against the infection. on Friday, Delhi reported 1,195 new cases and 27 deaths, taking the coronavirus tally to 1,35,598 and the toll to 3,963. While the recovery rate has risen to 89.18 per cent, the mortality rate declined to 2.92 per cent. DETAILS ADDED. FIRST VERSION POSTED 21:31 BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 1 Trend: Reports that allegedly as a result of mortar, rocket and artillery strikes of the Azerbaijani army, damage to the civilian infrastructure of Armenia in the amount of $ 300,000 was inflicted is a lie, Trend reports with reference to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry. These reports are nothing more than an attempt by the government of this country to blame Azerbaijan on its inability to repair the outdated and damaged private residential buildings, kindergartens, water and gas pipelines, factories, enterprises located in border settlements, i. e., abandoned facilities that were already in terrible condition, the Defense Ministry said. A kind of contradiction is created. During the July battles in the Tovuz direction of the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border, the Armenian Ministry of Defense has repeatedly stated that during the hostilities the Armenian side, "worthily" defending itself, did not suffer significant losses and prevented possible destruction that could have been inflicted on the settlements and infrastructure of Armenia. However, less than two weeks have passed before the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Armenia, Hayk Grigoryan, began sounding the alarm about the large-scale damage inflicted on the Tavush region. As you can see, the statement of one Armenian official completely contradicts the statement of another official. This indicates that even the official information disseminated by the Armenian side is based on lies and slander. Unlike Armenia, the units of the Azerbaijan Army never target and fire at the civilian population, settlements, houses, civilian objects. Azerbaijani soldiers never fight the civilian population. All claims and accusations of the Armenian side are unfounded. All this is yet another unsuccessful attempt to arouse compassion and attract the attention of the world community and international organizations, the ministrys statement said. As for the unfounded accusations of the Investigative Committee of Armenia in connection with the alleged use of heavy flamethrower systems TOS-1 and multiple Grad launch rocket systems by the Azerbaijani side during the hostilities on the Azerbaijani- Armenian border, we unambiguously state that during these battles the Azerbaijani army did not use these weapons. The Azerbaijani army intends to use these weapons and other more modern weapons solely for the destruction of selected military facilities, military infrastructure, and manpower over large areas deep in the enemy's defense with precise fire. However, it is known that such objects have not yet been targeted by us and have not been destroyed. If, as the Armenian side claims, the Azerbaijani army would use these weapons, then the scale of destruction and damage would be many times greater. On the contrary, in the course of these battles, as a result of Armenias intensive artillery shelling of our units positions, as well as settlements and civilian objects, on July 14, a 76-year-old civilian from the village of Aghdam, Tovuz region, Aziz Azizov, died. At the same time, damage was inflicted on civilians, public and private property, and infrastructure, and the extent of the damage is being assessed, the ministry said. Units of the Azerbaijan army only took adequate retaliatory measures solely in accordance with the power and destructive force of the combat means used by Armenia. If the Armenian side has any evidence regarding the use of TOS-1 heavy flamethrower systems and Grad multiple launch rocket systems, let the evidence be known. We categorically reject this information and declare that this is another lie. Armenia, as always, and this time also, is spreading misinformation, is trying to deceive the international community," the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said. The gateway built by the Chaldean Community Foundation (CCF) for Chaldean and Iraqi refugees and immigrants, who make their way to America in pursuit of a better life, and others in need, has once again been expanded. We thought what we had built would be good for nearly 20 years, said Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean Community Foundation and Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce speaking to the crowd of guests attending Fridays official opening for the expanded facility. He was referring to the original building in 2011. It was then that a handful of visionaries, who wanted to keep the faith, culture and traditions of their homelands alive while helping members of the Chaldean and Iraqi community with services they might need to succeed, launched CCF. Initially, their goal was to provide services such as workforce development, immigration, housing, language learning, behavioral health, access to healthcare and other basic needs to about 400 people a year. Instead, their reach grew to 40,000, and within four years staff and clients were busting at the seams. So they moved across the street in 2015, and built a new center that not only featured the space they needed but an architectural style that spelled out welcome, to all of the immigrants who passed through the doors looking for help including colors, designs and details reflective of the Chaldean culture but its historic ties to Babylon. But it too became too small and once again CCF made plans to expand. Even during the last four months with the pandemic keeping many people home the Foundation staff worked with more than 1,300 individuals who were unable to complete unemployment applications due to language barriers, assisted another 2,500 individuals with acquiring food and addressing other basic needs, and helped educate some 900 individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities on every aspect of the crisis. Our staff has worked tirelessly to meet the needs of the community during this crisis, Manna said, of his team that has grown to 41. The impact theyve made has been astounding. The coronavirus crisis stalled the expansion for a while. However, Manna and his team remained diligent and what greeted guests attending Fridays ribbon-cutting ceremony is beautiful facility and another gem to be boasted by its designer Saroki Architecture, and builder Jonna Construction. Peter Jonna, who was among the guest speakers was not only happy to see the work completed, despite the COVID crisis and the problem getting supplies, mentioned the pleasure he felt knowing the people the building would serve. I was brought to tears just thinking about those who come here from the Middle East with nothing but a look of despair and the job that people do here to make their lives better, he said. To most of the staff this is a calling, not a career, Manna said, once again nodding the great work of CCF. Included in the new space which was blessed by Bishop Francis Kalabat, Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle, is a primary health clinic serving both insured and uninsured patients; a behavioral health clinic providing mental health services; a full-sized multi-functional gymnasium and life skills area to provide education and recreation programs for seniors, youth and individuals with developmental and cognitive disabilities including music and art therapy and a new lobby. One of the areas Manna is most proud of is the life skills section, which resembles Main Street USA complete with storefronts and signs for each business tasked with teaching life skills. The new footprint totaling 30,000 square feet will also provide more space for CCFs Breaking Barriers program for special needs clients and their families and the BEAM Project for clients who are hearing and visually impaired. Major donors included Wireless Vision, Wild Bills, Level One Bank, Supercuts, the family of Thomas Denha, the Konja family and Childrens Foundation. The Foundation also received a grant from the Consumers Energy Foundation for the project. Among the guests who attended the sunny morning event was Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor. It feels good to be back out at an event, and theres no place I would rather be than with our Chaldean community, said Taylor. This is still a country that offers hope and opportunity, and this is where hundreds, no thousands of people, will find those opportunities. Be it a need for health insurance, financial aid, education, jobs, cultural enrichment, immigration or just a friend, the CCF is where they will take their first step. Their American dream starts here, and Im so proud that its here in Sterling Heights, he said. For more information, visit www.chaldeanfoundation.org. The economic recovery that was beginning to gather momentum in May and June now appears to be receding. In the past quarter, the economy contracted 9.5 percent compared with the prior year's quarter--an annual rate of 32.9 percent--breaking a record, although falling in line with gloomy estimates. Weekly jobless claims also rose 1.43 million as the pandemic continues to hobble economic growth. The Federal Reserve continues to use all the tools at its disposal to help. At a news conference yesterday, Fed chairman Jerome H. Powell announced that the central bank would extend through December 31 its crisis-era lending facilities, including the Main Street Lending Program, a low-interest loan offering aimed at companies with up to $5 billion in annual revenue or fewer than 15,000 employees. The program was scheduled to expire on September 30. "Recent labor market indicators point to a slowing in job growth, particularly among smaller businesses," Powell said, in understated Fed-speak. He added that the Fed intends to maintain facilities like the Main Street Lending Program "until we're very confident that the turmoil from the pandemic and the economic fallout are behind us." So for those who are interested in possibly tapping into the Main Street Lending Program, you have a bit more time. Here are the key aspects of the Fed loan scheme. Eligible companies must have been in good order before the Covid-19 crisis. The Fed program runs directly through federally insured depository institutions, including banks, savings associations, and credit unions; the Fed says it will support up to $600 billion in new loans. The Fed program supports five different lending facilities, with three devoted to businesses: one for new borrowers, one for borrowers who may have existing debt but lower fiscal needs, and one for borrowers who have an existing loan or credit line with outsize fiscal needs. Minimum loan amounts start at $250,000 for two of the programs. The third offers loans that start at $10 million. The maximum loan for the two new loan facilities is $35 million and $50 million; borrowers can also refinance existing debt for up to $300 million if a firm's total debt, relative to its 2019 earnings, is below noted thresholds. To access one of the three loan facilities, a company needs to have a minimum of just under $42,000 in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda) in 2019, and no debt. For companies with existing debt, the base Ebitda rises, depending on the amount of indebtedness. Business owners who have received PPP loans are permitted to apply, but the portion of any outstanding PPP loan that has not yet been forgiven is counted as outstanding debt for the purposes of the Main Street maximum loan size test. Meaning, the Main Street Loan size gets reduced depending on the amount of your PPP loan that has not been forgiven. The repayment period is five years. The rules allow for two years of deferred payments and one year with no interest charges. The repayment terms are standard across the three facilities: Borrowers must repay 15 percent in years three and four. In year five, borrowers must repay 70 percent. The Fed is on the hook for 95 percent of all loans. Banks need only keep 5 percent of a loan's value on their books. The rest gets sold to a special purpose vehicle, housed by the Fed. Main Street Loans boast low interest charges, but the rates are variable, and currently equal to Libor plus 300 basis points, or about 3 percent. They also must be repaid. Several restrictions--such as limitations on executive compensation and a requirement that companies make "reasonable efforts" to retain their employees during the loan term--may make this financing less palatable for some businesses. In recent weeks, reports have suggested that the program may be unpopular among small to midsize businesses and that interest even among banks has been tepid. But as Congress continues to debate a Phase 4 bill, with businesses hanging in the balance, the Main Street Lending Program may get renewed interest, says Robert Litan, an economist and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. "It'll be the only game in town if Congress doesn't do something for small business." This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. Patricia Negron and Diane Larsen have been best friends since kindergarten, so Ms. Larsen was always ready to step in and help her pal with Eddie, that dancing husband of hers. Hed never tire, and I didnt either, Ms. Larsen recalled in a telephone interview. Pat would say, Here, you take him for a while. He was a fabulous dancer. He was a great jokester, too. Always a fun, humorous kind of guy, another friend, Dick Roberts, said, until it was time to get serious about You need to do this medically. The Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana (YHFG), a Non-Governmental Organisation, has appealed to the Government to reduce the tax on sanitary pads to make them affordable. It will also be welcome news if Government could issue free supplies of it for the girls. Ms Augustina Dechegme Achigibah, the Evidence to Action: Sexual and Reproductive Health Education Advocacy Project Officer of YHFG, said most parents in rural communities in the Upper East Region were unable to afford the cost of sanitary pads to assist their girls to undergo safe menstrual periods. Ms Achigibah was speaking with the Ghana News Agency after a one-day media engagement on Reproductive Health Education sponsored by the Riksforbundet for Sexuell Upplysning (RFSU). She said, access to sanitary pads is a very big deal in Ghana because currently there is a tax on it. Averagely a packet of sanitary pads goes for GHC5.00 which is a challenge for some of our girls in the communities. Some end up using rags or tissue papers which are not good for their reproductive organs. I think it is a very big issue we have to look at. She said, Government would have to help us if possible scrap the tax or make sanitary pads free for the girls in schools as other countries are doing. Ms Khadija Hamidu, an Officer working on the Project, said urged the media to support the organisations advocacy on reproductive health education for young people. She said the media engagement would allow the selected Journalists to understand the project and its activities, and to enable them adequately educate members of the public on reproductive health. Ms Hamidu implored Journalists to use their platforms to initiate public discussions on reproductive health education to ensure policy changes in the implementation of the reproductive health policy education for young people. She said there was misinformation on reproductive health among some members of the public, saying everybody out there still needs education and a better understanding of reproductive health. The information out there is still scanty. The Bolgatanga based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in the Upper East Region is youth-focused and operates in the Bongo, Talensi, Nabdam, Bawku West, Kassena-Nankana West and Builsa South Districts of the Region. Its vision is to ensure Selfreliant and self-sufficient youth living in a more equal, healthy and prosperous society, with education, adolescents Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), entrepreneurial and employable skills, market access and sustainable farming, environmental sustainability and sanitation as its thematic areas. 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 I am very concerned that the current administration is misrepresenting the facts (lying) in order to stir up its base. This is a link to an article about one of the current campaign ads. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-ad-police-officer-attacked-2014-ukraine-protests-2020-7 This is just one of many examples of the current administration denying and ignoring facts, making things up and silencing anyone who disagrees (like Dr. Fauci ). It is not acceptable for any professional person to use lies in the course of daily business. In fact, its illegal: imagine if a doctor or a plumber or an electrician used lies to manipulate clients and customers. In the case of national politics, the stakes are even higher and the responsibility to be truthful is even greater. Obviously, We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts. It seems to me that reasonable people of any and all political parties should speak out against outright lies in politics. We can do better than this! Barbara Corson, Dauphin, Pa. The university will conduct new student orientations and the first two weeks of classes online to comply with an order from D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser instructing travelers from 27 high-risk states to self-quarantine for 14 days. The District defines a high-risk area as one that is seeing new daily cases exceed 10 per 100,000 residents. Eleven people were killed when a huge jetty crane crashed on them at Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), a Government of India undertaking, at Visakhapatnam on Saturday afternoon, the officials said. Visakhapatnam District Collector V Vinay Chand told reporters that the accident happened when the workers were testing the load capability of the crane weighing 70 tonnes. The base portion and the overhead cabin got separated, resulting in the collapse of the crane on the ground with loud thud, he said. #WATCH A crane collapses at Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. 10 dead and 1 injured in the incident, says DCP Suresh Babu. pic.twitter.com/BOuz1PdJu3 ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 Also read: Vizag is a wake-up call to ensure industrial safety | HT Editorial All the 11 workers were crushed to death on the spot as they came under the massive iron structure. There were 10 persons in the cabin of the crane including three employees of Greenfield company, two of Lead Engineers and one from Squad7, apart from four permanent employees of Hindustan Shipyard Limited. All of them died when the cabin crashed. The bodies of the victims have been retrieved and sent for post-mortem, he said, adding that no one was injured in the mishap. While one victim could not be identified immediately, the other 10 deceased were identified as R Venkat Rao, Chaitanya, Ramu, P V Ratnam, P Naga Demudu, Satyaraj, Shiva Kumar, P Bhaskar, K Jagan and K Prasad. The collector, who inspected the mishap site, said that jetty crane was originally erected by Anupam Cranes of Mumbai two years ago, but had not been commissioned for regular operations as the company backed out. Later, the HSL outsourced the operations of the crane to Greenfield Company, which co-opted Lead Engineers and Squad7 Company for maintenance operations. These contractors have commenced the full load trials now and the testing was being done when the tragedy occurred, Vinay Chand added. Also read | Vizag gas leak: All you need to know about Andhra Pradesh chemical plant Chand said the HSL had initiated an inquiry by an internal committee, headed by its Director (Operations), while chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has ordered an independent probe by committee of engineers, comprising heads of departments of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering of Andhra Engineering College, to investigate the cause of the crane accident. The committees will probe if there is any human negligence that caused the mishap, the collector said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Back in February 2008, Congressman John Lewis had some bad news for Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign. It was true that just a few months earlier, the civil rights hero had backed her bid to become the nations first woman president. But now, painfully and after no small consideration, he was having to take that endorsement back. The reason? A young, one-term senator from Illinois who had lit up that primary contest with his rhetoric and vision, and whom his constituents in Georgias 5th congressional district overwhelmingly supported. Something is happening in America, Lewis said. There is a movement, there is a spirit, there is an enthusiasm in the hearts and minds of the American people that I have not seen in a long time since the candidacy of Robert Kennedy. Barack Obama thanked the often-bloodied veteran of the struggle for civil rights who was famously beaten nearly to death on Selmas Edmund Pettus Bridge not just that day, but on many occasions for his support. In 2010, Obama awarded Lewis the Medal of Freedom (Getty) Among them was a speech in 2015 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma March, and the contributions of those who had passed, and those who were still alive including Amelia Boynton Robinson and Lewis himself. Their faith was questioned. Their lives were threatened. Their patriotism challenged, said Obama. This week, Obama found cause to again praise the congressman, and in doing so grasp more firmly than ever before the mantle of not just Lewis, but his entire generation who struggled for the most fundamental rights of American citizenship. Delivering a eulogy at the Atlanta funeral of Lewis, who died aged 80 after contracting pancreatic cancer, Obama said the congressman believed that in all of us, there exists the capacity for great courage. Yet while Obamas speech was partly concerned with the now sepia-hued struggle of Lewis and colleagues such as Dr Martin Luther King, it was also very much about the present, and the fight here in the summer of 2020, 55 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act to ensure everyone who wants to cast a ballot is able to do so. That very day, even as the New York Times published an essay Lewis had penned to be published on the day of his funeral, Obamas successor, Donald Trump, had threatened to delay Novembers election, claiming contrary to all evidence that postal ballots were vulnerable to fraud. Barack Obama hails John Lewis as a 'founding father' of a better America It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote? Trump had tweeted. Critics of the president, who is trailing badly in the polls to Obamas vice president, Joe Biden, denounced his proposal, which would require an act of Congress, as fascistic. Even Republicans condemned the idea, which Trump would later repeat at a White House press briefing. Obama, 58, is visibly older than the senator who accepted Lewiss endorsement 12 years ago. Yet, when he spoke at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he did so with close to as much passion as he has ever displayed. And on the matter of race, in particular, he appeared able to speak far more freely than he was as president. Bull Connor may be gone. But today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans, he said. George Wallace may be gone. But we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators. Obama did not mention Trump by name, but he did not need to. We may no longer have to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar in order to cast a ballot. But even as we sit here, there are those in power doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people dont get sick. For Democrats, the speech, delivered in one of many states controlled by Republican governors that have sought to limit voting rights, was a call to arms. For the final, 100-odd days of the 2020 presidential campaign, as Trump continues to undermine and the delegitimise the election he fears he will lose, Democrats will be organising filing lawsuits to open access to mail-in -ballots, trying to ensure there are adequate poll workers, and hoping the postal services have sufficient resources. Not for more than half-a-century has the nation been so seized with the issue of racial justice. Yet, say critics of Trump, never has the right to vote been so threatened. In his posthumously published essay, Lewis paid thanks to the American people who had inspired him, saying millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. We now know getting those words into the New York Times, was touch and go. An editor revealed there was a scramble to complete the essay as Lewiss health worsened and that he was even read the final rites before the last approval for the words was granted. When you see something that is not right, you must say something, Lewis urged in that essay. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself. Published on 2020/07/31 | Source New stills and behind the scenes images added for the Korean drama "Backstreet Rookie" (2020). Advertisement Directed by Lee Myeong-woo Written by Son Geun-joo Network: SBS With Ji Chang-wook, Kim Yoo-jung, Han Sunhwa, Do Sang-woo, Solbin, Kim Sun-young,... 16 episodes - Fri, Sat 22:00 A collaboration between Korea and China! Synopsis It's a romantic comedy where Choi Dae-hyeon meets Jeong Saet-byeol as a part-timer at his convenience store! A pretty college girl came to Dae-hyeon's convenience store to do a late night job. This is Jeong Saet-byeol, a high school girl who gave Dae-hyeon a surprise kiss for a cigarette errand. Dae-hyeon is under stress as sales go up with male guests coming to see Saet-byeol. Despite all the tricks of Dae-hyeon, Saet-byeol likes him. A love story by Jeong Saet-byeol, an unusual girl, will be played at a convenience store. Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2020/06/19 Type address separated by commas Your Email: Panaji, Aug 1 : The Goa Raj Bhavan on Saturday described the state government's proposal to construct a new complex as "irrational and imprudent", especially at a time when the state exchequer is under a financial strain due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "The Governor believes that at a time when the state is battling COVID-19 and reeling under financial crises, the idea to construct a new Raj Bhavan is irrational and imprudent. The Governor feels that any new capital work would entail unnecessary financial burden on the state exchequer thereby exacerbating the economic distress of the state," a statement issued by Raj Bhavan said. "The Governor in his letter to Chief Minister has further clarified that his requirement for functioning as Governor is very limited and he does not require any new Raj Bhavan building per se." The statement came a week after the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant-led cabinet cleared a proposal for the construction of a new Raj Bhavan complex, claiming that the present building had been declared as a heritage structure by the Archaeological Survey of India. The announcement by the Chief Minister on July 24 had triggered criticism by the Opposition as well as in the media, which had said that the capital-intensive project was being envisioned at the cost of expenses meant for management of the pandemic. "A lot of negativities and controversies are being generated on the matter of the state government's proposal for construction of new Raj Bhavan building at various media platforms," the Raj Bhavan statement also said, adding that in a letter to Sawant, Governor Satya Pal Malik had said that the project proposal may be deferred until the state's financial condition improves. "The project would be taken up only when the finances of the state improves and that too within the premises of the Raj Bhavan only." A teenager in Portland charged with arson over the bombing of a federal courthouse was arrested after his grandmother tipped off police. Gabriel Agard-Berryhill, 18, appeared in court in the Oregon city on Friday, and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He was arrested after his Trump-supporting grandmother Karla Fox saw footage of Tuesday night's attack, and tweeted that her grandson was behind it. She had bought him the vest he was wearing during the alleged attack. 'This is my only grandson, I love him to death, and didn't know he was going to do such a bad thing, I had been posting several things about the antifa and BLM, he knows I am against those riots bigtime...he chose his poison,' she tweeted, from the username @Trumpsgirl2020. Donald Trump has strongly condemned the Portland protests, which emerged after the May 25 killing of George Floyd and have worsened since Trump sent federal troops into the Democrat-controlled city. Gabriel Agard-Berryhill, 18, appeared in court in Portland on Friday charged with arson Hatfield Federal Courthouse was on fire late on Tuesday night after the device exploded Karla Fox identified her grandson as being behind the attack on the courthouse on Tuesday Agard-Berryhill was among protesters in Portland who allegedly resorted to violence on Tuesday night. Footage on social media captured a loud bang and then flames emerging from the building. Security cameras filmed the attack, which happened at approximately 11:50pm at the Hatfield Federal Courthouse. A figure wearing a vest bearing the word 'Icons' threw a 'large incendiary object,' which entered the building's portico area, prosecutors said, and landed near plywood sheeting affixed to the building's facade. The 18-year-old was pictured during protests wearing the vest his grandmother bought him Fox wrote a review of the vest online, saying she bought it for her grandson who was happy A few seconds later, the object exploded, igniting a fire near the building's main entrance. Police said the concussion could be 'heard and felt more than a block away.' The 12:11am explosion was so loud that even members in a private chatroom used to coordinate protest and riots expressed surprise. 'Holy f*** that was the loudest explosion I've heard ever,' wrote one. 'I felt that in my fking bones,' wrote another. Federal law enforcement personnel collected various items near the site of the explosion and sent them to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) laboratory for further analysis. Agard-Berryhill was identified by his vest; his grandmother's tweet; and the review of the vest she posted online. 'I got this for my grandson who's a protestor downtown, he uses it every night and says its does the job,' she wrote, posting a photo of Agard-Berryhill in his new vest and giving the clothing five stars. Fox told the New York Post that she bought the $26 non-bulletproof vest to protect him. 'I bought the vest for him after he found one online after getting hit with rubber bullets the night before at the protest,' she said. She said her grandson is currently on probation for a felony conviction when he was a minor. She said he spent the past two years at Rogue Valley Youth Correctional Facility in southern Oregon and recently talked of turning his life around, and getting a job at Amazon. Fox said that when she last saw her grandson, last week, he said that he was peacefully protesting and 'protected a girl.' Karla Fox, the grandmother of Agard-Berryhill, identified her grandson as the attacker The teenager is currently on probation for a felony conviction when he was a minor, Fox said A man in the same vest, identified as 'Rico' in the affidavit, appears in a viral July 18 video using a shield to protect a nude protester dubbed 'Naked Athena.' 'I believed all his stories,' Fox said. 'He said he was just hanging out at Riot Ribs [an anarchist food co-op] and doing peaceful things. 'I don't condone any of this. I am amazed at all of these events.' She told the paper that her last communication via text with her grandson was when he asked her to delete the photo of him wearing the vest, and to remove her comment about the purchase. She says she first became aware of the bombing video on Wednesday when a family member contacted her with links to Twitter. Agard-Berryhill was pictured with a naked protester on July 18 in Portland Agard-Berryhill reportedly told the paper he did not intend to damage the building or hurt anyone. 'The device I've been accused of allegedly throwing was allegedly given to me by an unknown protestor with full face coverings,' he wrote in a text message. 'I was allegedly told that it was a strobe firework that wouldn't damage the building or harm anyone around it.' Agard-Berryhill has been released without bail, pending his trial. Billy J. Williams, U.S. Attorney, condemned Agard-Berryhill's actions. 'No legitimate protest message is advanced by throwing a large explosive device against a government building,' he said. 'Mr Agard-Berryhill's actions could have gravely injured law enforcement officers positioned near the courthouse, other protesters standing nearby, or himself. 'I applaud the ATF agents and U.S. Marshals Service deputies who worked quickly to identify Mr Agard-Berryhill before he had an opportunity to hurt others.' Russel Burger, U.S. Marshal for the District of Oregon, said Agard-Berryhill's arrest should serve as a warning to others. 'The violent opportunists engaged in dangerous acts of violence, such as arson, need to realize there will be grave consequences,' he said. 'Serious crimes of this nature go beyond mere property damage to the courthouse and endanger people's lives.' This marks a year-on-year drop of 31 percent in the number of cases and and 37 percent in the number of victims, according to a report by the Vietnam Women's Union released at a workshop Thursday. It said over 70 percent of these victims were women and children from poverty-stricken border areas where people are poorly educated. The report said traffickers typically tricked the victims into going to foreign countries to work as part-time workers with high bonuses and then subjected them to forced labor and/or prostitution. Some were sold as wives and some were trafficked to give birth in China or for harvesting their organs for sale. Ha Thi Nga, chairwoman of the union, said at the workshop that the crime of human trafficking has become more complicated amid the Covid-19 pandemic, even though Vietnam has closed its borders and suspended foreign arrivals since late March to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Human trafficking is ranked as the third largest source of income for organized crime after arms and drugs trafficking, according to anti-trafficking organizations. "Traffickers mainly target women and children in rural and mountainous areas near the border where they live in poverty and get little access to education and social media," Nga said, adding that some of the traffickers are former human trafficking victims. Australian Michael Brosowski, founder of Hanoi-based nonprofit organization Blue Dragon, told VnExpress that the impact of coronavirus has meant that the trafficking of people out of Vietnam has slowed down; or at least that it is much harder to detect. "Because trafficking out of the country is harder, we're seeing more cases of exploitation within Vietnam," he said, adding that the government is doing a commendable job of combating the crime. "There are some further areas of law reform that are needed to make the law clearer for police and the judiciary; and there's an ongoing need to train officials throughout Vietnam in implementing the law. But overall, especially given the difficulties imposed by Covid-19, the government's efforts remain strong and focused." Vietnam is a human trafficking hotspot with the crime generating tens of billions of dollars annually, according to the Ministry of Public Security. The country has recorded over 3,400 victims of human trafficking since 2013, over 90 percent of them women, children and people from ethnic minority communities. Eighty percent of victims end up in China, which suffers from one of the worst gender imbalances due to its one-child policy and illegal abortion of female fetuses by parents who prefer sons, leading to increasing trafficking of Vietnamese women and baby girls to that country. SAN DIEGO, July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) awarded its 2019-2020 Merit Award designation to the Ashford University's Forbes School of Business & Technology SHRM student chapter for providing superior growth and development opportunities to its members. SHRM's student chapter merit award program encourages the development of more effective student chapters by recognizing outstanding activities and projects. Chapters are recognized based on chapter operations, programming, the professional development of their members, support of the human resource profession, and engagement with the broader SHRM community. "We are proud to have nearly 1,300 members in our SHRM Chapter that regularly participate in educational webinars, networking opportunities, and who learn from each other, as many are active and experienced human resources practitioners," says Dr. Craig Swenson, President of Ashford University. "Our SHRM chapter extends membership to all of Ashford's alumni, faculty, and current students from all degree programs interested in the field of human resource management. As one of our university's most active organizations, we are honored to receive this recognition and designation from SHRM." SHRM student chapters have the opportunity to earn an award based on the number of activities they complete during the merit award cycle, the most recent one of which lasted from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020. In 2020, the Forbes School of Business & Technology SHRM Chapter sponsored two educational events, offering students HRM educational opportunities and SHRM recertification credits. In March 2020, the school's chapter hosted a webinar titled "Interviewing Skills, Transferrable Skills and HR Competencies." In April, the chapter held a webinar on the topic "How to Bring Your Best Self to Work." "Today's members of our student chapters are the human resources leaders of tomorrow," says Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, SHRM president and CEO. "Ashford's SHRM student chapter is evidence that the future of human resources is, indeed, in good hands. I applaud their accomplishments and ability to move forward during a time of such change and uncertainty in the workplace." For more information regarding the Ashford University SHRM Chapter, please visit the chapter's LinkedIn Group Page, YouTube Channel, or website, which includes information on the student organization, chapter officers, upcoming events, and access to webinar archives. About Ashford University Ashford University is a recognized leader and innovator in distance learning and online education. Ashford is designed to meet the needs of working students, offering programs most often sought by those whose primary educational goals relate to developing professional and career-relevant competencies. Flexible schedules, innovative delivery, and accessible academic support tools help working students balance busy lives with academic studies. Ashford offers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs. For more information, please visit www.ashford.edu, www.facebook.com/ashforduniversity, or www.twitter.com/AshfordU. Ashford Media Contact: Pat Ogden [email protected] About SHRM SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, creates better workplaces where employers and employees thrive together. As the voice of all things work, workers and the workplace, SHRM is the foremost expert, convener and thought leader on issues impacting today's evolving workplaces. With 300,000+ HR and business executive members in 165 countries, SHRM impacts the lives of more than 115 million workers and families globally. Learn more at SHRM.org and on Twitter @SHRM. SHRM Media Contact: Julie Hirschhorn [email protected] SOURCE Ashford University Related Links http://www.ashford.edu Last year, the states business, civic and political communities came together to pass the House Bill 3 school finance legislation, focusing on the states long-term needs rather than short-term politics. The bill made key structural improvements to Texas school finance system, such as a renewed focus on our highest-need students; it exemplifies the approach we champion at Texas 2036, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing future challenges. Key to House Bill 3 is a commitment to close long-standing gaps in student outcomes among the states low-income and minority communities through data-informed programs and incentives. This mission equitable access to academic opportunity and efficient use of taxpayer funding should likewise frame the debate as schools resume this fall. Educators are working night and day to safely begin the new school year. Parents and teachers alike are rightly worried about the spread of infection on campus. But this is Texas, a state known for innovation and getting things done. And while the challenges ahead are real and substantial, we must overcome them. It will take collaboration and support from Washington on down to our local school boards, but Texans can get it done. In reopening schools, we must be clear-eyed about the unequal impacts school closures and distance learning can have on low-income, minority and rural communities. Students without adequate broadband access cannot be expected to learn online. Students without parental supports, routine meals or a safe place to call home cannot be expected to learn at their empty dinner tables. These disparities also highlight the need for a robust assessment and accountability system that ensures our educational system remains laser-focused on students who face additional barriers to opportunity. We need to care enough about these children to find out how much learning loss has occurred during the pandemic, but also how they are performing over the long term and whether our educational system is meeting their needs. These students have faced a lifetime of obstacles; this is not the time to turn our backs on their needs. Finding a way to open safely for the families who rely on in-person learning, and for the teachers who educate kids should be the priority for all those engaged in the education debate. We must focus on how, not if, we can open schools in a way that protects all who walk through their doors. Parents should not have to face the impossible choice between earning a living to support their families or staying home to support their childrens education. All parents, even those who can work from home, face difficult choices but its important that schools provide parents with options, not force them into untenable positions. The state has taken critical steps to help districts reopen. State leaders announced their decision to invest $200 million in federal COVID-19 relief funding for e-learning devices and home internet solutions. This is critical in San Antonio, where, according to a city of San Antonio report, 1 in 4 Black or Hispanic respondents do not have a wired internet connection in their homes. But for many students, even the best online options cannot replace the classroom experience. Further, this is not a job our state and local leaders can do alone. Congress must quickly pass a new COVID-19 relief bill with strong support for schools. Funds should be flexible to ensure that states have the resources not just to make it through the upcoming school year, but to maintain funding as the economy recovers. This is a difficult time, but Texas can meet the challenge. With support from our lawmakers in Washington and a solutions-oriented mindset from state and local leaders, we can begin the school year safely for students and teachers, resume on-campus learning soon and continue on the path to progress provided by House Bill 3. Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education in the George W. Bush administration and chancellor of the University of North Carolina System, is president and CEO of Texas 2036. Visit Texas2036.org for data and analysis on long-term issues facing Texas. BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for relentless efforts in enhancing safety in production and flood control to ensure the safety of people's lives and property. All localities and departments must strengthen the overhaul of key industries for loopholes to prevent major and extremely serious accidents, Li said in an instruction to a national teleconference on production safety Friday. Noting that flood control is still at a crucial stage, Li urged all-out efforts in flood control and rescue work in major rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. He stressed the importance of enhancing the prevention of mountain torrents and mudslides, facilitating post-disaster reconstruction, and preparation against typhoons in coastal regions. Since the start of this year, the country has made efforts to strengthen safety precautions in production resumption while enhancing epidemic prevention and control, the meeting said. It urged local authorities to further implement a three-year action plan to enhance safety in production, and strengthen the assessment and management of all kinds of risks. on Saturday reported262 new patients, highest in Gujarat, taking the total cases in the district to 13,925, said the state health department. The number of fatalities due to the pandemic in the district rose to 609 with the death of 12 more patients, it said. 214 new cases were reported in city and 48 in rural areas of the district, the health department said. Out of 12 deaths, eight were reported in the city and four in the district, it added. The Municipal Corporation (SMC), meanwhile, relaxed restrictions on shops in textile markets and diamond units in the city by allowing them to remain open for six hours instead of earlier four hours a day. It asked textile shop owners to get their staff tested for at a discounted rate to make them eligible to work. Diamond units have been allowed to deploy two workers at each polishing mill against one allowed earlier, provided the second polisher is tested for COVID-19 or has recovered from the virus. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hear ye! Hear ye! The Court of Public Opinion is now in session, the Honorable Judge Vox Populi presiding. Our first case today: The People versus E. Lee Trinkle, former governor of Virginia. Gov. Trinkle, you stand accused of racism and support for eugenics. How do you plead? Well, since Trinkle has been dead since 1939, he cant very well testify, but he has been the latest historical figure put on trial, so to speak. Last week, the University of Mary Washington renamed its Trinkle Hall, finding the name so offensive that it expedited the renaming ahead of other nomenclature concerns. This is of interest to us for several reasons, beyond our interest in Virginia history. Trinkle was the rare governor from Southwest Virginia he grew up in Wytheville. His name also adorns buildings at Radford University as well as the College of William and Mary. If his name causes such consternation at Mary Washington, should it not also provoke the same concerns at those other schools? And just what was Trinkles record anyway? The specific charges are contained in a report prepared last year for the Mary Washington Board of Visitors which found that students are uncomfortable walking by Trinkle Hall. It said that Trinkle is perhaps best known by three pieces of legislation either passed or presented during his time as governor. These included the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, the Forced Sterilization Act of 1924, and the Racial Segregation Act of 1926. The first of those mandated that all birth certificates and marriage licenses classify people as either white or colored. It officially banned interracial marriage and also had the effect of denying that Virginia was home to Native Americans by declaring that they were really Black. The second of those is self-explanatory and set in motion Virginias practice of sterilizing women who had the misfortune to be institutionalized in state prisons or mental hospitals. The third proposed under while Trinkle was governor but passed and signed after he left office formalized racial segregation in public assemblies. If you were a defense attorney for Trinkle, youd move to have that charge dismissed on the grounds that a governor cant be responsible for every bill that some legislator proposed or something that next governor (Harry Byrd Sr.) allowed to become law. The Mary Washington committee disagreed, finding that Trinkle is linked to the legislation in large part for his unwillingness to speak against it at a time when such action may have curtailed further action. Lets be generous and just deal with the first two charges. Unfortunately, those charges are undeniably true. Worse, Trinkle didnt just passively sign the bills, he actively promoted them. After the General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, Gov. Trinkle sent copies of the legislation to the governors of each state with a request that they try to have similar acts passed, according to the Mary Washington report. Trinkle was also active in promoting the sterilization law. Arizona State Universitys Center for Biology and Society posted a history of Virginias sterilization law on its website in 2011 long before these naming controversies. It called Trinkle a supporter of the eugenics movement and an influential political supporter for the sterilization law: Gov. Trinkle released a report on the critical financial condition of the state of Virginia. Within the report, Trinkle reported that one of the largest contributions to Virginias financial state was the increased spending on institutionalizing what he called defectives. Trinkle advocated the sterilization bill as a cost-saving strategy for public institutions that had experienced growth in the incarceration of what he referred to as feebleminded and defective populations. Trinkle added that legalizing sterilization for the insane, epileptic, and feeble-minded persons would allow these patients to leave the institutions and not propagate their own kind. Arizona State says the law passed quietly and without ceremony, but not without consequences. More than 8,000 women were sterilized under the Virginia law, which remained on the books into the 1970s. Nazi doctors cited the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law in their defense at Nuremberg. In 2015, the Virginia General Assembly authorized reparations for the survivors. The Mary Washington report is wrong in one respect. Trinkle may be known today for signing these bills, but thats not how he was known in his day. The major issue that consumed his governorship in the 20s was road-building he favored bonds to pay for them but was constantly frustrated by Byrd, who favored pay-as-you-go and ultimately prevailed. Trinkle also was known as a strong proponent of education, which is why he wound up with three colleges naming buildings after him. As governor, he also was involved in raising funds for two private Black colleges the schools we know today as Hampton University and Tuskegee University in Alabama. That certainly seems unusual for a Southern governor from that era. After leaving the governorship, Trinkle continued his advocacy for education. He served on the boards of two private colleges Hampden-Sydney and Hollins. In 1930, Gov. John Pollard named Trinkle as chairman of the State Board of Education. When Trinkle died, the story in The Roanoke Times that recapped his career emphasized his work on transportation and education with no mention at all of the things that define him now. Perhaps that was a journalistic failure at the time, but it also speaks to how accepted and normal those policies of segregation and sterilization were at the time they simply werent news. So how should Trinkle be remembered today? For his day, he was something of a progressive he backed womens suffrage and later the New Deal, two things the rest of Virginias political establishment didnt. The classic history of Virginia Virginia: The New Dominion by Virginius Dabney devotes six pages to Trinkle. None mention segregation or sterilization, but rather how Trinkle constantly ran afoul of Byrd and his conservatives. Trinkle, the book says, was to demonstrate a modest degree of independence in office independence which ultimately caused the organization to force him into political outer darkness. Nearly a century later, Trinkle again gets consigned to that oblivion for things that didnt make the first draft of history, but should have. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 16:32:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Garrison in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) holds a flag-hoisting ceremony to mark the 93rd anniversary of the PLA's founding at the Ngong Shuen Chau Barracks, in south China's Hong Kong, Aug. 1, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Gang) HONG KONG, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Garrison in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) held a flag-hoisting ceremony on Saturday to mark the 93rd anniversary of the PLA's founding. At the ceremony held in the early morning at the Ngong Shuen Chau Barracks, Commander of the PLA Garrison Chen Daoxiang extended greetings to all the service members of the garrison, and expressed gratitude to the HKSAR government, the central government's agencies in Hong Kong and people from all walks of life in Hong Kong for their care and support for the garrison's development. Chen pointed out that the promulgation and implementation of the law on safeguarding national security in the HKSAR marks a milestone for the practice of "one country, two systems." Safeguarding Hong Kong's prosperity and stability, the PLA garrison will unswervingly defend national sovereignty, security and development interests, and steadily push forward the sustained successful practice of "one country, two systems," Chen said. The garrison will also work with the HKSAR government, the central government's agencies in Hong Kong and people who love the country and Hong Kong to guard Hong Kong's journey to a fresh start, he added. Enditem Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Editorial Board (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 07:55 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066acd67b 1 Editorial djoko-tjandra,National-Police,AGO,Polri,arrest Free Finally, long-time fugitive Djoko S. Tjandra could no longer evade arrest. Handcuffed and wearing the orange vest for detainees, the graft convict arrived in Jakarta on Thursday after a flight from Kuala Lumpur, where the local police nabbed him upon request of their Indonesian counterparts. While the capture of Djoko, dubbed Joker by many, marked an end to an 11-year manhunt, it should kick start more daunting work for the countrys law enforcers. Djokos arrest has provided a new opportunity for both the National Police and the Attorney Generals Office (AGO) to revamp the system to deter cops and prosecutors from compromising their integrity. Read also: Indonesia brings graft fugitive Djoko Tjandra back from Malaysia The National Police responded quickly to findings that Djoko was able to enter, travel around and leave the country unchecked, allegedly thanks to the help of higher-ups in the police force. National Police chief Gen. Idham Azis has dismissed Brig. Gen. Prasetyo Utomo from his job as head of the Civil Servant Investigator Supervisory and Coordination Bureau at the polices Criminal Investigation Department, Brig. Gen. Nugroho Wibowo from his post as secretary of the National Central Bureau (NCB)-Interpol and Nugrohos direct superior Insp. Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte. Prasetiyo had allegedly issued a travel letter that allowed Djoko to fly within the country, while Nugroho had removed the Red Notice status for the fugitive so that he could travel back to Indonesia. Prasetiyo has been named a suspect and is facing multiple charges, ranging from obstruction of justice to document forgery. The same criminal investigation should await Nugroho, who is now under investigation by the Internal Affairs Division. The AGO has also taken action against state prosecutor Pinangki Sirna Malasari, who reportedly met Djoko in Kuala Lumpur last year. Deputy Attorney General Setia Untung Arimuladi removed Pinangki from her post as an official in the planning bureau under the junior attorney general for development on July 29 for a code of ethics violation. Many deem the punishment too mild because as a law enforcer, she should have taken part in the arrest of Djoko, who at that time was wanted by the AGO. The Supreme Court sentenced Djoko to two years imprisonment and ordered him to pay more than Rp 546 billion (US$54 million) in restitution for his involvement in the high-profile Bank Bali corruption case. Under the countrys criminal justice system, the AGO is responsible for executing the Supreme Courts verdicts, but in the case of Djoko, the execution did not materialize as the tycoon had fled Indonesia before the verdict was delivered. Read also: Arrest of fugitive Djoko Tjandra took a week to plan, minister says Law enforcers have long been perceived as part of the problem in the enforcement of the law in Indonesia, as the Djoko case may evince. Had civil society organizations and the public not leaked the alleged roles of law enforcers in Djokos evasion of justice, the scandal would have remained under the carpet. On the bright side, the Djoko case shows that the whistleblowing system has been in place within both the National Police and the AGO to help them eradicate corruption. But this wont be enough, unless they can clean up the mess themselves. Along with face masks, the schools in Andhra Pradesh will also provide schoolbags, text and notebooks. The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to reopen schools across the state from 5 September. According to a report by the Indian Express, Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has instructed officials to be prepared for reopening of schools on the date. The directive came with a condition that mentioned, "hopefully the situation will be normal by then." The day of reopening of schools in Andhra coincides with Teachers' Day. The chief minister has instructed the officials to be geared up for the launch of YSR Vidhya Kanuka on the same day, reported India Today. Students will be given a kit containing a schoolbag, text and notebooks, cloth for three pairs of uniform, a pair of shoes, two pairs of socks and a belt. The report said that the kit will also have face masks and the Reddy has proposed that students will be trained on how to use them. The Board of Intermediate Education in Andhra Pradesh (AP BIE) had last month sought suggestions from students, teachers and parents on some of the important issues including the syllabus, reopening of schools, working days and the teaching method. All the stakeholders were asked to revert by the end of July. There has been a spike in COVID-19 cases in Andhra Pradesh. The state has so far reported nearly 1,41,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The deadly virus has claimed lives of about 1,350 people in the state. Tom Otto said he wants to make Atco Dragway great again. The 33-year-old union construction worker grew up around the track after his father brought him there when he was a toddler. He still vividly remembers nights headlined by Benny the Bomb, literally blowing up his heap of bolts on the track. Or Doug Danger Senecal, a wanna-be Evel Knievel, soaring through the air on a motorcycle. The British teenager charged with hacking Twitter and stealing thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin was today described as 'a nice lad' whose father passed away around five years ago. The US Department of Justice charged Mason Sheppard, 19, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. He was one of three people linked to the hack earlier this month which saw accounts belonging to Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Barack Obama hijacked and used to post links to Bitcoin wallets along with false claims that payments would be matched. Neighbours of the family's 250,000 terraced home in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, have since said his mother Lorraine had been bringing Mr Sheppard up by herself since her husband Mark died. Pictured : The family's address (centre, white door) in Bognor Regis. The British teenager charged in relation to the Twitter hack was yesterday described as 'a nice lad' whose father passed away around five years ago The British teenager charged with hacking Twitter and stealing thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin was today described as 'a nice lad' whose father passed away around five years ago (stock image) A woman in her sixties, who lives in the same road but wished to remain anonymous, said: 'I know Lorraine and she's lovely. I've not seen Mason in years but he was always a very nice lad. 'His dad Mark died a few years ago - about five or six years I think. 'This is a real shock. No one around here has seen any police activity or anything.' A middle-aged woman was at the family's 250,000 three-bedroomed property earlier today but declined to comment on the Twitter investigation. She said: 'I have absolutely nothing to say. Please leave us alone.' Former US president Barack Obama, the most followed account on Twitter, was among the high-profile targets used to carry out the bitcoin scam US teenager Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested on Friday morning in Tampa Sheppard, also known as 'Chaewon', 19, was yesterday charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California. The charges were conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. Nima Fazeli, also known as 'Rolex', 22, of Orlando, Florida, was charged with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer. The third defendant is a juvenile who will not be identified, the justice department said. The scam saw more than $100,000 stolen, according to the Department of Justice, with the charges carrying a maximum penalty of 45 years in prison. US Attorney David L. Anderson said: 'Criminal conduct over the Internet may feel stealthy to the people who perpetrate it, but there is nothing stealthy about it.' He continued: 'There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence. United States Attorney David L Anderson (pictured in 2019) previously said: 'There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence' Twitter says hackers 'manipulated' employees to access 130 accounts Twitter said last week that hackers 'manipulated' some of its employees to access accounts. More than $100,000 worth of the virtual currency was sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions. 'We know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts,' said a statement posted on Twitter's blog. For 45 of those accounts, the hackers were able to reset passwords, login and send tweets, it added, while the personal data of up to eight unverified users was downloaded. Twitter locked down affected accounts and removed the fraudulent tweets. It also shut off accounts not affected by the hack as a precaution. Advertisement '[The] charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived. 'Criminal conduct over the Internet may feel stealthy to the people who perpetrate it, but there is nothing stealthy about it. 'In particular, I want to say to would-be offenders, break the law, and we will find you.' The criminal complaint states that the Twitter attack consisted of a combination of technical breaches and social engineering. 'The result of the Twitter hack was the compromise of approximately 130 Twitter accounts pertaining to politicians, celebrities, and musicians,' it says. 'The hackers are alleged to have created a scam bitcoin account, to have hacked into Twitter VIP accounts, to have sent solicitations from the Twitter VIP accounts with a false promise to double any bitcoin deposits made to the scam account, and then to have stolen the bitcoin that victims deposited into the scam account. 'As alleged in the complaints, the scam bitcoin account received more than 400 transfers worth more than 100,000 US dollars (76,000). 'The defendants are alleged to have victimised the Twitter VIP users whose accounts were hacked. 'The defendants are alleged to have victimised the people who sent bitcoin in response to the scam solicitations.' Fianna Fail and Fine Gael ministers have warned that the kind of rebellion that saw two Green Party TDs fail to vote with the Government in the Dail must not happen again. The Green Party has removed Dail speaking rights for junior minister and Dublin Fingal TD Joe O'Brien, and Dublin Central TD Neasa Hourigan for two months due to their failure to back legislation that extended the emergency rent freeze and eviction ban only for those affected by Covid-19. The punishment is seen as little more than a slap on the wrist as the Dail will not be sitting for the next six weeks. The situation that saw Mr O'Brien abstain from Thursday night's Dail vote - and Ms Hourigan actually vote against the government Bill - caused consternation among the Green Party's coalition partners. Weakens Green leader Eamon Ryan last night sought to draw a line under the incident saying: "You cannot vote against government if you're in government. You cannot abstain if you're in government. It weakens our strength." He said he is confident that when the Dail returns "we'll work well as a team". Meanwhile, Taoiseach Micheal Martin said that internal disciplinary matters were for political parties themselves. "He [Mr Ryan] has taken steps. The parties are different and we want to keep the focus on the policy agenda," he said. However, sources in both larger parties warned that there must not be a repeat of a minister abstaining from a vote on Government legislation. One Fine Gael minister said: "If I did it I'd be fired within 10 minutes" and warned another occurrence could make the government "untenable". A Fianna Fail minister said that a junior minister failing to support the Government "can't happen again". The source said there would have been elements of other legislation passed this week that Fianna Fail did not want "but we voted for it". Another Fianna Fail minister said it was better to know now that the support of the two Green Party TDs was shaky rather than on Budget night. The source said the coalition will have to ensure every other TD that supports the Government will be present for every future vote. Another Fine Gael minister said that backbenchers from their party and Fianna Fail may question why they have to support contentious legislation if it is OK for ministers to abstain. "You wouldn't like to see it again," they added. Mr O'Brien explained on Twitter why he abstained. He said the issue of homelessness is "extremely important" to him and he was not convinced the legislation "was the best we could have done". He said he knew his vote was not going to defeat the Bill. Ms Hourigan resigned as Green Party whip before she voted against the Government. She told RTE's Today With Sarah McInerney she fully expected to be sanctioned. She said there was not enough time to scrutinise the legislation and agreed with amendments that had been tabled by the Opposition. Asked if the sanctions against her will prevent her voting against the Government again, she said: "I hope that this just simply won't arise again." The controversial votes happened before the Dail descended into chaos with a massive row over a separate issue. The Government parties had moved to change Dail speaking arrangements so their backbench TDs can get better speaking slots more frequently. The bitter row that ensued forced a 10-minute suspension by new Leas-Cheann Comhairle Catherine Connolly after Rise TD Paul Murphy repeatedly refused to resume his seat. He said attempts to reformulate speaking slots were an effort to marginalise left-wing groups. During the same debate Tanaiste Leo Varadkar extraordinarily attacked smaller parties, saying he was "embarrassed" to share the Chamber with them. One of the pieces by Jackie Edwards An exhibition of paintings by the Wexford artist Jackie Edwards, celebrating the life and work of one of the world's best loved artists, Frida Kahlo, will run in Gormleys Fine Art, Dublin from August 1 to 15. Jackie who lives in Rosslare Harbour was inspired to create the exhibition after completing a month-long artist's residency in Lake Chapala, Ajijic, Mexico four years ago. In collaboration with her Italian friend, muse and model Lucrezia from Ferrara, Italy, Edwards has drawn inspiration from Frida's paintings, particularly her self-portraits, to create dramatic and dynamic pieces that are true to her own style, while incorporating that of Kahlo's. The paintings echo their Kahlo counterparts while adding a contemporary spin to create a hybrid fusion of old and new in an exciting modern format. Edwards' paintings are dynamic character studies of the human figurative form, and she creates ethereal portraits which use the interplay between light and shadow to create dramatic pieces. The iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954) was mainly known for her portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artefacts of Mexico. 'I want to create an authentic portrayal of Frida and her self-portraits, and to pay homage to her," said Edwards. 'I want to immerse the viewer in Kahlo's world, but in a style that is very much my own, inspired and helped by my model and muse Lucrezia.' Born in London to Irish parents, Jackie Edwards has been painting since childhood and attended Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design. She has exhibited in Ireland, Europe, and the UK since 1989. She received a double award at the Royal Academy Ulster 2015 and last year she exhibited works in the USA, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, Wisconsin. The show, comprising of a number of new works, will be on display at Gormleys Fine Art, Dublin, from the August 1 to 15. Due to social distancing, hundreds of virtual job fairs have been taking place globally, with companies both large and small joining in. Here, nonbank consumer lender loanDepot holds a virtual job fair on Facebook. Diana Olick | CNBC With coronavirus infections still surging across the U.S., many companies are turning to virtual career fairs as a hiring strategy. While not new, the concept has been gaining ground since the pandemic began. Hundreds of job fairs have been taking place globally, with companies both large and small joining in. The latest to enter the foray is early career platform Handshake. As a result of the widespread shift to remote work, Handshake, a career networking platform aimed at college students, announced Wednesday its own end-to-end digital job fair solution, which will allow universities and companies to host virtual recruiting events and job fairs. The new platform will facilitate large-scale virtual job fairs for universities and employers so that students have access to increased opportunities to both network and stand out in the job application process. This is good news for the approximately 17 million Americans out of work today and the 6 million-plus graduates who have entered into this brutal job market. According to Handshake's April survey, 73% of recent college graduates are still searching for full-time jobs, and 23% of students had their internship offers rescinded. While the unemployment situation is dismal for both graduate and undergraduate students, many Americans have lost their jobs or are struggling to obtain new opportunities amid the coronavirus pandemic. The national unemployment rate was 11.1% in June 2020, ranking 7.4% higher than it was in June 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What is a virtual job fair? Virtual job fairs take place at a designated time and are similar to a webinar. Recruiters and job seekers meet in a virtual space via chat rooms, teleconferencing, webcasts, and/or email to exchange information about job postings. Rather than just reviewing resumes,hiring managers will be able to meet candidates face to face, interview them and make offers right on the spot. Virtual hiring takes the hassle, time and expense out of attending a traditional job fair and helps recruiters and employers interact with potential employees from all over the world and a variety of disciplines. Employment platform CareerBuilder has been hosting virtual career fairs for universities and companies alike since 2013. However, Chris Salzman, health-care director at CareerBuilder, has found that since the onset of the pandemic, more companies are embracing virtual career fairs as a primary resource rather than a supplementary or creative resource. "It's become more of the staple, the norm and the necessity," he said. Kraft Heinz recently conducted a virtual job fair to hire their summer interns. Kraft Heinz Today the most active sectors in this arena are financial services, health care, nonprofit, internet and software, claims Handshake. Through the use of virtual career fairs and Handshake's new platform, employers have the opportunity to search for students across thousands of partner universities that meet the criteria and qualifications of their position. It will also enable universities to build stronger relationships with employers that don't typically recruit from their school. "This will become the opening for how a university or career center can establish a relationship with some of those employers. ... They should be able to attract more employers then they've had in the past," said Christine Cruzvergara, Handshake's vice president of higher education and student success. How a typical career fair works Virtual career fairs are not limited to college students and entry-level roles. FlexJobs, another virtual recruiting platform, primarily caters to filling more experienced and managerial positions. While these roles often require additional experience and technical skills, attending virtual job fairs can be advantageous for people looking to pivot industries or get one-on-one time with a recruiter for a role they may be passionate about, according to Brie Reynolds, career development manager at FlexJobs. For dedicated client virtual fairs, career platforms can provide the software, marketing and even prescreening of candidates so that recruiters from a company can connect with a variety of qualified candidates for their specific openings. Attendees provide their resume and contact information at registration, and after joining a lobby and being presented with options, they can either initiate one-to-one conversations with recruiters or join group conversations. CareerBuilder recently facilitated a targeted event for a client seeking interested, qualified and screened nurses. "We had over 300 people scheduled for the event, over 100 recruiter chats and over 75 qualified candidates, and they ended up making 35 offers," said Salzman. For career fairs with multiple employers, career platforms use intricate software to replicate a ballroom with Zoom "rooms" and chat boxes with recruiters for each company. Employers are able to facilitate interactive panels and discussions to share more about the positions that they are hiring for, as well as more about their company culture and values. Attendees may curate their schedule in advance or visit multiple "rooms" of their choosing throughout the day, asking questions in the group setting or initiating a one-to-one text or audio chat with a recruiter. According to Reynolds of FlexJobs, recruiters often expect the attendee to initiate any follow-up after the fair. "When you're applying for the job after the fair, make sure to mention in your cover letter which recruiter you talked to. ... It's good to reiterate that you're already active and are seeking out this company in particular," she said. Reynolds also encourages attendees to connect with recruiters on LinkedIn and include a message about their conversation at the fair. "You have given yourself an advantage if you're using the info you learned at the fair and the recruiter connection." Tips to prepare for the virtual job fair Virtual job fairs are much different from the in-person experience, so preparation is vital to success and to build a lasting impression on a recruiter or employer. Those who can adapt will have a great advantage. Here are some key ways to put your best foot forward and maximize your time with a recruiter. Do your research. One of the most common pieces of advice from recruiters and career services utilizing virtual career fairs is to do your research. Cruzvergara urges candidates to cross-reference their research with company reviews on platforms like Handshake to inform smart questions for recruiters. "Think of questions that would allow you to get deeper knowledge about the culture of the organization, what it means to be able to move up in that organization, or what it is you would be able to contribute or learn in that organization." Sharpen your communication skills. According to Jenny Petru, corporate recruiting manager at Regency Integrated Health Services, who has worked with CareerBuilder on virtual recruiting, "The best way a candidate can stand out is good communication skills and good grammar skills. ... In a virtual world, you don't want to write like you're texting a friend; you still want to have that professionalism." Don't give up. To make the most of this opportunity, Trappey encourages candidates to put themselves out there and overcome any apprehensions they may have about virtual recruiting. "The key to finding a job or an internship is to keep trying. Just say yes to a virtual event or go to LinkedIn to make those connections yourself. Having the confidence to do that even if you feel awkward is integral to landing a job no matter where you are." Benefits of virtual recruiting Despite lacking in-person interaction, virtual career fairs and virtual recruiting still offer job seekers an opportunity to connect with employers and form a lasting connection. In fact, experts predict that even after the pandemic, there will be no rush to revert to traditional, in-person job fairs. According to a survey conducted by Handshake in early April that polled 112 of their partner employers, 80% of recruiting will remain virtual for the foreseeable future, and 60% say that even if travel were safe, they would still decrease their on-campus presence. Here are some of the ways online job fairs provide benefits for candidates across different experience levels, employers and universities. Engages more candidates. While virtual career fairs existed prior to the pandemic, the coronavirus has been a critical catalyst for accelerating the use of virtual recruiting as a primary resource for employers. "It accelerated people's openness to being willing to think about a virtual strategy and to really use the tools that would allow them to engage more qualified students across more institutions," said Cruzvergara. Saves time and money. With career fairs now online, employers no longer need to spend days setting up an event, travel expenses for both the candidates and recruiters are eliminated, and there are no geographic boundaries. In addition, recruiters are able to participate across multiple shifts throughout the day, allowing them to resume normal work operations before and after. Opens up more conversations. In addition, the variety of available methods for interacting with recruiters can effectively cater to the different needs and preferences of candidates, allowing them to feel more comfortable in the recruiting process. "In this sort of isolated time, virtual events generally do give that interaction and space to speak freely to the company. ... These sort of events are a way to put a face to a name and make a connection so you can move forward in that process later," says Amy Trappey, senior director of customer success at female-oriented career platform Power to Fly. China turns inward amid external risks Global Times By Wang Cong Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/31 20:03:40 Major shift not meant to isolate, but to continuously rise: experts China has sent its clearest signal yet that it will throw more policy weight and coordination to further prop up its economy with a massive consumer market and robust industrial prowess to cope with fast evolving external risks, as top policymakers start to draft a key document that would set the tone for economic and social development for at least the next five years. While emphasis on the "domestic economy" at a top meeting on Thursday suggests a major shift in focus from export-oriented policies in the past several decades, it is not meant to isolate itself, experts noted. Instead, the experts stressed, the shift is a result of comprehensive calculations of both the massive domestic potential and the deteriorating external environment for the Chinese economy. The move will not only help further lift the Chinese economy, but also benefit a world economy in dire need of new growth impetus, they added. Major policy shift A meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, the top decision-making body, reaffirmed that China will form a new development pattern centered on "internal circulation," which should also be better supplemented by the "external circulation," according to a statement released after the meeting. The meeting attended by top leaders concluded that while China remains in "a period of strategic opportunity for development," it also faces a "protracted war" with "long- and medium-term" challenges and risks, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The meeting also decided that the fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, where proposals for the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for social and economic development will be assessed, will be held in Beijing in October. While Chinese officials have been repeatedly stressing the importance of boosting the domestic economy to cope with external challenges and risks in recent years amid slowing global growth and rising trade tensions, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the emphasis at the meeting on Thursday represents a formal adoption of the policy shift that will shape China's economic policies for at least the next five years, analysts said. "The policy shift also marks a milestone in China's economic development that we are moving away from the export-oriented economy toward a high-quality, domestically-driven economy that will be more resilient to risks and challenges," Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times on Friday. That shift in economic growth is ongoing, with growth becoming less reliant on exports. In 2019, internal demand accounted for 89 percent of China's GDP growth of 6.1 percent year-on-year. This year, as the COVID-19 pandemic has brought global trade to a near standstill, China's exports shrank by 6.6 percent in the first half of the year, and the prospects for a quick rebound remains dim as the deadly virus continues to ravage major economies across the world. Against this backdrop, the emphasis on the "internal circulation" is aimed at fully realizing the "considerable" domestic potential to cope with those challenges and risks, Cheng Shi, chief economist at ICBC International Holdings in Hong Kong, wrote in a note sent to the Global Times on Friday. "The development and expansion of 'internal circulation' will help offset external impact under the global turmoil, and, in turn, make the Chinese economy more flexible in the 'internal circulation,'" Cheng wrote, noting that focus on "internal circulation" should be targeting industrial and consumption upgrade. Not self-isolation However, despite the emphasis on the domestic economy, China will continue to engage overseas markets, particularly emerging markets in Asia and other parts of the world, through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other global initiatives, analysts said. Following the meeting on Thursday, the Voice of America, a perceived propaganda arm of the US government, questioned in a report on Friday whether China was self-isolating or has no other choice in making the shift. "This is definitely not self-isolation nor a retreat because of global risks," Song Guoyou, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Friday. "In fact, this is about the long-term growth paths of the Chinese economy, rather than some short-term challenges and risks." Though Chinese exports have taken a lesser role in China's economic output in recent years, China remains the world's largest trading nation, with total trade in goods reaching 31.54 trillion yuan ($4.51 trillion) in 2019, according to official data. Trade with countries along the BRI and the Southeast Asian countries is steadily rising. In the first half of the year, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations surpassed the EU as China's biggest trading partner, with trade worth 2.09 trillion yuan. Song said that giving priority to the domestic economy is meant to remove the hurdles of domestic economic development and make it more sufficient, which should also be conducive for other economies and the global economy, as they will rely on China's growth to recover from the COVID-19. China has been contributing over 30 percent to global GDP growth in 2019. The massive Chinese consumption market with an ever-growing middle class is the biggest source of revenue for many across the world, from soybean farmers in the US to carmakers in Germany, to fashion houses in France. "Given the size of the Chinese economy and the market, whatever domestic policy we may or may not take does not change the fact that the Chinese economy will only become increasingly intertwined with the global economy, not the opposite," Dong said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address As hundreds celebrated the life of Congressman John Lewis on Thursday, a 12-year-old Tennessee boy who recited one of Lewis' favorite poems stood out during the civil rights icon's funeral. Tybre Faw delivered one of the most memorable moments of the star-studded goodbye. In front of a crowd that included three former U.S. presidents and civil rights leaders, Faw helped eulogize Lewis by reading British poet William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. The poem is said to have inspired the likes of former South African president Nelson Mandela and others. "John Lewis was my hero, my friend. Let's honor him by getting into that 'good trouble,'" the boy said, referencing a famous line by the late congressman. Tybre Faw becomes emotional after the reading of John Lewis' favorite poem, Invictus, during his funeral service at Ebenezer Baptist Church. / Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Getty Images Faw told "CBS This Morning: Saturday" co-host Michelle Miller he wants do exactly that and continue the legacy left by Lewis. "I want to make it greater and better for everybody," he said in an interview that aired Friday. Their friendship began when then-10-year-old Faw met Lewis in Selma, Alabama during an anniversary of Bloody Sunday. According to "CBS This Morning' co-host Gayle King, his grandmother said Faw called Lewis and told him he wanted to meet him when he was 9. "It was really emotional because I met somebody I really cared about," Faw said. He went on to attend several events and protests with Lewis, including his final walk in March across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was the same bridge where Lewis was beaten by Alabama state troopers police during the march to Montgomery on March 7, 1965. Faw, whose family helped foster his interest in history, said he found out about his July 17 death after a call from his grandma. "I just lost a friend," Faw said. "He did all he can. He fulfilled his purpose. He did what he could." Lewis was the youngest person to speak at the 1963 March on Washington, and was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr. He served in Congress for over three decades and dedicated his life to justice, leaving a undeniable mark on U.S. history. Story continues Sneak peek: Storm of Suspicion Hurricane Isaias heads toward mainland U.S. Archaeologists pinpoint original location of Stonehenge boulders For the second time in 11 days, hundreds of farmers on Saturday took to the streets across Maharashtra to press for various demands including an increase in milk procurement prices. The agitation call was given by the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party with the stir being led by state party President Chandrakant Patil in Pune and other leaders in different parts of Maharashtra. Attacking the state government for ignoring the problems of milk farmers, Patil sought to know how many times Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray went to Delhi to resolve the peasants' issues. "If he has no knowledge of agriculture, then there are others like Ajit Pawar or Balasaheb Thorat and he (Thackeray) should send them to the Centre to resolve the farmers' problems, Patil said. The BJP chief said farmers should get Rs 20 per litre for cow milk. The state government should have given a subsidy of Rs 10, though the previous BJP-led regime had given Rs 5 per litre. Flaying the agitation, Congress state President and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat said that the BJP has no right to agitate since it is the BJP government at the Centre which has decided to import milk powder which led to the fall in domestic milk prices. BJP leaders like Pravin Darekar, Bharati Pawar, Devyani Farande, Suresh Dhus, Rahul Dhikale, Haribhau Bagade, Atul Save, Prashant Bamb, Ram Shinde, Ashish Shelar, Mangal Prabhat Lodha and others led the agitation in different parts of the state. Some were detained briefly by the local police. Earlier, on July 21, various farmers organisations like the All India Kisan Sabha, Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana and others had launched an agitation with the AIKS Coordination Committee -- a pan-India platform with more than 250-plus organisations -- supporting the farmers. AIKS leaders and SSS President Raju Shetti have warned of a nationwide stir if the farmers' demands are not conceded by August 9. --IANS qn/bg (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Maxwells lawyers say deposition has potentially embarrassing information that could make a fair trial impossible. An appeals court in the United States on Friday temporarily delayed the release of a 2016 deposition about Ghislaine Maxwells sex life, after she argued it could destroy her ability to get a fair trial against criminal charges she aided the late financier Jeffrey Epsteins sexual abuse of girls. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order after last-ditch scrambles by Maxwell to keep potentially embarrassing information, which her lawyer said could make it difficult if not impossible to find an impartial jury, out of the public eye. Maxwells appeal will be heard on an expedited basis, with oral argument scheduled for September 22. Her deposition had been taken in April 2016 for a now-settled civil defamation lawsuit against the British socialite by Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Epstein of having kept her as a sex slave with Maxwells assistance. Later in that interview: V: He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. Theyre all in each others pockets. JS: When you say you asked him why is Bill Clinton here, where was here? V: On the island. Doc: https://t.co/DyASI4SvIm pic.twitter.com/0yjsMUiCvo Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) July 31, 2020 Dozens of other documents from that case were released late on Thursday, after the presiding judge concluded that the public had a right to see them. The release of Maxwells deposition had been scheduled for Monday, pending the outcome of the appeal. Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997, and committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath. She was arrested on July 2 and has been held in a Brooklyn jail after a judge denied bail, calling her a flight risk. Maxwells trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein was found hanged at age 66 last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty. In seeking to keep Maxwells deposition sealed, her lawyers said in court papers on Thursday she had been promised confidentiality by Giuffres lawyers and the presiding judge at the time, through an agreed-upon protective order, before answering many personal, sensitive and allegedly incriminatory questions about her dealings with Epstein. They said further that Maxwell was blindsided when prosecutors quoted from the deposition in her indictment, and accusing Giuffre of leaking the deposition to the government. In a court filing on Friday, Giuffres lawyers called Maxwells appeal frivolous, and a transparent attempt to further delay the release of documents to which the public has a clear and unequivocal right to access. The lawyers also called the allegation Giuffre leaked the deposition completely and utterly false. Fridays order also covers a second deposition by an unnamed Epstein accuser that Maxwell also wanted to be kept under seal. Other documents from Giuffres lawsuit that quote or disclose information from the depositions also remain sealed. Among the documents released on Thursday were a few emails between Epstein and Maxwell dated January 2015, including one where Epstein told Maxwell that she had done nothing wrong. Lawyers for Maxwell said on July 10 in a court filing requesting bail in her criminal case that she had not been in contact with Epstein for more than a decade. Maxwell is now battling prosecutors in her criminal case about the scope of a protective order intended to protect her right to a fair trial while ensuring the privacy of her accusers. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 06:42:58|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, July 31 (Xinhua) -- The number of COVID-19 cases surpassed 4.5 million with over 152,000 deaths in the United States on Friday as a national debate over school reopening persists. The country's infections reached 4,536,240 and the national death toll from the disease rose to 152,878 as of 2:58 p.m. local time (1858 GMT), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The hardest-hit state, California, recorded 493,396 cases. Florida reported 470,371 cases, Texas 428,500 cases and New York 415,014 cases, the tally showed. "The coronavirus pandemic took a dramatic turn for the worse in the United States during July," said a report by The Washington Post. "States across the South and West were hit hardest over the past month," the report said. "And the number of deaths rose most in those states, too." "The figures paint a bleak picture of the pandemic when the country's virus response remains fractured and halting," it said. Incomplete shutdown is among factors contributing to the surging COVID-19 cases in the country, said U.S. top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci at a House subcommittee hearing on Friday. "We really functionally shut down only about 50 percent in the sense of the totality of the country," said Fauci when asked why Europe has been able to largely contain the virus while the United States has seen a rise in new cases. "If you look at what happened in Europe, when they shut down or locked down or went to shelter in place ... they really did it to the tune of about 95 percent plus of the country," Fauci said. At the same hearing, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield reiterated his stance that schools should reopen this fall in "public health best interest." "I think it's important to realize that it's in the public health best interest of K-through-12 students to get back in face-to-face learning," Redfield said. "It's really important to realize it's not public health versus the economy about school opening, it's public health versus public health of the K-through-12 to get the schools open. We've got to do it safely and we have to be able to accommodate," he added. Fauci said a "default position despite the fact that we have to have flexibility" would be to try "as best as we possibly can in the context of the safety of the children and the teachers" to reopen the schools. However, the national debate over if and how to reopen schools this fall is far from over. "While experts are all on the same page regarding the importance of opening schools, some note it might not be possible if there is too much transmission in the surrounding community, and if schools do not have the necessary resources to invest in safety measures," said a report by The Hill on Friday. U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration are pressuring schools to reopen in fall, threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that do not comply. Reopening schools is seen as a crucial step to restarting the country's economy for his reelection campaign. Few Americans want to see their local schools reopen for in-person instruction as usual or even with minor adjustments, said a new poll released last week. Eight percent of Americans say their local K-12 schools should open for in-person instruction as usual and 14 percent think schools can reopen with minor adjustments, showed the survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Enditem Microsoft is in the works of acquiring TikTok, the widely used video-sharing app. This would mean divorcing TikTok from its parent company, ByteDance. People with knowledge of the talks told in various news reports that as TikTok is under scrutiny from the Trump administration, it has discussed with Microsoft and other companies about getting bought out to avoid harsh actions. It is, however, still unclear if Microsoft will succeed in taking over the app as the talks are facing several hurdles. Microsoft is not the only company that wants to get TikTok under its wing. Other parties have also expressed intent in buying TikTok, but the process is still in its first stages, said a Financial Times report. According to New York Times, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (Cfius) has been looking into the 2017 purchase done by ByteDance of the Musical.ly app that later on morphed into TikTok. The committee had come to a decision that orders the parent company to cut ties with TikTok and the government is going through negotiations over the terms of the separation. Where is the scrutiny coming from? According to NPR, the Chinese company ByteDance is worth $100 billion. White House officials have seen TikTok as a medium that posed national security threats because it is Chinese-owned. It is quite a surprise that companies are interested in taking over the app even though both TikTok and ByteDance are under scrutiny for its data-sharing practices. President Donald Trump implied in his re-election campaign ads that there is possible spying of the Chinese on American users. The president on Friday said he was looking at some options for TikTok and the issues it faces. One of the options includes a ban. "We are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok," he said. The White House is also considering placing ByteDance on the "entity list" that will bar it from being involved with businesses or companies in the United States. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who leads the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), briefed the president on the plans of the company to divest. However, it remains unclear if the president will do any actions on the matter. Some concerns are that the U.S. would apply a divestment order to all of TikTok's U.S. operations and whether the actions will have a big impact on the app's global business. Discussions are set to continue into this weekend. But there have been reports of the president leaning towards a U.S.-based acquisition of TikTok, meaning an American company will buy the U.S. operations of the app. What happens if Microsoft is successful? If Microsoft gets to buy TikTok, it will give the tech giant a great ownership to one of the most famous social media platforms today. It is favored by many young digital users and is coveted by all of Silicon Valley. For months, TikTok has been the go-to app for teen and millennials to showcase and spread comedy skits and dance challenges. Even political activism has found its way into the app. Since the pandemic started, TikTok had been very well-liked worldwide, with more than 180 million downloads in the U.S. alone, said research firm Sensor Tower. TikTok did not address the president's comments or any deal talks in a statement released lately. But a spokesperson said the app was confident it will have long-term success and that it was committed to ensuring safety and privacy of its users. The fears that the social media app faces will likely go away once it has been acquired by a non-China based entity. Want to read more? Check these out! Are Your Apps Spying on You? Source Code for Disney, Microsoft, Nintendo Leaks Online Big Techs Alleged of Bullying Small Techs, Congress Hearing With Top Tech CEOs Postponed Officials said the sisters were hospitalised following the shooting on Eid al-Adha, but died from their wounds. A Jordanian man has shot and killed his three sisters on the first day of Eid al-Adha over a family dispute, the countrys official media agency reported. According to Petra News Agency, the directorate of public security in Jordan issued a statement saying: A young man fired live bullets at his sisters on Friday, following differences between them. The incident took place in the province of Balqa, northwest of the capital, Amman. The sisters were hospitalised following the shooting but died from their wounds shortly after, the statement added. An investigation has been opened into the incident and the search for the brother has begun, officials said. The shooting comes two weeks after a young woman, known only as Ahlam, was killed by her father in Balqa. According to the witnesses, Ahlam, who local media reported as having faced domestic abuse for years, ran out of her home with blood all over her body, screaming for help. Her father then allegedly chased her with a brick and beat her until she died. Witnesses said he smoked a cigarette and drank tea next to her corpse afterwards. Local media said the father was charged for the murder after appearing before the Grand Criminal Court in Amman. The hashtag #Ahlams _ Screams in Arabic trended across Jordans social media platforms, where users expressed anger and disgust at the crime. Many drew parallels to the killing of Israa Gharib, who was killed by her relatives last year in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem after posting a picture of herself with her fiance. Under Jordans penal code, men who commit so-called honour killings while in a fit of rage can be exonerated. Grass Valley, California--(Newsfile Corp. - July 31, 2020) - Rise Gold Corp. (CSE: RISE) (OTCQX: RYES) (the "Corporation") announces that all proposed resolutions were passed at the Corporations' annual general meeting of shareholders held today's date. Benjamin Mossman, Thomas Vehrs, Larry Lepard, John Proust, and Murray Flanigan were all elected as directors of the Corporation for the coming year, the authorized number of shares of common stock of the Corporation was increased, and Davidson & Company LLP were re-appointed as auditors of the Corporation for the ensuing year. About Rise Gold Corp. Rise Gold is an exploration-stage mining company incorporated in Nevada, USA. The Corporation's principal asset is the historic past-producing Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine located in Nevada County, California, USA. The Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine produced 2,414,000 oz of gold at an average mill head grade of 17 gpt gold from 1866-1955. Historic production at the Idaho-Maryland Mine is disclosed in the Technical Report on the Idaho-Maryland Project dated June 1st, 2017 and available on www.sedar.com. On behalf of the Board of Directors: Benjamin Mossman President, CEO and Director Rise Gold Corp. For further information, please contact: RISE GOLD CORP. 333 Crown Point Circle, Suite 215 Grass Valley, CA, USA 95945 T: 530.433.0188 info@risegoldcorp.com www.risegoldcorp.com The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently 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. Story continues Although the Corporation believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitation, the impact of the COVID-19 virus and amendments to reporting and other applicable requirements as a result thereof, obtaining all necessary approvals, meeting expenditure and financing requirements, compliance with environmental regulations, title matters, operating hazards, metal prices, political and economic factors, competitive factors, general economic conditions, relationships with vendors and strategic partners, governmental regulation and supervision, seasonality, technological change, industry practices, and one-time events that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information contained in this release. Rise undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/60897 A magistrate court in Zuba, Abuja, has dismissed the assault case filed by the Nigerian Police against the Adamawa senator, Elisha Abbo. The court dismissed the suit for lack of diligent prosecution by the police. This is despite a viral video showing Mr Abbo assaulting a woman, Osimibibra Warmate; and a televised press conference in which the lawmaker apologised to the victim. The magistrate, Abdullahi Ilelah, who upheld a no-case submission filed by Mr Abbo, said the police failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the lawmaker assaulted Ms Warmate on May 11, 2019, Punch Newspaper reports. The case with suit number CR/010/2019 lasted from July 8, 2019, till June 18, 2020. And the two witnesses that testified against Mr Abbo were Ms Warmate, and a police officer, Mary Daniel, who investigated the matter. PREMIUM TIMES had in 2019 exposed how the young senator was caught on camera assaulting a woman in Abuja. The May 11 incident occurred barely three months after Mr Abbo became a senator-elect and a month before he was sworn in on June 11. Footage of the video seen by this newspaper showed the 41-year-old senator physically assaulting the woman, whom he accused of insulting him by calling him a drunk. A policeman who stood by did nothing to protect the victim. Mr Abbo later owned up to his actions by issuing an apology publicly amidst tears. He, thereafter, turned himself in to the police, who held him for a night, before granting him bail after meeting a set of administrative conditions for his bound. He was thereafter, arraigned before the Chief Magistrate court, Zuba, Abuja, with two counts of criminal charges preferred against him. The testimonies Ms Warmate in her testimony narrated how she had gone to visit a friend, Kemi, at Pleasure Chest Sex Toy Shop, Banex Plaza, Wuse 2, Abuja on May 11, 2019 when the lawmaker walked in with three women, and how one of the women that accompanied Mr Abbo started vomiting and later fainted. She said when she left the shop, she received a frantic call from Kemi asking her to come to her aid as the lawmaker had accused her of putting something in the shops air conditioner system that caused one of his female companions to vomit and was threatening to get her arrested. The victim said when she returned to the shop and was cleaning up the vomit, two men, one of whom was a policeman in uniform, barged into the shop. After, Mr Abbo gave an order to arrest Kemi for insulting him but Kemi began pleading and then picked up her phone to tell her father that she was being arrested. As one of the men moved to take the phone, I begged him and said it was her father that she was talking to. Then the defendant (Abbo) pounced on me, punched me on my face and in the eye. He slapped me several times and asked me why I interfered, she said. He said he would make me a scapegoat for interfering and asked the two men to arrest me. The defendant (Abbo) pulled me by the hair and pushed me downstairs and to a car. I called my mother and I was being arrested. While in the car, the people on the premises told the defendant (Abbo) that he needed to report to the police on the premises before he could leave but the defendant (Abbo) refused and the security guards in the plaza had to lock the gate, she explained. Ms Warmate said she was let go by Mr Abbo after her mother pleaded. She also said she began to feel severe pains in her body due to the beating and went to a private hospital, Mega Eyesight, and also reported the matter to the police. Under cross-examination, Ms Warmate admitted that she was not a nursing mother at the time of the incident as widely reported and that she was not the one who recorded the video of the incident but obtained it from the owner of the shop where the incident occurred. She added that the video presented as evidence was a shortened version of what transpired on the day of the incident. The second witness, a police officer, told the court that she took statements from the victim, the senator and two others who witnessed the incident including Alaba Udeme, the mother of the victim. She said because the shop where the incident took place remained close, she could not access the CCTV and had to rely on a disc given to her by the victim. The videos of the incident and Mr Abbos public apology as well as a report signed by Amobrose Ibegbule, the doctor who treated the victim, were tendered as evidence. The ruling When the prosecution rested its case, Mr Abbo did not open his defence but filed a no-case submission, asking the court to dismiss the charges preferred against him. Advertisements In his ruling, the magistrate, Mr Ilelah said the evidence and exhibits tendered did not disclose a prima facie case of the alleged crime of criminal force and assault against the defendant (Abbo). The prosecutions case centred on the oral evidence of PW1 (Ms Warmate) and the two discs contained CCTV footage of the incident and alleged video clip of an apology from the defendant (Mr Abbo), he said. The medical report of Mega Sight Eye Clinic did not disclose in detail what happened to the victim and Dr. Ambrose Ibegbule who wrote the report was not called as a witness. The court also said the video of the press conference showing Mr Abbo apologising was not tantamount to an admission of guilt as it was not a confessional statement. Mr Ilelah added that the testimony of the victim was so weak because the allegation has not been substantiated in any material particular and the police did not do a proper investigation as it relied solely on the statement of the victim. The IPO (Investigating Police Officer) did not investigate this case at all or she just charged the defendant to court via the F.I.R (First Information Report) without due care and attention. In fact, she has succeeded in creating a doubt in the mind of this court during cross-examination and the Supreme Court held that where there is a doubt in a criminal trial, such doubt should be resolved in favour of the defendant, he said. He said the court would rely on the law and not logic or media reports because he who alleges must prove. The defendant is hereby discharged under Section 303(3)(c) and (d) of the ACJA 2015, the magistrate said. The Senate had set up an ad-hoc committee on July 3 to investigate the incident. The committee had in October, submitted its report before the upper chamber. The report which contains findings and recommendations, is yet to be discussed by the Senate. This, according to the former Senate spokesperson, Godiya Akwashiki, is because the case was still in court. However, with the dismissal of the suit, the Senate is expected to consider the report of the panel upon resumption in September. The cold-blooded murder of a 90-year-old woman, Madam Akua Denteh, at Kafaba, near Salaga, in late July 2020, has shocked many Ghanaians. The old lady was brutally murdered in full public view with a video of the incident going viral all because she was believed to be a witch. I have little to add to the expressions of disgust, except to ask this question: What did all these justifiably horrified people expect, when, over a period of ten years, Madam Ama Hemmah, a 72-year-old woman, was similarly murdered as a watch, in broad daylight, at Tema, and yet justice has been denied to the family she left behind? The law is there to prevent crime, as well as punish it. When something unlawful is done and it goes unpunished, people with a mentality similar to that of those who committed the crime, will convince themselves that they have nothing to fear when they too commit a similar crime. Indeed, if they are motivated as in this case by religious bigotry fuelled by evangelistic zealotry, the potential criminals can read into the inaction of the authorities over a crime, a secret agreement between the powers that be andthose who commit such crimes. Thus, in committing the crime, the criminals can assure themselves that they are doing something that an amorphous group of higher authorities in the society would approve of, but about which the latter would keep mute, because they lacked the guts to go public with their views. In other words, a climate of connivance indefinable but nevertheless real can exist between members of society and potential criminals, without either set of people realizing that they are indeed united by a common purpose. Aware of this social phenomenon and the possibility that it might cause imitative, or mimic, crimes to be committed, I have written and written and written about the dangers of not fully prosecuting Madam Hemma's murderers and bringing them to justice. I don't have the space to reproduce my demands for an explanation from the police about why they seem to have abandoned the prosecution of Madam Hemma's murderers. I have received no answer from the police, I am sorry to say. Nor have I heard from the Minister of the Interior, or the Attorney-General's office. Even more bizarre is the fact although Madam Hemma's case has been extremely well publicised both at home and abroad, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) which was created in 1993 as an independent institution designed to protect fundamental human rights and freedoms in Ghana, has not, to my knowledge, asked the police anything about Madam Hemma's case! If CHRAJ really exists to build on and improve good governance, democracy, integrity, peace and social development across the nation does it think that looking on unconcerned when acts of murder are not adequately prosecuted, can guarantee the human rights of Ghanaians? Isn't the right to life the most important of all human rights? CHRAJ and the other organisations that often go to the aid of educatedmembers ofthe societywhose rights are trampled upon, should make their work also relevant to the disadvantagedsections of the society, for they too pay taxes. I would like to end this article by quoting from what was originally published at the time of Madam Hemma's murder ten years ago: Daily Graphic, 26 November 2010: "Grandma Set Ablaze To Exorcise Witchcraft "A 72-year-old grandmother [Nana Ama Hemmah] suffered one of the most barbaric of deaths when she was burnt alive by a mob at Tema Site 15, after being accused of being a witch. "A student-nurse, who appeared on the scene, attempted to rescue the old woman from her ordeal but she died of her burns within 24 hours of arrival at the Tema General Hospital. "Five people who allegedly tortured and extracted the confessions of witchcraft from Ama Hemmah before drenching her in petrol and setting her ablaze, have been arrested by the Tema Police..... "Two of the suspects are Samuel Ghunney, a 50-year-old photographer, and Pastor Samuel Fletcher Sagoe, 55, the evangelist. The rest are Emelia Opoku, 37, Nancy Nana Ama Akrofie, 46, and Mary Sagoe, 52, all unemployed. "Briefing the Daily Graphic on the incident, the Tema Regional Police Commander, Mr Augustine Gyening, Assistant Commissioner of Police, said about 10 a.m. on November 20, 2010, Samuel Fletcher Sagoe visited his sister (Emelia) at Site 15, a suburb of Tema Community 1, and saw Madam Hemmah sitting in Emelia's bedroom at a time Emelia had sent her children to school. "Mr Gyening said Samuel then raised an alarm attracting the attention of the principal suspect, Samuel Ghunney, and some people in the neighbourhood. "According to him, the suspects claimed that Mad. Hemmah was a known witch in the area and subjected her to severe torture, compelling her to confess [to] being a witch......After extracting the confession from Mad. Hemmah, Ghunney asked Emelia Opoku for a gallon of kerosene and, with the help of his accomplices, poured it all over her and set her ablaze. "[Assistant Commissioner] Gyening said a student-nurse, Deborah Pearl Adumoah, who chanced upon the barbaric act, rescued Mad. Hemmah and sent her to the Community One Police Station, from where she was transferred to the Tema General Hospital, but she died the following day. "In their [statement made under caution], the suspects denied the offence and explained that they poured anointing oil on the old woman and [that] it caught fire when they offered prayers to exorcise the demon from her. UNQUOTE http://www.Graphic.com.gh /news/page.php?news=10378 THIS IS WHAT I WROTE ABOUT THE INCIDENT AT THE TIME: CAMERON DUODU writes: Because the suspects are likely to be prosecuted, I cannot offer a detailed analysis of their behaviour, due to the sub judice rule that prohibits comments on cases that are yet to be decided by the courts. But without prejudice to this particular case, I can confidently state that one thing is certain: a great number of people, particularly old women, are routinely subjected to the most excruciating physical and mental torture in Ghana in the mistaken belief that they are "witches". The lack of knowledge in the country generally about the physical and mental degeneration that occurs in certain individuals during old age, results in some people taking Alzheimer's disease and hysterical dissociation in particular, and mental illness as a whole, as signs of witchcraft. This ignorance, fuelled by a patchy knowledge of scriptures, which causes some people to interpret the Bible literally, induces them to inflict ultra-barbaric treatment on these alleged "witches" in the mistaken belief that they are doing what The Lord Jesus Christ would have done, had these alleged "witches" been brought before Him. But Jesus did not burn witches. He showed them compassion and physically touched them with his hands, which acts, even if He were not endowed with divine healing powers, would have affected the sick people positively in psychological terms, given the enormous reputation for miraculous performances that preceded Jesus to wherever He went to preach. Many of the latter-day evangelists who preach " in Jesus' name", are in fact religious mercenaries, some of whom are themselves, either psychotic, borderline maniacs, or drugged "false prophets". Some believe that 'it is better to be feared than to be loved' and resort to what amounts to religious terrorism in order to exercise power over the communities in which they live. Witchcraft has long formed part of Ghanaian mythology, and to the ulearned, the mention of demons in the Bible translates only too easily into a confirmation of the existence of "witches" among communities today. So, a Ghanaian marriage breaks down, due probably to infidelity or pecuniary hardship and the old lady in the household is held responsible. A young, unemployed man becomes listless and shows signs of depression: an old lady wants to kill him spiritually and consume him, with her coven of witches. A lorry driver gets drunk and crashes his vehicle: an old lady shone a torch into his eyes and blinded him and his vehicle ended up in a ditch. Even simple, mundane problems like pupils failing exams, or crops withering away due to drought, or an inability to save money due to reckless spending, are laid at the door of the ubiquitous "witch." Hence, large swathes of Ghanaian society fatalistically absolve themselves of personal responsibility in almost all things, and, armed with both traditional superstitions and the modern equivalent preached by some of the churches that specialise in demon expulsion, can easily embark on acts of brutality against helpless scapegoats, such as the old lady who was executed in public at Tema. Evidence in support of my assertion that this is a nationwide phenomenon in Ghana is provided by another report in the Daily Graphic. This report reads: "The Chairman of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has observed that the existence of witch camps in the country offends Chapter Five of the 1992 Constitution. Mr Laary Bimi, considered the practice as discriminatory against women and [said it was] inhuman and prevented the victims from enjoying their rights as humans. as enshrined in the Constitution. He wondered why there were supposed to be [male] wizards too but only women were made to endure the ordeal at the witches' camps, where they are kept against their will. "Mr Bimi was speaking at a day's workshop organised by the NCCE in Accra to disseminate findings of a study conducted by the Research Department of the Commission on: "Witchcraft and Human Rights of Women in Ghana: Case Study of Witches' Villages in Northern Ghana". Witchcraft is considered a universal and historical phenomenon, which continues to attract a lot of interest. Suspected witches are regarded as evil and harmful and because of that, people suspected to possess such powers are sometimes killed, maltreated or banished from the communities in which they live. "Against that background, Mr Bimi challenged Ghanaians to abide by the tenets of the constitution in a holistic manner if they wanted to be counted among the democratic people of the world. The study was conducted in three witches camps in the Northern Region, namely the Gambaga Camp* in the East Mamprusi District, Tindanzie Camp in the Gushiegu District and the Tindang Camp in the Yendi District. Presenting a paper on the "Objective, Methodology and Socio-demographic characteristics of Respondents", Mrs Janet Sarney-Kumah said the 1992 Constitution established that citizens were entitled to certain rights and freedoms, which include equality before the law, freedom from torture, cruelty and inhuman treatment, and human dignity. Mrs Sarney-Kumah indicated that most of the alleged witches interviewed were very old people and said old age was a factor influencing an individual's likelihood of being accused of witchcraft. "She, however, indicated that 7.1 per cent of the people interviewed [in the study] openly admitted possessing witchcraft. "Mr Derek Gyamfi Yeboah, who presented a paper on "Witchcraft acquisition and conditions at the camps", said 38 per cent of the respondents indicated that witchcraft was acquired through gifts obtained from persons who were already possessed. In addition, 49 per cent stated that people acquired it through family lineage, either by inheriting it from a dying relative or handed over to them by other family members. "Speaking on "Freedom of association, integration and conclusion", Mrs Praise Mensah said since the constitution guaranteed freedom of association for every citizen, the alleged witches, irrespective of their conditions, had the right to participate in every lawful social activity of their choice in the community. In her welcoming address, the Director of Research at the NCCE, Mrs Getrude Zakaria-Ali, commended the personnel for a good work done and said with the findings, the Commission was better equipped to embark on an effective civic education, which the constitution mandates it to do." http://www.Graphic.com.gh /news/page.php?news=10369 *In the UK, meanwhile, The Witches of Gambaga, a film co-produced and directed by a Ghanaian-British film-maker, Yaba Badoe, has won the 2010 Black International Film Festival Best Documentary Award. According to its Synopsis, "The Witches of Gambaga' is a haunting 55-minute documentary film about a community of women condemned to live as witches in Northern Ghana. Made over the course of 5 years, this disturbing expose is the product of a collaboration between members of the 100 strong community of 'witches', local women's movement activists and feminist researchers, united by their interest in ending abusive practices and improving women's lives in Africa. Painful experience and insight combine to generate a uniquely intimate record of the lives of women ostracized from their communities. Told largely by the women themselves, their incredible stories and struggles are rendered comprehensible to a wide range of audiences by the director's narration. It was completed in August 2010 by Fadoa Films Ghana and UK. It was directed by Yaba Badoe, and co-produced by Yaba Badoe and Amina Mama. REVIEWS of The Witches of Gambaga "A very good watch, beautifully made" Ingrid Falck, Al Jazeera "I was gripped from beginning to end" Suzy Gillet, London Film School "A brave and brilliant production" Hope for the African Village Child Trust "Thank you for living up to our expectations." Netright, Ghana "will go a long way to promote the rights of women" African Women's Development Fund " .. a shocking, extraordinary film.." Michael Eaton, screenwriter " the unacceptable and abusive treatment of women as witches is exposed" ABANTU FOR DEVELOPMENT Below is a link to the trailer of the film of Youtube The Director of the film, ABA BADOE, is a Ghanaian-British documentary film-maker and writer. A graduate of King's College, Cambridge, she worked as a civil servant in Ghana before becoming a General Trainee with the BBC. She has taught in Spain and Jamaica and has worked as a producer and director making documentaries for the main terrestrial channels in Britain. In 2009, her first novel, 'True Murder', was published by Jonathan Cape. Her TV credits include: 'Black and White', a ground-breaking investigation into race and racism in Bristol, using hidden video cameras for BBC1; 'I Want Your Sex', for Channel 4, and a six-part series, 'VSO', for ITV. For further information contact Yaba by e-mail or on +44-(0)208 675 5978 I have no evdience that The Witches of Gambaga has, in fact, ever been shown in Ghana, and if so, what the reaction to it was. The lackadasical, almost schizophrenic attitude to false prophets by the media, and the media's unconcern about some incidents of brutality against witches -- with a few very good eceptions -- must take its share of the blame for the continued inability of the authorities to stamp out barbaric practices, such as are discuseed in this article. NEARLY 100 years ago, the General Assembly named Virginias portion of U.S. 1 in honor of Jefferson Davis, the failed Confederacys only president. The naming came as part of the Lost Cause veneration that swept the South around the turn of the 20th century, with the United Daughters of the Confederacy leading the charge for the designation. That was then. This is now. We repeat our call that its time to give the highway a uniform designation across Virginia. The divisive name of Jefferson Davis needs to be dropped. The recent protests over systemic racism and police brutality have forced Richmond to confront its Confederate past. Since protests began in late May after the horrific murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, nearly all of Richmonds Confederate monuments are gone, toppled by protestersincluding the Monument Avenue statue of Davisor removed by the city. Counties and cities across the stateand nationare similarly taking down Confederate icons or eliminating these anachronistic names from such places as schools, buildings and parks. Jefferson Davis Highway must top the list. Sama al-Diwani and her college sweetheart had big dreams. Her boyfriend, Athir Assem, was planning to open a business in Iraq. She was preparing to go to England, where she would spend a year in training so that she could work as a pharmacist. After that, they would reunite, get married and start a family. Those dreams came to a stop with the coronavirus health crisis. Al-Diwani's university education is now on hold. Her familys earnings have gone down by 40% and she worries about losing her job at a local pharmacy. Assem has delayed plans for launching his business. He wanted to sell baked goods. Al-Diwani, 24, and Assem, 26, are among millions of young people whose plans for work, education, and marriage have been changed by the pandemic. Such unrest is common in many areas, but the sense of hopelessness is a big concern in the Middle East. There, war, displacement and disease have left a generation feeling helpless and bitter. In Western countries, many unemployed workers believe they will get their jobs back or somehow recover from the recession. But in some Arab countries, the pandemic seems like the final blow to economies that are now close to collapse. Before the pandemic, in 2019, youth unemployment in the Arab world was estimated at 26.4%, compared to a rate of 13.6 percent worldwide. Those estimates come from the International Labor Organization. This week, a United Nations report predicted that some Arab economies could shrink by up to 13% this year. Another 14.3 million people are expected to go into poverty, raising the total number to 115 million. That would represent about one-fourth of the total Arab population. Tariq Haq is a Beirut-based senior employment specialist with the U.N. labor agency. For many young people, seeing economies crumble the way that they are and seeing their prospects vanish before their eyes ... its undoubtedly going to be taking a huge toll on mental health and well-being, Haq said. Across Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, serious economic problems threaten to push the area into extreme poverty and unrest. Lebanon and Syrias currencies have crashed. In Iraq, where more than 60% of the population is under 25, a large drop in earnings from oil sales hurt the countrys budget. Millions of young people are looking to leave the Middle East. Before the cornoavirus spread around the world, al-Diwani had begun preparing her paperwork and request for a visa. It was my dream to finish studying and get married to the man I love, al-Diwani said. Then the coronavirus hit. The university suspended her acceptance as a student. She worries about losing her place and never feeling safe enough to travel again. Assem estimates his losses from delays in the bakery project, which was supposed to open in May, at around $10,000. Working at the pharmacy in Baghdads Karrada district, al-Diwani meets people suspected of being infected with the virus every day. She returns home frightened and worried that she might be carrying the infection back to her family. Corona destroyed me and my dreams and future in a very unexpected way, she said. Now the future is unknown, and I cannot think how we can come back from this. Im John Russell. Zeina Karam and Qassim Abdul-Zahra reported this story for The Associated Press. John Russell adapted the report for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story pharmacist n. someone trained to prepare doctors orders of medicines, administer vaccines, and advise patients on the use of drugs bake v. to cook by dry heat pandemic n. an infectious disease that spreads across a large area crumble v. to fall apart prospect n. the possibility that something will happen in the future vanish v. to stop existing toll n. to have a serious, bad effect on someone or something; to cause harm or damage currency n. a system of money in general use in a country or area The weekend in Hungary was, despite the result, a painful realisation for Red Bull Racing. On Saturday Max Verstappen didn't get further than seventh place. According to the Dutchman, the RB16 is a lot better this weekend. To close the big gap with Mercedes, Red Bull Racing will have to come up with some radical changes. In Hungary, it only turned out that the team went in the wrong direction. To make sure there isn't more damage, Red Bull has had to work hard in the off-week. According to Max Verstappen, the work undoubtedly had results. "Compared to Hungary the car is for sure better. Hungary was not really good. Of course, there are still things that need to be improved and we are working on it, but I think its now just purely working on balance as well, yeah, finding more performance in that. We do understand where its coming from; now its just time, of course, to put different parts onto the car and make it faster", the Dutchman explained at the FIA press conference. Gap to Mercedes too big? Although Verstappen sees possibilities to make the RB16 faster, according to the driver it is very difficult to close the gap with Mercedes. "The problem is that the gap is so big to the guys ahead that it will be very hard to close so yeah, I believe the guys are working flat out of course to improve the car, so Im confident they can do that but of course also the others are not standing still so yeah, we have a lot of hard work in front of us but lets see what we can do", Verstappen concludes. The mother of a 1-year-old boy alleged to have been severely beaten has been charged by the Wayne County Prosecutors Office. Lisa Marie Reed, 34, of Ecorse, has been charged with first-degree child abuse for the injuries to Zion Michael Reed, 13 months. His twin brother, Zyaire Reed, showed signs of severe abuse and died on July 8. Both injured babies were brought to the hospital that day. Reed was arraigned Thursday in 25th District Court. The charge is a felony punishable by up to life in prison if convicted. The prosecutors office alleges that Reed physically abused Zion, who is fighting to recover from his injuries at Childrens Hospital in Detroit. Reeds live-in boyfriend is in police custody, but has not been charged. He remains under investigation as the abuse case continues. He is not the father of the twins. Several Ecorse police officers are grappling to deal with the level of alleged abuse that appears to have taken place inside a residence at Renaissance Estates of Ecorse. So are some of the mothers family members who say they are in complete disbelief that Reed would do anything to harm her children. A relative said the entire ordeal is a family nightmare. Were doing horrible, just horrible, the family member said. This is a total shock. They just had a wonderful birthday party for them. It was at that birthday party a neighbor caught a glimpse that something was amiss. According to the relative, the neighbor saw Reeds boyfriend place one of the babies inside a car in such a way it sparked concern and the neighbor bought it to the familys attention. This was the first time the relative met Reeds boyfriend and she said he put on a convincing show, even wearing matching shirts with the family. No one, the relative said, can believe Reed would put a man over her children. Although it appears they didnt know each other long, the relative said the two had exchanged promise rings and considered themselves engaged. Ecorse police Inspector Tim Sassak said when officers arrived at the residence, Zyaire was on the hood of a vehicle unresponsive and the other baby was inside the residence. He said Zyaire was rushed to Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital and Reed and her live-in boyfriend followed. While at the hospital, Sassak said a physician explained the nature of the injuries done to Zyaire, who was pronounced dead upon arrival. Sassak began questioning Reed and the babys grandmother in an isolation room. I got a tap on the shoulder and was told her other child is here now, the inspector said. Then the boyfriend hops in the car and takes off. Sassak said the baby, Zion, was screaming. He wasnt screaming because he was hungry, he was in pain, Sassak said. He has the exact same injuries as the other child. Thats too much of a coincidence to ignore. Both children had severe injuries to the lips, ears and broken blood vessels in the eyes. The inspector said Zion has a broken left femur. Its not fractured, its broken, he stressed. He said Zion also has two broken clavicle bones. It also has been reported that Zion suffered a broken nose, hip and has some bleeding on the brain. Police said the injuries to the boys appear to be both old and new. Reed, who police said was crying and quite emotional over the death of her child, was immediately taken into custody inside the hospital once police learned of the extent of the injuries to the twins. While some officers went to the hospital, others remained at the residence to investigate. Reed has four children, but only had custody of the twins. Sassak said the bedding for the twins was bloody and the house was a mess. An immediate search was launched to locate Reeds boyfriend. The Wayne County Violent Crime Reduction Task Force proved to be instrumental in locating the man. They broke down every lead, Sassak said. They tracked him to River Rouge and to his dads house in Romulus. He was calling people saying hes not going back to jail. They found him in Sumpter Township at his uncles house. He had been getting dropped off by members of his family. Police were about an hour and a half behind him every step of the way until they were able to close the gap. When asked how they pinpointed his movements, Sassak didnt venture to guess. They do what they do, he said, impressed with the work that went into locating the man. They were like dogs with bones. The Michigan Department of Corrections also became active, noting the man is in violation of his parole. Tears were in the relatives eyes from beginning to end of the conversation talking about the children. I cant wrap my head around this, the relative said taking a moment to gain composure. I would not stick up for her and she should be in jail if this was the case. But, I know Lisa and she wouldnt hurt anyone. The relative said the family hears most information from the media. They have not been able to talk to Reed, which has increased their anxiety. According to police, the boyfriend has at least five outstanding warrants out of Traverse City, including one for alleged child abuse. The relative said they knew he was involved in a carjacking incident, but knew little else about him. Ricky Tanner, the twins uncle, took to social media following Zyaires death after receiving a flood of condolence messages. Today has been one of the most heartbreaking days of my life, he posted on his Facebook account. We lost a beautiful baby Zyaire today and still need prayers for his brother, Zion. He needs lots of prayers. Sassak said one child had a broken femur bone, located within the human thigh. It is both the longest and the strongest bone in the human body, extending from the hip to the knee. Tanner thanked the Ecorse Police Department and River Rouge Police Department in their efforts to investigate the case. Sassak said this case is like many others, saying when something goes terribly wrong, people come out of the woodwork who knew something was wrong, but didnt say anything. The inspector said at least one relative saw signs of possible abuse. Ecorse woman flags down police after husband allegedly fires shot at her, kicks puppy in mouth Police track down, arrest man after alleged domestic assault; threats to use AK-47 on officers Generator found in middle of West Road in Woodhaven by DPS crew; employees wait for owner SummerStage Family Day features marionettes and more Wyandotte Roosevelts Abbey Simpson signs on to row at Eastern Michigan University Explosion at R.J. Marshall in Rockwood called largest in fire chiefs memory; 50 firefighters respond Army jawan killed Jammu: An Indian Army jawan was killed when Pakistan opened heavy fire on forward posts along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district on Saturday. He said the Pakistan Army violated the ceasefire agreement by opening fire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri sector. Advertisement Photo"Indian troops responded strongly to the enemy fire," the spokesperson said. In the incident, Sepoy Rohin Kumar was critically injured and he later succumbed to his injuries, he added. He said that the nation will always remain indebted to him for his supreme sacrifice and devotion to duty. Sarah Letendre is spending her time trying to piece together a brand-new life for herself and her two small children. Technically she is homeless, living alone in a hotel, trying to find a job with her masters degree in social work and a permanent place to live. Her days as a nurturing stay-at-home mom are over. On the evening of July 10, Sarah, 34, and her police officer husband Ronald, 46, were involved in a domestic dispute at their home in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. Ronald, who is an officer at the neighboring Dover Police Department, placed a call asking for a welfare check on his wife. Responding officers were told by their fellow cop that during a discussion about a possible divorce Sarah became the aggressor and she needed a psychiatric evaluation. Officer Letendre, a former mixed martial arts fighter who outweighs his wife by 100 pounds, alleged that Sarah bit and scratched him and was on drugs. She said he had thrown her down, placed a knee on her neck and violently thrust his elbow into her ribcage. Sarah was arrested, and officers took her to Wentworth-Douglas Hospital for that psychological evaluation. Documents show she received a diagnosis of closed fracture of multiple ribs of left side. Doctors apparently saw no need for a psych evaluation, and her discharge papers make no mention of illegal drug use. Along with her arrest came an automatic no contact order, meaning she needed to steer clear of her husband who had quickly petitioned for custody of their sleeping children. Sarahs sister, Jessica Newman, told me the arresting officers drove Sarah home in the middle of the night and left her in the parking lot wearing only a tank top and shorts, no shoes. When Sarah went inside to get shoes, her purse and phone so she could drive to a friends house, her husband called police to report the no contact violation. The same Rollinsford police officers responded, and as they tried to get her out of the car to take her into custody, a frightened Sarah, nursing four fractured ribs, sped away, outside their jurisdiction. Once she got a lawyer, Sarah voluntarily turned herself in and has now documented what she says were incidents of domestic abuse going back more than two years. Now Sarah is only allowed to briefly see her kids a few times a week and only after submitting to drug testing, which her sister says is totally unnecessary. A custody hearing is set for the end of August. Three weeks into her ordeal Sarah wrote on Facebook: My husband broke 4 of my ribs and used his power and knowledge as a police officer to have my children taken away from me, and brand me as a drug addict and prostitute. Apparently, saying those things means what he did to me was justified in some way. Im sure there is more to this she-said/he-said story, but officer Letendre is not available to comment. He is on paid leave. Neither the Dover nor Rollinsford police departments have issued statements past their initial announcement of internal investigations. Sarahs sister told me the Letendres children, 5 and 2 years old, have asked their mother heart-wrenching questions like, Why did you leave? and Why cant we all go home? How does a mother explain to kids that daddy has a gun and mommy is afraid of him? This is just one story about domestic violence inside a police officers home. How often it happens isnt known because no agency keeps track. Dubious studies from 20 years ago concluded that 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence compared to 10% of civilian families. A more recent 2016 study simply concluded that officer-involved domestic violence is a high percentage national problem, made worse because of cops code of silence, improper investigations by police, and less than diligent prosecutors who may need to rely on offending officers for other cases. In Sarahs case, she faces criminal charges. Her husband faces none, according to the prosecutor in charge of the investigation. Not so far anyway. Domestic violence in this era of pandemic and civil unrest is increasing in every type of household. We have every reason to believe cases of officer-involved domestic violence are on the rise, too. Every police chief in the country needs to take notice and warn officers that covering up such violence is just as bad as committing it. www.DianeDimond.com; email to Diane@DianeDimond.com. Isaias weakened to a tropical storm Saturday night as it approached the southeast coast of Florida, and forecasters say it will likely maintain that strength as it continues its track along the coastline of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. In an advisory released early Sunday morning, the National Hurricane Center said the center of Isaias will move near or over the east coast of Florida through late Sunday night. On Monday and Tuesday, the storm's center will move from offshore of the coast of Georgia into the southern mid-Atlantic states. The center's earlier hurricane warning along the east coast of Florida was replaced with a tropical storm warning. However, the tropical storm warning has been extended northward along the southeast United States coast into South Carolina. The Hurricane Center also warned of a possible dangerous storm surge along the Florida east coast from Jupiter Inlet to Ponte Vedra Beach, where water could rise as much as 4 feet above ground level. The storm is predicted to slowly weaken starting Sunday night and through Monday. As it tracks north, it is also expected to pick up speed. Hurricane Isais approaches the east coast of Florida Aug. 1, 2020. At 5 a.m. ET, the storm was centered about 45 miles east-southeast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, moving northwest at 9 mph with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. Expected rainfall from Isaias, from Friday night through Tuesday in South and east central Florida, could be 2 to 4 inches, with isolated totals of 6 inches, the Hurricane Center said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in every coastal county of Floridas Atlantic Coast, stretching from Miami-Dade to Nassau counties, on Friday in preparation for the storm. DeSantis warned Saturday that Isaias will probably strengthen back into a hurricane while moving north along Floridas east coast. "Dont be fooled by the downgrade," the governor said at an evening briefing at the states Emergency Operations Center. We do think itll be upgraded back to a hurricane later this evening. Story continues He said utility companies have alerted thousands of repair workers to restore power lines after the storm. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the state has equipped shelters all along the coast with protective equipment, should evacuation of hospitals or nursing homes become necessary. Hurricane Isaias: How did the storm get its name, and how do you pronounce it DeSantis has urged people to have seven days of food, water and medication on hand and said state-run coronavirus testing sites in the areas where the storm could hit would be closed. Red no swimming flags fly at Lantana Municipal Beach as Isaias approaches the Florida coast Saturday. Isaias to reach Carolinas on Monday likely as a tropical storm In South Carolina, forecasters said Isaias would likely arrive as a tropical storm, with winds battering the state Monday and Monday night. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he did not plan to call an mandatory evacuation ahead of the storm. Weve been through these before, as you know, so were fully prepared, McMaster said. Were hoping this storm will not hit us hard, if it hits at all. Authorities in North Carolina ordered the evacuation of Ocracoke Island, which was slammed by last years Hurricane Dorian, starting Saturday evening. As hurricane Isaias gathered strength in the Caribbean, it snapped trees and knocked out power in the Bahamas on Saturday. Meanwhile, Miami officials closed beaches, marines and parks as Isaias churned its way through the Bahamas. Contributing: Associated Press This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Isaias tracks toward North Carolina after Bahamas, Florida Teachable Moments From Shut Down Help Schools Reopen Teachers, districts take lessons from spring to apply them to remote learning in the fall KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Mitch Cloud thinks he has the best job in the world. "This is like the best job ever! I love this job," he said. Cloud is a counselor at Fairview Elementary School in Olathe. He works with students in grades pre-k through fifth in individual, small group and classroom settings. Lesson In Leaving Kansas City Kansas Public Schools Superintendent Foust leaves for job in North Carolina KANSAS CITY, Kan. - As Kansas City Kansas Public Schools teachers and administrators continue to develop a plan for the upcoming school year, they'll be doing so while looking for a new superintendent. Dr. Charles Foust is leaving the district for the same job in New Hanover County, North Carolina. COVID Keeps KC Bushy COVID-19 impacts parks staff and operations The Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department is feeling the impact of COVID-19. With parks being utilized at an unprecedented rate, crews are struggling to keep up with maintenance and trash. Several staff have been impacted directly by COVID-19, and some have had to self-quarantine for various reasons, according to the department. Kansas City Watches Channel 9 KMBC 9 News at 5:00 P.M. and 6:00 P.M. are Kansas City's Most Watched Local Newscasts in July At the close of the July ratings period, KMBC 9 News at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. are Kansas City's two most watched local newscasts. KMBC 9 News at 6:00 finished the month #1 (M-F) in total viewers, with KMBC 9 News at 5:00 finishing second. Today's Lesson In Espanol Hermosura! Demi Rose saca su lado mexicano y se pone su sombrero de charro Ibiza, Espana.- La modelo britanica, Demi Rose, por medio de su cuenta de Instagram compartio un llamativo video en el cual se le pudo ver presumiendo de un colorido sobrero charro ante la camara. En el clip se aprecia a la celebridad acompanada de sus amigas coreando una cancion, mientras bailan frente al espejo, llamando la atencion de usuarios. Actually, Social Media Was Incredibly Slow To Boot Hater It Only Took Twitter 11 Years to Ban Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke The 70-year-old white supremacist had over 53,000 followers on Twitter as of Thursday. Ayatollah About Double Standards Via Social Media State Department envoy on Twitter's hypocrisy on Trump and Iran leader: It's 'clear' their actions are politically-motivated It is "clear" that Twitter's hypocritical censorship of President Trump -- and not of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- is about the upcoming presidential election in November, State Department deputy envoy Ellie Cohanim stated Friday. Split The Difference Trump praises Jim Jordan and Anthony Fauci after they clashed during coronavirus hearing WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump praised Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, after the two clashed at a congressional hearing Friday over preventing the spread of COVID-19. "Great job by Jim Jordan, and also some very good statements by Tony Fauci. Big progress being made!" War Aound World Cont'd Pakistan artillery kills 15 civilians in Afghanistan, Kabul says, after border clashes KABUL/QUETTA, Pakistan - Cross-border artillery fire by Pakistan killed at least 15 civilians in Afghanistan on Thursday, Afghan officials said, prompting Kabul to put its ground and air forces on alert. The artillery fire came after clashes between Pakistani and Afghan security forces at the closed Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossing, where crowds on both sides were waiting to cross for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Desperate Boozehounds Suffer Tragic Demise Amid Coronavirus Shortages Ten dead after drinking sanitiser in Indian state At least 10 people have died after drinking alcohol-based sanitiser after liquor shops were closed in a village in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The village of Kurichedu has been placed in lockdown after a local surge in cases of coronavirus. Kansas City Bartender Remembered Beloved local bartender Christopher "C-Wash" Washington passes away unexpectedly The Drunken Worm crew; C-Wash on the right. // Courtesy Krown Concepts. The 39th Street community is reeling today at the news that beloved local bartender and genuinely wonderful human being Christopher Washington, 32, has passed away. The Kansas City staple was well known for his delightful demeanor and his skills as one of the mad scientists behind The Drunken... Weekend Outlook August will start off with comfortable temps Hide Transcript Show Transcript FARTHER WEST TOWARD TOPEKA. MOSTLY CLEAR SKIES LATER ON TONIGHT. TEMPERATURES FALL THROUGH THE 70'S. AT 9:00, 74 DEGREES. LOWER HUMIDITY, NOT MUCH WIND. 60'S IN THE MORNING. 76 BY NOON. COOL FOR AUGUST ON YOUR SATURDAY. HIGH TEMPERATURES, WE ARE PUTTING THEM IN THE 80'S. Hottieinspires this peek at pop culture, community news and info from across the nation and around the world . . .And this is thefor right now . . . One of the biggest milestones in Indias quest for becoming a Digital-First Nation has been the introduction of unified payments interface (UPI). Having said that, the digital payments service still has a long way to go. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about the growth and gaps in Indias digital economy in a recent address to leaders of the US-India Business Council. India has about 500 million active internet users, with another 500 million that are yet to come online. This means that the efforts in doubling the size of Digital India requires bridging this divide and expanding access to the tools and platforms that power Indias digital economy today. It is noteworthy that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) recently put a cap on unified payments interface (UPI) transactions for digital payments players like Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and others. Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp recently wrote in an article on Financial Express More than four years ago, Prime Minister Modi launched this ground-breaking initiative to provide Indian citizens with the ability to make digital payments to one another and to the more than 60 million Indian small businesses that serve local communities and the world. Talking about the UPI integration with WhatsApp, Cathcart believes in doing so we can help power a new wave of fintech innovation and financial inclusion. The platform also has the ability to back up a broader suite of fintech applications like micro-pensions, digital insurance products, and flexible loans, something that might be seen on WhatsApp in the near future. Such custom solutions by Indian technology companies based on the UPI platform have the ability to solve large social, business and financial problems in India and then become templates for other countries to deploy. Rapidly scaling UPI is the need of the hour and one of the best ways to strengthen Indias digital economy added Cathcart. He also says that the UPI project has proven to be wildly successful in just four years managing a 100 million-strong user base ever since the launch. Gov. Eric Holcomb often brags about the Indiana Womens Prison. Last year, Holcomb showed the prison off to Ivanka Trump. Hes mentioned the prison in his state of the state address and posted videos to his Facebook page. I wanted to be at your graduation because of what it symbolizes for you and your families and for the state of Indiana, he said at the 2018 graduation ceremony for The Last Mile, a program that teaches inmates how to code. Were all in this together. But critics say such statements are insincere, given the current situation with prisoners confined to their cells for long stretches amid the grueling summer heat. Some employees at the prison worry prisoners could die if conditions persist. State Sen. J.D. Ford, D-Indianapolis, whose district includes the prison, says, Its kind of offensive that Gov. Holcomb swings through and does a photo op, but when we are reaching back to him asking for help, we have not gotten it. Since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as Side Effects previously reported, many women in the prison have been locked in their cells with few opportunities for relief. In units known as the cottages, prisoners and advocates say the conditions are anything but quaint: The rooms lack toilets and running water, and each houses two to four inmates, who report stifling temperatures much hotter than outside. Bathroom breaks come at the availability of correctional officers, who are each responsible for guarding dozens of women and must unlock each cell door individually. Some inmates have had accidents in their cells because of long wait times or stuck doors, so many stay dehydrated. Some have even stopped taking certain medications that may cause their bodies to produce more urine. The manual locks have also raised fire safety issues the women worry theyll be left for dead before an officer or first responders can get them out. This is a ticking time bomb, says one prison employee, who talked with Side Effects on the condition of anonymity because they didnt have permission to speak to the media. I think its just a matter of time until something really bad happens. The employee says the measures have been particularly harsh for new inmates, who are quarantined upon their arrival and have spent more time locked in their cells. They also said that some correctional officers respond slowly, if at all, to potential medical problems. Maybe youve gotten lucky so far, but one of these days, youre gonna open that door and somebodys gonna be dead, the employee says. Another prison staffer echoes those concerns, and notes an increase in medical incidents, particularly in the unit housing newer inmates. Emails shared with Side Effects show officers have encountered multiple inmates who appeared to be experiencing seizures. Both employees say officers are not medical professionals, so its unclear whether the incidents are seizures or some other health issue, possibly heat-related. The prison has passed out heat-related illness paperwork, and cell doors are opened when the outdoor heat index rises above 91 degrees. I do think thats helped, says the second staffer. But I still dont think its really where we need to be. I dont think its safe there yet. A spokesman for the Indiana Department of Correction wrote that water is available to the women and they are regularly encouraged to stay hydrated. The women have opportunities throughout the day to be out of their cell rooms and have access to restroom facilities. He noted that women have recently been allowed out of their cells for two hours each morning and evening, as well as for educational classes, work assignments and other programming. The prison has also installed air conditioning units for the cottage dayrooms. The first prison employee says that while A/C may make correctional officers more comfortable, it does little to improve conditions in the cells, which lack ventilation apart from small window openings, some of which do not open. The employees say that not everyone is able to participate in programs or work, and that four hours out of their rooms still means theyre in their cells for 20 hours. Ford has called on Holcomb to address the concerns in the prison, but has not heard what action, if any, the governor plans to take. The governors office declined to comment for this story, and referred Side Effects to the Department of Corrections response. Ford says that the department has barred him from personally inspecting the womens facility and cancelled a July 16 tour of the Westville Correctional Facility after he mentioned that a Side Effects reporter would join. The department spokesperson says that the changes were unrelated to media presence, and that officials grew concerned about the visits because of the potential to spread the coronavirus to the prisons. Kelsey Kauffman, who started an education program at the prison before retiring in 2017, has referred to conditions at the prison as torture. She points out that manual locks at the prison have been a source of fire safety concerns since the 1960s. There is a sense of deja vu, she says. Its the exact same arguments all over again. I cant imagine [then-Gov. Matthew Welsh] allowing it, said state fire marshal Ira Anderson, according to a 1963 article in the Indianapolis Star. Although the cottages have since been rebuilt, the doors still have to be unlocked manually. A recent inspection from the fire marshal found no fire code violations. Kauffman and others point out that the code referenced dates back to 1969, when the current cottages were constructed. An inmate at the prison reported that cell doors were opened during the recent inspection. Because of the pandemic, no fire drills have been conducted since before the lockdown, according to the state fire marshal. Its kind of hard for us to believe that a fire marshal could look at things here and say, Everything is fine. Were definitely perplexed by that, says the employee, adding that one officer would never be able to unlock all the doors if a fire broke out. I dont think so theyre going to run out of there. The department has said that the lockdown measures are appropriate for a maximum security facility. But Kauffman argues that the cottages at the womens prison are different from other maximum security facilities the cells were built without toilets or water so locking inmates in is, in effect, punitive. She says the justification is flawed, and that the department should reclassify the cottages as medium security. State Rep. Karlee Macer, D-Indianapolis, who also represents the prisons district, agrees that the lockdown appears punitive. We are supposed to be rehabilitating people, and this is not rehabilitation, she says. Macer says that female inmates have limited supplies of feminine hygiene products, further necessitating regular bathroom access while they menstruate. This is something that is used to humiliate women, she says. If you want to destroy a human being, this is a good way to do it. This story was produced by Side Effects Public Media, a news collaborative covering public health. Jake Harper can be reached at jharper@wfyi.org. Hes on Twitter @jkhrpr. The All Progressives Congress, APC, Campaign Organisation for the Edo State governorship election, has described the state Governor, God... The All Progressives Congress, APC, Campaign Organisation for the Edo State governorship election, has described the state Governor, Godwin Obaseki, as a confused man merely projecting the criminal plans his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are perfecting. The APC campaign said it was dawning realization for the PDP that they have been rejected by the people of Edo State. The APC said that it is the only party campaigning on its documented manifesto because of it sole strategy to win the election is by winning the hearts and goodwill of the people through well-thought-out programs and policies that will bring relief and erase the failures of the past four years. This was contained in a statement signed and made available by Prince John Mayaki, Chairman, Edo State APC Media Campaign Council Despite spending four years in office, Obaseki has neither achievements nor plans to show, the statement added. He is campaigning largely on empty rhetorics, revisionism, and shameful blackmail and propaganda. Election may be weeks away but the truth has finally dawned on Obaseki. He is on his way to a sound, comprehensive defeat so like all failures, he is already preparing the grounds for his defeat with false, ridiculous accusations. He is also trying to deflect attention while himself and his party, already renowned for violence, continue to ferry thugs and cultists into the State to rig the election. But he will be resisted. Together with our people, we are going to keep watch and ensure the votes to return Obaseki to where he came from are protected and made to count. While sales of compact cars, including models such as Swift, Celerio, Ignis, Baleno and Dzire declined, sales of utility vehicles, including Vitara Brezza, S-Cross and Ertiga, increased 26.3 per cent to 19,177 units as compared to 15,178 in the year-ago month. The country's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India on Saturday reported a 1.3 per cent increase in domestic passenger vehicle sales in July while that of the second biggest maker Hyundai Motor India fell by just 2 per cent, signalling recovery in the sector hit hard by COVID-19. Other manufacturers, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) and Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) reported huge declines in their domestic sales during the month. Maruti Suzuki India said its domestic sales in July stood at 101,307 units as against 100,006 units in July 2019 with sales of mini cars comprising Alto and S-Presso jumping 49.1 per cent to 17,258 units compared to 11,577 units in the same month last year. The company further said its sales of compact cars, including models such as Swift, Celerio, Ignis, Baleno and Dzire, however, declined by 10.4 per cent to 51,529 units as against 57,512 cars in July last year. On the other hand, sales of utility vehicles, including Vitara Brezza, S-Cross and Ertiga, increased 26.3 per cent to 19,177 units as compared to 15,178 in the year-ago month. MSI's total sales were down 1.1 per cent at 108,064 units in July as compared to 1,09,264 units in the same month last year. Rival Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) saw its domestic sales at 38,200 units last month as against 39,010 units in July 2019, down by 2 per cent. Its total sales were down 28 per cent at 41,300 units as against 57,310 units in the same month last year. Commenting on the sales performance, HMIL director (sales, marketing & service) Tarun Garg said the company has been able to contribute towards triggering the country's economic revival. "With the changing trend of preference for personal mobility, our consistent efforts are towards fulfilling the customer needs and meeting the market demand," he said. M&M reported a 35 per cent decline in domestic sales at 24,211 units last month compared to 37,474 units in July 2019. Its total sales were down 36 per cent at 25,678 units as against 40,142 units in the same month last year. "At Mahindra, we are happy to see a growing trend in our overall vehicle sales, buoyed by the continuing revival in demand, primarily in rural and semi urban India," M&M Ltd chief executive officer, automotive division Veejay Ram Nakra said. It is encouraging to see that the enquiry and booking levels in July are significantly higher compared to June, both for utility vehicles and small commercial vehicles, he added. "As we ramp up production, the biggest challenge is on the supply side and working around these challenges is our top priority," Nakra said. Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) reported a 48.32 per cent decline in domestic vehicle sales to 5,386 units in July compared to 10,423 units in the same month last year. "Despite various challenges, the month of July witnessed better sales in terms of both retail and wholesale when compared to June," TKM senior vice-president, sales and service, Naveen Soni said. In two-wheeler segment, Hero MotoCorp reported a 3.97 per cent dip in sales to 514,509 units as compared to 535,810 units sold in July 2019. Despite the prevailing economic slowdown on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company registered a sequential growth of 14 per cent over June and reached more than 95 per cent of wholesale dispatch numbers of the corresponding month in the previous year, the two-wheeler major said. "The robust volumes have been driven by strong retail sales due to the positive market demand," it added. Suzuki Motorcycle India Pvt Ltd (SMIPL), however, said its domestic sales were at 31,421 units last month, as against 62,366 units in July 2019, down 50 per cent. "With the unlock phase, the automobile industry is now marching towards normalcy in terms of production, distribution and sales while continuing to adhere to all the precautionary measures. From August 2020, we will try our best to achieve pre-COVID-19 production and sales volume," SMIPL managing director Koichiro Hirao said. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters People will have to keep wearing masks and follow social distancing protocols even after a vaccine against the coronavirus comes along, a top US vaccine developer has said. Maria Elena Bottazzi, the associate dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, has said in an interview that the vaccine will probably reduce but not completely eliminate the chance of an inoculated person contracting the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), caused by Sars-Cov-2. They automatically are going to say, Oh great, Im just going to get my little vaccine, and I can go back and do exactly the things I was doing last year. That is absolutely not true, Bottazzi said in the interview to Business Insider. More than 150 vaccine candidates in different stages of clinical trials across the world and 26 of them have reached the human trial phase. And out of these 26, five potential vaccines candidates have reached the Phase III or last stage of clinical trials. Under the last phase, thousands of volunteers from different age groups are being injected with the vaccine candidate to test its safety and efficacy. Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca are among the companies developing coronavirus vaccines that could be ready for emergency use soon. In India, two vaccine candidates are being tested on humans. Volunteers across the country are being administered the indigenous vaccine candidates against the coronavirus disease developed by Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) and Zydus Cadila. Bharat Biotech and Zydus were granted permission for Phase I and II clinical trials of Covaxin and ZyCoV-D respectively and the pharmaceutical companies have said the first doses of their vaccine candidates were administered to volunteers in July. A third vaccine candidate developed by Oxford University and backed by AstraZeneca Plc will soon be tested in India. Serum Institute of India is in a manufacturing partnership with the UKs AstraZeneca. The Pune-based Serum Institute has said it will be starting trials of the Oxford Universitys Covid-19 vaccine candidate by the end of August on up to 5,000 Indian volunteers after getting the necessary nods and launch it by June next year if all goes well. According to Moderna, it began a pivotal trial called a phase 3 study on Monday which will show how well its vaccine works. The other companies have said they plan to begin similar research within weeks. Bottazzi, the Texas-based scientist, said in the Business Insider interview that these first vaccines wont be a magic solution for the coronavirus pandemic that even if they are successful. The moment you get a vaccine doesnt mean youre going to put your mask in the trash, she said. That is not going to happen. I hope people dont think that is going to be the magic solution for all, she said. It all boils down to how effective these vaccines are going to be and Bottazzi said the first Covid-19 vaccines may reduce the disease but may not prevent infection. She said in the interview that she expects these vaccines are unlikely to be perfect. More than 17.5 million people have been infected by Sars-Cov-2 and 678,775 have died across the world, according to the coronavirus tracker of Johns Hopkins University. India, the third worst-hit country, has seen nearly 1.7 million infections and 36,511 fatalities till date. CARACAS, Venezuela Two American oil executives jailed in Venezuela have been released and granted house arrest in the South American nation, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said late Thursday. The two are among six Citgo executives detained more than two years ago while on a business trip to Caracas. The former governor recently visited Caracas on a humanitarian mission and met with President Nicolas Maduro to press for their release. This is a positive and important first step, Richardson said in a statement, adding his gratitude to Maduro for remaining engaged in the dialogue started earlier this month in a personal meeting. The two men released to house arrest are Gustavo Cardenas and Jorge Toledo, the governor said. Maduros government didnt immediately comment on the mens release. Maria Elena Cardenas, who lives near Houston, said she was relieved to learn of the transfer when her husband called Thursday night and said she was desperately looking for a place for him to sleep since the family no longer has a home in Caracas. Its such a relief to have him in a place where he can breathe fresh air coming through an open window, she said. The six men were called to Caracas just before Thanksgiving in 2017 for a meeting at the headquarters of Citgos parent, Venezuelas state-run oil giant PDVSA. They were hauled away from a meeting by masked security agents. Venezuelan authorities accuse the men of corruption stemming from an alleged plan to refinance some $4 billion in Citgo bonds by offering a 50% stake in the company as collateral. Prosecutors accuse the men of maneuvering to personally benefit from the proposed deal. All of the six men had been released to house arrest late last year before being taken back into custody two months later. Officials in June released a video of the men in jail after relatives appealed for international help in securing their release over fears about the mens health amid the coronavirus pandemic. Richardson, who heads a center that works to free jailed U.S. citizens around the world, made a brief visit to Venezuela earlier this month, saying as he left that he had been unable to secure their release despite talking with Maduro. The other four jailed Citgo executives are: Tomeu Vadell, Jose Luis Zambrano, Alirio Zambrano and Jose Pereira. Two other U.S. citizens jailed in Venezuela are former Green Berets Luke Denman and Airan Berry arrested in May while participating in a botched raid organized from neighboring Colombia to oust Maduro. Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Clinton presidency, has opened diplomatic back channels to several hostile governments, including Iran, Cuba and North Korea, to win the release of some 40 Americans. Washington and Caracas are locked in a tense relationship, with the Trump administration backing opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuelas legitimate president and leading a campaign of dozens of nations seeking to pressure Maduro out. They blame him for the once wealthy nations economic and social collapse. (Newser) As the Nov. 3 presidential vote nears, there are fresh signs that the nations electoral system is again under attack from foreign adversaries, the AP reports. Intelligence officials confirmed in recent days that foreign actors are actively seeking to compromise the private communications of "US political campaigns, candidates and other political targets" while working to compromise the nation's election infrastructure. Foreign entities are also aggressively spreading disinformation intended to sow voter confusion heading into the fall. There is no evidence that America's enemies have yet succeeded in penetrating campaigns or state election systems, but Democrat Joe Biden's presidential campaign confirmed this week that it has faced multiple related threats. story continues below Meanwhile, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a key Trump ally and chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, denied having accepted any damaging materials on Biden from foreign nationals after at least one Ukrainian national, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, told the Washington Post he had shared tapes and transcripts with Johnson's committee and Trump ally Rudy Giuliani. House Democrats announced Friday they have subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents he turned over to Johnson's panel. The 2020 campaigns and party committees have been receiving regular briefings from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, whose director released a rare public statement last week confirming Russia's continued work to meddle in the US election. (Read more Election 2020 stories.) U.S. President Donald Trump alleged again Friday that the November election could be rigged because of mail-in votes. Itll be fixed, itll be rigged, Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before traveling to Tampa, Florida. Without providing any evidence, the president said Russia and China could forge U.S. paper ballots and said, This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history. The comments come one day after Trump suggested delaying this years presidential election, alleging on Twitter that mailed ballots, which take longer to count, would make the 2020 presidential balloting the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. The president added, It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote??? Trump told reporters at the White House later Thursday that he does not want to delay the vote but also does not want to wait weeks, months or even years for the results of the election because of problems he predicts will occur with mailed-in ballots. The president does not have the power to delay the election, which lies solely with Congress. Lawmakers, including both Republicans and Democrats, were quick Thursday to reject any suggestion that the election would be delayed. Trump has criticized voting by mail since April. However, representatives for the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) told VOA in July that if there is any evidence to support Trumps claims of potential mail-in ballot fraud, the administration has yet to share it with them. Most states offer some form of mail-in voting, so-called absentee ballots, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, some states have moved to expand the use of mail-in ballots for the November election. Five states conduct all of their elections completely by mail: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah. Steve Herman contributed to this report. The US government will pay $2.1 billion to Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for Covid-19 vaccines to cover 50 million people and to underwrite the drugmakers' testing and manufacturing, the companies said on Friday. The drugmakers also said they were in advanced discussions to supply up to 300 million doses of the experimental vaccine for the 27-country European Union. The US award is the biggest yet from 'Operation Warp Speed', the White House initiative aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to fight Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the ... BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 1 Trend: On July 31, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev made a phone call to President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani. The head of state congratulated Rouhani and the brotherly people of Iran on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, and extended his best wishes for prosperity. Hassan Rouhani thanked for attention and congratulations, and extended his best wishes to the head of state and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of the holiday. Ilham Aliyev and Hassan Rouhani expressed their confidence that the friendly relations between the two countries would continue to develop successfully in political, economic, cultural and other areas. The issues of the implementation of the North-South transport corridor were discussed as well. Both sides noted the strategic importance of the project and hailed the measures taken. They also exchanged views over the work to be done in this area. The presidents also discussed the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, stressing the importance of joining efforts in this regard. The decision was made to organize videoconferences on the pandemic between the two countries` officials. Islamabad, Aug 1 : The management of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has made it mandatory for its cabin crew to take a breathalyser test to know how much alcohol they have in their blood before they are permitted to board a flight. In a directive issued by the PIA's medical division on Friday, which came into effect immediately, all the cabin crew must undergo medical check-up before boarding the flights, reports Dawn news. The notification said the tests would be carried out in the cabin crew briefing rooms by flight surgeon/medical officer or the ground staff supervised by the flight surgeon. It said all the operating cabin crews are required to undergo the test before operating flights on a "must basis". The move came after the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) noticed smoking in the cockpit and the cabin and issued directives to ensure enforcement of SOPs against it. Earlier, the CAA used to conduct tests of pilots and cockpit crew only, and now the flag carrier would make it mandatory to test its air hosts as well. Revell Publishing was founded in 1870 by Fleming Hewitt Revell, allowing him to publish the works of Dwight Lyman Moody, his famed evangelist brother-in-law. Since then, it has evolved into a contemporary trade house offering faithful living advice, inspiring personal narratives, and novels that always end on an up note. Executives at Revell, which is based in Ada, Mich., and parent company Baker Publishing Group said the key to staying in the publishing business for 150 years is the imprints ability to pivot to face challenges and changing times while remaining anchored in the Christian perspective. Theyre certain this commitment will carry Revell through todays issues, which range from a pandemic and demands for racial justice to more industry-specific challenges such as disappearing Christian retail outlets, heightened competition from multinational publishers, and new technology. We were founded five years after the Civil war, said Andrea Doering, Revell editorial director, who joined the company in 2007. Georgia had just rejoined the union. African American men had just been given the right to vote. It was a time of turmoil. But there were Moody and Revell deciding we need to be providing hope and help. Since then, this company has been at this through the Great Chicago Fire, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Spanish Flu. I think we are going to get through these times, too. Revell is doing more than getting through. One of six Baker Publishing Group imprints, it accounts for 20% of the privately held companys overall revenue, according to BPG. Richard Baker bought Revell in 1992, after the company, which had been run by the Revell and then Barbour families for more than a century, went through three owners in the 1980s. It had also moved from its primary focus on publishing for ministers and church leaders to publishing for the people in the pews and secular markets, according to The Story of Revell, a history of the publisher by Ann Byle, which was released in June. Revell hit its stride with celebrity books, dating back to Dale Evanss personal story Angel Aware (1953), about the death of her and husband Roy Rogerss young daughter, and provocative titles such as Marabel Morgans Total Woman (1973), which suggested that housewives should greet their husbands wearing only Saran Wrap. Dwight Baker, Richard Bakers son and successor as company president, told Byle that absorbing the trade publisher into BPG, a house known for academic publishing, got off to a rocky start. But, he said, Everything became more interesting after 2004, when Revell published 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. To date, Pipers title has sold more than five million copies. Since becoming part of BPG, Revell has drawn on its parent companys resources. Many of the groups 218 publishing and retail employees work with multiple imprints. Jennifer Leep, executive v-p, trade publishing for BPG, noted there are also advantages to being an independent publisher when it comes to attracting and retaining writers. Being an independently owned company with a streamlined structure allows us to stay nimble and relational, she said. We promise authors a high level of collaboration, creativity, and commitment from our team through every part of the publishing process. Revells powerful backlist (there are century-old titles still in print) continues to hum along, and it maintains a steady presence on current bestseller lists with such titles as Catch a Star by the WNBAs Tamika Catchings and The Next Right Thing by blogger and podcaster Emily Freeman. Half of Revells 75 new titles per year are fiction, and the list includes prolific and popular authors such as suspense master Ted Dekker; romance maven Irene Hannon, whose 21 books for Revell have sold more than a million copies combined; and mystery/thriller author Lynette Eason. Marketing moves include a new e-commerce stream on the BGP website, launched just in time to meet consumer demand when the coronavirus swept in and Amazon began focusing on staple items, not books. And the company has done well finding new outlets for its titles: Tractor Supply Co. sells Revell books along with agricultural goods and home decor in many of its 1,800 locations, and Revell books are also available at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. Revell looks for casual readers who are indifferent about format and media, Doering explained. We look for their needs, provide help in book form, then we get the books where they are. A century ago, Revell was the platform publisher of fundamentalist theologians. Today, its titles are not religiously didactic, but faith is always in the framework. Doering noted, A book from Revell wont say, God said do this, but it will say, Heres your problem, here are some solutions and heres a resource, and oh, by the way, this is a really old idea. And the author might cite the Bible. A book of fiction with Revells logo on the spine will have a redemptive, helpful quality. Theres a decision for good. Justice will prevail. Theres a sense of a moral universe, that our actions do matter, that you can change with grace and find a way forward. A year of pandemic and deep unrest may prompt a new pivot for Revell, Leep said. Everyday life has changedwere facing new challenges and having different conversations today than we were six months ago. So staying on mission for Revell means publishing books that address those new challenges and speak into those conversations. That may mean some pivots in terms of topics were focused on or ways we approach familiar categories, yet at core for us it always comes back to publishing faith-based content that inspires and equips readers. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has charged three persons including a juvenile over their alleged roles in the Twitter security incident that resulted in a cryptocurrency scam worth thousands of dollars. On July 15, PREMIUM TIMES (reported how) the social media giant was infiltrated by hackers who broke into 130 accounts, including those belonging to ex-President Barack Obama, ex-Vice President Joe Biden and billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk. The announcement of the charge was made by United States Attorney David L. Anderson; Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt of the Justice Departments Criminal Division; FBI Special Agent in Charge John L. Bennett; and some other officials. The three facing charges are Mason Sheppard, Nima Fazeli and a juvenile, whose identity was protected in pursuant to the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act. Mason Sheppard, also known as Chaewon, 19, of Bognor Regis, in the United Kingdom, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. Nima Fazeli, aka Rolex, 22, of Orlando, Florida, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer. READ ALSO: The Justice Department has however referred the juvenile involved to the State Attorney for the 13th Judicial District in Tampa, Florida. There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence, said U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California. Todays charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived. Criminal conduct over the Internet may feel stealthy to the people who perpetrate it, but there is nothing stealthy about it. In particular, I want to say to would-be offenders, break the law, and we will find you, he added. Twitter The hackers are alleged to have created a scam bitcoin account, to have hacked into Twitter VIP accounts, to have sent solicitations from the Twitter VIP accounts with a false promise to double any bitcoin deposits made to the scam account, and then to have stolen the bitcoin that victims deposited into the scam account. As alleged in the complaints, the scam bitcoin account received more than 400 transfers worth more than $100,000. This case is being investigated by the FBIs San Francisco Division, with assistance from the IRS-Criminal Investigation Cyber Unit; the U.S. Secret Service, San Francisco and Headquarters; the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Office and their REACT task force and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The case is currently being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys William Frentzen and Andrew Dawson of the Northern District of California and Senior Counsel Adrienne Rose of the Criminal Divisions Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. Assam Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday lauded the new National Education Policy (NEP) and said it will revolutionise the education system in the country. I thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the new National Education Policy. Now, the system can be divided into four stages. The Assam government welcomes the new education policy. It will revolutionise the education system in the country, Sarma said in a press conference here. He said that the state government is setting up a 40-member committee to study the implementation of the National Education Policy in Assam and added that they will start functioning within a week. I hope the committee will submit its recommendations by December 31. Under the new education policy, no student up to 12 will be deprived of education. They will be provided with all the facilities, the minister said. Sarma also said that the state government is considering a proposal to open the schools in Assam from September 1 and added that teachers will have to get a COVID-19 test between August 23 and 30. We are planning to open the schools from September 1, but the final decision will be taken by the central government. Testing of COVID-19 will be made compulsory for teachers from August 23-30. However, schools up to class 4 will remain closed, he added. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 13:02 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ade4da 4 News tourism,travel,Bali-Airport Free An estimated 4,000 passengers reportedly arrived at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport on the first day of Bali's reopening to domestic tourists on Friday. All seven business and 77 economy class passengers of the first plane that arrived from Jakarta to Bali at 10:15 a.m. local time on flight Garuda Indonesia GA402, which used the wide-body Airbus A330 plane, were given flower garlands by Bali Deputy Governor Cok Ace and airport officials. "There's been an increase [in passenger arrivals] this long weekend, although gradually and not directly significant," state-owned airport operator PT Angkasa Pura I (AP I) cogeneral manager of commercial operations for Ngurah Rai airport, Rahmat Adil Indrawa, said as quoted by kompas.com. He estimated that about 4,000 travelers had arrived at the airport on reopening day. A representative of Airport Authority Office Area IV, Puguh Lukito, said Ngurah Rai airport served 28 flight departures and 28 arrivals on Friday. On Thursday, it recorded 29 flight arrivals with total passenger movement of 1,800 people and 30 flight departures with 2,200 passengers. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, it reported 34 flight arrivals with 1,700 passengers and 33 flight departures with 2,300 passengers. During the period of July 26 to 30, the airport welcomed 17,757 domestic route passengers through 278 flights. One week prior, July 19 to 23, it saw an increase of 17 percent for the number of passengers and 8 percent for the number of domestic route flights. "The traffic movement of domestic route passengers has slowly shown good growth. As of July 30, we welcomed up to 73,875 passengers with a daily average of 2,463 people," said Rahmat. In all of June, there were only 17,861 passengers. "We do have to emphasize that we continue to implement strict health protocols in accordance with the increasing number of passenger arrivals," Rahmat added. According to data on covid19.go.id, as of July 31, Bali has recorded 3,407 positive cases of COVID-19 with 2,876 recoveries and 48 deaths. (kes) On Saturday afternoon, August 1, a huge crane crashed crushing at least 11* workers to death and injuring others, reported ANI. The incident took place at the Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), a central government undertaking, in Andhra Pradeshs Visakhapatnam. Twitter Even though the incident occurred only sometime ago, the videos of the heart stopping incident have surfaced online. Reportedly, the accident occurred when the workers were carrying out an inspection of the crane used to carry equipment for shipbuilding. The massive crane unexpectedly crumbled and crashed to the ground with a loud sound. Around 20 workers were said to be working on the inspection when the crane crashed. Some workers managed to run for safety, some others received injuries and at least 10 workers were crushed under the weight of the crane, a police reportedly official said. Also Read: Four-Storey Building Collapses In West Bengal, Disturbing Visuals Caught On Camera #WATCH A crane collapses at Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. 10 dead and 1 injured in the incident, says DCP Suresh Babu. pic.twitter.com/BOuz1PdJu3 ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 Three bodies have been retrieved from under the debris of the crane till now. The police with the help of shipyard staff, are carrying out rescue operations. The injured workers are being shifted to the local hospitals, the police said. Also Read: Bridge In Junagarh Collapses After A Few Hours Of Rain News18 The cranes name was reportedly Anupam and it weighed around 70 tonnes. RK Meena, Visakhapatnams police commissioner, reached the spot to look in to the matter. The crane was bought by HSL about 10 years ago and its operation was recently outsourced to a private agency. More details regarding the accident are awaited. Also Read: 19-Year-Old Crane Operator Saves Life Of 14 People Trapped In Burning Building *Some reports claim the number of casualties are 10. Eastman Kodak (KODK) stock has tripled today alone after the company said it received a loan from the government to produce ingredients for drugs used to battle the coronavirus. This week, Kodak stock has climbed than 2,000%, carrying its valuation to almost $2 billion following the news about the government loan. However, after today's initial pop, the shares have lost nearly $20 in value, bringing the company's market capitalization to $1.51 billion. Kodak stock soars on plan to shift production to drug ingredients The photography company said this week it will shift production in its factories from cameras and photography-related products to drug ingredients. Q2 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more IFrame President Donald Trump announced that the federal government has struck a deal with Eastman Kodak to manufacture ingredients used in generic drugs to battle COVID-19. The government awarded Kodak a $765 million loan under the Defense Production Act so it can begin producing drug ingredients. The loan is the first of its kind. Trump said during a press conference on Tuesday that the loan marks the 33rd time the government has used the Defense Production Act. He also said that the deal with Eastman Kodak will help to bring back jobs and "make America the world's premier medical manufacturer and supplier." Kodak said on Tuesday that it will manufacture pharmaceutical ingredients that the Food and Drug Administration has identified as essential but are in a chronic shortage nationwide. The photography company said it will expand its current factories in St. Paul, Minn. and Rochester, N.Y. and create a new Kodak Pharmaceuticals division. Not such a strange shift We've seen some pretty bizarre changes in companies over the years, especially as many firms changed their focus to cryptocurrencies to tap into the bitcoin craze despite their original intent having nothing to do with cryptocurrencies. However, Kodak's change is a bit different. Story continues The fact that the transition falls under the Defense Production Act isn't the only thing that makes Kodak's change different. In a statement, Kodak Executive Chairman Jim Continenza said they firm will leverage its "deep expertise in chemicals manufacturing" in making the transition. Additionally, CNBC reports that this isn't the first time Kodak will be manufacturing drugs. In the 1990s, the company produced nonprescription medications like aspirin. It then sold that business to SmithKline Beecham in 1994. Eastman Kodak stock hits $50 a share Eastman Kodak has been a penny stock since 2018, trading below $5 a share. Before the bump Kodak stock received on Tuesday, the company was valued at only about $115 million. After today's increase, Kodak's market value approached $2 billion before falling back to the $1.5 billion range. In today's initial 500% increase, Kodak stock tripped multiple circuit breakers that halted trading today. Over 110 million shares of the stock have changed hands, which is over 23 times the usual volume. By Michelle Jones Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. You can subscribe to our free enewsletter below to receive our stories in your inbox: Though life was slowly improving for millions in Illinois as the 20th century opened, many still struggled for fairness including women, the poor and minorities. In several instances, racial tensions exploded into some of the landmark moments in American social history. After the Civil War, some Blacks began to migrate north, looking for better job opportunities and living conditions. But despite the gains of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, many Blacks in the North had no money, few possessions and limited skills and education. As a result, they competed for lower-end jobs with immigrant labor and lower- to middle- class whites. Still, Blacks kept moving northward. In 1900, there were only 84,000 Blacks in Illinois. However, the start of the so-called great migration of Blacks from the South during the era saw minority populations jump in industrial cities like Chicago, Peoria and Springfield. In 1919, Chicagos Black population was 100,000, double the previous decade. Racial and economic fears were prevalent, and often resulted in violence. Grisly lynchings of Blacks were reported statewide in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including notable incidents in Decatur, Belleville, Danville and Cairo. Few, though, had the impact of the 1908 race riot in the capital of Springfield. On Aug. 13 of that year, Mabel Hallam, a young white married woman, claimed she had been raped by a Black intruder. A fiery rampage ensued throughout the night of Aug. 14 and much of the next day, as large mobs burned and looted businesses and Black houses. Two Black men, including an 80-year-old man married to a white woman, were murdered in gruesome fashion and more than a hundred people were wounded. Some 107 indictments were returned, with only one conviction. On Sept. 1, Hallam admitted she had lied. Journalist William English Walling penned a scathing account of the Springfield riot that stoked the passions of New York activists, who met to discuss American race relations. The discussion resulted in the founding of the NAACP on Feb. 12, 1909 the centennial of Abraham Lincolns birth. Other riots were even more deadly. In East St. Louis in 1916 and 1917, labor shortages induced business owners to hire Southern Blacks, resulting in an influx of some 10,000 to 12,000 Black laborers, creating simmering unrest and periodic violence. The National Guard spent several weeks in the city before withdrawing in mid-June. On July 1, a rumor circulated that a white man had been killed by a Black man. Large armed confrontations over the next two days claimed the lives of nine white people. Estimates of Black deaths range into the hundreds. Some 250 buildings and 40 railroad cars were burned in what one source calls the worst of many incidents of racial antagonism in the United States during World War I. On July 27, 1919, in Chicago, a 17-year old Black youth was swimming in Lake Michigan when he drifted across an unofficial line between the citys Black and white beaches. Whites on land threw stones at the boy, who was hit in the head and drowned. That sparked a week of violence that left 38 people dead and at least 537 injured. Some 1,000 Black families were burned out of their homes. The summer of 1919 has been dubbed the red summer for the number of race riots across the nation. Some progress was made during the era, including the formation of a race relations commission in Chicago after the 1919 riot that identified 59 needs for improvement. Ida B. Wells founded the first African-American womens club in Chicago, which became headquarters for the Illinois Federation of Colored Womens Clubs. Tom Emery is a writer and historical researcher from Carlinville. He can be reached at ilcivilwar@yahoo.com. Dr. Bakare, General Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church and former running mate to the current President of Nigeria, His Excellency Muhammad Buhari, has been selected to Chair the inaugural Advisory Board of the Africa office of The Royal Commonwealth Society, the oldest major Commonwealth organisation which has Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as its Head and Patron. In a statement signed by its Regional Co-ordinator for Africa, John Apea, the society said: Over the past few decades, we have been witnesses to your (Bakare) good deeds, which have consumed much of the ink flowing through writings in Africa and beyond; your unwavering crusade against corruption, your sincere love for Africa and your work as a respected pastor, statesman and philanthropist is unquestionable. To this end, we would be very delighted to have a man of your wisdom, experience, calibre and integrity to usher us into an interesting but dynamic era of race and international relations, development and co-operation. We are certain that together, the Africa office will be able to better the lives of all Africans by delivering on the Commonwealth thematic areas of prosperity, sustainability, fairness and security. In response to the Africa office of The Royal Commonwealth Society, Dr. Bakare spoke of his unwavering desire to work with the Commonwealth to better the life of its citizenry, 60 % of whom are under the age of 30. He added, there is a practical and ethical imperative that we place all hands on deck in order to help the plight of the common man. About the Commonwealth The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 54 independent and equal countries. It is home to 2.4 billion people and includes both advanced economies and developing countries. 32 of its members are small states, including many island nations. The Commonwealths member governments have agreed to shared goals like development, democracy and peace. Its values and principles are expressed in the Commonwealth Charter. With Ontario elementary and high school students returning to classrooms in September, many are wary of the provinces plan while they await more details. The Ford government announced Thursday that schools will reopen full-time for most students, with a blend of in-person and remote learning at some high schools and the option of remote learning for anyone who wants it. The precautions now are moderate, but I still do have that worry because teenagers can be a bit irresponsible, says 16-year-old Kirsten Kelly, soon to be a high school senior. Kelly, who is also a Halton Catholic District School Board student trustee, adds she was disappointed when the ministry of education floated classroom-only teaching among three options, because that would have put a lot of people, not just students, at risk. Elementary students and many high schoolers will be at school five days a week this fall, possibly with standard class sizes, while secondary students at two dozen boards considered higher risk including Toronto District and Toronto Catholic will alternate between in-class and online learning with a maximum class size of 15 to help limit the spread of COVID-19. Masks will be required from Grade 4 to 12, and encouraged for younger students. A report posted Saturday by the Toronto District School Board confirmed that high school students will be studying under the quadmester system meaning theyll take two courses at a time over two months, spending half of each day in school and the other half learning from home. That means teens can still earn the usual eight credits over the entire school year. For elementary students, the board says it will work to ensure that we dont have overly large classes, to minimize risk, and that it will have a better idea of class sizes once parents register their kids for in-school or full-time online learning. Families have to let the board know their preference starting Monday, Aug. 10. As per direction from the Ministry of Education, students may not necessarily be able to move between remote and in-person learning, and families should anticipate the possibility of being wait-listed if they change their mind, the board report notes. The opportunity to switch between remote and in-person learning will depend on the availability of an appropriate class placement. This may be at the end of an instructional period (i.e. each term at the elementary level and each quadmester at the secondary level). Critics of the reopening plan argue that it puts children and marginalized members of society at the most risk. It also doesnt guarantee smaller class sizes at elementary schools, as recommended in a report by SickKids hospital. Class sizes have been capped at less than 15 in other countries where schools have reopened, according to a summary curated by the Strategic Analysis, Research and Training Centre. Kelly said her younger sister, entering Grade 1, might be staying home to study because her parents arent sure shes mature enough to understand physical distancing and the risks around her. Premier Doug Ford said Friday that the plan was based on the best available advice, with the province committing $309 million to help cover the increased cost. Unions have accused the government of not spending enough to hire the extra teachers and custodians it would take to make classes smaller and safer. I think its really important that the ministry does commit financially, and very strongly, to funding any (personal protective equipment) requirements or extra staff, says Cameron Prosic, public affairs co-ordinator with the Ontario Student Trustees Association. When things are this unpredictable, we need to know that the ministry is committed financially as well with keeping students safe. Prosic adds that hes heard from many students who are confused about what lies ahead and plan to ask their parents to keep them out of the classroom. I know that school boards havent sent out much to students, he said. Weve been getting a lot of questions on our (OSTA-AECO) social media pages as well. People are pretty confused. Its just a little bit overwhelming with the adapted model, because there hasnt been much communication about how it will work. Justine Mackay, a 16-year-old senior student and student trustee with the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board in Peterborough, says that has been her experience. Everything is really up in the air right now, she says, adding many students dont follow the daily news and would benefit from direct emails outlining whats to come. I think, at first, everything will be slightly overwhelming jumping from distance learning right into going back full-time. I havent personally met anybody whos fully withdrawing and studying from home, but I do think there is kind of a general anxiety in the air about returning. Mackay says the situation is unprecedented, but the government has been doing the best it can under the circumstances: Its really important that they keep students as their top priority. Several other provinces have announced plans to reopen schools fully in September, including British Columbia and Nova Scotia. I am a little bit worried, says Kelly, only because Im afraid there may be another wave (of COVID-19) and it may be worse. With files from Kristin Rushowy Raneem Alozzi is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @r_alozzi Miriam Lafontaine is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @mirilafontaine United States Steel (X) came out with a quarterly loss of $2.67 per share versus the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of $2.74. This compares to earnings of $0.45 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of 2.55%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this steel maker would post a loss of $0.80 per share when it actually produced a loss of $0.73, delivering a surprise of 8.75%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates four times. U.S. Steel, which belongs to the Zacks Steel - Producers industry, posted revenues of $2.09 billion for the quarter ended June 2020, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 23.68%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $3.55 billion. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates three times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. U.S. Steel shares have lost about 32.2% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 0.9%. What's Next for U.S. Steel? While U.S. Steel has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Story continues Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for U.S. Steel was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is -$1.30 on $1.97 billion in revenues for the coming quarter and -$5.82 on $8.69 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Steel - Producers is currently in the top 33% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. 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 United States Steel Corporation (X) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 13:35:56|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WELLINGTON, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19 in managed isolation facilities on Saturday, said the Ministry of Health in a statement. The new cases were females in their 20s and arrived from Pakistan via Dubai on July 27. They were in managed isolation facilities upon arrival and had been transferred to the quarantine facility in Auckland, said the ministry statement. The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand was now 1,212, which was the number the country reported to the World Health Organization. The total number of active cases in New Zealand's managed isolation and quarantine facilities was 22, unchanged from Friday, it is said, adding that there was currently no one receiving hospital-level care for COVID-19. Laboratories across New Zealand have completed 3,002 tests, of which 2,606 swabs were taken in the community, and 396 were taken in managed isolation and quarantine facilities, it is stated. The total number of tests completed in New Zealand has reached 468,068, said the ministry. It had been 92 days since the last case of COVID-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source, said the ministry. While there continued to be no evidence of any transmission in New Zealand, the health ministry was urging the public to take a test if they were asked to. "Testing is the best way we can be assured that there is no undetected community transmission in New Zealand -- and we need everyone to play their part in that. If you are offered a test for COVID-19, please get swabbed," said the ministry. Enditem New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday (August 1) extended greeting on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. President Kovind said that this festival symbolises the spirit of sacrifice & amity which inspires us to work for the well-being of one. At the same time, he also urged people to enjoy the occassion by maintaining social distancing and following COVID-19 guidelines. Taking to Twitter, President Kovind wrote, ''Eid Mubarak! Idul Zuha symbolises spirit of sacrifice & amity which inspires us to work for well-being of one & all. On this occasion, let us share our happiness with the needy & follow social distancing norms and guidelines to contain #COVID19 spread.'' PM Modi extended his warm wish by writing, ''Eid Mubarak! Greetings on Eid al-Adha. May this day inspire us to create a just, harmonious and inclusive society. May the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered: PM Narendra Modi.'' On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also wrote to Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina sending greetings on the occasion of Eid ul Adha and assuring support for the country's health sector amidst COVID-19 pandemic. His greetings to Bangladesh PM read, "We hope that this festival will further enhance the spirit of peace and tolerance in our respective societies and promote fraternal ties between our two countries." Bakr Eid or Eid-al-Adha is called the'festival of sacrifice'and it is considered to be the second of the two most important Islamic holidays celebrated worldwide each year. The economic cost of containing the Covid-19 pandemic in Spain is just now beginning to emerge. Between April and June, the economy sank an unprecedented 18.5%, according to a flash estimate provided by the National Statistics Institute (INE) on Friday. This is the largest quarterly drop since the days of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and it comes on top of a 5.2% contraction in the first three months of the year, reflecting the fact that the country went into lockdown in mid-March. The coronavirus confinement measures were lifted in mid-June. This means that during the first half of the year, a fourth of Spains gross domestic product (GDP) went up in smoke due to the strict restrictions introduced to curb the coronavirus epidemic. The lost production amounts to around 300 billion, a figure that would be enough to cover pension payments for Spains 10 million retirees for two years. The lost production amounts to around 300 billion, a figure that would be enough to cover pension payments for Spains 10 million retirees for two years According to the INE, on an annual basis Spains GDP shrank by 22.1%. The numbers show that the coronavirus crisis has ended six years of steady growth that followed a prolonged recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis. The figures in Spain are worse than in other developed economies affected by the Covid-19 pandemic that have recently released their own indicators. Germanys economy shrank 10.1% in the first quarter; the United States contracted by 9.5%, and France shed 13.8%. This reflects two realities. On one hand, Spain was forced to adopt stricter containment measures than other countries, a fact that is supported by mobility reports published by Google. On the other, the Spanish economy is more dependent on tourism which contributes 12.3% to GDP and other services that rely on human interaction. This puts Spain in a more vulnerable position to undo the economic damage caused by the pandemic. The Spanish economy is more dependent on tourism and other services that rely on human interaction The INEs historical data goes back to 1970, and shows nothing nearly as bad as this years figures. Even during the worst of the previous crisis, in the first quarter of 2009, GDP only shrank 2.6%. To find anything similar to 2020, it is necessary to look back at the 20th and even 19th centuries. Estimates by the economic historian Leandro Prados de la Escosura show that in 1936, the Spanish economy sank at an annual rate of 26.8%, for an average of 6.7% each quarter. Historians have also calculated that in 1868 the economy lost 13.3% due to a financial crisis caused by railway investments and bad crops. In 1896, GDP contracted by 10% as the country grappled with the Cuban War of Independence. The data released on Friday confirms the forecasts made by the Bank of Spain, which had been expecting the economy to show a fall of anywhere between 16% and 21.8% in the second quarter. English version by Susana Urra. Globally, CG Hospitality Holdings owns and operates 134 hotels and resorts in 12 countries. Their wide portfolio consists of iconic properties and destinations such as Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, Maldives; Jetwing Vil Uyana in Sigiriya, Sri Lanka; The Farm at San Benito, Philippines; Meghauli Serai (A Taj Safaris Lodge) at Chitwan in Nepal; Taj Samudra in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Taj Jumeirah Lakes Towers in Dubai; and Fairmont The Norfolk in Nairobi as well as Fairmont Mara Club in Masai Mara, Kenya, amongst others. Q: What do you think will be the long-term effect of COVID-19 on the travel industry globally? A: With the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19, the world is going into partial or complete lockdown to further contain its spread. The resultant short-term and long-term impact on human life, businesses and government are hard to predict at the moment, given the uncertainty as things evolve. Norfolk Hotel. As the world continues to come to terms with this global health crisis, there is no doubt that the pandemic will change the world as we know it. Even though in India the government has announced the opening of the tourism segment and hotels in compliance with stringent guidelines, it is difficult to predict how long will it take for the segment to recover. Related stories Treebo Hotels: Improving customer experience by using technology I think we have to be prepared, cautious and need to brace ourselves for the worst for the rest of 2020. That being said, given travel continues to be one of the most preferred mediums of rejuvenation, the travel and tourism industry is here to stay. However, there will most certainly be a shift in the travel and destination preferences, as safety will be a new luxury. Given the need to relook at the entire business module and ways of operations, I think it will take a while for the hospitality industry to see a turnaround. As people will be hesitant to travel across borders, domestic tourism will be the preferred choice. It is important to note that with a population of close to 1.2 billion people, India has its catchment market for survival. Rahul Chaudhary. Business travel, followed by domestic leisure will be the initial segments to revive. In the long term, in a complete COVID-free world, the emergence of new tourism trends such as the adoption of cloud technologies and digitisation will revolutionise the travel and tourism sector as we know it. Q: While the world is opening, India is taking a while to open up, given that the cases are rising. What is your opinion on how India should get out of the lockdown? A: The Indian government, at the onset of the pandemic, declared the most stringent lockdown witnessed globally to clamp down the further spread of COVID. Ever since, the government has been closely monitoring the situation and providing strategic relief to the industries to resume operations, without compromising on health safety. In continuity I think, each state should work as a centre, under which they are given the authority to contain their residents within the state itself, with enough centres to quarantine and isolate its people. Within each state, businesses and restricted movement can be allowed and if there is a requirement for any inter-state movement, then it should be carried out by following stringent measures of precaution and with all necessary approvals and passes required. With government protocols and mandates in place, it is the individual efforts that would drive our journey towards flattening the COVID curve. In compliance with government protocols, hotels in India are already resuming operations. Like our brand The Fern that has reopened 40 hotels across India. However, it is important to understand that it is not only about opening hotels. It is also about gaining the confidence of our customers by addressing their fear. Given that the hospitality business is about bringing people together, a very interesting statement made by a noted gentleman puts social distancing into a better perspective. As he states, it is not social distancing that is required, it is safe distancing. Q: Dubai, where you have a hotel, is almost open. What do you think countries such as the UAE or other Asian giants did right and what can India learn from it? A: All the countries that took action as soon as the signs of the pandemic surfaced are the ones who are showing early signs of recovery. These actions included the way they restricted the movement of people, their laws in terms of safety protocols, education around COVID, and containing the spread of infection by monitoring the inflow of migrants in the country. The pandemic and its resultant new way of life will be the norm for a while now and all the countries that recognise it and ensure adequate preparedness and plans to sustain this disruption will be able to move forward from the crisis. Q: How long will it take to see a turnaround in the travel and hospitality industries in India? A: The pandemic has already brought about a stark change in consumer behaviour and preferences, which, in turn, is changing the business model of the hospitality and travel industries. The industry has always been a very personal touch-oriented service. Now, it will be based on a no-contact servicefrom contact-less check-ins to payments to in-room services. Earlier, breakfast and WiFi were considered essentials. Now sanitisers in every hotel space will be the new essential. Consumers will be more comfortable with smaller boutique hotels rather than larger ones as drivable destinations will see more demand. New hospitality trends such as staycations, wellness and leisure tourism, and digitisation will gather momentum. The current situation provides for a huge future, full of opportunities from the perspective of a hotel owner. The owners have the resources to be able to buy assets under distress and also renegotiate their terms with their existing operators to make it more financially viable. Every crisis I believe brings with it new learning, disruptions and opportunities. The COVID pandemic has offered us an opportunity to rethink the tourism industry and drive a more sustainable module. Hoteliers can re-look at their business module and at alternate ways of operation, such as converting the hotels into service apartments, schools, service offices or even hospitals, to survive. Q: The Indian government has not offered much help to the travel and hospitality industries in its stimulus package. What should the next step for these segments? A: The hospitality industry must continue to seek government stimulus packages even as they initiate conversations with the necessary stakeholders, such as banks. However, it is important to note that even if one approaches the bank for the restructuring of loans until the communication is streamlined from the central bank, the appeal will not move forward, thus creating a ripple effect. That being said, I believe the hospitality industry is a resilient business and we will make it work one way or the other, by either reducing costs or finding alternate ways of revenue generation. Q: How are you reimagining your businesses? A: To ensure sustainability aligned with the changes this pandemic has brought about, we have been restructuring our business approach. This has entailed rethinking our cost structure such as zero-base budgeting for all our hotels. We have legacy hotels where we have invested in properties that are almost 40-50 years old. They have a legacy of an existing cost convenience and payroll, which are the biggest costs incurred in hotel operations. To address this, we started engaging with our partners to align ourselves with the COVID situation and mutually work on a cost basis that is acceptable and viable to both. We also revisited our business model. An example would be our Vivanta Hotel in Kathmandu, which remained open right through the lockdown because we had two guests who had to stay back due to travel advisory. Since we had to run the hotel to cater to our guests, we explored other revenue generation modules. We began delivering lunches to hospitals and the doorsteps of consumers. It resulted in a profitable approach. We have recently started opening our hotels by strictly adhering to government protocols and with focus on three main aspects: Quality, safety and reliability. We have introduced rapid testing in all our operations, which offers instant results, warranting about 90% accuracy. It also provides an extra sense of security to our guests. For our Indian Taj Safaris, we are working on an aspirational 2020 plan on how to add more assets and centralise our services, which will help with cost optimization and revenue rationalization, thus creating a sustainable business for the long run. Wellness and leisure business will be our focus. I believe thats where the major influx of business will stream from, considering the growing focus on health. For CG Hospitality, we have a 3-5 year plan to survive, revive and thrive. Q: India has seen reverse migration. How do you see that affecting your hotels need for adequate manpower? A: I think there will be a lot of manpower and talent available in the market. I believe there might be an over-supply of manpower, but lack of places for them to be hired at. It is going to be a good thing because now, people who have been trained outside the country will come back to India. Their experience can be leveraged for the Indian hospitality industry. Q: What would your advice be for hotels that are opening up, given your vast experience in running so many businesses? A: Hoteliers have always been the most resilient of industrialists. If we look at the past 20-30 years, every major crisis, both local and global, has had its repercussions on the hospitality industry. We have always come out of every crisis far stronger. The tourism and hospitality industries are major economic contributors to every country and will always be here to stay. Norfolk Hotel. For hoteliers looking to open a hotel, make sure you start with zero-based cost budgeting. You must look at the returns, adopt more conservative methods and try and be in as less debt as possible, which will be possible if you can control your budget. Also, it is imperative to be aligned to the new trends and changes setting into the hospitality sector, and be agile and flexible enough to adapt to the changing situation. Q: What has been your biggest learning from the pandemic? A: Always plan for the worst, but always try and reach for the best. This crisis is an opportunity to re-assess our cost basis, re-think the current business model, and identify areas of operational efficiencies and revenue enhancements by incorporating innovative revenue streams. The factor that has helped CG Hospitality is our insistence on entering the business at the right price. We have managed to drive our investment by purely being focused on the returns and we have always been long-term investors. Wearing all three hats of investors, operators and asset managers, our approach is holistic, from taking harsh decisions, to the evolution of the business model and adopting completely different out-of-the-box thinking. In this respect, it is imperative for you to define your business module in a way that has the possibility and capability of reimaging itself. As I mentioned, I should be able to turn my hotel into a quarantine centre or an office anytime. One has to develop and peruse very dynamic businesses. Deepali Nandwani is a journalist who keeps a close watch on the world of luxury. A Tomball, Texas, man whose wife prayed every day outside his hospital window has lost his life battle to the CCP virus. Sticking to her solemn vow for over a month as she prayed in the street, Michelle Gutierrez has made peace with Gods decision after her husband, David, passed away on Aug. 14, reported FOX 26. Michelle told the news outlet that she was there by her husbands side till the end as he fought for his life at CHI Saint Lukes Health in The Woodlands. [W]e still had our prayer at that site, even though the doctors had said hes already on his way out, Michelle said. His last words was, you know, I love you, I love you, see you later if I dont make it, know that I put up a good fight, he said I put up a good fight, and I want you to know that I love you, and I will always love you and remember you. Earlier, on July 31, Michelle told The Epoch Times that David was on a ventilator and also on an ECMO machine, the equipment for cardiac and respiratory support. Michelle said she used to write her beloved husband a letter every morning and evening and then fax it to the hospital. She said that nurses would read the letters to David, and a nurse called her up from his room every day and put the phone to his ear so that Michelle could talk, pray, and read the bible to him while he was in a coma. In September, Michelle and David would have been married for 10 years, and the family with five children would have celebrated Davids 54th birth anniversary. Michelle told FOX 26 that though she tested positive for the virus in June, she showed no symptoms. Her husband had tested negative, but when he began developing COVID-19 signs, he was tested again and was found positive. Davids health gradually deteriorated before he passed away after being hospitalized for more than a month. The couples battle with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, touched many hearts after news media reported on their firm faith and taking challenges head-on. [People] got a lot of hope from Davids story. You know, and at the end of this, I didnt feel angry Do not lose your hope, she told the news outlet. Even if your loved one is at the brink of death, or they have survived, or they have passed on like David, hold onto that faith. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc When Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced an all-of-the-above strategy to conduct "a normal" election in November, he cast it as a decision to maximize voter access during the coronavirus pandemic. A massive backlash ensued. Over the past three weeks, the custodians of hundreds of traditional polling precincts have said they will refuse to host voters, or conditioned participating on the government paying to deep-clean and sanitize their churches or community centers. Thousands of veteran elections judges have dropped out, many of them retirees whose age or health conditions put them at high risk of deadly complications if they contract covid-19. "I will not volunteer for an unnecessary suicide mission," said Rebecca Wilson, 67, a chief elections judge from Prince George's County who has been a poll worker for 18 years. As of Friday, even after a thousand state workers took Hogan up on the offer of two days paid leave in exchange for staffing the polls in November, roughly a third of Maryland's 27,000 election judge jobs remained vacant. It is another example of the deadly pandemic weaving uncertainty though the presidential election process. As President Donald Trump faces bipartisan rebuke for suggesting the election be delayed and undermining mail-in voting, Hogan is under withering criticism - and facing open revolt - from rank-and-file poll workers in his state. Elections administrators are baffled by the moderate Republican governor's unusual voting plan. After long lines and delays at the limited number of polling places open during the primary, Hogan proposed thinning Election Day crowds by sending absentee ballot applications to every voter and opening all precincts for those who choose to vote in-person on Nov. 3. Maryland's nonpartisan, local election boards, career bureaucrats tasked with finding poll workers, say the plan is fundamentally flawed. "Without election judges, it will be impossible," said David Garreis, president of the Maryland Association of Election Officials. "Recruiting election judges is the most difficult task by the local boards in normal circumstances." The organization is meeting with Hogan's deputy chief of staff next week to lobby for massive voting centers in places like stadiums or other large venues that can process thousands of voters, spread far apart, with minimal staff. Hogan, meanwhile, has steadfastly rejected the criticism and deflected responsibility for how the election should be conducted in November, saying the Board of Elections should have already figured this out. "This is their only job," Hogan said in an interview. "They have no plan. . . . And so I said, 'great, well, we're going to just do it all-of-the-above.' " The board voted 3-2, split along party lines, in early July to use a limited number of in-person voting centers and mail absentee ballot applications to every registered voter. Maryland is among eight states planning to mail absentee ballot applications because of the pandemic. The two Democrats on the board also wanted limited in-person voting centers but preferred mailing ballots to every registered voter. Though it was considered as an option, neither side supported opening all of the state's precincts. Since board decisions require a four-vote supermajority, a rule geared at limiting partisanship and increasing transparency, the split vote did not count as an endorsement of any plan, leaving Hogan to go his own way. Across the country, 29 states have enacted plans to let voters cast ballots from home without needing an excuse to do so, and all have provided some avenue to let people who need to vote in person do so, said Richard H. Pildes, a constitutional law professor at NYU School of Law who has written about how critical it is to have in-person voting. D.C. intends to open 80 voting centers across the city and mail every voter a ballot. Virginia residents must request an absentee ballot; they will not be sent an application. Much attention of voter rights advocates has focused on the eight states, including New York and Connecticut, that do not consider fear of the pandemic a legitimate reason to vote by mail. Maryland appears to stand alone for having widespread backlash to its in-person voting alternative to supplement absentee balloting. "I'm not aware of the kind of pushback from local elections officials that seems to be happening in Maryland right now happening elsewhere," Pildes said. "That might be because in other states, the state officials are not requiring that every traditional polling precinct open." Hogan ordered the board to send absentee ballot applications in early July, hoping to encourage more ballots to be mailed early and avoid a last-minute surge in requests. But any changes to the absentee ballots applications in Maryland - including renaming them "mail-in" ballots - involves a formal notification and approval process that takes a month. None can be mailed until after the state board approves them during a Wednesday meeting. And without an emergency proclamation from Hogan to change state law, none of those mailed-in ballots can be opened or counted until two days after Election Day. "It could take weeks" to get results, said state administrator of elections Linda Lamone, who faced calls to step down after the problem-plagued June 2 primary. Lamone told the Hogan administration and state lawmakers it will cost an extra $20 million to finance the plan, with a big portion of the cost due to sending an absentee ballot application to every voter in the state, plus return postage. Public health experts, meanwhile, have cast the state's precinct plan as reckless and suggested that requiring people to take initiative to request a ballot - rather than simply mailing one - might ultimately push more people into understaffed precincts with long lines and, potentially, high viral loads. "The virus is hoping that a lot of people show up to vote, particularly in crowded places," said Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and former state health secretary under Hogan's predecessor, Martin O'Malley (D). "The fewer people who are put in that position, the better." And majority-minority communities most vulnerable to the virus are also statistically most likely to have to wait in line to vote, according to a recent report on election planning and the pandemic from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Hogan, who has been lauded nationally for his response to the pandemic, said he shares the goal of keeping voters safe. "My goal is to give everybody every possible opportunity to vote," he said, adding that the state will provide all the personal protective equipment necessary to operate the polls. Garreis, who is a deputy elections administrator in Anne Arundel County, said the costs of that are enormous: He estimated that getting plexiglass shields to separate 6,000 election check-in judges from voters could add up to $1 million just for his county. The governor has resisted calls for an all or mostly mail-in election by Attorney General Brian Frosh, D, and a coalition of voting rights groups, public health doctors and activists, saying the June primary was an "unmitigated disaster." The board sent some English-speaking voters ballots in Spanish. The company in charge of mailing out ballots sent many of them late. Some people reported never receiving their ballots, and others got multiple ballots. Limited polling locations in Baltimore City and elsewhere led to hours-long waits. "Frankly, I think that election went well under the circumstances," Lamone said this week. "Look what happened: people showed up at the polling place with their mailed ballot in hand. . . . They wanted to watch it go into the machine. We didn't anticipate that, and there was no way to react to it. We're trying to make sure that it doesn't happen again." Lamone, who did not her share her opinion on how the election should be conducted, said she's concerned about local boards being able to process all the ballot application requests, mailed-in ballots and early voting and Election Day ballots, all while observing social distancing. Hogan is unsympathetic and unmoved. "All we've heard is a bunch of arguing and whining," he said. "We're going to have to take these actions or they're going to fail miserably like they did during the primary." Steve Johns, 62, said the governor's plan vastly underestimates what it takes to run an election or show up to be a low-level election judge, as Johns has in Prince George's for the past two elections. "The [rule] book is almost as thick as a school textbook," he said. "If you want to do it well, you have to read it and pay attention in class." Johns took the election judge training in January, before the pandemic hit Maryland. But he refused to serve after Hogan announced his all-precinct plan. "There will be people who die from this decision," he said. "As much as I'd like to help, but you know - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? You don't have the second two if you've lost the first." Others, like Karen Nitkin of Howard County, are coming forward for the first time, drawn by what they see as the urgency of the situation. "It is almost, literally, the least I could do," said Nitkin, whose daughter waited in line for three hours to vote in an understaffed Georgia precinct during the primary. When Nitkin filled out her absentee ballot application in Maryland, she checked the box asking if she was willing to be an election judge. She's concerned about the health risk, but she's confident in the precautions and willing to withstand it for one day, especially because other people are taking risks just as large on a daily basis just to earn a paycheck. "I wouldn't want to do it every day," she said. "But there are people who work at Target every day, and I wouldn't want to do that either. If there's ever an essential service, this is it." Less weighty parallels, in style and political substance, likewise imply an intuitive partnership. Like Mr. Biden whose decades of verbal blunders have not kept him from six Senate terms, the vice presidency and the Democratic presidential nomination Ms. Duckworth can at times sound less than smooth at a microphone but has rarely paid much of a penalty for it. Past rivals say this owes, in part, to the campaign perils of insulting someone so visibly marked as a survivor of war. Most recently, after Ms. Duckworth suggested clumsily that removing monuments of George Washington merited discussion, attacks on her patriotism from conservatives like Tucker Carlson seemed to only boost her reputation among Democrats. And ideologically, Ms. Duckworth would appear closely attuned to Mr. Biden. She has spent much of her career positioned to the right of liberal Democrats, retaining some centrist muscle memory from her unsuccessful first congressional race in 2006 when she pledged fiscal conservatism and punishments for illegal immigrants and occasionally leading Republicans to wonder if they are looking at a kindred soul. I had a chance to develop a friendship with Tammy about 15 years ago while we were both out at Walter Reed, Bob Dole, the former Republican senator and presidential nominee, said in an emailed statement, recalling his time as a patient at the veterans hospital during Ms. Duckworths stay there. In hindsight, I wish I had brought up politics. She could have run as a Republican. Yet Ms. Duckworths is a worldview that has long defied easy labeling. She is at once the product of a globe-trotting conservative military family sustained by food stamps in her youth and a soldier who gave her limbs to a war whose wisdom she came to question. She is a woman well acquainted with male-dominated worlds fellow pilots called her Mommy Platoon Leader long before she became the first sitting senator to give birth, at age 50 and a canny politician whose connections helped guide her to the upper reaches of her party. Those close to Ms. Duckworth still describe her present career as something of a consolation prize. Plan A was flying helicopters, and she did not surrender the vision easily. Recovering in 2005, Ms. Duckworth vowed that some guy who got lucky one day in Baghdad would not dictate her future. Patna, Aug 1 : Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey said on Saturday that a team of Bihar Police, which went to Mumbai in connection with the probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, has not yet been able to "locate" the main accused Rhea Chakraborty. He said that Bihar Police is working on the basis of evidence and if needed, senior officers will also be sent from here to Mumbai. The Bihar DGP was speaking to reporters here on Saturday. He said that the team of Bihar Police probing in Mumbai has so far met friends, colleagues and relatives of the late actor and collected many important information from them. He said, "The four-member Bihar police team that went to Mumbai has recorded statements of Sushant's sister, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, his cook, his friends and colleagues. The team also went to the bank to collect information about transactions made from Sushant's bank accounts. Rhea Chakraborty, however, is yet to be located." On the question of the demand to get the matter investigated by the CBI, the DGP said, "Bihar Police is fully capable of investigating this case. If the family of Sushant would like the case to be investigated by the CBI, then it would be considered, but the Bihar Police would go to any extent to provide justice to Sushant. And I assure you that Bihar Police is fully capable of providing justice to his family for the peace of Sushant's soul." When asked about the allegation of going outside the jurisdiction to register a case in this matter, the DGP categorically stated that Sushant's father has himself registered the case in Patna, thereafter an investigation was launched. An accused in this case has also gone to the Supreme Court, he said adding "whatever the Supreme Court says will be followed. If the Bihar Police gets a chance to investigate the matter, the truth will be brought out." With regard to sending other officers to Mumbai, the DGP said if needed, a senior IPS level officer will also be sent to Mumbai so that he can meet his counterparts in Mumbai for better coordination. At present, the Bihar Police team in Mumbai is working hard and has met with some success. Sushant Singh Rajput, a resident of Patna and a well-known Bollywood actor, allegedly committed suicide at his Mumbai residence on June 14. Mumbai Police was investigating the matter. On July 25, Sushant's father K.K. Singh registered a case against Rhea Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, at Rajiv Nagar police station in Patna for abetting his son to commit suicide. After the case was registered, Bihar Police reached Mumbai and started investigating the case. Rhea Chakraborty has, however, approached the Supreme Court to shift the case to Mumbai. A decision in this regard is to be made on August 5 in the top court. Latest updates on Sushant Singh Rajput Death Mystery FILE PHOTO: Chinese and U.S. flags flutter near The Bund in Shanghai By Steve Holland and Daphne Psaledakis WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States intensified its economic pressure on China's Xinjiang province on Friday, imposing sanctions on a powerful Chinese company and two officials for what it said were human rights abuses against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities. The move, the latest blow to U.S.-China relations, came a week after U.S. President Donald Trump closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, prompting Beijing to shutter the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement it blacklisted the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, also known as XPCC, along with Sun Jinlong, former party secretary of XPCC, and Peng Jiarui, XPCC's deputy party secretary and commander, over accusations they are connected to serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. "The Chinese Communist Partys human rights abuses in Xinjiang, China against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities rank as the stain of the century," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. China denies mistreatment of the minority group and says the camps holding many Uighurs provide vocational training and are needed to fight extremism. Washington's action freezes any U.S. assets of the company and officials; generally prohibits Americans from dealing with them; and bars Sun Jinlong and Peng Jiarui from traveling to the United States. A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the company as a "a secretive, paramilitary organization that performs a variety of functions under the direct control" of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). "They are directly involved in the implementation of the CCPs comprehensive surveillance, detention and indoctrination ... which we all know targets the Uighurs and members of other ethnic minority members in Xinjiang," the official said. The Treasury also issued a license, authorizing certain wind-down and divestment transactions and activities related to blocked XPCC subsidiaries until Sept. 30. Washington recently imposed sanctions on the autonomous region of Xinjiangs Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, the highest-ranking Chinese official to be targeted, blacklisting the member of Chinas powerful Politburo and current first party secretary of the XPCC, as well as other officials and the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau. Story continues Peter Harrell, a former official and sanctions expert at the Center for a New American Security, said that from an economic perspective, Friday's action was a "substantial escalation" of U.S. pressure and sends a warning to companies engaged in activity in China. "The Trump administration finally took a meaningful sanctions ... action on Xinjiang, as opposed to ones that were primarily symbolic," Harrell said. XPCC is a quasi-military group created in 1954. It was initially made up of demobilized soldiers who spent time in military training while developing farms on the region's arid land. Civilian members from eastern China later joined the corps, which now numbers 3.11 million people, or more than 12% of the region's population. It is almost entirely made up of Han Chinese in a region that is home to the Muslim Uighur people. (Reporting By Steve Holland and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington; Additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Editing by Mary Milliken, Andrea Ricci and Tom Brown) After a long board meeting Tuesday night, two San Francisco supervisors Shamann Walton and Aaron Peskin posted a Twitter selfie with a toy train, bragging that they had approved a November sales tax measure to save Caltrain. By Friday afternoon, the measure appeared to be dead, and the Peninsula rail system in severe danger of shutting down. The Board of Directors for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency voted against San Franciscos version of the -cent sales tax during a special meeting Friday. To get on the November ballot, the sales tax measure needs approval from four transit boards and three county boards of supervisors by Aug. 7. San Francisco has stood firm on its demand to change Caltrains governance structure, a demand that San Mateo County officials say is illegal. Santa Clara County officials, meanwhile, have largely stayed out of the fray, though San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo expressed support for the governance changes and signed a joint statement with San Francisco Mayor London Breed and other officials, urging San Mateo County to give in. San Franciscos proposal differed from a more straightforward measure introduced in San Mateo County, in that it would force Caltrain to make governance changes to give San Francisco and Santa Clara counties more control over its management. Since the SFMTA is down to four board directors a side effect of the supervisors rejecting or postponing recent nominations by Mayor London Breed it only took one, Cheryl Brinkman, to strike the measure down. It certainly would be easier for me to hold my nose and vote yes, but I cannot, Brinkman said, noting that the conditions San Francisco added made the measure unwinnable because it might confuse or dissuade voters, and would lose support from a powerful coalition of business leaders and transit activists. The measure needs to pass by a two-thirds threshold of voters in three counties, so it cant afford to lose any endorsements. Were San Franciscos version to pass, the measure would be vulnerable to lawsuits: San Mateo County Counsel John Beiers said in a legal opinion that it would violate a 2017 state law that enabled the three counties to place it on the ballot. In an interview Friday, Caltrain board member Charles Stone, who is also a city councilman in Belmont, seemed exasperated. He said the likelihood of Caltrain stopping service is now pretty high. This is not a threat, this is not a joke, Stone said. This is not a game of chicken, although some officials in Santa Clara County and San Francisco seem to think it is. Caltrain officials began discussing the November sales tax long before the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, they envisioned the tax as a means to beef up service, particularly outside of rush hour. The agency was thriving with 65,000 riders each weekday whose fares covered 70% of the systems operating costs. Its brass were pursuing a long-range service vision to coincide with new development along El Camino Real and Googles forthcoming mega-campus at Diridon Station in San Jose. But the system lost 95% of its riders when COVID-19 swept into the region, and it has stumbled along with near-empty trains for months. Supporters of the tax changed their campaign message and began pitching it as a lifeline. Without it, officials said, the rail system might go dark. 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. While transit advocates and Peninsula politicians lobbied for the tax measure, leaders in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties saw an opportunity to press for governance reform theyd wanted for a long time. The San Mateo County Transit District operates Caltrain on behalf of a three-county Joint Powers Board, an arrangement thats been in place since SamTrans purchased the railroad right-of-way in 1991. Although San Francisco and Santa Clara counties collectively chip in $35.8 million each year for the systems capital and operating costs, they dont help pick the CEO. Under the tax measure the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday, the estimated $108 million generated by the tax each year would be deposited in an escrow account controlled by the Joint Powers Board. The board would release $40 million to Caltrain in the first year of the tax, and San Francisco and Santa Clara counties would end their annual contribution. The rest of the tax money would sit until the three counties hammer out a deal over management of the system. The plan set a deadline of Sept. 30, 2021 for the Joint Powers Board to agree on a governance solution for Caltrain. If they don't reach a solution, and Caltrain receives no more federal stimulus money, the board could dispense up to $40 million in 2022. Officials in San Mateo County flatly rejected the proposal, and for weeks the leaders from all three counties waged a battle on Twitter. Transit activists and political observers chimed in, some accusing the supervisors of elevating petty politics over regional transit. Others disparage Caltrain, saying that taxpayers shouldnt have to shell out more for a train that serves so many affluent tech workers. Those arguments spilled into Tuesdays board meeting in San Francisco, during which several supervisors criticized Caltrain for serving Silicon Valley commuters a demographic they said was less diverse than the population that rides Muni buses in San Francisco. Walton, who serves on the Caltrain board and helped write the alternative tax measure, accused Caltrain without evidence of using funds to subsidize SamTrans, and said that without governance reform, the good ol boy policies and practice would continue. Still, Peskin insisted Friday that all is not lost, because the SFMTA had left open the possibility of holding another special meeting next week. If six boards pass the revised measure next week, it will go to voters in November. Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan DEAL OF THE WEEK Scribner Heads to Space with Grush After a 12-house auction, which happened over the course of a week, Scribners Rick Horgan won North American rights to Loren Grushs The Six. Susan Canavan at Waxman Literary Agency, who represented Grush, likened the narrative nonfiction book to bestsellers like Code Girls and Hidden Figures. It follows, Canavan said, the six women chosen from 8,000 applicants to be Americas first female astronauts, and the challenges they faced in their quest to fly on the space shuttle. The author is a senior reporter at Verge and the daughter of NASA engineers. The deal also included a young readers edition, which Justin Chanda and Kendra Levin acquired for Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. The Six is tentatively scheduled for spring 2023. FROM THE U.S. McConaughey Gets Philosophical at Crown Matthew McConaughey sold an unorthodox memoir titled Greenlights to Crown. The book is set for October 20 and will, the Random House imprint said, feature anecdotes, poetry, lessons, and damn good yarns from the author, as well as a guide to his personal philosophy, which the book is named after. McConaugheywho, in addition to being an actor, cocreated a bourbon and is also a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austinwas represented in the North American rights agreement by Eric Simonoff at William Morris Endeavor. At Crown, Gillian Blake and Matthew Inman acquired the book. Fixsen, Sirois Shed Shadow for Sourcebooks Sourcebooks Anna Michels and Jenna Jankowski nabbed world English rights, at auction, to the historical novel The Girl in His Shadow. Jaima Fixsen and Regina Sirois, who are writing the title under the pen name Amelia Blake, were represented by Jennifer Weltz at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. Weltz said the book is about a woman who survived a mid-19th-century pandemic that left her an orphan secretly studying medicine when such practice was prohibited by law. Michels, at Sourcebooks, added that the novel is inspired by so many women whose names have been largely lost to history. The Girl in His Shadow is slated for spring 2021. Berkley Welcomes Jengs Other Web developer Sarah Zachrich Jeng sold her debut novel, The Other Me, to Jen Monroe at Berkley. The two-book, North American rights deal was brokered by Joanna MacKenzie at Nelson Literary Agency. Berkley compared the book to Netflixs Russian Doll and the novel Dark Matter, and said it was bought after a 72-hour exclusive. The Other Me, the PRH imprint added, is a genre-bending story about a frustrated artist who accidentally steps into a new reality where she never pursued her dreams. Strzok to Compromise for HMH Peter Strzok, a former FBI deputy assistant director, sold Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump to Alex Littlefield at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Brody took world rights from Gail Ross and Howard Yoon at the Ross Yoon Agency. In the book, HMH said, Strzok draws on lessons from a long careerfrom his role in the Russian illegals case that inspired the TV series The Americans to his service as lead FBI agent on the Mueller investigationto construct a devastating account of foreign influence at the highest levels of our government. He also grapples with a question the publisher said all Americans should be asking: When a president appears to favor personal and Russian interests over those of our nation, has he become a national security threat? Compromised is set for September 8. Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Deb Brody acquired Peter Strzok's Compromised. The book was acquired by Alex Littlefield at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In 2016, the final year of Jones term, the Richmond City Council voted to limit the detail it began during former Gov. Doug Wilders term as mayor and had up to 11 officers to a single officer who would accompany Jones only while he was on official city business. Upon taking office, Stoney eliminated the detail entirely after criticizing it during the campaign. Citing security reasons, neither RPD nor the mayors office would reveal further details of Stoneys detail, including how many officers were assigned, how long it will be in place, or what it will cost taxpayers. It is now in effect and will remain in place for the time being, Lepley said. The threats are being investigated. In late June, Stoneys spokesman said Richmond police had received credible threats against the mayor since he vowed earlier in the month to remove Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. Police recommended then that Stoney receive additional security in certain situations. On June 16, protesters showed up at Stoneys downtown apartment building, and police said 20 people briefly entered the lobby before being removed by security. A crowd of 200 or more protesters gathered outside, shouting for Stoney to come out. Incidents of over speeding on Agra-Lucknow expressway seems to show no sign of abating. In July alone, 1,038 cases of speed limit violation on the expressway were reported and fines were levied almost every day of the month. According to a report by HTs Hindi language publication Live Hindustan, drivers are breaking speed standards on the expressway with some driving at a speed as high as 194 kilometre per hour (kmph). While the permissible speed limit on the expressway ranges between 80 to 100 kmph, the average speed recorded by the vehicles was reported between 120 to 160 kmph. Some commuters were reported to be driving at twice the speed that is permitted. Not just car drivers but buses have also been reported for speeding at the expressway. In July, fines were levied almost every day on commuters for over speeding. Most incidents were reported during the night time. Of 1,038 cases of over speeding last month, more than 100 vehicles were being driven at a speed of over 150 kmph. There were 400 vehicles that were run between 130 to 140 kmph. Around 300 commuters drove at the speed of 160 to 180 kmph, while about 200 vehicles ranged between 120 and 140 kmph. Over speeding and rash driving have also led to accidents on the expressway. In a recent incident, six people were killed and at least 20 others injured when a private bus fell off the expressway after colliding with another vehicle last month. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A federally protected mouse found in north Colorado Springs has pushed back the city's timeline for adding recreational amenities at a 99-acre open space. The city started to mull new amenities at the Smith Creek Natural Area, east of Interstate 25 and North Gate Boulevard , in September and planned to finish a master plan in May, according to the city's website. Now the plan is on indefinite hold, the website states. The presence of the Prebles meadow jumping mouse, a threatened species, on the property is expected to bring more federal review, public meetings and permit requirements , said David Deitemeyer, city parks senior landscape architect. In the decades since the area was given to the city by a developer in the 2000s to fulfill a city ordinance, plenty of social trails have popped up, but none approved by the city, Deitemeyer said. The area also does not have a parking lot, a trailhead or other basic infrastructure. The city had publicized a community meeting on March 5 to seek the public's feedback on the potential for new trails and other recreational features, but canceled it this week to spend more time discussing the presence of the Prebles meadow jumping mouse with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to a city statement. Federal law prohibits activities that would harm or kill threatened species, such as the mouse, or destroy their habitat. The presence of a threatened species, such as the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, doesn't necessarily mean development plans for a park's development must be completely permanently shelved. Colorado Parks and Wildlife found the endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse living on its Fishers Peak property, south of Trinidad, in December. But the agency intends to move forward with development of the area, its newest park. "We will work around them," said Bill Vogrin, a CPW spokesman. While the community meeting on the open space has yet be rescheduled, residents can weigh in on the future of the park through an online survey , Deitemeyer said. The survey asks residents to tell them how they would improve or change the park. For some residents the answer to What would you change? is Not a thing. Others see room for a few tweaks. Resident Jeannie Robins said she purchased her home because it overlooks the open space and she now spends lots of time in the wetland area with her four children. I love it because it feels like my own private park, she said. Robins said she didnt see a need for common park improvements, such as a parking lot, at the open space. I think it would get over used, she said. If the open space were better known it could negatively impact the wildlife including the deer and birds that call the park home, Robins said. Smith Creek neighbor and mountain bike advocate Bryan Gilman said he thought the area could benefit from a small bike park, with features like bridges for bikes to practice on. However he said he wanted to see the undeveloped feel maintained. I think that would be cool, he said. Gilman also said the open space could benefit from a formal trailhead on Meadowgrass Drive. Many residents walk and bike along a utility easement that intersects with Meadowgrass Drive and that is maintained through a city partnership with Integrity Bank and Trust. Resident Jennifer Holt said she would be open to playground equipment in the area, but nothing else. My preference would be to not touch it at all, she said. PUNJAB SCHOOL EDUCATION BOARD BOSS TAKES TIME LOCATING OFFICE Newly appointed Punjab School Education Board chairman Yog Raj, 59, took time finding his office in Phase 8, Mohali, on Friday as it was his first visit to the PSEB headquarters. He admitted that though he had studied from a school in Faridkot district affiliated to the PSEB, he had never got a chance to visit its office. REPORTING MC PROCEEDINGS A TOUGH JOB IN COVID TIMES In Covid times, Chandigarh Municipal Corporation general house meetings are being conducted via video-conference. Though safe, and convenient, for MC officials and councillors, journalists are finding it harder to cover proceedings because the MC has refused to share the video conference link with them. Journalists who go to the MC office to watch the proceedings on the video screen set up have a tougher task on hand. The video stream quality is so poor that they can hardly make out whats happening. An MC official admits, There is one broadband line and more than 300 computers are running on it. So by the end of the meeting, journalists are struggling to make sense of the proceedings. Its like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. No wonder Chandigarh is struggling to become a smart city! UTS OPEN BORDERS ARE A PROBLEM ON THE GROUND, NOT ON PAPER Senior UT administration officials have been blaming Chandigarhs open borders for the rise in Covid-19 cases. But the latest steps the administration has taken, such as curtailing market timings by an hour and closing Sukhna Lake on weekends, have little to do with the open borders. Though war room press notes claim screening at borders is being practised, the situation on the ground is different. Some senior officials dont understand the principle of cause and effect. If you want to stop an effect (increase in cases), you need to address the cause (open borders). Screening at borders should be stringent and a priority, said a UT official, requesting anonymity. LOW-KEY SENDOFF FOR HIGH-PROFILE DIG, TRAFFIC, SHASHANK ANAND The farewell of high-profile Chandigarh Traffic Police deputy inspector general (DIG) Shashank Anand was a low-key affair amid Covid-19 safety guidelines. The guest list for the lunch hosted for Anand was limited to IPS officers and a DSP of Chandigarh Police. Being a law enforcement agency, we had to keep all protocols in mind to avoid negative media attention, said a senior UT police official with a smile. The announcement of Anands transfer left many netizens disappointed with some terming it a grave loss for Chandigarh. UT adviser Manoj Parida, Chandigarh mayor Raj Bala Malik and SSP Nilambari Jagadale congratulated Anand on his successful three-year tenure. The 2006-batch IPS officer of Haryana cadre has returned to his parent state. FAMILY OF CORONA WARRIORS ALLEGES APATHY Even as the UT administration prepares to honour corona warriors on Independence Day, one such family in home quarantine in Sector 46, Chandigarh, has alleged official apathy. Ravneet Dhaliwal, whose father is a Chandigarh Police inspector, took to social media recently to share the hardship her father faced before his Covid test and once he tested positive. Ravneet and her mother also tested positive. She claimed the authorities at Government Multi-Specialty Hospital (GMSH), Sector 16, were rude and apathetic. 1,200 DUSTBINS FOR PGI CAMPUS HOUSEHOLDS The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research Campus Residents Welfare Society and the hospital administration department distributed 1,200 dustbins among campus households. Each household has been given a green and a blue dustbin for wet and dry waste, respectively, to ensure waste is segregated at source. Contributed by Hillary Victor, Munieshwer A Sagar, Shailee Dogra, Rajanbir Singh and Amanjeet Singh Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size On a blue-sky March day, one week after the World Health Organisation declared the pandemic, a nearly 300-metre-long tanker set sail from Chevron's Wheatstone project on the coast of Western Australia carrying a cargo of liquefied natural gas. The gas on board had been super-chilled: first to minus 130 degrees the point at which it flashes over to a liquid then even further to minus 162 degrees. Like almost all tankers leaving Australia loaded with liquefied gas, this vessel, the British Mentor, would usually have been bound for a port somewhere in North Asia Japan, China, South Korea where its contents would be regasified, put into pipelines and sent to customers for power generation, heating and manufacturing. Instead, it would spend the next two weeks idling at sea, either anchored in the sparkling Indian Ocean or sailing around in circles. And finally, after finding a new buyer, it set off on a highly unusual voyage crossing the entire South Pacific to Manzanillo, Mexico, 15,000 kilometres away. Chevron's Wheatstone LNG project. Credit: Australia's big producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) the nation's second largest commodity export have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, and the story of the stranded British Mentor is far from isolated. As lockdown restrictions wipe fuel demand and buyers delay deliveries, the number of LNG cargoes loaded in Australia last month fell from 93 to 85, according to EnergyQuest, and, of those, one in three was forced to spend extended periods idling at sea. No one in the industry disputes the magnitude of the crisis pummelling oil and gas right now, or that the shock will be felt for years. BP and Shell responded first, radically reducing future price assumptions causing write-downs of up to $54 billion combined. In Australia, Woodside wrote off $6.3 billion, Origin $1.2 billion and Santos $1.1 billion. Oil Search slashed $500 million and axed a third of its workforce. Most producers significantly lowered their forecasts for benchmark Brent oil and LNG which is tied to the oil price out to 2025-26. Advertisement Loading On the question of what lies beyond, however, an unmistakable split in the industry is coming into focus: Once the COVID-19 smog lifts, will demand and prices for oil and gas return to pre-pandemic levels? Or will the downturn be deeper, longer-lasting, and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels in favour of clean alternatives? "We are seeing a really big difference narratively between companies in different regions and we've been observing it for a while," says Zoe Whitton, Citi's head of environment, social and governance research for Asia. "But the Europeans are reading a much longer-term transition into this crisis than the Americans or the Australians." As crude prices tumbled below $US16 a barrel, producers such as Britains BP, Italy's Eni, Frances Total and Royal Dutch Shell have been hastening preparations for a future that needs less oil and gas, renewing commitments to diversifying, sparing clean-energy investments from budget cuts and bringing forward projections for when they expect oil consumption to peak and decline. COVID-19 has gutted demand to such an extent and at a time when electric vehicles and renewable energy already loom as near-term threats that BP's Bernard Looney has openly queried whether fossil fuel usage may have peaked already. "I would not rule that out," he says. Advertisement This focus in Europe, analysts explain, has much to do with the combination of greater climate pressure from investors and assertive government decarbonisation policies. Australian producers and the Morrison government which backs a gas-led recovery from COVID-19 remain trenchantly committed to expanding fossil fuels. The idea that oil and gas demand may have peaked has been brushed off by many in the sector, who say energy demand is growing not shrinking, renewables lack scale, and the fundamentals of their business have not changed. I see some of those demand forecasts and to be quite honest with you I'm not sure how theyve developed them," Woodside chief Peter Coleman tells The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. It may take some time to recover and that will be based on the travel restrictions that will be in place by host governments around COVID-19 and I can't predict how long it will take for COVID-19 to work its way out of the system. But I think you are crystal ball-gazing if you develop a view that the world has had permanent demand destruction." Investors, however, are no longer as quick to dismiss the notion of peak demand. Credit Suisse's oil and gas analyst, Saul Kavonic, says the shock of COVID-19 has made "downside scenarios more stark and more plausible". The possibility of peak oil, he says, has to be considered. Advertisement Woodside chief Peter Coleman says in the longer term there will be a splitting of crude oil and gas pricing. Credit:Attila Csaszar "That's the issue with COVID, there are quite a few different scenarios that could play out here, he says. A prudent approach would be to consider the downside scenarios, and the downside scenario that we have already seen peak oil, to ensure the investment decisions you make are still resilient to those scenarios. Peaking demand will not trigger a sharp consumption decline. Even low-case forecasts say the world needs another trillion barrels of oil in the next 30 years. There'll be robust oil and gas demand for decades, says Kavonic. It will just become a declining industry. "Exactly where that demand peaks and the pace at which it declines is a debatable question. The chief concern now, he adds, is the danger of oversupply if LNG producers invest in new projects based on overly optimistic demand forecasts. I think you are crystal ball-gazing if you develop a view that the world has had permanent demand destruction. Peter Coleman, Woodside CEO Aside from Origin, most Australian producers are "pure-play", meaning they are solely in oil and gas. While large European counterparts are blazing into wind and solar power, Santos and Woodside's diversification strategies rest in emerging gas-related technologies such as hydrogen. Woodside recently noted renewables were unable to generate adequate returns. Australians, however, produce more gas than oil, so are not as vulnerable to the most undeniable transition threats. Transport electrification will erode oil demand, but some trends are powerfully in LNGs favour. Its usage in industrial heat, for example, lacks viable alternatives. Industry chiefs also believe that because gas is less-polluting than coal and less-intermittent than renewables, LNG will be what bridges the gap. Advertisement Oil tankers are seen anchored in the Pacific Ocean carrying crude oil no one will buy. Credit:Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg "We believe in the longer term there will be a splitting of crude oil and gas pricing as gas becomes more and more into demand as people see that it becomes a necessary not an optional, but necessary part of the transition to a lower-carbon world," Woodside's Coleman says. However, gas's future as a "transition fuel" is no longer the sure thing it once was, owing to increasing scientific concerns around emissions in drilling and shipping, and ever-growing advances in renewable technology. "Investors have really struggled with the phrase gas is a transition fuel for a number of years now ... that's no longer a strategy in and of itself," says Julien Vincent of shareholder activist Market Forces. "The claims by fossil fuel companies that their futures are secure no matter what has been disproven." Citi's Whitton agrees that gas's future under all scenarios aligned with Paris climate goals is far less certain, but says the "swing factor" for Australian producers is exposure to Asia, where decarbonisation policies guiding energy investment could go either way. Will they or won't they continue increasing gas in their energy mix? "When you are a pure-play producer, it is difficult to change, yet you are more exposed rather than less exposed and there is a danger that you'll interpret the energy-system change as a choice you make rather than a choice the rest of the world makes, Whitton says. I suspect there's a bit of that happening." Mumbai: Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore on Monday sought to correct the negative public perception that black money is pumped into films, and said the industry is likely to benefit from demonetisation. "The film industry has been transacting through cheques and money loaned from banks. We used to earlier hear that the black money is pumped in the film industry. I don't think in this age there is any black money used in the film industry. There will be transparency in the film funding due to which good films will get the support," Rathore said while taking to reporters on ongoing International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Panaji. "It is a team effort when film is produced. Right from the spot boy to the film star, everyone works. If money is transferred in their account directly then they will get the exact rates, specially for those working at lower category. The industry will get the support due to demonetisation," he said. Claiming that there are a lot of benefits associated with demonetisation and economic reforms that are being injected by the Modi led government, Rathore said certain section of people who were running parallel economy have now vanished. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: At least 40 people were died allegedly after consuming spurious liquor in Amritsar, Batala and Tarn Taran districts of Punjab. The police conducted over 40 raids and arrested seven more bootleggers on Friday evening, taking the total number of arrests to eight. The main accused Balwinder Kaur was arrested after her husband also died in the tragedy. As on Saturday morning, at least 20 persons have died in Tarn Taran and ten each in Amritsar Rural, and Batala. The death toll could rise further as the spurious liquor network was evidently spread across many areas. Punjab DGP Dinkar Gupta said a huge quantity of illicit liquor, drums and storage cans have been recovered from the accused and the same have been sent for chemical analysis. More arrests are likely, he said, adding that raids were continuing and the police teams would continue to crack down on all those involved in the case to unravel the extent of the liquor mafia operating in the region. The main accused Balwinder Kaur's husband Jaswant Singh was one of the victims. The local alleged that she had been in the illegal trade for the past two decades. While Kaur and Mithu were arrested from Amritsar Rural district, two persons identified as Darshan Rani and Rajan were nabbed from Batala district. Four others -- Kashmir Singh, Angrez Singh, Amarjit and Baljit, have been arrested from Tarn Taran. Another case was registered yesterday under sections 304, 307, 120of IPC against the four. The bootleggers had admitted to supplying spurious liquor in Norangabad. Mithu, who was arrested from village Jasso Nangal has also admitted to his role in the supply. "The blood pressure of our father shot up after consuming the liquor on Wednesday and we called the doctor. But his health deteriorated and we took him to the hospital where he was declared dead. People make this liquor in this village only but they are not being caught, a villager said. Punjab government on Friday had ordered a magisterial inquiry by Divisional Commissioner Jalandhar into the suspicious deaths. The magisterial inquiry will look into the facts and circumstances leading to incidents, as well as into any other issue(s) connected or relevant to the incident (s) and the circumstances leading to it. It will be conducted by Divisional Commissioner Jalandhar, along with Joint Excise & Taxation Commissioner Punjab, and SPs Investigation of the concerned districts. Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has given Commissioner Jalandhar Division the liberty to co-opt any civil and police officer or any expert to facilitate the expeditious conduct of the enquiry. He has promised strict action against anyone found complicit in the case, in which a woman has so far been arrested. Taking immediate and serious note of the case, Amarinder also directed the police to launch a search operation to crack down on any spurious liquor manufacturing units that may be operating in the state. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 14:09:51|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WELLINGTON, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Old St. Paul's housewarming concert, participating by three Chinese artists, was held Saturday here in the capital of New Zealand, to welcome the reopening of one of the country's oldest heritage locations. The 154-year-old wooden cathedral closed on May 3, 2019 for seismic strengthening work against earthquake. Featuring in live performances and local food, over 600 local people gathered in the housewarming event to celebrate the end of the 15-month-long wait. Combining classic Western music with traditional Chinese instruments, artists from Wellington Chinese Cultural Centre received a big round of applause from the audience. Chinese artist Yan Shu presented well-known Ave Maria with Chinese flute, while Quarrelling with Myself, a duet of Erhu, a Chinese two-stringed bowed music instrument and Chinese flute, was performed by Zoe Li and Jeff Lin in a light-hearted jocular way. "It is a fascinating intersection of Eastern culture and Western culture," audience Daniel Huang said. The celebration also featured popular local musicians, including New Zealand String Quartet, local baroque orchestra and The Queen's Closet. Enditem New Delhi, Aug 1 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday paid tribute to Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the firebrand freedom fighters and the strongest proponent of 'purna swaraj', on his 100th death anniversary. "India bows to Lokmanya Tilak on his 100th Punya Tithi. His intellect, courage, sense of justice, and idea of Swaraj continue to inspire," the Prime Minister said in a tweet. Tilak, born as Keshav Gangadhar Bal Gangadhar Tilak, tirelessly contributed to help the country break free from the British rule. He gave the slogan of 'Swaraj is my birth right'. Part of the Lal-Bal-Pal (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal) troika, Tilak was called the 'father of the Indian unrest' by British colonial rulers. He was a scholar, a writer, mathematician and a philosopher. He was given the title, 'Lokmanya', meaning 'beloved leader', by his followers. He died on August 1, 1920 in Mumbai. Science is clear on the efficacy of face masks it's proven to slow the spread of COVID-19. But what of face shields? Youve probably seen someone wearing one in your neighborhood. Its basically an individually sized salad bar sneeze guard attached to a headband. The advantages of a transparent plastic face shield over a face mask arent trivial. Breathing is easier while wearing a shield. Speech isnt muffled like it can be through a mask. Eyeglasses are less likely to fog up. People wearing a full-face visor instead of a mask tend not to touch their mouth, nose and eyes as much. You can see if a person is smiling at you through a face shield. With a face mask, you cant know for sure if its grin or a scowl under the fabric. Psychologists and speech therapists find that communicating with patients wearing a face shield is easier than with those wearing a mask. Hearing-impaired people can read the lips of people protected by a shield. Doctors, nurses, dental workers and other front-line health workers wear shields, but mostly as an added layer of protection in conjunction with masks. They're essential for intubation, which often causes to patients to expectorate violently. The shields also extend the longevity of the masks by blocking droplet contamination. If someone coughs in your face, a mask wont protect your eyes, but a shield will. And unlike face coverings designed for single use, such as surgical masks and N95 masks, plastic shields can be washed down and reused indefinitely. Despite the benefits, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is clear on its guidance: Face shields are not recommended for normal everyday activities or as a substitute for cloth face coverings. For one thing, its unknown how well shields, which have openings at the sides and bottom, protect others from droplets expelled by the wearer. Furthermore, the level of protection a shield affords to the person wearing it has not been thoroughly studied. In a recent coronavirus outbreak at hotel in Graubunden, Switzerland, only those workers who were wearing a face shield were exposed. "It has been shown that only those employees who had plastic visors were infected. There was not a single infection among employees with a mask," Rudolf Leuthold, director of the cantonal health department in Graubunden, told The Local. Nevertheless, face shields have their advocates. A Cincinnati physician says teachers and students should wear full face shields instead of cloth masks when classes resume in the fall. "These [holds up his fingers] are the 10 most deadly weapons, which is why you do not want to touch your t-zone,' your eyes, nose and mouth," internist Dr. Will Sawyer told Fox19. "Its self-inoculation." Sawyer maintains people can't help touching face masks to constantly adjust them, but a face shield forces them to keep their hands away from their face. However, the CDC says COVID-19 is primarily transmitted via respiratory droplets by coughing and sneezing, speaking and even breathing. Hand-to-mouth/nose/eye transmission is believed to be much less common, although it does happen. Whether you wear a mask or a shield, frequent hand washing is strongly encouraged. School districts in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states are including face shields among the protective gear theyre ordering in anticipation of reopening in the fall. In the Bay Area, for example, the Palo Alto Unified teachers union wants the district to outfit teachers with both face masks and shields. Dr. Eli N. Perencevich, an infectious disease physician and professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, co-authored an essay in the Journal of American Medical Association arguing for greater use of face shields by the general public. The opinion piece was published April 29. Perencevich referred to a 2014 simulation study in which face shields were shown to reduce immediate viral exposure by 96% when worn by a simulated health care worker within 18 inches of a cough. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. But the author of the study, William Lindsley, a research biomedical engineer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, told NBC News people should stick to cloth face coverings. "A cloth mask or a medical mask is going to do a better job of protecting you against the smaller particles than a face shield would," Lindsley said. "A face shield is good against the really big stuff [droplets] that you can kind of see. But as the stuff gets smaller and smaller, it's just easy for that to go around the face shield and be inhaled." There is mounting scientific evidence that the coronavirus can be spread as an aerosol, mainly indoors, suggesting that viral particles could be inhaled through the openings at the bottom and on the sides of a face shield. Swiss Federal Office of Public Health spokesman Daniel Dauwalder told The Local visors or shields are no substitute for face masks, but they could serve as a "complementary form of protection." California and New York both require people to wear face coverings in public. But while New York allows anyone to substitute a plastic shield for a mask, California's Department of Health's guidance states that shields be worn only by those who have a medical condition that prevents them from wearing a mask. It also stipulates that the shield should have a drape attached to its bottom edge. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. SF pastor claims without evidence that 'news reports on COVID are largely unreal' Andytown Coffee closes cafes, roastery after former employee tests positive for COVID-19 Florida Man Took Coronavirus Aid and Bought a Lamborghini, Officials Say Trump calls new Senate GOP coronavirus bill 'semi-irrelevant' Newsom announces $52M in funding to help hard-hit part of California Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said today that coronavirus vaccinations will be provided to the population free of charge. We plan that vaccination against coronavirus will be covered entirely from the budget, RIA Novosti quotes him as saying. In addition, the minister specified that the coronavirus vaccine will be included in the Russian vaccination schedule. The vaccination scheme is known to everyone - it will be planned, Mikhail Murashko explained. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 22:15:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KUWAIT CITY, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait on Saturday reported 491 new COVID-19 cases and six more deaths, raising the tally of infections to 67,448 and the death toll to 453, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Currently, 8,470 patients are receiving treatment, including 134 in ICU, the statement added. The ministry also announced the recovery of 593 more patients, raising the total recoveries in the country to 58,525. Kuwait resumed on Saturday commercial flights at Kuwait International Airport, the operation of the first stage will be at a maximum of 30 percent capacity. On July 28, Kuwait started the third-phase plan of restoring normal life. During the third phase, labor capacity will increase to no more than 50 percent and visits to social care homes will be allowed. Kuwait and China have been supporting each other and cooperating closely in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Kuwait donated medical supplies worth 3 million U.S. dollars to China at the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak. On April 27, a team of Chinese medical experts visited Kuwait to assist the Gulf country's anti-coronavirus fight, through sharing their experience and expertise in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. Enditem NEW DELHI : MG Motor India on Saturday said its retail sales increased by 40% to 2,105 units in July compared to 1,508 units in the same month of last year. "The overall market environment continues to be challenging with uncertainties due to variable lockdowns in various phases. The component supplies continue to remain impacted especially from the Chennai region," MG Motor India Director-Sales Rakesh Sidana said in a statement. However, despite these challenges, the production has remained at similar levels in July as compared to June 2020 and the company expects the situation to improve during the festival season, he added. The company said it is witnessing encouraging traction for top trims of Hector Plus that was launched last month. 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 Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 21:00:10|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese People's Liberation Army marked its 93rd founding anniversary on Saturday. President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has emphasized strengthening the country's military on many occasions. The following are some highlights of his quotes. -- We are closer than ever to realizing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and we need to build a strong military more than ever in history. -- Without a strong military, peace and development can not be guaranteed. -- The Party's goal for developing the military under the new circumstances is to build people's armed forces that faithfully follow the Party's commands, are able to win battles and have fine conduct. -- A military is built to fight. Our military must regard combat capability as the criterion to meet in all its work and focus on how to win when it is called on. -- A military that has the ability to fight can deter war. -- The Party's absolute leadership over the military is a defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. -- The Chinese people cherish peace. We will not engage in aggression or expansion. But we are confident that we will defeat any aggressor. Enditem Deepak Sathish By Express News Service COIMBATORE: A renowned neurologist MB Pranesh, who was undergoing treatment for COVID-19 in a private hospital in Coimbatore, succumbed to the infection in the wee hours of Saturday. He was 83. This is the first fatality to be recorded in the Coimbatore district so far, where a doctor has died due to the viral infection. Pranesh was known as a renowned clinician who did not take consulting fees from economically poor people. According to sources, the deceased who was residing at Tatabad had exhibited breathing difficulties on July 28 and was admitted to a private hospital. There, he was subjected to the COVID-19 test on the sidelines of his treatment. His samples tested positive and he was shifted to the Covid ward. Pranesh was a retired professor of Neurology in Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH), former and head of Neurology in KG Hospital and PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research. Until his death, Pranesh had been offering consultation in a clinic at Ganapathy here. Indian Medical Association-Coimbatore branch has expressed its condolence over Pranesh's death. The secretary M Doraikannan said, "Dr Pranesh examined his patients very carefully and talked amiably. He had a good memory as he kept a track of his patients' records. The neurologist was also friendly to poor patients. His students are working in the medical field across the globe." WASHINGTON - The Justice Department scheduled two additional federal executions on Friday, an announcement that comes weeks after it fought off last-minute legal challenges and successfully resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause. The executions of Christopher Andre Vialva and William Emmett LeCroy are both scheduled to be carried out in late September. The government carried out three executions in July, and two other executions had been set previously for August. Vialva, 40, was convicted along with a co-defendant in the 1999 kidnapping and killing of an Iowa couple at Fort Hood in Texas. The youth ministers had stopped to use a payphone in Killeen, Texas, and agreed to give Vialva and two others a ride, authorities said. Vialva pulled out a gun, forced the couple into the trunk and drove around for several hours, stopping at ATMs to withdraw cash and attempting to pawn the womans wedding ring, according to prosecutors. The victims, Todd and Stacie Bagley, were both shot in head and placed in trunk of their car, which then was set afire. Vialva -- who is the first Black inmate to be scheduled to be executed since the federal government resumed the death penalty this year -- is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24. A co-defendant in the case, Brandon Bernard, also received death sentence, though his execution date has not yet been scheduled. LeCroy, 50, of Georgia, was convicted of raping and killing Joann Lee Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, in 2001 and then stealing her car. Prosecutors said he broke into her home and attacked her when she came home from a shopping trip, binding her hands behind her back before he strangled her with an electrical cord and raped her. They said he then slit Tieslers throat and stabbed her repeatedly in the back. At the time, one of LeCroys lawyers argued he should face state charges and not be tried in federal court under the federal carjacking statute. LeCroys lawyers said he had no intention of stealing the car when he was burglarizing Tieslers home. He was arrested at the U.S.-Canada border and was previously convicted of firearms and drug offences, burglary, aggravated assault and child sex abuse charges. LeCroy is scheduled to be executed on September 26. The resumption of federal executions by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, started on July 14, with the execution of former white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee. Two others, Wesley Purkey and Dustin Honken, were executed later the same week. Anti-death penalty groups say President Donald Trump is pushing for executions prior to the November election in a cynical bid to burnish a reputation a law-and-order leader. U.S. officials have portrayed the executions, particularly those of men convicted of brutal killings of children, as bringing long-delayed justice for victims and their families. There are currently 58 men and one woman on federal death row, all of them in Terre Haute. At least until this year, the federal government has not been prolific executioner compared to states. Combined, states have executed thousands of people over decades. But just 37 were executed for federal crimes between 1927 and 2003, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Thirty-four were executed between 1927 and 1963, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg put to death in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. No federal executions were carried out from 1963 to 2001. And only three happened from 2001 to 2003. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was among them. The Justice Department announced an Aug. 26 execution date for the only Native American on federal death row, Lezmond Mitchell, earlier this week. Officials had previously set Keith Dwayne Nelsons execution for the same week in August. Mitchell was convicted of the 2001 killing of a woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter. Nelson was convicted of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl while she was rollerblading near her Kansas home, raping her in a forest, then strangling her. Lee, Purkey and Honkens victims also included children. ___ Tarm reported from Chicago Taxpayers will not have to foot the hotel quarantine bill for every person who enters the state despite concerns the $2800 charge could encourage people to lie about travelling to coronavirus hot spots. Greater Sydney was declared a hot spot on Saturday, meaning non-Queensland residents were turned around at the border and those returning home were put into hotel quarantine at their own expense. The view from a room in one of Queensland's quarantine hotels. Greens MP Michael Berkman has warned the $200-a-night stay might deter people from being honest with their border declaration. "Not everyone has $2800 to spare and that means poor and marginalised people crossing the border could be forced into a decision between taking a significant financial hit or making a false declaration," he said. Photograph: Octavio Jones/Getty Images School districts around the US are set to begin reopening in August, many with in-person classes, five days a week, despite coronavirus cases rising in many parts of the country. But the school reopenings have teachers around the US fearful for the safety of themselves, students, staff and family members, with teachers and unions saying that proper protections and protocols have yet to be implemented. Some teachers have even drawn up wills ahead of classes beginning, others have retired from the profession and teachers unions have said they will sanction strike action for members who deem that they are being forced to take potentially deadly risks. Related: School reopenings: what can the US learn from other countries' experiences? Educators are afraid because proper policies are not being put in place to protect them, said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association. The Oklahoma state board of education has only issued guidelines for school districts, and voted down a proposal on 23 July to issue a mask mandate in schools across the state. The OEA offers members through our personal legal services program a free will. The requests for those free wills are up over 3,000% in the last few weeks, Priest added. A report published by the Kaiser Family Foundation on 10 July found 1.47 million teachers in the US some 24% of the profession are at greater risk of serious illness if infected with coronavirus because they have conditions that make them vulnerable. Yet Florida has issued an order mandating all schools must open in August in-person, five days a week. The Florida teachers union responded to the order with a lawsuit. We are letting the community down by pretending we can open safely. The districts cannot do what is necessary according to CDC guidelines, said Stacy Rene Kennett, a kindergarten teacher in Immokalee, Florida, who is expected to begin attending in-person training for school reopenings on 4 August. Story continues Amy Scott, an IB language arts high school teacher in Miami, Florida for 44 years, decided to retire one year early due to the coronavirus pandemic and the instability of the upcoming school year. I dreaded it. I wanted to extend it as long as possible because I love kids and teaching, said Scott. But then came coronavirus and I realized all the difficulties of holding brick-and-mortar classrooms and the danger involved to teachers, students and the community spread and I didnt want to end my 45 years of teaching in such a frustrating environment. In Arizona, which was designated a global pandemic hotspot in early July, reopening decisions have been left to individual school districts. There is no consistency across the state, said Marisol Garcia, a middle school teacher and parent in Phoenix who currently serves as vice-president of the Arizona Educators Association. We are left to our own devices to figure out how to keep our families safe and ensure our students are safe Garcia explained current class loads in Arizona make social distancing impossible in districts where in-person learning is permitted, as she had no less than 31 students in each class last school year, and it remains unclear if any schools will face repercussions for not following guidelines for coronavirus protections. She also warns many of her colleagues may retire early. In Georgia, state agencies have issued guidelines for school reopenings, deferring decisions to school districts on when and how schools reopen in the coming weeks. Several school districts outside of metro areas in Georgia are reopening in August with in-person classes, five days a week, leaving teachers there concerned over safety protections as coronavirus case rates have been rising around the state over the past several weeks. Were very concerned that when were once again in school buildings, children, educators, and their family members will become sick and perhaps die, said Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Educators Association. According to Morgan, several school districts in Georgia that are reopening in person, five days a week, are not following CDC guidelines, with no mask mandates, large classroom sizes making social distancing impossible, and responsibility for extra cleaning measures placed on teachers to carry out. Even as schools are expected to reopen in the coming weeks around the US, school districts and teachers are scrambling to create plans for restarting schools, whether classes are conducted in person, virtually, or a hybrid of in-person and remote learning. The country is asking teachers and children to lead the way, yet no one seems to know what direction were headed, said Angela McKeen, a high school science teacher in Clarksburg, West Virginia. My concerns at this point are for my students. Can we prevent huge outbreaks? Can students effectively learn in such fluid situations? Can teachers effectively reach their students at not just their places academically, but also emotionally during this time? Teacher unions have raised the possibility of walking off the job unless comprehensive safety plans are implemented for schools to reopen. The head of the Colorado Education Association recently said teachers may refuse to report to work as schools are set to reopen in the state in August if teachers criteria for school reopenings arent met. The union cited a survey of nearly 10,000 members, where about eight out of 10 teachers asserted they would be willing to refuse to work if teachers arent provided a voice in how safety protocols are implemented, such as mask mandates and social distancing procedures. We dont want schools to be epicenters of outbreak in our community. It would crush any student or staff member if they brought coronavirus into school, said Ernest Garibay, a high school math teacher in Jefferson county, Colorado, and local union representative. By Dave Sherwood SANTIAGO, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Chilean regulators have tossed out lithium producer SQM's $25 million environmental compliance plan for the Atacama salt flat, requiring the miner to start again from scratch, according to a filing. Chile's Environmental Superintendent (SMA) blessed SQM's compliance plan early in 2019 after a multi-year investigation found SQM had overdrawn lithium-rich brine from the salt flat. But the regulator said in a filing dated Thursday that it would begin the process anew to comply with the decision of a regional environmental court in December that invalidated SQMs plan, calling it "insufficient." Both SQM and the regulator have since appealed that decision to Chiles Supreme Court, but the lower tribunal said earlier this month that environmental regulators must comply with its order even as the Supreme Court ponders a potential reversal. SQM did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The process is likely to prove yet another headache for the miner, which is seeking to expand its operations in the Atacama salt flat. The region supplies about one-third of the global supply of lithium, a key ingredient in the batteries that power cellphones and electric vehicles. (Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) Online retailer Amazon is under increasing pressure from campaigners in France who accuse the American company of destroying retail jobs, exploiting workers and harming the environment. The American company Amazon has come under fire on several occasions from campaigners, most recently over conditions of its workers during the Covid-19 crisis. In April, a French court ruled the firm was not adequately protecting its employees from Covid-19 in a case brought by trade union workers and backed by environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth. Amazon disputed the court's findings, and closed its French warehouses and distribution centres in protest for 35 days. The company has since agreed a deal with unions and re-opened the hubs. Similar legal disputes between workers and the company have occurred in Germany and the United States. In June, Fracture, a French lobby group made up of concerned locals, backed by Friends of the Earth, managed to have construction suspended at a site near Lyon airport which local officials say is just one of several sites in France earmarked to become a 160,000-square-metre Amazon logistics hub. Accused of harmful consumerism Gilles Renevier, a vet by trade, and unpaid head of Fracture says among their concerns is the traffic and pollution such a hub would cause. The group is also critical of the consumerist way of life promoted by Amazon that he described as harmful to society. How are we going to reduce the pollution when you have a big operation like this, with so many vehicles that are going to be circulating around it? he said in an interview with Reuters. Building at the Lyon site is on hold while a legal challenge makes its way through the courts. France's new environment minister, Barbara Pompili, last week said she backs a moratorium on the construction of large-scale logistic sites, without specifying the length, which comes as welcome news for anti-Amazon campaigners. In a statement on Twitter, the minister wrote that the moratorium would begin on 27 July, and would be part of the legal framework put forward by the recent Citizens' Convention on Climate. Amazon representatives have defended their business model, saying the company was good for the environment because its distribution was more efficient than traditional retail, and involved less pollution. They also said the company generates thousands of jobs, directly and indirectly. Amazon has an estimated 19% share of the French business-to-consumer e-commerce market, and directly employs 9,300 people. Expansion in France's northeast Several of Amazon's new expansion projects are focused on the north east of France, which gives it strategic access to the rest of Europe but their size is worrying environmentalists. 185, 000 square meters at a former airbase near Metz has been earmarked for a logistics hub, 76,000 near Belfort, 150,000 Dambach-la-Ville, and 190,000 square meters in Ensisheim. Ecologists are hoping their voices will be heard, especially in light of recent gains made by Green representatives in the last municipal elections in June, particularly in the major city of Strasbourg. The company does however have supporters in France and insists that it had made huge efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. Christian Poiret, mayor of a district in northern France where Amazon has a distribution centre, said he fought to attract the online retailer in order to generate jobs in the area. (CNN) Joe Biden heads into the weekend weighing the biggest decision of his presidential campaign so far, and people close to the process tell CNN that the former vice president is believed to have now begun to narrow his personal shortlist of potential running mates to a handful of women. In more than two dozen interviews with CNN in recent days, members of Congress, top Democratic donors, Biden allies and others close to the vice presidential vetting process said California Rep. Karen Bass, the 66-year-old chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, has gained real traction in the late stage of the search. Amid furious last-minute lobbying and speculation about Biden's historic decision, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Susan Rice, Barack Obama's former national security adviser, are also believed to be among the most serious contenders. The search continues to be conducted under extreme secrecy, with even many top campaign advisers in the dark about the vetting process. Several additional women have also gone through extensive examination by the Biden team, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Florida Rep. Val Demings and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Others, including Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham have also received various levels of scrutiny by the vetting team. Biden's team has yet to tell any of the women they've considered in earnest for the vice presidential role that they are officially out of the running, people familiar with the process said, with one source saying 11 women are still formally being considered. Bass' new emergence as one of the top contenders has been propelled by intensive lobbying on her behalf by some of her colleagues in the House including influential California Democrats and top donors. Her star has risen after Speaker Nancy Pelosi recommended weeks ago that Bass should not be overlooked. They've reached out to members of Biden's inner circle in recent weeks, making an impassioned case for why the congresswoman should not be overlooked in the search process. Her backers have painted her as a universally liked and respected member of the House, a team player with experience working with Republicans and leading a state legislature, an African-American woman with a compelling biography rooted in humble beginnings and notably, a safe political choice who would not rock the boat. "I think Karen has been under counted since Day One," said Steve Westly, the former California state controller and major Biden fundraiser, who said he is glad to see both Bass and Harris on Biden's shortlist. "Everybody likes Karen Bass. People are scratching their heads saying, who is this woman?" he said. "When you've been speaker of the legislature for a state that's twice the population of New York and the world's fifth biggest economy, you know how to manage media, you understand the economy. I think she is stronger than people think." Pelosi, who is close to several of the contenders, does not have a preferred candidate in the search, aides insist. Another unmistakable dynamic that has emerged in recent days: an intensive effort by some Biden allies to torpedo Harris' chances of being chosen. Even as Biden has publicly praised Harris in recent months, some of his supporters -- both in private and public -- have continued to raise questions through the press, sometimes using sexist language, about whether Harris would be a trustworthy team player, often bringing up Harris' famous attack on Biden in a Democratic primary debate over the issue of busing. One Democratic aide with knowledge of the search process offered this blunt observation: "Biden allies are laying the groundwork for the vice president to have a reason to not choose her." In multiple media reports, Biden allies have attacked Harris' motives. Florida donor John Morgan lamented that Harris "would be running for president the day of the inauguration. For me, loyalty and friendship should mean something." Chris Dodd, a member of Biden's VP vetting team, reportedly complained to a donor that Harris showed "no remorse" when asked about her famous clash with Biden on the debate stage. Former Pennsylvania Gov. and Biden supporter Ed Rendell, who said he currently does not have a favorite in the search for a running mate, said in an interview that Bass is seen as a "very safe choice" in a way that Harris simply is not. "Kamala can rub some people the wrong way. Karen Bass is not likely to do that," Rendell said. "The number one rule for picking the VP? Do no harm." Biden clearly came prepared to defend Harris at a press conference on Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, with a photograph of a notecard listing these bullet points under Harris' name: "Do not hold grudges." "Campaigned with me & Jill." "Talented." "Great help to campaign." "Great respect for her." The recent attacks on Harris have prompted cries of sexism. "This isn't about whining that we're not being treated fairly, although I would argue these women are not," said Karen Finney, a top aide to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. "We know that it's an old trope to say that you can't trust an ambitious woman." Harris herself told women on a Black Girls Lead 2020 conference stream Friday, "There will be a resistance to your ambition, there will be people who say to you 'you are out of your lane,' " addressing the attacks on her trustworthiness and ambition for the first time this week. "They are burdened by only having the capacity to see what has always been instead of what can be. But don't you let that burden you," she said, adding that she's experienced it her whole career. The Biden campaign has largely declined to publicly engage the criticism leveled against Harris until this week, when campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon responded to a report that Harris was seen by some as too ambitious. "Ambitious women make history, change the world, and win," Dillon wrote on Twitter. "Our campaign is full of ambitious women going all out for Joe Biden. He will make this decision, and this is clear: whoever he chooses from the very qualified options to help him win & unite the country, she'll be one too." One reason Harris has been under fire is that she has long been viewed as a favorite to be Biden's running mate. Her supporters point to the that she was already vetted on the national stage as a presidential candidate and unlikely to surprise the campaign with any last-minute unknowns. While her 2020 campaign ended well before the Iowa caucuses, Harris' backers maintain that she gained a loyal following while running for the White House, and that she would make history as the country's first Black and Asian vice-presidential candidate. Meanwhile, Rice's emergence as a serious contender has surprised some in the Biden world, given her limited campaign experience. But her close allies point to her governing credentials from her time in the executive branch and her deep foreign policy background at a time of global turmoil. They also say Biden's years-long working relationship with Rice is not to be underestimated, particularly given how he has emphasized wanting a partner who is "simpatico with me." "If there ever was a time to pick someone without campaign experience, this would be the year," a Cabinet member from the Obama administration, who knows Rice well, told CNN. "Susan would be the best governing partner." With the months of intensive vetting now drawing to a close, the final decision is left to Biden and his wife, Jill, who has emerged as one of his closest advisers in the process. She has held virtual campaign events with nearly all of the potential candidates, but has not participated in any of the interviews conducted by the search committee, according to people with knowledge of the process. The Biden campaign has also started building out the team that will staff the future vice presidential pick, a source close to the campaign said, but would not detail who will be involved. When Biden told reporters earlier this week that he would choose a running mate in the first week of August, two aides told CNN that the timing of an announcement was more likely to be pushed back until the week of August 10. But Biden's advisers gave him a deadline of next week to make up his mind, a person familiar with the process said. Biden enters the final stretch of deliberations as the country confronts a dire public health crisis and a economic recession. President Donald Trump's approval rating has taken a serious hit over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic -- a reality that close allies say should offer Biden the room to choose a running mate without weighing as much as he might in any other election cycle the political and electoral advantages that a specific running mate could offer. "They don't need to swing for the fences; they don't need it to be a distraction. They don't need to go with someone that isn't tested or someone who's flashy or random," one Biden supporter in close touch with his inner circle said. "If he's decided, he hasn't told anyone," a longtime friend of Biden told CNN. "But knowing him, he will not make a final decision until the very last moment." This story has been updated with comments Kamala Harris made Friday and additional reporting on Nancy Pelosi's approach to the VP selection. This story was first published on CNN.com Joe Biden narrows down his VP list, with Karen Bass emerging as one of several key contenders TAIPEI (Reuters) - The Taiwanese government on Friday said it will hold a state funeral for former President Lee Teng-hui, a figure respected on the island for ending autocratic rule but branded by mainland Chinese state media as a "national sinner". Dubbed "Mr. Democracy" for ushering freewheeling pluralism and defying China's drive to absorb an island it regards as a wayward province, Lee died late on Thursday aged 97 in Taipei. Vice President William Lai will lead a committee to organise the funeral and the government has ordered flags to fly at half mast across the island. A venue will be set up for the public to pay their respects in Taipei, the Presidential Office said. The date of the funeral has not been decided, it said. "We want to show our respect to former president Lee, who ushered the country's new era of democracy and pluralism," Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang told reporters. World leaders offered condolences, with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe praising Lee for laying Taiwan's foundation for liberty as well as boosting Japan-Taiwan relations. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Lee a crucial player in transforming Taiwan into a "beacon of democracy". "We will honour President Lee's legacy by continuing to strengthen our bond with Taiwan and its vibrant democracy," he said in a statement. Responding to Lee's death, Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, in a statement said Taiwan independence is a "dead end" and national unification is "unstoppable". Widely read Chinese state-backed tabloid the Global Times labelled Lee a "traitor" for being the "godfather of Taiwan secessionism". "Lee's death is definitely not sad news to most people in the Chinese mainland," the newspaper published in an opinion piece late on Thursday. "His image as a national sinner will never be changed in the history of China, and the separatists of the island can never change the historic trend that Taiwan will eventually be reunified with the mainland." Story continues Lee's greatest act of defiance was becoming Taiwan's first democratically elected president in 1996, achieved with a landslide vote following eight months of intimidating war games by Beijing in waters around the island. Beijing has not renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and has stepped up threatening military activity near the island in recent months. (Reporting by Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo and Ryan Woo in Beijing; Editing by Christopher Cushing) The oil-rich United Arab Emirates on Saturday announced the startup of its Barakah nuclear power plant, a first for the Arab world. "UAE first nuclear reactor at the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant has achieved first criticality and successfully started up," tweeted Hamad Alkaabi, the country's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This is a historic milestone for the nation with a vision set to deliver a new form of clean energy for the nation," he tweeted in English, along with a photograph of technicians raising their arms in celebration. The UAE premier and ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, tweeted that work at Barakah had "succeeded in loading nuclear fuel packages, carrying out comprehensive tests and successfully completing the operation". "Congratulations on realising this historic achievement in the energy sector & marking this milestone in the roadmap for sustainable development," Sheikh Mohammed said. The UAE started loading fuel rods into the reactor at Barakah in February, after regulators gave the green light for the first of the plant's four reactors, opening the way for commercial operations. The plant on the Gulf coast west of Abu Dhabi had been due to go online in late 2017 but faced a number of delays that officials attributed to safety and regulatory requirements. The Nawah Energy Company said at the time that Unit 1 will begin commercial operations after a "series of tests" leading to the start-up process. During the process, the unit will be synchronised with the power grid and the first electricity produced. The UAE has substantial oil and gas reserves, but with a power-hungry population of 10 million it has made huge investments in developing clean alternatives, including solar energy. The plant is a regional first -- Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, has said it plans to build up to 16 nuclear reactors, but the project has yet to materialise. Coal barges are pictured as they queue to be pulled along Mahakam river in Samarinda, East Kalimantan province, Indonesia, August 31, 2019. Photo by Reuters/Willy Kurniawan. Indonesia is stepping up efforts to diversify sales of the fuel as shipments to India slump and with exports to China poised to slow. Indonesia, the worlds top exporter of thermal coal, is using diplomatic channels to promote sales around the region, from Vietnam to Pakistan and Bangladesh, a government spokesman said, as it seeks to offset a fall in annual exports and a global shift towards cleaner energy. While Vietnams growing appetite for thermal coal is unlikely to match that of sizeable markets like China and India, the country is emerging as a key market and experts say it is important to get in early. Thermal coal is used by power plants to generate electricity. "In this current condition, we need to secure non-traditional markets for our future growth," said Hendra Sinadia, executive director of the Indonesian Coal Miners Association (ICMA). As part of such efforts, he said the government recently organized virtual meetings between Indonesian miners and Vietnamese buyers. "We are geographically advantaged and our coal quality matched Vietnams needs," he said. Indonesias coal exports fell 8 percent in the first five months of 2020 compared with a year ago, according to data from Statistics Indonesia, led by a mammoth 35 percent drop to India as lockdown restrictions hit demand for power in the Asian giant. Thermal coal exports to China rose by 31 percent to 29 million tonnes in the January-May period from the year prior, while exports to Vietnam jumped 44 percent to 8.9 million tonnes over that period. With Chinas plans to boost domestic coal production likely to curb its coal imports in coming months, Indonesia is looking to Vietnam, where coal demand is growing, to offset some of those losses. Vietnam, which became the seventh-largest buyer of Indonesian coal in the first five months of the year, saw a huge jump in coal imports in the first half of 2020 from the year prior of more than 50 percent as it fed the countrys growing number of coal-fired power plants. After India, Vietnam has the largest coal-fired power plant projects in terms of capacity among countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia, according to Fitch Solutions analyst Daine Loh, even as it expands renewable power sources. There are currently more than 17-gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power-plant capacity under construction in Vietnam while nearly 29 GWs of coal-fired plants are also in the pre-construction stage, Fitch data showed. Indonesias second-largest coal miner PT Adaro Energy told Reuters last week that Vietnam had the strongest demand growth in Asia in 2020. Despite this, Indonesian miners are planning to curb output due to falling demand for the fuel owing to the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. ICMA said earlier this month its members would cut 2020 production by between 15-20 percent from an earlier target to support prices. At least 30 Nigerian ladies trafficked to Lebanon are appealing to the federal government to rescue them. They made the appeal in ... At least 30 Nigerian ladies trafficked to Lebanon are appealing to the federal government to rescue them. They made the appeal in a statement by Ajibola Abayomi, president of Journalists International Forum for Migration (JIFORM), made available to NAN on Saturday. Abayomi said the message was being relayed based on an encounter with the victims, which necessitated the call for a speedy rescue action from government. JIFORM has forwarded details of the human trafficking agents involved in this matter to the relevant agencies and shall monitor it to the logical conclusion to ensure proper investigation and prosecution of those involved, he said. He said the ladies were all camped in one room with faulty toilet and other utilities, and were presently housed in a building at Dawra city in Lebanon. Abayomi said one of the victims, Adebisi Comfort-Oluwatoyin, with passport number A10597908, told JIFORM that they had to escape from the inhuman treatment by their mistresses and hosts. According to him, the 23-year-old lady who hails from Ondo state, graduated from the Edo State Polytechnic, and was a resident in Osun state before departing Nigeria in December. Help us plead with the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) and others to save us. The Nigerian embassy in Lebanon has tried but we want to go back home, she was quoted to have said. Our belongings and international passports were seized with no payments for the service we have been rendering for months. They loosen and cut our hairs with razor blade. The police and their immigration are always on their side. We are not getting justice and our lives are in danger. Actor Ankita Lokhande says she was shocked to see the videos of her late former boyfriend, actor Sushant Singh Rajputs body going viral on social media after his death. In an interview with Republic TV, Ankita called it a very painful thing to happen. In the interview, Ankita said she was sleeping when a journalists call woke her up, informing her of Sushants suicide. And within a few minutes, people started sharing a video of Sushants dead body, filmed at his Bandra home. I saw a video of Sushant in which they were putting a sheet over his body. And it was everywhere, people were sending it to me. I dont know how it leaked or what happened but it happened and I saw it. I didnt want to see it for two-three days but so much was going viral and I wanted to see what was happening. I saw the green cloth hanging from the fan and him lying. This was the saddest thing that can happen to somebody. Someones dead bodys pictures are going viral. What to say. I dont know who has done it but its really sad. Its very painful. For the family, for the people who loved him, she said. I dont know who did it but I got the pictures in 10 minutes. I really dont know what to say, she added. Maharashtra Cyber had issued a stern warning to those circulating disturbing photos of Sushant. In a series of tweets shared on its official Twitter handle, the Maharashtra Cyber said that the circulation of such pictures was not only in bad taste but also illegal. A disturbing trend has been observed on Social Media platforms by Maharashtra Cyber that pictures of deceased actor Shri. Sushant Singh Rajput are being circulated, which are disturbing and in bad taste, the agency said. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer It is emphasised that circulation of such pictures is against legal guidelines and court directions, and are liable to invite legal action, another tweet read. A final tweet added that the pictures doing the rounds online must be deleted: Maharashtra Cyber exhorts and directs all netizens to refrain from circulating the aforesaid pictures. The pictures already circulated should be deleted henceforth. . Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEW DELHI: In more trouble for former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student and activist Umar Khalid, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police has grilled him in connection with the communal riots in February. Khalid was grilled for nearly three hours on Friday in connection with the communal riots in the northeastern part of the national capital earlier this year. The former JNU student was also interrogated regarding an alleged speech that he made before US President Donald Trump's India visit. The Special Cell of the Delhi Police has also seized the mobile phone of ex-JNU student Umar Khalid. Earlier, an FIR was registered against the activist, in which it was said that the Delhi Riots was a pre-planned conspiracy and that the Khalid and his associates had a role in organising it. The FIR also stated that as a part of this plan, Khalid had appealed people to take to streets ahead of Trump's visit to garner international attention for his propaganda. Last month, the Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested Pinjra Tod activist Natasha Narwal and booked her under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged conspiracy in the northeast Delhi riots in February and were sent to judicial custody for 14 days. Narwal, along with another JNU student Devangana Kalita, was being investigated by the Delhi Police's Crime branch, related to communal violence in northeast Delhi. Communal clashes had broken out in northeast Delhi on February 24 this year over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), leaving more than 50 people dead and around 200-250 of them injured. Another month passes. The coronavirus pandemic marches on. And Americans struggling amid the economic fallout once again have to worry as their next rent checks come due Aug. 1. Many left jobless by the crisis are already behind on payments. And the arrival of August brings new anxieties. A supplemental $600 in weekly federal unemployment benefits that helped many pay their bills is set to expire as July ends, with Congress bogged down in disagreement over a new round of aid. Also set to end, unless lawmakers intervene, is a federal moratorium on evictions that has shielded millions of renters though some Americans remain protected by similar state and local actions. The Associated Press reconnected with renters first interviewed ahead of their April payments. Four months later, some have returned to work. One saw her church step in to cover her rent. Some found landlords willing to negotiate, while others are still looking for relief. Sakai Harrison poses for a portrait after leading his clients through a rigorous workout on Wednesday, July 29, 2020, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ron Harris)AP Sakai Harrison moved to New York to try to make it as a personal trainer and designer - but his gym shuttered early in the pandemic, and after weeks of struggling to both pay the rent and put food in his fridge, he knew what he had to do. He moved back to Georgia for greater stability. In May, he left his Brooklyn apartment and its $1,595 monthly rent for Atlanta. When the first of the month rolls around, his new place costs about $400 less - and it's larger. "This is the biggest silver lining I've ever seen," he said. He's training with a few one-on-one clients, and he's launched a boot camp with a dozen more. Sakai Harrison, left, leads his clients through a rigorous workout on Wednesday, July 29, 2020, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ron Harris)AP This week, he met four of them at a park, where they did lunging squats, pull-ups, and a military-like crawl. Harrison then led them into a gym for dumbbell exercises. They didn't wear masks for virus protection - Harrison says they take precautions, but pointed out that the state doesn't mandate face coverings. Harrison modeled the proper form and pace, corrected the men when needed, and gently teased when they tired or slowed down. Some shot barbs back, and Harrison smiled. He's charging clients slightly less than he got at Blink Fitness in New York, but that amount's helping him develop an apparel brand. He's taking orders for a line of shoes, T-shirts and hats. Barring another shutdown, Harrison said, "I'll be fine." - Aaron Morrison, New York, and Ron Harris, Atlanta Roushaunda Williams poses for a photo in Chicago Thursday, July, 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)AP Financial challenges keep piling up for Roushaunda Williams months after she lost her job of nearly 20 years tending bar at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. Potential reopening dates for the hotel have been pushed back, Williams said, and hospitality jobs remain scarce. She anticipates being unable to pay her $1,900 rent by September especially if Congress doesn't reauthorize the weekly $600 in additional unemployment aid as part of a new relief package. Roushaunda Williams poses for a photo in Chicago Thursday, July, 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)AP Williams, 52, said she asked the management company that owns her apartment for a rent reduction or other help. So far, she's been told her rent will just accrue if she can't pay. The Illinois governor recently extended a moratorium on evictions into August. Still, Williams worries about debt piling up while she's unemployed. "I've exhausted my savings," she said. "So I don't have a safety net at all now." - Kathleen Foody, Chicago This July 30, 2020 photo shows Jas Wheeler outside her home in Vergennes, Vt. (Jas Wheeler via AP)AP Jas Wheeler once hoped to ride out the pandemic and return to work at a Vermont bakery. Not anymore. Wheeler, 30, is immunocompromised and fears going back to the bakery would increase risk of infection. The former social worker started working at a small grocery store that pays less but allows more room for social distancing. Wheeler took the gig in anticipation of losing the $600 weekly unemployment aid. That money ensured Wheeler and their wife, Lucy, could afford their $850 monthly mortgage payment. The couple closed on their house in Vergennes the same day Wheeler was laid off in March. Wheeler's wife kept her jobs, but money remains tight. They've sold a car and are growing some food. "The unemployment without the enhanced benefit is not enough to live on at all," Wheeler said. "We're broke." - Michael Casey, Boston In this March 31, 2020, file provided by Itza Sanchez, Itza Sanchez stands at her home in Richmond, Va. (Itza Sanchez via AP, File)AP Though the pandemic took away Itza Sanchez's two incomes, it has strengthened her faith. The mother of two says the generosity of her Richmond, Virginia, church has saved them from hunger and eviction. Sanchez fell behind on rent when she stopped selling homemade tamales and collecting scrap metal over fears of contracting the virus. By mid-July, she owed about $950 in unpaid rent. That's when Sanchez got a notice to vacate the mobile home where her family lives. She was spared when her church sent $800 directly to the landlord. Now she's trying to scrape together $460 for August's rent. She gets food donations from church. The school system delivers lunches for her children, 11 and 7. An immigrant from Honduras, Sanchez isn't eligible for unemployment benefits. "In this crisis we have moments of anguish, and one feels desperate, Sanchez said. "But I have been blessed so far." - Regina Garcia Cano, Washington Andrea Larson poses at her home Tuesday, July 28, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)AP For Andrea Larson, life took an unexpectedly good turn. She lost her sommelier job in mid-March, when restaurants closed in Nashville, Tennessee. She was just getting by on unemployment, but worried about choosing between losing benefits or going back to an unsafe restaurant job. Then a former boss offered her a spot at a new restaurant - the White Limozeen, named in tribute to a Dolly Parton song and decorated in over-the-top kitsch. While Larson still fears the virus, she appreciates that her employer "spent a lot of money to make sure people are extremely safe." At her duplex, a plumbing disaster forced her to live in a construction zone for a couple of months. But she counts that as luck: She didn't have to pay rent. - Travis Loller, Nashville, Tennessee This March 31, 2020 photo shows Jade Brooks at her apartment in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)AP Jade Brooks and her family have counted on an eviction moratorium in Massachusetts to get them through the pandemic. Still, 22-year-old Brooks worries: How long will it last? Brooks' mother hasn't found find full-time work since losing her insurance-company job. And Brooks doesn't get paid enough as a hospital switchboard operator to cover rent recently raised to $2,075 monthly for their two-bedroom Boston apartment. Her family had an August eviction hearing scheduled in court after they refused to pay the $265 increase. Then the governor extended the eviction ban until mid-October, giving temporary relief. "It kind of gave me extra hope to figure things out, instead of jumping into the fire," said Brooks, who lives with her mother and an 8-year-old cousin. Brooks hopes the extra time gives her mom a chance to find work, and perhaps they'll negotiate a new lease rather than go to court. - Michael Casey, Boston FILE - In this March 30, 2020, file photo, Neal Miller poses for a portrait near where he was living during the COVID-19 outbreak in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)AP After two months of missing payments as part of a "rent strike," Neal Miller and his housemates heard from their landlord. To their surprise, he agreed to reduce the monthly $1,500 rent for their home on Chicago's West Side. Miller's share is now $150, down from $400. Miller, 38, said his landlord gave the impression that he'd prefer some income from the house over nothing at all. Miller's last stable job was as an adjunct professor at Loyola University. During the pandemic, he's patched together odd jobs dissertation editing, bookkeeping for a psychiatrist's office. He said lower rent cuts the pressure: "We are definitely in a unique situation by the response we got." - Kathleen Foody, Chicago FILE - In this March 30, 2020, file photo, Tnia Morgan, 39, stands outside the Baltimore County, Maryland, home that she rents and shares with her pregnant 18-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old nephew. (Tnia Morgan via AP, File)AP Tnia Morgans family has grown by one since the pandemic upended their lives. The birth of a grandson, her youngest daughters first child, June 25 was a rare blessing during a spring and summer otherwise filled with stress. "I love his smell. I love his smile. I love everything about him," said Morgan, who shares a townhouse in Baltimore County, Maryland, with her newborn grandson, her daughter and a nephew. She needed something to celebrate. Her income plummeted after she lost her hotel banquet-hall job in March. Bills pile up monthly. Four rent checks have come due since then. Morgan's landlord lets her pay what she can. She estimates that's been nearly half what she's owed since April. Food stamps help feed her family. She says she's tried in vain to sign up for unemployment benefits. Her only income comes from working for a food delivery service. "It's not much," she said, "but it's better than not having anything." - Michael Kunzelman, Silver Spring, Maryland FILE - In this 2020 file photo provided by Ruqayyah Bailey, Ruqayyah Bailey, of St. Louis County, Mo., poses for a selfie. (Ruqayyah Bailey via AP, File)AP Ruqayyah Bailey has lost much of her independence and wants to get her life back on track. Bailey, 31, has autism. Until March, she lived in her own apartment, worked part time as a cashier at a St. Louis cafe, and attended college. The coronavirus tossed all that structure out the window. Bailey could no longer get the one-on-one tutoring that helped her thrive in college. The cafe closed. With no money coming in, she moved back in with her mother. The cafe reopened in June, but Bailey now works just four hours a week. She's signed up for seven hours of college classes but isn't sure she'll get tutoring. She uses savings to pay bills and worries about losing her weekly $600 in extra aid. "I am completely stressed," Bailey said. "I don't know how to pay my bills. I'm not sure how I'm going to able to get back into my apartment." - Jim Salter, St. Louis FILE - In this March 29, 2020, file photo, Spokane cook Jason W. Still, 30, in seen in this portrait in Spokane, Wash. (Jason W. Still via AP)AP Jason W. Still spent nearly three months without work before he went back to cooking at a high-end restaurant in Spokane, Washington. Still, 30, returned to the kitchen at Clover when it reopened in early June. Before then, his wife's job in Washington's legal marijuana industry and Still's unemployment checks helped assure they never missed a rent payment. Still is back to working 40 hours a week. But he wonders whether that'll last, as COVID-19 infections surge in the U.S. "It's terrifying to me to be in a service industry that can just shut down again at any time," he said. - Anita Snow, Phoenix FILE - In this March 30, 2020, file photo, Tinisha Dixon, 26, takes a selfie at her apartment in Atlanta. (Tinisha Dixon via AP, File)AP Tinisha Dixon scraped money together to cover her $1,115 monthly rent for April and May. Since then, shes been unable to pay. Dixon, 26, shares a downtown Atlanta apartment with her partner and their five children. Before that, Dixon was homeless. Now she worries daily about her family ending up on the street. Dixon's partner works as a security guard, but reduced hours have shrunk his earnings to about $800 a month. Dixon said she worked briefly at a coronavirus testing site outside the city, but relying on her partner for rides interfered with his job. Before the pandemic, Dixon says, her landlord had begun taking legal steps to evict them. "I'm pretty overwhelmed trying to get everything situated, not knowing how long I can hold out here," she said. - Sudhin Thanawala, Atlanta Eli Oderberg, center, sits with Katie Evers, left, their 4-year-old daughter, Everlee, and the couple's goldendoodle outside their home in southeast Denver on Thursday, April 30, 2020. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)AP Eli Oderberg of Denver remains out of work. He lost his job at a Colorado energy company in a wave of mid-April layoffs sparked by the pandemic's economic fallout. Oderberg, 36, once worked on apps to track spills and leaks. Now he receives unemployment benefits as he sends out resumes and interviews for new jobs. He said he's been a runner-up for several positions but hasn't been hired. Oderberg and his wife, Katie, have been making their mortgage payments. She's on unemployment after losing her retail job. She's also pregnant, and the couple fears running out of money after the baby arrives. They also have a 5-year-old daughter. "I'm trying to get a good balance so I can enjoy my family," he said. "And I keep reminding myself there are a lot of people in a much worse situation." - Anita Snow, Phoenix Republicans may be thinking about numbers like these when they rail against mail voting. But the turnout increases from mail voting dont appear to change the results. The real reason to make mail voting widely accessible isnt to help one party or another its to help the American people participate in their own democracy as fully as possible. Thats why voters of both parties like it so much, which may be the best evidence of all that it has no built-in partisan bias. Second, public officials must educate voters. In 2016, nearly one in four voters cast their ballots by mail. Still, voting by mail remains a novelty for most Americans, who are used to walking into their polling place on Election Day, registering their vote and handing their ballot to another human being or at least feeding it into a scanner. Its understandable that people would be wary of or confused by a new method. Thats why public-education efforts will be critical over the next few months. State and local officials need to explain, in clear and simple terms, when and how to request an absentee ballot and how to fill one out, sign it and send it back. This will make the process more secure and also reduce the number of ballots rejected because they werent properly filled out or signed. When ballots are rejected, states must give voters a fair opportunity to fix any errors. Of course, all the education in the world wont help if ballots are rejected or uncounted through no fault of the voter say, because mail backups delay their arrival. By one estimate, as many as 4 percent of all mail ballots went uncounted in 2016. At a minimum, states that dont already accept ballots that arrive after Election Day must update their election laws and rules to do so. Whether they allow for a week or 10 days, the window needs to be long enough to account for delays in mail handling and postmark mix-ups that led to the dumping of so many absentee ballots in New Yorks primary. (The postmaster general, a Trump donor named Louis DeJoy, is making matters worse by slashing overtime and slowing the delivery of regular mail. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. Trump has started insisting that a winner be called on election night itself, and not a moment later.) The crush on the Postal Service will be real, and it can be eased by providing more places for voters to drop off their ballots in person like dedicated drop boxes, which are popular in Colorado. The pressure on election workers to process all those extra mail ballots can be alleviated by hiring more of them, paying them a decent wage and, critically, reminding voters not to get antsy when final results arent immediately clear. Counting absentee ballots can take time. Thats not fraud. The advertisement proclaims that the party is ready to 'sacrifice everything to support the mission of establishing the dictate of God (Ahkaam-e-Ilahi) and administration of Mustafa (Nizam-e-Mustafa).It also states that for the past 100 years, mission of Hegdewar, Savarkar, Nehru, Lohia and Ambedkar has been converted into a religion by the Sarkari Ulema which is opposed to fundamental principles of Ahkam-e-Ilahi and Nizam-e-Maustafa.Let us not forget that Nizam-e-Maustafa is a phrase coined and popularized by the most fundamentalist and fascistic section under the most uncivilized regime of the most hated dictator of Pakistan, General Zia.We strongly condemn the statement published as advertisement, which is not only a direct attack on the constitution of India but derogatory and divisive in many ways. It deliberately and conspiratorially puts the names of the most respected secular stalwarts of the freedom movement like Nehru, Lohia and Baba Sahib Ambedkar in the same category as those who propagated fascist ideology.Talking of Nizam-e-Mustafa in a secular India, which has thousands of communities -- religious, ethnic, linguistic, is deliberately and maliciously adding fuel to the hate campaigns. Let us not forget that majority of the Muslims did not support Jinnah and his Muslim league. They couldnt stop the partition but they never supported the two nation theory propounded by Muslim League and RSS.Let us also not forget that this advertisement has been issued when communal forces in the country are trying to vitiate the atmosphere in the name of religion. We feel that the advertisement is part of the conspiracy to tear apart the social and cultural fabric of India by dividing peace loving, anti-violence, toiling masses of the country.The language and message of the advertisement amply shows that all fundamentalists, be it Peace Party or many frontal organizations of RSS, use religion to propagate their fascistic ideologies.We appeal to the Muslim community and all secular Indians irrespective of their religion to unequivocally condemn the statement of such Muslim leaders and their nefarious designs.--- What lies beyond the pandemic? MassForward is MassLives series examining the journey of Massachusetts businesses through and beyond the coronavirus pandemic. ___________ Two weeks ago, a plumbing issue caused the taproom at Redemption Rock Brewing Co. to close early on a Saturday. Five months ago, that may have registered as a disaster. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, it amounted to a shoulder shrug. I was wildly calm about it, CEO Dani Babineau said. After COVID, I feel like I can deal with anything. Founder and president of White Lion Brewing Co. Ray Berry expressed a similar sentiment last week during a conference call. If we can get through this, theres nothing that should prevent us from continuing and operating in a healthy environment on the other side of the channel, Berry said. I firmly believe that. The pandemic has challenged all of us. Massachusetts has more than 200 commercial breweries with 161 of them offering on-site beer consumption, according to the Massachusetts Brewers Guild. Those like Redemption Rock and Greater Good Imperial Brewing in Worcester that relied heavily on taproom sales saw revenue dip by as much as 70% as on-site consumption was prohibited through state guidelines. White Lion, which began construction on a taproom in Springfield during the pandemic, saw an uptick in can sales at liquor stores, but about 40% of its sales were halted when restaurants were restricted to takeout. Amid the nightmarish last few months, breweries in Central and Western Massachusetts that spoke to MassLive remained driven to develop innovative ideas to generate revenue. Our motto right now is, outside of safety first, I dont mean to get too Darwinian, its the survival of the fittest, founder and owner of Greater Good Paul Wengender said. In early 2020, Greater Good invested in a digital marketplace that allowed consumers to purchase beer online and pick it up in-store. The pandemic forced the brewery to double down on those efforts. By mid-spring, Greater Good saw its can sales double. Wormtown Brewery expanded its distribution to Vermont early in the summer and will be available across Connecticut beginning in August. Hoping for similar success with canned beer, Redemption Rock partnered with Night Shift Distributing to expand its product into the Boston market. Its selling more canned products than ever. Revenue at the brewery located on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester is still down about 15 to 20%, however, Babineau said losses would be double if not for cans. Its not terrible as far as being able to hang in there and do enough revenue, Babineau said. We can stay at this level. This is OK. 3Cross Fermentation in Worcester followed the distribution model by teaming with White Lion. The Springfield brewery, which has distributed its product for more than two years, also is helping Brew Practitioners Brewery in Florence. One of the principles of White Lion is the sense of community engagement, the sense of community and fostering and building relationships, Berry said. White Lion took distribution a step further during the pandemic by offering doorstep delivery. It offered delivery to Springfield and its surrounding communities. Redemption Rock in Worcester also offered delivery while its tap room was closed. Each experienced deliveries daily. For White Lion, they saw inquiries well outside the Springfield market, which they tried to accommodate whenever possible. The door-to-door element was never part of our business model, Berry said. The local community embraced it. As the breweries attempted to expand their footprint across Massachusetts and New England the moves coincided with refocusing on deepening their roots within their respective communities. Wormtown partnered its neighbor and landlord Volturno, a pizza restaurant, to expand outdoor seating. Wormtown customers also have access to the restaurant's full menu. The innovation is one that may continue even after the pandemic. Wormtown Brewery in Worcester partnered with Volturno to expand its outdoor patio amid the coronavirus pandemic. As will the expanded patio at Redemption Rock and the taproom set to open at White Lion in September. Both initiatives were on the radars of each brewery at the start of the year, however, the pandemic re-emphasized the importance of the projects. Greater Good introduced a test kitchen early this year. Its survived through the pandemic and is another option that can attract customers. We re-invested into a new menu and then COVID hit. It was kind of a punch in the gut, Wengender said. We said, we do have this new menu, come out and try it, and they did. People came out. And theyre still coming out. Its great. Bay State Brewing Co. is the only other brewery in Worcester with a full kitchen. It too introduced new menu items to attract customers such as celebrating St. Patricks Day, Cinco de Mayo and Mothers Day in July. It brought items to the menu like corned beef and swiss sandwich, carne asada fajita taco, eggs benedict pizza. 10 Bay State Brewing Co. releases new hard seltzer Bling Away from the kitchen, Bay State dived into the seltzer game by introducing Bling. The 16-ounce can of seltzer debuted in flavors of lemonade, passion fruit and pineapple. We serve a very diverse audience here and not everyone likes beer, co-founder Chip Jarry said. We recognize that. The appreciation from the consumer is evident on the receipts at every brewery that spoke with MassLive. The customer base for all of us has been incredibly supportive, Jarry said. When you look at what they leave for a tip for wait staff, extremely generous. They know everybody is suffering and people have been great. The trouble is theres only so much you can ask. None of the breweries that MassLive spoke to saw growth during the pandemic, however, each of them experienced it before the pandemic arrived. Redemption Rock reported its best months to date just prior in early 2020. Wormtown expanded to Patriot Place in Foxborough. Bay State debuted its taproom just weeks before being told to shut down due to the virus. In the four months since Massachusetts has experienced more than 100,000 cases of coronavirus with more than 8,000 dead. Each day the state releases updated numbers and each day breweries track those numbers. I keep an eye every day of what those numbers look like and where Massachusetts is, Babineau said. Were kind of in this little pocket in the northeast and who knows how long thats going to last and whats going to happen. Its really just playing it day-by-day and hoping we dont start to see another spike or seeing other states start to infect us literally. Redemption Rock has seen an uptick in customers stopping at the tap room from Connecticut and New York, states where residents are allowed to travel to Massachusetts without having to quarantine. Many breweries skated through the pandemic with help from Paycheck Protection Program loans. At this point, though, business have used much of that funding. Most feel confident they can continue operating under Phase 3 guidelines of the states reopening plans. However, a regression to Phase 2 or operating in a climate similar to that of April or May in the state would likely be unsustainable. If we are moving forward and then be in the position that there was a spike and we had to take a step or two back? Berry said. That is going to create a number of issues to local businesses. I think when there is a remedy, there will be a number of us who wont be able to make it to the other side. Each innovation requires funding. Whether its retaining employees in a kitchen at Greater Good or expanding outdoor space at Redemption Rock or constructing a tap room at White Lion. Margins at breweries are already down due to COVID-19. The need for innovation to survive while revenue is already in the red is a fine line to tiptoe across. The federal, state and local government at the onset was able to come up with remedies, but what are those remedies three, six, nine, 12 months from now? Berry said. That is again what is on my mind and Im sure is on the minds of other businesses. In boosting its digital sales platform, Greater Good is confident even if the state regresses to previous phases, it can survive financially. Still, concern remains over the emotional toll it could cause. Were a business, forget brewery or anything else, that is emotionally connected to our community, Wengender said. And it comes from our employees. If we have no patio, if we have no inside, I think the business will be fine, but the culture and the sense of purpose that we all as employees will be knocked down more than anything else. Wengender contrasted that image with what his staff experienced when it reopened at the beginning of June. Masks couldnt fully disguise the smiles donned by staff and customers. Tears even filled a few eyes. The emotions came from the anxiousness of keeping customers and employees safe in a new world. Questions lingered around the kitchen menu and the heat outside combined with masks. As patrons arrived and found tables, the nerves soon melted away. With help from the community, breweries are confident they can survive. Youre worried about all that stuff and then you just see the people show up and I cant tell you the level of gratification, Wengender said. Its immeasurable. It was all summer in a day that day. Related Content: As schools and universities plan for the new academic year, and administrators grapple with complex questions about how to keep young people safe, a new report about a coronavirus outbreak at a sleepaway camp in Georgia provides fresh reasons for concern. The camp implemented several precautionary measures against the virus but stopped short of requiring campers to wear masks. The virus blazed through the community of about 600 campers and counselors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday. The staff and counselors gathered at the overnight camp in late June. Within a week of the camp orientation, a teenage counselor developed chills and went home. The camp, which the CDC did not name, started sending campers home the next day, and shut down a few days later. By then, 76% of the 344 campers and staffers whose test results were available to CDC researchers had been infected with the virus nearly half the camp. The study is notable because few outbreaks in schools or child care settings have been described to date, said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study affirms that group settings can lead to large outbreaks, even when they are primarily attended by children, she said. The fact that so many children at this camp were infected after just a few days together underscores the importance of mitigation measures in schools that do reopen for in person learning, Rivers added. Physical distancing, universal mask use, hygiene and ventilation are essential to reducing transmission, she noted. While the role children play in the spread of the virus has been questioned, the authors of the report said the research adds to evidence that children of all ages are not only susceptible to infection but may play an important role in transmission. Dr. Preeti Malani, chief health officer at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study, called the report a cautionary tale. Its difficult when you have a gathering this large, she said. Young people want to be with other young people. They want to socialize. It just takes one person for it to spread to lots of people. Of the 344 campers and staff for whom test results were available, 260 tested positive, meaning at least 43% were infected, though the figure may well be higher, the CDC said. Of children ages 6 to 10, more than half were infected; 44% of those ages 11 to 17 were infected, as were one-third of those ages 18 to 21. Only seven staffers were older than 22, and two of them tested positive. Those who had been at the camp longest had the highest rate of infection; overall, more than half of the staff, who had arrived before the campers, were infected. Though the camp was following the directives of an executive order issued in Georgia, it was not in full compliance with recommendations made by federal health officials at the CDC. Campers and staff members were required to show proof that they had tested negative for the coronavirus no more than 12 days before arriving at the camp. Cleaning and disinfection of communal areas were enhanced; the camp required physical distancing outside cabins, and it staggered the use of communal spaces. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. But while staff were required to wear cloth masks, the camp did not ask campers to do so and did not open windows and doors to increase air circulation in buildings. The campers stayed overnight in cabins, with an average of 15 occupants in each. Many camp activities which took place indoors as well as outdoors included vigorous singing and cheering, which can enhance spread of the virus, the report said. The case highlights the limitations of asking for proof of negative coronavirus tests before large gatherings, Malani said. Testing doesnt always mean safety, she added. It has to be combined with individuals adhering to strict quarantine. And thats hard to do for young people, on a college campus, and in K through 12. Inconsistent mask wearing is also problematic, she said. Even if the staff were wearing masks around the campers, its likely that when they were back in their quarters at night, they werent because thats what happens, Malani said. Its hard to do, because its not natural to have to distance all the time and wear a mask. In a recent study of an outbreak at a high school in Jerusalem that began 10 days after in-person classes resumed in late May, 13% of the student body and 16% of the staff ultimately tested positive. Though the students were supposed to wear face masks and practice social distancing, researchers concluded crowded classrooms of up to 38 students made distancing impossible. Air conditioning may have accelerated the spread of the virus. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Twitter Permanently Bans Former KKK Leader David Duke Twitter permanently banned David Duke late Thursday, citing a violation of the companys policy on hate speech. Duke was a former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the 1970s, and a former Louisiana State Representative from 1989 to 1992. The company said Friday that Dukes account had been permanently suspended for repeated violations of the Twitter rules on hateful conduct. Under Twitters hateful conduct policy, any threats or attacks directed at people on the basis of their religion, race, or ethnicity are prohibited. The company did not say what specific posts prompted the ban. David Duke leaves the Louisiana Secretary of States office after filing to run as a Republican for United States Senate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 22, 2016. (Bryn Stole/Reuters) Duke joined Twitter in September 2009 and had around 53,000 followers before his account was suspended. According to the New York Post, Dukes final Twitter post promised to expose the systemic racism lie and showed a link to an interview with Germar Rudolf, a convicted Holocaust denier. Duke said on Friday that he didnt know what triggered the suspension but planned to appeal it, reported Nola.com. He also said that he is not a proponent of violence against racial minorities, and accused Twitter of suppressing free speech, according to the outlet. The Twitter ban comes after YouTube banned Duke in June. Last year, the company updated its hate speech policy to specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation, or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status. Duke has a bachelors degree in history from Louisiana State University (LSU) and a doctorate from the Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management in Ukraine. Shortly after graduating from LSU, he founded the Knights of the KKK, a Louisiana-based chapter of the KKK, in 1974 and was its leader, or grand wizard, until 1978. He told the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph in 2009 that he left the KKK in 1980 because he didnt like its associations with violence and could not stop the members of other Klan chapters from doing stupid or violent things. Duke later served in the Louisiana State House as a Republican from 1989 to 1992. In a statement on his website in 2015, he wrote, I am not KKK, and I have had no association with any Klan group for four decades, and later commented on the media outlets portrayal of him, saying it is unfair to condemn him for his associations as a young man when one considers that many people in politics also evolved from controversy in their early days. In his writings, he has repeatedly denounced what he calls the Zionist-influenced, globalist media, which he calls the greatest enemies of mankind. Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. By Trend The Council of the European Union (EU) has updated the list of countries for which travel restrictions should be gradually lifted and the list still includes Georgia, Trend reports via Georgian media. In the updated list, the Council of the European Union recommends that member states open their borders with Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay. The list of safe countries also includes China, but traffic with China will resume only after the country opens its borders to the EU. Regarding the epidemiological situation, third countries listed should meet the following criteria, in particular: - number of new COVID-19 cases over the last 14 days and per 100,000 inhabitants close to or below the EU average (as it stood on 15 June 2020); - stable or decreasing trend of new cases over this period in comparison to the previous 14 days; - overall response to COVID-19 taking into account available information, including on aspects such as testing, surveillance, contact tracing, containment, treatment and reporting, as well as the reliability of the information and, if needed, the total average score for International Health Regulations (IHR). Information provided by EU delegations on these aspects should also be taken into account. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz HEALS Act checks proposed as CARES Act follow-up Republican senators on Monday introduced their proposal for the next coronavirus relief package in the United States, the HEALS Act, which includes a second stimulus check for qualifying Americans. Under the terms of the HEALS Act, $1,200 checks would be sent to individuals who earn less than $75,000 a year, while joint tax filers on under $150,000 would receive $2,400. Checks for a steadily smaller amount would be available to higher earners, up to a final income cap of $99,000 for individuals and $198,000 for joint filers. These eligibility requirements mirror those of the first round of stimulus checks, officially known as Economic Impact Payments, which have been sent out to millions of Americans as part of the CARES Act, a $2.2tn coronavirus relief package signed into law in March. A notable aspect on which they differ, however, is the payment of additional credits for dependents. While the CARES Act offered households an extra $500 per dependent but limited this to those under 17, the HEALS Act proposes the same amount but seeks to include dependents of all ages. According to the Tax Foundation, a non-profit organisation that focuses on tax policy in the US, the removal of the CARES Act age limit would make as many as 26 million more people eligible for the credit. Like the CARES Act, the HEALS Act also excludes immigrants without a Social Security number. What other second stimulus checks have been proposed? HEROES Act Passed by the House of Representatives in May, the $3tn Democrat-backed HEROES Act included a second batch of Economic Impact Payments, with the parameters of the scheme also very similar to those distributed as part of the CARES Act. Like the CARES Act and the HEALS Act, checks for $1,200 and $2,400 would be given to individuals on less than $75,000 and joint filers on $150,000, respectively, with the payments phased out up to upper income limits of $99,000 and $198,000. Once more, the issue of extra payments for dependents is where the terms of the bills stimulus checks particularly stand out. Just as the recently-unveiled HEALS Act has, the HEROES Act sought to broaden eligibility for the additional credit to include dependents over the age of 16. But while it capped the credit at a maximum of three dependents per household, it raised the amount paid out from $500 to $1,200, meaning families could potentially claim a total of $6,000. The HEROES Act additionally proposed including immigrants who do not have a Social Security number, and retroactively giving them the check they were denied under the terms of the CARES Act. However, Republicans in the GOP-held Senate balked at the overall spend of the HEROES Act, declared the bill "dead on arrival" in the upper chamber, and have refused to take it up. CAAF Act Tabled on Thursday by a group of Republican senators including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Coronavirus Assistance for American Families (CAAF) Act is the most recent proposal for a second stimulus check, and seeks to give households with dependents more than the CARES Act and the HEALS Act. Applying the income thresholds used in the first round of stimulus checks, the CAAF would distribute $1,000 payments to all American citizens equally, regardless of age or dependent status, according to a statement released by Senators Romney (R-Ut), Marco Rubio (R-Fl), Bill Cassidy (R-La) and Steve Daines (R-Mt). As Congress considers another round of payments, we should ensure that funds are going where they are needed most, the senators added. We believe the focus should be on families. The terms of the CAAF Act would, for example, enable a family of four featuring two dependents to claim $600 more than the CARES Act gave them: $4,000 rather than $3,400. Foreign nationals would not be eligible for the CAAF Act, however. Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act In addition to one-off stimulus checks, proposals for further direct cash injections have also included calls for regular payments. One such plan is the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act, which was introduced by Senators Kamala Harris (D-Ca), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Ed Markey (D-Ma) in early May. Harris, Sanders and Markey called for people in America to be handed $2,000 a month until three months after the US secretary of health and human services has declared the Covid-19 public health emergency at an end, with checks also being paid out retroactively right back to the start of the pandemic in March. It was proposed that the full $2,000 would be sent out to those earning under $100,000, with payments then phasing out to an income limit of $120,000. Up to $4,000 would be given to married couples who file their taxes jointly, while $2,000 would also be given out per child dependent, up to a maximum of three children. The proposal would cover all US residents, including those who dont have a Social Security number. However, the astronomical spend that regular checks would entail - the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act would cost at least $5.7tn to implement, far more than the approximately $270bn invested in the CARES Act checks - has made it a "futile proposal", Forbes notes. Nevertheless, as Congress returned from its July recess to begin talks on the next relief package, Kamala reiterated her call for monthly checks, telling MSNBC: Through the course of this pandemic and crisis, we need to give people $2,000 a month as recurrent payments - people below a certain income level - to help them and sustain them through these months of crisis so at the end of it, they can get back up on their feet instead of falling deep, deep, deep into the crevices of this crisis. Emergency Money for the People Act Introduced by Representatives Ro Khanna (Ca-17) and Tim Ryan (Oh-13) in mid-April, the Emergency Money for the People Act called for a system of regular payments very similar to the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act, but with higher income thresholds. $2,000 a month would be distributed to eligible Americans aged 16 and above who earn less than $130,000 a year, with $4,000 going to married couples on under $260,000. The amount paid would go down by 5% for every $1,000 over these income caps. Although the Emergency Money for the People Act proposed a more inclusive earnings limit, the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act was more generous to dependents. Rather than sending out $2,000 each, Khanna and Ryans proposal suggested a lower sum of $500 per dependent, again up to a maximum of three. That said, the Emergency Money for the People Act sought to include the dependents left out of the CARES Act because of its under-17s age cap. "The individual will receive the payment and their parent or guardian will receive the dependent credit," Khanna said in a statement. He added: "A one-time, twelve-hundred-dollar check isnt going to cut it. Americans need sustained cash infusions for the duration of this crisis in order to come out on the other side alive, healthy, and ready to get back to work." Like the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act, the bill includes immigrants without a Social Security number. Live coverage of the coronavirus crisis You can stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis in the States by following our dedicated US rolling feed. Flash Eliot Engel, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, issued a subpoena on Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a statement, Engel said his panel is investigating Pompeo's "apparent use of Department of State resources to advance a political smear" of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, also the 2020 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Sitting President Donald Trump, who will face off with Biden this November, had tried to push a narrative that Biden, when serving as the vice president, tried to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor to shield Burisma from an investigation in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. The White House's efforts to have Ukraine investigate the Bidens were at the heart of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Trump. The Democratic-led House impeached the president in December 2019, while the Senate, controlled by Republicans, acquitted him in February this year. Engel's subpoena demands all records purportedly dealing with the Bidens and Burisma that the Department of State has produced to Republican-led Senate committees, said the statement. "Secretary Pompeo has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he's not even trying to disguise it," Engel said. "I want to see the full record of what the department has sent to the Senate and I want the American people to see it too." The House Foreign Affairs Committee said it has learned that the State Department has produced 16,080 pages of allegedly responsive material to the Senate Committees since February. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday, Pompeo committed to continuing to send information to Senate Republicans, according to the statement. The House subpoena, directed to Pompeo, requires that the records be turned over by Aug. 7, said the statement. Pompeo, 56, became the Trump administration's second secretary of state in April 2018 after serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Interview: 'Security is Important' as Myanmar's Rakhine State Prepares to Vote 2020-07-31 -- As Myanmar gears up for general elections slated for Nov. 8, it remains unclear whether voting will be held in war-ravaged northern Rakhine state, where fighting between government forces and the rebel Arakan Army (AA) has raged for 20 months, leaving scores of civilians dead and displacing around 200,000 others. The Union Election Commission (UEC), which organizes and manages Myanmar's elections, is waiting for a determination by the military-controlled defense and home affairs ministries as to whether it is safe enough to hold balloting in Rakhine. Ethnic parties, such as the predominant Arakan National Party (ANP), oppose such a move, arguing that constituencies that have borne the brunt of the armed conflict need their representation in government and that voters' trust in the democratic system will erode if polling is cancelled. In the last general elections in 2015, balloting was not held in some areas affected by ethnic conflict. Though voting was held in Rakhine state at the time, the minority Rohingya Muslim population was disenfranchised, with officials invalidating their temporary documents prior to going to the polls. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya still living in Rakhine, despite military-led crackdowns on their communities in 2016 and 2017 that prompted more than 800,000 to flee across the border and into Bangladesh, will not have the right to vote in the 2015 elections. In the meantime, the Rakhine State Election Subcommission has prepared nearly all of the state's roughly 2,600 polling stations for balloting by 1.6 million eligible voters in Rakhine, should elections be held there. Commission chairwoman Tin Hlaing spoke with reporter Soe Soe Aung from RFA's Myanmar Service about the body's preparations for the voting. The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. RFA: What has the Rakhine State Election Subcommission done so far? Tin Hlaing: The Rakhine State Election Subcommission has prepared to hold elections in all 17 townships in Rakhine according to its policy. We have 2,596 polling stations. We also have prepared materials for these polling stations. RFA: Many people in Rakhine state do not have national ID cards now because they have fled their homes on account of the armed conflict. Many houses have burned down as well. How will they be able to vote without ID cards or other documents? Tin Hlaing: We can't say for now. It would depend on the situation on the ground during election time. We have made a list of voter names, and we have to check it again with village and township heads. We can only think of possible ways right now. RFA: Some have asked election officials to set up polling stations in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. Is this feasible? Tin Hlaing: We have government recognized IDP camps and others set up by civil society organizations. We already have polling station lists according to townships and have asked for materials only for those stations. We have to ask for a detailed list of material that's why we can't arrange to set up polling stations in all IDP camps. It would depend on the security situation on the ground at that time. If we wanted to set up polling stations in IDP camps, then we would have to report it to the Union Election Commission, and the UEC would decide on it. RFA: Which Rakhine township concerns you the most in terms of security? Tin Hlaing A: I didn't say we are concerned about security. I said security is important. We can't decide where to hold the elections. Security-related ministries or departments, such as the Ministry of Home Affairs, will decide according to the on-the-ground situation, and the UEC will announce the locations of polling stations when election date is close. In 2015, township names and polling station locations were announced in October for the November elections. Now, it is still too early to announce them. RFA: Can you guarantee that elections can be held in Rakhine? Tin Hlaing: The Rakhine State Election Subcommission cannot guarantee it. We can't decide whether the elections will be held or where they will be held. Reported by Soe San Aung for RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Copyright 1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content July not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address KYIV, July 31 (Reuters) - Ukraine is ready to go to international courts if its negotiations with Iran over the downing of a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 jet are unsuccessful, foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday. The first round of talks between Ukraine and Iran over the compensation were held on Thursday in Kyiv and were constructive, Kuleba said, but he said it was too early to say how much compensation Tehran would agree to pay. Iranian forces say they downed the jet after mistaking it for a missile at a time when tensions with the United States had risen. All 176 people on board - including 57 Canadians - were killed. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; editing by Jason Neely) The court found that during questioning by Crown staff on May 1, 2017, Mr Hoch was threatened with a long prison sentence if he refused to confess, while Ms Charles was warned that her parents and her partner's parents would face serious consequences back in China. Crown's investigators, all former members of Victoria Police, were also found to have claimed they could influence the outcome of a police investigation if Mr Hoch and Ms Charles admitted to the alleged scam. Mr Hoch was told by Crown surveillance member Manuel Lyberis: We are just trying to help you mate. It's like a get-out-of-jail card and you might only get one opportunity. Crown's investigations manager, Jason McHutchison, warned Mr Hoch he would cop the full extent of the law if he refused to answer questions honestly. After telling Mr Hoch he had been a detective with Victoria Police for 12 years, Mr McHutchison said he would ask the police to treat him alright. Thats why we have dealings with the police. Thats my job, to deal with police ... if we tell them ... to treat someone good, theyll treat them good, Mr McHutchison said, according to the judgment. The general manager of security and surveillance at Crown casino, Craig Walsh, also a former police officer, was present during some of the interviews. He told Mr Hoch he wanted to be able to tell police that he had co-operated, and advised him to consider his family. Two other women initially implicated in the scam have since had their charges dropped. Mr Hoch came to the company's attention during a routine review of the previous day's biggest winners, which included an examination of CCTV footage of the table and an assessment of betting patterns. Crown's investigators were found to have claimed they could influence the outcome of a police investigation if the pair admitted to the alleged scam. Crowns internal investigators arrested Mr Hoch and his co-accused on the night of May 1, 2017, when they were taken to a holding room inside Crown's flagship casino in Southbank. One of the rooms was marked "Victoria Police Interview Room", according to court documents. The court noted the pair were never cautioned or informed of their right to silence or legal representation by Crown's surveillance team. Ms Charles gave evidence that she was warned by Crown staff that she was in big trouble and that her parents in China would be notified. Her partner's parents worked for the Chinese government and would also face serious repercussions, she told the court. The interview with Ms Charles was supposed to have been recorded by a digital device in the possession of Crown investigator Wayne Eales. However, about one hour of the interview including the entire period when the alleged threats were made by Crown officers was never recorded, the court heard. Mr Eales told the County Court he may have accidentally switched off the digital voice recorder, but could not recall switching it back on. When Mr Hoch and Ms Charles were finally handed over to detectives from Melbourne West station, they made full admissions, including how the scam worked and how the proceeds of the enterprise were divided. Warrants were executed on their properties, where police uncovered more than $200,000 in cash and casino chips worth about $50,000, which was seized under proceeds of crime laws. In March, County Court judge Richard Smith ruled the conduct of Crown's surveillance team had significantly compromised the substantial and fulsome admissions that Mr Hoch and Ms Charles later made to police at Melbourne West station. Prosecutor Daniel Porceddu made an interlocutory appeal against Judge Smith's decision on March 19, when he conceded the Crown case would be significantly weakened without the admissions provided to police by Mr Hoch and Ms Charles. However, the County Court ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeal in a judgment handed down on July 30. "In our view, not only was it open to his Honour (Judge Smith) to exclude the evidence of the police interviews under that section, he was clearly correct to do so. "The unfairness was palpable. On his Honours unchallenged findings, both respondents believed they were likely to be imprisoned unless they co-operated with police," the judgment by the Court of Appeal states. The matter will return to the County Court for a mention hearing in October, but lawyers for Mr Hoch and Ms Charles are expected to apply to have the trial discontinued at an earlier date. Lawyer Steven Collin, for Ms Charles, and barrister Sam Andrianakis, for Mr Hoch, declined to comment. Tajikistan says it has stopped delivering electricity to neighboring Uzbekistan and Afghanistan because diminished river levels caused by a winter of reduced snowfall have constrained output at the Soviet-build Nurek hydroelectric plant. A statement posted on President Emomali Rahmons website on July 28 stated that snowfall in the areas where melted ice pours into the Vakhsh River was at levels of 50 percent compared to previous years. This is the first time something like this has happened in Tajikistan, Rahmon wrote. Uzbekistan had already reported problems earlier in the month. On July 24, the countrys electricity grid operator issued a press release to say that it has been forced to ration provision of power because of what it termed a discrepancy between the amounts of electricity being produced and consumed. The volume of restrictions is around 1.5-2 million kilowatt hours, which is about 0.8-1 percent of average daily consumption, the company said. Developments in Tajikistan were cited as a specific contributing factor. The National Power Grid of Uzbekistan reached a deal in May with Tajik power monopoly Barki Tojik to import electricity that Dushanbe produces at its hydropower plants the main one being Nurek. The contract was due to run up until September. Uzbekistan has now turned instead to Turkmenistan to make up for shortfalls. Those deliveries were due to begin from July 28. In Uzbekistan, more than 80 percent of electricity needs are met by thermal power plants, where electricity is produced by burning gas and coal. About 10 percent is produced at hydroelectric power plants. The government has pledged to increase the volume of power generated by renewables, but numbers are still far short of potential. In June, the Uzbek Energy Ministry announced a tender for the construction of a 100-megawatt wind power plant part of the governments strategy to reach the target of having one-quarter of its electricity needs covered by renewable sources by 2030. Deals done to date included one with UAE company Masdar to build a 500-megawatt wind power plant in the Navoi region; another with Saudi Arabias ACWA Power to build a 500-1,000 megawatt wind power plant, and also with TOTAL Eren of France to install a 100-megawatt solar power station in the Samarkand region. 'No COVID-19 positive person will be allowed when the bhoomi pujan happens on August 5 in Prime Minister Modi's presence.' Ved Prakash Gupta, the Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Ayodhya, describes to Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com the scenes in the temple town before the bhoomi pujan ceremony on August 5 and how Ayodha residents plan to create history. The mood in Ayodhya before the bhoomi pujan The bhoomi pujan (laying the foundation stone for the construction) of the Ram Mandir on August 5 in Ayodhya is going to be the most extraordinary, historical, moment in the history of our country. The people of Ayodhya are happy that they will be giving such joyous moments to our countrymen. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said we will be building a grand temple for Lord Ram in Ayodhya. That is going to be a reality soon. We will be lighting lamps in each and every house in Ayodhya for the next few days to welcome the construction of a Ram temple here. Just like all Ayodhya-wasi light their homes and shops during Deepavali. August 5 will herald Diwali celebrations a few months in advance and given the josh (excitement) of the people here I can assure you that we will continue celebrating Diwali from August 5 till actual Diwali (in mid-November), when prabhu Ramchandra came back to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana. We will bedeck the entire town with flowers, paint murals depicting scenes from the Ramayana on walls and draw rangolis (decorations on ground using powder colour) in open spaces as well as outside every home in this temple town. The entire town will be lit up for the occasion. Every temple in the town will play Ramayan paath (tales of Ram and his journey from childhood to his victory over Ravana), Sundarkand paath (tales of how Hanuman was encouraged by Jambuvant, the senior-most adviser, of Sugriva, reminding Hanuman of his strengths when he doubts his powers about reaching Sri Lanka to deliver Ram's message to Sita), Hanuman Chalisa (40 stanzas in praise of Hanuman), bhajans and kirtans (devotional songs in praise of Ram, Sita, Laxman, Hanuman). Kahi laddooo batenge, kahi pedhe batenge, kahi mithaiyan batengi (At every place people will distribute sweets). All the sants and sadhus in Ayodhya have begun grand preparations for the historic moment on August 5. It is a matter of honour and prestige for every Ayodhya-wasi to see Prime Minister Modi personally coming to Ayodhya to do the bhoomi pujan. IMAGE: Workers clean the Ram Ki Pauri ahead of the bhoomi pujan of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Photograph: PTI Photo Everybody is super excited to make their little contributions for the beginning of construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Our focus is on cleanliness of Ayodhya, health of the people of the town, creating a spiritual environment; poora vatavaran Ram-may ho gaya hai (the entire city is bathed in Ram's devotion). IMAGE: Workers place earthen lamps on the banks of the Saryu river for aarti ahead of the bhoomi pujan in Ayodhya. Photograph: PTI Photo About the Saryu river on whose banks Ayodhya is located The Saryu river has been a very sacred river for Indians for centuries and (Uttar Pradesh) Chief Minister Yogi Adityanathji had pledged to make the river free from effluents and dirty water which he has fulfilled before the bhoomi pujan. Given the Saryu's special importance for the local people here, everybody is contributing their bit to make the river cleaner and its banks more beautiful before August 5. While the local municipalities are providing enough money for the cleanliness and beautification of the river, the locals too are voluntarily doing whatever they can to beautify the embankments and keep them clean. About communal harmony in the town You will have to be present here to see how people from all walks of life, every religion and caste are working hand-in-hand to create history. Ayodhya has always showcased Hindu-Muslim unity and each and every citizen of the town is happy and excited to realise their dream of a Ram mandir becoming a reality as soon as possible. You will see hundreds of Muslims weaving garlands for the deities, outside the temples selling pooja wares, not just earning their living but also paying their respects to the true culture of India. While Ayodhya is known as a temple town and tourists from across the world visit it, we will have lakhs of tourists come to Ayodhya once the temple becomes a reality. The temple will exemplify the unity of Indians to the world and will become a global wonder soon. The atmosphere in Ayodhya is quiet convivial. On Mahant Pradeep Das suffering from COVID-19 and Modi's visit He is one of the five assistant mahants at the Ayodhya temple and he has been quarantined. All those who have come in contact with him have also been advised to quarantine themselves. All the people who came in contact with him have been tested and everybody has tested negative. No COVID-19 positive person will be allowed when the bhoomi pujan happens on August 5 in Prime Minister Modi's presence. All the testing will be done before the bhoomi pujan; only a select few will accompany the prime minister for the bhoomi pujan. On creating awareness about COVID-19 We have been creating awareness about social distancing, hand hygiene and importance of santisation and face masks. Each and every BJP worker, our local councilors, MLAs and MPs have been spreading the awareness about maintaining hygiene and social distancing at all times. Each and every neighbourhood, every municipal ward has pledged to follow the norms for maintaining hygiene and prevent spread of the Coronavirus. Women are not only encouraging Ayodhya-wasis to paint and decorate the entire town, but they have also been in the forefront of creating awareness about health and hygiene. All precautions related to coronavirus have been taken to ensure the good health of every person in Ayodhya. Lee remembered as initiator of 'quiet revolution' in Taiwan ROC Central News Agency 07/31/2020 10:43 PM Taipei, July 31 (CNA) Former President Lee Teng-hui () is being remembered as an initiator of a "quiet revolution" during his 12-year presidency, carrying out six rounds of constitutional reforms that laid a solid foundation for Taiwan to peacefully transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. Lee died aged 97 from septic shock and multiple organ failure at Taipei Veterans General Hospital at 7:24 p.m. Thursday, after being hospitalized for nearly six months. The former leader of Taiwan is known for his role in guiding the country to democracy while serving as president of the Republic of China (ROC), the official name of Taiwan, from 1988 to 2000. Addressing the opening of the 2020 Taiwan Capital Market Forum held in Taipei Friday, President Tsai Ing-wen () praised her predecessor for leading Taiwan through a "quiet revolution" to transform the country away from an authoritarian one in a turbulent time. The "quiet revolution" Tsai was referring to was the six rounds of amendments to the ROC Constitution conducted during Lee's 12-year presidency. According to Lee in his own book A Witness for God: Lee Teng-hui's Confession of Faith, after assuming the presidency in 1988 following the death of his predecessor Chiang Ching-kuo (), he was immediately faced with challenges from within his own then-ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party and from the then opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and the country could have fallen into political and social turmoil anytime. Lee wrote that he believed the root of the problem for Taiwan was the fact that the ROC Constitution was written back when the KMT government was still based in Chinese Mainland and as a result, the constitution was not suitable for the country. Therefore, amending the constitution was a must, he said in his book. The proposed changes to the constitution, however, were met with strong challenges especially from within the KMT, given the fact that Lee, a native Taiwanese, was surrounded by KMT conservatives from mainland China. With his clever political maneuvering, however, Lee was able to overcome these obstacles before ultimately solidifying his own power and exercising his leadership by taking advantage of the infighting within the KMT, former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang () recently told CNA. "Lee is almost like a political genius," Hsu praised. Lee was also good at using public opinion as a tool to back his resolution to push for reforms, despite the strong objections from KMT conservatives. During the fifth round of constitutional reforms in 1990, the National Assembly had amended the Temporary Provisions to extend the terms for their new members. This had resulted in a week-long student-led pro-democracy demonstration called the "Wild Lily Movement" at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Plaza. The Wild Lily demonstrators sought direct elections of Taiwan's president and vice president and new popular elections for all representatives in the National Assembly. Back then, Lee had just secured the National Assembly's approval for a full six-year term as president, but he decided to meet with student leaders of the "Wild Lily Movement" and hear their demands. DPP Legislator Fan Yun (), one of the student leaders that met with Lee at that time, told CNA that many student protesters were sympathetic towards Lee, as he was the first native Taiwanese to serve as ROC president and he was a minority in the ruling KMT. "Such sympathy towards Lee was also shared by then opposition DPP members," Fan said. Hsu recalled that after assuming office as DPP chair in July 1996, he had met with Lee at the latter's official residence to discuss how to proceed with constitutional amendments. Hsu said he asked that the government give more subsidies to the DPP, a request promptly accepted by Lee who said he needed all the help from the DPP in order to push for the democratic reforms. The successful talks laid the foundation for future KMT-DPP cooperation in constitutional amendments, Hsu noted. With the help of the DPP and the general public as represented by the student protesters, Lee ultimately was able to push through these changes to the nation's constitution to make it a better fit for Taiwan, which also sped up the democratization process for the country. The series of constitutional reforms beginning in 1990 included the termination of the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of Communist Rebellion, complete re-election of the national legislature, institutionalization of local self-government, direct mayoral elections of Taiwan's two special municipalities of Taipei and Kaohsiung, among others. During the third round of constitutional amendments in 1994, the National Assembly made an important decision that the next term of Taiwan's president would be popularly and directly elected for the first time. On March 23, 1996, Lee was elected president in the ROC's first-ever direct presidential election. Before stepping down from his presidency in 2000, Lee also saw the National Assembly pass the sixth round of constitutional amendment, which drastically reduced the assembly's powers and functions and shifted its responsibilities to the Legislative Yuan, marking another major step in Taiwan's democratization process. Former lawmaker Lin Cho-shui () told CNA that Lee is a "perfect combination of a romanticist and realist" and that was why he could win trust within the conservative KMT and gain true power within the party. "Lee's contributions to Taiwan's democratization and localization will live forever," Lin concluded. (By Joseph Yeh) Enditem/cs NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Former 21st Century Fox chief executive James Murdoch, son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from News Corp's board, according to a document released July 31 by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).(AFP) New York: Former 21st Century Fox chief executive James Murdoch, son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from News Corp's board, according to a document released Friday by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A letter sent by James Murdoch to the board said the decision was due to "disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions." News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times and the Sun newspapers among others, but not Rupert Murdoch's Fox News network. James Murdoch was once seen as his father's successor, but Friday's move reinforces his disengagement from the family media empire, which grew from a newspaper group in Australia. Murdoch, Rupert's younger son, headed 21st Century Fox until last year when he left after Disney acquired most of the group's assets. James Murdoch, 47, has recently been critical of his father's business and its media coverage. In January, he denounced the climate change skepticism of some Murdoch media, citing coverage of the fires which devastated large parts of Australia. He has launched his own private holding company called Lupa Systems, which among other things has taken a stake in Vice Media. "We're grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors," said Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp and James's brother Lachlan Murdoch in a statement. Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, Camden County, reopened Saturday, the latest act of defiance by the owners who have fought against state mandates that have kept gyms shuttered to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Ian Smith, 33, of Delanco Township, posted a video on his Instagram account Saturday morning showing two men kicking down wooden barriers and entering the business. I hate the fact that it has to come to this, Smith wrote in the videos caption. Governor Murphy can portray us in whatever villainous way he wants, but our hands are forced here and thats his fault. We are over 4 months into an economic shutdown that was supposed to be 14 days. It is time to end this and resume life in a safe and responsible manner. Small business is not solely responsible for the spread of the virus yet we are targeted as such and unfairly treated, he continued. You will not trample one our rights and you will not destroy our lives. We will not back down. Ever. Please share this to show what lengths we have to go to just to make a living for our families. Smith, along with co-owner Frank Trumbetti, 51, of Williamstown, were arrested earlier in the week for operating their business in spite of a judges order. They were charged with one count of fourth-degree contempt, one count of obstruction, and one count of Violation of a Disaster Control Act, both disorderly persons summons. After Atilis Gym refused to comply with multiple criminal citations and Superior Court orders, including a contempt of court order issued Friday, today law enforcement entered the premises to ensure closure of the gym and to abate the public health risks, said a spokesperson for Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal. As the Attorney General previously said, the state wishes it had not come to this, but the gym refused to comply even with a contempt order. New deadlines Gov. Phil Murphy on Saturday signed Executive Order No. 170, which temporarily extends certain statutory deadlines across state government that require review and action by agencies before a specified deadline. The deadlines were previously extended June 30, with Executive Order No. 159, according to a news release. The statutory deadlines, in addition to certain effective dates that are being delayed, are included in the accompanying appendix to the order. The order will take effect immediately. As the state government has responded to the COVID-19 crisis, resources have been immensely strained, Murphy said. Extending these deadlines allows state agencies to continue to be able to meet the needs of New Jerseyans, and provides agencies with crucial time to make decisions with the consideration and input necessary for the long-term benefit of our state. For a copy of Executive Order No. 170, click here. Virus update No briefing with state officials to update residents on the spread of COVID-19 is scheduled for Saturday or Sunday. Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} The next live briefing is scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday. In a tweet Saturday afternoon, Murphy reported that there are 393 new positive cases of the new coronavirus across the state, pushing the cumulative total to 182,029. He also said there have been an additional 11 deaths, pushing the total to 13,955 lives lost so far. During Fridays briefing, Murphy announced that the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in New Jersey had increased by 699, bringing the total to 181,660. There have been 10 additional deaths, bringing the state total to 13,944, he said. There are also 1,875 probable deaths. So far, Atlantic County has reported 3,557 cases with 241 deaths and 1,944 cleared as recovered. Cape May County has reported 978 cases with 82 deaths and 773 designated off quarantine. Cumberland County has reported 2,734 cases with 145 deaths. Included int he totals are two deaths and 18 new cases that Atlantic County officials reported Saturday. Two Hammonton men, a 67-year-old and an 84-year-old, died from complications of COVID-19, according to a news release from county spokeswoman Linda Gilmore. The 18 new positives were among eight boys and men, ages 3 to 56, and 10 girls and women, ages 7 to 73. Three of the confirmations were found in Pleasantville; two each were found in Absecon, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway, Somers Point and Ventnor; and one each was found in Atlantic City, Estell Manor, Hamilton Township, Hammonton and Margate, according to the release. Atlantic County will continue to provide testing at its drive-thru facility in Northfield at Rt. 9 and Dolphin Avenue, behind the county public works yard, each Tuesday in August from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., according to the release. The test site is available for both symptomatic and asymptomatic county residents with or without a doctors prescription, officials said. Residents must make an appointment for testing and provide proof of county residency and appointment confirmation. Appointments can be made online at www.aclink.org. Officials asked those who are unable to keep their appointments no less than 24 hours in advance so others may have an opportunity to fill those spots. A list of additional testing locations in Atlantic County is available at https://www.atlantic-county.org/covid/additional-testing-locations.asp For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. PHOTOS from a food drive for farm workers in Hammonton Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. The claim: Celebrities haven't addressed Epstein flight logs The child sex trafficking allegations against the late Jeffrey Epstein have received renewed attention following the arrest of his former associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is charged with recruiting girls for Epstein's sex-trafficking operation. Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019, and faced federal charges for the trafficking of minors in New York and Florida. He pleaded not guilty that July 10 and was found dead in his jail cell one month later. Since his arrest, photos have surfaced of Epstein and Maxwell with high profile-celebrities and politicians, including President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, as well as Maxwell's attendance at Chelsea Clinton's wedding. Flight logs for Epstein's private plane have also been unsealed following a lawsuit from one of his accusers, revealing that Trump and former President Bill Clinton had both flown on Epstein's plane. Other notable names in the flight records include supermodel Naomi Campbell and actor Kevin Spacey. Since the arrest of Maxwell, conspiracy theories about an elite pedophile ring have spread across the internet, accusing celebrities like Chrissy Teigen, Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey of involvement. More: Fact check: Ellen, Oprah, many others are not under house arrest for child sex trafficking The claims appear to originate from the far-right conspiracy movement, QAnon. Followers of the movement hold a wide range of beliefs, but a primary conspiracy theory is that global elites, leading Democrats and the "deep state," are involved in pedophilia and mind control and are working against Trump, who is trying to end their activities. Oprah Winfrey The theories have evolved into baseless claims accusing various celebrities of involvement in sex-trafficking Epstein-related or otherwise which have gone viral. One viral Facebook post, which has been shared more than 121,000 times said, "Does anyone else find it odd that not a single celebrity or big name on Epsteins flight list has spoken out in defense of themselves? ... Chrissy Teigen deleted 27,000 tweets, but never put out a statement about it. Ellen DeGeneres has not spoke on it. Oprah Winfrey has not spoke on it." Story continues What is QAnon? Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami professor who has been studying conspiracy theories for decades, told USA TODAY in 2018 that QAnon followers are usually "Trump supporters who have a strong conspiracy mentality and are probably evangelical." The Guardian reported in 2018 that a user named "Q," who claims to be a government insider with top security clearance, began posting messages on the dark web years ago and created a group of anonymous leaders who are referred to as "Anon." More: What is QAnon and where did it come from? What to know about the far-right conspiracy theory The person behind the conspiracy theories, "Q," claims to have knowledge about a large child sex trafficking ring, alleging some politicians and celebrities wear ankle monitors and are under investigation. The group attempts to decode anonymous comments on dark web message boards such as 4chan and 8chan. QAnon spread a baseless suggestion in 2016 that a pizza parlor in D.C. was a front for a child sex ring and started a conspiracy theory called "Pizzagate," which led to violent actions. In 2016, a 28-year-old North Carolina man opened fire inside the D.C. pizza shop, claiming he was rescuing child sex slaves. Police said in court documents that the suspect surrendered "peacefully when he found no evidence that underage children were being harbored in the restaurant." Are Teigen, DeGeneres and Winfrey in the flight records? Contrary to what the post says, Teigen has addressed the flight lists multiple times. On July 10 she posted on Twitter, "I have never even met the man (Epstein). Or been to the island. Or on the plane." After facing what she called "scary harassment" over allegations about ties to Epstein, Teigen said she deleted 60,000 tweets, blocked over 1 million users and is considering taking legal action. "I actually deleted 60,000 tweets because I cannot ... STAND you idiots anymore and Im worried for my family," her post on Twitter said. No reports about the high-profile celebrities on Epstein's plane have mentioned Teigen, and her name is not recorded on the released flight lists. Chrissy Teigen has scrubbed her Twitter account related to QAnon claims. Other celebrities who were identified in Epstein's flight records have addressed their relationship with him, including Naomi Campbell, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. All denied any knowledge of a trafficking operation. The post's accusations about celebrity involvement with Epstein does not include those who are actually in the flight records. Like Teigen, no published reports about celebrities on Epstein's flights include Winfrey or DeGeneres. Their names are also not listed in the released flight records. Additionally, Teigen, Winfrey and DeGeneres also are not recorded in a searchable database, which has been compiled through the use of optical character recognition to analyze the released flight log entries. Our rating: False The claims in the post have been rated FALSE. While there are some high-profile celebrities and politicians listed in Epstein's flight records, Chrissy Teigen, Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres are not. It is also false to claim that no celebrities have addressed their ties to Epstein; multiple celebrities who were actually listed in Epstein's flight records have publicly addressed their relationship with him. Additionally, although Teigen is not listed in any of the records, she has publicly addressed the false accusations. Our sources: Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. Contributed: McKenzie Sadeghi, USA TODAY This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Teigen, DeGeneres, Oprah are not in Epstein flight logs Held by the ASEAN Secretariat, the dialogue aimed to collect opinions on the building of the blocs master plan on pandemic response and post-pandemic recovery, as requested by ASEAN leaders at the 36th ASEAN Summit in June. It brought together hundreds of delegates from ASEAN member countries and regional and international organisations. Dung, who is also Chairman of the ASEAN Coordinating Council Working Group on Public Health Emergencies (ACCWG-PHE), suggested economic recovery work should be done in steps with clear focuses, concentrating on production, tourism, and transport, with more attention to be paid to disadvantaged groups. He stressed the need to ensure the dual goals of containing the pandemic while rapidly recovering economic activities. As ACCWG-PHE Chairman, Dung called for the involvement from the private sector, international organisations, and ASEAN partners in the building of the plan, first of all the draft plan framework. The master plan, which will be constantly updated, is scheduled to be submitted to the 37th ASEAN Summit in November. Rapidly rising COVID-19 infections, an ominous public health report from Oregon State University, and a political stalemate led to Gov. Kate Brown's order rolling back the reopening of two Eastern Oregon counties. "It was clear yesterday afternoon that if we did not act immediately, this could spread like wildfire," Brown said Friday in an interview with EO Media Group. "More people would die unless we took really quick action." It was the first time the state had reversed a county's progress under the phased reopening plan announced in mid-April. Umatilla County was moved two phases back to baseline, the highly restrictive rules in place at the end of the spring peak of the pandemic's spread in Oregon. For Umatilla County, the move resets the clock to restrictions in place last spring. Residents are encouraged to stay home, minimize travel, work from home if possible, limit public gatherings to 25 people and social gatherings to 10 people. Restaurants must return to take-out only. Most recreational facilities and entertainment venues must close. If infection rates drop significantly, the county could move to Phase 1 after 21 days. Brown's Thursday night order also moved Morrow County from phase 2 to phase 1. Morrow County officials said they were working with the state on possible voluntary measures to head-off a return to baseline. Morrow County ranks 70th and Umatilla County ranks 75th in per capita new coronavirus infection rates among the over 3,000 counties in the United States, according to an analysis of state health records by the New York Times. Brown said the state's own metrics showed Umatilla has the state's highest COVID-19 infection rate: 234 positive cases per 10,000 residents. Morrow County reported 213 cases per 10,000 people. The weekly percentage of tests that come back positive in Umatilla County is 23%, well above the statewide average of 5.1 percent. Morrow County's positive test rate is even higher 30%. Brown said her decision also was affected by reports she received from OSU'S Team-based Rapid Assessment of Community-Level Coronavirus Epidemics (TRACE) program. OSU tested 249 households last weekend and found 41 positive cases. The modeling that OSU uses forecasts a 17% citywide positive case load. A second OSU study showed "significantly higher" levels of COVID-19 in wastewater samples taken in Hermiston and Boardman compared to other areas of the state. In fact, the wastewater samples in the two Eastern Oregon towns produced the highest readings since OSU has been working on the program, OSU officials said. For the past few weeks, Brown said she and health officials made attempts to get Umatilla County to take voluntary actions. Union and Lincoln counties had voluntarily rolled back from phase 2 to phase 1 when they faced rising infection rates (OSU also participated in testing in Lincoln). The two counties were removed Thursday from the state's watch list of counties where infections are rising beyond acceptable limits. Brown had hoped to replicate the same pattern with Umatilla County, but she said her overtures were repeatedly rebuffed. She said county commissioners would only follow statewide restrictions. "Honestly, I have been in contact regularly with the local county commissioners. I would prefer to do things collaboratively, but in this case, it has become a crisis," Brown said. However, Hermiston Mayor David Drotzmann did tell OSU officials that "the results of this study are a significant warning. We now have a clearer picture of how many people are carrying this disease without knowing it, and how rapidly it is spreading family to family, household to household. Brown said she knows the rollback will be a health care and economic burden on the counties and that she would take action to reduce the impact. Adding more testing is challenging because of a growing nationwide shortage of test kits. Longer waiting periods are widely reported as labs struggle with a backlog of tests. Brown said she had asked for help from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and asked Oregon's congressional delegation to keep up pressure for more supplies. "It's not looking like it will be coming," she said. By Yury Zolotarev and Andrew Osborn KHABAROVSK/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Thousands of people marched in the Russian far eastern city of Khabarovsk on Saturday for a fourth consecutive weekend in protest at President Vladimir Putin's handling of a local political crisis. Residents of Khabarovsk, around 3,800 miles (6,110 km) and seven time zones east of Moscow, are unhappy about the July 9 detention of Sergei Furgal, the wider region's popular governor, who was arrested on murder charges he denies. His detention, which his supporters say was politically motivated, has triggered weeks of street protests, creating a headache for the Kremlin which is trying to tackle a sharp drop in real incomes as a result of the coronavirus outbreak and keep a lid on unrest as the economy stutters. Sheltering from sporadic rain beneath umbrellas, protesters chanted "Freedom!" One banner read "Russia without Putin" while protesters chanted "Putin resign!" outside a government building. City authorities estimated around 3,500 people had taken part in the march. Some local media put the number above 10,000, but said the crowds were smaller than previous weeks. The protests have highlighted anger among some in the far east over what they see as policies emanating from detached Moscow-based authorities who have neglected them for years. "The government doesn't think of us as people, we're scum to them," one female pensioner protester told Reuters. "We live at the edge of the world. This is the richest country...but we live in poverty and we pensioners have to work." Supporters of Furgal, who is a member of the nationalist LDPR party, say he is being punished for defeating a candidate from the ruling pro-Putin United Russia party in 2018. The Kremlin says Furgal has serious charges to answer. Sustained demonstrations are unusual for Russia's regions, as is a lack of response from the authorities to break them up. (Additonal reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Peter Scott in Moscow; Editing by Mike Harrison) As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to wreak havoc across the globe, it has been thought that children mostly seemed to be spared by severe illness. In the majority of cases, children infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) only develop a mild illness, with some tagged as asymptomatic. Now, new evidence shows that children carry high levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus even without falling ill, which may impact the spread of the virus to others, especially those who are at high risk of developing severe COVID-19. The team also found that infected children younger than 5 years old may carry up to 100 times as much of SARS-CoV-2 in their noses and throats as adults. Colorized scanning electron micrograph of a cell (green) infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (purple), isolated from a patient sample. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID Higher levels of viral genetic material The study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, suggests the possibility that the youngest children transmit the virus as much as other groups, even if they only develop mild to moderate illness. The study may highlight the ability of younger children to spread the virus to others, which could help revise current guidelines in containing the spread of the virus. Children are susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2 but generally present with only mild symptoms compared to adults. Earlier reports did not find strong evidence of children as key drivers in the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, school closures early in pandemic responses prevented large-scale investigations for schools as a source of community transmission. To arrive at their findings, the research team from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital, Chicago, and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, looked at swab samples from 95 children, a majority of whom reported cough or a low-grade fever in Chicago. The team found that children under 5 with COVID-19 have higher levels of viral load than older children and adults, suggesting a risk of higher transmission, as seen in the respiratory syncytial virus, also called RSV. The team believes that the study findings are significant, especially during discussions on the safety of reopening schools and daycare. "The observed differences in median CT values between young children and adults approximate a 10-fold to 100-fold greater amount of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract of young children," the researchers explained. They added that the study is limited to the detection of viral nucleic acid, rather than an infectious virus. Also, studies in children about COVID-19 shows a correlation between higher nucleic acid levels and the ability to culture infectious virus. One limitation of the study was, it was conducted at the time when lockdown measures were in place, and schools are closed. Hence, they had fewer opportunities to transmit. Further studies are needed to look at the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in children. "Our study was not designed to prove that younger children spread COVID-19 as much as adults, but it is a possibility. We need to take that into account in efforts to reduce transmission as we continue to learn more about this virus," Dr. Taylor Heald-Sargent, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago," said. Shape guidelines The study may help shape current guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic, adding children as key drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the general population. Also, younger children have behavioral habits that may increase the risk of transmission, such as playing with other kids in school. Also, close quarters in school and daycare settings raise concern for the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The new information on how these children can transmit the virus may affect school opening in a few months. In addition to public health implications, children are essential for targeting vaccine efforts when they become available. COVID-19 global toll The global case toll tied to COVID-19 has topped 17.53 million, with more than 678,000 people who died due to the infection. The United States remains the nation hardest hit, surpassing 4.56 million cases and over 153,000 deaths, while Brazil has more than 2.66 million people, with over 92,000 deaths. Source: Heald-Sargent, T., Muller, Q., Zheng, et al. (2020). Age-Related Differences in Nasopharyngeal Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Levels in Patients With Mild to Moderate Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). JAMA Pediatrics. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2768952 COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) - https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 By Jessica DiNapoli and Tom Bergin NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Eastman Kodak Co on Monday granted its executive chairman options for 1.75 million shares as the result of what a person familiar with the arrangement described as an "understanding" with its board that had previously neither been listed in his employment contract nor made public. One day later, the administration of President Donald Trump announced a $765 million financing deal with Eastman Kodak, and in the days that followed the stock soared, making those additional options now held by executive chairman Jim Continenza worth tens of millions. The decision to grant Continenza options was never formalized or made into a binding agreement, which is why it was not disclosed previously, according to the person familiar with the arrangement. The options were granted to shield Continenza's overall stake in the company from being diluted by a $100 million convertible bond deal clinched in May 2019 to help Eastman Kodak stay afloat, according to the person's account. While Kodak's approach is permissible, it is unusual because executives are paid to grow a company's long-term value and are not usually given extra compensation personally to cover events that may hurt share prices, several experts said. Kodak disclosed the stock options award to Continenza in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which was previously reported. But the person familiar with the arrangement told Reuters that the transaction occurred because of the understanding with the board. That arrangement reported by Reuters for the first time sheds new light on Eastman Kodak's handling of the unexpected windfall for its top executives. An Eastman Kodak spokeswoman said that Continenza had no comment. The spokeswoman said the gains reflected by the rise in the share price are only on paper: Continenza, she said, "is a strong believer in the future of the company, and has never sold a single share of stock." Story continues Prior to this week's financing deal, the company warned investors it was at risk of not continuing as a going concern, but it was boosted by the agreement with the Trump administration on Tuesday to supply drug ingredients. As a result, Continenza's gains at the end of this week amounted to about $83 million following a roughly 10-fold increase in Eastman Kodak's stock, compared to the approximately $53 million in gains he would have seen were it not for the additional options, according to a Reuters analysis of company filings. Roughly 29% of the options Continenza received on Monday vested immediately, giving him the right to cash them out as soon as possible. Related video: Kodak CEO banks $80 million on stock rally WIDE LATITUDE While most corporate boards and their committees have wide latitude in awarding options, three corporate governance experts interviewed by Reuters said the move to mitigate the impact of dilution on Continenza's stake in the company without a prior contractual obligation was unusual. "The compensation committee's job is not to protect the CEO from every adverse effect on the stock price," said Sanjai Bhagat, a finance professor at the University of Colorado. "It's to get the CEO to think about long-term value." A fourth expert, Robin Ferracone, chief executive of compensation consultant Farient Advisors, said the company may have offered the prospect of additional options to executives as they worked toward the convertible bond offering -- to avoid them being "disincentivized" to seal a deal that would help the firm but potentially water down their holdings. The additional options awarded to Continenza, a former telecommunications executive, were approved by the board's compensation committee on Monday, the spokeswoman said. Shareholders had voted in May of this year to increase the shares available for executive compensation. "The issue is the board wanted to make sure the CEO had the same economic alignment as was contemplated when he took the job," said a person close to the company. The company's market capitalization jumped from a little over $100 million at the start of the week to almost $1 billion by Friday following the deal. Eastman Kodak also granted options on Monday to three other executives, worth $712,000 each, according to regulatory filings. Kodak declined to comment on the reason for these awards. The company has struggled to reinvent itself from a flagging camera company after emerging from bankruptcy in 2013. Its selection by the U.S. government for the production of key pharmaceutical ingredients surprised many industry analysts who expected such a deal to go to a major generic drug maker. The government's U.S. International Development Finance Corporation released a July 28 statement quoting Continenza as saying: "Kodak will play a critical role in the return of a reliable American pharmaceutical supply chain." President Trump, too, hailed the development. "I want to congratulate the people in Kodak," he said at a press briefing. "Theyve been working very hard." (Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Tom Bergin; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis, Tom Lasseter and Daniel Wallis) Winona Countys racial and ethnic makeup, or lack thereof, seems to largely translate into its local police departments, creating a setting that could be interpreted as unwelcoming to any person who isnt white. Public discourse which has been heightened by the killings of Kentucky resident Breonna Taylor and Minneapolis resident George Floyd would likely determine that this is a deliberate choice by an institution known for its lack of diversity. But is that so? And furthermore, what do Winona County police departments look at when theyre hiring new officers and staff members? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 2019, Winona County has an estimated population of 50,484. Of that number, roughly 47,000 residents are white or identify as such, which is a percentage of about 93.7%. While the percentage of males and females is roughly equal, the disparity between racial and ethnic backgrounds is much different. Of Winona Countys total estimated population, the Census Bureau calculates that only 1.8% or 909 people are Black or African American. This percentage decreases for subsequent ethnic and racial groups, including American Indians, Asians, Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders and Hispanics and Latinos. Perhaps naturally, these statistics transfer almost directly into local law enforcement agencies. For the Winona County Sheriffs Office, of its total force of 82 people, 53 are male and 29 are female. 79 of those workers consider themselves white, while one identifies as Black and two consider themselves Hispanic or Latino, which results in a 3.66% minority against a 96.34% white majority. According to Winona County Chief Deputy Sheriff Jeff Mueller, the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the sheriffs office is not a deliberate choice, but rather a circumstance of a predominantly white community. Another issue lies in how they and other departments market themselves to appeal to a broader spectrum of people. While not implemented as of now, Mueller does have an idea of how they can change that. This is something weve talked about before and something I see that other departments have done in the past is recruitment videos, Mueller said. Thats a potential way weve looked at to reach people (of different racial and ethnic backgrounds). We may need to be a bit more ingenious with the way we go about reaching people. As of right now, the sheriffs office regularly advertises its openings at various job fairs across Minnesota, as well as lists its open positions on the Minnesota Board of Peace Officers Standards and Training website. The Lewiston Police Department does the same thing, with Chief Scott Yeiter adding that the department has placed ads in several news publications, including the Lewiston Journal, Winona Daily News and Rochester Post Bulletin. On top of these, Lewiston has also utilized the departments and the citys Facebook pages to announce when they have openings. An issue that is entirely removed from the matter of diversity, however, is pay, at least according to Yeiter. Like most small departments, we struggle to get any candidates, especially when we are hiring for part-time positions and starting pay is $16 an hour which was increased from $14 an hour a couple years ago, Yeiter said. With a total count of fewer than 10 police officers who all identify as white, and a largely white population that makes up 96.2% of its 1,564-person municipality, Lewiston, like Winona County, directly corresponds with the countys white population. Yeiter added that work within law enforcement is not something that is traditionally advertised, since most departments require some degree of higher education in candidates before they can even apply. It is not like we can reach out to the general public and recruit someone who has not already made the decision to become an officer, Yeiter said. The city of Lewiston cannot afford to recruit and train people that have not already completed the educational requirements in Minnesota. That isnt to say Lewiston is unwilling to have new officers come in and work for them, no matter their racial and ethnic background. I have had a brief conversation with an area chief in possibly sharing part-time officers, Yeiter said, which we both thought would be an option, but we have not discussed it further. For the Winona Police Department, which has a total force of 39 people, only one identifies as a different race or ethnicity by simply identifying as other. While echoing many of Mueller and Yeiters sentiments when it comes to recruitment, Winona Chief of Police Paul Bostrack clarified that the police departments only gets applications from applicants who have passed their licensing test. If theyre freshly new to the job market, they have to pass a state test and then theyre eligible to be licensed, Bostrack said. Those are the only people we can hire; we cant go and recruit from local businesses. Bostrack said that in order to become licensed to become an officer at the Winona Police Department, applicants have to first complete either a two-year law enforcement-specific associate program or get a four-year degree and follow that up by taking a 10-week law enforcement skills test. Thats our pool of people to draw from, Bostrack said. We basically get applicants whove decided to go to school for two to four years for law enforcement and then have taken that test. At one point in the past, Bostrack said, after Winona and several other police departments faced a drop-off in the number of applicants they received, they actually had brochures with information on Winona and the police department handed out to people who had completed law enforcement testing. We just handed them out to everybody who could physically take one as they left the testing, Bostrack said, emphasizing how desperate the department had become. In other words, it seems the makeup of police departments in Winona is not dictated by a desire to be exclusive toward one race or ethnic background, but by eligibility determined by education. Bostrack said that community outreach officers have been getting together with different groups of youth around the city in an attempt to encourage them to consider a path in law enforcement. They (community outreach officers) are going to the parks, playgrounds and the schools with kids of different racial and ethnic makeup so they can learn our officers names, Bostrack said. When they start leaving high school and look at their future, hopefully well get more applicants. Recruiting through the schools is a method that the St Charles Police Department (eight officers; seven white, one Latino and one female) has utilized, as well. St Charles Chief Ken Frank said when it comes to looking at applications, it ultimately whittles down to who the schools are providing. In the past, Frank has attended seminars at area high schools and colleges in the hopes of recruiting future officers. This is where it all begins for a career in law enforcement. Like with the sheriffs office, Winona and Lewiston police departments, St Charles can only hire those who have gone through the training to become a police officer. For smaller departments like St Charles and Lewiston, they cant afford to turn people away on the basis of gender, race or ethnicity, since they already receive so few applicants. Ive always encouraged everyone who has an interest in law enforcement to pursue it and investigate opportunities within it, Frank said. Because there are a lot of opportunities for a lot of different individuals within it. The repeated issues across these departments, then some more specifically than others is drawing from a narrow list of potential officers that is made up of largely white men. While there are ideas to broaden their recruitment, such as using recruitment videos, police in Winona County have to operate within a thin avenue of restrictions and qualifications. Why does law enforcement seem to appeal generally to men? How can police departments or higher education institutions entice all groups of people from different walks of life to pursue an interest in law enforcement? Right now, the system seems to be unable to rewrite itself, and change can only occur once that happens. Love 0 Funny 2 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 4 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. On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the U.S. GDP had the biggest drop in a single quarter in U.S. history. From April through June, the economy contracted by 9.5%, with GDP falling at an annualized rate of 32.9%. President Trump, who tweets about many topics, said nothing about it. But some 16 minutes after the news broke, he did tweet the following: "With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???" While I think this tweet was a profound error for reasons I'll get to in a moment, my strong suspicion is that it accomplished precisely what Trump wanted. By floating the idea that we should postpone the election, suddenly no one was talking about the disastrous economic data. Instead, just about everyone took the bait and started talking about this grotesquely irresponsible trial balloon for a terrible idea. Including yours truly. The president places outsized importance on numbers -- stock market numbers, COVID-19 numbers, whatever -- and racking up the single worst quarterly economic number ever recorded probably bothered him more than it should. After all, 32.9% was actually better than expected. Moreover, Trump wasn't responsible for the pandemic that caused the economy to grind to a halt in the spring. And even though his handling of the crisis has been spotty at best, a similar number would probably be inevitable under any president. Trump's tweet was a terrible error politically for more reasons that I can list here. But here are four: First, it makes Trump look desperate. If he were up 10 points in the polls, he wouldn't be asking for an extension. Second, Joe Biden is beating Trump badly by promising a return to normalcy. Floating the idea that the election should be postponed -- something Biden predicted Trump might try, to the outrage of Trump defenders -- only fuels a sense of chaos and presidential unsteadiness. Third, it forced other Republicans to distance themselves from the president. "Never in the history of the country, through wars, depressions and the Civil War, have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time. We'll find a way to do that again this Nov. 3," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in an interview with a Kentucky TV station. And finally, it's a futile idea that will go nowhere, even as it galvanizes Trump's opponents and divides his supporters, because the president of the United States cannot unilaterally delay an election. All elections are run by the states, and the timetable for all federal elections are set by Congress. It's this last point that we should all be grateful for, and progressives in particular should take note. Progressives, historically, have wanted the federal government to have more and more power. Many heap scorn on states' rights and the Electoral College as antediluvian. More recently, the left has been all over the place on presidential powers. They've wanted Trump to nationalize the health care system to fight the pandemic but are outraged by the president's "trampling" of state sovereignty in response to riots in Oregon and elsewhere. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio begged Trump to send in the army to fight the pandemic but is scandalized by the idea of Trump sending federal agents to quash violent protests. Well, presumably, all of them are happy that the president can't unilaterally move elections to suit his political needs. Hopefully progressives will remember their gratitude in the years to come. One of the beauties of our constitutional structure is that it makes it difficult for any actor to abuse power across the whole country. Even if one succeeds, there are safeguards to see that the abuse is temporary. Governors can screw up their own states but are powerless beyond their borders. Presidents can get away with all sorts of bad ideas but are constrained from making them worse by the various checks on their authority. And even when those checks fail, as has happened, there's always the final check: elections, which allow voters to say, "Enough." Nationalizing elections, policing, education or even, in some respects, pandemic-fighting doesn't guarantee dictatorship or the universalizing of mistaken policies. But it makes it much easier. If Trump's terrible (albeit successful) attempt to distract from a bad economy served as a teachable moment for the left and everyone else, it will have been worth it. Jonah Goldberg writes for the Los Angeles Times. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Decent Americans who are feeling perplexed today shouldn't be ashamed about it. There is good reason to be perplexed. On the one hand, in the name of health and safety, we are being asked by government to compromise personal freedoms that we have always taken for granted: going to work, going to church, sending our children off to school, meeting our friends in our favorite restaurant. We walk around wearing annoying masks and try to respect social distancing limits. But decent Americans are perplexed because we would expect that allowing more government into our personal space would happen uniformly, that in allowing more government, we are all sacrificing together for some greater good, some greater necessity. But instead, we look around and see chaos. We see no uniformity. Protests, often violent, are sweeping our cities. The same public officials who tell us to keep our kids at home; who tell us to not pray in church, as we have always prayed; who limit our places of work and livelihood look the other way, often with approval, as hooligans tear apart our cities. Greater demands from government should mean increasing respect for the law. A formation of a Guard of Honor marches in the parade during the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing, October 1, 2019. /Xinhua By Li Yun As China's white paper "China's National Defense in the New Era" writes, the history of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is a history of reform and innovation. From the establishment of a set of principles and institutions since the army was founded in 1927 to the reduction of millions of military personnel during the period of reform and opening-up leading up to last year, the army has carried out reforms while fighting and constructing under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and it has grown from small to large, from weak to strong. The progress of reform and innovation has never stopped. "In the new era, China is advancing defense and military modernization across the board and deepening reform in national defense and armed forces in all respects, with a focus on removing institutional barriers and solving structural and policy-related problems to adapt to the trends of worldwide Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and the demands of national security. New historic strides have been made in strengthening the armed forces," says the white paper. It has been nearly five years since Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a mobilization order to deepen reform of national defense and armed forces in November 2015. The achievements of China's military reform are obvious to all. They have reorganized and established new functional organs of the Central Military Commission (CMC), improved the leadership and management system for services and arms, established and improved the joint operations command system, and built and improved the law-based supervision system. They have adjusted scale and proportion, restructured force composition, reorganized the troops and rebuilt new-type combat forces. They have deepened reform in the institutions for Party building in the military, improved Party conduct, upheld integrity and continued the fight against corruption. They have established a modernized weaponry and equipment system for national security, strengthened strategic management and modernized national defense mobilization. It can be said that the phased goal of "making breakthrough achievements in the reform of the leadership and management system and the joint operations command system and making important achievements in the reform of optimizing size and structure, improving the military policies and institutions, and promoting aligning civil and military endeavors by 2020," has been basically achieved. Soldiers take part in the opening ceremony of a joint military exercise of Cambodia and China in Cambodia's southwestern Kampot province, March 15, 2020. /Xinhua No military reform can be achieved overnight. However, the military force structure and its institutions still need to be further improved in terms of specific details. Continuously releasing the effectiveness of reforms, activating the potential of military development and turning system advantages into winning advantages also require stronger determination, greater strength and more practical measures. At the same time, reforms in military policies and institutions are still in progress. This is not only a stage of consolidating existing reform achievements through legislation and institutional construction, but also a tough area for reform. In this regard, we must have a clear understanding and demonstrate and implement reforms more scientifically and rationally. At present, China continues to enjoy political stability, ethnic unity and social stability. According to the white paper, "there has been a notable increase in China's overall national strength, global influence, and resilience to risks. China is still in an important period of strategic opportunity for development. Nevertheless, it also faces diverse and complex security threats and challenges," especially with the United States and other countries having continuously increased their strategic pressure on China recently. It is true that to resist and eliminate security pressures and threats requires comprehensive use of political, economic and military means. However, countries with weak and ineffective military forces cannot deter external hostile forces such as hegemonism, power politics and unilateralism pursued by superpowers. Therefore, the PLA will continue to strengthen the military in its own way, deepen reforms and strengthen its own construction, firmly implement the missions and tasks entrusted by the CPC and the people in accordance with the requirements of the strategic demands of national security and development, and use powerful military forces to prevail over all threats and challenges. Editor's note: Li Yun is a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Military Research of the Department of War Research, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) Academy of Military Sciences. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN. MASSENA, N.Y. A man was seriously injured Thursday his ATV hit a deer in the Adirondacks. The accident happened around 11:30 p.m. in Massena, St. Lawrence County. Michael J. Markes, 44, of Massena was driving his ATV east on County Route 37 when a deer stepped onto the road, said the New York State Police. The ATV hit the deer, throwing Markes from the vehicle. Markes suffered a head injury, troopers said. He was rushed by Massena Rescue to Massena Memorial Hospital, troopers said, and later airlifted by helicopter to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse. As of Friday, Markes was in critical but stable condition, troopers said. Staff writer Samantha House covers breaking news, crime and public safety. Have a tip, a story idea, a question or a comment? Reach her at shouse@syracuse.com. The Commissioner for Health in Cross River State, Betta Edu is now the acting National Chairman of the Nigeria Commissioners for Health Forum. Mrs Edu, a medical doctor, has been the vice chairman of the forum. She stepped into the new position on Thursday in Abuja following the former chairmans resignation to pick up appointment in a private firm. Mrs Edu thanked her colleagues for giving her the opportunity to lead the forum and promised to follow in the footsteps of the former chairman, Abea Umar whom she said did a great job piloting the affairs of the forum. The acting chairman afterwards met with the Minister for Health, Osagie Ehanire where she thanked the minister for the support he has been giving to the forum. Mrs Edu said topmost on the forums agenda would be to see that Nigeria build a more resilient health system and achieve Universal Health Coverage through the implementation of Basic Healthcare Provision Fund and state Health Insurance Scheme in all the states, working with the Federal Ministry of Health, National Primary Health Insurance Scheme. The forum, she said, would also seek to improve the general public health response of states to the COVID-19 pandemic working in synergy with relevant federal MDAs. There would be high level policy dialogues that will put healthcare on the political front burner in all states of the federation, working with the Honorable Minister for Health and the Nigerian Governors forum, she said. READ ALSO: Mrs Edu said she would push for the establishment of a technical arm of the forum to engage development partners and other key stakeholders. We would take advantage of the present pandemic to advance discussions and actions on strategic building of health sector. Its COVID-19 today, another pandemic can put more burden on the health system in the future if we do not actively prepare. Building political capital will be crucial for our success, as a forum, she said. Mom goes undercover to investigate Planned Parenthood after daughter is prescribed testosterone Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A mother, whose daughter was given a prescription for testosterone at Planned Parenthood, wanted to find out why it was so easy, so she went undercover. Within a half-hour visit, she was given a six-month prescription with few questions asked. The 57-year-old mother, who's from the Tacoma area of Washington state and spoke with The Christian Post Monday on condition of anonymity, explained that after her troubled, trans-identifying 18-year-old daughter was prescribed testosterone by a Planned Parenthood nurse practitioner last month, she wanted to find out what the requirements were to purchase it. She found out about her daughter acquiring the hormone after the pharmacy texted her to let her know she had a prescription ready to pick up. Hours later, she found out the prescription testosterone and syringes had already been picked up. When she confronted her daughter about it, she refused to tell her who had prescribed it. "I was pretty sure her doctors wouldn't do this given her mental health and physical health challenges and her mild learning disability," the mother told CP. She'd heard that Planned Parenthood was now a provider of cross-sex hormones for transgender-identifying people and discovered that, unbeknownst to her, there was an affiliate office a few miles away from her home. So she called the clinic, pretending to be interested in testosterone, and was offered dates for an appointment and informed that if she had insurance it would cover the $160 appointment fee. The Planned Parenthood staff also instructed her on which bus routes to take and knew the cost of the fare to get to the clinic. "My daughter never even made her own doctor appointments and never rode the bus. Now I see why she did it. She was encouraged by Planned Parenthood," the mother said. After her daughter refused to listen to her concerns about the harmful side effects and risks associated with injecting herself with testosterone, she wanted to find out what Planned Parenthood clinicians tell their clients. She also wanted to know if they perform any mental health screenings or medical tests before they prescribe cross-sex hormones to gender dysphoric clients. In mid-June, the mother went undercover to investigate her local Planned Parenthood clinic, where she presented as trans and told the office staff she intended to transition. They asked for her real name so they could file the insurance claim, so she provided her name along with a trans male name she made up. According to the mother, she was asked to provide a urine sample, and the first person she saw in the examination room pricked her finger to draw blood to check her red blood cell count. When she asked questions about the risks of going on testosterone, she was given an informed consent document to sign. After the first Planned Parenthood staffer left, a nurse practitioner entered the room and asked how long she had thought about becoming a man. "I didn't think it mattered how long I'd thought about it, so I told her that after seeing and hearing about Caitlyn Jenner I thought: why not give it a try?" the mother explained to CP. Planned Parenthood's informed consent document for "masculinizing hormone therapy," which she shared with CP, lists potential changes to the body that "will probably not go away even if you stop taking testosterone," including a bigger clitoris, a lower voice, a mustache and beard, male pattern baldness, and thicker body hair. Under the heading "How long does it take to work?" the document reads: "It can take a month or longer. Some of the changes can take 2 to 5 years. No one can tell how fast or how much change will happen." "You will need to take the medicine forever to keep some of the changes to your body," the form states, noting that changes to body fat, strength, speed of hair growth, and sex drive are likely to change if users stop taking it. "If you have sex with a person who makes sperm, you need to use birth control to prevent pregnancy, just in case," the document additionally advises. The mother told CP that the nurse practitioner informed her of nothing more than what was listed on the informed consent form and subsequently wrote a prescription for injectable testosterone without first testing her hormone levels. The prescription, which was shared with CP, was for 100 milligrams of testosterone per week. By signing the informed consent document, clients assume responsibility for the risks of taking hormone injections and Planned Parenthood is not considered legally liable for any harmful effects. Planned Parenthood staff reportedly told the mother that they wanted her to return for a follow-up visit where they would teach her how to inject testosterone into her belly. When she told them she didn't like needles, they told her injections were the most effective way to administer the hormones. The mother told CP that she was prescribed the same dose as her daughter. "This whole thing is maddening, and I don't know what can be done about it," she said, noting that she's written to five different organizations to alert them about what Planned Parenthood is doing. The only group that responded was the pro-life investigative group Live Action, which referred her to some attorneys. Because of the ease with which she was able to obtain it, she believes her daughter likely thinks that medical professionals are on board and that she's being prescribed medication that will help her. CP called the regional Planned Parenthood in the Pacific Northwest, which covers Washington state, and presented as a prospective client to ask about transgender services and prescriptions for hormones. The Planned Parenthood staffer confirmed that individuals seeking gender-transition must be 18 or older, and said the cost of a 90-minute appointment to start hormones would be around $350. She also said a payment plan could be set up, and they would help fill out an application for Medicaid, which would pay for the appointment and ongoing expense of the hormones. No formal referral from a therapist or psychological assessment is required, the Planned Parenthood employee told CP, though clinicians would review medical, sexual, and mental health history during the appointment. Expectations about what one can achieve by gender-transitioning would also be discussed, she said, adding that referrals for surgery could be sent out if needed. Blood work and checking hormone levels would also be done, and ongoing follow-up appointments would be scheduled. CP also asked about the side effects of hormones, given scientific literature showing that the prefrontal cortex of the brain isn't fully developed until age 25. The Planned Parenthood representative said it sounded like "smoke coming out of nowhere," and brain development was inconsequential to starting gender transition hormones. The mother who reached out to CP also spoke on air with two separate medically-oriented radio programs to ask the hosts, who were doctors, about these medical practices. One of the hosts was a neurologist and she wanted to learn more about the effects of testosterone on the female brain. Doctors on both radio programs expressed concern that such a high dose of testosterone was being given to a young woman with such poor screening. The mother shared the recordings of both radio programs with CP. When the mother informed her daughter's therapist about the testosterone prescription, the therapist, who's a Christian, was shocked. "I feel like no one is listening. No one will help me," the mother said. "I feel like I'm losing my daughter. It's like a death. "I can't call her my daughter. I can't call her by her old name. It's like she doesn't exist." Though strained, she is doing her best to maintain a relationship with her daughter. One of the side effects of testosterone is the loss of empathy. Her daughter recently told her that she would soon move out and that she no longer loved her. Her daughter has been on testosterone for eight weeks. In 2015, the FDA released a safety announcement that warned: "Prescription testosterone products are approved only for men who have low testosterone levels caused by certain medical conditions. The benefit and safety of these medications have not been established for the treatment of low testosterone levels due to aging, even if a mans symptoms seem related to low testosterone." "FDA has concluded that there is a possible increased cardiovascular risk associated with testosterone use. ... Some studies reported an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or death associated with testosterone treatment, while others did not." The federal agency requires manufacturers of approved testosterone products to conduct clinical trials to address whether increased risk of heart attack or stroke exists among users of these products. "I've started therapy too. It's super hard," the mother said. "What really kills me is her voice changing," she lamented, adding that she recently asked her daughter if she could record her voice before it deepened significantly. The deepening of the voice due to how testosterone thickens the vocal cords is a permanent effect of the hormone. "She just started laughing at me," the mother said, "and I started crying about it and she thought it was funny. She just doesn't get it. And I don't think she's capable [of understanding] because of her developmental delay, her learning disorder. "She's been through a lot in her life and she thinks this testosterone is going to solve it." Ask a woman named Karen what she used to think of her name, and youll hear phrases like generic, perfectly serviceable and an easy name. In 2020, Karen is no longer an easy name. Once popular for girls born in the 1960s, it then became a pseudonym for a middle-aged busybody with a blond choppy bob who asks to speak to the manager. Now the moniker has most recently morphed into a symbol of racism and white privilege. A Karen now roams restaurants and stores, often without a mask during this coronavirus era, spewing venom and calling the authorities to tattle, usually on people of colour and often putting them in dangerous situations. And while this archetype had previously been called Permit Patty or BBQ Becky, Karen has stuck. In fact, many news reports dont even bother to use a womans actual given name. Whitefish Karen (named for her town in Montana) coughed on a couple when they called her out for not wearing a mask inside a grocery store. Kroger Karen, named after the supermarket chain, blocked an African American mothers car so the woman couldnt leave the markets parking lot. San Francisco Karen called the police on a Filipino man stencilling Black Lives Matter on his own property. And, of course, the Queen of Karens Amy Cooper, also known as Central Park Karen threatened and fabricated accusations against a Black man after he politely asked her to put her dog on a leash, as park rules stated. Karen Chang, a Bay Area resident who works in business management, had shrugged off early memes, but then the Cooper video changed everything for her. It was very upsetting, but I would sacrifice my name for the visibility and awareness that incident generated, said Chang, who is Asian American. Indeed, she may do just that. She said shes considering changing her name to KC after she and her fiance eventually wed. It has always been a term of endearment. Chang may be able to change her name, but if Shamann Walton, a San Francisco Board of Supervisors member, has his way, a version of Karen will be immortalized in city law. In early July, Walton introduced the CAREN (Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies) Act (presumably he couldnt come up with a suitable word that began with K). The bill would change the citys code to punish people who call 911 and file false, racially biased complaints. Thats a step too far for Karen Ortiz-Orband, a Boston-area nurse who is of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent. She supports the contents of the proposal but emailed Waltons office urging him to reconsider its title. I asked him to be mindful of the fact that there are women named Karen and people arent differentiating between the two. And by naming this bill as he has, hes doing exactly what the metaphorical Karen is doing: creating an opportunity for discrimination, said Ortiz-Orband, who is in her late 40s. And before you think, Thats so Karen to complain about CAREN, Ortiz-Orband asks you to imagine if it were your name. Its one thing to make memes, she said. Its another when you start applying it to laws. Youre villainizing a name that people actually have and youre putting these people at risk. When a woman acts like that name, you should use her correct name. Karen Gormandy, a literary agent and arts studio manager in New York City, said she doesnt take it personally when she hears her name used in these contexts because I assign that meme to white people. Im totally disconnected from it. Im on the receiving end of this misbehaviour, said Gormandy, 61. I feel as a person of colour I dont need to apologize and explain my name. Yet she said people sometimes avoid using her name when speaking to her. Some people use Becky instead, she said, laughing. The origins of Karen But why the name Karen? Robin Queen, chair of the linguistics department at University of Michigan, has looked closely at this question and her exploration led her to, of all people, Dane Cook. His 2005 comedy album contains a riff called The Friend Nobody Likes: There is one person in a group of friends that nobody likes, Cook said, using an expletive to emphasize how much they are, in fact, disliked. They basically keep them there to hate their guts. When that person is not around the rest of your little base camp, your hobby is cutting that person down. As an example of this person, he describes a woman named Karen. Other antecedents include Amanda Seyfrieds vacant Karen in Mean Girls, who racistly spouts to Lindsay Lohans Cady, If youre from Africa, why are you white? A parody account on Reddit from late 2017 based on the rants of a spurned husband is also often cited as an early driver and highlights the sexism of the Karen trope. Karen Grigsby Bates, senior correspondent for the Code Switch podcast on NPR, said Karens roots are anchored deep in American folklore. Bates who embarked on this research not because of her name but because the phenomenon was a convergence of gender, race, class, social upheaval and social media in this great big tornado pointed to the term Miss Ann from the antebellum and Jim Crow periods. African Americans used the term as code to refer to these unreasonable white women, Bates said. She described Miss Ann as a woman who knew her place in society, was complicit in maintaining it and who was at the upper end of the hierarchy. Even if she was a nice Miss Ann, she was still upholding this system that said, White womanhood above all else, except white manhood. Researchers also point to the demographic characteristics of the name Karen. According to Social Security data, Karen soared in popularity in the 1960s, peaking as the third most popular baby name of 1965, but never had a resurgence. The archetype is meant to evoke a woman of a certain age but then again, Linda, Cynthia or Susan would, too. Thats where the Karen theories get geekily fascinating. Miriam Eckert, who has a doctorate in linguistics and lives in Boulder, Colorado, said that the word Karen contains whats known as a voiceless plosive. Thats the K sound at the beginning of the word, Eckert said. When you say some consonants, like K or a T, theres a complete blockage of airflow and a sudden release, whereas a name like Cynthia has no stops at all. Karen is kind of a harsh sound that you can really spit out. And that aligns with the kind of person we are thinking of when we talk about a Karen. (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Back in April, Britains Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam told a news conference that the U.K.s relative performance in combating the coronavirus would become clear only once there were comparative figures on excess mortality (deaths above a five-year average). Shortly afterward, the government stopped showing charts with comparative death rates altogether. It wasnt hard to see why: The emerging trends were deeply unflattering to Britain. But Boris Johnsons administration also had a point. Covid-related deaths are recorded unevenly across countries, making comparisons difficult. Pressed on the issue, the prime minister said there would be time for drawing conclusions about relative performance later and he promised an independent investigation. On Thursday the U.K. Office of National Statistics released a trove of excess mortality data that allow more reliable comparisons to be made. The ONS got around the comparability problem by using total mortality figures, rather than simply Covid-related deaths, and drawing on data from Eurostat, which sets out clear criteria for reporting. The data confirmed the picture the government was eager not to highlight in those charts: England had the highest excess mortality rate in Europe. Understanding why the government made the decisions it did as the pandemic arrived in Europe will occupy journalists, historians and Parliament for many years. The data cant provide those answers, but they do give an indication of how Britain can better arm itself in fighting a second wave, or preparing for the next virus. It will be unforgivable for the government to again drag its feet on lockdowns, ignore whats happening elsewhere in Europe and not prepare adequately for a medical emergency. Late on Thursday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock surprised many with new lockdown restrictions on a large swath of northern England, including Greater Manchester. The new mantra seems to be better safe than sorry, although the timing and lack of clarity about the data used for the decision have created confusion that wont help with getting people to comply. Story continues What made the U.K. the most deadly place for Covid wasnt big spikes in mortality in badly hit cities or regions. Some places in Italy and Spain suffered worse. In Bergamo, the peak of deaths was 857% the normal rate; in Madrid it was 432%. Brent in London had the highest U.K. peak at 357% of the usual level. The real killer in Britain literally was that excess mortality continued longer than in any other European country. That may reflect the lockdown-lite policies Johnson pursued in the early stages. Britains slowness in shutting things down and its less stringent rules allowed the virus to spread faster and farther, making it harder to suppress. The U.K.s excess mortality rates were also more geographically dispersed than in most of western Europe. That could be due to a number of factors. Travelers returning from Europe and Asia to various parts of Britain faced no quarantine restrictions in the early stages of the outbreak and could have easily brought it home. That the spike in deaths happened all over the place also reflects public health problems peculiar to the U.K., especially high levels of obesity and weight-related disease. That conclusion is borne out by another piece of ONS data excess deaths among people under the age of 65. Here again, Britain ranked worst. While England is singled out for particular shame, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales also scored poorly, suggesting similar missteps and vulnerabilities. That provides some political ammunition for Johnson as he battles to hold onto Scotland, where the governing Scottish National Party has argued its superior handling of the pandemic shows the nation is better off on its own. Scotlands excess deaths were higher than Italys. Dealing better with future strains on the health-care system will be paramount. A study published Thursday from researchers at Sheffield and Loughborough universities, along with Economic Insight, estimates that some 21,000 U.K. deaths can be attributed not directly to Covid but to the lockdown, and especially lack of access to critical medical care. The purpose of the lockdown was to flatten the curve of coronavirus cases to prevent the National Health Service from being overwhelmed, but any new strategy will need to make sure theres adequate care for people with other serious conditions too. Johnsons government seems to now recognize the need to rapidly impose travel quarantines and partial local lockdowns. On the same day the ONS data were released, the U.K. had its highest daily total of coronavirus cases for more than a month and it added another country to its quarantine list Luxembourg joins Spain among the recent additions. Johnson said infection rates were bubbling up in 30 areas across the country. The regional lockdowns, quarantines, mask-wearing orders and other policies show a government desperate to avoid repeating its mistakes from the start of the pandemic, when it fatally ignored the policies that had proved effective in other countries. Johnsons campaign to tackle obesity and the dysfunctional social care system are other signs that he wants to strengthen the countrys defenses. The ONS data show the tragic price Britain paid for those early lessons to be heeded. (This column was updated with charts.) This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. US President Donald Trump has said his country could ban app TikTok as early as Saturday (Patrick Semansky/AP) US President Donald Trump said he will take action as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok, a popular Chinese-owned video app that has been a source of national security and censorship concerns. He told reporters on Air Force One as he returned from Florida: As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States. The president said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, I have that authority before adding: Its going to be signed tomorrow. Reports by Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal citing anonymous sources said the administration could soon announce a decision ordering ByteDance to divest its ownership in TikTok. There have been reports of US tech giants and financial firms being interested in buying or investing in TikTok as the Trump administration sets its sights on the app. The New York Times and Fox Business, citing an unidentified source, reported Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok. Microsoft declined to comment. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the US and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikToks fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and US tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a competitive threat. But its Chinese ownership has raised concerns about the censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government, and the potential for sharing user data with Chinese officials. SEYMOUR Two people died after a vehicle landed on its roof in the Housatonic River by Route 34 Friday afternoon. Emergency crews attempted an extensive water rescue for those trapped inside. First responders rushed to the area shortly before 4 p.m. after a crash catapulted a vehicle into the Housatonic River, according to initial dispatch reports. Later Friday night, police said a male victim and a female victim died after the vehicle went into the river, according to WTNH. Fire and police units from surrounding areas responded to the crash Friday afternoon, with crews on the river working to pull the vehicle to shore. Around 4:30 p.m., a diver was in the river, working to get the people out of the vehicle. The first person was out of the water by 4:33 p.m.; medics were called in to take the individual to the hospital. By 4:37 p.m., the second person was out of the water and turned over to medics. Divers remained in the water to confirm there were only two individuals in the car. Around 5 p.m., police and firefighters searched along Roosevelt Drive to find the spot the vehicle entered the water. Officials with the Great Hill Hose Company in Seymour said the crews were still on scene in the area of 150 Roosevelt Drive. Avoid the area completely until further notification, fire officials said around 5:30 p.m. Friday. This story will be updated. For anyone who's paid attention to Britain's South Asian community and its response to the Covid crisis, Thursday's dramatic announcement of new restrictions in northern England will have come as no surprise. The areas affected, including Blackburn, Oldham, Bradford and Manchester, have large populations with roots in the Indian subcontinent. And while West Yorkshire Tory MP Craig Whittaker was accused of racism for claiming there are 'sections of our community that are just not taking the pandemic seriously', I'm afraid that he had a point, however clumsily he made it. I have experience as a community leader in Leicester, where the Covid restrictions were widely ignored by the city's minority ethnic population and where the Government ordered the first local lockdown after the rate of infection soared last month. I warned in these pages that other parts of the country were at serious risk if we failed to learn from the mistakes made in Leicester. It gives me no satisfaction now to say that what happened is what I feared. Manzoor Moghal (above) is a community leader in Leicester, where he says Covid restrictions were ignored by the minority ethnic population The fact is that many in the community simply do not comprehend or do not want to just how dangerous this virus is. And this is especially worrying when one considers the serious risks faced by people with Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage. One survey showed that South Asians with the virus are 20 per cent more likely to die in hospital than indigenous people. Another claimed that ethnic minorities are four times more likely to test positive than white people. Then there is diabetes, another known risk factor and a disease that impacts people in my community more than it does the indigenous population. Despite all these dangers, I have found a frustrating dismissiveness within the South Asian population when it comes to following the rules and regulations. What could explain this dangerously blase attitude? Despite what some suggest, it has nothing to do with the idea that members of the community do not speak English. In fact, there is virtually no one who does not speak the language, while the handful who truly cannot understand are much older and live surrounded by children and grandchildren who were educated here. I believe, instead, that much of the community's refusal to take the virus seriously stems from a misguided sense of faith in their own security. People do not take steps to protect themselves they fail to wear masks or follow social distancing because they cannot see the point. A friend of mine had an urgent appointment for a blood test on Friday at his doctor's surgery in Leicester. As a shielded person, he was shocked to see a number of South Asian women from different households hugging each other in a park. This sums up the depressing lack of civic awareness I have seen and it is why I have no doubt that but for the latest Government intervention many families would have ignored the dangers and mixed with multiple households and generations to celebrate Eid. Another factor is that many in the South Asian community view death in a fatalistic fashion, believing there is nothing we can do to prevent it when our time is up. This leads to a dangerously laissez- faire view of Covid-19 and other health hazards. If something is written in the stars, then why try to fight it? Many in the community simply do not comprehend or do not want to just how dangerous this virus is. Pictured, men play cricked in Spinney Hill Park, Leicester, on June 28 I have lost count of the times since March when I have spoken to people about Covid-19, only for them to simply shrug off the risks and say there is nothing to be done. There is also ignorance at play here. I have heard many claim that it is safe for them to meet loved ones because they are showing no signs of illness. Yet it is a well-established fact that people who are wholly asymptomatic can still be contagious. This is all the more troubling when you bear in mind that economic hardship means that many South Asians are likely to be working in close proximity to one another. In Greater Manchester and Bradford, factories and warehouses are often filled with South Asian workers. Even shopping is more risky than for the rest of the population as Asian food markets are small and crowded, with no space for safety measures a potential Petri dish for spreading the virus. So what should be done? One of the things that helped significantly in Leicester was the arrival of soldiers to man the testing clinics. The presence of the Armed Forces was an important signal to the community about the gravity of what is taking place. There was a renewed sense of compliance. Westminster diktats can feel far removed when you live hundreds of miles away, but the presence of soldiers is real and tangible and they should be introduced to the parts of northern England now in partial lockdown. In the same vein, I believe that the police need to play a larger role in enforcing restrictions. Too many people think there are no consequences for their misbehaviour. If the police take no action, what is the deterrent? And I want to see local taskforces made up of people from the local authority and volunteers. They should tour neighbourhoods in vehicles to tell people who are disobeying rules that they need to change their behaviour. That their actions have consequences. That other people are at risk. Of course there are some in the community who show great responsibility, but a significant number do not. They pose a threat not just to their neighbours but to the rest of the country. As we approach the autumn and the colder weather starts creeping in, I am increasingly concerned. If people in the community do not start complying soon, the repercussions will be truly serious. The World Health Organization warned the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be lengthy, as it met to evaluate the situation, six months after sounding the international alarm. Russia is preparing to start a mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus in October. Coronavirus deaths in Florida surged past 7,000 as the countrywide total is now more than 153,000. More than 17.6 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus. Almost 10.3 million patients have recovered and at least 680,900 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Here are the latest updates: Saturday, August 1 23:04 GMT Two thirds of UK firms fully operational after COVID, survey says Two thirds of British businesses say they are now fully operational after the coronavirus lockdown, up from half in June, according to a survey seen by Reuters. A further 21 percent of the firms, polled in the first half of July by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said they were partly operational with some premises still closed. With businesses gradually reopening, this months data seems to indicate a turning point for the economy, said Alpesh Paleja, an economist for CBI, one of Britains main business lobby groups. But many firms, especially those in consumer-facing sectors, remained in acute financial distress, he added. Britains lockdown has been slowly lifting since May, with the last major change on July 4 when hotels, pubs and restaurants were allowed to reopen. 20:50 GMT Greece registers over 100 new infections Greek authorities say there were 110 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the fourth-highest daily figure and highest since April. Authorities say 23 of the cases concerned employees at a meat processing factory in the northern city of Kavala. Tests on all 140 employees are still ongoing. 20:40 GMT Russia officially resumes international flights Russia resumed international air travel, more than four months after restrictions were imposed amid the coronavirus pandemic. Moscows Sheremetyevo Airport was the first in the country to restart international services. Long lines of passengers were seen waiting to check-in as the flights resumed at Russias busiest airport. 20:20 GMT South Africa coronavirus cases top 500,000: health ministry South Africa has now registered more than 500,000 cases of coronavirus, the health ministry announced. Today South Africa has exceeded the half-a-million mark with a cumulative total of 503,290 confirmed COVID-19 cases recorded, Heath Minister Zweli Mkhize said in his daily update. 20:59 GMT Thousands of Israelis rally against Netanyahu Thousands protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu across Israel on night, demanding he resign over alleged corruption and a resurgence of coronavirus cases. Protests took place at scores of intersections and bridges, where people held banners accusing Netanyahu of failure and calling for his resignation, as well as outside his private residence in the northern town Caesarea. The main event took place outside the prime ministers official residence in Jerusalem, where organisers said thousands demanded Netanyahu step down. Thousands of Israelis protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Israel. The protests have become a recurring feature amid discontent over the the governments handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Netanyahus looming corruption trial [Amir Levy/Getty Images] 19:15 GMT COVID-19 kills 64 more people in Iraq The Iraqi Health Ministry has reported 64 more people died due to the virus over the past 24 hours, pushing the nationwide death toll to 4,805. The virus also infected 2,094 more people, bringing the total number of cases to 126,704, including 89,275 recoveries. 18:15 GMT Arizona congressman tests positive for virus; second this week The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee said on Saturday he tested positive for the coronavirus days after he sat close to another member of the panel, Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert, who also tested positive. Democrat Representative Raul Grijalva said in a statement that he has the virus but, like Gohmert, has no symptoms. He is at least the 11th member of Congress known to have tested positive for the coronavirus. 17:40 GMT Irelands chief doctor says rise in COVID-19 infections concerning Irelands chief medical officer on Saturday described a recent spike in COVID-19 infections as concerning, as the average number of cases per day doubled from about 20 in recent weeks to more than 40 over the past five days. Ireland, which still has lower infection rates than much of Europe, reported 45 new cases of COVID-19, down from a two-month high of 85 cases on Thursday. Ireland has reported over 26,000 infections and 1,763 deaths [File: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters] 17:12 GMT WHO expects lengthy coronavirus pandemic The World Health Organization warned the coronavirus pandemic was likely to be lengthy as it met to evaluate the situation, six months after sounding the international alarm. The WHO emergency committee highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of this COVID-19 pandemic when it met on Friday, the WHO said in a statement, warning of the risk of response fatigue in the context of socio-economic pressures. 16:40 GMT Florida reaches 7,000 deaths from coronavirus Florida health officials have reported 179 more deaths from the coronavirus, bringing the states total to more than 7,000. The latest numbers came as Hurricane Isaias threatened Floridas eastern coast, but no evacuations were immediately announced. The National Hurricane Centers latest prediction had the storm scraping past Florida but not making landfall. 16:15 GMT Maduro goes ahead with election plans amid fears of virus Venezuelas President Nicolas Maduro and his allies are going forward with their plans to hold legislative elections in December in the midst of the new coronavirus pandemic and marked by the distrust of government opponents in the electoral authority. This authority was selected without the support of the legislature consisting of an opposition majority and made up of directors seen as allies of the government. Ahead of the vote scheduled for December 6, residents started registering to vote or update their personal details. 15:50 GMT Record spikes in Asia as WHO issues grim warning Asian countries reported record rises of new coronavirus cases as the WHO warned the effects of the pandemic would be felt for decades and the scramble for a vaccine heated up. India and the Philippines reported more than 57,000 new daily cases and 5,000 cases, respectively, despite tightened restrictions. The WHO has said the pandemic was a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come. India has the third-highest cases in the world, and the most in Asia, with more than 1.5 million people infected [File: Amit Dave/Reuters] 15:25 GMT Russian movie theatres reopen after virus shutdown Movie theatres reopened in Moscow after more than four months of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic. Film enthusiasts rushed to the first screening at midnight at Moscows iconic Soviet-era Oktyabrsky cinema. Strict social distancing measures were in place as cinemagoers watched their film with patrons having their temperatures taken and were required to wear masks before entering the movie theatre. 15:00 GMT Police move to break up Berlin rally against virus restrictions Police officers in Berlin plan to break up a large demonstration against restrictions imposed to contain the novel coronavirus, held despite Germanys rising infection numbers. The organisers of the rally are not able to ensure health and safety regulations are being followed, a police spokesman told DPA news agency. Officers are now preparing to disperse the rally, attended by some 15,000 people, according to police estimates. People stage a protest, which was organised by Querdenken 711, against coronavirus restrictions in Berlin, Germany [Anadolu] 14:35 GMT 62 confirmed cases at Danish slaughterhouse The coronavirus has been detected in 62 employees at a slaughterhouse belonging to the Danish meat processor Danish Crown. On Saturday, there were 18 more positive cases among the employees of the company in Ringsted, Denmark, a company spokesman confirmed to dpa. So far, almost 600 of the 900 employees have been tested. The remaining 300 should be tested on Monday if they are not on vacation. 14:10 GMT Vietnams Danang to test entire population Vietnams coastal city of Danang plans to test its entire population of 1.1 million people for coronavirus infection, the governing authorities said, as 40 new cases linked to the tourist hotspot were reported across the country, taking total infections to 586, with three deaths. Most of the new cases are linked to hospitals in Danang city, where the first locally transmitted infection in more than three months was detected last week. 13:45 GMT Kenya Airways resumes international flights Kenya Airways resumed international flights on Saturday, heading to about 30 destinations for the first time since the routes were suspended in March due to the coronavirus. The carrier, in which Air France KLM holds a small stake, resumed domestic flights in mid-July after the government cleared local air travel. Passengers queue at the check-in counter as the Jomo Kenyatta international airport reopens after flights were suspended following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Nairobi, Kenya [Njeri Mwangi/Reuters] 13:22 GMT More than 30 crew test positive for COVID-19 on Norwegian cruise ship At least 33 crew members confined on a Norwegian cruise ship have tested positive for the new coronavirus, the company, Hurtigruten, said. Arriving at the northern Norwegian port of Tromso from the archipelago of Svalbard, the crew of the MS Roald Amundsen was quarantined on board the ship on Friday after four staff members tested positive for the virus and were hospitalised. Of the 158 crew members on board, 33 tested positive for COVID-19, while 120 tested negative, Hurtigruten said in a statement. Five people will be retested. Hello, this is Usaid Siddiqui in Doha taking over from my colleague Hamza Mohamed. 12:50 GMT Qatar reports more than 200 new cases Qatar confirmed 216 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the total in the Middle Eastern country to 110,911. The Ministry of Public Health said 201 people have recovered from the virus, taking the total to 107,578. Qatar has reported a total of 174 coronavirus deaths [Noushad Thekkayil/EPA] 12:25 GMT Thousands protest in Berlin against coronavirus restrictions Thousands of protesters against German coronavirus restrictions have converged in Berlin for a demonstration proclaiming the end of the pandemic has arrived just as authorities voice increasing concerns about an upturn in new infections. A crowd of people whistling and cheering, with few masks in sight, marched through downtown Berlin from the Brandenburg Gate ahead of a rally on a wide boulevard that runs through the citys Tiergarten park. Protesters held up home-made placards featuring slogans that included: Corona, false alarm, We are being forced to wear a muzzle, Natural defence instead of vaccination and End the corona panic bring fundamental rights back. Germanys management of the pandemic has been viewed as relatively successful. The countrys death toll just over 9,150 out of more than 210,670 confirmed virus cases as of Saturday is lower than in comparable nations. 11:35 GMT Kuwait bans flights to high-risk nations Kuwait has banned commercial flights to several countries it said it regards as high risk due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Saturday. The countries include India, Pakistan, Egypt, the Philippines, Lebanon and Sri Lanka all countries with large populations in Kuwait. The list also includes China, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Iraq. 11:15 GMT Vietnam says up to 800,000 have left virus epicentre Danang Vietnams health ministry says up to 800,000 visitors to Danang city, the nations coronavirus epicentre, have left for other parts of the country since July 1. Vietnam last week detected its first locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in more than three months in Danang, a tourism hot spot. The Southeast Asian country reported its first two COVID-19 deaths on Friday, and the toll rose to three on Saturday [Linh Pham/Getty] The total number of infections in the country has since risen to 558 from 413, with most of the new cases linked to three hospitals in Danang. More than 41,000 people have visited the three hospitals since July 1, the ministry said in a statement. 10:45 GMT Philippines confirms nearly 5,000 cases, largest single-day increase The Philippines has reported 4,963 additional coronavirus infections, the largest single-day jump on record. In a bulletin on Saturday, the health ministry said total infections have reached 98,232, while deaths increased by 17 to 2,039. Since a lockdown was eased in June, Manila has experienced a sharp rise in infections and deaths [Aaron Favila/AP] 09:50 GMT Poland reports record rise in virus cases for third day Poland has reported its highest number of new daily coronavirus cases since the global pandemic started for the third day in a row on Saturday, with 658 new infections, the health ministry said. More than 200 cases were reported in the Silesia mining region in southern Poland, which has been grappling with an outbreak amongst miners. The ministry also reported five new deaths. Poland has now reported a total of 46,346 coronavirus cases and 1,721 deaths [Reuters] 09:15 GMT Indonesia confirms more than1,550 new infections Indonesia has reported 1,560 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total in the Southeast Asian country to 109,936, data from the countrys COVID-19 task force showed. It also reported 62 COVID-19 related deaths on Saturday, taking the death toll to 5,193. 08:50 GMT Australias Victoria reports 397 coronavirus cases, three deaths Australias second-most populous state, Victoria, has reported 397 cases of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours and three related deaths, compared with 627 cases and eight deaths a day earlier. The deaths take the states COVID-19 death toll to 116 and Australias to 201. 08:10 GMT Russia plans mass vaccinations against coronavirus from October Russia is preparing to start a mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus in October, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Saturday, RIA news agency reported. The minister, who did not give details about the vaccine to be used, said doctors and teachers would be the first to be vaccinated. A source told the Reuters news agency this week that Russias first potential COVID-19 vaccine, developed by a state research facility, would secure local regulatory approval in August and be administered to health workers soon after that. Russia has reported more than 838,400 cases and at least 14,000 deaths [AFP] 07:45 GMT US records biggest single-day deaths since May US deaths from the novel coronavirus rose by at least 1,453 on Friday, the biggest one-day increase since May 27, to reach a total of 153,882, according to a Reuters tally. Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) wheeling a patient to Hialeah Hospital where coronavirus disease patients are treated, in Hialeah, Florida, US [Marco Bello/Reuters] The rise in deaths was the biggest one-day increase since the number of deaths rose by 1,484 on May 27. US cases rose by at least 66,986 to a total of 4.58 million with some local governments yet to report. 06:50 GMT India records highest daily jump in coronavirus cases India has recorded the biggest jump of 57,118 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking its coronavirus caseload close to 1.7 million, with July alone accounting for nearly 1.1 million infections. The health ministry on Saturday also reported 764 additional deaths for a total of 36,511. Only the US and Brazil have reported more cases than India [Adnan Abidi/Reuters] Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Friday that India achieved more than one million recoveries with active cases only one-third of the total. India is now conducting more than 640,000 tests in 24 hours, taking cumulative tests across the country to nearly 1.9 million, he said. 06:15 GMT Hello, this is Hamza Mohamed in Doha taking over from my colleague Zaheena Rasheed. 04:58 GMT Japans Okinawa declares state of emergency Japans Okinawa region has declared a state of emergency and asked people to stay home for two weeks amid an explosive spread of coronavirus cases. Governor Denny Tamaki said hospitals were being overwhelmed by the surge and told residents to avoid non-essential outings through the emergency, which is set to end on August 15. Okinawa reported 71 new coronavirus cases Friday, bringing its total to 395. US forces based on the island account for 248 of those cases. 04:21 GMT S Korea arrests Christian leader over church cluster Authorities in South Korea have arrested the founder of a secretive Christian sect at the centre of the countrys largest outbreak on charges of obstructing the government anti-virus efforts. Lee Man-hee is the powerful head of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus which is linked to more than 5,200 coronavirus infections, or 36 percent of South Koreas total cases. Prosecutors allege the 89-year-old conspired with other sect leaders to withhold information from authorities, including meeting places and the number of participants at the sects gatherings as authorities tried to trace infection routes in February. Lee and his church have steadfastly denied the accusations, saying theyre cooperating with health authorities. Its spokesperson, Kim Young-eun, said the church will do its best so that the truth is clearly proved in court. People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on a news conference held by Lee Man-hee, founder of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, in Seoul, South Korea, March 2, 2020 [File: Heo Ran/Reuters] 03:47 GMT Google says 20 US states, territories exploring contact tracing apps Alphabet Incs Google says 20 US states and territories, representing about 45 percent of the countrys population, are exploring contact tracing apps using a tool it developed with Apple Inc. In addition, the company said public health authorities in 16 countries and regions outside the US had launched apps using the Apple-Google tool, up from 12 previously. They include Austria, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Gibraltar, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Northern Ireland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Uruguay. The technology enables app users to track encounters with other people through Bluetooth signals and anonymously notify contacts if they later become infected with the virus. Google said the first of the US apps would be released in the coming weeks, but declined to name the states. It added that its system with Apple now enables apps launched by different countries to talk to each other, allowing contact-logging to continue even when users cross borders. 03:26 GMT Sharp drop in new cases in China China has reported a sharp drop in newly confirmed infections in the mainland, logging 45 additional cases in a possible sign that its latest outbreak in Xinjiang may have run its course. Thirty-one of the cases were in far western Xinjiang, eight were in northeastern Liaoning and the remaining six were imported cases. The figures are down from 127 cases reported nationally on Friday. 03:15 GMT Vietnam logs 12 new cases, ramps up testing Vietnams health ministry has reported 12 new local coronavirus cases linked to the recent outbreak in the tourist hotspot of Danang, taking total infections to 116 since the virus resurfaced last week. The new patients, with ages ranging from two to 78, are linked to Danang hospital, the ministry said in a statement. Vietnam has registered a total of 558 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began. After months of successful curbs, it reported its first two deaths on Friday. In Hanoi, where two people have tested positive after returning from Danang, more than 100 clinics have been set up with test kits to detect the virus. Hanoi has tested a third of the 54,000 people returning from Danang. Residents wait to be tested at a makeshift rapid testing centre as Vietnam records a rise in cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus in Hanoi on July 31, 2020 [Manan Vatsyayana/ AFP] I want to be tested so I can stop worrying if I have the virus or not. It is for me and for the community, said Pham Thuy Hoa, a banking official who recently went to Danang for a family vacation. Since coming back, my family and I have quarantined ourselves at home. I did not go to work or see others. We must be responsible for the entire community. In Ho Chi Minh City, the countrys southern hub, five people who returned from Danang have tested positive for the virus. The city is testing some 20,000 other returnees. As the number of cases continues to increase, Danang has tightened security and set up more checkpoints to prevent people from leaving or entering the city, which has been in lockdown since Tuesday. 02:48 GMT California, Florida report record rise in deaths California and Florida, two of the most populous US states, have reported record increases in COVID-19 deaths, according to a Reuters tally. Florida reported 257 deaths and California, 208 on Friday. For Florida, this is the fourth day in a row with a record rise in deaths and for California the second this week. Mississippi, Montana and Nevada also had a one-day record increase in deaths on Friday. Overall in the US, deaths have increased by more than 25,000 in July to 153,000 total lives lost since the pandemic started. 01:41 GMT Puerto Rico extends restrictions Wanda Vazquez, the governor of Puerto Rico, has extended measures aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus for two more weeks. That means bars, gyms, marinas and movie theatres across the US territory will stay shuttered until at least August 15. Beaches remain closed on Sundays, and are open the rest of the week only to people doing exercise, including surfers, swimmers and runners. Face masks continue to be mandatory, and those who refuse to wear one will be arrested, Vazquez said. A curfew from 10pm to 5am will remain in place, and no parties or gatherings will be allowed in short-term rental facilities. 01:22 GMT Fitch revises US outlook to negative Fitch Ratings has revised the outlook on the USs AAA rating to negative from stable, citing eroding credit strength, including a growing deficit to fiscal stimulus to combat the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The credit rating agency also said the future direction of US fiscal policy depends in part on the November election for president and the resulting makeup of Congress, cautioning there is a risk policy gridlock could continue. 00:56 GMT Mexico overtakes UK to post third-highest death toll The number of coronavirus deaths in Mexico rose to 46,688 on Friday, with the Latin American country overtaking the United Kingdom for the worlds third-highest COVID-19 death toll. The health ministry registered 8,458 new cases, a record for a single day, as well as 688 additional deaths, bringing the total to 424,637 cases and 46,688 deaths. The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases. 00:36 GMT Free tests for migrants stuck at Costa Rica-Nicaragua border Costa Rican doctors have started giving free coronavirus tests to about 200 Nicaraguan migrants who have been stranded at the two countries border for more than a week because the Nicaraguan government has demanded negative test results. Clinica Biblica Hospital in the capital of San Jose sent a mobile lab to the Penas Blancas border crossing. I thank God that finally we are going to be able to return to our country, said one migrant, who declined to give their name. Nicaragua has prevented the entry of hundreds of its citizens from Costa Rica citing COVID-19 concerns [File: Wendy Quintero/ AFP] 00:18 GMT Argentina halts plans to ease lockdown Argentina President Alberto Fernandez has announced a halt on the easing of lockdown measures due to an increase in new cases and fears the health system could become overwhelmed. We will keep things as they are until August 16, said Fernandez. In the last few days the virus has been spreading more, and weve seen a larger increase in infections. All this generates hospital admissions and unfortunately, deaths. In Argentina, more than 185,000 infections and nearly 3,500 deaths have been registered so far, figures well below those of other countries in the region. Hello and welcome to Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Im Zaheena Rasheed in Male, Maldives. For all the key developments from yesterday, July 31, go here. Rapper Post Malone said he opposes strict lockdown measures and he doesnt think the government should be forcing people to wear masks to stop the spread of COVID-19, though he urges the public to cover their face anyway. Its weird to me that there is, its like me in school, having to f*****g tuck in your shirt, or else you get detention or whatever, the six-time Grammy nominee told Joe Rogan on his popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience on Wednesday. Its weird to be forced to wear something. The artist whose legal name is Austin Richard Post added: At the end of the day, it all comes down to respect for other people. WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE Post Malone told podcaster Joe Rogan on Wednesday that he doesn't agree with California cities fining residents for not wearing face coverings in public The above undated image is a stock photo of a woman wearing a mask. California cities have started to impose fines of hundreds of dollars for not wearing face coverings in public Its not a government thing. Malone said he didnt agree with a new policy enacted by several cities in and around Los Angeles that imposed fines of hundreds of dollars on those caught not wearing a mask in public. You can get a fine for not wearing a mask and sometimes its up to $600, Malone said. He then agreed with Rogan about the need to lift the lockdown in order to allow economic life to flourish once again. Everybody has to live their life, Malone said. Everybody has to be able to survive and pay their bills, and eat. As coronavirus cases continue to climb in California, some cities have stepped up efforts to force citizens to wear masks. In April, Beverly Hills became the first city to mandate masks, threatening those who failed to comply with fines ranging from $100 for the first offense to $500 for the third and subsequent offenses. Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies earlier this month said they would begin issuing citations for residents of West Hollywood who did not wear masks in public. First-time offenders will be hit with a $250 fine and a $50 fee for a total of $300, according to LASD. Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statewide ordering requiring everyone to wear a face covering. Malone was not in favor of the new policy. 'LA is rough $300 because maybe someone sees you eating and you dont have a mask on, and then youre stuck with a f*****g ticket,' he said. 'It blows my mind.' California health officials reported the states first coronavirus death of a child on Friday as the statewide tally of fatalities surpassed 9,000, saying the victim was a teenager who had other health conditions. The teenagers death occurred in the Central Valley, but officials at the state Department of Public Health released no other details, citing privacy rules. The Central Valley is the states major agricultural region and recently has become one of Californias hot spots for the virus. Its extremely rare for children to die of the coronavirus. As of mid-July, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 228 children had died of the disease in the United States, less than 0.2 per cent of the nations deaths at the time. In California, more than 9,000 people have now died from the virus, and three-quarters were 65 and older. Only about 9 per cent of Californias nearly half-million confirmed virus cases are children, and very few have suffered conditions serious enough for hospitalization, according to state data. Scientists still arent certain why children dont seem to be as seriously affected by the virus as adults. she was the first American that were discounted more than ten years ago successfully, large parts of a face transplant. At the end of July Connie Culp at the age of 57 years died, such as the Cleveland clinic announced on Friday. In a Statement on Twitter said: "We are deeply dismayed. She was an Inspiration to all of us in the clinic. Further details at the time of death and the circumstances, the hospital did not initially. The then-45-year-old Connie Culp was audited in 2008 during a 22-hour continuous Operation in the Cleveland clinic in Ohio, the face of a recently deceased woman, TRANS plan. It was the first intervention of this kind in the United States and only the fourth, and until then, probably the most extensive in the world. Four years earlier, Culps had shot the former husband of her intention to kill in the face. He was later sentenced to seven years in prison. Culp survived, the bullet, however, destroyed her nose, cheeks, upper jaw and an eye. Unable to breathe you. at times just a hose that was passed through the trachea In more than 30 surgeries, the Doctors removed first, fragments of bone and bullet from Culps face. Later, they took parts of her Ribs and her femur to this new cheeks and to sculpt the jaw bone. Alone to Breathe and to take solid food, could Culp have been replaced only after the transplant, in 80 percent of her face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from the face of the organ donor. Since it was an experimental intervention, took over the clinic, the cost in the amount of several hundred thousand dollars. Culp, a mother of two children, was in the following years, among other things, for victims of domestic violence, and disfiguration, as well as for organ donation strong. Her former husband, she has forgiven according to their own information. Of her sister Culp has not been described in Interviews as a person who can get to you, and with every Situation in a humorous handling of finds. "Connie was an incredibly bold, vibrant woman, and an Inspiration to many,"said she, Frank Papay, head of the Institute for plastic surgery, the Cleveland clinic, after her death. "She was a great pioneer, and their decision is immune to this sometimes daunting procedure to a gift for humanity." Updated Date: 01 August 2020, 11:19 On a Friday morning in early June, Patrol Sgt. Jeffrey Norman went to court to testify about an impaired driving arrest he made last fall. The case quickly collapsed. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 31/7/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. On a Friday morning in early June, Patrol Sgt. Jeffrey Norman went to court to testify about an impaired driving arrest he made last fall. The case quickly collapsed. With Norman on the stand, the Crown prosecutor asked for an adjournment, and later stayed the charges Norman initiated against the alleged drunk driver but not before the patrol sergeant was grilled about his own conduct during his 27-year career as a police officer in Winnipeg and Los Angeles. WAYNE GLOWACKI / FREE PRESS FILES Patrol Sgt. Jeffrey Norman been sued at least eight times in Manitoba for allegations including excessive force, wrongful arrest and destruction of video and photographic evidence. It wasnt the first time Norman has faced questions about his conduct. Hes been sued at least eight times in Manitoba for allegations including excessive force, wrongful arrest and destruction of video and photographic evidence. Norman is currently the subject of at least one Independent Investigation Unit probe and was involved in another incident that has raised questions on whether the IIU should have been notified. In February, Norman was off-duty when he allegedly knocked out a suspected liquor-store thief with his police baton. Norman was also injured in the incident and suffered a concussion. While under oath, Norman acknowledged hes been the subject of complaints under Manitobas Law Enforcement Review Agency but said he didnt know how many. He also admitted to facing misconduct allegations while working in the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1990s, but said hed never been criminally charged. Despite the repeated accusations against him, there hasnt been any public finding of wrongdoing against Norman. The City of Winnipeg has issued financial settlements in more than one civil case involving Norman, the Free Press has learned, but the settlement process is private and the city refused to reveal how many of these lawsuits it has settled and how much they have cost taxpayers. Amid a reckoning over the role of police in society, policymakers in various jurisdictions have taken steps to handle allegations of misconduct with greater transparency. Normans former employer, the Los Angeles Police Department, is now proactively disclosing decades-old internal records related to shootings and severe use of force, as well as confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying. In Manitoba, provincial legislation that covers police governance and oversight has been under review since last year. The wide-ranging review of the Police Services Act is still underway, but part of its scope was to look at how provincial laws can best ensure transparency and consistency when dealing with police misconduct. WPS will adapt if law requires release of disciplinary records MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Chief Danny Smyth said hes not considering making internal police disciplinary records public. Winnipeg Police Service Chief Danny Smyth said hes not considering making internal WPS disciplinary records public, but in a July 10 interview with the Free Press, he suggested that could change if the law requires it. "We have a pretty robust disciplinary system, but like most companies, it's largely private, unless there's criminal conduct involved, and then of course it becomes very public and we've always made any criminal charges that our members are involved in public," Smyth said. The police chief suggested the police union would object to making disciplinary records public. "I won't speak for the union, but I think the union would take exception on that... This along with many other things, I think, will be reviewed as part of the Police Services Act review, and if it is recommended or put into the act that we start to make our disciplinary records public, we'll adapt accordingly." Smyth said hes concerned about drawing comparisons between Canadian and American police forces, which has increasingly become part of the public discourse in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. There's a lot of accountability that is built into our profession, and particularly here in Winnipeg, we're pretty wellregulated and held accountable at just about every end of the spectrum. Chief Danny Smyth "There's a lot of accountability that is built into our profession, and particularly here in Winnipeg, we're pretty well-regulated and held accountable at just about every end of the spectrum," Smyth said. "The problem I see sometimes is that all police organizations are being judged and painted with conduct that's happening in, sometimes, other countries even." Until last year, California had some of the tightest restrictions on public disclosure of police personnel files in the U.S. Police unions repeatedly blocked efforts to make such records public. Under a relatively new law, passed by California lawmakers as charged debates over racial disparities in policing became increasingly mainstream, certain disciplinary records will be subject to public scrutiny for the first time. Complaint process largely private KEN GIGLIOTTI / FREE PRESS FILES The Free Press asked LERA how many times it had investigated Norman but did not receive a response. An IIU spokesman declined comment when asked the same thing. In Manitoba, police misconduct allegations and complaints are often not made public unless theres a finding of wrongdoing, because the processes established to handle the complaints such as LERA investigations and internal WPS probes by the professional standards unit operate behind closed doors. The Independent Investigation Unit, which is required to investigate serious incidents involving on- or off-duty officers, doesn't make officers' names public unless criminal charges are laid. LERA redacts the names of officers under investigation. The identity of an officer who has been the subject of a complaint is only made public if there is a finding of wrongdoing which is exceedingly rare. From 1998 to 2018, there have been 4,579 formal LERA complaints filed and only 129 hearings, or 2.8 per cent. The Free Press asked LERA how many times it had investigated Norman but did not receive a response. An IIU spokesman declined comment when asked the same thing. Internal WPS disciplinary records and hearings, as well as investigations carried out by the professional standards unit, are not disclosed to the public. Thats crazy. Its not perfect here. A lot of matters get settled through informal disciplinary routes. But if its a formal hearing, that hearing is presumptively public. The public has a great interest, and ought to have an interest, in allegations of misconduct against police officers theyre paying for. Ian Scott, the former head of Ontarios Special Investigations Unit Ian Scott, the former head of Ontarios Special Investigations Unit, said he was surprised to learn WPS disciplinary hearings are kept from the public, which is not the case in Ontario. "Thats crazy. Its not perfect here. A lot of matters get settled through informal disciplinary routes. But if its a formal hearing, that hearing is presumptively public. The public has a great interest, and ought to have an interest, in allegations of misconduct against police officers theyre paying for," Scott said. "I think that situation ought to be remedied. I have no doubt that management and the (police union) are quite happy theyre in camera, but theyre not the only players in this game. The big players, I would have thought, would be the public." Ontario legislation requires police disciplinary hearings to be open to the public. In Winnipeg, however, the matter is decided through the collective bargaining process between the city and police union. The union agreement states any disciplinary proceedings must be kept private. The long history of civil litigation MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Winnipeg Police Association president Maurice Sabourin provided a written statement to the Free Press in which he took issue with past Free Press reporting on Norman, saying it implied the existence of civil litigation is a sign of guilt. During his 22 years with the WPS, Norman has been sued eight times for various forms of alleged misconduct. On two occasions he was the sole named defendant, and in the six others he had one or multiple co-accused. At least one of the lawsuits remains before the courts. A request to interview Winnipeg Police Association president Maurice Sabourin was declined. Instead, he provided a written statement in which he took issue with past Free Press reporting on Norman, saying it implied the existence of civil litigation is a sign of guilt. "I will note that in each instance the City defended the member in the civil action. If they felt he had done something wrong, I suspect they would not have done so. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on the specific legal matters involving a specific member beyond this," Sabourin wrote. "In general, our members, like all Canadian citizens, have rights to privacy where appropriate. Settlements involve both parties, who must agree in order for a settlement to occur. If there was a finding of liability or conviction for any member, it would be a matter of public record." "I will note that in each instance the City defended the member in the civil action. If they felt he had done something wrong, I suspect they would not have done so." Winnipeg Police Association president Maurice Sabourin In most cases, the city is obligated to pay legal costs for police officers, according to the collective agreement. Despite a history of complaints, Norman received multiple raises during his time on the force, according to information culled from the city's annual compensation disclosure documents. Norman recently testified in court he was promoted to patrol sergeant within the past two years, which would have resulted in a corresponding bump in his salary. The Free Press requested an interview with Norman through the WPS and his union. Those requests were declined. The cross examination In June, when Norman was on the witness stand in the impaired driving case, two different versions of events emerged about what had happened in the early hours outside Winnipegs police headquarters in October. CIVIL LAWSUITS FILED AGAINST PATROL SGT. JEFFREY NORMAN Click to Expand 1. DATE OF INCIDENT: SEPT. 22, 2003 Statement of claim filed: Sept. 21, 2005 Number of co-accused: 7 Allegation: Norman and co-accused assault a detained suspect at the Public Safety Building by throwing him against a wall, choking him, grabbing his neck, kicking and punching him, and smashing his head into a wall and table. Latest court filing: Amended statement of claim 2. DATE OF INCIDENT: APRIL 26, 2005 Statement of claim filed: April 24, 2007 Number of co-accused: 5 Allegation: Two plaintiffs are unlawfully arrested and assaulted by police officers. One of the plaintiffs is threatened by an officer who says a bag of cocaine may have dropped out of his pocket. One suspect is taken to hospital to be treated for injuries where Norman attempts to get him admitted under the name John Doe. Latest court filing: Notice of discontinuance 3. DATE OF INCIDENT: AUGUST 2008 Statement of claim filed: Sept. 23, 2008 Number of co-accused: 2 Allegation: Norman and other officers unlawfully detain a freelance photographer at a crime scene. Norman handcuffs the plaintiff too tight, leaving marks on his wrists. Other officers intimidate the plaintiff by telling him he wont fare too well at the Winnipeg Remand Centre. The plaintiffs memory card is stolen from his camera before he is released without charge. Latest court filing: Notice of discontinuance 4. DATE OF INCIDENT: JULY 5, 2011 Statement of claim filed: June 28, 2012 Number of co-accused: 0 Allegation: Norman twice shoots an unarmed man with a Taser outside a Winnipeg bar. The plaintiff is not charged with a crime. Latest court filing: Notice of discontinuance 5. DATE OF INCIDENT: JAN. 6, 2012 Statement of claim filed: Nov. 8, 2013 Number of co-accused: 4 + unknown officers Allegation: Norman uses false information to secure a search warrant at a Winnipeg residence. Later, the search warrant is executed and the plaintiffs traumatized by the experience. Their home is also allegedly damaged. Next court date: Aug. 12, 2020 6. DATE OF INCIDENT: APRIL 27, 2013 Statement of claim filed: March 11, 2015 Number of co-accused: 0 Allegation: Norman unlawfully arrests an entire family a father, mother, son and daughter following a traffic stop. He assaults the father with a police baton multiple times. He uses excessive force while arresting the daughter. A mobile phone used to record the assault is seized and the video is deleted. Latest court filing: Statement of defence 7. DATE OF INCIDENT: JAN. 12, 2014 Statement of claim filed: Nov. 17, 2015 Number of co-accused: 1 Allegation: The plaintiff is falsely arrested by Norman and co-accused. Hes handcuffed and slammed into a cruiser car, before being launched into the backseat. His cell phone, watch, wallet and cash are wrongfully seized from him. Latest court filing: Statement of claim 8. DATE OF INCIDENT: FEB. 7, 2016 Statement of claim filed: Feb. 6, 2018 Number of co-accused: 2 Allegation: Plaintiff is unlawfully arrested by Norman, given a ticket and released. After being released, he begins recording the activity of police. The plaintiff is then assaulted by police, who break his arm, arrested a second time, given another ticket, before being released. Latest court filing: Notice of discontinuance Seeing a vehicle driving slowly in a bus lane outside police HQ, Norman said he arrested an impaired driver at around 3 a.m. on Oct. 6 after conducting a field sobriety test based on his lengthy experience as a police officer. The 20-year-old man accused of impaired driving, through his defence lawyer, alleged Norman had improperly arrested him and used him as a "human shield" while pointing a Taser at the vehicles passenger. "Can you confirm how many civil actions have been pursued against you for excessive force or unwarranted arrest?" criminal defence lawyer Matt Gould asked Norman. "No," Norman replied. "You cant confirm that?" Gould asked. "Cant confirm what?" Norman responded. Gould asked again. "Can you confirm how many times civil action has been taken against you with respect to your actions as a police officer?" "No." Recalls being sued four times The cross-examination exchange led to Norman explaining to the judge he didnt want to provide the number of times hes been sued because he said that information was used against him in a previous case for which he testified in court. Eventually, he testified he recalls being sued four times, and said he has been the subject of previous complaints through the Law Enforcement Review Agency and during his time at LAPD. Gould zeroed in on past allegations against Norman to draw the courts attention to his use of a Taser. On the stand, Norman admitted he drew his Taser which he called a conductive energy weapon and pointed it at the vehicles passenger while he was arresting the driver. He said the passenger was repeatedly trying to exit the vehicle even though Norman had told the young man to stay put while he dealt with the driver. A use-of-force report was never disclosed as part of the court process. Norman testified it didnt have to be provided because it dealt with the male passenger, who wasnt criminally charged, so was separate from the case at hand. After Norman was questioned by Gould, Crown prosecutor Eric Hachinski asked for an adjournment of the trial, due to new issues he said arose during the cross-examination. No specifics were offered in court about what those issues were, and the trial never resumed. On June 25, all of the charges against the 20-year-old man were stayed on a paper docket without being addressed in court again. The Free Press left messages with Hachinski but did not hear back. In Manitoba, Crown attorneys do not have to explain why they decided to enter a stay of proceedings a practice that effectively drops the case. In this case, there was no finality no finding that Norman acted properly or improperly, or that the 20-year-old man was guilty or not guilty. Gould said he believed his client was innocent. 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. "It is a significant mistake to act like, when someone's charges get dropped, that it's a win," he said. "Its not. It's a significant burden in terms of anxiety and stress and unfairness that goes on for a long time." Gould said Normans use-of-force report on his decision to draw his Taser wasnt provided to the Crown prosecutor handling the case. He said it should have been disclosed. "It is disheartening to experience a situation where an officer presents in a way that unfortunately will reflect on officers generally," Gould said. "The responsibility that officers have to (act) at the highest level of responsibility and ethics and... reliability (and) experiences like this have an impact on everybody. It creates this distrust that is damaging to everyone overall." katie.may@freepress.mb.ca ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca Ryan Thorpe Reporter Ryan Thorpe likes the pace of daily news, the feeling of a broadsheet in his hands and the stress of never-ending deadlines hanging over his head. Read full biography President Donald Trump announced on Friday he will ban Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from operating in the United States. Trump said the popular video-sharing platform could be barred as soon as Saturday by executive order or through use of emergency economic powers. 'As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States' he told reporters on Air Force One as he returned from Florida. 'Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that [emergency economic powers].' The president also made clear he did not support an American company to purchase TikTok's U.S. operations after an earlier report claimed Microsoft was 'in talks' to acquire the platform. Trump told reporters he could ban TikTok in the U.S. as soon as Saturday, while traveling back from Tampa on Air Force One Friday TikTok's wide popularity among American teens has brought scrutiny from U.S. regulators and lawmakers who fear their personal information could fall into the hands of government officials in Beijing Microsoft is 'in talks' to buy Chinese-owned TikTok after Trump said he is considering banning the video app in the US The New York Times reported on Friday that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok, according to sources who note the deal could 'alter the app's ownership.' The report comes amid speculation President Trump would mandate Chinese parent company ByteDance to give up ownership of the platform. TikTok has raised concerns over its potential threat to security, along with claims that the Chinese government is using the technology to spy on citizens. Microsoft is currently in talks with ByteDance for ownership of TikTok, sources told The New York Times 'We are looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok,' Trump told reporters at the White House Friday. 'We are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok.' However, it seems Trumps plans may have hit a snag, as Microsoft is currently in talks with ByteDance for ownership. Anonymous sources told The New York Times that the deal is in the works, but were unclear where the two firms stood. However, Bloomberg reports that Trump plans to make a decision to order ByteDance to sell its ownership of TikTok in the US. TikTok took the world by storm in 2017, which allows users to create original videos that are shared in the app for millions to see. Currently 80 million Americans use the app, which has raised concerns among the government citing TikTok's data collection of users that may be in the hands of Chinese officials. Talks of banning the popular video app followed shortly after many users attempted to sabotage Trump's June rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. TikTok users and K-pop fans said they had signed up for the Trump rally in Tulsa - which marked the US President's return to the trail since campaigning was side-lined by the coronavirus crisis. Trump's campaign declared it had more than a million ticket requests, but in the hours before the event, crowds looked significantly lighter than expected at the 19,000-seat BOK Center. In the end, just 6,200 people attended Advertisement Sources told The New York Times on Friday that a deal was in the works, but it was unclear where the two firms stood. At the same time, reports had claimed Trump was planning to order TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance to give up ownership of the platform. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters the White House, ByteDance and potential buyers of TikTok, including Microsoft failed to produce a deal that would result in the Chinese company shedding the app's U.S. operations. The talks are expected to continue in the coming days. While Microsoft already owns professional social media network LinkedIn, it would face fewer regulatory hurdles in acquiring TikTok than its more direct competitors, such as FaceBook Inc, one of the sources said. But ByteDance's valuation expectations for TikTok of more than $50billion, and its insistence on retaining a minority stake in the app complicated deal talks, another source said. 'Not the deal that you have been hearing about, that they are going to buy and sell... and Microsoft and another one. We are not an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) country,' Trump said. TikTok, which has some 800million users around the globe, has raised concern among worldwide and U.S. officials for its potential threat to security, along with claims that the Chinese government is using the technology to spy on citizens. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday said the app was being looked at by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks. ByteDance has consistently denied any links to the Chinese government. The number of American users has been estimated to be as high as 80 million a month - although because the company is not publicly traded, the estimate by outside analysts is impossible to verify. The platform, which took the world by storm in 2017, allows users to create original videos that are shared in the app for millions to see. News of the ban comes after Joe Biden's presidential campaign had urged staffers to stop using the Chinese video sharing app, citing security and privacy concerns. In a memo on Monday, Biden's general counsel, Dana Remus, ordered staff members to delete TikTok from both their personal and work phones, and to 'refrain from downloading and using TikTok,' according to Bloomberg. The memo also bans staff from trading individual stocks without approval from the campaign's general counsel, an unusual step for a presidential campaign. Earlier this week TikTok pushed back at what it called 'maligning attacks' that call attention to the video app's Chinese connections - a coded reference to the inquiry, and also to what it claims are TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said the attacks were 'disguised as patriotism and designed to put an end to our very presence in the U.S.' 'We are not political, we do not accept political advertising and have no agenda -- our only objective is to remain a vibrant, dynamic platform for everyone to enjoy,' Mayer said. 'TikTok has become the latest target, but we are not the enemy.' Mayer said TikTok has established a policy on transparency and added that it would go further than others by disclosing more about its internal algorithms. 'We believe all companies should disclose their algorithms, moderation policies, and data flows to regulators,' he said. TikTok faces regulatory challenges across the globe, and a potential ban by the U.S. government over suspicions Beijing could force its Chinese owner to turn over user data. China's President Xi Jinping is photographed in May Founder: ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, was founded by Zhang Yiming, who is accused of Communist party links TikTok faces regulatory challenges across the globe, and a potential ban by the U.S. government over suspicions Beijing could force its Chinese owner to turn over user data is the latest threat. 'While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok,' TikTok said in a statement. HOW DOES IT WORK? Users post videos of themselves and broadcast them on the app Anyone can find these videos and post comments on them It also allows you to message that person privately Some of the most popular videos are watched more than 10 million times Each TikTok video is generally 15 to 60 seconds long The videos are typically set to music, often showing the user dancing, doing a trick, or lip-syncing Advertisement As relations between the United States and China deteriorate over trade, Hong Kongs autonomy, cyber security and the spread of the novel coronavirus, TikTok has emerged as a flashpoint in the dispute between the worlds two largest economies. Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs unanimously passed a bill that would bar U.S. federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices. It will be taken up by the full Senate for a vote. The House of Representatives has already voted for a similar measure. ByteDance has been considering a range of options for TikTok amid pressure from the United States to relinquish control of the app, which allows users to create short videos with special effects and has become wildly popular with U.S. teenagers. ByteDance has received a proposal from some of its investors, including Sequoia and General Atlantic, to transfer majority ownership of TikTok to them, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The proposal values TikTok at about $50 billion, but some ByteDance executives believe the app is worth more than that. ByteDance has also fielded acquisition interest in TikTok from other companies and investment firms, Reuters has reported. The Tears of TikTok: Social media stars with millions of followers bid farewell to the popular video-sharing app where they shot to fame after President Trump announces he's banning the Chinese-owned platform By Karen Ruiz for Dailymail.com TikTok stars are bidding farewell to the popular video-sharing app after President Trump announced he was banning the Chinese-owned platform on Saturday, amid national security concerns. The social media outlet, where users can create 15 or 60 second videos, has grown wildly popular among young people over the last year and is estimated to be used by more than 80million Americans. As news of the ban broke on Friday, TikTok stars rushed to say their final goodbyes to the app where they found celebrity status, asking fans to follow them on Instagram or YouTube instead. Scroll down for video TikTok mega-star Dixie D'Amelio, who boasts 32 million followers, uploaded a video of herself reacting to the demise of the app Skin care guru Hyram, who gained a following after sharing tips on beauty and skin care products, shared a farewell video to 5.4millon followers on Friday The D'Amelio sisters, Dixie, 18, and Charli, 20, are among young stars who have made a career from TikTok, after videos of their dances went viral. Charli (left) is currently the most-followed user on the app, with 75.1million fans Among them was popular skin care guru SkincarebyHyram, who has amassed 5.2 million followers in recent months by sharing videos of his beauty and skincare tips. 'Goodbye y'all. You have all made my life incredible for the last five months. I'll miss our memories, seeing your beautiful faces and all the laughs,' he said in a video. 'Remember: Keep that skin GLOWING.' TikTok mega-star and singer Dixie D'Amelio, also uploaded a video of herself reacting to the demise of the app, staring blankly at the camera as her song 'Be Happy' played in the background. Dixie, 18, and sister Charli, 16, from Norwalk, Connecticut, became two of the most popular users on TikTok, which they joined last summer, after videos of their singing and dancing went viral. Charli, who is yet to react to the ban, is currently the most-followed star on TikTok, boasting 75.1 million followers, while her older sister has 32 million. The girls have been known to make videos with fellow TikTok celeb Addison Rae, who is followed by 53.3million users. Addison, 19, took to Twitter after learning the news, asking followers to 'send flowers pls'. TikTok has propelled the careers of many young social media users including Addison Rae, who is followed by 53.3million users and has created videos with Kardashian sisters Addison took to Twitter to react to the news of the platform being banned Earlier this year, 16-year-old Charli D'Amelio (pictured on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon) became the first TikTok star to land a Super Bowl commercial when she appeared in an ad for Sabra Hummus Popular TikTokers Tony Lopez and Michael Le, also known as JustMaiko, each shared videos asking fans to find him on other social media platforms before the app shuts down for good. 'Well s**t. F**k. Follow me on Instagram I guess. This might be it,' Lopez said. The shuttering of the app will not only be a loss to the millions of fans joined to participate in viral trends, but it has sparked concerns for those who now use it to make a living. Tik Tok has produced a community young celebrities, many of whom have been able to make careers as influencers after landing lucrative sponsorships with brands. Earlier this year, Charli D'Amelio became the first TikTok star to land a Super Bowl commercial when she appeared in an ad for Sabra Hummus. As for getting paid for social media content, the teenager reportedly charges up to $100,000 per post, according to Cosmopolitan. Charli and Dixie have also partnered with Hollister and makeup brand Morphe in the last few months alone. The same goes for Addison Rae, who joined TikTok last July and has since amassed a massive following, with 3.1billion likes, and has been featured in videos with the Kardashians. Michael Le, also known as JustMaiko (left) has amassed 34.5million followers through his popular dancing videos. He and fellow TikToker Tony Lopez shared videos asking followers to find them on other social media platforms before the app shut down for good 'If TikTok actually gets banned please support your favorite creators and follow them on all other social platforms immediately. Your support means more than you know,' one Twitter user said on Friday. TikTok has raised concern among worldwide and U.S. officials for its potential threat to security, along with claims that the Chinese government is using the technology to spy on citizens. On Friday, Trump said the popular video-sharing platform could be barred as soon as Saturday by executive order or through use of emergency economic powers. 'As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States' he told reporters on Air Force One as he returned from Florida. 'Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that [emergency economic powers].' The president also made clear he did not support an American company to purchase TikTok's U.S. operations after an earlier report claimed Microsoft was 'in talks' to acquire the platform. Trump told reporters he could ban TikTok in the U.S. as soon as Saturday, while traveling back from Tampa on Air Force One Friday TikTok's wide popularity among American teens has brought scrutiny from U.S. regulators and lawmakers who fear their personal information could fall into the hands of government officials in Beijing Sources told The New York Times on Friday that a deal was in the works, but it was unclear where the two firms stood. At the same time, reports had claimed Trump was planning to order TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance to give up ownership of the platform. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters the White House, ByteDance and potential buyers of TikTok, including Microsoft failed to produce a deal that would result in the Chinese company shedding the app's U.S. operations. The talks are expected to continue in the coming days. Twitter users reacted to Trump's decision to ban TikTok, which has produced a number of young stars who now rely on it for their livelihood Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday said the app was being looked at by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks. ByteDance has consistently denied any links to the Chinese government. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, 'While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok.' ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the US and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikTok's fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and US tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a competitive threat. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 19:09:51|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DHAKA, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh's COVID-19 cases rose to nearly 240,000 on Saturday, with about 2,200 new cases reported, and deaths from the virus increased to 3,132. Senior Health Ministry official Nasima Sultana said in a briefing that "2,199 new COVID-19 positive cases and 21 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours across Bangladesh." "The number of confirmed infections in the country totaled 239,860 while fatalities stood at 3,132," she said. According to the official, 8,802 samples were tested in the last 24 hours in labs across the country. She said the total number of recovered patients in the country stands at 136,253 with 1,117 new recoveries. According to the official, the COVID-19 fatality rate in Bangladesh is now 1.31 percent and the current recovery rate is 56.81 percent in the country. Bangladesh recorded highest 4,019 cases in a 24-hour period on July 2. And the country reported the highest 64 deaths of COVID-19 patients in a day on June 30. Enditem New York, Aug 1 : America's top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a three hour US Congress hearing, undercut US president Donald Trump's claim that children are almost immune to the coronavirus, saying that "hundreds of thousands" of children have been infected. At the same hearing, Fauci expressed confidence that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready by early next year. More than a quarter-million Americans have volunteered to take part in clinical trials, the doctor said on Friday. Fauci's comments about transmission risk in kids come as school reopening dates draw closer all across America and new research around the behaviour of the virus in children points to transmission rates at least similar to adults. For weeks, Trump has been pushing the view that kids "don't catch it easily, they don't bring it home easily, and if they do catch it, they get better fast". Over 2.2 million US children have been infected with the novel coronavirus and more than 900 children have needed intensive care hospitalisation until July 30, according to the public database COVKID Project. The same site projects that at 10 per cent of all children infected, America could see 20,000 hospitalised. There are currently about 74 million children in the United States. Trump, looking to shore up his tanking poll numbers, has made opening schools a key priority as he looks to restart the economy. Students need to return to the classroom so their parents can return to work, he has said, putting him at odds with public health officials. Public opinion against school reopening has only been rising ever since Trump waded in. Some of the nation's largest districts have already rejected the idea of a full reopening. A new study, released Friday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), analysed 597 children and staff who attended an overnight camp in Georgia between June 21 and June 27. At the end of the week, 76 per cent of campers who were tested came back positive. Results from a study from South Korea, published by the CDC, show older kids most likely transmit COVID-19 to their household at rates similar to adults. Younger kids transmit the virus too. Another study published July 30 in JAMA, an international peer-reviewed general medical journal shows the level of the virus in kids is at least as high as the level of virus in adults. Young children can be "important drivers" of coronavirus, this study says, and raises concerns of virus transmission linked to behavioural habits of young children in close quarters in school and day care settings as public health restrictions are eased. A July 29 study published in JAMA shows that states with early closure of schools between March and May had reduced levels of COVID-19 spread compared with states which had late closures, even after adjusting for social distancing policies. "States that closed schools earlier, when cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was low, had the largest relative reduction in incidence and mortality." One of the nation's largest teachers unions has green-lighted its members' plan to strike if their schools reopen without proper safety measures in the middle of the ongoing pandemic. Contributed Photo / Westchester County Police Department WATERBURY A Waterbury man faces a felony drug charge after police said he was found with more than two kilos of fentanyl during a traffic stop in New York last week. Orlando Garcia, 42, was charged with first-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and third-degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, police said. Technology giant Microsoft is reportedly in advanced talks to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok, the video-sharing mobile app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., according to a person familiar with the matter. The reports come after U.S. President Donald Trump told media on Friday that his administration is considering banning the Chinese video app over privacy and national security concerns. Were looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. India has banned as many as 106 Chinese apps, including TikTok, a move welcomed by both the administration and the lawmakers, Trump told reporters at the White House. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options. But a lot of things are happening, so well see what happens. But we are looking at a lot alternatives with respect to TikTok, he added. On the other hand, TikTok issued a statement on Friday saying that, While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. It also added that the company would not provide Chinese government access to U.S. user data even if asked. If Satya Nadella-led Microsoft materialises the deal, it could run into billions of dollars. Also, if the software company were to buy TikTok, there would be no ban on the app in the U.S. The talks reportedly involve representatives from Microsoft, ByteDance, and the White House. TikTok, which has over 2.3 billion downloads around the world, was recently valued at about $50 billion. Pakistan army resorted to unprovoked ceasefire violation on the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri sector of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday. The Indian Army responded strongly to the enemy fire, a defence release said. Sepoy Rohin Kumar, 24, who belongs to Galore khas village of Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh, was critically injured in the exchange of fire and later succumbed to his injuries. Sepoy Rohin Kumar was a brave, highly motivated and a sincere soldier. The nation will remain indebted to him for his supreme sacrifice and devotion to duty, defence public relations officer Lt Col Devender Anand said in the release here. A pall of gloom descended on his native village as soon as the news reached the family. The sepoy was engaged to get married in November this year. His father works at a shop in Amritsar. The last rites of Rohin Kumar were performed with full military honors at a crematorium near his native village in the evening. His cousin brother lit the pyre amid slogans of Pakistan Murdabad and Shaheed Rohin Kumar amar rahe. Earlier, Ankush Kumar of Karohta village in the district had lost his life while fighting the Chinese troops in Ladakhs Galwan valley. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said today that Serbia is selling arms to both Azerbaijan and Armenia, since it needs to maintain its military industry in an efficient state. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia are our friends. In recent years, we have sold ten times more weapons to Azerbaijan [than to Armenia], he noted first of all. The military industry employs 17,000 people who must keep their places, Aleksandr Vucic said explaining the sale of weapons to both sides of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Serbian RTV informs. KYIV, July 31 (Reuters) - Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday that talks with Iran about the downing of a Ukrainian airliner in January were constructive but it was too early to say how much compensation Tehran would agree to pay. "The talks ended late last night. The talks lasted 11 hours. In general, they were constructive," Kuleba said in a video briefing after meeting with an Iranian delegation. "There is agreement and understanding that the most transparent and unbiased investigation by Iran is needed." Iranian forces say they downed the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 jet after mistaking it for a missile at a time when tensions with the United States had risen. All 176 people on board - including 57 Canadians - were killed. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Alison Williams) Syracuse, N.Y. Onondaga County reported another person died in the past day of the coronavirus, marking the 200th death related to the pandemic. The person who died was an 89-year-old woman with underlying health conditions, County Executive Ryan McMahon tweeted this afternoon. McMahon said Saturday the number of positive tests confirmed in the last day was 0.59%. The weekly average is 0.8%, according to McMahon. Regions that have infection rates below 5% will be allowed by state officials to send kids back to school in September. Overall, the county confirmed another 10 cases. That brings the number of known cases in Onondaga County to 3,354. Of those new cases, two were related to travel to California and Lake Placid, New York. Three more were related to a senior living facility. Four involved community spread, including one case where the source of transmission could be traced. One person who tested positive lives with someone whos already been diagnosed. Of the 10 new cases, three people were already in quarantine, McMahon wrote. Twenty people remain hospitalized in the county. Three people are in an intensive care unit. On Friday, McMahon warned county residents they could face legal trouble if they fail to work with public health officials. He said county officials will issue subpoenas if necessary to obtain timely information about who has been in contact with an infected person. Got a story idea or news tip youd like to share? Please contact me through email, Twitter, Facebook or at 315-470-2274. Candidates begin to file nominating petitions as election year kicks off Two local petitions have already been filed for local seats up for election in 2022. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 00:57:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Olgianna Melissinou makes a sandal in her store in downtown Athens, Greece, July 26, 2020. (Photo by Lefteris Partsalis/Xinhua) ATHENS, July 31 (Xinhua) -- The first thing that welcomes the visitor to the tiny store of Olgianna Melissinos in the heart of Monastiraki, the old commercial district at the foothills of the Acropolis in the Greek capital, is the overpowering smell of genuine leather. Against the backdrop of finely made sandals, belts and bags, old photos and framed articles that cover the walls floor to ceiling, and a radio playing calm instrumental music in the background, Olgianna and her husband Christos work tirelessly -- but cheerfully -- behind their benches. Olgianna is a third-generation shoemaker, as her grandfather started the family business in 1920 specializing in climbing boots and luxury shoes. In the 1950s her father Stavros took over the business and, shortly after, an interesting proposal came his way. "At some point, a choreographer came by his shop and asked him to make ancient Greek-style sandals for a performance. He did so, he liked the venture and made a few extra pairs for sale in his store," Melissinos told Xinhua. Extremely common during the ancient Greek and Roman times, sandals have a celebrated, centuries-old history in Greece, documented by various artifacts unearthed by archaeologists. But by the 1960s, when Melissinos took that order, the art of sandal making had almost died out, as open shoes were not popular or even considered socially unacceptable at the time. "His neighbors made fun of him. They told him 'no one is going to buy these things you make'. But he laughed and said 'never mind, someone will'." Artistic by nature, Melissinos, dubbed "the poet-sandal maker" because of his talent for poetry and playwriting, saw the project as a challenge to his creativity. "He started designing sandals on his own but also 'stealing' designs he saw on ancient statues, frescoes, depictions of ancient Greek sandals -- he studied a lot. And he started experimenting," Melissinos said. The first pair was sold in no time. "In a matter of a few years, this whole neighborhood changed and even those who were skeptical at the beginning started making sandals," she added. Greece experienced its first major tourism boom during that period and the liberal fashion trends of the time helped establish sandals as an iconic fashion item, a symbol of timeless simplicity and elegance, a shoe equally enjoyed by celebrities and hitchhikers, all basking in the Greek summer. Nowadays, the sandal, in its countless variations, forms, materials and colors, remains the top go-to summer footwear. And the tiny store that was one of the first to make sandals again in modern Greek history is now featured in sophisticated travel guides and prestigious fashion magazines. But as Melissinos said, word of mouth is their biggest marketing weapon. According to the sandal maker, quality and craftsmanship make the difference. In her store, everything is handmade of genuine leather by Christos and herself: sandals, belts, wallets, handbags. They do not give the impression that they are in a rush. They take the time to care for every little detail, to think of aesthetics, to add that tiny touch that makes every handmade product in the world unique. Their customers can have the sandal of their choice fitted on their feet, they can ask for little tweaks or even different color straps to create a sandal as close to their needs and taste as possible. "There is a whole story behind this store proving that the shoes are made with talent and craft. There is an atmosphere, they adjust the shoes to your size, you can pick the colors. In 10 minutes, they can give you a totally personalized pair of sandals. It is a very nice souvenir from Athens," confirmed French traveler Diane Petit just after she had her own pair custom-fitted by Christos. "Approximately 70-80 percent of our orders are 'sur mesure,' because we also want to achieve the perfect fit... We want to have a personal relationship with our customers," Melissinos stressed. And just as the Melissinos family craftsmanship has passed down to the third generation, so has the loyalty of their customers. "I was very moved one time when I made small sandals for the great-grandchild of one of my father's customers. It really counts when you are being honest and straight with your customers. The loyalty and the love they show you can go a long way, for generations," the sandal maker explained. As most sectors of the Greek economy, small and medium-sized shoe making industries suffered a severe blow during the decade-long economic crisis. Several manufacturers were forced out of business or moved out of Greece to where labor was cheaper. It was a very difficult time for her business, Melissinos recalled, but she refused to compromise on the quality of her products in order to lower the prices. As she said, what kept the small business afloat was foreign customers, but also a shift in the mentality of Greeks. "We worked hard, and I believe that our customers --especially the Greeks -- rewarded us, because they also returned to the mentality of buying one top quality product rather than 10, which are not of good quality," she stressed, referring to a big part of Greek society that was prone to hyperconsumerism before the crisis. Of course, making unique, handmade products when trends in fashion are changing fast is not an easy task. It takes time, it costs more and has a small profit margin -- but for Melissinos it is a personal choice. "You have to love it and then you can make your clientele love it too," she explained. Melissinos is confident that handmade crafts not only are not dying but are being reinvented and highly appreciated by more and more people. "We have customers who tell us 'I was very happy that I kept these (sandals) for 10 or 15 years. We had a great time 'together' and they refer to all the places these sandals took them to, and how they connected emotionally with them," she said. Over the past years, more and more travelers have visited Melissinos's store with a travel guide in their hands. Tourists today are more sophisticated, they are looking for authentic experiences and products, they do not shop randomly, the sandal maker claimed. And lately, visitors from China have joined the store's most valued group of customers. "They are always on the lookout for good quality products. They even take more time to decide because this is something new to them. But once they trust you, they become your best customers. I think you have to gain their trust," Melissinos said. This year, the coronavirus pandemic has made things much more difficult for this small business. With approximately half of their customers coming from abroad, and with travel restrictions that are prone to change at any moment, Olgianna and Christos are faced with uncertainty. But combining art with technology, they run an e-shop that ships worldwide and are optimistic that they will be able to welcome their friends back in Athens soon. Enditem " " Astronaut Image Gallery The crew of Apollo 13. From left to right are Commander James A. Lovell Jr., command module pilot John L. Swigert Jr. and lunar module pilot Fred W. Haise Jr. See more astronaut pictures. Image courtesy NASA Say the word "astronaut" and you'll conjure up visions of heroes and heroic feats: Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom successfully completing suborbital trips; John Glenn orbiting Earth aboard Friendship 7 in a historic five-hour flight; Neil Armstrong stepping down from the lunar module ladder onto the moon's surface; and Jim Lovell stabilizing the Apollo 13 spacecraft after an explosion a little more than 55 hours into the flight. But being an astronaut is not all glamour and glory. And very often it's not about being in space. In fact, the most time spent in space by one astronaut -- Sergei Krikalyov -- is just over 803 days. That works out to be just shy of 2.5 years. When you consider most people spend 30 to 35 years in their professional careers, 2.5 years doesn't seem that impressive. What do astronauts do with the rest of their time? Advertisement Well, most American astronauts are civil servants, which is what the federal government calls its employees. As civil servants, they have to attend meetings, go to training sessions and write reports -- just like any other office worker. They do, however, possess some specialized skills unique to their trade. And they enjoy, albeit rarely, opportunities to travel and work in space. From that perspective, you might say astronauts are regular, ordinary government employees who get to travel extensively, both around the world and in space. These days especially, American astronauts spend a lot of time on jets en route to Russia. They must do so because, following the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle program, the only way for Americans to travel into space is aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Eventually, independent companies will likely offer additional options for space launches. Before we wander into the details of astronaut work, let's start with the basics -- what exactly is an astronaut? Chandigarh: Haryana police force was on maximum alert on Monday, a day after the sensational Nabha jailbreak incident in neighbouring Punjab, as one more abandoned car was found in Kaithal district. Acting on inputs that some fugitives had passed through Haryana territory, the police remained on maximum alert and a vigorous search was on to nab the accused. "We are maintaining a high alert. If any of the fugitive is found in Haryana, we will immediately nab him," IGP Karnal Range, Subhash Yadav said. Another car was found on Monday abandoned in a village in Haryana's Kaithal district after the Nabha jailbreak incident. The car was found abandoned in Pharal village in Kaithal district. Kaithal in Haryana is about 70 km from Nabha in Punjab where the jailbreak incident took place on Sunday. "A car has been found in the village," IGP Yadav said, adding it was suspected to have been used in Sunday's jailbreak incident. Another car had been found abandoned on Sunday in Solumajra in Kaithal and is suspected to have been used by prisoners who escaped from the Nabha jail." Some Punjab Police uniforms and some telephone numbers written on torn pieces of papers had been found from the car which was found in Solumajra. Also Read: Punjab jailbreak: Another abandoned car with found in Kaithal, Haryana Further investigation in the matter is being conducted by Punjab Police," Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kaithal, Tarun Kumar said. The car bore a fake Punjab registration number, Kumar said. Police teams from Punjab were called in for a coordinated investigation in the case. Security has been beefed up in Haryana and police force has been put on high alert after Nabha jailbreak incident at Patiala in neighbouring Punjab on Sunday. The borders with Patiala and the adjoining borders with Ambala, Kaithal and Jind have already been sealed. Checking is being carried out at 'nakas', Yadav said. Khalistan Liberation Front Chief Harminder Singh Mintoo, who had escaped from Nabha jail in Punjab along with five other inmates on Sunday, was today nabbed from Nizamuddin Railway Station in Delhi. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Chandigarh: As many as 57 people have lost their lives so far in the Punjab spurious liquor tragedy, said officials on Saturday (August 1, 2020). According to reports, 37 died in the Tarn Taran district, while 12 and 8 lost their lives in the Amritsar and Batala districts respectively. As of now, over ten people have been apprehended in connection with this incident. Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has also ordered a magisterial inquiry by Divisional Commissioner Jalandhar into the hooch tragedy. "Anyone found guilty will not be spared," said Punjab CM. I have ordered a magisterial enquiry into suspected spurious liquor deaths in Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran. Commissioner, Jalandhar Division will conduct the enquiry and coordinate with concerned SSPs and other officers. Anyone found guilty will not be spared. Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) July 31, 2020 Earlier on Friday, the police had arrested seven bootleggers from Amritsar rural, Batala and Tarn Taran districts in over 40 raids conducted by five teams led by senior officers. Huge quantity of spurious liquor, drums, storage cans etc were also recovered from the arrested and the same have been sent for chemical analysis to check for constituents of spurious liquor. DGP Punjab Police Dinkar Gupta said that there will likely be more arrests, adding that the police teams would continue to crack down on all those involved in the case to unravel the extent of the spurious liquor mafia operating in the region. The inquiry will look into the facts and circumstances leading to incidents, as well as into any other issues connected or relevant to the incidents and the circumstances leading to it. It will be led by Divisional Commissioner Jalandhar, along with Joint Excise & Taxation Commissioner Punjab, and SPs Investigation of the concerned districts. The Chief Minister has also given Commissioner Jalandhar Division the liberty to co-opt with any civil or police officer or an expert to facilitate the expeditious conduct of the enquiry. Campaigners want an outstanding primary school to be renamed because of its links to a distant relative of Victorian colonialist Cecil Rhodes. Historians believe that Rhodes Avenue Primary in North London was named after wealthy landowner Thomas Rhodes, who died when his great nephew Cecil was just three years old. Despite no evidence that Thomas ever met infant Cecil, let alone had any colonial interests of his own, activists say the Rhodes name cannot be disentangled from the pursuit of white supremacy and the dehumanisation and subjugation of black people. Earlier this year, campaigners hung a banner on the schools railings with the message: Rename your school after someone who isnt a racist imperialist. An online petition was also launched by ex pupil Frances Browning and has attracted more than 600 signatures. Campaigners want an outstanding primary school to be renamed because of its links to a distant relative of Victorian colonialist Cecil Rhodes (pictured) But Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and now chairman of the History Matters project at the Policy Exchange think tank, said: I find it puzzling that the most important thing about this school is thought to be its name, which refers not to Cecil Rhodes, but to Thomas, who can hardly be held responsible for his great nephews actions. 'Rather than trying to erase a tenuous link with the past, shouldnt we be focusing on the black lives of the future? Born in 1762, Thomas Rhodes owned a 470-acre dairy farm between what was then the villages of Muswell Hill, Wood Green and Hornsey. After his death in 1856, aged 93, parts of the estate were sold and later transformed into Alexandra Palace. The school was built on the former site of the farmhouse and its Grade-II listed portico remains on display in its grounds. The Rhodes Primary school was built on the former site of the farmhouse and its Grade-II listed portico remains on display in its grounds The campaign has won the apparent support of Joseph Ejiofor, Labour leader of Haringey Council, who said: If we were naming roads today, we would never choose Rhodes Avenue, which is named after Thomas Rhodes, great uncle to Cecil, an imperialist, colonialist, and white supremacist. Campaigners say the primary school should now be renamed after anti-apartheid campaigner Oliver Tambo, who lived in the area during his years in exile from South Africa. The fact is that when most people hear the name Rhodes they think about Cecil Rhodes and Rhodesia, they said on Facebook. When children learn about Rhodes, they will make that link to their own school. A plane crashed while attempting to fly to Australia because it was overloaded with more than 43m worth of cocaine, according to police. The Cessna aircraft came down shortly after taking off from a remote airstrip on the south coast of Papua New Guinea last Sunday. It was found abandoned and empty but officials recovered 28 bags of drugs weighing a total of 500kg at a different location on the island. Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced on Saturday they had charged five suspected drug traffickers with alleged links to Italian organised crime. They face life imprisonment if convicted. The pilot, also Australian, was arrested and charged with an immigration offence after handing himself into the embassy in Papua New Guinea. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Officials described the attempt to smuggle the cocaine into Australia during the coronavirus pandemic as brazen. With current interstate travel restrictions in place due to COVID-19, the attempt to import illicit drugs into Australia shows how opportunistic and greedy organised crime can be, said AFP Deputy Commissioner Investigations Ian McCartney. Australian law enforcement remains committed to working collectively to protect Australia, which is especially important now, due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic on the community. Police said the Melbourne-based crime syndicate arranged a flight from Marreeba in Queensland to Papua New Guinea on the morning of 26 July to collect the cocaine. Recommended Gang smuggled hundreds of kilos of cocaine inside frozen chicken It is alleged the light aircraft flew at an altitude of only 3000 feet in an effort to avoid radar detection. After picking up the drugs, it crashed while attempting to take off from an area norther of Port Moresby that afternoon. The AFP alleges greed played a significant part in the syndicates activities and cannot rule out that the weight of the cocaine had an impact on the planes ability to take off, the police said in a statement. Photos released by police also showed a recovered drug package marked with 777 and hiding spaces within a truck. They may be in self-isolation, but Chrissy Teigen and John Legend aren't letting that stop them from dressing to the nines. The model, 34, shared a photo the couple all glammed up, looking ready for a night on the town. 'just a couple of kittens,' Chrissy captioned the picturesque snap. The cat's meow! Chrissy Teigen shared a snap of her with her husband John Legend, all dressed up In the photo, Chrissy looked fabulous in a light pink button down dress which fell delicately off a single shoulder. The dress drew the eye to her fabulous legs, which were further complimented by her strappy beige heels. Adding another fierce touch was her super sleek and straight hairstyle. John, meanwhile, looked just as good in a polka dot button down with light brown slacks and leather shoes. Friday night! It's not clear where exactly the night took them, but Chrissy did appear to be at a restaurant bathroom as she documented her evening on her Instagram stories, where she wore a matching pink face mask from RESA Pink lady: Teigen armed herself with a matching pink face mask The duo exuded couple's goals as they posed arm in arm by the sunset. 'Just a couple a kittens,' Chrissy captioned the snap. It's not clear where exactly the night took them, but Chrissy did appear to be at a restaurant bathroom as she documented her evening on her Instagram stories, where she wore a matching pink face mask from RESA. Meanwhile, Chrissy has not been letting the pandemic interfere with her thriving culinary business. The tour: Once inside, Teigen gave her 30.7million followers on Instagram a peak at the various renovations taking place Since the launch of her first cookbook in 2016, Chrissy's beloved Cravings brand has evolved into a food lover's empire. The model was putting forth major businesswoman energy on Friday afternoon as she checked up on construction at Cravings headquarters in Los Angeles. Once inside, Teigen gave her 30.7million followers on Instagram a peak at the various renovations taking place. Exciting: 'I'm walking through my office. This is so exciting,' expressed Chrissy excitedly as she filmed in selfie mode 'I'm walking through my office. This is so exciting,' expressed Chrissy as she filmed in selfie mode. She flashed her camera on various rooms that had the floors covered in plastic tarps, while various supplies rested in piles. 'It's gonna be Cravings headquarters...and we are not even done. I am so excited,' concluded Teigen. Cravings HQ: 'It's gonna be Cravings headquarters...and we are not even done. I am so excited,' concluded Teigen On Monday, Chrissy announced that she would be producing the new game show Eye Candy for the struggling streaming platform Quibi. Eye Candy is 'centered around teams of celebrities and civilians who will attempt to identify outrageous edible creations designed to look like everyday ordinary objects,' Quibi said in a statement. In the Japanese series, which is produced by Nippon TV, contestants have to bite into the objects they've identified in hopes they picked the candy items. The American version of Sokkuri Sweets was announced weeks after videos of cakes designed to look like everyday objects swept social media. When she is not gushing over her successful professional life, Chrissy is busy quarantining with husband John, 41, and their two children, daughter Luna, four, and son Miles, two, at their home in Los Angeles. Earlier this week, Chrissy gathered her family up for a photoshoot for her mother Vilailuck Teigen's upcoming cookbook. Andy Muschietti teases The Flash's plot (Image by Warner Bros) Director Andy Muschietti has provided an update on his upcoming solo Flash movie, teasing that its script will revolve around Ezra Millers superhero going back in time to save his mother. The Argentinian filmmaker, who shot to prominence with his work on Mama, It, and It Chapter 2, admitted as much during a recent interview with his native radio station Metro 95.1, which was then translated by Twitter user orden_67, via Screen Rant, and shared online. Read More: Michael Keaton reveals why he quit playing Batman Muschietti didnt say much, but he did explain, It is a story of time travel: Flash travels back to try to save his mother. It is a spectacular action movie but it has a big heart. At the moment, The Flash is scheduled to be released on June 3, 2022. But its not just the Coronavirus pandemic that has put the release of the comic-book adaptation at risk. Warner Bros have spent years in development hell with their Flash movie. BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA - AUGUST 20: Director Andy Muschietti attends a special screening of 'It: Chapter Two' at the Village Recoleta cinema on August 20, 2019 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo by Lalo Yasky/Getty Images) In fact, the first news of the spin-off movie emerged all the way back in 2013. Ezra Miller, who has played the Flash and Barry Allen in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Suicide Squad, Justice League, and the TV episode Crisis On Infinite Earths, has always been set to star. However, Phil Lord and Chris Miller were attached as writers, only to be replaced by Seth Grahame-Smith. Read More: Michael Keaton could return as Batman in the upcoming 'Flash' movie Then Greg Berlanti was hired, followed by Rick Famuyiwa, while there were even rumours that one or all of Joby Harold, Robert Zemeckis, Matthew Vaughn, Sam Raimi, and Marc Webb were going to get involved. Once again, Lord and Miller were linked to the film, as were John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Then, in the summer of 2019, Muschietti was hired to direct, with Birds Of Preys Christina Hodson writing. In recent weeks theres also be the added revelations that Ray Fisher will reprise his role of Cyborg in the blockbuster, while it has also been reported that Michael Keaton will portray Batman for the first time since 1992s Batman Returns. Norway continues to allow the construction of wind farms on Saami land, which threatens their herding livelihoods. Eva Maria Fjellheim is a PhD fellow at the Centre for Saami Studies at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. In April this year, wind energy company Eolus Vind broke ground for the Oyfjellet wind plant, a new wind power project in Saepmie, the ancestral lands of the Indigenous Saami people, which stretch across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. This led to a conflict between the Norwegian authorities, project developers and the Saami reindeer herding community Jillen Njaarke, which reveals the numerous reckless practices behind Europes green energy transition. The German owners of the Oyfjellet wind project, Aquila Capital, have already made a lucrative deal to supply the power produced by the wind plant to the nearby aluminium smelter by Alcoa. On the projects website, the developers claim to promote growth, green industry and green employment through long-term investment in renewable energy. Considering the effect of their actions on the Jillen Njaarke, their mission statement is not only misleading, but is also covering up the fact that the project is disrupting the sustainable way of living of the Saami community, which protects their land. Research demonstrates that the Saamis semi-domesticated reindeer avoid grazing in areas where they can see or hear wind turbines. A project such as Oyfjellet would disrupt the migration of reindeer, especially in the winter, when they are often weakened and at risk, particularly pregnant mothers and newborn calves. It is yet another source of distress for the Sami herders and their reindeer, adding to the uncertainties of a rapidly changing climate, increasing pressures on ecosystems and land grabbing. On paper, the Norwegian reindeer herding act should provide legal protection against the blocking of reindeer migration routes, like in the case of this new wind plant project, but the Norwegian authorities allowed the construction to move ahead. On June 31, the reindeer Saami herders from Jillen Njaarke announced they were going to court to stop the wind plant. They are determined to protect their lands from yet another encroachment by the Norwegian authorities. The community is genuinely afraid for its future. Humans are born, and they die, but the mountains live forever, Heihka Kappfjell, a 53-year-old reindeer herder from Jillen Njaarke, told us. What frightens me the most about the wind industry is that without the mountains there is nothing left for us Saami. Nothing that protects us, takes care of us and gives us comfort. Some 98 percent of Norways electricity production today comes from renewable energy sources. But in most public debates or political decisions, the detrimental impact that this has had on Saami livelihoods is readily overlooked. The Oyfjellet wind plant is not the first encroachment Jillen Njaarke have faced. Various hydropower plants in their land have reduced pastures and have exposed their herds to a higher risk when crossing unstable ice on water dams. The Norwegian government has already given out more than 100 additional concessions for wind power developments, some of which fall on Saami land. And it is not just Norway that has endangered the Saami livelihood pursuing green energy. Across Saepmie, the governments of Sweden, Finland and Russia have also promoted energy and resource extraction projects that make it impossible for the Saami to continue their traditional ways of life. Across Europe, wind power is presented as a climate solution that will pave the way for a sustainable future. Through policy programmes such as the European Green New Deal, many governments lower taxes, offer subsidies and loosen regulations to advance renewable energy production. Saami herders watching over their reindeer herd [Courtesy of Heihka Kappfjell] The conflict around the Oyfjellet wind plant shows how such policies can contribute to Europes long tradition of oppression and destruction of indigenous territories. The Saami community consider these kinds of programmes green colonialism. Regrettably, many vocal environmental movements in Europe tend to remain silent on these issues. Thus they offer implicit support for the colonisation of Indigenous peoples and lands in the name of environmentally friendly resource extraction. In 2016, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples published a damning report that highlights the Saami peoples struggle against land grabs in Saepmie. Echoing many researchers, Saami politicians and organisations like Protect Sapmi, the report warned of the devastating impact of industrial developments in the Saami ancestral land and called out the ongoing violation of Saami rights. In addition to all of the infrastructure developments, there is also the construction of ever more cabins, mines, and power stations. They say its only a little bit here and there, but in sum, it is quite a lot, Per Martin Kappfjell, a 28-year-old herder from Jillen Njaarke, told us. Such encroachment transforms Saami land into a traumatic stress environment for herders and reindeer. Unfortunately, the case of the recently constructed Fosen wind power complex, situated some 300km (190 miles) south of Oyfjellet, does not provide much hope that going to court would bring justice for the Jillen Njaarke community. The Saami reindeer herders from Fovsen Njaarke community took legal action against Fosen Vind, the developers of Europes largest onshore wind power complex, located on the Fosen peninsula. The reindeer herders argued the construction would violate their right to practise their indigenous reindeer herding culture in the future. Earlier in June, the Frostating Court of Appeal recognised that a third of the communitys winter pastures were destroyed by the construction and ordered 89 million krones ($9.4m) to be paid as compensation. The verdict shows that proving that wind energy projects need be stopped to ensure the cultural survival of the Saami is incredibly difficult. Under a certain level of doubt, as the verdict states, monetary compensation will save the herd and thus hinder a violation of international law. However, the courts argument assumes that the Saami will embrace short-term and high-cost technical fixes for their loss of pastures, like relying on the import of processed fodder to feed their herds during the winter. Consequently, the court forces the herding community to choose between making those changes or abandon reindeer herding altogether. This verdict shows that human rights conventions in Norwegian law do not protect us Saami, Arvid Jama, a reindeer herder from the affected Saami reindeer herding community in Fosen, told us. By awarding the community compensation for their losses, rather than stopping the operations of the wind plant, the court has put a monetary value on the Saami way of life. In other words, it reinforced the tendency of the Norwegian government and the industry to sell indigenous rights in the name of development and resource extraction. Herding is not a money industry. Its a way of life. Its cultural heritage, your family, your identity, your connection to the land, Silje Karine Muotka, member of the governing council at the Saami Parliament of Norway, said after the verdict. We have a saying in Saami It takes a village to raise a kid. This includes taking responsibility for the relations between humans, reindeer and the land. The mutual dependence between humans, the lands, waters and non-human relatives is integral to Saami world views and ancestral practices. This kind of reciprocity should also be central to finding new and more effective solutions to current global challenges, such as sustainable food production, community resilience and land use. As democratic processes led by majoritarian societies fail to include indigenous perspectives, exhausting and expensive lawsuits become one of the only pathways left for the Saami community. Yet, at the core, these kinds of conflicts are not merely legal problems. They call into question the fundamental principles underlying our ways of organising as societies. Access road construction for the Oyfjellet wind plant [Courtesy of Trond Erik Vollen] What does it say about us as a community if we disregard significant violations, such as in the cases of Jillen Njaarke or Fovsen Njaarke? What kind of humanity are we striving for when the destruction of indigenous cultures fuels climate action? Sidelining human and indigenous rights from the climate agenda is a much broader issue. Norways updated commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement from February 2020 barely mentions the importance of consulting Indigenous communities. In practice, the Norwegian governments continued support for green colonialism, makes the statement seem like nothing more than an attempt to uphold a questionable image of Norway as a frontrunner of climate action and protector of indigenous rights. These kinds of deceptive strategies are typical for colonial nations. Technically, there were consultations with the reindeer herders of Jillen Njaarke before giving the green light to the construction. However, the government and developers never considered whether the Indigenous herders wanted a wind energy complex at all. According to the herders, they were only allowed to pick between two different yet equally damaging projects. We got to choose between being shot in the left or the right leg, Heihka said of the consultation. The actions of the government, Eolus Vind and their lawyers were completely against democratic principles, he added. The green energy industry promises to build a sustainable wonderland with electric cars and bullet trains powered by limitless renewable energy supply. It reinforces the dangerous idea that we can maintain our addiction to high-energy lifestyles in a sustainable way. The wind energy sector on Saami territories is an extractive industry, and we have to treat it as such. It is high time to acknowledge the renewable dystopia taking shape in Norway and beyond. The key to a green future is not in the hands of renewable energy companies under the doctrine of ever more profits. Instead, we should work together with Indigenous communities who have been nurturing and defending our environments for centuries. We are in a climate and ecological emergency with hugely disproportionate effects on Indigenous peoples, Black people and people of colour. If we want to enable green ways of living, there is an urgent need for climate justice and a just transition. But rather than repeating empty, green slogans, we need to question what justice really means, and whom it currently serves. This requires us to listen to those who are most affected and provide active support for multi-front anti-colonial struggles. Susanne Normann also co-authored this article. Susanne is a research fellow and PhD candidate in Psychology at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE With New Mexicos general election just over three months away, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has sparked criticism and praise by urging New Mexico political parties to forbid their candidates from door-to-door campaigning. During a Thursday news conference, Lujan Grisham said door-knocking, long a staple of political campaigns, was hugely problematic given the close proximity between voters and candidates amid a recent surge of coronavirus cases. That is just a terrible idea in a COVID world, she said. The governor also said political organizing including voter registration efforts should not be happening at peaceful protests. While the Democratic Party said this week it has already been focused on running largely virtual campaigns, state GOP Chairman Steve Pearce accused the governor of seeking to outlaw campaigning. He said the Republican Party was considering filing a lawsuit over the issue that would hinge on alleged constitutional free speech violations. Were letting our campaigns do what they want, Pearce told the Journal. They should be responsible enough to do things safely. He also described the governors attempt to stifle door-to-door campaigning as an incumbent protection program, referring to Democratic majorities in the Legislature and an all-Democratic state congressional delegation. Chris Luchini, chairman of the New Mexico Libertarian Party, the states third major political party, said the Libertarian Party is not encouraging its candidates to do door-to-door campaigning amid the pandemic. But he also accused Lujan Grisham of micro-managing, saying, Shes from the party that doesnt need to do door to door. Under New Mexicos revised public health order, campaign activities are not explicitly mentioned. But some campaign activities, including political fundraisers, could be covered under the states ban on public gatherings of five people or more. The state Department of Healths general counsel warned Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Truth or Consequences, earlier this month that a planned campaign fundraising event that involved a river float and a reception could violate that part of the order. But Dow said Friday the letter was sent after she had already announced the event had been canceled. She also said she has been knocking on voters doors while wearing a face mask and abiding by social distancing guidelines. I dont know where I violate any health orders doing that, said Dow, who questioned why the governor had not also addressed mail carriers and U.S. Census workers who go door to door as part of their jobs. Political organizing During Thursdays news conference, Lujan Grisham said she respects New Mexicans right to peacefully protest, even if those protests target her. But the Democratic governor said a protest should not be cover for political organizing, citing voter registration efforts at some recent public protests. We are not going to use COVID-19 or anything else to prevent a peaceful protest, Lujan Grisham said. But we are not going to let them be excuses for political organizing for the sake of a political party or individual getting ready for the election. However, she did not say specifically how her administration planned to prevent such political activity from occurring at protests in the future. Multiple protests have taken place around New Mexico in recent months, including several organized by Black Lives Matter to protest systemic racism and police use-of-force issues. Lujan Grisham said Thursday she has seen no evidence nationally or locally that such protests increase the spread of COVID-19, but said participating is still a risk and urged those who take part to wear masks and maintain a safe distance from one another. Remote campaigning A Democratic Party of New Mexico spokeswoman said Friday the party fully supports the governors efforts to keep state residents safe amid the pandemic that has already killed 642 people statewide. The (party) is encouraging our candidates to find creative ways to reach out to voters safely and in compliance with all public health orders, DPNM spokeswoman Miranda van Dijk said. Such efforts include online organizing, virtual fundraising events and increased use of voter phone drives, campaign mailers and social media. But some campaigns are taking decidedly different approaches. For instance, President Donald Trumps reelection campaign boasted this month of knocking on the doors of more than 100,000 New Mexico voters. Pearce, who lost to Lujan Grisham in the 2018 gubernatorial race, said door-to-door campaigning is by far the most effective way of reaching voters. But the governor said there are other ways for candidates to reach voters, and said all political parties and groups can do a better job campaigning remotely. In addition, Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett fired back in response to the criticisms of the Republican Partys chairman. The GOP hasnt done a single substantive thing to help or protect a single New Mexicans life or livelihood during the public health and economic crises were dealing with so I cant say Im surprised, Sackett said in a Friday email. New Mexicos general election is set for Nov. 3, with absentee voting beginning Oct. 6. Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have placed a whole block of an apartment building in District 12 and an alley in Tan Phu District on lockdown as two people living there are suspected of being COVID-19 positive after returning from Da Nang, the country's outbreak epicenter. Health workers and functional forces are now guarding the entrances to block 2B at the Thai An 2 apartment building on Nguyen Van Qua Street in Dong Hung Thuan Ward, District 12. The wards chairman Lam Quan Minh Vuong said the lockdown has been in place since 9:00 pm on Friday. A 49-year-old woman living alone in an apartment on the sixth floor of block 2B, returned to Ho Chi Minh City on July 28 after visiting her sick mother at Da Nang General Hospital in the namesake central city. Da Nang is now Vietnam's COVID-19 epicenter where the majority of 116 local infections since Saturday last week are reported. The woman presented herself at the local authority and was sampled for COVID-19 testing on Wednesday, with the results still pending. Block 2B is one of the two blocks of Thai An 2 apartment building, with 15 floors and 116 apartments housing 328 residents. The sixth floor comprises eight apartments with 21 residents. Residents on the seventh and fifth floors of the block have also been sampled for COVID-19 testing while disinfection works were also carried out in the area. Meanwhile, all residents in the apartment block are asked not to leave, with foods and necessities being supplied to them by functional forces. Authorities sample residents at block 2B of Thai An 2 apartment building in District 12, Ho Chi Minh City for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing, August 1, 2020. Video: Dan Thuan - Xuan Mai / Tuoi Tre A 100-meter section at the end of alley No. 20 on Ho Dac Di Street in Tay Thanh Ward, Tan Phu District was also sealed off on Saturday morning. According to a brief report by the districts health center, a 42-year-old man living at a house in the alley traveled to Da Nang with his wife and two children from July 17 to 25. The four people returned to Ho Chi Minh City on the flight VN119 on July 25. They then stayed at home and only came into contact with their housekeeper for the next two days. A driver drove the four-member family to the local health center to report their travel history and be sampled for COVID-19 testing on Tuesday. The man mostly stayed at home on Wednesday although he broke self-isolation on Thursday and Friday, when he hung out at a cafe with a friend between 8:00 and 9:00 each morning. The suspected patient is now quarantined and treated at the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases while the three people who came into contact with him, including the housekeeper, the driver and the friend, were sent to a quarantine camp in the district. Twenty-six people related to the case have been sampled for testing as of Saturday morning. Functional forces also reported the cases of his wife and children who are now in the Central Highlands of Dak Lak to the provincial Center for Disease Control. A section of alley No. 20 on Ho Dac Di Street in Tan Phu District, Ho Chi Minh City is fenced off, August 1, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! New Delhi, Aug 1 : With a total of 22 companies filing their application under the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme announced by the government to boost electronics manufacturing in the country, experts on Saturday said the scheme can lead India to global leadership in mobile phone manufacturing. The scheme will bring additional investment in electronics manufacturing to the tune of Rs 11,000 crore, according to the government estimates released on Saturday. "The PLI will also unleash animal spirits in the potential Indian champions who are envisaged to grow to be global leaders in times to come," Pankaj Mohindroo, Chairman, India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA) said in a statement. The PLI scheme for large scale electronics manufacturing was notified on April 1. The scheme extends an incentive of 4-6 per cent on incremental sales of goods under target segments that are manufactured in India to eligible companies, for a period of five years subsequent to the base year (FY2019-20). The total cost of the scheme is expected to be Rs 40,995 crore which includes an incentive outlay of approximately Rs 40,951 crore and administrative expenses to the tune of Rs 44 crore. The scheme was open for filing applications till Friday and incentives are applicable under the scheme from Saturday. The international mobile phone manufacturing companies that have applied under the mobile phone segment are Samsung, Foxconn Hon Hai, Rising Star, Wistron and Pegatron. Out of these, three companies namely Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron are contract manufacturers for Apple iPhones. Foxconn also makes phones for Xiaomi in India. Major Chinese players like Vivo and OPPO stayed away from the PLI scheme amid the border tension and rising anti-China sentiments in the country. Indian mobile phone companies that applied under the scheme include Lava, Dixon Technologies, Micromax, Padget Electronics, Sojo Manufacturing Services and Optiemus Electronics. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the scheme is expected to promote exports significantly. Out of the total production of Rs 11.5 lakh crore in the next five years, more than 60 per cent will be contributed by exports of the order of Rs 700,000 crore. "The announcements today mark a significant milestone in India's journey towards becoming a electronics manufacturing hub," Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CyberMedia Research (CMR), told IANS. "Over the short-term, India stands to potentially gain from a multiplier effect that brings more electronics component players into the ecosystem, contributing to greater value addition locally, and a better integration into the global value chains," he said. The scheme will generate approximately three lakh direct employment opportunities in next five years along with creation of additional indirect employment of nearly three times the direct employment, the IT ministry said. Domestic value addition is expected to grow from the current 15-20 per cent to 35-40 per cent in case of mobile phones and 45-50 per cent for electronic components, it added. India has already emerged as the second largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world after China. In the last five years, more than 200 mobile phone manufacturing units were set up, the IT Minister said in June. Now that both local and federal eviction moratoriums have expired, tenants chances of getting evicted for not paying rent rest solely in the hands of Bexar County judges. Early in the pandemic, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and the Texas Supreme Court suspended evictions unless tenants posed an immediate criminal or safety threat. At the same time, Congress barred properties with federally backed mortgages or those participating in federal housing programs from filing evictions, a protection that ended July 24. With those directives expired, the judges who oversee eviction cases in Bexar County can make their own decisions about whether to hold eviction court. Of the five judges who oversee the countys four justice of the peace courts, only two are hearing regular eviction cases which has meant tenants possibility of losing their homes depends on the court precinct in which they live. Now Playing: The eviction process begins when a landlord delivers a notice to vacate to the tenant. Video: Mike Fisher Its an extreme example of unequal justice, said Genevieve Hebert Fajardo, a law professor at St. Marys University who helps run a hotline for tenants facing eviction. Some tenants will lose their homes during a pandemic, and others wont, solely on the virtue of where they live. Given the uneven enforcement, its unclear how many eviction cases will pile up in San Antonio. Also unknown is the number of tenants who cant pay their rent. This spring, the city set aside $50 million for rental and mortgage assistance, one of the largest outlays in the country. As a result, thousands of renters have been assisted, and the city still has about $20 million left in the pot. Ian Benavidez, the assistant director of the citys Neighborhood and Housing Services Department, said eviction filings are down about 40 percent compared to last year. From January 2019 through June 2019, nearly 9,800 evictions were filed in local courts. This year, about 6,000 were filed through the end of July. Benavidez said there could be several factors driving the decrease. Now Playing: Deputy Constable Edward Prado enforces eviction orders in Bexar County. Video: Billy Calzada One of them: Its estimated that about half of San Antonios rental units were covered under the CARES Act eviction moratorium. After it expired, the law requires landlords to give tenants an additional 30-day notice to vacate, instead of the typical three-day notice. When those cases resume, there could be a wave of eviction filings at the end of August, Benavidez said. But he is hoping that the citys commitment to earmark millions of dollars to housing assistance will help mitigate that. The citys emergency housing fund is the largest of its kind in Texas and one of the largest in the nation, Benavidez said. For each family approved for help, the city will pay up to three months of rent and utilities, or up to $5,000; internet costs; and up to $300 in cash. By July 30, the money went to about 9,000 families struggling to pay rent and 1,700 that needed assistance paying mortgages. As part of that program, the city set up workstations in each justice of the peace court to provide assistance if landlords decided not to move forward with evictions. With two judges now holding cases remotely, those city employees sit in on videoconference hearings to notify tenants and landlords about the assistance programs. So far, nearly 100 cases have been dismissed or delayed so tenants and landlords could work out arrangements, with an additional 100 cases in the process, Benavidez said. Hopefully, well be able to continue this past the emergency crisis because we know that evictions are not just a pandemic issue, Benavidez said. They definitely were an issue prepandemic and will continue after. Housing attorneys and policy experts argue its not safe for families to be subjected to eviction in the middle of a pandemic a process that can include going to court, having a constable move out a familys belongings and finding a new place to live. They are calling on elected officials to pressure judges to adopt a countywide policy on eviction case proceedings a decision that can be made only by the judges themselves. Right now, each court has a different plan. On the North Side, which is overseen by Justice of the Peace Court No. 3, the court still is moving forward with eviction hearings three days per week, scheduling five to 10 cases on each of those days. Most cases are heard through videoconference or phone, although exceptions are made for landlords or tenants who dont have access to the technology and want to appear in person. More Information More Information Are you facing an eviction or need help paying rent? For legal advice, call 210-570-6135 to reach St. Mary's University's legal hotline. For help paying rent or other bills, visit: www.sanantonio.gov/nhsd/programs/fairhousing. See More Collapse The same is true in Judge Robert Bobby Tejedas court in Precinct 1, which encompasses the South and West sides. He scheduled more than 60 eviction cases to be heard the last week of July. But his peer, Judge Ciro Rodriguez, the other judge who serves in Precinct 1, still is not hearing cases, unless they pose an immediate safety or criminal threat. Neither are the judges of Precinct 2 and 4, which encompass part of the West Side, downtown and the East Side. Its probably incredibly confusing for tenants themselves who are facing eviction, said Sofia Lopez, a researcher for the Action Center on Race and the Economy, an advocacy group that focuses on racial and economic justice. Its all the more ludicrous that within the same precinct Precinct 1 having two places you could potentially have a hearing, but someone could tell you that Precinct 1 wasnt having hearings at all. Judge Rogelio Lopez Jr., who oversees Precinct 4s justice of the peace court, said that under the Texas Supreme Court guidelines, judges can extend any court proceedings that they think could jeopardize the safety of their staff or public through Sept. 30. Lopez said he is closely watching COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Bexar County, which began to skyrocket in June. He wont resume court proceedings until it appears safe to do so. There was obviously a (Texas) Supreme Court moratorium that ordered us to (pause eviction proceedings), but once that was lifted, the courts were given discretion as to whether or not they felt safe opening or not, Lopez said. The decision and responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of each individual judge. Another reason hes not moving forward: Families facing eviction for not paying rent may not be able to afford the internet or cellphone cost to attend a hearing by Zoom or phone. Nearly a quarter of Bexar County households dont have a desktop or laptop computer, and nearly 17 percent dont have internet access, according to 2018 census estimates. My court handles 40,000 to 50,000 cases a year, so to try to do proceedings without having people there is not realistically feasible, Lopez said, referencing all his cases, including evictions, traffic and small claims. I can't have 100 people on a Zoom call and try and run through a docket. Across the nation, its estimated that 28 million households were at risk of eviction as the pandemic and economic crisis began to unfold, according to a study released in May by Amherst, an investment research firm. Lopez, the researcher for the Action Center on Race and the Economy, said thats nearly three times the number of homeowners who lost their homes in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It feels like were watching a train wreck about to happen, said Lopez. Its ongoing, but its about to get so much worse, and our elected officials and policy makers are just completely absent. An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amount that the city of San Antonio will provide for housing assistance. Marina Starleaf Riker is an investigative reporter for the San Antonio Express-News with extensive experience covering affordable housing, inequality and disaster recovery. To read more from Marina, become a subscriber. marina.riker@express-news.net | Twitter: @MarinaStarleaf Former Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari slammed few members of the Congress party for "taking swipes at the Dr Manmohan Singh led UPA Government" rather than fight the Bharatiya Janata Party. "BJP was out of power for 10 yrs 2004-14. Not once did they ever blame Vajpayee or his govt for their then predicaments. In @INCIndia, unfortunately, some ill-informed's would rather take swipes at Dr Manmohan Singh-led UPA govt than fight NDA/BJP," tweeted Tewari. The Congress MP further went on to say that in times of unity, the members are creating a divide. "When unity (is) required they divide," the tweet read further. This comes on the back of the ongoing political crisis in Rajasthan triggered by simmering differences between Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot. Pilot was removed as the deputy chief minister and the state unit chief of Congress. The Congress has accused the BJP of indulging in horse-trading to bring down the Gehlot government. The BJP has rejected all the allegations. New Jerseys fourth-largest city has a new top cop and head of its fire department, city officials announced. Elizabeth Deputy Police Chief Giacomo Sacca will take on the mantle of city police chief, replacing former chief John Brennan, who retired in March after nearly 30 years on the department, Mayor J. Christian Bollwage announced in a statement. Brennan had served as the citys police chief for three years. Bollwage also announced Donald Peterson, Deputy Chief of the Elizabeth Fire Department, will be the citys new fire chief, replacing Thomas McNamara. Chief Sacca is a strong proponent and practitioner of community-oriented policing, Bollwage said in the statement. Throughout his career, he has invested in relationships with his superiors, staff and all segments of his community. His past roles have shown that he is a great leader among officers, proved his attentiveness to our residents and puts the needs of our city as top priority. Sacca, who joined the police department in 1995, served as the citys deputy police chief for the past two years and rose through the ranks of the department, according to the statement. He achieved the highest score and ranked first in the promotional exam, the statement said. Peterson, who was hired by the fire department in 1987, served as tour commander as the deputy chief for 15 years, the statement said. Elizabeth Police Chief John Brennan, left, poses for a photo at his 2017 swearing in with then Police Director James Cosgrove. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media Saccas appointment comes during a period of transition for the city police department, following a year that saw the citys longtime civilian Police Director James Cosgrove resign when it was proven he used racist and sexist slurs against his staff. Cosgrove stepped down after State Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal called for his resignation when it was proven he used the n-word to refer to African American employees and the c-word to refer to women. The initial investigation was sparked by a complaint filed by a Westfield Attorney to the Union County Prosecutors Office. Amid the investigation, Bollwage, who had appointed Cosgrove more than 20 years prior, asked Brennan to step aside while an unspecified complaint from a police officer was probed. The details of that complaint against the chief were not revealed, but Brennan previously told NJ Advance Media that it was never sustained against him. The appointments also come months after Acting Prosecutor Lyndsay V. Ruotolo found no evidence to support claims of corruption in internal affairs or institutional or de facto racism in the department. The prosecutors office itself also underwent its own leadership changes amid the revelations about Cosgrove. Last June, Earl Graves, a former East Orange cop, was appointed as the new civilian director of the police department. He is the citys first African American police director. Graves served as interim police chief after Brennan announced his retirement. As a new member of the Elizabeth Police Department, Chief Sacca has made my transition into director smooth and it has been a pleasure to work with him, Graves said in the statement. He is a genuine, transparent person of integrity and his respect for our constituents and previous positions in the police department make him most qualified for his new role as police chief. Elizabeth has one of the most diverse populations in Union County. An estimated 65% of residents identify as Hispanic, while 19% are Black and 45% are white. An activist previously told NJ Advance Media he hoped the citys next police chief would help improve diversity issues in the police department. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription. Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. Actor Sushant Singh Rajputs suicide case is getting murkier by the day. Now, a former cook of the late actor has spoken to Times Now about him, his health and his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty. The cook, named Ashok, told the news channel that he never saw Sushant visit a doctor or take medicines. He said that he left for his home in September 2019 but when he returned in October, he was told he has been sacked. Ashok said the person he was talking to let him know that it was Rhea who had sacked him. Talking about his health, Ashok said Sushant was fine but started falling sick after his Europe trip with Rhea. He said at first they were told it was dengue but later realised it was depression. Never saw her (Rhea) taking control of him until the Europe trip post which Sushant starting falling sick. In the early stages we were told its dengue but now am coming to know that he was down with depression, he said. On Saturday, Sushants sister Shweta Singh Kirti on Saturday penned down a note, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to look into the entire case. Seeking justice for her late brother, Shweta has been sharing a lot of updates on her social media handles. After her father levelled serious allegations against actor Rhea, she had written, If truth doesnt matter, nothing ever will. #justiceforsushantsinghrajput Earlier today, Shweta penned a note tagging Prime Minister Modi which reads, Dear sir, somehow my heart says that you stand with and for the truth. We are from a very simple family. My brother had no godfather when he was in Bollywood nor do we have anyone right now. My request to you is to immediately look into this case and make sure that everything is handled in sanitised way and no evidence are tampered with. Expecting justice to prevail. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer I am sister of Sushant Singh Rajput and I request an urgent scan of the whole case. We believe in Indias judicial system and expect justice at any cost. @narendramodi @PMOIndia #JusticeForSushant #SatyamevaJayate, she further added. Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai residence on June 14. According to the Maharashtra police, statements of 41 people, including filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, film critic Rajeev Masand, director-producer Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and filmmaker Aditya Chopra have been recorded in the investigation so far. . Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Dr Ronan Glynn, Acting Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, and Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin Acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn has warned against large gatherings and house parties over the bank holiday weekend as 45 new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed. No further coronavirus-related deaths were recorded, the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) said. There is now a total of 26,109 confirmed cases and a total of 1,763 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland. Read More Of the cases notified on Saturday, 23 are men and 22 are women. More than three quarters of the cases (77pc) are under 45 years of age, while 50pc are aged 25-44 years. Eighteen are associated with outbreaks or close contacts of a confirmed case, while 12 cases have been identified as community transmission. The HSE said it is working to identify any contacts the patients may have had to provide them with information and advice to prevent further spread. Dr Glynn said over the last five days we have seen an average of 44 cases a day. This trend is clearly concerning and now is the time to ensure you and your families are making every effort to keep each other safe, he added. He urged people to avoid large gatherings over the bank holiday weekend. He said: Ensure gatherings are kept to a minimum and invite no more than 10 others into your home. Do not organise or attend house parties. Restaurants must enforce a limit of 50 people (including staff) on their premises at any one time. All workplaces should again review their procedures and protocols. Avoid congregated settings or environments where safety precautions are not in place. Wash your hands regularly, carry hand sanitiser and wear a face covering where appropriate. Ensure you isolate immediately if you experience any flu like symptoms. It is our individual action that will stop the spread. What is it with rappers and anti-Semitic rants on Twitter? Just weeks after English grime star Wileys tirade against Jewish people saw him banned from the platform, now a member of one of the worlds highest-profile Jewish dynasties, Kate Rothschild, finds herself embroiled in a new storm thanks to her ex-boyfriend Jay Electronica. The New Orleans rapper, 43, attacked a rabbi who was interviewed earlier this month by American television host Nick Cannon on his YouTube channel. Cannon himself has been suspended by US TV network ViacomCBS for propagating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Kate Rothschild, 38, pictured left with Jay Electronica in 2015 and right, at The Roundhouse in London, finds herself embroiled in a new storm thanks to her ex-boyfriend Electronica blasted in a tweet: Rabbi Abraham Cooper is a coward who lied to our brother Nick Cannon about the history of the Caucasian race. Ask him does he stand behind the vile teachings of the [sacred Jewish text] Talmud? Dont be a coward next time Cooper you devil. He then went on to recommend anti-Semitic passages from the Bible to his 373,000 followers. Kate, 38, has been conspicuous in her silence over the comments. She remains professionally connected to the musician: he is signed to Jay-Zs record label Roc Nation, where she holds a senior management position. Electronica's tweet, in which he called Rabbi Abraham Cooper a 'coward' and 'devil' before going on to recommend anti-Semitic passages from the Bible to his 373,000 followers Kate caused her family great embarrassment when she began an affair with Electronica which ended her marriage to first husband Ben Goldsmith. Kate and Ben split in 2012 after he found text messages on her phone from the American rapper. Neither Kate nor Electronica, responded to requests for comment. Roc Nation has also not responded. I hear that eco-friendly Ed Sheeran has turned his country estate into a carbon-neutral oasis. Im told Ed, 29, has installed ground-source heat pumps costing about 18,000 each linked to underfloor heating systems in the houses on his Suffolk spread. That means his gas and electricity bills will go down but with a reported fortune of 200 million, I dont think hell notice... Popular Musician Isaignani Ilaiyaraaja has filed a police complaint against Sai Prasad, the owner of Prasad Studios. In the complaint to Chennai Police Commissioner, the composer accused the management of Prasad Studios of tampering his musical instruments and notes. For those who don't know, Ilaiyaraaja, who has worked in over 1300 films in South and Hindi, has been working out of his office-cum-studio inside the Prasad Studios for the past 25 years. However, things turned sour after Sai Prasad, grandson of the late film producer LV Prasad took over the management. Notably, the case is pending in court. In the complaint, Ilaiyaraaja has made some serious allegations against the owner of Prasad Studios. "All my invaluable composition notes are lying there, and I received credible information that they are being sold surreptitiously in the black market for a huge sum," the composer mentioned in the complaint. Well, the rivalry between Sai Prasad and Ilaiyaraaja started in 2019, when the owner asked the composer to vacate the premises so that he can begin its renovation. As per reports, late LV Prasad had asked Ilaiyaraaja to set up his studio inside the premises. Now, after Sai Prasad's request, the composer reportedly offered to take the premises on lease. However, it was rejected by the Prasad Studios' management. Also Read : Ilaiyaraaja Shares A Good Rapport With Rajinikanth & Kamal Haasan Ilaiyaraaja also accused Sai Prasad of stealing his valuable belongings from the studio. In the complaint, the music composer said, "The worth of some of the materials cannot be quantified by way of money. I have learnt through my known circle that Mr Sai Prasad through his men has been removing, stealing, and damaging many of my belongings and articles which are worth several crores. Therefore, necessary action to be taken against the miscreants and my belongings to be recovered immediately." Also Read : Mani Ratnam & Ilaiyaraaja: Only 10 Films From This Majestic Combo, Take A Look Now, let's see what action will the police take against Prasad Studios. August 1 marks the anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), which is today celebrating 93 years. This year, China is also celebrating the fifth anniversary of the launch of the reform plan for the armed forces. Five years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for efforts in fully strengthening the armed forces through reform and unswervingly follow the path of strengthening the armed forces with Chinese characteristics at the Central Military Commission Reform Work Meeting in November. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), serves as the head of a CMC leading group for deepening reform on national defense and the armed forces. The reform is guided by the "CMC chairman responsibility system" to ensure the top leadership of the armed forces is centralized in the hands of the CPC Central Committee and the CMC. Here is a quick look on several key issues concerning the military reform, which has been described as the "most wide-ranging and ambitious restructuring since 1949". According to a guideline on deepening national defense and military reform, released by the CMC, the decision to deepen the reform aims at breaking down systematic, structural, and policy barriers, modernizing the military organization, and improving combat capacity. The overall goal is to achieve progress and concrete results before 2020 in military administration and joint operational command, optimizing military structure, enhancing policy systems and civilian-military integration, and building a modern military with Chinese characteristics that can win information age wars. As the infographic shows above, great progress has been progressively made in the past five years and these achievements can be summarized into two aspects strengthening joint operational capability and promoting civilian-military integration. To strengthen joint operational capability, Chinese military has reshaped the leadership and management system, optimized the scale, structure and forces composition, and reformed the military policies and institutions. Promoting civilian-military integration is another important component of the military reform process. The central commission for integrated military and civilian development was founded in January 2017 to strengthen centralized and unified leadership to boost integration process. At the first plenary meeting of the central commission for civilian-military integration, President Xi upgraded the civilian-military integration as a national strategy, saying that it is a major achievement of China's long-term exploration of coordinated development of economic and national defense construction. According to a five-year plan on promoting integrated military and civilian development in the science and technology sector released in August 2017, a coordinated military-civilian innovation system for the sector should be put in place by 2020, in addition to breakthroughs in mechanisms and exploring cost-efficient patterns. It also identified a new round of key sci-tech projects in military-civilian integration towards 2030, such as an integrated information system, quantum communication/computing, and brain science/brain-inspired intelligence. Meanwhile, China will continue to lower its defense budget growth rate to 6.6 percent in 2020. The 2020 defense budget around 1.27 trillion yuan (about 179 billion U.S. dollars), continues to see single-digit growth for a fifth consecutive year. The expenditure has been mainly used for advancing defense and military reforms, supporting military training and diverse tasks, modernizing weapons and equipment, and improving welfare of service personnel, according to He Lei, former deputy head of the Academy of Military Sciences, who is also a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC). During the past years, China has initiated a batch of major projects in areas such as intelligent manufacturing, green manufacturing, high-end equipment and space infrastructure construction, which all provide platform for civil-military industrial integration, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Two major drug companies will supply the US government with 100 million doses of an experimental coronavirus vaccine, the Trump administration said on Friday, as the nation's top health agency predicted that fatalities would rise in the coming weeks. The agreement calls for the US government to pay French drug maker Sanofi and British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline up to $2.1 billion to supply it with enough vaccines for 50 million people, with the option to buy another 500 million doses. The purchase falls under the Trump administration's so-called Operation Warp Speed, intended to rush a COVID-19 vaccine to the market by the end of 2020. "Todays investment supports our latest vaccine candidate, an adjuvanted product being developed by Sanofi and GSK, all the way through clinical trials and manufacturing, with the potential to bring hundreds of millions of safe and effective doses to the American people," Alex Azar, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, said in announcing the deal. The coronavirus, which first appeared in China, has infected 4.5 million people in the US and killed more than 152,000 Americans, according to a Reuters tally. The US Centers for Disease Control on Friday forecast between 168,000 and 182,000 total fatalities by August 22, predicting that deaths will rise fastest in Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Tennessee and Washington state. The CDC also released a study that said COVID-19 had spread to nearly half the staff and campers at a sleep-away camp in Georgia over a week and a half ago. The investigation demonstrated "that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission." SHIFTING TO MIDWEST New infections rose by nearly 2,000 in Illinois on Friday, according to the state health department, the highest single-day increase since May. Neighbouring Indiana in the Midwest saw a spike of 901 new cases. A top White House pandemic advisor, Dr Deborah Birx, has said the virus appeared to be shifting away from Sunbelt states, including Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, and moving into the Midwest. Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said on Thursday that Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska were particularly at risk. Four US states reported record increases in deaths on Friday, including Florida, which has in recent weeks been a hot spot of COVID-19 cases. Florida also reported 9,007 new cases, bringing its total infections to over 470,000, the second highest in the country behind California. Florida is among at least 18 states that saw cases more than double in July, when almost 25,000 people in the United States died of COVID-19. "I definitely don't feel safe. I feel like I'm fighting an invisible enemy," said Zinnia Santiago, 50, an executive assistant who lives in Coral Springs, Florida. The state, already reeling from the pandemic and resulting economic damage, was forced to close testing sites on Friday as Hurricane Isaias approached bearing high winds and heavy rains and residents stocked up on essentials. ONE DEATH A MINUTE Coronavirus deaths in the United States are rising at their fastest rate since early June. Roughly one American died about every minute from COVID-19 on Wednesday. In the nation's capital, top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, during testimony before a US House of Representatives subcommittee, fended off efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to draw him into the fierce political debate over the handling of the pandemic. A travel advisory went into effect in Chicago on Friday requiring travelers from neighboring Wisconsin to quarantine for 14 days. Wisconsin joined 21 other states that have seen a surge in new cases. The COVID-19 outbreak "is not in good control" in Wisconsin said Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. Gandhinagar, Aug 1 : With the help of the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC), the state government will be setting up the Gujarat Skills Development Corporation (GSDC), where 10 private companies will also hold 51 per cent stake. The NSDC in its board meeting on Friday gave the nod to setting up of such a corporation in Gujarat. "According to a projection, there will be a requirement of more than 20 lakh skilled workforce in Gujarat by 2022. The setting up of GSDC will play a big role in making trained workforce available in Gujarat. Due to the national level Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, the private sector investment will also be enabled in this corporation, which will add pace to the existing skill development in the state," said Vipul Mitra, Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), labour and employment department, Gujarat. According to the setup, the state government will have a quarter of the share in the corporation, while 24 per cent stakeholding will be that of NSDC. The remaining 51 per cent of the share will be held by 10 private companies in equal proportion. The seed fund required for the corporation is around Rs 100 crore. The state government has already provisioned Rs 30 crore in the budget 2020-21 for the purpose. The corporation will be supporting and creating high quality skills training institutes in the state. It will also provide skill development to technical and financial assistance in state government's various agencies. The GSDC will create Gujarat specific innovation models and also facilitate sharing of best practices from other states as well as the central government. "The NSDC will provide equity funding and also necessary support in hiring technology services, technical inputs, advisory services, financing services etc to the GSDC," added Mitra. "Using its expertise and experience, the NSDC will also undertake capacity building in GSDC," added Mitra. Once operational the GSDC will carry out activities such as skills financing, CSR lead skilling, capacity building, industry connect, market analytics, international collaboration knowledge and advisory services and NSQF courses, which are presently undertaken by the NSDC. Seeing the deluge of misinformation around mental illnesses and the online attack on Rhea Chakraborty, late actor Sushant Singh Rajputs therapist has broken her silence. Susan Walker spoke to journalist Barkha Dutt about Sushant and his severe condition and how Rhea was his biggest support during the tough time. Walker said Sushant was suffering from depression and bipolar disorder. In light of the misinformation and conspiracy theories currently raging on social media about Sushant Singh Rajput and Rhea Chakraborty, I have decided it is my duty to make a statement. In my capacity as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, I met Sushant and Rhea on several occasions in November and December 2019 and communicated again with Rhea in June of this year. ALSO WATCH | Rhea Chakraborty under our watch, say Bihar cops on Sushant death case She added that the stigma around mental illness can be harmful for a patient, keeping them from seeking help. Sushant was suffering from bipolar disorder, a severe mental illness that can be crippling for an individual during an episode. The symptoms of which can include severe anxiety, major depression and sometimes disordered thinking and paranoia. The continuing, appalling stigma around mental illness makes it very difficult for patients and their families to reach out. This has to stop. Mental illness is no different than cancer or diabetes. It can affect anyone, regardless of class, financial status and so on. In a way that cancer can, she said. People with mental illnesses and their families need to feel safe from discrimination so that they can get their treatment and support and acceptance they need. There is no shame in having a mental illness. Should one feel ashamed of having cancer? Mental illness can be treated, it is often the shame of having such an illness that can drive people to suicide. Along with the absolute torment of being in the grip of an illness that affects the ways our minds and emotions work, she added. Walker said Rhea was his biggest support and cared for him. Sushant was suffering terribly during his bouts of depression and hypomania. Rhea was his strongest support. From the first time I met them as a couple, I was impressed by the degree of concern, love and support she showed. It was very evident how close they were. Rhea took care of his appointments and gave him enough courage to attend, despite his being so fearful that someone would find out. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer When he was severely ill, he depended on her as somewhat of a mother figure and she completely filled that role with love, encouragement and patience. It was an incredibly hard time for her as seeing someone suffer through the cruelty of mental illnesses of family members. They need to keep it a secret and bear things in silence, an added trauma. The treatment that Rhea has received on social media is deeply shocking to me as I have only ever experienced her as deeply caring and sensitive person. Sushants sad and untimely death needs to be yet another lesson for us all--in ending of shame and stigma around mental illness, she added. Rajput, 34, was found hanging in his suburban Bandra apartment in Mumbai on June 14. His father filed an FIR against Rhea earlier this week, accusing her of abetment to suicide. . Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Ann OConnor with one of the pigs living at Secret Valley Wildlife Park Secret Valley Wildlife Park (SVWP) has appeared on RTE's Nationwide as it continues its campaign to remain open following the coronavirus pandemic. Home to 35 species of wild animals, including rescue animals from the pet trade and research laboratories, owner of SVWP Ann O'Connor has made a desperate call for public support to maintain its conservation facility. 'Secret Valley has no Government funding, and despite fundraising efforts through animal sponsorships and pre-selling tickets, we urgently need support to care for the animals and carry out essential enclosure maintenance and repairs,' Ann said. The park has over 100 animals to feed and care for daily, ranging from domestic animals to llamas and alpacas, meerkats and otters. Closed for over three months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 14-acre wildlife park, which relied on income from entrance fees, school tours and education workshops, has now run out of funds. Even though they have reopened, they still need to make up the shortfall in income from March to July. Ann has launched an emergency appeal on GoFundMe and now has launched a crowdfunding campaign with perks for contributors in order to buy animal feed and maintain the habitats. Since it opened 14 years ago, Secret Valley Wildlife Park has worked with a European exotic animal rescue organisation to provide a permanent home for exploited and neglected exotic animals. The facility currently has four species of rescued primates, including capuchin monkeys and cotton-top tamarins, rescued from the pet trade. A recent addition is four Rhesus Macaques which were saved from a Dutch Laboratory. Having been used for neurological research, it is hoped Bassie, Adriaan, Puyi and Tchang can live out the rest of their lives in peace at Secret Valley. The Wexford wildlife facility is an award-winning tourist attraction where the animal keepers work tirelessly on conservation and school educational programmes, according to Ann, who says that having to close the gates for good would be heart-breaking for everyone concerned. 'Secret Valley is a weather dependent seasonal attraction, where we take in 80 per cent of our income from March until the end of August. It costs over 100,000 to run for a year and, while we are open again since June 29, we will still at best have only half the visitors, and the same costs, with the restrictions that are in place.' To date, almost 6,000 of the wildlife park's 50,000 fundraising target has been achieved, and people are asked to contribute whatever they can to help save the Wexford wildlife sanctuary. Contributions can be made on www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-secret-valley-wildlife-park#/ People who contribute to the park's fundraising efforts can avail of perks such as a discounted annual family pass for 80 instead of 137. 'Over the past 14 years, Secret Valley Wildlife Park has educated visitors on the plight of animals in the wild, and some in captivity, and the conservation and rescue efforts that go on. Ironically, we now need to protect our rescued animals more than ever, and keep them in our care,' Ann said of the fundraising appeal. Opened initially as an adventure farm in 2007, Secret Valley invested and expanded to a wildlife park in 2012, working hard to meet the high standards required for a zoo licence. The facility was accepted as full members of BIAZA (British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums) in 2018. TV features over the years, including 'Higher Ground', The Holiday Show, Nick Junior, CBeebies and the Brennan brothers 'At your Service' programme have encouraged thousands of visitors to the scenic park. Last Friday's episode of Nationwide is now available to view on the RTE Player. Officers seized 30 kilos of heroin, 20 kilos of cocaine and three kilos of MDMA (Picture: National Crime Agency) Police have charged three British men with drug trafficking after they seized more than 50 kilos of class A drugs from a lorry whose driver was sleeping. Brian Wright, 72, Mark Youell, 63, and Alfred Rumbold, 64, were arrested as part of an ongoing probe into a transport firm allegedly involved in importing drugs. Wright was sleeping when Dutch police arrested him in his removals lorry just north of Utrecht in The Netherlands. Officers seized 30 kilos of heroin, 20 kilos of cocaine and three kilos of MDMA from the truck. The drugs have a combined street value of around 3.2 million. Read more: Brawls erupt across the UK as thousands flock to the seaside on hottest day of the year Three British men were arrested after the seizure (Picture: National Crime Agency) Shortly afterwards officers from the UKs National Crime Agency (NCA) moved in to arrest Youell and Rumbold at their homes in Clacton, Essex, and Orpington in Kent. Investigators searching Wrights home in Folkestone, Kent, recovered a handgun, ammunition and 10,000 in cash. All three men have since been charged on suspicion of importing class A drugs. Youell and Rumbold are due to appear at Medway Magistrates Courton on Saturday. Read more: English told to get out of Scotland by protesters at Glasgow Central station The joint British-Dutch investigation forms part of Operation Venetic, which has seen authorities arrest hundreds of people after they infiltrated the encrypted communications platform Encrochat. NCA branch commander Peter Stevens said: This operation has prevented millions of pounds of dangerous class A drugs from reaching the UK, where they would have been sold on by gangs involved in violence and exploitation. It demonstrates the value of international co-operation in combating organised crime. Our investigation into the circumstances surrounding this seizure, and those suspected of being behind it, continues. Thousands of people marched in Russias Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk on August 1 and then gathered for a rally in front of the headquarters of the regional administration. The protesters chanted such slogans such as, We need the entire countrys support," Russia without Putin, Shame on the Russian media, and mocked acting regional Governor Mikhail Degtyaryov, who was recently appointed by President Vladimir Putin. Daily protests although largely ignored by state media -- have persisted since popular Governor Sergei Furgal was arrested on July 9 and transferred to Moscow, pending trial on charges of attempted murder and ordering the killing of two local businessmen in 2004-5. Two years ago, Furgal unexpectedly won local elections against a Moscow-backed candidate, and his supporters see his arrest as a politically motivated show of force by the Kremlin. Haryana home and health minister Anil Vij inaugurated the MRI and CT scan centre at civil hospital in Ambala Cantonment on Saturday. Speaking to media persons, Vij said, The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine has been installed on a public-private partnership (PPP) model. It produces much lesser sound than other machines and takes lesser time. It can also perform MRIs of children, pregnant women and heart in case of heart diseases. Along with this, a brain MRI can also be done in five minutes. This facility will be free for Scheduled Caste (SC) patients, BPL card holders, accident victims, regular government employees and pensioners of Haryana. The centre has come up at a cost of about Rs 6 crore. All tests done by MRI machines have different rates, which have been set by the government, and are much lower than market price. The best cancer hospital in north India is also going to be inaugurated soon, where the building is ready and the remaining work is also going fast, Vij added. VIJAYAWADA: The YSR Congress-led Andhra Pradesh government reinstated Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar as State Election Commissioner after a long legal battle. According to reports, Ramesh Kumar has decided to take charge as SEC at Vijayawada on Monday. The government issued a GO on Thursday midnight reappointing Ramesh Kumar, subject to the outcome of the final verdict in the special leave petition that the government has filed in the Supreme Court. Panchayat raj and rural development principal secretary Gopal Krishna Dwivedi issued the GO restoring the post to Ramesh Kumar following the notification of Governor Biswa Bhushan Harichandan. The Governor said, In accordance with the orders of High Court of Andhra Pradesh in WP No. 8163 of 2020 and batch cases Dt.29.05.2020, I, Biswa Bhusan Harichandan, Governor of Andhra Pradesh, hereby, restore the position of Dr. N. Ramesh Kumar, IAS (Retd.) as State Election Commissioner. This Notification is subject to the outcome of the SLP(C) No.7294 of 2020 filed by the State of Andhra Pradesh, in the Supreme Court of India. Dwivedi issuing order in the name of the Governor stated, In compliance to the orders of High Court in WP No.8163 of 2020 and batch cases Dt.29.05.2020, the appended Notification shall be published in the extraordinary issue of Andhra Pradesh Gazette. Ramesh Kumar had been removed on April 10, and the tenure of the SEC reduced to three years. The Andhra Pradesh government also appointed retired Madras High Court judge V Kanagaraj in his place. Kumar moved the Andhra Pradesh High Court which had directed his reinstatement on May 29, but it was not implemented. He filed a contempt petition in the HC, which directed him to file a representation with the Governor. Accordingly, Ramesh Kumar met Harichandan on July 20 and the Governor wrote to the government asking it to follow the high court order on July 21 The AP government filed a SLP in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the high court contempt order but the apex court turned it down. The apex court gave Ramesh Kumar a week to file an affidavit about the implementation of high court orders. According to sources, as the SC did not give stay order and questioned about the non-implementation of the high court order, the government decided to issue an order in the name of the Governor as he directed the government to follow the high court orders. Sources said that Ramesh Kumars continuation as SEC would depend on the final verdict of the SC, which the government mentioned the same in the order. TD leaders and leaders of other parties welcomed the reinstatement of Ramesh Kumar and said that courts had protected the Constitution and the law in AP. Senior TD leader Gorantla Butchaiah Chowdary alleged that the YSRC government went against the Constitution and had now realised its folly. He said that no one was above the law and YSRC leaders should follow the Constitution. Members of the Jacksonville Community Center for the Deaf will present to the citys Commission on Disabilities and Human Relations a program intended to bring the citys deaf and hearing communities closer. Deloris DeDe Summers, the community centers president, said the PowerPoint presentation on the Open Communication Movement is an education tool. We have given a PowerPoint presentation to different places to educate them about the deaf community, Summers said. The presentation will happen Thursday. Community center members have talked with members of Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce and Jacksonvilles city council, as well as people at the Illinois School for the Deaf, Summers said. People are calling ISD to ask them about hearing problems, she said. They shoudnt. They need to be calling us at the JCCD. Queries at ISD include people calling to ask questions about hearing aids for their grandparents, she said. ISD has nothing to do with the (Jacksonville deaf) community because they (deaf students) are only there until theyre 22, Summers said. The goal of the presentations and other efforts of the community center is educating members of the hearing community on some of the basics of communicating with the deaf, including talking to businesses about basic sign language and, most importantly, where to go if hearing people have questions or want to learn more about the deaf community, Summers said. We are planning on having classes at the center, she said. The center is at 907 W. Superior Ave. In addition to the deaf, Summers wants to increase education about people who also are hard of hearing and those who are deaf and blind. Transparency is key the spectrum is broad, Summers said. Summers also has been working with Passavant Area Hospital on issues members of the deaf community have encountered while seeking medical care. The sign language interpreters there are awesome, she said. But if a person is in surgery and a deaf family members is waiting for information, its harder. I totally understand that the hospital is there for the patient but,when the interpreter is gone, what about the family members that are waiting? They need to be informed, too, Summers said. We need to improve that, she said, noting that meetings with Passavant have slowed down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. MUMBAI: Maharashtra Cabinet Minister of State Sambhuraj Desai said that the Bihar police cannot investigate Sushant Singh Rajput's death case in Maharashtra without permission. He stressed that the Bihar Police will have to inform the Mumbai Police before carrying out any investigation in the actor's death case. In a special conversation with Zee Media, Desai said that the Mumbai police informed them that Sushant Singh Rajput's family had not named anyone while filing FIR with the Bihar Police. He also said that the Mumbai police is questioning people associated with the matter, mainly from Bollywood, also adding that the case is going in the right direction. Meanwhile, Sushant's alleged girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty has filed a petition to the Supreme Court saying the investigation into her role in actor's death case should be transferred to Mumbai Police. Sushant's family has also filed a caveat with the court to not allow the actress' petition to be heard in court. The Maharashtra government also reiterated once again that the question of handing over the case to the CBI does not arise as the state police is capable of handling the probe, an assertion which comes in the backdrop of the growing clamour for a CBI investigation into the matter. The Mumbai Police has so far questioned over 35 people in the case whereas the Bihar Police has quizzed the late actor's sister Mitu Singh and his former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande. In another related development, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a case of money laundering against Rhea Chakraborty and her brother. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has invited his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei to a meeting of the "Lublin Triangle" ministers. According to the Foreign Ministrys press service, Kuleba informed his Belarusian counterpart about the launch of the "Lublin Triangle" format initiated by the three countries and invited him as an honored guest to the meeting of the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland in Kyiv. During a phone conversation held on Friday, July 31, the ministers discussed the detention of a few dozen of Russian militants by Belarusian law enforcement officers. Kuleba thanked the Belarusian side for the prompt provision of the list of detainees and assured that the competent authorities of Ukraine would thoroughly study it. The ministers also discussed the interaction of the two countries in the energy sector. Ukraine and Belarus are interested in using the Odesa-Brody oil pipeline to diversify oil supplies. The foreign ministers agreed to hold political consultations at the level of deputy ministers in the near future. During the talks, the parties are expected to pay attention to the preparation for the official visit of the President of Ukraine to the Republic of Belarus and the holding of the Third Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus in Grodno on October 8-9, 2020. On July 27, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania announced the creation of the "Lublin Triangle" format for political, economic, and social cooperation.The first meeting of this format took place in Poland, and the second one will be in Ukraine. As reported, Belarusian law enforcement agencies detained 33 militants of a foreign private military company near Minsk in the early hours of July 29. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko called an urgent meeting of the country's security council to discuss the recent detention of Wagner mercenaries near Minsk. The Wagner private military contractor is linked to businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's chef." Wagner fighters took part in the war in Donbas and Syria. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said the detection and detention of suspected Russian mercenaries near Minsk confirmed that they are used in various countries around the world and they pose a threat. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it will initiate the extradition of mercenaries from Russia's Wagner private military company who were detained in Belarus. ish She recently moved to Los Angeles after years of living in New York City. But as models get back to work Emily Ratajkowski headed back to her old stomping grounds and made the streets of NYC her catwalk. The 29-year-old showcased her trim figure in a chic ensemble as she was spotted out and about on Friday. Back in the city: Emily Ratajkowski headed back to her old stomping grounds and made the streets of NYC her catwalk as she headed to lunch on Friday The former UCLA student wore a red and yellow floral patterned mini skirt, that she teamed with a dark brown leather crop top. With a plunging neckline and puffed long-sleeves, the top added shape to her outfit. Opting for comfort, she added grey lace-up sneakers to her look as she walked down the sidewalk. Adding shape: The former UCLA student wore a red and yellow floral patterned mini skirt, that she teamed with a dark brown leather crop top. With a plunging neckline and puffed long-sleeves, the top added shape to her outfit Sensible shoes: Opting for comfort, she added grey lace-up sneakers to her look as she walked down the sidewalk For accessories, she wore thick gold hoop earrings, a gold choker and matching pendant necklace. While she covered her eyes in in chic brown cat eye sunglasses, she opted to not wear a face mask despite a New York state mandate requiring face coverings in public. Though, Emily did carry a white mask in her hand, as she chatted with a friend on her walk. Lunch date: She seemed to be headed to lunch as she later shared snaps on social media from a covered patio table, to Instagram The model also left her hair up in a sleek bun with pieces framing her face and she carried a white leather shoulder bag with her essentials. She seemed to be headed to lunch as she later shared snaps on social media from a covered patio table, to Instagram. Seated next to a wire fence and road blocks, she enjoyed a meal in a makeshift patio as cities look for ways to increase businesses despite dining regulations. Accessories: For accessories, she wore thick gold hoop earrings, a gold choker and matching pendant necklace She and her husband Sebastian Bear-McClard fled New York City while it was the American epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic and flew to Los Angeles on April 15. The Centers For Disease Control And Prevention had issued an advisory on March 28 asking 'residents of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to refrain from non-essential domestic travel for 14 days effective immediately.' However in late June as COVID-19 cases spiked dramatically in California, Emily and Sebastian crossed back to New York. Later: Emily added a standard face mask to her ensemble, which did not detract from her killer street look We didnt even have to wait until August to find out who was behind that massive Twitter breach on July 15th. Florida authorities arrested a Tampa teenager as he and two others were charged with a litany of felonies in the attack that hijacked numerous high-profile accounts. Charging documents from the prosecutors claim the Florida teen conducted a spear phishing attack by pretending to be Twitter IT and convincing an employee to hand over credentials. Google There are more details, but the whole episode remains as bizarre as it seemed when it occurred two weeks ago. Looking forward, were ready for some big news next week, with Googles Pixel 4a poised to launch on Monday before Samsungs big Galaxy Unpacked event Wednesday. Until then, you can tune in all weekend as SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule makes its first return trip home from the ISS. -- Richard The Engadget Podcast Big tech goes to Washington. Engadget This week on the show, Devindra and Cherlynn chat about Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazons long-awaited antitrust hearing. Are they too big to compete fairly? Or is the tech industry being overly criticized? (Its most likely the former.) Also, we dive into Garmins lackluster response to its widespread system outage, Quibis surprising Emmy noms, and Tenets international opening. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts or Stitcher. Continue reading. Donald Trump claims he will ban TikTok in the US That escalated quickly. Friday started with rumors that the Trump administration may try to force a sale of TikTok, and that Microsoft could be on deck as a buyer. On Friday night, however, the president told reporters he plans to ban the app somehow -- and it could happen later today. Continue reading. The best deals we found this week: MacBook Air, TCL Roku TVs and more And Amazons Echo Dot bundle is down to $21. Engadget This week is a good time to grab a new Apple laptop. Both Amazon and B&H Photo have the latest MacBook Air for $100 off, and those that need more power can grab the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro at Amazon for $200 off. Meanwhile two of TCLs 8-series Roku smart TVs are discounted at Best Buy: the 65-inch 4K model is down to $1,000 and the massive 75-inch 4K model is down to $1,500. Here are all the best deals from the week that you can still snag today, and follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for more updates. Continue reading. We could see COVID-19 exposure notification apps in the US soon On Friday, Canada released an app based on Google and Apple tech. Google According to a Google blog post, apps based on exposure notification systems it built along with Apple have launched in 16 countries and regions. Canadas COVID Alert app (iOS, Android) launched on Friday and is currently enabled in the province of Ontario. We havent seen this type of digital contact tracing tech enabled in the US yet, but that may change soon. According to Google, 20 states and territories covering about 45 percent of the population are exploring apps based on the systems, and the first ones should launch in the coming weeks. Continue reading. But wait, theres more... Netflix confirms it's adding playback speed controls to its Android app Microsoft confirms free 'Halo Infinite' multiplayer running at 120FPS Microsoft will shut down the Cortana iOS and Android apps in 2021 Apple is selling a braided Thunderbolt 3 cable for $129 Chernobyl-resistant mold could block radiation on the ISS Playing 'Flight Simulator' at home feels like meditation Netflix is making a film based on Ubisoft's 'Beyond Good & Evil' Sony's A7S III has 4K 120p video and a fully-articulating display YouTube is removing its community captions feature in September OnePlus Nord review: Almost invisible compromises Everything you need to know about getting a VPN in 2020 Oppo's new smartwatch runs Wear OS but with better health tracking Apple confirms its new iPhones will be delayed by a 'few weeks' They were last spotted in London filming a promo for their upcoming book, Once Upon a Tyne. But that will be the last fans see of Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly for a while as the duo announced they are quitting social media on Saturday. Better know by their household name of Ant and Dec, the presenters, both 44, said they were taking the summer off to spend time with loved ones. Toodle-oo!: This snap will be the last fans of Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly (both 44) for a while as the duo announced they are quitting social media on Saturday Posting to their joint Instagram account, the stars shared a snap of themselves kicking back in colourful Hawaiian shirts, captioned 'See you in FOUR WEEKS.' In a scene inspired by retro holiday postcards, Ant and Dec put their feet up with some light reading, with Dec sipping a cocktail while Ant chuckled at his magazine. The Newcastle natives finished the post with a friendly message which read: 'We're both taking a break for a few weeks to spend time with family and friends. Wishing everyone a great month and we'll see you at the end of August!' Dec married the duo's manager Ali Astall at St Michael's Roman Catholic Church in 2015 and the couple share a 23-month-old daughter named Isla Elizabeth Anne. Bon voyage: In a scene inspired by retro holiday postcards, Ant and Dec put their feet up with some light reading, with Dec sipping a cocktail while Ant chuckled at his magazine Household names: Known to everyone as simply Ant and Dec, the presenters said they were taking the summer off to spend time with loved ones Doubtless Ant will be taking the opportunity to spend time with his partner of over a year Anne-Marie Corbett, 43, with whom he shares a labrador called Hurley. Having attended rehab for painkiller addiction in 2017 and taking a work sabbatical in 2018 after facing drink-driving charges, Ant is now happily enjoying his relationship. Ant's divorce from partner Lisa Armstrong was announced in April following a painful breakup of their 12 year marriage. Happy couple: Ant will be using the break to spend time with his partner of over a year Anne-Marie Corbett, 43, with whom he shares a labrador called Hurley (pictured in January 2020) ITV recently confirmed its flagship show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Outta Here! would return for a 20th series on Thursday with Ant and Dec at the helm. It was also announced that a special one-off documentary called I'm A Celebrity: A Jungle Story, which will celebrate the very best moments of the show's stellar 19 year history. In May it was reported that show bosses were holding crisis talks to save this year's show amid the pandemic. According to The Sun, insiders were unclear whether the show would go ahead later this year after the TV industry was thrown into chaos by COVID-19. Back in action: Last week they returned to work together by taking part in a promotional day of filming for their upcoming book Once Upon A Tyne A source at the time said: 'I'm A Celebrity is six months away but bosses are holding meetings about how they can ensure it still goes ahead in the current climate. A raft of measures are being looked at. 'One of the most recent plans was to employ a crew that is 95 per cent made up of Australian workers to overcome the issues surrounding flying to different countries and the quarantine restrictions. 'This would mean a lot of the show's UK crew missing out on their annual big gig but ITV are having to seriously consider every option.' The insider added that due to the changing nature of the pandemic, every possible situation was being planned for. Best bits: Earlier on, the channel confirmed the show would return for its 20th series and announced a one-off documentary called I'm A Celebrity: A Jungle Story ATLANTA (AP) John Lewis was celebrated as an American hero during his funeral Thursday as former President Barack Obama and others called on people to follow Lewis' example and fight injustice. Three former presidents joined in the eulogies at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church after nearly a week of mourning that took the civil rights icon from his birthplace in Alabama to the nations capital of Washington to his final resting place in his home of Atlanta. Lewis was a man of pure joy and unbreakable perseverance," Obama said during a fiery speech in which he hearkened back to Lewis' legacy and connected it to the ongoing fight against those who are doing their darndest to discourage people from voting. He as much as anyone in our history brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals," Obama said. And some day when we do finish that long journey towards freedom, when we do form a more perfect union, whether it's years from now or decades or even if it takes another two centuries, John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America. Obama, speaking from the pulpit of the church that Martin Luther King Jr. once led, called on Congress to renew the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court diminished in 2012. You want to honor John, lets honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for, Obama said. Obama endorsed ending the Senate filibuster if that is whats needed to pass an overhauled voting law. The first Black president called the procedural hurdle that effectively requires 60 votes to pass major legislation a Jim Crow relic, referring to the segregation era. Former President George W. Bush said Lewis preached the Gospel and lived its ideals, insisting that hate and fear had to be answered with love and hope." Lewis died July 17 at the age of 80. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recalled how Lewis' body was lying in state at the U.S. Capitol earlier this week, and a double rainbow appeared. There was this double rainbow over the casket," she said. He was telling us, I'm home in heaven, I'm home in heaven.' We always knew he worked on the side of angels, and now he is with them. The arc of Lewis legacy of activism was once again tied to Ebenezers former pastor King, whose sermons Lewis discovered while scanning the radio dial as a 15-year-old boy growing up in then-segregated Alabama. King continued to inspire Lewis civil rights work for the next 65 years as he fought segregation during sometimes bloody marches, Greyhound bus Freedom Rides across the South and later during his long tenure in the U.S. Congress. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America, Lewis said of his run-ins with the law. The phrase was repeated several times during the funeral. We will continue to get into good trouble as long as you grant us the breath to do so, one of Kings daughters, the Rev. Bernice King, said as she led the congregation in prayer. Here lies a true American patriot who risked his life for the hope and promise of democracy, Ebenezers senior pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, told the congregation. Outside Ebenezer, hundreds gathered to watch the service on a large screen outside the church. Some sang the gospel song We Shall Overcome. When Lewis was 15, he heard King's sermons on WRMA, a radio station in Montgomery, Alabama, he recalled in an interview for the Southern Oral History Program. Later I saw him on many occasions in Nashville while I was in school between 1958 and 61," Lewis said. In a sense, he was my leader. King was the person who, more than any other, continued to influence my life, who made me who I was," Lewis wrote in his 1998 autobiography, Walking with the Wind." By the summer of 1963, Lewis was addressing thousands of people during the March on Washington, where King gave his I Have a Dream" speech. He spoke then about Black people beaten by police and jailed themes that resonate vividly in today's times. My friends, let us not forget that we are involved in a serious social revolution," Lewis told the huge crowd on the Washington Mall. To those who have said, Be patient and wait,' we have long said that we cannot be patient," he added. We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now! We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again." In 1965, Lewis was beaten by Alabama state troopers in the city of Selma in what became known as Bloody Sunday." Last Sunday, his casket was carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The wagon rolled over a carpet of rose petals on the bridge that spans the Alabama River. On the south side of the bridge, where Lewis was attacked by the law officers, family members placed red roses that the carriage rolled over, marking the spot where Lewis spilled his blood and suffered a head injury. Lewis was later awarded the Medal of Freedom by the nations first Black president in 2011. He spent more than three decades in Congress, and his district included most of Atlanta. Shortly before he died, Lewis wrote an essay for The New York Times and asked that it be published on the day of his funeral. In the piece published Thursday, Lewis recalled the teachings of King: He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice," Lewis wrote. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out." Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe," Lewis added. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring." Former President Bill Clinton referenced the essay during his remarks Thursday: It is so fitting on the day of his service, he leaves us his marching orders: Keep moving. Associated Press Writer Ben Nadler in Atlanta contributed. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 0 These national-security worries parallel a broader U.S. security crackdown on Chinese companies, including telecom providers Huawei and ZTE. The Trump administration has ordered that the U.S. stop funding equipment from those providers in U.S. networks. It has also tried to steer allies away from Huawei because of worries about the Chinese governments access to data, which the companies have denied it has. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Union ministers and Pratap Sarangi on Saturday condoled the death of Rajya Sabha MP and former leader "Deeply saddened to learn about the passing away of veteran leader & Rajya Sabha MP #AmarSingh. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved family. May his soul rest in peace," Patnaik tweeted. Union Petroleum and Steel Minister described Singh as a seasoned politician. "Saddened to learn about the passing away of seasoned politician and Rajya Sabha MP, Shri ji. My deepest condolences to his family and friends in their hour of grief. May God grant eternal peace to the departed soul. Om Shanti!," Pradhan tweeted. Union Minister of State for MSME, Pratap Sarangi, said Singh was a mass leader loved by people. "Grieved to learn the passing away of Shri ji, a veteran former Parliamentarian and Rajya Sabha MP. He was a mass leader who earned the love and adulation of his constituents. My deepest condolences to his bereaved family," Sarangi tweeted. Among others, BJP vice-president and former MP Baijayant Panda condoled Singh's death. "Just heard of the passing of #AmarSingh Ji. I first met him in 1997 when he accompanied the then PM to Odisha, & last a couple of years ago when he dropped by for tea. Like him of not, for years he was a player, with undeniable & immense influence in Indias politics. Om Shanti," Panda tweeted. Singh (64) died on Saturday while undergoing treatment in Singapore. He had undergone a kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EDWARDSVILLE Criminal sexual assault charges have been filed against a Collinsville woman for sexual assault accusations against a minor dating back to 2006. Sharilyn A. Whittaker, 65, was charged with four counts of criminal sexual assault, Class 1 felonies, and one count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, a Class 2 felony. The charges date back to a series of encounters between June 1, 2006, through April 13, 2010, where Whittaker committed the act of sexual penetration upon an 18-year-old male minor while she was in a position of trust, authority or supervision as a family friend of the victim. Following interviews with the victim and defendant, charges were filed. Whittaker turned herself in to the Troy Police Department, who led the investigation alongside Assistant States Attorney Kathleen Nolan. The collaboration allowed for the evidence needed to charge Whittaker, according to States Attorney Tom Gibbons. For so many victims of sexual assault, it can take years to finally reach the point where they are able to tell their story and begin the path through the justice system to vindication. When victims are heard and supported, we have an opportunity to connect them with a support system that allows them to continue their path to healing. As a community, we have to continue to provide these opportunities and remain vigilant to listen for the voices of those who have been victimized, so they can have their day in court and their opportunity for justice, said Gibbons, who filed the charges against Whittaker. Bond was set at $250,000 by Associate Judge Janet Heflin. Whittaker posted a cash bond and has been released with a no-contact order with the victim. If convicted of the Class 1 felony, the maximum penalty is 15 years per count served at 85% in the Illinois Department of Corrections. Both counts, if convicted, require the defendant to register as a lifetime child sex offender. These charges, as well as the statements made herein, are based upon probable cause. The defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. NASHUA, NH Nashua's mayor is pleased with the way officials and the community are handling the new coronavirus and COVID-19 in New Hampshire's second largest city. Jim Donchess said this week things appeared to be running smoothly considering the uncertainty of the pandemic. Nashua has been hit hard by the virus when compared to the rest of the state but not as hard as some Massachusetts communities just to the south with fewer residents, he said. City residents, for the most part, have also been adhering to the more than two-month old face covering mandate, Donchess added. "There's been general compliance," he said. "And I've noticed over these two months more people are wearing masks." Donchess said he went to a supermarket after the ordinance was approved in late April and did not see as many people wearing face coverings as he had during a recent return visit. That, he said, was a good sign. Donchess, who is a Democrat, although the city's municipal election process is nonpartisan, said residents and officials seemed to be on the same page about preventing the spread of the coronavirus and working on contact tracing. "The numbers could be a lot worse," he said. The city recently blocked off parking spaces and lanes downtown to allow for expanded outdoor dining for restaurants which has kept a number of small business operating and preserved jobs. The plan is working so well, he said, the city may consider it after the pandemic ends. Donchess also said there have been no outbreaks connected to or due to expanded dining in Nashua and only a handful of outbreaks outside of long-term care facilities. Got a news tip? Send it to tony.schinella@patch.com. View videos on Tony Schinella's YouTube channel. This article originally appeared on the Nashua Patch She's recently been soaking up the sun in Spain and became a hot topic after rapper Drake branded her a 'sweet one' in a new track. And Maya Jama was sure to set pulses racing as she put on a very busty display in a stunning snap from her Ibiza getaway that she posted to Instagram on Saturday. The DJ and presenter, 25, looked sensational in a marble print bikini which barely contained her ample assets as she posed by a pool. Wow: Maya Jama, 25, looked sensational in a marble print bikini which barely contained her ample assets in a snap from her Ibiza getaway that she posted to Instagram on Saturday Maya made sure all attention was on her eye-popping cleavage by donning a matching sheer coverup from PrettyLittleThing with a cut out around the bust. The beauty wore her dark locks down and curly for the snap and added a slick of makeup to accentuate her pretty features. Not forgetting to accessorise, Maya added a gold ring and chain bracelet as well as a stylish gold necklace. Maya has shared several snaps from her Ibiza getaway over the past few week with her followers, giving them a glimpse of her luxury surroundings. What a scene! Maya also sent temperatures soaring as she slipped into a teal blue bikini while in Ibiza last Sunday In one snap she flaunted her sensational curves while sitting in a comfy seating area and in another she showed the scenic view from her balcony. It comes after Maya revealed how her career stopped her from going 'off the rails' after her first love was shot dead when she was just 16. The DJ spoke to Cosmopolitan UK about having hope after her first boyfriend, Rico Gordon, was caught in crossfire between rival gangs as he travelled from London to Bristol. What a view: In another photo, the host treated fans to a glimpse of her scenic stay from her balcony She said: 'When I was 16 I went through a lot. With my boyfriend passing, it gave me a fearless approach to things. I felt like life was really short. 'Out of everything that [has] happened in my life, that was a reality check on a massive scale. At 16 you think the world is a fairytale and it took me out of that. It made me even more determined. 'If it hadn't been for going through those difficulties, my whole perception of life would be different. Cheeky: Maya also showed off her playful personality as she stuffed her face with a croissant 'I don't let myself get wound up over smaller things because I know what it's like to feel actual pain. I don't dwell on a lot.' She added: 'Statistically I should have gone off the rails then, and it feels like my career was the thing that saved that from happening because I had hope and there was something to look forward to. 'When you go through trauma, if you don't have something to look forward to, that's when you can get stuck in a rut.' US President Donald Trump The Chinese owner of TikTok was last night scrambling to sell the viral video app to Microsoft after Donald Trump pledged to ban the platform in the United States. ByteDance, one of Chinas biggest tech companies, has agreed to offload the social media platforms US operations in a bid to save a deal with the White House, Reuters reported. The Chinese firm had been keen to retain a minority stake in the business but was forced to take swift action after the US president pledged to ban TikTok from the US over security concerns. The video-sharing app, which claims to have 100 million American users, has been the subject of fears the Chinese state could exploit its data for intelligence purposes. The president said on Friday night: As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States. Mr Trump said he would sign an executive order on Saturday. The move adds further strain to US-China relations amid an ongoing row over the potential national security threat posed to the US by telecoms firm Huawei. A TikTok spokesman said the firm was committed to protecting users privacy. She said: TikTok US user data are stored in the US, with strict controls on employee access. TikToks biggest investors come from the US. Travelers who book directly with a hotel will soon be able to get money off their bill to encourage them to prioritise independent hotels over online travel agencies. It's hoped the ''I choose France" scheme will provide a boost to the Covid-hit local tourism industry by encouraging travelers to choose France for their summer vacation. "More people are increasingly buying local as a result of Covid-19," explains independent hotel owner Thomas Richard behind the new scheme. "We wanted to tap into this emerging trend." The scheme, which brings together 300 independent hotels under one platform, tries to lure customers to book with hotels directly by offering special rate discounts. Guests are notably awarded 4 euros off their next booking when they reserve a hotel room directly with the owner. "We wanted to educate people about the importance of supporting independent hotels," continues Richard, who was forced to shut his Petit Vatel hotel in the Normandy town of Le Havre on 17 March. "For two months, we had virtually no income," he tells RFI. High commission The difficult situation of independent hotels has been compounded by the high commission costs imposed by online travel agencies like Expedia and booking.com. "I pay around 17 percent in commission fees," says Richard, although admits he would not be able to attract certain foreign visitors without the online service. But after Covid-19, every penny counts. "It's the difference between keeping a hotel worker on the job or paying commission fees. Many hotel owners cannot afford to do both." Hoteliers in France are eager to bounce back after the pandemic, with many hoping to attract potential guests from this weekend's great summer getaway. "We're not expecting a huge rush," comments Richard, whose hotel is situated off the the busy roads. "Our biggest activity comes when tourists from Belgium and the Netherlands stop off in the Havre on their way to Brittany." Story continues Covid-19 measures Since July, many tourists from Paris have also begun to return to his premises, which accommodates up to 50 people. While getting them to respect social distancing measures has not been a problem, getting them to wear a mask has been more challenging. "A lot of people don't respect the rules so we're obliged to keep repeating them," he says. The current heatwave is unlikely to improve matters, with many travelers complaining that wearing a mask makes them hot. Still, their custom is badly needed by independent hotels. Competing against online travel agencies on price alone however is not easy. No middle man For Richard, who employs around 4 staff members, he's hoping to lure guests by offering them an authentic travel experience that cuts out the middle man. "Independent hotels are the face of a family-run industry that is open and tailored to meet each customer's needs," he claims. This industry is disappearing as big chains grow. "Unfortunately, our margins are being squeezed and we have to make cuts. The first to go are employees, whose labour costs are the highest in the hospitality industry," he said. I sincerely appreciate your patience as we have navigated the options for safely returning our students to school this fall, Talley wrote. Under normal circumstances, July is a hectic time as we prepare for the start of the school year. Preparing to open schools in the midst of a pandemic has made it even more challenging. Sept. 11: This article is subject to a legal complaint by 2673422 Ontario Inc. c.o.b. Budget Inn 2000. The City of Hamilton has denied the renewal of the Budget Inns business licence, citing concerns of public safety, as well as a lack of honesty and integrity in its operation. Coun. Nrinder Nann announced the citys decision on social media Friday afternoon. The east end motel, located at the corner of Sanford Avenue and King Street East, has long been a location of interest for police. In April, three people were arrested and charged with weapons and drug offences in a raid at the motel. In a statement to The Spectator, city bylaw director Ken Leendertse confirmed the decision was made following a review of evidence stemming from an investigation into complaints and concerns arising from the operation of the motel. Leendertse said he is of the opinion that public safety is at risk and that the owner is not operating with honesty and integrity as required by the City of Hamilton licensing bylaw. But, owner Pravin Patel said hes been left in a blank spot since receiving the notice last week. His business licence officially expired Friday night. Patel said he took over the motel in April 2019. Since then, he said theyve been working to clean up the establishments reputation. We did a lot better than the previous owner, said Patel, in an interview with The Spectator. We are trying to clean up everything. Patel said he has acknowledged the concerns from the city and when there are suspicious people at the motel, they kick them out. We always call the police, said Patel. Between January and April, police responded to 145 incidents at the Budget Inn, according to data obtained by The Spectator the bulk of them for non-emergency matters, such as disturbances and suspicious activity, and medical issues. Speaking to The Spectator, Nann said that has not been the experience of the community. She said her office, as well as the city, have received reports of alleged violence, human trafficking and drug trafficking, all stemming from the motel. Weve received those kinds of reports specifically by neighbours that live next door, across the street and adjacent, as well as businesses, said Nann. She said the operator has also not been compliant on a number of issues and has had multiple opportunities to change their operations but has not done so. Leendertse said the property has no outstanding orders or fines. From my perspective as the ward councillor, theyve been a very horrible neighbour, said Nann. That time is over, there is accountability right now. Hamilton police are also concerned about an increasing number of calls to the motel in the last few years. In an email, police spokesperson Jackie Penman said they support the citys decision to not renew the motels business licence. We understand the negative impact this establishment has had within the surrounding community and we continue to work with the city to address the issues, said Penman. Since 2015, police have received nearly 800 calls in connection with the Budget Inn. Last year, police received 216 reports more than double that of 2018. Tom Cooper, director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, said the motel has been a historically challenging place, where activities that we dont necessarily want to see in the community are taking place. There are very, very few options right now, and weve seen the results of that with the encampments, he said. Thats partially a response to the brutal reality of the lack of affordable, safe, accessible housing in Hamilton. Staff at the Kings Way Outreach Centre, a non-profit that supports people without stable housing located about a block from the motel, are anticipating increased demand for their services should the Budget Inn close. If that actually happens its going to hugely affect us, said operations manager Antoinette Laffrenier. A number of the centres existing clients between 20 and 25, she estimates live at the Budget Inn. Most of those people that are in there right now are the homeless population, which means that they will be coming to look for food and shelter, she said. Patel told The Spectator he plans to appeal the citys decision and has sought out a lawyer. Leendertse said the city had not heard from Patel as of Friday afternoon. The motel has 30 days to appeal the citys decision. If there is no appeal, the licence is revoked and the business can no longer run under the current ownership, said Leendertse. Leendertse could not provide any further details as the matter is now before tribunal. Patel said those staying at the motel will not be kicked out for the time being. CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Budget Inn motel has been a subject of police investigations. In fact, the Spectator has no knowledge of any police investigations targeting the Budget Inn or its operators. The Spectator regrets this error. While much progress has been made in Northern Ireland, people right around the world are still feeling the life-changing effects of the Troubles. Among them are the many couples who felt forced to flee the place they called home simply because they fell in love with someone from a different background. Now Exiles in Love, a new book from the Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association written and edited by Paul McLaughlin, is sharing some of their heart-wrenching stories. Here, we speak to two of the couples featured Derek & Winifred He met his would-be wife Winifred at a dance in Enniskillen back in 1968 and, according to Derek Kerr, it was clear from the start things were going to get complicated. "Right from the beginning, after only two or three dates, it was clear this wasn't going to be easy to resolve," laughs Derek, now 75. Because from very early on the young couple, Derek, a Protestant from Co Fermanagh and nurse Winifred, a Catholic who grew up in Plumbridge, Co Tyrone, were acutely aware of their different backgrounds. "That was quite clear from very early on," says Derek. "We took time to look at our situation from every possible angle because we knew it wasn't going to be easy. "It's difficult to describe now, but it was something that was such a big issue in those days, it was something you just didn't talk about. "There's a passage in the book that talks about a time that my mother was seriously ill in hospital. I went to visit her and she said, 'Winifred, that girl you know, she was the one that did my dressing'. And then she adds, 'She's lovely'. I never got to talk with my mother about her properly." Sadly in 1969, Derek's mother passed away. The couple continued to see each other but their families' apprehension about the relationship was clear. Derek remembers the reception he received when he eventually got to meet Winifred's family. "After phone calls to Winifred at her home and having taken her to her home in Plumbridge on several occasions I eventually met up with her parents and family," he says. "The reception I received though reserved was amiable in every respect. Likewise when Winifred came to our house my father may not have welcomed her with open arms, nevertheless he was never insulting or derogatory in any way." With pressures mounting, the couple took a year apart when Winifred travelled to Zambia at the beginning of 1970 for work. "We knew it was going to be difficult, but we did it as a deliberate year apart, as a sort of period to get our thoughts in order to see if the upheaval coming down the track was worth it," recalls Derek. "And when she came home after 12 months away, we had no doubts left. Within four nights, we had an engagement party in Bundoran." Expand Close Family excursion: Derek, Winifred and their children, Matthew, Christopher and Evelyn on a day out together / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Family excursion: Derek, Winifred and their children, Matthew, Christopher and Evelyn on a day out together Where to start married life, however, preoccupied the couple. "Although the hostility that could have emerged within our families never occurred, it was clear that many difficulties lay ahead," Derek says. "We soon concluded that for our future together to be successful and to lessen the impact it was going to cause our near family and 42 relatives, it was going to require us to move away to England or further afield." An uncle whom Derek describes as a "dearly loved mentor" met with him to mull over the situation. "We explored the dilemma that potentially had serious ramifications not only for Winifred and me, but for my father and others as well," he recalls. "We shared our concern for my dad and how he was going to cope on his own. We also talked about the added complication of the farm and property and the reality of my 'walking away' which in the longer term would likely result in my being disinherited from any part of my father's legacy. "My uncle and I talked very congenially and extensively for several hours and covered a large range of event'ualities. In a last-ditch attempt to persuade me from leaving and abandoning my father and our homestead, he informed me of a suitable job vacancy with a locally-based company which he knew very well. "He offered to recommend me and I was invited to a pre-interview assessment. I was verbally offered the job by the interviewer, but just 24 hours later it was withdrawn and although not mentioned, it was blatantly obvious that my personal life (which he would have subsequently been made aware it) was totally incompatible with the nature of the job. "This reflected the bigotry and prejudice that prevailed at the time. It further underlined the necessity for us to leave our homeland and seek a new life elsewhere." Winifred adds: "What was really confusing for us and remains a conundrum to this very day is the fact that both our families were always helpful and friendly with plenty of social interaction involving all our neighbours, irrespective of religion. "Yet, when it came to the bit, the idea of marrying outside of your own 'Church background' was almost certain to result in being ostracised by our peers." In October 1971, the young couple were married. There were just five of us there, remembers Derek. The wedding was held in Lurgan at a place neither of us had been before. Winifreds sister was the bridesmaid and a good mate of mine was the best man, and along with ourselves, we had only the priest. We went to a local eatery, where the priest knew the hotel manager, and we got our drinks on the house. That evening we got the boat to Scotland and we were in Stranraer by 7pm. And without saying an official farewell to their friends and families, the young couple embarked on a new life across the water. The couple enjoyed a brief honeymoon in Scotland before heading for Durham, where Derek soon started a new post as county organiser for Durham young farmers clubs. It was very clear that in Northern Ireland relationships between denominations were frowned upon, says Derek, who as a young man had dreamt of following his fathers footsteps into farming. They were held in low esteem and living in a rural community like we did, you depend on good relationships in your community. Difficulties over our marriage was not something we wanted to live through. Settling into life in England, Dereks first job came with a staff flat, and after two years in the north east the couple moved to Leamington Spa, where they lived for almost four years before settling in Leicester 38 years ago. Winifred, now 78, spent her working life in nursing, and the couple went on to have three children, Evelyn, a consultant gynaecologist, and Christopher and Matthew, who are both teachers. They also have eight grandchildren. It saddens me how it all came about because I was very interested in Northern Ireland, says Derek, who was awarded an MBE in 2004 for services to young people in rural areas. I loved it. I still do. But I have no regrets about leaving. Since living in England, the fact Winifred and I grew up in different denominations has not been raised. We have been accepted as two individuals and there hasnt been a question to this day about our differences. The way we see it, were from two different denominations of Christianity and if you cant love your Christian neighbour, then who can you love? Winifred adds: I have no doubts whatsoever about moving away, it was 100% the right thing to do at the time. My parents and Dereks father were able to come and visit, and we would go home every year for five or 10 days, although we havent for the last two years. Weve had wonderful posts to work in over the years, and we have eight grandchildren and were in contact with our wonderful kids three or four times a week. Theres no question that we did the right thing. Angela & Mark Expand Close Mark and Angela getting married / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mark and Angela getting married University lecturer Angela was in her early 20s and studying social anthropology at Queens University, Belfast, when she met soulmate Mark back in the late 1980s. A Catholic from Lisburn, she had grown up the child of a mixed marriage herself so wasnt fazed when she met Mark, a Protestant from England, at a Christmas party. The added complication, however, was his job. He was a soldier with the British Army. Its a strange thing, but I suppose its the experience every good couple has, says Angela, now 54. We just clicked. Conversation was so easy from the start and we enjoyed each others company. Mark wasnt from Northern Ireland, so he didnt have that baggage we might have had in a mixed relationship with someone local about us being from different backgrounds. I guess it was nice to be able to talk about other things from the start. We focused on what we had in common, rather than what was separated us. After a year together Mark proposed. He did it all officially and asked my dad, recalls Angela. He got the ring secretly, and we went on to have a really lovely wedding when I was 23. The priest was supportive and it was easy in that Mark wasnt religious so he was happy to agree that any children we would have would grow up as Catholics. By then, Mark had given up his position in the Army. But it didnt take long for the young couple to realise it wasnt going to be as simple as that to make a life for themselves in Northern Ireland, with the Troubles rumbling on in the background. I was still at Queens but Mark needed a job, and thats really when we started to realise things were going to be difficult, recalls Angela, a mum-of-one. He worked then as a chef he still does but of course when he was applying for jobs the questions would be about his previous experience, where he was from, what he had done to end up in Northern Ireland. Expand Close Big day: Mark and Angela celebrate their 22nd anniversary / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Big day: Mark and Angela celebrate their 22nd anniversary Theres this physical feeling of stress you carry with you in situations like that. We had to be so careful who knew hed been in the Army. You feel physically nervous, you dont sleep well and of course we were very sensitive to things going on in the news. We were hyper-vigilant all the time, and that feeling of stress really builds up. In addition, the newlyweds were looking to the future. Mark had planned a policy of staying at a job for a month at a time and moving on, says Angela. But we knew even then it wasnt sustainable. How could it be? Theres no chance to put down roots and make meaningful connections with friends. And of course, we were thinking about children and how our situation could impact on them. By 1989, when Angela and Mark were both still just 24, they packed their bags and moved to the North East of England, where Mark grew up. But of course, that came with its challenges, too. I feel like Ive missed out on a lot, says Angela, who is doing a PhD at the moment through Queens University about the long-term emotional legacy of The Troubles. Moving over in the first place was actually quite traumatic for me, because it happened quickly and there were loose ends I didnt have time to tie up and people I didnt get to say goodbye to in the way Id have liked. On top of that, it was very difficult in those early years to stay in touch with people, because flights werent cheap, we didnt have mobile phones. Some people didnt even have phones in their houses. Having a Northern Irish accent back then was difficult too because there were a lot of perceptions about what that might mean. But, says Angela, while the challenges have been tough, her life in England with Mark and their daughter, who is now in her 20s, has been worth it in the end. Were very happy here, and weve got a good life, she says. We get on really well as a couple and weve got good friends. Would we have had that if wed stayed? Probably not. The circumstances we were in then would create tension in any marriage, and when we moved away those tensions werent there. I feel some resentment now as I get older because of those circumstances we found ourselves in, and I do see it in many ways as having been in exile. But I think such huge changes have happened in Northern Ireland by now that I hope other couples coming up behind wont be in the same situation. As part of the book, we called our chapter Never Say Never, because I increasingly feel some nostalgia towards Northern Ireland, and it might be that one day in the future, well be able to come home. Mark adds: If Im being completely truthful, Im not sure I realised the significance of everything that was going on back then. I was still young, and I didnt have the same history as Angela because I didnt grow up in the place. I liked lots of things about Northern Ireland I loved the soda bread especially, but moving away at the time seemed like the right thing to do, just to get to somewhere that felt like a bit more of a normal environment, and on reflection coming back to England was the right thing to do for us and our family. Raising awareness The Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association (NIMMA) was set up in 1974 by a number of couples in or hoping to be in a mixed marriage who had met at a conference in Corrymeela. It has spent the past 44 years providing country-wide support and information to couples either in or contemplating mixed marriage. This is the third of its books about the subject and, like its predecessors it is aimed at secondary level pupils across Northern Ireland. NIMMA continues to lobby for acceptance of mixed marriage and wider availability of integrated education and shared social housing. Exiles for Love by Paul McLaughlin, is published by NIMMA in paperback and costs 5. Copies can by ordered by emailing info@nimma.org.uk Even teleprompter could not take so many lies: Rahul's dig at PM Modis Davos speech PM CARES Fund: No curb on use of PM's name, photo, image of flag, emblem, PMO tells HC Smart India Hackathon 2020 Highlights: PM Modi hail students with innovative ideas India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Aug 01: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday addressed the grand finale of the Smart India Hackathon, a nation-wide competition held by All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). This year, over 4.5 lakh entries were received for the competition. Addressing the gathering, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that it was challenging to conduct the Hackathon in a time when the nation is suffering from the novel coronavirus. "Holding this competition in these circumstances was the first challenge which you have solved. The challenges which you have been working on, I am curious to know about them," PM Modi said. Coronavirus outbreak: PM Modi wishes nation on occasion of Bakrid, devotees celebrate Eid-ul-Adha He also said that Artificial Intelligence can be a huge facilitator, to make the country's facilities, effective, interactive and people-friendly. "With the help of satellite, a rainfall prediction model will be prepared," said a finalist. Reacting to this, the Prime Minister lauded the step and said that it will be of great help to the farmers. The Prime Minister also said the government is providing sanitary napkin at Rs 1 each. "With the introduction of reusable sanitary napkin will be of great help to the girls. I congratulate you for being so thoughtful," PM Modi said to a student working towards reusable and bio-degradable sanitary napkin. PM Modi heard one of the teams from Shri Krishna College of Engineering about a solution for embankment breaches. He said the team should also develop a training module that would help to insitutionalise this solution. The Smart India Hackathon began at 9 am when the HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal inaugurated it. In the hackathon, candidates were to create solutions for real-world problems. The competition will take place virtually this year. It had started in 2017 and this is its fourth edition. Storm clouds are seen over the city as Hurricane Isaias approaches the east coast of Florida in Miami, Fla., on Aug. 1, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) FEMA Chief Warns Floridians to Prepare for Hurricane Isaias: Dont Bet Your Safety The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Pete Gaynor on Saturday warned Florida residents to be prepared for Hurricane Isaias. Take preparedness actions today, make yourself, your family, your business safer today, so you wont regret it tomorrow, he said during an interview with Fox News. The National Hurricane Center said earlier the day that hurricane conditions are expected along portions of the Florida east coast by late Saturday night and Sunday. Storm surge of two to four feet is likely to be seen between Jupiter Inlet and Ponte Vedra Beach. Heavy rains and flash urban flooding, especially in low-lying and poorly drained areas in Eastern Florida, are also expected. Here are the Key Messages for 11 am EDT, August 1 for Hurricane #Isaias. The latest NHC forecast can be found at https://t.co/tW4KeFW0gB and US local weather information can be found at https://t.co/SiZo8ohZMN. pic.twitter.com/VBepDZ8Gsr National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) August 1, 2020 According to a weather advisory issued by the Florida Division of Emergency Management at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, Isaias remained a Category 1 Hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph. In the Hurricane Warning area, gusts can reach 75 to 90 mph, while its forecasted to be 70 mph in the tropical storm warning area. Heavy rainfall of three to four inches is expected across Floridas east coast. President Donald Trump approved Floridas emergency declaration on Saturday and authorized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FEMA to mobilize federal disaster relief resources to supplement the states response efforts. Anthony Perrone, a south Florida resident, pulls the hurricane shutters closed on his home in preparation for Hurricane Isaias in Lake Worth, Fla., on July 31, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) The FEMA chief also warned that the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, will possibly complicate response to the hurricane. Locals and states will need more time if you have to give an evacuation order, he said. Youll need more transportation assets. Youll need more square footage if decide to put people into congregate settings. You may need to put people that are at risk in non-congregate, so things like hotels and dormitories. States, localities, tribes, and territories need to adapt their storm response plans to the new situation, he added. As one of the hotspot states of the CCP virus outbreak in the United States, Florida reported 9,642 new cases and 179 new deaths related to COVID-19 on Friday. As of July 31, there are over 480,000 infection and 7,022 deaths reported in the Sunshine State, Florida Department of Health said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the state was fully prepared for this and any future storm during this hurricane season, with stockpiles of personal protective equipment, generators, bottled water and meals ready to be distributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Rep. Karen Bass, a possible top-tier contender to be Joe Biden's running mate has had to row back on remarks she made in 2010 where she was heard praising the Church of Scientology. On Friday, video emerged of an event from 2010 at which the California Democrat spoke at a ceremony for a renovated Scientology Church in Los Angeles. During her remarks, while calling for peopel to treat one another with respect and fight oppression, she also spoke highly of the Church's controversial founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Scroll down for video Rep. Karen Bass, 66, is having to explain her past comments where she was seen praising the Church of Scientology and Fidel Castro She is pictured here at a Scientology event in 2010 The organization has been accused of acting like a cult and has faced a number of allegations from former members of abuse, human trafficking and intimidation. The 2010 event is pictured 'The Church of Scientology, I know, has made a difference, because your creed is a universal creed and one that speaks to all people everywhere,' Bass said in front of an audience of 6,000 people. 'That is why the words are exciting, of your Founder L. Ron Hubbard, in the creed of the Church of Scientology: That all people of whatever race, color or creed are created with equal rights.' Bass praised the Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard at an event in 2010. Hubbard is pictured in 1991 On Saturday, Bass sought to clarify the remarks and said she was trying to find an 'area of agreement' with the church, which has faced a number of allegations from former members of abuse, human trafficking and intimidation. 'Back in 2010, I attended the event knowing I was going to address a group of people with beliefs very different than my own, and spoke briefly about things I think most of us agree with, and on those things respect for different views, equality, and fighting oppression my views have not changed,' Bass stated in a tweet. 'Since then, published first-hand accounts in books, interviews and documentaries have exposed this group.' Bass did not state what her current views of the church are but mentioned that 'everyone is now aware' of the allegations against it. Joe Biden is nearing the announcement of his vice presidential choice as the top contenders and their advocates are making final appeals On Saturday, Bass released a statement clarifying that she prays at a Baptist church in LA Bass, 66, entered Congress in 2010 and is chair of Congressional Black Caucus The Congressional Black Caucus chair also stated that she's not a Scientologist, underscoring that she worships at a Baptist church in south Los Angeles. Bass's record is now coming under scrutiny as she appeared to be rising to the top of Joe Biden's possible picks for vice president. On Friday, the Trump campaign made her a target noting that worked in Cuba during the 1970s alongside a group that aligned itself with Fidel Castro's government, the Venceremos Brigade. The group was a joint venture between the regime and left-wing U.S. groups that organized trips for Americans to build homes in the country. In regards to Cuba, Bass traveled to the country in 1973 with an organization called the Venceremos Brigade and went to see Castro speak. She tweeted a photo of the trip in 2016 When Castro died in 2016, she referred to him as 'commandante en jefe' (commander in chief), and said his passing was a 'great loss to the people of Cuba.' Bass has been back to Cuba several times and when she returned in 2016 tweeted a a picture from her 1973 visit. 'She was always pro-Castro & later mourned his death,' Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh tweeted Saturday. 'Whether Biden picks her or not, he's written off Cuban-American voters just by considering her.' On a call organized by the Trump campaign, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) laid into Bass for 'showing a stunning amount of interest in the Cuban Revolution,' according to the Palm Beach Post. Raising speculation: Karen Bass was seen walking alongside Joe Biden after they both paid respects - with Biden's wife Jill - to John Lewis as the Civil Rights icon and Democratic congressman lay in state in the Capitol this week Could it be Karen Bass? The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus is now being seen as a frontrunner in Joe Biden's search for a running mate 'She will be the highest ranking Castro sympathizer in the United States government,' Rubio said of Bass should she be selected to be Biden's running mate. 'If I had to make that statement over again, I wouldn't use those words,' she said in an article in The Atlantic this week adding she hadn't fully realized how Cuba and Castro were seen in Florida, as opposed to California. Biden has said he will announce his pick for VP later this month. Others on the shortlist possibly include Senator Kamala Harris, D-Calif., former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., and Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Warning from Florida Democrats: Bass could alienate Cuban voters because of a 2016 statement she made when Castro died saying: 'The passing of Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba.' Appalled by the intransigence of her union when it comes to getting pupils back into classrooms, this maths teacher at a state secondary in the North of England resigned her membership. Here, in a powerful account, the experienced teacher in her late 30s who asked to remain anonymous lays bare the unions' shameful attitude. The idea that my union should advocate that schoolchildren be forced to wear face masks in schools would have been the final straw for me if I hadn't already cut up my NASUWT card a month ago. I cancelled the direct debit when I realised they just didn't really represent me any more. Nor, I suspect, do the unions speak for the vast majority of teachers on this whole issue of going back to school. In fact, the unions have been a brake on us going back to work. When I've had to make phone calls to my tutor groups, their worried parents ask, 'They are going back in September, aren't they?', and I've been really honest and replied: 'If you want to know who's been causing the problems, it's the teaching unions.' Appalled by the intransigence of their union when it comes to getting pupils back into classrooms, one maths teacher at a state secondary in the North of England resigned their membership (stock image) My union representative has been like a dog with a bone on the subject of returning to school and unable or unwilling to see both sides of the argument. I'm sure that's the case in a lot of schools and the heads feel their hands are tied. Recently, our head drew up a risk assessment and asked us all to sign it. My attitude is that there's always risk in everyday life. Inevitably, some of the things in the document were utterly absurd, such as prohibiting us from making a cup of tea for a colleague. But after months of trying to teach online, I was happy to sign it and get back to work. Yet the union rep insisted we shouldn't and had so many daft objections. I was left thinking, 'Do you know what? We get paid to do a job and I believe that kids need to be in a classroom, learning.' Teachers need to realise there are always going to be risks and I don't expect my head to be able to guarantee my safety from a virus. It's time for us to say enough is enough and get back to doing our job. At the moment, I feel embarrassed to be a teacher because we're taking a salary and not earning it. I've got colleagues earning between 40,000 and 50,000 a year and they're doing little or no work. Putting work online doesn't count, to my mind we've had a lot of kids who haven't accessed it at all. We know who the COVID-vulnerable people are now, and obviously a teacher who is vulnerable needs to take that up with their head. But the vast majority of us should be going back to work. We're behaving as if we're working on the frontline and we're not. 'The idea that my union should advocate that schoolchildren be forced to wear face masks in schools would have been the final straw for me,' she said (stock image) There's a lot of scientific evidence that the kids don't transmit the virus much anyway. Social distancing was one thing, but when the NASUWT said kids should be wearing masks all day, it just became ridiculous. It's psychologically damaging and completely impractical. We're always told in teaching that it's all about building rapport and relationships but how on earth do you do that if you and the students are wearing a mask? You wipe out the vast majority of your communication skills by putting one on. Imagine the Year 7s, starting at secondary school for the first time. How terrifying would it be to step into a school full of masked children and teachers? Masks have such negative associations. In any case, children should not be asked to protect adults, it ought to be the other way round. If teachers want to wear gloves and masks, that's up to them, but I don't. Teachers are always seeking the moral high ground and saying 'It's all about the kids', but since March it hasn't all been about the kids, it's been about the teachers and the unions have played up that aspect. Schools do need to go back to normal, not just for the kids' education and their mental health, but also for the good of the wider economy. Schools should be the example for the rest of society to follow and teachers need to get a bit of backbone and say: 'Yes, we're going back as normal in September. The kids are entitled to an education and it's wrong to impose restrictions on that.' An innovative e-learning programme developed by experts at the University of Huddersfield and University of Stirling will educate and empower nurses to improve cancer care. The Cancer Nursing Careers programme will provide learning opportunities for nurses who provide care to people affected by the disease in non-specialist cancer settings - including in primary, secondary and community care. The programme content was developed by Dr Vanessa Taylor of the University of Huddersfield and Dr Susanne Cruickshank and Professor Jayne Donaldson of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport at Stirling. They worked on the TEECAN project (Transform, educate and empower nurses to improve cancer care) in partnership with RM Partners, the West London Cancer Alliance hosted by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Health Education England. The e-learning resource, funded by a grant from Health Education England, is available on Health Education England's e-Learning for Healthcare Hub website and is available free of charge to nurses, and other health and care professionals, across the UK. Nurses make up 43 per cent of the NHS workforce and meet, treat, support and care for people at many stages during the cancer pathway, and in multiple settings. Cancer affects one in every two people, however, there is wide variability in an individual nurse's knowledge, skills and competencies related to cancer. It is important that health professionals feel confident talking to and supporting those affected by cancer. The Cancer Nursing Careers programme is an excellent resource for nurses and will help to ensure that nurses - regardless of the setting in which they work - have the necessary knowledge and skills to provide appropriate care to those affected by cancer." Dr Vanessa Taylor, University of Huddersfield and Dr Susanne Cruickshank, University of Stirling Clarity around cancer The programme was developed from eight outcomes outlined in the Royal College of Nursing Career and Education Framework for Cancer Nursing, published in 2017. The framework, for which Dr Taylor was Chair of the Steering Group and Lead Author, was written to provide clarity around cancer specific nursing outcomes and the minimum standards of theoretical and practice requirements necessary to provide excellent, safe, effective and timely cancer care. It also highlights four cancer cases studies to illustrate understanding of risk of developing cancer, treating cancer and providing excellent care to people affected by cancer. Reflecting on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer services, Dr Taylor and Dr Cruickshank added: "The current situation has directly impacted cancer services and it is important that they return to normal as quickly and as safely as possible. Nurses can prepare by undertaking cancer-specific learning, such as the Cancer Nursing Careers programme." Lets not even try to make out everything is tickety-boo in life right now. As a Victorian in the midst of Lockdown 2.0 during a week that registered numbers I hadnt contemplated in a worst-case scenario, I can confirm on behalf of the majority of my fellow Melburnians that it is a challenge to stay positive and upbeat, if not an impossibility. The word "sucks" comes to mind, along with a spluttering of expletives I will spare you. Sydney, I know you are dreading the same and my heart goes out to you. But, damn: I am giving positivity a red hot go despite the odds. I still believe there is much to be grateful for amid this pandemic and much goodness to celebrate. So, in a Karen-free (I promise) musing, let me share some insights that are helping me survive and even smile. A walk in the park is good for mental health. Credit:Quentin Jones As awful as lockdown, or the threat of it, is, I take solace in the fact that it is a necessary means to an end. Imagine living in Trumps USA with astronomical death and infection numbers, yet still being encouraged to carry on as normal under the reassurance the virus will just eventually "go away"? VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- K92 Mining Inc. (K92 or the Company) (TSX-V: KNT; OTCQX: KNTNF) has filed and made available for download on the Companys SEDAR profile (www.sedar.com), a technical report titled Independent Technical Report, Mineral Resource Estimate Update and Preliminary Economic Assessment for Expansion of the Kainantu Mine to Treat 1 Mtpa from the Kora Gold Deposit, Kainantu Project, Papua New Guinea with an effective date of April 2, 2020 (the Technical Report) prepared by Anthony Woodward BSc (Hons.), M.Sc., MAIG, Simon Tear BSc (Hons), EurGeol, PGeo IGI, EurGeol, Christopher Desoe BE (Min)(Hons), FAusIMM, RPEQ, Lisa J. Park, BEng (Chem), MAppFin, GAICD, FAusIMM. Refer to the Companys news release dated July 27, 2020 for a summary of the results of the PEA. The preliminary economic assessment (PEA) is preliminary in nature and includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the PEA will be realized. The Technical Report contains a full description of all underlying assumptions relating to the PEA. Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. On Behalf of the Company, John Lewins, Chief Executive Officer and Director For further information, please contact David Medilek, P.Eng., CFA at +1-604-687-7130. NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements that address future plans, activities, events, or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur are forward-looking information, including statements regarding the realization of the preliminary economic analysis for the Kainantu Project, expectations of future cash flows, the planned plant expansion, production results, cost of sales, sales of production, potential expansion of resources and the generation of further drilling results which may or may not occur. Forward-looking statements and information contained herein are based on certain factors and assumptions regarding, among other things, the market price of the Companys securities, metal prices, exchange rates, taxation, the estimation, timing and amount of future exploration and development, capital and operating costs, the availability of financing, the receipt of regulatory approvals, assumptions contained in the PEA, environmental risks, title disputes, failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated, accidents, labour disputes, claims and limitations on insurance coverage and other risks of the mining industry, changes in national and local government regulation of mining operations in PNG, mitigation of the Covid-19 pandemic, continuation of the lifted state of emergency, and regulations and other matters. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. The World Bank and the SBV signing the grant agreement On July 30, the World Bank and the State Bank of Vietnam signed a $6.2 million grant agreement to strengthen Vietnams COVID-19 surveillance and testing capacities, research capacity for COVID-19 vaccines and test kits, and communications about the pandemic. The COVID-19 situation in Vietnam is evolving quickly, said Stefanie Stallmeister, acting country director for the World Bank in Vietnam. This emergency operation will not only support the government to quickly monitor and respond to COVID-19 but will also contribute to building a resilient health system for future health emergencies. The project will strengthen the capacity of laboratory systems at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) and other lab systems nationwide by helping to improve their ability to evaluate community immunity to COVID-19. The grant will also fund the provision of equipment to improve the capacity of the Centre for Research and Production of Vaccines and Biologicals (POLYVAC) for the research and development of new vaccine and quick diagnostic tests. The project is expected to support 200 laboratories involved in COVID-19 surveillance and testing in hospitals and Provincial Centers for Disease Control nationwide. Support to NIHE and POLYVAC, Vietnams leading public health and vaccine research and production institutions, will directly contribute to improving the countrys capacities to detect and respond to COVID-19. The project is financed by the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) through its insurance window allocation to Vietnam. There became this myth about Trump that his base is so strong and locked in and they loved him, she says. I knew that wasnt true and it wasnt true for a long time, and that there were a lot of people out there that could be persuaded if the Democrat wasnt objectionable to them. I knew that Bernie Sanders was never going to fly with these people, but Joe Biden had always surfaced as somebody in our research that if it was him, there was a bunch of people who could be persuaded to vote for him. WASHINGTON The bids are in for Canadas fighter competition, and three companies will go head-to-head for the chance to build 88 new jets. The Canadian government on Friday confirmed that the field is down to two American entrants Lockheed Martins F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Boeings F/A-18E/F Super Hornet as well as Swedish aerospace manufacturer Saabs Gripen E. All companies submitted proposals before the July 31 deadline. The contest is scheduled to be decided in 2022, with the first aircraft delivery projected in 2025. Up to CA$19 billion (U.S. $14 billion) is up for grabs. Canadian CF-18 upgrade package OKd by US Our government committed to purchasing a full fleet of 88 aircraft to be able to meet our NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] and NATO obligations simultaneously, Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said in a statement. Efficient and modern fighter jets are an integral part of any air force and we continue to work diligently to make sure that we provide the members of the Royal Canadian Air Force the tools they need to protect Canada, both at home and abroad. Canada could downselect to two bidders in spring 2021 after an initial evaluation of proposals, though it could keep all three companies as options until the final selection of a single bidder in 2022, the Canadian government said in statement. The competing companies must submit proposals that offer economic benefits to Canadian defense contractors and other businesses, as industrial incentives and offsets make up 20 percent of the criteria under evaluation. The proposals will also be evaluated on each aircrafts capability and cost, which will be weighed at 60 percent and 20 percent respectively. The new fighter will replace the Royal Canadian Air Forces fleet of aging CF-18s. For its proposal, Saab will partner with Canadian defense firms IMP Aerospace & Defence, CAE, and Peraton Canada, and will offer a competitive package of industrial and technological benefits, the company announced. Story continues Saabs Gripen fighter is designed to operate in harsh environments and defeat the most advanced global threats. The system meets all of Canadas specific defence requirements, offering exceptional performance and advanced technical capabilities, said Jonas Hjelm, who heads Saabs aeronautics business. As a partner nation of the F-35 program, Canada has contributed funding for the development of the Joint Strike Fighter and is involved in the production of the jet. In Lockheeds statement confirming the bid, the firm said the F-35 program would support an estimated 150,000 jobs in Canada over its life span. The 5th Generation F-35 would transform the Royal Canadian Air Force fleet and deliver the capabilities necessary to safeguard Canadian skies, said Greg Ulmer, Lockheeds F-35 program executive vice president. The F-35s unique mix of stealth and sensor technology will enable the Royal Canadian Air Force to modernize their contribution to NORAD operations, ensure Arctic sovereignty and meet increasingly sophisticated global threats. Boeings argument for its Super Hornet Block III was simple: The Royal Canadian Air Force already operates F/A-18s, and buying the latest version of the Super Hornet is a proven, affordable option that will allow the service to reuse existing infrastructure and reduce sustainment costs. We have a partnership with Canada that spans more than 100 years. We dont take that lightly. The response we submitted today builds upon that great legacy and allows us to continue to bring the best of Boeing to Canada and the best of Canada to Boeing, said Jim Barnes, Boeings director of Canada fighter sales. Our proven, two-engine design can operate in the harshest environments and provide support no matter where the mission takes its pilots. That, coupled with Boeings 100% guaranteed industrial plan, will also deliver long term, well-paying jobs. High Court judge Justice Makonese has ordered the police to investigate the whereabouts of Tawanda Muchehiwa and produce the outcome to the Magistrates Courts at Tredgold Building in Zimbabwes second city of Bulawayo within 72 hours. The court ordered that the 72 hours commenced from 1400hrs on 1 August 2020. Muchehiwa is a nephew of ZimLive editor, Mduduzi Mathuthu. This court order followed an urgent chamber application filed by lawyer Nqobani Sithole, on behalf of MISA Zimbabwe on 31 July 2020 for a habeas corpus in favour of Muchehiwa. The applicant, MISA Zimbabwe, was represented in court by lawyer Zibusiso Ncube. Muchehiwas whereabouts remain unknown following his arrest at Mathuthus home in Mahatshula Suburb in Bulawayo on Thursday. He was arrested together with relatives, Amandlenkosi Mathuthu and Advent Mathuthu. Mathuthu remains in hiding after police ransacked his home Thursday. The police are claiming that they are unaware of Muchehiwas whereabouts despite his last known location being that of having been in the custody of the police at Bulawayo Central Police Station. Officer-in-Charge of CID Law and Order Section Bulawayo and the Officer Commanding Police Bulawayo Province, are cited as the first and second respondents in the matter, respectively. Writing on his Facebook page Saturday, Mathuthu said his nephew is in danger. The High Court today has ordered the police to turn over my nephew Tawanda Muchehiwa who was abducted last Thursday by Mnangagwa's shock troops and remains missing. The same thugs went to my house and when they couldn't find me, thought it wise to take my sister as bait. The crime is that I was manufacturing subversive July 31 protest material using cellular phones and cameras. It's fake news, but my nephew is in danger and I need your solidarity. According to the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, scores of people were arrested before and after the Friday anti-corruption protest. President Emmerson Mnangagwa says anti-government protesters are terrorists sponsored by the West. 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. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 21:07:30|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DHAKA, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Abiding by the recommended health advice to prevent the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladeshi Muslims with the spirit of sacrifice on Saturday celebrated Eid-al-Adha, one of the two major festivals in the country, but refrained from traditional hugs, embraces and handshakes with each other. Long lines of Muslims have been seen since Saturday morning in front of the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka for Eid prayers. Muslims also offered special Eid prayers in many other mosques in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country, seeking divine blessings, peace and prosperity for humankind. During prayers, they maintained a distance and greeted each other verbally instead of traditional hugs, embraces and handshakes. After prayers, people sacrificed animals as usual. The festival is celebrated on the 10th day of the month of the lunar Islamic calendar after holy Hajj. Bangladesh's COVID-19 cases rose to nearly 240,000 and the total deaths from the virus stood at 3,132 on Saturday. Enditem Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Hong Kong Sat, August 1, 2020 15:02 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ae5b66 2 World Hong-Kong,hospital,COVID-19,coronavirus Free Hong Kong opened a temporary field hospital with 500 beds on Saturday to house stable COVID-19 patients as the city battles a new wave of virus infections. The financial hub had been a poster child for tackling the coronavirus, with local transmissions all but ended by early summer. But since July the pathogen has returned, with some cases brought in by the tens of thousands of people who were exempted from a mandatory quarantine imposed on most arrivals. The opening of the hospital comes a day after city leader Carrie Lam announced the postponement of upcoming legislative elections for a year, saying that the decision is purely protecting public health and has "nothing to do with politics". More than 2,000 new infections have been detected since the start of July -- 60 percent of the total since the virus first hit the city in late January. The new makeshift hospital set up at the city's AsiaWorld-Expo exhibition center near the airport, will take in COVID-19 patients aged from 18 to 60. Read also: Hong Kong opens dining in shelters as residents struggle with restaurant ban "Our goal is to triage the patients from the community and provide them with appropriate treatment and hospitalization arrangement," Dr Larry Lee from the Hospital Authority told media, adding that around 20 to 30 patients are expected to be admitted on the first day. Lee said that arriving patients will go through X-rays as well as blood, saliva and heart tests. If found unstable, patients will be sent to hospitals while stable ones will get treatment and put under medical observation at the facility. New daily infections have been above 100 for the past 10 days with total infection numbers rising to 3,272 on Friday. The death toll rose from seven to 29 in July. China has offered to send mainland testing staff to the city to carry out "large scale nucleic acid testing". In a Saturday statement, the National Health Commission of China (NHC) said it has set up a team comprised of 60 clinical laboratory staff and an "advance unit" will arrive in the city on Sunday. By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - The first two COVID-19 vaccines to enter large-scale U.S. trials will not be tested in pregnant women this year, raising questions about how this vulnerable population will be protected from the coronavirus, researchers told Reuters. Moderna and Pfizer, which has partnered with Germany's BioNTech, this week separately launched clinical trials that use a new and unproven gene-based technology. Both companies are requiring proof of a negative pregnancy test and a commitment to using birth control from women of childbearing age who ... WATCH THE SPLASHDOWN EVENT LIVE HERE, the SpaceX video embed in this post will go live with pre-event content sometime before 7pm EDT on Saturday August 1. NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are about to make the first splashdown return in 45 years. "SpaceX and NASA are targeting 7:34 p.m. EDT on Saturday, August 1 for Crew Dragon and the two astronauts to depart the orbiting laboratory and return to Earth," tweeted SpaceX late Friday evening. From SpaceX, here is the timeline for NASA and SpaceX to return Crew Dragon Endeavour this weekend. From the SpaceX announcement about the highly anticipated space event: On Saturday, May 30, SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched Crew Dragon's second demonstration (Demo-2) mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the next day Crew Dragon autonomously docked to the International Space Station. This test flight with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board the Dragon spacecraft returned human spaceflight to the United States. SpaceX and NASA are now targeting 7:34 p.m. EDT on Saturday, August 1 for Crew Dragon to autonomously undock from the Space Station, with the two astronauts aboard the spacecraft, and return to Earth. Approximately 19 hours later, after jettisoning its trunk and re-entering Earth's atmosphere, Dragon will splash down at one of seven targeted water landing sites off the coast of Florida at 2:42 p.m. EDT on Sunday, August 2. The Demo-2 mission is the final major milestone for SpaceX's human spaceflight system to be certified by NASA for operational crew missions to and from the International Space Station. Once the Demo-2 mission is complete, and the SpaceX and NASA teams have reviewed all the data for certification, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi will fly on Dragon's first six-month operational mission (Crew-1) targeted for late September. And don't miss the AP story about the two U.S. astronauts who are about to make the first splashdown return in 45 years. These heroes say they'll absolutely have barf bags at hand, water landings can be nausea-inducing. SpaceX and NASA plan to bring Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken back Sunday afternoon in the company's Dragon capsule, aiming for the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida Panhandle. Flight controllers are keeping close watch on Hurricane Isaias, expected to stick to Florida's east coast. Hurley said if he and Behnken get sick while bobbing in the waves awaiting recovery, it won't be the first time for a crew. Astronauts returning in the early 1970s from Skylab, NASA's first space station, did not feel well following splashdown, Hurley noted. Feeling sick "is the way it is with a water landing," he said during the crew's final news conference from the International Space Station. This will be SpaceX's first splashdown with astronauts on board, ending a two-month test flight that began May 30 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center the first launch of a crew from the U.S. in nearly a decade. The capsule has been docked at the space station since May 31, allowing Hurley and Behnken to chip in with spacewalks and experiments. Read the rest of the piece by Marcia Dunn at AP:US astronauts pack up for rare splashdown in SpaceX capsule SpaceX and @NASA are targeting 7:34 p.m. EDT on Saturday, August 1 for Crew Dragon and the two astronauts to depart the orbiting laboratory and return to Earth https://t.co/bJFjLCzWdK pic.twitter.com/9udiNyZpQM SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 1, 2020 IMAGE COURTESY SPACEX July 31, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - Jeremy Corbyn, the former left-wing leader of Britains Labour party, is once again making headlines over an antisemitism problem he supposedly oversaw during his five years at the head of the party. This time, however, the assault on his reputation is being led not by the usual suspects pro-Israel lobbyists and a billionaire-owned media but by Keir Starmer, the man who succeeded him. Since becoming Labour leader in April, Starmer has helped to bolster the evidence-free narrative of a party plagued by antisemitism under Corbyn. That has included Starmers refusal to exploit two major opportunities to challenge that narrative. Had those chances been grasped, Labour might have been able to demonstrate that Corbyn was the victim of an underhand campaign to prevent him from reaching power. Starmer, had he chosen to, could have shown that Corbyns long history as an anti-racism campaigner was twisted to discredit him. His decades of vocal support for Palestinian rights were publicly recast as a supposed irrational hatred of Israel based on an antipathy to Jews. But instead Starmer chose to sacrifice his predecessor rather than risk being tarred with the same brush. As a result, Labour now appears to be on the brink of open war. Competing rumors suggest Corbyn may be preparing to battle former staff through the courts, while Starmer may exile his predecessor from the party. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter Rocketing membership Corbyns troubles were inevitable the moment the mass membership elected him Labour leader in 2015 in defiance of the party bureaucracy and most Labour MPs. Corbyn was determined to revive the party as a vehicle for democratic socialism and end Britains role meddling overseas as a junior partner to the global hegemon of the United States. That required breaking with Labours capture decades earlier, under Tony Blair, as a party of neoliberal orthodoxy at home and neoconservative orthodoxy abroad. Until Corbyn arrived on the scene, Labour had become effectively a second party of capital alongside Britains ruling Conservative party, replicating the situation in the US with the Democratic and Republican parties. His attempts to push the party back towards democratic socialism attracted hundreds of thousands of new members, quickly making Labour the largest party in Europe. But it also ensured a wide-ranging alliance of establishment interests was arrayed against him, including the British military, the corporate media, and the pro-Israel lobby. Politicized investigation Unlike Corbyn, Starmer has not previously shown any inclination to take on the might of the establishment. In fact, he had previously proven himself its willing servant. As head of Britains prosecution service in 2013, for example, his department issued thinly veiled threats to Sweden to continue its legal pursuit of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who had sought political asylum in Londons Ecuadorean embassy, even as Swedish interest in the case waned. With his background in realpolitik, Starmer appears to have grasped quickly the danger of being seen to share any common ground with Corbyn not only should he pursue significant elements of his predecessors program, but by challenging the carefully crafted establishment narrative around Corbyn. For this reason, he has refused to seize either of the two chances presented to him to demonstrate that Labour had no more of an antisemitism problem than the relatively marginal one that exists more generally in British society. That failure is likely to prove all the more significant given that in a matter of weeks Labour is expected to face the findings of an investigation by the UKs Equality and Human Rights Commission. The highly politicized watchdog body, which took on the probe into Labour while refusing to investigate plentiful evidence of an Islamophobia problem in the Conservative party, is expected to shore up the Corbyn-antisemitism narrative. Labour has said it will readily accept the Commissions findings, whatever they are. The watchdog body is likely to echo the prevailing narrative that Corbyn attracted left-wingers to the party who were ideologically tainted with antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. As a result, or so the argument goes, Jew hatred flourished on his watch. Starmer has already declared zero tolerance of antisemitism, but he has appeared willing in line with pro-Israel lobbyists in his party to conflate Jew hatred with trenchant criticism of Israel. The barely veiled intention is to drive Corbynite members out of Labour either actively through suspensions or passively as their growing disillusionment leads to a mass exodus. By distancing himself from his predecessor, Starmer knows no dirt will stick to him even as the Equality Commission drags Corbyns name through the mud. Sabotaged from within Starmer rejected the first chance to salvage the reputations of Corbyn and the wider Labour membership days after he became leader. In mid-April, an 850-page internal party report was leaked, stuffed with the text of lengthy email exchanges and WhatsApp chats by senior party staff. They showed that, as had long been suspected, Corbyns own officials worked hard to sabotage his leadership from within. Staff at headquarters still loyal to the Blair vision of the party even went so far as to actively throw the 2017 general election, when Labour was a hairs-breadth away from ousting the Conservatives from government. These officials hoped a crushing defeat would lead to Corbyns removal from office. The report described a hyper-factional atmosphere, with officials, including then-deputy leader Tom Watson, regularly referring to Corbyn and his supporters as Trots a reference to Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of a violent Communist revolution in Russia more than a century ago. Corbynites were thrown out of the party on the flimsiest pretexts, such as describing those like Blair who led the 2003 attack on Iraq as warmongers. But one early, favored tactic by staff in the disciplinary unit was to publicize antisemitism cases and then drag out their resolution to create the impression that the party under Corbyn was not taking the issue seriously. These officials also loosened the definition of antisemitism to pursue cases against Corbyns supporters who, like him, were vocal in defending Palestinian rights or critical of Israeli policies. This led to the preposterous situation where Labour was suspending and expelling anti-Zionist Jews who supported Corbyn on the grounds that they were supposedly antisemites, while action was delayed on dealing with a Holocaust denier. The narrative against Corbyn being crafted by his own officials was eagerly picked up and amplified by the strong contingent of Blairites among Labour legislators in the parliament, as well as by the corporate media and by Israel lobbyists both inside and outside Labour. Effort to bury report The parties responsible for leaking the report in April did so because Labour, now led by Starmer, had no intention of publicizing it. In fact, the report had been originally compiled as part of Labours submission to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, effectively giving Corbyns side of the story against his opponents. But once Corbyn stepped down, the party bureaucracy under Starmer preferred to shelve it. That decision meant there would be no case for the defense, and Corbyns opponents claims would go unchallenged. Once leaked, Starmer stuck to his position. Rather than use the report as an opportunity to expose the ugly campaign against Corbyn and thereby question the antisemitism narrative, Starmer did his level best to bury it from sight. He vowed to investigate the circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain. That sounded ominously like a threat to hound those who had tried to bring to light the partys betrayal of its previous leader. Rather than accept the evidence presented in the leaked report of internal corruption and the misuse of party funds, Starmer set up an inquiry under QC Martin Forde to investigate the earlier investigation. The Forde inquiry looked like Starmers effort to kick the damaging revelations into the long grass. The British media gave the leaked report despite its earth-shattering revelations of Labour officials sabotaging an election campaign little more than perfunctory coverage. Labour whistleblowers A second, related chance to challenge the Corbyn-antisemitism narrative reached its conclusion last week. And again, Starmer threw in Labours hand. In July last year long before the report had been leaked the BBCs prestige news investigation show Panorama set out to answer a question it posed in the episodes title: Is Labour Antisemitic? John Ware, a reporter openly hostile to Corbyn and well-known for supporting Israel and his antipathy towards Muslims, was chosen to front the investigation. The program presented eight former staff as whistleblowers, their testimonies supposedly exposing Corbyns indulgence of antisemitism. They included those who would soon be revealed in the leaked report as intractable ideological enemies of the Corbyn project and others who oversaw the dysfunctional complaints process that dragged its heels on resolving antisemitism cases. The Panorama program was dismal even by the low standards of political reporting set by the BBC in the Corbyn era. The show made much of the testimony of pro-Israel lobbyists inside the Labour party belonging to a group called the Jewish Labour Movement. They were not identified either by name or by affiliation despite being given the freedom to make anecdotal and unspecified claims of antisemitism against Corbyn and his supporters. The BBCs decision not to name these participants had nothing to do with protecting their identities, even though that was doubtless the impression conveyed to the audience. Most were already known as Israel partisans because they had been exposed in a 2017 four-part al-Jazeera undercover documentary called The Lobby. They were filmed colluding with an Israeli embassy official, Shai Masot, to bring down Corbyn. The BBC did not identify these pro-Israel activists presumably because they had zero credibility as witnesses. One-sided coverage Nonetheless, a seemingly stronger case at least, at the time was made by the eight former Labour staff. Their testimonies to the BBC suggested they had been hampered and bullied by Corbyns team as they tried to stamp out antisemitism. Panorama allowed these claims to go unchallenged, even though with a little digging it could have tapped sources inside Labour who were already compiling what would become the leaked report, presenting a very different view of these self-styled whistleblowers. The BBC also failed to talk to Jewish Voice for Labour, a group of Labour party members supportive of Corbyn who challenged the way the Jewish Labour Movement had manipulated the definition of antisemitism in the party to harm Palestinian solidarity activists. And the BBC did not call as counter-witnesses any of the anti-Zionist Jews who were among the earliest victims of the purge of supposed antisemites by Labours apparent whistleblowers. Instead, it selectively quoted from an email by Seumas Milne, Corbyns chief adviser, to suggest that he had interfered in the disciplinary process to help antisemites avoid suspension. Proper context from the BBC would have revealed that Milne had simply expressed concern at how the rule book was being interpreted when several Jews had been suspended for antisemitism and that he had proffered his view only because a staff member now claiming to be a whistleblower had asked for it. This section of the Panorama show looked suspiciously like entrapment of Milne by Labour staff, followed by collusion from the BBC in promoting their false narrative. Flawed reporting Despite these and many other serious flaws in the Panorama episode, it set the tone for subsequent discussion of the antisemitism problem in Labour. The program aired a few months before a general election, last December, that Corbyn lost to Boris Johnson and the ruling Conservative party. One of the key damaging, gotcha moments of the campaign was an interview with the veteran BBC interviewer Andrew Neil in which he repeatedly asked Corbyn to apologize for antisemitism in the party, as had been supposedly exposed by Panorama. Corbyns refusal to respond directly to the question left him looking evasive and guilty. With the rest of the media amplifying the Panorama claims rather than testing them, it has become the accepted benchmark for judging the Corbyn era. The show has even been nominated for a Bafta award, the British equivalent to an Oscar. Shortly after the program aired, Corbyns team disputed the Panorama narrative, saying it had contained deliberate and malicious misrepresentations designed to mislead the public. They also described the whistleblowers as disaffected former staff with political axes to grind. Ware and seven of the former staff members who appeared in the program launched a defamation action against the Labour party. After the internal report was leaked in April, the legal scales tipped decisively in Labours favor. Starmer was reportedly advised by lawyers that the party would be well-positioned to defeat the legal action and clear Corbyn and the partys name. But again Starmer preferred to fold. Before the case could be tested in court, Starmer issued an apology last week to the ex-staff members and Ware, and paid them a six-figure sum in damages. Admitting that antisemitism has been a stain on the Labour Party in recent years, the statement accepted the claims of the ex-staff to be whistleblowers, even capitalizing the word to aggrandize their status. It said: We acknowledge the many years of dedicated and committed service that the Whistleblowers have given to the Labour Party We unreservedly withdraw all allegations of bad faith, malice and lying. Threat of bankruptcy With typical understatement, Corbyn said he was disappointed at the settlement, calling it a political decision, not a legal one. He added that it risks giving credibility to misleading and inaccurate allegations about action taken to tackle antisemitism in the Labour party in recent years. Starmers decision also preempted and effectively nullified the Forde inquiry, which was due to submit its own findings on antisemitism in Labour later in the year. Many in the party were infuriated that their membership dues had been used to pay off a group of ex-staff who, according to the leaked report, had undermined the partys elected leader and helped to throw a general election. But in what looked disturbingly like a move to silence Corbyn, Ware said he was consulting lawyers once again about launching a legal battle, personally against the former Labour leader, over his criticism of the settlement. Mark Lewis, the solicitor acting for Ware and the whistleblowers, has said he is also preparing an action for damages against Labour on behalf of 32 individuals named in the leaked report. Among them is Lord Iain McNichol, who served as the partys general secretary at the time. Lewis reportedly intends to focus on staff privacy breaches under the Data Protection Act, disclosure of private information and alleged violations of employment law. Conversely, Mark Howell, a Labour party member, has initiated an action against Labour and McNichol seeking damages for breach of contract. He demands that those named in the leaked report be expelled from the party. He is also reported to be considering referring named staff members to the Crown Prosecution Service under the 2006 Fraud Act for their failure to uphold the interests of party members who paid staff salaries. This spate of cases threatens to hemorrhage money from the party. There have been warnings that financial settlements, as well as members deserting the party in droves, could ultimately bankrupt Labour. Corbyn to be expelled? Within days of the apology, a crowdfunding campaign raised more than 280,000 for Corbyn to clear his name in any future legal actions. Given his own self-serving strategy, Starmer would doubtless be embarrassed by such a move. There are already rumors that he is considering withdrawing the party whip from Corbyn a form of exile from the party. Pressure on him to do so is mounting. At the weekend it was reported that ex-staff might drop the threatened case over the embarrassing revelations contained in the leaked report should Starmer expel Corbyn. Quoting someone it described as a well-placed source, the Mail on Sunday newspaper set out the new stakes. Labour says they have zero tolerance to anti-Semitism. Zero tolerance means no Corbyn and no Corbynistas, the source said. There are already reports of what amounts to a purge of left-wing members from Labour. Starmer has committed to upholding 10 Pledges produced by the Board of Deputies a conservative Jewish leadership organization hostile to Corbyn and the left that places it and the pro-Israel lobbyists of the Jewish Labour Movement in charge of deciding what constitutes antisemitism in the party. Selective concern Starmers decision about who can serve in his shadow cabinet is a reminder that the storm over Corbyn was never about real antisemitism the kind that targets Jews for being Jews. It was a pretext to be rid of the Corbyn project and democratic socialism. Starmer quickly pushed out the last two prominent Corbynites in his shadow cabinet both on matters related to criticism of Israel. By contrast, he has happily indulged the kind of antisemitism that harms Jews as long as it comes from members of his shadow cabinet who are not associated with Corbyn. Starmer picked Rachel Reeves for his team, even though earlier this year she tweeted a tribute to Nancy Astor, a supporter of Hitler and notorious antisemite. Reeves has refused to delete the tweet. And Steve Reed is still the shadow communities secretary, even though this month he referred to a Jewish newspaper tycoon, Richard Desmond, as a puppet master the very definition of an antisemitic trope. Starmers zero tolerance appears to be highly selective more concerned about harsh criticism of a state, Israel, than the othering of Jews. Tellingly, Starmer has been under no serious pressure from the Jewish Labour Movement, or from the media or from Jewish leadership organizations such as the Board of Deputies to take any action against either Reeves or Reed. He has moved swiftly against leftists in his party who criticize Israel but has shrugged his shoulders at supposed moderates who, it could be argued, have encouraged or glorified hatred and suspicion of Jews. But then the antisemitism furor was never about safeguarding Jews. It was about creating a cover story as the establishment protected itself from democratic socialism. Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israels Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net . The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Post your comment below See also The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. China achieves key independent tech with full global service of BeiDou Global Times Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/31 10:49:40 Last Updated: 2020/7/31 20:10:25 Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a ceremony to mark the launch of full global services of the BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System on Friday in Beijing, indicating that China's domestically development and independently operated global satellite navigation system has been fully completed. The ceremony signals that China is an independent research and development (R&D) country for key innovations as "core technologies cannot be bought or begged for from other countries." The move also shows that China aims to share the fruits of its technological innovations, compared to the US that has been using its technological edge to bully other countries, experts said. The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System or BDS is China's largest space-based system and one of four global navigation networks, alongside the US' GPS, Russia's GLONASS and the European Union's Galileo. It provides global users with basic navigation, global short message communication, and international search and rescue services. At present, the system's services have covered more than 200 countries and regions, with more than 100 million users and 200 million daily services. "BeiDou is not only China's BeiDou, but also the world's BeiDou. It not only serves China, but also serves the world," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday. As a major national technology effort put forward by top decision-makers, the BDS system has been completed in 26 years since it was first started in 1994. It is a complex space system of the largest scale, with the highest level of service performance, and is closely linked to people's daily lives in terms of transportation, finance, earthquake monitoring, and global search and rescue. More than 400 entities and over 300,000 scientists worked on the project since its inception. Titans in the science and technology field, like Chen Fangyun and Sun Jiadong, were key in its completion. "The BDS is the result of efforts by an army of workers mobilized by the Party and nation, and hard work by hundreds of thousands of engineers in all areas, with the firm support of the public," Yang Changfeng, chief designer of BDS project, said. On June 23, the Long March-3B launch vehicle, carrying the last satellite of the BDS, blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Xichang, Southwest China's Sichuan Province. The satellite was the 55th member of the BeiDou system, and has begun providing navigation, positioning and timing services. From November 2017 to June 2020, in 31 months, China successfully launched 30 BeiDou-3 network satellites and 2 BeiDou-2 backup satellites, at a success rate of 100 percent, creating a new record for the world's satellite navigation system network launch, with the speed of deployment exceeding the monthly average of one satellite every month. Based on independent innovation, the system has completely broken free from relying on imports for its core components and restrictions by others, and all key components are 100 percent home made. "The ceremony on Friday shows that China is confident in its independent research and development of key scientific and technological innovations, and we are ready to master our own destiny given increasing uncertainty in the external environment," Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday. Key technologies that cannot be brought or obtained from other countries, especially during this pandemic period, sometimes decide the level of a country's development. The only way for a country to achieve long-term stability and prosperity is to make utmost efforts to ensure their independent development of high technology, Gao added. China has been fast tracking key exploration projects in recent years. In January of 2019, China's Chang'e-4 probe touched down on the far side of the moon, becoming the first spacecraft to make a soft-landing on the moon's uncharted side that is never visible from Earth. Last week, China successfully launched its first Mars probe, named Tianwen-1, via a Long March-5 Y4 carrier rocket from Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China's Hainan Province into planned orbit. The move heralded a new era for China's deep-space exploration that has steadily progressed beyond moon probes to interplanetary missions. Major projects including the BeiDou, Moon and Mars missions and technologies with civilian-military dual usage, should be completed based on independent research and development to avoid being bottlenecked by other countries in key areas, experts said. "The aerospace industry is an important part of mankind's efforts to explore and use outer space peacefully. It can fully accommodate the joint exploration and cooperation of all countries," Wang from Foreign Ministry said. Industry chain The successful launch of the BDS ensures the satellite navigation industry enters "a new golden age" in terms of comprehensive applications, insiders said. China's domestic satellite navigation and location service sector has grown to accommodate around 14,000 companies with over 500,000 workers in five main industry clusters across the country. From the core industrial chain, the upstream mainly includes basic components such as chips, card boards, antennas, and electronic maps; the midstream includes system integration, terminal products and software; the downstream mainly focuses on operation services. These fields all have listed companies. As an independently developed satellite navigation and positioning system, it solves the time and location acquisition that is needed, and will benefit not only military, but also civilian industries in the coming years, Huang Haihui, vice president of the UniStrong Science & Technology Co., told the Global Times on Friday. China's BDS played an important role in providing mapping services that supported the rapid construction of the Huoshenshan and Leishenshan fang cang temporary hospitals in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, at the beginning of the year when the city was struck by an outbreak of COVID-19. BDS terminals were also carried to the top of Mount Qomolangma for the first time in late May to help a Chinese surveying team measure the height of the world's tallest mountain. By the end of 2019 on the Chinese mainland, more than 6.5 million road vehicles, 40,000 postal and express delivery vehicles, 80,000 buses in 36 major cities, 3,200 inland navigation facilities, and 2,900 marine navigation facilities had adopted services from the BDS, forming the world's largest dynamic monitoring system for road vehicles. In the first quarter of 2020, more than 70 percent of smartphones in China used BeiDou services. A report released by the GNSS and LBS Association of China showed that the industry's market scale is expected to exceed 400 billion yuan by the end of 2020, up from 340 billion yuan in 2019. Projects that use self-developed technologies also help drive the domestic economic cycle before they extend to overseas markets. Zhang Quande, secretary-general of the GNSS and LBS Association of China, said the BeiDou global system will provide major services to global users upon its completion, and such services will lay a solid foundation for BeiDou's high-precision ubiquitous applications around the world. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address WASHINGTON - The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee said Saturday he tested positive for the coronavirus days after he sat close to another member of the panel, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who also tested positive. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said in a statement that he has the virus but, like Gohmert, has no symptoms. He is at least the 11th member of Congress known to have tested positive for the coronavirus. Its unclear where Grijalva, 72, caught the virus and whether it was from Gohmert, a Republican who has questioned the use of masks and often walked around the Capitol without one. Grijalva went into isolation after Gohmert tested positive on Wednesday, since the two had sat close to each other at a Natural Resources hearing the day before. While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously, Grijalva said in the statement. Numerous Republican members routinely strut around the Capitol without a mask to selfishly make a political statement at the expense of their colleagues, staff, and their families. Grijalva said he was informed by the Capitols attending physician that he had tested positive and would self-isolate in quarantine. He said he feels fine and hopes for a speedy recovery. Gohmerts diagnosis prompted concerns across the Capitol, where there is no required testing and there were few requirements for masks. That day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Capitol officials set broad new mask mandates for the House side, including on the House floor and in hallways and member offices. In the Senate, where almost all members have worn masks and office space is more spread out, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he doesnt see the need for new mandates. On testing, Pelosi and McConnell have remained firm that there should be no special access for lawmakers as long as the general public doesnt have widespread workplace testing. They have both said that equipment and tests should instead be directed to front-line workers. The leaders in May rejected an offer from President Donald Trump to send rapid tests to the Capitol for lawmakers. The White House tests anyone who will be in close proximity to the president, which is how Gohmert found out he had the virus. The Texas Republican was scheduled to travel with Trump to his home state that day. Gohmert also attended a hearing with Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday, and was captured on video walking closely behind Barr without a mask on as the attorney general entered the hearing room. A Justice Department spokeswoman said Barr was tested Wednesday and the test came back negative. At least two other lawmakers have quarantined after coming into contact with Gohmert last week Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, who sat next to Gohmert on a Sunday flight to Washington, and Republican Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who had dinner with Gohmert on Monday. Ridd has authored papers and articles that assert the reef is healthy and coral bleaching has been wildly exaggerated by climate alarmists. "I don't think the reef is in any particular trouble at all," he told an IPA podcast. "In fact, I think it's probably one of the best protected ecosystems in the whole world, and virtually pristine." Professor Peter Ridd has long contended that coral bleaching is overstated and the Great Barrier Reef is in good health. Credit:Lyle Vail/Australian Museum via WWF But it was Ridd's comments about his colleagues and employer, JCU, that landed him in trouble at work. In 2015 he contacted a journalist and argued that reports by the government's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies which is based at JCU were unreliable. The organisations should "check their facts before they spin their story", Ridd wrote, adding: "[My] guess is that they will both wiggle and squirm [if asked about the issue] because they actually know that these pictures are likely to be telling a misleading story and they will smell a trap". The university decided this amounted to misconduct and censured Ridd for the first time in April 2016, and directed him to make his public comments in a collegiate manner. Ridd stirred the pot again during an August 2017 appearance on Sky News in which he argued "we can no longer trust" the ARC Centre for Excellence or the Australian Institute of Marine Studies, in part because their staff were "not very objective about the science they do" and were "emotionally attached" to the reef. At various stages, Ridd was also ordered not to discuss the ongoing disciplinary proceedings with anyone directives he ignored by engaging with preferred media outlets such as News Corp's The Australian newspaper. By April 2018, the university had made a total of 17 misconduct findings against its professor. One breach involved an email Ridd sent to a student about a colleague delivering a keynote speech at a conference. "You wonder why he is there," Ridd wrote. "It is not like he has any clue about the weather. He will give the normal doom science about the GBR." He also complained of universities being "Orwellian in nature". Ridd was also reprimanded for emailing a student a link to a newspaper article about his plight using the subject line: "For your amusement." The university deemed this a breach of its order to "not make any comment or engage in any conduct that directly or indirectly trivialises, satirises or parodies the university taking disciplinary action against you". The court judgment referred to this as a "No Satire Direction". The final finding against Ridd was that he had failed to disclose the IPA had paid for various travel expenses and was helping him with legal costs. He was sacked on May 2, 2018. He added that grievance to his existing case against JCU's censures, lodged the previous year. Ridd prevailed in April 2019, when Federal Circuit Court judge Salvatore Vasta ruled the termination unlawful and awarded $1.2 million in compensation. Vasta's judgment was that Ridd's workplace agreement which explicitly protects academic freedom (provided it did not harass, vilify, bully or intimidate others) takes precedence over the code of conduct. [If that name sounds familiar, it's because Vasta is a controversial judge. He has been subject to a number of complaints, including concerns voiced by the Law Council of Australia. Several of his rulings have been overturned on appeal, in addition to this one. Last year Vasta was stood down from an administrative role within the court and ordered to undergo "mentoring".] Controversial Federal Circuit Court judge Salvatore Vasta found in Ridd's favour, but the decision was overturned. JCU appealed the Ridd decision. Last month the Federal Court upheld the appeal in a two-to-one majority and dismissed Ridd's claim (the dissenting judge thought the case should be re-heard). The majority judgment effectively found the workplace agreement did not ride roughshod over the university's code of conduct. While Ridd enjoyed academic freedom, it was not "untrammelled"; he was bound to comply with the code of conduct as much as was reasonable while exercising his right to robustly debate the science. "It's a question of what are the limits, if any, and what are the protections, if any, for academics when they're exercising academic freedom," says Mitchell Downes, one of Ridd's lawyers. Ridd's team argued academic freedom was a "shield", providing immunity from other obligations. JCU argued there was more to it; it was about "what you say and how you say it". That carried the day. For its part, JCU has maintained there is a clear distinction between Ridd's academic freedom and his conduct. "We defend Peter's right to make statements in his area of academic expertise and would continue to do that until we are blue in the face," deputy vice-chancellor Iain Gordon told Guardian Australia in 2018. "The issue has never been about Peter's right to make statements. It's about how he has continually broken a code of conduct that we would expect all our staff to stick to, to create a safe, respectful and professional workplace." If the High Court agrees to hear Ridd's appeal, it will set up a showdown between two esteemed legal minds: Melbourne-based workplace relations specialist Stuart Wood, QC, who is acting for Ridd; and Bret Walker, SC, who successfully represented Cardinal George Pell in his recent High Court appeal, representing the university. Predicting what cases the High Court will elect to hear is a mug's game, but some legal observers reckon Ridd has a fighting chance. The dissenting judgment of Judge Darryl Rangiah, who wanted the Federal Court to re-hear the case, would help. "If nothing else it shows this is a case on which reasonable minds can differ," says Jeremy Gans, a law professor at the University of Melbourne. In the meantime, Ridd has lost his job but gained a new career as a pin-up for climate change sceptics. He appears on Sky News and in The Australian, and the IPA has dedicated significant resources to his cause. The think tank certainly believes much is at stake in the "historic" case. "It will be the first time that the High Court has been asked to adjudicate on the meaning of intellectual freedom," says IPA policy director Gideon Rozner. "The fundamental issues of free speech at Australian universities, the future of academic debate and freedom of speech on climate change are all on the line." Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan has been lobbied to bolster a code meant to protect free speech at universities. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Members of the Morrison government are closely watching the case. In a party room meeting last July, Education Minister Dan Tehan reportedly raised concerns about JCU's then-pending appeal, while backbenchers James Paterson, Craig Kelly, George Christensen and Warren Entsch all spoke about the issue. The MPs wanted to know whether the government could contribute financially to Ridd's case. Attorney-General Christian Porter explained there is a fund that exists for "extraordinary and novel cases", but Ridd has not asked to access it, and is not expected to for his High Court appeal. It is an expensive campaign. Ridd says his legal expenses have eclipsed $1.1 million, comprising $300,000 of his money and $800,000 from donations. But in just two days last week, Ridd raised nearly $400,000 for the final hurdle. Ridd's GoFundMe page lays out his belief that the consequences of his case will be felt regardless of the outcome. "I don't take the decision to appeal lightly," he says. "The financial and emotional costs are high and legal action is fraught with uncertainties. There are, however, too many important principles at stake to walk away at this stage. "Even if we lose in the High Court, it will demonstrate beyond doubt that the work contracts at universities have the effect of crushing free speech. I have little doubt the Education Minister [Mr Tehan] will have something to say about that once the legal action is over. So even if we lose the High Court challenge, we still win the ultimate political battle." There is certainly a political battle to be had. Ridd's case has triggered a debate, if not a reckoning, about academic freedom. McNally, the union secretary, compares it to the suspension of La Trobe University's Roz Ward, who became a national fixation over the Safe Schools program. "She was targeted by her university and we had to defend her," he says. "The principal of academic freedom is one where you have to actually challenge orthodoxies and you have to ruffle feathers." Melbourne University law professor Adrienne Stone says universities need different rules from corporate workplaces. Adrienne Stone, a law professor at the University of Melbourne with a research interest in free expression, says Ridd's case has brought attention to how corporate norms of behaviour have infected universities. "My view is that universities are not ordinary workplaces, and the relationship between an academic and their employer is not like other relationships that you would have with, say, a corporate employer," Stone says. "Academic freedom exists to ensure we have the kind of environment that enables us to pursue knowledge for the public benefit. I don't think you should be allowed to vilify someone or bully someone or harass someone. But I don't think this general standard of having to be civil and collegiate is appropriate in the university context." Stone says JCU's demand that Ridd not trivialise the disciplinary proceedings against him proves bureaucratic culture is out of control in universities. "Can you believe that a university in the 21st century is issuing a 'No Satire Direction' to an academic? I think it's just nuts," she says. Courtesy Photo Major Jose Sanchez, a member of the Criminal Investigations Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety, is seen handing a tactical helmet to Hale County Sheriff David Cochran earlier this week. Sanchez presented the Hale County SWAT team with seven tactical helmets to help replace some of the older helmets Deputy Mark Browns team had been using. Brown said he had heard that DPS had some helmets that were being given out and wrote a letter to request that his squad be chosen for them. Sanchez came to Plainview on Wednesday to give Cochran the helmets. Brown said that his team was need of helmets as theirs were outdated. The SWAT team consists of 10 men who are deployed on calls for things such as serving warrants and the new helmets will help protect the team members on those calls. Advertisement Hurricane Isaias has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves through the Northwestern Bahamas. Isaias winds have decreased slightly with the storm expected to reach Florida overnight. The storm snapped trees and knocked out power as it ripped through the Caribbean country on Saturday and headed toward the Florida coast. Officials on the U.S. mainland are sterilizing evacuation centers and stocking them with protective gear in a desperate bid to avoid spurring new cases of coronavirus in the already hard-hit state. Hurricane Isaias blew through Bahamas on Saturday as Category 1 and headed toward the Florida coast. The storm track is pictured The storm is expected to his Miami and south Florida overnight before moving towards northern Florida and South Carolina early on Monday morning Wind gusts of up to 50mph are expected in West Palm Beach as the storm moved up Florida's east coast on Sunday Isaias was downgraded to a tropical storm on Saturday night as it neared the eastern coast of Florida The path of the storm remains unclear although it is believed that it will track more or less directly up the eastern seaboard 'Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,' the National Weather Service said in a flash bulletin on Saturday. 'Hurricane conditions are expected to reach the coast within the hurricane warning area in Florida tonight and will spread northward through Sunday.' 'Winds are expected to first reach tropical storm strength later today, making outside preparations difficult or dangerous,' the NWS said. Landfall is expected in South Florida overnight with storm tracks predicting the hurricane will veer north along the coast, threatening Georgia and the Carolinas on Sunday into Monday, and reaching New York City as early as Tuesday. A hurricane warning is in effect from Boca Raton to the Flagler/Volusia County Line in Florida. NOAA satellite imagery shows Hurricane Isaias over the Bahamas at 9.40am EDT on Saturday. Hurricane Isaias snapped trees and knocked out power as it blew through the Bahamas on Saturday and headed toward the Florida coast A storm surge is expected of between 2-4' feet along Fort Pierce and Melbourne on the east coast of the state The above map shows the amount of rainfall predicted through Tuesday with 12" in the Bahamas, between 3-5" near the coast Sea spray, sand and winds sweep across South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach on Saturday as Isaias bears down A beach goer attempts to set up a beach umbrella Saturday in Palm Beach, Florida as the outer bands reach the state Red no-swimming flags fly at Lantana, Florida Municipal Beach as Hurricane Isaias approaches the Florida coast Saturday Storm clouds are seen over the city as Hurricane Isaias approaches the east coast of Florida on Saturday in Miami Cars drive past a sign warning of Hurricane strength weather on Interstate 95, Saturday near Boynton Beach, Florida Tropical storm warnings are in effect from the northern Florida Keys to Boca Raton and inland and north to Orlando, Florida, including Lake Okeechobee. They also extend from the Volusia-Flagler County line to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Strong winds are currently moving across South Florida with the first band of rain from Isaias according to Weather.com. Wind gusts between 40-60mph were reported across various South Florida locations with a 59mph wind gust measured near Dania Beach. Florida authorities said they have prepared shelters, but didn't expect to have to evacuate people. 'The most important thing we want people to do now is remain vigilant,' said Gov. Ron DeSantis. Further north, authorities in North Carolina ordered the evacuation of Ocracoke Island, which was slammed by last year's Hurricane Dorian, starting Saturday evening. Isaias had maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour at 11am Saturday morning, a slight decline from earlier in the day, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Florida's well-honed hurricane responses have been partly upended by its grappling with one of the country's worst outbreaks of the novel coronavirus. The emergency operations center in Miami, usually a beehive of activity ahead of a storm, was mostly empty with plastic dividers set up between work stations and fans with ultraviolet lights hung around the room in the hope of eradicating any floating virus particles. Many emergency officials are instead working remotely. 'It's not a perfect system,' said Frank Rollason, Miami-Dade's director of emergency management, 'but what we're facing to today with COVID, we're trying to avoid packing all of those people into the emergency operations center.' Much of Florida's Atlantic coast was under a hurricane watch on Saturday, as Isaias bore down on the state A forecast of wind conditions on Sunday morning shows the section of Florida coast that may be hit hardest The forecast path of the storm shows that it could hit the Carolinas by Monday and even New York City by Tuesday Hurricane Isaias is expected to bring heavy rain as well as storm surges as it moves north from South Florida Palm trees bend in the winds preceding Hurricane Isaias in Miami Beach on Saturday Though there were fears the hurricane would delay the return of a historic mission to the International Space Station, NASA said on Friday that separation and splashdown would go forward as scheduled. Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken took part in a farewell ceremony Saturday at the International Space Station, several hours ahead of their planned departure on a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Splashdown is set for Sunday afternoon in the Gulf of Mexico, and will be the first splashdown for astronauts in 45 years. On Florida's Atlantic coast, a hurricane warning was in effect from Boca Raton, just north of Miami, about 150 miles north to the Volusia-Flagler county line. A hurricane watch was in effect from Hallendale Beach to south of Boca Raton. The state was 'fully prepared for this and any future storm during this hurricane season,' DeSantis said, with stockpiles of personal protective equipment, generators, bottled water and meals ready to be distributed. But DeSantis said state-run coronavirus testing sites would be closed in areas where the storm might hit. 'Our sites, because theyre outdoors with tents, if it were to get 40-, 50-mile-per-hour winds, it would just collapse,' he said. 'Safety is paramount for that.' Workers install panels and sand bags at the entrance of a CVS Pharmacy in Miami Beach, Florida on Saturday Bonnie Gruner's employees help board up the building she manages at in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida on Saturday Chris Nagiewicz, left, watches as his wife Mary screws in a hurricane panel on Saturday on a trailer home in Briny Breezes, FL A boarded up home is shown Saturday in Briny Breezes, Florida. Hurricane Isaias is headed toward the Florida coast, where officials have closed beaches, parks and coronavirus testing sites Anthony Perrone pulls the hurricane shutters closed on his home on Friday in Lake Worth, Florida. Perrone said he closed the shutters to prepare his home for the possible arrival of Hurricane Isaias The closure of COVID-19 testing sites is concerning in a state that has been a hot spot in the United States in recent weeks. The pandemic forced officials to wrestle with social-distancing rules at the same time as disaster response. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said each person in shelters needed to have 40 square feet and no more cafeteria-style dining would be allowed. Any evacuees infected with the new coronavirus will be isolated in classrooms separate them from the general population, Gimenez said. Meanwhile, officials in the Bahamas cleared people out of Abaco island who have been living in temporary structures since Dorian devastated the area, killing at least 70 people. The center of the storm is expected to move over northern Andros Island in the next hours, on to Grand Bahama Island in the northwestern Bahamas later in the day then near the east coast of Florida overnight through Sunday. It is expected to weaken slowly late Monday. Brett Hand controls a Marine Travelift with a hand held remote to lift boats out of the water and move them onto the grounds of Palm Beach Yacht Center for safe keeping as Hurricane Isaias approaches the Florida coast Saturday People are seen stocking up on water, in preparation for the storm in Miami on Friday. Hurricane advisory in effect for the Southeast coast of Florida. Hurricane Isaias is expected to hit South Florida in some areas as a category one on Saturday. A Fort Lauderdale resident stocks up with groceries and water in preparation for Hurricane Isaias on Friday Cars are seen lined up to fill up their tanks with gas at a Miami Costco on Friday in preparation for Hurricane Isaias A hurricane warning was in effect for northwest Bahamas. Isaias was expected to drop from 4 to 8 inches of rain in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Bahamian officials said they were concerned about a Category 1 storm hitting amid the coronavirus pandemic. 'The center of COVID-19 now is in Grand Bahama,' the islands minister, Sen. Kwasi Thompson, told government-run ZNS Bahamas. 'No one wanted to see a situation where we are now facing a hurricane.' Paula Miller, Mercy Corps director for the Bahamas, told The Associated Press that people on the island were still standing in line for gas on Saturday ahead of the storm. The area was still recovering from Dorian, complicating preparations for this one. 'People are doing the best they can to prepare, but a lot of businesses still have not fully repaired their roofs or their structures,' she said. 'Even a lower level storm could really set them back.' People in the Dominican Republic clean and dry their belongings after the passage of tropical storm Isaias, with which heavy rains caused the overflowing of the Magua River in Hato Mayor Locals try to rescue their belonging after the overflow of the Magua river caused by heavy rains caused during Isaias storm in the city of Hato Mayor, northwest of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic A man remains outside his home, where teddy bears were hanged from a window to dry after the passage of tropical storm Isaias, with which heavy rains caused the overflowing of the Magua River in Hato Mayor, Dominican Republic In the Bahamas, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis relaxed a coronavirus lockdown as a result of the storm, but imposed a 10pm to 5am curfew. He said supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and hardware stores would be open as long as weather permitted. The Bahamas has reported more than 570 confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 14 deaths. It recently barred travelers from the U.S. following a surge in cases after it reopened to international tourism. On Thursday, while still a tropical storm, Isaias toppled trees, knocked out power, destroyed crops and caused widespread flooding and small landslides in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. One man died in the Dominican Republic, where more than 5,000 people were evacuated, hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed and more than 130 communities were cut off by floodwaters. In Puerto Rico, the National Guard rescued at least 35 people from floodwaters that swept away one woman who remained missing. YEREVAN, AUGUST 1, ARMENPRESS. In a pro-accountability move that will help check Azerbaijani aggression and contribute to the stabilization of the 1994 cease-fire, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has included a provision in the Intelligence Authorization Act calling upon the U.S. intelligence community to provide Congress with a written assessment regarding which side is initiating the use of force in and around Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) and the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, ARMENPRESS was informed from the official website of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). We welcome this provision of the Intelligence Authorization Act as a pro-active measure to ensure that Congress has reliable intelligence on Azerbaijans cease-fire violations against Artsakh and cross-border aggression into Armenia, said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. This constructive initiative, in the spirit of the bipartisan Royce-Engel Peace Proposal, will help Congress hold Baku accountable, fact-check its denials, and contribute to a more stable cease-fire. Greater intelligence community scrutiny, more Congressional oversight, and additional accountability in the form of gun-fire locators and OSCE observers are all needed to help break Bakus reckless pattern of attack, deny, and repeat a one-sided cycle of violence needlessly perpetuated by uninformed calls upon all parties to refrain from violence, continued Hamparian. Surveillance really challenges your sense of dignity. From Global Voices. This story is based on reporting by Global Voices content partner Meta.mk News Agency, a project of Metamorphosis Foundation. A civic initiative called #hiljadekamera (thousands of cameras in English), has been raising concerns about the deterioration of privacy in Serbia resulting from the introduction of a video surveillance system with advanced facial recognition in the capital Belgrade. As part of the campaign, a documentary with the same title was released. The Serbian government in cooperation with the Chinese technology company Huawei have been actively working since 2019 on the implementation of the surveillance project, called Safe City. This project involves the installation of thousands of smart surveillance cameras with object and facial recognition features. The cameras were procured as part of a bundle that included an artificial intelligence system used to analyze the feed captured by them. Hiljade Kamera is led by SHARE Foundation, the leading Serbian digital rights group established in 2012 and a member of European Digital Rights network (EDRI). On its website (hiljade.kamera.rs), launched in May 2020, the initiative describes itself as a community of individuals and organizations that advocate the responsible use of surveillance technology. It pushes for the respect of the right to privacy and accountability in relation to the government surveillance program through a number of tactics, including crowd-mapping, community building, research, advocacy and content production. SHARE Foundation produced a concise documentary summarizing the situation. The documentary is available in Serbian, with English subtitles. In the video, experts and representatives of the initiative and the Serbian National Data Protection Authority raised concerns about the surveillance project. Bojan Perkov, a policy researcher at SHARE Foundation noted that the governments of Serbia and China have been working on technical and economic cooperation since 2009, when they signed their first bilateral agreement. Several years later, a strategic partnership forged between Serbias Ministry of Interior and Huawei, paving the way to the implementation of the project Safe Society in Serbia. Over the past several months, new cameras have been widely installed throughout Belgrade. Perkov further questioned the legality of the programs implementation. Even though the Ministry was obliged by law to conduct a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) of the new smart surveillance system, it failed to fulfil the legal requirements, as warned by civil society organizations and the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection. The Threats of Biometric Surveillance The documentary includes a contribution by Ella Jakubowska from European Digital Rights (EDRi), the leading network fighting for digital rights in Europe, who stressed the risks of massive surveillance: Theres a real sense of empowerment from being able to express yourself differently and suddenly, if youre forced to conform, this poses a real threat to your identity. It really challenges your sense of dignity and who you are as a person, and who youre allowed to be in your society, in a way thats very dangerous. This segment is part of an extensive interview conducted by SHARE Foundation, which provides wider context of the threats of biometric mass surveillance to human rights and freedoms. In surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition software, facial features are captured and analyzed to identify an individual by matching the data on existing databases. Jakubowska noted: Any society that looks to stratify people based on how they look, based on their health, based on their data and things about them, is an incredibly authoritarian and sinister society. The societies throughout history that have tried to separate and stratify people based on data about them are the sort of authoritarian societies that we want to stay as far away as possible from. The EDRI representative stressed that the people need to hold those in power to account, to be calling out surveillance when they see it and contributing to civil society organizations and the activists that are trying to reveal these secretive rollouts. Collaboration of all stakeholders and demand for public debate are key to preventing situations in which the power to decide is taken from citizens and lies only in the hands of private companies or police forces, she added. Avinash Ramachandran By Express News Service If nothing else, one can be assured of seeing the screen filled with style and pizzazz whenever Tigmanshu Dhulia decides to make a film on the Indian hinterland. We have seen him showcase reluctant dacoits, royal gangsters, hotheaded college students in films that generally carry a strong sense of brotherhood and, of course, betrayal. In 'Yaara', the recent direct-to-OTT Hindi release, Tigmanshu sticks to this template that has served him well in the past. Although 'Yaara' begins in 1999 in a posh area of Delhi, the film travels through dusty plains, dense forests and unforgiving deserts in a narration that spans four decades. We first see the members of the brotherhood Phagun (Vidyut Jammwal), Mitwa (Amit Sadh), Rizwan (Vijay Verma) and Bahadur (Kenny Basumatary) as middle-aged men in their 40s. Three of them have moved on from their life of crime but Mitwa hasnt. His re-entry after more than a decade turns their lives upside down. The various players in this action drama are introduced at a frenetic pace, which, unfortunately, is compromised later for establishing layers that are only half-baked. We first meet the Chaukdi gang the awesome foursome as kids who are roped in by Chaman (Sanjay Mishra in a cameo) to work in their gang that carries out smuggling across the Indo-Nepal border. We move from the 50s to the 60s and the 70s, and each time period is established by film posters, Amitabh Bachchan imitations, the breaking news of the times, and growing insurgency in the country. While the Chaukdi gang is essentially a group of lawless people, they also follow the Hindi cinema stereotype of having hearts of gold. For every mindless murder, they save the poor from the clutches of evil rich people just to balance things out. But their good deeds are unable to save them or the film once the Naxalite angle takes center-stage. Though this angle introduces us to Sukanya (Shruti Haasan) and her relationship with Phagun, Yaara is left to fight hard at redeeming itself after nosediving in these portions. As a separate entity, the police brutality to crush the insurgency does elicit the appropriate response of shock and rage. However, in the grander scheme of things, these sequences only make the character arcs of the main players all the more confusing. For instance, Sukanya, a firebrand activist in her youth, is not shown to be reluctant in accepting the riches offered by a cushioned existence. In between all this, there is a betrayal of this brotherhood, and the proverbial twists in the tale are so clear from the beginning that the build-up seems laughable at best. Holding your cards too close to the chest and revealing all of them at once doesnt bode well for a film that preferred taking it slow till then. Although Yaara does have its share of flaws, full points to Tigmanshu for his inspired casting choices, including having Vidyut play a role that isn't just about the action scenes. The John Wick of Hindi cinema shows that he isnt a one-trick pony. While Amit Sadh continues to play the conflicted angry young man with relative ease, Vijay Verma gets to do his best impersonation of the OG angry young man of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan. But more than anything, it is the casting of Shruti that takes the cake. She not only aces the dignified poise that comes with maturity but revels in the free-spiritedness of a rebel who believes justice will soon be served. It is a pity that the inconsistency in writing doesn't support the actors well enough. When the film concentrates on the camaraderie of the Chaukdi gang, Yaara feels like a Subramaniapuram meets Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. It balances the rusticness with an uber-cool attitude. It is super fun to see trigger-happy bootleggers doing their criminal activities without a shred of conscience. However, concentrating more on the betrayal than the brotherhood feels like a misstep or rather, a betrayal worse than the one they encounter in the film. Director: Tigmanshu Dhulia Cast: Vidyut Jammwal, Amit Sadh, Shruti Haasan, Vijay Verma Streaming on: Zee5 Wireless Gas Detectors Bring Connectivity to Confined Space Entries Wireless gas detectors are changing the way we work in confined spaces. The way that we test the atmosphere within a confined space is changing. Although continuous monitoring of the atmosphere within a confined space has always been considered a best practice, many companies have traditionally found it difficult or impractical to implement. The attendant assigned to the entry can monitor the atmosphere inside the space with a portable gas monitor, but this is often cumbersome and requires additional equipment (a sampling pump and a piece of tubing or a probe). However, this setup only tests the atmosphere in one small area. Continuously monitoring the atmosphere throughout the entire space or in the area where the work is being performed is much more challenging. This is all changing thanks to wireless connectivity. Wireless mesh technology embedded within some connected gas monitors enables the instruments to communicate with each other at a peer-to-peer level. Entrants inside the space carrying a gas detector enabled with peer-to-peer connectivity will share their readings with a connected area monitor or personal gas detector stationed with the gas tester or attendant outside the space, allowing them to see the readings and monitor the atmosphere through each of the entrants instruments. Seeing the gas readings within a confined space is not just convenient: it saves lives. Youve probably heard confined space horror stories like this a million times: the person inside of a confined space becomes unresponsive. The attendant responsible for monitoring the work goes into the confined space to check on his partner and is overcome by the same deadly gas. Its a tragic story of trying to help a co-worker based on gut reaction rather than proper safety protocols. According to OSHA, these would-be rescuers make up 60 percent of confined space fatalities. But with shared data on gas hazards, the attendant watching the hole in this example would have known what caused his partner to become unresponsive without being exposed firsthand. He could then take appropriate steps to rescue his peer, without putting himself in danger. This article originally appeared in the August 2020 issue of Occupational Health & Safety. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 23:47:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland has set up a batch of supportive teams that will head for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to carry out nucleic acid tests for COVID-19. Given the grave epidemic prevention and control situation in Hong Kong, the National Health Commission (NHC) assembled the teams at the request of the HKSAR government and under the deployment and command of the central government. Around 60 professionals were selected by the health commission of south China's Guangdong Province from over 20 public hospitals, and seven of them will leave for Hong Kong on Sunday to help with laboratory work, according to the NHC on Saturday. They will be the first batch of mainland professionals dispatched by the central government to support Hong Kong's fight against COVID-19. The NHC will continue to assemble mainland medical resources and send more support any time based on the requirements of the HKSAR in terms of battling the epidemic, it said. A supportive team on makeshift hospitals consisting of six experts has also been assembled by the NHC. All from Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, the experts boast experience and will provide technical support in transforming Hong Kong's AsiaWorld-Expo into a makeshift hospital for COVID-19 patients, the NHC said. Enditem Find 2021 Hyundai models at Boucher Hyundai of Waukesha. Local Waukesha dealership, Boucher Hyundai of Waukesha, now has a variety of 2021 Hyundai models for sale. Shoppers can find new Hyundai SUVs such as the 2021 Hyundai Kona and 2021 Hyundai Tucson at this friendly car dealership. The 2021 Hyundai Kona is geared towards families and individuals who are searching for a smaller model that still has enough space to use as a utility vehicle. This compact SUV is nimble, quick, and easy to drive. With a seating capacity of 5 people and a max cargo space of 45.8 cubic feet, the Hyundai Kona presents itself as a larger alternative to sedans, without carrying the excessive bulk of a regular SUV. The 2021 Hyundai Tucson is more of a traditional SUV that car shoppers usually think of when shopping for their next family vehicle. This model also has a seating capacity of 5 people, however it has a longer and larger stance than its smaller counterpart. Because of this, customers will find the max cargo space expanded to a roomy 61.9 cubic feet of cargo space. Both models would make a prime addition to the family, and both can be found at Boucher Hyundai of Waukesha. Customers can view the available models at http://www.boucherhyundai.com. Local Waukesha and Milwaukee residents are encouraged to contact Boucher Hyundai of Waukesha for additional information about these and other available Hyundai models at the dealership. With a variety of choices and a comfortable atmosphere, shopping is made easy at this local Hyundai dealer. Contact the team at Boucher Hyundai by calling 800-339-7306 or by visiting at 1583 E. Moreland Blvd in Waukesha. Within the past five months business owners in the Houston area have had to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic, whether that meant opting for an online business, installing social distancing conscious efforts into their day-to-day, or having to temporarily or permanently close their businesses. Cy-Fair COVID Resources: Where to find free food, blood drives and bill assistance As the local business community adjusts to the new normal that is COVID-19, Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce is asking business owners how they are handling the pandemic and providing the information free-of-charge on their YouTube channel. On HoustonChronicle.com: Cy-Fair COVID Resources: Where to find free food, blood drives and bill assistance The chamber began uploading the videos in May, speaking with owners of various businesses like Shaka Power Yoga and Bridgeland. Chamber Vice President Paula Harvey said the idea came to Angila Ervin, memberships and sales lead for the chamber, after the chamber recently started a podcast and wanted to make the content more available during the pandemic. Weve been called by a lot of our members saying, How can I promote myself? I have this great thing that everyone can use right now, Harvey said. We started looking at some of the bigger members like Bridgeland and the hospital, Houston Methodist, and we have some of those (members) mixed in there too and theyve got some great information. Each interview is less than 15 minutes, as the chamber opted to ask interviewees specific questions about how they have adjusted to COVID-19 and tips they have for other members. The chamber is also uploading video versions of their monthly lunch-ins to YouTube, which are free for the time being. The interviews have also been a resource for parents looking for guidance as the fall semester approaches. Kevin Kalra talked about Montessori Preschool and how parents are changing how its delivered; Zenith Learning is putting pods together in neighborhoods to sit down and do tutoring together, Harvey said. Its really a cool thing. The videos were a result of a need to serve members, Harvey said. Although the chamber is receiving less revenue due to monthly luncheons becoming free and less events overall, Harvey said that the chamber is more worried about the wellbeing of business owners. Its what we found the need was for our members and were just trying to stay connected because any time we can talk to them and keep things going, the better renewals, the better the retention and we want to help them right now, she said. We want them to survive, we want them to do good, we want to reach out to them to see how theyre doing and just show our support and hope that they carry on and stay with us too as members. But thats not first and foremost; we want to see how theyre doing. To view the interviews, visit the CyFair Chamber YouTube channel. chevall.pryce@chron.com Theres always that one friend you can share everything with and count on when the going gets tough, and not just call on but also call up whenever you are in a soup. This Friendship Day, we ask some Bollywood actors who is that one friend in the film industry they reach out to whenever they want, essentially who they consider to be their 3am Friend. JACQUELINE FERNANDEZ COUNTS ON VARUN DHAWAN Hands down Varun Dhawan. He is just so cute , he is like oh my God I am going to be calling you and face timing you whenever you want . He is very caring and he is always there . He is so fun to chat to as well. TIGER SHROFF CONFIDES IN HIS SISTER I dont have a 3am friend as I go to bed at 10pm! But if I do need to chat with somebody it would be my sister Krishna who would definitely be awake at 3am ANANYA PANDAY TRUSTS ISHAAN KHATTER It is Ishaan Khatter for me. We are working together in a film- Khaali Peeli and I have really connected with him. He is a nice, easy and fun person and definitely someone I would reach out to ant any time of the day. RADHIKA APTE NAMES KALKI KOECHLIN A 3am friend basically means when you are in desperate need in the middle of the night, who do you call? For me, its Kalki Koechlin ISHAAN KHATTERS BUDDY IS SIDHANT CHATURVEDI Nowadays I have too many 3am friends, and they are now transitioning into 4am friends. Let me say Sidhant Chaturvedi, I remember having conversations with him till 5 in the morning during the lockdown. Conversations about multiple things, the situation we are in, how each of us are handling it, many things, things we both care about. FATIMA SANA SHAIKH LOVES HER DANGAL SISTER SANYA MALHOTRA Sanya Malhotra. We have these random discussion about almost everything under the sun from work, family, social media, travel plans, friends... Even if we dont get to meet a lot, we are always in touch over calls and messages. Follow @htshowbiz for more POONCH: An Army jawan was killed in a ceasefire violation by the Pakistani Army in the Balakot sector of Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district on Saturday (August 1). "Pakistan Army resorted to unprovoked ceasefire violation on the line of control (LoC) in Rajouri Sector (J&K). Our troops responded strongly to the enemy fire. In the incident, Sepoy Rohin Kumar was critically injured and later succumbed to his injuries," the Indian Army said in a statement. "Sepoy Rohin Kumar 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," it added. On July 29, an Army porter was killed in an unprovoked ceasefire violation initiated by Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC) in Baramulla by firing mortars and other weapons, according to Chinar Corps, Indian Army. - Coast Regional Commander Yakub Rashid was appointed the new Nairobi Regional Commander to replace Philip Ndolo - Ndolo was then transferred to Kiganjo Police College as the new deputy commandant to replace Gabriel Musau - Musau was moved to coast to replace Yakub as the new coast regional commander Nairobi county has received a new police commander in a mini shuffle by the National Police service that happened on Saturday, August 1, 2020. In the changes announced by Deputy Inspector General of Police Edward Mbugua, Rashid Yakub took over from Philip Ndolo as Nairobi's police commander. READ ALSO: Nairobi man recounts how mother succumbed to COVID-19 as they waited for test results New sheriff in town: Rashid Yakub appointed new Nairobi police commander Source: UGC READ ALSO: Forest crowned world's tallest giraffe A report by the Standard showed Ndolo was moved to Kiganjo Police Training College in Nyeri and named the Deputy Commandant. Yakub has been in Mombasa county in the same capacity. The report further showed Kiganjo Police Training College Deputy Commandant Gabriel Musau replaced Yakub as the new Coast Regional police boss. READ ALSO: PCEA pastors put aside robes, wear PPEs to give last respect to fallen secretary-general Kania Musau is reported to have worked in Mombasa as the head of operations and also worked as a personal assistant to at least three commissioners of police for a long period of time. Ndolo, a long-serving police commander, served in North Eastern and was once the director of police operations. On the other hand, Yakub worked as the Western Regional Police Commander from 2019 before he was moved to the coast in the same capacity. READ ALSO: Kilifi: 47-year-old short-statured man gets married in colourful event after years looking for love He once accused Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko of assault during an arrest in Voi on January 22, 2020, but he withdrew the charges later on. At the time, Sonko was arrested in connection to the irregular award of a Ksh300 million tender. The mini reshuffle comes at a time when the former Nairobi Police Commander complained of intimidation in the enforcement of COVID-19 directives issued by the government. READ ALSO: Mwachonda Chibanzi: Acting KMPDU secretary-general tests positive for COVID-19 He particularly cited influential bar owners who continued to violate the ban on selling alcohol. It also comes hot on the heels of chaos being witnessed at City Hall forcing authorities to dispatch the Head of Operations at Vigilance House, James Mwaniki, to quell chaos between MCAs. The power battles in the Nairobi County Assembly took a new twist after reinstated clerk Jacob Ngwele issued a notice of motion suspending Speaker Beatrice Elachi. 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 According to a press release published by the French company Naval Group on July 31, 2020, Brusselle Carral, a Belgian company based in Zeebruges, has been selected on July 28th, 2020 as a supplier of deck equipment for the new minehunters built by Kership for Belgium Naval & Robotics (Naval Group / ECA Group consortium) for the Belgian and Dutch Navies. According to a press release published by the French company Naval Group on July 31, 2020, Brusselle Carral, a Belgian company based in Zeebruges, has been selected on July 28th, 2020 as a supplier of deck equipment for the new minehunters built by Kership for Belgium Naval & Robotics (Naval Group / ECA Group consortium) for the Belgian and Dutch Navies. Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link Belgian Company Brusselle Carral will provide deck equipment for new minehunters of Belgian and Dutch navies. (Picture source Brusselle Carral) Brusselle Carral is based in Zeebruges, Flanders and its activities focus on engineering and producing winches and steering gears. They have been selected in the frame of the naval mine countermeasures capability replacement, a program led by Belgium Naval & Robotics Naval Group and ECA Group consortium which provides for the supply of twelve mine hunters equipped with drone systems (Toolbox) to the Belgian and Royal Netherlands navies. They will be responsible of the design, construction and delivery of the electric driven constant tensioning anchor and mooring winches, for the 12 minehunters. Noel Deputter said at this occasion: This is a strategic reference for us to be part of this major program for the Belgian and Dutch navies. Our cooperation with BNR will bring out the best of our technical expertise. We are very much looking forward to this new partnership. Michel Le Bouedec declared: I am fully confident that this partnership will be fruitful for the minehunters program. We will soon be starting working with Brusselle Carral. We are much satisfied that the program moves forward, moreover associating a Belgian partner to the project. Indeed this partnership with a Belgian company is important as part of Belgium Naval and Robotics industrial cooperation plan, which aims at setting up a long-term presence in Belgium in key strategic domains through a series of measures satisfying Belgiums Essential Security Interests. As part of those measures, a significant part of the MCM program is to be carried out in Belgium. The contract for twelve minehunters for the Belgian and Dutch navies has been notified in 2019 and will span over ten years. After a design period of three years, Belgium Naval & Robotics (Naval Group / ECA Group consortium) will lead the production phase, which will be executed by Kership. Six ships will be delivered to the Belgian navy and six to the Dutch navy with a first delivery scheduled for 2024. They will be equipped with a complete drones system containing a total of more than a hundred underwater, surface, and aerial drones entirely dedicated to mine hunting. Last June, BNR has successfully passed the systems functional review . The supplier of deck equipment has now been selected. Devastating economic data poured in Friday as nations counted the cost of efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic, even as fresh spikes forced countries including Britain to put the brakes on a return to normality. Six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 17 million people and killed nearly 674,000, according to an AFP tally. As global daily cases approach the 300,000 mark, the impact is being felt in every sphere of life, with elections postponed in Hong Kong -- the latest blow to its democracy activists -- and the annual Muslim hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia performed with radically reduced numbers. In a sign of the trade-offs being forced on governments, Britain imposed new lockdowns in several northern counties Friday, just as Western Europe announced historic economic slumps that would have been nightmare scenarios at the start of the year. France's economy contracted by 13.8 percent in the April-June quarter, mirroring similar devastation in Spain (18.5 percent), Portugal (14.1 percent) and Italy (12.4 percent). Europe as a whole saw gross domestic product (GDP) fall by 12.1 percent in the eurozone and by 11.9 percent across the Union bloc. "It is a shocking drop, but completely understandable as the economy was shut for a considerable period," noted Bert Colijn, senior economist at ING Bank. Meanwhile, in the United States -- the world's biggest economy and hardest-hit nation -- jobless Americans were bracing for an end to extra unemployment payments after Congress failed to reach a deal on extending benefits. It came just a day after the US posted a second-quarter GDP drop of 9.5 percent from the same period a year ago, the worst it had ever recorded. On Friday, the country recorded 1,442 new deaths, taking its overall death toll to 153,268. One sector that is not struggling is pharmaceuticals, as the world pins its hopes on the race for a vaccine. Pharma giants Sanofi and GSK announced they will receive up to $2.1 billion from the US government to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Sanofi has also struck a deal with the EU for 300 million doses if the treatment works. And the US-German pharma team-up of Pfizer and BioNTech signed a deal with Japan to provide 120 million doses of their vaccine contender. They kept the size of the deal under wraps, but the US government recently put the cost of 100 million doses from those firms at almost $2.0 billion. But many businesses are in freefall, with airline conglomerate IAG, the owner of British Airways, posting a first-half loss of 3.8 billion euros ($4.5 billion) and UK bank NatWest sliding into the red, while Dutch airline KLM and Swedish truck maker Scania each said they were shedding 5,000 jobs. While strict European lockdowns were effective in bringing cases and deaths under control, an uptick in cases means the restrictions are far from over, even if they have become more localised and specific. Britain was the latest to impose new measures Friday, banning different households from meeting indoors across Greater Manchester, and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. With large Muslim populations in those areas, the ban was painfully timed, on the eve of the Eid-al-Adha festival. "We take this action with a heavy heart, but we can see increasing rates of COVID across Europe and are determined to do whatever is necessary to keep people safe," British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Twitter. Britain also delayed plans to reopen casinos, bowling alleys and skating rinks, due to begin on Saturday, while also putting off plans to resume indoor performances and increase stadium crowds. The sacred hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia has been held with 10,000 Muslim faithful allowed, instead of the roughly 2.5 million that attended last year. Pilgrims were brought in small batches into Mecca's Grand Mosque, walking along paths marked on the floor, in sharp contrast to the normal sea of humanity that swirls inside its walls. Germany added three northern Spanish regions to its list of high-risk destinations, including the tourist hotspots of Barcelona and the beaches of the Costa Brava, meaning anyone arriving from those areas will have to produce a negative coronavirus test or go into quarantine for 14 days. Denmark reversed its stance on face masks, recommending them on public transport, while Colombia hits 10,000 deaths. "The pandemic is a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday at a meeting to assess the situation six months after declaring a global emergency. Tedros has warned that young people should take greater efforts to stop the spread of the disease, and a new study found that hundreds of children in the US state of Georgia had contracted the virus at a summer camp last month. Thousands of people attended three rallies held by presidential candidate Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya on August 1, including some 15,000 at an event in Hrodno. Her husband, vlogger and activist Syarhey Tsikhanouski, has been jailed and banned from running for president. But it turned out that he has a wife who also wants changes, Tsikhanouskaya told a cheering crowd. A 37-year-old former teacher, Tsikhanouskaya is backed by two other leading opposition candidates who have been disqualified. She has vowed to release political prisoners, limit presidential powers, and call for a new presidential election within six months if she wins on August 9. She and several other candidates are running to unseat President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who is facing mounting public opposition after 26 years in power. Jaipur, Aug 1 : As the MLAs of the Ashok Gehlot-led Rajasthan government camp in a palatial hotel in Jaisalmer fearing poaching threats from Sachin Pilot-led rebel camp and the opposition BJP, Governor Kalraj Mishra, in an exclusive interview with IANS, says "Its unfortunate that the state govt is working from hotels". He rues the fact that seasoned politicians did not guide the younger lot and that is exactly why this situation arose in the first place. Terming the situation "strange", the Governor revealed that no one, right from the state government to the opposition have approached for a floor test on paper. However, everyone is discussing it here and there in the public and the media and there are apprehensions that the Congress government is losing the majority in the Assembly. Speaking at length on reasons why he recently cleared the notification to convene the Assembly session on August 14, only after receiving four representations by the Ashok Gehlot government, Governor Mishra explained how he has followed all constitutional norms in the process without being biased. Here are the excerpts... Q: Has the state government answered all your queries now when you have approved their proposal of calling the session on August 14? A: Yes, the final proposal sent by the state government addresses all issues which were raised by the Raj Bhavan. The basic query on our part was what is the urgency of calling a session at a time when COVID numbers are crossing the 1,000-mark each day in the state and the seating capacity of the Assembly is also limited (in terms of social distancing). However, the final proposal sent to us quoted the proposed date of convening the session (August 14) with elaborate reasons for calling it unlike the other three previous proposals. This proposal included reasons such as discussing corona and a few bills for calling the session. It also says that the government has decided on new arrangements in terms of COVID norms during the session which was our primary concern. Q: What was stopping you from giving your consent earlier? A: Article 174 of the Constitution gives the Governor the power to summon from time to time "the House or each House of the Legislature of the State to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit..." However, the phrase "as he thinks fit" is read as per Article 163 of the Constitution which says that the Governor acts on the aid and advice of the cabinet and the state government was sending the proposal under the same article. Meanwhile, the same article empowers the Governor to exercise certain limited discretionary powers. However, rule number 3 of Legislative Business Rules made under Article 208 of Indian Constitution says that the Governor can convene sessions on the notice of 21 days if there isn't anything urgent. If anything is urgent, the session can be summoned earlier also. So I asked what is the urgency of calling the session when there is COVID, when all your MLAs are stacked up in the hotel and over 1,000 Corona cases are being reported everyday in the state. There will be a congregation of more than 1,200 people in the assembly, however the seating capacity is limited. Meanwhile, the Cabinet said that it is their right to convene a session and the Governor is bound to the aid and advice of the Cabinet. So I had to say that I also have the right to question as well. The proposal had to be sent back three times for it lacked basic information, The first proposal was sent by the state government on July 23 which was a simple informal cabinet resolution lacking date as to when they wanted to convene the session and it lacked formal approval of Cabinet. It was returned on July 24, saying it has no date and no agenda, Later, the second proposal reached us on July 25 which was effective as it had the date mentioned and said that they want to hold the session on July 31. But as it did not have any urgent reason for conveying the session, Raj Bhawan advised them to work within constitutional norms and told them that a session can be convened at 21 day notice. So finally, the proposal for session with effect from August 14 was finalised as the date was proposed by Cabinet and State Government assured about new arrangements have been made with respect to COVID norms, answering the Raj Bhavan queries and so the session was finalised on the said date and notification was issued. Q: Amid the present scenario, when it looked as if the government was being toppled, wasn't it important on your part to call a session. A: The Chief Minister was making a public statement that he wanted to prove the majority, and so he wanted to move a trust motion in the public, however, nowhere was this fact mentioned in the file. If he wanted to convene a session for trust motion, it was a valid reason for short term notice as it made a strong ground for the same, however, as it was nowhere mentioned in the proposal, so we have had to take a 21-day notice period on our account. The very strange fact in the entire context is that no one is asking for a floor test on paper, however, everyone is discussing it here and there in public and media. They are discussing that the government is losing its majority. However, neither the ruling nor opposition parties are asking for a floor test. Q: Had you rejected the proposal the fourth time, did the Congress government hold power to call the session on its own as was said by one of its ministers, Pratap Singh Khachriyawas? A: It's just not possible as Article 174 clearly empowers the Governor to summon the House from time to time. No one else has the right to convene the session except Governor. Once he gives his approval, the Speaker makes all arrangements for the session to proceed. Q: How did you take the instant of sloganeering and dharna being staged by MLAs at Raj Bhavan? Can any disciplinary action be taken against this initiative? A: The CM has sought 10-minute appointment from the Raj Bhavan that day and we made the arrangements accordingly in good faith. However, when the CM with all his MLAs came in four buses and staged a dharna and raised slogans, I had to express my displeasure on the same. It was unfortunate on their part. Also, there are many families residing in this place with their kids. It was against the dignity of MLAs and Ministers. Further, the CM made a public remark that 'if public gheraoed Raj Bhavan, he will not be responsible for the same'. So I had to write a letter to him questioning 'who should be held responsible' in such conditions and told him that have never heard of any such statement from any CM. Later good sense prevailed and things were settled. In fact, these are seasoned politicians and could have guided the young lots, but they did not guide them rightly and hence this all started. Q: You have been raising your concern over the spike in corona numbers, however, the state government is camping in the hotel. Can the Governor hold power to look into the affairs when the state government is busy chalking out political strategies? If yes, how, if no, plz elaborate who will look in to the issues. A: The way the COVID numbers are rising in the state raises everyone's worries. I have had a meeting with the Chief Secretary and DGP recently to discuss COVID checks and raised a need for an effective strategy to contain its spread. Also, I met with the CM and advised him that at least his ministers should be in offices and secretariat to look after the things. Fighting corona is everyone's responsibility and hence we should jointly work in the same direction, was our clear communication on COVID part. Thereafter, the ministers have started going to offices and CM also started calling regular meetings and VCs. Q: Your opinion on the political crisis in the state. A: It is very unfortunate for Rajasthan politics as well as for the people of Rajasthan that the government is working from hotels. Now, when the assembly session starts from August 14, they should discuss all issues related to public interest and should resolve this crisis, as corona and other development works are being affected. Q: Video of the Speaker and CM's son is going viral discussing how rebel MLAs could have toppled the government. Can the Speaker speak openly on challenges of saving government? A: It is not yet verified by the Speaker or CM's son. So I can't comment. Ahead of the auspicious occasion of Raksha Bandhan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Pakistani sister Qamar Mohsin Shaikh would not be able to meet him amid COVID-19 crisis, so she has sent the sacred thread--Rakhi to him via post. Shaikh is from but is now settled in Ahmedabad after marriage and this would be her 25th with Prime Minister Speaking on that with ANI, PM Modi's sister, Shaikh said, "We have known PM Modi for the past 30-35 years. when I met him in Delhi for the first time he got to know that I am from Karachi and have been married here he called me behen (sister). I do not have any brother. So, after two to three years when we again visited Delhi on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan, I tied rakhi on his wrist." "Once on Raksha Bandhan, I told him that I will pray for you that you come to Gujarat and become the Chief Minister. At that time he laughed and later when he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. On Rakshabandhan, I told him that my prayers have been accepted by God. Later, he even became the Prime Minister," she added. This year Shaikh won't be able to tie rakhi on PM Modi's wrist therefore, she has sent the sacred thread via post. She said that her rakhi and book have been received by PM Modi. "I wanted to tie the 25th rakhi to Prime Minister personally but due to COVID-19 crisis I won't be able to , everyone is facing problems. I pray that the next five years go well for him that the whole world recognises the positive decisions he took. I pray for his long life," she said while PM Modi good health. Rakshan Bandhan is being celebrated on August 3 this year. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chandigarh, Aug 1 : Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Saturday ordered the suspension of, and inquiry against, seven Excise and Taxation Officers and Inspectors, along with two DSPs and four SHOs of Punjab Police, in connection with the hooch tragedy, which has so far claimed 86 lives in the three districts of Tarn Taran, Amritsar rural and Gurdaspur. He has also announced Rs 2 lakh ex-gratia compensation to each of the families of the deceased, most of whom are from Tarn Taran, which accounts for 64 deaths, followed by Amritsar Rural (12) and Gurdaspur (Batala) (11). Strict action will be taken against any public servant or others if found complicit in the case, said the Chief Minister, describing the police and Excise Department's failure to check the manufacturing and sale of spurious liquor as shameful. Nobody will be allowed to get away with feeding poison to our people, he added. Vowing stringent action against all those involved in the case, the Chief Minister warned those indulging in spurious liquor business to stop immediately or face grave consequences. He said he had directed the police to trace the culprits and charge all the people involved in the case, in which he had on Friday ordered a magisterial inquiry by a Divisional Commissioner, who has been asked to submit his report within a month. Such illegal acts are not acceptable, he said, asserting that the life of every single Punjabi was precious and he will not let people die to the greed of a few criminals. Urging the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal not to politicise the tragedy, in which so many families had been destroyed, Amarinder Singh said such cases had happened earlier too, including under the SAD-BJP regime. Similar incidents had occurred in 2012 and 2016 in Gurdaspur and Batala respectively. Several lives were lost in these cases too, he pointed out, adding that in the Batala case, no FIR was even registered and no action taken against the main accused. During the 13th edition of the Facebook Live #AskCaptain interaction, the Chief Minister announced the suspension of ETOs (Excise & Taxation Officers) Lovejinder Brar from Gurdaspur, B.S. Chahal from Amritsar and Madhur Bhatia from Tarn Taran. The Excise and Taxation Inspectors (ETIs) who have been suspended with immediate effect are Ravi Kumar (Gurdaspur), Gurdeep Singh (Amritsar) and Pukhraj from Fatehbad and Hitesh Prabhakar from Tarn Taran. Rajya Sabha member and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has passed away today in Singapore at the age of 64. The Rajya Sabha MP was ill and had been hospitalized at a hospital in Singapore for a long time. Rajya Sabha member and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has passed away today in Singapore at the age of 64. The Rajya Sabha MP was ill and had been hospitalized at a hospital in Singapore for a long time. He went there in March for surgery in a kidney-related illness. Amar Singh is survived by his wife Pankaja and twin daughters Disha and Drishti. Singh had paid tribute to the revolutionary freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak in a tweet, a couple of hours prior to his demise. Tribute to the great revolutionary freedom fighter Lokmanya #BalGangadharTilak ji on his death anniversary. His contribution will be remembered forever, he had written in his tweet. Tribute to the great revolutionary freedom fighter Lokmanya #BalGangadharTilak ji on his death anniversary. His contribution will be remembered forever pic.twitter.com/tEdchlp1hz Amar Singh (@AmarSinghTweets) August 1, 2020 Also read: From Sr Bachchan to Salman to Preity Zinta, Bwood wishes Eid Mubarak to fans Also read: SSC Constable Recruitment in Delhi Police 2020: Know how to apply for 5846 posts @ssc.nic.in He had also tweeted wishing his followers a joyous Eid Al Adha. Wishing a very joyous Eid Al Adha. Let's celebrate this day by spreading love and happiness. #EidMubarak #EidAladha2020 Amar Singh (@AmarSinghTweets) August 1, 2020 Many leaders have tweeted their condolences. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his friends & family. Om Shanti. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh expressed sorrow on Amar Singhs death saying that he is saddened to know about the passing away of the senior leader. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra tweeted that May God gives shelter to the soul of Shri Amar Singh ji in his deeds. Her sincere condolences to the family of Shri Amar Singh Ji. She expressed her deepest condolences to his bereaved wife and daughters in this sad moment. Amar Singh had suffered kidney failure in Dubai in 2013 and had earlier undergone a kidney transplant. However, he returned to politics in 2016. Singh was a key leader in the Samajwadi Party at a time when the party moved to support the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government in 2008 after the Communist Party of India withdrew from the government over a nuclear deal with the US. In 2017, Amar Singhs long association with the SP came to an end after he was expelled from the party. At the beginning of 2020, rumors regarding his death were spreading, to which he messaged Tiger Zinda Hai. Singh was born on January 27, 1956, in Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh. He was an alumnus of St. Xaviers College and University College of Law, Kolkata from where he earned his LLB. Also read: Liam Livingstone excited after England call-up for Ireland series Bloomberg | Getty Images President Donald Trump plans to employ the Council on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to force Chinas ByteDance Ltd. to divest its ownership of TikTok, Bloomberg reports. The announcement could come as early as Friday, and it follows a CFIUS security review of TikTok and its parent company last fall. ByteDance bought Musical.ly Inc., a lip-sync app, for $1 billion in 2017 and merged it with TikTok to create the social media phenomenon it has become in the U.S. However, select politicians and some members of the public have found issues with the companys privacy practices and ByteDance's alleged relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. Matt Gaetz urges Jeff Bezos to cut ties with SPLC over AmazonSmile bans Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida urged Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos to sever the company's ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center during the House Judiciary Subcommittee's hearing on antitrust Wednesday. During the hearing on Capitol Hill with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, Gaetz pressed Bezos over his companys relationship with the SPLC, which it partners with to decide which organizations can receive donations through the AmazonSmile program. Some conservative and Christian organizations have been prohibited from participating in AmazonSmile, while atheist organizations and Planned Parenthood are allowed to receive donations through the program. I am not here accusing you as someone who would ever traffic in hate, but it seems you have empowered people who do. Im particularly talking about the Southern Poverty Law Center, Gaetz told Bezos at the hearing that followed a yearlong investigation by the committee into the four biggest tech companies in the U.S. Amazon, Gaetz asserted, allows the SPLC to dictate who can receive donations on your AmazonSmile platform. Listing organizations the SPLC has labeled as extremists, Gaetz named several faith-based organizations, including Catholic Family News, Catholic Family Ministries, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Jewish Defense League. The first four of the aforementioned groups were designated as hate groups because of their opposition to same-sex marriage. Similarly, renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson was also listed on the SPLC's "extremist files" for subscribing to traditional Christian values on issues of sexuality and marriage. Carson was listed next to white supremacists, Neo-Confederates and anti-Semites. His name was finally removed in February 2015, with apology, following immense criticism. Im just wondering why you would place your confidence in a group that seems to be so out-of-step and seems to take mainstream Christian doctrine and label it as hate, Gaetz asked. In response to Gaetz's question, Bezos first discussed how the AmazonSmile program works, explaining that it allows customers to designate a certain fraction of their purchases to go to charity that we then pay for. We use the Southern Poverty Law Center data to say which charities are extremist organizations. But why?" questioned Gaetz. "Since theyre calling Catholics and these Jewish groups hateful groups, why would you trust them? Im going to acknowledge this is an imperfect system, Bezos replied. I would love suggestions on better or additional sources. Gaetz replied by suggesting that Amazon "divorce [itself] from the SPLC. Although Bezos indicated an openness to using other sources other than the SPLC in determining which groups can participate in AmazonSmile, he did not commit to cutting ties with the organization. In another exchange between Gaetz and Bezos later on in the hearing, the congressman once again brought up Amazons relationship with the SPLC. Gaetz asked Bezos whether he agreed with the SPLCs previous characterization of Carson, the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as an extremist, and Bezos said he did not. When Gaetz again asked why Amazon would partner with a group that labels Carson as someone worthy of an extremist watchlist, Bezos explained that his company needs to have some source of data to use to weed out actual extremist groups. I would like a better source if we could get it, Bezos added. After Gaetz indicated that he was pleased that Bezos recognized the infirmities of the Southern Poverty Law Center, he asked Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg if he agreed with the characterization of Carson as an extremist. After Zuckerberg indicated that he disagreed with that characterization, Gaetz asked, why would you trust the people who think he is? Zuckerberg followed up by asserting that he didn't know the details of Facebooks relationship with the SPLC. Over the past few years, Amazon has blocked several charity organizations from the AmazonSmile program because the SPLC attached the hate group label to them. These charities include D. James Kennedy Ministries, the Family Research Council and the religious liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. In response to its banishment from the AmazonSmile program, D. James Kennedy Ministries filed a defamation lawsuit against both the SPLC and Amazon. Attorney David Gibbs III, who represented the ministry, warned of a world where churches are banned from the internet, churches are banned from services, (and) Amazon wont deliver to churches if his client did not emerge victorious from the lawsuit. The fact that only right-leaning groups seem to get extra scrutiny from Amazon raises the appearance of a double standard. As Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James explained in a Washington Times op-ed, Amazon customers can use the AmazonSmile program to donate a portion of each purchase to left-leaning organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the Center for American Progress. Coles James also noted that shareholders at Amazon defeated a resolution that would have ended the use of the SPLCs defamatory list when determining which charities to include as part of AmazonSmile. She was referring to a resolution requesting a report on viewpoint discrimination that Amazon shareholders, at the urge of the board of directors, voted down. The report would have evaluated the range of risks and costs associated with discriminating against different social, political, and religious viewpoints. Should Bezos decide to "divorce" Amazon from the SPLC, as Gaetz suggested, his company would not be the first tech giant to do so. Last year, Twitter stopped using the SPLC as one of its safety partners in its effort to prevent abuse, harassment, and bullying. Twitters decision to cut ties with the SPLC came at a time when the organization grappled with allegations that it promoted a toxic workplace culture. Wexford County Council is inviting applications for the new role of Film and TV Coordinator as part of major development plans for the screen sector in the county. The Council will soon be announcing proposals to establish the area as a hub for screen industries, in a drive to attract more international and indigenous film and TV productions to the region and nurture home-grown talent. The first step will be the appointment of the film coordinator who will oversee the implementation of a Screen Sector Strategic Plan. The emphasis will be on initiatives that meet the demand of the industry as well as on nurturing local skills and talent through training, mentorship, work placements and funding. The coordinator will engage with local authorities, screen sector representatives and government agencies to develop film making infrastructure and work towards making Wexford an attractive destination for Hollywood and other foreign and indigenous productions. County Wexford has a history of attracting international award-winning productions to the county including Steven Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan' filmed in Curracloe; 'Brooklyn' which was filmed in Enniscorthy and more recent Irish productions such as John Banville's 'The Sea' and 'The Lodgers', filmed in Loftus Hall, which provided employment, contracts with local companies and a welcome contribution to the local economy. Development plans for the sector are coming at a time when Film, TV, animation and visual effects have become a significant employer in Ireland. Wexford County Council is looking to the success of counties like Limerick and Wicklow where Troy Studios, Ashford Studios and Ardmore Studios have generated hundreds of jobs for local residents from carpenters, riggers, office staff and assistants to camera, hair, makeup and costume design crew. The 'Screen Sector Strategic Plan' is currently being developed by the Screen Wexford Steering Committee consisting of local authority representatives from the Arts and Economic Development departments of the County Council and screen sector representatives. It follows a 2019 'Film & TV Production & Development in Wexford' report which resulted in the Council and the Local Enterprise Office engaging with a wide range of agencies to develop an ambitious vision for County Wexford within the thriving Irish film, television and animation industry. Phase One will build on Wexford's previous success following consultation and engagement with government agencies and all sections of the industry and will also see the setting up of the 'Screen Wexford Office' and the announcement of a pilot programme of industry led training initiatives which work placements within the screen sector from October/November. Support will be given to local creatives to produce their own work with the announcement of three Narrative Short Film Funding Awards for Wexford based film/documentary makers and animators in September/October 2020, which will include mentoring by industry leaders. The Screen Wexford Steering Committee want to create a community where local filmmakers and industry experts can come together, network and inspire each other in their companies and careers through training and networking events, both locally and internationally, and in the development of their own short and feature films and it plans to build a network of professionals and trainees in Wexford and surrounding counties in the south east over the coming months and years. The Film Coordinator role is a one-year part-time pilot initiative and applicants must have a minimum of five years project management expreience. The closing date for applications is Monday, August 10. For further information go to https://www.wexfordcoco.ie/arts-and-culture. It is doubtless a positive to see that the Bluerock Residential Growth REIT, Inc. (NYSEMKT:BRG) share price has gained some 31% in the last three months. But that doesn't change the reality of under-performance over the last twelve months. After all, the share price is down 37% in the last year, significantly under-performing the market. Check out our latest analysis for Bluerock Residential Growth REIT Because Bluerock Residential Growth REIT made a loss in the last twelve months, we think the market is probably more focussed on revenue and revenue growth, at least for now. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one does expect good top-line growth. In the last twelve months, Bluerock Residential Growth REIT increased its revenue by 9.8%. That's not a very high growth rate considering it doesn't make profits. Given this fairly low revenue growth (and lack of profits), it's not particularly surprising to see the stock down 37% in a year. It's important not to lose sight of the fact that profitless companies must grow. But if you buy a loss making company then you could become a loss making investor. The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers). Balance sheet strength is crucial. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time. What About Dividends? When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. In the case of Bluerock Residential Growth REIT, it has a TSR of -32% for the last year. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence! Story continues A Different Perspective Investors in Bluerock Residential Growth REIT had a tough year, with a total loss of 32% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 14%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 0.8% per year over five years. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. For example, we've discovered 6 warning signs for Bluerock Residential Growth REIT (2 are concerning!) that you should be aware of before investing here. If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of companies that have proven they can grow earnings. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com. Manama Kingdom yesterday announced a new corona-virus (COVID-19) death, a 55-year-old expatriate man, raising the total number of deaths from the pandemic to 147. Health Ministry announced the latest death on its twitter handle and offered condolences to the family of the deceased. There are currently 71 patients in the Kingdom who are receiving treatment at various facilities, of which 41 are admitted to critical care. Some 2,995 active cases are there in the Kingdom, Health Ministry said, out of which 2,954 patients are in a stable health condition. The ministry also said it carried out 4,326 COVID-19 tests in the Kingdom yesterday to identify 227 new patients. Some 92 of the newly detect- ed cases were expatriate workers. There were also 130 cases, who were contacts of active cases. Five travel related cases were also detected. New 483 recoveries were also detected bringing the total number of people cured of their infection in the Kingdom to 37,840. Bahrain, as of yesterday, conducted some 830,998 tests. According to the Health Ministrys contact tracing pages, during the period from 23 July to 29 July, Bahrain detected some 2,675 confirmed cases, of which 1283 were Bahrainis and 1,391 were expatriate citizens. Supporters of Rong Chhun, leader of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions who was arrested for alleged incitement over the country's disputed border with Vietnam, hold placards during a protest in front of Phnom Penh municipal court, Aug. 1, 2020. Cambodian union leader Rong Chhun was charged with incitement and jailed in Phnom Penh Saturday, a day after his arrest for claiming the government has allowed Vietnam to encroach on farmland along their shared border, according to court officials and lawyers. The outspoken activists arrest over an issue that touches nationalist nerves and evokes sympathy for poor farmers drew about 100 supporters to a protest in front of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court demanding his release. Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, was charged with incitement to commit a felony or cause social unrest and is being held in Prey Sar prison, pending trial, Phnom Penh Municipal Court Deputy Prosecutor and court spokesman Kuch Kim Long told RFA. After questioning him, the judge decided to detain Rong Chhun temporarily, he said. The charges fall under Article 495 of Cambodias Penal Code, with a broad definition of incitement that includes creating "serious turmoil in society" through public speech or sharing writings or drawings, or videos with the public. The charges of incitement are not justified, said lawyer Choung Chou Ngy, one of Rong Chhuns four-member defense team. It is unjust. He said the four lawyers will meet to request bail for Rong Chhun. An incitement conviction carries prison terms of six months to five years and fines. He did not commit any crimes, said Choung Chou Ngy. Border concerns resonate Rong Chhun is a member of the Cambodia Watchdog Council (CWC) an umbrella NGO of unions representing teachers, workers, farmers, and students whose criticism of the governments stance on border demarcation resonate with people who live near the border, said a supporter from Svay Rieng, a southern province that juts into Vietnam. He was only talking about the border. Rong Chhun should not have been arrested and detained, said villager Yos Sophoan. He is a Cambodian. He loves his country. People are concerned about the border, he told RFA. The banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party also condemned the arrest in an appeal for international pressure to secure Rong Chhuns freedom without any conditions. On July 20, Rong Chhun had visited Trapeang Phlong commune, in Tbong Khmum provinces Ponhea Kraek district, where Cambodians claimed recently placed border posts had caused them to lose land to neighboring Vietnam. The following day, he issued a statement on behalf of the Cambodia Watchdog Council in which he cited irregularities with the placement of border posts 114 to 119 that resulted in the loss of hundreds of hectares (one hectare = 2.5 acres) of ancestral land belonging to area farmers. On Friday, Cambodias official Cambodia Border Committee rejected Rong Chhuns claims that any farmers had lost land, saying his organization had disseminated fake news based on groundless accusations. The CWC says that farmers are losing land because Cambodia is demarcating the border based on a 1985 treaty from Vietnams 1979-89 occupation of the country following its ouster of the Khmer Rouge regime. Unresolved border issues between Cambodia and Vietnam, former French colonies from the 1860s to 1954, have sparked incidents in the past, with the construction by Vietnam of military posts in contested areas quickly challenged by Cambodian authorities in Phnom Penh. A joint communique signed by Cambodia and Vietnam in 1995 stipulates that neither side can make any changes to border markers or allow cross-border cultivation or settlement pending the resolution of outstanding border issues. Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Paul Eckert. Friendship Day is celebrated on different days in different countries. While International Friendship Day is celebrated on July 30 across the world as per the UN, different countries have specific dates for celebrating the day on a national level. Countries like Bangladesh, Malaysia, India, Singapore, and UAE celebrate Friendship Day on the first Sunday of August every year. This year the day falls on August 2nd. People celebrate this special day by exchanging cards, messages, quotes, and tying friendship bands. With advancements in the technologies, the way of celebrating the day has changed quite a lot. GIFs are becoming a huge part of Friendship Day celebrations. With all that said, take a look at Friendship Day GIFs that one can share with friends: Friendship Day Gifs Friendship Day is dedicated to honouring friendship amongst communities, individuals, and organisations. According to the United Nations, ''Through friendship by accumulating bonds of camaraderie and developing strong ties of trust we can contribute to the fundamental shifts that are urgently needed to achieve lasting stability, weave a safety net that will protect us all, and generate passion for a better world where all are united for the greater good.'' SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: TENOR ALSO READ | National Parents' Day Quotes To Wish Your Parents On This Special Occasion The day was first declared by the United Nations General Assembly in the year 2011. General Assembly proclaimed the day in order to celebrate the idea of friendship and fellowship. The resolution declared by the United Nations sheds light on including youngsters in various activities that involve various kinds of cultures. It is done in order to encourage diversity and gain a better understanding of different cultures, thereby promoting harmony among individuals and communities. SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: TENOR ALSO READ | SCUD Day History, Meaning, Significance And Celebrations; Know More On the occasion of Friendship Day, people organise parties, gatherings, and buy gifts. Tying friendship bands is a part of the tradition of celebrating the day. With the increasing use of social media and the internet, the way of celebrating the day seems to have changed. People these days tend to celebrate the day by sharing messages, quotes and GIFs on social media platforms. ALSO READ | Is Today National Hot Dog Day? Know About The Meaning, Significance And Celebration SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: TENOR SOURCE: GIFY SOURCE: GIFY SOURCE: GIFY SOURCE: GIFY ALSO READ | National Parents' Day Images To Share To Honour Them On This Special Day You might never have come across Bon Appetit, a glossy monthly magazine which serves up a cosy mix of gourmet recipes, wine reviews and lifestyle tips to its 1.5 million readers. It is hard to imagine a less controversial publication, or one that's more quintessentially American with its aspirational blend of self-improvement and conspicuous consumption and it has been attracting record digital subscriptions thanks to lockdown tips for banana bread and avocado toast. But popularity counted for nothing when a picture appeared online showing its editor of ten years, Adam Rapoport, dressed as a Puerto Rican at a Halloween fancy dress party. At a stroke he was out, branded a racist. Then, in a grovelling mea culpa, he confessed: 'From an extremely ill-conceived Halloween costume 16 years ago to my blind spots as an editor, I've not championed an inclusive vision.' He added he was stepping down 'to reflect on the work that I need to do as a human being and to allow Bon Appetit to get to a better place.' But popularity counted for nothing when a picture appeared online showing its editor of ten years, Adam Rapoport, dressed as a Puerto Rican at a Halloween fancy dress party. At a stroke he was out, branded a racist Never mind his successful record as an editor. Or that the picture was taken in 2004, a full six years before he joined the magazine. Or that Mr Rapoport denies applying make-up. Or that he is actually married to the Puerto Rican woman pictured alongside him in the photograph. But nothing can be taken for granted amid the toxic maelstrom now sweeping through American journalism, from the lofty heights of the New York Times to the least consequential website. They're calling it The Great Awokening and it endangers not just thousands of experienced, hard-working reporters and editors but the future of the industry they work for. It even threatens American democracy itself. This is a country where freedom of speech and religion are guaranteed under the First Amendment. But it is also a nation where the statues of Washington and Jefferson, the great architects of the Republic, the guarantors of the liberties that woke warriors take for granted, have been pulled to the ground and smeared with graffiti. America brought popular journalism and the true scrutiny of power to the world, yet never have the country's newsrooms been so threatened or so cowed as today. So great is the pressure to conform to messages put forward by movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo that any deviation leads to instant vilification online. And, ultimately, the chopping block. One exasperated newspaper editor told The Mail on Sunday: 'There is a revolution going on in newsrooms across the US and it goes against everything freedom of the press stands for. 'Surely the whole point is to tell both sides of a story, even if it means publishing the views of someone who doesn't believe the things you do? Well, in today's culture all that is out the window.' The prevailing atmosphere is so toxic that white writers are now fearful of publishing anything controversial in case it kills their career. One long-time editor at a major East Coast publication said: 'No one is against change and everyone realises white middle-aged men have dominated editorial boardrooms for too long. But this 'Great Awokening' is causing irreparable damage. 'Newspapers such as the New York Times have always prided themselves on publishing 'All the news that's fit to print'. And that means telling both sides of a story in a fair and impartial way. 'The Times has always been liberal but now the woke brigade is eating its own. It's happening in publications large and small.' The bodies are piling up. Stan Wischnowski, a Pulitzer-prize winning 20-year veteran of the Philadelphia Inquirer, was forced to quit as senior vice president and executive editor after publishing an article with the headline 'Buildings matter, too' about the effects of protests on the city's historic buildings. Dozens of black and minority staff members walked out of the 191-year-old newspaper in disgust at the headline for playing on the rallying cry 'Black Lives Matter'. They signed 'an open letter from journalists of colour', which read: 'We're tired of shouldering the burden of dragging this 200-year-old institution kicking and screaming into a more equitable age. 'We're tired of being told of the progress the company has made and being served platitudes about 'diversity and inclusion' when we raise our concerns. We're tired of seeing our words and photos twisted to fit a narrative that does not reflect our reality. We're tired of being told to show both sides of issues there are no two sides of. Things need to change.' A George Washington sculpture in Portland, Ore., is pictured with an American flag face mask on April 11, 2020 British-born anti-Trump conservative Andrew Sullivan is another casualty. He resigned from New York magazine last month after four years. In his final column he explained he was leaving to start his own online blog because he misses writing freely 'without being in a defensive crouch'. He lambasted America's mainstream media for its lack of contrary opinion and revealed that a 'critical mass' of staff at the magazine refused to work with him because of his critiques of 'woke' culture. Mr Sullivan, 56, said: 'This is increasingly the orthodoxy in the mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space. 'I miss just the sheer fun that used to be part of being a hack before all these dreadfully earnest, humour-free puritans took over the press.' He accused US media of putting 'the moral clarity of some self-appointed saints before the goal of objectivity in reporting'. And he cited George Orwell who said: 'If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.' No one, it seems, is safe. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue and long considered the most powerful female figure in US publishing, was forced to issue an extraordinary statement taking 'personal responsibility' for not encouraging more diversity at the fashion bible. 'I want to say plainly that I know Vogue has not found enough ways to elevate and give space to black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators,' confessed London-born Wintour, the model for the icy, stiletto-sharp editrix in The Devil Wears Prada. 'We have made mistakes, too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility.' Wintour insists that she is going nowhere. But rumours of her imminent demise continue to swirl, with the editor of British Vogue, Edward Enninful, hotly tipped to replace her. Nothing perhaps sums up the mood of ugly intolerance so well as the plight of the New York Times. Founded in 1851, the Times is an American cultural institution, nicknamed 'The Gray Lady' for its reputation as a sober and impartial paper of record. But when it hired Bari Weiss to give an opposing view to the newspaper's Left-of-centre politics, she was bullied by colleagues who branded her a 'Nazi and a racist' on social media. 'The lessons that ought to have followed the election [of Donald Trump in 2016] lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society have not been learned,' she said. 'Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. 'My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide [message boards] where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some co-workers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be truly 'inclusive', while others post axe emojis next to my name.' Her resignation came on the same day as James Bennett quit as opinion editor after publishing a piece by Republican Senator Tom Cotton which urged President Trump to send in troops to quell continuing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. A source said: 'This was something being widely discussed in Washington but it was deemed a subject too dangerous for the opinion pages of the New York Times.' Times workers threatened a walkout with employees mass-tweeting the sentence: 'Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.' Publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended Bennett saying 'I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions, even those we may disagree with,' but, within 24 hours, he bowed to the mob, issuing a grovelling apology saying 'the essay fell short of our standards.' Katie Kingsbury, the acting head of the opinion pages, told staff: 'Anyone who sees any piece of opinion journalism, headlines, social posts, photos you name it that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately. That's right, all Times employees are now empowered to report on those who deviate from the new moral mission.' A former New York Times journalist told The Mail on Sunday: 'The irony is the Times was enjoying a renaissance after President Trump got elected. Circulation figures were rising and online readership boomed. In Trump they had an easy target and one their readership enjoyed reading about. 'But their wokeness and desire to be painfully politically correct has misfired. The idea that the Times is on a 'new moral mission' is insulting to those of us who devoted years of our lives to the pursuit of excellence, to accurately reporting stories, all sides of them. You can't censure opposing opinion just because you don't agree with it. 'The worst thing now is that wokeness is creeping into the news agenda. There are no stories criticising the BLM movement because writers and editors live in fear of losing their livelihood if the mob comes after them. How can you run a newspaper that way? The answer is, you can't.' What, then, of Bon Appetit, the cookery magazine that found itself in such hot water? The publication has now apologised to its readers for publishing recipes from a 'white-centric viewpoint' and promised to hire more BIPOC staff, meaning Black, Indigenous and People Of Colour. Today the lead item on the website features a place called Riot Ribs, a 'mutual aid kitchen' at the centre of the continuing Black Lives Matter unrest in Portland. Perhaps the final word should go to Barack Obama, America's first black President, who has warned: 'One of the things I do worry about among progressives in the United States is a certain kind of rigidity where we say 'Uh, I'm sorry, this is how it's going to be' and then we start sometimes creating what's called a 'circular firing squad', where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity. 'Change is complex and the world is messy. People who do really good stuff have flaws. ANDREW ROBERTS: Dissenters live in fear and serious debate is silenced by the woke mob leading America's cultural revolution It gets more ludicrous with every passing day and more sinister. Take the case of Professor Patricia Simon, from Marymount Manhattan College in New York, who made the mistake of failing to be sufficiently enthusiastic in the course of a Zoom meeting. Accused of daring to nod off during discussion of an 'anti-racist framework' a social-media picture seemed to support the claim that she fell asleep Prof Simon faced nearly 2,000 demands that her contract of employment be terminated and she lose her livelihood. 'I was not asleep as is implied at any point during the meeting,' she said in her defence. 'The photo was taken without permission when I was looking down or briefly resting my Zoom-weary eyes. I listened with my ears and heard the entire meeting.' Patricia Simon, a theater arts associate professor at Marymount Manhattan College, New York, allegedly fell asleep during an 'anti-racist' meeting held on Zoom It's a response worthy of 1960s China and the grovelling apologies forced upon the victims of Mao's Cultural Revolution. But that would be appropriate, because a cultural revolution is exactly what is taking place in today's America, where the woke mob has surrounded the citadels of democracy newspapers, magazines, television stations and, of course, universities. Dissenters live in fear. Serious debate is all but silenced. A recent survey published by the respected Cato Institute reveals that 62 per cent of Americans say today's political climate prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find their views offensive. Just think about that: an overwhelming majority of Americans across all political persuasions have political opinions that they are afraid to share. It is positively Orwellian. How long until the same thing happens here if it has not already? Even liberals are afraid, with a majority 52 per cent feeling they have to self-censor before speaking or writing. The same applies to 64 per cent of people who consider themselves moderates, and 77 per cent of conservatives. These numbers are higher than they have ever been representing a true threat to democracy. And even more worrying for those who value the future of openness and political diversity is the intolerance of the young, who are driving so much of this frightening new trend. Forty four per cent of Americans under 30 support firing company executives if it is discovered they privately donate their own money to President Trump. Fifty per cent of people who call themselves strong liberals support firing Trump donors from their jobs. This tide of aggression towards people who merely happen to hold opposing views cannot be written off as a blip, for it is clearly part of a wider trend that has engulfed other Western nations. When America sneezes, it is never very long before Britain catches a cold. A British political tradition that has for decades prized tolerance of other people's opinions even when, or indeed especially when, we disagree with them is about to be tossed away. Proof that the bacillus highlighted in the Cato Institute's troubling survey is already infecting Britain can be seen in the treatment of Stephen Lamonby, who lost his job as a university lecturer for saying 'the Jewish are the cleverest in the world' and that 'Germans are good engineers'. Mr Lamonby, interviewed in last week's Mail on Sunday, said these things in a one-on-one private conversation with a colleague, Janet Bonar, who denounced him to the commissars of Solent University in Southampton. Who then dismissed him. Quite apart from the fact Mr Lamonby was making these remarks in a private conversation rather than in a lecture to students, or in a public address at Solent, and nothing he said was offensive or demeaning about any race or group, they also happen to be true. I'm happy to state here that I wholeheartedly support his conclusion about Jews. Although they make up less than half of one per cent of the world's population, between 1901 and 1950 Jews won 14 per cent of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for Literature and Science, and between 1951 and 2000 Jews won 32 per cent of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, 32 per cent for Physics, 39 per cent for Economics and 29 per cent for Science. This, despite many of their greatest intellects dying in the Holocaust. Mr Lamonby is only the latest person to be cancelled for holding legitimate views, which by no coincidence often tend to be conservative and traditional ones. We are not so far away from the Thought Crime from Orwell's 1984. Once all value judgments regarding races and peoples are banned, my profession history and biography-writing would become impossible. Take any example from history and try to explain what happened without making any statement to the effect that any group of people were better or worse at anything than any other group of people, and you will quickly appreciate it cannot be done, yet that is where the woke-finder generals are taking us. 'At the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Norman battle tactics which were in no way whatsoever superior to Saxon battle tactics won a victory after a Norman archer, whose expertise in archery was precisely equivalent to that of his Saxon counterpart fired an arrow into King Harold's eye. Thereafter, the centuries of Norman rule in England were no better or worse relatively speaking than any other period of history.' This is what the 'Solent' version will be like. In many cases, the 'cancelling' is self-administered. Last week, the president and chief executive officer of an organisation called Technical Safety BC in Vancouver told the Toronto Globe and Mail that she was removing the word 'chief' from her official title in acknowledgment of racism against people of colour. Progressivist absurdity and intolerance was captured brilliantly in Malcolm Bradbury's witty book The History Man, set in a new university in the fictional southern English town of Watermouth where Howard Kirk, the Marxist post-modern professor, persecutes anyone who disagrees with him in the name of 'generating the onward march of mind, the onward process of history'. The treatment of Lamonby and Patricia Simon was thus foretold nearly half a century ago. What this intolerance will do is to force the teaching of history underground. Indeed it already has: Professor Nigel Biggar of Oxford had to hold an academic conference on the British Empire as a private seminar amid fears of how it might affect the careers of the historians who took part. Academic papers will one day be distributed surreptitiously, like samizdat underground newspapers behind the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall. That is the kind of world we are moving towards. For the truly concerning thing about the Cato Institute survey is not that quite so many people fear that they might lose their jobs if they express their opinions, but that they are clearly right to feel that way. Brazil set new COVID-19 records for a single day on Wednesday, reporting 70,869 new cases and 1,554 deaths. With this, the country simultaneously surpassed the milestones of 2.5 million cases and 90,000 total deaths from the disease. These figures expose one of the worst scenarios of the global pandemic. Although in absolute numbers Brazil still lags behind the United States, Wednesdays numbers surpassed those of any other country in the world. In the midst of these catastrophic conditions, the Brazilian political establishment is promoting a campaign to reopen schools across the country as soon as possible, threatening to escalate the already soaring levels of COVID-19 infections. Entrance of a public school in Sao Paulo [Credit: Secretaria da Educacao do Estado de Sao Paulo] The schools represent a key step for a total reactivation of the Brazilian economy, which demands that workers leave their children while they are at their jobs generating profits for the ruling elite. The brutal irrationality of this proposal was recently expressed in a commercial produced by the Union of Private Educational Establishments of Rio de Janeiro (Sinepe-RJ). Attacking science and normalizing COVID deaths, it stated: Months have passed, weve learned to live with the virus. COVID will never totally leave, what ends is fear We understood that science is the vaccine, studies have only caused confusion. Locking everyone up at home is not science. To confine is to ignore, to subtract life, to weaken, to mess with emotions. Children need to get back together, play, rebuild bonds, friendships, see their friends again. Although it was quickly taken off the air, after a rain of criticism by health experts, its conceptions are fully aligned with the discussions being held at the top level of the state. It is impossible not to associate them with the sociopathic positions defended by extreme-right President Jair Bolsonaro. About a month ago, when he announced to millions of Brazilians that he had contracted the new coronavirus, Bolsonaro once again insisted that the entire population should contract the virus and called for the immediate reopening of schools. At that moment, he was looking for a candidate for the Ministry of Education (MEC). Renato Feder, one of those interviewed, declared later to Estadao that the presidents central concern was to have someone capable of promoting a plan for the resumption of classes throughout the country. The minister appointed by Bolsonaro, the evangelical preacher Milton Ribeiro, was promptly praised by national private education associations as a figure capable of advancing the safe resumption of on-site academic activities. Schools are already reopening The reopening of schools in Brazil is progressing in the same way as they were closed, without general planning, with local governments making arbitrary decisions. However, if in the movement to close schools at the beginning of the pandemic, governors and mayors appeared as opponents of the homicidal policy of Bolsonaro, now in promoting the reopenings, they reveal the total inconsistency of their opposition. Public school classroom in Sao Paulo [Credit: Secretaria da Educacao do Estado de Sao Paulo] Following the lead given by the Ministry of Education in early July, when it presented a national protocol for the resumption of classes, the state and municipal governments have approved their own protocols, which despite not setting dates, prepare the ground for reopenings at any time. Eleven states, plus the Federal District, have already scheduled the reopening of their schools. The dates set are based on completely fabricated arguments of a supposed stabilization of the epidemic. In Sao Paulo, the state most affected by the pandemic, an average of almost 2,000 deaths per week was commemorated by right-wing governor Joao Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) as a plateau in the spread of the disease and the time for normalization. Since then, he has manipulated data and the criteria of his reopening plan to allow a return to school in early September. A number of other governments are already pushing for the resumption of classes in private schools as a spearhead to open the way for public schools, which educate 80 percent of Brazilian students with much more precarious infrastructure. The first capital to permit the reopening of private schools was Manaus, in Amazonas, on July 6. According to the Union of Private Educational Establishments of the State of Amazonas (Sinepe-AM), 70 percent of the units reopened, bringing about 88,000 students inside classrooms. This week, the Amazonian governor Wilson Lima of the reactionary Christian Social Party moved up the date for the return of public schools throughout the state to August 10. The governments irresponsibility with the pandemic was already graphically demonstrated in April, when the scenes of thousands being buried in mass graves in Manaus shocked the whole world. In Rio de Janeiro the municipal government, administered by Marcelo Crivella of the Republicans party, is promoting the reopening of private schools on August 3. The state has recorded more than 13,000 COVID-19 deaths, the second highest toll in the country, and over the last 15 days the average number of new cases has increased by more than 100 percent. The politicians of the Workers Party (PT) and its allies, such as the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), are absolutely complacent in the face of this homicidal movement. In the state of Bahia, administered by Governor Rui Costa of the PT, the Secretariat of Education stated that the resumption of classes, still not scheduled, will occur in consonance with the rest of the country. In the neighboring state of Maranhao, the government of Flavio Dino of the PCdoB has postponed this week an already scheduled resumption of public schools, although he made sure that the school units received thousands of thermometers for the purpose of reopening them at any time. For a movement of the working class against the reopening of schools! Despite their efforts, the attempt by bourgeois politicians to reopen schools in the country faces massive opposition from education workers. In Sao Paulo a series of online meetings held by the Secretariat of Education to discuss the resumption of schools were closely followed by tens of thousands of educators opposing the pressure for their return to classrooms. Teachers demonstration in Porto Alegre last year [Credit: Caco Argemi] The prospects of a return in September in Sao Paulo are generating a growing movement among rank-and-file workers for a strike, and the same is happening in cities all across the country. Public school teachers in Manaus already announced a strike against the announced resumption of classes. On Thursday, public school teachers in Rio de Janeiro voted massively for a strike in case the government tries to reopen schools. This movement reflects a nationwide willingness to fight, expressed in recent years in the strikes by millions of education workers in all Brazilian states who opposed governmental attacks on their living standards, particularly over pensions, and the destruction of the public education system. The educators refusal to be sent to dangerous workplaces infected with COVID-19 is widely supported by working class families. A poll carried out by the Municipality of Sao Paulo of students families registered, according to CBN, 90 percent opposition to the return of classes. The struggle of teachers and school employees against the reopening of schools merges with the growing social crisis in Brazil. Millions of workers lost their jobs during the pandemic, resulting in more than half the active population being currently unemployed. The explosion of this crisis has been contained, so far, to a large extent by the federal governments monthly payments of R$600 (around US$115) in emergency aid, which will be cut off this month. As they condemn millions of families to miserable conditions, Bolsonaro and his allies intend to escalate the pressure on workers, forcing them to accept smaller wages and deadly working conditions posed by the pandemic. However, its consequence will inevitably be the unleashing of a wave of working class opposition of incalculable dimensions. The movement of educators assumes a highly explosive character and may occupy the front line in a struggle of the working class as a whole for decent living conditions and the resumption of the economy only under safe conditions, with safety procedures and the definition of what production is essential being defined by workers themselves. To advance this struggle, education workers need to overcome the control of the trade unions affiliated with the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE), which have suffocated all their last strikes, isolating their struggles locally and exhausting them until they were defeated. It is necessary to build new organizations, democratically elected rank-and-file school and neighborhood committees. These politically independent committees will allow Brazilian workers to advance their struggle against capitalism and to unify themselves with their international colleagues, who are facing the same issues and showing the same disposition to fight them the world over. I just got off a Zoom call with seven men I love, not counting myself. The call pulled us together from all across America and it lasted nearly two hours, filled with laughter, wisecracks and teasing - punctuated by several intimate, serious, painfully honest discussions of our deepest fears, frustrations and small victories. This group psychotherapy gathering, initially an in-person weekly session started in the Washington area 30 years ago, was the high point of my week for more than a decade until I moved to the San Francisco Bay area three years ago. Now, though, I am again savoring this intimacy with other men, more than ever. In the most psychologically disruptive time of my era - not just covid-19, but the deepest racial turmoil and the most perilous moment for American democracy - I have regained a profound sense of community at a time when I didn't even realize how much I missed it. As a special bonus, two of us are Black men, and we have had some of the most honest discussions of race I've ever participated in. On our most recent Zoom group call were: - Our benevolent but challenging 83-year-old psychiatrist/father figure who frequently expresses his pride in our modest achievements. - A 38-year-old ex-spy and war veteran who just moved west to start a new job and live with a new woman after a series of difficult relationships. - A 76-year-old retired computer guy who moved to a remote lake in New England with the woman he found late in life after several turbulent romances. - A 72-year-old salesman whose father squandered a fortune and whose mother took out her frustrations by mistreating him since childhood. - A 68-year-old retired defense contractor who recently married an Indonesian woman partly to help her avoid deportation and because he is a big-hearted man who loves needy women - sometimes several at a time. - A 42-year-old ex-lawyer who moved to the Sun Belt to be near his only child after learning 10 years ago that a) his mother had been a high-priced prostitute, b) his father was not his real father and c) his wife was cheating on him with his best friend. - A 40-year-old tech entrepreneur who continues to optimistically struggle to recover trust and find a good woman after being sexually molested by his oldest sister as an 8-year-old in the Midwest. And then there is me, a 70-year-old semiretired journalist happily married for 46 years with two great sons and daughters-in-law, four sweet grandkids and a lovely Northern California lifestyle - with the underlying challenge of being bipolar and occasionally suffering severe breakdowns, though thankfully none in the past 15 years. We all started as private patients and - once we had overcome acute conditions of depression, manic depression and other ailments - were invited to join the group of men who convened in our therapist's den at precisely 7 a.m. every Thursday. We had only one strict rule: everything that happened in that warm, familiar place stayed within that special place. We treasured the group because over time it truly became a family - but not a dysfunctional one. Under the warm blanket of confidentiality, we felt increasingly liberated from our inhibitions in a shame-free, guilt-free zone of trust. Family problems, work anxieties, existential, political, financial and, yes, even sexual problems were all laid out. It wasn't all idyllic, though. Like any family, ours had its blowups: hurt feelings, perceived insults, inappropriate humor and sibling rivalries when one guy thought another was getting too much attention from Dad. Despite such wrinkles, that cozy den always provided, and remains, a unique shared space in all our lives. Over decades, the group's membership expanded and shrank frequently; some men lasted a year or two, a month or even just a single, fearful visit. We had compulsive gamblers and workaholics, sex addicts and virgins, gender-benders, mother-haters, father-haters and wife-haters, just to name a few among the infinite variety of human conditions. We virtually never socialized outside the 90-minute sessions - except occasionally the younger guys got together to barhop in search of women. A few times we came together for funerals, hospital visits and, in a moment that was very meaningful to me, for a memorial service for my mother when three of the men in my group appeared. After more than 10 years, I had to drop out in 2017 when my wife and I moved cross-country to be with family. Others moved away, too. I missed the group a lot, but moved on. But two months ago, as covid-19 anxiety spiked, a few of the younger guys got the idea of getting back together. Every one of us jumped at the chance. We have been meeting every week since. At a moment of isolation, alienation and the loss of community, my group is a soothing oasis that every week reminds me of a few very important life lessons: People - or in this case men - are fundamentally very similar in our needs and our hopes, regardless of race, class and circumstance. Yet we are all ultimately alone because nobody truly knows the depth of what another man is confronting. Finally, though, we are very deeply connected because there are few things more meaningful than getting a chance to really be heard and understood by the people you love, even virtually. In our very latest sessions, something remarkable seemed to be happening: Most of us were clearly making some progress. The former spy who moved to the West Coast was really learning how to be patient with his latest potential mate, and how he cannot fix his family's serious psychological problems. The ex-lawyer found himself growing closer to his daughter and making peace with his father's impending death. The tech guy was finally realizing that his current romance is toxic and he needs to move on. We all sensed these signs of incremental progress and commented on them. Nobody has "resolved" their issues, but clearly there has been a lot of personal growth and learning. In the time of the pandemic, we are able to help each other in powerful ways, and that's about the best that humans can do. - - - Perl was a writer and editor at The Washington Post for 33 years, where he retired as assistant managing Editor in 2013. He now lives in Oakland, Calif. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal A small tweak in New Mexicos latest health order could provide a large boost for struggling alcohol producers. The states new public health order, announced Thursday by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, keeps the statewide ban on indoor dining in place through at least Aug. 28 following a recent spike in cases. However, the order also reclassifies wineries and distilleries previously left out of the standing health order to allow them to operate the same way as bar and restaurant establishments. This change allows these businesses to reopen tasting rooms for outdoor service, a change that industry leaders have been calling for. This couldnt have come at a more critical time, said Christopher Goblet, executive director of New Mexico Wine. Wine industry hurt Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached New Mexico in March, the states wineries have largely been stuck in neutral. When breweries were allowed to reopen at partial capacity in June, the order did not extend to wineries and distilleries an omission that Goblet described as arbitrary. With no ability to sell wine through their tasting rooms, Jasper Riddle, founder and winemaker of Alto-based Noisy Water Winery, said wine sales have plummeted during what would normally be a very lucrative time of year. He said up to one-fourth of winemakers may not buy fruit from vineyards this year, due to the volume of unsold wine and continued economic uncertainty. Riddle said hes concerned that this, in turn, could cause small vineyards to fail, creating a cycle that sets New Mexicos wine industry back years. Were approaching that point of no return for some of these businesses, Riddle said. Goblet noted the industry association has worked with state and local officials to raise awareness about the severity of the issue. One of your heritage industries is dying on the vine, Goblet said. Still, Goblet was ecstatic that the industry was included in the recent health order. Goblet said August, designated New Mexico Wine Month by former Gov. Susana Martinez, is among the most lucrative months for wine sales. The industry is launching a website, Grape Aid, aimed at helping New Mexicans support their local wineries. However, Goblet acknowledged that the industry will have to make up ground to stay afloat. It is essential that over the next 31 days, we sell three months of wine, Goblet said. Riddle agreed the industry isnt out of the woods yet. That had to feel like a drink of water to a man in a desert, said Riddle of the governors new order. But we didnt find the oasis. Distillers issues The shutdown has been hard on distilleries, too. Matt Simonds, owner of Broken Trail Spirits + Brew, said his company has a brewery license, as well, which has allowed it to continue its operations. Still, he said his sales are down more than 70% since the start of the pandemic and the company has permanently closed its taproom at Green Jeans Farmery. Santa Fe Spirits owner Colin Keegan added that the distillery will not be opening its downtown Santa Fe tasting room in August, due to the lack of suitable outdoor space. While he hopes to open by Labor Day, he said a closure that lasts into the fall would be devastating for his business. Those who have the might will survive this, and their competition will go by the wayside, Keegan said. The mandatory quarantine measures implemented by the British Government have devastated Majorca's Vacation Rental Sector according to Miguel Cifre, President of the Balearic Association of Entrepreneurs of Tourist Holiday Homes. It has caused the cancellation of all reservations from the UK for August, which is the worst news that we could receive in a season that seemed like it was going to be fixed after all, he claims. The average occupancy in more than 1,000 existing holiday homes in Majorca was around 50%-60%, but since Saturday, July 25, the situation has taken a spectacular turn because reservations have been progressively cancelled for the entire first half of August, he said. 70% of reservations have been lost and we can only hope that if the quarantine is lifted the situation may change in the second week of this month, but the damage is already done. The total number of reservations lost in the first fortnight of August exceeds 1,500 which means more than 9,000 Britons wont come to the Island during the first half of August and we just hope those figures are not repeated in the second two weeks, although everything indicates that the British market will not be able to recover from one week to the next, said Cifre. Germany As if that wasn't enough to contend with holiday home owners in Majorca are also worried about whats happening in the German market. Uncertainty is never good, especially in tourism, reservations from Germany have started to fall and are expected to drop even more in the coming days, its a very complicated situation, says Cifre. More than 1,000 vacation home owners are now offering discounts of up to 45% this week in a bid to entice tourists from other markets. "Prices range from 150-350 euros per day on average, but now we must apply the discounts that each owner wants to offer in a bid to recover reservations, says Cifre. The objective is to be able to save the peak summer month, which is where we have registered the most bookings up until now. The Covid-19 crisis has distorted all business plans, both in marketing and in turnover, so we must do everything possible to reactivate the second half of August, but until the quarantine is lifted, little or nothing can be done, explained Cifre. Hotel occupation is forecast to be around 60% in September, but the commercial flexibility currently in place due to the coronavirus crisis means that reservations can be cancelled the day before arrival without incurring a penalty, "This is another thing that has a negative impact, because we are depending on factors that we have no control over, which can seriously affect the income of the companies and owners of tourist houses and villas, said Cifre. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today decisions about bringing back students to New York college campuses amid the coronavirus pandemic will be up to each schools individual leadership. Its going to be a university by university decision, Cuomo said. The state has issued guidance it expects schools such as Syracuse University to follow, he added during a conference call with reporters. But when asked today whether he would weigh in on reopening colleges -- as he has on virtually every other part of society, from Broadway to car dealerships to gyms -- he said its the schools decision. Cuomos budget director, Robert Mujica, said college and universities have submitted reopening plans to the state. Those are under review. But Mujica added, The schools will make the decisions. The metrics are on track as far as the infection rates to move forward. Cuomo noted that risks of virus outbreaks and transmissions remain. How comfortable am I? Im not comfortable, period, he said, adding that New York better positioned than other states to reopen college campuses because virus transmission here is down. Id rather be in this state than any other state in the country, he said. New York confirmed another 753 coronavirus cases on Friday out of 82,737. Thats means 0.91% of the tests came back positive. Another four people died on Friday, Cuomo said. Overall, the state has reported more than 25,000 deaths from the coronavirus. More than 415,000 cases have been confirmed. Today, Cuomo said universities should be working on testing capacity and building an early detection system. That could become challenging as more communities are sending more Covid-19 tests to national labs, creating a bottleneck in getting results. SU officials have created new rules meant to trace and contain the virus. Those include mandated testing before students leave home, pool testing of all students through SUNY Upstate when they arrive, and another test two weeks later. SU is also asking students to physically distance or wear a mask around anyone who isnt in their household. Its asking students to limit gatherings to 25 people. It has suggested suspensions or expulsions will be in store for students who throw massive parties. When asked if he had a younger child preparing to go to college, the governor said he would read the schools plan and insist on understanding its testing capacity. (Cuomos three daughter are all adults.) What testing does the university have? he said. But he also said its up to each individual student to take precautions, such as wearing masks, social distancing and staying out of large crowds. If my college kid was going to college, it would be, really, up to my child to be smart, he said. To not do anything reckless. To not show up at the bar or be in front in the crowd. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Hybrid school reopening plans leave CNY parents scrambling 1st Syracusan injected in Covid-19 vaccine study wants to fix mess were in 9 dead after coronavirus outbreak at Liverpool memory care facility Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Got a story idea or news tip youd like to share? Please contact me through email, Twitter, Facebook or at 315-470-2274. BERRIEN COUNTY, MI -- The body of a 13-year-old Otsego girl was recovered Friday, July 31 after she drowned in waters off Warren Dunes State Park a day earlier. Berrien County sheriffs deputies did not immediately release the girls name because of her young age. Police and rescuers were called to the park just before 9 p.m. Thursday, July 30 on a report of a young teen who was missing and last seen in the water. U.S. Coast Guard searchers and others looked for the girl, but suspended the operation because of darkness. Authorities resumed the search Friday morning. At about 12:30 p.m., police received a report that a body had washed up on shore near Pier Street beach in Lakeside. Authorities determined it was the missing 13-year-old. More from MLive Whitmer vetoes GOP-backed bill to house nursing home coronavirus patients in separate facilities Michigan ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to count after court declines to hear challenge Police officers Saturday morning in Lehigh County shot and wounded the shooter in a Friday incident at a Bethlehem Township cigar store, where a mask dispute ended in gunfire, authorities said. Adam M. Zaborowski, 35, of Slatington, is accused of opening fire on police about 9:35 a.m. in the area of Second and East Washington streets in the borough, near his home at 801 Main St., according to police. It is to my understanding that the Slatington Borough (police) and Pennsylvania State Police troopers engaged our suspect from (Friday) and there was an exchange of gunfire and during that Mr. Zaborowski was wounded, Bethlehem Township police Sgt. Daryl LaPointe told lehighvalleylive.com. A Slatington police officer suffered a minor injury, and no troopers were hurt, state police said. Zaborowski was was treated at the scene by Northern Valley EMS then flown by Life Flight 6 helicopter for treatment at St. Lukes University Hospital, Fountain Hill. Adam Michael Zaborowski.Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com Slatington police and state police troopers Saturday morning were monitoring the mans house and blue pickup truck in the boroughs 800 block of Main Street, awaiting arrival of a Municipal Emergency Response Team to serve the arrest warrant, state police Capt. Joseph Sokolofski, commander of Bethlehem-based Troop M, told lehighvalleylive.com at the scene. The man then left the house and got into his vehicle, Sokolofski said. Borough and state police followed and attempted to stop him at Second and East Washington streets, where the man got out and opened fire on police with a high-capacity semiautomatic rifle, Sokolosfki said. Both the Slatington Borough officer and troopers returned fire and struck Zaborowski, Troop M spokesman Trooper Nathan Branosky said in a news release. After shooting Zaborowski, both the Slatington Borough police officer and troopers administered first aid to Zaborowski. A medical helicopter prepares to take off from Slatington Airport on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020, with a man wounded in an exchange of gunfire with police. He is believed to be Adam Zaborowski, the shooter in a shots-fired incident the day before over a face mask dispute at a Bethlehem Township cigar store, police said.Mike Nester | lehighvalleylive.com contributor Zaborowski was wanted on a warrant charging him with attempted homicide and related charges after allegedly firing two shots late Friday morning at a clerk and one shot into the air outside Cigars International, 4078 Nazareth Pike. The clerk had asked Zaborowski to wear a face covering while inside the store, and Zaborowski refused before becoming irate, grabbing two cigars from a shelf and leaving without paying, police said. The clerk followed and the gunfire ensued outside in an area where patrons were seated, police said. No one was injured in that incident. Zaborowski is barred from possessing firearms in Pennsylvania due a previous aggravated assault case, police said. Slatington resident Bill Rutt told a freelance photographer for lehighvalleylive.com he witnessed the shootout Saturday. He was sitting in his vehicle when a blue pickup truck came around the corner with police in pursuit, Rutt said. All of a sudden the blue truck stopped, he got out and started shooting and thats when I took cover, Rutt said. Rutt then could hear police yelling commands, and he went inside his house to begin checking on neighbors. As far as we know a couple of vehicles got shot up, but everybodys OK, Rutt said. Bethlehem Township police investigate July 31, 2020, after an alleged mask-related shooting outside Cigars International in the 4000 block of Nazareth Pike.Mike Nester | lehighvalleylive.com contributor Saturdays shooting remained under investigation by state police and the Lehigh County District Attorneys Office. There were no immediate plans to arraign Zaborowski on the Bethlehem Township charges, according to District Judge Jacqueline Taschner, as he remained in the hospital in Lehigh County. I anticipate theres going to be a bunch of charges in Lehigh County, she said Saturday afternoon. Lehigh County Special Operations and the Slatington Borough Fire Department both assisted at Saturdays scene. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com. Freelance photographer Mike Nester contributed to this report. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. International Afghan Prez orders release of 500 Taliban prisoners Kabul, Jul 31 (IANS) | Publish Date: 7/31/2020 1:07:29 PM IST Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday ordered the release of 500 Taliban prisoners in response to the militant groups three-day ceasefire announcement on the occasion of Eid, adding that he hoped the truce will extend. Ghani said the 500 prisoners were not part of the list given to the Afghan government by the Taliban and that these inmates will be released within the next four days, reports TOLO News. According to Ghani, the Afghan government has so far released 4,600 Taliban prisoners. Ghani said he does not have the right to decide on the release of those 400 Taliban prisoners on the list who are accused of serious crimes. Therefore he will call a Loya Jirga, a grand assembly of Afghan elders, to decide on the release. Ghanis annoucement comes as the Taliban also completed the release of 1,000 prisoners as per the peace agreement it signed with the US in Doha in February. A team of 88 policemen from Jaipur city police including three IPS, nine RPS (state services) officers and 17 inspectors who were sent to Jaisalmer yesterday are looking after the security of the hotel, where the Congress MLAs are staying. The Congress on Friday shifted legislators loyal to Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot to a luxury hotel near Jaisalmer, alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was attempting to poach its MLAs. The team of police officials from the city includes Additional Commissioner of Police Rahul Prakash, deputy commissioner of police, North, Rajeev Pachar, additional deputy commissioners of police Sunita Sharma, Satveer Singh and Rajendra Prasad; assistant commissioners of police Shankar Lal Chaba, Ranveer Singh and Vikram Singh, 17 inspectors and other subordinates have been sent to Jaisalmer, a top police official said. The official added that the city police team had been sent to ensure that they along with Jaisalmer and Jodhpur range police ensure that there were no loopholes in the security of the legislators staying in the hotel. A 360 degree multi-level security system has been established in the outer and inner periphery of the hotel. Barricading has been done in multiple areas of Jaisalmer especially connecting Bikaner, Barmer, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, the official said. The legislators had been camping in a hotel on the outskirts of Jaipur since July 13 in the aftermath of a rebellion by now-dismissed deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, who has the support of 18 Congress MLAs in the 200-member House. The government needs to be saved as you can see the way the Centre and its departments are after us. The pressure will be less there [Jaisalmer]. Most of the ministers and I will stay here and the rest will keep coming. There will be no compromise on governance, chief minister Gehlot said before boarding his flight to Jaisalmer. BJP state president Satish Poonia wondered if the Congress MLAs would cross over to Pakistan next. The CM talks of democracy and the Constitution, but if there is unity, why are the MLAs being shifted? The CM should run the government from the secretariat, and not from hotels, he said. Washington: Having endured what was surely a record-shattering slump last quarter, the US economy faces a dim outlook as a resurgent coronavirus intensifies doubts about any sustained recovery the rest of the year. A huge plunge in consumer spending as people stayed home and avoided shopping, traveling or gathering in crowds as the virus raged is estimated to have sent the economy sinking at a roughly 32 per cent annual rate in the April-June quarter. That would be more than triple the previous worst quarterly economic fall, a 10 per cent drop set in 1958. Depressed activity in such areas as business investment, home construction and government spending also likely contributed to the worst quarterly contraction on records dating to 1947. On Thursday, the government will issue its first of three estimates of economic activity, as measured by the gross domestic product, for the April-June quarter. So dizzying was the contraction last quarter that most analysts expect the economy to manage a sharp bounce-back in the current July-September quarter, perhaps of as much as 17% or higher on an annual basis. Yet with the rate of confirmed coronavirus cases now rising in a majority of states, more businesses being forced to pull back on re-openings and the Republican Senate proposing to scale back the government's aid to the unemployed, the economy could worsen in the months ahead. The Trump administration is betting against that outcome in asserting that the economy will undergo a V-shaped recovery in which last quarter's plunge would be followed by an impressive rebound in the current quarter a hoped-for dose of good news that would be reported in late October, not long before Election Day. Yet many economists are talking about a different letter of the alphabet. Noting that the economy can't fully recover until the pandemic is defeated or a vaccine is widely available, they envision a W-shaped scenario, in which a rebound in the current quarter would be followed by a sustained period of tepid growth or even outright recession. The markdowns are coming because of the clear economic damage the virus is doing, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, who said he believes the economy is losing jobs this month after two months of gains. We are going in reverse here, Zandi said. Analysts warn that the outlook could darken still further if Congress fails to enact enough financial aid to replace the expiring USD 600-a-week federal boost in unemployment benefits or provide sufficient help for businesses and state and local governments. Senate Republicans released a USD 1 trillion proposal on Monday that falls far short of a USD 3 trillion measure the House has passed, leaving an enormous gap for Democrats and Republicans to bridge as some elements of Congress' earlier emergency relief programs run out. Jammu: The patrolling party of BSF's 19th battalion which was doing its routine patrolling in the area along the border spotted a Pakistani drone flying along the Line of Control near Hiranagar sector in Jammu and Kashmir. According to the reports, the BSF personnel noticed the drone at around 10:30 pm on Friday (July 31) near a border post after which a search operation was launched in the area. Earlier in June, BSF personnel had shot down a Pakistani drone along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir, thus foiling an attempt of Pakistani agencies to drop weapons and arms across the border. According to reports, the drone was shot down in the forward post in Rathua village in Hiranagar Taluka in the Kathua district. The patrol party of BSF from 19 Battalion had spotted the Pakistani drone flying in the Rathua area of Hiranagar sector and fired eight rounds on it, thus shooting it down. The team recovered 1 M-4 US-made rifle, 2 magazines, 60 rounds of bullets and 7 grenades. Officials believe that in order to boost the strength of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror outfit in Kashmir, Pakistani terror agencies smuggle arms from across the border via such drones. Several such attempts of Pakistani agencies to smuggle arms weapons from across the border through the drone have been foiled by forces in the past. The UK's oldest national tri-service charity, in partnership with Northumbria University has today announced the launch of a programme of research into financial hardship and food poverty within the Armed Forces Community. Over a two-year period, the Northern Hub for Veterans and Military Families Research and the Healthy Living Lab at Northumbria University will work closely with SSAFA and their volunteer network to collect and analyse a range of anonymized data from serving personnel, veterans and families from all three branches of the Armed Forces community. The proposed data collection methods have been carefully designed to ensure minimal impact on beneficiaries during the initial steps they would normally go through to during SSAFA's caseworking process. SSAFA supports the welfare needs of over 85,000 veterans, families and service personnel, with more than 41,000 cases and visits completed alone in 2019, in local communities up and down the UK. The research is part-funded by a grant from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust, which has identified a need for evidence in order to identify future need and develop funding models across the whole of the Armed Forces community. This is the next step in research and has come about as a direct result of the impact of the collaborative Map of Need project. The Map of Need project analyses data from across the NHS and charities within the Armed Forces charity sector, which has provided government and the wider veterans' sector with a health and social care overview of the veterans and military families community. Through the Map of Need project the team at Northumbria have established data sharing agreements with the main charities within the veterans' sector as well as the NHS. We analyse this anonymised data to provide government and the wider veterans' sector with a health and social care observatory of the veterans and military families community. As a direct result of this collaborative effort, the Map of Need has identified that financial hardship is a significant, yet little considered, issue within the veterans' community. This new study will look in greater depth at financial hardship and food poverty within this community across the whole of the UK. This next step in research and the funding to undertake it has come about as a direct result of the impact of the Map of Need project." Dr Matt Kiernan, Associate Professor Mental Health and Veterans Studies, and Director of the Northern Hub for Veterans and Military Families Research at Northumbria University Professor Greta Defeyter is the Director of the Northumbria University's Healthy Living Lab said: "Covid-19 has shone a light on deepening inequalities and food poverty in the UK. However, the issue of food poverty in the veteran population has often been overlooked and never properly studied on this scale. The Healthy Living Lab are delighted to join forces with our colleagues from the Veteran Hub and SSAFA to research this important issue." British scientists say they have solved a mystery involving Stonehenge, the world-famous stone monument in Wiltshire, England. The scientists reported this week that they have identified where many of Stonehenges large stones, called megaliths, came from. Thousands of years ago, people used such stones to build markers, monuments and other structures. The researchers said part of one megalith helped solve the mystery. The small piece of stone had been kept in the United States for over 40 years. Chemical testing suggests that most of Stonehenges megaliths, known as sarsens, came from an area called West Woods. It is about 25 kilometers away from the ancient monument, the researchers said on Wednesday. People set up the sarsens at Stonehenge over 4,000 years ago. The largest sarsen is 9.1 meters tall. The heaviest weighs about 30 tons. David Nash of the University of Brighton led the study, which was published in the journal Science Advances. Nash said that researchers still do not know how people moved the stones to Stonehenge. Given the size of the stones, they must have either been dragged or moved on rollers, he said. Nash added, We dont know the exact route but at least we now have a starting point and an endpoint. Stonehenge also has smaller stones, called bluestones. Experts believe these stones came from Pembrokeshire in Wales, around 250 kilometers away. A sarsen core sample, taken during repair work in the late 1950s, gave important information about Stonehenges origins. The core sample was given to a man named Robert Phillips. Phillips worked for the company that was repairing the monument. Phillips took the sample with permission when he moved to the United States in 1977, Nash said. Phillips returned it to Britain for research in 2018. He died this year. The researchers studied very small pieces of the sample to find where it came from. It was similar to sandstone found at West Woods and all but two of the Stonehenge sarsens. Nash said he hopes the finding will help people better understand the hard work that went into building Stonehenge. Im John Russell. John Russell adapted this story from reports by The Associated Press. George Grow was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story monument n. a building or place that is important because of when it was built or because of something in history that happened there journal n. a magazine that reports on things of special interest to a group of people drag v. to pull (someone or something that is heavy or difficult to move) roller n. a part that rolls and is used to move, press, shape, spread, or smooth something route n. a way to get from one place to another place core sample n. a small part of a larger formation A Spitfire fighter plane emblazoned with the names of thousands of key workers soared above hospitals in the south east today in a flypast tribute to the NHS. The blue reconnaissance aircraft, with Thank U NHS painted on the underside, took off from Duxford Airfield in Cambridgeshire at about 11am before flying south and making its first pass over Southend Hospital. Other flypasts along the route included hospital in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and Buckinghamshire. The gesture marks the latest effort by the Aircraft Restoration Company to thank Britain's key workers for their efforts during the Covid-19 crisis. The firm, which is based on Duxford Airfield, had previously flown the aircraft every Thursday during lockdown to support the clap for our carers campaign. The plane was spotted passing over Leigh-on-Sea in Essex / @ChelmsRob A second flight was scheduled to take pace later on Saturday, with the plane set to pass over hospitals in Hampshire and Berkshire. The words 'Thank U NHS' were visible on the underside of the plane / @ChelmsRob Tweeting a picture of plane, Gary Moore tweeted: "Spitfire over Dover just now... what a sight!!!" Following the NHSs 72nd birthday on July 5, members of the public were asked to nominate the names of people who offered essential help during the pandemic to be written on the plane. The owners of the Aircraft Restoration Company said: "From a supportive family member to a kind neighbour, local community hero to frontline worker, you can say thank you for their support through the Covid-19 pandemic by nominating their name to be written upon the NHS Spitfire." People were asked asked to make a minimum donation of 10, to see their chosen name hand written on the a blue PL983 aircraft before it takes flight. The money will go to NHS Charities Together. Russia says it is close to rolling out an immunisation programme as it aims to win race for first coronavirus vaccine - Dado Ruvic/REUTERS Britain would be likely to reject a potentially game-changing coronavirus vaccine from Russia amid strong reservations about the trial process there, the Telegraph can reveal. That approach chimes with the US, where Anthony Fauci, Americas top infectious disease official, raised doubts about the testing regimes for potential vaccines in both Russia and China. There are strict international protocols governing the development of new drugs. Russia has claimed it is close to rolling out the worlds first vaccine against Covid-19, the key development in beating the global pandemic. Moscow has boasted it is a Sputnik moment, when the Soviet Union astonished the US by making it into space first with its 1957 satellite. Russias health minister Mikhail Murashko said on Saturday that the Gamaleya Institute, a state research facility, had completed clinical trials. Doctors and teachers would be the first to be vaccinated. "We plan wider vaccinations for October," Murashko was quoted as saying. But Dr Fauci told a Congressional hearing late on Friday that it was unlikely the US would make use of either a Russian or Chinese vaccine if they became available first. He also predicted that an American vaccine would be available by the end of the year. Three Western coronavirus vaccines are in final phase three trials. One is produced by US biotech firm Moderna and the National Institutes for Health; one by the University of Oxford and Britain's AstraZeneca; the last by Germany's BioNTech with US pharmaceutical Pfizer. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, removes his Washington Nationals protective mask during a Congress committee meeting on the coronavirus crisis - Getty Images North America Dr Fauci said: "I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing the vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone. Claims of having a vaccine ready to distribute before you do testing, I think, is problematic, at best. "We are going very quickly. I do not believe that there will be vaccines, so far ahead of us, that we will have to depend on other countries to get us vaccines." Story continues The British take a similar view to the Americans. One source said: We would use a vaccine if we trusted the data. Crucially, though, it depended, the source said, on how open the Russians or Chinese were about the vaccines development. International backing from scientists was also vital. Russia has released no scientific data proving the vaccines' safety or efficacy, and so fall foul of the sources stipulations. With the British plans, details have already been published in The Lancet. Public health experts are clear it would be impossible for the British to accept a vaccine from another country without all internationally recognised protocols being met. These cover the ethics of testing and transparency, and require the full release of data for peer review. Azeem Majeed, Professor of Primary Care at Imperial College London, said: We have strict and rigorous processes. It is unthinkable that the government would relax those rules. Professor Majeed said some countries, desperate to find a quick solution, might be tempted to turn a blind eye to agreed protocols. But he believed that the US, the UK or Germany would win the race to produce the first vaccine for international use. Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeters Medical School said: No government will adopt a product that has not passed international scrutiny. It would be an act of supreme folly. Chinese media last month announced a coronavirus vaccine was being used to immunise the Chinese military - making it the first approved for people. Professor Majeed said there were clear ethical issues in the army being used effectively as guinea pigs. China and Russia both stand accused of attempting to steal Western coronavirus research. They deny the allegations. Deadliest Catch's Mahlon Reyes, who worked as a deckhand on the Seabrooke and Cape Caution, has died at 38 in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana. The late Discovery Channel star, who is survived by his wife and four children, suffered a 'massive' heart attack and was rushed to hospital on July 25, according to TMZ. While his spouse told the outlet her husband initially survived, she explained he never regained consciousness and was taken off life support, surrounded by loved ones. Gone too soon: Deadliest Catch's Mahlon Reyes, who worked as a deckhand on the Seabrooke and Cape Caution, has died at 38 in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana His death 'completely shocked' the family, as he did not suffer from any known pre-existing health conditions. The Flathead County Sheriff's Office are working to determine the reality star's cause of death, pending his autopsy and toxicology results. Reyes, who last appeared on Deadliest Catch in 2015, was reportedly in the recovery process from a torn Achilles tendon, which he suffered while crabbing. Rest in peace: The father-of-four, who is also survived by his wife, suffered a 'massive' heart attack and was rushed to hospital on July 25, according to TMZ He was planning on going back to Alaska for the beginning of the next fishing season. To honor his memory, Reyes' wife revealed she and his Deadliest Catch crew already have plans to spread some of his ashes in the Bering Sea. Deadliest Catch star Nick McGlashan took to Twitter to share a throwback image with Reyes, which showed them both standing on a boat with big smiles. Beloved: While his spouse told the outlet her husband initially survived, she revealed he never regained consciousness and was taken off life support, surrounded by loved-ones 'This place misses you. RIP Mahlon,' he tweeted on Monday. Additionally, McGlashan posted a group shot on Thursday, which he captioned, 'Family times. Laughing, crying and remembering our brother Mahlon Reyes of the Summer Bay.' Both posts prompted condolences from fans, who were surprised to learn the tragic news. New Delhi, Aug 1 : Senior journalist N. Ram, former Union Minister Arun Shourie and activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan have moved the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of Section 2(c)(i) of the Contempt of Courts Act and termed it as a violation of the Articles 19 and 14 of the Constitution. The petition has been moved days before the apex court is slated to take up two contempt petitions against Bhushan for allegedly making derogatory remarks against the judiciary and bringing it under disrepute. On July 22, the top court issued notices to Bhushan and Twitter Inc for his tweets allegedly scandalising the judiciary. Two days later, a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra decided to begin hearing on another contempt case against Bhushan pending since 2009. The two cases will be taken up for hearing on August 4 and 5. The petitioners argued that this sub-section is unconstitutional, as it is incompatible with preambular values and basic features of the Constitution, and violates Article 19(1 )(a). They claimed the sub-section is unconstitutionally and incurably vague, and is manifestly arbitrary. The Section 2(c)(i) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, defines 'criminal contempt' as publication of anything - whether by words, spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise of any matter or the doing of any other act whatsoever - which scandalises or tends to scandalise, or lowers or tends to lower the authority of any court. The petitioners have asked the top court to issue directions declaring Section 2(c)(i) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 as being violative of Articles 19 and 14 of the Constitution. "The impugned sub-section, despite setting out penal consequences, is incurably vague. It uses vague terminology whose scope and limits are impossible to demarcate. In particular, the phrase "scandalises or tends to scandalise" invites subjective and greatly differing readings and application which is incapable of being certain and even-handed," said the plea. The petitioners' argued that the sub-section violates the right to free speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1) (a) and does not amount to a reasonable restriction under Article 19(2). "That the impugned sub-section, despite setting out penal consequences, is incurably vague. lt uses vague terminology whose scope and limits are impossible to demarcate. ln particular, the phrase 'scandalises or tends to scandalise' invites subjective and greatly differing readings and application which is incapable of being certain and even-handed. Thus, the offence violates the Article 14 demands of equal treatment and non-arbitrariness," said the plea. New Delhi: In a swift operation, chief of Khalistan Liberation Front militant outfit Harminder Singh Mintoo was arrested here last night within hours of his escape from Nabha jail in Punjab, with Delhi Police saying he was planning to flee abroad, to Malaysia or Germany. However, high alert continued in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi as about 12 armed dreaded fugitives are still at large. Two cars used by them in the escape have been found in Haryanas Kaithal district. 48-year-old Mintoo was nabbed from Nizamuddin railway stations parking area, marking the second arrest in the sensational jailbreak case of yesterday morning in which 8 people stormed the prison to free six inmatestwo militants and four dreaded criminals. Earlier, Parminder alias Penda was arrested yesterday in Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh, few hours after the jailbreak. Mintoo, accused in 10 terror cases, was in touch with terror groups in Pakistan, Punjab Director General of Police Suresh Arora said. Harminder was carrying a sophisticated semi-automatic pistol along with six live cartridges when he was arrested, Arvind Deep, Special Commissioner of Delhi Polices Special Cell, told reporters here today. He had bought a (train) ticket for Panvel and from there he had plans to go to Mumbai and then to Goa. He had good contacts in Goa since he had stayed there for 18 years from 1989 to 2007, Deep said while giving details of the arrest effected nearly 200 km from the scene of the crime. Finally, Harminder planned to flee to Germany or Malaysia, where he had good contacts since he had stayed there, police sources said. He was produced before a court here which sent him to seven days police custody. During interrogation, Harminder said the jailbreak was under planning for the last six months and its masterminds and executors were Gurpreet Singh Sekhon and Harjinder Singh who are members of a criminal gang, said DCP (Special Cell) P S Kushwah. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Darren Wilson is the former Ferguson, Missouri police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, who assaulted him. The shooting was a wholly justified act of self defense. Yet, it triggered the Black Lives Matter movement. Its fitting that a phony justice movement originated with a phony claim of police misconduct. Wilson has been cleared of any criminal conduct by a grand jury and by the Obama-Holder Justice Department. But the left never gives up. Thus, as Bill Otis notes, yet another prosecutor, Wesley Bell elected in 2018, reopened the investigation of Wilson. Bell, who is African-American, gained office by attacking Robert McCulloch, the incumbent prosecutor. McCulloch led the grand jury proceeding that resulted in no indictment of Wilson. Yet, Bell reached the same conclusion as McCulloch: Darren Wilson is not guilty of any crime that could be proven to a jury under the same standards applied to everyone else. Its absurd that Wilsons conduct was scrutinized in three separate proceedings, including one that wrapped up six years after the fact. Thats not the same standard applied to everyone else. Its the standard applied to people the BLM mob wants to crucify. Yet, its gratifying that even a prosecutor elected due to blow back against a predecessor who cleared Wilson was able to conclude that there is no basis for a prosecution. There can be no clearer demonstration that the BLM movement was founded on a lie about what happened in Ferguson. Bell now must face the ire of the fanatics who helped elect him. The New York Times reports that as he left the lectern after announcing his decision, an activist berated him, saying Bell now would be voted out of office. We got Bob McCulloch out only to replace him with the Black Bob McCulloch, this genius declared. In addition, 30 or so demonstrators converged on the Ferguson Market and Liquor, where Brown, the gentle giant, shoved a store clerk prior to his fatal interaction with Wilson. They called for a boycott of the store and, as would-be customers approached, told them the store was closed. Thats the mobs response to the refusal of multiple prosecutors to bring unwarranted charges against Darren Wilson: No injustice, no peace. Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu has spoken about the racial abuse she and her family have suffered in Dublin, revealing her daughter was once called "a mongrel". The Green Party politician was elected Lord Mayor on June 29 and said that since taking up the role, the level of abuse she receives has increased. "When I was in school, but more so recently, and especially in this role," she said of the abuse. "This is why I think, 'What can we do about increasing diversity?'. I would say I don't know why, but I actually got some research given to me that apparently if you are female and a politician and you are of a different skin colour, you tend to get a fair bit more abuse." Proud "I'm proud of my heritage and I'm proud to be Irish. Many people mask their true feelings towards minorities here. "I don't know what the mindset is, maybe people don't like women in politics or people of colour." Ms Chu, who is the first person of colour to ever be elected into the role, said people need to start calling racism out. An example of her own daughter suffering abuse, she said, shows why parents need to monitor what they say in front of children. "How can we tackle this issue? We need to start by calling it out, we need to start having honest conversations about these kinds of issues," she said. "We need to start understanding that racism does exist but at the same time, it's there, it is quite prevalent but it is something that we can tackle. "It doesn't surprise me, but it also completely shocked me when my kid got called a mongrel by older teenagers." Ms Chu, whose parents emigrated from China to Dublin in the 1970s, said that growing up she could never dream of the position she is now in. Working two jobs, her mother saved enough money to buy a chip van, which she then used to afford a restaurant and then three more. "I love that I'm the first but I hope I'm not the last person of colour in the role," she told Jennifer Zamparelli on 2fm. "It feels like a bubble. I never dreamed of becoming lord mayor. The gravity of the situation has not escaped me. "My mother came over here to look for a better life and get a job. Not unlike what a lot of our young people go through. I just don't think she thought that 40 years later she'd be sitting in the Mansion House and someone would be making her daughter the lord mayor." The bereaved mother of a 27-year-old woman who was killed in an accident at Ilasamaja bus-stop, inward Mile 2 area of Lagos has called on the Lagos police to investigate the matter and arrest the suspects. Chidinma Ajoku, a staffer of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), was killed alongside her male colleague when a container fell on July 26. The Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) described the accident as an avoidable accident given that reckless driving of the truck driver led to its attached 20ft container falling on a commercial bus. The truck fell on the commercial bus while discharging passengers at Ilasamaja bus-stop, leading to the death of two, while three others sustained injuries. Giving update on the accident, Nosa Okunbor, LASEMA spokesperson said six passengers were rescued and given medical attention, while two died on the spot. The accident occurred due to collision of a truck with registration number SGM 715 XA loaded with a 20ft container when it rammed into a commercial bus stationed at Ilasamaja bus stop under bridge while it was discharging some of its passengers, he said. According to information generated by LRT on arrival at the scene of the incident, insistence on right of way by driver of the truck laden with another one, led to the unfortunate incident, where the said truck with registration number SGM 715 XA, rammed into the commercial bus, LASEMA said. Mr Okunbor said the case was handed over to the Ilasa police fivision, while the rescued passengers were transported to Isolo General Hospital by officers from the division. Call for justice Chineze Ajoku, the mother of the deceased female passenger has called on the government and the Lagos State Police command to arrest the truck driver and get justice for the deceased. That Sunday, I waited and waited the whole night up till 2 a.m. waiting for her to come back from work. I was calling her aunty where she was staying in Surulere, she said. READ ALSO: Both of us did not sleep till it was 6 a.m. when a colleague called and told me that she was involved in an accident and they are at Isolo General Hospital. An accident scene used to illustrate the story The bereaved mother said when they got to the hospital, her daughter was not among the patients taken to Isolo but they were referred to Yaba General Hospital where her daughter and her colleague were found at the morgue. This is getting too much, these containers keep on killing people and nobody talks, she said. Mrs Ajoku described her daughter as someone with a promising future but life was snuffed out of her by a reckless truck driver. Everybody in this Lagos, whether you have a car or enter a bus or drive your own car, all of us, our lives are in danger. Because we encounter all these containers everyday and they are very reckless. She called for support from Nigerians to put an end to the loss of lives caused by truck drivers. The fallen Container Mrs Ajoku also said the police have not been able to trace or arrest the truck driver. The Lagos police spokesperson, Bala Elkana, said the police is investigating. The trailer that fell on the bus and killed these persons is impounded in our police station, not that the trailer is gone, only the driver that escaped. Whoever is the owner must definitely come around, but unfortunately, there is no registration number on it. But we are also trying to find out which particular company owns the trailer and get the driver arrested. It is not that nothing is done, it is not true, maybe they (victims family) are talking to another division. Police responded when it happened and took injured persons together with other emergency responders to the hospital, Mr Elkana told PREMIUM TIMES. The superintendent of police said the trailer is in custody and investigation is ongoing. At least 231 children and 29 adults who attended a Georgia overnight camp in June have tested positive for COVID-19, including 51 children under 10, and many who described feeling no symptoms. The results, published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Georgia Department of Public Health, show that young children can contract the virus and potentially spread it to others. This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission. the report states. The researchers did not identify the camp or say where in Georgia it was located, but said 597 Georgia residents, ages 6-59, attended the camp between June 17-27. The agencies were able to obtain test data for 344 people who attended the camp, with 260 (76%) of those testing positive. The researchers cant determine how many people were infected at the camp (some may have gotten the virus shortly before or after) and researchers were not able to obtain test results for everyone who attended. The report counts only people who tested positive within 14 days after leaving the camp. The results were compiled by comparing a list of people who attended the camp to the Georgia Department of Public Healths database of people who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The researchers say the results are likely an underestimate because cases might have been missed among persons not tested or whose test results were not reported. The 260 people who tested positive included 51 children age 6-10, out of 100 total in that age group who attended the camp. Among those age 11-17, 180 tested positive out of 409 attendees, and 29 of the 88 people over 18 who went to the camp also tested positive. There were 27 non-Georgia residents who also attended the camp but were not included in the study. The CDC issued a statement addressing the study Friday, saying that it was important to follow the agencys guidelines to prevent the spread of the disease. The camp adopted some mitigation steps found in CDC Suggestions for Youth and Summer Camps to minimize the risk for SARS-CoV-2 introduction and transmission to include cohorting of attendees by cabin and enhanced cleaning and disinfection, the CDC said. However, the camp did not require the 600 campers to wear masks, only the staff. Additionally, camp attendees engaged in a variety of indoor and outdoor activities that included daily vigorous singing and cheering, which might have contributed to transmission. According to the CDC, the camp opened with staff orientation and training on June 17, with 138 trainees and 120 staff members, ranging in age from 14-59. The staff members stayed for the first camp session, June 2127, and were joined by 363 campers and three senior staff members on June 21. On June 23, a teenage staff member left the camp after experiencing chills the night before. On June 24, that staff member tested positive for COVID-19. The camp began sending some campers home on June 24 and closed completely on June 27. Of the 260 who tested positive, the researchers were able to survey 136 about the symptoms they experienced during their illness. Thirty-six of those (26%) reported no symptoms, while 100 reported symptoms including fever (65% of cases), headache (61%), and sore throat (46%). The CDC report said the camp had adhered to requirements in Georgia Gov. Brian Kemps executive order that allowed summer camps to reopen on May 31. The agency said the camp complied with the required precautionary measures and some, but not all, of the recommendations from the CDC guidelines for reopening summer camps. The multiple measures adopted by the camp were not sufficient to prevent an outbreak in the context of substantial community transmission, the report states. Of those who tested positive, 200 of the 260 were staying overnight in a large cabin, meaning more than 15 people slept in the same building. The CDC said 375 of 597 people included in the study slept in such an arrangement. These findings demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 spread efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups, despite efforts by camp officials to implement most recommended strategies to prevent transmission, the CDC report states. Asymptomatic infection was common and potentially contributed to undetected transmission, as has been previously reported. The full breakdown of the testing results is below: A conman has been spared prison because he is too fat. Jail staff would have problems looking after 28-stone Barry Beardall including getting him out of bed, the judge said. Judge Peter Henry said because of the 74-year-olds size and ill-health, he needed carers to help him out of bed and give him medication. Jail staff would have problems looking after 28-stone Barry Beardall (pictured in 2011) including getting him out of bed, the judge at Southampton Crown Court said yesterday The judge at Southampton Crown Court said jailing him would cause enormous disruption for the prison service. Prosecutor Graham Gilbert said the conmans victim, John Ryan, had invested in shares through a Dubai-based company in 2016. He was subsequently told the firm was in trouble and he should transfer his money out and at least 2,360 went into Beardalls account. Pictured: A general view of Southampton Crown Court. The judge at Southampton Crown Court said jailing Beardall would cause enormous disruption for the prison service Beardall, of Ringwood, Hampshire, initially said he was unaware of the fraud. But in court this week he pleaded guilty and was given a 12-month prison term suspended for two years. He was told to pay Mr Ryan 2,500 in compensation. On Sanctioning Human Rights Abusers in Xinjiang, China Press Statement Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State July 31, 2020 The Chinese Communist Party's human rights abuses in Xinjiang, China against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities rank as the stain of the century. The Trump Administration has led the world's effort to impose tangible costs on the PRC's continuous campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, intrusive surveillance, forced labor, forced population control, involuntary collection of biometric data, and genetic analyses targeted at these groups. Today, we are continuing that record of principled action. On July 9, 2020, the United States designated Chen Quanguo, the current First Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary organization subordinate to the CCP, for his connection to serious human rights abuse in Xinjiang. Following his arrival in the region, Chen Quanguo began implementing a comprehensive surveillance, detention, and indoctrination program in Xinjiang, targeting Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities. The XPCC has been directly involved in implementing these measures. Today, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on the XPCC. The U.S. also sanctioned today Sun Jinlong, former Party Secretary of the XPCC, and Peng Jiarui, Deputy Party Secretary and Commander of the XPCC. They were designated pursuant to Executive Order 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. These actions will also restrict the ability of Sun Jinlong and Peng Jiarui to travel to the United States. Today's designations are the latest U.S. government action in an ongoing effort to deter human rights abuse in the Xinjiang region. We call on all countries to join us in condemning the CCP's heinous abuse of the human rights of its own citizens, affecting countless families across the world. For more information regarding this action, please see the press release issued today by the Department of the Treasury. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The oil-rich United Arab Emirates on Saturday announced the startup of its Barakah nuclear power plant, scoring another first for the Arab world. The announcement, coinciding with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, comes hot on the heels of the UAE's launch of the Arab world's first probe to Mars. "UAE first nuclear reactor at the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant has achieved first criticality and successfully started up," tweeted Hamad Alkaabi, the country's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This is a historic milestone for the nation with a vision set to deliver a new form of clean energy for the nation," he tweeted in English, along with a photograph of technicians raising their arms in celebration. The UAE premier and ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, tweeted that work at Barakah had "succeeded in loading nuclear fuel packages, carrying out comprehensive tests and successfully completing the operation". "Congratulations on realising this historic achievement in the energy sector & marking this milestone in the roadmap for sustainable development," Sheikh Mohammed said. The UAE started loading fuel rods into the reactor at Barakah in February, after regulators gave the green light for the first of the plant's four reactors, opening the way for commercial operations. The plant on the Gulf coast west of Abu Dhabi had been due to go online in late 2017 but faced a number of delays that officials attributed to safety and regulatory requirements. The Nawah Energy Company said at the time that Unit 1 would begin commercial operations after a "series of tests" leading to the start-up process. During the process, the unit would be synchronised with the power grid and the first electricity produced. The UAE has substantial oil and gas reserves, but with a power-hungry population of 10 million it has made huge investments in developing clean alternatives, including solar energy. Barakah, which means "blessing" in Arabic, is a regional first -- Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, has said it plans to build up to 16 nuclear reactors, but the project has yet to materialise. Barakah was built by a consortium led by the Korea Electric Power Corporation at a cost of some $24.4 billion. When fully operational, its four reactors have the capacity to generate 5,600 megawatts of electricity, around 25 percent of the nation's needs. The remaining three reactors are almost ready for operation. As well as generating competitively priced electricity, the UAE also hopes the nuclear plant will elevate its status as a key regional player, building on its success as a hub for tourism, banking and services. The fourth largest crude producer in the OPEC cartel, the country was built on oil and sits on a huge, recently discovered gas field. Nevertheless, it is spending billions to develop enough renewable energy to cover half of its needs by 2050. "This is part of the UAE's drive to diversify its energy economy, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and project its image as a regional leader in science and technology," a Gulf analyst told AFP. - No enrichment - On July 20, the first Arab space mission to Mars, an unmanned probe dubbed "Hope", blasted off from Japan on a mission to reveal more about the atmosphere of the Red Planet. The Barakah plant, on the coast facing Iran across the Gulf, stands just 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Saudi border and closer to Qatar's capital Doha than to Abu Dhabi. Amid a tense confrontation between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear programme, the UAE has said it will not be developing a uranium enrichment programme or nuclear reprocessing technologies. Qatar, the target of a boycott by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others since June 2017, last year said the Barakah plant poses a "flagrant threat to regional peace and environment". The UAE has repeatedly said its nuclear ambitions are for "peaceful purposes" and moved to dispel any concerns over safety. It says it has welcomed more than 40 international reviews and inspection missions. The UAE has substantial oil and gas reserves but has made huge investments in developing alternatives, including solar energy and now the Barakah nuclear power plant Barakah nuclear plant in the Gharbiya region of Abu Dhabi on the Gulf coastline west of the United Arab Emirates capital Los Angeles Police Officer Toni McBride, who shot a knife-wielding man in April, has come under increased scrutiny partly because of work as a gun-wielding model. (Dillon Precision Products) To the editor: I read with interest Steve Lopez's column on another police shooting of a man armed with a knife. These shootings first caught my eye in 1979. At the time, I was in law school when two Los Angeles Police Department officers shot Eula Love multiple times. The 39-year-old Love was holding a steak knife and arguing about why her gas was turned off over a $22 bill. After reading of these incidents over 40 years, I have picked up a couple of themes. First, officers across the country are permitted to use combat fire, where they empty their guns at the suspect irrespective of opposing risks. Second, police do not resort to alternative weapons, such as bean bags or even .22-caliber short bullets, often enough. Each LAPD squad car is loaded with special technology; is a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun the only option? If we agree a solution is needed, and we do, my first suggestion is a requirement to hire only college graduates with a degree in criminology. Kevin H. Park, Westlake Village .. To the editor: Lopez does an excellent job recounting the circumstances of LAPD Officer Toni McBride's killing of Daniel Hernandez last April. He also includes the opinions of two use-of-force experts whose conclusions differ on McBride's potential culpability. If her initial shots were within policy, the investigation should center on the final two shots, which occurred when Hernandez was "down in a wounded position." Interviewing McBride and the other officers present would certainly elicit enough evidence to conclude whether she should be found at fault regarding those final two shots. It has been months since Hernandez's death, more than enough time for the LAPD to have completed its investigation. The public is owed a timely response. Noel Johnson, Glendale Beachgoers enjoy the sunshine on Bournemouth beach on Friday (Picture: Getty) Brawls have erupted on beaches across the UK as thousands of people flocked to the seaside on the hottest day of the year. Police were forced to intervene in Bournemouth, Wales and Scotland when some sun-seekers got into fights on Friday. They had taken advantage of the high temperatures which hit 37.8C at Londons Heathrow Airport. A video on social media showed police escorting a woman from Bournemouth beach after an alleged fight between two groups. More than 100,000 were reported to be at the beach on Friday. A Dorset Police spokesperson said: Dorset Police received a report at 4.37pm on Friday 31 July 2020 of a fight involving a group of young people in the area of Bournemouth Pier. Officers attended and detained two people. A 16-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, both from Southampton, were given a section 35 order dispersal notices, requiring them to leave the area. They added officers were continuing with enquiries. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council have told people not to bother going to beaches this weekend because safe social distancing cannot be maintained. Police at Portobello beach in Edinburgh (Picture: Getty) Police at Portobello beach broke up large crowds (Picture: Getty) Police also intervened at Portobello beach in Edinburgh to deal with a large disturbance and they were forced to disperse groups and confiscate alcohol. Sun-seekers at Barry Island, in Wales, also failed to stick to social distancing guidelines, with images showing packed beaches, trains and roads leading to the area. Police also prevented an illegal party planned in Chalkwell, Essex, by closing down part of the seafront on Friday evening. Essex Police added in a statement: A dispersal order will be in place covering Chalkwell Park, following information about a large planned gathering. It will be in place from 7pm on Friday 31 July to 4am Saturday 1 August. The order will cover the area shown in the map below, including London Road, Chalkwell Avenue, Leigh Road, Mount Avenue and Chalkwell Esplanade and the beach to the low water marker. By Yanni Chow and Carol Mang HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Friday postponed a Sept. 6 election to the Chinese-ruled city's legislature by a year because of a rise in coronavirus cases, dealing a blow to the pro-democracy opposition which had hoped to make huge gains. The United States quickly condemned the move, saying it was the latest example of Beijing undermining democracy in the Chinese-ruled territory. "This action undermines the democratic processes and freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong's prosperity," White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters. The decision to delay the vote came after 12 pro-democracy candidates were disqualified from running for perceived subversive intentions and opposition to a sweeping new security law imposed by Beijing, prompting questions among many about whether the pandemic was the real reason for the delay. "Postponing the September elections for a year is a cynical move to contain a political emergency, not a public health one," said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. "This simply allows Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to deny Hong Kong people their right to choose their government." Avery Ng, secretary-general of the League of Social Democrats, was equally sceptical. "Obviously the Chinese Communist Party is using COVID-19 as a cover to stop Hong Kongers from voting against the government and democrats potential majority win," he told Reuters. "Together with the mass disqualification of candidates, the CCP ... only allows an election in which they can control the outcome to take place." Germany announced it would suspend its extradition agreement with Hong Kong following Lam's decision. The opposition had aimed to ride a wave of resentment over the national security law to win a majority in the Legislative Council, where half the seats are directly elected with the other half filled mostly by pro-Beijing appointees. Story continues Lam said she had to invoke an emergency law to make the postponement and no political considerations were involved. China's parliament would decide how to fill the legislative vacuum, she added. She told reporters the decision was aimed at safeguarding people's health. "We have 3 million voters going out in one day across Hong Kong, such flow of people would cause high risk of infection," Lam said. Hong Kong has reported more than 3,000 coronavirus cases since January, far lower than in other major cities around the world. But the number of new infections has been in the triple-digits for the past 10 days. Rival finance hub Singapore, which has had a larger coronavirus outbreak, held a general election in July. Many pro-democracy activists had suspected Lam would use the coronavirus to delay the election. The poll would have been the former British colony's first official vote since Beijing imposed the security law to tackle what China broadly defines as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with punishment of up to life in prison. Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula guaranteeing freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland. Critics of the new law say it undermines that autonomy. The Chinese and Hong Kong governments say the law is necessary to preserve order and prosperity after months of often-violent anti-China protests last year. "I anticipated it, because of this year's social movements, we already anticipated that the government wouldnt give us the right to let us vote," said resident Janis Chow, 25. "Im disappointed but I was ready for it." 'POLITICAL PURGE' News of the postponement came as the nomination period for candidates seeking to run in the election closed. Among the 12 opposition candidates disqualified was Joshua Wong, who rose to fame leading pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as a teenager in 2012 and 2014. "Barring me from running ... would not stop our cause for democracy," said Wong, 23. Wong, who China calls a "black hand" of foreign forces, said his disqualification was "invalid and ridiculous" and the new law a "legal weapon used against dissidents". The government denies political censorship or suppression of the right to run for the legislature. Authorities also disqualified some members of the Civic Party, a moderate, old-guard opposition group, and others who won an unofficial "primary" vote held by the opposition camp this month. That independently organised vote saw a younger, more defiant generation of democrats taking over the helm of the opposition, but the Civic Party disqualifications signal Beijing is becoming less tolerant of even moderate voices. Britain said it was clear the candidates had been barred because of their political views. Hong Kong's last British governor, Chris Patten, called it an "outrageous political purge". China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office said in a statement that officials would be sent down to Hong Kong to conduct large-scale coronavirus tests "to help Hong Kong build a large-scale quarantine and treatment centre", again sparking concerns among some local residents, this time that China may use this as an excuse to collect DNA samples for surveillance purposes. (Reporting by Yanni Chow, Carol Mang, Meg Shen, James Pomfret, Joyce Zhou, Pak Yiu, Twinnie Siu and Scott Murdoch; Additional reportnig by Nandita Bose in Washington and Maria Sheahan in Berlin; Writing by Marius Zaharia and Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie) LAKEWOOD, CO, July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Energy Fuels Inc. (NYSE American: UUUU) (TSX: EFR) ("Energy Fuels" or the "Company") today reported its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2020. The Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and may be viewed on the Electronic Document Gathering and Retrieval System ("EDGAR") at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml, on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval ("SEDAR") at www.sedar.com, and on the Company's website at www.energyfuels.com. Unless noted otherwise, all dollar amounts are in U.S. dollars. Highlights: At June 30, 2020 , the Company had $28.3 million in cash and marketable securities, plus $24.7 million of concentrate inventory, including 575,000 pounds of uranium valued on our balance sheet at $23.05 per pound and 1,675,000 pounds of vanadium valued on our balance sheet at $5.11 per pound, both in the form of immediately marketable product. As of July 31, 2020 , the spot price of uranium was $32.35 per pound and the mid-point spot price of vanadium was $5.30 per pound, which places a current market value on our concentrate inventories of approximately $27.5 million . As a result of existing inventories and planned production, the Company expects to have between 640,000 and 690,000 pounds of finished uranium and 1.675 million pounds of finished vanadium in inventory at the end of 2020, assuming no change to production or sales guidance. , the Company had in cash and marketable securities, plus of concentrate inventory, including 575,000 pounds of uranium valued on our balance sheet at per pound and 1,675,000 pounds of vanadium valued on our balance sheet at per pound, both in the form of immediately marketable product. As of , the spot price of uranium was per pound and the mid-point spot price of vanadium was per pound, which places a current market value on our concentrate inventories of approximately . As a result of existing inventories and planned production, the Company expects to have between 640,000 and 690,000 pounds of finished uranium and 1.675 million pounds of finished vanadium in inventory at the end of 2020, assuming no change to production or sales guidance. The Company had an operating loss of $6.5 million during Q2-2020, versus a loss of $7.8 million in Q1-2020, narrowing the Company's quarter-on-quarter loss by 17%. during Q2-2020, versus a loss of in Q1-2020, narrowing the Company's quarter-on-quarter loss by 17%. The Company had working capital of $38.04 million at the end of Q2-2020, representing an increase of 8% over Q1-2020. at the end of Q2-2020, representing an increase of 8% over Q1-2020. On June 11, 2020 , the Company announced the partial cash redemption of its floating rate convertible unsecured subordinated debentures (the " Debentures "). On July 14, 2020 , the Company distributed Cdn$10,430,000 in cash to holders of the Debentures as of July 8, 2020 . This amount represents the redemption of one-half of the total Debentures outstanding, and as a result, the Company has only Cdn$10,430,000 ( US$7,780,780 , based on the US-Canada exchange rate on July 31, 2020 ) aggregate principal amount of the Debentures outstanding, which are due on December 31, 2020 . , the Company announced the partial cash redemption of its floating rate convertible unsecured subordinated debentures (the " "). On , the Company distributed in cash to holders of the Debentures as of . This amount represents the redemption of one-half of the total Debentures outstanding, and as a result, the Company has only ( , based on the US-Canada exchange rate on ) aggregate principal amount of the Debentures outstanding, which are due on . On April 13, 2020 , the Company announced its entry into the U.S. rare earth elements (" REE ") market. The Company believes its fully licensed and constructed White Mesa Mill (" Mill "), which is the only uranium mill operating in the U.S. today, can play a key role in bringing the REE supply chain back to the U.S. Many REE ores contain recoverable quantities of uranium, and the Mill has a 40-year history of responsibly processing ores for the recovery of uranium and other metals. On May 21, 2020 , the Company announced that it had entered into consulting agreements with two REE industry experts ( Constantine Karayannopoulos , then Chairman of Neo Performance Minerals (" Neo "), and Brock O'Kelley ) to aid in the development and implementation of commercial and technical REE strategies for the new U.S. REE program Energy Fuels is pursuing. On July 7, 2020 , Mr. Karayannopoulos was appointed President and CEO of Neo, positions he held previously with Neo. Neo is currently one of the World's leading producers of advanced industrial materials, including rare earth-based engineered products, for multiple global markets. As a result of his new executive roles with Neo, his consulting agreement with the Company will end on August 6, 2020 . On July 31, 2020 , the Company entered into a non-exclusive Letter of Intent with Neo, under which: (i) Mr. Karayannopoulos and other Neo personnel will continue to assist Energy Fuels in developing commercial and technical aspects of the Company's REE strategy, including the potential production of a rare earth oxide concentrate at the Mill that can be sold to REE separation facilities; and (ii) the Company and Neo will work together toward potentially creating a longer term mutually beneficial relationship, which may involve commitments to buy and sell all or a portion of the REE concentrate produced at the Mill or other commercial arrangements. , the Company announced its entry into the U.S. rare earth elements (" ") market. The Company believes its fully licensed and constructed White Mesa Mill (" "), which is the only uranium mill operating in the U.S. today, can play a key role in bringing the REE supply chain back to the U.S. Many REE ores contain recoverable quantities of uranium, and the Mill has a 40-year history of responsibly processing ores for the recovery of uranium and other metals. On , the Company announced that it had entered into consulting agreements with two REE industry experts ( , then Chairman of Neo Performance Minerals (" "), and ) to aid in the development and implementation of commercial and technical REE strategies for the new U.S. REE program Energy Fuels is pursuing. On , Mr. Karayannopoulos was appointed President and CEO of Neo, positions he held previously with Neo. Neo is currently one of the World's leading producers of advanced industrial materials, including rare earth-based engineered products, for multiple global markets. As a result of his new executive roles with Neo, his consulting agreement with the Company will end on . On , the Company entered into a non-exclusive Letter of Intent with Neo, under which: (i) Mr. Karayannopoulos and other Neo personnel will continue to assist Energy Fuels in developing commercial and technical aspects of the Company's REE strategy, including the potential production of a rare earth oxide concentrate at the Mill that can be sold to REE separation facilities; and (ii) the Company and Neo will work together toward potentially creating a longer term mutually beneficial relationship, which may involve commitments to buy and sell all or a portion of the REE concentrate produced at the Mill or other commercial arrangements. On April 23, 2020 , the U.S. Nuclear Fuel Working Group (" NFWG ") released its "Strategy to Restore American Nuclear Energy Leadership" (the " Report "). In the report, the U.S. government commits to reviving and strengthening the U.S. uranium mining industry. The Report provides a number of policy recommendations, including direct government purchases, supporting Department of Commerce efforts to extend the Russian Suspension Agreement (" RSA ") to prevent dumping of Russian uranium in the U.S. (and "the consideration of further lowering the cap on Russian imports under future RSA terms"), enabling the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny imports of fabricated nuclear fuel from Russia , and streamlining regulatory reform and land access for uranium. , the U.S. Nuclear Fuel Working Group (" ") released its "Strategy to Restore American Nuclear Energy Leadership" (the " "). In the report, the U.S. government commits to reviving and strengthening the U.S. uranium mining industry. The Report provides a number of policy recommendations, including direct government purchases, supporting Department of Commerce efforts to extend the Russian Suspension Agreement (" ") to prevent dumping of Russian uranium in the U.S. (and "the consideration of further lowering the cap on Russian imports under future RSA terms"), enabling the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny imports of fabricated nuclear fuel from , and streamlining regulatory reform and land access for uranium. On May 6, 2020 , the Company announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire Prompt Fission Neutron (PFN) borehole logging technology and equipment for total consideration of $500,000 cash, of which $150,000 was paid in Q2 2020 and the remainder was paid on closing of the acquisition, which occurred on July 31, 2020 . This acquisition gives the Company control over this important in situ recovery ("ISR") technology in the U.S. PFN is critical to successful uranium production from many ISR deposits, as it more accurately measures downhole in situ uranium ore grade versus traditional methods. Mark S. Chalmers, Energy Fuels' President and CEO, stated: "Energy Fuels continued to consolidate our position as the clear leader in U.S. uranium production in Q2-2020, and we made significant progress in diversifying into rare earth element production. "On the uranium front, we resumed limited uranium production at our White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah from alternate feed materials and pond returns, and we expect to produce between 125,000 and 175,000 pounds of uranium companywide in 2020. Assuming current production and sales guidance, we expect to continue to build and hold between 640,000 and 690,000 pounds of uncommitted uranium in inventory at the end of 2020. Uranium spot prices are up 30% so far this year, as COVID-related production suspensions at major global uranium mines have created a widening gap between supply and demand and a strong potential for higher prices in the future. This means a higher realizable value for our uranium inventory. There is also good progress being made on uranium in the U.S. government. Our allies in Congress and the Trump Administration are pushing hard to fund $150 million per year to create the U.S. uranium reserve. While progress with the U.S. government can be slow and uneven at times, there is bipartisan support for the creation of the uranium reserve, and we are optimistic this program will be funded and implemented. In addition, the U.S. government and Russia are negotiating an extension of the Russian Suspension Agreement, which is expected to lower imports of Russian uranium into the U.S. over the long-term. Energy Fuels is heavily engaged in this process, and we are encouraged that the U.S. Department of Commerce appears committed to negotiating an agreement that will provide concrete benefits to the U.S. uranium mining sector. Adding to our leverage to increasing uranium prices, Energy Fuels also now owns the PFN borehole logging technology that most U.S. ISR uranium producers will need to use in order to resume and expand production. Not only will we be able to utilize this technology to ramp up production from our own ISR facilities, we have also secured the ability to monetize this technology with other U.S. ISR producers. "Energy Fuels has also made significant strides in entering the rare earth market. There is a lot of interest in rare earths at the current time, and we believe Energy Fuels is more advanced than other companies in the U.S. with respect to producing a salable rare earth concentrate. We are currently performing test work, which we believe will be highly scalable and will allow us to produce a rare earth concentrate sooner, and at a significantly lower cost, than other U.S. initiatives garnering considerable attention right now. We have also engaged several rare earth industry experts to assist us in these endeavors, and we have entered into a non-exclusive Letter of Intent with Neo Performance Materials under which Neo will provide technical and commercial assistance to the Company, and both companies will work together toward potentially creating a longer term mutually beneficial relationship. We are moving very quickly on our rare earth initiative with an eye toward generating cash flow within the next 12 months. "Finally, Energy Fuels is focused on managing our balance sheet. As discussed above, we have significant product inventories providing immediate leverage to rising commodity prices. And we are proud to have the ability to address our existing debt on our own terms, and that we expect to be debt free by the end of 2020. Debt can be difficult for mid-sized and junior uranium miners to service, and extremely burdensome for developers and explorers. Debt can devastate shareholder value if projects or markets do not perform as expected. In contrast to many other uranium companies which are currently incurring substantial long-term debt, Energy Fuels shareholders will not be exposed to that risk." Selected Summary Financial Information: $000, except per share data Six months ended June 30, 2020 Six months ended June 30, 2019 Results of Operations: Total revenues $ 788 $ 4,741 Gross profit (loss) (718) (4,943) Net income (loss) attributable to the company (13,844) (21,439) Basic and diluted loss per share (0.12) (0.23) $000's As at June 30, 2020 As at December 31, 2019 Financial Position: Working capital $ 38,043 $ 20,534 Property, plant and equipment 24,742 26,203 Mineral properties 83,539 83,539 Total assets 188,125 175,720 Total long-term liabilities 23,251 22,475 Webcast on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 at 11:00 am ET (9:00 am MT) To join the webcast, please dial 1-888-664-6392 (toll free in the U.S. and Canada). The webcast slides can be accessed through the following link: Energy Fuels Q2-2020 Results Webcast Link A link to a recorded version of the proceedings will be available shortly after the webcast by calling 1-888-390-0541 (toll free in the U.S. and Canada) and entering the code 758012#. This recording will be available until August 19, 2020. Outlook Operations and Sales Outlook Overview In response to the Congressional appropriations for the creation of a U.S. uranium reserve, the potential extension of the Russian Suspension Agreement, and/or implementation of policy recommendations contained in the Working Group's report, the Company is evaluating activities aimed towards increasing uranium production at all or some of its production facilities, including the currently operating White Mesa Mill, the recently operating Nichols Ranch ISR Facility, and the Alta Mesa ISR Facility, La Sal Complex and Canyon Mine, which are all currently on standby, as market conditions may warrant. Subject to any actions the Company may take in response to U.S. government actions or market conditions, the Company plans to extract and/or recover limited amounts of uranium from its Nichols Ranch Project in 2020, which was placed on standby in the first quarter of 2020 due to the depletion of its existing wellfields. In addition, during 2020 the Company expects to recover uranium at the White Mesa Mill from in-circuit uranium inventories extracted from the recent vanadium Pond Return campaign, from Alternate Feed Materials and from other Pond Return activities. The vanadium Pond Return campaign conducted in 2019 was brought to a close in early 2020. Subject to any actions the Company may take in response to U.S. government actions, both ISR and conventional uranium recovery is expected to be maintained at reduced levels, as a result of current uranium market conditions, until such time when market conditions improve sufficiently. The Company is also seeking new sources of revenue, including new sources of Alternate Feed Materials and new fee processing opportunities at the White Mesa Mill that can be processed under existing market conditions (i.e., without reliance on current uranium sales prices), and is evaluating opportunities to potentially recover REEs at the White Mesa Mill. The Company will also continue its support of U.S. governmental activities to support the U.S. uranium mining industry and will evaluate additional acquisition and disposition opportunities that may arise. Extraction and Recovery Activities Overview During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Company recovered approximately 83,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 , all of which were for the account of the Company. In the year ending December 31, 2020, the Company expects to recover a quantity of uranium within its previously published guidance of 125,000 to 175,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 . The Company also recovered approximately 67,000 pounds of high-purity vanadium pentoxide ("V 2 O 5 " or "black flake") during the six months ended June 30, 2020 from its vanadium Pond Return campaign, which was suspended during the first quarter of 2020. The Company has strategically opted not to enter into any uranium sales commitments for 2020. Therefore, subject to any actions the Company may take in response to U.S. government actions and general market conditions, all 2020 uranium production is expected to be added to existing inventories. All V 2 O 5 production is expected to be sold on the spot market if prices rise significantly above current levels, but otherwise maintained in inventory. ISR Activities During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Company extracted and recovered approximately 6,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 from its Nichols Ranch Project, which was placed on standby during the first quarter of 2020, due to the depletion of its existing wellfields. This amount of uranium production falls within the Company's published guidance of approximately 6,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 from Nichols Ranch during the year ended December 31, 2020. As of June 30, 2020, the Nichols Ranch wellfields had nine header houses that previously extracted uranium, which are now depleted. The Company currently holds 34 fully-permitted, undeveloped wellfields at Nichols Ranch, including four additional wellfields at the Nichols Ranch wellfield, 22 wellfields at the adjacent Jane Dough wellfield, and eight wellfields at the Hank Project, which is fully permitted to be constructed as a satellite facility to the Nichols Ranch Plant. Subject to any actions the Company may take in response to U.S. government actions, the Company expects to continue to keep the Alta Mesa Project on standby until such time as improvements in uranium market conditions are observed or suitable sales contracts can be procured. Conventional Activities Conventional Extraction and Recovery Activities During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Company produced 67,000 pounds of high-purity V 2 O 5 from its Mill Pond Return program and 77,000 pounds of uranium from Alternate Feed Materials. During 2020, the Company expects to recover approximately 120,000 to 170,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 at the White Mesa Mill from in-circuit uranium inventories extracted from the recent vanadium Pond Return campaign, from Alternate Feed Materials and from other Pond Return activities. In addition, there remains an estimated 1.5 to 3 million pounds of solubilized recoverable V 2 O 5 inventory remaining in the tailings management facility awaiting future recovery from Pond Return as market conditions may warrant, placing the company in a unique position to restart vanadium production quickly. The White Mesa Mill has historically operated on a campaign basis whereby uranium and/or vanadium recovery is scheduled as mill feed, cash needs, contract requirements, and/or market conditions may warrant. The Company currently expects that planned uranium production from Alternate Feed Materials, Pond Return, and the receipt of uranium-bearing materials from mine cleanup activities will keep the Mill in operation through all or most of 2020. The Company is also actively pursuing opportunities to process new and additional Alternate Feed Material sources and new and additional low-grade ore from third parties in connection with various uranium clean-up requirements. Successful results from these activities would allow the Mill to extend the current campaign through 2020 and beyond. In addition, if improvements in uranium market conditions are observed, or conventional mines are ramped up in response to U.S. government actions to support domestic uranium mining and/or recommendations of the Working Group, the Company would expect to be able to keep the Mill operating over a considerably longer period of time. Conventional Standby, Permitting and Evaluation Activities During the six months ended June 30, 2020, standby and environmental compliance activities occurred at the Canyon Project. Subject to any actions the Company may take in response to U.S. government actions and general market conditions, during 2020, the Company plans to continue carrying out engineering, metallurgical testing, procurement and construction management activities at its low cost Canyon Project. The Company is selectively advancing certain permits at its other major conventional uranium projects, such as the Roca Honda Project, a large, high-grade conventional project in New Mexico. The Company will also maintain required permits at the Company's conventional projects, including the Sheep Mountain Project, La Sal Complex, and Tony M, Whirlwind and Daneros mines. In addition, the Company will continue to evaluate the Bullfrog Property at its Henry Mountains Project. Expenditures for certain of these projects have been adjusted to coincide with expected dates of price recoveries based on the Company's forecasts. All of these projects serve as important pipeline assets for the Company's future conventional production capabilities, as market conditions warrant. Sales During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Company completed no uranium sales. The Company currently has no remaining contracts, and therefore all existing uranium inventory and future production is fully unhedged to future uranium price increases. During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Company did not complete the sale of any vanadium. The Company expects to continue to sell finished vanadium product, when justified, into the metallurgical industry, as well as other markets that demand a higher purity product, including the aerospace, chemical, and potentially the vanadium battery industries. The Company may also retain vanadium product in inventory for future sale, depending on vanadium spot prices and general market conditions. The Company also continues to pursue new sources of revenue, including additional Alternate Feed Materials and other sources of feed for the White Mesa Mill, in addition to evaluating the potential to recover REEs at the Mill. The Company's Plans in Response to U.S. Government Actions As stated above, in response to U.S. government actions to support domestic uranium mining, the Company is evaluating activities aimed towards increasing uranium production at all or some of its facilities, subject to general market conditions. No decisions on any project-specific actions have been made at this time. Continued Efforts to Minimize Costs The Company will continue to seek ways to minimize the costs of maintaining its critical properties in a state of readiness for potential improvements in market conditions, and is evaluating whether additional cost-cutting measures may be warranted at this time as a result of general market conditions. About Energy Fuels: Energy Fuels is a leading U.S.-based uranium mining company, supplying U 3 O 8 to major nuclear utilities. The Company also produces vanadium from certain of its projects, as market conditions warrant. Its corporate offices are in Lakewood, Colorado near Denver, and all of its assets and employees are in the United States. Energy Fuels holds three of America's key uranium production centers: the White Mesa Mill in Utah, the Nichols Ranch in-situ recovery ("ISR") Project in Wyoming, and the Alta Mesa ISR Project in Texas. The White Mesa Mill is the only conventional uranium mill operating in the U.S. today, has a licensed capacity of over 8 million pounds of U 3 O 8 per year, and has the ability to produce vanadium when market conditions warrant. The Nichols Ranch ISR Project is on standby and has a licensed capacity of 2 million pounds of U 3 O 8 per year. The Alta Mesa ISR Project is also on standby and has a licensed capacity of 1.5 million pounds of U 3 O 8 per year. In addition to the above production facilities, Energy Fuels also has one of the largest NI 43-101 compliant uranium resource portfolios in the U.S. and several uranium and uranium/vanadium mining projects on standby and in various stages of permitting and development. The primary trading market for Energy Fuels' common shares is the NYSE American under the trading symbol "UUUU," and the Company's common shares are also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "EFR." Energy Fuels' website is www.energyfuels.com . Cautionary Notes: This news release contains certain "Forward Looking Information" and "Forward Looking Statements" within the meaning of applicable United States and Canadian securities legislation, which may include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: production and sales forecasts; costs of production; scalability, and the Company's ability and readiness to re-start or expand any of its existing projects to respond to any improvements in uranium market conditions or in response to any government actions to support U.S. uranium mining; any expectations regarding vanadium opportunities, the Company's program for the recovery of vanadium from pond solutions, remaining dissolved vanadium in tailings facility solutions, future production opportunities, or the Company's ability to sell any of its vanadium product at a premium to spot prices or otherwise; the ability of the Company to secure any new sources of alternate feed materials or other processing opportunities at the White Mesa Mill; expected timelines for the permitting and development of projects; the Company's expectations as to longer term fundamentals in the market and price projections; expectations to become or maintain its position as a leading uranium company in the United States; any expectation as to how the NFWG's recommendations may be implemented and the timing of implementation; any expectation with respect to timelines to production; any expectation that the Company may be able to sell its uranium and vanadium inventories at potentially higher prices in the future; any expectation that Congress will make the requested appropriations; any expectations as to the Company's ability to implement any additional cost-cutting measures; any expectation that the Company may have the opportunity to process uranium-bearing ores for the recovery of REEs, at all or on commercial terms; any expectation that the Company will be able to recover REEs and/or uranium from such ores on a commercial basis; and any expectation that the Company and Neo may create a longer term mutually beneficial relationship. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans," "expects," "does not expect," "is expected," "is likely," "budgets," "scheduled," "estimates," "forecasts," "intends," "anticipates," "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," "be achieved" or "have the potential to." All statements, other than statements of historical fact, herein are considered to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements express or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include risks associated with: production and sales forecasts; costs of production; scalability, and the Company's ability and readiness to re-start or expand any of its existing projects to respond to any improvements in uranium market conditions or in response to any government actions to support U.S. uranium mining; any expectations regarding vanadium opportunities, the Company's program for the recovery of vanadium from pond solutions, remaining dissolved vanadium in tailings facility solutions, future production opportunities, or the Company's ability to sell any of its vanadium product at a premium to spot prices or otherwise; the ability of the Company to secure any new sources of alternate feed materials or other processing opportunities at the White Mesa Mill; expected timelines for the permitting and development of projects; the Company's expectations as to longer term fundamentals in the market and price projections; expectations to become or maintain its position as a leading uranium company in the United States; any expectation as to how the NFWG's recommendations may be implemented and the timing of implementation; any expectation with respect to timelines to production; any expectation that the Company may be able to sell its uranium and vanadium inventories at potentially higher prices in the future; any expectation that Congress will make the requested appropriations; any expectations as to the Company's ability to implement any additional cost-cutting measures; any expectation that the Company may have the opportunity to process uranium-bearing ores for the recovery of REEs, at all or on commercial terms; any expectation that the Company will be able to recover REEs and/or uranium from such ores on a commercial basis; any expectation that the Company and Neo may create a longer term mutually beneficial relationship; and the other factors described under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K, which is available for review on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, and on the Company's website at www.energyfuels.com. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this news release, and the Company disclaims, other than as required by law, any obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, results, future events, circumstances, or if management's estimates or opinions should change, or otherwise. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no obligation to update the information in this communication, except as otherwise required by law. It should further be noted that the NFWG's recommendations for direct government purchases of uranium are subject to appropriation by the Congress of the United States, and there can be no certainty of the outcome of the NFWG's recommendations. Therefore, the outcome of this process remains uncertain. SOURCE Energy Fuels Inc. Related Links http://www.energyfuels.com Sligo's city centre tourist office will not be re-opening this year. The shock news has been greeted with astonishment locally at a time when the sector is desperately trying to recover in the wake of the easing of the Covid-19 restrictions. The Sligo Champion understands that Failte Ireland has taken the decision not to re-open the tourist office on O'Connell Street until March 2021. A spokesperson for Failte Ireland said: "Since the Covid-19 crisis began, Failte Ireland has been relocating staff in order to effectively meet the needs of the tourism industry at this time of deep crisis. "Our primary objective is to assist the industry to successfully re-open and rebuild. In this regard, and given the low demand for Tourist Information Centre services, the Sligo TIC will temporarily remain closed. This will allow our staff to assist with the administration and delivery of a number of significant trade support initiatives including the Adaptation Grant Scheme announced last week TICs primarily cater for international visitors. "With minimum overseas visitors in Ireland this summer we know that the demand for the service will be very low. "To provide domestic visitors with access to up-to-date local information during their stay TIC staff will continue to provide local content inputs to the new discoverireland.ie website.Keeping the Sligo TIC temporarily closed is balanced with the need to apply our resources to essential trade support programmes." Xi declares start of Beidou's full-scale global service People's Daily Online (Chinadaily.com.cn) 13:22, July 31, 2020 President Xi Jinping announced on Friday morning that China's Beidou Navigation Satellite System has been completed and started providing full-scale global services on the day. Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, declared the completion of the global navigation and positioning system's third-generation network at a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. This is a new milestone in China's space industry and also a major achievement in the country's efforts to boost science, technology and innovation, experts have said. Beidou is the country's largest space-based system and one of four global navigation networks, along with the United States' GPS, Russia's GLONASS and the European Union's Galileo. More than 300,000 scientists, engineers and technicians from more than 400 domestic institutes, universities and enterprises have been involved in Beidou's development and construction. Dozens of distinguished scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering have taken part in the program, project leaders said. In late June, the final satellite to complete Beidou's third-generation network was lifted by a Long March 3B carrier rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province and was placed into a geostationary orbit about 36,000 kilometers above the Earth. After in-orbit tests over the past month, the satellite, the 59th in the Beidou family and 30th in the third-generation series, has recently started its formal operations, according to the China Satellite Navigation Office. Since 2000, a total of 59 Beidou satellites, including the first four experimental ones, have been launched from Xichang on 44 Long March 3-series rockets, with some of them having retired. Beidou began providing positioning, navigation, timing and messaging services to civilian users in China and other parts of the Asia-Pacific in December 2012. At the end of 2018, it started offering basic global services. Now, there are 30 third-generation Beidou satellites in three types of orbit 24 in medium-Earth orbits, three in inclined geosynchronous satellite orbits and three in geostationary orbits. There also are some second-generation Beidou satellites in operation offering regional services, said the China Satellite Navigation Office. Timeline: 1983 -- Renowned Chinese scientists, headed by Chen Fangyun, propose to build an experimental two-satellite positioning system. 1989 -- The concept of the experimental system is demonstrated and verified by two Chinese communications satellites operating in orbit. February 1994 -- The government approves and starts the research and development of a space-based navigation and positioning system, aiming to mitigate the country's heavy reliance on foreign networks. The system is named "Beidou". October 2000 -- China launches the first Beidou satellite. In December that year, the second Beidou satellite lifts off to join the first one to establish an experimental system. In May 2003 and February 2007, another two experimental satellites lift off to join the trial run. April 2007 -- Beidou's first mass-production satellite, also the first in its second-generation series, launches. December 2012 -- Beidou starts providing positioning, navigation, timing and messaging services to civilian users in China and other parts of the Asia-Pacific. November 2017 -- The first two third-generation Beidou satellites are launched. December 2018 -- Beidou begins providing basic global services. June 2020 -- The final satellite to complete the third-generation Beidou network launches. July 2020 -- Beidou starts providing full-scale services. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Mumbai, Aug 1 : For the second time in 11 days, hundreds of farmers on Saturday took to the streets across Maharashtra to press for various demands including an increase in milk procurement prices. The agitation call was given by the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party with the stir being led by state party President Chandrakant Patil in Pune and other leaders in different parts of Maharashtra. Attacking the state government for ignoring the problems of milk farmers, Patil sought to know how many times Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray went to Delhi to resolve the peasants' issues. "If he has no knowledge of agriculture, then there are others like Ajit Pawar or Balasaheb Thorat and he (Thackeray) should send them to the Centre to resolve the farmers' problems, Patil said. The BJP chief said farmers should get Rs 20 per litre for cow milk. The state government should have given a subsidy of Rs 10, though the previous BJP-led regime had given Rs 5 per litre. Flaying the agitation, Congress state President and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat said that the BJP has no right to agitate since it is the BJP government at the Centre which has decided to import milk powder which led to the fall in domestic milk prices. BJP leaders like Pravin Darekar, Bharati Pawar, Devyani Farande, Suresh Dhus, Rahul Dhikale, Haribhau Bagade, Atul Save, Prashant Bamb, Ram Shinde, Ashish Shelar, Mangal Prabhat Lodha and others led the agitation in different parts of the state. Some were detained briefly by the local police. Earlier, on July 21, various farmers organisations like the All India Kisan Sabha, Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana and others had launched an agitation with the AIKS Coordination Committee -- a pan-India platform with more than 250-plus organisations -- supporting the farmers. AIKS leaders and SSS President Raju Shetti have warned of a nationwide stir if the farmers' demands are not conceded by August 9. It looks as if Kenneth Petty will be able to see his child being born. Recently, the Barbs lit up social media after Nicki Minaj shared pictures from her pregnancy photoshoot. The world awaits the birth of Nicki's first child but on the homefront, the rapper and her husband had a few legal issues to take care of. Nicki Minaj's husband, Kenneth Petty, was recently arrested after he moved from California from New York and failed to register as a sex offender in the Golden State. Back in New York, Petty had been convicted of the attempted rape of a 16-year-old girl in 1995 and spent four years behind bars. Petty's pretrial stipulations in California include a curfew and travel restrictions, so it was reported by TMZ that Petty recently asked a judge to modify his terms so that he could witness his child being born. It seemed like a longshot, but the outlet followed up their initial report to say that a judge approved his request. Now, if Nicki Minaj goes into labor or has their baby outside of his curfew hours, he can legally be by her side outside of their home. It's believed that what helped his case was that the U.S. Attorney's Office didn't try to oppose the request. It's unclear exactly how far along Nicki is in her pregnancy, but by the look of her growing baby bump, she doesn't have much longer before Baby Petty is here. [via] A senior officer of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) fell to death from his fourth floor flat in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) late on Friday night. The deceased, 55-year-old Kulvindar Singh Kapur, was the Director (System) in MMRDA. Anand Muley, senior inspector at BKC police station said Kapur fell from the fourth floor of the building. We still do not have a clear picture whether he jumped off or accidentally fell from the flat. At the time of the incident his wife and 25-year-old son were present in the flat, he added. Soon after the incident he was rushed to Hinduja Hospital where he breathed his last during treatment. His body has been taken to the Sion Hospital for postmortem, Muley added. An accidental death record (ADR) has been registered in connection with the incident and further investigation is on. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Military sources said there had been no forward movement on the ground in the past two weeks. PTI Photo On Tuesday, as the Indian Air Forces first five Rafale fighters were on the way from a Dassault facility in France to the Ambala airbase, the Chinese foreign ministry claimed the situation in Ladakh was continuing to head in the direction of easing and cooling down and the Peoples Liberation Army and Indian troops had completed disengagement in most locations. As Indian Army sources pointed out, this preposterous claim was at complete variance with the facts. On Thursday, Beijings ambassador to India Sun Weidong, not surprisingly, stuck to the same script, saying the process of disengagement was almost over in most locations, and claimed China posed no strategic threat to India. (Astoundingly, he also blamed Indian Army aggression for the June 15 Galwan clash, in which Col. Santosh Babu and 19 other Indian soldiers were slain.) That the pullback of forces, as agreed to by the two commanders on July 14, is far from over was made clear by external affairs ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava almost immediately, who explicitly noted while some progress was made, the disengagement process has not been completed, and expressed hope that the Chinese will sincerely work with us for complete disengagement and de-escalation. The Indian Army was even more explicit. Military sources said there had been no forward movement on the ground in the past two weeks, after the last meeting of the corps commanders, who are due to meet again in the next few days. But with China digging in well inside Indian territory, it is hard to see what these military talks might achieve. Worryingly, the Chinese ambassador also claimed that at Pangong Tso, with the PLA 8 km deep inside Indian territory, Chinas traditional customary boundary line is in accordance with the LAC. (In Depsang Plains, the intrusion is 18 km deep.) The PLAs only pullback in Pangong was from Finger 4, till where it intruded, to Finger 5, whereas till April the Indian Armys patrols used to extend till Finger 8. Now China seems to suggest this entire area is Chinese soil, and on top of that the so-called buffer zone in Galwan Valley is being carved out of what was seen as Indian territory. This is a clear illustration of the salami slicing tactics Beijing is using to change the reality in Ladakh, completely disregarding the agreements reached at the military talks. Salami slicing tactics is what an aggressor uses to claim another countrys territory and challenge its rivals claim so forcefully that the land in question becomes disputed. In the process of resolving that new dispute, the aggressor ends up with at least a part of the land. This is what China is doing in eastern Ladakh, in the process of creating a revised status quo, which is vastly different from the status quo of April 2020 that India has been struggling to restore for the past several months. What has aided China in this endeavour, and not helped India one bit, is the reckless statement made by the Prime Minister on June 19 where he claimed there was no intrusion by the Chinese. While the PMO later clarified it referred only to Galwan, that distinction was lost on the Chinese, who have exploited it to the hilt. India must stand extremely firm now, and not allow the Chinese to change the status quo. "The world community must dissuade India from its disproportionate arms build-up, which could also lead to an arms race in South Asia," said Farooqui. Expressing serious concerns over the Rafale acquisition by India, Farooqui raised the concern over New Delhi's "continued intentions to expand and modernise its nuclear arsenal". "It is well known that India continues to expand and modernise its nuclear arsenal both in terms of type and number of delivery systems. India has nuclearised the Indian Ocean and continues to increase the readiness of its arsenal through measures such as canisterisation of missile systems," Farooqui said. "It is disturbing to note that India continues to amass military capabilities beyond its genuine security requirement. According to credible and reputable international research institutes, India is now the second-largest arms importer in the world," added Farooqui. India's up-gradation of arms has certainly spread uneasiness in Pakistan amid a surge in deadly exchanges of gunfire and confrontation along the troubled Line of Control (LoC). Pakistan has been urging the international community to take notice of what it calls "India's massive arms buildup" along with its "offensive security doctrine and force posture", which Islamabad says is adversely affecting the strategic stability of South Asia. "The arms buildup is being aided and abetted through a policy of exemptions, waivers and supply of advanced equipment, technology and weapons for narrow commercial interests. Such arms transfers also violate the objectives of various export control regimes on preventing destabilising accumulation of arms in various regions, including where outstanding conflicts and disputes exist," said Farooqui. "Transfer of advanced systems, where there is an open intention of conversion into nuclear delivery platforms, calls into question the commitment of international suppliers to non-proliferation commitments," she added. While Islamabad's position on India's acquisition of Rafale combat aircraft is filled with concerns and reservations, Pakistan has reiterated that it remains opposed to any arms race in the region, saying it cannot remain oblivious to such developments. "Pakistan cannot remain oblivious to these developments and remains confident of its ability to thwart any ill-considered act of aggression," said Farooqui. --IANS hamza/arm Google has taken one step closer to banishing third-party cookies from Chrome. The internet giant has started testing its trust tokens with developers, with promises that more would move to live tests soon. As before, the company hoped to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome once it could meet the needs of both users and advertisers. Trust tokens are meant to foster user trust across sites without relying on persistent identifying data like third-party cookies. They theoretically prevent bot-based ad fraud without tying data to individuals. This would be one framework as part of a larger Privacy Sandbox including multiple open standards. The company still hopes to eliminate third-party cookies by 2022. The testing comes right as Google is improving the transparency of ads. Its introducing an About this ad feature that shows the verified names of advertisers. Itll initially be available only for ads bought through Google Ads and Display & Video 360, but it should expand elsewhere in 2021. Google has vowed to curb ad misinformation on its sites, and proving the authenticity of some ads might help. Karen Bass, Kamala Harris and Susan Rice are all seen as candidates (Carolyn Kaster/Alyssa Pointer/Mark Humphrey/AP) Presumptive Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden is getting closer to naming the woman who would serve as his vice president if he wins Novembers US election. His campaign has not set a date for the announcement and there is still time for the contenders and their advocates to make appeals to Mr Biden, who is 77 and would be the oldest person elected president if he wins the race to the Oval Office. Mr Biden, who himself served as vice president to Barack Obama, had initially indicated in May he would make a decision around August 1 but campaign sources now suggest a decision could come in the week starting on August 10. That is one week before the party convention formalises Mr Bidens nomination to challenge President Donald Trump for the keys to the White House. Running mates are often announced on the eve of a convention. As he prepares to make his choice, a committee established to vet the contenders has provided Mr Biden with briefing materials. Mr Biden will likely soon begin one-on-one conversations with those under consideration, which could be the most consequential part of the process for a presidential candidate who values personal connections. He is also facing calls to choose the first black woman to compete on a major partys presidential ticket. The leading contenders include California Senator Kamala Harris, California Representative Karen Bass and Obama national security adviser Susan Rice. The deliberations remain fluid, however, and the campaign has reviewed nearly a dozen possible running mates, although Mr Biden has made it clear he will choose a woman. Expand Close Democratic presumptive nominee and former vice president Joe Biden (Andrew Harnik/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Democratic presumptive nominee and former vice president Joe Biden (Andrew Harnik/AP) For Joe Biden, this is crunch time after all the vetting, all the investigations into the prospective nominees, its now up to Joe. Its personal, said former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who was vetted for vice president in 2008. Its now about his gut feeling. The selection amounts to the most significant choice Mr Biden has confronted in his nearly five-decade political career. As a decision looms, the camps are jockeying for position. Were facing some of the biggest challenges in our history and its abundantly clear Donald Trump just isnt up for the job. We need real leadership and we need it now. Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 31, 2020 Ms Harris allies mobilised this week after Politico reported that the co-chair of the vetting committee, former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd, was concerned about her tough debate-stage performance and that she has not expressed regret. Several California elected officials and labour leaders initiated a call with the vetting team to emphasise that Ms Harris has strong support among labour and political leaders in her home state. The call was organised by Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis who said: A group of us really felt we needed to organise and speak out and correct the record because she has tremendous support. Beyond emphasising their strong relationships with Ms Harris, they also pushed back against the idea that Ms Harris would not be a loyal partner. Millions of people across our nation are teetering on a cliff right now. Rent is due tomorrow. Bills need to be paid. We have the answers already but reckless Republicans won't act: recurring $2k payments, expanded unemployment insurance, and nutrition assistance. Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 31, 2020 Ms Harris, while not directly addressing her vice presidential prospects, told a group of young black women that it is common for black women to face resistance when they exercise their power. There will be a resistance to your ambition. There will be people who say to you: You are out of your lane, she said during the digital summit. They are burdened by only having the capacity to see what has always been instead of what can be Ive had that experience my entire career. Mr Biden has sought feedback on his pick from Mr Obama, who has provided advice but has insisted the choice is Mr Bidens to make. Biden allies say his wife, Jill, and sister, Valerie Biden Owens, are likely to play a key role in the decision, as they have with many of his biggest political decisions throughout his career. Expand Close Wife Jill Biden is thought to be influential in the decision-making process (Michael A. McCoy/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Wife Jill Biden is thought to be influential in the decision-making process (Michael A. McCoy/AP) Jill Biden has held online campaign events and fundraisers with virtually all the potential contenders in recent weeks, as has Mr Biden himself. On Thursday night, Ms Bass joined Mr Biden for a virtual fundraiser that raked in 2.2 million US dollars. On Friday night, Mr Biden held a virtual fundraiser with Elizabeth Warren, who has also been considered as a running mate. Mr Biden said the event raised more than 1.7 million US dollars from over 50,000 grassroots donors. Weve known each other a long time. Her fearless work for a just America has transformed lives and inspired millions, including me, Mr Biden said of the Massachusetts senator. Ms Warren said: This is a time of unprecedented crisis. But I wake up every single day with a heart full of hope and here is why: Vice President Biden is meeting the moment. Earlier this summer, I was excited that 2020 would be The Year of the Picnic. That was until a discussion about whether or not the word picnic is racist. The idea was surprising to many, but old news to others. I cant believe that white people dont know this, one Black colleague said. Etymologically speaking, picnic from the French words pique-nique is nothing more than a potluck dinner. Yet when Southern white people made lynchings a regular occurrence at picnics, the word took on a different meaning for Black Americans. The word, picnic, carries with it the memory that there was a time when white folks gathered to eat outside, burning black flesh would be on the menu, explained Treva Lindsey, an associate professor of womens studies at Ohio State University. And a global pandemic disproportionately killing people of color coupled with the unjust deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd have left many Americans asking: How did we get here? The answer: systemic racism. Systemic racism is made up of structures baked into our countrys institutions like banking, education and yes, language that devalue Black people. READ MORE: Systemic racism has affected all of us. Heres how to start unlearning its harmful lessons. | Elizabeth Wellington In recent months, weve begun to exorcise culturally insensitive words and phrases from the zeitgeist. The NFL team from Washington, D.C., is now the Washington Football Team until a more equitable name can be decided upon. When writing about Black Americans, its now preferred to capitalize the B in Black. Trader Joes execs have rescinded their plan to remove stereotypical wording and images from its packaging of Mexican, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and other foods. But there are many more examples with racist connotations that are more difficult to navigate. Can you take your family on a picnic and not hold hate in your heart for Black people? Did Lady Antebellum really need to change its name to Lady A if they dont hold the same ideals as the United Daughters of the Confederacy? Can you call your room the master bedroom in good faith? READ MORE: Is master bedroom a racist term? As language evolves, consider history and usage. | The Angry Grammarian How do we have these necessary conversations about language without sounding like the language police? Understand that language denotes value First, we have to understand why language matters when it comes to Americas racist history, explained Molefi K. Asante, the chairman of Temple Universitys African American studies department. With the genocide of native people and the enslavement of Africans, America decided it was going to be a white persons land, Asante said, and this is embedded in the words we use. Black people were stripped of their language and the energy around language supported whiteness and it was negative to African people: Black was evil. White was pure. Black didnt have humanity. White had value, Asante said. That idea is what systemic racism is built on. Realize that the examples are everywhere Language reflects our collective identity, Asante said, and its troubling that there is some evidence that so many words may have come from a racist place. Peanut gallery, born in the vaudeville era, refers to the cheap seats in the theater where Black people were allowed to sit. (Remember, it was acceptable to refer to Black people as monkeys in polite company back then.) To be grandfathered in means that a person is exempt from an organizations new rules if they are a long-standing member. But states adopted Grandfather Clauses back in the 1870s so rules designed to disenfranchise Black voters wouldnt affect poor, illiterate white people. Tipping point the critical juncture when change becomes unstoppable, and the title of Malcolm Gladwells 2000 bestseller was popularized in the 1950s and defined the point when too many Black families moved into a neighborhood and white flight was, of course, imminent. Know that changing the words you choose can make a difference So if you stop using the word picnic, does that really change anything? Well yes and no, says Adriane Lentz-Smith, an associate professor of history and African American studies at Duke University. When you are talking about systemic racism, you are dealing with a reinforced ideology that people dont even see themselves trafficking in, Lentz-Smith says. The words we use feed into the structure. And people in power make life or death decisions for others based on this structure. So yes, taking a pause and being deliberate about the language we use can help create a kinder society that doesnt traffic in anti-blackness. But, dont mistake this for real structural change, Lentz-Smith says, and the obsession with wokeness is low-hanging fruit. Why? Its easier to cancel a word than to examine and eradicate policies that support white lives and inherently make Black lives more difficult. I imagine there are senators in Congress who would still call Black people Negroes, but if those senators are willing to reimagine prison and incarceration, or rethink crime bills, I dont care what language they use to to talk about it or me. Who should decide whats offensive? When you are dealing with terms that refer to a group of people, its a good idea to ask them. The default should be whatever that person wants to be called, said Nicole Holliday, a professor of linguistics and African American language at the University of Pennsylvania. Native American people made it crystal clear, for decades now, that the name of the Washington team was offensive to them. In that case its obvious, dont use the term, Holliday says. The same is true for referring to Asians as Orientals, Black people as the N-word (especially if you arent Black), and white women as Karen. Consider context. You cant ignore who is talking, who is writing, and what their intent is, Holliday said. We dont need to interrupt our grandparents every time they tell us a story if they use a word we consider to be outdated or insensitive, like Negro or colored. We can have those discussions without having to correct them every time, Holliday said. Language is shifting and it requires some patience. We cant punish people for not knowing the etymology of every single word in the English language. And because language evolves, words change meaning and often disappear. Trying to forcibly change a language doesnt work. Its a natural process. If someone calls you out, listen Resist the urge to dismiss their opinion or call them sensitive. Take the opportunity to listen to the person explaining their grievance, and use it to learn about the history of words like picnic, peanut gallery, or tipping point. Also, ask yourself: Are you emotionally attached to a particular turn of phrase, or are you angry that you have been told you cant use it? Our connection to language tells us a lot about what we find worthy, what we value, and how we define beauty, Lentz-Smith says. How we use language also tells us who we have the right to debase and menace. So, should you stop using the word picnic? Not necessarily. First of all, there isnt a really easy replacement, and swapping outdoor potluck meal doesnt roll off the tongue. But making sure that history is talked about, and not an invisible part of how we talk to each other, has value. And having those conversations, and being open to them, can help us dismantle this system that weve all inherited. Niagara Falls MPP Wayne Gates is requesting Ontario support commercial renters whose property owners have refused to participate in an assistance program partnered by the provincial and federal governments. As you know, Niagara Region was given the green light to move to Stage 3 last week. We were pleased to see more businesses open and get back on their feet after months of reduced income, wrote Gates in a letter Thursday to Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips. In Niagara, we have lost over 40,000 jobs tied to our tourism industry and many of the small and medium sized businesses have been struggling with rent payments on their commercial properties since the beginning of April 2020. Our community has showed extraordinary resiliency and many businesses have taken advantage of the previously announced (Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program) to assist them while they were not operating but we know that there are many businesses still struggling. Gates said he has heard from several small businesses that have notified that their property owner or commercial property manager refused to opt in to the program and instead simply demanded full rent. This is a frustrating situation where small and medium sized businesses in our community who lost 100 per cent of their income at no fault of their own had property owners who refused to lose 25 per cent of their rental income, he said. For this reason, I am requesting your government look at the possibility of releasing the 50 per cent CECRA portion from the provincial and federal government to commercial renters whose property owners refused to participate in the program. In April, the federal government announced the program, one of several aid packages to help businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the program, property owners can receive forgivable loans to cover 50 per cent of the rent for April, May and June the loans are forgiven if the owner agrees to lower the rent by at least 75 per cent. The tenant business would pay the remaining 25 per cent. The program has been extended to include July and August. But while the program has worked for some businesses, some have said it hasnt helped every business that needs rental assistance, as the program requires the landlord to apply, and some landlords have chosen not to. When asked to respond to Gates letter, Phillips sent an email statement that did not directly respond to Gates comments, instead indicating that despite some recent cause for optimism, Ontario faces a long road to recovery as a result of a serious global economic shutdown caused by COVID-19. Our government has promised to be there to support people and jobs since the pandemic first hit our province, he said. By extending support for commercial rent at the same time most of the province is in Stage 3, the province of Ontario is helping more businesses get through this challenging period, so they have an opportunity to recover and welcome back their customers. - with files from Toronto Star EDINBURG The snowbirds havent all flocked home to this small rural town on the Great Sacandaga Lake as the coronavirus pandemic has kept them down south. It's made it a struggle for the community to get its residents counted in the 2020 Census. Edinburg and the neighboring town of Day are considered hard-to-count communities and have the Capital Regions lowest participation rates in completing census forms through July 31. Their return rates are smaller than the hard-to-count minority census tracts that draw more attention in the Capital Regions big three cities of Albany, Schenectady and Troy, where getting a complete count is a struggle every 10 years. There is a number of people who didnt come home, said Edinburg Supervisor Jean Raymond, who also leads Saratoga Countys complete count campaign for the 2020 Census. Raymond rattled off all three examples of older residents who are in New Orleans and Florida who didnt head north after the winter due to worries about traveling during the COVID-19 outbreak. They normally would have returned before April 1, which is Census Day. Days census participation rate for filing online, mailing back a form or by telephone is 19.3 percent, the lowest in the Capital Region. Edinburg is next at 27.8 percent. The Mont Pleasant census tract in Schenectady is third at 29.1 percent. They trail the nationwide response rate of 62.8 percent and the New York state rate of 58.5 percent. Theyre also behind Albany Countys 62.1 percent, Rensselaer County at 60 percent, Saratoga County at 64.6 percent and Schenectady County at 62.9 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau rolls out its door-to-door followup to those who havent responded in the Albany region on Aug. 6 with it expected to reach Edinburg on Aug. 11, Raymond said. The two towns Adirondacks location and older population are factors in a low response rate, according Mark Castiglione, executive director of the Capital District Regional Planning Commission. Days 753 residents have a median age of 56.7 and Edinburgs median age is 55.3 for its 1,360 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureaus American Community Survey for 2018. Thats far older that the U.S. median age of 38.2 years, New York states 39 years and Saratoga Countys 42.8 years. For the 2020 Census, the census bureau was counting on people using a computer, a smartphone or making a telephone call to complete the census questionnaire instead of filling out a paper form. They are not as likely to use the internet to complete a questionnaire, Castiglione said about the two towns. The two towns were split apart to form separate townwide census tracts for the 2020 count. Raymond and Castiglione said this is part of a push to make sure theres an accurate count within the Adirondack Blue Line communities, which didnt happen in 2010. Raymond said she expects participation to pickup with the door-to-door component and Saratoga County's expansion of its campaign to respond to the census. The door-to-door campaign should have an impact, Castiglione said. Hopefully the response rate will go up. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 16:24 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ae9147 1 National BIN,Budi-Gunawan,intelligence,Jokowi,ICW,djoko-tjandra,graft,corruption,corruption-case,fugitive Free Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has demanded that President Joko Jokowi Widodo evaluate the performance of Budi Gunawan, the current chair of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) for his failure to detect fugitive Djoko Tjandra within Indonesias borders. The agency has denied any wrongdoing. ICW activist Kurnia Ramadhana said Budi had failed to detect and apprehend Djoko Tjandra, a convict in the high-profile Bank Bali corruption case, after he allegedly entered the country undetected to file a request for a review of his conviction on graft charges in early June. Djoko fled to Papua New Guinea in 2009 to escape his conviction. The National Police brought the fugitive home on Thursday though a joint operation of the Indonesian and Malaysian police. Read also: Indonesia brings graft fugitive Djoko Tjandra back from Malaysia The President must immediately evaluate the performance of BINs head, Budi Gunawan, because he was proven to have failed to detect graft fugitive, Djoko Tjandra, allowing the latter to travel in Indonesia easily, Kurnia wrote in a statement recently. Djokos furtive return elicited widespread criticism of the Indonesian bureaucracy. Djoko was reportedly able to file the case review request at the South Jakarta District Court, obtain a new electronic identification card and passport and have his Interpol red notice lifted. Kurnia noted that prior to Budi assuming his current position in 2017, BIN had managed to bring home two graft fugitives from outside the country. The first was Totok Ari Prabowo, former regent of Temanggung, Central Java, who was convicted of embezzling an educational aid fund. He fled to Cambodia in 2011 and was captured by the BIN in 2015. The second was Samadikun Hartono, who was convicted in a BLBI bailout corruption case. He escaped to China and was captured in 2016. Kurnia said BIN had the responsibility to apprehend escaped graft convicts as the 2011 Intelligence Law gave the organization the agency the mandate of pursuing threats to the nations economy. Therefore, we conclude that the search and circulation of information from BIN has not shown optimum results, he added. In response to ICWs complaints, BINs deputy head of communication and information Wawan Hari Purwanto said the intelligence agency was not a law enforcement body and that its position under the president required it to report directly to him, instead of to the public. According to article 30 of Law No. 17/2011 on state intelligence, BIN does not have the authority to carry out arrests either at home or abroad. BIN is not a law enforcement agency, and its [task] is to provide strategic input related to state security to the president, Wawan said in a statement to The Jakarta Post on Saturday. He said the agency would continue to coordinate with other domestic and foreign intelligence agencies to hunt down graft fugitives clandestinely, as was the case with the arrests of Totok Ari Prabowo and Samadikun Hartono. He also mentioned BIN was involved in the recent arrest of fugitive Maria Pauline Lumowa. The mission was spearheaded by the Law and Human Rights Ministry. Read also: Court drops fugitive Djoko Tjandra's case review plea after consecutive no shows According to 2020 ICW data, 40 graft convicts are still on the loose and are believed to have fled overseas. Twenty-one of them are being pursued by the Attorney Generals Office, 13 by the National Police and six by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The ICW has estimated that the escaped fugitives are collectively responsible for Rp 55.8 trillion and $105.5 million in state losses. Most of the fugitives are thought to have escaped to Papua New Guinea, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States or Australia. He was treated at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Before he was discharged I had to go to the hospital to learn to flush his PICC line, a tube leading from inside his body to the outside so he can receive chemo easily. The hospital was closed to visitors and before I could enter my temperature was taken, and I was stopped by three security guards. I was not surprised. Now, as then, people are cautious. President Donald Trumps executive order last week excluding undocumented immigrants from census data could lead to an undercount in New Mexico, members of the states congressional delegation said. But the White House said states should not be rewarded for welcoming immigrants who are here illegally. The order is already being challenged in court. This executive order was crafted to stoke more fear in immigrant communities and discourage families from participating in the census, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said in a statement to the Journal. Rosalinda Dorado, a community organizer with the immigrant advocacy group El CENTRO de Igualdad y Derechos, voiced similar concerns. He is yet again trying to instill fear and suppress the voices of immigrant communities, while threatening the well-being of our entire community, she said. During a visit to New Mexico last year, U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham said immigrants shouldnt fear filling out census forms. He said the Census Bureau is an independent organization that conducts itself in an apolitical manner and protects private information it collects. A spokesperson from the Census Bureau referred all questions about the order to the White House. Giving congressional representation and political influence to illegal aliens people who have blatantly disregarded our laws would be a perversion of our democratic principles, a White House release about the order said. The census not only determines the number of representatives a state sends to Congress, but also the amount of federal funding states receive for hospitals, schools, roads, infrastructure and water systems. Dorado and U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujans office said the state would lose $780 million if just 1% of the population chooses not to participate in the census. Lujans office said about half of New Mexicans have not responded to the census. Determining the most accurate count possible is critical to ensure we receive our fair share of federal funding for community essentials, like our roads and schools, U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small said. Lujan said the U.S. Constitution is clear, that all people residing in a state are supposed to be counted, including those living in the U.S. illegally. Everyone deserves to be counted and represented, but the president is once again trying to take unconstitutional action to discriminate against our immigrant communities, U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M. said in a statement to the Journal. The president needs to read the Constitution, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., added. I do not know why it is so hard for this administration to follow the highest law of the land. But the White House insists the order is constitutional. The Constitution does not specifically define which persons must be included for the purposes of apportionment and requires only that representatives be apportioned according to what has long been understood to mean the inhabitants of each State, the White House statement said. New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Steve Pearce said he supports the executive order. Its important to make sure we have an accurate count of Americans, a count that truly shows our representation, he said. Katie Holmes is notoriously private when it comes to discussing life with her 14-year-old daughter Suri Cruise, who she shares with ex-husband Tom Cruise. But during an interview for Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph on Friday to promote her new film The Secret: Dare to Dream, the actress gave a rare insight. The 41-year-old revealed how quarantining with Suri in New York has made her 'look at everything' she has, and celebrate simple tasks such as making dinner. 'It's been such a lesson': Katie Holmes (pictured in May 2019), 41, gave a rare insight into quarantine life with 14-year-old daughter Suri Cruise, during an Australian interview on Friday 'I like to keep her out of my interviews, but I will say that this time of quarantine has been such a lesson,' Katie told the publication via a video conference app. 'Just really looking at everything you have and celebrating the simplicity of making dinner and [spending] that time together.' The star, who shot to fame in 90's American teen drama series Dawson's Creek, went on to reveal how she feels 'very blessed' with her life. Grateful: While she prefers to keep Suri out of interviews, the actress did reveal to The Daily Telegraph that quarantine has made her celebrate the 'simplicity of making dinner' and spending time together. Pictured with Suri in New York in July 2019 New York-based: The Dawson's Creek star is pictured with Suri in New York in December 2017 'When I think about my life, I feel very blessed. I have felt very lucky and I rely on my instincts a lot but I also forgive myself for mistakes,' she said. Katie wed Tom in 2006, welcoming Suri in April of that year. The couple split in 2012. The actress has been balancing movies with motherhood, her latest film being The Secret: Dare to Dream, based on Rhonda Byrne's 2006 self-help book. Ex-husband: Katie wed Tom Cruise in 2006, welcoming Suri in April of that year. The couple split in 2012. They are pictured in February 2012 prior to their split Katie plays Miranda Wells, a widow with three children who is struggling to provide financially and emotionally. 'The narrative is a good accompaniment to the book,' Katie told ET! this week. 'She's really struggling to provide financially and emotionally, and you just see her exhausted and really not surrendering to anything, just kind of fighting it all. Positive: Katie also told The Daily Telegraph that she feels 'very blessed': 'I have felt very lucky and I rely on my instincts a lot but I also forgive myself for mistakes' 'That's taking its toll on her children and her relationships and she's just not being true to herself.' Katie added that watching the character go from that to finding hope was 'really powerful'. The Secret: Dare to Dream is out now in Australia in selected cinemas. The protesters held up a banner that read 'England Get Out of Scotland' (Picture: SWNS) Nationalists unveiled a banner reading England Get Out of Scotland at one of the country's busiest railway stations. The message was shown at Glasgow Central on Friday by activists who object to the Scottish border remaining open after coronavirus cases increased in the north of England. The same activists have previously targeted the border at Berwick, where motorists were shocked to see people wearing Saltaire face masks demanding the border was closed. However, the campaigners, from Action Scotland, insist they are not motivated by racism or xenophobia but believe closed borders could eliminate the virus in Scotland by the end of August. Police were called to Glasgow Central station (Picture: SWNS) Action Scotlands Sean Clerkin, 59, said: "In all the regions of England it is clear that the R rate of reproduction is either just below 1, or is on 1 and parts of the northwest of England including West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and East Lancashire have been put into lockdown. "In Scotland it is between 0.7 and 0.9 "All we are saying is anyone of any nationality who is planning to travel from England for non-essential reasons, please do not. The campaigners insist they are not motivated by racism or xenophobia (Picture: SWNS) Clerkin added: "We are calling on the Scottish Government to implement quarantine measures just like with Spain. "The banner is just to get attention, we want to protect everyone in Scotland whatever their nationality. Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has not ruled out a border closure with England or imposing restrictions on those who travel from regions with high infection rates. This week she urged people living in Scotland not to travel to areas in northern England that had been put under new lockdown measures. Police were called to the protest. Coronavirus: what happened today Click here to sign up to the latest news and information with our daily Catch-up newsletter This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. As a university student in the Dominican Republic, Victor Jose Victor had plans to become a psychologist. But then he found music. He began performing his own songs, and soon became famous for them. In 1975 he was among the first Dominican artists to visit Cuba after the Dominican government had prohibited travel there. He also began writing and producing songs for pioneering Dominican musicians like Wilfrido Vargas and Juan Luis Guerra. The Committee on Public Undertakings have selected the Airports Authority of India (AAI), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Oil India Ltd, among others for examination during the year 2020-21, according to a release by the Lok Sabha Secretariat. The Committee on Public Undertakings met on July 29 and selected 11 subjects for a comprehensive examination. This includes AAI, Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), Food Corporation of India (FCI), NBCC (India) Limited, National Fertilizers Limited (NFL), Oil India Ltd., Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC), Hindustan Antibiotics Limited and IRCON International Limited. For Horizontal Study, the Committee will review of the performance of Public Sector Insurance Companies, performance under CSR by Power Sector CPSUs, performance under CSR by Coal Sector CPSUs, Corporate Governance in CPSUs, Review of Performance of Steel Sector CPSUs, Review of Performance of CPSUs in Health Sector, Development and Production of Bio-fuel/Bio-diesel by CPSUs and Evaluation of Research & Development (R&D) activities of Maharatna CPSUs. Five audit-based reports including those related to the Operational Performance of NMDC Limited will also be examined. Zimbabwean authorities have thwarted a peaceful anti-corruption protest which was planned for today and launched a witch-hunt against political and human rights activists suspected of being behind the planned demonstration, according to Amnesty International. In a statement, Amnesty International said a number of activists have gone into hiding after police published a list of names of human rights defenders who are wanted for questioning in connection with the planned protests. A number of opposition leaders are also understood to be wanted by the police, while six others have already been arrested. The brutal assault on political activists and human rights defenders who have had the courage to call out alleged corruption and demand accountability from their government is intensifying. The persecution of these activists is a blatant abuse of the criminal justice system and mockery of justice, said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty Internationals Deputy Director for Southern Africa. This latest witch-hunt and repression of peaceful dissent is a continuation of what we have seen in the country in recent years, including the abductions and arbitrary arrests of those who are critical of the government, in an attempt to muzzle differing views. The thwarting of the protest illustrates the Zimbabwean authorities total intolerance of criticism. Six activists were arrested or abducted in the past few days, to prevent the protests from taking place Friday. Opposition MDC-Alliance spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere and Henry Chivanga, an activist fighting for rights of people with disabilities, are among those who were arrested. Police also arrested the sister of ZimLive editor, Mduduzi Mathuthu, on 30 July, and refused to release her until the journalist appeared at Bulawayo Central police station. Mathuthu is facing charges of planning the protests. His sister was released on the same day. Amnesty International said in the lead up to the Friday protests, authorities have been beefing up security in main cities, including sealing off the Harare Central Business District, under the pretext of enforcing COVID-19 regulations. Zimbabwean authorities must stop using COVID-19 as a pretext for restricting human rights. Peaceful protest is not a crime, and the motivations for crushing this demonstration are plain to see. Zimbabweans must be allowed to freely exercise their human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. The authorities must stop harassing, intimidating and arresting people who have done nothing more than peacefully express their opinions. The government launched a crackdown last week ahead of protests with the arrest of prominent journalist Hopewell Chinono and opposition leader Jacob Ngarivhume. While Chinono was arrested for inciting public violence, Amnesty International says it appears that he was targeted for exposing allegations of corruption in the procurement of Personal Protective Equipment related to COVID-19. President Emmerson Mnangagwa fired Health Minister Obadiah Moyo over a $60 million shady deal involving Drax International, which was hired without following state tender procedures to purchase COVID-19 test kits and other materials. Mnangagwa recently said the protesters were terrorists aimed at overthrowing a constitutionally-elected government. Acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn has warned against large gatherings and house parties over the bank holiday weekend as 45 new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed. No further coronavirus-related deaths were recorded, the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) said. There is now a total of 26,109 confirmed cases and a total of 1,763 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland. Of the cases notified on Saturday, 23 are men and 22 are women. More than three quarters of the cases (77%) are under 45 years of age, while 50% are aged 25-44 years. Eighteen are associated with outbreaks or close contacts of a confirmed case, while 12 cases have been identified as community transmission. The HSE said it is working to identify any contacts the patients may have had to provide them with information and advice to prevent further spread. Dr Glynn said over the last five days we have seen an average of 44 cases a day. This trend is clearly concerning and now is the time to ensure you and your families are making every effort to keep each other safe, he added. Important advice from @CillianDeGascun Thanks to you, medical scientists, public health doctors & others for all your vital work on the testing & contact tracing front @ACSLM1 https://t.co/M3WBNq88mP Stephen Donnelly (@DonnellyStephen) August 1, 2020 He urged people to avoid large gatherings over the bank holiday weekend. He said: Ensure gatherings are kept to a minimum and invite no more than 10 others into your home. Do not organise or attend house parties. Restaurants must enforce a limit of 50 people (including staff) on their premises at any one time. All workplaces should again review their procedures and protocols. Avoid congregated settings or environments where safety precautions are not in place. Wash your hands regularly, carry hand sanitiser and wear a face covering where appropriate. Ensure you isolate immediately if you experience any flu like symptoms. It is our individual action that will stop the spread. HK LegCo election postponed a year, gets central govt support Global Times By GT staff reporters Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/31 19:58:41 Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced on Friday that due to the current severe COVID-19 situation in the city, the Legislative Council (LegCo) election scheduled for September has been postponed to September 5 next year. Experts and local lawmakers said the decision prioritizes public health and aims to ensure fairness in the election. Lam announced the decision at a press conference on Friday, saying that it was not made for political reasons, but for public health. Before the announcement, many residents, politicians and organizations had urged the government to consider postponing the election as the latest wave of COVID-19 has been seriously impacting the city since July. According to the latest data from the HKSAR public health authority, Hong Kong reported 121 new cases on Friday. That marked the 10th consecutive daily increase of more than 100 cases, bringing the total number of cases confirmed in the city to 3,273. Lam said that from July 8 to July 30, Hong Kong reported 1,852 new confirmed cases, a 140 percent increase from the total of the previous six months. The city is in the most severe epidemic situation since January, with the risk of a huge outbreak increasing. Lam also listed several reasons to postpone the election for a year, including that this wave may last weeks or longer; society needs more time to recover; and at least 3 to 4 months are needed to prepare for a new election for fairness. Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times on Friday that Hong Kong is at a very critical point in curbing the further spread of the virus, and it would see its number of cases reach tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands if it fails to control the situation in the near future. If Hong Kong had pushed for the election and let candidates campaign in crowded places, it would have been risky, experts said. "Hong Kong should prioritize COVID-19 prevention and people's health. Postponing the LegCo election to contain the virus was a wise decision," Wang said. Top Chinese respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan told media on July 29 that community transmission has emerged in Hong Kong, and prevention is a priority. He suggested Hong Kong restrict group activities and ban illegal assemblies. He also called for large-scale nucleic acid testing in Hong Kong. The COVID-19 situation has complicated the city's election, seriously impacting people's right to participate in the process, observers said. HKSAR LegCo Finance Committee Chairman Chan Kin-por told the Global Times that given the worsening coronavirus situation in Hong Kong, whether or not hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents working or living in the Chinese mainland and overseas will be able to return in time and cast their vote must be taken into account. Chan said it would be hard to ensure a fair and just vote if the government pushes the elections forward regardless of the coronavirus situation. Ip Kwok-him, a Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress and an executive councilor, told the Global Times that elections and campaigns can no longer be carried out normally and that the political views of candidates cannot be fully promoted, as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the city has been increasing by over 100 a day for the last few days. Some residents may be reluctant to go out to vote. Ip said postponing the election is not what they want to do, but has to be made under the current situation. It was reported that from February to July, at least 67 countries and regions have postponed national or regional elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a BBC report in March, local and mayoral elections in England were postponed for a year until May 2021 due to the pandemic. Victor Chan Chi-ho, a candidate for the LegCo election who has prepared for the election campaign since submitting his application, told the Global Times on Friday that he supports the postponement, as he and his campaign team were concerned that the campaign and voting may further spread the virus. Lawrence Tang Fei, a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies and also a candidate for this year's election, told the Global Times that he also supports the postponement, as daily infections have surpassed 100. "Hong Kong is a populous city. More than 3 million people swarming to more than 600 polling stations as well as other procedures during the election will increase the risk of community transmission." "More than 60 countries and regions have postponed their elections. Why can't Hong Kong do the same?" he asked. "The LegCo election should be held amid an atmosphere of peace and stability, so it can better fulfill its responsibilities under the Basic Law," Tian Feilong, a legal expert on Hong Kong affairs at Beihang University in Beijing, told the Global Times. He also noted that the decision was legitimate and reasonable. Legal basis Lam also said that given the severe epidemic situation, the only practicable plan for the HKSAR government is to cite the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, considering infection numbers and the death toll are increasing, and election activities may worsen the epidemic situation. According to the Legislative Council Ordinance, the chief executive "may, by order, direct the postponement of a general election if, before the holding of the election, the chief executive is of the opinion that the election is likely to be obstructed, disrupted, undermined or seriously affected by riot or open violence or any danger to public health or safety." The chief executive must specify a date for an election and that date must not be later than 14 days after the date on which the election would have taken place, according to the Legislative Council Ordinance. Tian said that if the election needs to be postponed for a longer period, the chief executive may also use the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to make regulations for the postponement. The Emergency Regulations Ordinance states that when the chief executive considers a situation an emergency or public danger, they may make regulations they consider desirable for the interest of the public. In responding to how to deal with "one year vacuum period" as the four-year term of the current LegCo is about to end, Lam told the conference that she has sought help from the central government. Tian said that Hong Kong's chief executive can also use Article 11 of the Legislative Council Ordinance to call emergency meetings to deal with important agendas, including policy addresses or financial budgets. But this is a remedy plan and is troublesome. A more practicable way is that the HKSAR government could submit a plan to the National People's Congress Standing Committee, Tian said. Some experts suggested to extend the terms of the current LegCo to avoid a "one year vacuum period." According to a release from the NPC, the 21 plenary meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee is scheduled to be held on August 8. Relevant issues of Hong Kong may be solved during the meetings, observers said. Lau Siu-kai, vice president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, told the Global Times that although the HKSAR government has the legal basis to postpone the election, its decision will lead to a series of questions that need to be answered. Against the backdrop of Hong Kong's current political and social situation, support from the central government and a judicial interpretation of the decision would help the HKSAR government's work. China's State Council supports the HKSAR government's decision to postpone the election for a year, noting that the central government will propose that the National People's Congress Standing Committee make a decision on the "one year vacuum period." The central government said in a release on Friday that it will offer the necessary support for HKSAR in dealing with the COVID-19 epidemic to ensure residents' health and safety. The Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in Hong Kong expressed understanding and support for the HKSAR government's decision on Friday. "This is a responsible move to protect the citizens' health and safety it also fits the Constitution, Basic Law, and local laws and regulations." The Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council said on Friday that the central government has decided to send Chinese mainland testing personnel to Hong Kong to help expand nucleic acid tests and to build a temporary quarantine and treatment center to contain the virus. Dismissing misinterpretations However, the decision to postpone the election has been misinterpreted by the opposition and foreign media, which claimed the government was using COVID-19 "as an excuse to interfere in the democratic process," according to Hong Kong media reports. Experts noted that these forces - and the foreign forces behind them - want to use the momentum of 2019's unrest and the illegal "primaries" organized by the opposition earlier in July to force the election as soon as possible, so that they can seize power in the city and paralyze the HKSAR government. Ip said people's lives should be prioritized over elections, and that certain opposition forces only care about political gains, which is extremely irresponsible. Regarding the claim that "postponing the election was a trick played by the government and pro-establishment camp as they don't believe they can win," Ip said such speculation was nonsense. Who residents choose to support in the election may not make a difference in a year, and candidates can use this time to consolidate public support, Ip said. The negative reactions from certain opposition forces are no surprise, as they know that hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people in the Chinese mainland and abroad, most of whom support the pro-establishment camp, may not be able to return to vote in time, Chan said. But the fact that opposition forces disregarding the need for a fair vote reflects their eagerness to seize power and their selfishness in ignoring the risks of COVID-19, Chan said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Not So Different Creative Hub, the first of its kind in Ireland, was opened today in Blanchardstown Library. Located on the first floor of the Blanchardstown Library building, the Not So Different Creative Hub provides a wide range of services to bring together both neurotypical and neuro-atypical individuals to collaborate and develop the confidence to showcase their talent and make friends while exploring innovation and creativity. Fingal County Council Community Department has worked alongside Not So Different to support the creation of the Hub into a creative community space. The Hub was awarded 40,000 in funding, under the Department of Rural and Community Development Digital Innovation Programme, to create 12 creative digital workstations. Not So Different promotes equality and inclusion of people who are neurodiverse, such as those on the Autism Spectrum, and their families. They support them to realise their full potential through education and employment and to live a good life in community. Not So Different was founded in 2016 by Deirdre Lynch, a person with a lived experience of neurodiversity. The work of Not So Different is twofold - on the one hand working with individuals to develop and showcase their talents (in the Creative Hub) and on the other hand increasing the capacity of educators, employers, service providers and society by increasing their understanding of neurodiversity (in the Deirdre Lynch School of Thought). Not So Different works with individuals to progress to their chosen career path providing jobs skills workshops and personal development training. Not So Different invites employers and industry professionals to work with the individuals to increase their understanding of their neurodiversity as a being competitive advantage in the world of work. Speaking at the launch, Mayor of Fingal Cllr. David Healy said: 'I am thrilled to be officially opening the Not So Different Creative Ability Hub here in Blanchardstown. The Hub will provide much needed services and support young people to explore their careers in the creative industries. This will be an excellent addition to the services available to our Dublin 15 residents.' Speaking at the recent online launch of the Not So Different Digital Showcase, artist and participant Elizabeth Corkery said 'Over time, I've been a bit stuck with my career path, I get work done but it's tough trying to get to the next level. Sometimes people who are autistic are brushed aside. This was a great opportunity for me because, finally, people can see my work. I do have the talent and the skills, it's just that you need that bit of support and the push forward.' Chief Executive of Fingal County Council AnnMarie Farrelly said: 'Fingal County Council were delighted to support the development of the Hub through the Department of Rural and Community Development's Digital Innovation Programme. Based in the heart of Blanchardstown, the Creative Ability Hub is a great addition to the area.' The World Health Organisation (WHO) has appreciated the management of COVID-19 in Gujarat's Ahmedabad and suggested to take up various measures being implemented in the city as a case study for rest of India and other countries, the state government said on Saturday. WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan has appreciated the COVID-19 management in Ahmedabad, it said. The WHO has suggested to take up initiatives in Ahmedabad like 'Dhanvantari Rath', 104 fever helpline, Sanjivani Van; and active participation of private hospitals in control and treatment as a case study for other cities in India and abroad, it said. Meanwhile, Gujarat has also steadily ramped up testing for COVID-19 diagnosis from 64,007 in April to 3,91,114 in July, which the government said is thrice the rate suggested by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The patient recovery rate in Gujarat has improved to 73.09 per cent, "which is much higher than other states", while the COVID-19 mortality rate has declined to 3.97 percent, an official release said. The government under Chief Minister Vijay Rupani has been working on the formula of "testing, tracking and treatment" ever since the first COVID-19 case was detected in Gujarat on March 19, 2020, it said. The number of tests for coronavirus has increased steadily. At the rate of 410.83 tests per day per million tests as on July 31, the government has achieved a rate that is nearly thrice the rate of 140 suggested by the ICMR, it said. Till July 31, Gujarat had tested a total 7,64,777 samples including 3,91,114 in July, which is the highest in a month since the outbreak of the virus on March 19, the release said. A total of 64,007 samples were tested in April, 1,47,923 in May, and 1,61,733 in June, it said. "The patient recovery rate in Gujarat is much higher than other states at 73.09 per cent while the death rate has dropped to 3.97 per cent," the release said. The CM has suggested house-to-house health check-up be made available in cities through municipal authorities to detect infected patients, it said. As of July 31, Ahmedabad district contributed 26,517 COVID-19 cases in the total count of over 61,000 in Gujarat, as per health department. The deaths have taken place in Tarn Taran, Batala and Amritsar districts of the state since Wedesday. Chandigarh: The death toll in the Punjab spurious liquor tragedy rose to 62 on Saturday as 23 more casualties were reported from the state's Tarn Taran district, officials said. Till Friday night, the state authorities had reported 39 deaths from three districts. Nineteen of them had taken place in Tarn Taran alone, followed by 11 in Amritsar and nine in Gurdaspur's Batala. In Tarn Taran, the death toll has reached 42, Deputy Commissioner Kulwant Singh told PTI on Saturday, adding that the maximum deaths took place in the Sadar and city areas of district. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has already ordered a magisterial probe into the tragedy, unfolding since Wednesday night. Till now, police have arrested 10 people in connection with the case. The Opposition Shiromani Akali Dal on Friday had demanded a judicial probe by a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana Court while the Aam Aadmi Party's sought the chief minister's resignation. Bikramjit Singh, the station house officer at the Amritsar's Tarsikka police station, was also suspended. However, a senior police official on Saturday said families of several victims were not coming forward to record their statements but they persuaded them to do so. A majority of the families were not coming forward and did not want any action. Some of them are not even getting the post-mortem done, said the police official. Meanwhile, Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Ishfaq said some families have refused to accept that their kin died after consuming spurious liquor. The wards of some of those who died are not accepting that they died because of spurious liquor. They are saying their family member died of heart attack, said the DC. The chief minister has promised strict action against anyone involved in the case and has directed police to crack down on any spurious liquor manufacturing unit operating in the state. The Jalandhar Divisional Commissioner will conduct the inquiry, along with the Punjab Joint Excise and Taxation Commissioner and the Superintendents of Police (Investigation) in the three districts. By Associated Press PARIS: Travellers entering France from 16 countries where the coronavirus is circulating widely now must undergo virus tests upon arrival at French airports and ports. French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced last month that the tests would be required starting August 1 for passengers. France is allowing in from a list of approved countries unless they present proof of a negative test done within 72 hours of their departure. Those who test positive in France as of Saturday must quarantine for 14 days. France is not permitting general travel to and from the 16 countries, which include the United States and Brazil. The testing requirement therefore only applies to people entering under limited circumstances: French citizens who live in these countries or citizens of these countries with an established residence in France. Daniel Court was tested at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport after coming in from the French Riviera city of Nice. He acknowledged not loving the experience. Its very fast, but I have to say that its not very pleasant,'' he said. But we have to do it.'' Another passenger who got tested after landing at Paris main airport, Nadia Vusik of Belarus, said she thought the new policy made sense. It is definitely necessary, and I am happy that in France it is possible to do right here. Its very convenient, she said. French health authorities say the number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases has jumped on the French mainland in recent weeks. The government has already made mask-wearing mandatory in all indoor public spaces. France has had over 225,000 confirmed infections and over 30,200 virus-related deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, but experts say all numbers in the pandemic are too low for various reasons, including limited testing and missed cases. The French government has so far ruled out imposing another nationwide lockdown after the one that brought the country to a standstill for nearly two months between March and May. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 1/8/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion The robots are coming. Actually, theyre already here. They have been for decades, boosting productivity allowing us to do more with less. Consider a 2018 study: it found that between the early 1990s and early 2000s robots added about 36 basis points (0.36 per cent) to global productivity. That may not sound like much, but it amounts to a 10 per cent boost to global GDP, which in normal years grows at about three per cent. Although it has been argued robots are job killers, the robotics industry itself is a fast-growing sector of the economy, creating new jobs. "At the moment this is a $50-billion industry globally," says Rian Whitton, a U.K.-based robotics analyst at global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research. And these intelligent machines have a long runway to soar. "By 2030, it will be a $500-billion industry thats very significant growth," he adds. Given their potential, one might ask: Would adding drones and droids boost the productivity of my investment portfolio? The answer is more complicated than a straight up yes, however. Without a doubt robotics, and more broadly, automation are changing how we work, live and play. Whats more the skyrocketing stock market performance of big tech Amazon.com Inc., Tesla Inc. and Apple Inc., for example are undeniably fuelled by advances in these areas. Robotics and automation are linchpins to their manufacturing processes, or in the case of Amazon, its warehousing and shipping. Yet those who track the sector argue that while no shortage of investment options exist to gain exposure to robotics and automation, investors should not expect to jump aboard a stock market bandwagon ride to overnight riches. Thats despite the fact major players in the sector have experienced significant share price growth in recent weeks. "If you were asking that question in March, I would say companies in this sector were all grossly undervalued," says Josh Aguilar, an equity analyst with Morningstar in the U.S. who tracks the American robotics and automation companies. Many firms saw their share prices dragged down by double-digit percentages by the pandemic. "You could throw darts at the wall (to pick them) and do pretty well." Today, the big names Honeywell International Inc., Emerson Electric Corp. and Rockwell Automation Inc. in the U.S. trade once more at fair market value, he says. Less "consumer facing" than Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc. (Google) and other big tech, robotics and automation firms are generally key providers of manufacturing and other services for industrial conglomerates. And industrial demand is likely to struggle in the near future. With earnings season, now upon us, expected to be "pretty ugly," and several upcoming months of stagnating economic growth as the world grapples with COVID-19, Aguilar says the sector is likely in for a rough ride. Indeed, stock market volatility which often drags down share prices of companies in this space presents buying opportunities for forward-thinking investors seeking to buy and hold for several years. Yet investing in pureplay robotics is often challenging for Canadian investors because many of the biggest names in the field are Japanese and European, and trade on overseas exchanges. And homegrown robotics companies while very innovative are often small, niche market providers with limited upside for investors. As for the U.S. market, its big players are less involved in robotics and more dominant in automation, providing critical controls for industrial and manufacturing processes. (Albeit, Whitton adds Americans unsurprisingly lead the way when it comes to robotics research and development for military use.) Japan, however, is the global leader in robotics, home to companies like Hitachi, Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Sony Corp., Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. and Yaskawa Electric Corp. But the true standout is one of Japans lesser known corporate brands, at least among consumers FANUC, the largest maker of industrial robots. Europe, too, is no slouch in robotics with large firms like ABB, a Swiss-Swedish firm, and KUKA, a German robotics giant. Then again KUKA is no longer technically a German firm. Chinese conglomerate Midea Group purchased it in 2016. (On a related note, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is a key investor in Midea, which means we all have a small stake in the Chinese companys bet on robotics.) Further to that point, China is now the largest market for robots, says Whitton. "Their own robotics ecosystem isnt up to the level of Japan or Germany, so they have been buying up German companies," he says. "They see robotics as one of the key strategic technologies in the next 100 years that will basically define who calls the shots in the global economy." Analyst Josh Kern with Lux Research, based in Boston, says China has good reason to invest in robotics. "The biggest impact robots can make is for organizations dealing with labor shortages, such as those in e-commerce or manufacturing," he says. "These industries have a hard time retaining workers, which often engage in low-skilled repetitive tasks." Despite claims to the opposite, robots are not stealing our jobs. Theyre doing tasks we often wont or cant do. Robots work 24-7; they dont tire, and they dont quit jobs involving repetitive tasks we humans often find soul-crushing. Then again, robots are increasingly sophisticated, thanks to data analytics and artificial intelligence, able to do more challenging work better than flesh and blood workers. Kern points to Lockheed Martin as one example. It recently implemented autonomous mobile robots in its warehouses. "Before deployment, human workers only picked the right part 66 per cent of the time," Kern says. "After implementing the robots, that number increased to more than 99 per cent, increasing the efficiency of the overall process." For these reasons, robots and automation have sparked a manufacturing renaissance in North America and Europe, and even create jobs in technical and engineering vocations, Whitton says. "The correlation between robots and losing workers isnt as high as people think," he argues. "In fact, if anything it is the other way around because companies that invest in robots see productivity increase which means higher margins, allowing firms to hire more people." Albeit the new jobs often require skills in automation and robotics. "And there is a dearth of this kind of skilled labour," Aguilar adds. 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. Jobs aside, patient investors are likely to find opportunity, too. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of which there are many focused on this sector offer the easiest way to gain exposure. Canadians can look to Horizons Robotics and Automation Index ETF (RBOT), for example, which trades on the TSX. It provides low-cost access in one fell swoop to a basket of international companies, like FANUC and ABB, often difficult to access otherwise given their shares trade on overseas markets. And while the next few years are likely to be challenging, Aguilar notes the sector has a bright future. Thats largely due to the fact automation and robotics firms are tough to supplant because installing these processes are expensive, but necessary for many companies. "So once its in, the equipment is there for two decades at least." That gives robotics and automation providers steady revenues while at the same time they sell high-margin, replacement parts to keep the systems going, Aguilar adds. "Because these processes are mission critical, with the risk of failure so high, the long-term demand and, in turn, revenues are very, very sticky." Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) As President Rodrigo Duterte revived his call for the reimposition of capital punishment for illegal drug-related heinous crimes, a presidential body is also pushing for corrupt officials to be put on death row. Corruption should be categorized as a heinous crime and should be penalized by death, Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission chief Greco Belgica said in a media briefing on Saturday. Ang [proposal nga namin] noon, by hanging pero okay naman din ang lethal injection, he added. [Translation: Our initial proposal was death by hanging, but lethal injection is okay also.] Belgica said corruption is as bad as murder, as bad as drugs, since it puts millions of Filipinos under poverty. Duterte has been criticized for pushing the death penalty in his fifth State of the Nation Address at a time when tens of thousands of Filipinos are sick with the coronavirus disease. READ: Binay questions timing of death penalty push, says PH should focus on survival amid pandemic The 1987 Constitution abolished capital punishment but allowed Congress to bring it back for heinous crimes. It was revived under the administration of President Fidel Ramos, but was scrapped again under the leadership of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Some members of the House of Representatives promised a meticulous deliberation on the proposed death penalty bills, committing to deliver the legislation while Duterte remains in office. Meanwhile, Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III said theres better chance for the controversial measure to be passed if it's limited to prosecuting high-level drug traffickers. The reception to Bronco 2021 Fords flagship series of 44 vehicles that were revealed earlier this month surpassed expectations of the company's most optimistic initial projections, CEO Jim Hackett said in an earnings call Thursday. More than 150,000 customers have plunked down $100 to reserve a spot to order one of the vehicles, according to Ford. "We think this family of vehicles has big upside potential in the growing off-road category and this is a category with a leading OEM has not been seriously challenged until now," Hackett said. These are, of course, mere reservations, not actual orders. The deposits are refundable. Now, Ford is focused on the due diligence required to determine how many of these reservations will be converted to orders as it lay outs its manufacturing strategy for the brand. The Ford Bronco 2 and Bronco 4 will be built at Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan. The Bronco Sport will be assembled at a plant in Mexico. The company is now determining how many shifts to staff at each factory in order to match actual orders. "There's still a lot of work to do," Ford COO Jim Farley said in a call with analysts Thursday. "But the mix is great." The Bronco is a brand that leans heavily on nostalgia, customization, functional design and technology, such as the automakers next-generation infotainment system and a digital trail mapping feature that lets owners plan, record and share their experiences via an app. While the response to the Bronco has been palatable, there are a number of competitors also aiming to win over customers. GM released a video this week teasing its all-electric GMC Hummer. While the video was a promotional mashup of buzzwords, it also showed that GM had clearly identified Ford Bronco and Tesla Cybertruck as its main competitors. Then there's electric upstart Rivian, which plans to start production of its EV pickup and SUV in 2021. Isaias has strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center announced Thursday night, adding that the storm's maximum winds are estimated to be 80 mph, with higher gusts. The government of the Bahamas has issued a Hurricane Warning for the central and southeastern Bahamas. A special advisory will be issued soon. The storm continues its path through the Caribbean leaving intense flooding in Puerto Rico. Multiple municipalities on the west and east side of the island have been hit the hardest by the storm. On the west side of the island at least 41 people have been rescued amid the flooding, Puerto Rico National Guard Gen. Jose Reyes told ABC News. Officials are still visiting affected areas in the island as intense showers continue Thursday evening. A woman's car was swept away by water in Rincon, on the west side of the U.S. territory. The head of the islands Emergency Management Service confirmed at a press conference that they are still looking for her, though her car has been found. Heavy rain and intense flooding have led to destruction in communities that were already vulnerable due to the earthquakes. About 400,000 families are without power and at least 150,000 are without water. PHOTO: Tropical Storm Isaias may strengthen into a hurricane if it remains over the Atlantic Ocean. (ABC News) The island's power authority executive director, Jose Ortiz, said most customers should have power "within today or tomorrow." As the island is facing multiple emergencies, Reyes told ABC News that one of his main worries is how they've had to stretch their resources. "It's concerning when you have a certain number of resources and you have two, three and four battles to fight" Reyes said. Amid the storm, Puerto Rico is still trying to recover from Hurricane Maria and ongoing earthquakes while fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. There are currently 22 shelters opened with over 60 people -- following social distancing guidelines. PHOTO: Fire and rescue members cut the branches of a tree that fell under the heavy rain caused by the Isaias Storm in Santo Domingo, on July 30, 2020. (Erika Santelices/afp/AFP via Getty Images) Tropical Storm Isaias has now reached Dominican Republic, as it continues its path toward the East Coast of the U.S. Story continues Isaias will likely be near the Turks and Caicos Islands and southern Bahamas on Friday. Some fluctuation in intensity is expected as the storm interacts with the more mountainous terrain if Hispaniola. MORE: Puerto Rico continues to struggle amid thousands of earthquakes since December If the storm can maintain its organization and some intensity past Hispaniola, there will be some opportunity for strengthening on Friday and Saturday as the storm moves through the warm waters near the Bahamas and east of Florida. Isaias will bring tropical storm force winds of over 50 mph to Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Locally 4 to 8 inches of rainfall is expected across these Caribbean Islands, which could cause flash flooding and mudslides. PHOTO: Over the last 24 hours, some of the model consensus has shifted eastward as the track has shifted eastward. Once the storm passes Hispaniola, there will be a better understanding of how this storm will behave as it moves towards the United States. (ABC News) Over the last 24 hours, some of the model consensus has shifted eastward as the track has shifted eastward. Once the storm passes Hispaniola, there will be a better understanding of how this storm will behave as it moves towards the United States. If the storm manages to stay east of Florida and avoid a tremendous amount of land interaction, conditions may be conducive for some strengthening off the Southeast coast line. Water temperatures are very warm along nearly the entire U.S. East Coast and that will help the storm maintain intensity or gain strength slightly. This is reflected in the official forecast track. The cone of uncertainty includes the possibility of the storm staying just offshore and traveling along the East Coast into early next week. If this happens, there could be some impacts to the Georgia, the Carolinas and perhaps the Mid-Atlantic and into part of the Northeast. Regardless of the exact forecast track, impacts from Isaias remain quite possible along the East Coast even though the exact location and magnitude of the these impacts remains uncertain. Tropical Storm Isaias strengthens into hurricane, lashes Puerto Rico, targets US East Coast originally appeared on abcnews.go.com FILE PHOTO - Greg Kelly, the former deputy of ousted Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, is seen in the car, as he leaves after being released from a detention centre in Tokyo TOKYO (Reuters) - The trial of ex-Nissan Motor Co executive Greg Kelly, who is charged with conspiring to under-report the income of its former chairman Carlos Ghosn, has been scheduled to start on Sept. 15, public broadcaster NHK said on Thursday. Former Nissan Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa will be among those who will appear at the hearing at the Tokyo District Court in September, NHK said. Kelly denies wrongdoing. The trial was initially expected to start in April but was delayed partly by the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, according to NHK. Kelly, the automaker's ex-representative director, has been charged with helping Ghosn hide around 9 billion yen ($85.6 million) in compensation. Neither the court nor the office of Kelly's lawyer was immediately available for comment. Ghosn has fled to Lebanon, his childhood home, after being charged with engaging in financial wrongdoing, including understating his compensation in Nissan's financial statements. Ghosn also denies wrongdoing. ($1 = 105.0900 yen) (Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Jan Harvey) Speaking from Air Force One, Trump said on Friday night that he would ban TikTok in the US. US President Donald Trump has said that he is going to ban TikTok. Speaking from Air Force One, Trump said that as far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States. NBC News reports that Trump described the action as severance and said that he would sign an order on Saturday. I have that authority, he added. Trump said that he could ban TikTok with an executive order referring to the emergency economic powers the presidential role comes with that can be exercised on certain occasions. He also added that he did not support the deal involving Microsoft and TikTok. Reports of Microsoft being in talks to buy TikToks US business from parent company ByteDance emerged on Friday night. According to reports, the White House has ramped up its concerns about TikTok over the recent weeks due to it being owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Chinese law can compel any domestic company to hand over user data that it has collected. Trump told reporters earlier on Friday that they were looking at TikTok and that they may be banning it. We are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok, Trump said. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been looking into ByteDances acquisition of Musical.ly that happened in 2017, The Committee of Foreign Investment investigates foreign acquisition of US properties for potential national security threats. Larry Kudlow, Trump's top economic adviser, said earlier in July that he had been informed that the eventual buyer taking over TikToks US business will be a one hundred percent American company. While TikTok has claimed that it is an independent company that is free of Chinas influence and demands for rights to domestic companies data, the spokesperson for Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, has indicated that China sees TikTok as a domestic company. Since Trump and the members of his administration have said many times that China should be punished for its role in allowing coronavirus to spread to the US, banning TikTok could be a part of this punishment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News in early June - With respect to Chinese apps on peoples cellphones, the United States will get this one right. In June this year, TikTok users claimed that they had orchestrated the lower-than-expected turnout at Trumps Tulsa campaign rally, after an effort to reserve tickets that people had had no intentions of using went viral. The whole plan was to humiliate the president with an empty arena. According to an NBC report, Trump was furious at the underwhelming turnout. The Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA said the fire started from a foam shop and affected many other shops but the agency curtailed further spread due to timely intervention. A single storey building with six rooms and four shops, five bungalows with 26 shops; a bungalow with a three bed room flat were affected by the fire. In a statement by the spokesperson of the agency, Nosa Okunbor, LASEMA received distress calls to the 767/112 at 1:25pm and arrived the scene at 1:45 pm to combat the fire. Upon arrival at the scene of incident, it was discovered that a mattress shop was the initial source of the fire. A joint team of responders led by the Agency DG/CEO, Nigeria Police, LASG fire, LRU fire, LNSC worked together to curtail the inferno from escalating to more adjoining buildings, he said. The agency said the cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained but the fire has been extinguished and dampening ongoing at the scene. Officials assessing the burnt properties. Officials assessing the burnt properties. No loss of life nor injuries were recorded at the scene of incident, LASEMA said. When Amar Singh underwent his first kidney transplant in 2009, a chartered plane full of who's who in Delhi and Mumbai flew down to Singapore to meet the convalescing leader. On board were some top politicians, corporate honchos and lawyers. Despite been vanquished by the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls just a few months back, Singhs influence in the power circle had not waned a bit. The Samajwadi Party (SP) had lent support to help the Manmohan Singh government survive the floor test only to edge out Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh to emerge as the single largest party in the state. At the prime of his political influence, those were heady days for Singh. He was a politician sans frontiers. Someone who had friends in all parties. Including the Left. Singh would visit former President APJ Abdul Kalam to understand the benefits of the nuclear deal along with fellow general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav. And explain with all seriousness at his command to a posse of TV journalists why his party had decided to back the Congress government at the Centre. For someone who came from a humble background in Azamgarh, Singh remained the de facto number two in the SP for more than a decade. His presence in the party served a twin purpose for Mulayam Singh Yadav. By promoting Singh, the SP chief kept in check any leadership challenges, especially from his contemporaries. Both Beni Verma and Azam Khan left the party after a protracted battle with Singh. And most importantly, Singh brought with him both corporate heft and star cast to a regional party at a time when elections were becoming increasingly expensive. Singh learnt the ropes of politics in the Congress when he got in touch with former UP Chief Minister Veer Bahadur Singh. Before joining Mulayam Singh Yadav, Singh was also associated with Madhav Rao Scindhia for a short period. His differences with Mulayam Singh Yadav emerged as the latter set out to hand over the reins of his party to his son Akhilesh Yadav after the 2012 victory in the assembly polls. The generational shift of power also ushered in a transition at the periphery. By 2014, Amar Singh had left the SP to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Ajit Singhs Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). In the battle to wrest control over the party ahead of the 2017 assembly polls, Amar Singh had put in his weight behind Mulayam Singh Yadavs younger brother Shivpal. With the BJP firmly in the saddle in UP and at the Centre, and with his health failing, Amar Singh could never really engineer a turnaround. His second kidney had also developed complications when he returned to Singapores Mount Elizabeth Hospital and Medical Centre ahead of the March lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic. This was the same hospital where he had undergone his first successful kidney transplant in 2009. When a plane load of who's who of India travelled to wish him a speedy recovery. When Amar Singh breathed his last on Saturday, his wife and twin daughters were by his side. Nearly all businesses are experiencing hardships because of Covid-19. However, this hasn't happened with startups in the HR industry. They are still receiving millions of dollars worth of funding. JobHopin, a startup utilizing AI and machine learning technologies in the recruitment process, received $2.45 million worth of capital in a series A round last month. One month before, TopCV got VND10 billion worth of capital. Many recruitment startups received investments in the first half of the year. TopDev, which introduces workers in the IT industry, received capital from SaraminHR, while Sieu Viet Group received $34 million from Affirma Capital Pham Van Dai, co-founder of Works.vn, which has investment from TTC Vietnam, said the attractiveness of the recruitment market comes from the expectations on the high growth rate of the market in the time to come, when Covid ends and the demand for workers increases. After the social distancing period, the recruitment market has become more bustling with many businesses starting recruiting workers for their production resumption plans. Besides TTC Vietnam, Works.vn also received capital from two other strategic investors. According to Gaku Echizenya, CEO of Navigos Group, which owns VietnamWorks.com and Navigos Search, there are positive signs in the Vietnamese recruitment market. After the social distancing period, the recruitment market has become more bustling with many businesses starting recruiting workers for their production resumption plans. Gaku believes that IT, e-commerce, technological platforms and energy will recover rapidly in the post-pandemic period. He also named other production and business fields, including manufacturing (electronics, woodwork), real estate, finance and banking and some service fields such as hotel, tourism and education. FTAs, especially EVFTA, are expected to help Vietnam become attractive to foreign investors. The tendency of relocating production bases from China to Vietnam and neighboring countries is growing. A survey by VietnamWorks found that 60 percent of businesses said they are capable of maintaining and developing business activities. The number of jobs offered in the first week of May, just after the social distancing weeks, increased by 20-39 percent. Meanwhile, the number of applications for jobs on VietnamWorks increased by 10 percent in June compared with the same period last year. The increase in the number of workers seeking jobs on online channels has also led to the increase in the number of recruitment startups. The online recruitment market is diverse with recruitment channels targeting niche markets. VietnamWorks and CareerBuilder target the high-end labor market segment, while HotelJob and TopitWorks introduces workers in some certain business fields. Getbee, Hozo app and Thichlamthem.com also target specific market segments. Dai thinks that no online recruitment channel is powerful enough to cover the whole market. Therefore, startups tend to use high technologies or special solutions to attract users. However, most startups use Facebook for their marketing activities. Mai Lan Capital flow to startups still strong after Covid-19 As soon as COVID-19 subsided in Vietnam, startups began to again receive capital. South Africa has surpassed 500,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases, representing more than 50% of all reported coronavirus infections in Africas 54 countries. Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize announced 10,107 new cases on Saturday night, bringing the countrys cumulative total to 503,290, including 8,153 deaths. South Africa, with a population of about 58 million, has the fifth-highest number of cases in the world, behind the US, Brazil, Russia and India, all countries with significantly higher populations, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Since the onset of the pandemic in South Africa, our strategy has been to provide whatever support we can to protect businesses & preserve jobs. Now we must move quickly towards a robust programme of reconstruction and recovery and we must do so together https://t.co/hJbs4tyWlv pic.twitter.com/62M8mQ77V5 Cyril Ramaphosa #StaySafe (@CyrilRamaphosa) July 27, 2020 Experts say the true toll of the pandemic worldwide is much higher than confirmed cases, due to limited testing and other reasons. Half a million is a significant milestone, because it shows weve entered a stage of rapid increases. We may reach one million cases very quickly, said Denis Chopera, a virologist based in Durban. What we know for sure is that the figures are an underestimate and that this virus will be with us for a long time to come. South Africas Gauteng province which includes Johannesburg, the countrys largest city and Pretoria, the capital is the countrys epicentre with more than 35% of its confirmed cases. Local hospitals have been struggling to cope, and health experts say the country could reach the peak of its outbreak in late August or early September. Story continues Cape Town, a city beloved by international tourists at the countrys southern tip, was the first epicentre and reached its peak last month, according to health experts. South Africa will have multiple peaks across the country, each challenging its different provincial health care systems, said Mr Chopera, executive manager of the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence. The Western Cape had the first peak and did relatively well. Gauteng is the epicentre now and appears to be coping so far, he said. Other provinces, like the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, do not have reputations for well-organised health care systems. They may have serious problems. South Africa imposed a strict lockdown in April and May that succeeded in slowing the spread of the virus, but caused such economic damage that the country began a gradual reopening in June. South Africa was already in recession before the coronavirus hit and its unemployment stands at 30%. President Cyril Ramaphosas government has extended grants to the countrys poorest, increased supplies to hospitals and recently accepted a 4.3 billion US dollars loan from the International Monetary Fund. Corruption in the countrys pandemic response is a growing problem. On Thursday, the top health official in Gauteng province was forced to step down over corruption allegations related to government contracts for Covid-19 personal protective equipment. Mr Coutts-Trotter detailed his story to the program Bounce Back, a podcast series sponsored by DrinkWise . He also speaks about the impact his past still has on Ms Plibersek as she pursues her political career. "For me, it was just the experience of being overwhelmed by opiates, by heroin," he says of his 17-year-old self injecting the drug in Sydney in the 1980s. "From the first moment I tried heroin, I became obsessed with using as much of it as I could." He is one of the most senior bureaucrats in NSW, in charge of the state's court system and prisons. He's married to Tanya Plibersek, one of Labor's most prominent and powerful figures. He is also a convicted heroin smuggler. Loading "I really feel deep regret that my life and my history is too often hung around my wife's neck by people who use it as some kind of criticism of her - that there's something morally broken about her for her to choose to be with me," he says. "Which I just think is a) hurtful and b) probably a credit to her - if that's the only point of criticism, well, she must be as brilliant as I think she is. But it just does seem wearing and unfair that she gets tagged with it 36 years after the event." An only child, Mr Coutts-Trotter moved to Australia with his parents at age 11. His British father died of cancer just months after their arrival. Though he had a privileged education at St Ignatius College Riverview, "I didn't handle the uprooting and moving across the world, combined with the loss of my dad". He started drinking at about 12, and by 17 he was addicted to heroin. He presents the events in his life as an explanation for his actions, not an excuse. "So many people experience changes in their lives that are much, much harder than that, much more brutal, and are resilient and make their way through it without self-medication," he says. "I wasn't one of them. I was a person who turned to drugs and alcohol as a way of mediating my contact with the world." These days, we Republicans take our good news any way we can get it. This is from Pennsylvania: [T]heres good news for the GOP: Registration shifts across the state show Republicans are gaining voters at five times the rate of Democrats. Since the 2016 primary election, Republicans have added about 165,000 net voters, while Democrats added only about 30,000. Democrats still maintain a 800,000-voter edge over Republicans. But thats down from 936,000 in 2016, when Trump still won the state by less than 1%. The Democrats are the party of riots and arson, of favoring criminals over police officers, of doing away with law enforcement, of canceling those with whom they disagree, of selling out to China, of raising taxes to stratospheric levels. Is this really a winning platform? And is Joe Biden, verging on the comatose, a winning candidate? I have to see it to believe it. So I dont find it shocking that Republicans are signing up new voters far faster than Democrats. Here in Minnesota, if you read the newspapers and watch the news, you would think that most Minnesotans are pro-riot and arson, love to see statues torn down, dont mind our economy being needlessly destroyed, and cant wait to get back into President Xis pocket. But our polling finds that 85% of Minnesotans support their local law enforcement. The disconnect between the official story and what is actually happening on the ground is a chasm. Im guessing the same is true around the country. A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, reported in The Hill, finds something similar: Poll: Majority say they are concerned about rising crime in US cities. But majority is hardly the word for it: Seventy-seven percent of respondents say they are concerned that crime is rising in the nations cities, while 46 percent of respondents said they were concerned about rising crime in their own communities. Seventy-seven percent is an overwhelming consensus. Crime, which the Democratic Party mostly endorses or in any event chooses to do nothing about, is a winning issue. And it isnt the only one. Call me an optimist, but I think it is way too early for Joe Bidens handlers to be ordering a walker to get him up the White House steps. Summer Ali Smith Hamish Hamilton 16.99 The final instalment of Smiths seasonal quartet dovetails the bang up-to-date story of a brother and sister during the Covid-19 lockdown with that of siblings interned as enemy aliens at the start of the Second World War. As always with Smith, there are tangents aplenty. Some big themes can be glimpsed, and Einstein and Charlie Chaplin flit across the stage alongside the likes of Dominic Cummings, but the novel as a whole is frustratingly disjointed. Max Davidson If I Had Your Face Frances Cha Viking 12.99 Despite centring on appearances, Chas novel is far from superficial. It dives below the surface of beauty-obsessed Seoul, the worlds plastic-surgery capital, to explore why people go under the knife. For five young women navigating early adulthood, looking good is as essential to their CVs as glowing references. A mesmerising debut that also examines the Korean emphasis on filial duty. Gwendolyn Smith 28 Summers Elin Hilderbrand Hodder & Stoughton 14.99 Its 1993 and bookish Mallory Blessing has inherited a cottage on Nantucket. When her brother brings his pal Jake to stay, the attraction is instant. The lovers part, Mallory becoming a teacher, Jake wedding a woman wholl run for president, yet for almost three decades, they reunite for an annual island weekend until calamity strikes. This poignant novels blend of nostalgia, romance and escapism is so quintessentially summery, youll expect sand to spill from its pages. Hephzibah Anderson Midnight At Malabar House Vaseem Khan Hodder & Stoughton 16.99 Bombay, 1950: Indias first female police detective, Persis Wadia, has been given her biggest case yet. A well-connected Anglo, Sir James Herriot, has been murdered at his own party. The killer was surely one of his eminent guests. Has Persis been set up to fail? This is historical crime fiction at its best a compelling mix of social insight and complex plotting with a thoroughly engaging heroine. A highly promising new series. John Williams Mrs Barbara OtengGyasi, the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, said government has approved the establishment of a specialised Creative Arts Court as a division of the High Court to deal with copyright and other related matters. The Minister, in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency on Friday in Accra, said the Ministry had engaged the Office of the Chief Justice to ensure the establishment of the court to address the specific needs of the Creative Arts Industry, being a priority of the Government due to its contribution to the economy. She said it was the expectation of government that the court would facilitate the effective and expeditious resolution of disputes that affected the industry to protect the rights and interests of practitioners. The Ministry, in consultation with the Judicial Service, shall communicate the modalities for the Court in the next legal year, which commences in October 2020, she said. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Trailing Joe Biden in national and battleground state polls, Donald Trump escalated his criticism of mail-in voting on Friday by predicting November will bring the greatest election disaster in history. Itll be fixed. Itll be rigged ... People ought to get smart, the president said. This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history ... You wont know the election results for weeks, months, maybe years. Maybe youll never know the election result. Mr Trump on Thursday had backtracked from his initial calls for an election delay, but appeared to push the idea again on Friday. Congress has the power to set the election date, not the president, according to the US Constitution. He again endorsed absentee ballots, but warned governors who are increasing the number of mail-in ballots that they are ensuring voting fraud on a massive scale. Itll go on forever, he roared about vote-counting and uncertainty, sounding very much like a president who wants to delay an election, moments after adding a twist to his latest self-made controversy. Voting experts say there is little data to support the theory that postal ballots automatically spawn fraud. But White House officials point to recent media reports from New York, New Jersey and other states where recent elections were plagued by problems related to ballots being mailed in. I want to move it up, he said of the election date [3 November]. He predicted there will not be a result on whether he or Mr Biden won on that night or even 6 November, saying the 2020 election could last forever. Democrats have accused Mr Trump of floating a delay because he is running scared of losing to Mr Biden. The former vice president on Thursday evening accused the president of tweeting about a possible election delay that morning to distract from cable news coverage of the funeral of the late Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights leader. Earlier on Thursday, speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to his idea by quoting the Constitution. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution states: The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States, Ms Pelosi tweeted. Senior Republicans, including Senate and House leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, shot down the idea. Both, echoed by their caucuses, said the election should and would go forward on 3 November, putting Mr Trump yet again on a political island as some polls show him trailing Mr Biden by double-digits nationally and by around seven points in a handful of key swing states. Speaking with Saigon Investment, Dr. Tran Chi Thanh (photo), Director of Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute (VINATOM), and an expert on nuclear power technology and safety, believes that strategic planning of electric power is currently needed in order to develop nuclear power for the future. JOURNALIST: - Sir, the planning of electric power supply in Vietnam has not included the development of nuclear power. In view of national energy security is this intentional? Dr. TRAN CHI THANH: - First of all, I want to answer the question related to nuclear power, as I am a researcher in the field of nuclear technology and safety. In 2017, we introduced a new Planning Law that was implemented under the Ministry of Planning and Investment. After that, in 2018, some rules related to the planning of nuclear power were amended. According to the new regulations, the task of the nuclear power development planning process was shelved for much later in the future, and so far this task has not yet been assigned to any Ministry. Therefore, the National Power Development Planning has no basis to discuss nuclear power at this point of time. From the perspective of medium and long term national energy security, it is necessary to consider all possible scenarios for nuclear power generation. This is a large, stable, and reliable power source to run in the backdrop of the electricity system, which does not create greenhouse gases and is easy for supply and storing of fuel. Nuclear power and renewable energy are the new development trends in many countries in the world. However, as mentioned above, it is necessary to have a basis to bring up this issue for research and national consideration. The task of developing a nuclear power plan can be done soon, depending on the necessity, requirement and an effective development strategy. - Sir, in terms of the environment, huge costs and national energy security, what are the advantages of nuclear power compared to other energy sources? - Compared to fossil fuel energy and renewable energy, nuclear power has many advantages, such as no greenhouse gas emissions, no environmental pollution, safe operating conditions without incidents under current modern technology, ensured energy security because of diversified power sources, and the ability to store fuel for several years. This can be a huge, stable and reliable power source for the development of industries in the future. Nuclear power also brings about long-term economic benefits, because the current nuclear power plants can operate for 60 to 80 years if construction and operational management are both good. In addition, nuclear power will help in promoting the further development of science and technology in basic and advanced fields, and also support many of our industries. This will bring about economic efficiency and more potential for growth of science and technology. - In your opinion, will Vietnam be eligible to build and operate nuclear power plants for economic purposes in the future ? - Vietnam can develop, build and operate medium and functional power plants in the world today of 1,000 to 1,200 MWe capacity. However, in order to develop nuclear power, it is necessary to have an early strategy to maintain the current nuclear power resources. If there is no policy or early strategy, after three to five years Vietnam will lose all human resources to nuclear power. Human resources are the most important factor for the success of nuclear power development. There are people already who are building infrastructure such as a systematic nuclear regulatory system, appropriate training and retraining system, preparing technical human resources for factories, and strong research infrastructure with leading experts. Regarding the high costs and finances, nuclear power requires a large initial investment. However, it is possible to search and sort popular models in the world and within the nuclear industry. It should be noted that in the near future, nuclear power technology based on the method of water cooling will be dominant, and there is a lot of research available in this technique and sufficient scientific basis to use this method. Small modular nuclear reactor technology (SMR), based on liquid metal furnace cooling, doesn't have enough research yet. Therefore, in my opinion, Vietnam should not discuss SMR as it is not possible to do nuclear power projects based on this technology. It is necessary to take the nuclear research scenario into consideration and calculate, depending on the national strategy. The problem is the process and the time to implement the plans, which one is first and which is later, and when is the right time, so that it is suitable to offer the best development scenario to meet the requirements of the country, in line with the general development trend in the world. - Sir, can you tell us more about the countries that are continuing to develop and use nuclear energy even after the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident in Japan in 2011? - Nine years after the Fukushima incident in Japan, many countries around the world are continuing to develop nuclear power. Japan is also currently rebuilding the Energy Strategy Plan in which the main power source will be renewable energy, nuclear power and liquefied petroleum gas. Besides, from now until 2030, Japan plans to close down about one hundred coal-fired power units. - Thank you very much. Luu Thuy (Interviewer) People living in New York City are fearful after facing the worst of the coronavirus health crisis. This fear is fueling a sudden increase in home sales and rentals around the small towns and wooded hills to the citys north. Anil and Joyce Lilly will not be staying in their Bronx apartment much longer. They just bought a house north of New York in the Hudson Valley. It takes about an hour to reach from the city. We were locked into the apartment for three months, a solid three months, Joyce Lilly told the Associated Press, explaining their move to Washingtonville, New York. I feel like Im getting out of prison and I want to run as far away as possible, she said. Property sellers describe an active market recently, with many house hunters able to work from home. Steven Domber is president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hudson Valley Properties. He said a large number of the home buyers are coming from Manhattan, in the heart of the city. Many of them are experiencing cabin fever, which is wanting to get out of an apartment and having some land iftheres a lockdown again, he said. The Catskill Mountains and parts of the valley north of the city have been longtime vacation spots for New Yorkers. But agents say sales and rental activity is far above normal. Domber said his June sales were up about 30 percent compared to the same month last year. Home builder Chuck Petersheim said he took eight orders in one month, compared to his usual one-and-a-half each month. But New York City is in no danger of losing a lot of people any time soon. The movement north only represents a small part of the citys population of 8.3 million. New homes in the area cost from under $200,000 to more than $1 million. They are an escape many people cannot afford. But the increase in sales and long-term rentals suggests many New Yorkers see the city as less livable. Susan Cohen rented a home in Rhinebeck, New York with her husband after sheltering in their Upper East Side apartment. She said: For six weeks in our two-bedroom apartment, all we talked about was without a vaccine, we will never go on the subway againwe wont go to the movies, we wont go to the theater...And we said, What are we living here for? County-level home sales numbers from May and June still show a decrease compared to last year. But agents say those numbers are the result of delays of one to three months between offers being accepted and closings on home sales. Agents have described recent bidding wars over homes that had been on the market for some time and new listings being bought quickly by buyers with cash. Realtor John Murphy said some homes are selling for $100,000 or more above their asking prices. Home hunters Tony Speciale and Jerry Marsini learned about competition recently when they walked through the front door of a home in Kingston, New York. At that same moment, their agent got a message from the seller about a cash offer from someone else. If we find a house that were interested in, sitting on it more than a few days doesnt seem like a good idea, Speciale said. The Hudson Valley is not the only area outside New York City experiencing an increase in home buying. Along the New Jersey Shore, there are far more buyers than homes in Monmouth and Ocean counties. Wendy Smith noted homes are selling above the asking price and once a thing comes on the market everyone is jumping on it. She is president of Monmouth Ocean Regional Realtors. Extremely low lending rates from banks are helping the market. Work-from-home policies resulting from the health crisis also help people to decide to move from the city. Joyce Lilly said her husbands ability to work at a distance as an information technology supervisor helped them to decide to move from Riverdale in the Bronx on Tuesday. Susan Cohen just retired in January and her husband is able to work as a financial technology advisor from home. Im Pete Musto. Michael Hill reported on this story for the Associated Press. Pete Musto adapted it for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story rental n. a property, apartment or home, in which a person can live by paying the owner regular payments apartment n. a room or group of rooms in a building that is used as a place to live lockdown n. when people are forced to stay in their homes for emergency reasons afford v. to be able to pay for something county n. an area of a state that has its own government to deal with local matters bidding n. the process of making a competitive offer of money to buy something and which others can compete by offering more money cash n. money in the form of coins or bills or their equivalent price(s) - n. the amount of money that you pay for something or that something costs We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. Dubai-based business setup advisory Creative Zone has announced the opening up of its networking portal CZ Connect 2.0 to the wider SME community within the region. Initially launched in January, the portal was exclusive to Creative Zone clients comprising over 36,000 entrepreneurs. In light of the pandemic, a conscious decision was made to open its doors, providing all entrepreneurs and SMEs across the UAE a free unique platform or marketplace to engage, exchange ideas, cross-sell products /services, network, and establish meaningful business relationships to stay agile in the market. The initiative named CZ Connect 2.0 is primarily aimed at assisting UAE-based businesses a great platform to promote their products and services for free. More than just being a classified, the portal allows business owners, designers, freelancers and other professionals record their videos or do an editorial coverage narrating brand stories in their unique style. Registered members will also get first-hand access to exclusive promotions and offers published by other business owners, making it a 360-degree support network. On the key gestrure, CEO Lorenzo Jooris said: "Creative Zone have always believed in providing a lot more than just company formation services; we have managed to build an ecosystem that supports businesses in their entire journey, from setup to a successful business operation." Creative Zone recognises that businesses thrive on developing the right connections, we are extremely excited to open borders to all SMEs in the region with CZ Connect 2.0 to leverage our existing entrepreneurial network that we have established over the last 10 years," stated Jooris. The portal prompts for basic registration details to validate authentic business owners, thereby getting started immediately. It has 4 key functions: *Creation of a Business Profile: Businesses can add all important company details that they want to exhibit to the network, enabling interested parties to connect with them, exchange knowledge, call for projects, and list events. Entrepreneurs and professionals can fill the editorial section that will give the viewers a fair idea about the business, future plans and ongoing promotions. *Creation of Video Content: This feature enables members to narrate brand stories in their unique style. These stories will be shared with Creative Zones client base of over 36,000 business owners through the portal, EDMs and newsletters. Selected stories will also be featured in LEADERS Middle East online magazine as a way of showcasing success stories. *Special Promotions and Deals: CZ Connect members as well as external partners can create special deals and discounts to be shared with all members on the platform. Creative Zones channel partners like Insurance market.ae, Telr-payment gateways, Pipeline-Sales, V7- Media Marketing/legal to name a few, provide special packages for all active CZ Connect members. *Access to Member Events: Members can also attend focused monthly gatherings, speed networking events, and business pitch nights. One of the largest and most trusted business setup advisory firms in Dubai, Creative Zone was created with a simple yet revolutionary model for the UAE marketplace; to serve as a one-stop- shop, with flexible payment plans, for easy company incorporation. It has now evolved to provide added business support services to create an ecosystem that helps entrepreneurs and SMEs to set up, sustain, and grow their businesses and contribute to the UAEs position as the global location of choice for company setup.-TradeArabia News Service The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Zimbabweans based in the United Kingdom took to the streets in solidarity with the 31st July Movement, to express their displeasure with President Emmerson Mnangagwa's administration, whom they claim has failed to adequately govern the nation. New York The judge presiding over the criminal case against a British socialite charged with recruiting teenage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse said Friday that her attorneys are not permitted to publicly identify accusers even if they've spoken in a public forum. "Not all accusations or public statements are equal," U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan wrote in her ruling in the case facing Ghislaine Maxwell. "Deciding to participate in or contribute to a criminal investigation or prosecution is a far different matter than simply making a public statement 'relating to' Ms. Maxwell or Jeffrey Epstein, particularly since such a statement might have occurred decades ago and have no relevance to the charges in this case." She said the women "still maintain a significant privacy interest that must be safeguarded." Prosecutors had asked Nathan to block Maxwell's lawyers from publicly identifying the women unless they identified themselves as participants in the criminal case. Otherwise, prosecutors said, the women may be harassed or intimidated and become reluctant to cooperate with the government. Nathan's order came hours after newly unsealed court documents provided a fresh glimpse into a fierce civil court fight between Maxwell, who was Epstein's former girlfriend, and one of the women who accused the couple of sexual abuse. The documents released late Thursday were from a now-settled defamation lawsuit filed by one of Epstein's alleged victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Giuffre claimed in the suit and other litigation that Maxwell recruited her in 2000 to be a sexual servant to Epstein. She said the couple subsequently pressured her into having sex with numerous rich or notable men, including Britain's Prince Andrew, U.S. politicians, wealthy entrepreneurs, a famous scientist and fashion designer. Maxwell, and all of the accused men, have denied those allegations for years. Among the newly released documents were emails Maxwell and Epstein exchanged in January 2015, when Giuffre's allegations were getting a new round of media attention. One email, sent from Epstein's email address but written in Maxwell's voice, appeared to be a draft statement or set of talking points for Maxwell to use in defending herself. It said she had been the target of "false allegations of impropriety and offensive behavior that I abhor and have never ever been party to." Responding to a Maxwell email a few days later, Epstein wrote: "You have done nothing wrong and I (would) urge you to start acting like it." He suggested she go outside and hold her head high, "not as an (escaping) convict." Epstein killed himself last summer while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell was recently arrested on federal charges that she recruited at least three girls, including one as young as 14, for Epstein to sexually abuse in the 1990s. Prosecutors said she also joined in the abuse. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Maxwell is jailed awaiting trial in New York. Many of the documents unsealed by the court Thursday had been available publicly before. They included a deposition in which Giuffre described the alleged abuse, and also answered questions about errors she'd made previously in telling her story, including originally telling a court she was 15 when she met Epstein, when records showed she was at least a year older. Giuffre over the years has told her story to the FBI, but no charges were brought based on her allegations and she is not one of the three alleged victims in the current criminal case against Maxwell. Two documents that were not released as scheduled Thursday were depositions Maxwell gave in the civil lawsuit in 2016. U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska had ordered them released, but Maxwell's lawyers appealed her ruling to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Her lawyers said they should be blocked because she now faces criminal charges. Actor and comedy show host Kapil Sharma on Friday shared the news that The Kapil Sharma Show is returning to TV screens after a long break. He also said that his first guest would Sonu Sood. Sharing the news along with a clip from the show, he wrote: Dont miss the first episode of #TKSS after a long break with the Hero of #2020 @SonuSood paji Clapping hands sign tomorrow 9:30 pm @SonyTV #TheKapilSharmaShow stay safe. Sony TV also shared a glimpse from the episode where an emotional Sonu is seen watching a video where migrant workers thank him. Laakhon logon ko unke ghar pohonchakar bane Sonu Sood, desh ke dilon ke asli Superstar! Aur ab aa rahe hai woh #TheKapilSharmaShow par, the channel wrote. Dont miss the first episode of #TKSS after a long break with the Hero of #2020 @SonuSood paji tomorrow 9:30 pm @SonyTV #TheKapilSharmaShow stay safe pic.twitter.com/2XHpss1cTm Kapil Sharma (@KapilSharmaK9) July 31, 2020 The clip showed Kapil Sharma and Sonu Sood seated in the familiar drawing room sets of the comedy show. Kapil jokes and reads an episode of how two people, not migrants, were sent to Azamgarh by Sonu. The only other person in the clip is judge, Archana Puran Singh. According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, the show is resuming shoot after 120 days and that the episode would be more of a tribute to Sonu with a dash of humour. The episode with Sonu paaji was different from other shoots as its more like our tribute to him and with a dose of laughter. There is also an emotional live video chat with some of the migrants he helped, Kapil was quoted as saying. Kapil also mentioned that video chats with be a regular feature on the show now onwards and they cant have live audiences on the show. They would be interacting with people from Gurgaon to Kolkata to the US. Films are not releasing theatrically right now, so actors wont come often. But we have done an episode with Archanajis (judge Puran Singh) husband, Parmeet Sethi, Kikus (Sharda) wife Priyanka and Krushnas (Abhishek) wife, Kashmira. It was a homely feeling. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer He added that his wife Ginni wont step out for another 6 months. How he did add that they would like to do an episode with her too. But sometime in the future, wed like to do an episode with Ginny too. Earlier this month, when they shot the first episode after the break, Kapil had in fact shared a video clip of colleagues Sumona Chakravarti and Bharti Singh entering the studio and getting sanitised at the entrance. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Afghan Government To Release 500 Taliban Prisoners As Three-Day Cease-Fire Starts By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan July 31, 2020 Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has ordered the release of an additional 500 Taliban prisoners as a goodwill gesture as a three-day cease-fire proposed by the Taliban and agreed to by the Afghan government took effect on July 31. During a televised speech, Ghani said he had now released 4,600 Taliban prisoners out of the 5,000 pledged in a landmark agreement signed with the United States and the Taliban in February. However, Ghani said he has "no authority" under the country's constitution to release the remaining 400 inmates on the Taliban list because of their involvement in serious crimes. Ghani said he would summon a consultative Loya Jirga -- a traditional grand assembly of elders -- to decide the fate of the remaining 400. The Afghan president also called on the Taliban to enter into peace talks as soon as possible. "The fate of the remaining prisoners will be discussed and finalized during the negotiations," Ghani added. The Taliban says it has freed all 1,000 prisoners it had pledged in the agreement with Washington, and insists on its demand for the release of the remaining 400 prisoners on the list. The United States has reportedly proposed that the Taliban prisoners be transferred from Afghan jails to a location where they would be under both Taliban and Afghan government surveillance. The proposal -- aimed at breaking the deadlock that is holding up intra-Afghan peace talks -- was presented this week to the warring Afghan sides by top U.S. diplomats,, the Reuters news agency quoted unnamed "senior official sources" as saying. Of the 400 Taliban prisoners left, around 200 are accused by the Afghan government of masterminding attacks on embassies, public squares, and government offices, killing thousands of civilians in recent years. "The Americans and their allies agree that it would be insane to let some of the most dreaded Taliban fighters walk out freely...the Afghan forces arrested them for conducting some of the most heinous crimes against humanity," a senior Western diplomat in Kabul told Reuters. Another diplomat in the Afghan capital was cited as saying that "the only middle path is to get the Afghan government to hand these militants to the Taliban if they agree to put them in house arrest." The Afghan government and the Taliban earlier this week announced the halt in hostilities for the Eid al-Adha Muslim festival starting on July 31, raising hopes that the long-delayed intra-Afghan peace talks could begin next week. But on the eve of the 72-hour cease-fire, at least nine people were killed in the explosion in Pul-e-Alam, capital of eastern Logar Province. The bomb went off in the central Azadi (Liberty) Square in the city, which was packed with people shopping for Eid celebrations, according to local officials and eyewitnesses. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that all the victims were civilians, with many women and children among the dead. It said nine people had been killed and 40 more were injured but noted that these figures were provisional. Some reports said as many as 18 people were killed. Provincial police spokesman Shahpoor Ahmadzai said the attack had targeted a police checkpoint and that there were security forces among the victims. Government forces have gathered in the city to prepare for security measures ahead of the Eid celebrations, Ahmadzai said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. The Taliban denied involvement. Interior Ministry spokesman Tarek Arian, however, said the militant group "certainly cannot claim it is not behind such incidents." Meanwhile, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is trying to revive peace talks with visits to Pakistan and the Afghan capital, as well as in Qatar, where the Taliban maintains a political office. With reporting by AP, dpa, AFP, and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan -cease-fire/30758146.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 I am a child of the 1950s. Growing up on a Connecticut farm, my dream was to be a scientist, in part inspired by the annual August trip to Lockwood Farm in Hamden, where verdant fields slope eastward toward the iconic Sleeping Giant. The farm is home to field plots and experiments by scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. Once a year, in August, all the scientists sponsor Plant Science Day and show off their experimental plots along with demonstrations, tours, short talks and more. CAES is Americas first state agricultural research lab. Established by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1875, it has a long and steady credo: Putting Science to Work for Society Protecting Agriculture, Public Health, and the Environment. CAES is a Connecticut treasure. Whether summer sunshine or rain from Tropical Storm Isaias is beating down on us, this year due to the COVID-19 virus, we all can tune in from the safety of our homes and offices to find knowledge and inspiration on Wednesday, Aug. 5, for the 110th Plant Science Day. Yes, I am grateful for my childhood inspirations at the Plant Science Days of the 1950s. Im now a fifth-generation farmer living the dream in Shelton. I am proud of Connecticut and honored to have served on the CAES Board of Control under the administrations of Govs. Rell, Malloy and Lamont. I love collaborating with and supporting scientists. They help us implement new techniques for growing crops at our seven-generation family farm. Thanks to the knowledge imparted by Station staff, I still experience the childlike wonder of science. Did you know certain cover crops bio-fumigate the soil for growing strawberries, and with the addition of compost create amazing habitat for beneficial earthworms? Ive experimented with growing Christmas trees where the conifers coexist with wildflowers that attract beneficial insects. In season, these fields of fragrance are filled with the hum of pollinating bees, the graceful dance of Monarch butterflies, and the darting helicopter flights of dragonflies. I applaud the can do spirit of CAES scientists who through modern technology will now share their work virtually. Fellow scientists from around the planet will be tuning in along with CT Nutmeggers to this first-ever virtual Plant Science Day. During the school year, teachers will be able to bring talks and demonstrations from the field to their students. Who knows how many children may be inspired by the research presentations, story boards, and virtual tours of research plots to pursue a career in science? Ideas will germinate like seeds in healthy soil. We share a common goal: enabling all children to live their dream. We are all human and long for the excitement of group gatherings such as weve done for 110 summers at Plant Science Day, but we are also Nutmeggers who embrace innovation for this pandemic summer. It is the only way forward. As Winston Churchill said, Never let a good crisis go to waste. Tune in and be part of a proud tradition that has brought so many gifts of improved living to Connecticut and beyond. Perhaps CAES is best known for inventing hybrid corn and discovering vitamin A. More recently, Station scientists have unlocked the dark secrets of mosquitoes and ticks while providing guidance on how we humans can successfully co-exist with these insect threats for a healthy and successful life in Connecticut and indeed on the planet. You can check out the CAES Plant Science Day 2020 web page for all the current information and links: https://portal.ct.gov/caes Registration is free. Terry Jones is a fifth-generation Shelton farmer. He serves as vice president of the Board of Control at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, and board member at Connecticut Working Lands Alliance, the Valley Community Foundation and The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. Speaking at the finale of the Smart India Hackathon, Modi said the NEP is big on access to education and aims to increase gross enrolment ratio in higher education to 50 percent by 2035. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the new education policy announced by the government emphasises on making 'job creators' instead of 'job seekers' and is an attempt to transform the 'intent' and 'content' of the country's education system. Addressing the finale of the Smart India Hackathon, he said the National Education Policy-2020 facilitates inter-disciplinary study which will ensure that the focus is on what the students want to learn and will mark a shift from the "burden of school bag" to the "boon of learning". The NEP is big on access to education and aims to increase gross enrolment ratio in higher education to 50 percent by 2035, he said. "India's National Education Policy (NEP) reflects the spirit of new India. We are shifting from the burden of the school bag, which does not last beyond school, to the boon of learning which helps for life. From simply memorising to critical thinking. The 21st century is the era of knowledge, learning, and innovation. For years, the limitations of the system had an adverse effect on the lives of students. No longer," he said. "The new policy reflects the aspirations of young India. It is not process centric, it is people centric and future centric. The NEP is not just a policy but is a compilation of aspirations of all 130 crore Indians," he told the students who participated in the event through video link. The prime minister said that under the pressure of parents, relatives and friends, students tend to opt for subjects that others have selected. "Even today many children feel that they are judged on the basis of a subject in which they have no interest. Due to the pressure from parents, relatives, friends etc children are forced to pursue the subjects chosen by others. This has resulted in a large population which is well-educated, but most of what they have read, is not useful for them," he further stated. "Despite having a pile of degrees, individuals feel incomplete and lack confidence which affects their whole life. The new policy seeks to change this approach by bringing a systematic reform in education system and attempts to transform both intent and content of education," he said. Elaborating on the emphasis in the new education policy on inter-disciplinary study, the Prime Minister said,"this concept has been gaining popularity. And, rightly so." "One size does not fit all. One subject does not define who you are. There are no limits to discovering something new. Human history has many examples of stalwarts who have excelled in diverse areas. Be it Aryabhata, Leonardo da Vinci, Helen Keller, Gurudev Tagore," he said. "Now, we have done away with some traditional boundaries between arts, science, commerce. If someone is interested, they can learn Maths and Music together, or Coding and Chemistry together. This will ensure the focus is on what the student wants to learn. Rather than what the student is expected to, by society. Inter-disciplinary studies gives you control. In the process, it also makes you flexible. In the new policy, flexibility has been given great importance. There are provisions for multiple entry and exits. No one-way streets for a student. The Under-Graduate experience can either be a three or four-year journey." he said. Students will enjoy the advantages of an Academic Bank of Credit, which will store all the academic credits acquired. These can be transferred and counted in the final degree. Such flexibility was long needed in our education system, he said. The prime minister said the new education policy will help Indian languages to progress and develop further. "Students will benefit by learning in their own language in their early years. The new education policy will also introduce the rich Indian languages to the world. This will not only promote knowledge and learning in the country, but will also strengthen its unity. "While the policy focuses on local, equal emphasis has been laid on global integration. Top global institutions have been encouraged to open campuses in India. "This will benefit Indian youth in getting world class exposure and opportunities, and help them prepare for global competition as well. This will also help in building world-class institutions in India, making India a hub of global education," he said. The NEP approved by the Union Cabinet earlier this week replaces the 34-year-old National Policy on Education framed in 1986 and is aimed at paving the way for transformational reforms in school and higher education systems to make India a global knowledge superpower. Quoting the architect of the Indian Constitution BR Ambedkar that education should be accessible to all, Modi said that the new education policy is also dedicated to this idea."It emphasizes on creating job creators rather than job seekers. That is, in a way an attempt to bring reform in our mindset and in our approach," he said. Hackathon is a non-stop digital product development competition organised by the HRD Ministry, where problems are posed to technology students to suggest innovative solutions. This year, more than 10,000 students are competing to solve 243 problem statements from 37 central government departments, 17 state governments and 20 industries. Each problem statement carries a prize money of Rs 1 lakh except the student innovation theme which will have three winners, 1st, 2nd and 3rd, with prize money of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively. The public can once again enjoy tours of history in the modern world at Fernland Park in Montgomery. As the novel coronavirus pandemic hit Montgomery County in March, the city declared a disaster while the park suspended tours and closed its buildings. Fernland Park, which is one of four parks in Montgomery, reopened for tours on June 5. Since then, City Manager Richard Tramm informed the council during its regular meeting on Tuesday that it has seen a good bit of people coming in. Tramm said the park reported 481 visitors and provided 56 tours during the month. They are definitely back at work there and its just a sign that even though people are being more cautious in many cases, people are getting out and looking for something to do, so ultimately is glad we reopened that park, he said. And, again, staff there is trying to work as safely with everyone as possible. The public is asked to wear masks. The masks are not required for those touring on their own, such as to look at the buildings while walking around on the grounds, but is asked to wear a mask for interacting with staff on site. Those visiting park may either tour on their own or can coordinate and schedule an appointment with a docent who can guide guests through the park and explain the attributes and sites. The park is closed on Monday and for any inclement weather. The park hours with a docent on duty are from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Those interested in group tours are encouraged to message, email or call either the Fernland Park office at 936-597-7764 or the city at 936-597-3304, including to obtain a photo permit which is available online. To make a donation or volunteer please contact Fernland.org. mellsworth@hcnonline.com Lucknow: Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP leader Kalyan Singh said that he is proud of the fact that he, as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, did not order firing on kar sewaks who had assembled in Ayodhya in 1992. "In 1992 when I was the chief minister, I had ordered that kar sewaks who had assembled in Ayodhya should not be fired at. The district administration of Ayodhya had written to me that four battalions of central forces were stranded near Saket College as the kar sewaks had assembled there," Singh told ANI. "In the light of the situation that had developed in Ayodhya, I had then ordered in writing that firing should not be done at the three lakh kar sewaks and other ideas should be used to control them. I had made this decision because if there was firing then several people would have lost their lives. Since people had come from around the country, violence would have caused immense unrest in the state and the country. I am proud that no kar sewak was killed during that time," he added. Kalyan Singh further said, "I have no regrets that the state government fell for the cause of Lord Ram as I have immense faith in him." The former Uttar Pradesh CM said that the beginning of the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya marks the fruition of a 500-year struggle for this cause. "Bhoomi pujan for Ram temple in Ayodhya is going to be conducted on August 5 by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is an occasion of immense pride and happiness for me. In 1528, foreign invader Babar's commander Mir Baqi had demolished the Ram temple and made the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. This was not made for spiritual purposes but to humiliate the Hindus. The struggle continued for 500 years and after that, the temple is being made," he said. The Prime Minister is scheduled to lay the foundation stone of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on August 5, according to Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, the president of the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust. The construction of Ram temple will begin in Ayodhya after the ceremony to lay the foundation stone in which Chief Ministers of several states, Ministers from the Union Cabinet and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat are also likely to participate. The apex court, on November 9 last year, had directed the Central government to hand over the site at Ayodhya for the construction of a Ram temple. North Korean defector 'shocked' by kindness in US, was taught Americans 'torture and kill' Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A North Korean defector said he was shocked by the kindness he encountered when he first visited the United States because his home country portrays U.S. citizens as people who torture and kill. [The U.S.] is not just bad, Kim Geum-Hyuk, who now lives in Seoul, South Korea, said in an interview with the YouTube channel DIMPLE. America is a complete enemy for [North Korea]. They taught us to fight [Americans] til the end. I also was one of the victims of brainwash education so I had hostility toward America. According to Kim, who currently works as a peace ambassador for One Young World and is studying political science and diplomacy at Korea University, North Korea portrays Americans as "street dogs, wolves, and "people who torture and kill." But after arriving in California, Kim said he realized his home countrys depiction of U.S. citizens was "totally wrong. What I was taught in North Korea was an image of the coldness and wickedness of Americans, he said. They were an image of scary people to me, but it was totally wrong ... its totally different from the image that North Koreans think. I believed they were full of hostility, but they were just so nice, Kim added, expressing his surprise that "everyone actually said 'hi' on the street." Because he had never seen photos of the U.S., he was shocked at the beauty and size of the country. Kim said visiting the Grand Canyon was like going to Mars and that the size of Texas was bigger than he ever imagined. "[Americans are] so nice, funny, and open to anything, he said. There are Mexicans, Chinese, Koreans ... So many people made up one community ... I was just so surprised by the diversity." Led by Kim Jong Un, the North Korean regimes penchant for teaching its citizens anti-American propaganda is well documented. Painting the U.S. as an aggressive threat determined to destroy North Koreans, the countrys regime uses the fear of an outside threat to bolster national pride and government power. North Korean defector Jeon Geum-ju shared with The Washington Post how, from the earliest age, North Korean children are taught cunning American wolves want to kill them, while the countrys leaders are portrayed as godlike. A recently-discovered propaganda video revealed how the North Korean government seeks to silence Christianity by painting believers as religious fanatics and spies bent on undermining the stability of the hermit kingdom. The video, obtained by The Voice of the Martyrs, was allegedly used to teach state security agents how to identify and silence those who promote religion inside the country. North Korea has for the last 18 years ranked as the worst persecutor of Christians in the world on Open Doors USAs World Watch List. In the hermit country, those who profess Christ or are caught communicating with missionaries face severe repercussions like torture and imprisonment. Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American pastor who was held hostage in North Korea from 2012 to 2014, shared how the North Korean government is more afraid of Christians than nuclear weapons. According to Bae, most North Koreans have never heard the name of Jesus. "They said, 'we are not afraid of nuclear weapons ... we are afraid of someone like you bringing religion into our country and use it against us and then everybody will turn to God and this will become God's country and we will fall," Bae said. A statue of a Native American woman by a Chiricahua sculptor, Allan Houser, stands outside the Oklahoma State Capitol; another bronze statue of an Indian warrior is on the dome. No doubt they were inwardly smiling with the announcement on July 9, 2020 of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma. The inherent argument is over the nature of the power possessed by Native Americans in their reservations and whether that power can be considered "sovereign" even if it does not approximate the definition by Thomas Hobbes of complete monopoly of power in a particular geographical area. The case is fascinating, combining historical, legal, and political factors, questions of jurisdictional powers, and differences over interpretation of U.S. law, whether from an originalist and textualist or intentionalist and living constitutionalist point of view. The U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8 grants Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes. Though the federal government has the duty to protect the tribes, it is Congress, not the Executive or Judicial Branches of the U.S. system, that has ultimate authority affecting the tribes. By a number of U.S. treaties, those federally recognized tribes, now called nations, have the right to form their own government, enforce laws within their lands, protect their own people, tax, manage their own funds, and exclude persons from tribal lands. As a result, tribes possess a nationhood status. Today, there are 5.2 million American Indians and Alaska Native people and 573 federally recognized Indian nations. In addition, there are unrecognized nations and indigenous communities. In the state of Oklahoma, there are 39 tribal nations, 19 of which are federally recognized. The U.S. signed 370 treaties with many Native nations between 1778 and 1871. Most of them guaranteed peace, defined land boundaries, preserved hunting and fishing rights, and provided protection against domestic and foreign enemies. The tribes generally retained all internal governmental authority on issues such as education, health care, and housing. In recent years, there is a more insistent call for total self-determination. In the case on July 9, 2020, the SCOTUS by a 5-4 decision held that the land in northeastern Oklahoma reserved for the Creek Nation since the treaty of 1833 and the treaty of 1866 remains an Indian reservation, at least for purposes of federal criminal law. The land had been officially recognized by Congress as Indian territory and home to the Five Civilized Tribes. Congress declared Oklahoma a state in 1906 but denied the establishment of the Indian territory as a separate state. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the 5-4 majority, rather surprisingly rendered a textualist reading of the legal history of the rights of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He held that the treaty of 1866 guaranteed the Creek Nation the "quiet possession of their country." The case was a reminder of the tragic events in the 1830s, when a number of tribes, about 125,000 Native Americans, were forcibly removed from their homelands in the southeast, where their ancestors had lived for generations, to walk more than 5,000 miles to land west of the Mississippi River to what is now eastern Oklahoma. During this walk, the Trail of Tears, an estimated 3,500 of the Creek tribe died. On this event, Gorsuch was eloquent. "On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever[.] ... [T]hose lands remain under the control of the Native American Reservations for purposes of federal criminal law." The state of Oklahoma, he held, does not have authority to undertake criminal cases involving Native Americans, since they are subject to federal jurisdiction. Because Congress has not said otherwise, the government should be held to its word, that the Major Crimes Act of 1885 gave to federal authorities, not states, jurisdiction over serious crimes committed by or against Native Americans in their own territories. How was power allocated, and does the allocation remain in the U.S. federal system? The Gorsuch argument concerning Oklahoma is that the land granted to the Native Americans over 170 years ago retains its status as belonging to the tribal reservation, because no act of Congress or statute has dissolved the Creek Tribe or disestablished its reservation. States have no authority to reduce federal arrangements with Native Americans within the tribal borders. In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled that the state of Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction to prosecute a murder case of had happened within the three million acres belonging to the Muscogee, Creek Nation. This was followed in 2020 when the SCOTUS held that the state courts in Oklahoma had no jurisdiction to convict Jimcy McGirt, a member of the Seminole Nation, of sexual offenses raping a four-year-old child in 1996 that took place on the Creek Reservation. McGirt appealed his conviction, arguing that prosecution by the state was invalid because his offense had been committed within the territory of the Creek Reservation. Neil Gorsuch, a Westerner originally from Colorado, had been a judge on the Denver-based 10th Circuit and had ruled in favor of tribal rights to govern their own affairs and upheld their right to their land. On appointment to the SCOTUS, he hired a member of the Chickasaw Nation as a clerk. Gorsuch held that Congress had broken more than a few of its promises to the Creek nation. A major difference in the SCOTUS centered on the history of the Creek Reservation since it has been largely unknown for the past century, that a considerable part of the territory of Oklahoma is actually a Creek Indian reservation. Chief Justice John Roberts , dissenting, held that a century of practice in Oklahoma confirmed that the prior domains of the Creek Tribe were extinguished, that the state has maintained unquestioned jurisdiction for more than 100 years, and that the SCOTUS decision might lead to similar results in the other four Oklahoma tribal territories. This consequence would produce uncertainty and chaos for all parts of government, including verdicts in previous trials by the state, that touch on Indian affairs. The controversial issue remains. Can the state of Oklahoma prosecute Native Americans accused of major crimes by Indians in Indian territory, or are such offenses, according to the Major Crimes Act, solely matters of federal jurisdiction? The dispute rests on whether the Creek Reservation, about 3 million acres and part of the city of Tulsa, had been disestablished by Congress when Oklahoma was admitted to the U.S. in 1907. McGirt's case rested on the argument that his serious offense was carried out in Indian country; involved Native Americans; and therefore should have been tried in federal, not state court. The Creek Reservation never ceased to exist, so he was tried in the wrong court. The irony in all this case is twofold. One is the fact the 71-year-old McGirt can get a new trial in a federal court. The second is the possibility that many others who have been convicted in Oklahoma state cases can have the same outcome and can appeal to the federal court. Justice Gorsuch admitted the potential for cost and conflict around the jurisdictional boundaries. Is it an idle hope that with passing time, the federal government, the state, and the tribes can work together successfully as partners in criminal matters as well as in other areas? The McGirt case may lead to other developments, ending neglect of some controversial issues. According to the Fort Laramie peace treaty of 1868, the Black Hills were to be set aside for use and occupation of the Sioux Nation, Lakota, Nakota, Dakota peoples. But after gold was found, the U.S. military entered the area, and Mount Rushmore was built. The U.S. illegally took tribal land in the Black Hills. The Sioux were offered compensation but refused and demand the return of their land. Perhaps the U.S. might follow the Canadian example and acknowledge history. The Royal Ontario Museum acknowledges that "this museum sits on what has been the ancestral lands of the Wendat (and other nations) since time immemorial to today." More general is the impact of the McGirt case on guiding principles for the Supreme Court to examine legislation and law. It must decide whether using extratextual evidence is allowing the states and the courts to usurp the work of Congress. Should courts follow the theory of originalism or one of judicial restraint? Image: K5okc via Wikimedia Commons (cropped). The second hotel is the Holguin Costa Verde Hotel, which will be rebranded as the ASTON Costa Verde Beach Resort. This resort is located in the Holguin region of Cuba on its northeastern coast and comprises 749 rooms, 4 pools, 9 restaurants and 7 bars offering a great selection of a la carte, buffet, beachside and poolside dining options. Both hotels are due to open on 1st December 2020 and will join Archipelago's growing portfolio in Cuba, which includes the GRAND ASTON Cayo Las Brujas Beach Resort & Spa and two upcoming hotels, GRAND ASTON Varadero Beach Resort and GRAND ASTON La Habana Hotel, both currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2021. "We are delighted to be given the opportunity by Grupo de Turismo Gaviota S.A. to introduce our very successful ASTON brand to Havana and Holguin, particularly at such landmark hotels. Since its opening, GRAND ASTON Cayo Las Brujas has consistently ranked as the No.1 hotel in its region for guest satisfaction and quality audits. This operational excellence is now more important than ever and will continue to be post Covid-19, as guests will expect and demand higher standards of hygiene and safety practices from hotels. Cuba is best positioned to alleviate these concerns, as it is recognized as one of the safest destinations in the world, has an excellent healthcare system and is taking a holistic approach as a nation to ensure its tourism offerings meet new standards and expectations", commented Gerard Byrne, Managing Director, Archipelago Overseas. According to Archipelago's President & CEO, John Flood "We will continue to invest in the resources needed to ensure that the hotels we manage and operate in Cuba perform above and beyond our guest's expectations. There is no doubt that in the post pandemic travel context, Cuba will stand out as one of the world's leading destinations for safe, healthy and environmentally friendly travel". About Archipelago International Archipelago International is one of the most trusted names in Asian hospitality, operating over 150 hotels with a further 50+ currently under development across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East. With 20,000 rooms in more than 60 destinations, the Group's brands include GRAND ASTON, ASTON, Collection by ASTON, The Alana, Huxley, Kamuela, Harper, Quest, NEO and favehotels. SOURCE Archipelago International For further information: Erika Anggreini, [email protected], +62-812-3790-3691 New Delhi: After actor Sushant Singh Rajput's father lodged an FIR against Rhea Chakraborty, her family and six others in Patna's Rajiv Nagar police station under IPC Sections 341, 342, 380, 406, 420 and 306 for cheating, exploiting him financially and abetment to suicide, a four-member police team from Bihar began its investigation process in Mumbai. Reportedly, the Bihar police team still awaits Sushant Singh Rajput's post mortem report which is to be shared by Mumbai police. Patna IG also said that the Bihar police has not yet received actor's Post Mortem report. Meanwhile, PTI quoted Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray as saying, "The opposition can even bring Interpol or followers of the Namaste Trump event into the inquiry. Devendra Fadnavis should understand that it is the same police whom he has worked with in the last five years," Thackeray said at an event organised by a Marathi news channel. To question their (Mumbai police) efficiency is an insult to them and "I condemn this," he added. Thackeray said if anyone has any proof related to the case, he/she can bring it to the Mumbai police. "We will interrogate and punish the guilty. However, please don't use this case as a Maharashtra versus Bihar issue. This is the most deplorable thing to do," he said. Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his Bandra residence on June 14, 2020. Fans and several celebrities have been demanding a CBI inquiry into the death case suspecting a foul play. Part of the reason General Electric Co. moved its headquarters to Boston from Connecticut was because its leadership was miffed about the attendee list at a party in Hartford, as the authors of a new book on the companys downfall tell it. The book Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and The Fall of General Electric, by Wall Street Journal reporters Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann tells the tale of GEs fall from corporate Americas upper echelon. The authors put much of the blame on former CEO Jeff Immelt and his perceived unwillingness to acknowledge major problems inside the company, with his underlings using aggressive accounting maneuvers to make GEs financial performance appear more solid to outsiders, according to the book. As the authors put it at the end of one chapter: There was no market for hard truths or bad news. Not as far as the guy at the top was concerned. The book, which is out this month, spans more than half a century, from legendary CEO Jack Welchs start at GE in the 1960s to Larry Culps arrival in 2018 as the first outsider ever to run the company. Given the scope of the story and its subject, GEs move to Boston merits a scant two pages, but it did score a chapter title: The Candy Factory, a reference to the GE HQs former life as a facility for the candy maker NECCO. The authors report that by the time then-Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bornstein and other executives were threatening to move the headquarters out of Connecticut, the companys departure was already a fait accompli. Bornstein thought of Fairfield as a morgue, according to the book, and executives wanted the hustle and bustle of a city. GEs relationship with Connecticut officials had soured in part because the states congressional representatives worked with GE rival Pratt & Whitney to preserve its role as the exclusive supplier of a U.S. jet fighter engine, according to Lights Out. GE had wanted to build the engines as well, but Connecticut politicians sided with Pratt, considering it made the engines in big Connecticut factories while GEs aviation operations are based elsewhere, the book said. The final straw, according to the book, came when Connecticut lawmakers hosted an event in East Hartford to celebrate Pratts victory that newly elected Gov. Dan Malloy decided to attend. The book describes that decisions significance: That, a GE lobbyist said, sealed (Malloys) fate. Some things the company did not forgive. Gryta and Mann dont delve into why GE chose Boston over other contenders like New York, other than to say executives boasted to investors that the $145 million in incentives they received meant the move ultimately cost the company nothing. The authors, perhaps feeling liberated from the restrictions of writing for a newspaper, dont hesitate to take some shots. GEs designs for a glass tower on Fort Point Channel, which have since been scrapped, were terribly ugly. The move to Boston was met with expected swooning by the local press, bedazzled by one of the worlds biggest companies seeming to just fall into their laps, Gryta and Mann write. (No word on whether GE staffers believe Boston media remains in a state of bedazzled swooning.) Boston is the setting for several scenes in the book outside of the headquarters. A meeting between Bornstein and an increasingly impatient activist investor in 2016 took place at Bornsteins six-level, $13 million Back Bay townhouse. The book also catalogues Immelts changing whereabouts. In the few months Immelt was GEs chairman but no longer chief executive, the company booted him and his office to a WeWork space used by a subsidiary in the city, presumably a reference to GE Currents WeWork space across from South Station. When he later joined athenahealth, he landed in a redeveloped old arsenal that buzzed with tech companies that was sunny and modern, the antithesis of his old Fairfield bunker. The change over the course of the book is remarkable. GE transforms from the company that once had a bigger market cap than the next six largest Massachusetts-based public companies, combined, to one that is now No. 7 on that same list. The days of demanding a helipad in Boston for its executives are long gone. At books end, the narrative places Bornstein, the executive who reportedly found Connecticut a morgue, back in the Nutmeg State making venture investments, and Flannery on a six-week road trip with his wife after being forced out as CEO. Enter Larry Culp, stage left. In the end the authors write, when General Electric most desperately needed a manager to save what was left of the company, it had to go looking somewhere else. This article originally appeared on the Boston Business Journals website. THURSDAY 8/6 >> All WW (formerly Weight Watchers) in person meetings are cancelled until further notice. >> AL-ANON meets Thursday at 12 noon at First Presbyterian Church located at 414 Delaware Ave. in York. >> Tabitha Online Support Groups Tabitha will hold a Growing Through Grief Loss of Spouse online support group every Thursday from 10 - 11:30 a.m. Tabitha will hold a Growing Through Grief Loss of Parent online support group every Thursday from 12 - 1:30 p.m. Tabitha will hold a Caregiver online support group every Thursday from 2-3 p.m. The group will provide education and support for those caring for a loved one. Tabitha will hold a new Growing Through Grief All Types of Loss online support group every Thursday from 6 - 7:30. PHOENIX - When some 45,000 coronavirus test kits went unused during a 12-day testing blitz in Phoenixs hardest-hit Latino neighbourhoods, it was clear Arizona health officials failed to adequately spread the word to a community thats often distrustful of government. On the last day of testing in a state thats a national COVID-19 hot spot, just four vehicles lined up on a sweltering morning while a half-dozen uniformed members of the Arizona National Guard milled outside large white tents at a huge desert park in Phoenix. State officials said only about 15,000 of 60,000 test kits were used at South Mountain Park and Preserve and in the western Phoenix neighbourhood of Maryvale before testing ended Tuesday. It shows government officials limitations in promoting the availability of health care resources to communities of colour during the pandemic and the hesitancy from those often most at risk from COVID-19 even if they know about those options. Theres a lot of lack of information from the government, a lot of chaos and a lot of false positive tests creating distrust, said Antonio Velasquez, an evangelical pastor and Guatemalan community leader whos recovering from the virus that hospitalized him for two days. Many people would prefer to not get tested. Community leaders said many Latinos who found out about the testing events still stayed away, unnerved by uniformed military and police or the initial requests for IDs and pre-registration. Some people lack internet access to register online and those without legal status can be wary of giving their names to authorities. The National Guard was a major partner at the event, which later dropped those conditions. Latino leaders in Arizona say they want to help, especially in Phoenix, where 43% of the population identifies as Hispanic. Latinos are disproportionately at risk for the virus because of health problems like diabetes, a tendency to live in larger groups and be employed in hospitality and other work that puts them in contact with more people. Wed like to partner more with the state to better educate our communities about testing opportunities and how people can better protect themselves, said state Sen. Tony Navarrete, one of the Latino lawmakers and health care leaders who discussed the issue with Gov. Doug Duceys staff in a recent online conference. Effective messaging for Latinos about the virus also has been a challenge in other U.S. communities, said Gilberto Lopez, a public health researcher for the University of California, Merced. He saw the same distrust of government while surveying Latinos in Californias Central Valley about their perceptions of COVID-19. The governments generally dont really do a good job at communicating or understanding the communities they serve, Lopez said. The Arizona Department of Health Services, which held the testing blitz with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, translated materials and sent news releases to Spanish-language TV stations. But groups close to the Latino community typically go further. Valle del Sol Community Health in Phoenix has promoted events on the social media accounts of a former Spanish-language news anchor and influencer with tens of thousands of followers. City spokesman Alejandro Montiel promotes Phoenix events in interviews on Spanish radio. State health spokeswoman Holly Poynter said in a statement that the agency worked with community groups to share information on social media. The National Guard says the remaining tests will be used in other Arizona counties. Tomas Leon, senior vice-president of marketing for the private system Equality Health, said the 12-day surge event was halfway over when state officials contacted him for advice on getting more Latinos to show up. The state doesnt really know how to do a lot of this, Leon said. If you dont have credible community organizations working to help promote, you arent going to get far. He said other factors could include triple-digit heat, lag times of up to two weeks for results and concerns about nightmarish waits that his organization saw in June when as many as 1,000 people queued as long as 13 hours for free tests. Its often hard to keep track of the mishmash of free testing opportunities around Phoenix, with nonprofits or other groups pairing with the county or cities for a few days or weekends to take advantage of federal money allocated for COVID-19 tests. As the state prepared to close its South Mountain event, the non-profit HeroZona was opening a free testing location miles away in the majority Latino and Black neighbourhood of Laveen. Just two dozen cars lined up at Cesar Chavez Park for tests. Tim Herrera said he heard about the free testing on English-language TV news. I was expecting much longer lines, said the 68-year-old, who didnt have symptoms but wanted peace of mind. Meanwhile, officials in northern Arizona have been operating a centralized testing site at a park in the forested city of Flagstaff, which has made it easier for Latinos and others to get free tests. There are audio translation services in Spanish and Navajo for those from the nearby Navajo Nation and video for sign language. IDs and pre-registration arent required. Coconino County officials said communicating with the diverse population is a priority for the only county public health agency performing its own COVID-19 tests in Arizona. Everyone who shows up gets a test, about 10% of whom come from elsewhere, county spokeswoman Claire Harper said. County officials learned the importance of cultural sensitivities in messaging while giving information about wildfires, Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Liz Archuleta said. Its very important for me that we get everything out in Spanish and that its not an afterthought, that it is intentional and simultaneous, she said. And we want everyone and I mean everyone to be tested. This, for me, is public service and the role of government. Ayatollah Khamenei rules out any letup in resistance to US Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 8:01 AM Leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has slammed US sanctions on Tehran as "a crime against the Iranian nation". "The sanctions applied by the Americans against the Iranian nation are a crime, and there is no doubt about it," the Leader said in a televised speech on Friday on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. "The sanctions are a crime against a nation; even though it seems to be against the establishment, it is indeed against the entire nation," he added. The Leader said surrendering to the enemy is not the way to lift the sanctions. "The only cure for sanctions is rather relying on domestic capabilities." "Some argue and propagate the idea that if you want to stop the US from bullying, you need to back off. No sir! A person who is accustomed to aggression will come forward if you back off. This is a clear and natural issue. If you accept the US demands, they will raise new demands," he noted. "What the US wants is that we totally abandon our nuclear industry, reduce our defensive equipment to one-tenth, and give up our regional power," he said. "Unfortunately, some people, under the influence of the enemy, say what good nuclear power has for us. Nuclear power is the definite need for our country in the future. We need at least 20,000 or 30,000 megawatts of nuclear power, which we cannot get through another means or it is not cost-effective. What should we do on the day we needed it? Whose door should we knock? Should we beg from America and Europe to give us electricity or do enrichment for us? Will they do that? We have to think about tomorrow. These are not the needs that will be ready in a few months or two years. It must be prepared in advance and we have prepared the ground for this." Ayatollah Khamenei said the principle part of the nuclear industry has been maintained despite numerous damage Iran incurred because of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 'US, not Iran, will benefit from negotiation' The Leader pointed to the US call for negotiation with Iran, and said, "Those who call for talks with Iran seek to negotiate over these issues. Everyone must pay attention; I have said this for several times, and I have to repeat it, because some either fail to understand or pretend they can't understand." "If the enemy talks of negotiation, it means 'come to the negotiating table and don't develop missiles'. If you give in to their demands you'd make yourself defenseless; and if you don't, you'd have to face the same story: disputes, threats and sanctions again. This is what negotiation means." The Leader said the reason for his opposition to negotiation with America is that "such negotiations have no use; of course they benefit from it [but Iran doesn't]." "The old guy who is in office in the US apparently took some propaganda advantages of negotiation with North Korea. He wants to use it [negotiation with Iran] for his personal gain in elections and elsewhere," the Leader noted. However, Ayatollah Khamenei stressed, the US ruling system seeks to achieve broader "vital" objectives beyond what the incumbent president seeks to gain from talks with Iran. "They say you should abandon your defensive equipment, your regional power and national might. No man of honor interested in maintaining the country's interests would give in to such demands. This is why I'm opposed to negotiation; moreover, we are in talks with the entire world, except for the US and the fake Zionist regime, and there's no problem with that," he added. Goals of sanctions Ayatollah Khamenei said the enemies of the Islamic Republic seek to achieve short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals by imposing sanctions against the Iranian nation. In the short-term, they seek to impose so much pressure that the nation gets weary, exhausted, and disturbed, so much so that they stand against the establishment, he said. "You know that last year they said and this year they say there will be a hot summer meaning the people should come and stand against the establishment, but they themselves got the hot summer," the Leader said, apparently referring to anti-racism rallies which have been going on in the US for two months now. Their mid-term goal, he said, is to prevent the country's development through sanctions. "They mainly seek to prevent the country's scientific development," he said, citing the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists as an example of the enemy's efforts to hinder the country's scientific progress. Ayatollah Khamenei said the enemy's long-term goal is to lead the country and the government into bankruptcy. "One of the other goals they pursue is to dismantle the country's economy; if a country's economy collapses, it is not possible to live in that country anymore." The enemies also seek to achieve a collateral goal, which is to cut the Islamic Republic's ties with the resistance forces in the region, Ayatollah Khamenei noted. "That's because they know the Islamic Republic will keep helping them as much as it can." "We have a strategic depth in the region, based on which many nations and governments are our supporters and interested in Iran, ready to strive in the service of our goals. The enemies say you 'should give this up', but even if we do that, they will not stop there. "When you are willing to reduce your ability to defend yourself and destroy your authority in the region; when you are willing to totally abandon your nuclear industry which is vital to the country, the enemy will not be satisfied yet and will demand something new," the Leader said. However, the Leader added, these dreams will never come true and as a Persian proverb says, "A camel dreams of cottonseed." Disinformation campaign The Leader further pointed to a disinformation campaign, which works hand in hand with the sanctions and includes distortion of the truth and misrepresentation of the realities. The main purpose of the disinformation campaign is to undermine the people's morale, and to offer wrong solutions to people's problems, Ayatollah Khamenei added. The enemies, the Leader said, suggest if Iran wants the sanctions to be lifted, it must give in to US demands. "This is the gist of what they say." "Some people are influenced [by these insinuations] and exactly repeat what the enemies want, whether regarding the country's weaknesses or its points of progress which they play down and offer wrong solutions," the Leader said. However, this campaign will fail to influence the majority of the Iranian people, because they have known the enemy and how biased it is, Ayatollah Khamenei added. The Leader said the disinformation campaign tries to convince the Iranian people that the Islamic Republic must succumb to the US demands. "If the distortion process fails, so will the sanctions," the Leader said. "The arena is the arena of war of wills; when the process of sanctions is defeated and the will of the Iranian nation remains the same, it will prevail over the will of the enemy." Ayatollah Khamenei said the Iranian people are smart and have taken advantage of the enemy's sanctions, gaining achievements against the enemy's will. He went on to say that the US' secondary sanctions led the Iranian scientists and producers to indigenize what the country could not provide because of Washington's bans. He pointed to the production of the advanced homegrown jet fighter Kowsar, the spare parts produced inside the country, the establishment of thousands of knowledge-based companies, the Persian Gulf Star Refinery built by the IRGC, and the major energy projects in southern and Western Iran as examples of the Islamic Republic's achievements under the sanctions. "Had they sold us a jet aircraft, we would not have produced the jet trainer Kowsar inside the country," he said. "They [enemies] have admitted that Iran managed to manufacture so many defensive products at the time of sanctions." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Patna: Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey on Saturday (August 1, 2020) said that a team of Bihar Police, that went to Mumbai in connection with the probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, has not yet been able to "locate" the main accused Rhea Chakraborty. He said that Bihar Police is working on the basis of evidence and if needed, senior officers will also be sent from here to Mumbai. He stated that the team of Bihar Police probing in Mumbai has so far met friends, colleagues and relatives of the late actor and collected many important information from them. He said, "The four-member Bihar police team that went to Mumbai has recorded statements of Sushant`s sister, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, his cook, his friends and colleagues. The team also went to the bank to collect information about transactions made from Sushant`s bank accounts. Rhea Chakraborty, however, is yet to be located." On the question of the demand to get the matter investigated by the CBI, the DGP said, "Bihar Police is fully capable of investigating this case. If the family of Sushant would like the case to be investigated by the CBI, then it would be considered, but the Bihar Police would go to any extent to provide justice to Sushant. I assure you that Bihar Police is fully capable of providing justice to his family for the peace of Sushant`s soul." When asked about the allegation of going outside the jurisdiction to register a case in this matter, the DGP categorically stated that Sushant`s father has himself registered the case in Patna, thereafter an investigation was launched. An accused in this case has also gone to the Supreme Court, he said adding "whatever the Supreme Court says will be followed. If the Bihar Police gets a chance to investigate the matter, the truth will be brought out." With regard to sending other officers to Mumbai, the DGP said if needed, a senior IPS level officer will also be sent to Mumbai so that he can meet his counterparts for better coordination. At present, the Bihar Police team in Mumbai is working hard and has met with some success. Meanwhile, Bihar Police has also recorded director Rumi Jaffery''s statement in connection with Sushant's case. As per sources, Rumy was questioned for nearly 4 hours. Sources also said that Bihar Police received a lot of important information after interrogating Rumi as he was close to Sushant in his last days. Earlier on July 25, Sushant`s father KK Singh had registered a case against Rhea and six others, including her family members, at Rajiv Nagar police station in Patna for abetting his son to commit suicide. After the case was registered, Bihar Police reached Mumbai and started investigating the case. Rhea has also approached the Apex Court to shift the case to Mumbai. A decision in this regard is to be made on August 5 in the top court. Sushant, a resident of Patna reportedly died by suicide at his Bandra residence in Mumbai on June 14. Gov. Gavin Newsom, behind lectern, is joined by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) and families who have lost loved ones to police violence for a bill-signing ceremony for AB 392, a reform of California's use of force rules for law enforcement, in Aug. 2019. (Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times) The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Pomona Police Department, alleging that it has been using public funds under the influence of a lobbying group to adopt policies and training that undermine state law on police use of deadly force. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday, names the Pomona Police Department, its Chief Michael Ellis, and the city of Pomona as defendants. It was filed on behalf of Gente Organizada, a Pomona social action group, and a member of a Pomona coalition called Police Oversight Starts Today. A request for comment left with the Pomona Police Department was not immediately returned. In a statement, the city said that it "will vigorously work to ensure that all the facts are shared with the public because those facts will demonstrate that the city is complying with AB392," the state law on use of deadly force. None of the agencies in Los Angeles County have given PORAC or their respective unions a blank check to write Use of Force polices, which includes Pomona. Allegations in the lawsuit center on the Police Departments implementation of a state law Assembly Bill 392 that changed the standard for justifying the use of lethal force from when it is reasonable to when it is necessary. When the law took effect on Jan. 1, it was described as one of the toughest standards in the country regarding use of deadly force. Plaintiffs contend that the departments use-of-force policy references a reasonableness standard throughout and does not acknowledge that AB 392 created the necessary standard. As a result, they claim that the department is applying an inaccurate legal standard when it investigates its use of deadly force. Previously, prosecutors could only consider the moment lethal force was used when determining if an officer acted within the law. Under the new standard, prosecutors can also scrutinize the actions both of officers and suspects leading up to an encounter. Story continues ... Pomona Police Department instructs its officers that AB 392 did not change the legal standard for police officers use of deadly force, the lawsuit states. This instruction is incorrect: it misstates the legal standard of AB 392 and establishes a different and lower standard for Pomona Police Department officers uses of deadly force that violates state law. The plaintiffs contend that the Pomona Police Department has trained its officers on the use of deadly force relying on materials created by the Peace Officers Research Association of California, or PORAC, the states largest law enforcement labor organization. While acknowledging that PORAC declared it was neutral toward the bill several months before it was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Aug 6, 2019, the lawsuit alleges that the group began obstructing its implementation as soon as it became law. According to the lawsuit, three days after the law was signed, the president of PORAC emailed its members claiming that the new standard was consistent with current case law and would not significantly impact how police perform their jobs. The Pomona Police Departments training center then sent that email to all of the departments sworn officers. Shortly afterward, training on the new law was conducted for officers that relied on PORAC materials, the lawsuit states. In a statement, PORAC president Brian Marvel wrote that his organization has worked with the ACLU on police reforms and was disappointed in the allegations in the lawsuit. "None of the agencies in Los Angeles County have given PORAC or their respective unions a blank check to write Use of Force polices, which includes Pomona," he said. The lawsuit seeks several injunctions, including a halt to the use of Pomona Police Department resources to train officers that state law doesnt establish a necessary standard for the use of deadly force. Times reporter Anita Chabria contributed to this report. Terri Carbaugh received a settlement for agreeing to hold the California DOJ harmless while working for Kamala Harris A mysterious non-disclosure agreement has been revealed, showing that Senator Kamala Harris' top aid in the California attorney general's office received a $34,900 settlement to resign quietly in 2011. Terri Carbaugh was working for Harris, who was then California's top prosecutor, as chief deputy attorney general for administration and policy when she signed the agreement in September 2011, according to Business Insider. In exchange for agreeing to resign quietly and release any claim of harassment, discrimination or retaliation against the department, Carbaugh received the taxpayer-funded payout and a glowing letter of recommendation penned by Harris. Harris has previously spoken out against the use of non-disclosure agreements, and the publication of the NDA raises more questions than it answers even as Joe Biden considers Harris on his short list of potential presidential running mates. Harris has previously spoken out against the use of non-disclosure agreements. The revelation comes as Joe Biden considers Harris on his short list of potential presidential running mates Sabrina Singh, a senior adviser for Harris' political operation, declined to comment on the details of the dispute to Business Insider. 'Senator Harris strongly opposes the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence anyone. She fully supports the release of Terri Carbaugh from this NDA if she chooses,' Singh told the outlet. Biden's VP vetting team, led by former Senator Chris Dodd, is reportedly aware of the NDA and has a copy of it. The agreement came less than a year after Harris assumed office as California's attorney general, where she remained until being sworn in to the U.S. Senate in 2017. The full text of the 2011 agreement has been circulating for months among the media elite, though it does not appear to have been mentioned in any prior reporting on Harris, according to Business Insider. The agreement's authenticity was confirmed by the Sacramento Bee, which obtained a copy through a public records request. The amount of the settlement, $34,900, is notable, as California state law requires settlements of $35,000 and up to be reported to the director of finance, along with proposed steps to prevent future circumstances that could result in a similar claim. Carbaugh, seen being recognized by the state assembly, previously worked for Harris as as chief deputy attorney general for administration and policy Harris has taken a strong stance against such employment-related NDAs in subsequent years The NDA was signed on September 28, 2011, and set September 30 as Carbaugh's resignation date. In the intervening two days, the agreement specified that Carbaugh was to work remotely, take no meetings, and refer all inquiries about department business to Harris' senior counsel. Attached to the agreement was a 'pre-approved' announcement that Carbaugh agreed to send out to the department announcing her resignation. Also attached was a glowing letter of recommendation for Carbaugh that Harris agreed to sign once the agreement was executed. The agreement included this 'pre-approved' announcement of Carbaugh's resignation 'Terri is a highly motivated public servant,' Harris wrote in the letter of recommendation. 'I recommend Terri, without any reservation and with the highest esteem, to serve in any capacity she chooses.' Business Insider reported that when it reached Carbaugh for comment, she replied only with an exact copy of Harris' recommendation letter. Experts expressed bafflement at the agreement, noting that Harris had full discretion to hire and fire political appointees such as Carbaugh for any reason, or no reason, so long as the decision did not involve illegal discrimination. Harris has taken a strong stance against such employment-related NDAs in subsequent years. In 2018, Harris co-authored a bill to ban employers from requiring workers to sign non-disclosure agreements to get a job. Sandstorm Gold (NYSE:SAND) Q2 2020 Earnings Call , 11:30 a.m. ET Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks: Operator Good morning. My name is Amy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Sandstorm Gold Royalties second-quarter conference call. [Operator instructions] Please be aware that some of the commentary may contain forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. [Operator instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Watson. Please begin. Nolan Watson -- President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Well, thank you, Amy. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for calling into the second-quarter earnings call for 2020. This morning, Erfan, our CFO, is going to walk us through the Q2 results; and then David Awram is going to provide a brief update about our asset base. And then as usual, we'll turn it over to the operator, Amy, for a question-and-answer period. And if anyone has any questions that do not necessarily need to be part of the live Q&A, you can ask those questions through the web portal and we'll ensure that each question we get there will get a direct response from us after this call. Before I hand it over to Erfan, I want to provide an update on how our business has been impacted by COVID-19, as well as, answer some common questions of investors about our deal pipeline, Hod Maden, as well as, my expectation for where the market is going. At this time, we'll be going through a prepared PowerPoint presentation on the web portal. So if you're able to, please turn your attention there now. So starting with an update about how our business was affected by COVID. You can see on this slide, each of the producing assets in our portfolio that were affected by COVID-related shutdowns. Nearly half of our producing assets were affected. Some were for short periods, others involved total shutdowns for most of the quarter. Perhaps the most material impacts came from Santa Elena and Fruta del Norte which were shut down for most of the quarter. This is one of the reasons I love being a royalty company because despite this, we still had $13.4 million in operating cash flow before working capital adjustments, which is a testament to the robustness of our business. Because of COVID, we pulled our production guidance for 2020. However, I would like to provide a bit of clarification as to how these mine shutdowns may also affect our Q3 numbers. It's worth noting that all of these mines are currently back up and running, which means for Q3, we will be able to accrue revenue for the full quarter for each of our royalties. However, for our streams, we do not recognize the sales until we have actually received the gold from our counterparties and have actually sold it. In most cases, we delivered gold in the month following the actual production. However, in the case of Cerro Moro, we delivered silver once per quarter only, meaning that our Q3 ounces from Cerro Moro will reflect what was actually produced in Q2. And as Cerro Moro operated at a reduced rate in Q2, investors can expect our Q3 sales to be affected by COVID even though all mines are back up and running now. The good news is that we expect to be back to record revenue and potentially record cash flow by Q4. Moving on to general corporate update. I'll start with the current status of our deal pipelines. Last quarter, as the world felt like it was falling apart, our deal pipeline became as full as it had ever been. The majority of opportunities were from base metal companies that had gold or silver byproduct streams to sell. We're still working on a few of those potential transactions. However, as the central bankers have stepped in and started printing money at a record-setting pace, base metal prices have rebounded, and a number of base metal companies no longer require selling streams. Therefore, our deal pipeline has been out a bit. Having said that, with gold at record levels and with a strong balance sheet, we're continuing to build a war chest of capital to prepare for our next leg of growth. Sandstorm is well capitalized to continue growing and our team is still working hard to find the next leg of growth. Investors have also been asking questions about the status of Hod Maden. So I'll provide a quick status update. The Hod Maden feasibility study is moving quickly and the goal of having the results by the end of this year is still looking like an achievable goal. Once the feasibility is complete, we'll provide an updated time line for its expected start-up, however, it is worth noting that due to COVID, there have been some delays that will impact when the mine starts up. And in addition, there are some long lead items being identified in the feasibility study that may cause the official start date to be pushed back a bit further. So it's possible that the start date will get pushed into 2023. But we'll provide much more detailed information once the feasibility study work is completed and has been announced. Having said that, we're very pleased with our partner, Lidya Madencilik and how expeditiously they're pushing the asset forward, including having already started some of the earthworks for the road from sites to nearby highway. It's very clear that they're fast-tracking this asset toward production. This gets me particularly excited because when this asset comes online, I personally expect gold prices to be even higher than where they are today, which leads me to the final topic of where I see the market going. It's clear to me that the amount of debt in the world combined with the amount of damage COVID has done and continues to do to the world economy that the only way out of this debt trap is for central bankers to continue printing money and thus devaluating the money to make it debt easier to repay. I believe this will continue for a long period of time and will result in nearly all real assets in the world being materially revalued once this is all over. I expect the gold will continue to set all-time highs. That silver will increase dramatically along with things like copper. I even see record real estate markets within the not-too-distant future. Real assets are going to go up materially in price and there may even become a bubble in real assets. Because of that, I'm incredibly bullish on gold and for the amount of money that our investors can expect to earn from those increasing gold and silver prices. We're excited at Sandstorm to have a strong balance sheet, a strong portfolio, and significant growth ahead. As at this moment, we are entirely debt-free. We have $52 million in the bank. These are good times for Sandstorm and I genuinely think they'll keep getting better. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Erfan. Erfan Kazemi -- Chief Financial Officer Thanks, Nolan, and hello, everyone. I'm grateful that you've taken time out of your day to join us. I'd like to walk through our second-quarter financials in a bit of detail to see how they compare to both 2019 and the previous quarter. If you turn your attention to Slide 8 and reference the chart on the left, the black bars represent the number of attributable ounces sold over the last four quarters. You will see that Sandstorm sold approximately 11,000 attributable gold ounces during the second quarter of 2020 at an average realized gold price of $1,715 per ounce. Sandstorm's realized total revenue of $18.7 million represented here as the gold bar. In our first-quarter conference call, we discussed our expectations of lower production numbers in Q2 due to the effect of COVID-19. Nolan's already discussed, which of Sandstorm streams and royalties were affected, and these delays are reflected here in our second-quarter production numbers. However, as Nolan noted, 100% of the producing mines in Sandstorm's portfolio that were either shut down or reduced operations have been back up and running since the beginning of July. The silver lining in what was a difficult quarter for many mining operators can be seen in the chart on the right. This shows the average realized gold price for the last four quarters, illustrating a nice upward trend. The good news is now that all of Sandstorm's producing assets are back online, we will be selling those gold ounces at significantly higher prices than we were able to just over a year ago. Looking at the quarterly financials a little closer. The chart on Slide 9 compares the second quarter of 2020 with the same period in 2019. The attributable gold equivalent ounces sold decreased by 33% during the quarter, which was largely due to the operation suspensions that we've discussed. The resulting revenue of $18.7 million represents a 13% decrease from the second quarter in 2019. The decrease in attributable ounces sold was partially offset by a 31% increase in average selling price of gold. The average cash cost per attributable ounce during the quarter was $257, which resulted in cash operating margins of $1,458 per attributable ounce. That's an increase of nearly $450 per ounce compared to the second quarter of 2019. I think this highlights one of the many strengths of the royalty business model. Even in a seriousness of production delays, Sandstorm's cash flows are protected from the downside of rising operational costs and benit -- benefit from the upside of a strengthening gold market. It's also important to note that although our mining partners experienced lower production over the last few months, Sandstorm is still entitled to the gold ounces and royalty revenue from our producing mines. Thus, as we mentioned on the last call, this has been a delay and not a loss. As a result of the increase in operating cash margins, as well as, an increase in the gains realized and recognized on the revaluation of Sandstorm's investments, primarily driven by an increase in the fair value of the Americas Gold and Silver convertible debenture and Equinox Gold warrants, net income for the quarter was $7.1 million, up from $2.4 million in Q2 2019. I'd like to highlight a few specific assets on this next slide that provides a breakdown of Sandstorm's attributable gold equivalent ounces sold for the second quarter. The Yamana silver stream continues to be a strong producing asset for Sandstorm, since the Cerro Moro mine reached commercial production in the second quarter of last year. In addition to a temporary reduction in operations at Cerro Moro due to the pandemic, the depressed price of silver has also played a factor in Sandstorm's sales revenue from the stream. While silver did not experience the same run-up the gold price did in the second quarter, that trend seems to have changed over the last number of weeks. The Yamana silver stream remains a strong producer in our portfolio, and we're looking forward to continued success of the project in this higher silver price environment. The price of copper also struggled through much of the second quarter, a 21% decline in the average selling price of copper, compared to the second quarter of 2019, resulted in decreased sales revenue from the Chapada copper stream. It is worth noting that the price of copper has rebounded since the end of the second quarter. So I would expect to see stronger revenue from the Chapada copper stream by the end of the third quarter. The Santa Elena mine with another larger operation affected by COVID-19 and experienced a temporary suspension. This resulted in a 77% decrease in the number of gold ounces sold during the second quarter, compared to the same period in 2019. In late May, the operator, First Majestic Silver, announced they were beginning to resume operations in Santa Elena, and so, we expect stronger sales revenue from this mine for the remainder of the year. For those who have been following Sandstorm for a while, you may notice in addition to this chart, the Relief Canyon mine, which contributed approximately a thousand gold equivalent ounces in the second quarter. Sandstorm began receiving fixed payments from Americas Gold and Silver in May of this year. Sandstorm acquired the stream as part of the larger financing package with Relief Canyon back in April 2019. As part of the stream agreement, Sandstorm will receive 32,000 gold ounces over the next five and a half years followed by 4% stream on the gold and silver production from the mine. Finally, I'd like to look at Sandstorm's capital position. Sandstorm exited the quarter with a strong balance sheet, with zero debt and over $40 million in cash. Quite a reversal from the previous quarter where we had $50 million in debt. How did we do this? Well, during the quarter, Sandstorm completed an early warrant call in April with proceeds of over $50 million. In addition, the company realized over $25 million in cash from the sale and redemption of a portion of Sandstorm's equity and debt investment. This monetization investments as part of our corporate strategy of selling non-core assets and using that capital raise to continue growing our stream and royalty portfolio. In fact, that strategy continues to be successful. As Nolan mentioned, we have over $50 million in cash as of today. In addition to our cash position, Sandstorm still has over $70 million in equity and debt investments and an undrawn revolving credit facility of $225 million with a $75 million accordion feature. As you can see, in a season of uncertainty for many businesses around the world, Sandstorm's financial position remains robust. It's exciting to see the precious metals continue to do well and how that benefits Sandstorm shareholders. We're looking forward to the remainder of the year as our mining partners return to some sense of normality and as we continue to look for new opportunities for growth. And with that, I'll turn things over to Dave for an asset update. Dave Awram -- Senior Executive Vice President and Co-Founder Great. Thanks, Erfan. So despite a challenging start to the year, there have been lots of updates in Q2 for our portfolio of royalties. As mentioned earlier in the call, our operating partners have adapted well for COVID-19 and have resumed operations. Many jurisdictions have also deemed exploration as an essential service. So many drill programs have resumed. With frothy mark -- capital markets in the exploration space, we're seeing a remarkable amount of capital raise for exploration on projects held by junior companies. More projects than ever are being drilled, which is great because we are keen on demonstrating the exploration potential in our asset base. I'll start with Hounde operated by Endeavour Mining. This asset has been incredible in how it's expanded since our involvement in the beginning of 2019. When we purchased the royalty, there was under 1.9 million ounces measured in indicated resources. Less than two years later, there's 4.4 million ounces in M&I and it's clearly still growing. Now not all of these new resources are on a royalty ground, but much or most of it is and aggressive drilling continues to expand the project. Endeavour has operated this project exceptionally well and we expect a reserve update soon, more discussion on the expansion of the mining 1 million, and of course, further exploration success. Next is a brief update on Fruta del Norte. Right at the beginning of July, Lundin Gold restarted operations at the Ecuadorian gold mine. They were the last of our producing partners to get back into operations. They've given strong guidance for the rest of the year projecting 150,000 to 170,000 ounces for the second half of 2020. This is quite a bit higher six months total than the original guidance at the start of the year. So you can see the team is focused on knocking it out of the park for the rest of the year. Their time off was not wasted, as Lundin went out to raise over $55 million for resource expansion and to study increased throughput. It's great to have partners like that who are focused on growth even before they ramp up production. The one exploration of project I'll speak about is close to my heart in the Meli project by Sun Peak Metals. Sun Peak has been private for the last three years, three years -- three and a half years and are just about to go public on the TSX Venture under the ticker symbol PEAK. Off the back of financing in late 2019, they managed to get some drill holes completed on their Ethiopian projects before COVID hit. The Sun Peak team is led by Greg Davis and is comprised of a group that has worked together for over 17 years, and are responsible for discovering and defining two of the biggest VMS deposits found worldwide in the last 20 years. Greg and his team hone their skills at the Bisha and Asmara projects in the Nubian-Arabian Shield, where I believe they are unparalleled in experience. They're added again in Ethiopia looking for the next world-class VMS deposit in one of the most un -- underexplored jurisdictions in the world. Sun Peak spent the last three and a half years, searching and acquiring over a thousand square kilometers of prime property along trend of their previous discoveries. Initial drill results in the Meli project have over 15 meters, 3.2 grams, 25 grams silver, 2.2% copper, 1.4% zinc in the first hole, and over 37 meters to 2.5 grams gold, 29 grams silver, 2.4% copper, and 1.3% zinc. Excellent results. But as far as I'm concerned, secondary targets in an overall property portfolio. As they get the chance to begin drilling again later this year, I'm very much looking forward to seeing the results from their multiple primary targets. This is the right team with the right property at the right time and those are the exploration groups Sandstorm wants to be attached to. Bayan Khundii is a project that we've been attached to for the better part of a decade, but I haven't talked about much for some time. The project is operated by Erdene Resources and is based in Mongolia. We were involved shortly after its discovery and are happy to see it proceed all the way through its current feasibility study. It's not a big project, but in keeping with our favorite ones, it's very low cost and hold some excellent upside potential. The feasibility study released in mid-July outlines a high-grade open pit operation with all-in sustaining costs below USD 740. Construction and sustaining capex is under $65 million. So it's a low-cost project for almost 64,000 ounces of gold production per year. Of course, we also like the exploration potential and are believers that this project could extend well belon -- beyond the current six-year mine life. We'll be watching very closely in the future. With that, I'll pass the call over to Amy for the Q&A. Peel -- please feel free to ask questions about any of our royalties and streams. Questions & Answers: Operator [Operator instructions] Your first question today comes from the line of Robert Carlson with Janney Montgomery Scott. YOur line is open. Robert Carlson -- Janney Montgomery Scott LLC -- Analyst Hey, guys. Congratulations on what's been happening. I just looked at the screen here and I noticed year-to-date, you're up 29.9%. Well done. There's always been talk of initiating a dividend. And I know now, since we've got a cash position, any more thoughts on that? Nolan Watson -- President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. Thanks -- thanks for those remarks and definitely feels good to be Sandstorm these days. And as Erfan noted, our cash position has changed dramatically from $50 million of debt and little cash to over $50 million of cash and no debt, and the cash flow is coming in quite strong. Right now, we are -- my personal opinion is that next year, we should be a dividend-paying company. However, there are other factors at play, including some of these larger transactions that are in our deal pipeline right now. We want to see how those play out before we make any final long-term capital allocation decisions. Because once we start paying a dividend, our goal is to pay one forever and to increase it every year. So we just want to see how some of this stuff flushes out before we make that decision. Robert Carlson -- Janney Montgomery Scott LLC -- Analyst Thank you. Operator [Operator instructions] Your next question comes from the line of John Tumazos. Please proceed with your question. John Tumazos -- Very Independent Research, LLC -- Analyst Thank you. I apologize, I've never been to Ethiopia or Mongolia. Could you tell us a little more about each of the projects? When do you think there'll be a maiden resource in Ethiopia? Could you update us on how documented the project is in Mongolia? What do you think the time frame might be for first outputs? Dave Awram -- Senior Executive Vice President and Co-Founder Sure. So on Ethiopia, Sun Peak, so it's very early stage still for them. They really just did -- drilled a couple of these targets. So saying when a resource could get fleshed out on there, it's hard to say. I would expect if they can get in and begin drilling again, which they hope to this fall, initial resource could come out sometime next year. Ethiopia has not been a popular destination, but it's a very good destination even for Africa. There's been a lot of infrastructure money spent there. There's very, very cheap power for all of Africa and abundance of it, compared to most jurisdictions in that continent. And the government is -- really revised the way it's doing business and getting exploration companies to work there. And of course, it's a free and competitive market for work there. And so, we'll certainly be anxiously watching it. I think it's really more of a discovery story at first, and then, it will be about really a resource story soon after that as they start to flesh it out. For Mongolia, with Erdene, so that project, Erdene has been working, I think, in Mongolia for over 20 years now. So it's a management team that's very familiar with the jurisdiction. This is the feasibility of the study was public -- or has not yet been published. Just the results of the study have been outputted. They're going to be working on permits and putting together a financing package for the construction of this asset. They already got a big uplift because they received over $30 million in equity so far soon after they announced the results of the feasibility study. So we'll kind of stay tuned for timing on permits. But certainly, with the feasibility study done, a relatively low capex project, not a large mine to begin with. You know, at only 1,800 tons per day as an open pit operation, that indicates that it's quite small for that type of operation. So it should be a relatively straight project to permit and to construct. So the time line will be when they're able to firm up the permits should be relatively straightforward on that. John Tumazos -- Very Independent Research, LLC -- Analyst Switch -- thank you very much. Switching to Hod Maden. Does the -- you talked about the road building. Has the permit process been completed and are all the legal details in order? Dave Awram -- Senior Executive Vice President and Co-Founder Yes. So the road is -- has been -- most of the road upgrades are going to be completed by the government. And that program is expected to -- other than the upgrades that have been done so far by the company, those upgrades are expected to begin this fall. In terms of permits for the mine, the EIA is kind of -- it's been submitted and it's in process. It kind of works in conjunction with the feasibility study. It's expected to be completed toward the end of this year after the feasibility study has come out. Once that EIA is done, that gives you most of the permit setter in place, but you still need the forestry permit on top of that. And Lidya Madencilik has just completed another forestry permit on one of their other mines, Gediktepe, which actually has much more forestry ground associated with it and it took them a year to get that permit. So we'll wait -- we'll have to wait until the EIA is completed to understand really where they think the position on the forestry permit is. But we've had discussions with Lidya Madencilik about it and they've been relatively positive about where they think the process is going to go and the timing for that forestry permit, which is really the ultimate permit to make sure they can get into that full -- full-scale construction. Prior to that, though, they do hope to get some early works done on that, including the road and including some of the mill and mine site areas. John Tumazos -- Very Independent Research, LLC -- Analyst Thank you. I guess one last one. A couple of your smaller projects are Black Fox and Gold Bar. They've had a little tough luck in both of those locations. The tons and grade have gone south in a big way. What is your philosophy toward operations that have hard times of terms of maybe your revenue royalty is too small to make a difference, and there's no point restructuring it. Do you think it would help if you restructure the royalty for a time? Nolan Watson -- President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. No, it's a good question. The Black Fox is a good example of one that's an asset that's gone well past its original reserve life. We've made a lot of money off that deal and continue to make money, albeit, less when the grades are lower like this. Our deal there, as well as, on Gold Bar is small enough that it doesn't materially impact the operations of the mine. So whereas, Sandstorm, maybe four or five years ago, had to do a couple of amendments on streams where we were taking too much of the economics. We don't have any of those situations right now, so we are not looking to amend anything. John Tumazos -- Very Independent Research, LLC -- Analyst Thank you. Congratulations on all the progress despite the health crisis. Nolan Watson -- President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. Thank you. Operator [Operator instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Matthew William, a private investor. Please proceed with your question. Unknown speaker Hey, thanks, guys. Appreciate you taking a few additional questions here. So Dave, I believe it's been a little while since you've spoken of Oyu Tolgoi. I know it's a ways into the future, although, I'm interested to understand what is your base case view on when you will receive first revenue on Oyu Tolgoi? And then, Nolan, on a related front, it seems to me that the investment in entree would be seen as a core rather than a non-core equity holding. And I'm just kind of curious, how do you delineate between core and non-core equity investments and as how you think about them internally? Nolan Watson -- President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. So it's Nolan. I'll just give the update here on expected timeline to production. So the last public guidance that they had given of expected timeline production came out just over a year ago and it was 2027. I expect that date to be pushed back maybe a year based on the timeline delays that they've had at Turquoise Hill getting Oyu Tolgoi going up and running. But that situation is progressing well and you know, it's funny. I think once they do eventually get into cash flow, they'll probably cash flow their entire market cap every single year for a number of years. So it's an asset that we're very keen on. Having said that, to answer your question about equity investments and what is core versus non-core, our business is streaming and royalties. All equity investments are non-core. This is a more material investment for us and it's probably a longer-term hold than other equity investments in our portfolio. But that is not a core part of our business. We are extremely wealthy company. So we just classify everything as non-core. Unknown speaker OK. Thanks, Nolan. Appreciate it. Operator Your next question comes from the line of Alfred Heinrich, where -- a private investor. Please proceed with your question. Alfred Heinrich -- Private Investor Hello, I'm calling from Switzerland. I'm not sure I understood everything correctly, but let me just ask. For the corona, I mean, you had some lockdown. What is the probability that you will have further lockdowns because we are going to have a second wave? Or have you made a technical advancement or changes that you can do business without lockdown? That's my first question. My second one is, I've been a shareholder, an individual shareholder for about seven years or so. How about dividends? Is that somewhere around the corner? Or are you just investing again and again and again? Those are my questions. Nolan Watson -- President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. Thank you. So I'll start with the dividend one first because, like I said earlier, our -- I believe a dividend should be paid eventually with a company like ours and that's our goal. We are going to make that decision next year, if we're going to pay a dividend next year. And so, I can't give a definitive answer, but I personally would vote for it. That's my personal opinion. With respect to COVID-19 shutdowns, we don't get a say in those because we're just a royalty company. And so, we -- nothing that we do matters as to whether or not the asset is going to shut down or stay open. Having said that, I can't predict what's going to happen with COVID going forward any more than anybody else can. So I won't prognosticate as to what COVID is going to do. But what I can say is, what we're seeing across the entire mining industry is mining companies getting a lot better at dealing with the realities of operating when people do get infected by COVID. And I would say, at most of the mining assets around the world, there are one or more employees that have it and they get isolated, and they keep on mining and they keep moving forward. So I think that if there is another flare-up in COVID, fewer mines will shut down than they did the first time. And either way, because we're a streaming and royalty company, we'll still have -- Duration: 33 minutes Call participants: Nolan Watson -- President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Erfan Kazemi -- Chief Financial Officer Dave Awram -- Senior Executive Vice President and Co-Founder Robert Carlson -- Janney Montgomery Scott LLC -- Analyst John Tumazos -- Very Independent Research, LLC -- Analyst Unknown speaker Alfred Heinrich -- Private Investor More SAND analysis All earnings call transcripts Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images Late Monday night, President Trump and his son Donald Jr. retweeted video testimonials about the alleged effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. The next day, the Daily Beast reported that one of the doctors in the video, Stella Immanuel, has several other rather unusual medical beliefs: that alien DNA is used in medical treatments, that scientists are trying to create a vaccine to make people secular, and that demons are responsible for a wide array of sexual and psychological ailments. Of course none of those facts would be necessary to see that Immanuel is a quack. The claim that Trump circulated that Immanuel has successfully treated hundreds of patients with hydroxychloroquine, despite overwhelming evidence that it is ineffective is farcical on its face. Asked at a press conference yesterday about Immanuels bizarre demon-related claims, Trump insisted that he was only endorsing her allegedly successful treatments with hydroxychloroquine. I thought she was very impressive, Trump said. She said that shes had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients. That perhaps her beliefs about aliens and demons discredit her claims about hydroxychloroquine did not seem to occur to him. Trump was not alone in this response. Rush Limbaugh angrily denounced the Daily Beast for reporting on Immanuels beliefs. Oh, everybody is trying to destroy this woman: Do you know that she believes that alien DNA was implanted in the human race thousands of years ago, and theres a secret in that DNA that could unlock things and we could cure many diseases? he complained. Theyre trying to portray her as some wacko, unbelievable kook out there. Limbaugh did not address the alien-demon sperm issue. His sole focus was on Immanuels belief in hydroxychloroquine. She has her own track record of using it and prescribing it, he enthused. She says shes not lost a single patient. She says that in the past few months she has cured over 350 patients and not lost one. Like Trump, Limbaugh seems not to have considered the possibility that Immanuels self-reported success with a medication that medical scientists have studied extensively might not be true. At no time in his lengthy monologue does he even raise the possibility that Immanuels bizarre alien- and demon-related beliefs have any bearing on her credibility. Without quite saying so, both Trump and Limbaugh are observing an invisible line, between politically acceptable kookery and politically unacceptable kookery. Among influential members of their party, it is perfectly fine to insist that the entire worldwide medical Establishment has conspired to suppress an effective treatment for COVID-19. It is not acceptable to blame demons for most medical problems and claim the medical Establishment is controlled by aliens. The problem is that the line keeps moving. Every political party has a rough borderline separating tolerable and intolerable views. The partys mainstream beliefs are defined in relation to these contours. The Democratic Party is not socialist, but the relation of socialists to the Democratic Party hovering around its margins, with some working within the party and others refusing to support it gives some sense of the belief system that prevails within the party. The fringe beliefs are adjacent to the dominant ones. One way to tell that the Democratic Partys center has moved left is through the movements of its borders. The point is not to equate what passes for an acceptable belief in the Democratic Party with what passes for acceptable belief in the GOP. Quite the opposite, in fact. While the fringe segments of the party might support some unrealistic or unworkable programs or goals a jobs guarantee, a complete carbon phaseout within a decade, and so on it contains nothing resembling the rampant nuttery in the Republican Party. As the boundary demarcating the Republican fringe has advanced further right over the decades, the definition of what passes as unremarkable has moved with it. The president himself is obviously the most famous example of this. As recently as five years ago, leading Republicans put Trump himself outside that border. He was a huckster who had peddled a conspiracy theory about President Obamas birth certificate. I think hes a kook, said Lindsey Graham in February, 2016. Now the kook is president, and the unacceptable public position within the party is to call him one. Just as revealing is the growing collection of nuts and extremists Trump has dragged into the partys tent. Before Trump, explicit white-nationalist groups tended to keep their distance from the party. But in Trump, they found enough common ground to rally to his side. Trump does not endorse white supremacists, but white supremacists endorse Trump. The QAnon conspiracy theory is formed specifically around Trump, though it will probably outlive him. Its tenets are too wild for Republican leaders, or even Trump himself, to openly endorse. Still, it has gained a large and growing foothold within the party. Eleven Republican congressional candidates openly endorse the theory. Its followers have crowded his rallies, and Trump has (perhaps unknowingly) shared their slogans. His aide, Dan Scavino, has tweeted QAnon memes. Fox News host Jesse Watters said the cult had uncovered a lot of great stuff in an interview with Eric Trump, who heartily agreed. Its imprint is large enough that a Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy would not dare deliver a speech denouncing it. The partys rightward lurch can also be measured in a series of extremists nominated or appointed to posts within the administration. Merritt Corrigan, the deputy White House liaison at the U.S. Agency for International Development, has written, Liberal democracy is little more than a front for the war being waged against us by those who fundamentally despise not only our way of life, but life itself, and complained, Our homo-empire couldnt tolerate even one commercial enterprise not in full submission to the tyrannical LGBT agenda. John Gibbs, Trumps nominee to run the Office of Personnel Management (and a current official at HUD) has claimed that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were Satanists. Rich Higgins, whom Trump nominated for a Pentagon job, has called former President Obama a communist and Black Lives Matter an agent of communist China. Higgins would be chief of staff to Anthony Tata, who has described Obama as Muslim and a terrorist leader, and suggested that former CIA Director John Brennan sent a coded tweet ordering Trump to be assassinated. The significance of these appointments is not just that they legitimize beliefs that Republicans previously considered too embarrassing to associate with openly they change the definition of what constitutes fringe. Beliefs like Climate scientists have conspired to falsely create a consensus for anthropogenic global warming, or Democrats routinely engage in massive undetected vote fraud no longer even register as controversial. The fringe ideas that do attract attention are by this point nearly indistinguishable from simple mental illness. The border keeps moving further into delusional territory, and will probably keep moving after Trump is gone. GODFREY The Illinois Department of Natural Resources will host a free fishing clinic at Glazebrook Park, 1401 Stamper Lane in Godfrey Monday, Aug. 10 to Thursday Aug. 13. A class will be held fro 9-9:30 a.m. with catch and release from 9:30-11 a.m. Fish poles and bait will be supplied, but guest are allowed to bring personal poles. A person is not required to go to every lesson to participate. The Delhi High Court has issued a show-cause notice to the principal and chairman of a private school in the national capital for disallowing two students from taking online classes over non-payment of fee. A single-judge bench of Justice Pratibha M Singh, while hearing a contempt petition filed by the father of two students of the school on Friday, issued a show-cause notice and directed the principal and the chairperson to join the hearing through video conferencing on August 7. The bench, after hearing the detail submission of the petitioners counsels, also asked why contempt action be not initiated against the school for not complying with the courts order. The father of the two students, in his contempt plea, said that he was not even permitted to deposit the fee online as the petitioners access to the portal of the school had been blocked due to non-payment of fee from April 2020 till June 2020. The counsel for the petitioner submitted that in fact the examinations have also commenced and petitioner are also being deprived of taking the said examinations. The High Court opined that the school ought to have immediately complied with the order. Notably, the Delhi High Court had in its earlier order directed the school to the petitioner access to the school portal immediately so that the students can attend online classes. The petitioner shall deposit the fee in the school within one week. During this entire period, access to online classes shall not be stopped to the petitioner. The petitioner shall be permitted to participate in all the activities of the school which are being conducted through virtual/online classes without any hindrance whatsoever, the earlier order had said. The court had also noted that the careers of children is paramount and directed that the school shall intimate the petitioner as to how much fee is payable up to date within a period of one week. A man fatally shoots his wife, and mother in law when he was unable to find his gun magazine. He later on regretted gunning down both in the weekend. The shooter, Frederick Lee Clea, told the police that it was not intended, but he was sorry for shooting both victims to death. Those killed by the wild outburst of Clea, is his 41-year-old wife, Latiya, and her 75-year-old mother, Mekenda Sanders, reported Crazy America. He killed the two, in their family home at Cheltenham on Saturday. It was where they lived and where both victims got shot to death. When asked by the police after his arrest, they interviewed him about the motive for shooting the two. He admitted that it was about a misplaced gun magazine that made him lose his temper after arguing with Latiya. He added the argument started, when he was looking for a 'loaded' gun magazine for a pistol. He remembered that his wife has it. Frederick went through the room turning everything over, just to find the bullets that were unexpectedly used to kill his victims. The ammo magazine was found and loaded into his 9-mm pistol. Then he went to the kitchen where he came upon his wife and mother-in-law in the kitchen, handling the groceries. He explained to the police that he still argued with his wife and popped rounds into the women. The investigators were told that the victims did nothing to anger him.,adding that even his stepmother was quiet during the argument. He just shot them for no reason at all, as admitted to the investigators. Also read: Man Hides Decomposing Body Under Floor Board, Tries to Escape Authorities By Disguising as His Siste A call on Saturday sent the police to the Clea home, reporting a domestic disturbance On the 911-call, there in the background was a woman screaming about something done to her, and mentioning something about her leg, with much alarm, said the complaint, confirmed MSN. During the call, gunshots rang about 20 second, then there were three rounds at 12 seconds later, noted investigators. When the police went to the location, the shooter let the police in and told them that he lost it and killed the two women and shot them. Police who arrived on the scene went to check on the victims and found both dead with gunshot wounds. Latiya and Sanders were already dead beyond any help, cited DNYUZ. The county coroner examined the corpses of the slain victims, Latiya got shot five times by her husband, more than Sanders who just got a single good shot in the chest that was immediately fatal. Inside the house, when the shooter went amuck was two children, aged-5 or 10. They are now with relatives. There were two incidences of domestic violence according to sources. A statement said that buying a gun and his temper resulted into the death of the the two victims. There are two orphans with no grandparent, as a result of the crime. He will stay in prison for life. Frederick was charged with two counts of first- and third-degree murder, as well as possessing an instrument of crime. Related article: Three Friends Found Killed on a Fishing Trip Under Mysterious Circumstances @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Eastern Libya military court gives journalist 15 years: A military court in eastern Libya sentenced a local photojournalist to 15 years in prison on vague terrorism-related charges, prompting an outcry from rights groups. Ismail Bouzreeba al-Zway, 39, was detained by security agents while covering a news event in his hometown of Ajdabiya in 2018, according to the international Committee to Protect Journalists. He was accused of working for Al-Nabaa, a privately owned Libyan news channel broadcast from Turkey that eastern Libyan authorities consider to be affiliated with Islamist "terrorism." Turkey backs Libya's U.N.-recognized government in Tripoli against the rival government in the east. Bramptons integrity commissioner has determined Coun. Gurpreet Dhillon sexually harassed a woman while in Turkey in November 2019, and recommended he be suspended without pay for 90 days, the harshest penalty her office can prescribe. In a damning 268-page report released Friday, Integrity Commissioner Muneeza Sheikh found that Dhillon, regional councillor for wards 9 and 10, engaged in the unnecessary, unwelcome, and unwanted sexual touching of a Brampton woman in her hotel room while on an official trip with the Canadian Turkish Business Council. As part of her investigation, Sheikh said she reviewed a cellphone recording the complainant made of the alleged attack, in which the woman can be heard saying no to Dhillon 74 times over the course of 2 minutes and 57 seconds. The commissioners report is not a finding of criminal wrongdoing or guilt, and the complainants allegations, which include sexual assault, have not been tested in court. In a statement Friday, Dhillon said I completely deny the allegations and conclusions made in this report, which he described as one-sided and politically driven. He said that, despite repeated requests, the integrity commissioner refused to disclose the purported evidence against him, which represented a total lack of due process. Dhillons lawyer said the councillor had launched an application for a judicial review challenging the validity of the report. I hold myself accountable to the people of Brampton. The allegations against me are wholly inconsistent with who I am and my six-year track record as a public servant, Dhillon said. Sheikh wrote in her report she was alerted to the allegations against Dhillon by Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown on Nov. 27, after the complainant reached out to him, alleging that Dhillon had sexually assaulted and harassed her. Brown didnt file a formal complaint with the commissioner, but Sheikh wrote that she exercised my own discretion to treat it as a complaint that required at least a preliminary investigation. The complainant, who is not named in the report but is described as a Brampton business owner, didnt file a formal complaint until March 19. According to Sheikh, Dhillon refused to participate in the integrity commissioners investigation, citing procedural irregularities. Over the course of the investigation, which included interviews with the alleged victim and people she told about the incident, as well as a review of notes, photos, and other records, Sheikh concluded Dhillon tried to force himself on the complainant at the Movenpick Hotel in Ankara, Turkey, between the evening of Nov. 14 and early hours of Nov. 15. Sheikh wrote that in the audio recording, the councillor can be heard pleading with the complainant to have sex with him, but she repeatedly resists. The complainant made it clear that she did not want to engage in any sexual contact or sexual activity with Councillor Dhillon, Sheikh wrote, and the womans dozens of refusals in less than three minutes make very clear how vigorously the complainant was refusing. Sheikh concluded that Dhillon forcefully lifted up the complainants skirt while he had her in his grip and lifted her off the ground. The commissioner wrote that the complainant was clearly traumatized by the encounter, and on the recording can be heard panting uncontrollably after Dhillon leaves the room. Sheikh concluded Dhillons conduct was grossly discreditable and was unbefitting of his role as a councillor for Brampton, and violated the citys respectful workplace policy as well as council rules. Misconduct of this nature warrants the highest level of discipline, she wrote, but the integrity commissioner only has the power to recommend a 90-day suspension without pay. I am displeased there is no avenue that allows for Councillor Dhillons immediate removal from City council. In addition to the suspension, Sheikh recommended council formally reprimand Dhillon and take other remedial action it deems appropriate, such as barring him from visiting municipal offices except to retrieve mail or attend council meetings and prohibiting him from travelling outside the province on official business. She also recommended Dhillon issue a formal apology to the complainant and the public for his gross misconduct. A spokesperson for Mayor Patrick Brown didnt immediately return a request for comment Friday night, while a City of Brampton spokesperson referred questions about the report to the integrity commissioner. Council will consider the report at its Aug. 5 meeting. A man who believed he was defending his fiancee when he punched two sisters in the face at a hen party has received a fully suspended sentence. Luka Tomljanovic (33), of Gardiner Street, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to two counts of assault causing harm at Sams Bar, Dawson Street, Dublin, on January 19, last year. He had no previous convictions. Detective Garda Fiona Deehy told Dara Hayes BL, prosecuting, that early on the date in question, sisters Aoife and Shauna O'Connor were attending a hen party in the city centre bar. Det Gda Deehy said Tomljanovic and his fiancee were part of a group sitting in the bar near the hen party. The accused's fiancee began to dance in the sisters' faces, who felt as though she was trying to intimidate them. The dispute began when a bottle struck and smashed the glass Aoife O'Connor was holding in her hand. The bottle was thrown by another person in who was part of the same group as the accused. A row began between the accused's fiancee and the other women in the hen party, with pushing and shoving on both sides. Restrained Tomljanovic arrived into the middle of the row and threw nine punches, two of which struck Aoife O'Connor in the face and one which struck her sister Shauna in the face. Tomljanovic was then restrained by security. Tomljanovic told gardai he saw people gathering around his fiancee and pulling her hair. He said he was trying to move people away by punching them and he was aware he was punching women. Det Gda Deehy agreed with Pieter Le Vert BL, defending, that his client also punched two other women, neither of whom reported any injuries. She agreed his client felt the assaults were something he needed to do to protect his fiancee. Mr Le Vert said his client had 2,500 in court as an offer of compensation to the victims. He said his client is unemployed and that he is planning a wedding. Judge Melanie Greally said it appeared to have been "a one-off and out-of-character event" and that he is unlikely to reoffend. Judge Greally sentenced Tomljanovic to 12 months' jail but suspended the sentence on condition that he hand over the 2,500 to the victims or a domestic violence charity. The Governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, has denied he has plans to report his predecessor, Olusegun Mimiko, to the Economic and Fi... The Governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, has denied he has plans to report his predecessor, Olusegun Mimiko, to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). In a statement signed by his Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Donald Ojogo, Akereolu insisted his friendship with Mimiko will not be forced by political differences. There have been rumours on social media, that the EFCC may pick up Mimiko, for allowing Akeredolus deputy, Agboola Ajayi, contest in the October 10 governorship election under his political party, Zenith Labour Party (ZLP). But Akeredolu has now described the stories as lies, planted to destroy his relationship with Mimiko which goes back over 40 years. The attention of the Ondo State Government has been drawn to a viral post circulating in a section of the social media. The post specifically makes allusion to an imaginary statement ascribed to Governor Akeredolu wherein he allegedly threatened to expose his friend of over four decades and former Governor, Olusegun Rahman Mimiko, to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The widely circulated story line is untrue, puerile and utterly mischievous, the statement read in part. The widely circulated story line is untrue, puerile and utterly mischievous, the statement read in part. Rajya Sabha member, former Samajwadi Party leader and famed power broker during the UPA era, Amar Singh, 64, lost his battle with kidney ailment on Saturday. He passed away in a Singapore hospital where he was undergoing treatment for kidney ailments. From Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan condolences poured in as the news broke. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said Singh was friendly with all political parties. He remembered him as "humorous and always energetic". "Amar Singh, MP and a person I have known for long, died today. Although he was mostly with the SP, but he made friends across the spectrum of political parties. My condolences to his family," said BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy. Amar Singh was expelled from the Samajwadi Party in 2017 after rift between Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh, his father, started to widen. But that was not the first time that he had been expelled from the party. Amar Singh underwent a successful second kidney transplant. But the abdominal infection couldn't be reversed, according to news reports. Name: Yasmin Monet Prince Age: 21 Hometown: London Now lives: Ms. Prince lives with her family in a townhouse in Sydenham, a leafy suburb of London. Claim to fame: Ms. Prince is a rising British actress known for her role in Hanna, an action drama on Amazon Prime Video that returned for its second season in July. Her character, Clara, is a super-soldier who escapes from a secret lab at the end of Season 1 and returns as a leading force in the shows story line. Ms. Prince has a history of playing action roles including her parts in Dark Heart a crime series, and Nocturnal, a crime thriller. I really enjoy the physical and emotional challenge these roles offer me, she said. Big break: Ms. Prince was involved in musical theater since 9, and at 14 landed spots at both the Shakespeares Globe youth company and the BRIT School of Performing Arts. After graduating in 2016, Ms. Prince starred in Ellen, a film produced by Britains Channel 4, about a troubled teenager being raised in a broken, single-parent home. It was massive because it was my first TV project ever, and it was a lead role, she said. President Donald Trump on July 31. Carlos Barria/Reuters President Donald Trump on Friday said he planned to vote absentee in the 2020 election. Trump has painted a false distinction between absentee voting and mail-in voting, which are virtually the same thing. The president has repeatedly made unfounded assertions that mail-in voting will lead to widespread voter fraud in November. Voter fraud is extremely rare in the US. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. After months of unfounded attacks on mail-in voting, President Donald Trump on Friday said he planned to vote via an absentee ballot in the 2020 election. "Absentee ballots are great ... I'm going to be voting absentee," Trump told reporters as he once again condemned mail-in voting, which is practically identical to absentee voting in terms of process and security measures. Trump has repeatedly drawn a false distinction between absentee and mail-in voting, according to voting experts. "No-excuse mail voting or absentee voting whatever you call it is essentially the same thing," David Becker, the founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, told CNN in mid-July. "You request a ballot, you get a ballot, you vote, you send it in, and there are protections in place," Becker added. "It doesn't matter whether you call it mail voting or absentee voting. It's the same thing." Though he continues to make misleading comments on mail-in voting, Trump will be voting by mail in November. The president also voted by mail in the Florida GOP primary in March. Because of concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats have advocated for expanded access to mail-in voting to reduce the chances of the virus spreading at crowded polling places. Trump, who's trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, has responded with repetitive, baseless assertions that voting by mail will lead to widespread fraud. Story continues "Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history unless this stupidity is ended," Trump tweeted on June 22. On Thursday, the president went as far to suggest that the election should be delayed (which he has no legal authority to do), again citing unsubstantiated concerns over mail-in voting and mirroring the tactics of anti-democratic authoritarian regimes in the process. The reality is that voter fraud is extremely rare in the US, and there's no substantial evidence to support the notion that increased access to mail-in voting would jeopardize the integrity of the election. In 2016 and 2018, there were just 372 cases of potential fraud out of approximately 14.6 million ballots cast by mail (0.0025%), according to a recent analysis from The Washington Post. Despite these facts, Trump continues to maintain that mail-in voting will lead to "disaster" in November. Read the original article on Business Insider Washington: James Murdoch has resigned from the board of News Corp over disagreements with its coverage of politics and environmental issues in a move that separates him from his family's global media empire. James, the youngest son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, said he would step down immediately as a director at the company that owns The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and The Herald Sun. James Murdoch has resigned from the News Corporation board. Credit:Getty Murdoch's resignation represents a final severing of ties from a business empire he once seemed destined to lead but has become increasingly estranged from over recent years. For those familiar with the internecine, Succession-style power plays of the Murdoch family, James's resignation was not a huge surprise. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 19:57:32|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close The Capitol Hill is shrouded in fog in Washington, D.C., the United States, on Dec. 17, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) The two parties remain far from making a deal, with the extension of unemployment benefits being one of the sticking points, and both sides of the aisle have blamed each other for failing to make progress. WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The expiration of enhanced federal unemployment insurance benefits on Friday will be a "significant hit" to the fragile U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic as roughly 30 million unemployed Americans will lose a crucial financial lifeline, economists have said. As part of the 2.2-trillion-U.S.-dollar coronavirus relief bill passed in late March, Congress agreed to provide 600 dollars in federal unemployment benefits per person per week on top of state unemployment benefits. But those extra benefits are set to formally expire on Friday midnight as Republican and Democratic lawmakers are deadlocked over negotiations on the next COVID-19 relief bill. The two parties remain far from making a deal, with the extension of unemployment benefits being one of the sticking points, and both sides of the aisle have blamed each other for failing to make progress. "Republicans tried several ways to extend unemployment benefits. Democrats blocked them all," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted Friday. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attends a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., the United States, July 28, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua) In response, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, blamed Republicans for failure to act in more than 10 weeks. "More than ten weeks ago, we passed the Heroes Act, which had a path to containing this virus with testing, tracing, treatment, mask wearing, sanitation. The Republicans said they wanted to 'take a pause.' Well, the virus didn't," Pelosi said Friday at a weekly press conference, referring to the 3-trillion-dollar relief package approved by House Democrats in May. Senate Republicans on Monday unveiled their 1-trillion-dollar relief package, which would slash the federal unemployment benefits to 200 dollars through September, giving an unemployed worker about 70 percent of previous wages when combined with state benefits. But Democrats want to maintain the current level of benefits through January. Letting enhanced unemployment benefits expire or even renewing them at a lower amount will be a "significant hit" to the U.S. economy, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "There has been talk that Senate Republicans support cutting the benefit to 200 dollars per week. If this becomes law, nearly 1 million jobs will be lost by year's end, and unemployment will be 0.6 percentage point higher," Zandi wrote Thursday in an analysis. "With unemployment still firmly in double digits and seemingly set to go higher regardless of what lawmakers do now, this would seem a poor policy choice," he wrote. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., the United States, on July 9, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua) In the absence of a new supplemental jobless benefit, aggregate U.S. household income will lose roughly 72 billion dollars a month and is likely to weigh meaningfully on consumer spending, according to economists at Wells Fargo Securities. "Over the past three months, consumer spending has averaged 1.1 trillion dollars a month. Assuming all of the lost income were to translate into a commensurate drop in personal consumption, all else equal, spending for August could be about 78 billion lower, a monthly decline in the neighborhood of 7 percent," Wells Fargo Securities economists Tim Quinlan, Sarah House and Shannon Seery wrote Friday in a report. "Prior to the current crisis, the largest monthly decline on record was 2.1 percent in figures that go back to the 1950s," they noted. While warning that a recent resurgence in COVID-19 cases is starting to weigh on the U.S. economic recovery, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that "there is a need for some additional fiscal support." Many Americans that were laid off during the pandemic are going to need support "if they're going to be able to pay their bills to continue spending money to remain in their current rental house or apartment, or house if they own it," Powell said at a virtual press conference. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (1st R), former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (2nd R) and Paul Volker (2nd L), Vice Chairman and incoming Chairman Janet Yellen attend the U.S. Federal Reserve centennial commemoration at the Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C., capital of the United States, Dec. 16, 2013. (Xinhua/Zhang Jun) Former Fed chiefs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen have also urged Congress to approve the next COVID-19 relief bill and extend enhanced unemployment benefits as the pace of the U.S. economic recovery could be slow and uneven. "The unemployment insurance has a humanitarian aspect. We want people to be able to pay their bills and to stay in their homes," Bernanke said at a Congressional hearing two weeks ago, adding the unemployment insurance will also increase aggregate demand and help the economy in general. The U.S. economy contracted at an annual rate of 32.9 percent in the second quarter of the year, the steepest decline since the government began keeping records in 1947, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! Even though kids are happy staying and studying from home amidst the COVID-19 lockdown parents are waiting for the day the schools would reopen. However, this new study surely highlights why there is still time for schools to be deemed safe for the little ones. Reuters The study was trying to understand the impact of COVID-19 on kids below the age of five years. They looked at kids who showed mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19, however along this road, they discovered that they actually contained higher concentrations of the novel coronavirus than kids of older age, teens and even adults. Conducted by researchers from Northwestern University and a Chicago pediatric hospital, the study published in JAMA Pediatrics surely puts an asterisk on parents and educators who were gearing up for the opening of schools and daycare centres. The study doesnt really test the rate of COVID-19 transmission in children, but they do look at the possibility that kids could be more, if not, at a similar risk of transmitting SARS CoV-2 than adults. It is important to note, however, that a major chunk of kids in the study had comparably milder symptoms. They used clinical data collected from 145 COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms that only started showing the symptoms over the previous week. The sample was split into three categories -- children under five, children between five and eighteen years, and adults from 18 to 65 years. This sample, however, didnt include severe patients, asymptomatic patients as well as patients who didnt have any symptoms for a week. Kids below 5 years have high COVID-19 load The nasal swabs of kids below the age of five were considerably more concentrated than older kids and adults. In fact, some kids had higher concentration levels who werent even that ill. Taylor Heald-Sargent, the lead author and a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and assistant professor of paediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine said "We found that children under 5 with COVID-19 have a higher viral load than older children and adults, which may suggest greater transmission, as we see with respiratory syncytial virus, also known as RSV. This has important public health implications, especially during discussions on the safety of reopening schools and daycare." Reuters When will school reopen? Researchers claim that there is still much to be learnt about the infection, its transmission and how the immune system responds. However, now is probably not the right time to let the kids out. Taylor said in a statement to Fortune, "One of the things thats come up in the whole school reopening discussion is: since kids are less sick, is it because they have less of the virus? And our data does not support that. We can't assume that kids aren't able to spread the virus." Dateline Charting Myanmars Course Through US-China Tensions -- Ye Ni: Welcome to Dateline Irrawaddy! This week, well discuss Myanmars foreign policy amid tensions between China and the US. Former Information Minister [in the U Thein Sein government] U Ye Htut has joined me to discuss this. Im The Irrawaddy Burmese editor Ye Ni. As everyone knows, there was a war of words on social media between the US and Chinese embassies recently. US embassies in six Southeast Asian countries attacked China, accusing China of undermining the sovereignty of its neighbors, citing Chinas activities in the South China Sea. The tensions have grown to an extent that the US sent two aircraft carriers into the South China Sea. This is one of the developments from Trumps trade war with China and analysts suggest the US and China are engaged in a cold war. What is your assessment of the situation? Ye Htut: The US started to exercise an Indo-Pacific strategy under Trumps leadership. If I remember correctly, Trump proposed an Indo-Pacific strategy during the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] meeting in 2017. In 2019, the US Department of Defense issued an Indo-Pacific Strategy. Before that, it issued its National Security Strategy. This reflects how the US views the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean together as one large security region. But the idea was first presented by Japanese Prime Minister Abe in 2007, who was in his first premiership at the time. He suggested that four democraciesthe US, Japan, India and Australiashould take the lead on containing the rise of China in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. Trump put that idea into practice. The Indo-Pacific Strategy issued in 2019 says that a free and open Indo-Pacific region includes 1) respect for sovereignty and independence of all nations; 2) peaceful resolution of disputes; 3) free, fair and reciprocal trade based on open investment, transparent agreements and connectivity; and 4) adherence to international law. It appears that the US is trying make accusations against China on three of those four pointson [lack of] respect for sovereignty, peaceful resolution of disputes and adherence to international law. The op-ed published by the US Embassy in Myanmar accused China of violating those three points, citing [unregulated] banana plantations [in Kachin State] and debt trapsissues that have increased anti-Chinese sentiments among Myanmar people. In the past, the US viewed ASEAN as a bloc in its approach toward the relationship between China and ASEAN. Now, the US is focusing not only on the relationship between China and ASEAN, and but also trying to create discord between China and individual ASEAN countries. But this will not evolve into a cold war like there was between the US and the Soviet Union. At the time, besides the political rivalry, there were wars and invasions through proxies. The current situation will not turn out like that. The rivalry may intensify on the geopolitical and economic fronts, as far as I am concerned. YN: Taking a look at foreign policy, Myanmar had to depend heavily on China in the past. The US imposed sanctions against Myanmar and bilateral relations only improved after reforms were introduced under the U Thein Sein administration. Everyone was taken aback by then-President U Thein Seins decision to suspend [plans for] the Myitsone Dam. It was viewed as a challenge to China. Would you explain the Myanmar governments foreign policy on the US back then? YH: Despite different political systems, from 1948 to 1988, Myanmar attached great importanceboth under the AFPFL [Anti-Fascist Peoples Freedom League] government led by U Nu and under U Ne Wins governmentto China as a neighbor and a strategic country. At the same time, the country maintained friendly ties with all Western countries, including the US. But building ties with the US was not intended as a threat to China. At the same time, it was not the case that we allowed China to undermine the sovereignty of our country, just that we maintained good ties with them. We fought the CPB [Communist Party of Burma], which was backed by China, and we strongly opposed [ethnically Chinese students] when they, under the influence of Chinas Cultural Revolution, defied the governments order not to wear Mao Zedong badges or carry copies of Maos Little Red Book to schools and universities. What happened then, between 1988 and 2011, was that we did not abandon the US, but they shut the door on us, pushing us toward China. We had no option but to engage with China. So we had to rely on them more than ever. However, we did not let this affect the territory or sovereignty of the country. China-Myanmar relations had become a strategic partnership under the U Thein Sein administration. But our relationship with Western countries, including the US, was not good. What U Thein Sein thought was that Myanmar had to rejoin the international community if it wanted to see full developmenteither of its economy or of anything else. To do so, it had to improve ties with Western countries, including the US. For that to happen, reforms had to be carried out inside the country, so the U Thein Sein government took steps to reconcile with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and 88-generation activists. We approached the US not because we wanted to break off ties with China. We just wanted to restore ties with the US as before. This was the reality. But when the US and some analysts described it as anti-Chinese move, some ministers in the U Thein Sein government took up that viewfor example in connection with the Myitsone Dam. I have written about it my book. U Thein Seins decision to suspend the Myitsone Dam was not intended to insult China. It also was not a signal that Myanmar wants to break off its ties with China in favor of the West. As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi [then the opposition leader] had expressed opposition against the Myitsone Dam, U Thein Sein was concerned that it could lead to an uprising and his government was not able to start reforms. So he made the decision himself to suspend the dam project. Frankly speaking, I would say he made a hasty decision. Of course Western countries liked it very much. By suspending the dam project, we did not intend to break off ties with China, but we never denied the allegations that we were seeking to break off our ties with China. The consequence was that China felt like it was the only loser in Myanmars democratic reformsthough it may not oppose reforms in Myanmarand that Western countries were winning applause while it attracted only negative views among Myanmar people. After all this happenedperhaps it is coincidental or intentionalfresh clashes erupted in northern Myanmar. New groups like the AA [Arakan Army] grew, acquired weapons, infiltrated into Rakhine State and started military operations. Though all the ethnic armed organizations [EAOs] in northern Myanmar had previously signed ceasefire agreements, all of them refused to sign ceasefire agreements with the U Thein Sein administration. YN: Myanmar had to fight back against the CPB and also resist the influence of Chinas Cultural Revolution. Among the EAOs based on the China-Myanmar border are the United Wa State Army, which is believed to be the most powerful EAO in Myanmar, the Kachin Independence Army, which possesses relatively strong forces, and the AA, which is engaged in active fighting with the government. Because of its geopolitical position, Myanmar inevitably has to engage with China. While China has control over EAOs in Myanmar, it is also offering to make infrastructural investment in Myanmar through the One Belt One Road [OBOR] Initiative [also known as the Belt and Road Initiative]. How much do you think we can trust in China? YH: Whether we can trust in China will depend on its strategic interests. We can trust China if it believes we will not harm its strategic interests. If we are deemed harmful to its strategic interests, China will do what it mustthough they say our two countries have Pauk-Phaw [sibling] relations. To compare the situation now to back then, we were able to engage with them as equals from 1948 to 1988, based on five principles of peaceful coexistence. Once, we spoke up for China at the UN when China was not yet a UN member. But when sanctions were imposed against us after 1988, we had to rely heavily on China, particularly on the economic front and the international diplomatic front at the UN, throughout the U Than Shwe administration. When sanctions decreased after the U Thein Sein government restored ties with Western countries, Myanmars economic reliance on China fell to a certain extent. As relations with Western countries improved, Myanmar needed less help from China on the diplomatic front. Then, renewed clashes erupted and the peace process with EAOs in northern Myanmar stalled. So what happened was that we had to rely on China regarding ethnic affairs and the peace process under the U Thein Sein government. Previously, we said we needed no outsiders in peace talks, but then we had to allow China to participate in peace talks as observers or in a mediator role. Then, the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi government came to power. I thought her government would be able reduce Myanmars reliance on China. But, the Rakhine issue broke out, and investments from Western countries declined due to various reasons. As pressures resurfaced on the UN front, the National League for Democracy government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has had to rely on China diplomatically. On the economic front, Myanmar even has to sign separate agreements with China as part of the OBOR initiative. Regarding the peace process, Myanmar has to continue relying on China. So, China is holding all three cardsthe economic, the diplomatic and the peace processfor Myanmar. This is the reality. To address this, Myanmar needs to understand the strategic interests of China and seeks to cooperate with it based on those strategic interests, without conceding sovereignty and economic freedom. It is wrong to think that we will be able to grab back all three cards by taking sides with the US. This is the reality. YN: Thank you for your contributions! You may also like these stories: New Challenge for Myanmar as US Seeks to Loosen Chinas Grip in Southeast Asia Myanmar Urges Calm After Social Media Spat Between US, Chinese Embassies US, China Agree to Continue Engagement Amid Strained Ties - Chiz Escudero reacted over the latest data reported by the Department of Health - In DOHs new memorandum, mild or asymptomatic cases will be considered recovered 14 days from date of onset symptoms - According to the former senator, what the health department did was intolerable and insulting - He also asked President Rodrigo Duterte to fire Health Secretary Francisco Duque from his post PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed! Former senator and now Sorsogon Governor Chiz Escudero slams the Department of Health (DOH) led by Secretary Francisco Duque on his social media posts. KAMI learned that the Sorsogon Governor also called for the termination of Duque as the health secretary. Photo from Wikimedia Commons Source: UGC In a tweet, Escudero reacted to the recent decision of DOH to include the mild and asymptomatic cases in mass recovery adjustment that resulted in 38,075 recoveries in just one day. After recording the highest one-day covid+ new cases of 3,954, DOH reports a 38,075 mass recovery adjustment to include mild/asymptomatic cases, he wrote. This is only in the Philippines & is intolerable & insulting! he added. Escudero also asked the President to fire Duque from his post. PRRD: Sir, please fire Sec. Duque!!! You/we/I deserve better po!!! In the tweet of Escudero, he shared a photo with words saying: I dont know whats worse: People who lie or people who think I am stupid enough to believe the lies! Sorry but... How can anyone even agree that DOH is correct in CLAIMING/OWNING that mild/asymptomatic covid+ patients are recovered when there was NO INTERVENTION ON THE PART OF DOH OR DOCTOR OTHER THAN THEIR OWN IMMUNE SYSTEM that was responsible for their supposed recovery? Earlier, Philippine Star reported that the DOH recorded 38,075 new recoveries today, Thursday. It mentioned that patients with mild or no symptoms are tagged as recovered 14 days from the date of onset symptoms or by date specimen collection. PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! As of posting time, there are now 89,374 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Philippines. Meanwhile, 22,327 of the cases remain active. Today, a record-high 3,954 new COVID-19 cases were reported by the health department. So far, this is the highest number of new cases recorded in just a day. Recently, the Philippines already surpassed China with the number of COVID-19 cases. The coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, China. Please like and share our Facebook posts to support KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinion about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts! Source: KAMI.com.gh Former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid was questioned on Friday in connection with a case related to the north-east Delhi riots, in which he and at least eight others have been booked under the Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA), and charged with sedition, murder, attempt to murder and rioting. Khalids cellphone was also seized, police said Saturday. The case is being probed by the Delhi Police special cell, which is probing a larger conspiracy angle behind the riots that took place in February. Friday was the first time that the former JNU student was questioned for his alleged role in the riots that left 53 dead over 400 injured. Joint commissioner of police (special cell) Neeraj Thakur confirmed that Khalid was questioned by his team at their office on Friday and that his cellphone was seized for investigation. Thakur, however, refused to share further details. A special cell officer, who did not want to be identified, said, Khalid was questioned for nearly three hours. He was questioned regarding the purported provocative speeches he had allegedly delivered at two different places before the visit of US President Donald Trump in February. Khalid had allegedly appealed to the public to come out on streets and block the roads during Trumps visit, the officer said. More than eight people, including suspended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain, Jamia student Meeran Haider, Jamia Coordination Committees media coordinator Safoora Zargar, and Pinjra Tod activists Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, have been arrested under the stringent UAPA on charges of planning and executing the north-east Delhi riots. The counsels for the arrested persons have accused Delhi Police of launching a witch hunt against their clients, only because they were part of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. According to the special cell submissions before the court, Khalid along with the other accused had hatched a conspiracy to orchestrate the riots just before the Trump visit on February 24 and 25. In at least four charge sheets, police have said Khalid had met councillor Hussain and Khalid Saifi, an activist, on January 8 at the Shaheen Bagh sit-in protest site to allegedly plan the riots. When contacted Tridip Pais, counsel for Khalid, said he did not want to comment on the case developments. Khalid was earlier arrested in February 2016 for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans on the JNU campus along with former student union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others. They were charged with sedition. They had denied the charges and accused the police of using doctored videos to build a case against them. The case is being heard by a city court. La Crosse speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Jul. 31, 2020 President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday expressed deep concerns over the protracted incremental insecurity in the country, essentially, in northern Nigeria. He, however, reaffirmed confidence in the service chiefs in handling the situation. The president, accordingly, gave fresh assurance that there would be more resources for the countrys military, police and other security agencies to deal with the unwanted security situation in some areas of the country. Assessing the state of security in the country, the President described the situation, particularly, in the North West and the North Central parts of the country as very disturbing. In a message to Nigerians shortly after performing the Eid prayers with his family and aides at the forecourt of the State House, Abuja on Friday, President Buhari said that while much had been achieved, security wise, from the situation he inherited in 2015, more still needed to be done. He said considering the security situation on ground when he came to office, Nigerians know that we have done our best. However, what is coming out of the North West and the North Central is very disturbing. Responding to a specific question on the performance of the Service Chiefs which recently, he said needed to get better, the President said that the Military, the Police and other security agencies are working hard. We are making available resources for them to even do better, he assured, adding that from the reports I am getting, they could do much betterthey could do much better. But we are keeping them on the alert all the time to do their duties. On the issue of corruption, President Buhari said that all past and present cases will be fully investigated. This is why we put the commission (of investigation) in place. There has been abuse of trust by people trusted by the previous administration and this administration, he said, stressing that all of such cases will be uncovered and firmly dealt with by his government. On the specific case of the Niger Delta, the President decried the wastage of the resources earmarked for the betterment of the lives of the people of that region, lamenting that corruption had been unhelpful in that regard, especially if you recall there is the 13 per cent derivation. He also warned against the vandalization of oil pipelines in the oil- producing areas which often results in environmental pollution. Those who are blowing pipelines and interfering with the production of petroleum products are hurting their people more than the rest of Nigerians because the majority of their people are fishermen, fisherwomen and farmers. Now if they pollute the land and the waters, the fish goes into the deeper sea where the people cannot go and they cannot grow anything. They are hurting their immediate communities more than any other thing, the President further noted. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka, together with the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), will conclude its general election campaign with an online meeting livestreamed through the partys Facebook page at 3 p.m. Sunday, August 2. The SEP is fielding 43 candidates for three districtsColombo, Jaffna and Nuwaraeliyain the scheduled August 5 general election. All previous SEP election meetings, which attracted significant audiences, were held online because of the coronavirus pandemic. The election is being held as COVID-19 infections are spreading across the country, exposing earlier claims by President Gotabhaya Rajapakses government that it had successfully controlled the disease. Indifferent to the health and lives of the masses, the government has lifted the lockdown it reluctantly implemented in late March and reopened the economy. The ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna administration wants to win a two-thirds parliamentary majority in order remove limited constitutional restrictions on the presidents authoritarian executive powers. It aims to establish a presidential dictatorship based on the military in order to crush the inevitable struggles of the working class and the oppressed masses against the austerity measures it is implementing. The so-called opposition partiesthe United National Party, its breakaway faction, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the Tamil National Alliancehave no fundamental opposition to Rajapakses dictatorial agenda. All fear the growing opposition of the working class. The SEP is the only party in this election fighting for the independent mobilisation of the working class based on international socialism and against growing social inequality, the danger of imperialist war and the threat of dictatorship. The SEP election meeting will be addressed by party speakers, including General Secretary Wije Dias and leading candidates. They will explain and elaborate the international socialist program on which the partys election campaign is based. We invite workers, youths, intellectuals and WSWS readers to attend and participate in this important event online. Meeting details: facebook.com/sep.lk 3 p.m. Sunday, August 2 The federal government is being urged to conduct a review of Chinese state involvement in Australias electricity grid and consider the removal of some equipment amid fears of remote sabotage. Influential South Australian senator Rex Patrick is behind the push as Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows China has overtaken Vietnam as the main supplier of transformers for the Australian electricity network in recent years. Some believe imported transformers could put the power grid under threat of attack. Credit:Paul Jones Transformers are crucial parts of the grid that convert alternating current from one voltage to another, powering households and energy-intensive factories. In 2018-19, Chinese companies supplied 29 of the 70 transformers imported by Australia. Of these, 16 were for use in Victoria. The Andrews government signed a memorandum of understanding with China in 2018 to participate in its controversial Belt and Road initiative. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Everyone is aware of the physical health crisis caused by COVID-19. However, as a country, we are facing a new danger. It is coming in the form of mental health distress increased anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal impulses. Those who are vulnerable, isolated, or ill-equipped to address mental health effects of the pandemic have turned to alcohol, marijuana, porn, and over-eating in significant and quantifiable numbers. Our country is dealing with rising cases of domestic, sexual and child abuse. These problems often lead to a cascade of other medical and social problems, and our medical and public health systems are not well prepared to respond. Im encouraged by the agility of the church weve witnessed over the past two months. While our governments have done what they can to address the many needs of Americans, local churches have often been the ones to meet financial, physical and emotional needs in very efficient ways. Church leaders are deeply plugged into the specific needs of their communities, and, most importantly, they have a heart for providing spiritual support and care. However, many pastors find it difficult to speak about mental health challenges from the pulpit. In a 2018 survey, nearly half said they rarely, or never, speak on the subject to their churches in sermons or large group messages. The good news is that church leaders have the trust of their congregants. Many congregants will ask you or your staff for emotional help before they consider going to a professional. They believe that God can heal, and they believe that their faith and prayers play a significant role in helping them to recover. They are not wrong. But the current situation is complicated. As a seminary graduate and a licensed psychologist who has worked with many pastors, I have seen that many of our faith practices are helpful, even speeding recovery for those experiencing a mental health crisis. But it is also clear that when our communities do not encourage the use of appropriate medications and psychological care, people can feel isolated and not recover as quickly or holistically. Just like wed pray for healing for someone who has the coronavirus, while still trusting them to the care of medical professionals, we must pray and encourage with Scripture those struggling with their mental health, while also trusting them to the care of mental health professionals who can help them on their journey. In fact, what I love about counseling is that as a Christian psychologist, I can lean on God and His Word in my practice. Certainly, this year and likely for many years to come, we psychologists and pastors alike must anticipate addressing the mental load weighing heavily on people around the world as a result of the coronavirus. By the time the world is normal again, fear, loss, trauma, and skepticism are likely to take root in the hearts of a majority, even those who are deeply committed to the Christian faith. As we prepare for that future, here are a few ways church leaders can help those who searching for spiritual and emotional support: 1. Acknowledge emotional struggles are real and not a sign of spiritual weakness. In 2 Samuel 22, David recounts the distress he experienced while under attack from his enemies. He recalls the flood of death and destruction that was about to sweep him away. In that moment of peril, he remembers to do the only thing he could do, But in my distress I cried out to the Lord: yes, I cried to my God for help (v.7). Notice here that God did not give David a lecture to remember to trust him. When Elijah, after a stunning victory against the prophets of Baal, turned and ran for his life and asked God to let him die (1 Kings 19), what does God do? Does He call him out for his weak faith? Give him a sermon? No. He provides for his physical needs and then, only after some time, begins to ask him some questions. Even Jonah, in the midst of ungracious rage at God (Jonah 4), receives kind and gentle questions. The Bible is filled with stories of people crying out in their distress to a God who is listening to them. Traumatized and distressed people need to know that what they are feeling is real and important. Being in distress is not a sign of spiritual weakness. It is the reality of being a human. When church leaders validate pain and distress without sermonizing or giving the deeper theological answer, people in pain often feel understood and less alone thereby often reducing the pain they feel. There is a temptation to offer perspective as a means of comfort, but our presence helps more than our insights. If you find it hard not to jump to exhortation, try asking these three questions first: What happened (what is causing your pain)? How does that make you feel? What has been the hardest part? 2. Invite your congregation to express their questions and laments to God. When was the last time your congregation lamented together the pains suffered within your community? Consider offering everyone in your church or community space to express their deepest questions, and even complaints, to God as an act of corporate worship. In fact, take the risk and lead the way with your own laments. The COVID-19 crisis has certainly taken from all of us our health, our financial security, our relationships, our ability to worship together, and so much more. You might wonder if this will make people feel even more ungrateful and bitter. Ironically, there is evidence that suggests that those who express their anger toward God may increase their sense of connectedness to Him. Keep in mind that when you admit the aches of your soul to God, you are not whining. You are having honest conversations with one who knows everything about you and has called you by name. 3. Preach on Gods care for and tenderness towards traumatized and distressed people. Have you ever considered that the Bible is primarily written about and to traumatized people? In nearly every story of the Bible, we meet distressed and overwhelmed individuals. The Pentateuch is the story of the call of Gods people out of slavery and into a land surrounded by enemies. The story of Israel and Judah is a story of turmoil, political upheaval, threats of war, and oppression by foreign governments. The New Testament is also filled with the same sorts of troubles, ending in persecution and a final battle. What can we learn about our God who has communicated to us in our suffering? God pursues us, even when our suffering is by our own hand (Gen 3). God is moved by our pain (Exodus 3:7). God keeps track of our sorrows (Psalm 56:8). God bears our burdens and rescues us (Psalm 68:19-20). God comforts us in our suffering so that we can participate in his kingdom work (2 Cor 1:4). Let this God of the oppressed, who does not crush bruised reeds, shine in your sermons. 4. Continue the journey of healing. You and your church are well positioned to provide ongoing practical spiritual and emotional support for the long journey ahead. Just as many of you already provide healing groups for those dealing with grief and addiction, consider using some of the free lessons and discussion guides found at Beyonddisaster.bible in small group meetings. These materials created by American Bible Society, along with the core Bible based trauma healing program, have shown great evidence to reduce trauma and distress symptoms, increase positive spiritual coping, prepare your congregation to become the hands and feet of Jesus to hurting people. Not at all. It just seems like a lot of back-and-forth talk. Yes. I'm growing very worried over what might happen. If it keeps up, I might be a little more concerned. I think there are much larger things to concern us as a country. It's hard to tell; I can't take the leader of either country seriously. Vote View Results YEREVAN. It seems that Ukraine has a complex to perceive the essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh [(Artsakh)] conflict, to perceive the serious threats facing the people of Artsakh, the Republic of Artsakh, the real threat to the security of our region, and has a complex to decouple conflicts and to assess conflicts according to their merit, essence, and history. Armenias Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan stated this in an interview with a local TV. "It is in this sense that we have a disagreement here. We have been working very consistently with Ukraine for two years in this regard, as we have no complexes, no problems with the friendly people of Ukraine, and we will continue to work consistently in that direction and deliver our signals and messages. We are patient and will continue to do so. But we will continue to find unacceptable the positions that are disconnected from reality, which are based on those universal approaches. This does not bring any benefit to the region, or to them, or to us," Mnatsakanyan stressed. Watertown, NY (13601) Today Plenty of sunshine. A few flurries or snow showers possible. High 18F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low around 0F. SE winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 15 to 25 mph. Fiction 1. All The Lonely People by Mike Gayle is published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton. Available July 23 Hubert Bird is old and lonely. In weekly phone calls to his daughter Rose, who lives in Australia, he paints the picture of a perfect busy retirement, filled with friends and outings, when the reality is anything but. When Rose announces she is coming to stay, he realises he needs to make some changes. A young mother moves into the neighbourhood and the pair strike up an unlikely friendship as they start a campaign to tackle loneliness in the area. This timely and poignant book flits between present day and Huberts early life, emigrating to the UK as one of the Windrush generation. Mike Gayles writing is beautiful and engaging and All The Lonely People is both heartbreaking and uplifting, devastating and thought-provoking. It is the kind of book you will want to press into the hands of everyone you know and tell them to read immediately. 8/10 (Review by Megan Baynes) 2. All Adults Here by Emma Straub is published in hardback by Michael Joseph. Available now. The challenging journey through adulthood is explored with perceptive wit in Emma Straubs entertaining new novel. All Adults Here charts the complicated relationships of the Strick family in the fictional small US town of Clapham. At its heart is family matriarch Astrid, who witnesses a shocking tragedy that sparks a re-examination of her life. As she opens up to her adult children frustrated Elliott, single-mum-to-be Porter and bohemian Nicky it turns out they also have secrets and hang-ups to spill. Straub endearingly portrays her central characters as they tangle with a multi-generational crew of friends and relatives. Her easy writing style combines wry humour with the occasional poignant insight. At times the comic tone feels jarring when the novel addresses more serious themes, skipping too lightly over a characters inner complexities. But this is a book that whips along with feel-good momentum, driven by warmth and love. 7/10 (Review by Tom Pilgrim) 3. Pondweed by Lisa Blower is published in hardback by Myriad Editions. Available now. Lisa Blower is a highly regarded short story writer, and her new novel tells the story of an unlikely road trip undertaken by two endearing and idiosyncratic people. Pondweed centres on a couple of late 60-somethings, Selwyn and Ginny. Next-door neighbours in their youth, they once courted and have now got together again after a fashionfollowing a 50-year interval. They think they know each others distant pasts intimately but are not so strong on anything since. In the interim, Ginny had a daughter and not much else happened for her; Selwyn developed his passion for ponds. But cheated by his business partner out of his pension, Selwyn decides to take the pair of them off on a trip down memory lane in the direction of Wales, armed only with a stolen caravan full of booze and ornamental fish. The road trip quickly turns out to be a painful, poignant and charming journey through the couples past, as a series of apparently impromptu stop-offs start to trigger forgotten memories, unresolved conflicts, and only partially buried secrets. An unlikely romance between two people who are meant for each other, but dont know how to be together, Pondweed is a delightful read. 7/10 (Review by Dan Brotzel) Non-fiction 4. Sex Robots & Vegan Meat by Jenny Kleeman is published in hardback by Picador. Available now Synthetic wombs, do-it-yourself euthanasia, AI sex robots and meat grown from stem cells: are these the plots of dystopian horror movies or the technologies that will save the future of humankind? Documentary film-maker and journalist Jenny Kleeman explores birth, death, sex and food, navigating opinions, facts and half-truths. In doing so, she must negotiate with an array of distinctive characters (including evangelistic vegans, competitive scientists, and even incels), all of whom vie for centre stage. The real treat is Kleemans insatiable curiosity, pushing her to ask the difficult questions, even when conversations take an awkward turn (as they so often do). Coupled with her own knee-jerk emotions, assumptions and personal views, her narration ends up being part fact-finding mission, part-storytelling. Whether shes right or wrong isnt really the point; its whether you agree, disagree, or are downright horrified by the promises of this whole new world. A moreish page-turner of a book that will leave you feeling informed and ready for the next dinner party. 9/10 (Review by Nicole Whitton) Childrens book of the week 5. The Secret Explorers and the Comet Collision is published in hardback by DK. Available now Space and the universe are the setting for the first instalment of DKs new educational series for children, which introduces us to the Secret Explorers, a team of elite mini adventurers. Each of the eight explorers has a unique expertise and has been brought together from around the world to solve special secret missions. In Comet Collision one of two initial books in the series space whiz Roshni and rain forest expert Ollie are picked to blast off for a mission to Jupiter to fix a broken space probe. We see Roshni go on a daring spacewalk as the duo work against the clock to complete their mission before a comet strikes. From facts about Jupiters rings and space probes to asteroids and gravity, the story is perfect for little stargazers aged seven and above, . 7/10 - Holly Williams Senior journalist N Ram, former Union minister Arun Shourie and advocate Prashant Bhushan moved the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday challenging the validity of section 2(c)(i) of Contempt of Courts Act, which criminalises publication of any matter that could scandalise or lower the authority of courts. The petitioners contended that the provision is violative of freedom of speech under Article 19 of the Constitution and effectively gags discourse on matters of public importance. It violates right to free speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a). It is unconstitutional as it is incompatible with the preambular values and basic features of the constitution, the plea said. The SC had recently invoked the provision to issue notice to Bhushan for his tweets against Chief Justice of India (CJI), SA Bobde and the apex court. It was submitted that the provision raises a prior restraint on speech on matters of public and political importance by criminalising criticism of court in sweeping and absolute terms. The offences of scandalising the court is rooted in colonial assumptions and objects and have no place in legal orders committed to democratic constitutionalism, the petition said. The Contempt of Court at provides for civil and criminal contempt. Civil contempt is defined under Section 2(b) as wilful disobedience to any judgment, order or direction of a court or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court. Section 2(c) deals with criminal contempt and attempts to punish publication of any material or commission of any act against courts. This provision has three sub-clauses, which explain when such a publication or act could amount to criminal contempt. First, if such publication or act scandalises or lowers the authority of any court (sub clause i), second, if it prejudices or interferes with any judicial proceeding (sub-clause ii) and third, if it interferes with or obstructs administration of justice (sub-clause iii). The petitioners have challenged only sub-clause (i), which criminalises any publication or act on the ground that it scandalises or lowers the authority of the court. The provision, it was contended, has an extremely wide import and is incapable of objective interpretation. For example, an interrogation by a traffic constable about whether the red beacon on the hood of a judges car was held to be contempt on the ground of scandalising the court, the petition stated. It was argued that the provision uses vague terminology, whose scope and limits are impossible to demarcate. In particular, the terminology scandalises or tends to scandalise invites subjective and greatly differing readings and applications. It violates Article 14, which demands equal treatment and non arbitrariness, the plea added. 01.08.2020 LISTEN The Ghana Education Service (GES) has confirmed the death of Jennifer Naa Doku Bolor, a form two Gold Track General Arts Student of Oyoko Methodist Senior High School. In a statement signed by Cassandra Twum Ampofo, Head of Public Relations, GES, the Education Service said Jennifer, after writing the last paper of the semester exams on Thursday, July 30, 2020, reported sick to the school nurse. The statement added that while she was being attended to, she collapsed and was rushed to St. Joseph Hospital. It noted that her aunt who works at Koforidua was immediately informed. Jennifer, unfortunately, died on arrival at the emergency ward, the statement indicated. It added that Management of GES is waiting for the hospital authorities for the cause of death. ---Daily Guide South Korea's new coronavirus cases dipped slightly to around 30 on Saturday, amid the country's stepped-up efforts to curb imported infections and local transmissions among vacationers at camp sites. South Korea's new coronavirus cases dipped slightly to around 30 on Saturday, amid the country's stepped-up efforts to curb imported infections and local transmissions among vacationers at camp sites. The country reported 31 additional cases, including 23 imported ones, bringing the total caseload to 14,336, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). The number of new locally transmitted cases stood at eight. The latest tally marked a slight decrease from 36 new cases reported Friday. But health authorities tightened vigilance amid concerns about continued inflows of the virus from abroad and local contagion during the summer vacation season. The country's imported cases have recently risen due to infections among South Korean workers returning home from Iraq and Russian sailors. Imported cases, which hit a record high of 86 on July 25, have increased by double-digit numbers for more than a month. Of the new imported cases, 19 were found at airports or ports, while the remainder tested positive while in quarantine at their homes or temporary accommodations. Virus cases traced to Russian ships docked in South Korean ports have emerged as a new source of cluster infections. Starting Monday, sailors aboard ships from Russia will be required to submit a certificate showing they have tested negative for COVID-19. South Korea also began on-board quarantine inspections on not only ships coming from Russia but also vessels departing from six high-risk countries -- Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines and Uzbekistan. In a comforting development for the quarantine authorities, the number of locally transmitted cases fell back below 10. Of the new eight cases, five were from Gyeonggi Province, two from Seoul and one from North Gyeongsang Province. The country reported no additional fatalities, leaving the death toll at 301, according to the KCDC. (Yonhap) Manipur chief minister Nongthombam Biren Singh on Friday paid his respect to the three soldiers of Assam Rifles who were killed in an ambush near Khongtal area in the states Chandel district on Wednesday. Chief Minister Biren Singh along with MLA L Sushindro (Khurai) led military officers in laying wreaths to the mortal remains of the soldiers of 4 Assam Rifles at the Bir Tikendrajit International Airport on Friday morning. Biren Singh said there is no place for violence in a democratic country like India. Stating that the government would not remain a silent spectator and the perpetrators would be definitely tracked down, he also appealed to the armed groups to shun violence and reach out for a political solution. He was speaking to reporters on the sideline of the ceremony. The chief minister said the government would try to provide suitable assistance to the families of the martyred central forces personnel belonging to Manipur and added that the matter would be put up in a cabinet meeting for discussion. He also met the family members of Ratan Salam, one of the three Assam Rifles soldiers who was killed on Thursday, after the ceremony and expressed his condolences. The nation salutes their supreme sacrifice made in the highest traditions of the Force in service of the nation. In this hour of grief, the Assam Rifles stands firm in its solemn commitment to ensure the welfare of the families of the fallen soldiers, Assam Rifles said in a press release on Friday. The three Assam Rifles personnel were killed while five others sustained an injury in an ambush near Khongtal area in Chandel district on Wednesday evening. Later, Manipur Naga Peoples Front (MNPF), Revolutionary Peoples Front (RPF) and United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) claimed responsibility for Wednesdays ambush. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A coalition of Oregons largest industry groups filed a lawsuit Friday to overturn the executive order on climate change policy that Gov. Kate Brown issued after Republicans walked out of this years short legislative session and once again killed Democrats controversial carbon cap and trade bill. Brown issued her executive order in early March, mandating the same emissions reduction targets that were in the failed House Bill 2020 -- namely at least 45% below 1990 emissions levels by 2035, and at least 80% below those levels by 2050. She also directed state agencies to adopt rules to achieve those goals through stricter emissions standards for trucks; emissions cap and trade programs for large industrial sources, transportation and natural gas; as well as stricter carbon standards under the states existing Clean Fuels Program. The business groups argue that Brown overstepped her authority under the Oregon Constitution, and the responsibility for that policy making properly rests with the Legislature. The plaintiffs in the suit include trade groups representing some of Oregons largest industrial sources of greenhouse gas pollution, including loggers, farmers, truckers, manufacturers and fuel companies. Oregons largest umbrella business group, Oregon Business & Industry, did not actively oppose the carbon bill in the Legislature because its membership was divided on the issue. But it signed on to Fridays lawsuit. Sandra McDonough, president of the group, noted in an email to members Friday that individual companies are taking steps to reduce their greenhouse emissions and that the group still believes durable and balanced solutions are needed. The lawsuit is not about carbon policy, she insisted. Rather, it is about constitutional authorities and the role of the Governor versus the role of the Legislature. In our view, the Governor exceeded her constitutional role by rewriting statute and infringing upon the designated role of the Legislature. In the end, there may be little practical distinction. Democrats have tried and failed for more than a decade to come up with a meaningful carbon reduction policy that can pass amid intense opposition from industry, rural Oregonians and Republican lawmakers. Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Brown, said many of the same industries behind the lawsuit used their influence to shut down HB 2020. Based on their previous behavior of spreading misinformation on climate change and spending millions on lobbyists and political donations, its no surprise that industries dependent on polluting the climate are attempting to further delay action and place the health and economic burdens of climate change onto future generations, he said. But it is a huge disappointment. Other states have initially implemented climate change policy via executive order. In June 2005, then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed an executive order setting greenhouse emissions reduction targets for the state and directing state agencies to develop programs to get there. That states carbon cap and trade system was subsequently approved by lawmakers. A variety of East Coast states have also joined a regional climate initiative capping emissions in the power sector via executive order. Brad Reed, a spokesman for the climate advocacy group Renew Oregon, said the new lawsuit was right out of the standard industry playbook: obstruct in the Legislature then take it to court if you dont prevail. He pointed to two failed lawsuits by the Western States Petroleum Association to block implementation of Oregons Clean Fuels Program, and said the new suit is more of the same. Tom Kelly, a Portland businessman and chair of a business group that supports the climate change policy, called the lawsuit a dangerous delay tactic. These groups claim to be acting in the interest of Oregons businesses and industry, yet by standing in the way of climate action, they threaten Oregons economy, technological innovation, and job growth. We must take a lesson from COVID-19 and follow science to avoid a climate catastrophe. We are running up against the clock to flatten the climate curve. -- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-2218505; @tedsickinger Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. On the morning of Nov. 14, 1960, no parents were more afraid of sending their children to school than the parents of four 6-year-olds in New Orleans. The children, all African American girls, were that day integrating the citys public schools. Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation in public schools in 1954, but Louisiana didnt desegregate until ordered by a federal judge in 1960. Even then, the school district in New Orleans delayed as long as it could. The parents of the girls, torn between giving their daughters the best education available and not wanting to endanger them, chose the educational opportunities, knowing the law was on their side. Three of the girls went to McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School. The fourth, Ruby Bridges, broke the color line at William Frantz Elementary School. On that first day, and for the rest of the year, the kindergartner was escorted by federal marshals to protect her from screaming mobs. The image of Bridges and the marshals was captured in Norman Rockwells iconic painting The Problem We All Live With. Sixty years later, the problem were all living with the one that has parents afraid to send their children to school is the novel coronavirus. In 1960, in New Orleans, school districts and mobs who wanted to keep children out of school were on the wrong side of history. In 2020, in Texas, the attorney general and Texas Education Agency, intent on rushing children back to school, are on the wrong side of history and science. Federal marshals cant protect the children, but school superintendents guided by public health professionals can. That theyre not being allowed to is irresponsible and dangerous. On July 17, the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District banned Bexar County school districts from reopening for in-person learning until after Labor Day because of the high risk of spreading COVID-19. Health departments in Texas other four largest counties issued similar orders. At first, the TEA said that school districts ordered to remain closed and offer only online classes would continue receiving state funding. But Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote a nonbinding legal opinion that health departments didnt have the authority to keep schools closed. This prompted TEA to reverse itself and say school districts could provide only online classes for the first eight weeks, but on the ninth week must open for in-person learning or lose state funding. This applies to all districts, including those in communities heavily afflicted with COVID-19. Neither Paxtons opinion nor the TEAs reversal are based on science or consideration of the risks to which students, teachers and staff, and their families, will be exposed. These are arbitrary dictates that undermine the gradual reopening the districts have been preparing for as they balance the necessity of children being in school with their safety. Forcing districts to choose between health and safety, and state funding is unconscionable. We dont have room in that calculus for politics, Brian Woods, Northside ISD superintendent, said last week in an Express-News Editorial Board meeting that also included Edgewood ISD Superintendent Eduardo Hernandez and SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez. Each is basing his decision on science and health metrics, and they wont put children and others at risk. Martinez said that if after eight weeks, Metro Health finds no change for the better, his campuses wont reopen for in-person classes. Were not going to allow children to come in if its not safe, he said. Hernandez, speaking as if Paxton and the TEA were present, said, Give us the space to lead. Dont threaten us with funding issues. Dont scare us. Gov. Greg Abbotts rush to reopen the state led to the COVID-19 spike, and the surge in deaths and hospitalizations. This should be cautionary tale instead of a model for opening schools. No one denies children must return to school as safely and soon as possible. But no one should deny that safely must precede soon. All of us want children back in school, just like all of us want to eat out, enjoy live concerts, go to sporting events and, most of all, see and embrace family and friends without worrying about spreading the virus and adding to the 153,000-plus lives its stolen. Theres a moral arrogance among those who object to wearing a mask and practicing social distancing, who insist on rushing to reopen schools as if were not amid a deadly pandemic. They act as if theyre the only ones inconvenienced when COVID-19 is the problem we all live with. Cary.Clack@express-news.net John Carl D'Annibale/Times Union BETHLEHEM Town police said they are investigating two suspected fatal drug overdoses that occurred in Delmar during a 24-hour period. The first occurred on Friday and the second on Saturday, police said. A 40-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man died after what is suspected to be a combination of heroin and fentanyl, police said. Pound Sterling ignores England coronavirus setback, Pound-to-Canadian-Dollar rate hits 3-month best, all eyes on month-end developments Pound Sterling has ignored UK governments move to impose some fresh coronavirus restrictions and postpone some further re-opening measures. Sterling has posted daily highs with Sterling/dollar around 1.3150 and Euro/Sterling at weekly lows close to 0.9000.The currency index has posted a 6-month high. Near-term trends will be influenced strongly by month-end Sterling demand. Westminster government postpones further re-opening measures in England Overnight, the government announced that would be renewed restrictions in parts of Northern England covering around 4.5mn. In these areas, social contact between households has been banned. The Scottish government has also advised against non-essential travel to the North of England. In a press conference on Friday, Prime Minister Johnson has postponed the re-opening of facilities such as casinos. The limited admission of spectators into sporting events in pilot projects will also be delayed. According to the ONS, the prevalence of coronavirus within the UK has increased this week for the first time since May. At this stage, there will be no change to national social contact rules, but the government will increase the scope of compulsory face coverings in inside places. Johnson also stated that the planned changes to work-place guidance would go ahead as planned with more workers encouraged to return to the workplace. ING commented; Prime Minister Boris Johnsons decision to impose fresh lockdown restrictions in some Northern regions of the UK has failed to faze the pound (which is the best performing currency in the G10 this week). The currency now appears to be overly complacent to various factors - not least to its main driver: uncertainty over EU-UK trade talks and the potential for a downward correction is rising. Pound Sterling has, however, again been resilient on Friday with GBP/USD at 18-week highs despite a limited dollar comeback. Markets have also ignored fresh tensions over fishing with the next round of formal talks due on August 17-21st. The Pound-to-Euro exchange rate has strengthened to 1-week highs and there have been further significant moves on the crosses. The Pound-to-Canadian Dollar rate has strengthened to 3-month highs just above 1.7650 and the Pound-to-New-Zealand-Dollar rate at 2-month highs around 1.9730 with GBP/AUD dollar at 6-week highs above 1.8300. The Pound-to-Swiss-Franc rate has also strengthened to 6-week highs around 1.1950. J.P. Morgan commented; As weve repeated many times, anyone looking to express a bearish GBP view should do so via EUR/GBP and, although the cross has been range trading for weeks now, buying dips remains our long-standing view. Next week will provide a stern test for Pound Sterling buyers. (Natural News) The New York Times published an astonishingly horrible article the other day titled Latin America Is Facing a Decline of Democracy Under the Pandemic accusing governments like Venezuela and Nicaragua of exploiting Covid-19 to quash opposition and oppress democracy. (Article republished from CaitlinJohnstone.com) The article sources its jarringly propagandistic claims in multiple US government-funded narrative management operations like the Wilson Center and the National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored Freedom House, the extensively plutocrat-funded Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the United States Naval Academy. The crown jewel of this piece of State Department stenography reads as follows: Adding to these challenges, democracy in Latin America has also lost a champion in the United States, which had played an important role in promoting democracy after the end of the Cold War by financing good governance programs and calling out authoritarian abuses. Whoa, nelly. I wanted to laugh but it isn't funny that the New York Times thinks it's okay to publish such a blatantly false statement. pic.twitter.com/cBlcf4aq1l Esha (@eshaLegal) July 30, 2020 The fact that Americas most widely regarded newspaper feels perfectly comfortable making such a spectacularly in-your-face lie on behalf of the US government tells you everything you need to know about what the mass media in America really are and what they do. The United States has never at any time been a champion of democracy in Latin America, before or since the Cold War. It has intervened hundreds of times in the continents affairs throughout history with everything from murderous corporate colonialism to deadly CIA regime change operations to overt military invasions. It is currently trying to orchestrate a coup in Venezuela after failing to stage one during the Bush administration, its pushing regime change in Nicaragua, and The New York Times itself admitted this year that it was wrong to promote the false US government narrative of electoral shenanigans in Bolivias presidential race last year, a narrative which facilitated a bloody fascist coup. This is propaganda. There is no other word for it. And yet the only time western politicians and news reporters use that word is to talk about nations like Russia and China. Why is propaganda used in an ostensibly free democracy with an ostensibly free media? Why are its news media outlets so consistently in alignment with every foreign policy objective of US government agencies no matter how destructive and inexcusable? If the media and the government are two separate institutions, why do they so consistently function as though they are not separate? Well, thats easy. Its because they arent separate. The only thing keeping this from being seen is the fact that Americas real government isnt located where people think it is. Read more at: CaitlinJohnstone.com Vijay Inder Singla Chandigarh: The Punjab School Education Department has not only ensured the safety of the students during the Covid-19 epidemic but has also set new standards for the continuation of the study of the students during this difficult period. The School Education Department under the guidance of Education Minister, Vijay Inder Singla, first time started the process of online admission and online education for the safety of students during the Corona disaster as it is still not possible to open schools in these circumstances keeping in view the social distancing. Advertisement Vijay Inder Singla In this process, students from more than 19000 schools across Punjab are being imparted online education. Apart from pre-primary, online education is being imparted to more than 9 lakh primary school students and more than 14 lakh students from 6th to 12th standard. As a result, enrollment in government schools has increased by nearly 1.5 lakh this year. Advertisement It is important to mention that the students of private schools are also taking benefit from the lectures being given on Doordarshan. Under the guidance of the Education Minister, Education Secretary Krishan Kumar not only initiated the process of online education by implementing this unique initiative at the grass root level but also achieved better results by taking the initiative in this field as compared to private schools. Punjab governmentAs a result, 1.5 lakh more students were enrolled in government schools in the state in the session 2020-2021 as compared to the session 2019-2020. At the same time the Department of Education also carried out the work of distribution of free books and uniforms. Advertisement The work of the education department was not only limited to online education but government schools also set a new milestone by taking the first term (July) papers of 6th to 12th class students online. The Department of Education has taken 20 marks paper in each subject. The students have shown lot of interest in the online test and the teachers also assessed the students online by downloading various apps on their mobile phones. These initiatives of Department of Education, teachers and students have created new possibilities in the field of education. Solidarity greetings of Eid Mubarak to the blessed Emir, His Highness Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani and all people of Qatar! Once again this year, as it has been observed for centuries, Muslims from around the world, including many in Africa answered the call of Islam. Congratulations to them and congratulations to the people of Qatar. May Allah, The Almighty, protect you, accept your supplications and forgive all your sins. Masha Allah! The uniqueness of Islam is its five pillars; and prominent among is the Hajj, which is the most unifying of mankinds experiences. Hajj brings together Muslims from every corner of the globe, without any discrimination, such as colour, language, education, nationality socio-economic status. Suffice it to say that, Islam is a peaceful religion that embraces all peoples and faiths. As we celebrate Eid-Ul-Adha, this year, and as we relive the ideals of Prophet Ibrahim (Peace Be Upon Him), who is revered by both Muslims, Christians and Jews alike; as we commemorate this occasion of giving charity, making and sacrifice and feeding the poor, humanity is reminded of the common bond that we all share together. As you began to commemorate four-day of the Eid al-Adha holiday, or Feast of Sacrifice, the Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Foundation (STBHF) is impressed that the blessed Emir, His Highness Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani was at the forefront to perform the Eid-Ul-Adha prayer this morning along with Qatari citizens from all walks of life. On watching international satellite television channels in Africa, we saw the blessed Emir on the front role of the praying ground, and there was nothing like armoured tanks, anti-aircrafts guns or foreign fierce terrorists guarding him, Masha Allah. This did not happen in other Arab countries because the leaders in those countries have the blood of the Arab people of Yemen hunting them everywhere. Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sacrifice is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to honor the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim (PBUH) to sacrifice his son Ishmael (PBUH) as an act of obedience to God. The basis for the Eid Al-Adha comes from the 196th verse of sura 2 (Al-Baqara) of the Quran. At the Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Foundation (STBHF), we are proud of the blessed Emir, His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, whose leadership by example serves as a role-model for other world leaders. We hope that common sense will prevail so that the blockading Arab governments may draw lessons from the message of Eid-Ul-Adha by eschewing tendencies that could severe the unity and stability in the Middle-east. If they truly believe in the Oneness of Allah and preaching of the Holy Prophet, Mohammed (SAW), then let us believe that the blockading countries-Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Egypt-will adhere to the tenets of love, caring and sharing that the Holy Quran teaches, because love is the bedrock of any truly meaningful sacrifice. We call for an end to the blockade against Qatar. This years commemoration of Eid-Ul-Adha cannot be celebrated as the tradition calls, but we can use the occasion to reflect on the previous months of our lives as individuals, as nation, as a region and as humankind. We can use the occasion also, to remember our health care workers, and the numbers of COVID-19 patients who would have loved to be at home to celebrate with us at this moment. This is because the activities associated with Eid-Ul-Adha cannot hold this year due to the devastating pandemic. There is no doubt that Qatar, under the wise leadership of the blessed Emir, has made sacrifices in this peculiar times of Covid-19 pandemic. We urge the Gulf nation not to be weary, and continue to make sacrifices propelled by love, for God, for Africa and for humanity. We would like to welcome as many Qataris as possible to the Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Foundation (STBHF) for the first time. This is their Organisation and their solidarity bridge with Africa. Irrespective where one Qatari lives, we count on their membership. The Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Foundation (STBHF), wishes the blessed Emir, His Highness Sheikh Tamim Binb Hamad Al-Thani, and all Qataris a very happy and peaceful Eid al-Adha. Qatar must live! Sender: Fatmata B. Bangura Acting Programme Coordinator Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Foundation (STBHF) For and on behalf of volunteers of the Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Foundation (STBHF) Protesters against restrictions have gathered in for a demonstration titled The end of the pandemic freedom day. It comes amid increasing concern about an upturn in infections in Germany. A crowd of people whistling and cheering and with few masks in sight marched from the Brandenburg Gate on Saturday ahead of a rally on a wide boulevard that runs through the city's Tiergarten park. Protesters held up homemade placards featuring slogans that included Corona, false alarm, We are being forced to wear a muzzle and Natural defense instead of vaccination. Some chanted We're here and we're loud, because we are being robbed of our freedom. Demonstrations against restrictions this year have drawn a variety of people, including some conspiracy theorists and right-wing populists. People came from various parts of Germany for Saturday's protest. Germany's management of the pandemic has widely been viewed as relatively successful, with a lower death rate than comparable countries. The country has been easing lockdown measures since late April but social-distancing rules remain in place, as does a requirement to wear masks in public transport and shops. Infection figures have crept up over the past few weeks and officials have warned against complacency. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Researchers from Bristol and Mexico made a breakthrough in fertility science when they disproved the centuries-old belief of how the sperms swim. Dutch textile merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek invented the powerful compound microscope around 340 years ago. He accidentally discovered the single-cell bacteria, which changed the course of medicine. Shortly after that, he examined his own semen and found tiny, wriggling creatures called "animalcules." In 1678, van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the secretary of the Royal Society in London that the creatures he discovered moved forward as their tails move like that of a snake or an eel swimming in water. He described the tail of the sperm as moving like how snakes or eels do when swimming. This was confirmed by scientists over the next centuries while observing the sperms under the microscope. Since then, science has believed that sperms wriggle as they swim. READ: Pregnant Male Seahorse Might Be More the Same With Human Pregnancy Than Previously Thought Sperms Deceived Scientists for 340 Years Now, it turns out that the centuries-long belief of how sperms swim is wrong. Using state-of-the-art 3D microscopy and mathematics, scientists found that sperms swim like the otters. Study author Hermes Gadelha, head of Polymaths Laboratory in the department of engineering mathematics at the University of Bristol, sperms are very tricky creatures deceiving scientists for so long. Gadelha noted that to see the real movement of the tail, one should "move with the sperm and rotate with the sperm." It is like putting a tiny camera on the sperm's head. That is just how Gadelha's co-authors Gabriel Corkidi and Alberto Darszon, both from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. They used state-of-the-art tools like the super-high-speed camera that can record more than 55,000 frames within a second. The researchers were successful and saw that the centuries-old belief side-to-side movement of the sperms was actually not true. They discovered that the sperm's tail lashes to only one side, enabling them to swim in a perpetual circle, says Gadelha. The sperms were smart enough to figure out that if they roll while swimming, like otters corkscrewing through water, their one-sided stroke will allow them to swim forwards. "The rotation of the sperm is something that is very important. It's something that allows the sperm to regain symmetry and actually be able to go straight," Gadelha added. READ ALSO: Jaw-Dropping Decrease in Children Being Born Could Impact Societies Groundbreaking Study Surprises Science Gadelha remarked that their findings were indeed a surprise. To confirm their findings, they spent nearly two years repeating the experiment and cross-checking their math equations. But the results stayed the same. But why does the sperms' movement important in science? Gadelha said that the rotating motion of the sperms may be hiding some subtle aspects about their health or how well they can travel so fast. The researchers hope that more scientists and fertility experts will use their findings for future research on male fertility. Gadelha said that the instrument that they used in this breakthrough has limitations. They are open to finding more about how the sperms move, and hopefully, they will discover more exciting details about it. READ MORE: Mouse-Human Hybrids Chimeras in Development to Serve as Accurate Models for Research STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A 17-year-old teen reported missing from Meiers Corners has been found safely, the NYPD announced Friday afternoon. Britney Toro was found after last being seen at her home on the 300 block of Bradley Avenue around 2 p.m. on Sunday, cops said in a Friday media release from the departments Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. A spokeswoman for the NYPD said the girl had been at a family friends home and returned home Friday morning. The Advance/SILive.com reported that the girl was missing Thursday night after the police issued a media release asking for the publics help locating her. The Bahrain Red Crescent Society (BRCS) has appointed Dr Nilofer Jahromi as the new head of its Young & Youth Committee. Besides this, she will also continue her current role of Head of Charity Agricultural Project, said a statement from BRCS. The Society aims to provide all necessary support, training, and guidance to volunteers at various leadership levels to help them greater success during the various relief and humanitarian work carried out by BRCS inside and outside the kingdom. Lauding the appointment, Director-General/Acting General Secretary Mubarak Al Hadi praised the excellent voluntary efforts exercised by Dr Jahromi in the Society for many years and also her leadership qualities that qualifies her to lead the volunteer youth team towards more achievements. On her new role, Dr Jahromi she was eager to fully advance her new tasks and provide active cooperation with the other committees within the spirit of a co-operative team. Soon after the appointment, she held a meeting with the Young & Youth Committee members and discussed her future plans and also the work schedule besides current and future activities and initiatives.-TradeArabia News Service The Road @ Chapel Hills chose to close its doors for 13 days after one of its ministers tested positive for the coronavirus. ANN ARBOR, MI Ten new murals will come alive in downtown Ann Arbor in the coming weeks. The nonprofit Ann Arbor Art Center reached a $50,000 crowdfunding goal for its A2AC Murals campaign, unlocking a $50,000 match from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. A total of 188 donors gave a combined $50,850 via Patronicity.com as of Friday afternoon, July 31, including several thousand dollars in the last 24 hours. Were so thankful for the support and belief in the power and importance of public art in our community, said Jeremy Wheeler, the centers marketing manager. The murals will be going up throughout August and September, Wheeler said in an email. We will be announcing installation dates on our social media channels as they become available, he said. Other than that, any additional funds that we collect before midnight tonight will go towards the A2AC Murals initiative, which means more murals in downtown Ann Arbor this year and beyond! The community can look forward to everything from traditional street art stylings to abstract work to more traditional painted pieces, Wheeler said, noting a diverse group of artists is involved. A2AC Murals is a chance to highlight our homegrown talent while exposing Ann Arbor to outside creative minds, all the while creating new destination spots for visitors and residents for years to come, Wheeler said. Money from the online fundraiser will pay artists and cover expenses like equipment rental, paint and permits. Mural locations include the Blind Pig, Circ, Potbelly, 200 S. Ashley St., Ann/Ashley parking deck, Spencer, the Art Centers ceramic studio, the Brown Blocks pay boxes, Clinc and the old Vogels building. See the mural locations. Confirmed artists include local artists Avery Williamson, Gary Horton, Nina Shahin, Chris Dokebi Sammons and University of Michigan student group Live in Color, as well as Detroit artists Ouizi and WC Bevan, MAS Murals of Dearborn and Taylor White, who is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the last two years, the Art Center has partnered with artists Pat Perry and Jesse Kassel, who painted two separate murals downtown one behind Grizzly Peak off Ashley Street and one next to Cupcake Station on Liberty Street. As many downtown businesses are infusing creative solutions for our sidewalks and streets, A2AC Murals will bring new life to walls across downtown, A2AC Exhibitions Coordinator Mike Wolf said in a statement. When people come together in this way, investing in creativity, we can transform neighborhoods and create a sense of place and belonging, said Art Center President and CEO Marie Klopf. The $50,000 matching donation is coming via the Public Spaces Community Places program, a collaborative effort of the MEDC, Michigan Municipal League and Patronicity, in which local residents can use crowdfunding to be part of strategic projects in their communities, according to the Art Center. Communities, nonprofits and other businesses can apply at https://patronicity.com/puremichigan. Creating public spaces that enable people to enjoy a diversity of artworks is key to great placemaking, Dan Gilmartin, CEO and executive director of the Michigan Municipal League, said in a statement. These murals will add to the vibrancy of the Ann Arbor community for residents and visitors alike. MORE FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS: Downtown Ann Arbor library closed for 2 weeks after employee tests positive for COVID-19 A lot of things are just different. Heres Ann Arbors plan for socially distant voting Tuesday Biggest flood-mitigation project in Ann Arbor history now complete Ann Arbor affordable housing tax proposal heads to November ballot Defenders vs. disrupters: The debate over preserving neighborhood character in Ann Arbor Advertisement Supercars were surrounded by police after drivers raced through wealthy London neighbourhoods past midnight yesterday. Revving engines kept those living along Sloane Street, between Knightsbridge and Belgravia, awake into the early hours of the morning as cars worth hundreds of thousands of pounds streaked along the road. Some 18 police officers were called to the road where some cars were surrounded while the drivers' details were checked. Officers found cars with missing number plates as they issued warnings for loud exhausts and anti-social driving after a number of calls were made to 999. A Lamborghini, Porsche, and high power BMWs were among a number of vehicles stopped on the popular shopping street last night in a bid to cut down the racing. A yellow Lamborghini was pulled over by police on Sloane Street last night as 18 police officers arrived to tackle to problem of anti-social driving into the early hours of this morning Police officers were out in force to do spot checks and offer warnings or fines to any drivers breaking the law on the affluent London street last night. This silver BMW was one of many high-powered cars pulled over by officers Supercars worth thousands of pounds lined the streets last night as drivers took their prized possessions out for a spin to show off the cars' power The driver and passenger of a high-powered BMW wait outside the car while their details are checked by three police officers during the crackdown Many of the police officers arrived at the scene on bicycles during their night patrolling the streets of London. Some 18 officers arrived on the street after a number of complaints were made by well-heeled residents A police officer points at a number plate as he inspects one of the super cars with his colleague looking on. The yellow Lamborghini was just one of a number of expensive cars to be checked over Police watch on after pulling over a white Porsche during the night of spot checks. The driver and his passenger pulled onto the side of the road where a number of officers waited to offer a warning over anti-social driving A young man stands next to a silver BMW as he waits while an officer checks the car's details on an electronic device. The area is well-known for being one of a number of central London roads where supercars gather in the summer months A man speaks to a police officer near the Lamborghini that was pulled over. A woman sits in the passenger seat and another man waits nearby A matt black Kawasaki motorcycle with a luminous green trim was among the vehicles to be pulled over. A man speaks to police as they check something on an electronic device A motorcycle driver pulls over and gets off the Kawasaki motorbike as police officers inspect vehicles on the street following a number of noise complaints A black Lamborghini is left with its driver door open after it was parked up on the side of the road ahead of a police inspection. The crackdown was launched last night after cars continued racing along the road past midnight A man wears an orange face mask to protect against coronavirus while his car is checked over by police officers. One appears to be making notes while the other talks to the driver A red BMW was parked up outside a Dolce & Gabbana store after the police stopped cars speeding along the wealthy shopping street Six police officers crowded around one car after it was pulled over while driving along the street. The officers issued a number of cautions throughout the night The black car's driver made his way around the back of the car ready to speak to officers as another vehicle pulled in to park behind him. A number of supercars and high-powered BMWs were stopped A police officer stoops down to speak to the driver of a red BMW during the night of spot checks before the driver and passenger were asked to step out of the vehicle A driver's license is compared to details found on a police officers mobile device while officers try to find out if the man was driving the supercar legally A Lamboughini worth hundreds of thousands of pounds was just one of dozens of vehicles pulled over during the course of the night Over 25 Scholarships up to 100% Awarded by 7 Prestigious Australian Universities to Complete the ANC Foundation or Diploma Programme in Sri Lanka View(s): The best way to move towards your dreams is to set things in motion even amidst glaring hurdles. ANC Education, the leading institute for Australian Higher Education in the country equips you to be ready for when the world recovers, and has paved the way for students to obtain excellent scholarship opportunities awarded by prestigious Australian Universities to kick start your academic journey with the ANC Foundation or Diploma programmes, that offer guaranteed entry into Top Australian universities. ANC has partnered with 7 prestigious Australian Universities that will be awarding 25 Merit Scholarships for students to study the ANC Australian Foundation or Diploma programmes in Sri Lanka. These Scholarships are offered at both the ANC Foundation and Diploma level and deserving students will receive a range of scholarships ranging between 25%, 50% and 100% Scholarship value, awarded from the following Australian universities: University of South Australia (UniSA) Edith Cowan University (ECU) Murdoch University James Cook University (JCU) University of Tasmania University of Tasmania College (UP Education) Western Sydney University You can be one of the lucky students to grab this golden opportunity and receive a scholarship from a prestigious Australian university. The scholarships ranging between 25%, 50% and 100% scholarship value will be offered for students to commence the ANC Australian Foundation or Diploma programme in August 2020. Students are eligible to apply for the 25 Merit Scholarships with their O/Levels or with pending O/Level results. Application forms to apply for the Scholarship is available online at www.ancedu.com or students can pick-up the Scholarship application from ANC Education. ANC Foundation programmes offer guaranteed entry to the 1st year of a Bachelors degree in Australia after O/levels in the fields of Engineering, Business, Information Technology, Science and Arts. ANC Diploma programs offer guaranteed entry to the 2nd year of a Bachelors degree in Australia after A/levels in the fields of Engineering, Business and Science. The Deadline to apply for the Scholarship Application is 20th August 2020. Be the first to submit your Scholarship application today and stand a chance to receive the Maximum Scholarship Value. For more information, Call 077 333 55 22 or visit www.ancedu.com or follow us on Facebook at ANC Future Centre / ANC Australian Foundation and Instagram page ancfuturecenter. Face to face and online counseling session is available. With American tourists banned from Italy, Amalfi coast workers are sliding into poverty For 15 years, hed worked in the kitchen of a luxury resort, overseeing the dishwashers, keeping ingredients stocked, making sure the guests in 1,200 euro-a-night rooms could order seafood spaghetti at any hour. But this summer has brought only a trickle of guests. The hotel is operating with a skeleton staff. At his home five miles inland, Ninfo Falcone, 43, is contending with unemployment however he can: by dipping into his savings, building a small greenhouse, buying pigs and rabbits to raise, and occasionally taking a load of vegetables to sell in town. I went from five-star-hotel work to cultivating a patch of land, Falcone says. Once operating behind the scenes of near-paradise, cooking the meals and washing the sheets, the workers of the Amalfi coast now stand as a painful example of what can happen when borders are tightened, international travel collapses and tourists from hot spot countries are frozen out. In one cliffside town after another, unemployment has exploded. Hotel and restaurant staffers who had catered to honeymooners, tycoons and Hollywood stars are sliding into poverty. Some are leaning on relatives for help or scrambling to find alternatives. Others, in deeper despair, have turned to charities and local town halls for food handouts. Its been an economic tragedy, says the Reverend Francesco Della Monica, whose chapter of the Catholic charity Caritas had never until this year received requests for help from residents of the coast. For the vacationers still fortunate enough to come mostly Europeans, and Italians on weekend trips the lack of crowds has made the Amalfi coast even more alluring. But workers are bearing the cost of that change. Some of the reopened hotels and restaurants are offering staff positions only off the books or at reduced wages. Taxi drivers sit idle for much of the day and extend their shifts past midnight to earn just a portion of what they once did. Look at this guy, one driver at a taxi stand says, pointing to a colleague with bags under his eyes. Hes been awake for 23 hours. Even those with seemingly idyllic jobs, such as Vincenzo Parlatore, 39, an Amalfi beach attendant, have stories about how their lives have been ruptured. During a lunch break, Parlatore said hed found his job only weeks ago, a last-ditch option after months of unemployment. He had practically zero money left, he says. Since the winter, three of his four children had celebrated birthdays; none had received gifts. Among 30 restaurants and hotels, Nicola Vollaro received an offer at only one, where the monthly pay was 700 Euros And now my wifes birthday is coming up in two days, he says quietly. He spent last summer guiding wealthy tourists on 1,800 euro boat tours, and he started this year with a plan to launch a similar tour business of his own. Just before the pandemic began, he bought a boat, an investment that became almost immediately useless. He takes out his phone, showing text messages hed exchanged with creditors who wanted a slice of his first paycheck: 600 euros for boat insurance, 400 euros to a shipyard. Im not sleeping well, Parlatore says before returning to duty at the beach. There, striped umbrellas stretch out in socially distanced rows. Vacationers skip into the water. Im jealous of the chance to be carefree, he says. There is not yet any sense of when tourism or the regions workers might recover. That will depend to a large extent on how quickly the United States can bring the virus under control and persuade Europe to let Americans visit once again. Vincenzo Parlatore says the stipend he earns as a beach attendant is not enough to sustain his family or pay his debts (The Washington Post by Federica Valabrega) In some tourist-dependent parts of Italy, domestic travellers have made up for some of the losses. But the Amalfi coast, which grew over the decades into a vacation empire, depends on people coming from far away people splurging on once-in-a-lifetime trips, or those with the money to come every summer. In a normal year, foreigners outnumber Italians almost six to one. Americans are by far the most important nationality for the area, according to regional government data, accounting for 25 per cent of the total visitors to the province of Salerno, home to the Amalfi coast. More than 40 per cent of the people who last year checked into five-star Amalfi hotels were from the United States. It is a painful void, says Corrado Matera, the regional government head for tourism. In June, with Europeans again able to travel between countries on the continent, tourism in the province was nonetheless down 80 per cent. The Amalfi coast now fills up on weekends but has a sleepier, neighbourhood feel otherwise. The Italian government has launched a programme of subsidies and benefits aimed at tourism workers. But most unemployed people on the Amalfi coast say those benefits are fractional at best, amounting to several hundred dollars per month. Stanislao Balzamo, a community organiser, says the process for determining who is eligible has been uneven and chaotic. Some have received nothing. The Amalfi workforce is mostly local people born and raised in the villages and people tend to work seasonally, depending on large spring and summer paychecks while getting by on smaller unemployment benefits in the winter. But amid the pandemic, workers say the wages for spring and summer jobs the few available are falling. One room cleaner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, said shed been at the same five-star resort for 30 years what used to be salaried work. Now she is being called in on a day-by-day basis and is working less than half the normal time. Clerks wait for guests to check-in at the Palazzo Avino in Ravello (The Washington Post by Federica Valabrega) I feel very let down, the worker says. The hotel never did this before. For me, it stinks. Nicola Vollaro, 64, had been a night porter at a five-star hotel, earning a monthly salary of nearly 1,500 euros and collecting tips from a clientele he said was almost entirely American. Now, he has gone months without a paycheck. Shaving and putting on a crisp shirt, he has gone town to town and door to door with a CV in plastic sheeting. Among 30 restaurants and hotels, he received an offer at only one, where the monthly pay was 700 euros. Its a crisis, and this is the best I can offer, Vollaro remembered the restaurant owner saying One afternoon, he buys a two euro bus ticket to Positano, known among workers as the Amalfi coast town with the wealthiest tourists and best wages. Hes heard from a friend that a small company that delivers supplies to hotels and restaurants might be hiring. I went from five-star-hotel work to cultivating a patch of land This is the last step before desperation, Vollaro says. A ride that can take hours in normal times takes 30 minutes. Out the window, he can see all the reasons that people visit: the alluring beaches at the bottom of rickety stairs, tiny plots of farmland with plump lemons, luxury resorts that seem to be nailed into the sheer rock face. Vollaro gets off at his bus stop, holding a slip of paper with the companys address. The search for it takes him higher and higher, up one flight of steps and then another, until he is far from the tourist zone. Above, clouds cup the mountaintops. Below, the few boats in the bay are only specks. He comes to a winding road and at last found the company. The owner is out front. Some workers are loading crates of bottled water onto a flatbed truck. Vollaro tells the owner he is looking for work. Their conversation is short. Theyre looking for somebody younger, Vollaro says a moment later, walking away. Even if he could do the job, it pays barely anything 700 euros per month. Im too young to retire and Im too old to work, Vollaro says as he heads back down the hill. Zigzagging along Positanos switchback roads, passing one shuttered hotel and then another, he complained that the town had become a tomb. He chats with a restaurant owner who tells him shes hired back only two of her 16 employees. He points out spots where hes already knocked, looking for work, finding nothing. Enough with this place, Vollaro says, and he thinks about whether the next step might be to search elsewhere, to move away from the coast, to give up on tourism, at least temporarily. Im done with this, he says. He calls the Amalfi coast a fake cake towering, glorious, beautiful. But, he says, it wont sustain you. The Washington Post A Victorian manager at Connect Logistics trucking company has been charged with manslaughter in connection with the Eastern Freeway crash that killed four Victorian police officers in April. Frankston man Simiona Tuteru, 49, was arrested and charged with four counts of manslaughter on Saturday, four months into the investigation into the April 22 crash. Mr Tuteru, who was arrested in Lyndhurst in Melbourne's south-east, appeared on Saturday night via videolink at an out-of-sessions court hearing where he was granted bail. The court heard the man oversaw the coordination of Connect Logistic truck drivers, including the driver Mohinder Singh, who was behind the wheel when the semi-trailer ploughed into the officers. Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor, Senior Constable Kevin King, Constable Glen Humphris and Constable Josh Prestney were killed when a semi-trailer veered into the emergency lane on the Eastern Freeway. Both Republicans and Democrats agreed progress was made Saturday during deliberations over a new stimulus deal to combat the impacts of coronavirus, a bright spot in what was an otherwise fraught week of negotiations. "We're not close yet, but it was a productive discussion and now each side knows where they're at," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said after a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The group has spent days trying to reconcile priorities for what would be a fifth round of stimulus funding. Negotiations grew testy Friday when both sides blamed the other for the deadlock while a $600 weekly unemployment benefit came to an end without a solution in sight. "I guess we would also characterize the discussions as the most productive we've had to date," Mnuchin said. "We went through a long list of policy issues on our side and on their side, as we've suggested in the past, there's clearly a subset of issues where we both agree on very much." $1,200 checks? Money for schools?: Breaking down what Republicans and Democrats want in the coronavirus stimulus plan Mnuchin said there was an overlap in issues both parties agree to that should be prioritized in the next package. "The four of us agree that education is timely," Mnuchin said. "There are schools that want to open that will need money for social distancing and PPE (personal protective equipment)." He also said that there was "bipartisan support" for small business loans. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks to reporters following a meeting at the Capitol with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Saturday. But Meadows, who has been speaking with President Donald Trump throughout the talks, cautioned a deal isn't near. I dont want to suggest a deal is imminent because it is not," Meadows said. "There are still substantial differences but we did make good progress. Pelosi remained steadfast in her desire to pass a larger bill and not take a piecemeal approach suggested by Republicans and the White House, such as a short-term extension of the unemployment benefit, saying Saturday, "Were not doing short-term. Story continues Theres clearly a desire on their part to do an entire package," said Mnuchin, referring to Democrats' demand to pass a larger long-term bill quickly. "Weve made clear that were willing to deal with the short-term issues and pass something quickly and come back to the larger issues, so were at an impasse on that. The negotiations: Congress leaves town without a coronavirus stimulus deal, allowing $600 unemployment benefit to end Pelosi and Schumer are set to continue talks with Mnuchin and Meadows on Monday. Both sides' tones Saturday were more measured than just a day earlier. At a press conference Friday, Meadows slammed Democrats for rejecting a short-term deal to continue the bolstered unemployment benefit for one week. "What we're seeing is politics as usual from Democrats up on Capitol Hill," Meadows said. "The Democrats believe that they have all the cards on their side, and they're willing to play those cards at the expense of those that are hurting." In her own press conference Friday, Pelosi condemned Republicans and the Trump administration for taking a "piecemeal" approach to relief as COVID-19 cases continue to surge nationally. "In this time of all of that, what are the Republicans proposing? Cutting the benefits to American working families (by) putting $200 on the floor yesterday," she said. "Six-hundred dollars is essential in the lives of these families." Pelosi argued that a short-term deal to extend the unemployment benefit by one week would only be worthwhile if lawmakers had nearly completed a larger bill, noting the amount of time it would take for the measure to pass. Postal Service: Union warns of U.S. Postal Service cost cuts as states prepare for mail-in voting Meadows and Mnuchin had negotiated with Pelosi and Schumer on Thursday as well. Meadows said that Democrats were offered four separate deals throughout the day but rejected all of them. "We're going in the wrong direction. They're going in the wrong direction because of partisan politics. It is very disappointing," he said. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, right, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, arrive at the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Capitol to resume talks on a COVID-19 relief bill on Saturday. House Democrats passed their version of the next stimulus measure in May. The $3 trillion package would have extended the $600 unemployment provision until at least January 2021. The proposal was not taken up by the Republican-majority Senate. Senate Republicans released a $1 trillion counterproposal on Monday, which was criticized by some conservative lawmakers for being misguided and expensive. It was likewise denounced by Democrats for not providing enough aid for schools, essential workers, tenants facing eviction, homeowners facing foreclosure, or food stamp recipients. "Im going to speak in animal terms. Say you are at the zoo. You see a giraffe. You see a flamingo. These two bills arent mateable," Pelosi said during Tuesday talks with Republicans, according to a source not authorized to speak publicly. Contributing: Christal Hayes, Nicholas Wu, Courtney Subramanian, and Ledyard King This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus stimulus: Trump admin., Congress have 'productive' talks Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot said on Saturday that he would welcome back former deputy chief minister Sachin pilot and other dissident Congress legislators if the partys high command forgave them. If the high command forgives them (dissident MLAs), I will hug them. I have no prestige point, Gehlot said while talking to media outside a Jaisalmer hotel, where the MLAs loyal to him were shifted ahead of the assembly session from August 14. The fissures in the state Congress leadership came to the fore when Pilot and 18 other MLAs rebelled against the Gehlot government in July. The chief minister has accused Pilot of trying to topple the government and alleged that he did nothing substantial as the Rajasthan Congress president in a seven-year tenure. Gehlot, however, has now said that he would do as the partys brass decides. The party has given me so much. I have been on many posts -- three times chief minister, state party chief What all I am doing is to serve people. Whatever the high command decides, I have no objections to it, the 69-year-old leader said. Stating that the democracy in the country was under threat, Gehlot said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was playing a big game of horse trading. He urged Prime Minister Nraendra Modi to stop all attempts to topple his elected government. We have no quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government. Modi should get stopped whatever is going on in Rajasthan, he said. Gehlot said Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat should resign on moral grounds, stating that his involvement in a conspiracy to topple the Rajasthan government was now known. Shekhawats name was linked to the audio tapes, purportedly of conversations detailing the plot to topple the Gehlot government. The Union minister has denied it was his voice on the audio clips and said he was ready to face any investigation. State BJP chief Satish Poonia rejected Gehlots charges and asked him to focuss on his party instead of attacking the BJP. If they had the numbers [number of MLAs needed to prove majority], this situation would not have arisen and the MLAs would not have been confined to a hotel. They have lost the mandate mentally, he said. DETROIT, MI -- An appeals court has ordered the immediate release of a teen confined to a juvenile facility for not completing homework after an earlier alleged assault. The state Court of Appeals on Friday, July 31 ordered the release of the teen, only referred to as Grace. Judge Mary Ellen Brennan on May 14 ordered the 15-year-old, who is a high school sophomore at Groves High School, into detention at Oakland Countys Childrens Village. The judge ruled she had violated probation and cited failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school. The state Court of Appeals on Friday ruled on an emergency motion and said the juvenile respondent is ordered immediately released from detention to the custody of her mother pending appeal or further order of this court. The Court of Appeals has agreed to hear issues surrounding the case. An attorney for the teens family sought relief from the Court of Appeals after Brennan, during a hearing last week, refused to release the girl. The teen, who has ADHD and receives special education services, struggled with the transition to online learning and fell behind, according to earlier reports. Birmingham Schools leaders disagreed with Brennans measures. From the start of the pandemic, the district sought to hold students harmless given the challenging, virtual learning environment they were thrust in due to no fault of their own, spokeswoman Anne Cron said July 16. The district maintains that belief today. The teens detention sparked an online petition calling for her release and several Michigan lawmakers have weighed in. Rep. Debbie Dingell wrote on her Twitter account about the teens release: Great News! But we cant forget Grace is just one case in our broken criminal justice system. Let this case shine a light and raise awareness of the work we still need to do. Related stories Judge denies release of 15-year-old girl in custody for not completing homework School disagrees with judge who locked teen up over online schoolwork CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Four Northeast Ohio bars were cited Friday by the Ohio Investigative Unit for violating state health orders and coronavirus safety protocols. The Ohio Investigative Unit cited the bars overnight after receiving several complaints of clear violations of the health orders, which have been issued by the Ohio Health Department to promote safety in bars and restaurants and slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. These are the first citations issued locally since the Ohio Liquor Control Commission approved a proposal by Gov. Mike DeWine to end alcohol sales at the states bars and restaurants at 10 p.m. nightly. Agents went to these four establishments after witnesses saw the following violations: - Floods Restaurant, Warrensville Heights: Received two administrative citations for disorderly activity. The bar operated at more than double the permitted capacity on July 24 and July 31. Approximately 75 patrons were congregated, standing, seated in close groups or at the bar and moving freely about the premises while consuming alcoholic beverages, according to a news release from OIU. Music was playing with additional patrons dancing and consuming alcoholic beverages. Two violation notices were issued for violation dates of July 24 and July 31. - Captiv8 Potato Bar, Cleveland: Received citations for disorderly activity and limitation on hours for on-premises alcohol consumption. Law enforcement received a call about midnight Saturday that the bar was still selling alcohol after the new 10 p.m. last-call order. Agents and officers approached the main door, found it locked, and were unable to gain access, the release says. Agents and officers observed the premises occupied by a large number of people. As they checked the premises, they found a rear door and observed security officers moving large numbers of people out of the building. Agents and officers gained access through the rear door, at which time they observed numerous patrons still inside the premises and evidence of on-premises consumption. A Touch of Italy, Shaker Heights: Received citations for disordely activity and limitation on hours for on-premises alcohol consumption. Law enforcement received a call about about 11 p.m. in reference to alcohol consumption after the 10 p.m. last call order. Agents arrived at approximately 12:45 a.m. and observed approximately 50 people packed into a confined area in and around the bar, the release says. Patrons were standing, congregating at the bar and dancing while consuming alcoholic beverages. Bar staff was seen still pouring and serving drinks in front of OIU agents, the release says. Secrets, Cleveland: Received citations for disorderly activity and limitation on hours for on-premises alcohol consumption. Cleveland police officers called OIU agents about 2 a.m. after receiving a call about a disturbance at the bar. The establishment was heavily occupied and violating the current hours of sale, the release says. As officers and agents coordinated their entry, approximately 30-35 patrons were observed exiting the premises. Agents entered and discovered most patrons had departed. They observed approximately 15-20 people inside the premises and staff were aggressively cleaning glasses and bottles. A bar manager admitted to alcohol being sold until 1:45 a.m., the release says. Agents determined the establishment intentionally violated the hours of sale order. The cases will go before the Ohio Liquor Control Commission for potential penalties, the release says. We continue to work with our law enforcement partners and local health departments following up on complaints to ensure liquor-permitted establishments maintain compliance, so everyone can enjoy a healthy experience, OIU Enforcement Commander Eric Wolf said. When egregious violations are observed, enforcement action is taken. We all need to continue to work together by following the precautions put in place to make these establishments safe and compliant with the directives. Read more coronavirus coverage on cleveland.com: Ohio reports 928 new coronavirus cases, 26 new deaths: Saturday update Cleveland records 57 new cases of COVID-19 coronavirus, no new deaths: Friday update New coronavirus infections, rate of tests found positive decline for a second week in Cuyahoga County Cuyahoga County looking for solutions to child care during remote learning, executive says Democrats including Sen. Sherrod Brown bemoan end of $600 federal unemployment supplement Under its vocally anti-American President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines has emerged as a focal point between China and the US in their continuing contest for dominance in the region. After years of cosier ties between Manila and Beijing, at the expense of the Philippines traditional alliance with the US, Duterte last month appeared to signal a retreat from his anti-Washington stance by reversing an earlier decision to scrap a key military agreement with the US in June. While analysts say Duterte is unlikely to change his policy on China any time soon, the shift to reinstate the Visiting Forces Agreement which gives legal status to US troops stationed in the country underlines the difficult balancing act the Philippines must strike in its dealings with the two powers. Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China. As tensions have flared between China and the US, the Philippines has become part of their strategic confrontation amid Beijings growing aggression in the resource-rich South China Sea also one of the worlds busiest shipping routes where Chinas claims to most of the waters are disputed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Washington needs the support of Manila and other key partners in Southeast Asia in its efforts to push back on Beijings ambitions in the region. For China, maintaining ties with the Philippines is equally important amid its rising confrontation with the US. The US took a stronger stance in the middle of July when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared support for the 2016 ruling by an international tribunal which rejected most of Beijings claims in the South China Sea. It was a historic victory for the Philippines, which took the dispute to The Hague, but China has never accepted the decision. Beijing said the latest US policy statement on the issue deliberately stokes territorial and maritime disputes. Story continues The Philippines backed the US stance, calling on China to accept the ruling. In his State of the Union address on Monday, Duterte argued the Philippines was neither beholden nor a pawn to anyone in the South China Sea, but also made clear the country was not prepared to go to war over its competing claims with Beijing. China is claiming it, he said. We are claiming it. China has the arms, we do not have the arms. So, it is simple as that. They are in possession of the property. In addition to their rivalry in the South China Sea, China and the US both have clear trade and investment interests in their relations with the Philippines. Beijing has long sought to increase its leverage in the maritime disputes and related ongoing discussions for a code of conduct in the South China Sea by winning over its Southeast Asian nations on the economic front. China has wooed the Philippines with investments under its Belt and Road Initiative Chinese President Xi Jinpings signature development strategy and was its top trading partner last year. On the other hand, Washington has sought to counter growing Chinese influence in the region with its Indo-Pacific strategy which includes more frequent freedom of navigation exercises in the contested waters. The US and the Philippines have deep historical ties, with a mutual defence treaty dating back to 1951 and a military relationship which has continued since the closure in 1992 of the American naval base at Subic Bay and the Clark Air Base in Luzon. On taking office in 2016, Duterte pivoted the Philippines towards Beijing, vowing to set aside the tribunal finding in exchange for Chinese investment. In October that year, he travelled to Beijing for a meeting with Xi and declared America has lost now and he had realigned myself in your ideological flow. In February Duterte made his biggest move in distancing the Philippines from its historical ally when he announced the termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement. It was an angry response to the revocation of a US visa for a former police chief who helped to lead Dutertes bloody war on drugs, although the official reason was to diversify foreign relations. The move which US Defence Secretary Mark Esper described as unfortunate complicated Washingtons efforts to push Beijing into following international law in the region. Months later in June after resistance from within his government Duterte reversed course. Foreign Minister Teddy Locsin said the decision to reinstate the agreement was a response to vast and swiftly changing circumstances of the world in a time of pandemic and heightened superpower tensions. Derek Grossman, senior defence analyst at the Washington-based think tank Rand Corporation, said Beijing was likely to be increasingly concerned that the Philippines could turn anew to the US to hedge against Chinese assertiveness particularly as Manila had officially endorsed the US shift in its South China Sea policy. That said, Dutertes latest statement that China controls the South China Sea seems to have been timed to throw cold water on the notion that the Philippines is once again happily conducting alliance relations with the US, he said. As we know well, Duterte is extremely anti-American and has been seeking ways to diversify Filipino foreign and security policy away from over-reliance on the US. Public sentiment in the Philippines has long been pro-US, but Grossman said there had recently been a further souring of opinion on China, for reasons ranging from suspicions about coronavirus, the South China Sea, illicit Chinese activities in the Philippines such as gambling and human trafficking allegations and potential distrust for Belt and Road projects in the Philippines. Jeffrey Ordaniel, assistant professor of international security at Tokyo International University, said Beijing was wary of any strengthening of treaty commitments between the US and the Philippines, noting that their mutual defence treaty covered the South China Sea. The Philippines South China Sea policy has been largely determined by Dutertes parochial concerns, characterised by his deep-seated anti-US sentiments and favourable view of China, he said. The weakening or strengthening of the US-Philippine alliance is obviously an important determinant of how far China could continue to push the envelope in the South China Sea. Ordaniel said Duterte was unlikely to change tack on his approach to China, but noted the strongman leader had less than two years left in office. The 2022 election will be pretty significant for China and the US. Many are expecting or hoping for the pendulum to swing back for the Philippines to align itself again with America. Purchase the 120+ page China Internet Report 2020 Pro Edition, brought to you by SCMP Research, and enjoy a 30% discount (original price US$400). The report 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, including Charles Li, CEO of HKEX, James Peng, CEO/founder of Pony.ai, and senior executives from Alibaba, Huawei, Kuaishou, Pinduoduo, and more. Offer valid until 31 August 2020. To purchase, please click here. More from South China Morning Post: This article Manila walks fine line between Beijing and Washington in South China Sea first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020. By ANI NEW DELHI: In a virtual meeting with Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday, senior Congress leaders demanded that Rahul Gandhi should lead the party again. According to sources, senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh raised the demand that Rahul Gandhi should lead the party again. The meeting was called to discuss the current political situation and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Singh during the meeting said, "Rahul should lead the party as a president as we have seen him taking a stand on various issues against the current government." The same was endorsed by Rajiv Satav, Shaktisinh Gohil, Neeraj Dangi and several other MPs. Rajya Sabha MP and AICC General Secretary In-charge organisation, KC Venugopal praised Rahul and said that he has taken a front lead in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. Venugopal said, "Under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, Congress Party has raised the concern and voice of the people strongly. Earlier on July 11, Lok Sabha MPs Manickam Tagore, Gaurav Gogoi and other MPs had raised the demand of Rahul's return as a party president. The demand was made in the presence of Rahul Gandhi himself but he remained silent on the issue." The growing demand for Rahul to lead the party can be correlated with the development as Sonia Gandhi's tenure as Congress Interim President will complete year on August 10 and it needs to be decided by the Congress Working Committee (CWC) whether to extend her tenure and to choose another leader as party president. Rahul Gandhi had resigned as party president after the debacle in the 2019 General Elections, taking the moral responsibility of the defeat. (ANI) New Delhi, Aug 1 : Even as the veterans vs Team Rahul war within the Congress is out in the open, former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor came to the rescue of party colleagues Manish Tewari and Milind Deora, saying the UPA's transformative 10 years were distorted and traduced by a motivated and malicious narrative. Tharoor took to Twitter and wrote, "I agree with Manish Tewari and Milind Deora. UPA's transformative ten years were distorted and traduced by a motivated and malicious narrative. There's plenty to learn from our defeats and much to be done to revive Congress. But not by playing into the hands of our ideological enemies." His remarks came amid the row over a Congress meeting chaired by party interim chief Sonia Gandhi two days ago, which saw arguments and sharp criticism by younger leaders who appeared to blame the party's last government for its downfall. Amid the criticism of the senior leaders, a section of the party rallied behind former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Twitter. Congress leaders Anand Sharma, Tharoor, Tewari and former Mumbai Congress chief Deora - all ministers in Singh's cabinet at one point - defended the former Prime Minister, tagging criticism for him as "ill-informed" and part of a "motivated and malicious narrative". Earlier in the day, Deora responding to a tweet of Tewari said, "Well said, Manish. "When demitting office in 2014, Manmohan Singh said history will be kinder to me. Could he have ever imagined that some from his own party would dismiss his years of service to the nation and seek to destroy his legacy - that, too, in his presence?" Deora's remarks came after Tewari on Saturday hit out at party leaders who questioned 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rule at the Centre, calling them "ill-informed". Interestingly, he gave the example of the BJP to put out a contrasting picture on party unity. "The BJP was out of power for 10 years (2004-14). Not once did they ever blame (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee or his government for their then predicament. In Congress, unfortunately, some ill-informed (leaders) would rather take swipes at Dr Manmohan Singh-led UPA government than fight the NDA/BJP. When unity is required, they divide," the member of Parliament from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab tweeted. The verbal tongue lashing from the former Minister for Information and Broadcasting comes after a number of party MPs questioned the UPA rule and demanded introspection on Congress debacles. The members of Team Rahul had asked for introspection when the Congress' Rajya Sabha MPs met on Thursday. The issue of the 2014 election debacle was raised by Rajeev Satav, IANS had reported on Friday. He was countered by party senior and former Union Minister Anand Sharma and others. Tewari said on Friday: "Was the UPA responsible for the decline in the Congress fortunes in 2014 is a valid question. It must be gone into. Equally valid is the point that the UPA was sabotaged from within. The 2019 election defeat must also be analysed." Hryvnia strengthens to UAH 27.68 to U.S. dollar on Aug 3 18:40, 01.08.20 6237 The official forex rate against the euro for August 3 is set at UAH 32.78 per euro. (Newser) All 50 states are warning Americans about mysterious seed packages sent unsolicited to their doorstepsmostly from China, USA Today reports. The US Dept. of Agriculture suspects a simple business scam, but some officials say it could be a poison pill to damage crops: "I've had people describe to me that the seeds are coated with something purple," an official at the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship in Iowa tells Reuters. "I haven't had it in my hands yet, but it sounds an awful lot like a seed treatment." In Texas, meanwhile, Commissioner of Agriculture Sid Miller says the seed packets might contain "invasive species." story continues below "An invasive plant species might not sound threatening, but these small invaders could destroy Texas agriculture," says Miller, per the San Angelo Standard-Times . The USDA has identified 14 seeds in the packets"including mustard, cabbage, morning glory, and some of the herbs like mint, sage, rosemary, lavender, then other seeds like hibiscus and roses," they sayand suspect a so-called "brushing" scam is at work. In such a scam, vendors pay people to make orders and send them to strangers; then fake reviews pop up to support the product, Business Insider reports. The volume of shipments alone can help boost the product's success. The USDA says it's currently rounding up the packets and analyzing their contents. (Read more China stories.) Washington, Aug 1 (UNI) Coming down heavily on China's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities of China, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called the Chinese actions as 'stain of the century'. In an official statement issued on Friday, Pompeo said that the US is leading the world in taking action against the Chinese government for their mistreatment of their Muslim minority "The Chinese Communist Partys human rights abuses in Xinjiang, China against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities rank as the stain of the century. The Trump Administration has led the worlds effort to impose tangible costs on the PRCs continuous campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, intrusive surveillance, forced labor, forced population control, involuntary collection of biometric data, and genetic analyses targeted at these groups." Pompeo announced the Trump administration's decision to impose sanctions on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary organization subordinate to the CCP. "On July 9, 2020, the United States designated Chen Quanguo, the current First Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), for his connection to serious human rights abuse in Xinjiang. Following his arrival in the region, Chen Quanguo began implementing a comprehensive surveillance, detention, and indoctrination program in Xinjiang, targeting Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities. The XPCC has been directly involved in implementing these measures. Today, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on the XPCC." Apart from Quanguo the U.S. secretay of State also sanctioned Sun Jinlong, a former Party Secretary of the XPCC, and Peng Jiarui, Deputy Party Secretary and Commander of the XPCC. Pompeo also called on all countries to come together in condemning the Chinese government's poor human rights record. UNI XC RKM SB 1340 New Delhi [India], July 31 (ANI): Tech giant HP has appointed Ketan Patel as the Managing Director for India responsible for the company's business in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well. He replaces Vinay Awasthi who is moving to a new role as the head of print operations for the supply chain. From August 1, Patel will report to HP Chief Commercial Officer Christoph Schell. Patel joined HP in 2005 and has held various leadership positions across its personal systems, print and graphics solutions businesses. From 2013 to 2017, he was Senior Director of Personal Systems at HP India. Before that, he was head of personal systems category for Asia where he led the computing business that included hardware, services and solutions across Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and South Korea. Schell said India, as one of the world's fastest-growing economies, is on the cusp of a digital transformation revolution where technology will play a central role in how we work, live and play. "This is an opportunity for HP to deliver innovation and drive growth in the local economies where we operate. As a proven leader with rich experience and a deep understanding of the market, I am confident that Ketan will add immense value to our customer and partner ecosystem in the region." (ANI) Health charities and welfare advice groups have warned that dying people in Northern Ireland are 'falling through the cracks' in the welfare system. (Lynne Cameron/PA) Health charities and welfare advice groups have warned that dying people in Northern Ireland are 'falling through the cracks' in the welfare system. The groups, including Age NI, Marie Curie, NI Hospice, Wave Trauma Centre and the MS Society, are calling on Stormont to reform what they say are 'cruel' benefit laws for terminally ill people. In a letter to Communities Minister Caral Ni Chuilin, they urged the Government to scrap rules that only allow terminally ill people to claim fast-track access to benefits like PIP and Universal Credit if they can provide evidence that they will die within six months. Campaigners say the unpredictable nature of many terminal conditions mean dying people are excluded from the fast-track system and are forced to apply under the standard route, which involves more paperwork, face-to-face assessments and longer waiting times. Craig Harrison, policy and public affairs manager for Marie Curie Northern Ireland, said the system was causing additional stress. A Department for Communities spokesperson said dealing with people's claims quickly and compassionately was a priority, adding: "That's why terminally ill people can get their claims fast-tracked and access benefits without a face-to-face assessment." A little over a year ago, a group of progressive policy experts published a book of essays titled Recession Ready, which offered a simple, compelling, and modern theory about how to deal with economic catastrophe. Recessions are both common and devastating, it warned. Instead of trying to fight downturns on a case-by-case basis, waiting until disaster strikes to write a bespoke stimulus bill, the authors argued that Congress should plan ahead by putting in place more automatic stabilizerspolicies that are preprogrammed to kick into gear and support the economy when it slumps. Advertisement The United States has a number of automatic stabilizers in action already, though we dont always think of them as such. Safety-net programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance, for instance, fit the bill. They are designed primarily to help Americans in times of need, but as a result they also add ballast to the wider economy at moments of crisis by boosting household spending power and aggregate demand. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But Recession Readys contributors wanted to take the concept much further. The government could redesign unemployment benefits and food stamps to increase in value when unemployment spikes. Washington could send households cash, deliver more aid to states, and increase infrastructure spending during periods of weaknessall automatically. In many ways, the book reflected the lessons and scars of the Obama era, when the White House spent years battling recalcitrant Republicans on Capitol Hill for more fiscal stimulus while the economy languished. And rather than praying for responsible leaders in Congress to save the day through white-knuckle, down-to-the-wire negotiations, it argued, you could set up the better part of a recession-fighting machine ahead of time, allowing it to run on autopilot whenever the need arose. Advertisement Advertisement Now that were muddling our way through the coronavirus crisis, the books case seems more urgent than ever. At the moment, about 30 million Americans are set to lose crucial unemployment benefits that have been sustaining them through the pandemicfor the simple, mind-numbing reason that Congress couldnt hit an arbitrary deadline. Lawmakers have known for months that the extra $600-a-week payments Americans are depending on were set to officially expire on Friday. And yet Republicans waited until the last minute to introduce a badly insufficient, and arguably dangerous, bill to deal with the next phase of pandemic relief, which Democrats rejected.1 As a result, Congress skipped out on town without a deal, and out-of-work Americans will now see their incomes slashed in the midst of our worst economic collapse on record. Anyone with a working neuron should see this as lunacy. Advertisement Advertisement We could have avoided this nationwide facepalm if unemployment benefits were designed to rise and fall with the health of the economy, in the first place. Automatic stabilizers prevent you from cutting off things too soon, George Washington University professor Jay Shambaugh, who co-edited Recession Ready, and served on Obamas Council of Economic Advisers, told me. The idea that the unemployment rate is higher than at any point in the Great Recession and were about to pull support from the economythats just ridiculous. Advertisement Advertisement Using automatic stabilizers to recession-proof the economy would have other advantages, too. Take speed, for starters. Lawmakers moved quickly to pass the CARES Act this March, but that wasnt necessarily typical. After Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the country had to wait five months into the Great Recession for Obama to be sworn in and then sign his stimulus package. A well-designed stabilizer could get money out the door much faster, perhaps as soon as the unemployment rate or jobless claims significantly ticked up. Advertisement Advertisement Another plus: With automatic stabilizers in place, we wouldnt have to worry about Congress failing to cover all of its bases. So far, Democrats havent been able to get anywhere near enough aid to states into the coronavirus relief bills, and as a result, many are facing looming budget crises. Itd be better if that aid was simply loaded and ready to go. Advertisement Advertisement Programs also tend to work better if they are in advance and tested, instead of thrown together on the fly while the world is burning. Had Congress decided ahead of time that it wanted to let freelancers get unemployment benefits, or try to pay people their full wages after losing a job, or send out checks to nearly every American at a moments notice the next time the economy crumbled, we might have had good systems in place to do them. Instead, weve run into all manner of administrative and logistical headaches, from laid off workers waiting months for their benefits to the Treasury sending out prepaid debit cards that people threw away because they looked like junk mail. (The entire structure of the flat, $600 unemployment bonus thats so controversial was essentially a workaround to deal with the limits of antiquated state computer systems.) Its good that Congress can improvise when called up. But it would be nice if our parachute actually deployed properly the next time the economy was in freefall. Advertisement Advertisement There are clear political upsides as well, at least for Democrats. With stabilizers in place, a potential president like Joe Biden wouldnt have to worry about as much about a Republican Congress attempting to undercut his administration by refusing to pass stimulus measures during a recession. That could also yield economic benefits: Businesses might be less likely to lay off workers at the start of a downturn, and families might not cut back spending as much, if they know Washington will support the economy whether or not theres gridlock on Capitol Hill. Advertisement Automatic stabilizers wont entirely eliminate the need for Congress to act when the economy tanks, since each recession has its own unique root causes that usually need to be addressed. In 2008, there was a housing crash and financial crisis; today, theres a pandemic thats shut down normal life. Lawmakers will still have to come up with solutions to tomorrows calamities as they arise. Advertisement What stablizers would do is spare our elected officials the need to reinvent the wheel every time a crisis comes up, by making the basic, well-established steps for fighting a recession an automatic routine that doesnt require a massive partisan fight to enact. When we went around talking to people on the Hill about this book, we kept trying to say to them, This isnt everything you would do in any situation. What we picked as topics are the things we always do, Shambaugh told me. Having a recession-fighting regime in place would also free up politicians attention to focus on the really unique, complicated problems they need to address. Last time it would have left more space to think about housing. This time it would have left more space to think about test-and-trace, about the proper way to deal with the health care system around this. And what do we do about businesses that we are telling to shut down, because thats just different. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Recession Ready left a deep impression among some Democrats in Washington, and in many ways, it helped shape the partys response to the coronavirus crisis. Two of its contributors, Washington Center for Equitable Growth economist Claudia Sahm and former Obama chief economist Jason Furman, were among the most vocal proponents of mailing checks to families (or, more often, wiring direct deposits). One crucial reason Democrats pushed for enhanced unemployment benefits so aggressively in March is that, prior to the crisis, two senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Michael Bennet of Colorado, were working on bills to bulk up UI benefits and make them a better stabilizer. When House Democrats were hashing out their own phase four coronavirus bill, the HEROES Act, in May, many argued for tying unemployment benefits to the unemployment rate, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi briefly entertained the idea before nixing it due to cost. But Wyden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently picked the idea back up, introducing a bill that would have extended the $600-a-week payments, and only decreased them incrementally as joblessness fell. The unity task force between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders campaign also included a revamp of unemployment insurance in their recommendations. Advertisement Advertisement But if Democrats take control of Washington after November, they should be willing to go further by setting up recession-fighting weapons like cash payments and infrastructure spending to fire off automatically when necessary, too. They also cant let the idea get eclipsed by other, shinier priorities. Theres nothing particularly sexy about stabilizers. (Even the word suggests the exact opposite of excitement.) Its probably not going to get a large part of the base revved up, or even make an immediate difference in peoples lives, any more so than a temporary stimulus package. But after two economic cataclysms where Congress has failed to what was needed, in part because of Republican obstruction or incompetence, Democrats owe it to the country to make sure that we arent in the same position a decade from now. We know the essential mechanisms to fight a recession. We should set them and forget them. 1The GOP tried to make up for its delay by proposing a temporary extension of jobless aid. But by the time they got around to it, the offer was essentially pointless, because states had already switched off the extra bonus payments and would have had to potentially spend weeks restarting them. For more of Slates coverage of the economy, listen to How To! Today, Bal Gangadhar Tilak's influence can be felt strongly in the citys pulse in the elongated Tilak Road (one of many in India); in the sarvajanik Ganeshotsav and Shivajayanti festivities, celebrations which he organised to nurture communal harmony; and in the Kesari Wada, his home, nestled in the heart of the city. When Bal Gangadhar Tilak proclaimed, Swaraj ha mazha janmasdha hakka ahe, ani toh me milavnarch (Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it), his words rallied an entire nation to rebel against the colonial regime and fight for the ultimate goal: freedom from imperial rule. But long before Tilak was seen as a national hero, or established the Home Rule League, or edited two prominent newspapers Kesari and Mahratta, publishing scathing indictments of the British rule or wrote the Gita Rahasya while imprisoned at Mandalay, came his childhood and education, which moulded his personality and showcased the person he would go on to become. Though he is known for his political work, it is stories from his childhood that shape the foundation of his legacy and add colour to the portrait we have of him. Tilak was a rebellious student and stood up for what he believed in, even though it would most often earn him the wrath of his teachers. There is a well-known anecdote about the time he was in school when a few of his classmates littered the classroom floor with groundnut peels and refused to own up when the crime was caught. Angry with the entire class, the teacher ordered all the students to clean up the mess. But Tilak vehemently refused. Me shenga khallya nahit, me tarfala uchalnar nahi (I did not eat the groundnuts, I will not pick up the peels.), he declared. Born in 1856 in Chikhali, a village in the coastal district of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, Tilak moved to Pune following his fathers transfer to the city. A ten-year-old boy at the time, his father tutored him in Mathematics and Sanskrit. Tilak would go on to earn great proficiency in both these subjects, graduating and subsequently teaching them at a local school in Pune. It is said that he could calculate complex equations and sprawling mathematical problems without a pen and paper. He would often argue with his teachers about the importance of mental math, refusing to write down tables for homework, because according to him, tables were not to be written but to be memorised. He was strongly critical of the step-wise method for solving sums as well, where students write down each step involved in the calculation. His intelligence, stubbornness and penchant for argument isolated him from the herd, but he never succumbed to peer pressure. In his politics too, he was firmly convinced of his extremist policies, and the triumvirate Lal-Bal-Pal that he was part of did not hesitate to form a separate faction after the Indian National Congress split, following the 1907 annual meeting held at Surat. Much of Tilaks life was spent in Pune. He studied at Deccan College, started schools under the Deccan Education Society and established the Fergusson College, one of Punes most reputed educational institutes. Today, his influence can be felt strongly in the citys pulse in the elongated Tilak Road (one of many in India); in the sarvajanik Ganeshotsav and Shivajayanti festivities, celebrations which he organised to nurture communal harmony; and in Kesari Wada, his home, nestled in the heart of the city. In Pune, he is remembered not only for his oratory and his Swadeshi and Boycott movements following the Bengal Partition, but also for such stories about his sharp wit and mischief that characterised his childhood. Of note are Tilak's perspectives towards health and wellness. He once said, If one attends to ones body as one does to ones mind from the age of 16 to that of 25, and if the physical strength thus stored up is not dissipated by gluttony or vice, one can stand any amount of hard, intellectual work till old age. It is said that he was a child with low immunity and would fall sick often. Once, while in college, he accompanied his friends for a hike up the local fort Sinhagad a difficult climb. He barely made it to the top, and became a joke for his classmates. Unmotivated to learn about colonial poets like PB Shelley and John Keats, he flunked that particular school year, and used this time to get fitter and stronger. He was convinced, or so our grandparents have us believe, that in order to serve his nation, he must first work on being healthy, both mentally and physically. This view would go on to serve him for a long time through his rigorous imprisonments. The years at Mandalay following the sedition charges levelled against him after his publication supported two revolutionaries, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose, took their toll. Prisoners were served dirty, grimy food and ulcers broke out in his mouth. But he continued to work, and it was here that he wrote his magnum opus, the Gita Rahasya, an interpretation of the Karma Yoga of the Bhagvad Gita, and translated the entire text into Marathi. Pune, and the rest of the country, is now geared up to celebrate Ganeshotsav, but within the confines of our homes, to maintain social distancing. Though the thought of fewer barricades, less crowded and cleaner streets is a temporary relief, there is a feeling that we will be breaking a decades-old tradition, put in place by a fierce journalist and politician who intended it to bring people together. Black Lives Matter UK is to announce on Tuesday how it will spend the 1 million it has received in donations. A GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign started by the activist group on June 2 has attracted more than 35,000 donations totalling 1.17 million. But BLM UK has revealed GoFund-Me is holding on to the money until it explains how it will be distributed. Pictured: People at an All BLack Lives UK protest at Marble Arch, London, on July 5 this year The group has been criticised for a far-Left policy agenda, which includes tearing down capitalism and abolishing the police, and its lack of transparency. Beyond founding member Joshua Virasami, 30, little is known of the identities of its core leadership. In a statement posted on its fundraising page on July 10, BLM UK announced it was working with organisational and legal experts to create the most appropriate and ethical structure for holding and distributing much of these generous funds, adding it hoped to get the money out sooner rather than later. The group said it planned to have its website up and running by Tuesday, August 4, to mark the four-year anniversary of its founding. It is also the anniversary of Mark Duggans death, whose killing by police in 2011 sparked the London riots. Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday can reveal the Metropolitan Police spent 1.5 million policing the Black Lives Matter and counter protests on the weekend of June 13 and 14. The largely peaceful BLM demonstration was met by a mob of far-Right extremists who pelted police with bottles, barriers and fireworks. The rally was billed as an effort to defend historical monuments after the defacing of Winston Churchills statue the weekend before. However, it was hijacked by far-Right thugs and Home Secretary Priti Patel condemned the scenes as unacceptable thuggery. Boris Johnson added: Racist thuggery has no place on our streets. Anyone attacking the police will be met with the full force of the law. One of the counter-protesters was photographed urinating on the memorial to PC Keith Palmer, who was killed in the Westminster terror attack in 2017. Andrew Banks, 28, was jailed for 14 days after pleading guilty to outraging public decency at Westminster Magistrates Court. At the time of the protests, Met Commander Bas Javid said police had made the right decision to allow demonstrators to gather in Central London despite the lockdown and fears of violent clashes. He said: The assessment made was that the best tactic was to cater for an assembly and the best way to do that is to put conditions in place. Having an element of control is the best and safest way to manage that, not just for the public but for the people who are demonstrating and police officers. TikTok could be ordered divested from its Chinese parent firm under an order reportedly being prepared by US President Donald Trump President Donald Trump said Friday he will bar fast-growing social media app TikTok from the United States as American authorities have raised concerns the service could be a tool for Chinese intelligence. US officials and lawmakers in recent weeks have voiced fears of the wildly popular video platform being used by Beijing for nefarious purposes, but the company has denied any links to the Chinese government. Media reports circulated earlier Friday saying that Trump would require the US operations of the app be divested from its Chinese parent firm ByteDance, but the president announced a ban. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said: "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States." He added he would take action as soon as Saturday using emergency economic power or an executive order. Trump's move comes following a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) in the United States, which investigates deals affecting US national security. TikTok, especially popular with young audiences who create and watch its short-form videos, has an estimated billion users worldwide. Queried by AFP, TikTok declined to comment on the reports of the forced sales, saying only: "We are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. "Hundreds of millions of people come to TikTok for entertainment and connection, including our community of creators and artists who are building livelihoods from the platform." The firm this week pledged a high level of transparency, including allowing reviews of its algorithms, to assure users and regulators. "We are not political, we do not accept political advertising and have no agendaour only objective is to remain a vibrant, dynamic platform for everyone to enjoy," TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said in post this week. "TikTok has become the latest target, but we are not the enemy." The popularity of the platform surged after ByteDance acquired US-based app Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with its own video service. James Lewis, head of the technology policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he believes the security risk of using TikTok is "close to zero" but that ByteDance could face pressure from China to engage in censorship. "It looks like ByteDance may be getting squeezed by Beijing, so making them divest makes sense," Lewis said. "They could start censoring stuff." Lewis said US authorities under CFIUS have the power to unwind an acquisition previously approved and that a similar action was taken in 2019 with the dating app Grindr after it was bought by a Chinese firm. Explore further TikTok faces US national security review 2020 AFP July 31, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - On June 11, President Donald Trump issued an executive order (E.O.) authorizing the imposition of sanctions in the form of visa/travel restrictions and asset freezes targeting International Criminal Court (ICC) officials as well as other persons that contribute to the Courts investigations against the United States and its allies. During the announcement of the sanctions regime, Attorney General William Barr indicated that the U.S. Department of Justice initiated domestic investigations into officials at the ICCs Office of the Prosecutor for corruption and malfeasance. This is the Trump administrations latest salvo in its war against the ICC, which can be traced back to a September 2018 speech given by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton in response to the ICC Prosecutors request to initiate an investigation into U.S. conduct in Afghanistan. In his speech, Bolton outlined a number of measures aimed at shielding U.S. nationals as well as the nationals of U.S. allies (presumably Israelis), from investigation or prosecution by the ICC. These measures included prohibiting ICC officials from entering the United States, sanctioning their property located within the United States, and prosecuting them in the U.S. criminal system. This plans rollout was initiated in March 2019, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would restrict visas for ICC staff members, including the Prosecutor herself, who were involved in the Courts investigation into the nationals of the United States or its allies. The newly announced sanctions regime represents the second step in the implementation of this plan, reacting to the ICC Appeals Chambers March 2020 authorization of an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. This article assesses the possible effects of the U.S. sanctions regime on the ICC investigations in Afghanistan and Palestine with a view to ascertain whether the Trump administration officials who are responsible for its instatement could be prosecuted for contempt before the ICC. In doing so, the article builds upon the analysis of Sergey Vasiliev, which was published on Just Security in September 2018 following Boltons speech. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter Offenses Against Court Officials In his article, Vasiliev argued that Boltons threats against the ICC constitute contempt of court under article 70(1)(d) of the Rome Statute since they could impede, intimidate, or corruptly influence ICC judges in relation to their determination of whether to authorize the Prosecutor to investigate in Afghanistan [or] dissuade the ICC Prosecutor from making progress in the investigation against U.S. service members. Additionally, Vasiliev warned that if the Trump administration actually adopts the measures outlined in Boltons speech, it would amount to retaliation against ICC officials on account of performance of their duties in relation to the situation in Afghanistan and constitute an offense under Article 70(1)(e) of the Statute. This concern appears to have now materialized with the issuance of Trumps E.O. Section 1(a)(i)(A)-(B) of the order allows the imposition of sanctions on any foreign person who has directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute United States personnel [or] any personnel of a country that is an ally of the United States without the consent of that countrys government. The latter part of the provision presumably refers to Israel. There is no doubt that the primary target of this provision is the Court officials, including judges, who play a role in advancing the ICC investigations and prosecutions carried out against U.S. and Israeli personnel in the Afghanistan and Palestine situations. The opening text of the E.O. itself refers to the situation in Afghanistan, and complaints from U.S. officials about the work of the Court often refer to both situations. The E.O. also extends the sanctions to anyone who materially assist[s], sponsor[s], or provide[s] financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of those whose property is blocked (see Section 1(a)(i)(C)). Accordingly, U.S. officials may target any non-U.S. individual or entity who enters into any sort of commercial transaction with the ICC officials who are placed on the U.S. sanctions list. In order to not face sanctions themselves, individuals or other entities may avoid engaging in any commercial transactions with the sanctioned Court officials, which may have serious implications on their personal and professional lives. Additionally, the announced initiation of criminal investigations against the Court officials for the simple reason that they are carrying out their functions under the Statute may cause serious risks to their liberty and personal security considering the global reach and influence of the U.S. authorities. These measures have clearly been designed to impede, intimidate, or influence ICC officials involved in the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations with a view to stop them from performing their duties or to retaliate against them in the event they do perform those duties. The Court itself appears to be convinced of this since it characterized the U.S. sanctions as an escalation and an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law and the Courts judicial proceedings with the declared aim of influencing the actions of ICC officials in the context of the Courts independent and objective investigations and impartial judicial proceedings, (emphasis added). The Prosecutor reiterated these remarks by characterizing the U.S. measures as naked attempts to interfere with the courts judicial and prosecutorial independence to meet political objectives. Such conduct is criminalized under Article 70(1)(d) and (e) of the Statute. These offenses could be proven without a need to demonstrate the targeted Court officials were in fact affected by the acts of the perpetrator. As the Commentary on the Law of the International Criminal Court lays out, carrying out the prohibited conduct in itself is sufficient, meaning that the U.S. officials who are implicated in instating the sanctions regime have already incurred liability under these provisions. Interference with the Witnesses and Evidence Collection Process The potential targets of the sanctions regime is not limited to the Court officials. As noted above, Section 1(a)(i)(A) allows sanctioning of anyone who directly engages with the ICC investigation into Afghanistan and Israel. What constitutes direct engagement, however, is not clarified within the order. The use of such wide an imprecise language allows U.S. authorities to sanction anyone who provides any support to the ICC Prosecutors investigations into U.S. and Israeli nationals. This, arguably, includes witnesses providing information to the Court on the alleged crimes committed by U.S. or Israeli personnel in Afghanistan and Palestine respectively. As a result, fearing possible U.S. sanctions, potential witnesses may be unwilling to come forward and give testimony to the Court. Those who have already done so, on the other hand, may face sanctions for their engagement with the Court. These acts by the United States may incur liability under Article 70(1)(c) of the Statute, which criminalizes obstructing or interfering with the attendance or testimony of a witness, [and] retaliating against a witness for giving testimony. The Courts decisions in the case against Jean-Pierre Bemba, in which the politician and former warlord was convicted with others of corruptly influencing witnesses, confirm this. The Trial Courts judgment verified that it is prohibited to directly or indirectly threaten, pressure, or intimidate the physical wellbeing or property of witnesses in order to deter them from providing full and truthful information to the Court or punishing them for doing so ex post facto (para. 45; see also the confirmation of charges decision, para. 30). That judgment also found that there is no need to prove that the witness actually felt intimidated or was deterred by the perpetrators conduct (para. 48). (As the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicated, however, the relevant conduct must be of sufficient gravity to likely intimidate or deter the witness from giving evidence (para. 18).) Finally, the Appeal Chamber elaborated that the term witness in this context includes not only actual witnesses but also potential witnesses and, more generally, anyone who knows, or is believed to know, something of relevance to the investigations or judicial proceedings before the ICC (para. 720). The E.O.s provision for sanctioning non-U.S. individuals and entities who materially support those involved in ICC investigations into U.S. and Israeli personnel may constitute further criminal interference with the Prosecutors collection of evidence in the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations under article 70(1)(c). The wide range of actors who may be implicated under the E.O.s section 1(a)(i)(C) includes States Parties to the Rome Statute, NGOs or international organizations that provide information or assistance to the Prosecutor, and any company or individual whose services are procured by the Court in relation these investigations may be implicated under this provision. The possibility of finding themselves on the crosshairs of a superpower with vast capabilities, influence, and reach may very well intimidate and dissuade such actors from interacting with the Court. Could the ICC Initiate Contempt Proceedings Against U.S. Authorities? There do not appear to be any jurisdictional impediments to the ICC initiating contempt proceedings against the U.S. officials implicated in the creation and implementation of the sanctions regime. As discussed above, the conduct of the U.S. authorities appears to constitute at least three of the types of conduct criminalized under Article 70 that is, conduct described in 70(1)(c), (d), and (e). Further, Article 70 of the Statute provides the ICC with jurisdiction over offenses against its administration of justice irrespective of the nationality of the perpetrator or the territory in which the act was committed (see ICC Rules of Procedures and Evidence, Rule 163). The main impediment that the Court will likely face in carrying out contempt proceedings against U.S. authorities is related to enforcement. While a number of States Parties have voiced serious concerns regarding the U.S. sanctions towards the ICC for example, France, the U.K., the Netherlands, and the European Union, which is comprised of many States Parties it is unlikely that any of them would be willing or able to enforce an arrest warrant issued by the Court against U.S. officials. This is for the simple reason that doing so would amount to political suicide under current circumstances, and indeed could put these individuals and entities at risk of physical harm. Furthermore, as Vasiliev has rightly pointed out, Part IX of the Statute, which otherwise requires States Parties to cooperate with ICC investigations and prosecutions, does not apply to the Courts exercise of jurisdiction in offenses against the administration of justice. Rather, pursuant to Article 70(2) of the Statute, these cooperation issues are governed by the domestic laws of the State whose cooperation is requested. States Parties may rely on this provision in justifying their refusal to cooperate with the Court in bringing the indicted U.S. officials before the Court. It should be remembered, however, that the ICC has not shied away from investigating situations and indicting suspects where the prospects for arrest were very low in the past for instance, the situations in Sudan and Myanmar. As the ex-Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashirs recent ousting from power and possible transfer to the ICC has shown us, the political context may change, and with it the prospects for arrest and surrender. Considering Trumps unprecedented lack of popularity worldwide and rapidly diminishing chances of being re-elected, it is not inconceivable that a similar situation may materialize for some U.S. officials at some point in the future. One concern Vasiliev raises in connection to this point seems to have been resolved by the ICC Appeals Chamber since the publication of his article. It is now settled that that the heads of states and other high-ranking officials of non-State Parties do not enjoy immunity from arrest and surrender to the ICC before the domestic courts of the States Parties to the Statute where the Court is properly exercising its jurisdiction (paras. 1-5). This is a valuable piece of jurisprudence for national authorities of certain States Parties who may be willing to take a stand and enforce the ICCs decisions against any U.S. officials indicted for contempt. While this finding was made in the context of a prosecution involving Article 5 crimes (war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity), there is no reason why the Courts reasoning should not equally apply to its exercise of jurisdiction over offenses under Article 70. There would be no basis for the Court to adopt different standards on immunities in relation to various crimes under the Statute. Indeed, if this were the case, the high-ranking officials of non-States Parties pursued by the Court could freely commit any of the offenses listed under article 70 to impede the proceedings against them with impunity. Conclusion There is a plausible case to be made for the Court to initiate contempt proceedings against the officials of the Trump administration. As discussed, the jurisdictional requirements are met. What ICC officials need now is to muster the judicial courage to stand up to an administration that time and again has demonstrated it does not consider itself bound by the rule of law, internationally or domestically, and to strike back with the powers that are vested in them by the Statute. This surely is a perilous step to take since it will further escalate the tension between the United States and the ICC. Taking on a global superpower is not an easy task for an international tribunal. The only alternatives to fighting back, however, are either inaction or appeasement that is, halting investigations against U.S. and Israeli personnel. Some may say that the ICC should take this path for self-preservation. Others realize that neither of these options are any good in the long run. Inaction will allow the U.S. attacks against the ICC to further escalate as the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations move forward. Appeasement, on the other hand, will only damage the Courts reputation and credibility, and open it up to further accusations of pro-Western bias. The Court must fight back. Not only this will send a strong message to those who believe that they can bully the ICC into submission but it will also bolster the Courts status in the eyes of the international community. Uzay Yasar Aysev is a legal consultant at Global Rights Compliance LLP, specialising in international criminal law, international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Uzay holds an LLM degree on public international law from Leiden University and previously worked in a number of international organisations including the International Criminal Court, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, UNHCR and the International Bar Association. - "Source " - The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Post your comment below See also The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. At least 11 people have been killed and one injured after a crane collapsed at Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday. According to police, the crane had undergone repairs and officials and operators were inspecting it when it fell, trapping several people. News agency ANI said that the incident occured on Saturday afterroon. Watch video: #WATCH A crane collapses at Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. 10 dead and 1 injured in the incident, says DCP Suresh Babu. pic.twitter.com/BOuz1PdJu3 - ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 Meanwhile, a team of doctors and police has reached the accident spot. Several people have been rushed to local hospitals More details are awaited. Frances O'Connor, a much-loved member of the Kilmuckridge community throughout her life, recently celebrated her 90th birthday surrounded by a small group of family. Born Frances Kearns in July 1930 to Aidan and Brigid Kearns, she began her life lived in The Faythe, Wexford town, growing up alongside her brother Patrick. Sport and religion are very important to Frances, and are interests she has kept up throughout her life. She has a great love of hurling and never forgot her club the Faythe Harriers despite supporting local club Buffers Alley since she moved to Kilmuckridge to begin her married life with Paddy (PJ) O'Connor in 1955. Frances is a big fan of hurling and the Wexford team and greatly enjoyed 1996 when they won the All-Ireland. She has been heavily involved with community life in Kilmuckridge, and loves Irish music, singing and dancing. She reared four children in Kilmuckridge and her children and grandchildren are very important to her. Up until recently, Frances was a daily mass-goer and sang with the church choir in Kilmuckridge; she also made annual trips to the Knock Shrine and Our Lady's Island. Visits to Lourdes have been a regular occurence, and she would often travel to England to visit her brother until his death in 1996. She enjoys travelling, a favourite being a trip to New York in 1999 for a family wedding. Frances is also a fan of sun holidays with friends. Frances has been very involved with the Pioneer Association, being a secretary of the Kilmuckridge branch as well as secretary of the Leinster Region at one stage. She helped organise the Readoiri competition every year during this time. Tragedy struck the family when PJ died in 1985, but Frances battled on and continues his legacy, especially in community activities. PJ wrote the Guardian notes for the Kilmuckridge area for almost 15 years, and Frances took over after his death. Together, they were involved with the Kilmuckridge Drama Festival and the '79 Club, with PJ even being the first chairperson of the festival. Frances continued for as long as she could always looking after the visiting drama groups with tea refreshments along with other local ladies. She would write a report on the festival every night, often published in the Evening Herald. She is still very proud to be part of it all, especially when Kilmuckridge Drama hosted the all Ireland Drama Festival in 2015. Frances has been involved in the ladies club, the senior citizens club as well as the women together group over the years. Unfortunately her health took a turn about five years ago and she has been cocooning. Up until the lockdown, Frances kept in contact with all her friends, especially at Kate's Cafe in the village and The Upton Court. She was part of the celebration for the 40th anniversary of the 79 club held in Upton court last year. She was surrounded by her nearest and dearest as she celebrated her 90th birthday. Her grandson Padraig played the guitar and all the family sang it out before sitting down to cake. In 2018, Tucker Carlson highlighted the expropriation of land from White farmers in South Africa. He stated "[a]s land seizures based on skin color shows, South Africa is once again becoming a place where an entire group of people is targeted for discrimination and violence on the basis of their skin color." Twenty-six years ago, "South Africans engaged in a peaceful revolution. As late as the 1980s commentators predicted that any transition from white minority domination and black majority rule would precipitate a bloody civil war. Instead, in 1994 South Africans replaced president F. W. de Klerk with Nelson Mandela in a free and fair election that astonished the world." Thus, ". . . South Africans of all races voted in the country's first democratic elections, choosing Mandela as their first black president. The inhumane apartheid regime seemed to be miraculously ending peacefully, though much work remained to improve the lives of all South Africans." By the "late 1980s, however, South Africas economy was in a deep recession and large segments of the country were becoming ungovernable." Former president Jacob Zuma (2009-18) "brought the country a reputation for corruption and ineptitude." In fact, in 2018, the World Bank ranked South Africa as the most corrupt country in the world. In 2018, Hammond and Tupy "in reviewing South Africa's flirtation with the idea of changing its constitution to let the state expropriate farmland without compensation, wrote that South Africa need only look north to Zimbabwe to see the disastrous consequences of this kind of policy." Zimbabwe's former dictator Robert Mugabe gave "the green light to his paramilitary supporters to invade commercial farms, seize some 23 million acres of land and the confiscated farms were resettled with small scale agriculturalists. Many of the new would-be-farmers had no real knowledge of commercial agriculture and many soon returned to subsistence farming. The actual commercial farmers left for other African countries and the result was devastating food shortages in a nation once dubbed the 'bread basket of Africa.'" According to Epoch Times, in 2019 "ten million people were unemployed [in South Africa and] the country had a national debt of more than $200 billion dollars." It is a country "ravaged by almost a decade of extensive corruption" and "collapsing water and electricity services." This was the grim picture. Political parties sowing racial discord in a country still haunted by its apartheid past. Radicals encouraging land invasions. The most unequal society in the world according to the World Bank, with more than half of the population of 58 million living in poverty and a tiny elite controlling extreme wealth. In May of 2019, an election was held to "decide whether [South Africa would] be able to repair the damage done by nine years of corruption, which has crippled [the] government and caused great hardship for [the South African] people, said University of Johannesburg Vice Chancellor Adam Habib." In fact, South Africa's "two major political parties, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA), bled votes . . . in the May election that many analysts had described as the most important since the countrys first multiracial vote in 1994." President Cyril Ramaphosas ANC dropped below 60 percent for the first time, but at 57 percent put in a relatively strong showing, following Ramaphosas efforts over the past year to reform the government. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), whose leaders have encouraged land invasions and have been accused of inciting racial hatred, and whose protests have often exploded into violence, got almost 11 percent of the vote, up from the 6 percent it received in 2014. 'The EFF is proto-fascist. Its particularly violent, its particularly militaristic, its particularly focused on spectacle; its particularly focused on the aggrandizement of the individual leader.' The partys leader, or 'commander-in-chief,' is. . . 37-year-old, Julius Malema. Shortly before the polls, he . . . made the following public utterance: 'We are not calling for the slaughtering of white peopleat least for now.' The populist EFF says if ever given the chance to govern, it will seize all banks, mines, and land, and dole out the wealth to impoverished black South Africans Political commentator Melanie Verwoerd said the EFF inspired fear because its racist messages took South Africa back to a time when the country was on the brink of racial civil war. Attacks on farmers in South Africa mount and "being a white farmer can be a life-threatening occupation." The Federalist, recently argued that South Africa is on the verge of collapse and set to become the next Venezuela. Moreover, South Africa has been hit hard by COVID. The South African government has "instituted one of the worlds most repressive coronavirus lockdowns, under which people are not even allowed out to exercise or walk the dog and the sale of alcohol and tobacco has been outlawed." These reports should not be surprising when one considers the way South Africas president, Cyril Ramaphosa, chose to celebrate Freedom Day. Taking to Twitter, Ramaphosa revealed that he had a conversation with his 'Brother, President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela' noting, 'Our two countries share a close and deep historical bond based on friendship, solidarity and cooperation.' Perhaps, then, its no surprise that the ANC has turned to the likes of Cuba and Venezuela. For more than a decade, economic freedom in South Africa has been steadily declining as the government has inserted itself more and more into economic and private life. The " left-leaning ANC's socialist economic policies such as central planning, government subsidies and grants has lifted some black South Africans out of poverty, but the economic growth has been stagnant in the last decade." Lawlessness now prevails in South Africa. See this You Tube about how people have to safeguard their cars in Durban. As "freedom has declined, so has economic growth and opportunity, so that now more than a quarter of the population is unemployed and, thanks to the failing state education system, largely unemployable. When one accounts for all those who have simply given up looking for work, the unemployment rate rises to a crippling 40 percent." There "is now very little doubt that the ANC is failing and presiding over a slowly failing state. Like Venezuela, it seems intent on doubling down on bad policies. One of the most contested issues currently is the governments policy of Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC), which would allow the state to seize land without paying for it, trashing property rights enshrined in the countrys constitution. Another is the ANCs move to effectively nationalize health care, even though state hospitals are failing and private clinics offer high levels of care." Though "[l]aws restricting land ownership along racial lines were overturned in 1991, . . . restitution has proven more difficult. The ANC had set a goal of returning 30% of white-owned land to black farmers, but by last year reached only 10%. Historically, the ANC operated with a 'willing buyer, willing seller' model, but tight funding meant that those transfers happened very slowly and on a small scale. White farmers control an estimated 73% of commercial farmland today. To try to ease crushing rural poverty, the government has begun to explore legislation that would allow land to be seized without compensation." Ilana Mercer has written that ". . . if you replace a despot, but not despotism, you only oust a tyrant, and not tyranny." Seemingly absent from the repertoire of . . . Mr. Ramaphosa is an understanding that only the rule of law and the protection of individual liberties, especially private property rights for wealth-creating whites as well can begin to reduce the dizzying scale of the . . . problems. Without these building blocks and bulwarks of prosperity and peace . . . South Africa cannot be rehabilitated. In A Democratic South Africa?: Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (1991), Donald L. Horowitz concluded that democracy is, in general, unusual in Africa, and, in particular, rare in ethnically and racially divided societies, where majorities and minorities are rigidly predetermined (also the dispensation presently being cultivated by craven American elites) [emphasis mine]. Apartheid was an unmitigated satanic evil -- I still recall the scarred heads of those mercilessly beaten as they cowered in their hovels. But as Martin Luther King Jr. said "an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind." Will this be South Africa's fate? Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com Image credit: Pixabay public domain The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has predicted that the coronavirus death toll in the US could rise to 182,000 by late August. This means that, over the course of one month, roughly 30,000 Americans could die from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to the internal document first obtained by Yahoo News. In the report, the researchers also forecast a spike in fatalities of between 5,000 and 11,000 during the week of August 15 to August 22. The projection contradicts President Donald Trump's repeated claims that the virus will soon 'disappear' and that the US has a 'fatality rate lower than most.' It also comes on the heels of more than 1,500 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the US on Wednesday, the biggest single-day increase since May. A new CDC model predicts the US coronavirus death toll could reach 182,000 by late August, with around 30,000 deaths in just one month (above) Also forecasted is a spike in fatalities between 5,000 and 11,000 during the week of August 15 to August 22 (above) Five states and one territory are expected to see new deaths per week increase including Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Tennessee and Washington. Pictured: Nurse Kyah Paschall checks on 64-year-old-coronavirus patient Patricia Luera connected to a ventilator at Paradise Valley Hospital in National City, California, July 8 The US has struggled to get the pandemic under control with more than 60,000 new daily cases confirmed over seven of the last 10 days. The CDC projections for coronavirus deaths are based on forecasts made by 32 different modeling groups across the country. Last week, the forecast projected between 160,000 and 175,000 people would die from COVID-19 by August 15. This week, that number rose to between 168,000 and 182,000 by August 22, the document reveals. Additionally, five states and one territory are expected to see new deaths per week increase over the next four weeks: Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Tennessee and Washington. Another model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics predicts more than 230,000 coronavirus-related deaths will occur by November 1. The projection has continued to increase in recent weeks with initially 208,000 deaths by November 1 predicted on July 7 and then up to 224,000 deaths the following week. However, if the US implemented a universal mask mandate, the model suggests that 198,000 Americans would die by that date. The CDC also says that the virus is on track to become one of the leading causes of death in the US in 2020. Statisticians told CNN in an email they expect COVID-19 to become the third leading causes of death among Americans, but not over take the top two which are heart disease and cancer. On Friday, Reuters revealed that the US recorded nearly 25,000 coronavirus deaths in July, a 19 percent increase compared to June. Additionally, 1.8 million new cases were recorded out of the total 4.4 million, an increase of 66 percent in comparison with last month On July 16, the country also shattered single-day global records when it reported more than 77,000 new cases. Meanwhile, as former hotspot states such as New York and New Jersey report record-lows, Middle America is becoming the new hotspot with cases surging in states such as Ohio and Missouri. On Thursday, Ohio's health department reported that the state had seen its highest single-day increase in infections since the pandemic started in January with 1,733 cases. The state's previous record was 1,679 new cases on July 17. Meanwhile, in Missouri, more than 2,000 new cases were recorded on Thursday, a record-high for the state and the third day in a row the state has broken its record high. In fact, the state has broken its total case record seven times over the last 11 days,. Benjamin Franklin at the University of Pennsylvania's Locust Walk. University City is the neighborhood that Penn and Drexel have been rebuilding for the last 15 years, and Kevin Gillen says that it is the neighborhood that has experienced the greatest rise in property values in that time. Homes for sale (must shoot for print) 4206 Spruce Street $715,000 4732 Kingsessing Ave., $459,900 4049 Ludlow Street, $300,000 Other photos: Campus shots of Drexel and Penn; the Penn Alexander School; Sansom Street commons; the Left Bank apartments; WXPN World Cafe. 08/21/2013 ( MICHAEL BRYANT / Staff Photographer ) Read more TL;DR: Universities across the country are rolling out coronavirus testing plans in an effort to prevent outbreaks when students return. Some schools are testing everyone, others are not. Read about the varying plans for Philadelphia-area schools here. The $600 in extra coronavirus unemployment benefits expires today. If you relied on this on this money to pay your rent or mortgage, groceries, and other bills, here is a roundup of resources where you can find support. Ellie Silverman (@esilverman11, health@inquirer.com) What you need to know: Positive coronavirus tests caused 20 percent of the MLB schedule to be postponed, one week after opening day. Citizens Bank Park remains closed after two Phillies staffers tested positive. Its official: Phillys school year will begin fully remotely. Philly restaurant workers are organizing for higher wages and better work conditions despite the pandemic. Pennsylvania meatpackers claim the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is not protecting them from COVID-19 dangers. See photos of the Summerfest Green Phase opening on Penns Landing. Minority-owned small businesses were largely shut out of Pennsylvanias first coronavirus loan program. Whats going on in your county? We organized recent coverage of the coronavirus pandemic by local counties mentioned in the stories to make it easier for you to find the info you care about Local coronavirus cases The coronavirus has swept across the Philadelphia region and cases continue to mount. The Inquirer and Spotlight PA are compiling geographic data on tests conducted, cases confirmed, and deaths caused by the virus. Track the spread here. Universities across the country are rolling out coronavirus testing plans in an effort to prevent outbreaks once students return. Some schools are testing everyone: The University of Pennsylvania is mailing students at-home testing kits. Pennsylvania State University will test students and staff coming from places where infection rates are high. Swarthmore College will test all 900 students expected to live on campus when they arrive, then weekly depending on how many positives are found. Other schools are not using the blanket-testing approach: La Salle University in Philadelphia and Widener University in Chester will focus on testing those who show symptoms. Read more here. The federal program that has delivered an extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits to millions of Americans ended Friday, and negotiations over extending it have stalled in Washington. If you relied on this on this money to pay your rent or mortgage, groceries, and other bills, here is a roundup of resources where you can find support. Helpful resources You got this: Use SEPTA, bike share, Uber, and car rentals safely No matter how youre traveling, it comes down to the same basic principles wear a mask, maintain distance from others, and wash your hands [before and after commuting], says Dr. Eric Sachinwalla, medical director of Infection Prevention Control for Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia. Read more tips here. Here are 11 Philadelphia-area rooftop restaurants and bars that are open during the pandemic. In-person events are back. Heres how to decide whats safe. Eastern State Penitentiary and one major museum will reopen in August with many more right after that. Have a social distancing tip or question to share? Let us know at health@inquirer.com and your input might be featured in a future edition of this newsletter. What were paying attention to A group of educators talked to NPR about how to improve online learning this fall. With the pandemic cancelling fundraising plans this year, medical charities have been hit hard, STAT reports The Rehoboth Beach area is seeing a sharp decline in visitors, WHYY reports. Enjoy getting our journalism through email? You can also sign up for The Inquirer Morning Newsletter to get the latest news, features, investigations and more sent straight to your inbox each morning Sunday-Friday. Sign up here. President Akufo-Addo has called on inhabitants of Zongo communities to vote massively for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to enable him to retain power in the upcoming general elections. The President says his government has done a lot for Zongo communities in the country and will do more should the party be given another term. While addressing chiefs and imams of the Zongo community in Kumasi as part of the Eid-ul-Adha celebrations, the president promised to do more for Zongo communities. I am here to plead with you that just as you did in 2016, vote for me again come December 7. If you are pleased with my work in the Zongo communities vote for me. There are more developmental projects I will bring to your doorsteps so I am pleading with you to help me. Meanwhile, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has said that the Akufo-Addo-led government has by far cared more for deprived communities than any other government in recent history. Speaking at the virtual Eid prayers held at the forecourt of GBC on Friday, Dr. Bawumia cited the Zongo Development Fund and the Inner-City and Zongo Development Ministry as already ensuring human and infrastructural development in Zongo communities. He further outlined the many interventions the administration has implemented in the inner cities including scholarships for brilliant but needy students from deprived communities, as some life-changing policies that are having a real impact on lives that would otherwise be neglected. He pledged to do more including the building of 16 model SHSs in the Zongo communities to further develop the human capital in those areas if given another term. ---citinewsroom New Delhi: Lt Gen A K Bhatt has been appointed as the countrys new Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) and will be in charge of all army operations including on the LoC which has seen heightened tension. Bhatt, a Gorkha officer, replaces Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, who has been appointed as the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Mathura-based Strike 1 Corpsone of the three assault forces of the armywhich is mandated to cross into Pakistan in a short notice. It was during the tenure of Lt Gen Singh that India carried out surgical strikes at five separate locations in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to target terrorist launch pads. Bhatt is at present posted in the Army Headquarters as the Additional Director General of CAB (Complaint and Advisory Board). The appointment was cleared by the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Lt Gen Shokin Chauhan, who headed the Strike 1 Corps, has been appointed as the new chief of the Assam Rifles. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's never at a loss for words, seems to have let the cat get her tongue over her amazing insult to Hawaii's patron saint and most beloved figure of honor, Father Damien of Molokai. That's the 19th century Belgian priest who came the islands, learned the Hawaiian language, lived like a pauper, and spent his life caring for people with leprosy on the remote island of Molokai, before catching the disease and dying of it himself. The native Hawaiians loved him as an emblem of their Aloha spirit and honored him with a statue alongside King Kamehameha I as their state emblems inside the capitol. Not an issue for the far-left wokester congresswoman, who singled Father Damien out as a 'colonizer' and an example of 'white supremacy' on an Instagram tour of all the bad things about America: . @AOC calls the statue in the US capitol building of Father Damien, a canonized saint in the Catholic Church, a part of white supremacist culture. Father Damien died of leprosy after spending his life serving others who had the disease. pic.twitter.com/NVnfCN7EVK John Gage (@johnrobertgage) July 31, 2020 See, pure wokesterliness - if someone's white, it's obviously because of white supremacy, never mind the particulars. White, colonizer, that's all there is to it. And for that, she got a gale wind of blowback from grossly offended Hawaiians (America's least-white state) and all kinds of people who actually know the story of Father Damien and what he means to Hawaiians. The Week, which is a center-left mainstream publication, had a devastating takedown of this fool, in an excellent piece titled "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez picked the wrong statue to criticize," by Matthew Walther: In an Instagram story uploaded Thursday, the congresswoman, who once complained about not being able to afford an apartment after being elected to a position that pays her $174,000 a year and will provide her with free health-care and other benefits for the rest of her life, singled out a statue of Damien, who lived in vowed poverty and eventually died of leprosy himself, as a representative example of "what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks [sic] like." She was not referring to the saint's life or manner of conduct, but to the fact that he is memorialized inside the Capitol while Queen Lili'uokalani, the last monarch of the kingdom of Hawaii, is not. Ocasio-Cortez is probably not aware of the fact that the statue of the saint is a replica of one that stands outside the Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu, that he spoke and preached in the Hawaiian language, that his feast day is a holiday in Hawaii, or that he is routinely named in lists of the most admired figures in modern Hawaiian history. Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner, had even more damning details - his piece is brutal: While there, according to the U.S. Capitols website: "He constructed a home for boys and later a home for girls. He bandaged wounds, made coffins, dug graves, heard confessions, and said Mass every morning. In December 1884, Father Damien noticed severe blisters on his feet without the presence of pain. As he suspected, the disease was leprosy." Queen Liliuokalanithe very woman whom AOC says they should honor instead of Fr. Damien the colonizerwrote to Fr. Damien in 1881 to thank him and to bestow an honor upon him. ...and... So the statue AOC objects to as a totem of white supremacy is a statue of a poor, sick immigrant social worker to the poor, whose work was honored by Hawaii's native queen. The statue was created by an immigrant woman feminist artist of color, and chosen by the people of the least white state of the union. Here he is - look like a white supremacist to you? Even the normally silent Catholic bishops stepped up, here's a video by Bishop Robert Barron that tells the story of Father Damien for this clown, otherwise hailed as 'the future of the Catholic Church' by the left-wing National Catholic Reporter: Friends, I made this quick video in response to @AOC. In defense of St. Damien of Molokai: Part 1 pic.twitter.com/Wj92fPBxbs Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) July 31, 2020 It's nice to see one of them saying something. Barron also defended Father Junipero Serra, a man with a similar history to Father Damien, whose statues were toppled in California and whose Mission San Gabriel the subject of a likely arson fire. Most powerful was the verdict of native Hawaiians - who didn't take the attack on Father Damien well at all: A Hawaiian Catholic catechist said that St. Damien of Molokai is a hero to the Hawaiian people, after a prominent congresswoman claimed the statue honoring him in the U.S. Capitol is part of colonialism and patriarchy and white supremacist culture. St. Damien gave his life serving the isolated leper colony at Kalaupapa peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, said Dallas Carter, a native Hawaiian and a catechist for the diocese of Honolulu, in an interview with CNA. Any Hawaiian here who is aware of their historywhich most Hawaiians arewould absolutely, Catholic or not, defend the legacy of Damien as a man who was embraced by the people, and who is a hero to us because of his love for the Hawaiian people, Carter said. We did not judge him by the color of his skin. We judged him by the love that he had for our people, Carter told CNA. And Hawaii's a blue Democrat state, though tha hasn't stopped Ocasio-Cortez elsewhere. What she was trying to do was pigeonhole the same flawed narrative of Confederate statues being unworthy to stand based on the legacy of slavery, onto Hawaii's beloved chosen saint. And she was also trying to erase Hawaii's history, a truly disgusting thing given the special state's many worthy figures, and given how little people know of it. Now that it didn't go over well, she's saying nothing, expecting it will blow over. But it shouldn't blow over. She owes the Hawaiians an apology and she's not giving it. Let this be one more reason for Hawaiians to reconsider voting for Democrats. Ocasio-Cortez is exactly what's wrong with them. Image credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons A resolution denouncing bigotry, antisemitism and hate speech espoused by extremists who target Chinese Americans on claims China caused the COVID-19 pandemic and conspiracy theorists who say Jews are using COVID-19 to make money drew both praise and harsh criticism from the public during Tuesdays Fort Bend County Commissioners Court meeting. During public comments, Sugar Land resident Ian Scharfman was among those who came to voice support for the measure. Sadly, this pandemic has given rise to hate directed at our neighbors, such as hateful ethnic slurs and other egregious actions directed at Asians and the proliferation of conspiracy theories tied to this pandemic that are founded in antisemitic tropes, to name a few examples, Scharfman said and urged commissioners to approve the measure. We must stand together to condemn such hate, bigotry, racism and antisemitism in all its forms. The resolution put forward by County Judge KP George, denounces antisemitism, anti-Asian bigotry, racism and all hateful speech, violent action and the spread of misinformation related to COVID-19 that casts blame, promotes racism or discrimination or harms Fort Bend County Asian Pacific, Black, Latinx, Jewish, immigrant or other ethnic and religious communities. The measure also drew criticism from a number of residents such as Christine Longwood, who objected to the resolution because it wasnt inclusive of every ethnic group. I noticed on the resolution that nowhere does it have Caucasians or white listed, Longwood said. Because a particular demographic is excluded from the resolution, it seems like a pretty racist document to me. The resolution states the Jewish community has been the target of blame, hate, antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories that claim they profit from COVID-19 and goes on to condemn terms like Chinese Virus or Kung Flu virus as language that encourages hate crimes and against Asians and Pacific Islander individuals and spreads misinformation. Related: Fort Bend County Commissioners voice concerns about COVID-19 mask order Deborah Chen from OCA Greater Houston, a national civil rights organization that advocates for Asian Pacific Americans, said many Asian American residents contacted her organization for support because they were afraid to go to the grocery store or venture out in the community for fear they would become targets of hate speech or violence. The Midland incident is where a family was shopping at Sams Club and was stabbed and thats generated a lot of fear among many members of the Asians community, she said, referring to reports that an Asian family became victims to an alleged hate crime incident while shopping earlier this year. According to police officials, Jose Gomez, 19, allegedly stabbed three family members including two children under the age of 10 and later reportedly told officers he tried to kill the family because he believed they were infecting people with coronavirus because they were Chinese. Unfortunately, whether its antisemitic tropes that rely on conspiracy theories that blame Jews for (COVID-19) or geography that has been the source of anti-Asian hate and violence, particularly what happened in Midland a few months ago, extremists and other people have stoked fear for their own agendas, Anti Defamation League Southwest Regional Director Mark Toubin said. We do know that public officials can make people feel more secure by publicly and officially stating that hate and this pandemic should not be related and thats what this resolutions does. The resolution also encourages people to report any antisemitic, discriminatory or racist incidents to the proper authorities for investigation, which drew criticism from Simonton resident Andrew Perry who said although he didnt condone racism he opposed the resolution because it limited his constitutional rights. Youre trying to limit our freedom of speech, Perry told the court. You make words prosecutable or investigable. This is a slippery slope. Where does it end? During court discussions, the resolution drew criticism from Commissioner Andy Meyers who also voiced concerns related to free speech. There are problems with potential first amendment questions. There are problems with potential HIPPA violations, he said. But I think most importantly, there are problems with potential violations of state and federal law in relation to how this resolution is worded to establish county policy. On HoustonChronicle.com: China poisoned our people, says campaign ad from Houston candidate Kathaleen Wall Commissioner Vincent Morales also voiced opposition to the resolution. This resolution condemns hate but it creates division. It does not show unity. I could see us coming together supporting a resolution that is not so divisive, Morales said, without pointing to any specific part of the resolution as divisive. When contacted later for clarification, Morales issued a statement via email: Fort Bend is internationally known as a diverse county, and I believe were a fine example of how so many different cultures, people, and beliefs can successfully thrive and peacefully coexist. The reason that we continue to grow so quickly is because we live up to that reputation. This Commissioners Court has stood time and again for equality, justice, and civility, and despite our different backgrounds and cultures weve worked hard together to keep our community thriving, Morales wrote. My major concerns were the policy changes, and especially after Judge Georges recent media appearances about unkind and racist social media comments against him the vague language about citizens being asked to report on their fellow citizens speech was not the direction I expected him to go. Normally, our court takes policy decisions through a more deliberative approach. We were initially brought the first Anti-Defamation League Resolution and I had been working for days on being ready to vote in favor of it, to condemn hate and promote the peaceful unity of our community. Ive still not learned why the ADL resolution was changed and picked apart to its final extent. As has been the case before with Judge George, I (and Commissioner Meyers) find ourselves occasionally on the outside looking in when it comes to input or discussion. As an elected member of the court, its regretful when I have been deprived of any deliberative or creative process, Morales wrote. I liked the initial resolution and was ready to support much of the language in even the second version if there had been any discussion at all from the other members. But they stayed silent, so my only choice was an up or down vote. I honestly believe that if this was an inclusive court that relished a diversity of perspectives, we would have taken the time to proofread these documents against embarrassing errors, involve more deliberation from all our members, and solicit at least some input from the departments impacted by the new policies. These are basic steps towards unanimous support and resolutions that we all can agree upon, and use to show love to all our neighbors as ourselves. The resolution was approved 3-2 vote with Meyers and Morales voting against the measure at a Fort Bend County Commissioners Court meeting held Tuesday, July 28. knix@hcnonline.com Ibrahim Magu According to TheCable, Ibrahim Magu, former acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has asked the presidential probing the agency under his watch to explain why people who are being tried by the EFCC have been asked to testify against him. In a statement Tosin Ojaomo, his counsel, issued on his behalf, Magu said the panel headed by Ayo Salami, a former president of the appeal court, has been hostile to him. Magus ordeal began after Abubakar Malami, attorney-general of the federation (AGF), accused him of mismanaging loot recovered loot by the anti-graft agency. He was detained at the area 10 force criminal investigation department in Abuja for 10 days before he was eventually granted bail. In the statement, Magu said he is yet to be served with all the allegations levelled against him. Why is the panel inviting suspects facing EFCC trial? What is the basis of the panels invitation to a senior lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), a lawyer that is defending the looters of our common patrimony, especially those who are under EFCCs investigations and trial? he said. Is it not curious that while the lawyer to Magu, Wahab Shittu, deliberately refused to disclose what transpired before the panel, Ozekhome and Obla issued statements and made public what transpired before the panel. What is the propriety of the panels invitation to a disgruntled official of the EFCC, Nuru Buhari Dalhatu, to come and testify against Mr Magu while the said Dalhatu is under investigation for misconduct and fraternizing with suspects? What is the justification for the panels invitation of another senior lawyer, Godwin Obla (SAN), who is currently facing EFCCs trial with an indicted judge of the Federal High Court? Is it not strange that Obla made a damning revelation on what transpired before the panel and went ahead to demand for his outrageous legal fees of N763 million and the striking out of the charge against him? Why is the panel hostile to Mr Magu at any time he tried to take up issues with those invited to testify against him? How come that a fact finding panel over allegations of corruption against Mr Magu has now turned to a platform where certain individuals whose actions and antecedents fit into the description corruption enablers as well as haters of the war against corruption and its leadership are being invited to testify against Mr. Magu? There is the need to ask this important question- Has any witness testified that he or she gave xyz amount to Mr Magu in order to compromise cases before him? Why is it that the Salami-led panel is yet to serve and confront Mr Magu with all the allegations against him and what are the terms of reference of the panel? ALBANY Shortly before Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sat down with local officials in Savannah, Ga., in mid-July to offer advice on combating the coronavirus, he met briefly with the citys mayor, Van Johnson. Johnson, a Brooklyn native, lamented that he wasn't able to see his mother, who still lives in New York City. Cuomo had recently announced a quarantine order for visitors traveling from states with high infection rates, Georgia included. Well, she can come see you but if youre going to see her, then youre going to have to quarantine, Cuomo explained. Do you mind telling her that? Johnson said. So they called her up. She said that they loved and appreciated the governor for what he was doing and how he had protected New York," Johnson recalled. "And he basically said, You know, this is going to keep everybody safe.'" Cuomo had brought Johnson a cheesecake from Juniors famous Brooklyn fare alongside personal protective equipment and medical supplies. The trip had been quickly organized; the governors team had reached out to their Savannah counterparts on a Friday to set up the Monday visit. Were just excited that we have the partnership, Johnson said. When you want to win, you team up with winners. You follow the playbook of winners. Nobody follows the playbook of those who lost." It was in a press conference in Savannah, before a group of reporters who hadnt been asking questions of this governor almost daily for the past five months, that Cuomo would admit for the first time that New York had made a lot of mistakes during its coronavirus response. He declined to elaborate. Back in New York, the trip was less of a hit. Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente was frustrated that the governor hadnt visited his county, where officials were struggling to buy medical supplies. Look, Im all for helping other areas, but not when we need help first, Picente said. Others pointed out that Cuomo would be exempt, as an "essential worker," from the same quarantine order that he had explained to Johnsons mother. The Savannah trip may have backfired, said former state Assemblyman John McEneny, a longtime Albany historian. In some ways, the trip offered a portrait in miniature of Cuomos overall handling of the pandemic. Over the past 140-odd days, he had become not only New Yorks governor, but Americas governor a steady counterweight to a federal response that has been criticized as muddled and often contradictory. With unprecedented executive powers augmenting his usual top-down management style, Cuomo's administration toiled for months to bring New Yorks infection rate down, wrestling with the thought of 30,000 lives lost and hundreds of thousands sickened. But the same tactics that helped flatten the states curve would unnecessarily complicate its reopening processes and, some say, worsen the spread among New Yorks most vulnerable. In interviews, more than 30 current and former Cuomo associates, as well as friends and longtime political observers, described a crisis response that, for better or worse, will likely be remembered as the most consequential period of the governor's four-decade political career. When historians and academics assess New Yorks response to the coronavirus pandemic, they will judge the efficacy of Cuomos decision-making. This is what he was born for, said Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa. I think that this was the thing that he spent his whole life working up to. Everything he'd ever done prepared him for this moment. 'The man and the hour' On the 54th day that Cuomo delivered a daily coronavirus briefing, he talked about his paternal grandmother. The briefings had included several monologues about his family: his concern for his elderly mother, his pride in his three daughters, his love for his brother, Chris, who had tested positive for the virus. But April 24 was the first day the public heard him mention Mary Cuomo, whose words he invoked as he offered a lesson about humans under pressure. You really get to see people and get to see character when things get hard," he said. "And when the pressure is on ... you really get to see the true colors of a person and see what they're made of. ... The weaknesses explode or the strengths explode. In the governors case, both have been on full display in the five months since New York announced its first confirmed case of coronavirus. The thing about Andrew is that his greatest strengths become his weaknesses. That is, of course, the definition of a Shakespearean flaw, said Michael Shnayerson, the author of "The Contender," a 2015 biography of the governor. He pushes too hard he pushes people too hard, he pushes a situation too hard. Cuomo is demanding and progress-driven, a firm leader whose micromanager tendencies come to the fore in a crisis. This is a governor famous for showing up, often in a signature windbreaker or parka, to address a flood or blizzard in any corner of the state. No emergency is too small. His days begin at the crack of dawn and end long after dark. He interrogates his team about the information and policies they present to him and if you dont have the facts, youre (screwed), said a former aide. He doesnt curse, but he can undress you with a look, said Joe Spinelli, a senior adviser to the governor who also worked with his father, the late Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. Early in the coronavirus crisis, it was clear that these traits the same ones that vexed legislators and often evoked public criticism could prove beneficial. He privately negotiated with the state Legislature in late February, before New York had even confirmed its first case, to secure $40 million in response funds, as well as enormous executive power allowing him to single-handedly suspend many laws with the stroke of a pen. Later, he worked to ramp up testing capacity and arm-twisted federal officials to set up temporary hospitals. In normal times, Cuomo could go for months without holding a news conference at the Capitol. He began hosting them daily, shooting into the national spotlight via cable news livecasts; he was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and profiled in Vanity Fair. (He would not be interviewed for this article.) The high profile prompted #Cuomo2020 and #DraftCuomo hashtags and the coinage of the term Cuomosexual for those intrigued by his bachelor status. The briefings at times revealed a more unguarded man who told New Yorkers to say I love you before it was too late, a divorced dad who recounted conversations hed had with his adult daughters about mistakes hed made in the past. The pandemic marked the first time two generations of Cuomos had lived in the Executive Mansion since Gov. Mario Cuomo's era. He often alluded to his father, even hiding Easter eggs in the form of quotes from A.J. Parkinson, a fictional pundit to whom Mario Cuomo would attribute bromides he didnt want attached to his own name. Parkinson was quoted multiple times during the crisis: "Today we must consider an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere"; "Don't pass the buck without passing the bucks"; and "I respect elected officials who aren't typical politicians." ("There was only one Mario, but Andrew comes so goddamn close, you cant believe it," said radio host Bill O'Shaughnessy, a longtime Cuomo family friend.) This wit and openness represents "the real Andrew Cuomo," according to Jerry Goldfeder, a prominent election lawyer who worked with Cuomo when he was state attorney general. Even former enemies offered praise: When we needed it, he was providing the right voice and, in many cases, the right leadership, said Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, Cuomos 2018 Republican opponent for governor. The man and the hour met, said Harold Holzer, a family friend and former Mario Cuomo aide. And now, while states across the South and elsewhere are reeling from COVID-19, New York's positive test rate has remained at roughly 1 percent. But the state's respite and what critics have described as a midsummer Cuomo victory lap comes after great suffering. At the height of the pandemic in mid-April, no fewer than 800 people were dying every day. Even amid the current spike elsewhere, New York's total death and infection numbers still tower over those of every other state. Including probable COVID-19 deaths in New York City, the state has recorded more than 30,000 fatalities linked to the illness roughly double the toll in New Jersey, the state with the second-highest mortality rate. Texas and Florida have recorded about 6,000 deaths apiece. Those statistics make it all the more remarkable that Cuomo's daily briefings 111 in a row, followed by frequent calls and appearances in more recent weeks made him a venerated national figure. His image of competence and straight talk stood in contrast to President Donald Trump, who has been criticized for downplaying the virus and sparring with his own medical experts. The American public was getting so many conflicting kinds of information that they didnt know what to think. It was mostly obfuscation, said Norman Adler, a former Albany lobbyist who has known the Cuomos for decades. So here comes Andrew, and hes not for the most part obfuscating, and that was comforting to people. Even when it was bad news, it was done in a way that made people think, OK, I understand. 'There were no rules' After the March 1 announcement of New York's first confirmed coronavirus case a woman in her 30s who had traveled to Iran Cuomo urged calm, noting that the state had gone through viruses that are, frankly, more frightening than this. With 76 confirmed cases a week later, Cuomo declared a state of emergency. The first death from COVID-19 was announced March 14. Although California and Washington state had responded to the pandemic first, the tsunami that hit New York was unprecedented. The governor "had to figure out how you navigate that storm, and there were no rules," said Jay Jacobs, the head of the states Democratic Party and a longtime Cuomo ally. "He laid the groundwork. He created the road map for other states to follow. There were early missteps with potentially fatal consequences. Cuomos history of feuds with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio led to a mid-March argument over whether the mayor could impose a shelter-in-place order a term that elected officials in California's Bay Area had not shied away from, but Cuomo said was likely to cause panic. His resistance to such a directive lasted five days, delaying a move that public health experts say could have saved lives in the city and elsewhere. Steve Bisson/AP In early April, de Blasio announced that New York City schools would close for the school year, only to see Cuomo swoop in and announce that such a decision was his alone to make. The conflicting messages caused confusion but didnt keep city schools open. A Democratic legislator speaking on condition of anonymity attributed the fight to a refusal to allow anyone else to get attention or credit. Cuomo would later show reluctance to hand over power to other local government officials across the state. Ahead of the phased reopening of some areas in mid-May, the governor announced control rooms composed of local leaders would oversee reopening in the state's 10 regions. It quickly became apparent that the control rooms would actually have no real decision-making capacity. Instead, orders came directly from Cuomo and his team, many times without input from the local leaders, who scrambled to absorb and enforce directions that they had received at the last minute. Local leaders pleaded with the governors office to hand over more agency in the reopening process. Their requests were often met with silence, or, occasionally, a phone call from a senior member of the Cuomo administration who would promise improved communication that never came, local officials said. As the reopenings continued and the infections declined, Cuomo's messaging could tip over the edge from encouraging to bizarre. He directed staff to construct a foam mountain intended to represent the infection curve. The same metaphor informed a political poster filled with inside jokes from coronavirus briefings and cartoon drawings of his team and his daughters even his German shepherd, Captain that the state would sell for $11.50 a pop. About 34,000 were sold. Critics noted that the mountain was made up of economic hardship and sickness, and accused Cuomo of putting himself at the center of the narrative. My father is a foothold in that mountain, and I just find it unseemly, said Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, whose father died of the virus in April. Cuomo senior adviser Rich Azzopardi said the poster was meant to portray a cautionary tale for the rest of the country. The death toll has affected Cuomo personally, those close to him said, and he worries greatly about the prospect of a second wave. But even those numbers have presented a point of contention and provided other states with a lesson in what not to do. Cuomos handling of the virus in nursing homes, in particular, has fallen under withering scrutiny: More than 6,500 residents in those facilities have died of the virus, and critics say the Cuomo administration is partially to blame. At issue are two directives issued early on in the crisis. The first allowed COVID-positive but asymptomatic employees to continue working in the long-term care facilities; a second barred nursing homes from turning patients away solely because they had coronavirus. Both orders were later rescinded or altered, but the Cuomo administration has insisted that its actions were in line with federal recommendations. The second order, issued March 25, has been the subject of the heaviest criticism. At the time, Cuomo had been deeply concerned about the availability of hospital beds grim models had projected a need for 140,000 beds at the apex and it was generally understood that nursing homes could properly care for sick patients. (In the end, the state at the peak of the crisis needed about 18,500 beds.) Instead, critics say the order likely sent COVID-positive patients into the care facilities, where the virus, in Cuomos own words, spreads "like fire through dry grass. The governor has defended the order by pointing to federal guidance and, in recent weeks, to a self-absolving report from the state Department of Health asserting that, because of the timeline of the outbreaks, the directive could not have been the main source of spread in the homes. The report relied on data unavailable to the public and was touted to have been peer-reviewed," though the assessment was completed by hospitals with state contracts. Cuomo has dodged questions about whether there should be an independent review, though the state Legislature plans to hold hearings on the subject. 'We lived through this' When asked about nursing homes or other potential errors during the crisis response, Cuomo has at times berated reporters or blamed their institutions for furthering political agendas. Those were some of his weakest public moments, those interviewed said, when Cuomo's frustration got the best of him over perceived unfair reporting or an inability to convince people of a narrative he had constructed. ("We respect tough reporters and we hope they respect tough public servants," Azzopardi said. "We also believe in speaking honestly and directly, and that includes taking issue with the occasional editorial stance of a newspaper especially when the facts are on our side.") He doesnt handle criticism, said Adler, the former Albany lobbyist. I think some people would have some sympathy, maybe, if there was some logic, said Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay. At the time, no one really knew what was going to happen, but God forbid you have to admit mistakes from time to time. Polls indicate that the criticism hasnt affected the public's perception of the governor. His favorability rating shot to 77 percent in April, his highest ever, and has remained in the mid-60s since, according to Siena Research Institute polling. In May and June, he maintained a 76 percent approval rating for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic; in March, it hit 87 percent. An analysis released Thursday by the COVID-19 Consortium suggests that the public is more likely to favorably view an executive who has taken decisive action to quell the spread of the coronavirus. Despite months-long campaigns from Republicans on nursing homes and people taking apart every single action that we took at various points, people don't care," said DeRosa, the governor's secretary. "They say, We lived through this with him. He got us through this, and we are not going to forget that. And no one's going to rewrite that history. If the governor has any regrets, or if he has taken pause at any point during the pandemic, he has not shown it though he has floated the idea of writing a book on his experiences. He is adept at interacting with the press and skillfully dodges any questions that would prompt much in the way of self-reflection. He came close, once, at a July news conference in New York City, when a reporter asked Cuomo what question he would offer if he were sitting on the other side of the table. He joked about his poster at first, and then paused, letting seconds lapse as he chewed over the question. How are you doing through all of this," he decided, "and when you look back, what do you think? By that point, thousands of New Yorkers had died, leaving as many grieving families and friends. New York had made great progress but watched in horror as other states called in refrigerator trucks to store dead bodies, a tragedy Cuomo had experienced just months before. The daily briefings had waned but the work had not. Perhaps all of those things ran through the governors mind at that moment. He declined to answer his own question it was, he said, too personal for that setting. MANILA, July 31 (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday retained coronavirus restrictions in the capital Manila until mid-August and announced free vaccines to combat a surge in infections that has overwhelmed health care workers and facilities. The Philippines this month has recorded Southeast Asia's biggest daily jump in coronavirus deaths and biggest single-day increase in confirmed infections. The capital region and provinces south of it were placed under general community quarantine, limiting movement of elderly and children, and the capacity of business establishments. "My plea is to endure some more. Many have been infected," Duterte said in a televised address. Duterte promised free vaccines, prioritising first the poor and then the middle class, police and military personnel. The Philippines will be given precedence by China in vaccine distribution, he said. (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales Editing by Ed Davies) State was recently honored by leading industry trade press and associations for its innovative use of technology as well as its commitment to supporting the receivables management industry. Receivables Advisor Magazine recently named State a Top 10 Innovative Agency for our work in developing an omni-channel communication platform to better assist patients. In July 2020 State also was honored by the American Collectors Association International (ACA) with its All In award for States work in educating legislators at both the state and national level. As we collectively respond to a global pandemic with the accompanying economic crisis, it is critical that patients have the ability to communicate with their providers to best understand the myriad of flexible payment options and expanded financial assistance available to them. State has worked with numerous legislators to share how we are providing compassionate, empathetic care to assist patients through this difficult time. As some in congress have proposed stopping all collections calls, State has shared how an inability to communicate with their healthcare providers to discuss financial options would harm, not help patients. The people at State Collection Service exemplify the spirit, morals and ethics of what it means to help consumers while at the same time serving their clients. They are most deserving of this years All In Award and we appreciate the example they set for the accounts receivable management industry, Mark Neeb, chief executive officer of ACA International. As the pandemic continues to rage on, patients may defer or simply forego necessary medical care if they are unaware of the financial options and assistance available. If patients are unaware of the financial assistance programs, it may add stress to the patient and their family from a financial burden that is unnecessary. It is in the patients best interest to be able to freely communicate with their healthcare providers. State believes passionately that patients need the ability to discuss all of their financial options with their healthcare provider, especially during this turbulent time, said Tim Haag, president of State. We continue to invest time and effort in educating state and national legislators to avoid unintended consequences where patients are harmed by well-meaning legislation. Additionally, ACA awarded State Account Executive Beth Conklin with its Fred Kirschner Award in recognition of the more than 125 training sessions she has provided. State is honored that its staff and executives are frequently asked to share information and train others in our field. We are committed to providing exceptional patient care that is compliant with all relevant regulations and are pleased to share our expertise with colleagues. About State State improves the financial picture for healthcare providers by delivering increased financial results while ensuring a positive patient experience. Rooted in a tradition of ethics, integrity and innovation since 1949, State uses data analytics to drive performance and speech analytics with ongoing training to ensure patient satisfaction. A family-owned company now in its third generation of leadership, State assists healthcare organizations with services spanning the complete revenue cycle including Pre-Service Financial Clearance, Early Out Self-Pay Resolution, Insurance Follow-Up and Bad Debt Collection. To learn more visit: http://www.statecollectionservice.com. Haiti - News : Zapping... Me Lafontant's residence attacked On Thursday evening, the residence of the former government commissioner Me Jacques Lafontant was attacked by unidentified individuals. For Me Lafontant, the authors of this attack are under the orders of Rockefeller Vincent the new Minister of Justice. He sees this attack as an attempt to intimidate... NOTICE BRH transfer in Gourdes In a notice dated July 30, the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH) decided to postpone to October 1, 2020 the measure concerning the delivery in Gourdes of transfers made in dollars... Sogener's lawyers strike back Following the State seizures of the Sogener Company and the property of its managers Thursday, July 30 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31423-haiti-flash-the-state-seized-the-sogener-company-and-the-property-of-its-leaders.html , Guerby Blaise one of the lawyers of the Defense Council of Dimitri Vorbe announced an action for annulment of the order of Judge Mathieu Chanlatte which should force the judicial and police authorities to reverse. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31423-haiti-flash-the-state-seized-the-sogener-company-and-the-property-of-its-leaders.html Cuba : words of sympathy The Embassy of Haiti in Cuba learns with sadness the death of the great Cuban historian Eusebio Leal, defender and tireless fighter for Cuban culture and the world. Haiti presents its sincere sympathies to its family, these friends, to the government and the Cuban people "QEPD querido Eusebio !" Large delegation in Carries Accompanied by Prime Minister Jouthe, Vincent, the new Minister of Justice Vincent, Toussaint Secretary of State for Public Security and Normil Director General ai of the PNH, Ms. Myriam Jean visited accommodation sites, beach hotels as well as the village of Carries. The Head of Government spoke with the victims of the arson of May 29, 2020 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30830-haiti-insecurity-land-conflicts-in-arcahaie-1-dead-and-many-damages.html around the restoration of security in the area, the support of the State, and the repair of the burned goods. Become a Regional Representative of the OHJ Become one or one of the 13 Regional Representatives of the Haitian Youth Observatory. Deadline for submitting applications: August 8, 2020. To know the conditions and submit your application visit : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdlf8ZLeBNC5FSAZBIraJGu8YQuNJ8WmJJgtOPAeG4hCAWaIg/viewform HL/ HaitiLibre Parents and teachers who have been waiting and wondering if and how schools will reopen this fall are finally getting some answers. Districts across Central New York, and the state, submitted their final reopening plans to the state on Friday. Each plan is dozens of pages long, addressing everything from how many students can be on buses and in classrooms to what days kids will go to school, if at all. The majority of large districts in the region have chosen hybrid plans that have most students going to school two days a week and learning from home three days a week. But how they have spread out those days varies widely from district to district. Some are splitting kids by alphabet, making it easy to figure out who goes when. Baldwinsville took a different approach: a rotating schedule of three days in class and three days online learning. It allows them to get three days of in-person education in a row, but means the days students are in class changes each week. Some smaller districts have decided to bring all students back to the classroom every day. In Onondaga County, those include Jordan-Elbridge, Fabius-Pompey and LaFayette. Although the hybrid plan isnt popular with working parents who are struggling to find child care for the remote-learning days, experts and superintendents say its often the only solution given their classroom sizes and staffing. The schools dont have the space or teachers to keep students six feet apart. In districts sending kids into the classroom, most are prioritizing students with special needs and English language learners, who will typically attend four days a week. Some districts are bringing younger kids in for more days in the classroom. Teachers and staff also will report to school every day. School districts also say online instruction will look very different this fall compared to the spring when schools had to improvise. Most districts plan to take attendance, have a much more structured school day and teach live-streamed classes whenever possible. In many districts, a single Web-platform will be used, and efforts are being made to get everyone access to technology. There are variations in the schools hybrid models. For example, the Syracuse City School District is splitting the younger grades in half, sending one group to school on Monday and Tuesday; the other half will go on Thursday and Friday. Wednesday will be online for everyone and a day to clean the buildings. Nearly all high school students in the Syracuse district will be learning from home. I would love to have every kid, every day, because thats our business. Thats what we do, said Syracuse Superintendent Jaime Alicea. But knowing that theres not a vaccine. And theres a lot of issues, regarding covid-19. Goal number one is the health and safety of our students and staff. The district has high poverty levels. Many families dont have access to WiFi or computers. In the spring, 40 percent of families did not have either. The district is doing another survey to find out if that number has changed. Its also ordering hot spots to help families. The district is the largest in the region, with nealry 20,000 students in K-12. Related article: McMahon: Hybrid school reopening plans will create an absolute crisis Liverpool and North Syracuse also are going with hybrid models, as are districts including Jamesville-DeWitt, Fayetteville-Manlius and Baldwinsville. Some, like East Syracuse Minoa, plan to bring back all the elementary and middle school students with high school on a hybrid schedule - but a final decision wont come until they receive definite numbers of parents who are keeping their children on distance learning from home. Many schools are conducting parent surveys designed to determine who has decided to keep their children at home and continue remote learning, rather than send them into the classrooms. Some districts are sending the younger students every day. Tully schools want to send pre K-grade 4 students five days a week, while the older students are on a hybrid schedule, with kids attending two days a week. School districts have to address areas ranging from health and safety to special education and transportation in their plans. Some common issues addressed in the plans are: Masks : Most are requiring students and staff to wear masks, some with built-in mask breaks. Social distancing : Students must be six feet apart. Gym, chorus: Students must be 12 feet apart. Some districts are holding these classes virtually. Wednesday: Many large schools are closed to students on Wednesdays for deep-cleaning between groups. Temperature checks: Most schools are asking parents to fill out health screening forms that are sent to school with the child each day. The screening includes a temperature check. Some districts also will have personnel check kids temperatures before they board the bus. Sick kids: The districts all have procedures for sick kids, who need to be isolated six feet apart in a special room, and typically sent home as soon as possible Buses . Many districts are asking parents if they would drive their child to school; there are surveys for parents to fill out. Typically, buses will have one student per seat. There are still questions about whether kids have to be one seat apart on the buses or not, superintendents say. Distance learning: Reopening plans give parents the option to stay with remote learning if they are more comfortable not sending their child into the school buildings. Related article: See Central New York districts plans for reopening this fall What the largest districts in the region are planning: Alexander Albon has been driving with a new race engineer since the start of the British Grand Prix weekend. From now on Simon Rennie will assist Albon during the race weekends. According to Ho-Pin Tung, the switch has been an important one. Correct changeover According to Tung, it could be very important for Albon to work with Rennie now instead of Mike Lugg. "In Hungary, after qualifying, you saw that Albon was almost fighting on the radio. He then complained a lot about being sent out in traffic, so he didn't have a good qualifying session," Tung told those at the Ziggo Sport F1 Cafe. "That's one of those things, if there's a bit of friction, you don't want that. There isn't enough time for that in a weekend. Everything has to run like clockwork," continues Tung. Engineer can change Robert Doornbos completely agrees with Tung. "Albon had a dramatic season so far in terms of speed. A good engineer can help to change that, but you have to get the right feedback from him. As a driver, it has to be your buddy. One word is enough if there is something wrong with the car," concludes the former F1 driver. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lefteris Papadimas and Vassilis Triantafyllou (Reuters) Athens, Greece Sat, August 1, 2020 08:03 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ace401 2 Science & Tech greece,Acropolis,technology,diving,archeology,shipwreck,artificial-intelligence Free Hidden and protected for millennia, an ancient shipwreck in Greece opens to the public for the first time on Aug. 3, fusing archaeological wonders in the depths of the sea with the marvels of modern-day artificial intelligence. Access to underwater sites is typically restricted in Greece to preserve their integrity. But authorities have been able to allow recreational diving at the shipwreck at Peristera, thanks to computer surveillance technology. Underwater cameras monitor the site, and use image recognition software to alert administrators instantly if the wreck is in danger of being disturbed. The site is located off a tiny outcrop off the Aegean island of Alonnisos, where a wooden vessel sank in the late 5th century B.C., taking with it thousands of amphorae, pointy-bottomed clay jugs used for commerce across the ancient Mediterranean. "We were lucky to start with one of the most beautiful ancient wrecks in the world. They call it the Acropolis of sea wrecks," said George Papalambrou, an assistant professor of power propulsion at the National Technical University of Athens. Papalambrou, who works at the University's School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, says the custom-made monitoring system -- with solar power, recognition software and luminosity-triggered lens wipers to unclog debris -- could be a template deployed to other underwater sites. Read also: Acropolis in Athens reopens after virus shutdown "The idea is to try to resemble how the human optical system, our eyes, are able to determine an object which passes in front of us," he said. Dimitris Kourkoumelis, an underwater archaeologist at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, says the pilot project could make more sites accessible. "It is the first time, and not only not just in Greece but on a pan-European level, that such a site, such a shipwreck so large with so many objects, is opening to the public and divers," Kourkoumelis said. Archaeologists say the wreck gives insight into commerce in the period known as the Golden Age of Athens. The 3,000-3,500 amphorae on board may have been transporting wine. "I have dived at many sites. It was the first time I felt so emotional," Kourkoumelis said. "Truly, its difficult to explain ... it is something really impressive." Sherrie Hewson has said she believes her brother had coronavirus when he died of a brain tumour. The 69-year-old former Coronation Street star's brother Brett Hutchinson, 71, passed away from the incurable disease in April this year, following a battle with pneumonia. But Sherrie claims COVID-19 'had something to do with' his passing and believes that her brother knew but didn't want to make 'a fuss'. Convinced: Sherrie Hewson has said she believes her brother had coronavirus when he died of a brain tumour (pictured in 2018) The Loose Women star revealed last August that her brother had a grade four glioblastoma and he had been given 18 months to live. Speaking during an interview on talkRADIO's Drivetime, Sherrie said: 'I'll always believe that Covid had something to do with his, they call it pneumonia but I don't believe that. 'Controversially, I believe that that's what it was called but no one, you can't prove things, the sadness and the pain was too big to carry on and create a fuss.' The actress went on to say that she and her family all attended Brett's funeral to ensure he was sent off 'the right way'. So sad: The 69-year-old former Coronation Street star's brother Brett Hutchinson, 71, lost his battle with the incurable disease in April this year, following a battle with pneumonia Relecting on the difficult period in her life, she added: 'So it's been horrendous, but this is a year I will never, never forget.' MailOnline have contacted a representative of Sherrie for comment. Back in April, Sherrie expressed her fear that she would never see her terminally ill brother again due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, Brett was in hospital fighting his brain tumour, and due to the threat of the virus, she wasn't able to visit him. Claims: But Sherrie claims COVID-19 'had something to do with' his passing and believes that her brother knew but didn't want to make 'a fuss' Speaking to Yours Magazine, the star said: 'My brother is in hospital with a brain tumour. I call him every other day but he is very ill and I don't know if he'll come out of this.' 'My family are absolutely everything to me yet I haven't been able to see my two granddaughters aged nine years and nine months, my 13-year-old grandson, and my darling daughter Keeley. 'We're in touch all the time but it's really hard not being able to cuddle and kiss them. Opinion: 'I'll always believe that Covid had something to do with his, they call it pneumonia but I don't believe that' The interview comes after Sherrie broke down in floods of tears on Good Morning Britain earlier that month when she revealed her beloved brother Brett was in hospital and she can't see him. Calling in from home in Manchester, Sherrie told Lorraine Kelly: 'I have a brother with a brain tumour in Wales and I can't see him and he was in hospital and he had to be moved to make space for a bed.' As a picture came up of them on screen, she said: 'There he is, he's gorgeous. I can't see him so I send him silly videos every day and that's the way to do it.' A glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive form of brain tumours in adults and last August Sherrie had spoken about the tragic situation. Heartbreaking: Back in April, Sherrie expressed her fear that she would never see her terminally ill brother again due to the coronavirus pandemic The cause of glioblastomas are currently unknown, but they are usually treated with surgery, followed by a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Due to glioblastomas having tendrils that extend to other regions of the brain, it can be difficult to fully remove all of the growth. Meanwhile, following his death, Sherrie told OK! in June: 'I take three steps forwards, two steps back, I'm trying to move forward, but I just wish my brother was still here. I'm devastated, my heart is broken, but I have to find a way to mend my heart. I've got to find the those little bits of my heart and I will find them because I've got a lot to be thankful for.' She added: 'I'm fine sometimes, but I have days where I hurt very much so I have to find a way of getting rid of that and being strong. My daughter and granddaughters get me through. I might have a flip but everyday I'm getting stronger.' Prasanta Mazumdar By Express News Service GUWAHATI: Bhutan King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck lauded Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and his government for helping Bhutan during the Covid-19 lockdown. In a letter to Sonowal, the king said: Though Assam with its people fought it hard to contain the pandemic with necessary lockdown and curtailment of peoples movement, the benevolence of the authorities of Assam in allowing movement of vehicles carrying essential commodities to Bhutan helped its people and ensured their well-being during the lockdown period. Wangchuck described the gesture as a true reflection of the close ties of friendship and brotherhood between the people of Assam and Bhutan. I remain appreciative of your goodwill and look forward to your continued support, the king wrote. He believed that the efforts, being taken by the Assam government, would stem the spread of the virus. The Bhutan king empathized with the people of Assam in these trying times. Sonowal expressed his gratitude to Wangchuck on behalf of the people of Assam. He said the ever-increasing bond of friendship and brotherliness between Assam and Bhutan would keep strengthening the mutual ties in the days to come. Bhutan and Assam have shared a cordial relationship for centuries. The direct contact between the Ahoms of erstwhile Ahom dynasty and the people of Bhutan dates back to the 17th century when the Ahoms had further expanded their kingdom to western Assam. Anna Moneymaker/Pool/Getty ImagesBy BENJAMIN SIEGEL, ABC News (WASHINGTON) -- The Trump administration mismanaged ventilator negotiations with a major medical device manufacturer, overpaying by roughly $500 million for tens of thousands of breathing machines earlier this year, House Democrats said Friday in a new report. Citing thousands of pages of emails and documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee, the report concluded that "inept contract management" and negotiating led the Trump administration to mismanage funds in the arrangement with Dutch company Philips a nearly $650 million contract announced by the Department of Health and Human Services in April -- that could have been used to secure protective equipment for front line medical workers early in the coronavirus pandemic. While President Donald Trump and his administration have since touted the production of ventilators, the delays early in the process backed up the delivery of machines that were in short supply last spring and in high demand in states first hit by the pandemic. "This should be something that everyone is very concerned about," Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., told ABC News. "We're very concerned that the same incompetence and gross negligence that characterize the contract negotiations here are happening elsewhere." The White House and Republicans, in similar responses to Democrats' report, accused the committee of trying to politicize the pandemic, and did not address the specific concerns about the agreement negotiated by the administration. "This partisan report is nothing more than a stunt that is only meant to politicize the coronavirus," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email. "We needed ventilators and we needed them quickly. Thanks to President Trump, no person who needed a ventilator went without one. The strength of our SNS continues to grow each day," Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., and Michael Cloud, R-Texas, said of the report. The Obama administration first inked a contract with Philips in 2014 for 10,000 ventilators by June of 2019 and granted the company a five-month extension when it fell behind in production, teeing up the final delivery of the last batch of ventilators by November 2019. The Trump administration granted Philips three additional extensions to complete the contract, which ended up ended up pushing back deliveries of ventilators to the federal government, a move that "deprived the country of any ventilators from Philips before the pandemic hit," Democrats wrote. On Jan. 21, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disclosed the first coronavirus death in the United States, Philips emailed the Department of Health and Human Services and offered to move up the delivery of ventilators -- a message the administration ignored for six weeks, according to emails cited by Democrats. In March, the administration agreed to modify the terms of its arrangement with Philips to order more ventilators, but did not require the expedited delivery of the machines to the federal government, according to the report, citing emails between the Trump administration and Philips. Instead, top administration officials, including White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, trade adviser Peter Navarro and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation CEO Adam Boehler, a Kushner associate, inked the new deal for ventilators, paying nearly five times the price for machines that were "functionally identical" to the units sold to the Obama administration, Democrats said in the report. In a statement, Philips disputed Democrats' charges and denied overcharging the Trump administration for ventilators and profiteering in the arrangement. "Philips is on track with the production and delivery of the 43,000 EV300 hospital ventilators according to the April 2020 contract with HHS. The list price of the specific bundle of the EV300 ventilator plus roll-stand and accessories, as selected by HHS, is over $21,000 and is being provided to the U.S. government for $15,000," the company said. "The agreed price [per unit] reflects a discount, while taking into account part of the higher costs for the expedited delivery schedule." Krishnamoorthi, whose panel has also investigated the accuracy of coronavirus antibody tests, said Democrats are worried the administration will take a similar approach to its agreements with pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines for the virus and has called for the administration to operate a "transparent" development process. While ventilators were in short supply and high demand earlier this year, many doctors have tried to lessen patients' dependence on the machines, armed with new knowledge of treatments and alternative therapies that don't involve intubation. "People were put on mechanical ventilation because they needed help breathing [and] doctors found it very difficult to get those patients off of the ventilators or to wean them off. And the fatality rates of people who had been put on mechanical ventilation with quite high," Dr. Ronald Waldman, a global health expert at George Washington University, told ABC News. Copyright 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. In Queensland, contract tracers have identified almost 2000 people who might have been exposed by two women who travelled to Melbourne and spent eight days mingling in Brisbane while infectious. Pedestrians wear masks in North Sydney on Friday. Credit:Renee Nowytarger Olivia Muranga, 19, and Diana Lasu, 21 are facing fines of up to $13,345 and a maximum of five years behind bars after allegedly lying to health officials to avoid mandatory quarantine following their trip. Their alleged failure to isolate triggered a massive health response, with authorities bracing for the possibility of an outbreak. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd said people in Sydney hotspots should also consider wearing masks. "Particularly when people are outside their homes and in areas where physical distancing may be difficult," Professor Kidd said. "That, of course, includes when you go into the supermarket, where there's lots of people moving around and people may come closer to you than the 1.5 metres, that people should be considering wearing masks." NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant also urged the community to wear a mask when unable to socially distance while NSW Health is "putting out spot fires". The federal government's Infection Control Expert Group chair Professor Lyn Gilbert backed moves to introduce mask-wearing in areas of Sydney with signs of community transmission. Masks were no substitute for other precautions higher up the "hierarchy of infection control", namely staying home when sick, social distancing where possible and good hand and respiratory hygiene, she said. Professor Gilbert - also an infectious disease expert at the Marie Bashir Institute of Emerging Infections and Biosecurity - said we were in a relatively enviable position of having "a pretty good handle on where the outbreaks are, and rapidly containing them". "It makes sense to try and limit transmissions even further by asking people to wear masks who could have been exposed and could be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic in those areas," she said. "I do fear, and I believe it's a plausible fear, that having a mask on can well give people a false sense of security ... but we recognise that sometimes they are not possible and a mask can be a useful supplement, particularly when community transmission is happening." Pedestrians wear face masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus at Town Hall in Sydney's CBD. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Supermarket giant Woolworths announced it would also strongly recommend customers in NSW, ACT and Queensland hotspots wear masks. Surgical masks were "perfectly adequate" and there was no reason to believe homemade cloth masks would not offer some protection, though there was no strong evidence supporting them, Professor Gilbert said. The Darlo Bar has been shut for deep cleaning due to a customer testing positive to coronavirus. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer She warned against buying N95 masks - the high-grade masks used by hospital staff in close contact with COVID-19 patients. The ACT government strongly advised Canberrans not to travel to Sydney except for essential reasons. In a statement, the Australian Club said it had "decided to act with an abundance of caution" and would close until Tuesday for a clean after a staff member who had visited the Apollo restaurant in Potts Point - the epicentre of a COVID cluster - tested positive. The Australian Club has been closed due to the outbreak. Credit:Jacky Ghossein The staff member was at the club on Monday July 27 between 6am and 9.30am, the club said. Founded in 1838, the club counts some of the country's highest-profile men among its members and frequenters. On Wednesday July 22, former prime minister Tony Abbott, Cardinal George Pell and former 2GB host Alan Jones reportedly had dinner at the venue. Dr Chant revealed the two Thai Rock outbreaks in Wetherill Park and Potts Point were genomically linked, and genomic sequencing had so far linked NSW's active cases to strains in Victoria. "We are awaiting further genome sequencing to see how that's further linked to The Apollo, and we'll update the community once that data is in hand," she told 2GB on Friday morning. Of the 21 new cases in NSW on Friday, six were associated with The Apollo restaurant linked to the Potts Point outbreak, which also includes cases from the local Thai Rock restaurant, now includes 19 cases. Loading One of the 21 cases one was a person in Orange, in central-western NSW, who was linked to a known cluster in Sydney and was diagnosed on their return. "There is no need for concern in the Orange community," the local health area service said. The Thai Rock Wetherill Park cluster in Sydney's west swelled to 94 after three new cases were linked to the Our Lady of Lebanon cluster and two are linked to the restaurant. The owners of the Thai Rock restaurants, David and Stephanie Boyd, apologised to the public on A Current Affair but insisted they were not to blame. "It's almost a trial by social media," Mr Boyd said. The funeral gatherings cluster also grew to 21 cases, two cases were linked to the Mounties club in Mount Pritchard, two are in hotel quarantine and one case was acquired in Victoria. Two cases remain under investigation, and one case was linked to another known case that remains under investigation. People who visited businesses across Sydney suburbs including Marrickville, Crows Nest and Surry Hills were being either asked to monitor for symptoms or self isolate for 14 days after people who visited venues were later diagnosed with COVID-19. The Darlo Bar advised a COVID-positive patron attended the venue between noon and 2pm on July 26, and a case linked to the Apollo cluster visited Harpoon and Hotel Harry in Surry Hills between 2.15pm and 11pm on July 26. Indias education ministry has decided to review in the coming week, the setting up of local chapters of the Confucius Institutes in association with seven local colleges and universities after security agencies alerted it to the growing Chinese influence in higher education in India. The ministry also plans to review 54 Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) signed between prestigious educational institutions including IITs, BHU, JNU and NITs and Chinese institutions. It has already issued a notification to the Ministry of External Affairs and the University Grants Commission. The Confucius Institutes are directly funded by Ministry of Education of Peoples Republic of China with the ostensible aim to promote Chinese language and Culture. But they have come in for criticism all around the world, including the US and the UK for helping spread Chinese propaganda. Most recently, according to a BBC report of September 2019, Australia launched an investigation of whether the agreements between universities and the institute have broken anti foreign-interference laws. Also Read: China moves PLA battalion across Indias Lipulekh Pass. Its a signal Around the same time, several universities around the world shut down programmes operated by the institute, that report added. Ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee have been quoted saying that Confucius Institutes are part of the overseas propaganda to project Beijings soft power. The decision to review the Confucius Institutes and the MoUs comes at a time when the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has been amassing more than 50,000 troops, tanks, missiles and artillery guns in occupied Aksai Chin, in an open display of aggression against India along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh. The PLA has even spread the deployment to the middle sector in Uttarakhand and the eastern sector in Arunachal Pradesh. Also Read: Army wont take eyes off Ladakh, preps to shop for Siachen-like gear for troops According to high ranking officials in the government, the Confucius Institutes in India to be reviewed are at: the University of Mumbai; Vellore Institute of Technology; Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar; . O P Jindal Global University, Sonepat; School of Chinese Language, Kolkata; Bharathiar University, Coimbatore; and KR Mangalam University, Gurugram. The officials, who asked not to be named ahead of the review said Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University also has an MoU with Hanban (the Confucius Institutes HQ) though it hasnt set up a centre. Also Read: Security agencies red-flag Chinese fronts in education, not just power and telecom The MoU was signed between JNU and Peking University around 2005 during the-then Chinese premiers visit to India. The institute was never set up since there some disagreements over constitution of the board . Since the MoU was signed for five years, it lapsed. Chinese officials wanted to revive it later but the university did not show much interest, said sinologist BR Deepak, chairperson at JNUs Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, who was an associate professor at the varsity when the MoU was signed. The education ministry called the review after security agencies made a presentation before Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on July 15 to red-flag Chinese penetration in the Indian telecommunication sector and higher education. The meeting was attended by the senior-most secretaries to Government of India. It was in this meeting that the decision to review Beijings presence in the two highly sensitive sectors was taken. It isnt clear what the government will decide after the review but HT learns that the education ministry will question the universities, colleges and institutions whether they took permission from it (until recently, the ministry of HRD) or the ministry of external affairs before signing the MoUs with Chinese universities or Hanban. Interestingly, this isnt the first time the education ministry is acting along these lines. On October 1, 2019, the University Grants Commission (UGC) issued a circular asking universities to get approvals from the central government before offering courses in association with any Chinese institutions. The University of Mumbai maintained that the circular was not valid for existing institutes. The (Confucius) Institute first started eight years ago with a grant that came from the Chinese government of about 90 lakh. Ever since theres been no additional grants but we have managed to keep the institute up and running by increasing courses, said Vibha Surana, director of the Confucius Institute at the university. She added that learning Mandarin has opened many job prospects for students in the past. The Confucius Institute was established in 2013 at the University of Mumbai following an MoU with Hanban in the same year. It was set up as an apex Chinese institution providing standard international certification and assuring quality Chinese language teaching. There was no response to queries seeking comment from KR Mangalam University and Lovely Professional University. HT couldnt immediately reach the other universities and colleges that have partnered to set up Confucius Institutes. Among the other MoUs reviewed by the ministry will be those involving the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) with top Chinese technical institutions for research, student and faculty exchange, and language courses. These institutions account for around 30 of the 54 MoUs. According to a central government document accessed by HT, the list of 54 MoUs that will be reviewed this week at a high-level committee are: IIT Kharagpur - (1) Tianjin University, (2) Henan Polytechnic University [HPU], (3) Chang Gung University IIT Bombay - (1) Central University of Finance and Economics, (2) Tongji University IIT Madras - (1) Beijing Jiaotong University, (2) Huazhong University of Sciences and Technology, (3) Shanghai International Studies University, (4) Dalian University IIT Delhi - (1) Changan University, (2) City University Of Hong Kong Hiksar Peoples & Republic of China, (3) China Jiliang University, (4) Nanyang Normal University IIT Guwahati - (1) Hunan University, (2) Shantou University, (3) Soochow University, (4) University of Macau, (5) Yunnan University IIT Gandhinagar - (1) Confucius Institute Headquarters [HANBAN] IIT Roorkee - (1) The Center for Monsoon System Research of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at Chinese Academy of Sciences, (2) East China Normal University [ECNU] IIT Bhubaneswar - (1) Engineering Centre of Materials, Manufacturing, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong - University, China [during state visit of President of India to China] NIT Durgapur - (1) Tianjin Polytechnic University, (2) Hohai University, (3) Integrated Risk Governance Project, Future Earth Program [hereafter IRGP/FE], Beijing Normal University, (4) Southwest University for Nationalities [SWUN], Chengdu, (5) Beijing Normal University, (6) School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, (7) Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan NIT Surathkal - (1) Institute of Radio Frequency and optoelectronics Integrated Circuits plus State Key Lab of Bioelectronics, Southeast University NIT Warangal - (1) Changan University IISER Kolkata - (1) Hubei University, (2) Changshu Institute of Technology IISC Bangalore - (1) China University of Geosciences Jawaharlal Nehru University - (1) Tsinghua University, (2) Beijing Normal University, (3) Shandong University, Jinan, (4) Guiyang University, Guiyang, Guizhou, (5) Tongren University, Tongren, Guizhou, (6) Guizhou Minzu University, (7) Sichuan University of Peoples Republic of China, (8) Jinan University, (9) Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences/ the Chinese [Kunming] Academy of South and Southeast Asian Studies, (10) Yunnan Minzu University, (11) Shenzhen University, Guangdong, (12) Renmin University of China, Beijing Manipur University - (1) Yunnan Open University Central University of Punjab - (1) Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, (2) Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Banaras Hindu University - (1) Soochow University, School of Law, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China (2)Beijing Language and Culture University, (3) Beijing Foreign Studies University, (4) North China University of Water Resources & Electric Power, (5) Dali University SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Technology giant Microsoft is in advance talks to acquire US operations of TikTok, a media report on Friday said. In other news, Donald Trump has been making remarks of banning TikTok in America. A media report on Friday said that the Bill Gates owned tech giant Microsoft is likely to acquire TikToks US operations. The US President Donald Trump has been in the news headlines for making a remark of banning the Chinese social media app TikTok in the USA. Recently, India banned TikTok and several other Chinese apps in India. This move of the Indian government was appreciated by both the US administration and the US lawmakers. President Trump told media at the White House that theyre looking at TikTok. They may be banning TikTok. Donald Trump, in response to a question, told that they may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options but a lot of things are happening, so theyll see what happens. He went on to say that they are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok. A media report marked that Microsoft headed by Indian American Satya Nadella is in final conversations to take charge of US operations of TikTok. In the past few days, claims of TikTok collecting private data of Americans were made by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Also read: US charges three in Twitter mega Bitcoin hack Also read: US to ban Tiktok after India? Trump says US will ban Chinese app Mike Pompeo said to the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that India has banned 106 Chinese applications including TikTok that threatened its citizens privacy and security. Senator Marco Rubio said that in its current form, TikTok represents a potential threat to personal privacy and their national security. He added that he applauds the Trump Administration for taking this critical step, but they must do more than simply remove ByteDance from the equation Also read: Covid-19 vaccine update: Health Ministry says only 3 vaccine candidates in phase 3 3 capital for Andhra: Cabinet clears decks for development of Amaravati, Visakhapatnam and Kurnool INS Kavaratti: The silent submarine killer in the seas, to be commissioned into Navy today 11 killed as crane collapses in Visakhapatnam Shipyard India oi-Briti Roy Barman Visakhapatnam, Aug 01: At least 11 people were crushed to death and one person was injured on Saturday after a crane collapsed in Andhra Pradesh. AP Chief Minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy has directed Visakhapatnam District Collector and City Police Commissioner to take immediate action in the incident. The incident was reported from Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam, DCP Suresh Babu confirmed. The massive crane suddenly crumbled and crashed to the ground with a massive sound when the workers were carrying out an inspection of the crane used to carry equipment for shipbuilding. Death toll in south Mumbai building collapse rises to 9 US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news "A new crane was being commissioned.Trial run was being conducted to bring it into full-scale operation. We've also ordered inquiry both from within Hindustan Shipyard and also a high-level committee from administration", says Vizag District Collector Vinay Chand. #WATCH A crane collapses at Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. 10 dead and 1 injured in the incident, says DCP Suresh Babu. pic.twitter.com/BOuz1PdJu3 ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 "Around 20 workers were said to be working on the inspection when the crane crashed. Some workers managed to run for safety, some others received injuries and at least 10 workers were crushed under the weight of the crane," a police official said. According to the reports, three bodies were retrieved from under the debris of the crane and the remaining were believed to be crushed. The rescue operations is going on by police with the help of shipyard staff. "The injured workers are being shifted to the local hospitals," the police said. Millions of Americans are waiting for the possibility of a next round of stimulus checks, but Congress still is trying to decide what it will look like, how much will be included in each check and who receives the money. The current session of the Senate runs until Aug. 7, so a decision will have to be made before then on how much can be done before the Senate comes back on Sept. 8. According to a report from CNET, the start of the break could be pushed back if a deal is not reached. There are multiple different ways these stimulus checks could look once the Senate reaches a decision. According to Forbes, the most likely option is that another $1,200 check will be cut for adults making less than $75,000 a year and $500 for each additional child. Adults making over $75,000 would have it reduced $5 for every $100 of gross income above the limits. The report also said that Senate Republicans removed the age limit, which would allow anyone 17 and older to get the check, including high school, college and adult dependents. The report said that Democrats are pushing for $1,200 per dependent on top of the $1,200 per person, again capping the annual income at no higher than $99,000 for an individual or $198,000 for a married couple. An alternative proposed by other Senate Republicans would have a check of $1,000 for each individual earning less than $75,000, including children regardless of age. So for example, a family of four would receive $4,000. The last option in the report was proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Ed Markey would have each individual earning less than $100,000 in annual income receiving a check for $2,000, including children regardless of age. The amount would be phased down up until $120,000. For those hoping to get the second stimulus check, it could be a quick turnaround from after it gets signed. CNET reports that if it is signed on Aug. 7 and President Donald Trump signs it on Aug. 10, the checks could be headed out as early as the week of Aug. 24. However, the report notes that if a deal is not reached until Sept. 9 and signed by the president on Sept. 11, it would not be sent out until the week of Sept. 28. Hotel Business News and Analytics Important! This article is written by orangesmile.com editors and is protected by copyright law. The article can only be re-used with a direct link to www.orangesmile.com NEWS BLOCKS: Germans Tell Where They Want to Travel in 2020 As many countries around the world reopen their borders, tourists start making vacation plans again. Germany is well-known as one of the major source markets in tourism, so it is important to know what destinations are popular in this country. Even though there is no coronavirus vaccine available at the moment, Germans are already eager to travel. What places do they prefer? Surprisingly, Germans remain the #1 nation that wants to travel abroad. The share of people who are not scared by the coronavirus is significantly higher in Germany than in the rest of the world. A global survey asked respondents from different countries whether they were planning to continue to travel abroad. An astonishing number of Germans 70% - told they would continue traveling. This is the highest result not only in Europe but also in the rest of the world. Only 20% of the respondents from Germany were planning to stay in the country and enjoy domestic trips. Finally, the remaining 10% had concerns about traveling during the coronavirus pandemic and said they would stay at home. At the same time, 90% of the German respondents were considering health risks when planning a vacation in 2020. What destinations are German tourists planning to visit his year? In the past, Mallorca hotels were the most popular choice. Spain and the Canaries in particular were the preferred destination for Germans, followed by Italy, Austria, and France. Such countries as Denmark, Greece, and Switzerland have always had many guests from Germany too. Nowadays, tourists consider their home country the safest destination but they are also willing to visit neighboring countries. It looks like hotels in Zurich, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen hotels will get more German-speaking guests soon because Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark are the most popular choices. When it comes to long-haul destinations, German travelers want to visit South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore. Just like tourists in many countries of the world, German travelers have safety concerns. They consider air travel and cruises to be riskier and label car journeys the safest. Beach holidays, camping, and holidays in the wild are also less risky in the opinion of German tourists. To prevent the spread of the disease, Germans think it is important to keep minimum distance and observe hygiene rules. 31.07.2020Stay in touch with the latest news of a worldwide hotel industry. All up-to-date analytics, reports , and news about hotel business trends on OrangeSmile.com. New Delhi: Chinese mission in Islamabad has asked Pakistani authorities to manage negative sentiments domestically when it comes to atrocities on Uighurs Muslims which could take a toll on bilateral ties. Pakistani authorities had done an internal study to gauge the public mood on the atrocities against Uighurs by Chinese govt in the restive western province of Xinjiang. The report found that religious journals in Pakistan have been talking about it vocally and widely covering the situation in the westernmost Chinese province which one journal described as "police state". The main objective of the Pakistani assessment was to manage the reaction and control any activity that may cause embarrassment for both Pakistan and China on the Uyghur issue. Journals like Ishraq, Ahl-E-Hadith, Mohaddis, Peyam, Al Burhan, Al Aitisam, Uswah Hasana and Tarjuman Ul Quran have been discussing the matter since November 2019. The story was first broke by WION on Friday. The report was handed over to the Chinese mission, with the mission seeking more feedback on the matter. The Chinese mission in Pakistan is worried about the religious sections of Pakistani society, which are considered not only staunch but uncompromising. It sees the role of mainstream English media such as Dawn who have reported on China's expanding sphere of influence also concerning. While major mainstream media in Pakistan have been focusing on growing cooperation and goodwill between Islamabad and Beijing, "certain English media" gives space to disturbing news from China, the mission has discussed with Pakistani authorities. Feedback on Urdu media has been asked, as religious segments rely on Urdu media for information. When it comes to Urdu media versus English media, the Chinese mission believes the latter caters only to a certain section of the elite and doesn't have a significant role in shaping public opinion. What the Chinese mission seeks to understand is if concerns regarding Xinjiang are taking "shape of emotions" and this could be detrimental to the interest of both countries, especially with the mega infrastructure project China Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC passing through the South Asian country. Both sides have concurred that "chances of emotions taking shape" may increase as western sources give more reportage to the crisis in Xinjiang but with documentary evidence. The Chinese response to western stories on Xinjiang is not seen as convincing and one that is lacking transparency. For example, while initially, China denied that acknowledge the presence of detention centres, Beijing later adjusted its position to pronounce them as re-education and de-radicalisation centres. People to people connectivity is another aspect the Chinese mission has asked feedback on as Pakistanis might be forming personal opinions and getting information first hand. One is the frequent visit of people from Pakistan to Urumqi, Kashgar in Xinjiang with some married to Uighur Muslims and concerned about the safety of their families. Another is increased connect between Pakistani and Turkish nationals at the public and official level and that might get expose the former with Uighur right activities. Feedback has also been asked on current questions being raised on the silence of Pakistani nationals over conditions of Uighurs vis a vis being vocal on "other communities such as in Palestine or Kashmir." Pakistani Establishment and Prime Minister Imran Khan have been silent on Uighur issue and when asked have been muted to any criticism against "all-weather" ally China. He films his excursions and, as the producer of Bright Sun Films, shares them on YouTube. The subjects of some of his more popular videos, like a former Days Inn hotel or an abandoned Walmart, are fairly mundane, but viewers are drawn out of morbid curiosity, he said. The National Woman Leader and member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker/Extra Ordinary National Convention Planning Committ... The National Woman Leader and member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker/Extra Ordinary National Convention Planning Committee (CEONCPC) Hon. Stella Okotete said the on-going re-positioning of the ruling party will secure its continuous reign beyond 2023. She spoke on Friday at Karonmajigi Village in Abuja where she donated food items and celebrated the Eld-Kabir festival with some internally displaced persons and physically challenged persons in the Federal Capital Territory.The woman leader said efforts at re-positioning the party by the Gov. Mai Mala Buni led Caretaker Committee in the last one month have recorded tremendous progress, which placed the party in vantage position for continuity beyond 2023.According to her: Our repositioning efforts of APC are clear for everyone to see.We are having new members and old members come back, we have repositioned the party for high grounds and continue governing the country beyond 2023.I can tell you that non- APC states will be APC states by 2023. I can assure you that we are taking Edo state back from the PDP and we are going to maintain APC in Ondo state, we are taking Anambra, Osun and Ekiti states next year.Definitely we are going to maintain the status quo. Definitely it is going to be APC, APC, APC beyond 2023.Okotete, who is the only woman in the 13-man caretaker committee, also unveiled her plans for women folks of the party by changing the narrative and ensuring they are well represented and positioned as positive change agents.Admonishing the IDPs, Okotete assured them APC government under President Muhammadu Buhari will ensure their quick return to their various villages and town.The Women leader said: The President has done so well in the area of security and I can assure them(IDPs) that in no distance time, very soon they will be back home.Chairman of the Physically Challenged Persons in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abubakar Shehu Abduljelil, commended the APC for recognising the physically challenged persons, even in the partys constitution from the ward to the national level.He urged Buhari to continue to support the physically challenged persons to maximize their potentials for national development.Items donated include bags of rice, beans, cartoons of Noddles and spaghetti as well as soft drinks A mild-mannered bystander harbors a sinister motive. A carelessly tossed glove becomes a critical clueor a frustrating red herring. The inspector calls all the assembled suspects into the drawing room, and with incisive wit and a withering glare at the culprit, sketches out the brilliant solution to the question of whodunit. These mainstays of crime fiction plotting have a creator, and her name was Agatha Christie. Christie, who was born in Devon, England in 1890, published 66 novels under her own name and six more under a pseudonym, plus 14 short story collections and a handful of stage plays, including the London West Ends longest running show, The Mousetrap. Guinness World Records cites her as the bestselling fiction writer of all time as well as the most translated author (7,236 translations as of 2017). Her work has sold more than a billion copies in English and a billion copies total in other languages, according to Agatha Christie Ltd., which the author set up in 1955 to manage her literary and media rights. And Christies stories have spawned dozens of film and movie adaptations, including Octobers Death on the Nile, directed by Kenneth Branagh. This year is the 100th anniversary of Christies debut, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the book that introduced Hercule Poirotor, as an ad that ran in the Nov. 6, 1920, issue of PW called him, a new type of detective in the shape of a Belgian. Poirot and a later Christie creation, amateur sleuth Miss Marple of fictional St. Marys Mead, became household names, and even a global pandemic cant stop the grand doyenne of crime fiction. Were selling more than usual, even though many bookshops are closed, says James Prichard, who is chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Ltd. and Christies great-grandson. People return to beloved childhood books in times of crisis. Theres a sense of justice in her books, and you know that things will be tied up at the end, which is reassuring. Christies fiendish puzzles, thrilling denouements, and bucolic-but-ominous settings have inspired generations of crime fiction writers. PW spoke with authors of forthcoming mysteries about her outsize influence on the genre. The ABCs of murder Mystery tropes that now seem inextricably baked into the category first became popular in Christies books. Her two main protagoniststhe eccentric, Continental, dandyish Poirot, and the mild-mannered maven of human nature Marplecemented the idea of oddball investigators in an era of mysteries solved by hard-bitten police professionals. Her cozy, pastoral settings whose few inhabitants exhibit the full range of human motivationrage, jealousy, greed, fearpopularized the limited suspect pool. In book after book, she crafted puzzles that seem to have no humanly possible solutions, leaving readers guessing at supernatural causes. These are then solved, brilliantly, with clues that incredulous readers now see were there all along. Many Christie fans started reading her early and were hooked for life. Some of these introductions were more dramatic than others. I had a family member who had worked in Hollywood, who arranged for the world film premiere of Murder Most Foul to screen in our village, says Martin Edwards, who in Mortmain Hall (Poisoned Pen, Sept.) impressively channels Agatha Christie, PWs starred review said. [Marple portrayer] Margaret Rutherford opened the event and arrived by helicopter, which made a big impression on an eight-year-old boy. I went home and found that my grandmother had many Christie books. I read Murder at the Vicarage and decided to become a detective novelist. Sophie Hannah, who writes the Christie-estate-sanctioned Poirot continuationsMorrow will release the fourth, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, in Septemberwas another young fan. My father was a collector of secondhand books, she says, and he brought home a copy of The Body in the Library from a book fair. I had read all of Christies books by the time I was 14. Her prose style is very clear, crisp, and simple; you dont feel as if youre reading a book thats too complicated or grown up. Shes a brilliant storyteller, and her books are incredibly gripping and entertaining and enthralling. Christie never talks down to the reader, her murders happen off page (the most common method is decorous, bloodless poison), and her protagonists, Marple and Poirot, are charmingly devoid of ulterior motives. So much of the current crime fiction market is so gory, or are psychological thrillers, says R.V. Raman (A Will to Kill, Agora, Oct.).Not everyone is in love with antiheroes. Its good to have a hero who is outstanding and honest. Christies fans appreciate that she is scrupulously fair to the reader, as Anthony Horowitz (Moonflower Murders, Harper, Nov.) puts it. The joy of a Christie novel is that whether or not you solve it as you read, at the end of the book, all the clues were there in plain sight. Unfinished portrait Much like her books culprits, Christie was not what she appeared to be. I have a view that people imagine her born oldalmost a Miss Marple figure, Prichard says. But she was an incredibly active, adventurous, pioneering young woman who was interested in a lot of things. She surfed, and traveled, and was interested in learning. And on one memorable occasion, she lived out a mystery just like one of those in her books. In August 1926, Christies husband, a dashing WWI aviator, asked for a divorce in order to marry another woman. That December, Christie disappeared. Her car was found parked on the edge of a cliff with her clothing and other personal items inside. After 10 days and a countrywide manhunt, she was found living in a resort hotel registered under her husbands mistresss surname. She said she had no memory of how she had come to be there, or of the intervening timea claim she stuck with for the rest of her days. Marie Benedicts The Mystery of Mrs. Christie (Sourcebooks Landmark, Jan. 2021) suggests one possible occupation during those missing days: hands-on research. Christie had just published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which introduced the concept of an unreliable narrator to crime fiction, and her career was on the rise. Could she have been holed up, watching a real-life mystery play out? Was this a sly way of testing out a real-life large-scale police investigation? Why would we think that this woman who is the most masterful plotter of all time would have done anything but plotted this disappearance? Benedict asks. She was writing herself back into her own narrative. After the funeral Christie wrote during what came to be called the golden age of detective fiction, and her cohort included other big names of the dayRaymond Chandler, G.K. Chesterton, and Dorothy L. Sayers. But none of them have enjoyed either her level of commercial success or the loyal adoration of her readers. One hundred years later, what accounts for her continued popularity? Her books never get boring, says Alex Pavesi (The Eighth Detective, Holt, Aug.). You can read 50 and still enjoy reading the 51st. She is very clearly associated with the time between the wars, the last days of a certain type of British society. That nostalgia is part of the enduring appeal. Theres also a universality to Christies settings, her characters, and her villains motives, several authors noted. All the themes and emotions she writes aboutlike hate, and envy, and inferiority complexesare as universal now as they were when she wrote them, Hannah says. Her fundamental interests are human nature and human psychology: what makes people behave the way that they do? Murder, it would appear, knows no borders. Her characters are very recognizable human types, Edwards says. If you live in India, China, Brazil, New Zealand, anywhere, you can recognize the type of character shes talking about. And what strong characters they are, Horowitz says. Theres a danger in some murder mystery books of losing humanity for the sake of the puzzle; the puzzle becomes so complicated that the engineering required to make it work renders the characters irrelevant. She never did that. The mechanism of the murder is ingenious. But what people love are the characters. Popularity at this level becomes self-fulfilling, and community necessarily forms around it; you cant swing a dagger without hitting a Christie fan. The first time I came to America for a mystery conference, I bonded on the airport bus with an Italian woman, says Ovidia Yu (The Mimosa Tree Mystery, Constable, Sept.), who is Singaporean. We talked the whole ride. We had nothing in common except Agatha Christie, although wed read her in different languages on opposite sides of the world. Horowitz found Christies books everywhere. I was 19 years old, traveling back from Australia to London overland, staying in youth hostels in all these different countries, he says. All the hostels had Agatha Christie books on the shelves in the lounges. I would pick one up, read it, switch it at the next place. I was even able to read in situ: Murder on the Orient Express in Istanbul, Death on the Nile in Egypt. In addition to being enthrallingly plotted, Christies books are just plain satisfying to read, especially in difficult, unpredictable times. She introduces a limited number of suspects in a limited space, ties up all her loose ends, and brings perpetrators to justice. Christie speaks to the human condition, says Hannah Dennison (Death at High Tide, Minotaur, Aug.). Shes dealing with evil in the world, but at the end goodness always comes through. It gives you the sense that even though the world, especially now, is so full of injustice and darkness, things always come right. Below, more on Agatha Christie. And Then There Were More: Agatha Christies Influence Seven mystery writers discuss the debt they owe the Queen of Crime. by Sumon Corraya Some 31 districts are affected. Food and drinking water are in short supply. Many residents have had to leave their flooded homes for makeshift shelters. Many have not received the 10 kilos of rice promised by the government. The Catholic Church is active in handing out supplies. Flood victims take on debt to eat. Rajshahi (AsiaNews) Bangladesh is facing a humanitarian emergency caused by flooding. About 10 million people in 31 districts are struggling with shortages of food and drinking water. Some districts, like Kurigram in the countrys north, have been flooded for about a month, forcing many residents to abandon their homes or take refuge on tin roofs. Flooding in Matikata submerged Nur Miha's home two weeks ago. He and his family were forced to leave, and find some shelter in a makeshift plastic shack. They now live in constant fear as monsoon rains fall relentlessly. Nurs main concern is the lack of food. "For two weeks, he told AsiaNews, we have been homeless and hungry. He says he has not yet received aid from the government although the authorities did promise to provide the 10 million people affected by the floods with 10 kilos of rice. Some NGOs gave him and his family some supplies, but this is not enough. "What little we have received, we use it to feed our four children," Nur noted. The Catholic Church is also providing assistance to flood victims. In Rajshahi, Caritas is considering how best to help the affected population. Its director, Suklesh Costa, explains that food items like rice, oil, potatoes, etc. will be distributed to 600 families. The Diocese of Dinajpur will supply the same goods to around 1,200 households. The delivery will take place after the Eid al-Adha holiday, which is celebrated on 1st August. The COVID-19 pandemic has made things even more difficult. Due to the floods, we cannot go to work, Nur explained. We have spent all our savings. Plus, the coronavirus blocks the work of humanitarian agencies, which are unable to deliver aid. Rohima Begums story is a bit different. She and her family of six found refuge on a tin roof. The government provided them with 10 kilos of rice, but she had to borrow money to buy salt, oil, meat and other food items. "We don't lack food, she explained, but we are worried about health, repaying the loan and the interest, and the risks associated with drinking water. Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh has died aged 64. Facing health issues for a very long time, Singh was reportedly undergoing treatment at a Singapore hospital. He is survived by wife Pankaja and twin daughters. Singh had suffered a kidney failure in Dubai in 2013 but recovered to return to public life in 2016. He was elected to Rajya Sabha with the backing of Samajwadi Party, a party he was the general secretary of until January 2010, when he was expelled by the erstwhile party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. As the general secretary of the SP, Singh was instrumental in saving the Congress-led UPA government from falling after the Left parties withdrew support from it in 2008 over the issue of nuclear deal. Despite his illness, Singh was active on social media. Earlier today, he paid tribute to freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his 100th death anniversary and also wished his followers on Eid. In fact, there were rumours on social media about Singh's death in March this year. But he tweeted "Tiger Zinda Hai" to put these rumours to rest. Boeing Co slashed production on its widebody programs, delayed the arrival of its newest jet, and confirmed the demise of its iconic 747, as it reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss on Wednesday amid fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. planemaker, which has laid off thousands of workers as it also grapples with the 16-month-old ban on its 737 MAX after fatal crashes, delayed its timeline to hit build rates of 31 narrowbodies monthly to early 2022 from 2021, as the pandemic decimates new jet demand. It now expects to resume 737 MAX deliveries to airline customers before year-end in the United States, a slip from earlier guidance of end-September. That means the jets U.S. return to service could slip to 2021. The production cuts reflect concern among aviation companies about the pace of the coronavirus recovery. Global airlines warned on Tuesday it would take a year longer than expected for air traffic to return to normal, with long-range travel hit harder than short hops. The outbreak has crippled passenger travel and pushed major airlines to the brink of bankruptcy, resulting in many carriers deferring aircraft deliveries - when Boeing gets paid most of the money for new jets. Boeing also confirmed the last 747, the iconic hump-topped jumbo jet that democratized global air travel in the 1970s but fell behind modern twin-engine aircraft would roll out of its Seattle-area factory in around two years. Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun told analysts the Chicago-based company was making payments to its sprawling supply chain and also working closely with airlines to manage a COVID-19 recovery process that could take three years. The 737 MAX grounding has cost Boeing some $20 billion, ousted executives, halted production and hobbled its supply chain, with criminal and congressional investigations and lawsuits still ongoing. The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated this crisis. CONSOLIDATING PRODUCTION The majority of some 450 737 MAX aircraft in storage will be delivered during the first year after Boeing resumes deliveries, Boeing Chief Financial Officer Greg Smith told analysts. Story continues We still see a path in positive cash flow in 2021, Smith added. Industry sources said Boeings move will put pressure on European rival Airbus SE to further cut its own wide-body production amid a mounting glut of its A330 jets. Airbus declined to comment ahead of earnings on Thursday. Boeing will now reduce 787 production to six jets a month in 2021 - a third rate drop from a year ago, when it was producing the Dreamliners at a record monthly rate of 14 planes. Calhoun told employees in a memo Wednesday Boeing would study the feasibility of consolidating production in one location. That means Boeing could close its 787 assembly line north of Seattle. It also builds the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, and the largest 787-10 can only be built there. Such a move would imply an expansion of the South Carolina plant as rates go up again, industry sources say. Boeing also said it would again reduce the combined production rate of the 777 and 777X jets to two planes per month in 2021 while delaying the 777Xs entry into service by up to a year, as Reuters previously reported. Also Watch: Boeings commercial airplanes operating profit was hit by $845 million in abnormal production costs on 737 and factory closures related to COVID-19 fears. Boeing also logged $468 million in severance expenses related to plans to cut 19,000 jobs of its roughly 160,000 workforces, saying on Wednesday deeper cuts were possible. Well have to further assess the size of our workforce, Calhoun told employees. Downside risks are not fully reflected in Boeings current share price, Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard said. On an adjusted basis, Boeing lost $4.79 per share, bigger than analysts average estimate of a loss of $2.54, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. John Lewis was elected to Congress in 1986. I was elected in 1988. Not long after my swearing in from the 22nd Congressional District of Illinois, I met Congressman Lewis for the first time. It was 6 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in the House gym. Over the 10 years I served in Congress, our little group of congressmen Pete DeFazio of Oregon, Dick Durbin and I from Illinois, and John Lewis from Georgia met as many times in the House gym at 6 a.m. Tuesday to Thursday as our schedules allowed. It was usually 20 minutes on the treadmill, 10 minutes in the sauna, shower, dress, and a walk back to our offices. Since Johns office and mine were fairly close to one another, we often walked together. In that hour each day, I never once saw the civil rights icon or the sought-after national leader. What I did see was the personification of kindness and calmness. John never brought up the demonstrations or marches he led never anything about Dr. King or other civil rights leaders. We seldom ever talked about those things, except perhaps as the issue related to legislation currently pending before us in Congress. John and I shared a common background of growing up in rural poverty, of believing that government could be a force for good, that we shared a common love for the powerful principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We had many conversations about our families and the small rural churches that were such an important part of our upbringing. We shared the scriptures that we learned from our mothers, and we talked often about Dr. Kings Beloved Community, a vision John never gave up on his whole life. Later, in my first term, two Methodist ministers and a White House staffer, all of whom had been civil rights activists, began meeting in my office at 7 a.m. on Wednesday mornings to discuss the role of faith and politics. The discussion, prayer, and meditation was centered around Christs admonition that people of faith are to be in the world, but not of the world, that we are to give unto Caesar what is Caesars and give unto God what is Gods. This became a very bipartisan group and eventually was incorporated into the Faith and Politics Institute, conducting many of these discussion groups all over the Hill. The Institute remains today as a force for promoting bipartisanship in Congress. John Lewis became an important leader in our Faith and Politics Institute. Who better than my friend John to help us understand the dynamic relationship between faith and politics? When our institute began sponsoring the pilgrimage each year to the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, who but John could lead that pilgrimage, and he did for more than 20 years. There was a reason he was called the Conscience of the Congress. His conscience manifested itself as courage and kindness, and will always be a beacon to all Americans who care about justice and call him friend. Glenn Poshard is a former Illinois State Senator, U.S. Congressman, gubernatorial candidate, and is a former President of the Southern Illinois University system. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Alhaji Ridwan Moktar Abass, the Chief Iman, New Fadama Central Mosque has advised the youth not to allow politicians to use them to cause violence in the upcoming December polls. "If any politician approaches you for any untoward activities in the impending general election, tell him to engage his children, he said. Alhaji Abass gave the advice in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after this year's Eid al-Adha prayers at new Fadama in Accra during a presentation of Sunlight products from Unilever Ghana to the leadership of the Mosque. Other items presented were face masks and thermometer guns to encourage the congregants to observe the COVID-19 health protocols. The festival commemorates Prophet Ibrahim's devotion to Allah and his readiness to sacrifice his Son, Ismail. The celebration involves the slaughtering of animals as sacrifice to mark the occasion. Alhaji Abass advised the politicians to be civil in conducting their electioneering campaign and avoid the use of intemperate language that could mar the peace and stability of the country. The country, he said had witnessed peaceful elections over the years and that it was imperative for all to maintain that feat and consolidate the tenets of democracy. Touching on his message to the Muslim community, Alhaji Abass urged them to sacrifice for each other as exhibited in the Holy Quran. He said the celebration must bring all together irrespective of religious differences for peaceful co-existence. The Chief Imam commended Unilever Ghana for the gesture and said the products would reinforce the need to observe the COVID-19 protocols to the fullest. Mrs Ewuraba Adusei, the Brands Manager for Sunlight, Unilever Ghana said, "Sunlight is about inspiration. We are using this opportunity to advise our brothers to keep their faith alive and be safe from the COVID-19 pandemic. GNA Five workers were killed in a boiler explosion at Manas Agro Industries and Infrastructure Ltd in Maharashtras Nagpur district on Saturday afternoon, the police said. The incident took place near a biogas plant of the company at Bela village in Umred tehsil around 2.15 pm. The deceased were identified as Mangesh Prabhakar Naukarkar (21), Liladhar Wamanrao Shende (42), Vasudeo Ladi (30), Sachin Prakash Waghmare (24) and Prafull Pandurang Moon (25), all residents of Wadgaon village. Sachin Waghmare worked as a welder while others were helpers, the police said. Thick smoke billowed out of the plant following the explosion. All five workers sustained grievous burn injuries and died on the spot, the police said. Superintendent of Police Rakesh Ola visited the spot following the incident, officials said. Two key lefty relievers are inching closer to rejoining the Red Sox. Darwinzon Hernandez and Josh Taylor could be activated within the next week, Sox manager Ron Roenicke said before Fridays game in New York. The two southpaws, who both recovered after testing positive for COVID-19, are at the clubs alternate training site in Pawtucket. On Friday, Taylor threw his second live batting practice session since getting to Pawtucket, tossing two innings against some of the organizations hitters. Hernandez is slated to throw a live BP on Saturday. hen their next time is in a game, a simulated game there, Roenicke said. After that, well make a decision. If we think Josh is ready for a one-inning stint, he could be active shortly after that. Darwinzon, it depends on if we think we need to stretch him out a little more. If we do, then he could be a little bit behind (Taylor). Both lefties tested positive for COVID-19 before the start of summer training camp, with Hernandez testing positive at home in Venezuela and Taylor registering his positive test after arriving in Boston. Both were shut down for an extended period of time and were not build up enough to be ready for Opening Day. The plan is for each pitcher to have one day off between outings, so Taylors simulated game appearance will likely take place Sunday and Hernandez will likely pitch Monday. Then, the Red Sox will decide if the pitchers are ready to be added to their active roster. Appearing on WEEIs Ordway, Merloni and Fauria earlier this week, Roenicke said Taylor is likely to join the club before Hernandez, who is being stretched out to pitch multiple innings. (Taylor) may be a little different because we usually only ask him to throw an inning, Roenicke said. Sometimes, well ask him to throw an inning-plus. Darwinzon is different than that because, eventually, we still think this guy could be a starter so we may try to stretch him out a little bit longer and see if we can get him 2-3 innings. Then, who knows? Maybe he ends up being a starter at the end of this year. But we have to build him up first. At the end of next week, teams must reduce their active rosters from 30 players to 28. Because Taylor and Hernandez are currently on the COVID-19 related injured list, they dont count against Bostons 40-man roster and the team will need to make roster moves to activate the lefties. Related links: Boston Red Sox prospect Jarren Duran belts 428-foot homer, makes diving catch in Pawtucket; Darwinzon Hernandez, the starter? Boston Red Sox relievers Darwinzon Hernandez, Josh Taylor test positive for coronavirus PORTLAND, Ore. Nike has filed documents with the state of Oregon that show its recently announced layoffs will eliminate at least 500 jobs at the companys world headquarters near Beaverton. But it has not yet divulged the number of job cuts. The number of layoffs worldwide will be higher than the 500 in Oregon losing their jobs. Last week, Nike said the cuts will result in termination costs of $200 million to $250 million. Since the launch of her first cookbook in 2016, Chrissy Teigen's beloved Cravings brand has evolved into a food lover's empire. And the 34-year-old model was putting forth major businesswoman energy on Friday afternoon as she checked up on construction at Cravings headquarters in Los Angeles. Teigen slipped her model figure into a chic oversized jumpsuit that buttoned up the front and featured three-quarter sleeves. Boss moves: Chrissy Teigen was putting forth major businesswoman energy on Friday afternoon as she checked up on construction at Cravings headquarters in Los Angeles She paired the trendy one piece with a pair of sandals and a black designer handbag. Chrissy concealed the majority of her famous mug behind a black cloth face mask and she had her lengthy golden hair parted down the middle. She carried her cellphone in her hand as she swiftly made her way into the building. Once inside, Teigen gave her 30.7million followers on Instagram a peak at the various renovations taking place. On trend: Teigen slipped her model figure into a chic oversized jumpsuit that buttoned up the front and featured three-quarter sleeves Safety first: Chrissy concealed the majority of her famous mug behind a black cloth face mask and she had her lengthy golden hair parted down the middle 'I'm walking through my office. This is so exciting,' expressed Chrissy as she filmed in selfie mode. She flashed her camera on various rooms that had the floors covered in plastic tarps, while various supplies rested in piles. 'It's gonna be Cravings headquarters...and we are not even done. I am so excited,' concluded Teigen. The tour: Once inside, Teigen gave her 30.7million followers on Instagram a peak at the various renovations taking place Exciting: 'I'm walking through my office. This is so exciting,' expressed Chrissy excitedly as she filmed in selfie mode On Monday, Chrissy announced that she would be producing the new game show Eye Candy for the struggling streaming platform Quibi. Eye Candy is 'centered around teams of celebrities and civilians who will attempt to identify outrageous edible creations designed to look like everyday ordinary objects,' Quibi said in a statement. In the Japanese series, which is produced by Nippon TV, contestants have to bite into the objects they've identified in hopes they picked the candy items. Cravings HQ: 'It's gonna be Cravings headquarters...and we are not even done. I am so excited,' concluded Teigen The American version of Sokkuri Sweets was announced weeks after videos of cakes designed to look like everyday objects swept social media. When she is not gushing over her successful professional life, Chrissy is busy quarantining with husband John Legend, 41, and their two children, daughter Luna, four, and son Miles, two, at their home in Los Angeles. Earlier this week, Chrissy gathered her family up for a photoshoot for her mother Vilailuck Teigen's upcoming cookbook. Getty Images Albuquerque protesters have said they will meet federal agents sent by Donald Trump with civil disobedience and peaceful protests. After an announcement this week that federal agents were pulling out of Portland, the US president announced more agents would be going to Albuquerque to combat violent crime in the city, On Friday, the Trump administration said it would also send federal agents to Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee. Activists organised by the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice gathered at a park and announced their intent to push back on any Portland style occupation of their city by federal law enforcement agencies. When Trump sends stormtroopers here, we will greet them with nonviolence, Jim Harvey, director of the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice said. Mr Trump and attorney general William Barr announced last week that federal agents would be deployed to other cities, including Albuquerque, but they would not be outfitted in tactical gear like the agents in Portland. The citys mayor, Tim Kelle, voiced his concern that federal agents would be deployed to his city, but said hed been promised that agents would not engage in heavy-handed protest suppression of the sort seen in Portland. The US attorney has provided a written guarantee that Operation Legend will not be what we saw in Portland, Mr Keller said in a statement, invoking the nickname for the federal surge. However, we remain concerned about the presidents own words that contradict these assurances. KOB4 News reported that Albuquerque was establishing a city-run service meant to help residents organise peaceful protests and demonstrations. The citys Office of Equity and Inclusion said it was establishing a website and hotline for residents organising for any cause. We are committed to protecting the civil rights of all of our residents, including the First Amendment right to protest, Mr Keller said. Thats why we are finding new ways to connect with organisers about critical information to help keep them safe as they plan their First Amendment activities. Story continues In addition to establishing the hotline, police said they would begin enforcing the states gun laws, which ban individuals to bring deadly weapons to protests. According to KRQE News, officers will give offenders a verbal warning, allowing them to either leave the protest or hand over their weapons to police. If those who have been warned do not comply within 10 minutes, police will arrest them. Read more Trump administration sending federal officers to 3 more US cities A military seafaring assault vehicle that sank off the coast of Southern California is under hundreds of feet of water, putting it beyond the reach of divers and complicating rescue efforts for eight missing troops, officials said Friday. Still the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. David Berger, said the search was continuing while he was suspending waterborne operations of all of its more than 800 amphibious assault vehicles across the branch until the cause of the accident is determined. He said the move was out of an abundance of caution." Berger said the focus now should be on the troops and their families. One of the eight Marines who were rescued died at a San Diego hospital. Two Marines remained hospitalized with injuries but were stable and out of the intensive care unit. A total of 16 troops 15 Marines and one Navy corpsman were on board when the amphibious assault vehicle started taking in water Thursday evening as it was about a half mile (more than 1,000 meters) from the shores of San Clemente Island. They had just completed a routine training exercise and were heading back to the Navy ship with a dozen other amphibious assault vehicles, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman, the commanding general of the Marine Expeditionary Force. Troops on board two other amphibious assault vehicles responded quickly but could not stop the 26-ton vehicle from sinking, Osterman said. It's a very tragic situation," Osterman said, adding that his thoughts and prayers are with the troops and their families. Military ships, small boats and helicopters continued searching the choppy seas for the missing Friday amid moderate to strong winds. The Navy-owned island is about 70 miles offshore from San Diego. The Navy and Coast Guard were discussing ways to reach the sunken vehicle to get a view inside it, Osterman said. All of the Marines on the vehicle, which resembles a seafaring tank, were attached to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. They ranged in age from 19 to early 30s and all were wearing combat gear, including body armor, Osterman said. Each troop also had flotation devices. The vehicle is designed to hold up to 24 people with 280 pounds of equipment each, Osterman said. He said there were three water-tight hatches and two large troop hatches and that it is designed to be naturally buoyant. Thursday's accident marks the third time in recent years that Camp Pendleton Marines have been injured or died in amphibious assault vehicles during training exercises. The vehicles have been used since 1972, and continually refurbished. Marine Corps officials said Friday they did not know the age or other details of the one that sank. The Marines use the vehicles to transport troops and their equipment from Navy ships to land. They are nicknamed amtracs because the original name for the vehicle was amphibious tractor. The armored vehicles outfitted with machine guns and grenade launchers look like tanks as they roll ashore for beach attacks, with Marines pouring out of them to take up positions. The Marine Expeditionary Force is the Marine Corps main war-fighting organization. There are three such groups which are made up of ground, air and logistics forces. Josh Elizetxe is the creator of Snow (pictured) A business graduate has made $100million in sales of a teeth whitening system he invented while getting jaw surgery, and the coronavirus only helped boost his growth. Josh Elizetxe, from Phoenix, Arizona, launched Snow in 2017 after befriending his orthodontist and oral surgeon prior to undergoing a jaw operation. 'I spent months researching oral care and oral cosmetics and testing out products to prepare for my recovery. I realised that the brands lacked the aspirational appeal commonly found with skin care and makeup brands,' the 27-year-old told FEMAIL. 'I realised that oral care products had the potential to be a part of the beauty routine too.' Australia is the company's second top sales country behind the United States and there have been over 25million unique viewers on the Snow website since launch. The $567 wireless teeth whitening system, their top-selling product of 2019, has five patents pending and includes a vegan anti-aging lip treatment ($43). The system self-sanitises to kill 99.99 per cent of bacteria, uses red light technology to keep your gums healthy during the process and a blue light spectrum for whitening. Josh Elizetxe, from Phoenix, Arizona, launched Snow in 2017 after befriending his orthodontist and oral surgeon prior to undergoing a jaw operation The $567 wireless teeth whitening system, their top-selling product of 2019, has five patents pending and includes a vegan anti-aging lip treatment ($43) It also connects to a mobile app via Bluetooth to track and controlling the device. In an independent study performed by Prestige Testing, 97 per cent of participants experienced whiter teeth after one use and 100 per cent after four weeks. 'In the first year I would call every customer, including the celebrities who ordered, and ask them about their experience, everything from taste, scent, results and sensitivity,' Josh said. 'Then I would take that feedback and improve every aspect of the brand, including the packaging.' Claiming that Snow is like the 'Apple of oral care', Alexa.com voted the company the most popular oral cosmetics brand on Earth in 2020. Claiming that Snow is like the 'Apple of oral care', Alexa.com voted the company the most popular oral cosmetics brand on Earth in 2020 The results speak for themselves: Customers have been loving the way the product brightens their smile in seconds 'We have spent years perfecting our formulas. There is nothing like them on the market,' Josh said. 'Many teeth whitening systems online are not strong enough to deliver results that last a long time, or they use harmful ingredients that can cause painful sensitivity.' The COVID-19 outbreak that has halted the world has done no such thing to Josh and his team, who haven't had to lay off any of their employees. 'COVID-19 accelerated our growth and showed us just how big this brand will become,' he said. 'We have always been known for bringing professional treatments into the home, so the at-home rush was incredible for us. What are tips for getting whiter teeth? 1. Limit coffee, red wine and tea. 2. If you are drinking these staining agents, try to drink them where possible through a straw. 3. Get a regular professional clean to reduce the buildup of tartar, which can make staining agents stick to your teeth more. 4. Limit acidic fruits like lemon water and the like, which can erode your teeth. 5. Remember that tomato-based pasta sauces can stain your teeth, as canned tomatoes are far more acidic than regular tomatoes. 6. Limit foods like popcorn and ice, which are crunchy and can place great strains on your teeth and increase the risk of fracture. 7. Be wary of charcoal toothpastes, which can just be sandy and strip the enamel of the teeth. Advertisement The COVID-19 outbreak that has halted the world has done no such thing to Josh and his team, who haven't had to lay off any of their employees (Josh and his girlfriend) While the brand already sells a number of add-ons like charcoal floss ($32), a lip exfoliator ($63) and desensitising serum ($36), they have more ideas in the works 'We shattered company sales records and had over four million unique shoppers in April and May alone.' During those months they were selling a product every 23 seconds. While the brand already sells a number of add-ons like charcoal floss ($32), a lip exfoliator ($63) and desensitising serum ($36), they have more ideas in the works. Josh just launched a whitening toothpaste which sold out in pre-order before the team had a chance to promote it. Later this year he is looking to create an electric toothbrush, mouth rinse and additional flavours of whitening toothpaste. British Airways pilots have voted to accept a package including job and pay cuts aimed at avoiding a larger number of redundancies, their union announced. The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said there will be around 270 compulsory redundancies and temporary pay cuts starting at 20 per cent. The pay cuts will reduce to 8 per cent over two years before falling to zero over the longer term. Balpa said its members voted by 85 per cent in favour. Balpa general secretary Brian Strutton said: 'Our members have made a pragmatic decision in the circumstances, but the fact that we were unable to persuade BA to avoid all compulsory redundancies is bitterly disappointing.' British Airways pilots have voted to accept a package including 270 compulsory redundancies and temporary pay cuts starting at 20 per cent (file photo) The union said the package it helped negotiate was in response to BA's formal notification of 1,255 pilot job losses and the threat to fire and rehire the remaining pilots on worse conditions. A BA spokesman said: 'This is an incredibly difficult time for everyone at British Airways and we are grateful to Balpa and our flight operations team for the work they have done to reach this agreement and save hundreds of jobs. 'Today's financial results show the enormous challenge British Airways faces as it contends with the impact of the global pandemic and government travel bans, reducing demand for travel very significantly. 'We do not expect our company to return to 2019 levels of business until at least 2023 and therefore we need to act now to reshape our company for a very different future.' A BA spokesman said they do not expect their company to return to 2019 levels of business until at least 2023 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic (file photo) It was reported yesterday that British Airways announced a 3.8billion loss during the pandemic. The owner of the firm warned that passenger numbers will not recover until 2023 after plummeting by 93 per cent during the pandemic. Parent company IAG said this is down from a 0.9billion profit in the same six month period a year ago. Revenue was 4.8billion some 56 per cent lower than the levels in 2019. Half of British Airways's 45,000 employees are currently on furlough. About 30 people gathered for a Black Lives Matter protest organized by Portland firefighters at 7 p.m. Friday in Portland Firefighters Park. Attendees were encouraged to arrive early for the three-hour event to help clean up the park, either by sweeping the steps or picking up trash, and make Black Lives Matter signs, which they would later hold up for passing cars. They were also given black T-shirts that said Fire Fighters for Black Lives Matter on the back. Some people brought their own signs or wore firefighter gear, such as a helmet. Organizer and firefighter Jason Sharp said the event was organized about two days before the demonstration during an equity committee meeting. It was just time for somebody to do something so that everybody felt supported, Sharp said. The event was created so firefighters could support the Black Lives Matter cause, show support for each other and to spread some love, Sharp said. The firefighters have a second demonstration organized for Saturday at 7 p.m. in the same location. -- Madison Smalstig l msmalstig@oregonian.com l @madi_smals l Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories Legislative elections in Seychelles will be held early alongside October's presidential polls in order to save public money, as the island nation's economy is hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, President Danny Faure has said. The Seychelles has recorded only 114 cases of COVID-19, with no fatalities, but the impact on global tourism has weighed heavily on the Indian Ocean archipelago considered a paradise for luxury travel. The government banned cruise ships and shut its international airport after the first cases were announced in March. The country is due to reopen to commercial flights on Saturday. The pandemic is expected to result in a 14 percent drop in gross domestic product, according to an estimate released by the country's finance ministry. As a result legislative elections, scheduled for next year, will now be held at the same time as the presidential vote, Faure said in a televised address on Thursday. Due to "economic problems we will have to face and to reduce spending, I have decided that it is better to do these two elections together," Faure said, adding that it was "in the interest of the country". The country's election commission has set tentative dates for the presidential election from October 22 to October 24. It marks the first time since 1998 that the two elections will be held in the same year. Faure announced in May that he would seek re-election in presidential polls. The 58-year-old took office in 2016 after his predecessor quit following a crushing defeat in legislative elections for the party which had been in power for four decades. The victory for the Linyon Demokratik Seselwa (Seychelles Democratic Union in Creole) was the first time since the country's return to multiparty politics in 1993 that the opposition had obtained a majority in parliament. The ruling Parti Lepep, known as the People's Party locally, hopes to take advantage of divisions within the opposition coalition in the next elections to regain control of the National Assembly. To make up for the loss of tourism revenues, Seychelles has turned towards its second-largest sector fishing, by accepting the rotation of international teams on its soil, to obtain foreign currency. The archipelago of 115 islands welcomed more than 360,000 visitors in 2018, twice as many as ten years ago and almost four times its population. The accident at Hindustan Shipyard Limited here on Saturday in which 11 people were killed after a crane collapsed is the second major industrial mishap here after the gas leak at LG Polymers that witnessed two dozen deaths in May. In a grave mishap, 11 people were killed when a massive 70-tonne jetty crane collapsed during a load test in the Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL) here. The victims were crushed to death on the spot when they came under the massive iron structure that crashed on the ground with a loud thud after its cabin and base snapped during a trial run. The port city hub for many large scale industries in Andhra Pradesh witnessed industrial mishaps earlier also. About 12 people succumbed and hundreds fell ill when styrene monomer stored in a tank in a plant belonging to LP Polymers plant here leaked on May 7. After a committee submitted its report the city police arrested some officials of the company. A fire accident at Hindustan Petroleum Corporations complex here claimed 28 lives including a senior official of the PSU in 2013. As many as 19 people were burnt alive and scores injured in an explosion in Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in 2012. The casualties include senior officials of the RINL, the corporate identity of Vizag Steel. "There was an inquiry into that. It found no human error in the incident," a senior official of the RINL told PTI. Last month one employee was killed and another seriously injured in a major fire accident in a pharmaceutical company in the Pharma City at Parawada near here. Even as the toll in the hooch tragedy rose to 38, Punjab Police on Friday arrested seven more bootleggers from Amritsar, Batala and Tarn Taran districts in over 40 raids conducted by five teams led by senior officers. With these arrests, the total number of persons apprehended so far in the spurious liquor death case has gone up to eight, including Balwinder Kaur, who was arrested on Thursday night from Muchhal village. Director General of Police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta said a huge quantity of spurious liquor, drums, storage cans etc. has been recovered from the accused and they have been sent for chemical analysis to check for constituents of spurious liquor. More arrests are likely, he said, adding that raids were continuing and the police teams would continue to crack down on all those involved in the case to unravel the extend of the spurious liquor mafia operating in the region. While Balwinder Kaur and Mithu were arrested from Amritsar Rural district, two persons identified as Darshan Rani and Rajan were nabbed from Batala district. Four others, namely Kashmir Singh, Angrez Singh, Amarjit and Baljit, have been arrested from Tarn Taran. An FIR was registered against the four accused arrested from Tarn Taran district, said the DGP, adding that the bootleggers had admitted to supplying spurious liquor in Norangabad village. Mithu, who was arrested from Jasso Nangal village, has also admitted to his role in the supply of spurious liquor, said the DGP. As of Friday evening, 10 persons had died of spurious liquor consumption in Amritsar Rural, nine in Batala and 19 in Tarn Taran. The death toll could rise further as the spurious liquor network was evidently spread across many areas, said the DGP, adding that questioning of the arrested accused was expected to lead to further arrests in the case. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has already ordered a magisterial inquiry by Divisional Commissioner Jalandhar into the hooch tragedy. The inquiry will look into the facts and circumstances leading to incidents, as well as into any other issue(s) connected or relevant to the incident(s) and the circumstances leading to it. It will be conducted by Divisional Commissioner of Jalandhar along with the Joint Excise and Taxation Commissioner and SPs Investigation of the concerned districts, according to an official spokesperson. The Chief Minister has given Commissioner Jalandhar Division the liberty to co-opt any civil or police officer or any expert to facilitate the expeditious conduct of the enquiry. He has promised strict action against anyone found complicit in the case. A U.S. manufacturer recently sold $163 million worth of Mk 54 LWTs (Light Weight Torpedoes) and accessories to Germany and Belgium. Most of this went to Germany, which got 64 Mk 54s and a lot of accessories, including upgrade kits for older Mk 54s, for about $130 million while Belgium bought 29 Mk 54s for $30 million. The U.S. Navy began using the 324mm (12.75 inch) Mk 54 LWT in 2004 and since 2010 has been upgrading these with a Mk 54 Mod 2 LWT upgrade kit that consists of a more sensitive sonar (to seek out a submarine) and more powerful computer to interpret what the sonar hears. This upgrade takes advantage of the many advances in electronic and computer components over the two decades since the current Mk 54 was first developed. Many components for the Mk 54 came from the older Mk 50, which ceased production in the mid-1990s. Since then, old Mk 50s have been cannibalized for parts but that supply is running out. Rather than just build more of these older components, new and improved components were designed and, as with this Mod 2 kit, used to upgrade existing Mk 54s and equip new ones. The Mk 54 is carried mainly by aircraft and helicopters as well as many American and foreign surface ships. The LWT has replaced depth charges as the main weapon against submarines. The Mk 54 is particularly effective when used by aircraft equipped to seek out submarines. Patrol aircraft can carry up to eight lightweight torpedoes, while helicopters can carry up to three, but usually just one or two. The Mk 54 weighs about 340 kg (750 pounds) and has a warhead containing 45 kg (100 pounds) of explosives. Its guidance system has been deliberately designed to work well in shallow coastal waters, where ships are believed most likely to encounter subs. Until 1991, when the Cold War ended and the Russian nuclear sub fleet disappeared, the emphasis was on fighting subs on the high seas where the water was much deeper. There are several upgrades available for the Mk 54. For example, to make the Mk 54 more effective on patrol aircraft, the U.S. Navy developed glide kits. Putting wings on torpedoes is all about the concern at the growing use of anti-aircraft missiles by submarines. To deal with that problem, the Navy sought to equip some Mk 54 torpedoes, which are normally dropped into the water at a low altitude by P-3 or P-8 patrol aircraft, with an add-on glide kit. These systems consist of wings, control flaps, a flight control computer, battery, and GPS for navigation. The kit allows a torpedo to be released at 6,300 meters (20,000 feet), which is outside the range of submarine-launched anti-aircraft missiles. When dropped the torpedo can glide for 10-15 kilometers. When down to about 100 meters (300 feet) altitude, the glide kit is jettisoned and the torpedo enters the water to seek out the sub. Normally, aircraft have to descend to under 330 meters (a thousand feet) to launch the torpedo. This takes time and fuel as well as putting stress on the aircraft. Many subs have sensors sensitive enough to detect low flying helicopters (the main target for their anti-aircraft missiles) and aircraft. Patrol aircraft are more effective if they can stay at high altitude all the time. Moreover, the glide kit is easy to build, since it can use items already used for smart bombs (JDAM) and earlier glide kits. Mk 54 LWTs cost about a million dollars each and are a cheaper and somewhat less capable replacement for the Cold War era high tech Mk 50 and the old reliable Mk 46. The Mk 54 is a more cost-effective alternative to the three million dollars Mk 50, which was in development for over two decades. The Mk 50 was difficult to build because it was meant to be a "smart" torpedo that was light enough to be carried by helicopters but could go deep (560 meters beneath the surface) to kill Russian nuclear subs. Alas, when the Mk 50 finally became available in the late 90s, the high-seas Russian nuclear subs were gone and the typical target was now a quieter diesel-electric sub in shallow coastal waters. In response to that the Mk 54 was developed, using cheaper, off-the-shelf, electronic components, some technology from the Mk 50 and larger Mk 48, as well as the simpler, but not deep diving, frame and propulsion systems of the older Mk 46 lightweight torpedo. Thus the 3.25 meter (ten foot) long Mk 54 is a bit of a hybrid, created to save money and be more capable against quieter subs operating in shallower water. The Mk 54 has a range of about 10 kilometers and a top speed of about 72 kilometers an hour. It has built-in sonar that can search for the target sub, as well as acoustic sensors (listening devices to pick up any sounds a sub might make). The Mk 54 also has an onboard computer and a data file of underwater noises and search tactics, which are used as it tries to find its target and keep after it until it can hit the sub and destroy it with the explosives in the warhead. Since the 1960s some 25,000 of the older 230 kg Mk 46 torpedoes were manufactured and many are still in use, even though the last Mk 46 upgrade was in 1979. Capable of reaching targets 370 meters deep, the Mk 46 received several upgrades that kept it worth retaining. A few thousand Mk 54s have been produced so far. Mk 50s are kept in inventory to deal with the few hostile nuclear subs that are still out there, although the Mk 54 also has a capability of going deep, just not as deep as the more expensive Mk 50. China developed its own Yu-7 324mm LWT based on the Mk 46 and older Italian LWTs. Current British, French and Italian LWTs are similar to the Mk54 but can usually go deeper (up to 1,000 meters) and get most of the export sales. The American and European LWTs have superior detection and guidance systems which receive regular upgrades. In 2019 Russia revealed a new version of their standard APR-3 350mm (13.78 inch) LWT used mainly by sub-hunting helicopters. The new APR-3M replaces the older APR-3E. While the APR-3M is more capable than the 3E it is not much competition for the American and European LWTs. But Russia keeps trying. The APR-2 was an attempt to catch up at the end of the Cold War. Introduced in the 1980s, there was no export interest and it was mainly an effort to provide Russian ASW (Anti-submarine warfare) fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters with something better. In the 1990s the APR-3 showed up, followed by the improved APR-3E. By 2019 the improved APR-3M was available, and the Russian torpedo is still playing catchup. The M model weighs 470 kg (1,074 pounds), 11 percent less than the E model and can reach targets 800 meters deep. The M model is also shorter, has more range and more detection range (2,500 meters, 25 percent more than the E) and a rocket motor that can propel the LWT up to 3,000 meters from the launching helicopter or aircraft. Because of that rocket boost Russia officially calls its LWTs missiles. Police have made a desperate appeal to anyone with information about a 16-year-old girl who disappeared nearly a month ago. Lyla Farage was last seen in the suburb of Keilor Park, 15km north-west of Melbourne, just after midnight on July 9. Victoria Police released an image of Ms Farage in the hopes someone recognises her and can provide information regarding her current whereabouts. Lyla Farage (pictured) was last seen in the suburb of Keilor Park, 15km north-west of Melbourne, just after midnight on July 9 Ms Farage is described as 160cm tall with a slim build and dark brown hair. She has blonde hair in the image released by police. The teenager was last seen wearing a blue hooded jacket, black track pants and pink slippers. Ms Farage is known to frequent the Preston, Glenroy and Leopold areas. Police urged anyone with information about Ms Farage's disappearance or current location to contact Keilor Downs Police Station. Patrick Sikes / For Hearst Connecticut Media Several state parks have closed Saturday after reaching capacity, according to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Parks closed Saturday include: Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison, Silver Sands State Park in Milford, Mount Tom State Park in Litchfield, Sherwood Island State Park in Westport, Burr Pond State Park in Torrington, Wadsworth Falls State Park in Middletown, Lake Waramaug State Park in Kent and Millers Pond State Park in Haddam, officials said. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take stock of the happenings in Rajasthan, where a political crisis has rumbled on for most of last month. The Congress-led state government has accused the BJP of "horse trading" and trying to topple it. "The Prime Minister should stop the 'tamasha' going on in Rajasthan. The rate for horse-trading has increased here. What 'tamasha' is this?" Gehlot asked on Saturday. Gehlot also said he is open to welcoming back the Congress rebels led by Sachin Pilot. Asked if the dissidents will be forgiven, he said, "It depends on the party high command. If the party high command forgives, I shall embrace them." Since the power tussle between him and Pilot resurfaced last month, the Congress veteran has used harsh words against his former deputy, once even referring to him as 'nikamma' or useless. But Gehlot said he will do whatever the Congress leadership wants. He said the party trusted him and he has been a Union minister, AICC general secretary, state unit president and chief minister for a third time. "What else do I want? I am doing this to serve the public," he told reporters in Jaisalmer. Gehlot was on his way back to Jaipur after an overnight stay at Jaisalmer's Suryagarh resort where loyalist MLAs have been shifted ahead of the assembly session from August 14. The Congress has accused the BJP of playing a major role in the rebellion by the now sacked deputy chief minister and 18 other Congress MLAs who are threatening his government. "We have no personal quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government. Modi should get the drama which is going on in Rajasthan ended," said Gehlot outside the hotel where the MLAs were shifted on Friday. Gehlot said Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat should resign on moral grounds, claiming his involvement in a "conspiracy" to topple the Rajasthan government is now known. He said Shekhawat's name also cropped up in a cooperative society scam in which money from poor people was looted. Gehlot also alleged that some other Union ministers, including Dharmendra Pradhan, are involved in the "conspiracy" against his government. Gehlot and other Rajasthan ministers are likely to spend most of their time in the state capital as the Congress tries to keep its numbers intact in Jaisalmer. Including the 19 rebels, the Congress has 107 MLAs in the 200-member assembly. The BJP has 72 MLAs. Gehlot claimed that democracy is under threat in the country and the Union Home Ministry is after his government in the state. He repeated the charge that the "rate" for trying to lure MLAs away has gone up after the announcement of the assembly session. Back in Jaipur, Gehlot said Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati is giving statements "under pressure" and asserted that all six BSP MLAs lawfully merged with the Congress in Rajasthan last year. The BSP recently challenged the merger in the high court, prompting the Congress to charge that the party made the move at the behest of the BJP. (With inputs from PTI) In June, a 28-year-old Chicago woman became the first person in the country to undergo a double lung transplant due to the coronavirus. She told reporters in a press conference on Thursday that she woke up from the surgery in mid-June, and "couldn't recognize my body." Mayra Ramirez had an autoimmune condition that may have made her more susceptible to the coronavirus when she caught the disease in April. The disease severely damaged her lungs, leaving her on a ventilator for roughly six weeks until doctors placed her on the transplant list. One of her doctors said lung transplants are gradually becoming a more accepted treatment for patients like Ramirez, and "offer some of the critically ill patients another option for survival." Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. mayra ramirez Mayra Ramirez, a COVID-19 survivor due to a double-lung transplant, listens Thursday, July 30, 2020, to a question about her journey through the pandemic during her first news conference at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Associated Press/Charles Rex Arbogast The 28-year-old Chicago woman who became the first person in the United States to receive a lung transplant due to the coronavirus spoke out in a press conference on Thursday about the illness that nearly killed her. COVID-19 damaged Mayra Ramirez's lungs so severely that they were riddled with holes and scars. Her only option was a double lung transplant a procedure that has been used on only several other coronavirus patients in China and Europe, according to the Associated Press. Ramirez told reporters on Thursday that the last thing she remembered was telling her doctors in April that she wanted her mother and older sister to make medical decisions for her. The next thing she recalled was awaking groggily in mid-June after the surgery. "I looked at myself and couldn't recognize my body," she said. "I didn't have the cognitive ability to process what was going on. All I knew was that I wanted water." Story continues She spoke to reporters from Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, along with the US's second coronavirus patient to undergo the double lung transplant, 62-year-old Brian Kuhns. Ramirez and Kuhns' doctors told reporters that neither patient would be alive had it not been for the transplants. "[A] lung transplant isn't for every patient with COVID-19, but it does offer some of the critically ill patients another option for survival," Dr. Ankit Bharat, a thoracic surgeon and surgical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program, said at the press conference. "Mayra and Brian are living proof of that." He added that lung transplants are gradually becoming a more accepted option for lung-damaged COVID-19 patients who are relatively young and have few other underlying medical conditions. Ramirez told The New York Times that she had contracted coronavirus likely in April, even though she had been socially distancing and working from home. She said she had an autoimmune condition and took immunosuppressants that may have made her particularly susceptible to the coronavirus. She said she went to the hospital in late April after weeks of feeling ill, and doctors quickly told her she would need a ventilator. Yet even after the disease had left her body, her lungs were so severely damaged that doctors placed her on the transplant list. She told The Times that when she eventually awoke from the 10-hour transplant surgery in mid-June, she believed it was still May. It wasn't until much later that she realized what a lung transplant had meant. "It wasn't until weeks later that I had the ability to, you know, think to myself, 'There's a family out there that's grieving their loved one'," Ramirez said at the press conference. "I have that person's lungs. And how lucky I was to have received it." Read the original article on Insider The Australian government will require Facebook and Google to pay for news content. Do you think digital platforms should have to pay for news content? One of the nations largest gym chains has revised its mask policy, again. After hearing from its members, Planet Fitness said it is making a slight adjustment to a new policy scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 1. Under the revision, members will not have to wear face coverings if they are actively working out and in accordance with local and state restrictions. Earlier this week, Planet Fitness announced masks would be required at all times at all of the companys 1,450 locations in North America and Australia that are open to the public. As we continue to face the COVID-19 pandemic, amid an ongoing global health crisis, wellness has never been as essential to our collective community as it is today, said Chris Rondeau, its chief executive officer in a statement. In its latest statement it said: At Planet Fitness, our members and employees are our number one priority, and we remain committed to providing a safe and clean environment where everyone feels comfortable. We are instituting a universal, standard mask policy in all of our stores effective August 1, although after hearing member feedback, we will be making a slight adjustment to this policy. Members will now be required to wear masks at all times within our facilities except while actively working out and in accordance with local and state restrictions. Health and wellness is more important now than ever, and we are confident that we have taken numerous precautions to ensure the safety of our community, including enhanced cleanliness and sanitization efforts, physical distancing measures in our large and spacious stores, touchless check-in and more. A growing number of businesses are requiring customers to wear face masks including Best Buy, BJs Wholesale Club, Costco, Home Depot, Kohls, Lowes, Macys, Rite Aid, Sams Club, Starbucks and Walmart. Photo: (Photo : Instagram/wilottery) On July 30, the United Nations General Assembly celebrates the International Day of Friendship. The UN encourages governments, groups, and other organizations to facilitate events promoting happiness and unity among friends. On this special day, try to connect with people and build bridges among different cultures and countries. It is one way to divert our attention from the hard times that people have been experiencing since the pandemic happened. Here is an inspiring story of a man who values his friendship over money. See also: Love languages quiz: Understand how to make your family feel loved The promise of longtime friends Almost 30 years ago, longtime friends promised that if either of them wins the lottery, they will share it. In late June, Thomas Cook took home a Powerball ticket that won him $22 million. It just meant that his friend, Joseph Feeney, also won the lottery. As part of keeping the agreement that the two friends made in 1992, the duo explained to Wisconsin's lottery their plan with the money. Cook wants to be a man and said that "a handshake's a handshake." Feeney said that whoever hits the jackpot prize shall split the cash in two. He said that they bought tickets every week but did not think that it would happen. See also: Hairstylist received letter of thanks from husband of woman with dementia Life-changing news A press release states that Cook bought his winning ticket priced at $2 ahead of the June 10 draw at a Synergy Coop in Menomonie. He heard the life-changing news while he was eating breakfast. He said that it was quite an experience when he read the first two or three numbers. He admitted that he somewhat froze, so he handed the tickets to his wife. After seeing the numbers, his wife froze too. Cook wanted to tell Feeney the good news, so he called his friend of 30 years. The shocked Feeney recalled asking his friend if he was joking. See also: Viral video: Heartwarming reunion of 3-year-old best friends [they were separated by lockdown] Retirement fund According to the press release, the two chose the cash option. After taxes were deducted, each man took home $5.7 million. With one in 292,201,338 odds of winning, Cook was able to fund his retirement. He gave two weeks of notice at work before retiring promptly. He said that he could not think of any better way to retire. He is looking forward to spending time with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Best of all, he is not worrying if he has time, where they can go, and if he could afford it. The two previously traveled with their wives on a road trip riding a PT Cruiser convertible. This time, the foursome hopes to splurge on something a bit larger than that. Cook bought another two tickets, saying that he has got nothing to lose. Advertisement Shocking footage obtained by The Mail on Sunday shows how police officers violently dragged a grieving father from the hospital bedside of his dying daughter shortly after he had been told her life support was being withdrawn. The harrowing film from a police body camera shows the moment Rashid Abbasi, a 59-year-old hospital consultant, was wrenched away from his critically ill six-year-old daughter by an officer holding his neck. Mr Abbasi, who has worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, had his legs and ankles strapped together and was wheeled away from his daughter Zainab on a trolley. His wife Aliya, a former doctor, was grabbed from behind, pulled from the bedside and fell backwards on to the floor of the hospital ward screaming. The disturbing incident took place in a hospital in the North of England that the MoS cannot name for legal reasons. It came after the parents were involved in a protracted dispute with doctors over the care of their critically ill daughter. Medics insisted Zainab should be allowed to die but Mr and Mrs Abbasi fought for further treatment that they were convinced would keep her alive. In a bedside vigil with his wife Aliya and another relative, Rashid is gently stroking his dying daughters arm when police enter the ward Aliya turns to the tallest of the officers to beg for empathy for her grief, asking: Do you have children? He says yes Police were called to Zainabs bedside after a complaint about Mr Abbasis behaviour. The MoS can also reveal how: The distressing footage shows that, as Mr Abbasi was arrested, a female police officer shouted: Youre acting like an animal, its disgusting; Officers repeatedly refused to retrieve emergency medication from his pocket, despite his cries that he was suffering chest pains; He says he was later told that he had suffered a heart attack and underwent a heart procedure the following day; Mr and Mrs Abbasi fought a three-week legal battle against hospital bosses to overturn draconian reporting restrictions that prevented them telling their story; Mr Abbasi has begun proceedings to sue police for wrongful arrest; In their first newspaper interview, the couple last night condemned the brutal and callous way they were treated by police. The episode shines a spotlight on how the NHS handles sensitive cases when parents disagree with medics decisions to withdraw their childs life support. It follows the traumatic cases of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, terminally ill children whose parents fought long legal battles over their care. Rashid and Aliya Abbasis daughter Zainab suffered from respiratory problems and a rare genetic illness called Niemann-Pick disease, which meant she was likely to die during childhood. The couple clashed with Zainabs doctors for years over her treatment. They say that on two previous occasions when Zainab was critically ill they had successfully argued for her to be treated with steroids instead of having life support withdrawn, and were proved correct when her condition improved. The stand-off escalates in a dramatic and troubling instant, as two of the officers grab Aliya from behind and drag her away from the bedside l Meanwhile the other two officers manhandle a visibly distraught Rashid away from the bed while still in his chair The officers physically struggle with the agitated father, grappling with his flailing arms in a bid to restrain him After her admission to hospital last July, Mr and Mrs Abbasi believed that, while their daughter was dangerously ill, she could survive with the right care. But on August 19, doctors told the Abbasis that Zainab was dying. An audio recording reveals how one doctor told them that the next steps would involve taking her off the ventilator. Rashid and Aliya pleaded for further tests, but one of the doctors refused, saying the process of moving Zainab on to palliative care needed to start straight away. Rashid told them they would have to get a court order to do so. Urged again to carry out more tests, the doctor replied We are not going to be doing any more going round in circles, adding: You will never come to terms with this. The medics then attempted to hand the couple a letter restricting Mr Abbasis visiting hours amid claims that staff felt threatened and intimidated by him. Mr Abbasi, a respiratory expert who works at a different hospital, stormed out of the meeting but hospital staff then called police, claiming he pushed a senior doctor who attempted to prevent him returning to his daughters bedside. Half an hour later, four police officers and two security guards gathered at Zainabs bedside where the devastated Abbasis and one of their sons were quietly comforting her. Aliya, held back by the female officer and another man, helplessly witnesses her husbands distress Amid the struggle, Rashid yells that he has chest pains, but is told: Youve brought this on yourself' His energy depleted, Rashid is finally subdued. As he lies prone and groaning on the hospital floor, he is handcuffed The bodycam footage shows how officers asked on a number of occasions for Mr Abbasi to leave his daughters bedside and talk to them outside the ward but he refused. Mrs Abbasi suggested the officers talk to her husband at the bedside. She pleaded with them to show compassion, saying: We were just informed they were going to take the tube out of our daughter. But after just over five minutes, an officer gave Mr Abbasi a final warning before wrenching him away from his daughter. One officer held his neck as he was dragged in his chair away from the bedside, the footage shows. After being forced on to the floor, Mr Abbasi, who suffers from serious heart problems, complained of chest pain, only to be told: Youve brought this on yourself. The officers are seen claiming that Mr Abbasi kicked and bit them during the struggle. Mr Abbasi denies the claims. Mr Abbasi told the MoS: The pictures speak for themselves. They behaved like barbarians. They were not prepared to listen. My daughter was given a death sentence half an hour before they arrived. Mr Abbasi was taken to accident and emergency, where officers later de-arrested him. He said he was told he had suffered a heart attack and the next day he underwent an emergency angioplasty. Following the incident, the NHS trust applied to the High Court for permission to take Zainab off the ventilator, but on September 16, just three days before the hearing was due to start, Zainab died. On Friday Mrs and Mrs Abbasi won a legal battle to partially lift reporting restrictions. Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Centre, which is helping the couple, said: The family showed extraordinary restraint in the face of brutal treatment. They genuinely feared that their only daughter was about to die. The officers bundle him on to a trolley, binding his legs around the ankles and thighs as he continues to cry out about chest pains, demanding his medication You are acting like an animal, the female officer berates Rashid, firmly adding: Your behaviour in front of your child is disgusting The hospital said: When there is a risk to the safety of any of the patients in our care, to relatives, visitors or to our staff or interference with the delivery of care and treatment it is necessary for us to seek help from the police. This is never taken lightly. It is essential we maintain a safe and secure environment, particularly where we are caring for very sick and vulnerable patients. The police force involved, which the MoS cannot name for legal reasons, said its officers responded to a call of a man being violent and abusive towards staff and that he had assaulted a consultant. They added: While we recognised this was a very distressing time for him and his family, our duty was to ensure the safety of all those present. They confirmed Mr Abbasi was arrested on suspicion of breach of the peace and assaulting police officers, and that one officer was treated in A&E. The force added: Due to the nature of the incident, it was necessary to detain the man and when he complained of feeling unwell he was taken for treatment as soon as possible. The force said they had reviewed the footage and that it sets out a very different picture to the limited version of events which have been presented to us. How police 'brutally' intruded into a grieving family's sombre vigil just 30 minutes after the parents were told their daughter, 6, was being taken off her life support machine Between crisp white hospital sheets lies a little girl in a pink nightdress, a dark bundle of glossy black hair splaying out behind her on a well plumped pillow. Her father is at her side, tenderly stroking her right arm as her mother watches. Just 30 minutes earlier, parents Rashid and Aliya Abbasi had been told the time had come for six-year-old Zainab to die. Yet within moments their tragic bedside vigil turns into a violent clash with police, who at one point are filmed with their hands around Rashids neck. He is dragged away from his dying daughter, in handcuffs and with his legs and ankles strapped together, as a female officer snarls into his face: Youre acting like an animal, its disgusting. Video footage from a police bodycam shows that the scene when officers arrived at the hospital ward is sombre and calm. Rashid and Aliya appear to be quietly coming to terms with the devastating news that doctors believe their beloved daughter, who has been critically ill in hospital for three weeks, is dying and should be removed from her ventilator. Rashid is sitting hunched forward in a blue hospital chair beside the bank of machinery keeping Zainab alive. A curtain is drawn back as the couple, who were accompanied by one of their sons, feel no need to seek privacy. Aliya, towards the foot of the bed, seems too exhausted to be scared or even surprised when she sees the police officers, three male and one female, approaching. One of the men asks Rashid: May I have a quick word with you, Sir? Not here, if you could just come outside. Rashid replies quietly: No, I dont want to leave my daughter: my daughter is dying. When the PC repeats his request, Aliya starts to explain, believing the officers are unaware of the distressing news which has just been delivered. We have just been told, about half an hour ago, that they are going to take the tube out and our daughter is going to die so, to be honest Her voice tails off as she struggles to articulate her distress. Aliya invites the officers to sit with them at the bedside, saying: Youre welcome to drag up a chair and just sit here and talk to us. The couple show no signs of refusing to co-operate, but they do not wish to leave their child. Rashid is sitting hunched forward in a blue hospital chair beside the bank of machinery keeping Zainab alive. A curtain is drawn back as the couple, who were accompanied by one of their sons, feel no need to seek privacy Rashid is told by an officer his behaviour is of some concern. He responds: This is a lie. Was Friday a lie as well, about your behaviour, which is why the police were called? the officer asks, making the exchange more confrontational, while repeating requests to take the conversation outside. His colleague, tall with a shaven head, steps past Aliya to take up a position behind Rashid. He appears to repeat a scripted request for co-operation: Is there anything I can reasonably say or do to get you to listen to what I am saying and comply with what I am asking you to do? Neither parent has yet raised their voice or stood up. Aliya again tries to explain their desperation: They are going to take the tube out of our daughter, she is going to die she is on a ventilator but her words are cut off by the officer. A nurse in a navy uniform puts her own hand protectively on Zainab, just inches from where the father is still gently holding his daughters arm. As the police continue to insist the parents leave their daughters bedside, Aliya again pleads: My daughter is dying on a ventilator, I dont think you quite understand The officers again ask Rashid to stand up and come with them, this time raising the spectre of arrest if he doesnt comply with their request. Aliya then stands up and pleads with a hospital consultant on the ward: Is this what you guys want? The nurse, who by this point has been joined by a colleague, then tells Rashid that if hes arrested, instead of returning to his hospital accommodation he will lose immediate access to his daughter: Youll not be close to her, she says. Her words are intended as an act of kindness but they seem to encourage a more forceful attitude from the tall male officer who emphasises: Theres accommodation up by Accident and Emergency thats a lot closer than the police station where he wont be able to leave, so perhaps you should consider that before making your decision. Aliya begs for them both to be allowed to stay, not to waste a moment of their remaining time together. When someone has got hours we look after her 24 hours, 24 hours a day. Aliya begs for them both to be allowed to stay, not to waste a moment of their remaining time together. When someone has got hours we look after her 24 hours, 24 hours a day She appeals to the tall male officer to empathise and feel her grief for a moment. Do you have children? she asks. He says he does, but then checks himself and adds: Not that its relevant here. Now the female officer steps in, telling Aliya whats best for her dying child. What is best for your daughter is not to have this kind of confrontation around her. She is in the best care, in the best place. Aliya responds: Shes not, shes not. But the female officer, clearly disgruntled at being challenged, insists: Yes she is, yes she is, jabbing the air in front of her. When Aliya defends herself the female officer begins to lecture her: Youre incorrect. The top and bottom of this is this environment you are putting your daughter in isnt appropriate Your husband is creating an issue. Aliya pleads for understanding: Were you told that half an hour ago [a doctor] informed us that they were going to take the tube out? Her voice, so calm until this point, starts to catch with emotion. But the female officer says bluntly: Yes but they are not doing it right now! prompting the desperate mother to ask: Do you know what compassion is? Her appeal gets her nowhere, as the female officer tells her from one mother to another that this is not right. Aliya says: Do you know what I have to deal with here? Now, five and a half minutes into the confrontation, the tall male officer repeats his is there anything I can reasonably say or do. script before leaning over Rashid. He starts to physically remove him, repeating: Leave go of your daughter. The officer wearing the bodycam and the female officer grab Aliya from behind and pull her backwards. Pandemonium breaks out. Aliya falls to the floor and screams in shock. Her terrified cry prompts an anguished bellow from Rashid, who is then dragged backwards from the bed while still sitting in his chair. Officers wrestle with his flailing arms and one policeman puts his hand on the fathers neck, beneath his chin, his fingers clearly visible against the grey hairs of the older mans beard. As Rashid is levered away from his daughters bed, the command On the floor! is clearly given. Three officers, including the one wearing the bodycam, struggle with Rashid, yelling at him Stop fighting, while the female officer and man who appears to be a security guard restrain Aliya. After a fierce struggle, Rashid, panting with exertion and fear, is overpowered and handcuffed. He complains of chest pains only to be told by an officer: You have brought this on yourself. Well take you to A&E, thats absolutely fine, says another officer. Please come with us and act responsibly, youre an adult, youre an educated person. By now Rashid is lying prone on the polished pale grey floor of the ward, his head jammed into the wooden frame of a closed hospital door. He is clearly in physical and mental distress, groaning and grimacing. Police try to get him to sit up, but he resists, continuing to repeat that he has chest pain and asking for the emergency medication he has in his pocket. The female officer tells him he cannot have it until he complies with their orders. If you sit up reasonably well get your medication. The officers attempt to sit Rashid, by now handcuffed, on a chair but the scuffle continues as he screams and then accuses one of the male officers of kicking him. With mounting anger the father yells: Why are you are kicking me, you bastard what are you doing? The policeman can be heard denying the accusation. He slides back on to the floor, telling the officers he is too dizzy to sit up. Distressingly, he repeatedly shouts for his medicine, warning the officers I will have a heart attack! The officers then tie him with a double leg restraint, one around his thighs and another at the ankles and then, satisfied that he has been immobilised, lift him on to a waiting trolley. All the time he screams: Let me have my medicine. Ive got chest pain! I will have a heart attack! You animals. Animals. Animals, he says. The female officer believes he is trying to kick her and clearly loses her temper, snarling: You are acting like an animal. Its disgusting. She orders her male colleagues Get him out. She then tells Rashid again: Your behaviour in front of your child is disgusting. A male officer accuses Rashid of biting him and later appears to show the camera a wound on his hand. Rashid is heard denying the claim. There are further furious exchanges as Rashid is pushed through double doors out of the ward and out into a corridor and he attempts to grab one of the officers with his cuffed hands. The female officer shouts stop biting and Rashid replies Im not biting. He accuses the police of hurting his wrists and repeatedly asks for his medicine. They reassure him that they are taking him to A&E for urgent help but one of the officers appears to tell him: If you act like an animal, you are going to be [treated] like one. As he is wheeled into a corridor, the bodycam footage cuts out. 'Our little girl was dying, all we wanted was some compassion': Heartbroken parents recall 'brutal' moment they were wrenched from their 'lovely little girl' who they had fought to keep alive Zainab Abbasis bedroom remains untouched since the heartbreaking day ten months ago when the terribly ill six-year-old girl died in hospital. A Disney poster adorns the door, two birthday cards, both featuring princesses, are still on display and Tigger, her favourite soft toy, sits on a shelf opposite her empty bed. She was the light of our home, her grief-stricken mother Aliya told The Mail on Sunday. When she passed away it was like the soul had been taken from our house. All of us were here but the home was empty. What made Zainabs death in September so unbearably painful for Aliya and her husband Rashid, who are both doctors, is that her final weeks were overshadowed by a bitter dispute with medical staff over whether to withdraw life support so bitter in fact that it culminated in the violent arrest of Rashid and his forced removal from his dying daughters bedside. Pictured: Zainab Abassi who suffered from a life-limiting genetic condition. Both of her parents, Aliya and Rashid are medical doctors For much of her short life, Zainab was only able to communicate with her father by gently squeezing his hand. Indeed, she was holding one of Rashids fingers as a police officer shouted leave go of your daughter before dragging him from her For much of her short life, Zainab was only able to communicate with her father by gently squeezing his hand. Indeed, she was holding one of Rashids fingers as a police officer shouted leave go of your daughter before dragging him from her. With tears streaming down his face, Rashid, 59, a respiratory consultant at a different hospital to the one Zainab died in, said he still suffers flashbacks of the harrowing incident. As I was being pulled off her bedside she was holding my finger, he said. One officer was squeezing my wrist at the same time as they pulled me. I could feel pins and needles. I fell on top of them and then they pulled me down and they were kneeing me on my lower abdomen. It was brutal. Aliya, 53, added: It was so unbelievable. I had this feeling that I spoke but nobody could hear me. I kept saying, You dont understand, half an hour ago we were told that they are going to take our daughters tube out. She is dying. Born in June 2013, Zainab was Rashid and Aliyas fourth child but their first girl. Rashid and Aliya noticed their daughter was missing some key development milestones but believed she was otherwise thriving. She was very cheeky, very bright, a lovely little girl, Aliya said. She was a bundle of joy, she really was. From the beginning she was a little fighter. She was a feisty little thing. But in January 2016, Zainab contracted swine flu and, after spending weeks on a ventilator, was left with respiratory complications, which she suffered from for the rest of her life. Swine flu has continued to circulate in the UK each winter after the 2009 global pandemic. Weeks later, Zainab was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick disease, a rare and incurable genetic disease. After this devastating development, which meant she was likely to die before adulthood, Rashid and Aliya increasingly clashed with Zainabs doctors over her care, particularly the way her respiratory problems were being treated. Although she lost the ability to speak, Zainabs parents say she could still communicate by making non-verbal noises and would be in bright spirits despite being seriously ill. Even when on a ventilator, she would enjoy watching her favourite film, Paddington. And she could respond to music, she would watch her DVDs, Aliya said. She loved having her hair washed, brushed and plaited. The disagreements between Zainabs parents and her doctors intensified when she fell dangerously ill last July and was admitted to hospital for the final time. On August 16, Rashid was banned by the hospital from visiting his daughter between 5pm and 9am because it was claimed a junior doctor had felt threatened and intimidated by him during a dispute over Zainabs care. Doctors Aliya and Rashid Abassi, who had an altercation with hospital staff and police officers, brought about by a dispute over the care of their daughter Zainab. Zainab had a life-limiting condition and died in May 2019 Medical staff later called police when Rashid did visit, but officers calmly handled the situation and he was allowed to stay. Three days later, Rashid and Aliya met three senior doctors in a room near Zainabs ward, who told them they wanted to take her off her ventilator, which was providing her lungs with oxygen, and allow her to die in the most caring manner. Rashid and Aliya disagreed and a heated argument escalated when the doctors attempted to hand Rashid a letter spelling out how his visiting hours would be restricted. Medical staff claimed Rashid pushed one of the doctors as he stormed out of the meeting. He denies this. My shoulder may have brushed him but then he is the one who ran after me. He first tried to stop me, he said. The couple said they panicked because they feared medical staff were taking Zainab off the ventilator while they were in the meeting. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer, Aliya said. Around half an hour later, four police officers and two security guards gathered at Zainabs bedside, where Rashid, Aliya and one of their sons were sitting calmly. They repeatedly asked Rashid to move into a different area where they could speak to him, but he did not move. Aliya explained why her husband needed to be there and asked, Do you know what compassion is? But five-and-a-half minutes later chaos broke out as officers attempted to forcibly remove Rashid. I thought they were in parallel, removing Zainabs tube as well, he said. To this day, I wake every night thinking somebodys tightening my handcuffs and Zainabs tube is being pulled out. As officers forced him to the ground to put handcuffs on him, Rashid, who had previously suffered two heart attacks, felt a crushing pain in his chest. I thought, if I die, what happens to my daughter? I would never see her again and they would almost certainly carry out their threat of removing the tube. I cant put it in words. I think the heart attack was just a physical manifestation of that distress. Aliya breaks down in tears as she remembers how she later asked one of her sons to visit Rashid in Accident and Emergency because she feared he would die. I wanted the children to say goodbye to their father. I thought they might not see him again. Rashid and Aliya obtained police camera footage of the incident last December after making a request under the Data Protection Act but it took them weeks to build up the courage to watch it. When she did finally view the video, Aliya was struck by the couples sheer helplessness and the refusal of police to listen to their pleas for understanding. Born in June 2013, Zainab was Rashid and Aliyas fourth child but their first girl. Rashid and Aliya noticed their daughter was missing some key development milestones but believed she was otherwise thriving I felt like I was this pathetic middle aged woman pleading with people to listen to her, she said. I am having bereavement counselling and I tell my counsellor that this is how I feel now: I feel I speak and people cant hear me. Rashid added: You are speaking to a brick wall. The louder you say things, the louder it bounces back to your face. Following the shocking incident, the hospital trust treating Zainab which did not withdraw her tube during the police incident applied to the High Court for permission to withdraw life-support treatment and move her to a palliative care regime. A two-day hearing was scheduled for September 19 and 20 but her condition deteriorated, and on September 15, Mr and Mrs Abbasi made a last ditch attempt to save her life. During two emergency telephone hearings with a judge, Rashid and Aliya pleaded for their daughter to be allowed high doses of steroids. Their request was refused and at 10.08am the following morning Zainab died with her parents and brothers by her bedside. In a stark sign of how the relationship between the parents and hospital completely broke down after the arrest, two security guards were posted outside the entrance of the ward. Aliya and Rashid passionately believe their daughter was not terminally ill and that more could have been done to save her. If that episode last year hadnt happened, we could have carried on looking after her for many, many years, Aliya said. Rashids arrest was the last of many flashpoints with clinicians during the final years of Zainabs life. He was arrested in February 2019 at another hospital after it was claimed he had refused to leave his daughters ward and was agitated. He was later de-arrested due to concerns over his health. The couple were also investigated by social services and police following allegations that they were obstructing medical access to Zainab. This included claims they had changed their daughters medication, given her a drug that had not been prescribed and given her too much oxygen at home. Medical staff later called police when Rashid did visit, but officers calmly handled the situation and he was allowed to stay The couple have always strenuously denied the claims and say they have evidence which disproves them. The police closed their investigation last year due to insufficient evidence, while social services concluded that, while there had been safeguarding issues, Zainab was not at continuing risk of significant harm. The couple conceded that Rashid can become animated but say this was due to the frustrations of their dispute over Zainabs care. They denied he was threatening or intimidating. Aliya warned that other parents, who are less medically qualified than they are face similar battles against doctors determined to withdraw their childs life support. Its a bit like if you take your car to a garage and a mechanic insists on a certain course of action. You go with the advice because you dont know any better. Because we were both doctors we knew exactly what should be happening and we could point out when our daughter was being failed. If this could happen to us, what about other people? On two previous occasions, in 2016 and 2018, Zainab was critically ill in intensive care and doctors suggested it was time to bring her off the ventilator and allow her to die. But because of our medical knowledge, we successfully challenged them and urged them to treat her with higher doses of steroids. On both occasions we were proved right. This happens up and down the country every day because parents dont know what is happening. Rashid, meanwhile, remains tortured by the memory of his violent removal from his daughters bedside. Zainab had human rights. She wanted to have the closeness and the company of her parents. What happened to her human rights the rights of a dying child? It was with great sadness that people around Tubbercurry learned that Margaret Kennedy is retiring from business and closing her sweet shop in the town. Generations of children grew up with the shop, not alone in Tubbercurry, but throughout South Sligo where a visit to Kennedy's Sweet Shop was a treat and a joy. Be it on the way home from school, or attending events in St. Brigid's Hall, the sweets purchased from Margaret always seemed better and tastier than any other shop in the world. Margaret's mother ran the shop before her when a dish of jelly and ice cream could be purchased for a few pennies. Only last year a man who got married in France had bags of sweets from Margaret's Shop as a treat for guests. Highlights of his visits to Tubbercurry included visits to Margaret for sweets. Margaret knew all her young customers by their first name and probably smiled to herself every so often when she remembered serving sweets to their parents and even grandparents when they were children. The shop has featured in films and political photo opportunities over the years and it will be sadly missed. Margaret had a smile for everyone, and she is wished many years of happy retirement. Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 1 : The BJP Kerala unit on Saturday launched protest demonstrations across the state to demand Pinarayi Vijayan government's resignation in the wake of unearthing of the gold smuggling racket. BJP national Secretary Bhupender Yadav, who launched the protests online from Delhi, alleged that the CMO was "facilitating" the gold smuggling. These protests will continue till August 18, with all top state BJP leaders observing one-day fasts at various place during this period. On Saturday, lone BJP legislator in Kerala Assembly, O. Rajagopal, began his day-long fast at the state party headquarters here. Yadav said Vijayan will go down in history as the "most corrupt Chief Minister" in the country. "Vijayan, your time is now up. You will be forced to tell the truth on how the gold smuggling is taking place, as your own office has direct control over it. Look into those who have been arrested -- they include Swapna Suresh, who despite no qualifications was given a job in the IT Department headed by Vijayan. You will have to answer," the BJP leader said in his speech. State BJP President K. Surendran, participating in the launch of the protest from his home in Kozhikode, said the situation is grave as allegations have now surfaced that the "smuggling of gold going on with the help of Vijayan's office has terror links too". "... news that is now coming out is that the legal brains of the Communist Party of India-Marxist are working hard to save the accused. It's also now coming out that the Kerala Police is now trying to get the custody of the accused in order to tutor them," Surendran claimed. The gold smuggling came to light when Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate here, was arrested by the Customs on July 5 as he was facilitating smuggling of 30 kg gold in diplomatic baggage to Thiruvananthapuram from Dubai. This has to stop. The Cares Act was not only a symbolic victory for the political process, it was a substantive one, too. The billions of dollars in aid to households, through additional unemployment insurance or direct payments, coupled with the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, have so far protected vulnerable families from what otherwise would have been catastrophic economic losses. In fact, personal disposable income actually rose in the second quarter of 2020, even as the economy shrank at an annual rate of 32.9 percent. Ideally, Congress would produce a new bill that modified what was inevitably imperfect about the Cares Act and included funds to help state and local governments. Especially urgent within aid to the states would be generous financial support for the November elections. As important as it is to salvage the economy, it might be even more vital to salvage the legitimacy of the vote. Control Valve Market Research Report by Type (Linear Valve and Rotary Valve), by Material (Alloy Based, Brass, Bronze, Cast Iron, and Cryogenic), by Component, by Industry - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 New York, Aug. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Control Valve Market Research Report by Type, by Material, by Component, by Industry - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913965/?utm_source=GNW The Global Control Valve Market is expected to grow from USD 7,786.28 Million in 2019 to USD 10,888.78 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5.74%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Control Valve to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: Based on Type, the Control Valve Market studied across Linear Valve and Rotary Valve. The Linear Valve further studied across Diaphragm Valve and Gate Valve. The Rotary Valve further studied across Ball Valve, Butterfly Valve, and Plug Valve. Based on Material, the Control Valve Market studied across Alloy Based, Brass, Bronze, Cast Iron, Cryogenic, Plastic, and Stainless Steel. Based on Component, the Control Valve Market studied across Actuators and Valve Body. Based on Industry, the Control Valve Market studied across Building & Construction, Chemicals, Energy & Power, Food & Beverages, Metals & Mining, Oil & Gas, Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare, Pulp & Paper, and Water & Wastewater Treatment. Based on Geography, the Control Valve Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Control Valve Market including Alfa Laval AB, AVK Holding A/S, Cameron International Corporation, Christian Burkert GmbH & Co. KG, Crane Co., Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Emerson Electric Co., Flowserve Corporation, IMI plc, Kitz Corporation, Metso Corporation, Neway Valve Co., SAMSON Controls Inc., Spirax-Sarco Engineering plc, and Trillium Flow Technologies. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Control Valve Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19: COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Control Valve Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Control Valve Market during the forecast period? 3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Control Valve Market? 4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Control Valve Market? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Control Valve Market? 6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Control Valve Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913965/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Story continues CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 Find 2021 Hyundai models at Stockton Hyundai. Local Stockton dealership, Stockton Hyundai, now carries a variety of 2021 Hyundai vehicles. There are currently three SUVs available at this dealership, including the 2021 Hyundai Kona, 2021 Hyundai Palisade and the 2021 Hyundai Tucson. With a variety of trims available on these models, shoppers have a wide array of choices for customers to choose from. The 2021 Hyundai Kona is a popular compact SUV that is suitable for city driving and on the country roads. Nimble and quick, the Kona attracts the attention of drivers who primarily wish for a model to drive everyday for work, groceries, etc, with the occasional vacation. Similar to the Hyundai Kona, the 2021 Hyundai Tucson seats 5 people. However, this SUV boosts the cargo space to 61.9 cubic feet. This enables a quick load of gear and groceries. It provides a more versatile interior which can carry more objects, making it a prime vehicle for moving and long vacations while still being a candidate for city driving as well. The 2021 Hyundai Palisade has 7 or 8 seating capacity depending on the drivers preferences. With a massive 86.4 cubic feet of cargo space, this model is a solid choice for any shopper looking for their next vacation or family vehicle. Shoppers who are interested in leasing or buying a new 2021 Hyundai vehicle are encouraged to contact Stockton Hyundai today. An expert team member can tell you more about the available models and which one may be more suited to a particular lifestyle or another. Find out more about this model at http://www.stocktonhyundai.com. Rhea Chakraborty's plea in the Supreme Court is scheduled to be heard on Wednesday, August 5. Rhea had filed a petition requesting the transfer of Sushant Singh Rajput's case, in which she and few others have been named, from Bihar to Mumbai. According to the apex court's website, Rhea's petition will come up for hearing before a bench of Justice Hrishikesh. Rhea, her family members and two others have been named in the FIR filed by Sushant's father, in connection to his death. They are booked under charges of abetment of suicide, cheating, confinement, theft and others. But this FIR was filed at the Rajiv Nagar police station in Patna, which is Sushant's hometown and the residence of his father. In response to Rhea's petition, both the Mumbai Police and Bihar Police filed a caveat in the court. Sushant's father K.K. Singh also filed a caveat, requesting to be heard on the matter before the court passes any order. Rhea, in her petition, has claimed to be falsely implicated in Sushant's death, and has accused Sushant's father of using 'influence' to do so with the FIR that he has filed. She has further said that she was in a year-long live-in relationship with Sushant until June 8. "The deceased (Rajput) was suffering from depression for some time and was also on anti-depressants and he died by suicide on the morning of June 14, 2020 at his Bandra residence by hanging himself," Rhea added in her petition. Currently, a parallel investigation is being conducted by both the Bihar Police and the Mumbai Police, amidst demands for transfer of the case to the CBI. ALSO READ: Sushant Singh Rajput Death Case: SC Dismisses PIL For CBI Probe, Says 'Let Police Do Their Job' 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 There are so many artists that made classic songs everyone just knows by heart today. They helped shape the music industry and gave iconic lyrics that have stood the test of time. Stevie Nicks is one of those artists. Her solo music as well as what she created with Fleetwood Mac still lives on today. But did you know that Nicks is a major fan of the Twilight series? One of the movies even inspired her to write new music in 2009. And she thinks the series is timeless. Stevie Nicks at the premiere of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 at Nokia Theatre L.A. on Nov. 12, 2012 | Michael Buckner/Getty Images RELATED: Midnight Sun Almost Didnt Get Finished; The Twilight Companion Novel Was Leaked in 2008 Stevie Nicks wrote a New Moon-inspired song, which kickstarted an album While on The Late, Late Show with James Corden in 2016, Nicks shared that she was ready to never return to songwriting. After she released her album Trouble in Shangri-La in 2001, she didnt make another album until 2011. And thats thanks to New Moon. If it hadnt been for your movies, she said to Taylor Lautner, who was on the show with her. Ive since made two records In Your Dreams, and 24 Karat Gold I would never have never made those albums because I was so staunch in my belief that it was over. In Your Dreams came out in 2011, and the song that kickstarted her return to making an album was Moonlight A Vampires Dream. It was, you guessed it, inspired by Edward and Bellas love story. And this isnt a secret either; she was open about it when she put it out in 2011 too. I had written a song in Brisbane, Australia when I was on tour with Fleetwood Mac in 2009 called Moonlight A Vampires Dream which was inspired by the New Moon film, she told MTV News that year. When I finished writing that song, which came together really quickly, I knew the time was right to start recording. She compared the love story to Wuthering Heights The beginning of the song has the lyrics: Shes lonely, lost Shes disconnected She finds no comfort In her surroundings This is 100 percent the vibe of most of New Moon. But its not just about Twilight. That movie inspired her to write this song, but it was also largely about her past relationship. She told Spinner.com that the track really is an ancient song that encompasses my strange and everlasting relationship with Lindsey Buckingham. To get Stevie Nicks back into the studio after a decade is quite a feat. She really was a fan of Twilight, and was sad to see it end. Its bittersweet because I really would be happier if it was not ending. I wish it could go on forever, Nicks told Digital Spy in 2012 at the Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 premiere. I think that [Stephenie Meyer] is probably god knows how long it took her to write this. And its been five years. Taylor Lautner and Stevie Nicks at the premiere of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 after-party on Nov. 12, 2012 | Christopher Polk/Getty Images RELATED: Even Though My Chemical Romance Inspired Twilight, They Were Not Fans of the Saga She also saw a lot of weight to the story of Bella and Edward as pretty significant, comparing it to a couple of literary classics. Its a huge love story its like Wuthering Heights, its that kind of story, she said. Its like Jane Eyre its a totally timeless kind of story that we can relate to. Nicks music is iconic, and she finds the best inspiration Whether it was her Fleetwood Mac days or her solo career, she continued to find that inspiration through anything she liked, to create her impressive discography. You can be walking down the street, and see someone that catches your eye, and say, Gosh! That was a gorgeous man, and something touches you, and you might go home and write a poem about that, you know? she told Thirteen.org in 2011. She also shared that going to Italy inspired Italian Summer, and isnt about any particular love. But instead just the feelings she got while being there. I wrote it about Italy, walking around on the cobblestone streets and feeling free and feeling safe, she said. So you can be inspired by anything. This appeared on the same album as Moonlight A Vampires Dream. Coincidence that Bella also went to Italy in New Moon? Maybe not. Even now, during COVID-19 lockdown, shes finding inspiration in interesting places. I am getting all my paintings and drawings out listening to music [mostly Harry Styles Fine Line] and being inspired by him to write some new songs and poetry. Way to go H it is your Rumours, she wrote in a note she tweeted out on March 23. Maybe the next Twilight re-watch will produce a Tusk 2.0. RELATED: How Harry Styles Is Making Stevie Nicks Coronavirus Self-Isolation Easier A United Arab Emirates official on Saturday urged Turkey to stop interfering in Arab affairs, mockingly referring to the Ottoman empire which collapsed a century ago. The backlash came after Turkey condemned what it termed "malicious" actions by the UAE in Libya, where the two countries support opposing sides in its grinding conflict. Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs, called on Turkey "to stop intervening in Arab affairs". Turkey can no longer behave like "the Sublime Porte and use the language of colonialism", he said, referring to the government of the Ottoman empire which ruled the Arab world for centuries. "The Sublime Porte and colonialist illusions belong to the archives of history... and relations between states are not conducted with threats," Gargash wrote. Turkey backs the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in western Libya, while the forces of eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) lead by commander Khalifa Haftar are supported by the UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Russia. "Abu Dhabi does what it does in Libya, does what it does in Syria. All of it is being recorded. At the right place and time, the accounts will be settled," Turkey's Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television. "It is necessary to ask Abu Dhabi, where this hostility, where these intentions, where this jealousy comes from," he said, quoted Friday on the Turkish defence ministry's website. Libya has been torn by violence since the 2011 ouster of long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a NATO-backed uprising, and the conflict has since drawn in multiple foreign powers. *This story was edited by Ahram Online Search Keywords: Short link: China's successful launch of Tianwen-1 Mars mission marks steady progress in exploring the outer space People's Daily Online By Wen Wu (People's Daily) 09:36, July 31, 2020 China launched its first Mars exploration mission Tianwen-1 on July 23 with the fourth Long March-5 rocket coded as Long March-5 Y4 at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China's Hainan province. The Mars probe is expected to take about seven months to reach the planned orbit around Mars, after which it will carry out tasks of orbiting, landing and roving in one mission. On July 27, with its optical navigation instruments, the probe captured an image of the Earth and Moon from some 1.2 million kilometers away from Earth. China has made a lot of preparations for the mission. The Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center has carried out repeated drills for various systems to support the launch, while the Xi'an Satellite Control Center in northwest China's Shaanxi province has improved the adaptability of the space-ground communication system for the mission. Deep-space ground control stations in Kashgar, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Jiamusi, northeast China's Heilongjiang province, had been well-prepared to provide support in measurement and control before the launch. Meanwhile, two Tianlian satellites, China's tracking and data relay satellite series, had constantly sent telemetry data back to the ground from the geosynchronous orbit. The reason why China chose to launch its Tianwen-1 probe to Mars at this time of the year is to take advantage of the Hohmann transfer orbit, which is considered the best route from Earth to Mars. Proposed in the 1920s by German engineer Walter Hohmann, the Hohmann transfer orbit forms every 26 months and falls in the summer this year. What's the most difficult part of the Mars mission? To escape Earth's gravitational field and fly to Mars, an object has to reach the "second cosmic velocity" of about 11.2 kilometers per second. The greater the mass of the object is, the more difficult it is for the object to attain the speed. The Tianwen-1 probe, however, weighs about five tonnes, making it the heaviest deep-space probe ever launched by China. This mission marks the first time that Long March-5 carrier rocket exceeds the second cosmic velocity, the fastest China's carrier rockets have gone to date. Another problem for the mission lay in the information transmission. The fastest speed at which human beings can transmit information is the speed of light, which is 300,000 kilometers per second. However, the distance between Mars and the Earth exceeds 50 million kilometers at the closest and reaches 400 million kilometers at the farthest, which results in an information transfer delay ranging from several minutes to dozens of minutes. The delay in information transmission means the Tianwen-1 probe can't be directly controlled by the control center on Earth and needs to deal with the unknown environment in the deep space by itself and make judgments and choices on its own. What's the purpose of the Mars mission? The purpose of the Mars mission is not just reaching Mars, as the real goal is to collect as much effective scientific data as possible, according to Liu Tongjie, spokesperson for China's Mars probe mission as well as deputy head of the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center under the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The orbiter is equipped with seven instruments and the rover set up with six payloads, Liu added. After it landed on Mars, the Tianwen-1 probe will send back images of Mars, investigate the surface and geological structure of the planet, measure and record the climate and magnetic fields, and collect a large amount of scientific data. Why Mars? Mars has similar natural environment with Earth and has always been a priority target for manned deep-space exploration outside the Earth-Moon system, Liu pointed out. In previous explorations, human beings have found evidence that suggests the existence of water on Mars. Since then, whether Mars is hospitable to life and whether it has connections with Earth have become major scientific issues of the research on Mars. The study of Mars is believed to be significant for understanding the evolution of the Earth. Tianwen-1, meaning Questions to Heaven, comes from a poem by Qu Yuan (about 340-278 BC), one of the greatest poets of ancient China. Although about 2,300 years have passed, human beings nowadays still have many questions about the outer space. Representing a starting point of the planetary exploration program in China's aerospace cause, the Mars mission symbolizes China's pursuit of and progress in exploring the deeper space. So far, China has established space stations hundreds of kilometers away from the ground, sent spacecrafts to the Moon that is 300,000 kilometers away from the Earth, and started to explore Mars in the deeper space. Step by step, China is marching toward farther places in the universe with the exploration spirit and persistent efforts of Chinese astronauts. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Colt Johnson became well-known on the 90 Day Fiance franchise for many thingsfrom failing to bring flowers to greet his now-ex-wife, Larissa Dos Santos Lima, at the airport, to his intense love for cats and his extra-close relationship with his mom and roommate, Debbie Johnson. Now, Colt is appearing on the fifth season of TLCs 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After with his (now-ex) girlfriend Jess Caroline. And on a recent episode, Colt got a whole new claim to fame among 90 Day Fiance fans when he visited Jess in her home country of Brazil. Colts revealing Speedo on a Brazilian beach left many fans speechlessalmost. Colt Johnson | Bryan Steffy/WireImage Colt showed off some skin on the beach with Jess On 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After, Colt and Jess have never shied away from talking about their sex life and their attraction to each other. Jess, 26, said she loved having sex with her American boyfriend because she was the boss in the bedroom. Colt, 34, also talked about how much he loved getting down and dirty with his new girlfriendeven in front of his mom, who didnt exactly want to hear about how loud Jess was behind closed doors. Jess and Colt continued with their carefree, sexually forward ways during a recent episode, when they took a walk on the beach together in Brazil. I wanted to show Colt the Brazilian beach and relax, Jess told TLC producers. No Debbie, no family. Just me and Colt. Colt raved about the beauty of the beach before stripping down to just a teeny-tiny Speedo. Jess, who was also in a skimpy bathing suit, immediately admired her boyfriends body and said she appreciated the revealing look. Ooh, sexy boy, Jess gushed. I like the look. When in Brazil, do as the Brazilians do, Colt quipped, before taking his girlfriends hand for a romantic walk along the beach. Jess continued their flirty banter, asking Colt, Have you had sex on the beach before? The 90 Day Fiance star said he hadntonly the drink, he quippedbut Jess confessed that she had before. Colts girlfriend even told 90 Day Fiance producers that, while she normally had a high sex drive, Colt brought it out of her even more. Colt make me want sex all the time, Jess said laughingly after their walk along the beach. RELATED: 90 Day Fiance: Colt Johnson Asks Jess Carolines Dad For Her Hand in Marriage in Brand-New Sneak Peek Some 90 Day Fiance fans didnt approve of Colts revealing look Some 90 Day Fiance fans thought Colts bathing suit was a little much. I can never unsee this, one commenter wrote on TLCs official 90 Day Fiance Instagram account. Another viewer agreed that Colt and Jess should cover up a bit more. My eyes cant handle all of this, they wrote. One critic thought the 90 Day Fiance stars suit just wasnt the right fit for his frame. Im all for body acceptance on the beach, but Coltee needs a suit that FITS, they argued. Yet another agreed that the outfit wasnt great, but they were still impressed with Colts way with women. I will never get that image out of my head, but I have to say he has some kind of game to get girls this fast, the 90 Day Fiance fan remarked. Others praised him for being confident in his body While some fans thought Colt should forego the Speedo in the future, others praised him for embracing body acceptance and body positivity. Several viewers remarked that they were impressed with the confident air he had. One Instagram user wrote, I give him credit for having confidence. Another commenter praised Colt for wearing whatever he wanted to wear, no matter what others opinions might be. Rock it Colt, they exclaimed. He gave no f*cks what anyone says or thinks lol I love it. As long as he loves himself and his girl loves him, thats all that matters. Get it Colt. Other 90 Day Fiance fans wished they had that level of confidence on the beach. I wasted decades thinking that I was too fat to wear a bathing suit or shorts, one Instagram user mused. Another agreed, writing, I say do you Coltee because the beach is gonna get whatever body Im given too! For Avila Colanter, it wasnt enough to just bring a donation of gifts to the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) in San Diego. Wanting to make it extra special for the kids at the RMHs on-site school, the 10-year-old Carlsbad resident who attends Phoenix Learning Center in Encinitas, brought the donations along with a mini horse dressed up for Christmas. Avila just loves horses and she had this idea a couple of years ago, proud mom Brit Colanter told the Encinitas Advocate. On Dec. 8, after a lot of coordination from Brit and Avila, the idea became a reality. The mother and daughter were joined by Avilas siblings 7 year-old Monnica and 4 year-old Augustine a cousin and her grandparents (dad Eddie, unfortunately, had to work) as they brought gift baskets to the 5-10 kids staying at the RMH on-site school with the help of Beanie Baby the mini pony, who the children got a chance to play with. Avila and her family also brought a bunch of unwrapped gifts to donate to RMHs Santas Workshop, a program that allows parents from underprivileged families to pick out presents for their kids this holiday season. Advertisement While the kids at the on-site school were thrilled to play with Beanie Baby, and Avila and her family enjoyed seeing the joy in their faces, the children also appreciated the gift baskets, which included the childrens book Jasper and the Big Race. That book was written and illustrated by Avila when she was just 7 years old, and is available on Amazon. It was around the time she finished the book that Avila hatched the idea for the Christmas Pony donation event. Then this year, Brit Colanter was able to help her daughter make it happen. Weve done Operation Christmas Drop (a charity affiliated with the military) for kids overseas and she loves doing that and then she just thought it would be awesome to do something like that with a horse dressed up for Christmas, Colanter said. She was really insistent that this would happen so I finally said, OK, Ill try to make some calls, not knowing how it was going to all come together. It all started to come together when a friend from 4H gave her the name of Anne Shapery, who runs LJ Mini Ranch in La Jolla. Shapery, who brings mini horses and other animals to the VA hospital and to work with autistic kids, was happy to provide the horse for Avilas project. Then, Colanter connected with the Ronald MacDonald House and officials there invited Avila and Beanie Baby to the RMH on-site school. While that was all being organized, the family was also spending October and November collecting gifts and monetary donations from friends and relatives, people from their church and the families of Avilas classmates in teacher Ashley Pirrellos fourth-grade class. It was amazing to see everyones generosity, and just see the community get behind this (project), even people I didnt know, said Colanter, whose family recently moved to Carlsbad from Encinitas. Another fun thing for Colanter and her kids was taking the donated money and going shopping for toys for the RMH kids. Mom says Avila is already excited about organizing a Christmas Pony donation next year, and they are looking at potentially finding additional locations to bring their holiday cheer. Germany is offering free coronavirus tests to travellers returning from abroad from August 1 and tests will be mandatory for anyone arriving from a high risk country from Monday. Health Minister Jens Spahn has defended the free tests despite harsh criticism from those who believe that travellers should pay for them and insists that offering free Covid-19 tests makes it easier to persuade travellers to agree to be tested. "The virus does not take vacations," Minister Spahn said in relation to the danger of "imported" infections. Because of the estimated incubation period for coronavirus, he also recommends having a second test a few days after the first, which will also be free of charge. Medical Associations and the Opposition Liberal Party, or FDP, have heavily criticised Minister Spahn's plan saying the free tests will cause an overload of work and cost a fortune. The equipment necessary to carry out the coronavirus tests has already been established at most of Germany's International airports and will be operational at Berlin and Schonefeld from next week. Minister Spahn wants travellers from high risk regions to be tested at the airport, instead of undergoing mandatory quarantine which he says is difficult to monitor. Those arriving from areas not included in the high risk list will have 72 hours to undergo a test free of charge at a Medical Centre. High risk areas include the Spanish regions of Catalonia, Navarra and Aragon, Luxembourg, Turkey, the United States, practically all of Latin America, and large parts of Africa and Asia. The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a warning against travel to Catalonia, Navarre and Aragon on Friday. In the last week there has been a clear increase in new coronavirus infections, both "imported" and domestic, most of which were reportedly the result of parties, family gatherings or religious ceremonies. In the last 24 hourse 955 new Covid-19 infections were confirmed in Germany, compared to 800-850 one week ago and 300-350 in mid-June. 209,653 people in Germany have contracted coronavirus since the pandemic began, 192,700 have completely recovered and 9,148 died, according to the latest data from RKI. Chennai: A Chennai based space enthusiast Shanmuga Subramanian, who in December 2019 had found Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander's debris on Moon has now said that Chandrayaan-2's Pragyan rover is intact on Moon's surface. Shanmuga also stated that it has rolled out a few metres from the skeleton of Vikram lander, whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing. Chandrayaan2's Pragyan "ROVER" intact on Moon's surface & has rolled out few metres from the skeleton Vikram lander whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing | More details in below tweets @isro #Chandrayaan2 #VikramLander #PragyanRover (1/4) pic.twitter.com/iKSHntsK1f Shan (Shanmuga Subramanian) (@Ramanean) August 1, 2020 He claimed that the debris he found was of Langmuir probe from the Vikram lander and the debris NASA found might be from the other payloads, mainly - antenna, retro braking engines, solar panels on the side etc. He expressed, "South Pole region is not always well lit and the lander was in a shallow depth of 2 ms from the surface so it was not visible on November 11's NASA flyby due to different angle of incidence and would be difficult for anyone to find it unless the sun is directly above the surface. South Pole region is not always well lit and the lander was in a shallow depth of 2 ms from the surface so it was not visible in Nov 11th's NASA flyby due to different angle of incidence & would be difficult for anyone to find it unless the sun is directly above the surface(3/4) pic.twitter.com/hCNvn2c6DH Shan (Shanmuga Subramanian) (@Ramanean) August 1, 2020 "Since the sun is never directly above moon's surface in that region, it would have been so difficult," said the 34-year old Shanmuga. He stated, "It seems the commands were sent to lander blindly for days and there is a distinct possibility that lander could have received commands and relayed it to the rover but the lander was not able to communicate it back to the earth." Update: It seems the commands were sent to lander blindly for days & there is a distinct possibility that lander could have received commands and relayed it to the rover.. but lander was not able to communicate it back to the earth @uncertainquark Shan (Shanmuga Subramanian) (@Ramanean) August 1, 2020 Also read | Our own orbiter had located Vikram Lander earlier, says ISRO Chief K Sivan after NASA releases images Chandrayaan-2 was injected on August 14, 2019, and had successfully inserted into lunar orbit on August 20, 2019. While orbiting the moon in a 100 km lunar polar orbit, Vikram Lander was separated from Orbiter on September 02, 2019, in preparation for landing. Vikram Lander descent was as planned and normal performance was observed up to an altitude of 2.1 km before the communication from the lander to the ground stations was lost. A Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin, authorities said Friday. The 17-year-old boy was arrested earlier Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorneys Office will prosecute the case. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. The hacks led to bogus tweets being sent out July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media companys employees into giving them access. It said targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack. This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems, the company tweeted. After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter's systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or other electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information. Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later given the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The company has previously said the incident was a coordinated social engineering attack that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. It didnt provide any more information about how the attack was carried out, but the details released so far suggest the hackers started by using the old-fashioned method of talking their way past security. British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number. When the worker called the number they might have been taken to a convincing (but fake) helpdesk operator, who was then able to use social engineering techniques to trick the intended victim into handing over their credentials, Clulely wrote Friday on his blog. Its also possible the hackers pretended to call from the companys legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said. Related Content: JUNEAU, Alaska - A marijuana business in Juneau could start allowing onsite cannabis consumption making it the first business in the city to do so if given permit approval later this month. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 1/8/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. JUNEAU, Alaska - A marijuana business in Juneau could start allowing onsite cannabis consumption making it the first business in the city to do so if given permit approval later this month. Rainforest Farms submitted an application to the City and Borough of Juneau to modify the inside of the business to create a designated space for consuming cannabis, including installing a wall and adding security cameras and doors, the Juneau Empire reported. Only eating edibles would be allowed, the application said. Smoking or vaping would not be allowed. We are not allowing smoking, and the dosages of edibles are smaller, but Alaska is pretty open creatively on what we can do," Rainforest Farms co-owner James Barrett told The Associated Press on Saturday. We are going to add a coffee shop, bar and lounge area that offers pot-infused foods, but will also have some non-infused foods, such as sandwiches. The state legalized onsite consumption in March 2019 and Juneau approved the ordinance a few months later, but no businesses have taken advantage of it, the newspaper reported. The ordinance allows edibles to be consumed indoors while state-approved businesses can offer outdoor smoking options. 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. The state Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development has already approved the plans, which include the wall installation and air filtration systems to prevent excessive smell coming from the business. The permit will next go before the city Planning Commission at an Aug. 11 meeting. Public comment can be submitted until noon on Aug. 7. Public testimony will be taken at the Aug. 11 meeting. The permit could end up before the Juneau Assembly for a vote if the Planning Commissions decision is appealed, said City Planner Laurel Christian, who oversees Rainforest Farms' permit. The business still must go through a state permitting process. We will need approval from the city first. After that, we would submit another application to the state," Barrett said, adding that he expects both applications to be approved. ___ AP journalist Cheyanne Mumphrey in Phoenix contributed to this report. Ondo State Police Command has arrested a bike rider simply identified only as Dare, for allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl, Zainab Justina Adeyemo, to death in Akoko North west Local government Area of the state. According to Vanguard, the incident happened on Friday July 17th, 2020, when the girl was returning from an errand in a neighbouring village when she boarded Dares bike. Mama Zainab, as she was popularly called, said her daughter left their house around 2pm and took a motorbike to make it easier and quicker for her. Unfortunately, hours after her mother thought she would have come back, she was nowhere to be seen. The apprehensive mother quickly dashed to the village where her daughter was sent only to be told that she had long gone back after delivering the message. Still hopeful, she rushed back to her village to meet an empty house, no Zainab. In desperation, she went back to Eshe where she sent her and was told that her daughter joined a popular commercial motorcyclist called Dare while returning home. The mother was directed to Dares house where, to her surprise, Dare denied seeing her. This infuriated other commercial motorcyclists and they attempted lynching Dare. But later they ended up dragging him to the nearest police station where he admitted that he truly carried the girl with his motorbike and that he dropped her at Iru motor Park. At this stage, Dare was compelled to show them where he dropped the girl, which he did. He was then taken to the nearest police station. The agony of Mama Zainab who could not control her emotions at this stage narrated to Vanguard Crime Guard in tears. She continued: On getting to the police station, now visibly frightened Dare pleaded that he should be treated gently assuring that the missing girl would eventually be seen. Shockingly, he further claimed that while he was on his way from Eshe to Irun with Zainab, they had an accident and the girl was seriously wounded. Initially, we told the police to carry out immediate investigation into his claims but they were insisting that we must wait for the stipulated 24 hours before taking any action. This infuriated villagers and they went out in search of Zainab without the police. Luckily, after about five hours thorough search, the corpse of Zainab was discovered along a footpath in the bush. The police was informed and they later picked it. The delay by the police forced both commercial motorcyclists in the area and villagers to stage a protest demanding that Dare must be brought out to say what happened to the little girl. The protest made the police to accost Dare who started narrating how he raped and later killed the little girl. He told gory tales of how he was raping her inside the bush while they were on their way only to discover that she was dead. He claimed that Zainab died as result of the struggle that ensued between them during the process and he dumped her body in the bush. Police sources said after his confession, the protesting crowd nearly set the police station ablaze by insisting that Dare must be handed over to them to be killed. However, the police succeeded in curtailing their moves and later transferred the suspect to the State Criminal Investigations Department in Akure where more investigations will be carried out over the case. KanyiDaily had also reported how the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) uncovered a decomposing corpse of a middle-aged woman who was raped to death behind a primary school in Anambra. The Bihar health department has developed Sanjivan, a mobile phone application (app) that facilitates coronavirus disease (Covid-19) test and also provides updated information put out by the state government about the raging viral outbreak. The user-friendly app helps an individual to register for Covid-19 test, apply for self-quarantine at home and also gives elaborate details about nearest testing and Covid Care Centres, hospitals and availability of beds in those healthcare facilities. Follow latest updates on coronavirus here It also contains district-wise emergency helpline numbers, a chatbot option on FAQs (frequently asked questions), IEC (information education and counselling) material on SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease. The app, which became operational on Saturday morning, has an option to requisition an ambulance. It can be downloaded via the health departments portal at http://health.bih.nic.in/31-07-2020/sanjivan.apk. The department also has district helpline numbers for those who dont have access to the mobile app. The helpline numbers have a back-up of 10 available lines in case the primary number comes engaged because of congestion due to high volume of calls. The department is also working towards providing the testing facility at an individuals doorstep in collaboration with private laboratories. Click here for complete coronavirus coverage We will fix rates for collecting swab samples from home in a bid to avoid crowding at test centres, said Pratyaya Amrit, principal secretary, health, Bihar and the brain behind launching the app. Amrit took charge of the health department on Tuesday (July 28) amid the states battle to fight the pandemic The state government has capped 2,500 as the maximum cost to conduct the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test at a private laboratory. While an additional 300 is likely to be added for the collection of swab samples from home. A user, who will register for the rapid antigen detection (RAD) test, will get a registration number and an OTP (one-time-password). The user can then visit the nearest testing centre and share the OTP, which will substantially lessen the time that takes for the elaborate registration process. Click here for complete coronavirus coverage The test report will be available through an SMS (short message service) on the registered mobile number. We are building a module, where test result will be available on the app within the next couple of days, said Amrit. The app has done away with the concept of making a visit to the district magistrates (DM) office and stand in a queue to physically apply for self-quarantine at home. The SMS on test result will also have another OTP, which will enable a user to apply for self-quarantine at home. The app also allows a user to see the availability of beds in dedicated Covid-19 hospitals. Now, Covid-19 patients dont need to run from pillar to post in search of hospital beds. We will closely monitor the availability of beds that will cause a lot of convenience for those suffering from the viral infection, Amrit added. Bihar, which has been drawing flak for the poor count of daily tests, conducted 22,742 tests on Friday, an 8,000 plus jump, following the change of guard in the health department earlier this week. On Saturday, the daily test figure was 28,624, almost double since Amrit took charge, and it would be further ramped up to 30,000 in the coming week, officials said. Bihar reported the biggest spike in Covid-19 cases with 3,521 new infections on Saturday, taking its overall case tally to 54,508. The 14 Covid-19 deaths on Friday took the states death toll to 312. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Prosecutors have called for a rape case involving Gerard Depardieu to be reopened after a probe into claims he assaulted an actress was dropped over a lack of proof. The French actor, now 71, was accused of assaulting and raping an actress in her 20s at his Paris home in August 2018. A probe into the allegations was dropped last year but the actress has now relaunched proceedings, Paris prosecutors said on Saturday. Depardieu denies any wrongdoing. The French actor, now 71, (pictured in 2018) was accused of assaulting and raping an actress in her 20s at his Paris home in August 2018 The preliminary investigation was opened on August 27 after the young woman filed a complaint near the southern city of Aix-en-Provence for rape and sexual aggression against the star. It was then passed on to officers in Paris but the probe was dropped after nine months in early 2019 after investigators failed to gather enough proof to proceed to formal charges. At the time, Depardieu's lawyer, Herve Temime, said the actor 'absolutely denies any rape, any sexual assault, any crime' and dismissed the complaint as 'groundless.' Depardieu (pictured above in Paris promoting a film in 1987) strongly denies any wrongdoing Described as a controversial and larger-than-life character, Depardieu (attending the opening of the Beiteddine International Art Festival in 2019) became the face of French cinema due to roles in films such as Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean de Florette and Camille Claudel The young woman has now relaunched proceedings by acting as an 'injured party' - which under French law almost always leads to a case being examined by an investigating magistrate. MailOnline has contacted lawyer, Herve Temime, for comment. Described as a controversial and larger-than-life character, Depardieu became the face of French cinema due to roles in films such as such as Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean de Florette and Camille Claudel. He has also had a successful international career, having made more than 180 films, working among others with Peter Weir in Green Card and with Ridley Scott in 1492. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Saint Petersburg, Russia Sat, August 1, 2020 11:37 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066adc23f 2 Entertainment rapper,murder,Russia Free Russian investigators on Friday charged a rapper's widow with his murder after discovering his dismembered body. Investigators said they found fragments of the body of Ukrainian rapper Alexander Yushko, who performed under the stage name Andy Cartwright, in a flat in the northwestern city of Saint Petersburg on Wednesday. The Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said that the head resembled a passport photograph of the victim. "The wife of the victim has been detained. She has now been charged," it said in a statement, adding that the charge was murder. The press service of Saint Petersburg's branch of the Investigative Committee confirmed to AFP that the statement, which did not give names, referred to the rapper's widow Marina Kokhal. Kokhal claimed that she cut up the rapper's body after he died from a drug overdose because she wanted to protect his reputation, local media reported, citing sources close to the investigation. She called police several days later. Investigators said that the couple had quarreled and the rapper's wife caused his death "in a way not determined." "Then to cover up traces of the crime, the woman ... cut up the body of the victim into separate body parts with the aim of later destroying them," the investigators said. Read also: UK rapper jailed for 24 years for rapes REN TV channel reported that initial tests found no traces of drugs in the rapper's body. The 31-year-old performer took part in rap battles in the city run by an organisation called Versus Battle. The organisation on its website calls him a "Ukrainian underground rap performer" known for "complex rhymes and vivid metaphors." He posted regularly on Instagram, most recently an image of a tattooed bicep. Fontanka.ru local news website reported that his widow continued to update his social media after his death. The former tsarist capital known for its art galleries and ballet was recently rocked by another similarly grisly crime. A reputed historian who taught at one of the city's universities, Oleg Sokolov, is currently on trial for murdering his young lover and dismembering her body. He was arrested last year after being hauled out of a freezing river drunk with a backpack containing her arms. Topics : rapper murder Russia NXTDIGITAL today announced the results for the year ending 31st March 2020. The company clocked a significant turnaround across all financial and business parameters driven by the robust performance of its media business through IMCL, its media subsidiary. Financial Performance On a consolidated basis, revenues grew by 65% over FY19, from `704.62cr to `1,162.10cr; its Operating EBIDTA grew significantly to `218.01cr against a loss of `72.61cr in the previous fiscal. NXTDIGITAL also saw an impressive turnaround in its PAT at `110.05cr; up from a loss of `303.43cr in FY19. The Board of Directors today recommended a dividend of 50% of the `10 face value of each Equity Share, which works out to Rs. 5 per share. The main growth driver has been the performance of its media business through IMCL, which is one of Indias premier integrated digital platforms delivering services over digital cable and satellite as well as broadband. The media business has now recorded profits consistently for the last four quarters on the back of a robust business performance. Performance Drivers The digital platforms company with a subscriber base of over five million; reaches over 1,500 towns across the country through digital cable and Indias only Headend-In-The-Sky (HITS) platform. The satellite-based HITS technology supports Local Cable Operators (LCOs) and their customers across India, including remote connected regions like Ladakh, Kargil, the far north-east and the Andaman, Nicobar & Lakshadweep Islands. The technology, using C-band is not affected by rain or adverse weather and customers in these areas continue to enjoy digital services, uninterrupted. The Company has continued to focus on key drivers through FY20. Some of the drivers include Continuing to focus on the fastest growing segments of semi-urban and rural India. Over 60% of the companys subscriber base is in these markets which continue to see increasing pay TV penetration as well as growing ARPUs. Growing ARPUs through value added services and differentiated products in the cities. Launching innovative products like layering Cable TV with Broadband and Value-Added Services, coupled with 24X7 services on ground. Successfully implementing the new regulatory framework, set out by the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) in early 2019. The visionary framework which brought in much needed transparency to the pay TV ecosystem and enhanced subscriber choice has buoyed the business model and set out a clearly defined level playing field for the industry. Maintaining pre-paid collections at nearly 100%, whilst ensuring low churn through a focused E&R (engagement & retention) model for subscribers and franchisees Leveraging its leadership position in technology, whilst improving cost efficiencies. Recently moved to 32APSK technology, that improves satellite throughput by over 30% Working closely with its 9,000+ franchisees to remain focused on the subscriber through continuous enhancement of the quality of service and viewership experience. NXTDIGITAL continues to remain committed to its digital platforms business and furthering the governments mission of Digital India, Skill India and Make in India. Whilst it has expanded its objectives to bring digitalization to remote areas; it continues to propagate the Make in India mission by developing solutions indigenously. This is manifested through well planned strategies like working to develop Set Top Boxes locally and thereby stimulate the India manufacturing industry, initiating digital online training for LCOs, establishing a robust digital payment collection platform; and a proactive Business Continuity Plan (BCP) rolled out to ensure top class services even amidst major cyclones and the Covid-19 pandemic that impacted the entire country. Commenting on the performance, Vynsley Fernandes, Chief Executive Officer, IMCL reiterated that This kind of outstanding performance consistently over the last 4 quarters speaks volumes on our commitment towards our subscribers through strong value creation. We firmly stand committed to further our endeavour of creating an integrated platform for digital services, offering Cable TV, Satellite, Broadband and other digital media, all under one roof. Building an effective framework along with our product bundling strategy has been crucial for our business turnaround in FY20. With close to a 100% prepaid base and a substantial presence in Phase 3 and 4 markets, IMCL expects to continue on its digital growth path. Vision for Growth The company plans to expand its Managed Services model significantly. The company has already signed on large Multi-System Operators to provide these delivery services; which will take its total serviced customer base to over 10 million. Additionally, the company is looking to tap into the cable TV market serviced by smaller and independent MSOs; and which is estimated at over 69 million today. Effectively, the model is to support these smaller MSOs and Local Cable Operators, several of whom are unable to sustain their businesses due to increasing costs of connectivity and technology obsolescence. A similar model is being defined to help its existing franchisees become multi-product and multi-service providers; offering customers a whole range of services from FMCG products to digital and financial solutions. This will help its franchisees not only sustain their businesses, but diversify and grow their earnings portfolio, across the country. The company remains focused on delivering integrated services to customers, bundling television with broadband services from its subsidiary ONEOTT iNTERTAINMENT Ltd., which has a presence in over 40 cities. More than 67,000 new COVID-19 cases were registered across the United States in the past 24 hours and 1,259 people died from the disease, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. This takes the nationwide total to 4,562,170 infections while over 2.3 million have recovered. A staggering 153,320 deaths from the disease have been registered, the university's COVID-19 dashboard showed. The US tally is nearly double that of the second most infected nation, Brazil, in both infections and fatalities. Unlike many other nations, there is no one official go-to tally on the US as a whole, rather health departments on the state level each release data at differing times of the day. This way, nationwide US tally may differ from source to source. Nevertheless, the John Hopkins University worldwide dashboard has become the de facto US and global tally counter, compiling COVID-19 figures from government sources, health services, and individual hospitals. Globally, over 17.6 million cases of infection have been detected and nearly 680,000 people have died from the since December 2019. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shutting pubs again to allow schools to reopen risks putting millions out of work, shattering confidence and costing the economy dear, Ministers were warned last night. A top Government adviser yesterday said the move might be necessary as a trade-off to stem a possible rise in coronavirus cases caused by 10 million children returning to the classroom. Professor Graham Medley, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said most people would prioritise the health and wellbeing of children over going to the pub. Government advisers have warned that stricter lockdown rules may be necessary if the PM wants to reopen schools in September His comments came amid growing concerns over a possible second wave of coronavirus. But pub bosses hit back, saying a return to closures would be devastating for the industry and households that rely on it for work. It came as: Boris Johnson was accused of leaving the wedding industry in the lurch after delaying the resumption of larger receptions; There were renewed fears people were ignoring social distancing, with Arsenal fans flouting the rules while celebrating their 2-1 FA Cup win over Chelsea and thousands flocking to Brightons beaches; Oxford Universitys top vaccine scientists warned most of the worlds population could catch coronavirus by 2022; Government advisers said the Army should be put on standby in case local lockdowns trigger riots; The number of Covid-19 related deaths across the UK rose by 74 yesterday, to 46,193. Kate Nicholls, of Hospitality UK, which represents pubs, restaurants and hotels, said shutting down large chunks of the economy was a short-sighted strategy. We need to be focusing on collective efforts to drive down and control infections, she said, adding that the hospitality industry directly employs 3.2 million, with another two million reliant through supply chains. Its simply too big to just switch off. We would be talking about millions of people unemployed, a major loss of economic activity. Her comments came after Englands Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty cautioned the country was near the limit on how much social distancing measures could be eased without triggering a dangerous increase in virus levels. Another Sage member, Prof Calum Semple, said there would probably be a second wave in October and hard decisions will need to be made about what restrictions need to be reintroduced. He told the BBC: Whether thats potentially the pubs and the hospitality sector taking a hit in preference to education will be a political decision. There are genuine fears that the lack of social distancing could lead to a second spike But senior Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith said it was a false choice to say pubs should close to allow schools to open. The former Tory leader pleaded for Ministers to ensure both are kept open. He told The Mail on Sunday that impending economic Armageddon was a far greater risk than Covid-19. He said: Of course, we must protect the vulnerable. We must protect people with co-morbidities. But he added: The rest of us should be back at work by now and schools should be opening. If we dont get this economy moving, more people will die because the economy collapsed than will ever die of Covid. Jaisalmer: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday (August 1, 2020) sought Prime Minister Narendra Modis intervention to end the ongoing political crisis in the Congress-ruled state and said that he is open to welcoming back the Congress rebels led by Sachin Pilot. "PM Modi should stop whatever is going on in Rajasthan, the Chief Minister said outside the hotel where the MLAs were shifted Friday. "As a Prime Minister of the country, Modi ji should stop the `tamasha` going on in Rajasthan. The rate for horse-trading has increased here. As soon as the assembly session was announced, they have increased the rates further. What tamasha is this?" Gehlot said. Answering queries from reporters, Gehlot said if the Congress high command forgives the dissidents, he will welcome them back to the party. Gehlot said he will do whatever the Congress leadership wants and gave the party the credit for making him the Rajasthan chief minister thrice. The Chief Minister was on his way back to Jaipur after an overnight stay at Jaisalmer's Suryagarh resort, where loyalist MLAs have been shifted ahead of the assembly session from August 14. The Congress has accused the BJP of playing a major role in the rebellion by the now sacked deputy chief minister and 18 other Congress MLAs who are threatening his government. We have no quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government, he said. Gehlot and the ministers are likely to spend most of their time in the state capital as the Congress tries to keep its numbers intact in Jaisalmer. He claimed that democracy is under threat in the country is and the Union Home Ministry is after his government in the state. Gehlot said that Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat should resign on moral grounds. "Gajendra Singh Shekhawat`s name has come up in the Sanjivini Cooperative Society (alleged scam). A court has also given directions in the matter. He should resign on moral grounds," he said. "BJP`s game of horse-trading is big. They have tasted blood. They have done horse-trading in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and are now experimenting here," he said. Gehlot alleged that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs is engaged in horse-trading. "The entire Ministry of Home Affairs is engaged in this work. Many ministers are engaged like Dharmendra Pradhan, Piyush Goyal. There are many secrets too," he said. Congress MLAs supporting Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot shifted to the Suryagarh Hotel in Jaisalmer on Friday. They were earlier lodged at the Fairmont Hotel in Jaipur. Gehlot said that MLAs were shifted to keep them away from external pressure. The Rajasthan Assembly session is scheduled to begin on August 14. The Congress MLAs were lodged at Jaipur`s Fairmont Hotel after differences between Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot came out in open triggering a political crisis in the state. The Congress has accused the BJP of indulging in horse-trading to bring down the Gehlot government. However, the BJP has rejected the allegations. Including the rebels, the Congress has 107 MLAs in the 200-member assembly. The BJP has 72 MLAs. Patna, Aug 1 : As the mystery of Sushant Singh Rajput's death gets murkier with new revelation leaping out of the dark everyday, two probe teams have been trying to get a foot-hold -- the Mumbai Police who have been at it for over 45 days and the recent new entrant their Bihar counterparts post July 25. Allegation were raised that a four-member police team from Patna, which went to Mumbai to probe in to the alleged suicide of the 32-year-old actor who belonged to Bihar's Purnea, has not been getting cooperation from their Marathi counterparts. On Saturday, Bihar Director General of Police Gupteshwar Pandey spoke to the media in a bid to calm the atmosphere saying the Mumbai Police is "highly professional" and he hoped to get cooperation from them. Talking to journalists in Patna, the DGP accepted that though his team was yet to get a hold of the post-mortem report, photo of the crime scene, video and other 'documents' but he has full faith that all these will soon be made available to the Bihar team. The DGP said he is expecting full support from the Maharashtra government and its professional police. Sushant had died on June 14 in his Bandra residence and Mumbai Police is yet to register an FIR. It was on July 25, that the late actor's father registered the first FIR in the case at Rajiv Nagar police station. Pandey said, "Rhea Chakraborty, the main accused in the Sushant Singh alleged suicide case, has moved the Supreme Court to transfer the case to Mumbai. In such a situation, it is expected that Mumbai Police will be waiting for the order of the Supreme Court. "I am sure Mumbai Police will definitely accept whatever order the Supreme Court gives in this matter." The Bihar Police chief denied that Mumbai Police misbehaved with the Bihar Police team, a video of which went viral on the social media. The DGP said that there is no such thing. He said that Mumbai Police is "professional" and everyone has high hopes from them. Pandey said the members of Bihar Police team that went to Mumbai are constantly investigating the case and Mumbai Police DCP Crime has also assured full cooperation. He said, "The Bihar Police team met DCP Crime in Mumbai and they have assured that they will co-operate. They too are awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court in this case. After that they will give us all the documents. Then we will be able to investigate the matter independently and as I have said earlier that Bihar Police is fully capable of investigating this matter. Not only Bihar, the whole country today wants to know the truth in this matter. Bihar Police is engaged in bringing out the truth." The DGP said that Bihar Police is currently working on the basis of evidence. He said, "After Sushant's death, I was among those who first met his family. Sushant's father has lodged an FIR. Bihar Police team is in Mumbai. Our senior IPS officers are in touch with the Mumbai Police. We are awaiting the order of the Supreme Court. Before that we are working on the basis of evidence." Pandey also said that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was deeply saddened by the untimely demise of a talented actor. He said, "I had said this to his father when I went to meet him at his house after receiving the news of Sushant's demise. I said I have come to you with CM's condolence message. In this difficult moment, the entire state is with you and that is why I am again saying that as the head of Bihar Police, I assure you the justice on behalf of the entire state." On July 25, Sushant's father K.K. Singh registered a case against Rhea Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, at Rajiv Nagar police station in Patna for abetting his son to commit suicide. After the case was registered, Bihar Police reached Mumbai and started investigating the case. Rhea Chakraborty has, however, approached the Supreme Court to shift the case to Mumbai. A decision in this regard is to be made on August 5 in the top court. Latest updates on Sushant Singh Rajput Death Mystery The crash happened around 10pm and the men were taken to Beaumont Hospital. The driver, in his 30s, is said to be in critical condition, while the two other men, one in his 20s, one in his 30s, are also receiving treatment for non-life threatening injuries. The road was closed for examination by gardai, but has since been reopened. 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 Microsoft Corp. isnt the only company interested in buying TikToks U.S. operations, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. government officials probing national-security concerns around the Chinese-owned video-sharing app have had talks with at least one other large company as well as investors in TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. who are interested in taking a stake in TikTok, according to one of the people, who requested anonymity because the discussions are private. This person declined to identify these companies. ByteDance is considering changes to the structure of TikTok because President Donald Trump is weighing ordering a divestiture of TikToks U.S. business, a decision that could come at any time. Venture investors in ByteDance have approached Chief Executive Officer Zhang Yiming with a range of proposals to address U.S. concerns that the app, especially popular with teens, is a security threat, people familiar with the matter have said. Any solution would likely have to pass scrutiny from U.S. regulators in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, as well as U.S. antitrust regulators. The deal provides a rare opportunity to profit off the momentum of the fastest-growing social media app in the U.S. Still, not all companies likely to be attracted to such a deal will even be in the running. TikToks valuation is estimated at $20 billion to $40 billion, so few companies would be able to afford it. Most of those that would are likely to find it politically difficult to make the move. The CEOs of Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. testified this week in the U.S. House of Representatives to answer lawmakers questions about their enormous market power. While any one of the four companies could fit TikTok into their product offerings, deals by these giants are already under a microscope. Google, whose YouTube is a competing video offering, is already facing a European Union probe for its much smaller acquisition of Fitbit Inc. Apple doesnt tend to make acquisitions anywhere near large as TikTok. And Facebooks years-ago purchases of smaller rivals Instagram and WhatsApp have been brought up anew amid the antitrust scrutiny. The worlds largest social network has already worked to turn lawmakers against TikTok, and is unlikely to court further risk to its already tenuous position on data security. Facebook also looked at purchasing Musical.ly, the predecessor to TikTok, in 2016, and passed. Microsoft, with a market value of $1.55 trillion, is bigger than Google or Facebook, but currently has a better reputation in Washington. The company wasnt invited to the antitrust hearing on July 29, and has largely escaped recent criticism of Big Techs outsize influence. Its unclear whether Microsoft would seek to integrate TikTok into its own operations, or join with other investors from private equity or venture capital to finance spinning out TikTok as a separate entity based in the U.S. With the second option, investors could seek to gain even more from a TikTok stock listing in the future. Media companies, such as Walt Disney Co. and Verizon Communications Inc., have been interested in purchasing social-media assets in the past. Disney in 2016 considered but ultimately decided against purchasing Twitter Inc., for instance. TikToks U.S.-based CEO, Kevin Mayer, was formerly the head of streaming for Disney, and may be better positioned to help broker a deal in the media world. Other social-media companies, such as Twitter and Snapchat parent Snap Inc., have smaller valuations than TikTok and therefore are unlikely bidders. They would need to use stock or outside financial help to complete such a transaction. Its still not clear how a U.S. divestiture of TikTok would work, and how completely the app would have to separate from its current Chinese ownership. The company hasnt said how such a move would affect employees, the technology or its product. However the ownership shakes out, there is one group that no potential buyer or investor wants to alienate: TikToks 165 million American users. This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed. 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 Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 10:18:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia on Saturday confirmed five new imported COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 239, said a health ministry's statement. Among these new patients, four are Cambodian men, aged between 23 and 30 years old, who arrived in the country on Friday from Pakistan via a connecting flight in Malaysia, the statement said. They were sent to the Chak Angre Health Center in southern Phnom Penh for treatment, health ministry's secretary of state and spokeswoman Or Vandine said in the statement. While another case was an 18-year-old Indonesian man, who arrived in the kingdom on Thursday from Indonesia via a connecting flight in Malaysia, she said, adding that he was also admitted to the Chak Angre Health Center for treatment. According to Vandine, a total of 236 passengers on both flights have been placed under a 14-day mandatory quarantine at various quarantine centers in Phnom Penh. Cambodia has so far recorded a total of 239 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 166 patients cured and 73 remained in hospital. Enditem A light plane overloaded with cocaine and bound for Australia crashed soon after taking off in Papua New Guinea, exposing a Melbourne-based criminal syndicate with alleged links to Italian organised crime. The Australian Federal Police have charged five men four from Melbourne with conspiring to import more than 500 kilograms of cocaine with an estimated value of $80 million, from PNG into Australia. Police allege the syndicate arranged for a Cessna light plane to fly from Mareeba, near Cairns in north Queensland, to PNG to collect the drugs last Sunday. The Cessna light plane, before it crashed in PNG. Credit:AFP The pilot went out of his way to avoid detection, flying at around 3000 feet from Mareeba to PNG so the plane would not show up on radars, police said. The prime minister is veering all over the place like a shopping trolley a phrase he used to describe how he was making up his mind on Europe, in or out, a few months before the referendum. At his news conference yesterday, he said it was time to squeeze that brake pedal to keep the coronavirus under control. Perhaps his shopping trolley is like one of those airport or station luggage trolleys with brakes. Many of this mornings headlines screamed that he was slamming on the brakes, which was more dramatic than the impression of a judicious course correction that Boris Johnson wanted to give. At best, though, he seems inconsistent. Yesterday he confirmed the reimposition of rules against social mixing in parts of northwest England, delayed the return of wedding receptions and added to the list of places where face coverings should be worn. As for children returning to school in 10 days time in Scotland and a months time in England, that was downgraded to something that we aim to deliver. At the same time, the guidelines on shielding the most vulnerable are still lifted today, while the government is going to subsidise everyone to go out to restaurants from Monday, which seems like pressing the accelerator at the same time as squeezing the brake. Partly, the appearance of erratic policy is inevitable if you say you will follow the advice of the scientists. Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, has looked at the latest figures and changed his assessment of the situation. The government has to respond immediately or explain to the public inquiry why it didnt. This public inquiry is like the medieval idea of judgement day. It is real the prime minister confirmed in the House of Commons that it would happen and it is imminent, although no one knows when it will be. But everyone acts as if it is in constant session, and every action has to be justified in the privacy of confession, otherwise known as writing things down to be used in my defence later. That means there is no time to prepare public opinion for sudden changes of policy no time for spin. Which puts the governments critics and especially the official opposition in an awkward position. Many of those people who complained that it was chaotic to announce with a few hours notice that holidaymakers returning from Spain would have to isolate for 14 days were in effect saying they wanted the government to ignore the evidence and lie to them about the risk. It was remarkable how quickly the idea spread that Matt Hancock, the health secretary, had announced the new measures for the northwest on Twitter, as if there were something wrong in using the fastest and most effective means of communicating news. In fact, Hancock recorded a televised announcement first, which was used by all the main broadcasters. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty In both cases Spanish quarantine and the northwestern partial lockdown people complained that the measures were announced at the wrong time: late at night. But this is the same public opinion that demands that politicians follow the science and would turn on them unforgivingly if they delayed acting even for a few hours without good reason. It seems extraordinary, when Johnson seemed to be so obviously contradicting himself yesterday, that he remains as popular as he is. His personal ratings are negative, but not disastrously so: 36 per cent still approve of the way he is handling his job as prime minister (45 per cent disapprove). That is not bad for a midterm leader whose handling of a national crisis is so harshly judged. Keir Starmers ratings are better (44 per cent approve, 22 disapprove, and a lot say neither), but not only are Johnson and Starmer about equal when voters are asked who they prefer as prime minister, the Conservatives remain in the lead when people are asked how they would vote. It may be that people recognise, at some level, that Johnson is trying to do what they want him to do, even if it seems a bit disorganised and someone they know has had to cancel a wedding. And Starmer is stuck with the majority of public opinion, which was always nervous about easing the lockdown too early. So when the prime minister squeezes the brakes, all Labour is left with is complaining that the changes have been announced in the wrong way that, and that taxpayer subsidies havent been extended to this or that group who are suffering. Starmer is further locked into supporting Johnson and Hancock because they have taken the basic precaution of consulting Andy Burnham, Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, who supports the new measures. The big political argument over how to get out of the fiscal hole left by coronavirus is yet to come. That may shift public opinion. Until then, Johnson may seem like a supermarket trolley with a wonky wheel, but Starmer cannot overtake him. SEOUL -- South Korea's first military communications satellite has reached a geostationary orbit on Friday, 10 days after its liftoff, the country's arms procurement agency said. The Anasis-II arrived successfully at the geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km above the Earth, at around 7:11 a.m. local time Friday after the 10-day orbital migration, according to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA). The Anasis-II satellite lifted off atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, manufactured by the U.S. commercial space company SpaceX, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 21. The South Korean military will take over its first communications satellite for military purposes only around October, after testing functions and operability, the DAPA said. South Korea has separately developed eight different devices that can be connected on the ground to the satellite, planning to take a final operability test by the end of this year for the military purposes. With the satellite, the South Korean military would significantly enhance its transmission capacity and anti-jamming capability by securing a core system for the network centric warfare. South Korea has become the 10th country in the world to run a military-only communications satellite. The entrance exam is conducted for admission to different courses offered by CIPET at 37 locations across India The Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology (CIPET) released the admit card for CIPET JEE 2020 on eadmission.cipet.gov.in. Candidates who have applied for the CIPET Joint Entrance Examination can get their admit cards by providing their mobile numbers and date of birth. The admit card can be downloaded till the date of the entrance examination, which is scheduled to be held on 5 August. The admit card mentions the name, roll number and other details of the candidate. It also states the information about the examination centre as well as the date and time of the test. The last date to register for the exam is August 3. The entrance exam is conducted for admission to different courses offered by CIPET at 37 locations across India. CIPET was set up to train manpower in various disciplines of Plastics Engineering and Technology. Steps to download CIPET JEE 2020 admit card: Step 1: Visit the official website of CIPET JEE 2020 - eadmission.cipet.gov.in Step 2: Enter your mobile number and date of birth and click Login Step 3: Your CIPET JEE 2020 admit card will be displayed on the screen Step 4: Download and take a printout for future reference. A police officer has resigned after breaching COVID-19 border restrictions, as the Northern Territory reports one new case of coronavirus. The 27-year-old was among a group of five people who crossed the Queensland border into the Territory and he resigned on Saturday. They failed to complete the required border entry forms when they entered on Monday, police said. A police officer has resigned after breaching COVID-19 border restrictions. Border checks are seen at the border between New South Wales and Queensland 'These actions could have seriously compromised the health and safety of all Territorians,' Deputy Commissioner Murray Smalpage said in a statement. 'What is most disappointing is the action of the former police officer. 'We do not discriminate when it comes to disciplining those who fail to abide rules.' The former officer was accompanied by a 28-year-old woman and men aged 26, 27 and 29. They were all quarantined along with two close contacts, women aged 19 and 24. The officer has since started self-isolation and has been slapped with an infringement for contravening an emergency declaration. On Saturday the Territory reported a fresh COVID-19 diagnosis - that of a woman who arrived on a flight from Melbourne. She is the partner of a Darwin man who tested positive on Friday, with the couple now under the care of the local health services. The case takes the total number of COVID-19 infections reported in the NT to 34, all related to international or interstate travel. The Northern Territory government has said it will employ an extra 100 frontline health workers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The extra staff will allow for ongoing border screening of passengers arriving from interstate and will help manage people in supervised quarantine. They will also be trained in contact tracing. 'We know there is no vaccine, there is no cure, and COVID-19 has no end date,' Health Minister Natasha Fyles said. 'Our frontline health staff are integral to our response to COVID-19 and they have done an incredible job in trying times.' Cancun police officer among fatalities after man opens fire on Policia Ministerial Cancun, Q.R. A Cancun police officer was among the fatalities from a Friday night shootout when two men inside a building opened fire on entering officers. The shootout happened in Region 239 of Cancun when police officers arrived at a home with a search warrant. Upon their arrival, officers were met with gunfire that resulted in one officer being hit in the chest. Officers repelled, killing one of the men from inside the home. The deceased Policia Ministerial officer has been identified as Commander Ricardo Ruiz Ordaz who was part of Fiscalia Especializada en Atencion al Narcomenudeo (FEAN) drug team. Ruiz Ordaz was shot upon entering the home. He was rushed to hospital where he died shortly after arriving. The FGE has confirmed the death of the officer, offering condolences to his family. We regret the death of our dear colleague Ricardo Ruiz Ordaz during the fulfillment of his duty in favor of the procurement of justice. Our deepest condolences to your family. Rest in peace. Police arrested two men and two women from inside the home. They also seized various weapons and drugs. The deceased shooter has not been identified. Dr. Joyce DeJong has heard the skepticism surrounding Michigans 6,191 confirmed coronavirus death count. That the number has been inflated under political or financial motivations. But as the medical examiner for 12 of the states 83 counties, who has played a key role in the behind-the-scenes process for counting each of those deaths, shes comfortable with the accuracy. Ankara, Aug 1 : Turkey started to celebrate the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha amid social distancing measures against the COVID-19. The Turkish government did not impose any further restrictions during Eid al-Adha, but officials urged the public to strictly implement social distancing rules amid concerns that social interactions during the holiday can cause a surge in the number of new coronavirus cases, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Turkey observes the festival from July 31 to August 3. It is a Muslim tradition to sacrifice livestock to mark the occasion. Local officials delivered free disposable prayer rugs, disinfectants, masks and water to people heading to prayers in the mosques. The country have seen a stable trend in new figures of COVID-19 cases in the past few weeks. Turkey confirmed 982 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, while the total diagnosed cases climbed to 230,873, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said. Meanwhile, 17 people died in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 5,691, Koca tweeted. Turkish health professionals conducted 46,492 tests in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall number of tests to 4,800,823, he said. A total of 996 patients recovered in the last 24 hours, raising the total recoveries to 214,535 in Turkey since the outbreak, Koca added. The rate of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients is 8.8 per cent and the number of seriously ill patients is 582, he stated. "There is a decrease in our pneumonia rate, but an increase in the number of newly diagnosed patients," the minister said. Turkey reported the first COVID-19 case on March 11. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text By Express News Service ROURKELA: The first plasma bank of western Odisha became operational at the RSP-run Ispat General Hospital (IGH) on Friday.Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurated the facility through video-conferencing. The occasion was marked by plasma donation by three Covid-19 survivors. Another 100 cured patients have also volunteered to donate plasma for treatment of critical Covid-19 cases. The plasma bank is funded by the District Mineral Foundation of Sundargarh. Naveen said, The world and Odisha are fighting the global pandemic Covid-19 and it is plasma therapy that has brought a ray of hope for countless patients and their families. It is an effective medical procedure in so many cases. The CM further said it is matter of joy to inaugurate the States third plasma therapy facility at IGH, Rourkela in western Odisha.The plasma bank at IGH is the third such facility in the State. Naveen informed that similar banks will be set up at Berhampur and Burla. Meanwhile, as many as 75 positive cases were detected in Sundargarh on Friday taking the tally to 1,373 in the district. Of the total Covid-19 cases, 826 have recovered and 536 are active. The district has so far reported 11 Covid-related deaths. Iraq will hold early federal elections in June next year, the country's Prime Minister said on Friday. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said in a televised statement that federal elections would be held on June 6 next year, a year earlier than scheduled. The announcement fulfills a promise made by al-Kadhimi when he took office to meet a key demand by anti-government protesters. Protesters called for early elections and a reformed electoral law when they took to the streets in demonstrations that erupted last October. The rallies, led by Iraqi youth, swept over Baghdad and the Iraqi south, decrying rampant corruption in the country. More than 500 protesters were killed in the demonstrations as Iraqi security forces used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse crowds. Pressure from the protests lead to the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Al-Kadhimi came to power following a political consensus in May. It's unclear under what electoral law the vote will be held. The parliament's court now must officially vote on the new date but political differences prevail over the implementation of a new electoral law passed late last year. Parliament approved the law in December, aiming to give political independents a better chance of winning seats in parliament and weaken the hold of ruling elites. If implemented, the legislation would change each of the countrys 18 provinces into several electoral districts, with one legislator elected per 100,000 people. Crucially, the law also prevents parties from running on unified lists, which in the past has helped them sweep all the seats in a specific province. The May 2018 elections drew abysmal voter turnout and were tainted with allegations of fraud. "I will never forget Mr. Wallace's inaugural address as Governor in 1963," Lewis wrote. "Looking defiant, he declared, 'Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.' That day, my heart sank." Lewis wrote. He added: "But the George Wallace who sent troops to intimidate peaceful, orderly marchers in Selma in 1965 was not the same man who died this week. With all his failings, Mr. Wallace deserves recognition for seeking redemption for his mistakes, for his willingness to change and to set things right with those he harmed and with his God." By then, Wallace was a much-changed man. He had run for president in 1968, as an independent candidate against Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat Hubert Humphrey. His blue-collar populist appeal won strong support in the North as well as the South. Then he ran again in 1972, and an assassin's bullet put him into a wheelchair for the rest of his life. "Although we had long been adversaries, I did not meet Governor Wallace until 1979. During that meeting, I could tell that he was a changed man; he was engaged in a campaign to seek forgiveness from the same African-Americans he had oppressed." Lewis forgave Wallace. President Donald Trump has declared that federal agents will not leave Portland, even after a second night of peaceful protests. The commander-in-chief has declared that Oregon's largest city has been overrun with 'thugs' and 'rioters' after more than two months of protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 'Homeland Security is not leaving Portland until local police complete cleanup of Anarchists and Agitators!' Trump tweeted on Friday night. His statement came despite Gov Kate Brown making a deal on Wednesday with the Department of Homeland Security for a phased retreat of federal agents. On Thursday, federal officers withdrew from the streets, in a move that state officials hope will continue to ease tensions as the city tries to move on from months of chaotic nightly protests. Thursday night was the first time in weeks that demonstrations ended without any major confrontations, violence or arrests, and similar scenes were seen Friday. President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that federal agents will not leave Portland, even as a second night of peaceful protests occurred On Wednesday, Gov Kate Brown made a deal with the Department of Homeland Security for a phased retreat of federal agents. Pictured: Black Lives Matter protesters march past the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland on July 31 Thursday and Friday have followed with peaceful protests and no violence, confrontations or arrests. Pictured: Black Lives Matter protesters rally at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on July 31 No federal agents emerged from the downtown courthouse, which has become the center of protests, and there was no noticeable law enforcement presence. Pictured, left and right: Leshan Terry with his son Leshan Terry Jr, 6, during a protest at the courthouse in Portland In early July, Trump declared that agents would be sent to Portland to quell protests, which he declared were 'out of control.' But the protests became even more violent after federal agents were deployed, often ending with demonstrators being pepper sprayed and even put into unmarked vehicles The city's federal courthouse that has become ground zero for clashes between federal troops and protesters. But Thursday's change in tone came after the government began drawing down its forces under a deal between Democratic Gov Brown and the Trump administration. As agents from US Customs and Border Protection, the US Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement pulled back, troopers with the Oregon State Police took over. Since then, there have been no visible signs of any federal law enforcement presence outside the Mark O Hatfield Federal Courthouse. 'Last night, the world was watching Portland,' Brown said in a tweet on Friday. 'Here's what they saw: Federal troops left downtown. Local officials protected free speech. And Oregonians spoke out for Black Lives Matter, racial justice, and police accountability.' As of midnight on Saturday, no federal agents had emerged from the courthouse, which has been the center of protests for weeks. There was also no noticeable law enforcement presence surrounding the area. The fence that has separated protesters and US agents stationed at the courthouse was decorated with balloons and upside down American flags sewn together with 'BLM' painted across, reference to the Black Lives Matter movement. At one point in the night a small firework was shot over the fence. As it sizzled out on its own, protesters pleaded with others to remain peaceful. Gov Kate Brown tweeted that the protests on Thursday and Friday were a stark contrast to those held when federal agents were in Portland The fence that hasf separated protesters and agents was decorated with balloons and upside down American flags sewn together with 'BLM' painted across. Pictured: Navy veteran Adam Winther holds a flag while forming a "Wall of Vets" during a protest in Portland, July 31 Black Lives Matter protesters hold signs during a caravan in Portland on July 31 Unlike previous weeks, protesters were not centered mainly outside the courthouse, but scattered throughout downtown. Pictured: Bobbi Snethen (right) holds a sign during a protest caravan for Black Lives Matter on July 31 in Portland Despite Trumo declaring protests were 'out of control' when agents came in, they became even more violent often ending with demonstrators being pepper sprayed and even put into unmarked vehicles. Pictured: A protestor holds a flaming stick while wearing a gas mask as protesters gather at the Justice Center and Federal Courthouse, August 1 Later, a few small fires were occasionally started outside the courthouse, with at least one put out by other protesters. Unlike previous weeks, protesters were not centered mainly outside the courthouse, but scattered throughout downtown. Just after midnight, the crowd had grown to over 1,000 people who remained outside chanting 'Black Lives Matter' and shouting the names of black people killed by police. Groups were also standing together engaging in conversations about social injustice. Mayor Ted Wheeler also struck an optimistic tone but cautioned that there was much work to be done after more than 60 days of protests - and not just in cleaning up downtown Portland. Just after midnight, the crowd had grown to over 1,000 people who chanted 'Black Lives Matter' and shouted the names of black people killed by police. Pictured: A Black Lives Matter protester shouts and holds a portrait of George Floyd in Portland, July 31 In addition to the protest, groups were also standing together engaging in conversations about social injustice. Pictured: Black Lives Matter protesters gather at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on July 31 Later, a few small fires were occasionally started outside the courthouse, with at least one put out by other protesters. Pictured: An organizer speaks as a fire burns at the Justice Center and Federal Courthouse in Portland, August 1 These were in sharp contrast to demonstrations in which federal agents using rubber bullets, tear gas and flash grenades on the crowds of protesters. Pictured: A firework explodes as Federal Agents stand in the street firing tear gas, pepper balls and other dispersants, July 29 Leaders in Oregon are pushing for a raft of measures that would address systemic racism in everything from policing to housing. Those proposals could be fast-tracked for consideration in a special legislative session later this summer. The governor also announced the creation of a Racial Justice Council to advise her on criminal justice reform and police accountability, health equity, economic opportunity, housing and homelessness, and environmental justice. Portland's City Council also voted this week to refer a ballot measure to voters in November that would create a police review board independent from any elected official or city department. Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty Look alive, America: What happened to Stacey Abrams is about to happen nationally. If you recall, the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race was rife with voter suppression, voter disinformation, and finally the downright theft of an election by Brian Kemp, the secretary of state and Republican candidate. Kemp used his authority as secretary of state to control the allocation of resources, ballots, and election day procedures in one of the most egregious abuses of electoral power this side of Bush v. Gore. What Kemp did to Abrams in November of 2018 laid out a winning dirty playbook that the GOP is about to roll out nationwide, with partisan officials charged with running state elections using voter suppression and disenfranchisement tactics to chip away at Democratic votes and the electoral process itself. As weve seen in primaries over the last few months, expect long lines, inadequate numbers of poll workers and ballots in certain (Democratic) areas, and white nationalists serving as de facto security guards at select polling sites throughout the South and Midwest. All this is happening as many voters will be casting absentee ballots for the first time because of the coronavirus, overwhelming the capabilities of often underfunded and partisan elected officials and creating a treasure trove of opportunities for lawyers and party activists to delay and legally contest results. Stacey Abrams Is the Only Vice Presidential Pick for Joe Biden. Heres Why. The possibility of a New York debaclewhere it takes weeks to determine winners, and many votes are wasted or spoiled thanks to the failures of the voting system, voter confusion and issues with the mail as each state has its own rules for when ballots must be submitted to be countedis quite real. What Americans need and deserve are electoral systems throughout the country that are run by competent and nonpartisan individuals who respect the rule of law and the will of the people. But thats not what we have. Story continues One of the dark and dishonest talking points the president often returns to, most recently in his tweet Thursday musing about just rain-checking the election, is the idea that Americans cheat at the polls (and specifically that they cheat against him). Although most members of his administration (and family) routinely vote by mail, the president has insisted that the use of the U.S. Postal Service is a means of increasing voter fraud. In fact, not only did the president and vice president vote by mail, so did the presidents wife and daughter Ivanka, Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and roughly a dozen other inner Trump circle officials. Essentially, Republicans voting by mail is deemed safe and acceptable, but Democrats voting by mail is cheating and a version of voter fraud, according to the president. His attacks on voting by mail along with his efforts to drastically defund the U.S. Postal Service are clearly a way of setting up a scapegoat in advance should he lose the electoral vote along with the popular vote this timeand to increase his legal and political options if he should lose narrowly in a handful of key states. In order for Biden to solidify his current lead and win by an undisputable margin, he will need to keep a close eye on the referees running our election. If he wins, restoring the systems intended to protect the integrity of our elections should be one of his first priorities. The stakes couldnt be higher: Past the presidency, this years statewide election results will affect the Census, the redrawing of political lines in each state and the allocation of resources and political power for the next decade. Georgias example shows that Republicans are comfortable disenfranchising voters to win that fight; it remains to be seen if Democrats are willing to fight to protect democracy. It is not necessary for the Biden team to reinvent the wheel; it is crucial that they keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes focused. During the 2018 campaign, Abrams and her team built an extensive grassroots campaign strategy that extended across the 159 counties in Georgia. After the election was taken from her, Abrams and her team launched Fair Fight, an organization dedicated to litigation, legislation, and advocacy in order to support voter protection programs at state parties around the country. Whoever Biden picks for his running mate, he should lean on Abrams and other policy-makers who know and understand the real threat of voter disenfranchisement and how to combat it. 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. New York, 26 July 2020 (SPS) - The Polisario Front's Representative to the United Nations, Sidi Mohamed Omar, denounced on Friday Morocco's constant recourse to "blackmail" in the implementation of UN resolutions on the Sahrawi issue, arguing that the only path sought by Rabat is the "indefinite irresolution of the conflict" in Western Sahara. Faced with the failure of the Security Council to ensure the implementation of its resolutions on Western Sahara, Sidi Omar said that "the only solution sought by the Moroccan regime is the indefinite irresolution of the conflict while it persists in its vain attempts to normalize its illegal occupation of certain parts of Western Sahara." He also pointed to "Morocco's constant recourse to blackmail" and the policy of "empty threats as a means of concealing the fact that it has no real political will" to achieve a peaceful and lasting solution to the conflict in accordance with UN resolutions and its doctrine on decolonisation. "The UN-sponsored peace process in Western Sahara, launched in 1991, is now completely paralysed because of Morocco's obstructionism on the one hand, and the tendency of some parties in the Security Council and the UN Secretariat to link the entire peace process to the appointment of a new personal envoy on the other, which is only a pretext for taking no action or initiative in this regard," he stressed. As for the delay in appointing a new personal envoy of the Secretary-General for Western Sahara to replace former German President Horst Kohler, who resigned in May 2019, Sidi Omar said that the main reason is "the preconditions" that Morocco has set itself regarding potential candidates. In this context, the Sahrawi diplomat reaffirmed the position of the Polisario that "the appointment of a new UN envoy is not an end in itself." (SPS) 062/SPS/700 Tropical storm Sinlaku is expected to make landfall in northern and north-central Vietnam in the next 24 hours, bringing strong winds and heavy rains. Sinlaku evolved from a tropical depression Saturday, the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said. As of 4 p.m., the storm's eye was over mainland China's Hainan Island and about 330 km off the coast of Thai Binh Province of northern Vietnam and north-central Nghe An Province to the southeast. Its maximum wind speed near the eye recorded at 75 kph. In the next 12 hours, the storm would move west-northwest at about 15-20 kph, entering the Gulf of Tonkin. By 4 a.m. Sunday, the storm's eye would cover sea regions from Thai Binh to Nghe An, with a maximum wind speed of 75 kph. The storm would continue to move west-northwest at about 15 kph and make landfall in north-central and northern Vietnam, before devolving into a tropical depression. By 4 p.m. Sunday, the tropical depression would have a maximum wind speed of about 50 kph. The Hong Kong Observatory also anticipated the storm would move west-northwest before making landfall in northern Ninh Binh to north-central Ha Tinh provinces Sunday afternoon. By 3 p.m. the same day, the storm would devolve into a tropical depression with a maximum wind speed of 55 km/h, according to the Observatory. Due to the storm's impact, several parts of the South China Sea, including regions near Vietnam's coast, should expect strong winds and rough seas. From Saturday to Sunday, heavy rains of up to 500 mm each time should be expected in areas from north-central Thanh Hoa to Quang Tri provinces. Besides, northern Vietnam should expect downpours with rainfall up to 400 mm each from Saturday to Wednesday. Rainfall of 180 mm a day is considered heavy. Hanoi should expect rainfall between 150-250 mm each downpour from Saturday to Monday, with more rains to be expected until Wednesday. Nghe An authorities have recalled over 3,000 vessels carrying over 15,000 sailors to shore in response to the incoming storm. As of noon Saturday, over 400 vessels with about 1,600 on board are still operating off of the Nghe An coast, though all have been notified of the storm's trajectory to seek shelter. Hundreds of other vessels operating near Ha Tinh and Quang Tri have also been notified of the incoming storm, which is the second storm to appear on the South China Sea this year. The first storm, Nuri, came in mid-June. While it never made landfall in Vietnam, it caused strong winds and heavy rains in several areas, including HCMC. At least one motorbike rider in the city was killed by a falling tree branch during a downpour on June 13. The South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the East Sea, could see 11-13 storms and tropical depressions this year, half of them directly affecting the country, meteorologists said. It's been an annual ritual for longer than I care to admit: summer weeks on the rocky coast of Maine. Much of the appeal, as with any tradition, is its changeless character. The precise times for high and low tides change each day, but in a predictable fashion. Although my children have grown from toddlers to adults - as old as I was when I first took them to Maine - the magical tide pools in which they used to splash are everlasting. The world might be going to hell, but summertime in Maine remains forever constant - "true north," both literally and metaphorically. Until this summer. Anticipation morphed into apprehension starting in March, when the local government of a Penobscot Bay island near my coastal cabin voted to ban all visitors, even seasonal residents who owned property there. The North Haven Select Board's order stated that "people who do not reside on the island full time may not travel to the island due to the significant increase in risk associated with the transmission of covid-19." Although that order was soon rescinded, the governor declared that all out-of-state visitors would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days. Mainers' cordial, symbiotic relationship with so-called "summer people" now took on a wary, fearful tone. With my car's Virginia license plates, I might as well be Typhoid Mary. Even getting to Maine would now prove daunting. Typically, I would take two days to drive from my year-round home in Virginia (often longer if caught in traffic turmoil around New York City or Boston). Spending the night somewhere new and different en route was part of the ritual, especially when the kids were young. So it was that we enjoyed leisurely and memorable hours at places like the historic Mohonk Mountain House in the Hudson River Valley and the Red Lion Inn in the Berkshires. As with flying or taking a train, however, the prudent coronavirus protocol is to avoid motels and hotels. But the biggest deterrent to driving a car up Interstate 95 and the Jersey Turnpike is something I never heard of before (and never wanted to think about): toilet plumes. Because flushing toilets release a cloud of aerosol droplets that can contain the coronavirus, public restrooms are primary places to be avoided. As a man well-practiced in peeing discreetly behind trees and bushes, I'm not as concerned as my wife, Pat. So on the morning of our departure she makes a point of not drinking her usual multiple cups of coffee. We also bypass the big communal bathrooms at the interstate rest stops. Instead, we take exits that lead to either secluded wooded areas or off-the-beaten-path gas stations with single-occupancy bathrooms. We manage to make it to Maine with only three pit stops. Unusually light traffic (because of the pandemic?) means the 615-mile drive takes a little less than 11 hours. At least another hour is needed, upon arrival at the cabin, to unpack the car bulging with groceries and other provisions to see us through the 14-day quarantine. Those two weeks, as we settle in for the night, stretch out interminably before us. Will being sequestered in just one place - inside this tiny, extremely rustic dwelling - turn claustrophobic? Or worse, be the setting for a Stephen-King-like horror story? Dawn breaks the next day around 5 a.m. Maine's northern latitude translates into summer days filled with roughly 16 hours of daylight. How could all that time possibly be filled? It's a question that occurs now only in retrospect. In the moment, just gazing out the cabin windows at the ocean seems enough, more than enough, to fill the longest day. Relaxing after a long drive doesn't yet feel like a quarantine. As Pat and I open all the cabin windows to listen to the waves breaking against the rocks, the scent and taste of the salt air seem especially meaningful. "We must not have yet caught covid-19!" I can't help but remark, for one of the first coronavirus symptoms is said to be loss of taste and smell. On the horizon 11 miles out is Monhegan Island, inspiration for some of America's best-known artists - Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Jamie Wyeth. In my mind's eye I can see their work. And is that a mermaid I hear singing? I don't ask Pat, who is in the other room organizing her art materials to embark upon a series of seascapes. Will it be pastels and paper or oils and canvas? While she's painting, what book should I read? Perhaps the bestseller I bought last year but was too busy to read, Jenny Odell's "How to Do Nothing?" Such are the difficult decisions that must be addressed under self-quarantine. But one decision I will never have to make is which cable news show to watch, for I vow not to hook up our TV service. Unplugged, tuned out: a two-week quarantine keeping "the news" out and the virus at bay. After all, escapism is what a cabin in Maine should be all about. Having no notion of social distancing, the chipmunks seem less timid than in summers past. So, too, at night, the skunks. No doubt they are happy that fewer "summer people" are sharing their habitat. "So cute!" Pat invariably exclaims each time a chipmunk scampers from shoreline rocks to shrubs of beach rose. The ubiquitous presence of chipmunks in Maine I once took for granted. Now, with quarantine-imposed, laserlike focus, I want to learn everything there is to know about Tamias striatus (Eastern chipmunk). A well-worn Audubon field guide, unearthed on the cabin bookshelves, serves as the departure point for my exploration. A couple of times each day, to prevent cabin fever, Pat and I join the chipmunks outside and go for walks along the rocky shoreline. As long as we don't go where other people are, we don't violate Maine's CDC quarantine guidelines. Specifically, we're to avoid bars, restaurants, retail businesses, gyms, pools or any kind of shared facilities. You're on your honor; Big Brother isn't watching. (Residents of Northeast states can now avoid the Maine quarantine altogether. And residents from other states can, in lieu of the quarantine, provide proof of a recent coronavirus test. "Know before you go," advises the website Maine.gov/covid19. Maine's restrictions seem to be working, as its coronavirus death, hospitalization and positive-testing rates remain among the lowest in the country.) Pat sets aside a few hours each day for her consultancy work with Zoom calls and emails. But the most satisfying work is using our hands to tackle the long overdue project of repairing and repainting the cabin deck. Even just "puttering around" can suddenly seem profound. The most routine of household chores, like vacuuming, are reincarnated in a shelter-in-place setting - no longer layered in the dust of too much information, no longer something "to get over with" to have time for "more important" things. What could be more important than finding and discarding the nests of field mice who overwintered in our cozy cabin's drawers and kitchen cabinets? Their pellets of poop can harbor a virus, too, often deadly when aerosolized. Not the coronavirus, but the hantavirus. Not chipmunk cute. With invisible agents of death lurking all about, you don't need the thrill of adventure travel to sharpen the senses. Just softly swaying in my Adirondack rocker while gazing at the undulating sea outside the window seems, counterintuitively, as consciousness-raising as my long-ago attempt to summit Mont Blanc. There's renewed appreciation for what I have in being alive - and what could be lost. Staring at the ocean can actually change your brain waves and put you into a mildly meditative state, so I've been told. I can attest my blood pressure drops. And the color blue has been shown to be associated with spikes of creativity. Since Pat's now a painter, maybe I can become a poet. At the very least, a poetry reader: But one looks at the sea/As one improvises, on the piano. Those words are from the fugue-like "Variations on a Summer Day," by Wallace Stevens. He wrote it in the 1930s while vacationing near this very spot. Also from that poem: Words add to the senses ... the eye grown larger, more intense. As I read, my rocker moves in easy, iambic rhythm with the waves. The days move rhythmically as well, undisturbed by the discordant noise of politics, heat advisories and social media. A literal "new dawn" marks the beginning of each day as the sun peeks over the ocean vista. A light-diffusing fog sometimes softens the sun but is typically burned off by midmorning to reveal a vivid bluebird sky. The prevailing winds bring crisp ocean breezes that keep temperatures cool and mosquitoes away. Time moves so slowly toward autumn you're unaware that the sun sets a bit farther south on the western horizon each evening. When night finally falls, the pitch-black sky, unpolluted by artificial light, exposes the vastness of the Milky Way and the smallness of even a pandemic in the scheme of things. When the quarantine ends, Pat and I treat ourselves to an outdoor dinner at the local lobster shack. We talk about how each day has blended so easily into the next, the way summertime is supposed to be. The quarantine reminds me of school vacation when I was a boy, when the summer seemed to stretch out endlessly before me. It would never end, and then it's over. The last son of the 90 year-old woman who was beaten to death at Kafaba has shared her last unfulfilled wish saying "My mother's last wish was to see my children before she will pass away." Mr Mahama Saaka, who is 36-years-old and teacher at Salaga T.I Ahmadiyya Senior High School, who recounted this, said he was yet to have a child and unfortunately his mother had to die this way without seeing his children. He recounted this when the Ghana News Agency (GNA) visited the family of the murdered old woman at Salaga in the East Gonja Municipality of the Savannah Region to gauge their mood after the sad incident. Madam Akua Mariama Denteh, 90 years-old, was on Thursday, July 23, beaten to death at Kafaba by some residents and a spiritualist, who accused her of witchcraft and behind certain strange happenings in the area including; limiting the progress of the town. Madam Denteh had nine children, and three died leaving two males and four females, a number of them as teachers and 21 grandchildren. The spiritualist was brought to the town by some youth of the area to fish out alleged witches in the area, working against the progress of the town. The spiritualist mentioned Madam Denteh as a witch, which she denied but her denial was not accepted and was subjected to beatings. The incident was captured on video, and had since gone viral on social media. The deceased has since been buried. So far, the Police arrested Yenufunu Yahaya Seidu (V), a Chief at Kafaba, who had been granted police enquiry bail, and six others in connection with the incident. The incident has attracted condemnation from civil society organisations, politicians, gender and human rights activists across the country. GNA gathered that, when Madam Denteh was beaten and succumbed to the torture, the spiritualist identified 17 other women in the area as being witches and some of them were also subjected to beatings whilst others, who were connected to powerful people in the area, were spared from beatings. Mr Saaka said It had been my greatest desire to fulfil my mother's wish but I'm shattered now, I don't know what to do. He told the GNA that Since the incident happened and I took my Mum to the morgue, I have not been myself, I'm sick internally, I can't even cry. She wanted to see my children before she will pass. That is the promise she gave to me, but the unfortunate incident has crushed everything. He said I don't believe that my own community; they will do this thing. I'm very, very surprised because I grew up there. We are very sad. We don't know what to do. He called for justice to be served So that my Mum will be used as an example to protect all other elderly women. Mr Mahama Sallam, 60 year-old third child and surviving first son of the deceased, said what happened was unacceptable, attributing it to ignorance saying We leave everything in the hands of God. GNA also visited the spot, where the old woman was beaten at Kafaba, and it was a compound of a house, whose owner had since fled the town. The road from Salaga to Kafaba is in a deplorable state and it takes about an hour and a half to reach Kafaba from Salaga using a four-wheeled vehicle. There is no Police Post at Kafaba, which presupposes that unless a good Samaritan in the town intervenes, any unlawful act could be meted out to any citizen in the area. Yenufunu Yahaya Seidu (V), a Chief at Kafaba, who was arrested and granted bail in connection with the incident, told the GNA at Kafaba that some youth of the area informed him of their decision to invite the spiritualist to fish out witches in the area to ensure the progress of the town. He said lawless acts in the area could be prevented, if there was a Police Station in the area and appealed for one in the area to ensure law and order. ---GNA Millions of Australians in coronavirus hotspots are being urged to wear protective face masks as clusters on the east coast of the country continue to grow. The advice from health officials, disease experts and Australia's largest supermarket comes after an infected shopper visited a busy grocery store in Sydney's inner west. Health authorities are becoming increasingly concerned about community transmission, after Victoria recorded it's second highest total of daily new infections on Friday with 627 cases. There are fears New South Wales is on a 'knife's edge' after 17 new cases were announced on Saturday. The Thai Rock cluster in Wetherill Park has now swelled to 98 cases, with 57 associated with the Crossroads Hotel, eight cases associated with Batemans Bay Soldiers Club, and 25 associated with the funeral events. Five are associated with the Mounties pub in Mount Pritchard, and 24 are associated with the Potts Point cluster. In Queensland, authorities are also concerned after the state recorded ts first case of community transmission since May. A shopper is pictured wearing a face mask inside a Woolworths store in Sydney (pictured on Friday) A woman is pictured wearing a face mask while walking around St Kilda in Melbourne (pictured) A bike rider in Melbourne is pictured wearing a mask (pictured). Anyone who does not have a face in public in Victoria can be fined $200 Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has already announced face covering will become mandatory across the entire state from 11.59pm on Sunday, August 2. But Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd said it's time for everyone to consider wearing masks. 'Particularly when people are outside their homes and in areas where physical distancing may be difficult,' Professor Kidd said. 'That, of course, includes when you go into the supermarket, where there's lots of people moving around and people may come closer to you than the 1.5 metres, that people should be considering wearing masks.' Grocery chain Harris Farm Markets revealed that a shopper who visited their Leichhardt store in Sydney on July 26 between 3pm and 3:30pm later tested positive for COVID-19. Grocery chain Harris Farm Markets (pictured) revealed that a shopper who visited their Leichhardt store on July 26 between 3pm and 3:30pm later tested positive for COVID-19 The advice from health officials, disease experts and Australia's largest supermarket Woolworths, is to wear a mask while shopping The store has now undertaken deep cleaning and anyone who was there during that time is advised to get tested. Supermarket Giant Woolworths released a statement saying it 'strongly encourages' customers to 'wear face coverings'. 'Even though wearing a face covering is not mandatory in NSW, ACT or Queensland, as the largest private sector employer with stores in almost every community, we feel it's important we lead the way in helping reduce community transmission of COVID-19,' the statement said. 'Masks and face coverings are a highly visible symbol of the persistence of COVID-19. By encouraging and role modelling their use, it will further support the steps we need to collectively take to stop the spread of the virus and keep our team and customers safe.' Pictured: A map showing the postcodes with the highest density of cases in Sydney since July 1. The city's northern beaches and the eastern suburbs have both recorded their first cases this month in the past 10 days Supermarket Giant Woolworths released a statement saying it 'strongly encourages' customers to 'wear face coverings' (pictured, mask-wearers in a Sydney Woolworths on Friday) Woolworths has encouraged shoppers to wear masks (pictured, a woman in a Sydney store on Friday) Popular Sydney pubs The Darlo Bar and Harpoon and Hotel Harry have also been forced to shut their doors after patrons tested positive. Darlinghurst's Darlo Bar advised a COVID-positive patron drank at their venue between noon and 2pm on July 26. Surry Hill's Harpoon and Hotel Harry revealed a case linked to the Apollo restaurant cluster nearby attended the busy venue between 2.15pm and 11pm on July 26. One of the country's most illustrious private member's club - The Australian Club - have also been rocked by a potential COVID-19 cluster. The venue on Macquarie Street in Sydney is often frequented by business leaders, celebrities and even former prime ministers. It has been revealed that a staff member has tested positive for COVID-19 and the club has now been closed for deep cleaning. All staff members and visitors who were at these venues during these times are advised to self isolate and get tested. One of the country's most illustrious private member's club - The Australian Club (pictured) - have also been rocked by a potential COVID-19 cluster Surry Hill's Harpoon and Hotel Harry revealed a case linked to the Apollo restaurant cluster nearby attended the busy venue between 2.15pm and 11pm on July 26 Although face coverings are now widely encouraged, the federal government's Infection Control Expert Group chair Professor Lyn Gilbert said people still need to socially distance, wash their hands regularly and stay at home when feeling sick. 'It makes sense to try and limit transmissions even further by asking people to wear masks who could have been exposed and could be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic in those areas,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald. 'I do fear, and I believe it's a plausible fear, that having a mask on can well give people a false sense of security ... but we recognise that sometimes they are not possible and a mask can be a useful supplement, particularly when community transmission is happening.' A cleaner is seen at Harpoon & Hotel Harry at Surry Hills in Sydney, Friday, July 31, 2020 Mumbai: Police said on Monday that three people, including two bank officials, were arrested in Latur district, Maharashtra for being involved in illegal exchange of banned high value currency notes worth Rs 11 lakh with new ones. This is the third such incident in Latur where some people, in connivance with authorities, allegedly tried to exchange old notes with the new ones, they said. "The branch manager and a cashier of a public sector bank along with a trader were arrested on Saturday. The bank officials were carrying new currency notes, while the trader was in possession of Rs 11 lakh in form of scrapped notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations," Latur Superintendent of Police Shivaji Rathod told PTI. Working on a tip-off, the bank officials and the trader were arrested on Saturday when they were exchanging the notes on the footpath outside the divisional office of State Transport Corporation, he said. Also Read: Rs 22.75 lakh in demonetised banknotes seized, 2 detained near Ahmedabad Rs 11 lakh in new notes of Rs 2,000 denomination were seized from the bank officials, who had allegedly sought 20 per cent commission for exchanging the old notes, police claimed. Those arrested have been identified as, bank branch manager Himanshu Rajbahadur Singh, cashier Shishupal Rajpalsingh Arya and local trader Manoj Bhanudas Ghar. They were later produced in a court which remanded them in police custody for three days, police officials said. The accused have been booked under IPC sections 188 (disobedience to duty), 379 (theft) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), police added. Earlier, officials of another public sector bank, having a branch at Udgir in Latur district, were arrested for allegedly exchanging Rs 18 lakh illegally. Later, a cashier working in MSRTC's Udgir office also exchanged old notes with the new ones without following proper procedure, police said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Maruti Suzuki's July sales report indicated that the recovery will start first in the mini segment and then the utility vehicle segment. New Delhi: The country's automobile sector's July sales report showed a faint glint of a recovery with the two biggest manufacturers reporting vastly better figures than previous months. Maruti Suzuki India reported a 1.3 per cent increase in domestic passenger vehicle sales in July while sales recorded by the second biggest car maker Hyundai Motor India fell by just 2 per cent. But news from the other manufacturers, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) and Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) was not so good with each of them continuing to report huge declines in domestic sales. Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) sold 1,01,307 units in July against 1,00,006 in July 2019 with the two minis Alto and S-Presso jumping 49.1 per cent to 17,258 units compared to 11,577 in the same month last year. However, sales of Maruti's compact cars, including models such as Swift, Celerio, Ignis, Baleno and Dzire, are still sliding with a year-on-year drop of 10.4 per cent to 51,529 units from 57,512 in July last year. The utility vehicle segment is doing decidedly better. Sales of Vitara Brezza, S-Cross and Ertiga increased 26.3 per cent to 19,177 units, compared to 15,178 in the year-ago month. In terms of total sales, MSI reported a dip of 1.1 per cent at 1,08,064 units compared to 1,09,264 in July last year. Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) saw its domestic sales at 38,200 units last month as against 39,010 units in July 2019, down by just 2 per cent. Its total sales though were down 28 per cent at 41,300 units as against 57,310 units. Commenting on the sales performance, HMIL's director (sales, marketing & service) Tarun Garg indicated that the company senses a post-COVID trend of preference for personal mobility, and is calibrating its sales strategy accordingly. Of the rest of the auto pack, M&M's slide of 35 per cent in domestic sales (24,211 units compared to 37,474 units in July 2019) is substantial. Its total sales too were down 36 per cent at 25,678 units as against 40,142 units in the same month last year. However, M&M's CEO (automotive division) Veejay Ram Nakra stressed the emerging positive, the potential revival in demand, primarily in rural and semi-urban India. "It is encouraging to see that enquiry and booking levels in July are significantly higher compared to June, both for utility vehicles and small commercial vehicles," he said. The bigger challenge, he said, was on the supply side. Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) too gleaned some positive news, despite a 48.32 per cent y-o-y decline in domestic vehicle sales, 5,386 units in July 2020 compared to 10,423 in July 2019. Its senior VP for sales and service, Naveen Soni said, "Despite various challenges, July witnessed better sales in terms of both retail and wholesale when compared to June." In the two-wheeler segment, Hero MotoCorp reported a 3.97 per cent dip in sales to 5,14,509 units as compared to 5,35,810 units sold in July 2019. Despite the impact of COVID-19, the company registered a sequential growth of 14 per cent over June and reached more than 95 per cent of the wholesale dispatch numbers of the corresponding month in the previous year, the company said. "Robust volumes have been driven by strong retail sales due to the positive market demand," it added. The numbers reported by Suzuki Motorcycle India Pvt Ltd (SMIPL) showed a 50 per cent fall but the company seemed to suggest that once COVID precautions are eased a bit more, the pace would pick up. "In the unlock phase, the automobile industry is marching towards normalcy in terms of production, distribution and sales while continuing to adhere to precautionary measures. From August 2020, we will try our best to achieve pre-COVID-19 production and sales volume," SMIPL managing director Koichiro Hirao said. August 01, 2020 / 10:56 PM IST Coronavirus News highlights: Today is the 131st day since India implemented a nationwide lockdown, to help curb the novel coronavirus pandemic. So far, India has recorded 16,95,988 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 36,511 deaths. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Gujarat have reported the highest number of cases. However, infections are rising rapidly in states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Yet, Indias recovery rate continues to rise and now stands at 64.5 percent. 'Unlock 3.0' begins today.Globally, there have been over 1.75 crore confirmed cases of COVID-19. More than 6.77 lakh people have died so far. Catch the highlights here: Shopify Inc. is a growing rival to Amazon.com Inc. in e-commerce. The Canadian tech company is still much smaller than the U.S. giant, of course except in one respect. Ottawa-based Shopify, which went public only five years ago, has come to have an outsized impact on equity returns in its home country. It now accounts for fully 6.5 per cent of the S&P/TSX Composite Index, more than Amazons 4.9 per cent weight in the S&P 500. As Shopify goes and most of the time it goes up, not down so goes Canadas main equity benchmark. The stocks blistering run has added more than 4.5 percentage points to the TSX indexs return this year. Thats far more than the influence of Amazon, Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc. or Facebook Inc. on the S&P 500, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. One reason Shopify stands out, of course, is there are no other Canadian tech companies even close to its size: It closed the week with a market value of $165 billion. As investors pile into the tech sector globally and as more retailers turn to online selling to serve customers during the pandemic Shopifys popularity keeps growing. The stock is an easy choice for managers of Canadian large-cap funds who want some local exposure to e-commerce. The three largest sectors in the TSX index financials, energy and materials have a combined 55 per cent weighting, with 99 of the indexs 221 members. The index has only 10 tech companies. Yet, they now represent 10.5 per cent of the TSX composite, and that percentage has almost doubled this year. For Shopify, its influence has tripled since the end of 2019. Shopifys stellar earnings report this week provided fresh evidence of how the stock can push around the broader index. After reporting second-quarter sales that nearly doubled, crushing analysts estimates, the stock jumped 6.8 per cent. On that day the TSX rose 173 points. Shopify alone contributed 71 points of the gain, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Shopify has moved to rival Royal Bank largely because it is perceived as Amazon Junior facilitating the global move to online consumption, said Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce strategist Ian de Verteuil in a July 17 report. Excluding Shopify, S&P/TSX returns over the past year and YTD would be about 500 basis points lower as would the percent exposure to the three big sectors. Read more about: The governments performance-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the mobile phone sector has given us hope and secured a favourable response, Union Minister for Information Technology and Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad, said on August 1. We have introduced the PLI scheme for five years to boost local production. It has given us hope, secured favourable response. We have received 22 applications under the scheme. Besides this, we have received commitments to make mobile phone and parts worth Rs 11.5 lakh crore, Prasad said. Prasad made the remarks while addressing the media to explain the Centres PLI scheme, adding that initiatives such as Digital India and Make in India have been transformative programmes. Prasad added that companies will be eligible for incentives from August 1. He further enumerated that of the Rs 11.5 lakh crore, Rs 7 lakh crore worth of mobiles and components will be exported. Over 3 lakh people will receive direct employment. More than 9 lakh people will get indirect employment, he added. Prasad listed companies that have applied for the PLI. Samsung, Pegatron, Wistron, Foxconn and Rising Star are among the global players. Domestic players include Lava, Dixon, Micromax, Soho and Optimus. Notably, Apple with 37 percent and Samsung with 22 percent together hold 60 percent of all global mobile phone sales revenue. Apple, Samsung (are) welcome to India, we urge boost in manufacturing. We welcome Indian companies such as Lava, Micromax, and urge them to transform into champions, Prasad said. Indias electronic production has jumped by 23 percent over the past five years and value addition is expected to grow from 15-20 percent to 35-40 percent, the minister said, adding that mobile manufacturing alone has grown from two factories in 2014-2016 to more than 250 factories now increasing from 6 crore units produced in 2014 to 33 crore units. India offers a stable investor-friendly government, a huge domestic market and a popular leader of the stature of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he listed as reasons for companies to be interested, adding that the scheme is not against any country, but is industry positive. We have proper rules and regulations with regard to our security and with bordering countries, he said. Control Valves Market Research Report by Type (Ball Valve, Butterfly Valve, Cryogenic Valve, and Globe Valve), by Size (1-6, 25- 50, 50 and Above, 6-25, and Up to 1), by Technology, by Application - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 New York, Aug. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Control Valves Market Research Report by Type, by Size, by Technology, by Application - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913966/?utm_source=GNW The Global Control Valves Market is expected to grow from USD 7,522.92 Million in 2019 to USD 10,037.87 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 4.92%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Control Valves to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: Based on Type, the Control Valves Market studied across Ball Valve, Butterfly Valve, Cryogenic Valve, and Globe Valve. Based on Size, the Control Valves Market studied across 1-6, 25- 50, 50 and Above, 6-25, and Up to 1. Based on Technology, the Control Valves Market studied across Electric Control Valve, Hydraulic Control Valve, Manual Control Valve, and Pneumatic Control Valve. Based on Application, the Control Valves Market studied across Building & Construction, Chemicals, Energy & Power, Food & Beverages, Oil & Gas, and Pharmaceuticals. Based on Geography, the Control Valves Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Control Valves Market including Alfa Laval, Emerson, Flowserve Corporation, IMI PLC, Kitz Corporation, Metso, Pentair PLC, Samson AG, The Weir Group PLC, and Velan Inc. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Control Valves Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19: COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Control Valves Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Control Valves Market during the forecast period? 3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Control Valves Market? 4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Control Valves Market? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Control Valves Market? 6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Control Valves Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913966/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Story continues CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 " " The Florida Keys, last known destination of the doomed Flight 19. Zephyr Picture/ Getty Images On the afternoon of December 5, 1945, five Avenger torpedo bombers left the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with Lt. Charles Taylor in command of a crew of 13 student pilots. About an hour and a half into the flight, Taylor radioed the base to say that his compasses weren't working, but he estimated he was somewhere over the Florida Keys. The lieutenant who received the signal told Taylor to fly north toward Miami, as long as he was sure he was actually over the Keys. Although he was an experienced pilot, Taylor got horribly turned around, and the more he tried to get out of the Keys, the further out to sea he and his crew traveled. As night fell, the reception of radio signals worsened, until, finally, there was nothing at all from Flight 19. A U.S. Navy investigation reported that Taylor's confusion caused the disaster, but his mother convinced them to change the official report to read that the planes went down for "causes unknown." The planes have never been recovered. Seattle police launch criminal investigation into arson, explosives in violent riots Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said Wednesday that a criminal investigation has been launched to find the perpetrators involved in setting fires to property and hurling explosives at officers in violent riots over the weekend. Best made the announcement alongside Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan at Wednesday's news conference where she revealed that police discovered a cache of fireworks, stun guns, pepper spray, and spike strips inside a van that was used by a dozen suspects at a protest attended by 5,000 people on Saturday. The van had also used in an attack on the Police Department's East Precinct in Capitol Hill where it was parked before someone threw an explosive into the building that blew an 8-inch hole in the wall. After obtaining a search warrant police impounded the van where they also found pyrotechnics, smoke bombs and gas masks. Best stressed that the weapons found are evidence that not everyone who comes to these protests are peaceful. Peaceful protesters do not show up in a van full of explosives, The Seattle Times reported of the police chief's comments. The rioters also set fire to five portable trailers on a construction site at the King County Youth Service Center. They also vandalized and set fire to a Starbucks, vandalized vehicles, and injured some 59 officers who were hit with explosives, rocks, bottles, and wood. Best said no arrests have been made in connection with the van, but added, "we are going to follow up aggressively with the investigation." Officers were allowed to use non-lethal weapons including blast balls, pepper spray and 40mm sponge-tip rounds to disperse the rioters on Saturday, a day before a newly passed city ordinance banning officers from using non-lethal weapons was set to go into effect. U.S. District Judge James Robart on Friday night granted a request from the Department of Justice to block the city's ordinance. The DOJ argued that banning police from using non-lethal weapons to control rioters would mean police would have to use lethal weapons. Days earlier, the judge had denied Durkan and Best's request to block the ordinance, saying it didn't meet the burden necessary to issue an injunction. Robart stressed that the restraining order, filed on Saturday, would only last for two weeks, The Seattle Times reported. The police chief sent a letter to residents and business owners last Friday alerting them that due to City Council Ordinance 119805 which was set to go into effect on July 26 before the judge's injunction officers would be banned from using "less-lethal tools," such as pepper spray and would not be able to defend property from armed rioters. In the letter, Best said: Simply put, the legislation gives officers NO ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd. I have done my due diligence of informing them (city council) of the foreseeable impact of this ordinance on upcoming events. Best added that she wouldn't put officers' lives in danger by deploying them to disperse crowds without any equipment to defend themselves. Christopher F. Rufo of the Discovery Institute shared an attached image of Best's letter to Seattle residents along with a concerned tweet, saying, "The Seattle police chief is sending out letters telling residents: We cannot enforce the law. You are on your own." The ordinance banning the use of non-lethal weapons was introduced by Councilwoman Kshama Sawant and says law enforcement agencies are prohibited from "using any form of chemical weapons, including tear gas, mace and pepper spray. It would also ban other police weapons of crowd control, including rubber bullets, bean bags, blast balls, water cannons and sonic/ultrasonic weapons." Sawant was a supporter of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone and dismissed reports of violence as propaganda perpetuated by capitalists. She later said in a series of tweets that the crimes and murders committed at CHOP last month "underscore the urgency to defund police by at least 50 percent." Forty-seven suspects were arrested at Saturday's protest that escalated into violence. Best said at a news conference Saturday that when rioters set fire to the Starbucks residents in the apartments above had to be evacuated. She added that some rioters "threw cement block from the top of apartment buildings, trying to drop them onto people onto the street." Some officers were "hit with rocks, explosives and bottles" as well as a "smoke bomb," she said. The police department reported such incidents to the public in a tweet Saturday: Numerous incidents of bottles and balloons filled with liquid being thrown at officers. Police continuing to work to clear the area. Multiple dispersal orders issued. Crowd has not yet dispersed. Crowd continuing to throw large rocks, bottles, fireworks and other explosives at officers. pic.twitter.com/3gTGJUonUt Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) July 26, 2020 Some rioters carried sledgehammers and smashed windows and spray painted cars. King County youth detention officer Daryl Breaux said her cars windows were smashed and tires slashed, KIRO7 reported. I didnt deserve this, OK! Im a hardworking individual, college-educated young lady, black lady at that! Born and raised in Seattle!, Breaux told the news outlet. We support everyones First Amendment rights to free speech and to assemble, but what we saw today was not peaceful; it was not a peaceful protest at all, Best said. The rioters had no regard for the community's safety. She added that, as promised, police did not use CS gas or tear gas on Saturday. The 47 people arrested in the riots were charged with assault, property damage and destruction. Madagascar's finance ministry this week published a report detailing how the government had managed money from international lenders for the fight against Covid-19. The Malagasy state had been on the receiving end of increasing criticism over the lack of transparency in the management of coronavirus cash. Financing of more than $671 million has been agreed or is in various stages of negotiation with international lenders, according to the report dated 28 July. Disbursements worth $186 millions have been made to the authorities in Antananarivo, notably the World Bank has transferred more than $15 million to purchase ventilators, oxygen concentrators, digital X-ray machines, tents, and personal protective equipment including facemasks, glasses and alcohol gel. Almost $166 million paid to the government by the International Monetary Fund funded the gap in public finances, according to the report. Other funding is still being negotiated, such as $29 million from the Russian government for laboratory equipment and a project aiming to improve water treatment systems at medical establishments. Another $11 million in funding from the European Union for the government's budget is still at the negotiating stage, while money from the Japanese government to provide testing kits has been agreed, but not yet disbursed. Various UN agencies have agreed more than $14 million in funding, however these funds are managed and disbursed at the project level, for example, the purchase of 400,000 masks by the UN Development Programme. The publication of the report is "a step forward towards transparency", according to civil society group Rohy, cited by Madagascar correspondent Laetitia Bezain. However, "many details remain to be clarified", for example, public contracts awarded by mutual agreement. Malagasy civil society groups had questioned the management of funds destined for the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and what money was being spent on, how it was being allocated to different state organs and how it fit into the strategy for combatting the outbreak. Madagascar has recorded 10,748 cases of Covid-19 and 105 deaths, according to statistics from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Tracey Sullivan tries to catch her breath as she talks about her late wife, a Nassau Bay police sergeant killed conducting an on-duty traffic stop in December. It wasnt long enough, she said of their five-month marriage. Now the family and community will have a permanent way to honor 43-year-old Kaila M. Sullivan, a 16-year veteran of the Nassau Bay Police Department. Harris County Precinct 2 agreed in late June to rename a local historical building for her, marking the first time the city has officially recognized a member of the LGBTQ community with a public landmark. The Kaila Sullivan Chapel, formerly the Bay Area Museum, is housed in a modest-sized building on NASA Road 1 originally built in 1890 but restored and relocated 6 miles from its original spot. Since the early 2000s, the Bay Area Historical Society has maintained it as a venue for weddings and civic events. Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia, who proposed the renaming, said Sullivans story and passing was the catalyst to turn what had been an effort to repurpose an aging venue into a project that would pay tribute to a local hero. More Information What: The Kaila Sullivan Chapel, formerly the Bay Area Museum is located at 5000 NASA Road 1, Seabrook, Texas. Hours: The venue is open Saturdays 10a.m.-4p.m. Website: For information, visit the site's official Facebook page at https://bit.ly/2XzhhF5 See More Collapse Ive been in law enforcement for the better part of my life and its hard to separate yourself from it, Garcia said. My heart goes out anytime men or women in law enforcement goes down. Garcia, who attended Sullivans 2019 memorial service, says the late officers impact on the Bay Area and especially, Nassau Bay, was evident by the tributes pouring in from all corners, including city officials, members of the LGBTQ community, and law enforcement agencies in the surrounding area. The Friendswood resident was remembered as a devoted wife and mother to her son, Kaden. She was an advocate for victims of domestic violence and a motorcycle enthusiast who served as president of the Texas chapter of Sisters Eternal Womens Motorcycle Club. (Sullivans story) moved me, he said. I know that when things happen in a big city like Houston, or county like Harris County, it really affects a lot of people and when I learned about her life and her contributions my heart went out to that very small community. Honoring Sullivans place in the Bay Area while retaining the buildings historical place in Nassau Bay turned out to be perfect synergy, said Garcia. Through a partnership with the historical society, Precinct 2 and the county assumed the building as part of its parks projects. It was a great opportunity to do two things all at once, and that was to take this beautiful building, support and maintain it and at the same time honor a fallen member of our community who has done so much, Garcia said. While artifacts from the space program accent its small entrance area, the buildings non-denominational worship space with its eight pews, high vaulted wood ceiling, antique floors, two organs and a piano that sit on a small stage near a podium has always been its centerpiece. (The name-change) gives the chapel a better depiction of what it really is, which is a welcoming place to everyone, and that embraces Sullivans life she was welcoming to all, he said. Nassau Bay, a city adjacent to Johnson Space Center, has a population of just under 4,500 people, and the Sullivan family made their home in nearby Friendswood. According to Tracey Sullivan, her late wife was welcomed everywhere she went. It means so much that the community absolutely embraced my wife, they loved her, she said. When we met with them (Precinct 2) during the process to rename the building, they didnt care that Kaila and I were gay, and it was just awesome. Sullivan was struck and killed during an on-duty traffic stop, two weeks before marking her of 16th year with the department. Were very appreciative of Commissioner Garcia and the entire Harris County Commissioners court for taking the initiative and moving forward in finding a local place to recognize Sgt. Sullivan, said Nassau Bay Police Chief, Tim Cromie . It speaks of her reputation not only here in the Nassau Bay community but the entire south Clear Lake City area. I find it humbling for our department that the county would recognize her commitment and impact on citizens here. According to Cromie, Sullivan lived her life without passing judgment on others, and her colleagues in the close-knit department took that example to heart. To us, she was just Kaila, said Cromie. We loved her for the person she was. Acceptance as an LGBTQ family unit hasnt always been a given, admits Tracey Sullivan. We both knew from the moment we met that we were destined to spend the rest of our lives together, but people have not always been as accepting of us being married or that we could be ourselves, she said. Kaila taught me not to worry about what other people think or do and to just spread love, do good deeds and everything will come back to you tenfold. Shortly after the item passed in the Harris County Commissioners Court, Tracey Sullivan and Sullivans 16-year-old son, Kaden, visited the chapel. We sat down at a pew, said some prayersit was good, it was good, she said. yorozco@hcnonline.com DEL RIO, Texas On a sweltering afternoon near the Texas-Mexico border, Ximena Colecio donned a powder-blue face mask before walking to a chain-link fence to hang the handmade sign clutched in her tiny fingers. Scrawled in bright neon marker, it reads: "For the best teacher. We will miss you." There were 27 other such signs hanging at Irene C. Cardwell Elementary on July 22 to mourn the loss of Chavell Gutierrez, 55, who died a day earlier from COVID-19. Gutierrez isn't the first person to succumb to the virus in this small southwest Texas border town of about 35,000 residents, and officials are certain she won't be the last. The virus has stretched Del Rio's resources to its limits. As city and county officials scramble to stop the spread of the disease, local health care workers are fighting a war on two fronts: a battle to save their patients' lives and their own. "We were at 13 cases for a long time until we got to around June," said Dr. Jaime Gutierrez, the local health authority. As of Friday, there were 1,163 positive cases of COVID-19 in Val Verde County and 14 deaths, according to state data. Gutierrez said local counts place the number of fatalities much higher. Freezer trucks to store bodies arrived in Val Verde County on July 25. "How many more deaths is it going to take before people decide enough is enough?" Gutierrez asks. No one in Del Rio knew the answer to that question but so far, it's not 48. Though many of those deaths are pending review before being classified as COVID-19, all of them died after testing positive for the virus as of July 30, local officials said. "These people died of COVID-19 pneumonia," Gutierrez said. "My diagnosis on the death certificates says cause of death is 'pneumonia due to COVID-19.' " 'I've never seen anything like it' Dressed in a dark suit and tie, Rick Robles looked serene for a man who began his workday abruptly at 2 a.m. Story continues "I got that one and another call from the hospital at around 6:45 in the morning," he said. "Some people think (COVID-19) is a hoax. They should spend a day with me." A lifelong resident of Del Rio, Robles owns and operates Sunset Memorial Oaks Funeral Home, where he's also responsible for embalming the dead. COVID-19 is like nothing he has experienced in his 30 years in the funeral industry, and he wishes more people would take the virus seriously. It's 12:28 p.m. on a Thursday, and Robles hasn't had enough time to eat breakfast. His funeral home used to average eight to 10 services a week. That's no longer the case. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: Hurricane Hanna complicated by COVID-19 'Mixed messages from Day One': Rising cases prove summer is no barrier to COVID-19 "We've had about 18 (funerals) so far this week," Robles said. "Last week it was 22. It's a spike, and the difference is COVID. ... I've never seen anything like it. The situation with COVID-19 has gotten out of hand in this area." There is data to support Robles' claim. Val Verde County's population is slightly above 49,000. Its positive cases match counties more than twice its size. By July 29, Val Verde County had reported up to 1,163 positive cases. Counties similar in size to Val Verde include Burnet, Kendall and Lamar. There were slightly more than 1,260 cases of COVID-19 among the three on the same date. Speaking as a funeral director, Robles said one tragedy he has witnessed from COVID-19 is how it has stripped away people's ability to seek comfort in one another as they mourn their dead. Chapel and graveside services are limited to 10 people who have to maintain their distance or risk spreading the disease. "That's hard for families," Robles said. "It's even harder for them to know their loved one passed on by themselves without having (family) there to hold their hand when they shared their last breath." Alejandra Valadez knows exactly how that feels. 'I don't wish this upon anyone' "My grandmother was alone when she died. ... There were nurses, but not family," Valadez said. Dionisia Valadez, 88, had been living in a long-term care facility in Del Rio when staff placed the building on lockdown in March. On July 7, she was rushed into the ICU at Val Verde Regional Medical Center. Dionisia tested positive for COVID-19 and Influenza A and B. Valadez was able to see her grandmother in the hospital, but not in person. She had to use an online video conferencing app, and the conversation was brief. "The last time I saw her she wasn't responsive," Valadez said. "I told her I loved her very much, and that we were waiting for her to come home. ... She never did." Five days after being admitted into the ICU, Dionisia Valadez succumbed to the virus on July 12. She was cremated soon after. There was no funeral service. Valadez said she feels traumatized and infuriated after losing her grandmother to the virus. She wasn't able to hold her grandmother who lay dying in the hospital, and she's upset by the number of people who still aren't wearing masks. She too has a message for those who think COVID-19 is a hoax. "It's real. It's here. And you don't know who could be a carrier. Wearing a mask could save someone else," Valadez said. "I don't wish this upon anyone. My grandmother helped raise me. ... It's hard watching someone you love fighting for their life and not being able to do anything about it." Valadez continues to urge people to be responsible and do what they can to stop the spread of the virus, a mission shared by city, county, and Del Rio health care officials who have likened COVID-19 to a viral hurricane. County sheriff: 'People need to be mindful' One institution that has weathered the COVID-19 storm well so far has been the Val Verde County Jail, which hadn't reported a single case of the virus as of July 28. Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez aims to keep it that way. "People are dying," Martinez said. "To slow this down, I think people need to be mindful of what's going on around them." Martinez and officials with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards were aware of the virus early on. Since February, inmates at Val Verde County jail have not been allowed to see family members in person. They instead communicate on video through electronic devices. The jail has one entrance, and everyone is screened upon entry for signs of COVID-19. Fogging machines spray an alcohol-based chemical throughout the facility two to three times a week. Border Patrol apprehensions are handled elsewhere, and the jail no longer holds misdemeanor offenders. Felony offenders and inmates charged with family violence are placed in a restrictive housing unit where they're closely monitored. Authorities at the Val Verde County Jail, seen in this Wednesday, July 22, 2020 photo, said there have been no cases of COVID-19 in either staff or inmates. Outside the jail, Martinez said county and city law enforcement agencies have responded to complaints of people who aren't wearing masks, which have included food service employees at restaurants. "I can't stress enough that we need to be respectful toward one another," Martinez said. "I think people need to be responsible for their actions, and in my opinion, they need to be held accountable for them. ... A person who's not respecting someone's space ought to be considered a deadly weapon." It's Martinez's contention that COVID-19 is so prevalent in Del Rio that it's impossible to know who's contagious at this point, and failing to social-distance or wear a mask could very well kill someone. "In the beginning, this community thought that (COVID) was just hype," said Val Verde Chief Deputy Waylon Bullard. "The majority are wearing masks now. ... There are still a few who say: 'It's my right. I don't have to,' but they're becoming fewer and far between." One city official said those who insist on not wearing a mask are trying to hold on to some degree of "normal" amid a global pandemic, but "normal" is a relative term depending on whom you ask. Del Rio City mayor: 'Please stay home' "Everybody's trying to find some kind of normalcy. ... We're never going to go back to how it was before; it's not going to happen," said Del Rio City Mayor Bruno Lozano. Seated in his office at City Hall, Lozano said he's worried that the reason the city's positive cases are so high is because people who are asymptomatic for COVID-19 are passing the virus to older, more susceptible residents at an alarming rate. Visiting family and friends often is part of Del Rio's small-town culture something Lozano is now trying to change. On July 15, he made an urgent request in a video posted to the official City of Del Rio Facebook page asking people to voluntarily stay home for 21 days to limit the spread of the virus. "We're currently experiencing an emergency crisis like never seen before," Lozano said in the video. He encouraged Del Rio residents to shop online whenever possible, use delivery apps to support local businesses, and, if necessary, designate only one family member to go to the grocery store. In his efforts to educate the public, he has gone so far as to encourage the Del Rio community to tell their children not to hug their grandparents. "We need to teach our children why it's important to save Grandma and Grampa's life," Lozano said. "Personal responsibility is everything." Lozano is concerned Del Rio residents are ignoring calls to practice social distancing spreading the virus with little thought for whom it might affect. On the day Lozano pleaded with residents to stay home, there were as many as 455 positive cases of the coronavirus in Del Rio, according to hospital data. A week after his message, the case count had risen to 567. 'I don't think people are listening' "There are no secrets in Del Rio. Everyone knows everyone," said Liz Williams, a waitress at the Malinda Restaurant inside the Ramada Inn. "The mayor asked people to stay home. I don't think people are listening to him." Williams used to serve coffee, toast and scrambled eggs to a group of older residents she said would frequent her restaurant every morning. Williams is worried for their safety; she hasn't seen them in four months since the outbreak. "I do know a few are OK, though," Williams said. "I got a text once with a photo. They were eating breakfast at someone's house. The text said, 'Hey, could we get some coffee over here, please?'" That Williams is receiving texts at all from restaurant patrons she hasn't seen in months underscores how tightly woven the Del Rio community is. Williams said it's a small town, and people like to hang out no matter what's going on. She suspects that is the reason the coronavirus has become such a problem in Val Verde County. All the things that make small-town living worthwhile: its connections and relationships, handshakes and hugs like blood in the ocean to a hungry shark it creates a feeding frenzy for COVID-19. During April, May and early June, Del Rio's positive cases hovered in the low teens. By mid-July, there were hundreds of positive cases. "I live over near Comstock," Williams said. "Driving past the lake on Mother's Day and on Father's Day, the lake was filled with people." It can't happen here ... until it does Dr. Gutierrez and other officials agree with Williams. The lack of social distancing in Del Rio has made COVID-19 worse and likely cost people their lives. For awhile, Del Rio was an abnormality. While the virus raged around the rest of the country in March, April and May, doctors and nurses at Val Verde County Regional Medical Center saw few cases. A hospital employee said people in Del Rio took the virus seriously at first. "There were lines at H-E-B and Walmart with people 6 feet apart. Everybody had their masks on," she said. Then in May, Texas began to reopen gradually, and things in Del Rio changed over the course of the summer holidays. "Sure enough, 10 days after Mother's Day, we started to get a couple ... 10 days after Father's Day, then 10 days after the Fourth of July. ... It started to snowball," Gutierrez said. Val Verde County local health authority Dr. Jaime Gutierrez, seen in this Wednesday, July 22, 2020 photo, said resources are stretched thin amid a spike in positive cases of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Gutierrez said the summer is when Del Rio adults want to be at Lake Amistad and Del Rio teenagers want to visit San Antonio. In early June, Bexar County reported more than 2,800 positive cases of COVID-19, according to state data. By Father's Day the virus had ballooned to more than 6,800 cases in the San Antonio area. "We saw a lot of teenagers driving to San Antonio, getting infected and coming back," Gutierrez said. "It set off a huge wave of positives and it hasn't let up. ... It's been ungodly. ... Fortunately, the medical community here has really stepped up." The medical community in Val Verde County had little choice otherwise. Del Rio Hospital is a COVID-19 war zone The Val Verde Regional Medical Center has become a COVID-19 war zone, with actual soldiers from the U.S. Army and Navy fighting the disease alongside rural doctors and nurses. It's a battlefield where health care workers have displayed uncommon valor, bravery and sacrifice and have suffered causalities. There are green zones and red zones places on the hospital floor marked with bright red tape where not even the hospital CEO can walk not safely, not without a plastic suit of Personal Protective Equipment, and those places are growing larger every week because of the coronavirus. On July 23, nurses at Val Verde Regional Medical Center were preparing a section of the hospital its surgical services department to become another COVID-19 unit, its fifth such unit in three weeks. A medical staff member at Val Verde Regional Medical Center works on a COVID-19 isolation unit Thursday, July 23, 2020 in a hospital that has been described as a 'war zone' in the fight against the virus. "For about three months, we sat on the fringes of COVID," said hospital CEO Linda Walker. "We were preparing here at the hospital. ... When things ramped up, they ramped up very quickly." The Val Verde Regional Medical Center's initial capacity for COVID-19 began with seven beds. As cases grew, health care workers expanded from the ICU into an empty pediatric unit to create enough space for 19 beds. A third, fourth and fifth unit soon followed. Of the 72 total hospital beds and the 50 patients who occupied them July 23, there were 30 COVID-19 patients. Those hospitalized afflicted with COVID-19 have ranged in age from their mid-90s to 6 years old. Walker said many rural hospitals like theirs are struggling to avoid becoming "COVID hospitals." She said as more people infected by the coronavirus are admitted, other patients have to be housed safely in places like the emergency department, which is creating a strain on the local health care system. The toll is also creating a strain on the health care workers. Rural nurses pushing themselves to breaking point "I've had employees in my office sobbing," said Chief Nursing Officer Jessica Nuutinen. "They say, 'I'm going to pick up this extra shift,' and tears are coming down their face. They say: 'I'm so tired but I know it's the right thing to do. This is my family, my community. I'm going to pick up this shift.'" Opening more COVID-19 units has forced many changes at Val Verde Medical Center, and Nuutinen has helped guide hospital staff through the anxiety and the uncharted waters the virus is forcing onto its overtaxed workforce. "I'm a nurse, and nurses get into this profession for a reason," she said. "What I truly admire about my staff is how we're all coming together to overcome (the virus). ... I've never been so proud of my team." Still, there have been casualties. Personal protective equipment hangs on a wall in a hallway of the Val Verde County Regional Medical Center on Thursday, July 23, 2020. Hospital loses one of its own to COVID-19 Irma Santellanes worked at Val Verde Regional Medical Center for 43 years. She was a unit secretary, and one of the first people to volunteer to screen those who entered the hospital by taking their temperature and placing a paper armband around their wrist. "She did it with honor 'Whatever you need, Miss Jess. Whatever you ask of me, I will do'" Nuutinen said. Santellanes contracted COVID-19 and died days later on July 16. She was 62. "This hospital has never seen anything like (COVID-19)," Walker said. "Most hospitals haven't, but particularly here in the rural areas ... this is not the flu, and it is incredibly contagious." Jessica Nuutinen, chief nursing officer at Val Verde Regional Medical Center, talks about the impact of the recent spike in cases of COVID-19 on medical staff in Del Rio, TX on Thursday, July 23, 2020. When hospital staff talk about their work family, they are speaking more than figuratively about what binds them together. Santellanes' daughter is a nurse who also works at Val Verde Regional Medical Center. Her sister works in the radiology department. Many hospital employees wear a picture of Santellanes on their work badge. A table draped in white with a memorial is set up near the hospital entrance where Santellanes worked. A book with blank pages has been placed on the table to allow her work family the chance to share their memories of her and their grief over the death of one of their own. Walker said of the roughly 570-person hospital workforce, about 32 employees were out sick July 23 with the coronavirus. Seven others had recovered from COVID-19 and returned to work despite fearing they might get the virus again. One of them is Lucinda Renee Martin, director of Surgical Services. What it's like to have COVID-19 Martin said her battle with COVID-19 began on a Monday toward the beginning of July. "You never think it's going to happen to you ... until it does," Martin said. "You want to brush it off as, 'Oh, I have a little itch in the back of my throat it's allergies.' That's how it started. Just a little scratch, like you need a cup of water." Photos: Notables who have died from coronavirus complications Martin said she felt fine otherwise but the scratch continued into Tuesday. On Wednesday at about 3:45 p.m., Martin felt suddenly dizzy, then experienced a heat flash followed by the chills. Her energy quickly plummeted and she needed to rest. "I sat down and thought, 'Something's wrong with me,'" she said. All hospital staff get their temperature checked before entering the building. Martin said she felt healthy that morning. A colleague screened her again. Her temperature had spiked to 103 degrees. Now symptomatic for COVID-19, she took a swab test and immediately went home to quarantine for 14 days. Martin is married and has five children, ages 17 years to 20 months old. She told her husband that something was wrong, then secluded herself in a bedroom and went to sleep. "I pretty much slept for 13 days. It's scary. ... It was exhausting," she said. "I would wake up at 8 o'clock in the morning, look at the time, and then I'd wake up again and it would be 4 p.m." Martin lost her sense of taste and smell, both symptoms of the virus. She had no appetite. Her bed was soaked in sweat. Her back ached and she continued to lose track of time. It was difficult to breathe. It was difficult just to exist. In the evenings, Martin would tell her children "good night" using a mobile phone. Despite never leaving her room, her husband and her children began displaying symptoms of COVID-19 and needed to quarantine themselves. July 23 was Martin's second day back at the hospital after recovering from the illness. She said her family is better, and understands the risks of what returning to work at a hospital with five coronavirus units could mean. "I'm worried about getting COVID again, but I was worried before," Martin said. "Being a nurse, that's what we're here for. ... What we're fighting is a biological warfare, and everybody is fighting for their lives." To help Martin and her colleagues win that battle is the U.S. military. Soldiers are helping fight the disease In mid-July, the U.S. Navy Rural Rapid Response Team 1 arrived at Val Verde Regional Medical Center. Their presence has been described as "a godsend." Composed of Cmdr. Sean McKay, a U.S. Navy Doctor; Lt. Cmdr. Sarah Jagger, an ICU/Critical Care Nurse; and Capt. Stephanie Corsaro with the 62nd Medical Brigade, they're providing rural hospital staff with critical knowledge in how to combat COVID-19. A specialist in the U.S. Army, Juron Toliver, and other service members provide additional support. McKay works directly with COVID-19 patients in Del Rio. He's stationed in Maryland, where he has served in various hospitals as a pulmonary critical care doctor. He said the Navy developed medical teams about a month ago to support rural communities dealing with the coronavirus. "We're being sent wherever we're needed," McKay said. "Other Navy teams have gone to New York. We have Navy critical-care teams in places like Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida, San Diego, Okinawa and Guam." McKay said everyone has been welcoming and helpful while his team works alongside rural caregivers to slow the spread of the virus. He said his team will stay in Del Rio as long as the Department of Defense feels they're needed in the area.. Val Verde County Judge Lewis Owens hopes they stay awhile. How much will it cost to fight COVID-19? Judge Owens is part of what's referred to as the Val Verde County COVID Task force. He and other locally elected officials and health care providers meet often at the county courthouse to decide what actions are needed to stop the virus. The county recently hired six contact tracers to track how COVID-19 is spreading through the community. With so many positive cases already, Owens said that the process is often daunting but that he and other officials are doing everything they can. Ximena Colecio looks at a sign she hung on a fence outside her school in Del Rio, TX on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 to remember her teacher who died the day before from COVID-19. Deputies are now serving citations to people in Val Verde County who test positive for COVID-19. If they leave their home, if they violate quarantine, if they do not follow social distancing guidelines, the county will fine them up to $250, which could increase at a later date. "There's no book for this," Owens said. "For a flood, you have a template. For a tornado, you have a template you have things you follow. But for COVID-19? Things we thought were right two months ago we're having to rethink." Owens likens COVID-19 more to a viral hurricane, and at the end of the day, Val Verde County will need more funding if its going to weather the storm. A month ago, when COVID-19 began to skyrocket, Val Verde County had more than $724,000 it received in relief funds. As of July 22, all but $59,000 had been spent. Owens said the court had set aside $200,000, which officials used purchasing supplies to battle COVID-19 early during the pandemic. "We bought a machine to make disinfectant, purchased hand sanitizer, handed out food. ... We didn't wait for these other programs to kick in. We started buying stuff," Owens said. "We bought masks, N-95's, and gowns." Medical staff at Val Verde Regional Medical Center work on a COVID-19 isolation unit Thursday, July 23, 2020 in a hospital that has been described as a 'war zone' in the fight against the virus. Owens hasn't crunched all the numbers, but in consideration to staffing and other ancillary needs, said it might take another $1.2 million a year for Val Verde County to effectively deal with the coronavirus. But with so many unknowns, it's difficult to land on a number. US coronavirus map: Tracking the outbreak "I've already looked at the budget for the next fiscal year," Owens said. "We're going to be fine. The problems is that I'm using my reserves 'to be fine.' The problem is also what I'm going to do the following fiscal year, and then the year after that if this continues." At this point, no one can say. COVID-19 still feels like a puzzle and it remains unknown how many pieces are missing even when some of the things Del Rio has lost are glaringly obvious. The absence in Del Rio at San Felipe Creek San Felipe Creek is a spring-fed oasis along the eastern edge of the city. The water is so clear you can drop a stone off a bridge and watch as it sinks to the bottom of the creek bed. Ordinarily in July, you would both hear and see Del Rio's children splashing in the water while parents watch from nearby shaded picnic tables at least until, like so much else, it was closed by the coronavirus. Yellow caution tape fastened to park benches flutter in the wind, and San Felipe Creek is now defined by absence by what Del Rio no longer has because of COVID-19. The absence is as real as the virus itself, as real as the teacher who won't be in the classroom, or the grandparent who will be missing at the dinner table. It wasn't always this way. And its uncertain when things in Del Rio will start to feel normal again. Follow John Tufts on Twitter: @JTuftsReports This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: COVID-19 in Texas: Del Rio reels from coronavirus deaths Renowned businessman and President of the Ghana Rugby Foot Ball Union Herbert Mensah on Friday donated several quantities of products brands and a bullock to the Muslim community at the central mosque in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region. The donation coincided with the celebration by Muslims worldwide of Eid Al-Adha, the holiest festival in the Islamic calendar. Eid Al-Adha or the Festival of Sacrifice is celebrated to commemorate the obedience of Ibrahim in a four-day celebration that began on 31 July and will last until Monday, 2 August. The yearly ritual is considered a time to think of others as well as repenting for sins committed in the past. The Festival of Sacrifice marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage, where Muslims return from pilgrimage in Mecca. Muslims will sacrifice goats, sheep, lambs, and cows to represent Ibrahims commitment to God, where Allah came to Ibrahim in a dream and asked him to sacrifice his son Ismail as an act of obedience to God. Participation in the sacrificial festival is mandatory for all obedient Muslims that can afford an animal. It is also mandatory for people with money to give an amount to charity, so less fortunate people can afford to join in on the celebration as well. As a tradition, Mr. Herbert Mensah, a Christian himself, and who is the former chairman of Kumasi Asante Kotoko FC joins the Zongo community in Kumasi every year to share in their celebration and sacrifices. This year, King Edward of Hello FM in Kumasi together with Prince Osei of Kessben fm, representing Herbert Mensah, donated the a big bullock and other products from sponsors Sunda International. He remarked that the yearly gesture by Mr. Mensah is in line with his long-held tradition of keeping a bond with the Zongo community that has always supported him especially during his days as Kotoko chairman, his activities with the May 9 Foundation and his efforts to build Ghana Rugby. King Edward also added, Herbert believes in the goodness of helping the poor in our society the same way as sponsors like Sunda International. He acknowledged Sunda international for their donation of product brands such as Kleesoft, FasKit, and so on. Receiving donation on behalf of the Muslim community, regional chief Imam Abdul Mumin praised Herbert Mensah for his dedication and commitment to the Zongo communities and the poor in general throughout the years. Imam Abdul Mumin prayed for blessings of Allah (God) upon the life of Mr. Herbert Mensah and all generous givers to the poor in our society. Thousands of Ghanaians including Ghanas vice president Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia have joined millions of other Muslims from all over the world this year to fulfill one of the major pillars of Islam and to celebrate Eid al-Adha in the holy city of Mecca. 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 YEREVAN. In two years, we have actually carried out those functions, and in this period, three working directions have been formed for us. Armenias Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan stated this in an interview with a local TV program, and referring to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs' calls to return to substantive talks toward resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict with Azerbaijan. "The first direction refers to () substantive issues where we have pursued essential, important goals to specify the priorities that are primary for us, and the correct expression of which is one of the main necessary components for building appropriate compromises. Their disregard will not lead to compromise. There will never be a concession, there will never be an unbalanced solution to this settlement. And in that sense, we were speaking, expressing ourselves in two very simple words: status and security [of Artsakh]. And those two words contain quite a huge content: substance. As the status refers to the recognition of Artsakh's right to self-determination, the implementation of the function of the expression of free will, without restrictions and with a legally valid result. They refer to a security system that does not violate or pose a threat to the comprehensive security of Artsakh, for which Armenia today remains the only guarantor. These two have those in-depth, substantive details as well, about which we have talked consistently for two years and listened to the other side as to how they perceive and how they are ready to work with us in that respect. The second most important direction of work for us has been the formation of the climate necessary for real progress in the negotiation process. This referred to both the reduction of escalation risks and the climate that promotes peace. The rhetoric that has been formed in this period, which we have constantly heard, does not at all contribute to that climate. The consistently heard that rhetoric does not affect; the threat is denied and does not affect. And the third main direction which has been very important for us is Artsakhs participation, involvement in the peace process; a function that is very important. Is your portfolio too heavily exposed to one sector? If so, you could be putting yourself at significant risk if there's a market crash. As investors in airline and travel stocks will tell you, the crash that took place in March didn't hit all industries equally. Every downturn is different; the industries hit hardest during the financial crisis that took place more than 10 years ago may not be the same ones that suffer during a crash caused by a global pandemic today. That's why the safest thing to do is to diversify and to balance out your exposure. If you've got $5,000 available to invest, buying shares of the three companies below can help strengthen your portfolio. 1. Thermo Fisher Thermo Fisher (NYSE:TMO) is a top healthcare stock that can add versatility, dividends, and overall stability to your portfolio. The Massachusetts-based company has been able to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic by quickly obtaining emergency use authorization (EUA) for its Taqpath COVID-19 Combo Kit, which tests for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), in March, when the pandemic wasn't yet the global crisis that it is today. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has expanded the EUA multiple times since then. The company is also working with WuXi Diagnostics and the Mayo Clinic on an antibody test that will help to determine whether someone may have potential immunity against the coronavirus. By being able to adapt and pivot to the current pandemic fairly quickly, Thermo Fisher ably demonstrates its versatility. And that's something long-term investors will value. It's paid off for the company thus far, with second-quarter results July 22 showing sales up 10% year over year. Management stated on its earnings call that revenue from COVID-19 tailwinds totaled $1.3 billion (total sales for the quarter were $6.9 billion). Another benefit of owning shares of Thermo Fisher is its dividend. Although its yield is a modest 0.2%, well below the S&P 500 average of 2%, it's still a way to generate some recurring income every three months for your portfolio. 2. Target Target (NYSE:TGT) is a stable retail stock that's also doing well during the pandemic and would look great in any portfolio. The Minnesota-based company released its first-quarter results on May 20 for the period ending May 2, and comparable-store sales were up an impressive 10.8% from the prior-year period. The company attributes that to a 12.5% increase in the average size of a customer's basket of purchases, as consumers were in pantry-loading mode during the early stages of the pandemic. One of the benefits of a big-box retailer like Target is that consumers can do all of their essential, day-to-day shopping at one of its stores. That makes Target much more resilient than a niche store, as it can serve customers who are in need of a wide range of products. Investing in Target is a great way to add some retail exposure to your portfolio without taking on significant risk. In each of its past 10 quarterly results, Target's never failed to stay in the black. Target also provides investors with a solid dividend, which today yields 2.2% per year. On June 11, the company announced it would be raising its dividend payments by 3%. It's the 49th annual raise in a row, meaning the stock is now one more annual hike away from becoming a Dividend King. 3. Twitter Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) can help round out your portfolio with another key industry -- tech. The social media company is coming off a strong second quarter in which it reported 186 million monetizable daily active users (defined by Twitter as "users who log in and access Twitter on any given day through twitter.com or our Twitter applications that are able to show ads") on its platform during the period. That's up 34% from the prior-year period and 12% from the first quarter. Although sales were down 19% year over year as advertisers cut back on spending, the increase in use is a great sign that there's still significant demand during the pandemic. And that could help bring advertisers back. Twitter is the riskiest stock on this list, especially with President Trump looking to regulate social media companies and take away some of the legal protections they currently have. The company is also coming off a security breach where many high-profile accounts were compromised. But these could prove to be short-term concerns for investors; they may, in fact, amount to nothing. The social media platform remains immensely popular, and whatever Trump's intentions toward Twitter, even he continues to use it. Twitter is the only stock on this list that doesn't pay a dividend, but it makes up for that with potential long-term growth. Which stock is the best buy today? Year to date, only Target has underperformed the S&P 500: To strengthen your portfolio, you're better off investing in all three stocks to diversify your holdings. However, if you only need to add one stock, then go with Thermo Fisher. It has consistently reported a profit over the past 10 years, and it's in the fairly stable healthcare industry, where demand will likely be a lot more consistent than in the retail or tech sectors. The case, which was reported by ProPublica, immediately drew condemnation. The release came more than a week after an Oakland County Circuit Court judge ruled that the teenager, who violated the terms of her probation by skipping coursework when her school switched to remote learning because of the coronavirus pandemic, should remain at the juvenile facility. The judge said the decision was intended for the girls own good. I think you are exactly where you are supposed to be, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan said to the girl, who is Black. You are blooming there, but there is more work to be done. The judge said that the police had been called three times over confrontations between the girl and her mother, adding that she was detained because she was a threat to her mother. But the teenager was not placed in detention or incarcerated after any of those previous encounters, a lawyer for Grace told The Times last week. One of the girls lawyers said she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and received special education services, which made it difficult for her to shift to online education. The girl had been on probation after she pulled her mothers hair and bit her finger in November, the judge said. The police referred the case to the Oakland County court, and an assault charge was filed against the girl. A few weeks later, she was charged with larceny after she was caught on surveillance video stealing a cellphone from a fellow student at Birmingham Groves High School in Beverly Hills, northwest of Detroit, according to ProPublica. ...im going back to bed Reply Thread Link you guys i cannot believe it's an election year on TOP OF IT ALL Reply Thread Link it seems like years ago we were all watching the debates Reply Parent Thread Link fracking seriously though Reply Parent Thread Link we are living in a nightmare Reply Parent Thread Link i fucking hate it here Reply Parent Thread Link we all thought 2016 was a clusterfuck of a year. tho 2020 better not top it even further with a Dump reelection Reply Parent Thread Link We need that Audrina gif reworded from while Laurens away to what you said Reply Parent Thread Link oh god dont remind me Reply Parent Thread Link And nothing of value will be lost. But even if its gone, another app will just take its place. Reply Thread Link You sound like a bitter Viner. But you right, another app will just come along and replace it. Reply Parent Thread Link i miss vine :( But i was a content watcher, not creator. I know BYTE exists, but its not the same. Reply Parent Thread Link Vine >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > my morning shit>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Tik Tok Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Facebook is launching an app basically with the same purpose this month. It's called Reels and will fall under Instagram. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I love her. Reply Parent Thread Link lmao the blow dryer. love ha Reply Parent Thread Link This is the only way I can stand to listen to his incoherent ramblings. Reply Parent Thread Link I literally said the same thing. Reply Parent Thread Link The pull back she does at the "are happening" part kills me. Reply Parent Thread Link She is THE best Reply Parent Thread Link This is the only way Im not triggered by his voice. Edited at 2020-08-01 10:44 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link This is like real-time Drunk History lmao Reply Parent Thread Link LMAO Reply Parent Thread Link LOVE HER Reply Parent Thread Link lol, as if the US is not using Facebook, Google, Amazon and many other companies to track and collect every little thing we do online. Also is kinda ironic we're talking about this on a Russian website. Reply Thread Link I really hate how people are downplaying the ccp side of this. It's essentially a state owned app and you're feeding data into that's used to prefect surveillance, facial recognition and tracking all in the service of oppression. Not to mention the old stories about them hiding black, disabled or "ugly" users. Removing users who brought up genocide in China or anything that upset the ccp. Another app will come along, IF trump is even able or actually willing to ban this one. Reply Thread Link right. still, if he bans this, TT users are coming for his ass. I'm morbidly curious how that would roll out. What would stop him from banning other social media he doesn't agree with? (not defending TT) Reply Parent Thread Link My two roommates in grad school were Chinese. One night, one of our flat mates got drunk and started saying fuck the Chinese government, fascists, fuck them all hahaha! The two Chinese girls got really upset... but not because they were mad, bc they were scared. They were like, omg you cant say that, youll get in trouble, saying stuff like this is really bad etc and when the guy pushed and was like, idc Ill post it on FB one of them got so upset she almost cried. Bear in mind this was in the UK at the time... halfway around the world. Their own citizens are fucking terrified of mild critiques from non-nationals in another county cause thats the culture of obedience they foster. Yall really want that kind of state to have literally all the personal information you store on your phone? Cause TikTok will do that for you. Reply Parent Thread Link The one two things that have kept me from spiralling are my ability to say fuck this government and the knowledge that I WILL vote this year. I'd lose it if I couldn't. Reply Parent Thread Link It's something that worries me, my job sometimes has all-asia seminars on Zoom and there have been moments where the facilitator has had to move the conversation/topic along because fuck if we can be sure if we're being monitored or not or where all the information is going or lord knows what else. Reply Parent Thread Link my uni friends are chinese canadian some go back china yearly to visit families refuse to discuss ccp politic online or even in text. they always say ccp is spying and theyre afraid ccp will reject their visitor visa. Reply Parent Thread Link what can China do to me when I dont live there and have never been there though. everyones going on about how SCARY it is that they have our data but then......what are they doing with it that would impact me more than Facebook/google/amazon? Reply Parent Thread Link Yeah, I don't see the problem with banning Tik Tok, of all things. It's spyware targeting children. While the idea of the state banning things is terrifying as a concept, this is not something worth protecting given who controls it and what their interests are in all of this information they've collected. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I doubt Trump cares about any of that though. Reply Parent Thread Link but does Trump care about ANY of these issues? idgaf about tiktok but the right thing happening for the wrong reason definitely is going to give me pause. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link How is it different than Facebook? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Thank you! I always feel like I'm losing my mind when people are like "stop being a buzzkill it's just for fun" like there is a multitude of things wrong with it. You didn't even touch upon the rampant sexualization and borderline pedophilia on the app. It's terrible, I didn't think a social media platform could get worse than youtube or facebook but alas there it is. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link the only difference between tiktok and Facebook/amazon/google is that its foreign owned Reply Parent Thread Link Right? TikTok absolutely should be removed from US stores. It's a shitty app that's owned by a government that's actively practicing ethnic cleansing. Trump just managed to blindly stumble his way into the right side of an issue for once. He doesn't give a fuck about the security aspects of it and probably has no idea how to get rid of the instances of it already on people's phones. Reply Parent Thread Link It's "This Is Your Digital Life" and FaceApp all over and it's amazing how people are willing to give up their privacy for a little bit of fun from a stupid third party app. Reply Parent Thread Link not only tiktok is incredible mediocre as an app, and the content is boring and cringey, but the fact that people still use it after KNOWING everything you said (it's not a new thing, ffs) it's the worst thing, so many fake woke people Reply Parent Thread Link very confusing to me about how stressed people are about tik tok while using face ID on their iphones, an alexa, and/or facebook Reply Parent Thread Link On the other hand, this shit would be epic when it fucking blows up in his face...so, I'm hoping he really tries to do it? You know it would be entertaining as hell - they'll come for his ass. Didn't he learn his lesson in Oklahoma and his shitty rally no one showed up for? Edited at 2020-08-01 06:03 am (UTC) I'm just gonna sit back and watch this go down...On the other hand, this shit would be epic when it fucking blows up in his face...so, I'm hoping he really tries to do it? You know it would be entertaining as hell - they'll come for his ass. Didn't he learn his lesson in Oklahoma and his shitty rally no one showed up for? Reply Thread Link Is that Frederick Lau in the second gif? OO Reply Parent Thread Link No idea...it was from GOT era. I think Maisie was in this group. Reply Parent Thread Link People who dropped out of college to do TikTok logging on to twitter to find out its getting banned pic.twitter.com/bLWCj3L7wg Jose (@JZepeda_13) August 1, 2020 Reply Thread Link Logistically, I doubt he'll follow through with this. But I could be wrong. I was certainly wrong about him ever becoming president in the first place, so. Reply Thread Link I feel bad for people who make a living off of it but that app is literally spyware. It is compromising your data and your information and thats not a bug... thats the defining feature. Its why that app exists. Reply Thread Link Embarrassing as shit. Im worried about the voting stuff. Im waiting for mine in mail... still I dunno Reply Thread Link On one hand, fuck trump and his stupidity. On the second hand, tik tok is dumb. On the third hand, watching teens melting down saying things like tik tok is my whole career my mom will be so mad at me is fun. Reply Thread Link How is that app even a career? Reply Parent Thread Link I assume through sponsored content/brand partnerships? I have no clue how white kids awkwardly dancing = $$$$ but \_()_/ Reply Parent Thread Link From the past threads with Charli D'___, she's given money for brand and content partnerships. The reason companies are reaching out to the influencers has to do with viewers. Charli D has 16? million followers which mean for a company, they have 32 million eyes (give or take a couple) that will buy their products based off this normal, reachable girl. She's not a celeb, she doesn't probably doesn't have PR or others that a celeb has so it means they can pay her what she thinks her worth is while lowballing her. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link ngl, I'm of two positive minds of this 1) my brain is imploding because it might be the first thing I agree with him doing, even though it's probably for the wrong damn reasons. (Didn't India ban it already, too? so lol @ people asking how it could be done.) 2) it might piss off the older teens just old enough to vote and tbh if Trump loses the election because the Youth are pissed he banned TikTok, I'll be here for it. Reply Thread Link I'm already following my fav creators on their grams cause they have been teaching me A LOT about random history, painting, appropriation in magic, politics , showing Portland, sterilization and how to pee right and hormones resin art, foraging for food,farming this fckin app taught me a lot in 3 months I had it Reply Thread Link there are so many things I didn't know I didn't know about in this comment Reply Parent Thread Link I get that foraging for food girl on my for you page a lot but that just aint for me lol Edited at 2020-08-01 06:35 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link i'm not on tik tok, but foraging tik tok is calling to me from this comment... i'm so conflicted!! Reply Parent Thread Link 'appropriation in magic'? o.o Reply Parent Thread Link There's a right and a wrong way to pee? Reply Parent Thread Link I was peeing out of my butt before I got into tik tok. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Link us! I want to know about history, magical appropriation, peeing properly, and sterilization! Reply Parent Thread Link Ah to be a person who does not know how an app (or a website) can be blocked from a country... Reply Thread Link Lol, seriously. And here I am from a country which had YouTube banned for several years and currently has Telegram banned. Reply Parent Thread Link Failure to vaccinate everyone will give rise to new variants, says UN chief Faith vs safety in burials: COVID-19 remains in dead bodies for 9 days says Centre Man gets COVID-19 positive result in middle of train journey India oi-Briti Roy Barman New Delhi, August 01: A 29-year-old man was deboarded from the Kozhikode-Thiruvananthapuram Jan Shatabdi Express on Friday and sent to hospital after he received his positive COVID-19 test result in the middle of the train journey. He left for his home in Kanyakumari before his results arrived. Health authorities alerted Ernakulam Town Station, where he was deboarded. According to officials, the man had given samples for a COVID-19 test three days ago, but boarded the train before the result was out. 45 Kolkata cops, including senior officials test positive for COVID-19 The man is a contract worker at Kunnamangalam in Kozhikode district. Before the result returned, he left for his hometown after coming to know that his pregnant wife had been hospitalised. The man had boarded the train to reach his hometown in Tamil Nadu and he received a call in midway from health officials asking him to get down at the Ernakulam Town railway station. Health officials in Kozhikode after coming to know that the man was COVID-19 positive contacted him but the train had already left the station. Though they informed health officials in Thrissur district, by the time they reached Thrissur station, the train had left from there too. Then health authorities in Ernakulam who then reached the EKM Town station and shifted the man to the hospital. He was then immediately rushed by the authority to the Government Medical College in Kalamassery where he is presently under treatment. Notably, after the man got down, the compartment where the man travelled was sealed, preventing other people from entering it. Three others who were in the compartment with him were also shifted to another seat in the train. The train then continued its way. "The details of all the passengers who were in the compartment were shared with state health officials for necessary further action," said an official with the Railways. He also said that measures have been taken to sanitise the train completely in Thiruvananthapuram. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Saturday, August 1, 2020, 12:19 [IST] New Delhi, Aug 1 : In 1986, an army officer working as a medical specialist at Base Hospital Lucknow was charged with allegedly misbehaving with two women during a check up by touching their private parts. After 34 years, the Supreme Court restored the sentence of cashiering from service of the army officer saying abusing a position of trust being a doctor is not condonable. A bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and S Ravindra Bhatt taking into account the reprehensible conduct of Lt. Col S S Bedi said, "We restore the punishment of penalty of cashiering by taking into account the reprehensible conduct of the appellant abusing a position of trust being a Doctor which is not condonable." A complaint was made by two women against Bedi on May 15, 1986 that he misbehaved with them during check up by inappropriately touching their private parts. He was commissioned in the Indian Army Medical Corps on July 24, 1966. The Armed Forces Tribunal upheld Bedi's conviction but converted the punishment of cashiering to a fine of Rs 50,000. The Centre filed an appeal in the apex court against this order. The Centre's counsel argued that the conversion of sentence by the tribunal was unwarranted. "The appellant had misbehaved with two patients and the expert evidence also shows that there was no necessity of the appellant touching the private parts of the complainants", the Centre argued. The top court said a perusal of the evidence of the complainants makes it clear that the appellant misbehaved with them during the course of their physical examination. "There was no motive for false implication of the appellant by the complainants; therefore, we are in agreement with the conclusion of the General Court Martial and the Tribunal that the Appellant is guilty of the charge of using criminal force against two women patients", said the bench. Bedi's counsel argued that even if the penalty imposed by the Court Martial of cashiering from service is upheld, forfeiture of all the pensionary benefits of the appellant is not automatic. "He submitted that no order as contemplated in Section 71 (h) of the Army Act, 1950 forfeiting his pension has been directed by the General Court Martial. Therefore, the appellant is entitled for payment of pension", the bench noted. "The Tribunal found the imposition of the punishment of cashiering from service shockingly disproportionate. The Tribunal also highlighted the delay in the complaint made against the Appellant. We are not convinced with the reasons given by the Tribunal for converting the sentence from cashiering to imposition of fine of Rs.50,000", the bench observed. However, the top court directed the Centre to consider the entire record of service of the appellant and his advanced age while taking a decision to initiate proceedings under the Army Pension Regulations. 'The judge said the implications of his constitutional finding went far beyond the individual electricians' SEO.' Stock Image The High Court has put a six month stay on an order striking down a law setting minimum pay and conditions for certain sectors of industry. Mr Justice Garrett Simons ruled last month that the Minister for State for Business Enterprise and Innovation had acted outside his powers in purporting to make a sectoral employment order (SEO) for electricians in June last year. He also found the parent legislation governing such orders, Chapter 3 of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2015, was invalid by reference to Article 15.2.1 of the Constitution [power of Oireachtas to make laws]. The case was brought by members of the National Electrical Contractors of Ireland which claimed the SEO breached their rights and was unconstitutional. It was brought against the Labour Court, the Minister for Business Enterprise and Innovation, Ireland and the Attorney General, who opposed the challenge. Further submissions were made by the parties following the judgment and on Friday Mr Justice Simons made formal orders in the case. The court was told the State intends to seek a "leapfrog" appeal to the Supreme Court. The judge said the implications of his constitutional finding went far beyond the individual electricians' SEO. Were this finding to be upheld on appeal, it would cast doubt on the validity of any SEO under the relevant chapter of the 2015 Act, he said. However, he said, crucially even this finding would not preclude the putting in place of primary legislation imposing minimum rates of pay and remuneration in any particular sector. Nor would it preclude the regulation of such matters by way of secondary legislation, provided always that the requisite principles and policies were stated in primary legislation, he said. The judge said that last month's decision was concerned solely with identifying which branch of government, was entitled to regulate the terms and conditions of employment. The judge emphasised that his judgement in no way suggests that the imposition of minimum rates of pay in any particular sector is "per se unconstitutional" or that there was anything to suggest the rates in the electricians' sector are overly generous. by Melani Manel Perera Fr Reid Shelton Fernando released a statement and an election prayer to underscore the great responsibility Christians have, as voters, to pick people who possess the qualities that will keep the people united and the country free. Colombo (Asia News) - Father Reid Shelton Fernando (picture 2), a a human rights activist, a former university lecture and the former chaplain of the Young Christian Workers Movement (YCWM), released a statement and an election prayer" to underscore the great responsibility Christians have, as voters, to pick the people who possess the necessary qualities to keep people united and the country free. Please, he said, put aside this prayer in the introduction. What we need is to pray in faith as found in Ex 3:7. God listens to the cry of the poor desperate people and the unexpected thing may happen. God can change the minds of people. Let us hope ' [. . .] that the best outcome will be shared by many Christians, including priests and nuns. Let us pray, said Fr Fernando, for God's guidance for ourselves and for our fellow citizens in electing representatives to contribute to the realisation of a future that is peaceful and prosperous, in which freedom, human and democratic rights and human dignity of all the communities are respected. Grant us the discernment to correctly assess their views, plans, experience, character and proposed programs, and guide us to cast our vote for the candidate who will best represent your Divine Will on Earth." The prayer reads: Heavenly Father, you are the Creator of Heaven and Earth, you have created us according to your image and likeness (Gen 1 &2). In the work of looking after Your creation, You have bestowed upon us freedom and the power to use this freedom for the good of all humans as well as all of creation. We have failed in many aspects. Forgive us for our failure. As we are to give our rulers the task of governing, grant all the citizens of this country, the guidance of Your Holy Spirit, no matter whether they are Christians or not; grant all of them the wisdom to choose the best candidate from their respective parties who will not follow the path of selfishness and of corruption. We pray that the election process will be fair, honest and free from fraud and technical difficulties and lead to the formation of a government that will govern our country with righteousness. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will be at work in all of us at this time to enable us to make serious and informed choices for the country's future welfare. Amen. Sri Lankas parliamentary election was initially scheduled for 25 April, but was postponed because of COVID 19 after a nation-wide lockdown was imposed in March. It was reset for 20 June, then on 5 August. About 16 million voters are eligible to choose 225 lawmakers among 7,400 candidates running for 20 political parties and 34 independent groups. Nova Scotia Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard is urging Canadians to recognize Aug. 1 as the day slavery was abolished in the British Empire even if the federal government won't. Thomas Bernard has been pushing for years for the Canadian government to mark Emancipation Day each Aug. 1. It was recognized officially only in Ontario until Saturday, when Vancouver officially declared Aug. 1 Emancipation Day. She introduced a private member's bill in the Senate in 2018, but it's since been dropped. But she's still pushing for the recognition and reminding Canadians that even though slavery was abolished 186 years ago, it laid the groundwork for the anti-Black racism and marginalization that are rampant today. "From coast to coast, we could pause and recognize Emancipation Day and use it as a time to remember, use it as a time to reflect and use it as a time to commit to action," Thomas Bernard told CBC's Information Morning this week. She hosted a virtual panel discussion in Halifax last week about the importance of Emancipation Day. Canadians not taught about history On Aug. 1, 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect, freeing about 800,000 enslaved people in most British colonies. But while Canada is often lauded as being a safe haven for those fleeing slavery through the Underground Railroad, the reality for Black people at that time was bleak, Thomas Bernard said. LISTEN | Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard on Emancipation Day: "What was promised as the terms of freedom and opportunity wasn't realized," she said. "So people weren't given land or if they were given land, it was much smaller parcels of land and land that was really not very fertile." The problem, she said, is that this history is not taught in Canada. "I can't even imagine how our ancestors did survive with what little resources they had," she said. Thomas Bernard said it's important to remember that Emancipation Day wasn't just a celebration 186 years ago. It was a call to action and one that must continue today as Black people continue to face racism and violence, she said. Story continues "Several people maintain that the current-day anti-Black racism that we're seeing, the racial profiling, the history of marginalization ... is really rooted in that history of slavery," she said. Afua Cooper, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, spoke about the roots of contemporary racism during the panel discussion last week. She also chaired a panel that looked into Dalhousie's links to slavery and has called for both the institution and the province to apologize for the impact of slavery on Nova Scotia. WATCH | How recognizing Emancipation Day can help dismantle racism: Majid Jowhari, a member of Parliament for Richmond Hill, Ont., near Toronto, has introduced a new motion in the House of Commons calling for Emancipation Day to be recognized across the country. Thomas Bernard said she expects that motion will come before MPs this fall. She said she'll keep fighting until the goal of a nationally recognized Emancipation Day is achieved. "But even when that happens, that's just one part of the equation," she said. "Reparations are important. An apology is important. These are things that have never happened." Elective surgery at one of Queensland's biggest health services may be put on hold again as early as Monday in a bid to free up health staff to deal with a potential coronavirus outbreak. More than 27,000 Queenslanders have come forward to be tested for the virus since two Queensland women tested positive earlier this week after travelling to Melbourne. A major Brisbane hospital may have to suspend elective surgery again. Credit:iStock That works out to be about six tests each minute. The young women triggered a massive health response when they allegedly evaded mandatory hotel quarantine after a trip to Melbourne and spent eight days mingling in the community, before testing positive. Syracuse, N.Y. Syracuse University has suspended Zeta Beta Tau after finding the fraternity violated public health orders last spring related to the coronavirus, a university spokeswoman confirmed today. Given the severity of the global health emergency, this type of behavior was not only reckless and selfish as it put the health of our community at risk, it was also a clear violation of public health orders, Sarah Scalese said in a written statement in response to questions. The violations occurred in the spring semester, Scalese said today. The behavior involved ignoring social distancing guidelines, according to Scalese. She did not provide details on exactly what the violations were. On March 22, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all non-essential gatherings or parties of any size to be canceled. That rule didnt relax until the end of May, after the spring semester was over. Even then, gatherings were limited to 10 people or fewer, under New Yorks reopening plan. We are disappointed that members of our community ignored social distancing guidelines that are in place to protect the health, safety and well-being of our students, faculty, staff and the broader Syracuse community, Scalese said today. The school concluded conduct proceedings and found the fraternity responsible for violations of the Code of Student Conduct and executive orders issued by Cuomo and Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon, Scalese said in her statement. The fraternity is now no longer permitted to operate at Syracuse University, according to Scalese. The suspension comes three weeks before classes are scheduled to begin at SU. The school has announced a series of protocols its leaders say will keep Covid-19 in check as thousands of students return to Syracuse. Those new rules include mandated testing before students leave home, pool testing of all students through SUNY Upstate when they arrive, and another test two weeks later. Syracuse is asking students to physically distance or wear a mask around anyone who isnt in their household. Its asking students to limit gatherings to 25 people. It has suggested suspensions or expulsions will be in store for students who throw massive parties. Currently, outdoor gatherings of up to 50 people are currently allowed in Central New York, under state guidelines. Next week, the school will launch a website that tracks the virus on campus. The public dashboard will be updated weekly. More on Syracuse University and Covid-19 SU warns students not to contract virus on purpose Syracuse charging $1,000 extra for dorm space for students required to quarantine SU reopening: Hundreds must quarantine to meet NY travel guidelines Got a story idea or news tip youd like to share? Please contact me through email, Twitter, Facebook or at 315-470-2274. By Omar Younis DEL MAR, Calif. (Reuters) - Scientists are using drones and other technology to study great white sharks along the coast of Southern California to better understand interactions between these marine predators and people and assess the risks to human beachgoers. The two-year study by the Shark Lab at California State University deploys drones for aerial surveillance of the sharks and uses underwater robots, while the scientists also tag some sharks using a spear that fits the animals with a transmitter to track their movements. "Drones have actually changed our world. They've become a much more powerful, cost effective tool. So in the past we used helicopters and planes and it was very expensive," Shark Lab Director Chris Lowe told Reuters. Despite carnage depicted in films like "Jaws" and "Sharknado," shark attacks on people are rare - humans kill exponentially more sharks than sharks kill humans - but they can be deadly. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said a 63-year-old New York City woman died on Monday after being attacked by a great white shark while swimming in the Atlantic. "Despite the fact that shark populations are going up and more people are using the water than ever before, we're not really seeing more people actually being bitten by sharks," Lowe said. "In fact, in some years, the rate has gone down. So what that tells us, as a scientist, is that we're not on their menu at all. But occasionally accidents happen." From Santa Barbara to San Diego, the Shark Lab researchers have been flying drones along the coastline to count the number of sharks and people and look at the proximity of the creatures to the shore and swimmers. The coastal community of Del Mar, north of San Diego, is home to a great white shark nursery, the researchers said. Lowe said he hopes the research will help lifeguards protect the public by better understanding how sharks behave and whether some species are more aggressive than others. Story continues Shark Lab researcher Patrick Rex said the scientists are trying to determine what environmental factors increase the likelihood of people encountering the sharks. "We're also trying to figure this out for white sharks as well, what environmental parameters bring them closer to shore and maybe closer to humans," Rex said. (Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien) A Florida couple who was caught breaking quarantine rules despite testing positive for the coronavirus was jailed on Wednesday, according to state officials. Officials allege that Jose Antonio Freire Interian and Yohana Anahi Gonzalez repeatedly ignored orders to self-isolate after neighbors filmed them walking the dog, going for groceries, and washing their car. The couple was released from jail early on Thursday after posting a $1,000 bond. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. florida couple Jose Antonio Freire Interian (L) and Yohana Anahi Gonzalez (R) of the Florida Keys. Monroe County Sheriff's Office via AP A Florida couple who tested positive for the coronavirus was jailed on Wednesday when neighbors caught the pair breaking quarantine rules, according to officials. Jose Antonio Freire Interian, 24, and Yohana Anahi Gonzalez, 26, of the Florida Keys have been charged with breaking quarantine during a public health emergency and violating emergency management, according to jail records cited in the Washington Post. The couple had been given strict orders to self-isolate for at least two weeks after they tested positive for the virus on July 15, the Associated Press reported. They were also advised to wear face masks in their home a three-bedroom house they share with at least three other tenants. By the following weekend, neighbors reported seeing the couple leave their house to go to the supermarket, prompting the Florida Department of Health to issue a warning and order them to stay home until at least July 31. A few days later, neighbors filmed Freire walking his dog and also reported seeing the couple going for groceries again and washing their car all without face masks on, according to Key West police. The couple was released from jail early on Thursday after posting a $1,000 bond. Speaking to AP after his release, Freire said: "I didn't do anything. I was just walking my dog. It's not as if I left the house to go shopping." Story continues But officials seemed to disagree. Key West City Manager Greg Veliz said on Thursday: "It's a national debate up until the health department tells you to quarantine, and then there's no more debate," according to the Washington Post. "If the law allows someone to be arrested for violating a quarantine order and they continue to thumb their nose at the law yeah, they should be arrested." While this is the first case of its kind reported in Florida, there have been similar instances across the country. In May, a woman from Kentucky who was infected with the virus was arrested while shopping for groceries, AP reported. She was accused of "criminal mischief" and "wanton endangerment." Last month, 21 tourists who were traveling to Hawaii were also arrested after they were caught breaking the state's mandatory 14-day quarantine. None of them tested positive for the virus. Florida public health officials have urged people to wear face masks and practice social distancing after the state became one of the country's biggest hotspots for the outbreak. Florida reported its highest single-day jump in coronavirus deaths just this week. The US currently has more than 4.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and has seen more than 153,000 deaths related to the virus, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University. Read the original article on Insider Nearly two months after the "murder hornet" invaded Washington, state officials have managed to capture one of the massive insects in a trap for the very first time. Scientists have been working to capture the invasive Asian giant hornets, which measure more than 2 inches long, in a bid to prevent a full-on infestation. The Washington State Department of Agriculture on Friday revealed it successfully captured its first giant hornet in a bottle trap on July 13, near Birch Bay in Whatcom County, which is at the states northern border. The insect was confirmed to be part of the invasive species just more than two weeks later, on July 29. "This is encouraging because it means we know that the traps work," Sven Spichiger, managing entomologist for the department said. "But it also means we have work to do." The state Department of Agriculture said officials' next steps include setting up additional traps and tracking down nests using infrared cameras. They are hoping to destroy enough nests before mid-September, when mating season begins. "Until that time, the colony will only contain the queen and worker Asian giant hornets," the WSDA press release reads. "Destroying the nest before new queens emerge and mate will prevent the spread of this invasive pest." Should they successfully capture another giant hornet, officials plan to tag and track it with the hopes of finding the entire colony. "If it becomes established, this hornet will have negative impacts on the environment, economy, and public health of Washington State," the department added. According to a recent environmental assessment, the predatory insects, which typically nest in preexisting ground burrows or decayed trunks, could displace small mammals who live in similar spots. Should they continue to repopulate, scientists worry the hornets could also decimate the honey bee population in the region. The hornets, nicknamed from their propensity to attack and kill honeybees, regularly decapitate the adult bugs and eat the larvae and pupae. Parents of gender-confused kids demand investigation of gov't-funded study on puberty blockers Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Parents whose children were harmed by the medicalization of gender, specifically puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and surgical interventions, are asking the Surgeon General to increase public awareness of the dangers of these irreversible medical practices. A nonpartisan group called the Kelsey Coalition delivered on Friday a strongly-worded petition asking U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams to raise awareness about the harms of hormonal treatments and gender reassignment surgeries being performed on gender-nonconforming youth. These treatments and procedures are being done without one long-term study backing their safety or efficacy, they say. "Parents who consent to these treatments are often misled to believe that their child will be at greater risk of suicide if they do not. There is no evidence to support this claim. In Oregon, parental consent is irrelevant: the law allows 15-year-olds to receive state-subsidized hormonal treatments and surgeries without parental knowledge or permission," the petition says. The petition also highlights concerns about the hastiness with which these medical and surgical pathways are being opened up to young people. "An increasing number of 'informed consent' clinics provide cross-sex hormones to young people after only one or two visits. These clinics do not require mental or physical health assessments. Surgeries may be obtained within months." The medical repercussions from the use of these treatments will not be seen for years, the petition adds, citing the results of a large cohort study from the American Heart Association on thousands of transgender-identifying adults that shows significant risks to their cardiovascular health. Trans-identifying females on the hormones were three times as likely to have heart attacks, the research letter from the study explains; trans-identifying males on the drugs were at five times greater risk of developing venous thromboembolism. Among those supporting the petition is Lynn Millican, founder of the Lupron Victims Hub. Lupron is a drug used to treat sex offenders, prostate cancer patients, and children with precocious puberty, but has never been through an FDA approval process for gender dysphoria and is prescribed off-label. Dr. Susan Bradley, a Canadian psychiatrist known for her work on gender identity disorder in children, is also backing the effort. Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist from Rocklin, California, who has been one of the most vocal doctors speaking out about the dangers of these practices, told The Christian Post in a Monday interview that he feels strongly that the Surgeon General must be alerted to the long-term consequences of these drugs on young bodies, arguing that the treatments have no benefit to kids with identity confusion as it relates to their biological sex. "Understand that mega-doses of testosterone are being given to teenage girls, some 10 to 40 times higher than what is normal for their body. Is it any wonder that follow-up studies in adults have shown an increased risk of myocardial infarction and death at these doses?" Laidlaw said. "Puberty is not a disease," he emphasized, adding that some doctors are causing the disease of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism when they administer medications like Lupron for this purpose. Side effects of puberty-suppressing drugs like Lupron include abnormal bone and brain development along with sex organ stunting, dysfunction, and potential sterility, he added. "As the Surgeon General is the nation's doctor and has shown great leadership in the opioid crisis, we expect a thorough examination and action to stop these harmful, life-altering, unproven medical treatments," he said. The Kelsey Coalition is also petitioning the federal government for an investigation into a $5.7 million National Institutes of Health research grant that was awarded to four pediatric gender clinics in 2015 for a five-year study, where children are being given these treatments with no control group. As part of their efforts, Laidlaw wrote a letter to Dr. Jerry Menikoff, the director of the Office of Human Research Protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, expressing his concerns with the grant, providing copies of that letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar and NIH director Francis Collins. He received a response on May 23 from Dr. Diana Bianchi, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Development. Bianchi's letter of reply which was obtained by CP says the study being conducted was "observational" and accepts as an uncontestable truth that the youth participating in it are in fact transgender. The main purpose of the research, the NICHD director said, is "to gather evidence" on the hormonal interventions used in pursuit of "longitudinal outcomes of medical treatment for transgender youth." This data that the researchers collect is then to be used to inform the medical community about "potential yet unknown benefits or risks that may lead to changes in current guidelines for such individuals." Because few studies exist on this particular patient population, the data they are assembling is "critical to assure improved outcomes," the letter states, citing as supporting evidence an article in Nature Reviews Endocrinology on puberty suppression in gender identity disorder. The grant application, she said, went through a "rigorous peer review process," received a "highly meritorious score" in the study section indicating that the medical community would value the research and that the advisory council for the agency also reviewed it. Bianchi also noted that the NICHD staff "rigorously reviewed" the grant each year and that the final funding decision for the study was made by her predecessor, Dr. Alan Guttmacher. What the letter obfuscates is that these treatments are experimental, and no blood test, brain imaging scan, or DNA markers have ever shown the presence of a "gender identity" or that a child is transgender, apart from his or her biological sex. The letter also notably omits as Laidlaw and his colleagues ultimately uncovered through FOIA requests that a 2017 progress report for one of the grantees revealed that cross-sex hormones were being given to children as young as 8 years old. "We must keep in mind that there are Institutional Review Boards which are designed to provide ethical oversight of human research being conducted in the United States," Laidlaw told CP. "This system was developed in response to atrocities in human experiments that occurred in Nazi Germany and also here in the U.S. during the Tuskegee syphilis study. It seems that in this NIH-funded study, the IRBs have failed the children." Asked to respond to the NICHD director's claim that the research grant was merely "observational," the California-based endocrinologist said it amounts to "a distinction without a difference." "It is the very same clinics providing the wrong sex hormones and blocking normal puberty who are also administering the surveys and conducting blood sampling. This would be akin to Nazi soldiers taking body temperatures of prisoners while dunking them in freezing waters for hours, and then SS doctors publishing the data on body temperature, but claiming they had no part in the experiment." He elaborated further on the ethics of the study: "Another part of the issue is consent. Can a child consent to procedures that will lead to future sterilization, for example? Do they have the intellectual capacity and life experience to even know what that means? They do not. So the child cannot provide meaningful consent, nor can their parent." Laidlaw often posts on his Twitter feed easy-to-understand explanations about how hormones work, particularly how they function in the human endocrine system. He was locked out of his account last week. Although his feed remains online, the social media giant deemed as "abusive behavior" a reply-tweet he wrote questioning the notion of underlying "transness" in a depressed, anxious, or autistic child, and he is presently barred from using the platform. "Then again, maybe every child is trans?!? Are we all missing something? Let's pop more pills and shoot up more kids!" he mused sarcastically about the medical interventions on the tweet thread. Laidlaw appealed the violation and it was rejected within an hour. He appealed again on July 22 and has not heard anything back since. In March, members of the Kelsey Coalition met Laidlaw in Washington, D.C., and met with Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who is a member of the House Republican Doctor's caucus on Capitol Hill. Laidlaw told CP that Harris was friendly, receptive, and was concerned about the government-funded study. CP reached out to the press secretaries for both Rep. Harris and the Republican doctors caucus to ask if any action was being taken. This article will be updated when a response is received. Bill Mahoney, who hails from the Rochester area of New York, is one such parent who says he joined the Kelsey Coalition because it was the only organization he found that understands that the current affirmative model for transgender diagnosis and dealing with the related issues are seriously flawed. Earlier this year he explained his painful journey in a video on the coalition's YouTube channel. Mahoney's 21-year-old son is currently enduring a third battle with cancer, he explained in an email to CP on Tuesday. Both the hospital where his son is being treated, Strong Memorial, and his son's college, Rochester Institute of Technology, fully support the affirmative model and consider him a "non-supportive parent" for not agreeing with his sons self-diagnosis that he is female, he explained. "My sons medical situation is complicated by having a P53 gene mutation that predisposes him to cancer and transgender hormones are likely to accelerate the cancer growing genes," Maloney said. "The school and hospital psychologists refused to consider the other awful things that have happened to him in evaluating his mental state, including losing his leg to cancer at age 2, losing his mother to cancer same P53 genetic defect as his while in grade school, acute blood loss during surgery in 2018, now dealing with stage 4 colon cancer, which has a poor prognosis." The Kelsey Coalition is a nonpartisan organization whose mission is to promote policies and laws that protect young people from medical and psychological harms, according to their website. They are named after FDA pharmacologist Dr. Frances Kelsey, who in 1961 refused to bow to corporate and political pressure to authorize thalidomide for market use and thus prevented thousands of serious birth defects. The most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control say that 2% of U.S. high school students now self-identify as transgender. USA President Donald Trump said that his administration is working on what he called "a big immigration bill". Speaking to reporters on Friday at the White House before a trip to Florida, Trump said the bill will be "merit-based", reports Xinhua news agency. In addition, he said the administration is working with representatives of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that grants undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children permissions to live and work lawfully. Trump made the remarks only days after his administration announced it is reviewing DACA and that it will reject new applications. DACA, created via an administrative memo in 2012 by the previous Barack Obama administration, previously gave recipients a renewable two-year deferral from deportation and has made them eligible for work permits, driver's licenses, and health insurance. Recipients of DACA, estimated to be about 700,000, are commonly called "Dreamers". Trump, who has made the abolishment of the program a key part of his hardline immigration policy, first announced intentions to rescind DACA in September 2017. During the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has ramped up moves to restrict immigration. Critics have argued he's using the pandemic to promote his political agenda and appeal to his voters as the November election nears. The global death toll from the coronavirus is around 680,000, with more than 17.6 million infections confirmed, causing mass disruptions as governments continue to try to slow the spread of the respiratory illness. Here's a roundup of COVID-19 developments in RFE/RL's broadcast regions. Russia Russia plans to implement extensive vaccinations against the coronavirus in October, the countrys health minister said on August 1. Speaking to journalists in Nizhny Novgorod, Minister Mikhail Murashko added that teachers and medical workers would be given priority for the vaccination program. Murashko did not provide any other details about the vaccine or the vaccination program. Earlier in the week, Reuters reported that an unnamed source had said Russias first COVID-19 vaccine candidate should secure government approval in August. Russia reportedly has two vaccines one developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute in cooperation with the Defense Ministry and one by the Vektor state research laboratory in Novosibirsk undergoing approval. In testimony before the U.S. Congress on July 31, Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases official in the United States, expressed concern about reported COVID-19 vaccines being developed in Russia and China. I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing the vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone, Fauci said. Serbia Serbias government has been urged to collect and share data on COVID-19 infections and deaths inside institutions for people with disabilities. Six organizations representing people with disabilities and human rights groups wrote to Prime Minister Ana Brnabic on July 31, saying that understanding the impact of COVID-19 on people in institutions is impossible without transparent and complete data. It is not known how many people with disabilities living in institutions across Serbia have died or been infected with COVID-19, said Milan Sverepa, director of Inclusion Europe. The government said in April that 574 people living in institutions had been infected. Sverepa said it is deeply worrisome that how many of them may have died remains unknown. Based on government figures for 2019, more than 14,512 adults and children, including people with disabilities, live in state-run institutions in Serbia. The groups that sent the letter to Brnabic are Inclusion Europe, the European Network on Independent Living, Validity Foundation, Disability Rights International, Mental Disability Rights Initiative Serbia (MDRI-S), and Human Rights Watch (HRW). Since April, Human Rights Watch and MDRI-S have sought information on what steps the government has taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in residential institutions, HRW said in a news release. The government has not provided the information sought, HRW said. An important part of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic is understanding the scale and circumstances of infections and deaths, said Emina Cerimovic, senior disability rights researcher at HRW. Collecting this data is necessary to inform government policy, decision-making, and response. Publishing this data helps the wider public understand the impact of the outbreak on social care institutions. With reporting by TASS, Reuters, and AFP TRIPOLI The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Friday demanded immediate release of Ismail Abuzreiba, a Libyan journalist sentenced to 15 years in prison by a military tribunal in the eastern city of Benghazi. The UNSMIL said in a statement late Friday that it is dismayed by the sentencing of the journalist, calling for his immediate release. The mission is concerned that the detention and trial appear to violate Libyas laws as well as its international obligations, the statement said. Abuzreiba is known for opposing the eastern-based army, which controls eastern Libya. The eastern-based authorities of Libya have not announced the reasons for Abuzreibas arrest yet. Libya has been torn by a raging civil war, between the GNA based in the capital Tripoli and the Libyan National Army and its allies based in the east. Related Seoul plans to phase out diesel cars from public sector and mass transit fleets by 2025 as part of efforts to accelerate its transition to green mobility. The metropolitan government unveiled a "No Diesel" initiative this week aimed at eliminating the highly emitting automobiles from the roads and replacing them with electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Diesel cars, deemed as a key culprit of climate change and fine dust air pollution, account for 64.6 percent of vehicles used by the municipal government, district offices and cityaffiliated pubic organizations. Diesel also makes up 0.9 percent of the capital's public transportation system. "We hope the 'No Diesel' plan led by the Seoul Metropolitan Government will contribute to the creation of a proper ecosystem of consumption and production of environment-friendly cars," said Hwang Bo-yeon, chief of urban transportation policy. The new policy focuses on replacing diesel cars and vans in the pubic fleets with environment-friendly alternatives over the next five years. Of a total of 5,153 diesel automobiles currently used in the public sector, 3,586 cars will be replaced with electric and hydrogen vehicles in stages by 2025, City Hall said. City authorities will also cooperate with carmakers to speed up the development of green models for fire trucks, ambulances and cleaning vehicles, which mostly run on diesel. In early July, the city government banned the purchase of new diesel cars for public use, with a plan to procure only environment-friendly cars in the future. It will also remove diesel vehicles from public transportation, including taxis, airport buses and city tour buses. The city, which already replaced all diesel buses with compressed natural gas buses in 2015, plans to introduce some 4,000 electric and hydrogen buses by 2025, officials said. In addition, the city will enhance cooperation with private organizations in the green mobility drive. The government seeks to replace 30 percent of community buses with electric vehicles by 2023 and encourage school bus operators and car rental services to adopt environment-friendly automobiles. According to the plan, the authorities will step up public awareness campaigns and consult with the central government to expand benefits for the use of green cars and early scrapping of old diesel vehicles. (Yonhap) SPRINGFIELD City Councilor Orlando Ramos, citing concerns about residents who live along private roads in poor condition, is calling for an ordinance that would require developers to pave the roads in future housing projects. Ileana Greene, who lives on a gravel road at the end of Briggs Street in Indian Orchard, praised Ramos proposal Friday, saying she hopes a new ordinance could help her and future homeowners. I think its necessary, Greene said. Our taxes continue to go up and we get potholes, and in the winter it gets messy and (there is) constant dirt and dust on vehicles. After moving to the new house five years ago, Greene said, she first heard the developer would pave the road, and then thought the city would pave it. Paving never occurred. The city does respond on occasion with some road fill, she said. Ramos first proposed the private way ordinance last winter, saying it stalled during the coronavirus emergency. He plans to refile it now. The ordinance would require developers to design and construct roads that meet standards of a public way as part of any new development, Ramos said in a news release. Public Works Director Christopher Cignoli said it has been standard practice for a number of years for his department to require paving by the developers, but he knows Ramos wants it as a formal and enforced ordinance. Ramos said residents living on private ways ought to be treated similarly to residents living on public ways. The private way residents pay the same amount in taxes to the city as residents of public ways, Ramos said. The fact that private ways were constructed without meeting todays acceptable engineering standards means that they are more susceptible to potholes, washout, or erosion, Ramos said. However, the help that the DPW can offer to private ways is limited. Because the roads are private, the city has no legal responsibility for their maintenance and upkeep, Ramos said. From the Middle East to Asia, Latin America to Africa and, particularly, Europe, and on issues including trade, terrorism, arms control and immigration, the presumptive Democratic nominee and his advisers have vowed to unleash a tsunami of change in how the US handles itself in the international arena. With few exceptions, Americans could expect Mr Biden to re-engage with traditional allies. Where Mr Trump has used blunt threats and insults to press his case, Mr Biden, a former senator and vice president, would be more inclined to seek common ground. Historically, US foreign policy has not changed drastically as the presidency shifted between Democratic and Republican administrations. Allies and adversaries stayed the same and a non-partisan diplomatic corps pursued American interests. That changed with Mr Trump. Under his America First policy, he viewed both allies and the foreign policy establishment with suspicion, while speaking warmly of adversaries like North Koreas Kim Jong Un and Russias Vladimir Putin. Advertisement But Mr Trump found it hard to make swift changes. Academics often say that American foreign policy is like an aircraft carrier: easy to order a wholesale change of direction from the bridge but far more difficult and time-consuming to alter course. Mr Trump saw that when he was unable to extricate the US from the Iran nuclear deal for more than year. This is the United States of America. We dont settle we aspire. Lets get to work. Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 24, 2020 His well-publicised withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organisation will not actually become final until after the November 3 election, if ever. His decision to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany could take years. Mr Trumps initial problems may have reflected a lack of governmental experience by both him and his top advisers. That created a steep learning curve that was complicated by their intense distrust of national security institutions. Mr Biden, with his Senate and White House experience, may be better positioned to deliver on change swiftly. Mr Biden told reporters in Delaware that he knows how to get things done internationally. I understand the national security and intelligence issues, he said. Advertisement Thats what Ive done my whole life. Trump has no notion of it. None. Mr Bidens campaign also has assembled an experienced team of foreign policy advisers. Among them is Susan Rice, national security adviser and UN ambassador under Barack Obamas presidency, who is on the shortlist for vice president. If she is not selected, she could become a key adviser if Mr Biden wins. The Trump campaign casts Mr Bidens foreign policy experience as a weakness. Joe Bidens record of appeasement and globalism would be detrimental for American foreign policy and national security, and after decades of the status quo, President Trump has made it clear that the United States will no longer be taken advantage of by the rest of the world, deputy press secretary Ken Farnaso said in a statement. For decades, the first and often only foreign policy shift that new presidents of both parties directed on their first day in office, and Mr Trump was no exception, was abortion-related. Like clockwork, Republicans enacted the so-called Mexico City language, known by opponents as the global gag rule, to prohibit the use of US foreign assistance for abortion-related services. Democrats rescinded it and should Mr Biden win, he has promised to follow suit. Advertisement But he has also pledged to demolish other Trump policies on Day One. They include reversing Mr Trumps ban on immigration from mainly Muslim countries, restoring US funding and membership to the WHO and halting efforts to oppose the Paris Climate Accord. He has promised to call top Nato leaders and declare of US foreign policy, Were back while convening a summit of major heads of state in his first year. One area that will require more nuance is China, which Mr Trump has placed at the top of his foreign policy agenda and on which he has painted Mr Biden as weak. After previously boasting of warm ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Mr Trump has relentlessly attacked China, blaming it for the coronavirus outbreak that threatens his reelection prospects. Mr Biden also has said he would immediately restore daily press briefings at the White House, State Department and Pentagon, events once deemed critical to communicate US policy that the Trump administration has all but abandoned. Mr Biden and his surrogates say they intend to act quickly on the following: Middle East: Restore assistance to the Palestinian Authority that the Trump administration has eliminated as well as to agencies that support Palestinian refugees. Mr Biden has not said he will reverse Mr Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital or return the embassy to Tel Aviv. United Nations: Restore US membership in UN agencies such as the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and possibly the UN Human Rights Commission. Europe: Tone down rhetoric Trump has used to berate and insult European allies. Mr Biden can be expected to try to warm relations among Nato partners. Africa: Try to raise Americas profile on the continent, which has become a new battleground for competition with China. Asia: Revert to a traditional US stance supporting the presence of American troops in Japan and South Korea. Mr Biden has also criticised Mr Trumps personal relationship with Kim. Latin America: Cancel Trump administration agreements that sent asylum-seeking immigrants to Mexico and other countries while they await court dates and halt all new construction of the southern border wall. Mr Biden also wants to restart Obama-era engagement with Cuba. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi congratulated on Saturday the United Arab Emirates on the operation of its Barakah nuclear energy plant, the presidency said on its official website. "I extend congratulations to the United Arab Emirates and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed on launching operations at Barakah Nuclear Power Plant," El-Sisi said, describing it as "significant accomplishment" added to the UAEs record. The United Arab Emirates on Saturday announced the successful startup of its nuclear power plant Barakah, the first Arab nuclear energy plant, was built by a consortium led by the Korea Electric Power Corporation at a cost of $24.4 billion. When fully operational, its four reactors have the capacity to generate 5,600 megawatts of electricity, around 25 percent of the UAE's needs. "This achievement embodies the long-awaited and aspired dream of the Arab nation to be a great and inspiring pioneer in all fields serving humanity," the president added. Search Keywords: Short link: By PTI KOLKATA: The West Bengal forest department is bringing six tigers to Buxa Tiger Reserve in Alipurduar district, as part of its effort to augment the population of big cats in the national park, an official said on Saturday. The six big cats are being brought from Kaziranga National Park in Assam, Chief Wildlife Warden Ravikant Sinha told PTI. "Arrangements have been made to ensure safe and smooth transit of the animals," he said. Sinha said the government wanted to increase the population of Royal Bengal tigers in BTR, the largest forest in North Bengal with an area of 745 sq-km. "Recently, two Royal Bengal tigers have been spotted in Buxa through our camera traps. These two big cats were seen from various locations of the core area of the forest. So, at least two tigers are there already and we need to raise the number," Sinha said. The six tigers are being relocated from Kaziranga to Buxa as these two reserve forests have similar habitats, the official said. The BTR, which is spread over the plains and foothills, has about 390 sq-km of core area and is home of 73 mammal species including leopard, chital deer and wild boar. The forest department had recently launched a short film about the BTR, the official said. The film was handed over to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to create a buzz about the reserve forest nationally, he added. New York A positive coronavirus test in a New York City school will trigger a two-week classroom shutdown under a reopening plan announced by the nation's largest public school system. If there is a single confirmed case, the entire classroom will self-quarantine for 14 days and receive instruction remotely under the plan released by Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday. If there are two confirmed cases in different classes, the entire school building will shut down while contact tracers investigate. "We are doing everything in our power to keep kids healthy while ensuring they are getting the education they deserve," de Blasio said. "These rigorous test and trace protocols will keep our students and staff safe as we start off this new school year." Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat like de Blasio, has said it is up to him to decide whether any of the state's 700 school districts can open in September at all. Friday was the deadline for districts including New York City's to submit their reopening plans to the state. De Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza previously announced a hybrid reopening plan for the 1.1 million-pupil system, with most students spending two or three days a week in physical classrooms and learning remotely the rest of the time. Parents can request full-time remote learning for their children if they prefer it. De Blasio said Friday that schools won't open at all unless the citywide rate of positive COVID-19 tests is below 3% a lower number than the 5% rate that has been cited by experts as a sign that it's safe to open schools and businesses. "This is a way of proving that we will do things the right way, setting a very tough bar but also one I am convinced we can achieve," de Blasio said, noting that the city has been below 3% every day since June 10. Face coverings and social distancing will be required under the plan, and school buildings will be cleaned throughout the day and disinfected at night. School staff will have priority access to free COVID-19 testing with expedited results, officials said. Every school will have an isolation room for students who are exhibiting symptoms of the virus. Carranza said officials "are actively engaged with" with unions representing teachers, principals and other school staffers on implementing the plan. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. But United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the plan's safety measures don't go far enough. "We need randomized testing of school communities throughout the year and a vigorous contact tracing system that gives schools test results and a course of action with a 24-hour turnaround," Mulgrew said in a statement. "What's more, even if there are stronger safety standards in place, we still have grave concerns about the city's ability to enforce them effectively in every school. Right now, this is not enough to protect students and staff. " Under the plan, students will stay together in pods or cohorts in order to facilitate contact tracing in the event of a positive case. De Blasio and Carranza, who joined the mayor at a briefing Friday, acknowledged that high schools and middle schools will look different from pre-coronavirus days when students who had English together typically split off into different classes for math, social studies and other subjects. "When there's demand, the market reacts quickly," she says. "People are wearing them all day, every day, so we're seeing improvements in things like ease of wear and ease of communication," she added, citing a mask with a clear front that allows people to see the wearer's facial expressions. The urge to innovate has been great in Japan, where masks were widespread even before the pandemic, used to warm faces or protect against pollen, influenza or the unwelcome gaze of strangers. While most people in the country are still wearing cheap white surgical masks, consumers have begun to move away from viewing face coverings as a one-and-done commodity, something picked up at a convenience store, worn a few times and tossed in the trash. Taisuke Ono, chief executive of a tech startup, Donut Robotics, says he envisioned a world where people could be wearing masks on trips abroad for the next 10 years or more. If that happens, they will demand that their masks do more than just protect them from viruses, he says. His company is building a mask that serves as a combination walkie-talkie, personal secretary and translator. It can record its user's voice, projecting it to someone else's smartphone all the better for social distancing or translating it from Japanese into a variety of languages. Loading "The pandemic made this possible," he says, noting that his prototype had generated media attention and enormous interest from investors on Makuake, a Japanese version of Kickstarter. Before, he says, "even if you made something like this, no one would invest in it, and you couldn't sell it. Now, the global market has grown several times." Although the pandemic will end at some point, he added, "people will still be using masks because they're afraid". While it's unclear how well some of these more ambitious masks will fare with consumers, one innovation has been a clear hit: face coverings with high-tech fabrics that are said to provide superior comfort or protection. As summer temperatures rise, masks made of materials intended to keep wearers cool are in demand. People who have been wearing reusable cloth masks including those sent by the Japanese government to every household in the country are finding them ill-suited for the heat and humidity of summer in central Japan, much less Singapore or Hong Kong. Toyoshima, a Nagoya-based trading company, began collecting funds for a new mask made with military-grade nylon in mid-April. It raised over $US1.2 million more than 13,000 per cent of its goal. Customers told the company that they wanted a highly effective mask that was also fashionable, says Koki Yamagata, who leads the company's crowdfunding initiatives. "A lot of people said that they wanted more colours," he says as he modelled a white version of the mask, which retails for around $US50, on a Zoom call. The products have not generated much profit, he says, adding that the company began making them partly out of a sense of social responsibility. Other Japanese companies have followed suit. Tadashi Yanai, founder of Uniqlo, the giant clothing retailer, insisted that his company would not sell masks but changed his mind after customers clamoured for a product made from the brand's high-performance, fast-drying fabric. The masks sold out immediately, and the company has committed to making 500,000 packs a week, according to a spokesman, who says that the company was now planning to sell them overseas as well. For some clothing makers, producing masks have been a necessity, with retail sales slowing considerably as consumers stay home. Many "factories haven't had much to do for two or three months, so they're saying 'Why don't we make cloth masks?' " says Kensuke Kojima, a product consultant for the fashion industry. While medical practitioners have worn masks of one sort or another for hundreds if not thousands of years, the masks worn today were first developed in the late 19th century for use during surgeries. They were first employed to fight epidemics in the early 20th century, when Wu Lien-teh, a doctor of Chinese descent, began promoting simple gauze masks as an effective method for battling an outbreak of pneumonic plague in a part of north-eastern China then known as Manchuria. When the Spanish flu hit in 1918, the practice went global for the first time. While masks soon fell out of favour in most countries, the Japanese government continued encouraging their use for fighting common illnesses like the flu, said Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. The ubiquity of surgical masks in Japan, which are typically made of non-woven synthetic materials, has risen and fallen over the years as the country confronted different health issues and crises. In the 1990s, they became a popular defence against clouds of seasonal pollen created by fast-growing trees, like cypress, planted across the country to provide a source of cheap timber. In 2011, after the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, mask stocks ran low as consumers feared radioactive fallout. And in the following years, drastic increases in pollution from China drove more demand, particularly in the winter. But, even in Japan, it took a pandemic to push mask sales into the stratosphere, with face coverings in such short supply early on that people were lining up at the crack of dawn to buy a box. Months later, masks are abundant, and shops in Harajuku, the youth fashion mecca, are increasingly putting them on prominent display. On Takeshita Street, storefronts are lined with masks ranging from the playful (plush animal faces) to the punk-inspired (leather straps studded with spikes and safety pins). Although masks may be fashionable, buyers should beware, says Kazunari Onishi, an expert on infectious diseases at the Graduate School of Public Health at St Luke's International University in Tokyo. "You must choose a mask that meets the national standards," he says, adding that "other types of masks are not intended to be used against infection". "If your priority is reliably preventing infection, these masks will not protect your life," he says, adding that even if you wear a mask, "you must maintain a safe social distance''. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman has accused the president of bullying and intimidation and said coming forward in impeachment proceedings helped end his career . After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career, he wrote in an op-ed with The Washington Post. Lt Col Vindman experienced attacks from Donald Trump after he testified before Congress during the presidents impeachment hearings. His testimony became key in the impeachment inquiry, as he expressed alarm over Mr Trumps phone call with Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky. During the phone call, Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky to open an investigation into political rival Joe Biden. Lt Col Vindmans op-ed went on to warn about the dangers of the Trump administration to those who speak out about the president. At no point in my career or life have I felt our nations values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving, he wrote. The Iraq veteran and Purple Heart recipient was born in the Soviet Union but left at the age of three following the death of his mother. He found himself in the public eye after being assigned to the National Security Council under the Trump administration. Congress subpoenaed Lt Col Vindman to testify during the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry, making him the first from the White House to speak under oath about Mr Trump. During my testimony in the house impeachment inquiry, I reassured my father, who experienced Soviet authoritarianism first-hand, saying, Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth. Despite Trumps retaliation, I stand by that conviction, he wrote. After Lt Col Vindmans testimony, he was denounced by the president and subject to repeated attacks from Republicans. This summer, his promotion in the army from lieutenant colonel to colonel was delayed, triggering speculation that the president was retaliating against Lt Col Vindman. On 7 July, the day after the Pentagon approved Lt Col Vindmans promotion, he submitted a letter of resignation. His retirement came into effect on 1 August. Lt Col Vindman decided to resign because he believed that staying would result in more retaliation from the president and allies. Despite losing his career over this painful experience, however, he stood by his testimony. America has thrived because citizens have been willing to contribute their voices and shed their blood to challenge injustice and protect the nation. It is in keeping with that history of service that, at this moment, I feel the burden to advocate for my values and an enormous urgency to act, he wrote. He added: To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream. The scary swing at the ADAM Lookout in Amsterdam If you're desperate to get away this summer, but have been put off by the new quarantine rules suddenly slapped on holidaymakers in Spain, your saviour could be long weekends in some of Europes most amazing cities. Better still, prices are low for many short breaks, with some packages costing less than half as much as a year ago, and theres so much availability you can normally book at the last minute. Here are four safer haven city breaks to consider. Amsterdam is a top choice for a long weekend. Flights are under 90 minutes and the train journey from the airport to the city centre takes just 15 minutes and costs about 5. Arrive in the evening and eat at one of the many restaurants that spill out over cobbled streets lining the canals. The next day, art-lovers can take advantage of new limited numbers (and extra space) in the Van Gogh Museum or the Rijksmuseum to see works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and many more. Take a free ferry to the Eye Filmmuseum, housed in what looks like a giant white spaceship. Then head to the sky deck of the ADAM Lookout building next door to have a go on Europes highest over the edge swing. Day two should include the extraordinary Anne Frank House. Then get a taste of Holland by walking past windmills in Amsterdam Forest on the way to the Boerderij Meerzicht pancake house for a sweet or savoury treat. Visit lastminute.com for flights and two nights in a four-star hotel from 129pp. Berlin is where political history comes alive. A bus from the airport takes 30 minutes and costs about 2, or a taxi is around 25. The citys unofficial slogan is Poor but sexy, so expect a grungy but vibrant weekend of street art and flea markets. Walk the line of the Wall and learn its secrets at the old Checkpoint Charlie, where post-war politics is explained on dozens of information boards. Renting a bike helps cram in plenty of sights. Ride past the Brandenburg Gate and cross the Tiergarten to climb the Victory Column for an amazing view of the city. Then circle back via the Reichstag with its Norman Foster additions to museum island, where one ticket gets you into all five buildings. Shining example: The imposing Brandenburg Gate in Berlin Day two can include a walking tour through the Soviet architecture of East Berlin, where the revolving restaurant at the top of the old TV tower at Alexanderplatz is now open again. Or head to Tempelhof airport, famous for the Berlin airlift. Its now an urban park where you can walk down the runways before grabbing a drink or snack from a food stall. Visit ba.com/berlin for flights and two nights in a four-star hotel from 149pp. Bologna is the perfect choice for a taste of Italy. Its a foodie paradise with great markets and excellent restaurants. Flights take just over two hours, and the five-mile trip from the airport to the city centre costs about 6 by bus or 20 in a taxi. Toast your arrival with an Aperol spritz in a pavement bar amid the tangles of Unesco-protected medieval streets that twist off the perfectly preserved Piazza Maggiore. During the day, food tours have restarted, with strict hygiene at tasting stops. Bologna is famous for Parma ham, balsamic vinegar, parmesan cheese and incredible pastas and lasagnes. It is also a great place to see some Old Masters head to the National Art Gallery for works by Raphael, Titian and El Greco, or try MAMbo for contemporary art and lunch in its stylish cafe. Vibrant: The view over Bologna, which is the perfect choice for a taste of Italy Dinner can be eaten alfresco in a warm Italian square. Then stroll the ancient streets, gelato in hand. Day two starts with a walk along the Portico di San Luca. At nearly 2 miles, its the longest colonnade in the world, with 666 arches stretching out of town to the basilica of San Luca. Back in Bologna, two medieval leaning towers, Le Due Torri, are symbols of the city. Theres a viewing area at the top of the straightest one. Climber numbers are limited to ensure social distancing. Trailfinders.com has flights, private transfers and two nights in a four-star hotel from 249pp Nice is the place for a weekend of old-school glamour and art. Oligarchs usually get from the airport to the city by helicopter non-oligarchs can take a taxi for about 30 or a half-hour bus ride for 2. Start a Riviera weekend with a stroll along the Promenade des Anglais and consider blowing your budget with a drink at the Hotel Le Negresco. French fancy: Nice is the place for a weekend of old-school glamour and art Next morning, after coffee and croissants, head back to the Corniche and tour the Massena Museum. Its a Belle Epoque mansion that tells the story of the town and its famous residents, including Napoleon Bonaparte. For glorious views across the Mediterranean, climb the Colline du Chateau from the old town. Back at sea level, a photo of the red-domed Russian Cathedral will make friends think you went to Moscow. Dinner could include local favourite salade nicoise. Next day, tour the flower market or head to the Musee Matisse or Musee Marc Chagall to see works by two of the towns most famous adopted sons. Want a final taste of glamour before you head home? Monte Carlo is half an hour away by train. British Airways (ba.com/nice) has flights plus two nights in a four-star hotel from 169pp. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be lengthy, the World Health Organisation has warned after its emergency committee met to evaluate the crisis six months after first declaring an international emergency. A nuanced approach to tackling Covid-19 is needed to reduce the risk of response fatigue as the diseases places continued social and economic pressures on countries, the panel said. The committee gathered in Geneva on Friday exactly six months on from its declaration that coronavirus was public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), its highest level of alert. WHO continues to assess the global risk level of Covid-19 to be very high, the organisation said in a statement issued on Saturday. The committee highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of this Covid-19 pandemic, noting the importance of sustained community, national, regional, and global response efforts. The virus has killed more than 680,500 people worldwide and infected at least 17.6 million, according to a tally by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The WHO warned this week the global spread of the disease is still accelerating, with the number of cases doubling in the past six weeks. During Fridays meeting, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the committee: Its sobering to think that six months ago, when you recommended I declare a PHEIC, there were less than 100 cases and no deaths outside China. The pandemic is a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come, he added. The emergency committee advised the WHO to provide nuanced, pragmatic guidance on criteria for appropriate Covid-19 response activities to reduce the risk of response fatigue in the context of socio-economic pressures. It also called for more research into critical unknowns, such as the animal source of the disease and long-term health impacts in survivors. The committee will meet again within three months. "The establishment of the memorial is extremely important for our country. Its history contains a lot of tragic pages. But we must bear them in mind and tell the coming generations about them. Such moments should stay in the history of Ukraine. They are in our talks, in our memory, in books. It would be very good if this project were brought into life and we built history together with you." President Zelensky also emphasized the importance of remembering the Ukrainian "Righteous Among the Nations," who saved Jews in the Holocaust. In a significant development, the meeting participants agreed to form a working committee, headed by Andrii Yermak, Head of the Presidential Administration. The committee will coordinate regarding the framework of the Memorial's establishment as well as to prepare for the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy. Supervisory Board member, President of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, stressed that the future memorial must give visitors a clear answer to the question of what is anti-Semitism and draw the world's attention to Babyn Yar. Ronald Lauder said, "This is the third generation that knows about the Holocaust. But while almost everybody knows about Auschwitz, the history of Babyn Yar is almost unknown to young people. I want people to visit Kyiv in order to see the Babyn Yar Memorial, to understand what happened here. We have a chance now to do something fantastic. The more people that know what happened at Babyn Yar, the better off the world will be." The Head of the Supervisory Board, Natan Sharansky pointed out that the history of Babyn Yar is not only of importance for Jewish people, as it is also the site where other nationalities perished, in particular, Ukrainian, Belarus, and Polish people. Natan Sharansky said, "This initiative is not just a monument, but a critical memorial, with a museum, a research center, contributing to raising the degree of tolerance in society, playing a global role in Ukraine's positioning in the world. Such institutions throughout the world are established in partnership with the state and supported by its key officials." The first President of Ukraine (1991-1994) Leonid Kravchuk, who has also joined the Supervisory Board, emphasized that the future Memorial will make an indisputable historical statement. "This Project is interesting, important, and highly comprehensive. It is part of history. Babyn Yar is a terrible tragedy and that's why we have to create an unrivalled memory of it, to make the best project possible." Another Supervisory Board member, former-Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Chancellor of Germany (1998-2005) Joschka Fischer, said "For my country, it's very important not to forget and to contribute everything that we can towards memory of the Holocaust and this terrible crime." In September 1941, just days after the Nazis occupied Kyiv, around 34,000 of the city's Jews were marched to the Babyn Yar ravine and shot dead over a two-day period. Later massacres were also carried out at the same site, killing victims of other minorities and nationalities. The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center will respectfully commemorate the victims of the tragedy and promote the humanization of mankind through preserving memory and study of the history of the Holocaust. About the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre is a non-governmental charity whose purpose is to preserve and cultivate the memory of the Holocaust and the Babyn Yar tragedy in Ukraine by turning the Babyn Yar area into a place of remembrance. The Foundation's mission is to worthily honour the memory of the victims of the tragedy and to contribute to the humanization of society through preserving and studying the history of the Holocaust. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1222366/President_Ukraine_Volodymyr_Zelensky.jpg SOURCE Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center Yves here. Laffaire Skripal never hung together well. And now the central claim, that the Russians used Novochik, looks to have fallen apart. By John Helmer. Originally published at Dances with Bears Austria officially confirmed this week that the British Governments allegation that Novichok, a Russian chemical warfare agent, was used in England by GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, in March 2018, was a British invention. Investigations in Vienna by four Austrian government ministries, the BVT intelligence agency, and by Austrian prosecutors have revealed that secret OPCW reports on the blood testing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, copies of which were transferred to the Austrian government, did not reveal a Russian-made nerve agent. Two reports, published in Vienna this week by the OE media group and reporter Isabelle Daniel, reveal that the Financial Times publication of the cover-page of one of the OPCW reports exposed a barcode identifying the source of the leaked documents was the Austrian government. The Austrian Foreign Ministry and the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekampfung (BVT), the domestic intelligence agency equivalent to MI5 or FBI, have corroborated the authenticity of the documents. The Austrian disclosures also reveal that in London the Financial Times editor, Roula Khalaf, four of the newspapers reporters, and the management of the Japanese-owned company have fabricated a false and misleading version of the OPCW evidence and have covered up British government lying on the Skripal blood testing and the Novichok evidence. On Wednesday afternoon this week, OE24, a news portal of the OE media group in Vienna, broke the first story (lead image, right) that the barcode found on the OPCW document photograph published in London had been traced to several Austrian state ministries. The next day, OE political editor Isabelle Daniel reported the Austrian Foreign, Defence and Economics Ministries had received copies of the barcoded OPCW dossier, and that the Justice Ministry and prosecutors were investigating potential moles. Daniel also quoted a Foreign Ministry source as saying its copy of the documents had been securely stored in its disarmament department safe, and that there were no tips the leak had come from there. Daniel also quoted a BVT spokesman as confirming the authenticity of the OPCW file had been verified. We have checked it recently. Officially it has not come to us. Left: Isabelle Daniel of OE, Vienna. Right, Roula Khalaf Razzouk, editor of the Financial Times since her recent appointment by the Nikkei group, the newspapers owner. Her full name and concealment of her Lebanese political and business interests can be followed here. The names of the four Financial Times reporters who have participated in the misrepresentation and cover-up are Paul Murphy, investigations editor; Dan McCrum, a reporter; Helen Warrell, NATO correspondent; and Max Seddon of the Moscow bureau. The leak had been an explosive secret betrayal and a criminal investigation was under way, OE24 reported. OE is a privately owned Austrian media group, based in Vienna. It publishes a newspaper, the news portal OE.at, radio and television. The Financial Times report first exposing the OPCW documents appeared on July 9. Details of how the newspaper fabricated the interpretation the OPCW had corroborated Russian involvement in the Novichok attack can be read here. For the full Skripal story, read the book. At an OPCW Executive Council meeting on April 14, 2018, five weeks after the Skripal attack, the British Government confirmed that a few days earlier all States parties had received copies of the OPCW dossier. This included Austria, as the Viennese sources now acknowledge. Source: https://www.opcw.org/ The OPCW responded promptly to our request to send their experts to the United Kingdom, declared Peter Wilson, the British representative to the OPCW on April 14, 2018. They conducted a highly professional mission. The OPCWs designated laboratories have also responded professionally and promptly. What the Director-General said was really important on this, and the Technical Secretariats presentation shows how professional that work was. The report the Technical Secretariat presented to us on 11 April was thorough and methodical. The Technical Secretariat responded quickly to our request to share that report with all States Parties. All have had the chance to see the quality of that work. Wilson went on to say: As you know, on 4 March Yulia and Sergei Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, the United Kingdom, with a chemical weapon, which United Kingdom experts established to be a Novichok. OPCW has now clearly verified those findings. The Austrian copy of the OPCW file now confirms this was a misrepresentation of the chemical formula and other evidence the OPCW had gathered. Wilson went on to conclude: the identification of the nerve agent used is an essential piece of technical evidence in our investigation, neither DSTLs [Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down] analysis, nor the OPCWs report, identifies the country or laboratory of origin of the agent used in this attack. So let me also set out the wider picture, which leads the United Kingdom to assess that there is no plausible alternative explanation for what happened in Salisbury than Russian State responsibility. We believe that only the Russian Federation had the technical means, operational experience, and the motive to target the Skripals. The first qualifying sentence was the British truth; the conclusion was the British lie. The Austrian evidence now verifies there was no evidence of a Russian source in the blood and other test samples; no evidence of Novichok; and no evidence to corroborate the British allegations of a Russian chemical warfare attack. In its report, the Financial Times displayed a partial photograph of the cover-page of one of the OPCW documents in its possession (lead image, left). A classification stamp appears to be showing through the title page, but no barcode is visible. The London newspaper appears to have cropped the published picture so as to hide the barcode. That concealment proof of the Austrian source allowed the newspaper reporters to claim the source of the document was unknown, probably Russian, as the headline implied: Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek touted Russian nerve gas documents. A British military source was reported as claiming the documents were unlikely to have come from OPCW member states in western Europe or the US. Khalaf and her reporters added: The OPCW, which is based in The Hague, said this week that it was investigating the matter, but declined further comment. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. With the barcode in their possession but hidden, they knew they were publishing a combination of disinformation and lies. The disclosure of the barcode to the Austrians appears to have followed after they had requested it from Khalaf. She checked with her superiors in the newspaper management before handing it over. They believed they were doing so in secret. It is not known if Motohiro Matsumoto, the Nikkei executive responsible for the London publishing company, was alerted and gave his authorization. Matsumoto, one of the five directors of Financial Times Ltd., is the general manager of Nikkeis global business division. He takes his running orders from Nikkeis chairman and a long-time media executive, Tsuneo Kita. Matsumoto replaced Hirotomo Nomura at the head of the Financial Times on March 25, 2020. When Nikkei bought the newspaper from Pearson Plc in 2015, Nikkei became its sole proprietor. The Austrian press has yet to report how the barcode was obtained from the newspaper. Because the BVT and state prosecutors in Vienna are involved in their search for the moles, it is likely they contacted their counterparts at MI5 and the Home Office, and that the newspaper agreed to hand over its copy of the OPCW file to the latter. The collaboration of the journalists with the secret services to falsify evidence against Moscow in the Novichok story remains a sensitive secret. Source: https://m.oe24.at/ Khalaf has refused repeated requests for comment. Max Seddon, the newspapers Moscow reporter, was also asked for additional information about the photograph of the cover-page. He will not answer. Ukraine welcomes 'constructive' talks over plane crash with Tehran Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 10:14 AM Ukraine says the first round of talks between Kiev and Tehran about the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane near Tehran was constructive, but it was too early to say how much compensation Iran would agree to pay. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday that talks with an Iranian delegation on Thursday were constructive but it was too early to say how much compensation Tehran would agree to pay. "The talks ended late last night. The talks lasted 11 hours. In general, they were constructive," Kuleba said after meeting with the Iranian diplomats. "There is agreement and understanding that the most transparent and unbiased investigation by Iran is needed," he added. He also said that Kiev will take the case to international courts if the negotiations are unsuccessful. With 167 passengers and nine crewmembers on board, Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashed outside Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on January 8, moments after takeoff. Iranian authorities acknowledged that the plane had been downed due to human error at a time when Iran's air defenses were on high alert due to increased hostile American aerial activity in the aftermath of the assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Eight sentenced to prison for planning to foment demonstration in HCMC Police guard a trial against a group planning to instigate a demonstration in Ho Chi Minh City, July 31, 2020. Photo courtesy of Vietnam News Agency. A HCMC court on Friday sentenced eight people to 30 months to eight years in jail for seeking to incite a demonstration two years ago. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, 44, identified as the linchpin, got eight years for "disrupting security" while Hoang Thi Ngoc Vang, 54, got seven years for the same crime. Six others got up to five years, with the court ruling that their conduct was "extremely dangerous" and a threat to social order and national security, deserving "strict punishment." According to the indictment, Hanh and Vang were dissatisfied with the government, always accessed "negative information" on social media and shared video clips on their Facebook page to induce people to take part in a demonstration to be held in HCMC on September 4, 2018. Hanh and her accomplices created a secret Facebook group they called Constitution. On August 25, 2018, they discussed plans, assigned tasks, called for donations, and readied weapons for the demonstration. According to investigators, the group planned to organize a mass demonstration in the downtown area aimed at overthrowing the administration, but their plan was foiled by the police. The defendants admitted to receiving money from anti-government organizations operating overseas. With the Law on Demonstration yet to be passed following several delays, acts to incite public protests are illegal in Vietnam. Under Obama, the Voice of America, which is a taxpayer-funded organization intended to promote America and her values around the world, turned into a Democrat outreach program with a particular focus on the Muslim world. It recently put out an Urdu-language and English-language video that was widely circulated amongst Muslims at home and abroad, and that is an obvious Biden campaign ad and a Muslim get-out-the-vote (for Democrats) effort. The Voice of America (VOA) is a multimedia agency that broadcasts outside of the U.S. It was founded in 1942 specifically to promote American interests abroad. It now reaches countries around the globe and offers programs in 47 different languages. It operates under the aegis of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) In June 2018, President Trump announced that he was nominating Michael Pack to serve as the head of the USAGM. Thanks to the Democrats tactic of slow-walking his nominations to fill various positions, the hearing on Packs nomination didnt take place until September 2019. Democrats tried to block Packs appointment, saying that he was too partisan. It wasnt until June 4, 2020, that Republicans were finally able to secure Packs nomination. The Democrats assertion that partisanship justified blocking Packs appointment was interesting, to say the least, given that the agency was already operating in a partisan way. For example, in April, the Trump administration contended that the VOA was uncritically relaying Chinese propaganda about the Wuhan virus. Once Pack was installed at the USAGM, he immediately fired the heads of various agencies. The media insisted that this was a purge to install partisan loyalists. Its more reasonable to believe that Pack was trying to return the various USAGM departments to their original mission of promoting America abroad. Firing the heads of various departments was a good start, but it wasnt enough. The rank-and-file workers were apparently still busy promoting a pro-Democrat party and pro-Muslim agenda. The VOA is currently being investigated for distributing a 2-minute video to its Urdu services that is nothing more than an ad urging Muslims in America, both Urdu and English speaking, to vote for Biden and other Muslim candidates in Congress. This is not an exaggeration. There is no other way to understand this video: Sara Carter reports that Pack will be investigating the video, which not only violates VOAs charter and codes but also potentially violates the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities: The agency overseeing U.S. foreign broadcasting services announced Thursday that it has launched an investigation into Voice of America a major multi-media agency with extensive global reach after it promoted a video that can only be described as an apparent election advertisement for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee former Vice President Joe Biden. CEO Michael Pack, with the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) announced the investigation into Voice of America [VOA] shortly after SaraACarter.com first reported the political ad for Biden promoted by the VOAs Urdu services on all their multi-media platforms. Moreover, the video was branded with VOA logos throughout and at the end of the two minute ad. [snip] USAGM staff members who attempt to influence American elections will be held accountable, said Pack in the press release. Our networks comprise the U.S.s megaphone to the world, and this invaluable instrument is generously funded by the American people. To safeguard our agencys reputation and the integrity of our content, I will continue to ensure that violations of journalistic standards and principles are dealt with swiftly and fairly. This investigation and, indeed, every action that I have taken since starting my tenure last month has been to repair USAGM so that, once again, U.S. government international broadcasting advances the American national interest. It is to be hoped that Pack will ensure that, going forward, the Voice of America is just that, rather than the voice of the Democrat party or any other special interest groups. As for Packs promise that USAGM staff members . . . will be held accountable, Im not holding my breath. The sad reality of Washington D.C. is that leftists are never held accountable. On the one hand, the Federal Appellate Court in the District of Columbia will turn Gen. Michael Flynn, who didnt collude with or lie to anybody, into the unhappy defendant trapped in Franz Kafkas The Trial. On the other hand, people who worked to advance Obamas agenda or oppose Trumps get multi-million-dollar book deals. Image: YouTube screengrab Americas top infectious diseases official has raised concerns over the safety of Covid-19 vaccines being developed by China and Russia as the world scrambles for answers to a pandemic the WHO warned will be felt for decades. Six months after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency, the novel coronavirus has killed at least 679,000 people and infected at least 17.9 million, according to an AFP tally. As countries across Western Europe announced new lockdowns and reported historic economic slumps, the UN health body said the pandemic was a once-in-a-century crisis and its fallout would be felt for decades. Several Chinese companies are at the forefront of the race to develop an immunity to the disease and Russia has set a target date of September to roll out its own vaccine. But US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said it was unlikely his country would use any vaccine developed in either country, where regulatory systems are far more opaque than they are in the West. I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing the vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone, he told a US Congressional hearing on Friday. Claims of having a vaccine ready to distribute before you do testing, I think, is problematic, at best. As part of its own Operation Warp Speed, the US government will pay pharma giants Sanofi and GSK up to $2.1 billion for the development of a Covid-19 vaccine, the companies said. In east Asia, territories which saw success in tackling the early wave of the coronavirus are now confronting worrying new spikes. Japans Okinawa declared a state of emergency Saturday after a record jump in cases on the island -- many linked to US military forces stationed there -- while Hong Kong opened a new makeshift hospital to house Covid-19 patients. The finance hub had been a poster child for tackling the coronavirus, with local transmissions all but ended by early summer. But since July daily cases have risen to record highs, partly brought in by the tens of thousands of people who were exempted from a mandatory quarantine imposed on most arrivals. - Fresh lockdowns - France, Spain, Portugal and Italy all reported huge contractions in their economies for the April-June quarter, while Europe as a whole saw gross domestic product fall by 12.1 percent. In a sign of the trade-offs being forced on European governments, Britain imposed new lockdowns Friday on millions of households in northern England. With large Muslim populations in those areas, the ban was painfully timed, on the eve of the Eid-al-Adha festival. Meanwhile, in the United States -- the worlds biggest economy and hardest-hit nation -- jobless Americans were bracing for an end to extra unemployment payments after Congress failed to reach a deal on extending benefits. It came just a day after the US posted a second-quarter GDP drop of 9.5 percent from the same period a year ago, the worst it had ever recorded. - Sect leader arrested - Fresh off a bout of Covid-19, Brazils President Jair Bolsonaro said Friday nearly everyone will probably end up catching the new coronavirus, urging Brazilians to face up to it and saying there was nothing to fear. His comments came as Brazils death toll closes on 100,000 and as Latin Americas biggest airline LATAM said it was laying off at least 2,700 crew over the coronavirus. In South Korea the elderly leader of a secretive sect at the center of the countrys early coronavirus outbreak was arrested Saturday for allegedly hindering the governments effort to contain the epidemic. People linked to Lee Man-hees Shincheonji Church of Jesus accounted for more than half of the Souths coronavirus cases in February and March, when the country was enduring one of the worst early outbreaks in the world. The South has since been returning largely to normal, appearing to have brought the outbreak under control with an extensive trace, test and treat program. Mumbai: At least five persons were killed in a massive explosion in a boiler that ripped through the Manas Agro Industries & Sugar Ltd. plant at Bela here on Aug 1, 2020. According to an official of Nagpur Rural Police, around 2.14 pm, the blast rock Image Source: IANS News Mumbai: At least five persons were killed in a massive explosion in a boiler that ripped through the Manas Agro Industries & Sugar Ltd. plant at Bela here on Aug 1, 2020. According to an official of Nagpur Rural Police, around 2.14 pm, the blast rock Image Source: IANS News Mumbai: At least five persons were killed in a massive explosion in a boiler that ripped through the Manas Agro Industries & Sugar Ltd. plant at Bela here on Aug 1, 2020. According to an official of Nagpur Rural Police, around 2.14 pm, the blast rock Image Source: IANS News Mumbai: At least five persons were killed in a massive explosion in a boiler that ripped through the Manas Agro Industries & Sugar Ltd. plant at Bela here on Aug 1, 2020. According to an official of Nagpur Rural Police, around 2.14 pm, the blast rock Image Source: IANS News Nagpur, Aug 1 : At least five persons were killed in a massive explosion in a boiler that ripped through the Manas Agro Industries & Sugar Ltd. plant at Bela here on Saturday afternoon, the police said. According to an official of Nagpur Rural Police, at around 2.14 p.m., the blast rocked the factory followed by a fire, grievously burning and killing the workers instantly. The sugar factory is part of the Manas Group, and was earlier known as Purti Power & Sugar Factory, owned by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari's family. "Prima facie, it appears that the victims were doing some welding work at this particular site and some gas leak may have led to the explosion. The real causes will come out after the probe by the concerned department. We are investigating the matter and lodging the necessary complaints," Superintendent of Police Rakesh Ola, who rushed to the site, told IANS. The victims have been identified as Liladhar W. Shende, 42, Vasudev Ladi, 30, Praful P. Moon, 25, Sachin P. Waghmare, 24 and Mangesh P. Nakerkar, 21. The police had to pacify the angry crowd before the bodies could be removed from the spot. Waghmare was the welder at the plant and the others were his team of helpers, and all were engaged in some maintenance work at the time of the explosion which was followed by a fire and clouds of smoke billowing from the premises. Expressing shock over the tragedy, Shiv Sena leader Kishore Tiwari called for a thorough time-bound probe into the incident to determine whether norms governing the boiler management were adhered to, and follow up with stringent action against the factory officials found negligent. "All the labourers killed are Dalits and it is the obligation of the factory management to pay a compensation of Rs 1 crore to the families of each of the victims as they have lost their breadwinners," Tiwari said. According to some videos of the post-blast scene, at least one two-wheeler vehicle was damaged in the blast. How are you? For many, during times of COVID-19, such a simple question may generate a level of anguish not normally experienced. Periods of confinement, loneliness and loss of employment are all circumstances being exacerbated by the extended lockdowns. While the growing number of deaths has become a daily tragic consequence of the surge in infections, the impact on people's mental health is also taking its toll. Soon after the second lockdown began, Lifeline was reporting a 22 per cent surge in calls in Victoria, while Beyond Blue had seen a doubling of demand for support services. Beyond Blue chief executive Georgie Harman said that early in the pandemic people were reporting feeling worried, uncertain or overwhelmed, while in more recent times they had seen more signs of exhaustion and fatigue. Lifeline has seen a dramatic increase in people needing support. Credit:Robert Peet Victoria is hardly alone. The largest survey of nationwide mental health during the height of the restrictions found mental health problems had doubled. The first major survey of Britain's strict coronavirus lockdown found the mental health of women, the young and people living with children were most affected by the upheaval. But knowing the problem exists, and having the resources to support those in need, are two very different things. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is not shy in pointing out that the state's mental health system is broken, a view supported by the state's royal commission which bluntly stated in its interim report that the system had "catastrophically failed to live up to expectations". BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.1 By Fidan Babayeva Trend: The import of products from Portugal to Azerbaijan increased by 21.1 percent over the first 6 months of 2020, compared to the same period of last year, and made up $5.9 million, Trend reports on August 1 referring to the statistical bulletin of the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee. In the reporting period, Portugals share in the total import volume of Azerbaijan showed an increase from 0.07 percent to 0.12 percent of the total volume. Meanwhile, the export of Azerbaijani products to Portugal made up $130.7 million which is 63 percent less than in the first half of last year ($213.3 million). Portugals share in the total export volume of Azerbaijan decreased from 2.1 percent to 1.7 percent. The foreign trade operations between Azerbaijan and Portugal amounted to $136.7 million from January through June this year, which is 1.5 times less than in the same period of 2019. The balance of foreign trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Portugal during the reporting period was positive and amounted to over $124.7 million. In general, the foreign trade turnover of Azerbaijan amounted to $12.6 billion from January through June 2020, which is 34.1 percent less than in the same period of 2019. The balance of foreign trade turnover on an annualized basis declined by 10 percent and remained negative, amounting to $2.6 billion. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Fidan_Babaeva Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton splashed a cool $6.25million on a lavish English manor named Highwell House in 2016. But beneath the glamour of Cate's sprawling estate is a chilling history she'd likely rather forget. Previously known as Potters Manor or Steep Park, the Victorian manor was once a squalid drug den frequented by criminal, pagans and drifters. The chilling past of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton's English manor is revealed: The A-list couple live in a mansion that was once a squalid pagan drug den painted with witchcraft symbols English charm: Cate and Andrew (pictured) splashed a cool $6.25million on their lavish English manor named Highwell House in 2016 It was originally built in 1890, but began to fall into disrepair in the early 2000s before finally being extensively refurbished in 2015. Instagram images prior to the renovations show the property as a dilapidated squat house with building debris, broken furniture, smashed glass and drug paraphernalia. Pentagram symbols, often used as part of Wiccan and pagan ceremonies, were drawn on the ground, while the word 'Liar' was spray-painted onto a wall in large black letters. Glamorous: Following extensive renovations, the palatial home has been restored to its original grandeur (pictured in 2016) Derelict: It was originally built in 1890, but began to fall into disrepair in the early 2000s. (Pictured in 2012) Eerie: Pentagram symbols, often used as part of Wiccan ceremonies, were drawn on the ground Terrifying: The word 'Liar' was spray-painted onto a wall in large black letters Crumbling walls with ripped wallpaper served as haunting backdrops for rooms that had long been ransacked by looters, while crumpled documents were eerie reminders of previous residents. Many locals even believed the home to be haunted, with some claiming to have photographed ghosts inside its walls. In 2015, The Sun named the manor Britains 13th most creepiest abandoned house. Haunting: Many locals even believed the home to be haunted, with some claiming to have photographed ghosts inside its walls Creepy: Crumbling walls with ripped wallpaper served as haunting backdrops for rooms that had long been ransacked by looters Remnants: Crumpled documents were eerie reminders of previous residents Before Cate and her family moved in, the mansion was owned by a wealthy couple named Mr and Mrs Walford. Mr Walford died in 2001, while his wife moved into an aged care two years later - leaving the property abandoned for a decade before it was refurbished and placed on the market. 'We're just pleased the place is occupied now for years it was derelict and we were getting all sorts of people up there, druggies,' a local told The Daily Telegraph when asked how they feel about Cate and her family moving into Highwell House. 'They were burglars that were taking their loot there and splitting it up at one stage in the old barn,' they said. Two police officers have been suspended following drug raids on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane on Saturday morning. Nine people were detained, including two serving members and a former member of the Queensland Police Service, following a five-month investigation into alleged drug trafficking. In a statement, the QPS said officers from the ethical standards command started the operation in March, with support from the ethical standards command, organised crime gangs group and Gold Coast police. "A 28-year-old male senior constable from South Eastern Region and 29-year-old male senior constable from Central Region have been suspended from duty," the statement said. "As this matter is under investigation by ethical standards command it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage." SANTA FE The administration of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is defending before the state Supreme Court its decision to ban indoor restaurant service as a reasonable precaution against the coronavirus. A challenge to the indoor dining prohibition was in the hands of the state Supreme Court on Friday after a flurry of written briefings were filed by the Governors Office, restaurants that oppose the ban and Republican officials who side with dissident restaurants. Lujan Grisham on Thursday announced the extension of a stay-at-home health order that not only limits restaurant service, but also mandates masks in public and prohibits public gatherings of five people or more. Minor changes are being drafted that would relax self-quarantine provisions for travelers entering or returning to New Mexico. The 7-day rolling average of daily deaths, infections and the rate of positive tests for COVID-19 have all increased over the past two weeks, according to an Associated Press analysis of data collected by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. There were 203 newly confirmed cases per 100,000 people in New Mexico over the past two weeks, which ranks 22nd among states for per-capita new reported cases. The governor has asked that state district court Judge Raymond Romero be ordered to remove himself from the case because of apparent bias if the matter is sent back to the lower court. Romero previously suspended the ban on indoor restaurant service and has urged the Supreme Court to return the case to his court in southern New Mexico. The United Nations committee looking into global insolvency practices is gaining hands-on experience of running short of money. Working group five of the UN Commission on International Trade Law has warned delegates to its next meeting that advance copies of key documents will not be available 'due to the UN's liquidity crisis'. The group is examining insolvency regimes around the world to see how they serve or don't serve small, medium-sized or micro businesses that go bust. A key part of the UN's funding problems relates to actual and proposed actions by Donald Trump It was due to meet in New York in May, but because of the coronavirus crisis will meet in Vienna this December. A key part of the UN's funding problems relates to actual and proposed actions by Donald Trump. On June 8, the US think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, warned: 'The US remains the largest donor to the UN, contributing $10 billion in 2018, slightly less than a fifth of the UN's collective budget.' Until now, the president's attempts to cut US spending on the UN have been largely frustrated by Congress, but it warns: 'If proposed cuts to foreign aid spending go through, the UN is likely to undergo significant changes.' A fundraising effort is underway to help the family of Cody Grennan, a 10-month-old baby with a rare illness. Cody is the son of Spain-based Sligo musician Johnny Grennan and Finland native Pinja Koskinen, and has undergone a number of surgeries to deal with complex issues that affect his breathing. Soon after the birth of Cody last September in Torrevieja on the Spanish coast, it became evident to Cody's parents and doctors that he was struggling to breathe - it soon transpired after a number of scans that his trachea was almost non-existant. This condition has been described as incredibly rare, and later this year, Cody will undergo another surgery which will attempt to reconstruct part of the trachea. The conditions that Cody has been officially diagnosed with include Esophageal Atresia, Subglottic Stenosis, Tracheamalacia and Tracheostomy. With three surgeries in the early part of his life, Cody's journey has been turbulent and it has been further complicated for the family by the fact that Johnny has been unable to work full-time. In an effort to help with costs, a GoFundMe page has been set up. Caroline Monaghan, a native of Boyle, is one of those involved and says that while the family were a little apprehensive about raising funds, it has been a wonderful success so far since first going live last Sunday week. One of the triggers for Caroline to mention the possibility of setting up a GoFundMe page again, having previously been floated, came when she heard that Johnny, a talented musician, was planning to sell some of his much-cherished and needed equipment. "Johnny, we're always in touch with him," Caroline told The Sligo Champion. "He rang me last week, and he was going auctioning off his music gear. I had spoken to them before about a GoFundMe page - they were a bit unsure about it and they didn't want people to think they were stuck. So I just went ahead and set it up, but I didn't send it out. "Myself and Johnny had a good chat last Sunday and I told him that it is set up, all I have to do is send - I told him you just tell me when. So we said we'd send it and put it out there." The reaction to the campaign has been huge. In little over a week, the page received over thirty thousand euro in donations from all over the globe. The support has been greatly appreciated by the family, and Caroline says they have been staggered by the reach and response the fundraising drive has had. "Within minutes of going up, the money started to come in," Caroline explained. "Johnny's friends did a gig in Spain too to help out. "It has been fantastic - just unreal. When it started we would have thought that five thousand would have been good. Part of it is that Cody's illness is so uncommon. He is such a lovely lad but this illness is so uncommon." The money raised will be of significant assistance to Johnny and Pinja as they continue to care for Cody ahead of his next surgery later this year. The need for specialist care is one element of the unique situation the family find themselves in but Cody continues to fight and, as the GoFundMe page says, does all the things a healthy baby can. "In thta way, Cody is no different," the post says "but our wee boy struggles to breath and his struggle goes on." Caroline continues: "The funds will mainly go towards Cody and what he needs. They are not sure yet if he will need nursing care - but he will need 24-hour care until he is back in hospital in October or November. It takes two to look after him sometimes. We've set a 50 thousand goal now and we're already at over 36 thousand." For more information, and a chance to support the cause, find Cody Grennan (Cody's Giggles) on GoFundMe. Afghan Bomb Blast Kills 17 By Ayaz Gul July 31, 2020 A car bomb blast in the capital city of the Afghan province of Logarn killed at least 17 people and injured dozens more, according to local Afghan officials who spoke to VOA. They said the suicide bomber targeted a security force's convoy in the provincial capital of Pul-e-Alam. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid swiftly denied involvement, saying their fighters had nothing to do with the attack, which came just hours before the three-day Taliban Eid ceasefire went into effect. The festivities started Friday and the Afghan government ordered security forces to cease operations against the insurgents. After Friday morning special Eid prayers, President Ashraf Ghani announced in a televised speech that his government is working to release the remaining up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners in response to the release of all 1,000 Afghan security forces from insurgent custody under a prisoner swap stipulated in the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement. Ghani said, however, he is not authorized to let the prisoners go on his own. He said a special jirga meeting, or council of lawmakers, will be convened to decide the fate of the remaining prisoners so the intra-Afghan talks can begin. The Taliban freed all 1,000 of their detainees on the eve of the Eid but linked its participation in intra-Afghan peace talks to the release of all its 5,000 prisoners from Afghan jails. Also Friday, Afghan authorities alleged cross-border fire from the Pakistani Army killed at least nine civilians and injured 50 others in the southern border town of Spin Boldak. The Afghan army chief said in a statement that he has ordered his forces to prepare for a retaliation, raising tensions. Pakistani officials said that thousands of Afghans attempted to illegally cross into Pakistan from the border entry point in the area. Local Pakistani officials are confirming they opened aerial firing on their side of the border; there are no comments from Pakistan about cross-border fire. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address TISHYA PANDEY By As laid down in retired Justice BN Srikrishnas words, The Final Privacy Bill could turn India into Orwellian State. The economy is slowly recovering from the global pandemic and after much hiccups, the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) held a meeting on Monday to review the issues arising out of the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019. The Committee had been constituted in September 2019 by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MEITY) to deliberate on Data Governance Framework. In 2020, Indias active online platform users stands at 1.3 billion and the scenario has obligated the government to establish a data protection law in India to address the lacunas that the Information Technology Act, 2000. The Indian legal system has failed to address data protection and has not even begun addressing privacy laws while the rest of the world has moved way past us. Our dependence on such laws which are no more than relics is stifling not only the e-commerce domain but also harming the basic protection that should be offered to consumers too, an industry expert stated. The Data Protection (Draft), 2018 had too many safeguards, while on the other hand the PDP Bill, 2019 has fewer safeguards, making it even more dangerous in its operability. It essentially gives government the power to access private data or government agency data on grounds of sovereignty or public order. This raises a huge red flag on how the right to privacy would be guaranteed to all citizens. The data protection problems germane as the Honble Supreme Court on September 26 2018 had delivered a unanimous verdict in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, affirming that the Constitution of India guarantees each individual a fundamental Right to Privacy. The issue which has drawn flak from the citizens pertain to the supreme power bestowed by the government to exempt itself. Clause 35 of the PDP Bill grants government the wide power to exempt any agency of government from application of the Act for the purpose of processing citizens data and has also granted liberty to take steps if satisfied that same is necessary and expedient for maintaining the integrity and sovereignty of India, or for maintaining friendly relations with foreign states and public order. It draws a stark contrast with the draft presented by retired BN Srikrishna in 2018 as it only exempted the processing of data if it is in the interests of the security of the state relying on the conditions laid down in Puttaswamy judgment. The current proposal seems as if the government is the party, judge and adjudicator of its own cause which dilutes the very purpose of having a centralised privacy act and the road block is not limited to clause35 only. The problem with respect to clause 35 is that it is opening room for abuse of powers. There is absolutely no transparency and accountability towards the use of the relevant data as the ultimate target/ citizen in question would never know how their personal data is being used by the Government. In a way it is negating the enjoyment of personal privacy and other digital liberties, an advocate working with a legal firm stated. Now that the Commi t tee is scheduled for a meeting in August, certain questions still need to be pondered into. What if the exemption is granted to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), one of the largest collectors of personal data? Wouldnt be giving unrequited power to government undermine the adjudicating power given to the Data Protection Authority? Its like all of us are sailing on an anchorless ship, with the captain having no idea about what to do. The main focus in principle should have been on expanding the scope of privacy rights, rather it looks as if the bill is going the other way around. We need to draw more knowledge from where such laws are already being enforced and take the aid of industrial specialists who are better equipped to handle the legal lacunas we might face. As a country of 1.3 billion citizens, we owe it to ourselves to expect better governance and a reassurance that our constitutional right to privacy will always be protected. TISHYA PANDEY TMT lawyer based out in Delhi (The writer can be reached at tishyapandey.adv@gmail.com) What I'm listening to: I've got a wicked release from the band Vulfpeck called The Beautiful Game . The only way to get their record is to buy a ticket to their concert and they perform only in America, so I had to get that disc from a record shop that had somehow managed to acquire the vinyl. They're really funky and incorporate some unexpected instruments the record opens with a beautiful free-form clarinet solo. They're right up the top of my listening list at the moment. I'm also pulling out a lot of old favourites; I see that as music education for my children. Stevie Wonder, Kate Bush, even compilation albums like the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. I've got a seven-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl, so they're learning the gentle art of cleaning the record and dropping the needle. What I'm watching: I have just downloaded Amazon Prime. I wanted to watch Picard because I'm a Trekkie. It's the latest Star Trek and we hang out with Picard again, played by Sir Patrick Stewart. He's come back out of retirement and he's on a bit of a rogue mission. It starts off a little slow. Why are we hanging out with Picard in a winery? Where's my space action? And by the end of it I was well satisfied for space action. I've started watching Carnival Row now. It's got some big names, such as Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, who plays a fae, which is a fairy, so she's got these giant dragon fly wings. There are lots of fairies, but it's not a show for kids. The fairies get up to some cheeky adult business. I loved the aesthetic of the show, but I'm just not sure about the acting I'll forgive the acting when the show looks this beautiful. What I'm reading: A history of electronic music called Live Wires by Daniel Warner. It starts off way back with early electronica and it's amazing to discover how exactly they got these sounds. Now it's easy, we just press a button on a synthesiser, but back then they were creating these sounds from the ground up. And a lot of the records that they mention I have the vinyl of, so I can hear it with new ears now. The one before that was Robin Hobb's book Fool's Assassin. It's part of a universe where dragons exist and it's pure escapism. I used to read fantasy novels when I was a kid, the Dragonlance Chronicles, and I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. That universe where elves and dwarfs and orcs and fairies and all these creatures can exist, that's a world where I'm quite happy to exist. Loading I'm also teaching my kids to juggle: That's very important for life. You never know what could happen, they might be needing to be a clown one day. It's also very good for the brain; there's some science about it balancing the two sides because it's creative and also mathematical. So I find value in it, even though it seems like a silly thing to do. And I probably shouldn't have spent my entire youth trying to learn to juggle instead of making friends, but I did. And look at me now! We're in Melbourne and the situation is worrying: My wife's a midwife, so she's there at the front line every day in the hospital. We're all really careful. It's disappointing that so many people are not taking it seriously enough. If you're not wearing a mask, you're going to get judged. Everyone who's a loose link in this is actually having a really negative effect. You're not smarter than the scientists. Just put a bloody mask on. Just wash your hands. My daughter described it as like a world war and the enemy is a virus. For us as parents, we don't want to be alarmist, but at the same time we do need to be pretty straight up with the kids. They're adaptable, but unfortunately for them this is the new world. Dylan Lewis is the new host of Weekends on Double J from 9am-12pm every Saturday and Sunday. Former soldier Lisa Smith has been sent for trial accused of being a member of Islamic State (IS) and financing terrorism. The Co Louth mother-of-one had a book of evidence served on her when she appeared in Dublin District Court yesterday. Judge Marie Quirke sent her forward to the non-jury Special Criminal Court. Ms Smith (38), who left Ireland and married after converting to Islam, was returned here from Turkey last December after spending time in a Syrian refugee camp. An ex-member of the Defence Forces, she is charged with being a member of terrorist group IS outside the State between October 28, 2015, and December 1 last year. Inadequate She is also charged with providing financial assistance of 800 to a man alleged to have been involved in the terror group, via Western Money Transfer on May 6, 2015. She is denying the allegations. Yesterday, a State solicitor said a book of evidence was ready and had been served on the accused. The DPP had certified for trial at the Special Criminal Court and the Attorney General had signed a certificate and letter of consent. The State solicitor said the DPP's opinion was that the ordinary courts were inadequate to secure the effective administration of justice. He said exhibits had been placed on a USB key and provided to the defence. Ms Smith stepped forward when her case was called and was handed the book of evidence, in a large stack of thick, printed volumes. She stood as the judge gave her the formal warning that she must provide any alibi details to the prosecution within 14 days. The judge granted legal aid. Defence solicitor Peter Corrigan said there would be a challenge in relation to reasons for sending his client for trial to the Special Criminal Court. "The current available evidence points to the defendant not being part of any illegal groups" and that it was solely "for religious purposes", he said. Judge Quirke noted his position, and said the Attorney General had provided a certificate and his opinion and "that is a matter for you to consider". She said she was satisfied to make the order sending the accused for trial, remanding her on bail under existing conditions already agreed. Ms Smith nodded to indicate that she understood the alibi warning. The terrorist group membership charge alleges the accused was "a member of a terrorist group styling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), also known as Dawlat al-Iraq al-Islamiyya, Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) and Dawlat al Islamiya fi Iraq wa al Sham, otherwise known as 'Da'esh' and the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham". Last week, Mr Corrigan said Ms Smith would be seeking to challenge the decision on the trial venue. Ms Smith "has been denied now her fundamental right to a jury trial" and would be challenging "the validity of the certificate that has been issued", he said last week. The prosecution argued on that date that the district court had no jurisdiction to hear the argument on a trial venue. The book could be served and the accused returned for trial and this did not prejudice Judicial Review proceedings, a State solicitor said. Her defence also previously asked for the case against her to be reviewed and for the original charge to be discontinued, but a judge has said this was a matter for the DPP and not the courts. Polish towns that declared themselves 'LGBT free zones' in a backlash against gay rights are to be denied EU funds. Hardline president Andrzej Duda has just won five more years in power after a campaign that included attacks on the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community. Now six towns that declared themselves as 'LGBT Free' or banned campaigning for the rights of same-sex couples, have had their requests for town twinning, which comes with potentially lucrative funding, rejected by Brussels. Protesters wear protective face masks and shout slogans as they take part in a protest against discrimination of the LGBT community two days before the Presidential elections runoff at Krakow's UNESCO listed Main Square on July 10, 2020 in Krakow, Poland EU Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli tweeted to say that six town twinning applications from 'Polish authorities that adopted 'LGBT free zones' or 'family rights' resolutions were rejected.' 'EU values and fundamental rights must be respected' by the 27 member countries, Dalli said. The move came as Poland's prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he was looking to potentially withdraw from the European Istanbul Convention, which guards against domestic violence. Poland's government has described the treaty as 'ideologically tainted' and Mr Morawiecki has said the convention raised 'serious doubts', indicating he was leaning toward exiting the convention. Hardline president Andrzej Duda has just won five more years in power after a campaign that included attacks on the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community The Istanbul Convention - an initiative of the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organisation - is billed as a key treaty to combat violence against women. It states that men and women have equal rights and obliges state authorities to take steps to prevent violence against women, protect victims and prosecute perpetrators. The convention, which came into force in 2014, has been signed by 45 European countries and the European Union, but 10 countries - including the UK, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic - have yet to ratify it. Many Poles have protested Poland's desire to withdraw from the treaty and Council of Europe leaders have said such a move 'would be highly regrettable and a major step backwards in the protection of women against violence in Europe'. Large Fire In Tehran Commercial Area Engulfs Warehouses Radio Farda July 31, 2020 Tehran's fire department says a huge blaze broke out this morning in a large commercial area housing depots for various manufactured goods. The local ISNA new website quoted a fire department official who said the blaze started before 11:00 am and fire trucks rushed to the scene at Fadaiyan-e-Islam Street within minutes. They discovered a warehouse and docks covering 3,000 sq. meters (33,000 sq. feet) engulfed in flames. The main blaze covered an area of 700 sq. meters. As of early afternoon, firefighters were still battling the blaze. There are so far no reports of human casualties. Iran has experienced many fires and explosions in the last two months, raising suspicions of deliberate destruction. Forest fires and fires at industrial sites have been frequent. However, incidents at or near military sites have raised more serious questions. An explosion and fire at the highly-guarded uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, on July 2 was attributed to some sort of attack or sabotage even by government officials who are usually keen to attribute such incidents to accidents. Theories about the cause of the Natanz incident range from a possible cyberattack by Israel to internal sabotage and even a cruise missile strike. Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/large- fire-in-tehran-commercial-area- engulfs-warehouses/30758527.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 When Cypress Creek Hospital administrators began a program to address the mental health needs of the first responders in their area, Justin Farris, director of business development and contract administration and spokesperson for the hospital had no idea that they would be expanding the program to reach some of their own colleagues in the health profession because of the coronavirus pandemic. It wasnt in our original plans, but we were able to adjust the program to include them, he said. Nursing home works to recover: Park Manor of CyFair nursing home on the road to recovery after COVID-19 outbreak The irony wasnt lost on the administrators who birthed the program and find themselves poised to share their ingenuity across the nation. Heres the story of how it all began for area first responders. What is the name of the program working with the veterans and first responders? The name of the program is the Honor Strong Program at Cypress Creek Hospital. The program serves first responders, active duty military members, veterans and front-line health care workers. More Information Program Video Links: Full Honor Strong Program Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mX6pjDr3gOVmB4K5uxCunTewznEEVpKu/view?usp=sharing 60 Second Overview Honor Strong Program Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z7Z5053y1ZdrUf9L7NKxc3dXYwQnKzZB/view?usp=sharing Credit: Hancock Advertising www.hancockadvertising.com Editor's note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. See More Collapse When did you begin the program? The program officially opened its doors on Nov. 5, 2018. In response to the overwhelming mental and physical toll the COVID-19 crisis has had on front-line health care workers, Cypress Creek Hospitals Honor Strong Program expanded its services on July 1, 2020 to serve front-line health care workers who are in crisis. On HoustonChronicle.com: In Houston neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID, city takes safety message door to door What did you see in the community that warranted you starting the program? After Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, Cypress Creek saw a need in the community for care and treatment programs designed specifically for first responders. This led to the creation of the Honor Strong Program. The Honor Strong Program was named for the strength and resilience Houston displayed during Hurricane Harvey and the honor binding together members of the military and first responders. Can you share some of the situations they are faced with that is bringing them to the hospital? An Honor Strong Program patients reason(s) for acute care admission is typically the tip of the iceberg relative to addressing their overall behavioral health care needs. Some of the diagnoses patients who are admitted into the Honor Strong Program are experiencing include depression, anxiety, PTSD, suicidal ideation, substance use, stress, burnout fatigue, psychological distress, personal trauma, fear of being harmed or seriously injured, intrusive memories, loss of safety, hyper-arousal, death, coping with overwhelming losses and grief. How do they hear about the program? Current information regarding the Honor Strong Program is available on our website at www.cypresscreekhospital.com and through direct community outreach. Information regarding the Honor Strong Program may also be found on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. Do they typically come for one treatment or is it something that takes time with a clinical psychologist? The Honor Strong Program at Cypress Creek Hospital is a resiliency focused, acute inpatient program. A comprehensive assessment and psychiatric evaluation will determine the patients level of care needs and length of stay while in the program (length of stay varies for each patient). While admitted into our inpatient program, patients are seen by a Board-Certified Psychiatrist as well as Masters level Certified First Responder Counselors who are specifically assigned to this program. Outpatient programming such as Partial Hospitalization, Intensive Outpatient and Electroconvulsive Therapy are also available to Honor Strong Program patients. What kind of treatment do you find they require? Treatment focuses on connecting each first responder with tools and support to recognize the resiliency within themselves to find balance with life changes, especially those associated with traumatic experiences. This is why the Honor Strong Program promotes trauma-informed and resiliency focused care. The treatment model includes positive psychology, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Prolonged Exposure Therapy, Holistic Therapies (Pet, Art, Yoga, Relaxation and Psychoeducation), psychotherapy, medication management, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing and Cognitive Processing Therapy. Is this something thats free to them or does it require insurance? We accept most major insurance plans including, Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE. For patients who do not currently have health insurance, staff are available to assist in determining the appropriate financial assistance available. Are you able to measure your success? We are focused on outcomes and measurable goals. Our master treatment plans are based on diagnosis and assessment(s) completed by the patients upon admission. We also utilize standardized assessment(s) for depression, suicide, trauma, and resiliency as a measure of baseline data and ongoing assessments throughout treatment. A standardized assessment is likened to the behavioral health X-ray and when repeated, demonstrates progress. This process can be an effective tool in building resiliency. Do they return to normal lives? Equipped to meet the world again? Our goal is to help the men and women who serve our community return to duty. We provide a continuum of care, following discharge, to all Honor Strong Program participants. We believe in not only treating the patient but building healthy habits for the body and mind as well as integrating patient support systems. We are committed to our mission to assist Honor Strong Program patients in their recovery. We serve those who serve and honor their strength in their path to recovery. If someone wants to enter the program, what steps do they have to take? Cypress Creek Hospitals Honor Strong Program offers patients a direct, private and dedicated referral line that is separate from our main hospital referral lines. First responders may call our direct referral line at 281-995-1475; staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Once a first responder arrives at Cypress Creek Hospital, an Honor Strong Program staff member will meet you at your vehicle and escort you directly onto the Honor Strong Program unit through a private entrance. Admissions are expedited and Honor Strong Program patients are assessed immediately and will not experience any wait time. A separate assessment room on the treatment unit is available for all assessments. Our assessment process can range from 30 minutes to an hour. If a first responder meets inpatient criteria, then the first responder will be admitted to our Honor Strong Program Unit. To ensure all information is held in the strictest of confidence, patients in the Honor Strong Program remain separate from other patients throughout their entire stay. Im sure the nature of your business requires anonymity, but are these people we would meet in the store every day or at work? Yes, these are the men and women who put their lives on the line daily to protect and serve our communities. Is there anything else youd like to add about the program? First responders are routinely exposed to traumatic events in the course of their duties. The toll taken by these experiences on the men and women who serve in emergency roles can be overwhelming and more intense and tragic than most of us can imagine. Being a first responder is a big responsibility. Peoples lives literally depend on those that serve them daily. In doing so, first responders often risk their lives to protect and serve their communities. Asking for help can feel daunting and unnatural, preventing many first responders from seeking the mental health treatment they need. First responders often fear the stigma associated with seeking help as well as what their future will hold if they do reach out. Its critical that we ensure they feel free to access mental health resources. Farris also pointed out that the unit staff receives continuous training to better understand military and first responder culture. While in the middle of COVID-19 some might be hesitant to visit a hospital, Farris said those fears should be allayed with the precautions they are taking. dtaylor@hcnonline.com Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made somewhere between $36.2 million and $157 million in 2019, financial disclosure records reveal. The couple, who both serve as Senior Advisors to President Donald Trump, were required to file documents declaring their assets and liabilities with the Office of Government Ethics on Friday. The exact amount of money the pair made is impossible to determine, as they are only required to 'report in range', according to The Washington Post. However, even with minimum earnings of $36.2 million, the documents show Ivanka and Jared continue to make huge amounts of outside income while they work in The White House. The Daily Beast reports that some of that revenue came from Kushner Companies - Jared's family business 'which benefited from a real estate tax break championed by Ivanka herself'. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made somewhere between $36.2 million and $157 million in 2019, financial disclosure records reveal The filings reportedly show Jared made somewhere between $200,000 and $2.34 million from hotels and other buildings owned by the company at their Pier Village Project in Long Branch, New Jersey. In 2018, Long Branch was designated an 'Opportunity Zone' as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act spruiked by Ivanka. As part of the legislation, investors in those lower-income 'opportunity zones' became entitled to certain tax advantages. The Daily Beast claims Kushner Companies shelled out at least $9 million on property in the area after the program was passed by the Trump Administration. Ivanka and Jared's financial disclosure records were blasted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who claim the couple are pushing public policies that are actually in their personal interests. The filings reportedly show Jared made somewhere between $200,000 and $2.34 million from hotels and other buildings owned by the company at their Pier Village Project in Long Branch, New Jersey. The Daily Beast claims Kushner Companies shelled out at least $9 million for the local Bunaglow Hotel (pictured) after the program was passed by the Trump Administration 'Ivanka Trump advocated for the Opportunity Zones program while her husband was profiting from it, representing a clear conflict of interest,' CREW's Jordan Libowitz told The Daily Beast. 'The program seems to have been made to be easily exploitable by the rich and well connected, starting with those related to the president.' Additionally Kushner reported between $100,000 and $1 million from the Vreeland Avenue Associates - part of a real estate complex where six tenants received low-interest loans under the Paycheck Protection Program - also spruiked by Jared and Ivanka. Meanwhile, Ivanka reported $3.9 million in earnings from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. Ivanka reported $3.9 million in earnings from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. The hotel has long been seen as a potential conflict of interest because it hosts diplomats and other government officials who meet with members of the Trump Administration. News of the financial filings was met with outrage on Twitter, with several critics claiming Ivanka and Jared's sole purpose for working in The White House was to enhance their personal fortune. 'Isn't that why this family ran for the presidency - to make money? Just shameful and they get away with it!' one raged. Both Jared and Ivanka have repeatedly denied any conflicts of interests during their time working for the Trump Administration. GREENSBORO After voyaging across the Atlantic Ocean for more than a year, a bottled message from a Greensboro Day School student landed more than 4,000 miles away. Student Vivian Byerly now knows what happened to her bottled letter because she received a reply to it Sunday. The letters journey began in April 2019 when Vivian and her classmates, now rising fifth graders, sealed personalized messages in glass bottles to send out to sea. In Vivians letter, she told the future reader her name and that she was a third grader at Greensboro Day School. She included her teachers name and email address, along with the schools address. If you find this message, please let us know, Vivian wrote. Her classmates included the same plea in their letters, but Vivian customized her message with a drawing of a ship and an inspiring quote of her choice from an unknown author. A former British army officer has been arrested and charged for organising a ceremony involving a hallucinogenic Amazonian healing potion in Romania. Thomas Lishman, 58, was detained by Romanian authorities on December 15 after the event at a retreat outside the capital Bucharest. Guests at the all-night event were drinking a substance 'ayahuasca', which is made from roots and brewed into a type of tea. Guests at the all-night event were drinking a substance 'ayahuasca', which is made from roots and brewed into a type of tea, file photo Thomas Lishman claimed the drink was legal as it was made from natural ingredients, file photo Among those attending the event was the former head of Romania's secret police. Lishman learned about the brew while serving in the British Army. The former officer claimed drinking the tea provided people with mystical life-changing experiences. According to The Guardian, Lishman has been charged with conspiracy to traffic 'dimethyltyptamine' - which is a controlled drug in Romania. He said he had taken local legal advice that ayahuasca was legal because it was made from natural products rather than a laboratory-made drug. According to the Foreign Office: 'We supported a British man following his arrest in Romania and were in contact with the Romanian authorities. We stand ready to offer further assistance should he require it.' Local media has claimed that Lishman, due to his prior military service is a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. His co-accused is Gelu Oltean, who until 2014 was the head of the Romanian Secret Police. If convicted, Lishman faces up to 13 years in prison. (ANSA) - ROME, 30 LUG - President Sergio Mattarella visited Bologna on Thursday to mark the 40th anniversary of two of the most painful moments in Italy's history - the 1980 Bologna station bombing and the Ustica air crash. On 27 June 1980, a Bologna-Palermo flight by the now-defunct Itavia airline crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea between the islands of Ponza and Ustica, killing all 81 people on board. Known in Italy as the Ustica Massacre ("Strage di Ustica"), the disaster led to numerous investigations, legal actions and accusations, and continues to be a source of controversy, including claims of conspiracy. The Bologna train station bombing killed 85 people and wounded 200 on August 2, 1980. Staged by rightwing extremists, it was Italy's worst terrorist attack since World War II. Mattarella laid a wreath at the commemorative plaque at Bologna station at a ceremony with relatives of the victims and attended a special mass at Bologna's St Peter's Cathedral. "After paying tribute to the plaque that recalls the victims of the barbarism of the bombers, there are few words one can say - pain, memory, truth" the president said. (ANSA). The mosquitoes buzzing around Winnipeg certainly got noticed this month. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 31/7/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The mosquitoes buzzing around Winnipeg certainly got noticed this month. The city received at least 204 complaints about the blood-sucking critters in July, according to data released Friday. Thats dramatically higher than the seven mosquito complaints it received throughout July 2019. The data indicate Winnipeggers are well aware when the mosquito population rises. The criteria to fog the entire city to kill the pests was met last week, and fogging took place from July 24 to 27, while no such mosquito control occurred in 2019. Coun. Kevin Klein said his office received almost 60 complaints about the pests in recent weeks. "(They said) they couldnt go into their backyard without losing a pint of blood," said Klein. Just before the fogging operation was announced, Klein publicly pushed for the treatment to take place. He also suggested on social media that council consider a motion to ensure it happened. "I think its a service that taxpayers expect," Klein said Friday. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Ken Nawolsky, the citys superintendent of insect control, said spikes in mosquito complaints do tend to match a surge in the actual bug population, as appears to be the case this year. Under current policy, fogging operations are governed by set city and provincial criteria, and are not ordered by council. In order to fog, the "adulticiding factor analysis (AFA)" must be high, the citywide average trap count must have a minimum of 25 female mosquitoes for two consecutive nights and one or more city quadrants must report at least 100 female adult mosquitoes. Ken Nawolsky, the citys superintendent of insect control, said spikes in mosquito complaints do tend to match a surge in the actual bug population, as appears to be the case this year. While complaints alone dont satisfy the fogging criteria, Nawolsky said city crews will investigate when residents of one area complain there are more mosquitoes than city trap counts would indicate. "If theres some (unexplained) clusters well often go out to those areas and try and do a little investigative work to see if there is something else there thats causing (it)," he 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. On Friday, the citywide average mosquito trap count was 14. Nawolsky said the mosquito count should remain lower for the weeks to come, as long as weather conditions are normal. "If it currently holds up with (this) weather pattern and just normal amounts of rainfall, we should have fewer mosquitoes for the remainder of the summer," he said. Nawolsky said residents must frequently dump, drain and cover any standing water in their yards to ensure the mosquito population remains low. Joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga 01.08.2020 LISTEN Tv personality, Paul Adom-Otchere has described running mate of the opposition National Democratic Congress Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang as an excellent choice. He says the choice by former President John Mahama come as a surprise to many. Speaking on the Analyses on Starr FM Saturday, the Good Evening Ghana host said the NDC stands and equal chance of winning the December just as the incumbent Nana Akufo-Addo and his runningmate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. The choice he made is excellent because it is a surprise choice. And in politics the surprise element is key. The ticket is a winning ticket just as Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia, he told host Albert Quashigah Saturday. On her inaugural address, the veteran journalist described it as great. The address was great by and large. It is gratifying that when we are selecting people for positions, both parties select people who have knowledge for the job, unlike in the past where people who did not have the requisite qualification were selected for political offices. The Executive Director of the Institute of Democratic Governance, Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey who was also on the show also praised the address by the former Education Minister. I would say the best speech probably a vice presidential candidate has delivered probably the best. Professor Opoku-Agyemang was on Monday night outdoored by former President John Mahama as his runningmate for the December polls. ---starrfmonline (Natural News) If you thought things were bad in Seattles autonomous zone, thats only a preview of what conditions in the city will be like if the proposed 50 percent defunding of the police department goes through. Speaking recently on Americas Newsroom on Fox News, the president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Michael Solan, said that the move will make CHAZ/CHOP, the experience that it was, look like childs play. Earlier this month, police in Seattle forcefully cleared out the Capitol Hill protest zone after weeks of protests and two deadly shootings that forced the citys liberal mayor to finally take action after weeks of pretending like nothing was wrong. However, the violence continues. Over the weekend, dozens of officers were injured in protests as rioters set a portable trailer on fire and threw an explosive device at a police precinct, blowing an 8-inch hole through one of its walls. Some of the injuries sustained by officers included abrasions, bruises, burns and a torn meniscus. Almost 50 people were arrested. In a press conference on Wednesday, it was revealed the police discovered smoke bombs, explosives and other weapons in a van that was stationed at the protests. The chief of police of Seattle, Carmen Best, said that the vans contents illustrated that some of the people at these protests do not have peaceful intentions. She said: Peaceful protesters do not show up in a van full of explosives. Meanwhile, a sergeant with the police department s arson and bomb squad said that they discovered the remnants of a Molotov cocktail that exploded near the King County juvenile detention facility. Solan also appeared on Fox & Friends Weekend, where he said that what is happening in the city is a travesty that could influence how public safety is addressed across the nation moving forward. According to the Seattle Times, three council members support the Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now coalition, which seeks police defunding along with major reforms geared toward ending systemic racism. Seven out of the nine city council members support defunding the police, which means they already have enough support to defund police even without getting approval from Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan. Chief Best said that she doesnt think council members supporting defunding the police have a real plan. She said the move will cost them 1100 employees. Their budget is currently set at $409 million. Solan added that the city will be plagued with crime if the defunding takes place. L.A. set to defund police in next fiscal year Los Angeles is already on a path to defund police after the city council approved a measure to reduce the departments budget by $150 million starting in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. The city council is made up of 14 Democrats and one independent, who voted to slash the police budget by a margin of 12 to 2. The move will see the number of officers reduced by 231, even though L.A. already has one of the countrys worse ratios of police officers to residents. The citys officials stated that their decision was influenced by demonstrators demands to reduce police spending. The measure states that unused police funds must be invested back into communities of color. However, the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter has said that this huge cut isnt satisfactory. Theyve been calling for 90 percent of the LAPDs budget to be defunded and the money re-directed to social safety services. Its scary to think what these cities will look like when they are not properly policed. Solan said, Seattle will be a lawless wasteland, and the same will be true of any city that gets rid of the forces who exist to protect their people. Sources for this article include: Breitbart.com SeattleTimes.com NaturalNews.com FoxNews.com It seems likely that schools in Western New York will get the green light to reopen this fall, based on current Covid-19 infection rates. But many local schools say that if that happens, they will not be able to fit all their students in the schools, given the requirements for social distancing. That means many schools likely will adopt a hybrid model that combines some remote instruction with some in-person instruction. School districts across New York just posted their plans on how they would reopen if they get the go-ahead. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he'll announce in the next few days whether schools can resume instruction in person. The district plans, which were due Friday, address how they would handle different scenarios: 100% in person learning, 100% remote learning and a hybrid of the two. Here are the districts in Erie and Niagara counties that have posted their plans so far, along with a brief description of what their hybrid model would look like: New Delhi, Aug 1 : Rajya Sabha member, former Samajwadi Party leader and famed power broker during the UPA era, Amar Singh, 64, lost his battle with kidney ailment on Saturday. He passed away in a Singapore hospital where he was undergoing treatment for kidney ailments. From Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan condolences poured in as the news broke. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said Singh was friendly with all political parties. He remembered him as "humorous and always energetic". "Amar Singh, MP and a person I have known for long, died today. Although he was mostly with the SP, but he made friends across the spectrum of political parties. My condolences to his family," said BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy. Singh was expelled from the Samajwadi Party in 2017 after rift between Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh, his father, started to widen. But that was not the first time that he had been expelled from the party. Singh underwent a successful second kidney transplant. But the abdominal infection couldn't be reversed, according to news reports. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi: Days after Foreign Ministers of four countries Nepal, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China met virtually to deal with COVID-19 crisis, Nepal foreign minister has dismissed any idea of creating a subregional group involving the four countries. Nepal Foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali said, "Virtual conference of four countries was totally focused on the cooperation amidst the COVID-19. It is unnecessary and wrong to create any other type of coordination between those countries. Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan are members of SAARC and China is an observer of the SAARC, we are already in a single umbrella." Gyawali rejected the idea of any plan to create a sub-regional alliance. "There is no possibility, desire or plan to create another sub-regional alliance or organisation comprising of those four countries. It was purely confined on cooperation on COVID-19 pandemic," he said. During the virtual meet, China called for advancing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Trans-Himalayan Connectivity Network and also said it supports the extension of CPEC to Afghanistan. The Nepalese foreign minister mentioned about Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura issue saying his office has "time and again asked our Indian friends to formally start the diplomatic negotiation to settle these problems" but the "proposal was not responded to in a timely manner". He also called for revisiting of the Gurkha recruitment in Indian and British Forces saying, "Gurkha recruitment is legacy of past. It was the first window open for Nepalese youths to go abroad but in the changing context some of its provisions" are not required and "we should start objective discussions...Tripartite agreement of 1947 has become redundant". The tripartite agreement was signed between India, UK and Nepal in 1947 on the rights of Gurkhas in military service. More than 30,000 Nepalese Gorkhas are currently serving in the Indian Army's seven Gorkha Rifle regiments. On India-China tensions, the FM said, "How they manage their differences will definitely set the future of Asia, at least in this region. After Wuhan summit, the partnership between India and China deepened but nowadays, there are tensions after the Galwan clash. Though both countries are trying their best to de-escalate the tension, however it is challenging." Justice Department Sets Date for 2 More Federal Executions The Justice Department says its scheduled two additional federal executions of convicted murderers just weeks after the department successfully resumed executions following a 17-year hiatus. William Emmett LeCroy and Christopher Andre Vialva are scheduled to die by lethal injection in September at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, the department said on July 31. LeCroy, 50, of Georgia was convicted of raping and murdering Joann Lee Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, in 2001. Prosecutors said LeCroy broke into Tieslers home and attacked her when she came home, strangling and raping her. He then slashed her throat and stabbed her in the back five times before stealing the nurses car. He was caught at the U.S.Canada border. A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 2004 found LeCroy guilty of carjacking resulting in death and recommended a death sentence. His conviction and sentence were also affirmed on appeal. His execution is scheduled for Sept. 22. Meanwhile, Vialva, 40, was convicted for the 1999 kidnapping and murdering of two youth ministers Todd and Stacie Bagley in Texas. Vialva and his accomplices are members of a local gang in Killeen, Texas, who planned to commit a robbery. They approached Todd Bagley, who was using a payphone, and asked him to give them a ride. During the trip, Vialva pulled a gun, forced the Bagleys into the trunk, and drove around for several hours, while stopping at ATMs to withdraw money from the couples bank accountwhich was unsuccessful because the couple had less than $100 on deposit. The men also tried to pawn Stacies wedding ring. While locked in the trunk, the couple tried to talk to their abductors about their faith and pleaded for their lives. Later that day, Vialva and several accomplices drove to an isolated location on the Fort Hood, Texas, military reservation where they proceeded to douse Bagleys car with lighter fluid while the couple sang and prayed. Vialva then shot Todd Bagley in the head, killing him instantly, and shot Stacie Bagley in the face, which knocked her unconscious. She died of smoke inhalation after the men set the car on fire. Vialva and one of his accomplices were tried jointly and found guilty and sentenced to death for the murders. Vialvas execution is scheduled for Sept. 24. The DOJs announcement comes after the federal government successfully carried out three federal executions in July after fighting off last-minute legal challenges. Two other death-row inmatesLezmond Mitchell and Keith Dwayne Nelsonare scheduled to be executed this month. The Trump administration has been criticized for scheduling the executions during the pandemic, with critics saying that the scheduling had no regard for the safety and health of those involved. Meanwhile, anti-death penalty, religious, and other groups have criticized the decision to resume the death penalty after the 17-year pause over moral and religious concerns. The administration has said the resumption of the death penalty is a way to bring justice for victims and family members. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen wrote in a recent op-ed, published in The New York Times, that the decision as a legal issue is straightforward, as the U.S. Constitution expressly contemplates capital crimes, and Congress has authorized the death penalty for serious federal offenses. He added that the DOJ also has an obligation to carry out the law. The coronavirus pandemic and the ruling class negligent response to it is a traumatic event for world humanity. Studies show the pernicious impact the crisis is having on the mental health of billions. Drawing on research of past disasters and disease, psychologists predict that a mental health shadow pandemic will last for years after the disease has subsided. This mental health pandemic has various causes and manifestations. As World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, Social isolation, fear of contagion, and loss of family members is compounded by the distress caused by loss of income and often employment. World COVID-19 cases will soon eclipse 20 million and there have been more than 675,000 deaths to date. After lockdowns wreaked economic havoc for the ruling class, and forced workers and their families into poverty and hunger, corporations and governments are now seeking to drive workers back into unsafe workplaces. Although resilience to disaster is natural, the pandemic isnt like a wildfire or hurricane. Dealing with the insidious uncertainty of its spread is more like living with a domestic abuser or being deployed to a war zone. Being witness to brutal repression of protests compounds the distress. In the United States, the spread of the virus has had an immediate effect on mental health. Calls to a Disaster Distress Hotline, run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, increased by 338 percent in March. In April, 42 percent of Americans reported feelings of hopelessness and calls to the hotline climbed 900 percent. One in 25 Americans had lost a close family member or friend. By June, a University of Chicago survey reported 40 percent of Americans had depressive symptoms, and in July, 56 percent reported at least one negative effect on their well-being. Internationally, much research has already been conducted on the psychological impacts of the pandemic. In the United Kingdom, the Mental Health Foundation has been conducting a study since March on the psychological impacts of the pandemic. Half of the UK population has reported anxiety. Half of the Spanish population reported mild-to-severe psychological impacts, and more than half of the Chinese population reported moderate-to-severe psychological impact. To begin to get a sense of the immensity of mental distress caused by the pandemic, half of the combined populations of China, Spain, the UK and the US is almost a billion people; nearly one-eighth the worlds population. In the US, the second surge started to hit Southern states and California in June. In Louisiana, which has been especially hard-hit, the seven-day new case count is 15,870, 42.9 percent of residents have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression, a 3.9-fold increase since last year. Feeding America predicts food insecurity among 52.5 percent of children in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, the highest level nationally. Physicians in Louisiana are observing new physical symptoms suggestive of the psychological burden: weight gain, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar. A lot of folks who would come in with one or two problems now have 10, said Dr. Chad Braden of Baton Rouge, speaking to the New Orleans Advocate. The pandemic, mass unemployment and financial precarity are caustic to mental health and compound previous inequalities. As the UK study cited above states: The distribution of infections and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown and associated measures, and the longer-term socioeconomic impact are likely to reproduce and intensify the financial inequalities that contribute towards the increased prevalence and unequal distribution of mental ill-health. In June, 44.7 percent of the unemployed in the UK worried about having enough money for food, and a quarter were suicidal, double the rate in the general population. In the US, 40 percent of households have had difficulty affording basic necessities in the past three months. Just as the pandemic has led to a redistribution of wealth, the UK study shows a divergence in psychological impacts between those already at risk financially, socially, medically and psychologically and the rest of the population. People with previous psychiatric conditions have suffered the most. One-on-one therapy, peer support, volunteering and supported employment are impossible. The suicidality rate for this population is almost triple the rate in the general public. People with preexisting physical disabilities are also isolated from essential psychosocial support, and many live in high-risk residential facilities, as do the elderly, for whom loneliness and the fear of death have been exacerbated. Women report greater psychological impacts owing to a disproportionate representation in affected industries, being the primary caregivers at home, and an increase in domestic abuse. In June, 43 percent of Americans with children reported feeling hopeless. Children are at particular risk for mental health impacts. According to the WHO, they have experienced an increase of restlessness and difficulty focusing, which may indicate a psychological impact. Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have more difficulty adjusting to lockdown, and children with autism may suffer from a change in habit and ritual. The UK study found a spike in the numbers of single parents seeking support. Sixty-three percent are anxious or worried, 43 percent are lonely, and 28 percent are afraid. Many were reliant on insecure, casual employment and suffer from a loss of income and social isolation. The risk of postnatal and perinatal mental health problems has increased, these conditions are less likely to be identified, and care is more difficult to access. Concern is warranted for infants and toddlers of single parents, as these years are critical to social and cognitive development. Various studies and surveys document a disproportionate mental health impact on youth globally. The population between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely than any other age group to not cope well, with 22 percent reporting suicidality. Education has been cut, job prospects are greatly lessened, youth are isolated from their peers, and their lives are less structured. As one respondent to the UK study said, It feels like their whole, like, their whole generation is being wasted. The pandemic has worsened the mental health of 83 percent of UK teens with a mental health history, and 60 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 22 report symptoms of depression. High risk factors for youth, include losing a parent, having an infected relative or acquaintance, lost family income, more time invested in social media, increased family conflict or violence and the ubiquitous issues of death. The distress that is affecting nearly everyone is particularly felt by young people. Three-quarters of mental health problems arise before the mid-20s, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) peaks at ages 1624. For teens, the disruption in their social environment could slow their cognitive and psychological maturation, posing life-long consequences. Nowhere is mental anguish more acute than in the health care field. Anywhere the virus breaks containment, workers battle overwhelming influxes of patients for whom there are no proven treatments. They risk their lives with insufficient protective equipment and staffing, knowing first-hand the limitations of the system to care for them if they fall ill. Already experiencing a crisis of burnout, the New England Journal of Medicine describes a surge of physical and emotional harm that amounts to a parallel pandemic facing the US clinical workforce. Three New York City health workers have been driven to take their lives. John Mondello, 23, a rookie emergency medical technician (EMT), died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 24. Lt. Matthew Keene, a veteran EMT, shot himself on June 19. Dr. Lorna Breen killed herself on April 26 while visiting family. The emergency room at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where Breen was a supervisor, became a brutal battleground during the surge. The pandemic comes at a time soon after suicide became the 10th leading cause of death in the US, increasing 35 percent from 1999 to 2018. Drug overdoses in 2020 have increased by 13 percent over the previous year, one-tenth of the general UK population has reported suicidal thoughts. According to the Chicago Tribune, suicides in the US could increase by 20 per day. Models on the 2008 recession crisis predict a 1.6 percent increase in suicide for every 1 percent rise in the unemployment rate. At levels of 20 percent unemployment, 18,000 suicides can be predicted along with 22,000 drug overdoses. Adjusting for misclassified and undercounted workers, the true unemployment rate now is 27.4 percent. Lessons from studies on the impact of past pandemics may predict the psychological impacts of COVID-19. Thirty percent of children whose families were quarantined during the H1N1 and Sars-CoV-1 pandemics developed PTSD. Anxiety and depressive symptoms among health care workers, and a high prevalence of psychiatric symptoms in the general public lasted for months and years after Sars-CoV-1. Income reduction was the highest predictive factor in the development of psychological disorders after the Sars-CoV-1 pandemic. The 1918 influenza increased first-time asylum admissions in Norway by 7.2-fold, and US influenza death rates significantly and positively related to suicide. To address the burgeoning mental health crisis, more studies and intervention are needed. Clinicians are intervening, but armies of mental health workers must be rallied. In the US, experts have called for $38.5 billion in funding. The CARES Act set aside one-half of one one-hundredth that amount. The May 6 UK study stated: there will be no vaccine for these population mental health impacts. One should add: under capitalism. To think that the prevailing conditions exacerbated by the negligent policies of the ruling class will improve, or even return to their prior state, would be naive. The only corrective to the myriad social and economic factors critical to mental well-being is the organization of society to meet the needs of humanity. The health care system in the US and globally, of which mental health treatment is an integral part, must be wrested from the control of the private health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies and the giant for-profit health care chains and placed under workers control. This requires the socialist reorganization of the entire economy under a workers government. (Natural News) Big tech and mainstream media have joined forces to crush free speech and press freedom. Not only are they censoring alternative medical views on coronavirus, but they are also censoring news outlets that happen to cover those views. (Article by Joel B. Pollak republished from Breitbart.com) On Monday night, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (owned by Google) took down video from a Facebook live stream of a press conference on coronavirus in Washington, DC, by a group of doctors that was covered by Breitbart News that day. The press conference was held by a group called Americas Frontline Doctors, which was organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. The press conference featured doctors talking about their own views about the treatment of coronavirus or COVID-19, sometimes presenting perspectives that are not featured by the experts making policy for the country. Some talked about hydroxychloroquine; others touted the scientific case for reopening schools. One doctor, Stella Immanuel, a Nigerian immigrant, argued passionately for hydroxychloroquine (plus zinc and azithromycin), saying she had personally treated hundreds of patients with it. She called hydroxychloroquine a cure. The video went viral. New York Times columnist Kevin Roose drew attention to the video, noting: Breitbart could claim it was just covering a newsworthy press conference. The #2 most-engaged post on Facebook today is a Breitbart video of a group of doctors claiming that hydroxychloroquine is "a cure for Covid" and "you don't need a mask." 14 million views in 6 hours. (For scale, Plandemic got ~8 million in a few days.) Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020 This video is also trending on Twitter. It doesn't seem to be doing big numbers on YouTube, but not having sortable sitewide data makes it hard to know for sure. Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020 Interestingly, the fact that a news org posted this video may be why it's still up on FB. (Breitbart could claim it was just covering a newsworthy press conference, not promoting the views of the doctors.) Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020 CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy tweeted a report that Rooses tweets were driving people at Facebook absolutely crazy. @CaseyNewton reports that @kevinroose's tweets showing the top content on Facebook most often from right-wing pages have "been driving people at Facebook absolutely crazy." https://t.co/FLc92TLKMV Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 22, 2020 Subsequently, Facebook and Twitter took the video down, with Facebook responding directly to Roose, saying the video was taken down for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19. The video appears to have been taken down from Facebook. Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020 A Facebook spokesman says the video was removed "for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19." https://t.co/dTKZMHL7GF Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020 Copies of this video are still floating around on Facebook. One posted by Diamond and Silk 3 hours ago has racked up another 5.7 million views. I cant remember any video that spread this quickly. Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020 When President Donald Trump retweeted someone elses version of the video, Twitter removed it. It was the latest example of Twitter interfering in a message posted in this case, indirectly by the President of the United States. Twitter then limited Breitbart News Twitter account on Monday evening. Breitbart News was therefore punished for a live stream of a press conference that contained information to which mainstream media outlets objected. Even if that information was wrong and claims about a cure are hyperbole at best there was no way for Breitbart to know in advance what would be said at the press conference, which also included a question-and-answer session. The logical implication of Big Techs behavior in this case is that any news outlet, or any individual, can be censored merely for covering live speech expressed in the public square. This is a form of prior restraint preventing the press from covering news events without approval by those in charge. Because journalists cannot anticipate everything that might be said at a press conference, the only way for them to protect their outlets from being silenced is not to cover such events. This has a chilling effect on press freedom and free speech. Governments, particularly third world dictatorships, regularly use prior restraint to silence dissent and free speech. But governments are not the only entities that can use prior restraint. It can also be done by the tech monopolies who control much of the flow of information in our society today. That is what is happening here. Big Tech companies, cheered on by establishment media, are engaging in a commercial form of prior restraint to withhold dissemination of dissenting views. One might expect outlets like the Times to object to this abuse. After all, the Times and other establishment media fought the great 20th century legal battles against prior restraint. But the Times and other establishment media outlets, which are never penalized for their inaccuracies, have learned that they can use prior restraint to suppress their competitors. CNN has perfected the technique: under the guise of asking questions, they contact advertisers to ask whether they have joined a boycott in the most recent case, a boycott of Facebook. The advertisers, thus pressured, join the boycott. (In the latter case, the boycott is intended to pressure Facebook to censor hate speech defined to include conservative media.) The Times own report on the video, and its removal, is inaccurate. It claimed Tuesday: The video did not appear to be anything special. But within six hours, President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had tweeted versions of it, and the right-wing news site Breitbart had shared it. The nothing special video had gone viral many hours before President Trump tweeted a clip of it, and Breitbart News had live streamed it first. The Times obscures that essential fact. The implication is that any news outlet more precisely, any conservative news outlet, since the rules are not applied to the Times or CNN when they cover dubious medical claims must avoid covering live press conferences unless they know beforehand whether the information presented (on COVID-19, voting, or other subjects) is accurate and acceptable. By punishing Breitbart, Big Tech is effectively using a form of prior restraint, and it would be regarded as an violation of the First Amendment if the government did it. Any such restriction would have to pass the legal test of strict scrutiny to survive. In this case, however, the left has outsourced the job of censorship to Big Tech and the establishment media. All of this is happening in the middle of a public health crisis in which policy responses are a topic of legitimate debate, and prior to a presidential election when free speech is more urgent than ever. And, shamefully, instead of opposing Big Techs actions instead of protecting the freedom of the press and the importance of public dialogue and debate the establishment media are supporting an effort to censor not just alternative views, but media who happen to cover them. Read more at: Breitbart.com A truck driver has been arrested at Beitbridge Border Post on allegations of smuggling 12 500 bottles of BronCleer with a street value of $2,5 million from South Africa. appeared before Beitbridge resident magistrate, Mr Toyindepi Zhou who released him on $15 000 bail. Dennis Norman Gwangava (27)appeared before Beitbridge resident magistrate, Mr Toyindepi Zhou who released him on $15 000 bail. He was facing charges under the Medicines and Allied Substances Control Act Chapter 15:03. Mr Osweld Arufandi prosecuted. The state alleges that on July 28, Gwangava of Redcliff, who is employed as a driver by a South African registered company G and H Transport, was arrested by police following a tip off. Detectives from CID Drugs and Narcotics received information that Gwangava had smuggled the cough syrup using his haulage truck which was towing two trailers. At the Masvingo turn-off in Beitbridge, police intercepted the truck and escorted it to the police station where a search was conducted leading to the recovery of 12 500x 100ml bottles of the cough syrup, which is a medicine containing Codeine, which are controlled and restricted. The cough syrup was taken to Beitbridge District Hospital Pharmacy for examination and the report is an exhibit, which will be produced in court. According to the State, the cough syrup is worth $2 500 000. Cases of smuggling have been on the increase in Beitbridge, with some of the smugglers mostly using illegal entry points. Beitbridge police recently arrested 35 people carrying an assortment of goods worth thousands of dollars, which they had smuggled into the country through an illegal crossing point located less than one kilometre from the main port of entry. The gang was arrested after the police intensified efforts to reduce intrusive leakages along Zimbabwes border with South Africa. Stepping up his attack against the Centre's new Education Policy (NEP) 2020, DMK President on Saturday said it was an attempt at "imposition" of Hindi and Sanskrit and vowed to fight against it by joining hands with like-minded political parties and Chief Ministers of other states. The sweeping reforms were not but "a glossy coat on the old oppressive Manusmriti," he alleged. In a letter to partymen, Stalin said the party was committed to the struggle against such policies of the government, and recalled it (also) moving the Madras High Court on the issue of OBC reservation in All India Quota (AIQ) in medical admissions. There was an "undeclared emergency" in the country, he said referring to detention of political figures in Jammu and Kashmir among others. On the NEP, he questioned why the "successful" 10+2 system was being replaced with 5+3+3+4 and described the vocational education for children as a "psychological attack" on them. He further said "with Education placed in the State List, the Centre will assume the remaining rights of the states and take in its control (aspects ranging) from syllabus to university." "This is an attack on the federal structure being underscored by the Constitution of India," Stalin said in the letter. DMK was therefore opposing the NEP and will also join hands with other like-minded political parties and chief ministers on the issue, he added. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SALMON, Morgan Pent, passed away on July 26, 2020, after a brief illness. Morgan was born on February 4, 1951, in Richmond, but grew up in Goochland, Va. He graduated from Goochland High School and was inducted into the Army in February 1971. He was stationed in Germany, where he was awarded The National Defense Service medal, as well as Marksman and Sharp Shooter M-16 designations. He co-owned a tree service business until retirement. Morgan was preceded in death by his father, Pent M. Salmon. He is survived by his mother, Catherine Salmon; brothers, Mike Salmon (Edie), Ron Salmon (Lynn); sister, Debbie Nicholas (Gary); one nephew, four nieces and four great-nephews. Everyone loved Morgan, he had many friends and will be greatly missed. Graveside service with military honors will be held Sunday, August 2, 2020, at 9:30 a.m. at the Salmon Family Cemetery, located at 1500 Salmontown Rd., Goochland, Va. Please dress casual. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Goochland Fire and Rescue, Company 4, 2397 Hadensville-Fife Road, Goochland, Va. 23063. Arrangements by Norman Funeral Home, Goochland, Va. Wellington, Aug 1 : New Zealand reported two new COVID-19 cases n managed isolation facilities on Saturday, which took the overall tally in the country to 1,562, said the Ministry of Health. The new cases were females in their 20s who arrived from Pakistan via Dubai on July 27, Xinhua news agency reported citing the Ministry as saying in a statement. They were in managed isolation facilities upon arrival and had been transferred to the quarantine facility in Auckland, said the statement. The total number of active cases in New Zealand's managed isolation and quarantine facilities was 22, unchanged from Friday, it said, adding that there was currently no one receiving hospital-level care for COVID-19. It had been 92 days since the last case of COVID-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source, said the Ministry. While there continued to be no evidence of any transmission in New Zealand, it urged the public to take a test if they were asked to. "Testing is the best way we can be assured that there is no undetected community transmission in New Zealand -- and we need everyone to play their part in that. If you are offered a test for COVID-19, please get swabbed." The death toll currently stands at 22. The government has made preliminary plans to reopen educational institutions on September 1 but the final decision will depend on the directives of the Centre, state Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Saturday. All teachers and employees of the schools will have to get themselves tested, and the Education and Health departments will coordinate the efforts for the tests that will be conducted from August 23-30, the minister said while addressing a press conference here. "We have drawn up a preliminary plan for reopening schools but it is still open for further discussions with parents and other stakeholders, and will be implemented only in accordance with the directives of the Union government," Sarma said. Schools will remain closed for students up to Class 4 till September-end, he said. Classes will be held in open spaces such as the playground or courtyard of the school for students of standard 5-8, he said. The classes will be divided into sections of 15 students and only these many students can attend classes at a time, he said. Students of standard 9 and 11 will attend classes in their classrooms for two days a week with 15 students being present at a time. Those in standard 10 and 12 will attend classes four days a week. Only 15 students will be present at a time in a classroom and classes will be held for only three hours in a day, the minister said. "Efforts will be made to ensure maximum social distancing with schools initiating shift systems with a particular class coming at an allotted time of the day," he said. At the degree level, classes will be held only for the final semesters while for the post-graduate students, the universities will take a decision. All these proposals will be put up on the website of the Education Department and people are welcome to give their suggestions till August 20, Sarma said. "We will work on these suggestions but also wait for the Centre's directive before taking a final decision," Sarma said. The minister further said that the Secondary Education Board of (SEBA) and Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) have also been asked to consider either reducing the syllabus or providing maximum options in the question paper so that students do not face any difficulty if a portion of the syllabus has not been covered. Educational institutions in Assam are closed since March 20, following the outbreak of the (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tully Smyth has been left shattered after her new podcast received scathing one star reviews from listeners. In a series of Instagram posts shared around 1am on Saturday morning, the former Big Brother admitted that she was struggling to cope with the negative feedback that her Too Much Tully podcast has been getting. Posting a picture of one of the bad reviews, the 31-year-old begged her followers to leave positive reviews of the show on Apple. 'This week has been really rough for me': Tully Smyth has been left shattered after her new podcast received scathing one star reviews from listeners 'To everyone except this Karen,' she wrote. 'If you ARE enjoying Too Much Tully, it would truly mean the world if you rated it + left your thoughts.' In another post, the former reality star opened up about the 'hate and vitriol' she's been receiving lately. 'This week has been really rough for me,' she wrote. Broken: Posting a picture of one of the bad reviews, the 31-year-old begged her followers to leave positive reviews of the show on Apple 'I have always tried to lead with love and positivity but sometimes the hate and vitriol is deafening,' she continued. 'People seem even angrier and ready to attack than usual and it's all too much for me right now, so I'm having a breather.' Tully's desperate plea seems to have worked, with a handful of glowing five star reviews now appearing on Apple. Struggling: In another post, the former reality star opened up about the 'hate and vitriol' she's been receiving lately The former Big Brother star launched her Too Much Tully podcast last week. And the 31-year-old's latest venture has garnered some scathing reviews from listeners. Several listeners left negative comments and one star reviews on the Apple Podcasts site, with many singling out Tully's interview with Bachelor In Paradise star Ciarran Stott as a particularly egregious episode. Not fans? Tully launched her new podcast Too Much Tully last week, but it's already receiving bad reviews from listeners One person wrote in their review: 'The title says it all. TOO MUCH TULLY. Please get this self-obsessed selfie queen off our media platforms. 'Ughhhh painful, up herself, zero interview technique, BORING AF. She should go back to doing other people's social media for a job and keep out of my ears.' Another chimed in: 'This podcast is getting the same feedback as Tully's last podcast; if you're going to get guests on let them speak and not speak for them / over the top of them. Savage! Several left comments on the Apple Podcasts site slamming the show, particularly her interview with her ex Bachelor In Paradise star Ciarran Stott 'One person wrote in their review: 'The title says it all. TOO MUCH TULLY. Please get this self-obsessed selfie queen off our media platforms' 'Be good if she could take on feedback.. needs so much work. The podcast with Ciarran is cringeworthy at best.' Someone else wrote: 'If you wanna here a play by play of the life of an Aussie D list 'celeb', then sure listen. Otherwise not original, not relatable, a bit of been there done that.' However, it wasn't all negative, with many of Tully's adoring followers also showering her with praise and five star reviews. It's a hit! Despite some mixed reviews, Tully's podcast has been a huge hit so far, trending on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts 'This was just like having a conversation with the gals!!' gushed one fan. 'Such an easy listen, started my day off great! Looking forward to hearing more from you girls!' Another wrote: 'I love this podcast!! Tully is real and very easy to listen too. Well done on great content so far. Keep it coming.' The podcast has been a huge hit so far, reaching high on the official charts and trending on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify. James Murdoch sensationally quit the board of his family's News Corporation media empire following a series of behind-the-scenes rows over the company's political stance especially on climate change. James, a father-of-three who is regarded as 'the liberal of the Murdoch family', cited editorial disagreements in his bombshell resignation letter, which ran to just two paragraphs. In it, he wrote: 'My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.' The 47-year-old, who has held senior positions in several of his father's companies, was once seen as the favourite to take over News Corporation. James Murdoch sensationally quit the board of his family's News Corporation media empire following a series of behind-the-scenes rows over the company's political stance. Pictured: James (right) and Lachlan Murdoch with their father Rupert But he is understood to have grown disillusioned with the conservative views championed by many of its newspaper titles, as well as by Fox News which is also owned by his father as part of a separate corporation. He and his wife Kathryn an environmental campaigner have been particularly annoyed at the company's coverage of bushfires in Australia over the past two years. Though James recently pocketed $2billion (1.5billion) when his father Rupert sold off large parts of the business to Disney, it is unclear what his business plans are. His other interests include Tesla, the electric car firm founded by Elon Musk, where he has been a non-executive director since 2017. He and his wife Kathryn an environmental campaigner (pictured together) have been particularly annoyed at the company's coverage of bushfires in Australia over the past two years But Andrew Neil, previously one of Murdoch Sr's key lieutenants, said the idea of James being a success on his own terms was 'farfetched'. Last night, the former editor of The Sunday Times told The Mail on Sunday: 'James was always the liberal of the family with a small "l". Riveting family saga that's morelike Succession than Succession! The dynasty led by Logan Roy (centre) As members of the world's most famous media dynasty, the Murdochs have long been used to life in the public spotlight. More recently, however, the family has had to get used to a whole new level of scrutiny thanks to the runaway success of TV drama Succession. The HBO series charts the exploits of fictitious media tycoon Logan Roy and his attempts to protect his Waystar Royco empire from both his business rivals and his squabbling children. One of Logan's primary concerns is which one of his four children will take over the empire once he is no longer fit to carry on. The drama, which stars Brian Cox as Logan, is a work of fiction but the show's writers appear to have been inspired by the Murdoch family. There are similarities between the Roy children and the Murdoch offspring. Observers have noted that Kendall the second son, just like James is Logan's presumed heir apparent. But he has struggled to prove himself to his father and has been involved in several business disasters. Asked if he had ever watched the series, James Murdoch said: 'Not even a peek, why would I?' The series has been lauded by critics and is up for 18 Emmys. It appears to have influenced the recent BBC documentary about the Murdochs. Fans noted the use of home movie footage, theme music and even the topics it covered had echoes of Succession. Advertisement In fact, he was liberal by Murdoch standards, which doesn't mean he was very liberal in general. 'When I knew him, when he was a teenager, he was the one with the long hair while his brother Lachlan had one of these US Marine Corps buzz cuts, and at one stage he even had an earring in one of his ears which passes for rebellion in the Murdoch family.' He added: 'So he has always been a liberal and his wife and her friends are all incredibly woke so that has encouraged them down that road. Now he has got two billion in the bank, every dollar of which he owes entirely to his father, he probably feels he has got enough money to say what he wants.' He said: 'It's interesting that he is only that wealthy because of the businesses his father built. Now he has decided to turn against the opinions these businesses represented but he is not handing back the money... I don't think he will do anything. 'James has got the money and he has decided to have different opinions from his brother and his father, which is fine. But every proper job he has ever had is because his name is Murdoch. The idea he will go anywhere or do anything is pretty far-fetched.' Nonetheless, James is something of a survivor. He was executive chairman of News International when the firm was rocked by the phone hacking scandal which led to the News of the World's closure. He bounced back when his father appointed him as chief executive of 21st Century Fox in 2015, but sources say James has effectively been sidelined ever since the Disney sale. James told one interviewer: 'There is plenty of stuff on Fox News that I disagree with. I am not involved with the Fox Corp business. My brother [Lachlan] and my father run that and they are off doing their own thing.' Earlier this year, James and his wife issued a statement in which they criticised the Murdoch-owned media in Australia for not facing up to the challenge of climate change. While scientists insisted climate change has been a key factor in the extent of the fires, the newspapers' editorial line broadly maintained that the blazes were no worse than in previous decades. In 2017, the couple purchased a 450-acre retreat north of Vancouver in Canada which boasts a hot spring and a river which can be used to generate electricity. James has laughed off reports he bought it as some kind of survivalist bunker. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal Journal North Amid calls across the nation to defund police departments, many have asked Santa Fe city councilors by email, phone call and in person at virtual city meetings to do the same. The Santa Fe Police Department specifically saw its budget decrease by 11.6% to just under $25 million, with the departments administrative division seeing almost all of the cuts. But for many participating in public comment Wednesday, the cuts did not go far enough. Im concerned that were not answering the call of our most marginalized community members to defund the police, said Allison Fabara, one of dozens of people who spoke before the council. Fabara and other speakers argued councilors should divert funding for SFPD to other areas of the city, such as Affordable Housing, which has a total operating budget of $2.4 million for the year. Fabara said Santa Fe While Black, a local group advocating for racial justice, had asked the city to defund SFPD by 50%. SFPD Chief Andrew Padilla said cutting the departments budget would affect the number of officers the department could hire and thereby impact response times, something some councilors had brought up as an issue. If we were to take that reduction in force and defund the police, those response times are only going to increase, Padilla said. He said the department was in the process of returning a tank and Humvee, the latter of which had been used for recruiting. Mayor Alan Webber said returning the vehicles shows the city is demilitarizing its police department, which has been another point of concern since the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May. While no councilor voiced support for a 50% decrease in funds, many said the department could improve operations. That same night, councilors approved the creation of a Health and Safety Task Force, meant to reexamine the future role of the department. I think its about trying to find the right response to the right needs, said Councilor Renee Villarreal, a co-chair of the task force. However, Daniel Strongwater, who also spoke at the meeting, told the Journal he wished the public had been included in budget discussions from the start. If the budget is a reflection of our values and morals as a city government, then it really needs to include the community, he said. Some Muslims across various Zongo communities in Accra have labelled this years Eid al-Adha as one of the most peaceful and exciting despite the existence of coronavirus. According to them, unlike other previous ones, this very Eid comes with a calm and peaceful aura. Speaking to GhanaWeb, they expressed excitement about how they were at least permitted to pray in their mosques unlike Eid-ul-Ftr where they were all compelled to stay indoors. Its going on well. Very exciting and bliss. The atmosphere is busy and peaceful, an individual stated. We thank God for bringing us this far. Weve been through a lot but Alhamdulillah, this Sallah is the most peaceful one weve had and we thank God for that, another said. To them, the fact that they are in good health is enough reason to celebrate. Most of them also prayed that the coming year will be void of COVID-19. What we are praying for next year is that Allah should sack this coronavirus so we can celebrate it properly next year, a celebrant told GhanaWeb. However, Muslims around the world celebrate Eid today although precautions against the coronavirus are preventing some aspects of the Islamic holiday from being celebrated in the usual way. For instance, many large prayer gatherings, outdoor festivals, and other public celebrations have been restricted this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: ghanaweb.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 Condolences from across the political sphere poured in for Rajya Sabha MP and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh who died in Singapore on Saturday where he was undergoing treatment. Singh is known for wielding immense influence in power circles as a close aide of Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav. Singh, 64, had undergone kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time. Calling Singh an energetic public figure who witnessed it all, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise, PM Modi tweeted Saturday evening. Vice-President of India Venkaiah Naidu paid condolences and said, The Rajya Sabha MP mourns the untimely demise of Shri Amar Singh. In this hour of grief, I express my heartfelt condolences to his family and associates and pray to God for the peace of the departed soul. Om Shanti! Defence minister Rajnath Singh described Singh, his fellow politician from Uttar Pradesh, as a leader with friends in every political party. Saddened to know about the passing away of senior leader and MP Amar Singh. In his public life, he made friends in every political party, Rajnath Singhs tweet said. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also expressed grief on Twitter and said, May God give shelter to the soul of Shri Amar Singh ji in his deeds. My sincere condolences to the family of Shri Amar Singh ji. I express my deepest condolences to his bereaved wife and daughters in this sad moment. Jairam Ramesh, former union environment minister described Singh as one of the most colourful members of the upper house. The Rajya Sabha has just lost one of its most colourful members. Amar Singh played a key role in the United Front government in 96 and 97 in pushing telecom and petroleum sector reforms. I was his neighbour for quite a few years. Have many fond memories, the senior Congress leader said. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav paid an emotional tribute to Singh with a photograph. Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik said deeply saddened to learn about the passing away of veteran leader and Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved family. May his soul rest in peace. If there has to be just one takeaway from Gunjan Saxena The Kargil Girl trailer, it is this you dont earn respect by saying I can do it, you earn it by keeping your head down and just doing it. That Nike logo never sounded so right as when you see a vulnerable looking Janhvi Kapoor, playing the real life Gunjan Saxena, answering the naysayers with her work. Watch Gunjan Saxena The Kargil Girl trailer The Kargil Girl trailer introduces its main cast and how a frail-looking girl with passion for flying ended up flying rescue and recce missions for the Indian Air Force during the Kargil War, and this was long before female pilots were commissioned by the IAF and it is not easy as she is reminded at every point that she is a woman and weak because of it. Pankaj Tripathi plays Janhvis father in the film who is the wind beneath her wings. Despite the whole world saying that she cant do it, a quiet but determined Pankaj is seen telling her that hard work never fails you. Whether a woman or a man fly the plane, they are called pilots, he simplifies it for his passionate daughter. Based on the life of Flight Lieutenant Gunjan Saxena, who made history when she became the first Indian women in combat during the Kargil War, The Kargil Girl will release during the Independence Day weekend on Netflix. She, along with Flight Lieutenant Srividya Rajan, flew the Cheetah helicopters for casualty evacuation and reconnaissance for which they often flew very close to Pakistani positions. Directed by Sharan Sharma, the film also stars Angad Bedi, Viineet Kumar, Manav Vij and Ayesha Raza in pivotal roles. Speaking about the film, Pankaj had earlier told IANS: I liked the character very much. I am having a lot of fun while shooting for the film. Janhvi is a very sincere actress. She respects me a lot and I too respect her for the sincerity and commitment towards her work. Sharan is a very talented director and is well versed with his craft. Its an opportunity to work under Dharma Productions. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A PRIEST found not guilty in two sexual assault trials has not been allowed to return to ministry to date, the Limerick Leader has learned. In February, a jury at Limerick Circuit Court returned majority not guilty verdicts in relation to each of the six charges. The man in his 60's held his face in his hands and sobbed as each of the verdicts were read out by the court registrar. Last year, the same priest was acquitted of eight similar charges relating to a different complainant. All the sexual assault offences were alleged to have occurred in a County Limerick parish in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The priest is no longer in that parish. Following the court case in February the priest has not yet been allowed back into ministry. He has now been stood down for five years in total. In accordance with diocesan child safeguarding policy a priest is removed from ministry after a sexual assault allegation. In response to a media query, a spokesperson for the archdiocese in question said: The issue that you raise is extremely sensitive and impacts in a profound way on the lives of a number people. Naturally, it is not appropriate for the Archdiocese to comment on any individual person or case and we do not wish to do so in this email. At all times, our primary concern is the protection of children and vulnerable adults and, in particular, the care of victims of sexual abuse as we seek to respond as best we can to their needs, said the spokesperson. When the archdiocese receives allegations of sexual abuse against a priest, priority is always given to the criminal process and the roles played by Tusla, the gardai and other relevant state agencies, they said. Once, these State processes are completed the archdiocese implements its own procedures. Even in cases where there is not a criminal conviction, the archdiocese needs to address the issue of the suitability of the priest concerned for ministry. This process is akin to the professional suitability and fitness to practise procedures as practised by many professional bodies. At all times, we seek to implement our procedures in a manner that reflects principles of justice and equity for all involved, concluded the spokesperson. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 11:21:38|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close How does the Chinese army help with the fight against COVID-19? How does it help with poverty alleviation? China's military published a video on the People's Liberation Army on China's Army Day, which falls on Aug. 1. Mrs. Charity Assan, the Chair of South Africa branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has advised eligible voters who have still not registered to do so before the exercise ends on Thursday, August 6, 2020. She said it was highly essential for any unregistered voter to prioritise his/her registration as a primary civic responsibility to promote Ghanas democratic development. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the weekend in Sunyani, Mrs. Assan, an astute politician and a founding member of the NPP in South Africa, emphasised voting was a basic human right, and that all eligible voters ought to register in order not to be denied such rights in the impending December 7 general election. She indicated President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addos government had brought the nation on the right path of economic growth, prosperity and development, saying Ghanaians could only be active citizens and not spectators in the nations developmental process if they exercised their voting rights. We should be citizens and not spectators by registering in the voters registration exercise to enable us all to exercise our civic and constitutional rights as Ghanaians in Election 2020. This is the surest way we can vote and maintain President Akufo-Addo in government to facilitate rapid socio-economic growth and development, Mrs. Assan added. She said government had for the past three and half years advanced the nations economic fortunes, and that President Akufo-Addo required absolute support from Ghanaians to enable his government to successfully implement her social and poverty interventions programmes to better the lot of the people. Mrs Assan commended the EC for the registration exercise so far, and therefore called on supporters of the various political parties to eschew violence and support the Commission to generate a credible voters register that would subsequently facilitate credible Election 2020. 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 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 Nepal to send revised map with Indian territory to UN, Google India oi-Deepika S New Delhi, Aug 01: The Nepal government is preparing to send the newly updated map, which includes Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura as its integral part, to the United Nations and Google, Nepali media reported on Saturday. "We are soon delivering the revised map incorporating Kalapani, Lipu Lekh and Limpiyadhura to the international community," Nepali media quoted Minister for Land Management, Padma Aryal, as saying. India did not respond kindly to its proposal of talks ahead of redrawing political map: Nepal The Nepal government is also preparing to publish a book including the "encroached territories" of Kalapani, Lipu Lekh and Limpiyadhura, adding that the first priority, however, is to print the English version of the updated map and distribute it to the international community, local media quoted Aryal as saying. On June 13, Nepal's parliament passed the amendment to include the new political map featuring areas of Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura in its Constitution. The India-Nepal bilateral ties came under strain after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated an 80-km-long strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass with Dharchula in Uttarakhand on May 8. India has termed as "untenable" the "artificial enlargement" of the territorial claims by Nepal after its Parliament unanimously approved the new political map of the country featuring Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura areas which India maintains belong to it. Nepal reacted sharply to the inauguration of the road claiming that it passed through Nepalese territory. India rejected the claim asserting that the road lies completely within its territory. The Lipulekh pass is a far western point near Kalapani, a disputed border area between Nepal and India. Both India and Nepal claim Kalapani as an integral part of their territory - India as part of Uttarakhand's Pithoragarh district and Nepal as part of Dharchula district. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Jul, 2020 ) :German Ambassador Bernhard Schlagheck Sunday said his country backed Pakistan in its efforts to overcome the socioeconomic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and build back better for a more sustainable future. "COVID-19 has shaken the world unexpectedly and we will continue to feel the socioeconomic consequences of the virus for quite a long-time. Showing solidarity with each other during the trying times is the responsibility of all of us," he said while talking to APP. Ambassador Bernhard said the successful bilateral development cooperation between the two countries spanned over decades. "The current portfolio encompasses more than 500 million Euros in the areas of renewable energy and climate change, sustainable economic development and good governance," he added. He said the COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted the importance of access to health and education facilities, and stressed the need to support the weakest parts of the society. He said the German Government had decided to upscale its support to local Pakistani governments in their fight against the pandemic. It had made available 0.5 million euros to Pakistan to promote activities, which would help mitigate the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic at a local level. Germany would also commit 6 million euros to support the Pakistani communities hosting Afghan refugees, to improve local health and education services, he added. The ambassador said the projects would be implemented by the German development organization Gesellschaft fr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.\932 Seven suspected migrants have been arrested after being found in the back of a lorry at a port in Plymouth, days after after a record-breaking 202 crossed the Channel. Devon and Cornwall Police received a report of the five adults and two teenagers being found at Millbay Docks at 7.15am today. They were located in a Mesguen lorry trailer, which is believed to have arrived at the port on Friday. Britain urged France to get tougher on stopping migrants using the Channel to reach the UK, with one minister saying the crossings were 'unacceptably high' today. Five adult and two teenage suspected migrants have been arrested after being found in the back of a lorry at a port in Plymouth The suspected migrants arrived the day after more than 200 illegal immigrants arrived on British shores on Thursday, with 48 arriving on three boats in Kent. A force spokesperson said: 'The seven persons have been detained and have been assessed by South West Ambulance Service staff and their immediate welfare needs are being addressed. 'Police are currently liaising with Border Force and the port authorities. 'Initial inquiries would indicate the trailer arrived on a Brittany Ferries vessel from Roscoff yesterday. Devon and Cornwall Police received a report of the five adults and two teenagers being found at Millbay Docks at 7.15am today 'All seven persons have been arrested for illegally entering the UK.' Immigration compliance minister Chris Philip said: 'The number of illegal small boat crossings we are seeing from France is unacceptably high. 'And migrants continue to arrive in Calais to make the crossing. The French have to take tougher action.' The news comes as after Border Force figures showed 96 migrants were intercepted by police on Friday. Of those spotted in Dungeness, Kent, yesterday morning, a young man gave a thumbs up for the camera, in apparent glee having navigated the world's busiest shipping lane from Calais to make it to Britain Officers wearing face coverings were seen talking to the group of around ten people in Dungeness earlier in the day. A further 58 illegal immigrants were picked up by French authorities and taken back to France. This year, migrants travelling to the UK on small boats and other craft has already soared to 3,421 - almost double the number of arrivals for the whole of 2019. On Thursday a record-breaking 202 migrants made the treacherous crossing to the UK. Border Force dealt with 20 separate incidents as dinghies, kayaks, zodiaks and even a children's dinghy were used to make the treacherous crossings of the 21 mile wide Straits of Dover. More than 200 illegal immigrants crossed the Channel to arrive on the British coast on Thursday a record for a single day French authorities intercepted around 20 migrants in a boat that was taking on water in the English Channel earlier in the day All of the adults will be now processed by immigration officers who will interview them and discover if they are claiming asylum. If they do, checks will be made as to their history. MailOnline revealed in April none of them will be tested for coronavirus by officials. Earlier this month, the interior ministers of France and Britain signed an agreement to create a new joint police intelligence unit to combat migrant traffickers and reduce the number of illegal Channel crossings. In 2019, 2,758 migrants were rescued by the French and British authorities while trying to make the crossing - four times more than in 2018, according to French officials. The Mood COVID-19 has left the Presidential Election up in the air, with many having now written off Trumps chances of a 2nd term. Trump may have hoped for a 2nd term and, as some put it, a political dynasty to extend beyond his watch. We can expect the debate to last longer than Trumps political career. The big question mark will be whether Trump would have won a 2nd term had the U.S not succumbed to COVID-19. It wasnt just COVID-19 that has left Trump trailing in the polls, however. Civil unrest and the administrations foreign policy are just two examples of how Trump isolated and disjointed the U.S. With Canada, China, Mexico, the EU, and even the UK falling foul of U.S foreign policy, many will be hoping of a Trump defeat. Were 3-months away from the 3rd November and theres a lot that has to change for Trump to claw back his way into contention. The Latest Polls So, according to the latest FTs interactive Calculator and polling data, which are as at 29th July 2020, there has been a shift in the numbers. The FT has Democratic challenger Biden with 308 Electoral College votes, which remains unchanged from 22nd July. In fact, Biden has held onto the 308 since falling back from 318 as at the end of June. Its been a different story for the U.S President, however. The latest numbers show Trump with 128 Electoral College votes, which is down from 132 as at 22nd July. Looking more closely at the numbers, there is some cause for optimism for the blues. Joe Biden has seen the number of solid votes rise from 188 to 190, with leaning votes falling by 2 to 118. For U.S President Trump, his projected Electoral College vote count has fallen from 132 to 128. Leaning votes stand at 51, with solid votes at 77. Thats quite a shift from 22nd July. Leaning votes and solid votes had stood at 17 and 115 respectively just over a week ago. Also positive for Biden is the rise in the number of toss-up votes, which have increased from 98 to 102. Story continues If we look at the key U.S states that tend to be election barometers: Missouri continues to lean in favor of Trump and the Republicans, with Kansas City now also leaning in Trumps favor. A week ago, Kansas City had been a solid Republican state. Sending in Federal agents looks to have caused the shift. For Biden, Illinois, New Mexico, and Oregon are solid blues, with Michigan, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania also blue. The Road Ahead With the first of 3 Presidential Election debates not due until 29th September, that may favor the U.S President. Trump and the administration have just under 2-months to prepare to defend the Administration. U.S equities have held their ground, largely thanks to the FED. By contrast, however, the economy is in a shambles, with unemployment sky-high. The latest U.S COVID stimulus package also doesnt like its going to do the trick and support the unemployed. A sizeable cut in unemployment benefit is not only going to rile voters but also weigh on consumer spending. Thats a double negative for a U.S President that had promised to reunite the Republican Party and make America great again. As the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to hit the U.S economy further, Republicans have also begun to distance themselves from the President. The failure to deliver a swift stimulus package to the House was a reflection of the partys recent fragmentation. Trump needs a united party front and a widely available vaccine to shift the polls in his favor. If the latest news on the vaccine is anything to go by, a vaccine may not be available until mid-2021. That means one full winter season, where the U.S could even succumb to a 3rd wave of the pandemic. Such an outcome would almost certainly be curtains for the U.S President. Not even a postponement of the U.S Election would save Trump. The Glimmer of Hope For the die-hard Republicans, there may be a glimmer of hope, however Republicans have a tendency to be more loyal than Democrats. You dont have to go too far back in history to see examples of Democrats flipping at the last minute. Hillary Clinton was set for a comfortable win back in 2016. Then consider Trumps in-party support that remains exceptionally high compared to other Presidential candidates going for a 2nd term. This is the case even with the latest news of some turning their back on their leader. When you then factor in Trumps sheer desire to win at all costs, some may still give him a reasonable chance to swing the polls in his favor. One last thing to consider is the COVID-19 pandemic and what actual impact it will have on Election Day. Trump may quietly be hoping for the pandemic to remain a concern on Election Day. With Republicans considered to be more loyal, they are more likely to vote at any cost. A low turnout on Election Day must therefore also favor Trump and a 2nd term. All in all, it makes for an interesting few months ahead. Assuming that China, Russia, and other anti-Trump nations dont rig the elections, its still anyones race. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Shortly after the death of Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) and former leader of Samajwadi Party Amar Singh, several politicians took to Twitter to express their condolences. Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his friends & family. Om Shanti. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 1, 2020 Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent out a tweet in his memory, "Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his friends & family. Om Shanti, " the Prime Minister said. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also shared his condolences. Saddened to know about the death of the senior leader and parliamentarian Amar Singh, Here are some other reactions from leaders: Amar Singh MP and a person I have known for long, died today. Although he was mostly with SP, but he made friends across the spectrum of political https://t.co/sq1ncErLyj condolences to his family Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) August 1, 2020 Saddened by the death of senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Shri Amar Singh. Heartfelt condolences to his family. May his soul rest in peace. Ghulam Nabi Azad (@ghulamnazad) August 1, 2020 Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi also took to Twitter to express her deepest condolences to his bereaved wife and daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) August 1, 2020 VICTORIAThe British Columbia government says it has implemented all seven recommendations made by a coroners jury at the inquest into the killing of a man by police in Port Hardy five years ago. While the purpose of a coroners inquest is to identify systemic gaps to prevent similar deaths in the future, the province also says many of the recommended actions were already in place. James Butters, also known as James Hayward, was fatally shot by police that responded to reports of a man making threats in July 2015. The Independent Investigations Office of B.C. cleared the RCMP officers involved of wrongdoing, finding in 2017 that Butters advanced toward them with a knife after the officers told him to drop it. A coroners inquest in August 2019 heard that in the weeks before and months after his release from prison, Butters had asked to see a doctor, wanting psychiatric help that he never received. A member of Butters family said they were hoping police and the government could learn lessons from the death but worry policies will continue to be ignored or breached. The inquest heard the officer who shot Butters had not completed all of his mandatory de-escalation training either at the time of the shooting or by the time of the inquest four years later, although he remained on duty. The jury made seven recommendations, including ensuring that anyone released from correctional facilities is provided with the medication they need and that the province enforce the required de-escalation training for police officers. The presiding coroner is expected to release her comments on the recommendations imminently. They will then officially be forwarded to the Public Safety Ministry. However, the ministry said the recommended changes are already in place. The province has implemented all of the recommendations, the ministry said in an email reply. Several of the recommendations are part of existing policy, the government said. They include the provision of forensic psychiatric assessments, communication between parole officers when a client transfers between jurisdictions and training to help parole officers recognize and respond to mental health symptoms. The Provincial Health Services Authority took jurisdiction over correctional health services in 2017 and its policy ensures those with known release dates are provided with up to a 14-day supply of medications for continuity of therapy, the ministry says. One action taken this year since the inquest is an evaluation by the ministry to assess police agency compliance with crisis intervention de-escalation training and other use-of-force training requirements, such as annual firearm certifications. Ministry staff have observed high rates of compliance with (crisis intervention de-escalation) and other training requirements at police agencies visited to date. The evaluation will be completed in fall 2020. Butters aunt Nora Hayward said shes happy to know the recommendations are in place. However, the entire process of trying to get justice for her nephew has been frustratingly slow and difficult to navigate, she said. We didnt even learn what had happened, because James couldnt tell us, until four years later, Hayward said. The family only heard the names of the officers involved at the inquest, she said. They were shocked to learn the officer who shot him still hadnt completed all of his training. The RCMP says his training is now up to date. The family is concerned that the problems werent a lack of policy, but that many policies werent followed, Hayward said. But lodging complaints five years after the shooting is daunting, she said. Butters had trouble accessing treatment for his mental health issues, Hayward said. Without the psychiatric assessment he requested, Butters didnt qualify for the cost of his medication to be covered. While 14 days of medications would have helped, it wouldnt have saved her nephew, Hayward said. James suffered from mental health issues and he was trying to get better, she said. Hayward said she hopes what happened to Butters wont happen to anyone else. I want his life to make a difference, she said. Mark Miller, executive director of the John Howard Society of the Lower Mainland, couldnt speak to Butters case directly but said theres always a need for more rigorous support for people with complex mental health needs. There have been some good strides made in that area, but it continues to be an area that requires more, he said. Parole officers tend to be well trained in both mental health and addictions, Miller said, but its always a good idea to offer more training as those needs can become more complex and evolve. Miller also noted there may be good reasons to limit the distribution of medication to 14 days, as the risk of overdoses and other types of crises are magnified during the transition out of prison. One of the biggest challenges facing people transitioning out of institutions can be identifying and accessing the services available to them, and the society tries to offer support, he said. Services are often divvied up between multiple authorities under umbrellas like corrections, housing and health. Add to that the experience of a mental health crisis, and things that many of us take for granted like the ability to fill out an application form can be compromised, he said. Read more about: The Ontario NDP pleaded Friday for the Ford government to extend a pandemic-related ban on rental evictions that is due to expire on the weekend as critics fear a looming expansion of Torontos housing crisis. It is the eleventh hour, NDP tenant rights critic Suze Morrison said. Either he (Premier Doug Ford) changes course today, or the evictions start tomorrow. Advocates warn lifting the moratorium on hearings at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) will lead to a massive wave of evictions and allow developers and corporate landlords to hike rental rates especially in Toronto where demand is strong and supply is tight after Ford previously removed rent control on vacated sites. It wont be quite as quick as Morrison suggests; eviction orders that were in process before the pandemic will now be acted on, and non-urgent eviction hearings will start in mid-August, Tribunals Ontario said this week. But whether it is tomorrow or some time in August, the body responsible for ordering a sheriff to remove someones belongings from their home in Ontario will soon be considering the cases of tens of thousands of people who lost work when COVID-19 shuttered the economy. People who have never missed a rent payment or car payment in their entire lives are now terrified of being evicted, Morrison said. The province has not offered renters any specific assistance since March, when restrictions on social interactions led to the loss of large numbers of retail and hospitality jobs, and the federal assistance available does not cover an average Toronto rent. Younger renters are particularly vulnerable to eviction given many are employed in precarious or part-time work that has been lost to the pandemic and related shutdowns. Its the responsibility of the province to step up and make sure that folks are able to stay housed... and instead the premier rolled out an eviction bill to make it easier for landlords to throw people out on the streets, Morrison said. Morrison is referring to Bill 184, a housing bill that Ford and his government introduced to the legislature near the start of the pandemic and toughened along the way. She and other critics say the bill makes it easier for landlords to bully tenants into signing bad repayment plans during the pandemic and then evict them without a hearing. Spokespeople for the premier and Housing Minister Steve Clark did not respond when asked if they would extend the moratorium or put a direct support plan in place for renters unable to make full payments because COVID-19 stripped them of income. Geordie Dent, the executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants Association, said tenant advocates were fighting to slow the process and protect renters rights on a number of fronts. He said some were pushing the attorney generals office to create guidelines for the LTB to follow, and others were focused on efforts to convince Torontos mayor to use emergency powers to stay evictions in the city. The City of Toronto voted on Wednesday to challenge Bill 184, arguing that it breaches rules around procedural fairness and natural justice. Were mostly trying to push the government on financial support, or to mimic B.C.s plan to mandate long repayment plans for a year, Dent said. British Columbia has been providing rental relief of between $300 to $500 a month directly to landlords and is requiring landlords work out rent repayment agreements that span a reasonable period of time. The Landlord and Tenant Board is gradually resuming services in August, Tribunals Ontario said in an emailed response to questions. Tribunals Ontario said on Thursday that the LTB would begin issuing pending eviction orders starting Aug. 1, and begin to schedule hearings for non-urgent evictions for mid-August and into the fall. Spokesperson Rebecca Ganesathas was not immediately able to say how many L1 (non-payment of rent) eviction applications the board had received since the moratorium. In April, the last month the LTB had provided data, the board had received 1,405 such applications. That was down from the roughly 2,500 to 3,000 range seen in the previous two months and the equivalent three-month period a year ago. Nearly six months after a San Jose woman became the United States first known death from the novel coronavirus, California and the country dont look like weve had the better part of a year to figure this out. With the pathogen spreading far faster than our capacity to detect it, were fighting the pandemic in the dark and losing badly. Despite months of striving to emerge from the testing deficits that have hobbled the state and national response, we remain mired in a fundamental ignorance about the course and scope of the contagion. While California reached its goal of at least 60,000 tests a day last month and has since doubled that figure, the states premature return to pre-pandemic activities fueled a much greater increase in infections. Both the Bay Area and the state at large have seen the pandemic reach new records within the past two weeks. While the states current average of more than 120,000 tests a day would have been adequate to the task when the virus spread was being hampered by a nation-leading shutdown, a bigger outbreak requires more testing. Based on the states population and cases in early July, the Harvard Global Health Institute estimated that more than 220,000 tests a day would be required to manage the outbreak and more than 820,000 would be needed to suppress infections while reopening the economy. The states testing capacity is falling short by other measures. The share of tests yielding positive results has climbed from under 5% in June to near 8% in recent weeks, a sign that the virus is outpacing diagnosis. Equipment shortages have been reported as well as delays of up to two weeks in returning results, rendering tests essentially useless in preventing transmission. State officials have acknowledged recently that testing isnt available to everyone who wants it and that the surge in cases has overwhelmed capacity to effectively trace the contacts of infected people. Meanwhile, a public-private testing task force established by Gov. Gavin Newsom has lost its leaders and much of its membership and influence, the Los Angeles Times reported, despite the groups early success in ramping up capacity. California and other states have struggled to fill a leadership vacuum after a series of testing missteps and outright abdication of responsibility at the federal level. The Harvard analysis estimates that the United States would need to do about twice as much testing to control the virus and four times as much to suppress its outbreak. The Trump administrations top testing official, Brett Giroir, told the House coronavirus subcommittee Friday that nationwide demand is outpacing supply to the extent that a quarter of test results arent returned within five days, long past the point of utility in slowing the spread. President Trumps son-in-law and consigliere, Jared Kushner, did develop a national testing plan, according to a Vanity Fair report this week, but abandoned it partly on the grounds that most of the virus victims were expected to be in Democratic-leaning states and cities. The inability to track outbreaks leaves scant options for managing the pandemic apart from the broad-based shutdowns that California abandoned too soon and that the nation as a whole never quite managed. Newsom and Bay Area officials have already retreated from business and school reopenings as dire economic indicators suggest a shutdown of sorts persisting regardless of official orders. Giroir testified Friday that We cannot test our way out of this or any other pandemic. That may be true, but there is currently no other way out of its devastating social and economic consequences. This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters. Just last week, the PA senate passed HB732, which includes a $670 million tax break for the fracking and petrochemical industries. If signed into law, this means more fracking and more single-use plastics in Pennsylvania. This bill was also passed just after Attorney General Josh Shapiro detailed the horrors of fracking related health issues. Air and water pollution can lead to migraines, nausea, violent nosebleeds, and even cancer. The last thing we need during a global pandemic is more air and water pollution that puts our health at risk. By increasing fracking, single-use plastic litter is going to rapidly rise. This pollution is going to clog our oceans and waterways even more than it already has, leading to an extreme loss of wildlife biodiversity. We need LESS single-use plastics, not MORE. I was so disappointed that my state Representative Todd Stephens voted for HB732, prioritizing companies like Shell and Exxon over PA communities. I want to thank Senator Maria Collett for voting against HB732 and keeping the health of myself and the environment in mind. Valerie Viscusi Lansdale Researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences are leading a new 3 million study to investigate the real-world effects of the newest cystic fibrosis medications as they become available. The research will look at how a new triple combination cystic fibrosis drug, Kaftrio, will affect people in their day to day lives, rather than in controlled clinical trial conditions. Kaftrio (known as TriKafta in the US) is a successor to Orkambi. The project, called RECOVER, has been awarded 2.85 million from Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (US), 112,000 from Cystic Fibrosis Trust (UK) and 100,000 thousand from Cystic Fibrosis Ireland. In recent years, a number of promising new medications have been developed that treat the underlying genetic defect in cystic fibrosis. The most recent triple combination cystic fibrosis drug, Kaftrio, has demonstrated striking improvements in clinical trials of people with the most common form of cystic fibrosis. Pending final European Medicines Agency approval, expected in the next number of weeks, these new medications will be provided for use in the majority of people with cystic fibrosis in Ireland and the UK as part of an existing agreement between the manufacturer and the respective states. Starting in August 2020, the study will recruit patients and begin to examine clinical outcomes over a two-year period across cystic fibrosis centres in Ireland and the UK. In addition to collecting routine health measurements, they will study detailed imaging, functional, biological and quality of life measurements that could not be collected in clinical trials. Our study will allow us to discover in detail how this powerful new treatment affects the health and everyday lives of people with cystic fibrosis, to understand why different people might respond differently to the drug and to gain insight into how this treatment might affect the very significant treatment burden that people with cystic fibrosis currently endure, said Professor Paul McNally, associate professor of paediatrics at RCSI, a respiratory consultant in Childrens Health Ireland and lead researcher on the RECOVER study. Clinical trials occur under very controlled conditions and exclude many sick people with cystic fibrosis. Real-world studies, such as RECOVER, are essential to confirm the trial findings and examine in-depth effects on the everyday lives all people with cystic fibrosis. In partnership with the Irish and UK cystic fibrosis registries, RECOVER is led by an Irish research team collaborating with researchers in 16 clinical and university sites in the UK, Europe and North America. Philip Watt, CEO of Cystic Fibrosis Ireland, commented: Cystic Fibrosis Ireland is proud to support this major research study that will provide much new detailed data on the impact of new and innovative cystic fibrosis medications across Europe and North America. Dr Lucy Allen, director of research at the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, said: The data from the clinical trials have shown us that Kaftrio will make a significant difference to peoples lives. However, as cystic fibrosis is a complex condition affecting many parts of the body it is important to understand the full impact of this drug. In the short-term the results of the RECOVER study may speed up access to Kaftrio around the world. In the longer term it will provide information on tailoring care for each individual with cystic fibrosis. Led by RCSI, the collaborating institutions include Imperial College, London; Childrens Health Ireland at Crumlin, Tallaght, Temple Street and Connolly; National Childrens Research Centre; St Vincents University Hospital, Dublin; University Hospital Limerick; Belfast City Hospital; Royal Belfast Hospital for Children; Royal Brompton Hospital, London; CF Registry of Ireland, Dublin; UK CF Registry; The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Toronto; Eramsus MC, University Medical Centre, Rotterdam; Brandenburg Medical School, Germany; Queens University Belfast; Teagasc Food Research Centre, Cork; and Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. The Electoral Commission (EC) says it has detected some multiple registrations in the ongoing mass voter registration exercise. The detection followed the commencement of a deduplication exercise by the commission, a process that involves using machines to match pictures and fingerprints of persons who have registered to detect duplication. The Director of Electoral Services at the EC, Dr Serebour Quarcoo, told the Daily Graphic last Wednesday that an adjudicating committee would sit on the issue on Monday, August 3, 2020, reports Timothy Ngnenbe. When asked about the number of persons involved in the multiple registration exercise so far, he said: "I cannot put out figures now because we are currently working on it, but, it will be ready by Monday." Dr Serebour said the names of persons who would be confirmed to have engaged in multiple registrations would be deleted. When asked what the fate of the culprits would be, he said their names would not be included in the final voters register, meaning such persons would not be able to vote on December 7. As to whether they would be prosecuted, he said the EC would take a decision on that. We will look at all the cases issue by issue at the right time, he stated. Dr Serebour explained that the multiple registration might have occurred because of ignorance by some persons. "We started registering on cluster basis so instead of waiting to have their turn, some people rushed to other polling stations to register and when the registration team got to their original polling stations, they went ahead to register again," he explained. Dwindling numbers Touching on the dwindling numbers at registration centres across the country as the exercise inches to a close on August 6, Dr Quarcoo said it was partly because many people rushed to register when the exercise began. He, however, said the development was a positive sign that more people had registered already, which had lessened the burden on registration officials. "If the numbers are going down, it means that many people have registered and challenges with social distancing and other safety protocols have improved," he added. Visits Checks by the Daily Graphic in some centres in the regions indicated that the long queues that characterised the exercise from the beginning had vanished, and EC officials were issuing out about half of the 100 voter identification (ID) cards per day. Daily Graphic correspondents who visited some of the centres are Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah and Biiya Mukusah Ali, Bono Region; Vincent Amenuveve, Upper East Region; Bright Selase Afavi, Volta Region, and Ruby Delanyo Buafor and Jennifer Kwasin, Accra. At the registration centres visited, all the necessary protocols were being adhered to strictly. Veronica buckets had been placed at vantage points for the washing of hands, and the temperature of applicants was taken before the registration process was triggered. Accra The centres visited included Kubinson International School in the Anyaa Sowutuom Constituency, the St Josephs Catholic School 1 at Adabraka and the CMB Market in the Korley Klottey municipality. The Registration Officer (RO) at the Kubinson International School, Mr Aziz Okai, said people came in groups of two and sometimes three, but so far there had been a decline in the number since my team arrived here, he added. At the St Josephs Catholic School, 160 persons had registered, three days after the registration caravan stopped there. The RO, Ms Marian Tagoe, said registrants were not showing up as expected, making the centre a quiet place, as compared to the start when officers had no time or less time to go on break. The situation was the same at the St Josephs 2 registration centre where the RO, Ms Munira Tagoe, said 170 persons had registered there in the fourth phase. Upper East When the Daily Graphic visited the Sumbrungu Kolbia Akuka registration centre in the Bolgatanga municipality at about 8.50 a.m. last Monday, six people had gone through the registration processes for the day. At the Sumbrungu Market Square centre, the officer in charge, Mr James Mornah, said as of 9:09 a.m. 10 people had been issued with voter ID cards. At the Kolbia Market Square, the situation was not different as the registration officials were less busy. Bono Region At 1.10 p.m last Monday the Anokye Showroom Registration Centre at Area One in Sunyani was empty but the RO, Mr Akumfi Ameyaw, said 29 people had registered. The situation was not different at the Bakers Cooperative Office at Ahenboboano where the RO, Mr Benjamin Koomson, said 32 people had registered as of 1.30 p.m. According to him, people were trickling in and attributed the low patronage to the mad rush that characterised the beginning of the exercise. Volta Region Centres visited in the Ho municipality included the Volta Regional Museum Office and the Methodist Primary School, Bankoe, where only a small number of applicants were going through the process. An EC official at the Regional Museum Registration Centre, Mr Patrick Dzigbordi Adzah, told the Daily Graphic that eight applicants had been captured as of 11:30 a.m. since the days exercise started at 7 a.m. This registration centre is surrounded by three or more other centres, hence people could not wait for us to come here before they registered. They moved to register at clusters they were not supposed to register," Mr Adzah observed. #GhanaVotes2020 Source: Graphiconline.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 Mihir K. Malani Capital markets in India have gone through a significant technological upgrades over the past decade. Due in part to the innovations led by market participants, both institutions as well as individuals and also to regulatory bodies showing a clear intent to make technology a priority in the sector. While interest in new technologies continues to grow, some trends have changed the face of the industry. For ages, automated trading has been dominated by large trading desks, hedge funds and institutions due to the technology infrastructure and investments required. However, this seems to be changing as the investor of today is more aware, knowledgeable and in most cases, possesses the technological know-how required to create and use smarter investment and trading tools. Many HNIs have their own proprietary strategies backed by years of research and some even have well equipped development teams working on automation of these strategies. Developing new trading strategies often requires dealing with large amounts of historical data. While some of it can be obtained for free from designated websites, more specialized and detailed data like live prices, intra-day trade data, etc. can only be sourced from authorized vendors often for a fee. This, however, is money well spent as data plays a critical role in helping investors create models as well as back-test them for various market scenarios. With powerful databases like MongoDB, managing financial datasets is easy allowing users to create powerful models handling large amounts of data on the fly. Investors who are market savvy but lack technology capabilities take to state-of-the-art trading tools provided by some brokers. These tools provide clear and actionable information like charts, live news, etc. and tools like strategy builders and rule-based systems which are easy to use and do away with the need for programming skills. Some of these have made their way to mobile devices, making sure investors are always connected and capable of making smarter trading decisions even on the go. Another notable trend has been the increased investor interest in options trading. Given the sheer complexity coupled with risks involved, options trading had been a rather unchartered territory for investors and non-institutional traders. However, with the increase in availability of sophisticated trading tools and increased awareness on options as a trading instrument, many investors have taken the effort to study and participate in options trading. This has also been a result of some much-needed hand holding by broking and advisory firms by way of options focussed investor education programs. Moreover, built-in libraries from programming languages like Python help traders analyse and understand the mathematical aspects of these instruments with regards to pricing and risks. Done right with the appropriate tools and the right amount of discipline, options trading has turned out to be an interesting avenue for investors and professional traders. Having covered research, historical data and software implementation, the only bit left is exchange connectivity. This is where trading APIs play an important role in that they allow investors to connect to the exchanges via the brokers network thus providing seamless connectivity. Most broking companies today offer trading APIs through a subscription model. Thus, by offering last mile connectivity, brokers take care of the logistics, hardware requirements, latency as well as exchange compliance thereby making it easy for clients to plug in their strategies and start trading. Although technology has improved the overall experience of trading and investing, financial markets remain prone to shocks and sudden price movements. With large exposures this could mean a P&L swing of lakhs of rupees within a few seconds. In view of this, it is extremely critical that such scenarios are identified in real time and the turn-around time for any kind of response is kept low. This brings us to the conclusion that broking companies investing in strong risk management systems and processes will be the ones able to offer smarter trading tools and tech enabled products to their end clients, keeping them ahead of the curve. The ones who stop short of this, might need to brace themselves for difficult times ahead. (The author is Founder Nerve Solutions) : 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. Ellen DeGeneres' wife Portia de Rossi was spotted walking the couple's dogs on Friday afternoon in Los Angeles. The 47-year-old actress's impromptu outing comes after an insider at Telepictures revealed to DailyMail.com that DeGeneres, 62, may be walking away from her popular talk show. Pressure has been building over the past several months as seemingly endless staffers have stepped forward to slam Ellen for perpetuating a toxic work environment DeGeneres is now allegedly telling executives at Telepictures and Warner Bros that she has had enough and wants to pull the plug on the show. Spotted: Ellen DeGeneres' wife Portia de Rossi was spotted walking the couple's dogs on Friday afternoon in Los Angeles Controversy: The 47-year-old actress's impromptu outing comes after an insider at Telepictures revealed to DailyMail.com that DeGeneres, 62, may be walking away from her popular talk show If Portia was feeling stressed by her significant other's predicament, she did not show it on her face as she trekked through a parking lot with her pooches. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail and she had a pair of large sunglasses over her eyes. The Arrested Development star kept casual in light grey windbreaker that she layered over a black t-shirt and a pair of white drawstring shorts. She wore some Nike trainers on her feet and expertly manned all three of her dogs' leashes. Casual: The Arrested Development star kept casual in light grey windbreaker that she layered over a black t-shirt and a pair of white drawstring shorts Pokerface: If Portia was feeling stressed by her significant other's predicament, she did not show it on her face as she trekked through a parking lot with her pooches Portia - who has been married to Ellen since 2008 - has yet to speak publicly about the accusations that have been made against her wife by former and current staff members of the Ellen DeGeneres show. Ellen attempted to do some internal damage control by issuing an apology email to current staffers, where she appeared to deflect all blame and noted that she was 'disappointed' to learn that the show was not 'a place of happiness.' 'On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be a place of happiness no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case,' began DeGeneres in an email acquired by Variety. Quick and easy: Her blonde hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail and she had a pair of large sunglasses over her eyes Pro: Portia wore some Nike trainers on her feet and expertly manned all three of her dogs' leashes. The Ellen DeGeneres Show first premiered on NBC in 2003 and has remained on the air for a total of 17 seasons. Ellen also wrote that she 'I could not have the success I've had without all of your contributions. My name is on the show and everything we do and I take responsibility for that.' She acknowledged the internal investigation launched by WarnerMedia, which will look into 'staff experiences on set.' 'Alongside Warner Bros., [We at The Ellen DeGeneres Show] immediately began an internal investigation and we are taking steps, together, to correct the issues. As we've grown exponentially, I've not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I'd want them done. Silence: Portia - who has been married to Ellen since 2008 - has yet to speak publicly about the accusations that have been made against her wife by former and current staff members of the Ellen DeGeneres show; Portia and Ellen pictured in January 'Clearly some didn't. That will now change and I'm committed to ensuring this does not happen again,' wrote DeGeneres in her email. The email was immediately met with backlash, with many expressing disappointment over Ellen shifting the blame to her executive producers. Multiple staff members at the show told DailyMail.com they did not buy Ellen's apology and went on to encourage the host's departure. 'Don't think for a minute anything she has said in that apology means anything. She created and then enabled this toxic culture to go on for so long,' one staffer, who spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity. Damage Control: Ellen attempted to do some internal damage control by issuing an apology email to current staffers, where she appeared to deflect all blame and noted that she was 'disappointed' to learn that the show was not 'a place of happiness' 'If anyone had come to her or those three vile [executive producers] to complain, they would've been fired.' The Telepictures insider explained to DailyMail.com on Friday that Ellen now 'feels she can't go on and the only way to recover her personal brand from this is to shut down the show.' 'The truth is she knew what was going on, it's her show. The buck stops with her. She can blame every executive under the sun but Ellen is ultimately the one to blame.' Accusations against DeGeneres have ranged from alleged demeaning on-set behaviors to racial insensitivities. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 17:09:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIRUT, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun urged on Saturday the Lebanese army to protect Lebanon's sovereignty against Israel, said a statement by Lebanon's Presidency. "I call upon the Lebanese army to protect Lebanon's sovereignty against Israel's greed while committing to UN Resolution 1701 and protecting our territories and waters," Aoun said on the occasion of the Lebanese Army's 75th anniversary. He also called the army not to allow terrorists to enter Lebanon. Aoun said that Lebanon is facing "numerous enemies," including COVID-19, corruption, and those who contributed to weakening the Lebanese pound and increasing prices which caused suffering among citizens. Enditem Advertisement Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of President Donald Trumps handling of three major challenges facing the country the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide unrest over racial inequality and relations with Russia in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, a sign of the obstacles that his reelection bid faces just three months before Election Day. With the White House confronting the most significant reckoning on race since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the worst public health crisis in a century, and a hostile Russia reminiscent of the Cold War, Americans have little confidence in the job Trump is doing in all three of these major areas. Trump closes out the month of July the way it began, with his approval on the coronavirus in the low 30s. His approval sits at 34%, right about where it was earlier this month (33%) when it reached a new low since ABC News/Ipsos began surveying on the virus in March. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the response to the coronavirus (COVID-19)? (ABC News/Ipsos Poll) In the new poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos Knowledge Panel, Trumps approval is also deeply underwater at 36% for how he is handling both the protests over racial inequality and relations with one of the countrys greatest geopolitical foes, Russia. An election that comes down to be a referendum on Trumps handling of the coronavirus, his response to the race movement or his dealings with foreign adversaries spells trouble for the incumbent president. With all three crises, Trump only consistently has the support of his own party and his base. Republicans back Trumps handling of the coronavirus (74%), the protests (78%) and Russia (80%) by overwhelming margins. Democrats are almost uniformly in opposition to Trumps managing of the three issues, with approval of the president in single-digits on the pandemic (7%), the unrest (8%) and Russia (8%). Roughly 1 in 5 Republicans disapprove of the president on coronavirus (26%), the protests (22%) and Russia (20%), and just over 9 in 10 Democrats disapprove on all three matters. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling relations with Russia? (ABC News/Ipsos Poll) Independents trace the countrys attitudes, with his approval falling between 30% to 33% and his disapproval landing between 66% and 69% on COVID-19, the demonstrations and his approach to Russia. About half of Trumps base white, non-college educated Americans approve of his leadership on the outbreak (50%), the protests (51%) and Russia (51%). The latest numbers for Trump are particularly problematic on his combative response to the nationwide protests as his approval is in dire straits across racial lines. Only 45% of whites, 7% of Black Americans and 28% of Hispanics approve of Trumps handling on this specific issue. Over half of whites (55%), and clear majorities of Black Americans (92%) and Hispanics (72%), disapprove. Meanwhile, less than one-third of the country believes that sending federal officers to respond to demonstrations in cities makes the situation better. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the response to protests happening across the country? (ABC News/Ipsos Poll) A slight majority (52%) view the response as exacerbating the situation, and 19% say it doesnt have an effect either way. Even among Americans who are supposed to be Trump loyalists, only 42% of white non-college educated Americans say that the presence of federal agents improves the situation. Over a third (37%) of this demographic see the move as making the situation worse. The new poll comes after the president made a hard pivot back to pushing for an unproven treatment for the virus, hydroxychloroquine, against the advice of top health experts after appearing to break from months of downplaying the viruss severity by encouraging the country to wear masks and practice social distancing last week. MORE: Trump returns to old ways, pushes unproven coronavirus treatment It also comes amid the backdrop of clashes in Portland, Oregon, where the president dispatched federal agents into the city to halt the nightly protests that were sparked two months ago by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May. On Wednesday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said that she was assured that officers would begin a phased withdrawal from the city an announcement that Trump appeared to contradict by Thursday morning, arguing that the officers would only leave once safety was restored. His disapproval on his handling of relations with Russia, in particular, comes at a precarious time for the president, who has dismissed U.S. intelligence that indicates Russia paid the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan. Trump, in an interview with Axios earlier this week, said he never discussed the matter in a July 23 phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and when pressed on why he didnt raise it, he said, That was a phone call to discuss other things and frankly thats an issue that many people said was fake news. This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel July 29-30, 2020, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 730 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.0 points, including the design effect. See the polls topline results and details on the methodology here. Trump in trouble as nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of his handling of COVID-19, protests, Russia: POLL originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Afghanistan Facing Humanitarian Disaster Amid Pandemic, Continued Violence, U.S. Watchdog Finds By RFE/RL July 31, 2020 Millions more Afghans are being pushed into poverty by the coronavirus pandemic, which has overwhelmed the war-wracked country's basic health-care system and exacerbated food insecurity, a U.S. watchdog said on July 30. The pandemic's devastating effect, combined with the continued high levels of violence, has brought one of the world's poorest countries to the brink, the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in its quarterly report, warning that the country "is headed for a humanitarian disaster." The virus entered Afghanistan in February as thousands of migrants returned from neighboring Iran, which at the time was the region's worst-hit nation for the virus. Since then, Afghanistan has been ravaged by COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. "The economic shock of the pandemic -- including increased unemployment, food-supply disruptions due to border closures, and rising food prices -- has exacerbated Afghans' food insecurity, already impacted by the ongoing conflict and high poverty levels," said SIGAR, which collates expert and media reports and conducts its own analysis. About one-third of Afghanistan's estimated 32.2 million people were either in a crisis or an emergency state of food insecurity, the report warned. Prices of essential commodities like wheat flour, cooking oil, sugar, and pulses have steadily risen over the past few months. "At the same time, the purchasing power of casual labor has dropped significantly," the report noted. SIGAR said Afghanistan had likely entered a recession because of the pandemic, with the economy projected to shrink by up to 10 percent in 2020. "Experts predict that an additional 8 million people will fall into poverty, pushing the poverty rate from 55 percent to 80 percent," the report says. Afghanistan has almost 36,500 confirmed infections, with nearly 1,300 deaths. SIGAR said that number may "vastly undercount" the true toll of the virus and pointed to research showing up to 90 percent of possible cases are not being tested. "Testing remains limited, but nearly 43 percent of samples test positive, one of the highest rates in the world," the report warns. Most of the detected cases are in urban areas, with Kabul becoming the epicenter of the virus. Virus-related border closures have seen customs revenues plunge, with sustainable domestic revenues down 23.4 percent in the first two quarters of 2020, compared to the same period last year, SIGAR said. The report acknowledged that Taliban violence has remained above "historic norms" for most of the second quarter of this year and the security situation had not improved following the signing of a landmark peace deal between the Taliban and the United States in late February. "Violence levels stayed well above historic norms for the majority of the reporting period," SIGAR said, citing NATO's Resolute Support mission. The militants continued attacks on government security checkpoints and bombings, pausing online for a three-day cease-fire over the Eid al-Fitr holiday in late May and a current cease-fire for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on July 28 said more than 10,000 government forces had been killed or wounded since the U.S.-Taliban deal was signed. With reporting by AFP and dpa Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-facing- humanitarian-disaster-amid-pandemic-continued- violence-u-s-watchdog-finds/30758356.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 China conducts 'high-intensity' aerial drills in S China Sea, amid tensions with US Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 10:04 AM China has conducted "high-intensity" aerial drills over the South China Sea, as tensions escalate between Beijing and Washington in the strategic waterway. China's Defense Ministry announced on Thursday that long-range Chinese bombers, the H-6G and H-6K, were among the aircraft that took part in the aerial exercises over the South China Sea, without specifying the exact location of the drills. The Chinese jet bombers carried out "high-intensity training, and completed day-and-night training exercises in taking off and landing, long-range assault, and attacks on sea targets," Ren Guoqiang, the ministry spokesman, said at a virtual press conference in the capital, Beijing. Ren added that the drills were part of the country's routine training and had "achieved the expected results." The Chinese Defense Ministry stressed that the exercises had been pre-scheduled and were aimed at boosting the skills and capabilities of pilots to operate under various natural conditions. The South China Sea is a gateway to major sea routes, through which about 3.4 trillion dollars' worth of trade passes each year. China claims the strategic waterway is its sovereign territory and has since 2014 built artificial islands on reclaimed reefs and installed military bases on them. Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei have overlapping claims with China to parts of the sea. The United States, which sides with Beijing's rivals in the maritime dispute, routinely sends warships and warplanes to the South China Sea to assert what it calls its right to freedom of navigation, ratcheting up tensions among the regional countries. Earlier this month, Washington said Beijing's claims to most of the sea are illegal, ramping up support for Southeast Asian nations with claims to parts of it. Australia has also rejected Beijing's territorial and maritime claims in the sea, saying there was "no legal basis" to several of China's claims. Canberra has in the past joined provocative maneuvers by the United States in the region. 'US must stop stirring up troubles in South China Sea' At the press conference in Beijing on Thursday, Ren lashed out at the US administration and said Washington must stop stirring up troubles in the South China Sea as China is determined to safeguard its sovereignty and security in the strategic waterway. "China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands and reefs in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters, which is based on sufficient historical and jurisprudential evidence," the Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman said. "We urge the United States to stop making erroneous remarks, taking provocative military actions in the South China Sea and sowing discord among countries in the region. The US move to stir up troubles in the South China Sea will only make China all the more determined to ride the waves, safeguard its sovereignty and security more resolutely, and safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea more firmly," Ren underlined. Ren also censured a statement issued by the US Department of State earlier in the month, which accused Beijing of seeking a "maritime empire" in the South China Sea and destabilizing the region with its drills on the Xisha Islands. "We firmly oppose this statement of the United States," Ren said. "The US side disregards the historical context and objective facts of the South China Sea issue, flagrantly violating its commitment of not taking a position on the sovereignty issue of the South China Sea, making groundless accusations against China, sowing discord among countries in the region and dispatching two aircraft carriers for military exercise in the South China Sea." The Chinese official said the US statement "fully exposed the hegemonic mindset and double standards" of the administration in Washington. "The US regards itself as the so-called 'arbiter' of the South China Sea issue, but actually it is a trouble-maker to disturb peace in the South China Sea, a saboteur of regional cooperation and a provocateur of country-to-country relations," Ren stressed. China raps Pompeo's anti-China rhetoric China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday blasted US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's remarks on China-US relations and called on him to abandon his outdated Cold War mindset. Pompeo claimed in a speech last week that the US foreign policy towards China has been an "old paradigm of blind engagement" since the two sides established bilateral relations. Wang Wenbin, a spokesman of China's Foreign Ministry, lambasted Pompeo for not respecting the history and facts, and said the actions of people like him are actually serving their own ends and not welcome, even in the United States. The Chinese official also called on the US secretary of state to abandon his outdated mindset towards China and help bring China-US relations back on track. "We urge people like Pompeo to discard their outdated Cold War mindset and ideological prejudices, view China and China-US relations in a correct manner, stop actions that harm China's interests and damage China-US relations, and create essential conditions for the relations between the two countries to return to the normal track," Wang said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Advertisement Thousands of people protested Germany's coronavirus restrictions Saturday in a Berlin demonstration that insisted 'the end of the pandemic' has arrived. The declaration comes as authorities voice increasing concerns about an uptick in new infections. With few masks in sight, a dense crowd marched through downtown Berlin from the Brandenburg Gate ahead of a rally on a wide boulevard that runs through the city's Tiergarten park. Protesters who came from across the country held up homemade signs with slogans like 'Corona, false alarm,' 'We are being forced to wear a muzzle,' 'Natural defense instead of vaccination' and 'We are the second wave.' People attend a demonstration initiated by the initiative 'Querdenken-711', with the slogan 'the end of the pandemic - the day of freedom to protest current measurements that aim to curb the spreading of Coronavirus in Berlin Participants hold a banner reading 'Health is more than the absence of illness' as they take part in the demonstration in front of the Brandenburg Gate Police estimated around 17,000 people took part in the protest today Demonstrators hold banners reading 'Stop! It is enough! Enough is enough' as they are seen clearly not social distancing Demonstrators hold a banner during a protest against the government's restrictions amid the coroanvirus pandemic. Police used bullhorns to chide participants to adhere to social distancing rules and to wear masks, apparently with little success They chanted, 'We're here and we're loud, because we are being robbed of our freedom!' Police used bullhorns to chide participants to adhere to social distancing rules and to wear masks, apparently with little success. They tweeted that they were preparing a criminal complaint against the rally's organizers for failing to enforce hygiene rules. Police estimated that about 17,000 people turned up to the march, and demonstrators were kept apart from counterprotesters, some chanting 'Nazis out!' A demonstrator wearing a black bird mask is seen at today's protest Thousands of people gathered at the protest and were seen without face masks Demonstrators waved banners and wore masks during the protest in Berlin pleaded with Germans this week to observe the distancing and mask rules and, amid concern about residents bringing home infections from summer trips abroad, introduced free tests for people entering the country Woman stage a counter protest during a demonstration A demonstrator stands next to a sign reading 'We need a Corona investigation committee' A counter-protester holds a sign reading 'Never Again' and depicting Thuringia's regional leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party A woman carries a sign reading 'End of the Corona dictaturship' as she attends the demonstration Demonstrators hold a banner reading 'Nobody has the right to obey' during the protests. A senior ally of Angela Merkel said earlier this week that a second wave of coronavirus has already hit Germany and that they are seeing new clusters of infections every day Protests against anti-virus restrictions in Germany have long drawn a variety of attendees, including conspiracy theorists and right-wing populists. Unlike the U.S., Brazil and Britain, Germany's government has been praised worldwide for its management of the pandemic. The country's death toll - just over 9,150 people out of more than 210,670 confirmed virus cases as of Saturday - is five times less than Britain's, which has a smaller population. In the 24 hours to July 31 there were 870 new infections. The German government has been easing lockdown measures since late April but social distancing rules remain in place, as does a requirement to wear masks on public transit and in shops. But officials have been warning against complacency as the number of new Covid-19 cases crept up recently. They pleaded with Germans this week to observe the distancing and mask rules and, amid concern about residents bringing home infections from summer trips abroad, introduced free tests for people entering the country. A senior ally of Angela Merkel said earlier this week that a second wave of coronavirus has already hit Germany and that they are seeing new clusters of infections every day. A counter-protester holds a sign reading 'we are many. Berlin against Nazis' Demonstrators waved banners in the air and clapped their hands together as they marched through the streets A demonstrator holds a heart-shaped banner reading 'Love is the answer' during a protest A demonstrator waves a banner reading 'Freedom' in front of the Brandenburg Gate Counter-protesters wear face masks and hold signs during the Berlin protest. The German government has been easing lockdown measures since late April but social distancing rules remain in place, as does a requirement to wear masks on public transit and in shops Germany has plans to make coronavirus tests mandatory for travellers returning from high-risk areas, as fears rise that summer travel could spark a new surge in infections A senior ally of Angela Merkel said earlier this week that a second wave of coronavirus has already hit Germany and that they are seeing new clusters of infections every day Germany's national disease control center registered 955 new cases Friday, a high figure by recent standards. 'Thousands of #covidiots are celebrating themselves in Berlin as `the second wave,' without distancing, without masks,' tweeted Saskia Esken, a co-leader of the Social Democrats, the junior party in Germany's governing coalition. 'They are not just endangering our health, they are endangering our success against the pandemic and for the revival of the economy, education and society. Irresponsible!' Germany will also make coronavirus tests mandatory for travellers returning from high-risk areas, as fears rise that summer travel could spark a new surge in infections. It was also reported that Germany is carrying out coronavirus checks at airports and is considering making them compulsory to fend off a second wave of Covid-19. Munich, Dortmund and Duesseldorf are among the airports which are screening travellers when they return from overseas, and Angela Merkel's health minister is discussing plans to enforce them nationwide. The number of coronavirus cases in Jefferson County crossed the 4,000 threshold on Friday, closing out a month in which infections grew nearly fourfold. But the convergence of recent, positive trends including a decline in average daily increases and a leveling off of hospitalization rates and ventilator usage has led to some cautious optimism among local leaders. Its not just like the flu, County Judge Jeff Branick said. But our downward trajectory might just mean that the masks are effective. I certainly like where the 14-day moving average is going, and I hope it continues. Still, Port Arthur Mayor Thurman Bill Bartie warned there is work to be done as he announced a Turn Down the Numbers campaign that will begin next month. He harkened back to May, when he warned that Aug. 1 would be a sad day if the virus had not been brought under control. Tomorrow begins that sad day, he said in a conversation that streamed live on Facebook on Friday. To put July in perspective, the county reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 18 and did not surpass 1,000 cases until late June. It heads into the new month having confirmed 4,018 cases and 67 virus-related deaths. A little more than half of those deaths were logged in July. Related: Rural SE Texas sees slowing in confirmed COVID cases More Information Coronavirus testing sites When: Noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday Where: Carl A. Parker Multipurpose Center, 1800 Lakeshore Dr., Port Arthur See More Collapse Over the course of the month, the county logged a record seven-day average number of coronavirus cases confirmed each day of just more than 120. The period from July 23 through last Wednesday also proved the most deadly week locally since the pandemic began, with 14 fatalities. But a 14-day downward trend in the number of cases confirmed each day and last weeks stabilization of rates of hospitalizations, patients in intensive-care beds and ventilators in use have some elected officials and other experts optimistic. As of Thursday, the last day when coronavirus case statistics for the entire county were available, the seven-day rolling average was down to nearly 69 coronavirus cases confirmed each day. Top hits: Get Beaumont Enterprise stories sent directly to your inbox But Dr. Praphul Joshi, a Lamar University professor and director of the Master of Public Health program, said in an email that a sustained reduction still is needed to reduce the virus-related burden on the health-care system and decrease mortality. Joshi also is the director of the Southeast Texas Public Health Institute. Beaumont Mayor Becky Ames on Friday said hospital capacity and threats from hurricane season are her two biggest concerns at this time. So to help continue that reduction, the Beaumont City Council earlier this week voted 4-3 to keep most city facilities closed, reversing a previous vote to open them as early as Friday. The city also is working to set up more public opportunities to allow residents to be tested for coroanvirus. Related: In reversal, Beaumont will keep public facilities closed In Port Arthur, Bartie said he would give more information next Wednesday about how residents can take the Turn Down the Numbers pledge and become ambassadors for the campaign. He said such action is necessary to continue fighting the pandemic within his citys limits. Bartie also encouraged parents who have a choice to allow their children to attend school virtually rather than in person. He urged other parents to have conversations with their children about the importance of washing their hands and wearing a mask. He also said some multigenerational households might want to start considering wearing masks even inside their homes to stop the virus spread. Beginning tomorrow, yall, the story changes again, he said. Kaitlin Bain is the Government Reporter for the Beaumont Enterprise. Contact her at Kaitlin.Bain@BeaumontEnterprise.com or on Twitter by clicking here. Don't miss a thing: Sign up for our Daily Headlines newsletter. A slew of posts on social media platform Twitter and online publishing platform Medium have pointed out how prospective employers have been ghosting candidates after the interview process especially since the lockdown. Bengalurus 34-year-old Cassandra Lobo elaborated how the consulting firm she interviewed for not only conducted two rounds of interviews but also an elaborate assessment test where her results showed that she exceeded the recruiters expectations. Lobo said that her interviewers were also visibly impressed. But, two months later, Lobo has no clue as to what happened to the job position. The position still seems to be open as the job role still reflects on recruitment platforms. The company should have the basic decency to inform candidates whether they were selected or not. Why keep us hanging? I could have given at least a few more interviews, said Lobo who lost her job in a retail firm in April 2020. Several million people have lost their jobs across India and are interviewing aggressively even as very few are recruiting. But ghosting has become a common problem faced. Ghosting is typically used in the world of dating for a potential partner who abruptly stops communicating with the other person. This includes blocking the number, unfollowing on social media as well as no calls, messages made to clarify their position. Ghosting is an indication that the other person is no longer interested in you. In the hiring world, Ghosting, a phenomenon where either the prospective employer or candidate suddenly cuts off all communications with the other party during the last stage of negotiation in the recruitment process. In fact, employers had taken ghosting seriously and had also begun to name and shame candidates who had stopped responding to communication post interviews. Amidst the coronavirus lockdown, the tables seem to have turned. Thousands of candidates are out on the job market seeking relevant opportunities and companies are spoilt for choice. Instead of openly stating whether the candidate was shortlisted for the post, several organisations choose to ignore. Your repeated calls would not be answered nor will there be any formal communication. Even if there is a third-party recruitment consultant involved in the process whose responsibility is to communicate the companys decision, these entities also go incommunicado. Delhis Anna Vashum was contacted by a healthcare research firm through an HR consultant. Vashum who is a biochemistry graduate was told that she would be the best fit for the job. After an extensive three-round interview, her salary expectations were sought and Vashum was told the company will get back. This was May. Now it is the end of July. I was told in the interview that I was the perfect fit at this company. The companys human resource team also negotiated the pay package that I would be offered which made it clear that they were interested in offering me a job. When I contacted the HR consultant two weeks later he said that he had no information. I tried to contact the recruiters hiring manager who hasnt responded even after two months, said Vashum. Data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed that against an average employment of 404 million in FY20, employment in June 2020 was 374 million. This meant that 30 million jobs had been lost ever since the lockdown was imposed due to the coronavirus outbreak. Now imagine the number of people looking for alternate employment opportunities after a job loss. Isnt it a part of standard employment practices to not keep the candidate in the dark? Recruitment heads in companies told Moneycontrol that sometimes there is genuinely more time taken to finalise a candidate. There have been cases where we have liked more than one candidate. Budgets are constrained now so we have to be very sure of who we hire. This takes time. Hence sometimes we find it tough to inform the candidate about the final selection and these conversations also get awkward, said the head of HR at a mid-sized financial services firm. However, he also admitted that on some occasions if too many people apply for one position, the HR managers could also forget to inform those who did not make the cut. If employers complain about candidates not being responsive after an interview, the same principle applies to recruiters as well. Rather than delaying future job prospects of a candidate, the best would be to inform those interviewed for the position that they were not chosen for the position. Even if the process is taking time, it is best to keep the communication open and transparent. Considering the tough employment market, more companies a candidate interviews for, the better are his/her chances of securing a job. Train passengers could be infected by coronavirus if they sit within 8ft of someone carrying the disease on a two-hour journey, research suggests. Scientists also found that more than one-metre social distancing is required to be safe when travelling for one hour. The latest data comes as workers across the country prepare for commuting again as employers begin to ask their staff to return to the office. Rail users who sit within 8ft someone carrying coronavirus could be infected on a two-hour journey The study was based on high-speed routes in China and conducted as part of the University of Southampton's WorldPop project in collaboration with several organisations from the country, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Analysis covering the spread of the virus between December 19 and March 6 found that an average of 0.32% of passengers sitting within three seats across and five in front or behind an infected person caught the disease. Passengers travelling in seats adjacent to a sufferer had the highest chance of being infected, at 3.5%. The research, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, also showed the transmission rate for those on the same row was 1.5%. Lead investigator Dr Shengjie Lai said: 'Our study shows that although there is an increased risk of Covid-19 transmission on trains, a person's seat location and travel time in relation to an infectious person can make a big difference as to whether it is passed on. 'The findings suggest that during the Covid-19 epidemic it is important to reduce the density of passengers and promote personal hygiene measures, the use of face coverings, and possibly carry-out temperature checks before boarding.' Passengers travelling in seats adjacent to a sufferer had the highest chance of being infected, at 3.5% (Pictured: Passengers on a train in Brighton last month) Department for Transport guidance for public transport users states that if they cannot stay two-metres apart from others, they should maintain a one-metre gap 'where possible' and take 'suitable precautions' such as washing hands regularly and touching as few surfaces as possible. Face coverings are mandatory across all public transport in the UK. WorldPop director Professor Andy Tatem said: 'Our research is the first to quantify the individual risk of Covid-19 transmission on public transport based on data from epidemiological investigations of disease cases and their close contacts on high-speed trains. 'It shows that the transmission risk not only relates to the distance from an infected person, but also the time in their presence. 'We hope it can help to inform authorities globally about measures needed to guard against the virus and in turn help to reduce its spread.' Fans of Vikings recently got to experience a panel for the series, and it was epic. On Friday, July 24, 2020, many big names in the show, including the creator, Michael Hirst, participated in an at-home panel for San Diego Comic-Con@Home 2020. Hirst revealed some surprising information about one character that fans will certainly find interesting. Hirst was joined virtually by Travis Fimmel, who played Ragnar Lothbrok, Katheryn Winnick, who played Lagertha, Alexander Ludwig, who plays Bjorn Ironside, Clive Standen, who plays Rollo, and Jordan Patrick Smith, who plays Ubbe. Michael Hirst is asked if he was ever nervous about writing someone out Michael Hirst | Jerod Harris/Getty Images for A+E Networks The moderator asked Hirst if there was anyone he was nervous about writing out. Hirst of course mentioned the death of Ragnar Lothbrok. When he first wrote the outline for the hit series, Ragnar was going to die at the end of season 1, but Hirst could tell the rest of Ragnars story still needed to be told completely and fully. And what actually happened, was that Ragnar continued to be a presence in the rest of the show, Hirst explained. He never really went away. People would talk about him all the time It wasnt a huge risk after all. Hirst admits he killed off 1 character 3 times in the script, but didnt go through with it RELATED: Vikings: Why Michael Hirst Cried Watching Ragnar Lothbrok Meet His End Hirst had another character that he was nervous about killing off, and thats Harald Finehair (Peter Franzen). The other person who was very difficult was Harald Finehair, Hirst revealed. Brilliant actor, who in the script I killed off three times and couldnt do it. I couldnt do it. He did lots of bad stuff, that guy, but he did it so well and he had a sense of humor and I just didnt want to lose that. There werent that many laughs in Vikings, but he gave us most of them. I just couldnt sacrifice it. He just lived on. Harald has his heart set on being the king of all Norway, which he eventually does achieve in season 6. Harald raided with Ragnar Lothbrok (Fimmel), but he always considered Ragnar an enemy and rival. Harald has done a lot of terrible things to people, including abducting Lagerthas (Winnick) companion, Astrid (Josefin Asplund) and having her marry him. He even rapes Bjorn Ironsides (Ludwig) second wife, Ingrid (Lucy Martin), and hes eager to see the death of Bjorn in any way possible at this point. Hirst hints at whats to come in the final episodes Hirst was also asked by the moderator to give a hint about the new season, and he teased the final episodes. Fans are hoping for a satisfying conclusion to the stories of Ragnars sons after so many years. The characters who we all, including me, have grown to love, will all have their fates decided, Hirst revealed. Whether they live or die, is of course in the hands of the gods, although I had a hand in it too. I think the conclusion of the saga is deeply satisfying. A proper and meaningful ending, and I hope all our fans will feel the same way. I tried to do justice to all my characters, and I hope I succeeded. For the full panel, check out the video in the article. Dharamsala, Aug 1 : Describing him as a personal friend, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has condoled the demise of former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui. In a letter to his widow Tseng Wen-hui and family members, he wrote: "As you know I had the honour of meeting your husband during my first visit to Taiwan in 1997 when he was the first popularly elected President. "Subsequently, we met again in Taiwan and at Peace Forums elsewhere and I regard him as a personal friend. "His contribution to Taiwan's democratic development was an exceptional achievement. Today, Taiwan is a vibrant and prosperous democracy with a rich cultural heritage. Perhaps the best tribute we can pay him is to remember his courage and determination and emulate his dedication to democracy." The Nobel Peace laureate concluded by observing that President Lee Teng-hui was an ally of the Tibetan people and did what he could to support them. The former President, considered the "father of Taiwan's democracy", died at the age of 97 on Thursday from septic shock and multiple organ failure, after being in hospital for nearly six months -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text With the Centre making further relaxations in the lockdown as part of Unlock 3.0, the Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday announced removal of restrictions on inter-state transport, besides throwing open the tourism sector to step up the states revenue collection. The state government also hinted at reopening of all educational institutions from September 5, coinciding with Teachers Day. Principal Secretary (transport) M T Krishna Babu said starting Sunday, there would be no hurdles for the inter-state passenger movement. However, people entering Andhra Pradesh will have to register their names in the Spandana website. Once passengers register their names with Spandana, an auto-generated e-pass will be sent to their mobile and email. They can carry the auto generated e-pass along with a valid id proof to get entry at the border check post. This system is to ensure a record of the people coming to AP such that local health staff can keep a watch on the health of the concerned, Krishna Babu said. Minister for Tourism Muthamsetty Srinivas said the government will throw open various tourist spots for the people which would contribute to the states revenue. He also announced that a new tourism policy would be released shortly by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. The minister said tourism projects including Kailasagiri in Visakhapatnam and Bhavani Islands on Krishna River near Vijayawada would be reopened for the public from August 15. Boating facilities on Krishna and Godavari rivers would also be operated from August 15. Srinivas said the state government had sought financial assistance of Rs 1,000 crore from the Centre to revive the tourism sector, which had been hit badly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Proposals for temple tourism, including packages for Tirupati, Simhachalam, Dwaraka Tirumala, Kanipakam and Sri Kalahasti were sent to the Centre. These tourism packages would be resumed in the first week of August. He said star hotels would also be started next week under public-private partnership after getting a nod from the chief minister. An official release from the chief ministers office said the state government was gearing up to reopen the schools from September 5 across the state, coinciding with Teachers Day, hoping that the situation would become normal by then. The chief minister asked the officials to prepare for the launch YSR Vidhya Kanuka on the same day and students would be provided with a kit including a schoolbag, texts and note books, cloth for three pairs of uniforms, a pair of shoes, two pairs of socks and a belt. He said that masks should also be included in the kit and awareness should be created among the students as to how to use the masks, the CMO release said. 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From: Royal Bank Of Canada financialcaredepartment@gmail.com To: "undisclosed-recipients": ; Date: Thursday, 02 July 2020, 01:27AM -07:00Subject: $12,000,000,00 USD Payment Notification To: Date: Wednesday, 15 July 2020, 02:07AM -07:00 Subject: $12,000,000,00 USD Payment Notification RBC) Royal Bank Of Canada. 14 park ave Lac Du Bonnet Manitoba Canada. $12,000,000,00 USD Payment Notification we are to Notify you about the latest development concerning your payment that are left in our custody, besides,you are given a bill of Sum in order to receive your payment $12,000,000,00M usd which we didn't hear from you for sometime now. Hence,we are now offering a New Year BONUS to help all our customers that are having their payment in our custody due to of high prices. In other words we are now requesting that you should pay only the sum of $50 to receive funds your payment abandoned in our custody by online transfer or atm card if you wish so. Therefore you are requested to send the fee $50 only by ITunes Card,or Google Play CARD,amazon' Stream Wallet is also ACCEPTED because it can be redeemed to cash all we needs is picture of the card only Be advice that the bank has already created on-line transfer with the account that opened in your favor this afternoon in which the $12,000,000,00 Million of your funds has been transferred to the account that our bank open in your favor. The on-line banking account details are follows. Welcome! To - Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Secure Account Page Account Name Account Type Activate Online Banking Account Created Opened Account Balance 2020 -1-13 $12,000,000,00 Account Number Royal Bank Sort Code 6021253365 239936957 Country Ca Name Of Bank (RBC) International Money Transfer Input Released Swift Code 053904483 Account Number 6021253365. I will be forwarding to you the account logging details to enable you access your funds online and proceed on transfer to your designated bank account in any part of the world Or Tracking Number Of Your ATM Card Delivery to enable you Monitor the Arriver of your ATM without any further delay as soon as you update us copy of itunes card of the required Fee $50 to take note. Yours Faithfully, MR DAVID I MCKAY The President and CEO. From: MR DAVID I MCKAY whiteterry274@gmail.com To: "undisclosed-recipients": ; Date: Wednesday, 15 July 2020, 02:07AM -07:00Subject: $12,000,000,00 USD Payment Notification From: David I Mckay CEO fundorigin7@gmail.com Date: Thursday, 23 July 2020, 11:07AM -07:00 Subject: $12,000,000,000.00 USD Payment notification from Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) RBC) Royal Bank Of Canada. 14 park ave Lac Du Bonnet Manitoba Canada. $12,000,000,000 USD Payment Notification we are to Notify you about the latest development concerning your payment that are left in our custody, besides,you are given a bill of Sum in order to receive your payment $12,000,000,000 usd which we didn't hear from you for sometime now. Hence,we are now offering a New Year BONUS to help all our customers that are having their payment in our custody due to of high prices. 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Be well informed that our bank Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) was successful opened Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account in your name which will helps us to have a smoothly transfer from Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) to your Nominated bank account, and your Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account Booklet and Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Platinum MasterCard will Delivered to your destination house within the stipulated time frame of 24 hours upon receipt of the Activation fee of $25 USD only by Google play Gift Card. This means that as soon as we receive the activation fee we will make the delivery of your Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account Booklet and Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Platinum MasterCard to your address between 24 hours Your Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) account details are as follow; Keep it confidential Account Number: 6021253365. 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This transaction is lottery won by your e-mail address via online active email address selected from sponsor of Coca Cola Company award. With due respect and utmost courtesy, we write to officially regarding the release of your award Winning fund valued sum of $12,000,000.00 USD from Coca Cola Company which was approved for release via Swift Telegraphic Wire Transfer into your nominated bank account. The management of Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) department wish to notify you that this honorable bank Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) was instructed by Coca Cola Company in conjunction with the Canadian Finance Ministry and Canadian Ambassador to U.S on Winning payment matters which they have empowered our bank Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) after much consultation and consideration to handle all Winning payments and release them to their appropriate beneficiaries accordingly. I am Mr.David Mckay the President and CEO Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC), your appointed bank officer who is working on your behalf for the actualization of fund crediting/transfer into your personal bank account. Be well informed that our bank Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) was successful opened Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account in your name which will helps us to have a smoothly transfer from Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) to your Nominated bank account, and your Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account Booklet and Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Platinum MasterCard will Delivered to your destination house within the stipulated time frame of 24 hours upon receipt of the Activation fee of $25 USD only by Google play Gift Card. This means that as soon as we receive the activation fee we will make the delivery of your Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account Booklet and Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Platinum MasterCard to your address between 24 hours Your Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) account details are as follow; Keep it confidential Account Number: 6021253365. Swift Code: 239936957 Routing # 053904483 I will advice you purchase Google play and send it i will be faster but send only Google play of $25 if you can send it today send me the pictures so that i will redeem it to cash and you will get your package Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account Booklet . Your immediate compliance will be in your very best interest, If at any time you have questions, concerns or comments, please contact us as we strive to ensure that you will always receive a prompt and courteous attention. Yours Faithfully, Mr.David Mckay The President and CEO. (RBC) Royal Bank Of Canada email contact ( Customer-care Telephone number:+1-7407-4383-24 (RBC) Royal Bank Of Canada.1122 International Blvd. Burlington,Ontario L7L 6Z8 Canada.$12,000,000.00 USD Payment notification from Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC).Dear Beneficiary,I am Mr.David Mckay the President and CEO Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC).This transaction is lottery won by your e-mail address via online active email address selected from sponsor of Coca Cola Company award. With due respect and utmost courtesy, we write to officially regarding the release of your award Winning fund valued sum of $12,000,000.00 USD from Coca Cola Company which was approved for release via Swift Telegraphic Wire Transfer into your nominated bank account.The management of Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) department wish to notify you that this honorable bank Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) was instructed by Coca Cola Company in conjunction with the Canadian Finance Ministry and Canadian Ambassador to U.S on Winning payment matters which they have empowered our bank Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) after much consultation and consideration to handle all Winning payments and release them to their appropriate beneficiaries accordingly.I am Mr.David Mckay the President and CEO Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC), your appointed bank officer who is working on your behalf for the actualization of fund crediting/transfer into your personal bank account. Be well informed that our bank Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) was successful opened Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account in your name which will helps us to have a smoothly transfer from Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) to your Nominated bank account, and your Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Checking Account Booklet and Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) Platinum MasterCard will Delivered to your destination house within the stipulated time frame of 24 hours upon receipt of the Activation fee of $25 USD only by Google play Gift Card. 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Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more.... After Beijing imposed the new security law in Hong Kong, several prominent human rights activists have fled the city in fears of retaliation from the Chinese government. However, Chinese police officers are looking to find and arrest six pro-democracy activists who have found refuge in Western countries, including the UK. Criminal group According to BBC, the group that police are looking for include Simon Cheng, a former UK consulate worker, Nathan Law, a well-known activist in Hong Kong, and Samuel Chu, a United States citizen. Authorities stated that the individuals are wanted on suspicion of breaking the new security law in the city while China's state TV called the group troublemakers. The series of incidents come after Beijing suspended legislative elections for September on Friday for at least a year. The Chinese government said the decision was necessary due to the spike in coronavirus cases. The opposition, however, accused Beijing of using the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to punish critics. The White House has called the move of China as undermining the city's democracy. Pro-democracy politicians attempted to use China's distracted stance amid the passing of the new security law to score a significant win in the Legislative Council (LegCo). Most of the citizens of Hong Kong are worried that the new legislation Beijing passed in the city will undermine their political freedom and autonomy. Also Read: China Using Coronavirus Pandemic as Cover Up to Silence, Detain Critics and Human Rights Violations? In recent weeks, several countries, including the UK and Australia, have suspended their extradition treaty with Hong Kong over fears of China's retaliation. On Friday, Germany had done the same, and there are reports that one of the individuals Chinese police are looking for have found asylum in the country. The move marks the first time in history that the city's police force will use extraterritorial power detailed in the new security law to locate and arrest activists that have since fled Hong Kong, as reported by NST. Fleeing criminals Chinese state TV, CCTV, said the six individuals that police are looking for are accused of inciting secession or conspiring with international forces against Beijing, both of which are punishable with life imprisonment as written in the new legislation. Several lawyers and legal experts have claimed that China's new security law in Hong Kong would result in a drastic change to the city's legal system. The legislation punishes several actions that Beijing deems illegal with up to life imprisonment and enables the mainland's police and security force to act and operate within the city of Hong Kong with impunity. One of the most worrying details of the new security law writes that anyone who would conspire with international forces to incite hatred or disagreement with Beijing or Hong Kong authorities are subjected to suspicion of committing a criminal offence. During a media briefing, Teresa Cheng, Hong Kong's Justice Secretary was asked about the exact definition of the provision but was unable to give a clear answer. The article is only one of the many clauses that cause concern among activists that Beijing is gaining control of the city. Related Article: European Union Sanctions China Over Hong Kong's New Security Law, Limits Exports of Goods @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Mumbai: Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam has raised questions on the behaviour of Bihar and Maharashtra Police who are investigating the mystery behind the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The Congress leader slammed police of both states saying 'some kind of' competition appears to have ensued between them to beat the other on solving the case. "The way police of two states investigating Sushant Singh Rajput's death case are behaving on the streets of Mumbai is looking ugly. Mumbai and Patna police are vying to beat each other. The Mumbai Police were seen pushing the Patna police officials inside their police van. It appeared that instead of an investigation, there was a competition going on between the police of two states," the former Maharashtra Congress president tweeted in Hindi. Rajput, 34, was found hanging at his apartment in suburban Bandra on June 14. Mumbai police, which is investigating the actor's death case, have recorded statements of Bollywood personalities including Sanjay Leela Bhansali, film critic Rajeev Masand, actress Sanjana Sanghi, the actor's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, casting director Shanoo Sharma, filmmaker Mukesh Chhabra, and Aditya Chopra of Yash Raj Films. Police have so far recorded statements of around 40 people, including those of Rajput's family members, his cook and doctors. A Bihar police team is probing a separate 'abetment to suicide' case on the basis of a complaint filed by the late actor's father KK Singh in Patna. On July 31, the Enforcement Directorate registered a money laundering case against Sushant's alleged girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and his brother. There has been a huge public sentiment about handing over the case to the CBI, but Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra been reluctant to do so. CM Uddhav said on Friday that Mumbai Police is capable of probing the case and lashed out at Opposition parties for doubting the credibility of his state police. San Francisco, Aug 1 : The US Department of Justice has charged three young individuals (including one juvenile) with hacking Twitter last month that compromised the accounts of 130 high-profile celebrities, politicians and businesses like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Apple and Uber. The 19-year-old Mason Sheppard (aka "Chaewon") of the UK was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. "Nima Fazeli, aka "Rolex," 22, of Orlando, Florida, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer," the Department of Justice said in a statement on Friday. The third defendant is a juvenile. "With exceptions that do not apply to this case, juvenile proceedings in federal court are sealed to protect the identity of the juvenile," said the statement. Twitter has revealed that the massive hack that spread a cryptocurrency scam by hijacking accounts of high-profile celebrities, politicians and businesses was a result of a phone spear phishing attack. The attackers targeted 130 Twitter accounts, ultimately tweeting from 45, accessing the DM (Direct Messages) inbox of 36, and downloading the Twitter data of seven accounts. The incident raised concerns around Twitter tools and levels of employee access. "The hackers allegedly compromised over 100 social media accounts and scammed both the account users and others who sent money based on their fraudulent solicitations," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. As alleged in the complaints, the Twitter attack consisted of a combination of technical breaches and social engineering. "There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence," said US Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California. The hackers are alleged to have created a scam Bitcoin account, to have hacked into Twitter VIP accounts, to have sent solicitations from the Twitter VIP accounts with a false promise to double any Bitcoin deposits made to the scam account, and then to have stolen the Bitcoin that victims deposited into the scam account. As alleged in the complaints, the scam Bitcoin account received more than 400 transfers worth more than $100,000. "Today's announcement proves that cybercriminals can no longer hide behind perceived global anonymity," said Thomas Edwards, Special Agent in Charge, US Secret Service, San Francisco Field Office. Twitter said that since the attack, it has significantly limited access to its internal tools and systems to ensure ongoing account security. As a result, some features -- namely, accessing the Your Twitter Data download feature -- and processes have been impacted. Twitter said it will be slower to respond to account support needs, reported tweets, and applications to its developer platform. A Wisconsin public-health official blames quarantine fatigue. A Michigan health officials points to laxer rules in Wisconsin regarding masks, bars and restaurants. Browser does not support frames. Households in Lowell, home to the second largest Cambodian refugee community in the U.S., received vote-by-mail applications that were supposed to be translated in Khmer. While the applications were in a Khmer font, there were missing characters, attorneys and local organizers say. The Secretary of the Commonwealths office sent out vote-by-mail applications earlier this month to Lowell households in mostly English and Spanish with information in Khmer telling people how access the application online. But the Khmer translation had eight missing characters, making the applications inscrutable, said Sovanna Pouv, Executive Director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association. Now CMAA and Lawyers for Civil Rights are calling for the office to send out full applications in Khmer to households, this time printed correctly. Its a straightforward ask of the state, basically sending it back to the community. We just want to be able to get people engaged and to make sure peoples voices are heard, Pouv said in an interview with MassLive. This is just one example of voter suppression. Lowell is home to an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Southeast Asians, most of whom are Cambodians, according to CMAA. It is unclear how many of them are eligible voters, but the northern Massachusetts city boasts the second largest Cambodian refugee community in the nation, next to Long Beach, California. Debra OMalley, spokeswoman for Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin, said his office is aware of the issue with the Khmer translations in Lowell but that thousands of mail-in voting applications garnered responses. Our application mailing to Lowell voters included information in Khmer and thousands of those applications have already been returned to the Lowell Election Commission, OMalley said. Massachusetts also has a Khmer application on the Mail My Ballot MA website, and interpreters can take calls from Cambodian residents with questions or who would like to request to have a Khmer application mailed to them, OMalley said. We will be working with local leaders in the Cambodian community to do whatever we can to make sure that those who read Khmer have the same opportunities to vote as everyone else, she said. The $8 million vote-by-mail law ratified earlier this month requires Galvins office to send out mail-in ballot applications to households by July 15. The law also required his office to provide ballots in any language required by the bilingual election requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act. For Lowell, that means making sure the Cambodian community has access to Khmer applications and ballots. Galvin said he couldnt send out the applications until the state Legislature provided funding for postage, but the governor advanced the funds after Galvin was sued by election reform advocates, including Lawyers for Civil Rights. There is no excuse for the Secretarys disenfranchisement of Khmer-speaking voters, Oren Sellstrom, litigation director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, said in a statement issued Friday. He must fix this mistake now, while there is still time to do so. Pouv of CMAA said the organization has worked with the city of Lowell in the past to provide municipal ballots in Khmer. The organization also worked with the city to set up early voting sites with translated materials and translate the vote-by-mail applications being sent out in July. CMAA sent the city Elections Department the Khmer translation in early July so the city could to send the translation to the state. The state didnt do a final check with us to make sure that the characters were all correct before they printed and sent it out, Pouv said. Pouv started seeing complaints about the applications on social media as early as July 22. After Pouv reached out to the state, an official asked to use CMAAs distribution list to send translated materials to affected voters directly, according to emails read out loud to MassLive. Pouv said he worried the mailing list wouldnt cover all eligible voters. He responded to the official, thanking that person for acknowledging the letter and asking that new applications be mailed to Lowell residents. Our mailing list is not sufficient in covering the entire Cambodian population. Nor do we have access to information of all voters, Pouv wrote in an email sent Tuesday. Asked about the possibility of mailing out new applications, OMalley said the office is consulting community leaders to determine how effective the first mailing was. After CMAA and Lawyers for Civil Rights raised the issue publicly, the state called local officials and said they wanted to fix the translation error, Pouv said. He said the officials would be working on sending a full application that includes a Khmer application with input from the CMAA. It sounds like theyre willing to do the work, he said. Related Content: Japan ruling party approves proposal to acquire capabilities to halt ballistic missile Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 6:32 AM A ruling party committee has approved a proposal for Japan to acquire capabilities to halt ballistic missile attacks within enemy territory. Giving long range munitions to Japan's Self Defense Forces is a controversial issue for a country that renounced the right to wage war after its defeat in World War Two. The proposal could also anger China and Russia, which could fall within range of any new strike weapons. The proposals, crafted by senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers including former defense minister Itsunori Onodera, will be presented to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as early as next week. The recommendations will be discussed by Japan's National Security Council, which is expected to finalize new defense policies by the end of September. Abe has pushed for a more muscular military, arguing Japan needs to respond to a deteriorating security environment in East Asia as US inroads in the region and its standoff with China are escalating tensions. A strike option against mobile launchers requires close surveillance with satellites that Japan does not currently possess, meaning it would have to rely on help from ally the United States. US defense company Raytheon has been lobbying senior LDP lawmakers with a proposal to choose its SPY-6 radar rather than using Lockheed's system, sources earlier told Reuters. "The government will make a decision regarding this by the end of September and our thinking will be reflected in that," Onodera said. President Donald Trump has been pressuring Tokyo to purchase millions of dollars of US weapons. Abe's government has announced that it will spend a record 242 billion dollars on military equipment over the next five years, 6.4 percent higher than the previous five-year plan. Japan has ordered about 100 US-designed F-35 stealth fighter jets with an option to take off and land vertically, suggesting Tokyo is also developing aircraft carriers for the first time since World War II. With the new purchases, Japan plans to operate 147 of the F-35s, CNN reported. Earlier this month, Japan also announced plans to build "one of the world's most sophisticated stealth jet fighters", likely a twin-engine aircraft, in the next decade. The new sixth-generation fighters would begin production in fiscal year 2031 and replace the country's aging fleet of almost 100 F-2 jets, single-engine fourth-generation fighters modeled after American F-16s, Japan's NHK News said. Last month, a photo appeared on Twitter which depicted the helicopter carrier Izumo undergoing modification for fixed-wing operations, apparently at the Japan Marine United shipyard in Yokohama. Forbes said the $28 million modifications will clear and reinforce Izumo's deck in order to transform the vessel from a helicopter carrier into a light aircraft carrier capable of supporting the Japanese air force's F-35B stealth jump jets. Izumo's sister vessel Kaga is slated to undergo the same modifications, the US magazine reported. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Advertisement Hurricane Isaias continues to build up strength as it heads for Florida this weekend, before tracking up the East Coast, potentially threatening the return of two Earthbound American astronauts aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon ship Sunday. Hurricane warnings are now in effect in portions of Florida's East Coast and northward to the state's Flagler/Volusia County line after Isaias - while still a tropical storm - destroyed parts of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico Thursday. Hurricane warnings are also ongoing in the northern and central Bahamas, where hurricane conditions are expected to continue into Saturday. (The orange circle shows Hurricane Isaias' tropical-storm-force winds gusting at least 39 mph, while the small purple circle show gusts of at least 74 mph The National Weather Service tweeted out a projected path for Hurricane Isaias, showing it traveling through Florida, along the East Coast all the way up to Maine by Wednesday The NWS tweeted out this rainfall map showing large portions of the East Coast could be hit with two to six inches of rain from Isaias through August 5 A hurricane watch - usually issued two days prior to anticipated tropical-storm-force winds - is also in effect in portions of South Florida from Boca Raton to Hallendale County, Weather.com reported. Meanwhile, tropical storm warnings have been issued from the northern Florida Keys to Boca Raton and inland north to Orlando. On Friday night, Isaias was listed as a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds reaching up to 80mph and expected to strengthen as the night went on and transitioned into the weekend, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. As of early Saturday, the storm was centered about 135 miles (215 kilometers) south-southeast of Nassau in the Bahamas and was moving northwest at 15 mph (24 kph). Isaias has the potential to disrupt the Sunday return of the first US astronauts to have reached the International Space Station on an American spacecraft in nearly a decade, according to NASA. Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley blasted off from Cape Canaveral on May 30 on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon and are scheduled to splash down off the coast of Florida on Sunday afternoon. NASA said Friday that their undocking remains scheduled for approximately 7.34pm Saturday with splashdown at 2.42 pm on Sunday. The NWS said storm surges in Florida could be between three to five feet above ground Weather forecasters believe Isaias gusts could range from 40 to 80mph on the East Coast A map showing Florida being in the path of Isaias' eye starting Saturday morning through Sunday, before it potentially travels north to the Carolinas and Virginia Possible damage and other impact of Isaias along the East Coast includes high to some flash flooding, storm surges, power outages and damaging winds Isaias' impact on Florida could prevent two American astronauts aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon (pictured) from returning to Earth on Sunday afternoon as planned NASA astronauts Doug Hurley (left) and Bob Behnken (right on May 30) may not be able to come back to Earth on Sunday as scheduled NASA won't decide whether to postpone Behnken and Hurley's splashdown until about six hours prior to undocking. 'We don't control the weather, and we know we can stay up here longer -- there's more chow, and I know the space station program has more work that we can do,' Behnken told reporters in a press call. The potential splashdown sites are in the Gulf of Mexico and along Florida's Atlantic coast. On Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for all of the state's 19 counties along the Atlantic coast, while shuttering all beaches, marinas and parks in those areas. DeSantis said during a news conference Friday that Isaias was expected to hit Florida 'as early as late tonight into tomorrow morning, with the potential to increase in strength to Category 2 [hurricane],' Fox News reported. Miami Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Friday that 20 evacuation centers were on standby that could be set up with COVID-19 safety measures, although authorities didn't believe the shelters would ultimately be needed for the storm. A young man walks next to his destroyed house Friday, after Isaias passed through Hato Mayor Isias destroyed parts of the Dominican Republic (pictured) and Puerto Rico on Thursday Families stay next to their destroyed houses after the passage of Hurricane Isaias, in Hato Mayor, Dominican Republic on Friday People place damaged belongings on a truck to throw them away Friday, after the passage of tropical storm Isaias, with which heavy rains caused the overflowing of the Magua River in Hato Mayor, Dominican Republic Residents clear up the debris of affected houses after Hurricane Isaias hit the area, in Hato Mayor, Dominican Republic, Friday Soldiers look at a house destroyed by Hurricane Isaias, in Hato Mayor, Dominican Republic DeSantis said the state was 'fully prepared for this and any future storm during this hurricane season,' with stockpiles of personal protective equipment, generators, bottled water and meals ready to be distributed. But he urged people to have seven days of food, water and medication on hand and said state-run coronavirus testing sites in the areas where the storm could hit would be closed. 'Our sites, because theyre outdoors with tents, if it were to get 40-, 50-mile-per-hour winds, it would just collapse,' he said. 'Safety is paramount for that.' In Daytona Beach and Polk County, authorities distributed sandbags and other officials advised people to have emergency provisions at home sufficient for three to seven days. Isaias is expected to hit near South Florida late Saturday or very early Sunday and potentially land in central or northeast Florida Sunday afternoon. Florida then could expect to see some rain, wind, high surf and coastal flood or storm surge - of between three to five feet above ground - impacts throughout the weekend. Legislative Assistant Ryan Fernandez, puts sand bags in a resident's car trunk in Palmetto Bay near Miami, on July 31 A woman is seen with toilet paper and water in her shopping cart as she prepares for the storm in Miami, Florida on Friday A man is seen carrying a shopping cart full of paper towels, water and other supplies in preparation for the storm on Friday in Miami A resident walks with containers filled with gasoline at Cooper's gas station before the arrival of Hurricane Isaias in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas on Friday Long lines of cars were seen waiting to fill up with gas in Miami in preparation for Isaias People fill sand bags for distribution to the residents of Palmetto Bay near Miami, Friday Storm surge watches have been issued from Jupiter Inlet to Ponte Vedra, Florida. Life-threatening surf and rip currents are also being expected in Florida through the weekend. Between two to four inches of rain is a possibility from southern Florida to east-central Florida between Friday night to Monday. Isolated maximum totals of six inches are also possible, according to the National Hurricane Center. It's believed that Isaias will then begin to turn northeastward near the East Coast at the beginning of next week. The governors of North Carolina and Virginia both declared a state of emergency as well. Isaias was expected to hit North Carolina on Monday, Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters at news conference Friday. He advised state residents to stay with relatives or in hotels away from the coastline if possible, noting that shelters would be open as a precaution, but that capacity would be capped due to coronavirus precautions. Heavy rainfall is also a possibility through the eastern Carolinas early next week. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said he activated a state of emergency as a precaution, but anticipated the hurricane would affect Virginia's coastal areas, too. It's believed that after passing near North and South Carolina Monday, Isaias could then head towards the Northeast Seaboard, going as far north as New England by Tuesday or Wednesday. Residents along the coast from Florida to Maine are being asked to follow the progress of Isaias and be prepared just in case. New York City and the Tri-State area could also feel the effects of Isaias, with heavy rain anticipated as early as Monday night into Tuesday, according to ABC 7. On Friday, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo told state agencies to prepare and pre-deploy emergency response assets. A free backpack giveaway and mobile food drive will kick off at noon on Aug. 8 to help students get well-fed and ready to return to school. Montgomery County United Board Member Chris Easley said the nonprofit organization has partnered with Spirit of Texas Bank and Conroe City Councilman and Mayoral Candidate Jody Czajkoski as well as the Montgomery County Food Bank to host the event at the bank off Texas 105 in Conroe. We plan on trying to feed at least 200 families and trying to service at least 200 kids to get ready for when they go back to school, Easley said. Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, precautions will be taken and the perishable and nonperishable items, such as protein, dry goods, and produce, will be loaded into the cars at the bank. The bank is located at 1836 Spirit of Texas Way. Registration is not required. Those interested in receiving the items are asked to enter from Texas 105, also known as West Davis Street, drive into the parking lot where the items will be loaded, and then exit on the other side of the bank towards the library. The items are first come, first serve and will be handed out until the items are all distributed. While Easley said there is already a good solid team, he said volunteers are still accepted. Anyone who would like to volunteer are asked to reach out or show up an hour ahead of time at the event. This will be the third event for Montgomery County United to host during the coronavirus pandemic. The organization also hosted two mobile food pantries in Montgomery which fed an estimated total of 600 people. Each year, the organization also hosts a back to school event to support students. But this year, due to COVID-19 the organization debated canceling. But then, Easley said Czajkoski reached out and was more than willing to support the event. He said, Spirit of Texas Bank also offered to help. He shared that Montgomery County Food Bank has also been a big help to make the three events possible for the organization to carry on its mission and serve the community. We chose to move forward because of the help we got from our sponsors, Easley said. We believe in consistency, faith and hard work. We want to be consistent; we want to have faith in organization that we are going to continue to serve and we want to keep working hard within the community. So, we didnt want to let the pandemic get in the way of what we normally do, he continued. We figured hey, we might not be able to do it on the grand scale like we normally do it, but we can at least do something. If we dont do anything but hand out back packs and send people on their way, we still simply feel like weve done our part. For more information go to the Montgomery County United Facebook page and send a direct message or call Arnette Easley at 936-718-7860. mellsworth@hcnonline.com A Muslim boy wearing face mask leaves the Jama Masjid (Grand Mosque) after Eid al-Adha prayers during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the old quarters of Delhi, India. (Image: Reuters) The usual fervour surrounding Eid al-Adha celebrations was missing on Saturday in view of the coronavirus pandemic that has severely hit livestock sale for the festival of sacrifice and forced many to stay at home. For the limited number of faithful who gathered at mosques, prayers were conducted observing social distancing norms. At Jama Masjid in Delhi, people brought their own mats and avoided hugging. Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended warm greetings on the occasion and hoped that the festival inspires the people of the country to create a "just, harmonious and an inclusive" society. "May the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered," he said. Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday extended his Eid greetings to people and hoped that the occasion will bring peace and prosperity to the society. 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 Jama Masjid and Fatehpuri Masjid in Delhi's old quarters attracted a number of people for the early morning namaaz. Shahi Imam Mufti Mukarram of Fatehpuri Masjid said, "People observed social distancing and wore masks in the mosque during namaaz." "Eid al-Adha means Eid of sacrifices. We prayed for relief from the virus, peace and growth of the country and thanked the authorities to allow namaaz in mosques with precautions against COVID-19," he said. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia greeted Delhiites on the festival. "Hearty congratulations to you all on Eid al-Adha," Kejriwal tweeted. In Kashmir, no Eid prayers were offered in major mosques and shrines as police enforced strict restrictions in most parts of the Valley, including Srinagar city. Police personnel made announcements early in the morning on public address systems, appealing to people not to congregate for Eid prayers as the threat of coronavirus was still prevalent in the Valley. People preferred to offer Eid prayers at home -- either individually or in small groups consisting of family members only, the officials said, adding, however, reports of congregation Eid prayers being offered in the mosques in interior parts of cities and towns have been received. In Uttar Pradesh, weekend lockdowns imposed to to break the chain of coronavirous transmission, dampened the spirit of the festival. Imam of Lucknow Eidgah Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali told PTI, "Only five people offered namaaz at Lucknow's Eidgah. Most people offered namaaz at their homes and also did 'qurbaani' in their homes. Ninety per cent of people completed their prayers in the early morning itself. By and large, there was silence in most parts of the city." Markets in prominent areas of the state capital such as Hazratganj, Aminabad, Gomtinagar, Indiranagar, Latouche Road, Alambagh, Hewett Road, Aliganj and Gudumba remained shut. There was also less movement of people on the streets. In Allahabad, people offered namaaz while observing social distancing norms and prayed for the end of the pandemic. The sight, smell and sounds of Eid were also missing in Kolkata's Zakaria street, next to Nakhoda Mosque, which dons a festive look every year with numerous food stalls and gift shops dotting the road on the occasion. Bengal Imams Association president Mohammed Yahia said all 26,000 mosque committees in the state have been asked to allow 25 people to enter their premises during morning prayers. "We have asked everyone from the community to distribute sacrificial meat among the family members and close friends, and not to anyone else keeping in mind the present situation," he said Extending his greetings on the occasion Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar tweeted, "The festival inspires us to inculcate empathy, peace and universal brotherhood. Given Covid Challenge-Need to follow safety protocols-wearing masks, practising physical distancing in celebration." Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also wished people in a Facebook pictorial post. The Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ), which has over 800 mosques under it in the state, had appealed to the members of the community to avoid congregation, as advised by the state government and support the administration in the fight against COVID-19. "We asked our members to be safe and follow healthy practices during the celebrations. We don't want the infection to spread. We even asked them to clean the places where the goats are sacrificed properly and strictly advised against public sacrifice," M Ibrahim, state secretary of TNTJ, said. "Coronavirus has affected the overall economy. Realising that many among us are unable to buy during this festival, we made arrangements to help reach food to the deserving. No one should go hungry during this festival," he said. The pandemic-induced lockdown had a severe effect on people's livelihood, which was markedly visible in the lacklustre sale of livestock during the festival. The owner of a goat farm in Tamil Nadu's Kundrathur said sealing of state borders hindered procuring animals from the neighbouring states. "Prices have been high this time and sale is not brisk, as it had been in the past," Nadeem said. Mohammad Izhaar, a goat seller in Delhi's sarpine market near Jama Masjid, said Bakrid has been insipid. Every year he sells around 15-20 goats on Eid al-Adha. This year, he has sold only four, that too at a loss. "It (the pandemic) has sucked the life out of us," he said woefully. In a world without the coronavirus, the sale of goats would have fetched Rs 60,000 to Rs 70,000, but this year they were sold at half the price, Izhaar said. A MOTHER is appealing to the new health minister Stephen Donnelly to introduce brain cooling into all of Irelands maternity hospitals. Shortly after baby Luan Collins was born in December of 2018 in University Hospital Limerick, it was found he was suffering from a condition known as HIE and urgently needed a special form of treatment known as brain cooling. Luan from Sixmilebridge was whisked away from his mother Laura, and a race against time began to get him to the nearest hospital where this treatment was available in Cork city. The hours ticked by, as a specialist ambulance travelled from Dublin to Limerick to pick him up and transport him to Cork. Luckily, Luans story had a happy outcome. He made a full recovery and is now a happy, healthy toddler. But the story could have been very different. Failure to get the baby the treatment he or she needs, within that crucial time frame of six hours, can result in life-limiting brain injuries or even death. Limerick-based solicitor Carmel Finnegan, who specialises in birth injuries, came across such cases during the course of her work with Dennison Solicitors in Abbeyfeale. She has launched a campaign to have brain cooling introduced into all of Irelands maternity hospitals so every baby born in Ireland has the same chance, and their chance of survival is not dictated by geography. NEW YORK and HONG KONG, Aug. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Key Announcements Co-Founder Carson Wen , his wife and another again found jointly and severally liable to American senior banker and co-founder, Chad Holm , for breach of a contract for 22% of the Bank of Asia Project , his wife and another again found jointly and severally liable to American senior banker and co-founder, , for breach of a contract for 22% of the Bank of Asia Project Mr Wen recently issued a press release confirming these court findings, while attempting to distract from the evidence through inaccurate and misinformed assertions FHI and Mr Holm compelled to publicly correct Mr Wen's release and its material omissions Carson Wen , with the assistance of others, separately found by the courts to have judgment proofed and dissipated substantial assets available for satisfaction of various judgments in Mr Holm's favour , with the assistance of others, separately found by the courts to have judgment proofed and dissipated substantial assets available for satisfaction of various judgments in Mr Holm's favour Financial Holdings, of which Mr Wen is the sole director, remains further liable to Mr Holm for over US$10 million in wage-related claims in wage-related claims Mr Holm extends invitation for Carson Wen to privately engage and prove his desire for a "constructive dialogue" is genuine FHI Statement FHI on behalf of its Chairman, Mr Holm, issued the following statement today: "In a press release issued by Carson Wen on 13 July 2020, Mr Wen made astounding false and misleading assertions, attempting to downplay his liability and paint himself as both a victim and a saviour. He is neither. As a result, we are unfortunately required to issue a response and provide the irrefutable evidence conveniently omitted from Mr Wen's release. The motivations behind his ill-advised statements cannot be clearer." FHI Full Response (1 Aug 2020) Judgments in Summary The conclusions by the two esteemed courts are indisputable. As the lower court found, "[q]uite frankly, I had very little difficulty in finding Mr Wen and Ms Fung liable for breach of the BVI Contract." The Court of Appeal thereafter dismissed the appeal by Mr Wen and others, finding, "the conclusion of the learned judge that an oral contract had been made and was breached by the Appellants is unimpeachable." JUDGMENT (LOWER COURT): https://www.eccourts.org/chad-holm-et-al-v-sancus-financial-holdings-limited-et-al/ JUDGMENT (COURT OF APPEAL): https://www.eccourts.org/sancus-financial-holdings-limited-et-al-v-chad-holm-et-al/ Further Public Disclosure In the event that Mr Wen unwisely chooses to perpetuate a very public debate, FHI and Mr Holm will be left no choice but to further defend themselves. It is FHI's and Mr Holm's hope they are not required to do that again. Further Inquiries Inquiries can be directed to [email protected]. SOURCE FH Investment Limited PARIS - Travellers entering France from 16 countries where the coronavirus is circulating widely are having to undergo virus tests upon arrival at French airports and ports. French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced last month that the tests would be required starting Aug. 1 for the arriving passengers France is allowing in from the listed countries unless they present proof of a negative test done within 72 hours of their departure. Those who test positive in France as of Saturday must quarantine for 14 days. France is not permitting general travel to and from the 16 countries, which include the United States and Brazil. The testing requirement therefore only applies to people entering under limited circumstances - French citizens who live in these countries or citizens of these countries with an established residence in France, Castex has said. Daniel Court was tested at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport after coming in from the French Riviera city of Nice. He acknowledged not loving the experience. Its very fast, but I have to say that its not very pleasant. It is surprising. But we have to do it, Court said. Another passenger who got tested after landing at Paris main airport, Nadia Vusik of Belarus, said she thought the new policy made sense. It is definitely necessary, and I am happy that in France it is possible to do right here. Its very convenient. Health authorities have said that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has jumped on the French mainland in recent weeks. The government previously made mask-wearing mandatory in all indoor public spaces. The French government has so far ruled out imposing another nationwide lockdown after the one that brought the country to a standstill for nearly two months between March and May. Read more about: South Florida newspaper, the Sun Sentinel, is asking Florida governor Ron DeSantis to do more amid the increasing number of coronavirus cases and deaths across the state. The Sun Sentinel editorial board has called on DeSantis to enforce a statewide face mask mandate through an editorial titled, "Help us out, Gov. DeSantis. We're dying here" published on July 29. "Help us all out. Far better that you require people to wear masks in public than to continue fostering conditions that will force another shutdown," the editorial was quoted in a report. The editorial also said DeSantis' refusal to implement a mask order is "out of touch with the mainstream," adding that a new poll found that 79 percent of Floridians support a mask mandate, including 60 percent of Republicans. The state governor urged people to wear masks. However, he is passing the responsibility to local governments to issue mask orders. DeSantis said a state mandate is punishable by law and could backfire. He added that some local sheriffs have said that they would not enforce such orders. A mask mandate on some parts of the state would not make sense. Businesses are likewise having the right to ask customers to wear masks. States with Mask Orders Some states have taken the federal suggestion to mandate wearing masks. As of June 18, the state of California is requiring its citizens to wear a mask in indoor public spaces, such as public transit. The state also requires its people to wear a mask outside when practicing social distancing is not possible. However, the order exempts people with certain medical conditions and children under the age of two. In New Mexico, people who refuse to wear a mask will be punished by $100 fine. Masks are required in the state at all times during any activity outside residence. On April 17, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a mask order that is applicable for anyone over the age of two. On July 2, Texas also implemented its mask mandate through Governor Greg Abbott's order. With this order, violators would first get a verbal warning and could face up to $250 fines if a violation was done again. However, some local sheriffs have refused to follow the new executive order that requires wearing a mask in public. Police officials in nine Texas counties said they will not issue a fine to those who refused to follow the said mask order. Florida and COVID-19 Florida has been reporting a record number of coronavirus related deaths for four consecutive days. The state reported 257 more deaths on Friday. This breaks the record of 253 deaths on previous day, said the Florida Department of Health. Florida also recorded at least 9,007 new coronavirus cases, making the state's total number of case to more than 470,000. Experts said the number of cases will keep on increasing. Public health expert at the University of South Florida, Jay Wolfson, said the surge of number that they are seeing now is the result of insistence to open the state. "Now we'll have to wait to see if it will level out," Wolfson was quoted in an NPR report. Check these out: Texas Sheriffs Say No to Coronavirus Mask Rule Florida Bar and Restaurant Owners Face Foreclosures Florida Reports 11,445 Cases in a Single Day, Governor Won't Mandate to Wear Facemasks US President Donald Trump has said that he will ban the popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok from operating in the country through an executive order as early as Saturday, according to media reports. Speaking to reporters on board the Air Force One on Friday, the President said: "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the US." Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order as early as Saturday to officially bar the company from the US, The Hill news website reported. "Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that," the President said, while signalling that he was not supportive of allowing an American company to acquire TikTok. Trump's announcement came hours after reports that Microsoft was in talks to purchase TikTok from Beijing-based company ByteDance. That report emerged around the same time news outlets reported that Trump was considering signing an executive order requiring ByteDance to divest the American portion of TikTok due to concerns that the company may be giving sensitive US data collected through the app to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said The Hill news website. Trump administration officials have for weeks floated taking action against TikTok due its connections to China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made similar comments earlier this month, announcing that the administration was considering banning Chinese apps, including TikTok, due to national security concerns. The US President's announcement also came nearly a month after India on June 29 banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, over national security concerns. Pompeo had welcomed India's move, saying the "clean app" policy will promote New Delhi's national security against the CCP spying on the country. "We welcome India's ban on certain mobile apps that can serve as appendages of the CCP's surveillance state. India's 'clean app' approach will boost India's sovereignty, will also boost India's integrity and national security as the Indian government itself has stated," he had said. The Rajasthan crisis has shown the internal faultlines within the Congress, and the inability of the central leadership to reconcile the competing ambitions of the various factions that inhabit the party. It has shown the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)s continued, relentless quest for political power and its instinct for recognising an opportunity of leveraging the faultlines of its primary competitor. But beyond the political landscape, and beyond Rajasthan, the crisis has actually shown, yet again, the institutional decay at the heart of the Indian constitutional order. Each institution, autonomous and constitutionally or legislatively mandated to act in a particular way, according to first principles, has acted in ways that can raise questions. This is not unique to the state, but is a pattern that has been visible elsewhere. Take four examples. The first is the use of state apparatus, within the control of the political party in power. Neither the Congress nor the BJP come out clean here. In Rajasthan, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot appears to be using the administration, the police, and agencies of the state government to enhance his power and squeeze his rivals. This was reflected, most visibly, in the phone-tapping which ostensibly showed legislators being lured, and the investigation by the Special Operations Group against Sachin Pilot and his loyalists. The BJP has not been far behind. The fact that there have been Income-Tax raids against those close to Gehlot, and the Enforcement Directorate has summoned the CMs brother in an old case, appears to be a visible pressure tactic. To be sure, any case or alleged wrong-doing merits investigations but the timing of the moves on the part of both the Centre and the Rajasthan government against political adversaries is probably not just a coincidence. The story is not that parties are doing this; the story is that investigative institutions are happy to play along. The second is the role of the Speaker. In Rajasthan, the Speaker happens to be from the Congress. This probably explains why he has been willing to initiate disqualification proceedings against rebel legislators with speed. One can argue that when a party writes to the Speaker about its legislators, any Speaker would follow due process and do that. This is true. But think of a counterfactual. If the BJP was to initiate disqualification proceedings against members of its party who were moving to the Congress, would the Speaker have acted with the same sense of urgency? Or go back to other cases, most prominently Karnataka, where a friendly Speaker sought to take decisions that would give the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) government more room, or Manipur, where a Speaker who was elected on the BJP ticket, appeared to take decisions that helped the N Biren Singh government survive. There is clearly a larger pattern here which indicates that the office of the presiding officer of any legislature is often not the independent institution, above party loyalties, that it is meant to be. Past political allegiances of the Speaker play a key role in determining decisions. The third institution is the office of the governor. In Rajasthan, Governor Kalraj Mishra has now agreed to convene the assembly on August 14, but this has come after a prolonged process of back and forth between the state government and the governor. Gehlot wanted a session from July 31 itself; the governor asked for a set of clarifications about the agenda of the session, suggested a 21-day notice period to convene the assembly; and asked about the social distancing protocols to be put in place issues that did not necessarily fall within his mandate. The first principles here are quite simple. Both the Constitution, and a series of Supreme Court (SC) judgments, has allowed the executive the right to ask for a session of the legislature. The governor, in the case of state assemblies, or the President of India, in the case of Parliament, has limited discretionary room in this regard. It is also both an established custom, and good form, for any government to seek to prove its majority in the house when there are doubts about its stability. The governors rejection of the governments first three proposals gave rise to suspicions about whether Mishra who has served as an important leader of the BJP was seeking to give the Opposition and rebel legislators more time to rally their numbers. But this goes beyond Mishra. In Karnataka or Manipur, the fact that former BJP leaders are governors has helped the party in its political goals. And in the past, when the Congress has been in power, governors appointed by the party have acted in a similar way. The story once again is not of one governor or the other. But it is about how a constitutional institution, meant to be non-partisan, has often acted in partisan ways, and in contravention of the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution. The fact that it is now almost a given that governors will behave in ways that suit their former parties is disturbing. The fourth institution is the judiciary. In Rajasthan, the high court stepped in and effectively stopped the Speaker from initiating disqualification proceedings against the rebel legislators of the Congress. The usual judicial precedent, on such cases, so far, is respecting the autonomy of the legislative domain and of the Speaker, and reviewing decisions after they have been taken in case of a legal challenge. Once again, this goes beyond the state. In Karnataka, the SC, by allowing rebel legislators not to follow the party whip by saying they could not be compelled to participate in proceedings, weakened the Speakers authority with major political implications. The judiciary deserves, and has, the utmost respect of all Indian citizens, including political actors who often take their battles to the courts. It is the failure of the political class to be able to preserve the autonomy of the legislature that invites judicial intervention in the first place. But once it has been asked to intervene, it is important for the courts to act consistently, based on established doctrine and principles. Otherwise, decisions can end up generating controversies and suspicions which unnecessarily undermine its dignity. Governments come and go. Political parties rise and fall. But the Constitution and its vision of independent institutions is permanent, and ensures both stability and legitimacy of the political system. The story of the erosion of institutional autonomy can, thus, erode both the stability and legitimacy of the system. letters@hindustantimes.com SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Our Divisions Copyright 2021-22 DB Corp ltd., All Rights Reserved This website follows the DNPA Code of Ethics. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is like a child who, when caught doing something wrong, admits to it in dribs and drabs; but only when his back is up against a wall. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 31/7/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is like a child who, when caught doing something wrong, admits to it in dribs and drabs; but only when his back is up against a wall. Trudeau has been embroiled for weeks in a controversy over a sole-sourced contract handed to WE Charity, an organization with close ties to his government and to members of his family. At first, Trudeau said there was nothing wrong with awarding the contract, claiming WE was the right organization for the job. (WE has since backed out of the deal). He was happy to stand by that, until reports surfaced that his mother and brother were paid by the organization for speaking engagements, and that his wife was reimbursed for expenses incurred while volunteering for the charity. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he knew there would be questions about the proposed contract with the WE Charity because of his familys cosy relationship with the organization. (Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press) That forced Trudeau to admit there was an "appearance" of a conflict. That was his first admission of guilt. The prime minister said he should have recused himself from a May 22 cabinet meeting where the contract was approved. He apologized for not doing so. That was just the beginning of the story. Canadians later found out WE was in contact with government officials as early as mid-April to discuss their possible involvement in administering the Canada Student Service Grant program. WE even started incurring expenses in early May before the contract was approved by cabinet (a revelation heard at the House of Commons finance committee Thursday that has still not been properly explained). Trudeau said he knew nothing at the time about those discussions or transactions, a claim thats increasingly difficult to believe. During his testimony at the finance committee, Trudeau squirted out another piece of information he was hiding. He said he first heard of the WE contract just before a May 8 cabinet meeting. The prime minister said he knew there would be questions about the proposed contract because of his familys cosy relationship with the organization. He was so concerned about it, he now claims, he had his officials take the item off the agenda for that meeting. He "pushed back" and insisted the public service take another look at the contract to ensure it had done its due diligence, he said. Its unclear what kind of "due diligence" the public service supposedly did during those two weeks. Whatever it was, it didnt stop Trudeau from approving the contract two weeks later. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is viewed on a mobile phone as he testifies via videoconference during a House of Commons finance committee investigation into the WE Charity scandal. (Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press) The story that government continues to peddle is that WE was the only organization in Canada that could administer this program. They couldnt possibly know that without going through a competitive bid process. Had they issued a request for proposal (which, with very few exceptions, is what governments are supposed to do by law when hiring third parties for service contracts), they would have been able to properly examine their options. One of the reasons governments have procurement rules is to prevent politicians from giving contracts to their friends or political allies. Want more great journalism? Get our best news and features delivered in your inbox every weekday evening. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The argument that government didnt have time to tender the contract is disingenuous. Government began discussing the summer student program in mid-April and didnt officially announce it was up and running until late June. Within that two-month period, government could have issued a request for proposal. They could have expedited the process if necessary, as the federal government has done with other RFPs during the pandemic. Instead of instructing the public service to issue an RFP, Trudeau approved the sole-sourced contract at the May 22 cabinet meeting knowing full well he was in a conflict of interest. Thats not a momentary lapse in judgment. Thats a premeditated act. WE Charity co-founders Craig (left) and Marc Kielburger introduce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau at a WE Day event in 2015. (Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press files) Trudeau made the same piecemeal admissions with the SNC-Lavalin scandal. He began by denying the story outright. Once he could no longer do so in the face of evidence, he admitted there may have been some misunderstandings around his governments attempt to cut the Montreal-based engineering firm a deal on its criminal prosecution. As evidence grew, he was forced to concede that he did try to interfere in the prosecution, but argued there was nothing wrong with doing so. Trudeaus first instinct is to deny and cover up. When hes caught, he admits to as little as possible until hes forced to admit more. The WE Charity controversy is a continuation of that pattern. The question for Canadians is: how long can they tolerate that level of deceit from their prime minister? Eventually, the untruths and the manipulation will catch up with him. YEREVAN. Turkey's positioning in the light of these developments reflects Turkey's destructive and destabilizing policies formed in this region, which we have witnessed and continue to witness in the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. Armenias Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan stated this in an interview with a local TV channel, and referring to the Armenian-Azerbaijani tension in the direction of Armenias Tavush Province and Turkey's reaction to it. "What was happening after July 12 is aimed at exporting this destabilizing policy to the South Caucasus, which is unacceptable, which we resist by all possible means and will resist in the sense that any attempt to destabilize the South Caucasus by a neighbor in the region will be unacceptable to us. In this regard, we use all possible tools at our disposal by way of intensifying our entire national or international formats," said the FM. Touching upon the fact that Armenia has recently circulated an OSCE petition to suspend the inspection visits by Turkey to Armenia within the framework of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) and the Vienna Document, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan said. "That was our proportionate response to the actions that Turkey and Azerbaijan are taking today, jointly initiating and carrying out these military exercises, which take place at a time when both our resources and those of the international community and the [OSCE Minsk Group] Co-Chairs are being invested on strengthening the de-escalation; this, of course, is unacceptable. These military inspections stemming from the CFE and the Vienna Document contain a very essential tool. It is a tool for building mutual trust, and it is a tool for equal security interests, mutual respect. What Turkey is doing, of course, does not show such mutual respect, and this was an equal response by Armenia." And asked whether this is the response to the current Turkish-Azerbaijani military exercises, the Armenian FM gave a positive answer. Joined by a slate of guests including George Floyds brother, Terrence Floyd, and Eric Garners mother, Gwendolyn Carr, New Jerseys fourth-largest city painted and dedicated a Black Lives Matter mural across the street from its City Hall. Community groups in Elizabeth received permission from the city to paint the words, Black Lives Matter, on Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza in bold letters, emblematic of a national movement which gained exponential traction in the wake of Floyds death at the hands of police in Minnesota in May. The activists worked with city and local police officials to put on the event, which was attended by the police director and other officers who interacted with the crowd. We have to come out and we must protest, Carr said to the crowd. We cant only say Black Lives Matter when there is a police killing. Black lives are supposed to always matter. Black lives are supposed to matter when the school system is failing us, when the job market is not giving us a fair living wage Thats when Black lives matter also and this is what we should be screaming about. The two spoke to the crowd of more than 100, almost all Black residents, many wearing shirts that read I know Black Lives Matter, do you? urging them to apply the murals message beyond the realm of police violence. I just want to thank everyone for coming out, showing love to the cause, being down for change, because its needed, Terrence Floyd said during brief comments to the crowd. Especially in our communities and in our culture, its needed. He told NJ Advance Media Carrs presence prompted him to come to the event. I decided to come out here to support Mama Carr. Shes been in this movement for some years and now that Im in it, Im helping her like shes helping me, Floyd told NJ Advance Media. Its a movement, its not a moment. That was the message that underlaid the 2-hour ceremony sponsored by the New Jersey Legacy Foundation and the Elizabeth Youth Theater Ensemble, which included speeches, prayers and painting. Some, however, felt that the murals dedication rang hollow without a commitment of action from the city, which has grappled with policing issues in a city whose population is about 19% Black and 65% Hispanic. Last year, Elizabeth Police Director James Cosgrove resigned after an inquiry found he used racist and sexist slurs against his staff and Mayor Chris Bollwage earned criticism for his staunch defense of Cosgrove. Elizabeths police force is now helmed by Earl Graves, its first Black director. Protesters held signs that read, If Black Lives Matter, defund EPD, and How about accountability? and activist Kason Little declined to attend the event, accusing the mayor of using the mural for political cover. Bollwage was not in attendance, according to an event organizer, and the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. Other speakers said the mural was a positive step in the right direction that needs to be followed up with more action. Black Lives Matter is not a trend, Janay Martinez, a poet with the Elizabeth Youth Ensemble, told the crowd. Towns all over are simply slapping Black Lives Matter on the ground and calling it change. Making it such a big thing, when they arent doing anything else to help my people. That is not change, this is not change, let this be the stepping stone to implementing change. Reverend George E. Britt, who delivered the closing prayer, echoed Martinezs sentiment, calling for renewed investment in the community. Its not about a painting, its beyond a painting, Britt told NJ Advance Media. This is a symbol of affirmation, of consent we gotta build on that now and bring about the change that really makes this live. Elizabethan Bree Maejor, 19, was selected to paint the letters, which have appeared on streets across the nation in cities like Newark and Washington D.C. She began on Friday, working from 4 to 10 p.m. and continued at 5 a.m. on Saturday until the ceremony at noon, with the help of volunteers. The yellow letters are accompanied by a fist and six lines representing The Big Six of civil rights leaders: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Congressman John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young. Blocks were left unpainted in the letters, where designated community members like Donna Alexander, President of the Urban League of Union County, and Rev. Leonard Grayson, the Acting President of Elizabeth NAACP, were asked to fill them in. Also in attendance were Al Michaels, the nephew of transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, Assemblyman Jamel C. Holley, the first Black lawmaker to represent New Jerseys 20th district and organizer Lawrence Hamm, who made an unsuccessful bid for the Senate this year. Johnson, an Elizabeth native, was a central figure in the Stonewall riots, viewed as one of the seminal moments in the gay liberation movement. Recently, a petition gained more than 165,000 signatures calling for the replacement of a Christopher Columbus statue in Elizabeth with one of Johnson. On Tuesday, the Elizabeth City Council issued a commendation to Johnson for her pioneering work in trans rights and revolutionary LGBTQIA+ activism. Martha P. Johnson was about civil rights not just gay rights, LGBTQ+ rights Martha was about rights, and she fought for everyone, Michals said to the crowd. And she would be honored that her hometown, her city, Elizabeth, New Jersey is recognizing her today. Prior to the ceremony, a white man stormed onto the scene of the mural, shouting All Lives Matter. Event organizer Kim Nesbitt Good approached him, offering a handshake and then a hug, and moving him away from the mural. After telling the story during the ceremony, Good left attendees with her message: Lets just love one another. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. Representative image Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc on Friday said they are in advanced discussions to supply up to 300 million doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine for the 27-country European Union. Armed with an emergency fund of more than 2 billion euros (A1.80 billion), the European Commission wants to strike deals with up to six drugmakers for their vaccines for their 450 million citizens against the coronavirus that has killed 674,000 people worldwide. The Commission said the aim of the talks with Sanofi was to clinch an advance purchase deal. "The envisaged contract with Sanofi would provide for an option for all EU Member States to purchase the vaccine," the Commission said in a statement. "It is envisaged that, once a vaccine has proven to be safe and effective against COVID-19, the Commission would have a contractual framework in place for the purchase of 300 million doses, on behalf of all EU member states." 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 A Commission spokesman said he could not comment on when a deal would be announced and the possible price for the vaccine, calling it a quite promising step towards an eventual agreement. Sanofi is working on two vaccine projects including one in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline. The companies said the doses would be manufactured in European countries including France, Belgium, Germany and Italy. Sanofi is leading the clinical development of the vaccine and expects to start a trial by the end of this year. Earlier this week, EU talks with Sanofi, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson hit an impasse over price, payment method and potential liability costs, EU officials told Reuters. Other pharmaceutical companies talking to the EU include France's Valneva, Moderna and biotech firms BioNTech and Germany's CureVac. The Navi Mumbai police on Friday booked three persons and busted a rice black-marketing racket. Police have also seized 110-tonne (1.10 lakh kg) rice worth 33 lakh. According to police, the trio had been allegedly black-marketing the subsidised rice allotted under the public distribution system for the last three months. The accused illegally bought 110-tonne (1.10 lakh kg) rice meant for the poor in the ration shops in Solapur. They, then, exported the rice to Dhaka, Qatar and Madagascar and sold them for three times the price. The accused identified as Bhimashankar Khade, Iqbal Kazi and Laxman Patel are currently at large. With the help of his co-accused, he would store it at Kazis warehouse located along the Mumbai-Goa highway in Palasphe. Once the consignment was brought over to the warehouse, they would break the seals of the rice sacks and refill it in other sacks with Asian Rice printed on it. Once the rice was repackaged, Patel, a Ghatkopar resident, would export it to countries like Dhaka, Qatar and Madagascar. Kazi is the director of the warehouse, said police. We seized 110-tonne of rice valued at 33 lakh from the godown along the highway. The rice was brought to the warehouse in four containers in the last four to five days, said Ashok Dudhe, deputy commissioner of police, zone 2. During the raid, the police found workers at the warehouse, who were segregating and loading the sacks. The daily wage workers were employed by the accused and their statements are being recorded. Police said they were not aware that the rice was black marketed. The accused were essentially selling the rice under a new name called Asian Rice and then exporting it for a profit. We suspect they were making Rs 25 profit for every kg of rice exported. Patel, the exporter, was previously booked under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and Khade also has a cheating case registered against him at Bhoiwada police station dating back to 2001, said an officer from Panvel police station. The police have also procured CCTV footage which established that the accused were involved in the racket for at least three to four months. The accused have been booked under sections of Essential Commodities Act, said Ajay Kumar Landge, senior inspector at Panvel police station. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON JACKSON, MI -- A street fair showcasing Black-owned businesses drew hundreds to Elnora Moorman Plaza in Jackson Saturday. The Kissed by the Sun Street Fair, organized by the owners of Jackson-based apparel company TFE Co., showcased Black-owned businesses alongside food vendors, live music and activities. Booths were set up to accommodate social distancing, with vendors lining each corner of the park on Milwaukee and High Streets and along the inter-city trail. Vendors parked along High Street, where a Black Lives Matter mural was painted with the citys permission in June. Organizers Erica Estelle and Chala Fowler-Lott said by mid-afternoon the fair was already a success. Theyd expected 15 to 20 vendors when planning began, but a total of 47 vendors set up for the event. Estelle said many of the vendors were running a booth for the first time, representing cottage businesses that owners operate from their homes via social media. The fair was organized as an opportunity for those businesses to make their presence known in the community and to meet with other Black business owners without the expense of operating a storefront. Even today, there are people here who were meeting for the first time, Estelle said. Estelle and Fowler-Lott put together the event at no charge to vendors, working with the city of Jackson to close Milwaukee Street for parking and arrange power and trash service at the park. Jerusha Morgan runs Love Jerusha, selling African waist beads and other jewelry along with body scrubs and bars from her home in Jackson. The street fair marked her first vendor event, she said. Its great to be able to give people a feel for the person behind the logo, Morgan said. Dennis C. Reid II, a caricaturist and illustrator who has adapted to the pandemic by offering his services via Zoom call, said he was glad for the opportunity to meet the owners of other Black-owned businesses. Reid II noted that Small businesses have an advantage in the face of COVID-19. Were making it work with social media, Reid II said. We dont know how long this COVID will last, so weve got to adapt. A woman was disgusted after several Christmas presents arrived completely destroyed when she mailed them with Australia Post. Debbie Martin lives in Katoomba, NSW and was excited to send her daughter and her partner, who live in Queensland, carefully chosen presents but when the package arrived it came with a letter from Australia Post explaining the parcel had been damaged. Not only were gifts like shirts, underwear and a handbag totally shredded but several items were missing from the parcel, including aftershave. Ms Martin told Yahoo News Australia she had spent approximately $600 on the gifts. Debbie Martin was shocked when her Christmas gifts including clothing arrived shredded and destroyed. Source: Supplied When she posted photos of the destroyed items on Facebook people were flabbergasted at the state they had arrived in. Looks like a couple of rottweilers were fighting over it, one person said. Good Lord, did it go through a tree mulching machine? another person wrote. It begs the question, how on earth does a parcel get to this state? a user asked. According to Australia Post Ms Martins parcel was damaged by machinery but they didnt elaborate further. All the gifts in the parcel sent by Australia Post were shredded or missing. Source: Supplied The things that went missing were ladies underwear, men's socks, and aftershave. These things totally disappeared. I thought that maybe the aftershave got broken but nothing smells of it and it was wrapped in bubble wrap and inside the men's socks, Ms Martin explained. She told Yahoo News that she wasnt offered insurance when mailing the items at the post office and even requested the parcel be sent straight to her daughters local post office to be picked up. I wanted her to have to pick it up at the post office and they said it was a good idea and printed out some kind of sticker to put on the parcel, which I had to sign it and they said it would be safer this way, she said. Gifts worth almost $600 were either destroyed or missing from the parcel. Source: Supplied When the presents arrived destroyed, Ms Martin raised a complaint with Australia Post and she was informed because the parcel didnt have extra cover, they could only compensate her up to $100. Story continues Ms Martin wasnt satisfied and took the matter to the ombudsman who offered her a goodwill gesture of $250 plus $28.45 for the postage cost. Given the extreme amount of damage caused by Australia Posts equipment, Ms Martin isnt prepared to accept the goodwill gesture and is still looking for answers. An Australia Post spokesperson told Yahoo News while the vast majority of mail arrives safely and on time, something has clearly gone wrong here. Australia Post apologised for the matter and urged Ms Martin to contact them again. We have sought to work with the customer regarding this matter and advised that even though insurance was not taken out on the items, compensation was and remains available as a gesture of goodwill, and we encourage the customer to contact us. Thats disgusting... seriously how could they pull a blind eye to that amount of destruction? a Facebook user wrote. 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. WASHINGTON The White House and Congress hurtled over an economic and political cliff on Friday, failing to reach agreement to extend $600-per-week federal jobless aid payments for millions of Americans before their midnight expiration and risking a backlash from voters amid a pandemic-induced recession. Republicans and Democrats heaped blame on each other for the breakdown, even as they said they would continue to try to strike an agreement on a recovery package that would restore the benefits, which have become a critical lifeline for laid-off workers and the economy itself. But in allowing the lapse, President Trump and congressional leaders in both parties were treading on politically perilous ground three months before the general election. The relief package under discussion is almost certainly the last chance Mr. Trump has to inject fresh stimulus into the battered economy before he faces voters in November, with his political standing damaged amid widespread public dissatisfaction over his handling of the pandemic. Republicans, whose hold on the Senate majority is under threat, could also pay a steep price for failing to deliver relief to struggling Americans, after waiting weeks to present their own proposal and ultimately endorsing a deep cut to the enhanced jobless benefits. But the impasse also amounts to a calculated risk for Democrats, who have pressed to extend the full $600-a-week federal unemployment payments through January as part of a sweeping $3 trillion recovery plan. They opted to reject Republicans last-ditch proposals for a short-term extension or a continuation of the aid at a lower rate, taking the position that allowing the benefits to expire was better than agreeing to an aid proposal that they considered far too stingy to meeting the needs of a crippled economy and a continuing public health crisis. The Spectator interviewed 10 staff working on the COVID-19 units at Hamilton General Hospital and the Charlton Campus of St. Josephs Healthcare Hamilton. They described the stress, fear and anxiety of battling a virus that has no treatment and so many unknowns. But not one of them expressed a desire to do a different job that would be less risky. They talk of the resilience of their patients and how they have taken care of each other on the front lines of the pandemic. On the Covid front: Part 1 In their words: Angele Viger, physician assistant at Hamilton General Its certainly been, by far, the most difficult thing Ive done in my entire career for sure. Its very emotional and it takes a pretty big toll on your mental health as well. Its a big risk and its a lot youre giving up as a health-care provider working on the front line, but in my mind, I think its totally worth it. These patients need someone to care for them. They need empathy and they need a good team around them ... They are just like everyone else, they need someone to care for them and look after them when they are sick. In my mind, its worth the risk of what Im doing to be able to care for these people. Raju Gokhruwala, environmental services at St. Josephs People are scared to go in that area even, forget about in the room. Im very proud that Im there, I work from my heart and Im happy to do this job. Corry Koning, registered nurse at Hamilton General My family has taken it in great stride. My kids have been unaware of how close mommy gets to it. My husband has been great. He makes sure that the kids stay away when I come home so I can have my shower and no one is getting it. Other than that we do every day in the same way weve always done every day. We say our good mornings and goodnights and just hope for the best. Kathryn Runstedler, respiratory therapist at Hamilton General These patients are dying and they are alone. Its very hard to watch and its very sad to see because usually you have the family come in, theyll have as many people as they want, theyll stay as late as they want and say their goodbyes. Its really hard when the family cant come in ... You know their family wants to come and they want to be there but they just cant. Sharri Faugh, registered nurse at Hamilton General Having the equipment on for hours and hours is exhausting. Its like being in a sauna and someone is shining a radiant heater for 12 hours. Its hot, its suffocating, you cant breathe and you have a headache after every shift because of it. Brenda Erskine, charge nurse at St. Josephs Its a whole different type of nursing. Youre used to as soon as someone calls, you go into the room and help them. Now youre trying to make sure youre doing as much as you can for them while youre in the room ... You want to sit down and talk with them and unfortunately at times you just cant. You want to offer comfort, you want to be there for them but the COVID virus prevents you from that. Sometimes that was hard not being able to give that little bit of personal touch that you normally would give. Dr. Zahira Khalid, specialist in internal medicine at St. Josephs There was a night I had to go to a retirement home where there was an outbreak and it was quite touching to see how the residents were conscious of their neighbours or roommates who had COVID and wanted to make sure they were comfortable. Even though they knew they were sick, it wasnt about just looking out for themselves. They looked out for each other and looked out for us as health-care workers. They were socially isolated from their own families and still looking out for each other. Frances Garner, physiotherapist at St. Josephs There has been a whole lot of effort trying to get everything in anticipation of whatever may come. There has been some anxiety just in feeling like youre waiting for that wave to come and not knowing when its coming. We all have a certain degree of relief that it hasnt presented itself at the level we were all fearing that we would be in the same situation as New York City and Italy. We havent been pushed to the point that it has tapped out our resources. There is still that element of what if? On the second wave is it potentially going to push us to that point or not? Always feeling like we have to stay ready. Dr. Jason Cheung, specialist in internal medicine at St. Josephs It is a scary infection. It seems to be here for the foreseeable future and until we have some more definitive interventions like vaccines, I think we should all make sure we are complying (with) the advice of our medical officer to wear masks when in public and make sure we are practising social distancing. Dr. Rebecca Amer, respirologist at St. Josephs It was kind of strange for the first couple of months. We were prepared. Wed come into the hospital and it was spooky because we had only one-third of our normal in-patient volumes and people were staying away ... We kept bracing ourselves for this huge tsunami of patients ... and we were like, What is going on? ... But its because the community did a great job in keeping away and distancing and abiding by all the public health guidelines. We just hope they continue to do that because its definitely not over, not by a long shot. Its still in the community. We have to be prepared to deal with this for the next couple of years. BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. Sullivan County prosecutors plan to bring another matter involving the mother of Blountville toddler Evelyn Boswell whose body was found in March before a grand jury later this month, District Attorney General Barry Staubus said at a Friday court hearing. Megan Boswell, 19, was indicted by a county grand jury in May on 11 counts of making false reports to authorities as they searched for her missing daughter, whose remains were found on Boswell family property near Blountville. An extensive search for Evelyn started in mid-February after local authorities received a Department of Childrens Services referral stating that said she had not been seen since before Christmas. No charges have been filed in Evelyn Boswells death and Staubus declined Friday to provide any additional details about what will be presented to the grand jury. Boswell appeared via video in Sullivan County Criminal Court Friday morning for a hearing during which the court received updates from attorneys involved with the false reports case. She has been held at the Sullivan County jail since February, when she was first charged with lying to investigators. During Fridays five-minute proceeding, Staubus told Judge Jim Goodwin that a matter involving Boswell will be presented to a grand jury Aug. 19. Goodwin also set Boswells next court date for Aug. 28. Boswells attorney, Brad Sproles, has previously attempted to get the court to reduce his clients $150,000 bail, but it was not discussed in detail Friday and Goodwin left the amount in place. Still, Sproles noted Friday that if his client was only convicted on the false report charges, she could potentially be eligible for parole in the near future. At an arraignment hearing in May, Megan Boswell pleaded not guilty to the false report charges. Speaking after the hearing, Sproles said he is not sure what will be presented to the grand jury. That was what weve been waiting for, to see if there was any additional charges, he told reporters. Sproles also said he has not yet received any discovery materials from prosecutors, but he attributed it to a mountain of information officials had to sort through in the case. Staubus remained tight-lipped after the hearing about exactly what will go to the grand jury, including whether charges could be brought against other defendants and whether the matter may specifically relate to Evelyn Boswells death. We will take the matter to the grand jury, well see what determination they make and then well go from there, but at this time I cant make any comment about what will be presented to the grand jury or the nature of what will be presented to the grand jury, Staubus said. In a separate case, Evelyn Boswells grandmother, Angela Boswell, 43, was charged with stealing a BMW that authorities sought in connection to an Amber Alert issued early in the search process. Boswell and a man named William McCloud Angela Boswells boyfriend at the time were arrested Feb. 21 in Wilkes County, North Carolina, after law enforcement located the couple in the vehicle. Boswell previously told the Bristol Herald Courier they did not steal the car. The vehicle theft case is continuing to move through the courts, with the next hearing scheduled for Sept. 24, according to court filings. Boswell was arrested again in March after authorities accused her of breaking into her parents home near Kingsport. She faces charges of theft under $10,000, introduction of drugs into a penal facility and possession of counterfeit money. Bail is $50,000 in that case and she remains behind bars at the Sullivan County jail. In the meantime, the investigation into the Evelyn Boswells death remains active and ongoing, Capt. Andy Seabolt, a spokesman for the Sullivan County Sheriffs Office, wrote in an email Friday. Citing the active investigation, Seabolt said the office could not provide any further information. 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. The export of indigenously manufactured ventilators was approved by group of ministers (GoM) on the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) at their 19th meeting on Friday, the Union health ministry said in a statement on Saturday. The Group of Ministers (GOM) on Covid-19 has considered and agreed to the proposal of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare allowing the export of made-in-India ventilators. This decision has been communicated to the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) for further needed action to facilitate the export of indigenously manufactured ventilators, said the statement According to officials in the ministry aware of the matter, India now has the capacity to manufacture ventilators indigenously, allowing it to export the machines. Click here for full Covid-19 coverage We now have at least a couple of dozen manufactures of ventilators in the country as opposed to a few some six months ago. The data before us suggests Covid-19 patients in India largely need oxygen therapy and not mechanical ventilation as much, and our case fatality rate is also very low, which is why in terms of demand and supply we are pretty comfortably placed. It opens up export avenues and thats why the idea was discussed. Fortunately, everyone was on same page on this, said one of the ministry officials, who did not wish to be identified. Between them, a couple of big manufacturers who earlier used to produce about 50-100 ventilators in a month can now manufacture anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 ventilators. DGFT had prohibited the export of ventilators in March to ensure domestic availability of the machines to effectively fight the viral disease. Through a notification issued on March 24, 2020, all types of ventilators were prohibited for export. Now with export of ventilators having been allowed, it is hoped that domestic ventilators would be in a position to find new markets for Indian ventilators in foreign countries, the health ministry statement read. As on July 31, 2020, 0.22% of about 500,000 active cases were on ventilators across the country. Indias case fatality rate (CFR) has been progressively declining, which also means fewer patients are on ventilators. According to the government data, Indias CFR on June 18 was 3.33%, which came down to 2.72% on July 10; it currently stands at 2.15%. We have managed to curtail deaths due to Covid-19 quite well, and one of the reasons could be we are detecting cases early, and patients who are sick enough to require hospitalization is a small number. The number of cases could increase but how well an outbreak is managed depends largely on how many lives a country is able to save, says Dr GC Khilnani, former head of the pulmonary medicine department at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 19:36:30|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain, on July 21, 2020. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua) The House subpoena, directed to Pompeo, requires that the records be turned over by Aug. 7. WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Eliot Engel, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, issued a subpoena on Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a statement, Engel said his panel is investigating Pompeo's "apparent use of Department of State resources to advance a political smear" of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, also the 2020 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Sitting President Donald Trump, who will face off with Biden this November, had tried to push a narrative that Biden, when serving as the vice president, tried to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor to shield Burisma from an investigation in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. The White House's efforts to have Ukraine investigate the Bidens were at the heart of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Trump. The Democratic-led House impeached the president in December 2019, while the Senate, controlled by Republicans, acquitted him in February this year. Combo photo shows U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden attending their respective events on different occasions. (Xinhua) Engel's subpoena demands all records purportedly dealing with the Bidens and Burisma that the Department of State has produced to Republican-led Senate committees, said the statement. "Secretary Pompeo has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he's not even trying to disguise it," Engel said. "I want to see the full record of what the department has sent to the Senate and I want the American people to see it too." The House Foreign Affairs Committee said it has learned that the State Department has produced 16,080 pages of allegedly responsive material to the Senate Committees since February. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday, Pompeo committed to continuing to send information to Senate Republicans, according to the statement. The House subpoena, directed to Pompeo, requires that the records be turned over by Aug. 7, said the statement. Pompeo, 56, became the Trump administration's second secretary of state in April 2018 after serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. An ice rink featuring a frozen waterfall in Beijings Changping district has become a popular destination among climbing enthusiasts and newcomers to ice sports. Located in the Huyu Natural Scenic Area, the rink consists of a 40-meter-high climbing area. With the approach to the Beijing Winter Olympics, ice and snow activities are attracting fans across the country. The China Tourism Academy estimated that 305 million people will visit such venues nationwide this season Jan 18, 2022 05:36 PM The chairman of the Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives, Adam Schiff, introduced an amendment to the Intelligence Act (H.R. 7856) for the committee's consideration, obliging the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Ratcliffe, to prepare a report on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The amendment will be considered next week and, if approved by the committee, will be sent to the Congress. It will enter into force if adopted by the House of Representatives, Senate and signed by the President. In route news, Uniteds September schedule includes the revival of more international service; Aeromexico plans a return to San Francisco; American trims its Los Angeles network; British Airways ends a JFK all-business-class route; major carriers extend their change fee waivers again and Southwest does the same with its empty-middle-seat policy; the state of Alaska tightens up its coronavirus policy; the European Union extends its ban on U.S. travelers; and New York LaGuardia completes another piece of its big reconstruction project. United Airlines just released its September schedule, which includes a modest capacity increase over August and the resumption of a number of international routes. One of them is San Francisco-Munich a route that its Star Alliance partner Lufthansa started flying in late June. United said it will also boost its SFO-London Heathrow schedule back to daily service. Most of the international service resumptions in September will be from other United hubs, including Chicago-Amsterdam, Houston-Amsterdam, Houston-Frankfurt, Chicago-Hong Kong and Los Angeles-Sydney, as well as a new route from Chicago to Tel Aviv. (Keep in mind that US residents are unlikely to be able to visit most of these places until bans and quarantines are lifted. More about that below...) To Mexico, United will bring back Puerto Vallarta flights from LAX, Denver and Chicago; Cabo San Lucas service from Denver; and routes to Aguascalientes, Tampico and Veracruz from Houston. Also coming back will be Costa Rica service from Houston and Newark, and United plans to introduce new service to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Chicago and Washington Dulles. In domestic markets, United said it will revive flights from the mainland to Kauai and Hilo, Hawaii, and add more capacity on it existing routes to Honolulu, Kona and Maui. Overall, United said, it will add 40 domestic flights a day in September, increasing connecting opportunities at Denver, Chicago and Houston. You can see Uniteds announcement here. Aeromexico is planning to resume service on more transborder routes Aug. 1, including San Francisco-Mexico City with five 737-800 flights a week. Other Mexico City routes being revived Aug. 1 include Denver, Las Vegas and San Antonio. The airline already flies from Mexico City to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando and New York JFK. American Airlines will drop several Los Angeles routes, some of which are being taken up by its partner Alaska Airlines in the months ahead. AA will discontinue its current LAX-Louisville and LAX-San Diego flights in October and will not revive its currently suspended service from LAX to Fresno or to the Oregon cities of Eugene, Medford and Redmond. However, Americans latest schedule filing indicates that it plans to resume suspended service in the next six to 12 months from LAX to Anchorage, Aspen, Bozeman, Durango, Jackson Hole, Kalispell and Santa Fe. If youre not a big shot in the business/financial world, you might not be familiar with British Airways flights BA1/BA2, which provided premium transportation between New York JFK and Londons close-in City Airport (which serves its financial district) using an all business-class, 32-seat A318. But now BA has decided to discontinue that pricey flight, the latest victim in the airlines post-coronavirus restructuring. The airlines all-business-class service featured a westbound fueling stop in Shannon, Ireland, where passengers were able to take advantage of U.S. Customs preclearance. (The flight was considered by some to be the next best thing to the Concorde due to its clubby and exclusive nature.) Major airlines have extended their waiver of change fees once again in an effort to make customers feel more comfortable about booking and/or rescheduling travel. The waivers had been due to expire on July 31. United said its customers now have until Aug. 31 to cancel or change flights booked for travel through the end of 2020 without incurring a fee. That also applies to new flights booked by Aug. 31. Delta said its waiver now applies to new flights purchased through Aug. 31; those flights can be rebooked at no fee for travel up to a year from the purchase date. Delta flyers who had purchased a ticket before April 17 and are slated to fly through the end of the year can rebook those plans for travel through September 2022. (In other news, Delta is now warning customers that the face mask they wear on their flight cannot be one that has exhaust valves.) American Airlines said this week it is now waiving change fees on new tickets bought by Sept. 8, including AAdvantage award tickets, and that customers are allowed to alter their origin and destination cities. AA already has a fee waiver in place on all previously purchased tickets for travel through Sept. 30. Americans partner Alaska Airlines has also extended its change/cancellation fee waiver, which now applies to tickets purchased through Sept. 8. Don't miss a shred of important travel news! Sign up for our FREE weekly email alerts. Just as airlines keep extending their change fee waivers, some are also extending their promise of empty middle seats. In the latest development, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said his airline will now limit seat sales on all flights through at least the end of October in order to keep middle seats empty. Previously, Southwest had promised to do so through the end of September. Deltas empty-middle-seat pledge is currently in place through September, as is Alaskas, while JetBlue is keeping middle seats empty through September 8. United and American no longer have such a policy in place, although they have said they will notify passengers if their flight is getting full and give them the option of rebooking. British Airways Planning a trip to Alaska? The state government plans to change its testing/quarantine policy on Aug. 11. Currently, air travelers into the 49th state have the option of either getting a COVID-19 test with negative results before they leave home or taking one at their arrival airport in Alaska and self-quarantining for a couple of days until the results come back. But after Aug. 11, that second option will no longer be available, except for Alaska residents. Also being eliminated is the option of self-quarantining for 14 days without a test. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the pre-departure tests will have to be conducted within 72 hours of leaving home. Enforcement procedures for the new rules are still in the works, he added. In case youre still expecting the European Union to lift its ban on U.S. arrivals in time for a late-summer vacation, maybe you shouldnt get your hopes up. The ban, which took effect July 1, is reviewed every two weeks to determine if more countries should be allowed onto the safe list based on their success in holding down new coronavirus numbers. In its first review on July 16, the E.U. decide to keep the U.S. on the no-entry list, and this week it extended that ban once again. In airport news, New York LaGuardia will cut the ribbon Aug. 5 on the next piece of its massive $8 billion reconstruction project: the first seven gates in a new Terminal B Western Concourse that will eventually have 17 gates. The Western Concourse will be used mostly by American Airlines and will feature a new Admirals Club. In June, LGA opened its spacious new Terminal B Arrivals and Departures Hall, which will be linked to the Western Concourse by an elevated pedestrian bridge (just like the Eastern Concourse, which opened in December 2018). The Western Concourses second piece, with 10 more gates, will open in 2022. The concourse features soaring 55-foot high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that allow for ample natural lighting, the airport said. Amenities will include a children's play area, a greenspace with landscaping and seating, spacious restrooms, family and nursing restrooms, a designated American Airline service desk, and a pet relief area. Read all recent TravelSkills posts here Chris McGinnis is SFGATE's senior travel correspondent. You can reach him via email or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Don't miss a shred of important travel news by signing up for his FREE weekly email updates! SFGATE participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. By PTI BALLIA: The Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party on Saturday claimed that AAP has agreed to join the Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha led by it. SBSP general secretary Arvind Rajbhar said he had met Rajya Sabha MP and Aam Aadmi Party's national spokesperson Sanjay Singh in this regard in Lucknow on Friday. "The AAP has agreed to join the Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha led by the SBSP," Rajbhar claimed. He said former Uttar Pradesh minister and SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar will meet Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal in a week's time and a formal announcement in this regard will be made in the national capital. Meanwhile, charging the BJP-led Union and state governments with befooling people, Om Prakash Rajbhar said both parties will join hands to launch a struggle against "anti-people policies of the ruling party". The SBSP chief said a rally will be held after the coronavirus lockdown in Uttar Pradesh, in which Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will take part. There is an effort to bring all parties having similar ideology on one platform to oust the BJP from power, the SBSP chief said, adding that as of now, there are eight parties in the morcha. Om Prakash Rajbhar, earlier an NDA ally in the state, was removed from the UP cabinet by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, just a day after the Lok Sabha polls concluded in May 2019 for making embarrassing statements against the BJP. During the Lok Sabha campaign, Rajbhar had said that BJP members should be "thrashed" with shoes, drawing instant ire of senior BJP leaders. Adityanath had also got all other SBSP members holding the rank of the minister of state removed. Later, the former minister floated the Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha with a focus on the 2022 assembly elections. The Rajbhar community constitutes 20 per cent of the Purvanchal population and regarded as the second most politically dominant community after the Yadavs in eastern UP. A former San Antonio police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black man during a 2016 arrest at a North Side apartment complex died early Friday. John David Lee, 41, was pronounced dead at 12:48 a.m., according to the Bexar County medical examiners office. His cause and manner of death are listed as pending, investigators said. Lee, who had been with the San Antonio Police Department since February 2004, left the department Feb. 13, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records. He was an 11-year veteran at the time of his encounter with 36-year-old Antronie Scott. On Feb. 4, 2016, Scott, who was wanted on two felony warrants, was being followed by undercover officers with the Repeat Offenders Program. They watched as Scott drove to the Wood Hollow Apartments, 10362 Sahara St., about 6:45 p.m. They called for a uniformed officer to approach him, Police Chief William McManus said at the time. Lee arrived at the complex and pulled up to Scott. As Scott was exiting a white Mercedes sedan, Lee approached him and said to Scott, Let me see your hands. Scott spun around quickly and Lee almost immediately fired his service weapon because he feared for his life, McManus said. Scott, who was shot in the upper torso, died at the scene as his wife sat in the passenger seat of their car. McManus placed Lee on administrative leave and issued a contemplated indefinite suspension immediately after the shooting. In March 2016, the chief instead decided to provide Lee with more training. According to McManus, Lee had put his vehicle too closely to Scotts during the traffic stop, putting him in a tactically poor situation. The chief also considered that Lee was following instructions from undercover detectives. The case brought attention to SAPDs tactics and use of force for a time that year. McManus decisions in the case led to a vote of no-confidence from the San Antonio Police Officers Association. Mike Helle, president of the association, said then that use of force was not rampant in the department. Officers also reportedly felt that McManus was folding to community pressure while ignoring how Lee had been trying to arrest Scott for outstanding felonies that included possession of a firearm. At the time of the shooting, Lee had four incidents on his resume, and two of them were accidents. After the shooting, Scotts wife and mother filed civil rights lawsuits against Lee and the city, seeking damages arising from his death. An amended complaint also names current and former city leaders including McManus, former City Manager Sheryl Sculley and former Mayor Ivy Taylor. It alleges that they failed to properly supervise, screen, discipline, transfer, counsel or otherwise control officers known to engage in the use of excessive force, including officers repeatedly accused of such acts. The suits have since been consolidated and were reset March 18 under the exigent circumstances created by the pandemic, according to court records. When Lawyer Thomas J. Henry filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Scotts wife in 2016, he said he was not alleging that race played a part in the shooting. Recent Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyds death have brought new attention to incidents in which Black men, including Scott, were killed by police in San Antonio. On June 14, Scotts son, Antronie Scott Jr., was among the protesters at the Roll For Peace protest in San Antonio. Scott held up his iPhone to the crowd, tears streaming down his face as he talked about his fathers death four years ago. Dad died because cops shot him in the heart after thinking his iPhone 4 was a gun, the young man said. In June, several protest groups and advocates called on Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales to re-examine the cases of Scott, Marquise Jones and Charles Roundtree. Gonzales has since said that there was no new evidence to reopen the cases. An SAPD spokesperson said Friday afternoon that a statement on Lees death would not be made because the results of his autopsy had not been released. Staff writers Laura Garcia and John Tedesco contributed to this report. Jacob Beltran is a reporter covering San Antonio and Bexar County. To read more from Jacob, become a subscriber. jbeltran@express-news.net | Twitter: @JBfromSA The Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC), under Govt. of Karnataka, has released an official KPSC recruitment notification, inviting online applications from eligible and interested candidates for filling 276 Group A (Ayurveda Professors/ Assistant Professors - Homeopathy/Medical Officers), Group B (Ayurveda Assistant Professors/Assistant Professors - Homeopathy) and Group C (Staff Nurse & Pharmacist) posts through direct selection on a fulltime basis to be posted in the Department of AYUSH to be posted across the state of Karnataka in India. The online application-cum-registration process for KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 starts from August 12, 2020 onwards, and closes on September 14, 2020 with September 15, 2020 as the last date for paying the application fee. CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Group A (Ayurveda Professors/ Assistant Professors Homeopathy/Medical Officers), Group B (Ayurveda Assistant Professors/Assistant Professors Homeopathy) and Group C (Staff Nurse & Pharmacist) Organisation Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) Educational Qualification PUC/Diploma; Bachelors Degree/Post Graduation in the concerned discipline; BAMS/ BHMS/BUMS/BNYS Degree Experience Refer to the advertisement Job Responsibilities null Skills Required Desirable Job Location Karnataka Salary Scale In the range of Rs. 15,600 to Rs. 97,100 per month as per the designation Industry Civil Service Application Start Date August 12, 2020 Application End Date September 14, 2020 KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020: Age Criteria Candidates interested in applying for Group A, B and C posts through KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 must have completed 18 years of age as on September 14, 2020 and not be more than 45 years (Group A Ayurveda Doctors), 40 years (Group A and B Assistant Professors - Homeopathy and Group B Ayurveda Assistant Professors) and 35 years (for remaining posts) with a relaxation in the upper age limit up to 3 years for OBC (2A/2B/3A/3B) and 5 years for (SC/ST and Cat I) respectively as specified in the notifications. KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020: Exam Fee Candidates must remit a prescribed amount of Rs. 600 + 35 (Gen/UR), Rs. 300 + 35 OBC (2A/2B/3A & 3B) and Rs. 50 + 35 (Ex-Servicemen) as examination-cum-application processing fee through online mode or any other mode as mentioned in the KPSC recruitment notification on or before September 15, 2020. SC/ST/Cat-I candidates, however, are required to pay only the processing fee of Rs. 35 and are granted exempted from paying the examination fee as mentioned in the KPSC recruitment notification. KPSC Recruitment For 990 Assistant And Junior Engineers In PWD, Apply Online From August 17 Onwards KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 Vacancy Details KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020: Eligibility Candidates applying for Group A, B and C posts through KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 must have passed PUC/Diploma; possess a Bachelor's Degree/Post Graduation in the concerned discipline; BAMS/ BHMS/BUMS/BNYS Degree from a recognised University/Institute established by Law. Candidates must (compulsorily) know Kannada language - read, write and speak. KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020: Selection And Pay The selection of candidates as Group A, B and C posts through KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 will be done in the following stages: Compulsory Kannada Language Exam and Competitive Examination - General Paper and Specific Paper The AYUSH Recruitment 2020 will be held either through Offline-OMR method or through Computer based recruitment test-CBRT. Candidates shortlisted for Group A, B and C posts through KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 will be paid emolument in the range of Rs. 15,600 to Rs. 97,100 per month as per the designation. SAIL Recruitment For Specialists And GDMO Posts, E-mail Applications Before August 18 AYUSH Recruitment 2020: How To Apply Candidates applying for the post of Group A, B and C posts through KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 must register online on the official KPSC website at http://www.kpsc.kar.nic.in/ from August 12, 2020 onwards, and submit their applications on or before September 14, 2020 at http://www.kpsc.kar.nic.in/indexk.html Read the summery notification about KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 for Group A, B and C posts here Read the detailed notification about KPSC AYUSH Recruitment 2020 for Group A, B and C posts here Alabama nursing homes even those that suffered high rates of coronavirus infections and deaths passed mandatory infection surveys with flying colors this summer, raising concerns about the reliability of the inspections. State inspectors found no deficiencies in any of the more than 230 reports posted online, despite coronavirus outbreaks overwhelming some nursing homes in Alabama but not hitting others. The inspections were required by federal regulators. So, this is really quite implausible. I really dont understand it, said Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy. Earlier this year, before the pandemic, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that 50 percent of Alabama nursing homes had at least one infection control problem in inspections conducted before the shutdown. Inspectors often cited nursing home staff members for improper hand hygiene and failure to isolate sick residents, according to the GAO report. Yet inspectors with Alabama Department of Public Health found no problems at several nursing homes that experienced large outbreaks, including Crowne Healthcare of Mobile, Ashland Place Health and Rehabilitation, Crowne Healthcare of Greenville, Lynwood Nursing Home, Arbor Springs Health and Rehab Center and Diversicare of Bessemer. Coronavirus has affected more than half the nursing homes in Alabama. Hundreds of residents of long-term care facilities, which include assisted living and nursing homes, have died from the virus. Nursing home inspections stopped in mid-March as part of coronavirus restrictions designed to protect residents. In the early days of the pandemic, federal regulators allowed nursing homes and other health care facilities to complete self-assessments unless serious lapses threatened patient safety. Inspectors could only investigate most complaints by phone during the lockdown. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) encouraged facilities to focus on infection prevention. On June 1, CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced new rules for nursing home inspections that restarted on-site surveys suspended since March. States that completed special infection control inspections of all nursing homes by July 31 would qualify for additional coronavirus relief funding. While many nursing homes have performed well and demonstrated that its entirely possible to keep nursing homes patients safe, we are outlining new instructions for state survey agencies and enforcement actions for nursing homes that are not following federal safety requirements, Verma said. Alabama inspectors have completed almost all the required inspections. Assistant State Health Officer Dr. Karen Landers said some nursing home deficiencies may be published later, after operators and regulators agree on plans of correction. An analysis by the Center for Medicare Advocacy found the vast number of nursing homes in Alabama and around the country received perfect marks, despite frequent problems prior to the pandemic. They found less than 3 percent of facilities had lapses in infection control, despite widespread outbreaks of coronavirus. Prior to the pandemic, infection control was the most-cited problem in nursing homes, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In its analysis, the center found only two deficiencies in Alabama nursing homes. Landers said inspectors did the surveys in person, following a checklist provided by the CMS. While normal inspections may take place over multiple days, these surveys generally took only one, she said. Inspectors were encouraged to do some work off site to limit exposure inside facilities. Generally, depending on the size of the nursing home, it was a same-day or next-day time frame, Landers said. Landers said the coronavirus outbreak may have pushed nursing homes to improve infection control standards. Tamara Konetzka, a public health professor at the University of Chicago, questioned the need for punitive policies toward nursing homes struggling with coronavirus. Her research showed nursing home quality had no relationship to the number of coronavirus cases. Instead, nursing homes in hard-hit communities tended to have more cases. Instead of penalizing nursing homes, Konetzka said officials should focus on providing more protective equipment and testing capacity to nursing homes. It really comes down to resources, Konetzka said. We do know what needs to happen. We need more testing, rapid testing. We need more staff. We need PPE. All of that requires resources. Dr. Rachel Werner, a professor of healthcare management at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent much of her career studying efforts to improve nursing home quality. She said targeted efforts to improve nursing home care can be effective. Requiring a certain level of coronavirus testing might have some impact, if nursing homes put effort into following the regulations. Theres always a concern they will comply on paper but not in spirit, Werner said. She said hospitals have improved their ability to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and that may be true in nursing homes as well. The optimistic view of this is that nursing homes are doing their best to follow proper infection control standards, Werner said. Edelman said she thinks its more likely that the inspections are quick and dont include much observation of patient care. If they are not observing the care, they arent going to find the deficiencies, Edelman said. People want to know, especially families who havent been allowed inside the nursing homes. They want to know whats going on. A Rs 3 lakh crore emergency credit facility targeted at small enterprises will now be extended to professionals such as doctors and chartered accountants as well to help them tide over the crisis triggered by the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday, warning that the timing of a full economic recovery is tough to predict when the pandemic is still to play itself out. The government estimates that around Rs 1 lakh crore of the facility would be used by the professionals. Some pockets are still under containment... decided by states, which is the right thing as states are better placed to judge [the ground situation]. We appreciate that, Sitharaman said at an interaction with media in North Block. But there are disruptions in the value-chain which is not just confined to raw materials. It also involves manpower [movement] and outsourcing of services. Hence,it is difficult to do an assessment [of a full economic recovery]. She said migrant workers who had left the cities for their homes in the hinterland after the lockdown was enforced on March 25 to curb the spread of the disease were returning to work in one positive development for the economy. Some of them [workers] have approached their employers... One-two industrial groups have made arrangements to bring them back, she said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is getting regular feedback on the economic situation and the government is keeping all options open to facilitate a faster economic recovery, Sitharaman said. Even so, the government is cautious about overstating the green shoots of a recovery visible in the economy, she added. Sitharaman said the ~3 lakh crore emergency working capital loan scheme meant for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) had attracted significant response and its scope has been expanded at the request of industry so that more units and individual professionals can get financial support as well. After consultations with stakeholders and taking into account the remaining headroom under the scheme, it is decided to include individual loans for business purposes within its ambit, she said. The scope of the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) has also been expanded in line with the revised definition of MSMEs and the cap on funding under the scheme doubled from Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore. This is the latest in a string of stimulus measures announced by the Modi government to cushion the impact of the coronavirus disease pandemic, which struck at a time when a slowdown in householding spending and corporate investment had already become a drag on economic growth, which decelerated to 4.2% in fiscal 2019-20, the slowest pace in 11 years. It follows precipitous growth contractions reported by the US and European countries after the pandemic closed shops, factories and restaurants, signalling a period of recession. The US economy posted a second-quarter contraction of 9.5%, the worst figure on record. Europe as a whole saw GDP fall by 12.1% in the Eurozone and 11.9% across the bloc. Most economists expect Indias economy to shrink by at least 5% this financial year. Indias gross domestic product numbers for the April-June quarter are expected at the end of August; for two of those months, the country was under a hard lockdown, and that is expected to have taken its toll on Asias third largest economy. ECLGS is one of the key components of the Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus package under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-Reliant India Initiative) launched in mid-May, which offered additional working capital finance of 20% of the outstanding credit as of February 29, 2020 in the form of a term loan to units with up to Rs 25 crore outstanding and revenue of up to Rs 100 crore. Explaining the amended eligibility criteria Debashish Panda, secretary in the department of financial services (DFS) said, It is decided to increase the upper ceiling of loan outstanding from Rs 25 crore to Rs 50 crore, and to increase the annual turnover ceiling from Rs 100 crore to Rs 250 crore in line with the new definition of MSME. The Cabinet on June 1 raised the upper limit of turnover for a MSME to Rs 250 crore. As of July 29, over Rs 1.36 lakh crore had been sanctioned and Rs 87,227 crore disbursed under ECLGS, Panda said. We expect some headroom of about Rs 1 lakh crore under the scheme that could be used by individual professionals. For example, a doctor can avail this facility to purchase diagnostic equipments, etc, he said. CA Vijay Kumar Gupta, former Central Council Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), said the move to extend the emergency credit benefit to professionals was positive. But the government should take more measures to boost demand. Unless there is demand for goods and services, businesses would not take loans. They will take loans only if they are sure of their ability to repay, he added. Sitharaman said the process of government stake sales in Air India and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) was underway, and she was confident of meeting the governments target of raising Rs 2.1 lakh crore in disinvestment proceeds during fiscal 2020-21. In May, the government announced an elaborate disinvestment strategy along with the Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package. The strategy aims at capping the number of public sector companies in strategic sectors at four. It proposed to eventually disinvest state-owned firms in the non-strategic segments. Sitharaman said the Cabinet will soon decide which public sector units would come in the strategic sectors. In order to define the strategic sector, the government will soon announce a new public sector enterprises policy, government officials said, requesting anonymity. To provide relief to the industry, the government is in talks with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on various matters, Sitharaman said. Industry has been demanding a one-time loan restructuring; private banks are not in favour of extending loan moratoriums any further, out of concern that even borrowers capable of paying back loans may be dissuaded from doing so in case of an extension. RBIs Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is scheduled to meet next week. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday said he might have "mold" in his lungs after spending weeks in isolation after catching coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Bolsonaro appeared in public through a Facebook live video, the first one he had since he recovered from COVID-19. In it, he said he had just taken a blood exam. He had been in self-isolation in his house for about 20 days and said he had caught "other things," while recovering from coronavirus. "I've caught mold, mold in my lungs. It must be that," Bolsonaro said. Bolsonaro tested positive for COVID-19 three times since July 7. He announced that he was free of the virus on July 25 through a tweet, the CNN noted. He said he felt "a bit weak" and there was also "a bit of an infection" found in him. For now, the Brazilian president said he is taking antibiotics. A statement from the president's press office confirmed that his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, also tested positive for COVID-19. The statement said the first lady "is in good health and will follow all established protocols." She was last seen in public on Wednesday afternoon, when she went to an official event in Brazil with her husband. The office also said she's with the president's medical team, the CTV News said. Bolsonaro, in his Thursday address, thanked God and hydroxychloroquine for his health. "I'm healed from Covid. I have antibodies, no problems. In my particular case, I first thank God, and secondly, the medication prescribed by the presidential doctor: hydroxychloroquine," he said. After taking the drug, he claimed that he was "already okay" the next day. If that was a coincidence or not, he did not know, he added. Ineffective Drug Numerous studies have shown that the drug, which he claimed helped in his recovery, was not a helpful cure against COVID-19. Some studies have also seen the drug as harmful. Other than Bolsonaro, hydroxychloroquine is also supported by President Donald Trump. Brazil is right next to United States in terms of numbers of coronavirus deaths and infections, but Bolsonaro had chosen to downplay the coronavirus for a span of months. He often goes out in public or at rallies without a face mask. On some occasions, he had even hugged his supporters. Bolsonaro made an appearance on horseback during a visit to Piaui State Thursday. There, he was greeted by supporters and some of them were not wearing masks. In his official Facebook page, the video showed him on a horse, given to him as he arrived at Sao Raimundo Notato airport. He wore a mask at first, but removed it in the midst of celebrating with supporters. The visit was meant to improve the president's relations with regional heads and to inaugurate a water system in Campo Alegre de Lourdes, a small town in the northeast state of Bahia. Science Minister Tests Positive for COVID-19 Other than the president and first lady, there have also been other officials in Brazil, who tested positive for COVID-19, the Reuters reported. Science and Technology Minister Marcos Pontes was one of them. This makes him the fifth cabinet minister to be publicly diagnosed with COVID-19. Want to read more? Check these out! Brazil's Bolsonaro Tests Positive for COVID-19 Again, Touts Unproven Drug Bolsonaro Says COVID-19 Lockdown Measures Kill the Economy Brazil's First Lady Tests Positive for COVID-19 Integrity Commission of African National Congress (ANC) has ordered Deputy Finance Minister Dr David Masondo to step down from his position following allegations of abuse of power. The Commission has urged Dr Masondo to voluntarily relinquish his responsibilities in the government and the party. The ANC leader allegedly abused state resources by involving Hawks to resolve a domestic violence dispute with a woman he was seeing. The woman allegedly started demanding money after Masondo told her to abort their child, and then he reportedly set the Hawks on her, leading to her arrest. The Commission concluded that Masondos action brought disrepute to the ANC and he showed poor judgement by involving Hawks for personal issues. George Mashamba, Integrity Commission chairman, wrote to Masondo informing him about the decision and said it would stand him in good stead if he considers the option. We have confidence that lessons have been learnt from the ordeal you are going through. We accept that your lawyers have advised you to report the matter to the Hawks and that you acted on their advice, the letter read. Read: South Africa Warns COVID-19 Corruption Puts lives At Risk Read: South Africa To Shut Schools Until August 24 As COVID-19 Cases Continue To Surge 'Voluntarily step aside' Mashamba told Mashondo that he should have known the mandate of the Hawks is to investigate corruption and offences that fall under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act. He said that the demands of the woman did not fall under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, and he should have been aware of it as a senior leader of the ANC and a deputy minister. We hope that in light of the above you would voluntarily step aside from your position so that our recommendation that you be removed from the position you hold at the political school and that you step aside from your appointment as deputy minister of finance would be redundant, said Mashamba in the letter. Read: South Africa Extends Loans For Small & Medium-sized Businesses Amid Coronavirus Pandemic Read: Three Members Of South African Women Squad Test Positive For COVID-19 An aspirant for the position of General Secretary for the Convention People's Party (CPP), Joseph Kwadwo Afari-Yeboah says the current electoral predicament of the party points to bad leadership. He said to the extent that the party has not held a national congress to elect its leaders including national officers, parliamentary and presidential candidates barely four months to a national election, one can say the partys leadership has failed. In a Citi News interview, he said there is the urgent need for an overhaul of the party to enable it to regain its vibrancy and influence in Ghanas body politics. He said it was surprising that some of the existing leaders who have superintended over the partys woes are still vying to remain in office. The fact that CPP at this material moment hasnt gone to congress means that we have had and keep on having leadership challenges. With 3 months to elections and we dont have national executives, it means that there is leadership failure but some of them [leaders] are still contesting to be back into office but I think that we have failed our party, he said. He further called for commitment on the part of the party members to rebuild the partys structure. We as members and leaders have failed our party and it is important that we have a total overhaul of the structure of the leadership of the party and even members becoming more committed towards the rebuilding of the party, he added. CPP primaries It is unclear yet when the CPP will hold its national congress as some members of the party earlier this year secured a court injunction against the congress planned for March 2020. The plaintiffs in their statement of claim prayed the court for an order declaring the 2019 Regional elections of the party conducted and championed by Hajia Hamdatu Haruna and James Kobina Bomfeh, legally and constitutionally flawed. Meanwhile, some aspirants have already gone public expressing their interest to contest various positions int the party. Mr Ivor Kobina Greenstreet , the election 2016 Presidential Candidate of the party has declared his intention to contest for the flagbearership position going into 2020. A Commissioner of Oaths, Eben Agbenya has also declared his intention to contest for the position of General Secretary. citinewsroom Steve Irwin's 'hot niece' Rebecca Lobie has never shied away from showing off her best assets and incredible figure. And on Friday, the 32-year-old left little to the imagination as she posed up for a racy mirror selfie. The blonde bombshell put on an eye-popping display as she went braless in a fishnet top. Racy! Steve Irwin's 'hot niece' Rebecca Lobie put on an eye-popping display on Friday as she went BRALESS in a fishnet top She paired her risque top, which featured a black piece of material over her bust to protect her modesty, with a leather-look miniskirt that showed off trim pins. For makeup, she opted for a flawless foundation with glamorous false lashes and a glossy pout. The social media sensation, who hails from Mooloolaba in Queensland, seemed keen for a night out on and wrote in her Instagram caption hashtags including 'bring on the weekend,' and 'sending good vibes.' Bikini babe: Social media sensation: Rebecca rose to prominence in September last year after her racy Instagram photos caught the attention of the wider media Rebecca rose to prominence in September last year after her racy Instagram photos caught the attention of the wider media. In the months since, she has grown in confidence and has she shared revealing pictures of herself in skimpy swimwear and underwear. One of her most daring photos yet was shared last month. In the racy image, Rebecca posed up in neon orange lingerie that left very little to the imagination. She's not shy! One of her most daring photos was shared last month. In the racy image, Rebecca posed up in neon orange lingerie that left very little to the imagination The blonde lives on the Sunshine Coast with husband Mick Lobie and their two young sons. She is the daughter of Frank Muscillo, who is married to Steve Irwin's sister Joy. According to her LinkedIn, Rebecca was previously managing director of the Irwin family business, Australia Zoo, but left in December 2015. Off the market! The blonde lives on the Sunshine Coast with husband Mick Lobie (pictured) and their two young sons During her tenure, she oversaw 'multiple food outlets' at the Sunshine Coast tourist attraction, as well as 'catering and functions'. In 2016, The Courier Mail reported that Rebecca, who is believed to be working as a restaurant manager near her home in Mooloolaba, had cut all ties with Australia Zoo. She is also no longer following her 21-year-old cousin, Bindi Irwin, on Instagram - despite the fact the pair were once close. In the action film, in which he is being reunited with Hwang Jung-min after their 2013 hit film "New World," Lee plays a ruthless killer chasing a hit man who killed his brother, traveling all the way to Thailand to avenge his brother's death. Actor Lee Jung-jae is consolidating his filmography with another villainous role in his upcoming film "Deliver Us from Evil" set for release next week. Lee, who used to appear in melodramas, mostly took on villainous roles in recent years. When asked about how he feels about his previous films like "The Face Reader" and "Assassination" in which he played bad guys, Lee said, "I'm a bit worried about being typecast as a villain." He added, "When playing a villain, there's room to use your imagination to make the character more interesting. Not to mention various props, I tried out many things such as clothes, accessories, tattoos and even once wore a pink wig to create some mystique." "Deliver Us from Evil" is packed with action scenes including fistfights, gunfights and car chases. Lee even ruptured his shoulder while shooting scenes. "It matters to have a lot of spectacular action and stunts, but at the same time I wanted to portray a cruel look that is immediately recognizable," he said. "My role is like a beast who enjoys hunting. I put a lot of efforts to make facial expressions that would allow viewers to interpret the role by just looking in his eyes." The new film by Lee's close friend and actor Jung Woo-sung, "Steel Rain 2: Summit," was released early this week, about two weeks ahead of his film, which will hit theaters on Aug. 8. "Rather than competing with each other, both of the films can be a boost for the ailing film industry [due to the coronavirus epidemic]," he said. Lee is also preparing his directorial debut with an aim to release his own movie sometime next year. "Jung has been rejecting my offer for four years. He simply says he is thinking about it. I hope he will make up his mind soon," Lee said. Courtesy Photo Big Brothers Big Sisters of America has honored a Midlander for her service to the organization. Diane McLellan, president of the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Permian Basin, has received the Janice and Bill Hanna Good Steward Award, which recognizes someone who gives of their time, talent and treasure, said Kay Crites, executive director. McLellan, who has been president for two years and has been on the board for five years, was selected from nominees of more than 240 agencies in the Big Brothers Big Sisters network. She said she started volunteering with the nonprofit as a Big Sister and has donated to the organization since she moved to Midland. Her late husband, Dan, also used to volunteer with BBBS and had attended a fundraising bachelor auction that she also had attended. Years later they figured out that they were at the same event when they were going through pictures. McLellan got involved with the board after her husband died because she wanted to do more than write checks. The couple made a yearly donation to BBBS. An Oak Park man, 37, was arrested Thursday after Ferndale police say he was involved in a road rage incident in which a shot was fired at a car. Ferndale police Officer Jill Mahlmeister said the incident involved one driver being cut off while merging into traffic on eastbound Eight Mile Road near Livernois about 5:40 p.m. Police said they were called and met the man whose car was shot at an area near Eight Mile Road and Woodward. He told police the suspect shot at his vehicle and drove off. No one was injured, and the suspect was identified later that evening, Mahlmeister said. Ferndale police investigated and arrested the suspect several hours after the shooting. Investigators recovered two loaded handguns during the arrest. The suspect was released as the police investigation continues. Mike McConnell, Daily Tribune EVN proposes not to extend deadline for current FiT for wind farms In a document sent to the prime minister, Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) was of the opinion that the FiT rate for wind farms should be maintained at the level outlined in Decision No.39/2018/QD-TTg of 2018 adjusting support mechanisms for the development of wind power projects in Vietnam in order to ensure transparency, competition, as well as contribute to stabilise the selling price of wind power. Previously, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) proposed the government to extend the scheme to apply FiT mechanism for wind power until December 2023 (The existing deadline is November 1,2021), and then conduct bids and auctions to select investors for new projects. According to the MoIT, after the issuance of Decision No.39/2018/QD-TTg adjusting support mechanisms for the development of wind power projects in Vietnam, numerous projects were proposed to add to the power planning and begin construction. However, only a few of these wind farms have been put into operation for a variety of reasons, including difficulties related to the Law on Planning, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and difficulties arising during the construction process. At present, according to Decision No.39, the tariff is VND1,928 (8.4 US cents) per kWh for on-shore wind power projects and VND2,223 (9.6 US cents) per kWh for off-shore wind power projects, which started operation before November 1, 2021. These rates exclude VAT. The cost of purchasing electricity from wind power projects is calculated and included in the input parameters of the electricity price scheme of EVN. 4,800MW of wind power was added to the planning, however, as of early July, only 11 projects came into operation with the capacity of 429MW. Most recently, the prime minister gave in-principle approval to add 7,000MW of wind power to the planning. Investors were expecting the FiT scheme to be extended by more than two years compared to the current October 2021 deadline. According to Nguyen Quang Huan, deputy chairman of the Board of Directors of Halcom Vietnam JSC, enterprises in this sector have faced numerous difficulties because there is only a year left of the incentive. The COVID-19 pandemic remains a major concern, freezing international flights while all machinery and equipment for wind farms are imported and foreign experts still cannot enter Vietnam. In addition, it takes at least one year for manufacturers to complete equipment orders for wind farms. Thus, it is nearly impossible for investors to complete wind farm projects on time to enjoy the current FiT. Furthermore, Huan also requested the government to build stable and long-term policies for wind farms. They were a match made in Marvel heaven. That is, until Thanos decided to snap away half of the universe. Are Gamora and Starlord still a couple after everything that happened with Avengers: Endgame? Heres what we know about these Guardians of the Galaxy and their future movies together. Gamora and Starlord are pretty much the galaxys cutest couple These two mightve seemed like an unlikely pair at first. Peter Quill was just a boy from Missouri, while Gamora was one of the worlds most dangerous fighters. Throughout Marvels original movie though, fans saw Peter Quill and Gamora become friends and eventually, partners. These two only solidified their relationship with the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy, where Gamora helped Peter Quill on the search to find, and eventually defeat, his father. Just when things were looking good, though, Gamoras father, Thanos decided to ruin it. The events of Avengers: Endgame mightve impacted their relationship Gamora made Peter Quill promise to kill her if Thanos got her during Avengers: Infinity War. Their relationship only goes downhill from there for Gamora, we mean literally. After Thanos throws Gamora off a cliff to get an infinity stone, Peter thinks his chances of love are over. That all changed when the time-traveling during Avengers: Endgame puts him face to face with the love of his life. Well, kind of. This new Gamora is from 2014 and doesnt remember Peter Quill or any of the adventures they went on with the rest of the Guardians. Her sister from 2019, Nebula, does tell Gamora that she was dating Peter Quill but she doesnt really respond to that information. In fact, when Tony Stark is dying, Gamora wanders away from the group. Where she goes, exactly, fans dont really know. Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, and Chris Pratt of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 | Karwai Tang/WireImage What will happen during the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie? Its still unclear what is next for these unlikely heroes. Marvel has yet to release the details of the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Some fans suspect Thor could hang out with the Guardians for a little bit, as he and Quill bicker over who is the true captain of the ship. Others think that the gang could search for 2014 Gamora together, after her untimely and unexpected exit from Avengers: Endgame. That, in turn, might impact Peter Quills relationship with her. Fans do know, however, that it will come along with a wave of sequels, including those for Captain Marvel and Black Panther. Unfortunately, though, Marvels release timeline has been impacted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In the meantime, fans can watch the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies on Disneys streaming platform. To learn more about Disney+ and to subscribe, visit their website. RELATED: Are the Guardians of the Galaxy Part of the Avengers? Heres What We Know About the Future of These Music-Loving Heroes RELATED: Who Plays Nebula in Avengers: Endgame? Heres What We Know About the Character and Her Future With the Guardians of the Galaxy , We're sorry, this article is not currently available NEW YORK A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily delayed the release of a 2016 deposition about Ghislaine Maxwells sex life, after she argued it could destroy her ability to get a fair trial against criminal charges she aided the late financier Jeffrey Epsteins sexual abuse of girls. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order after last-ditch scrambles by Maxwell to keep potentially embarrassing information, which her lawyer said could make it difficult if not impossible" to find an impartial jury, out of the public eye. Maxwells appeal will be heard on an expedited basis, with oral argument scheduled for Sept. 22. Her deposition had been taken in April 2016 for a now-settled civil defamation lawsuit against the British socialite by Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Epstein of having kept her as a sex slave" with Maxwells assistance. Dozens of other documents from that case were released late on Thursday, after the presiding judge concluded that the public had a right to see them. The release of Maxwells deposition had been scheduled for Monday, pending the outcome of the appeal. Lawyers for Maxwell and Giuffre did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997, and committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath. She was arrested on July 2 and has been held in a Brooklyn jail after a judge denied bail, calling her a flight risk. Maxwells trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein was found hanged at age 66 last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty. In seeking to keep Maxwells deposition sealed, her lawyers said in court papers on Thursday she had been promised confidentiality by Giuffres lawyers and the presiding judge at the time, through an agreed-upon protective order, before answering many personal, sensitive and allegedly incriminatory" questions about her dealings with Epstein. They said further that Maxwell was blindsided when prosecutors quoted from the deposition in her indictment, and accusing Giuffre of leaking the deposition to the government. In a court filing on Friday, Giuffres lawyers called Maxwells appeal frivolous, and a transparent attempt to further delay the release of documents to which the public has a clear and unequivocal right to access." The lawyers also called the allegation Giuffre leaked the deposition completely and utterly false." Fridays order also covers a second deposition by an unnamed Epstein accuser that Maxwell also wanted kept under seal. Other documents from Giuffres lawsuit that quote or disclose information from the depositions also remain sealed. Among the documents released on Thursday were a few emails between Epstein and Maxwell dated January 2015, including one where Epstein told Maxwell that she had done nothing wrong." Lawyers for Maxwell said on July 10 in a court filing requesting bail in her criminal case that she had not been in contact with Epstein for more than a decade." Maxwell is now battling prosecutors in her criminal case over the scope of a protective order intended to protect her right to a fair trial while ensuring the privacy of her accusers. Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor Like in 2016, the major contenders for this years governorship election in Ondo State are Rotimi Akeredolu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and Eyitayo Jegede of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). They were selected at the indirect primary elections held at the International Event Centre in Akure last Monday and Wednesday. Four years ago, Mr Jegede a former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in the state won the PDP governorship primary by polling a total of 760 votes while his opponent, Saka Lawal, polled a total of 22 votes. In APC, Mr Akeredolu defeated Olusegun Abraham, the preferred aspirant of a leader of the party, Ahmed Tunubu, by 669 votes. Mr. Abraham, a one-time Chairman of Owena Motel under Governor Adefarati, scored 635 votes to place second in the race. By the time the election came up in November 2016, Mr Akerodolu polled 244, 842 votes to beat his closest rival, Mr Jegede who garnered 150, 380 votes. Olusola Oke who contested under the banner of Alliance for Democracy, scored 126, 889 to come third. Journey to 2020 Four years after, both Mr Akeredolu and Mr Jegede went through difficulties before securing the governorship tickets of the two major political parties in Nigeria. For Mr Akeredolu, he had problems within his cabinet following his fight with the deputy, Agboola Ajayi, and the Secretary to the State Government, Ifedayo Abegunde. Mr Ajayi dumped the APC after falling out with his boss; he then joined the PDP. According to him, Mr Akeredolu made the party a poisoned space with one man kneeling on its neck. While this was ongoing, the SSG Mr Abegunde resigned and publicly declared that he was opposing his boss second term bid. He also alleged that Mr Akeredolu did not win the 2016 election to become governor but he and other unnamed persons helped him despite not winning the election. In his reaction, Mr Akeredolu called on security agencies to probe the allegations made by former SSG. Also, in the build up of the election, 11 of 12 aspirants seeking the governorship ticket of the ruling party rejected the indirect mode of primary. They argued that such an election is often slanted to favour the incumbent governor because it often has automatic delegates in the mold of former governors, former deputy governors, former speakers, deputy speakers, serving National and State Assembly lawmakers. But the party maintained that the aspirants cannot decide for APC. Amidst all these, there were talks with some persons to step down for Mr Akeredolu that was not going to happen until a few hours to the primary election on Monday. Four out of 12 aspirants stepped down. One of them included Mr Abraham the governors closest rival in 2016 and also Mr Tinubus ally. But, Olusola Oke, lsaac Kekemeke and five others continued with the race. Eventually, Mr Akeredolu won in all the local government areas of the state, with 2,458 votes. His closest rival, Mr Oke came second with 262 votes while Mr Kekemeke came distant third with 19 votes. Mr Kekemeke, who spoke before the poll, said there were a lot of unscrupulous schemes by the committee to subvert their interest ahead of the October 10, 2020 governorship election. For me, this process is unfair. It is aimed at producing a predetermined result, he said. Speaking on Friday, Mr Oke, also said he was giving Mr Akeredolu seven days to conclude all reconciliation efforts with a view to uniting all aggrieved members of the party. After a meeting with members of his campaign organisation, he noted that it is important that the reconciliation should be comprehensive and involve all the strata of our party. That is the only reconciliation that will instill confidence in our people. Whatever negotiations should be done timely, we are expecting that within the next seven days all reconciliation efforts, all terms and conditions would have been agreed upon, he said. Like Mr Akeredolu, the journey was not as rosy as expected for the PDP candidate Mr Jegede, especially after the deputy governor, Mr Ajayi joined the race. The development divided the party and those who were very loyal to Mr Jegede. The popular opinion then was that Mr Ajayi had the money and key political position as deputy governor to buy his way as the candidate of the PDP, but Mr Jegede, who despite losing in 2016 refused to dump the party, had loyalty. Mr Jegede faced other challenges. Two PDP bigwigs from Mr Ajayis Ondo South senatorial district, Solomon Bitire and Daisi Mafimisebi, in January wrote to the PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus, that it was the turn of their zone to produce the next governor or else the party stood no chance in the election. Advertisements They argued that Mr Akeredolu is from Ondo North; his predecessor, Olusegun Mimiko was from Ondo Central (where Mr Jegede comes from), then, its automatically the turn of the South. Mr Jegede maintained that he had control of the partys loyalists in the 18 local government areas of the state, having contested before. I contested against his (Agboola Ajayi) boss, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu in 2016 and I came second. Myself and his boss contested in 2016. If Akeredolu was not a threat to me in 2016, his deputy cannot be a threat to me or my ambition in 2020, he said. Mr Jegede defeated Mr Ajayi and other aspirants by polling 888 votes against the deputy governor who had 657 votes. His emergence appears double jeorpardy for Mr Ajayi as he will now have to fend off an aggressive plot to remove him from office. He has, however, said he will join hands with Mr Jegede to defeat Mr Akeredolu. For the governor, he has said he would win his reelection based on his first tenure performance as governor. What next? Both candidates have boasted that they are favourites of the Ondo People but there are a lot of factors to be considered the power of incumbency may not really matter, analysts opined. Though a member of the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) a former governor of the state, Olusegun Mimiko, is being wooed by PDP and APC leaders. Mr Akeredolu was reported to have met Mr Mimiko, after which PDP leaders in the Southwest also visited him. Details of the meeting between Mr Akeredolu and Mr Mimiko were not made public, but Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde led some PDP members to visit Mr Mimiko to solicit his support in the coming election. Sources close to Mr Mimiko said the visit was initiated by Oyo governor, who the source noted, believed Mr Mimiko is still politically relevant. John-Paul Akinduro, a media aide to Mr Mimiko said: Dr. Mimiko is an accomplished political leader, who is a role model to many politicians across party divides. With regard to the coming governorship poll in Ondo State, I can tell you that almost all the aspirants from the parties have come to see him in Ondo to seek his support and mentorship. You must also know that Makinde is a brother to Mimiko. The two speak from time to time on issues of national interest. The former governors priority is for a greater Ondo State. He believes government should be about people and service and this he has demonstrated in his eight years as governor of Ondo State. Zoning? Another factor in the upcoming election is the issue of zoning and if considered may not favour Mr Jegede. Adebayo Adefarati who served as the states governor between 1999 and 2003 was from Ondo North and Olusegun Agagu from Ondo South was governor between 2003 and 2009. Mr Mimiko came from Ondo Central and he served from 2009 and 2017. The unpopular opinion in the state now is that if Mr Akeredolu who is from Ondo North had served from 2017 till 2020, a candidate from South should follow. But sources within the two parties who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES disclosed efforts are being made to ensure that political leaders use their influence to make sure that parties resolve all crises within them before the election period. Difficult task for two old foes For political analysts, the performance of the incumbent governor may have only little to do with the outcome of the election as most elections are determined by strategies adopted by parties. It is going to be too close to call in the sense that the two candidates can manage the internal crisis in their parties. But beyond this, would the political power holders in Ondo want power to shift to Central after just one term of the north? Jide Ojo, an analyst said. What matters now is reconciliation. Olusola Oke has said Akeredolu should try to reconcile within seven days. If reconciliation is done, Akeredolu may scale through Issues of performance or non performance has never been a factor in Nigerian politics. The power brokers only need to agree and they will get you in. Mr Ojo, however, said the current realities may favour the PDP. The defection of Ajayi, the SSG and other key party members may cause APC a lot. In addition, if they are not careful with the handling of the Ajayi impeachment saga, some lawmakers may also defect. So, APC must start strategising on where to pick their deputy, SSG and other key positions. If APC do not want what happened in Oyo State to repeat itself, Akedolu must reconcile with all those he seems to have offended in the past and make sure they dont lose members again to PDP as it is happening in Edo State. For Jegede, the senators in PDP must be ready to work for him to strengthen his chances. Then, he needs to be sure of the political worth of Ajayi and the SSG that resigned. He may win. This is not the first time governors will do one term and then be sacked in their second term bid. Remember what happened to M. A. Abubakar in Bauchi who could not win a second term. Jubril Abindo in Adamawa could not also win reelection because he was unpopular with the people Ondo is sophisticated politically. Anybody can win and lose. It is not a state with one sided party like some states. Like Rivers where PDP will always and the goal and Lagos of APC. So, if the Federal power fails to come to Akeredolus aid and he refuses to reconcile, he may lose and Jegede may win, he said. The analyst said the two candidates must start negotiating across all zones and regions in the state. The calculation will be where does the real vote come from? And who are those strategizing for Akeredolu and Jegede? Jegede has become a known name but will the people from Ajayis zone trust him enough and vote for him? The police, with the arrest of three gangsters wanted in Uttar Pradesh, have foiled a bid of robbery and recovered a cache of arms and ammunition from their possession. Those arrested were identified as Rohit Sharma, Rahul Kumar and Abhishek Sharma, all hailing from UP. Two pistols with two live cartridges, four magazines, two country-made .315 bore pistols and ten .315 bore cartridges were recovered. The accused were arrested on a tip-off regarding movement of armed men in Nabha village of Nayagaon late on Friday night. The accused were intercepted on a road leading to the village and after a brief chase three persons were arrested while two gave police a slip. They are wanted criminals. We managed to arrest three of them while two men managed to escape taking advantage of darkness, said senior superintendent of police (SSP) Kuldeep Singh Chahal. The accused were booked under Sections 399 (making preparation to commit dacoity) and 402 (assembling for the purpose of committing dacoity) of the Indian Penal Code. A French soldier died during a maintenance operation in Chad after a piece of equipment exploded, the defence ministry said in a statement on Friday. The ministry said armed forces were investigating the causes of the accident at the base in N'Djamena, which killed Andy Fila, a brigadier-chef of the infantry regiment and an electro-mechanic specialist. France has more than 5,000 troops in the West African Sahel region as part of international efforts to fight Islamist militants in the area and has based its counterterrorism forces in Chad. (REUTERS) The Sentinel That was before March 9. Before dawn that morning, Randys son, Jerome, died as he worked a Monroe Township house fire that also killed resident Jessica Diehl. Randys prior predictions of being a basket case at hearing the news were wildly underestimated. It wasnt close. It was so far beyond that. Theres no words. Theres no way to describe it, he said. We still daily break down. Small things. Little things. Nothing can replace the loss of their son or their grandchildrens loss of their father, but Randy and Rebecca Guise and Jeromes sister, Jessica Skvarka, Thursday night accepted a check for $90,265.49, a token of the outpouring of support that the family and the fire company have experienced since Jeromes death. Randy said the money would help Jeromes three children, who are all under the age of 14. Theyre never going to have their father again, he said. We can set trust funds up for the kids so that through even their schooling, further education, at least they can remember their dad. In memoriam South Middleton Township manager Cory Adams said the township reached out to F&M Trust in the days after the fire to set up a fund to help, in some way, as the Guise family tried to pick up the pieces as best as they can. The amount raised was a testament not only to the residents of South Middleton Township but also Mount Holly Springs and elsewhere, including those who may not have known Jerome but were inspired to contribute, Adams said. A public memorial was held on March 14, but Adams said Thursday nights recognition was a time for the township to remember one of their own. He also read a resolution honoring Jerome into the record of the supervisors meeting. We felt that it was the right time, right now, to have our own memorial and to not only recognize Jeromes sacrifice, but to celebrate his life as it was lived, he said. Remembering a brother The nearly five months since Jeromes death marks the first time in about 50 years that a member of the Guise family has not been part of Citizens Fire Company, Randy said. Four generations of the family have served. Jeromes loss has been hard on his fellow firefighters, a number of whom were on hand Thursday offering support to the Guise family as Jerome was honored. Were bouncing back. Hes definitely in our minds everyday, Citizens Fire Company Chief Tim Yingst said. Just as it is in a family, the fire company is reminded of Guises loss in the little things. Its time for planning upcoming fundraisers, for example, and Guise isnt there to take charge of the meat raffles as he has done for years. But, theyve been keeping his memory alive. Plaques bearing Jeromes picture were donated to the department; one hangs in the Mount Holly station and on in Boiling Springs Village Station, where Jerome lived. A few weeks ago, members of the fire company joined Guises family in a picnic at the Boiling Springs station catered by the family of Jessica Diehl, who also died in the fire. A memorial committee is working on setting up a memorial in each station using the photos, flags and other gifts that have poured into the department over the past few months. Yingst said the department would also like to memorialize Jerome with a bench or similar memorial in a public area. Its just tough right now with everything going on, he said. Citizens Fire Company has heard from fellow firefighters across the country and Canada, gathering three binders full of cards. The community support was just amazing, and not just the monetary, Yingst said. After the accident and the weeks after, the way the municipalities and the community came together feeding us, making sure we were OK, bringing drinks and just everything. Yingst thanked the township for setting up the fund for the Guise family as well as those who made donations. I wish we knew the names of people that donated so we could send cards, he said. Its overwhelming when we started to hear the amounts. Making them proud The Guise family echoed that appreciation. Randy said he cant thank the community enough whether it was for a donation or for turning out for the procession to honor Jerome. Randy said Citizens Fire Company allowed him to drive the engine for Jeromes final ride. He remembers that as the procession rolled through Boiling Springs, he saw a young boy dressed in a fire suit who offered a salute. I tried to drive an engine and cried, he said. Hes already written letters to thank the fire departments that helped out in the aftermath of the accident that took Jeromes life, and hes tried to visit the companies that provided standby service for Citizens Fire Company. If the community were to remember anything about his son, though, Randy said he hopes they remember how much he helped others. He helped everybody he touched and he touched everybody he helped, Randy said. He was just that kind of a person. Randy knows there are tough times still ahead. Jerome used to join him at his Cameron County home for hunting season. He already knows thats going to hurt. And he and Rebecca have talked about being part of a club of surviving family members they never wanted to join. He made us proud when he was alive and we always let him know that. With everything, hes made us so proud, Randy said. Photos: Funeral procession for Citzens Fire Company firefighter Jerome Guise Email Tammie at tgitt@cumberlink.com. Follow her on Twitter @TammieGitt. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 0 A man shot by police Saturday morning in Lehigh County is believed to be the shooter in a Friday incident at a Bethlehem Township cigar store, where a mask dispute ended in gunfire, according to township police. Saturdays incident occurred in the area of Second and Main streets in Slatington, near the home of Adam M. Zaborowski, Bethlehem Township police Sgt. Daryl LaPointe confirmed. It is to my understanding that the Slatington Borough (police) and Pennsylvania State Police troopers engaged our suspect from (Friday) and there was an exchange of gunfire and during that Mr. Zaborowski was wounded, LaPointe told lehighvalleylive.com. The Bethlehem Township Police Departments spokesperson, Sgt. Shaun Powell, also confirmed in an email to lehighvalleylive.com the suspect from Fridays incident at Cigars International engaged in a shootout with Slatington police and was wounded. No police were injured, Powell said, deferring to Slatington police for further information. The man shot was flown by helicopter for treatment at St. Luke's University Hospital, Fountain Hill. Lehigh County authorities were not immediately available for comment. Regional state police spokesperson Trooper Nathan Branosky had no immediate comment but said information would be released later Saturday. Zaborowski was wanted on a warrant charging him with attempted homicide and related charges after allegedly firing two shots late Friday morning at a clerk and one shot into the air outside Cigars International, 4078 Nazareth Pike. The clerk had asked Zaborowski to wear a face covering while inside the store, and Zaborowski refused before picking up two cigars and leaving, police said. The clerk followed and the gunfire ensued outside in an area where patrons were seated, police said. No one was injured in that incident. Many people right now are bored just hanging at home and miss socializing ready to get out If you go out and about during this pandemic and attend an event or house party here in Louisiana just how big of a risk is it that youll run into someone who has COVID 19? According to a new risk assessment tool from Georgia Tech, its very likely even if you follow Governor John Bel Edwards mandate limiting to 50 people for an inside event. The tool estimates the likelihood of encountering one or more individuals who may have the coronavirus based on the size of the event and the parish. Its kind of a high school probability that a lot of us have forgotten, said Mallory Harris. a Stanford Ph.D. student who is part of the project. She says its more simple to get to that number than you think. Its the same as if youre drawing marbles out of a hat with one red one and you pick out 10, said Harris. Whats the probability that you dont pick the red one? So it ends up being a (1-p)n is what the probability actually is. Here in Lafayette if youre looking at going to an event with 100 people theres a 99 % that one or more people there will be infected. If there is 50 people there, there is a 98% chance. A ten-person house party goes to 56% chance. The researchers say they hope this tool will give people a better understanding and help them plan and prepare. We think about giving people a concrete number of how risky is it to go to the sporting event or this barbecue will help them, said Harris. If you have in your mind theres an 87% chance that its one of the people there thatll encourage people to take those precautions and protect themselves and protect others. The White House COVID 19 task force has recommended Louisiana to move to limiting ten people at events with the surge in cases. WSKF Sedai Karate members, who normally train in the Rugby Club Skerries and Studio in Ballykea, have like every other sporting organisation, been curtailed by COVID but that has not stopped its members progressing in the sport. Lockdown posed significant difficulty in continuing to train, remaining focused and achieving personal goals. It would have been so easy to have taken a break at the onset of lockdown but determined students were not going to be defeated that easily and chose to keep training at home with online classes and as restrictions eased, outdoor sessions. Despite the disruption and significant changes the students deserve to be complimented having achieved amazing results through pure determination, focus and attitude. The students have illustrated this perfectly by the recent grading of some of its members. It hasn't been easy keeping focus and disciplined in such a challenging environment. Keeping physically and mentally active in such times has proved to be of enormous benefit to every age group and keeping active, for some, has been a lifesaver. Practising karate develops students in a different way both physically and mentally and can support practitioners in achieving a better understanding of themselves and others. The physical nature of the art benefits co-ordination, reflexes, balance, mobility, flexibility, strength and power with the mental benefits improving focus, concentration, mindfulness, self- esteem, humility, patience, self-discipline and respect. Its practice is not defined by age or ability and has remarkable benefits due to its inclusive nature. Following months of adapted training and preparation this weekend saw three club members going forward to be examined by Ireland's Chief Instructor. WSKF Sedai are delighted and compliment all three students who passed their examination and graded successfully to their new kyu grades. Importantly the students have demonstrated great character in their approach proving themselves to possess much more than a grading proficiency in karate. Special congratulations to Rebecca Dolan, Skerries grading to 6th Kyu; Tristan Gannon, Skerries grading to 8th Kyu; and Blake Kavanagh, Skerries grading to 7th Kyu. WSKF Sedai are continuing with Online classes, and are holding reduced capacity classes at their Studio with outdoor classes under government guidelines. Karate Classes are held Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Cardio Fit, Strength and Conditioning are held on Tuesday and Thursday. All classes are run under COVID- 19 guidelines. Everyone is welcome to attend Karate and/or fitness specific classes. Contact Instructors Francisco Astudillo at 089 9884213 or Sorcha at 086 1569828 or find them on Facebook: WSKFSedai and karateconsultants.blog.spot.ie COVID-19 is rapidly spreading across Bangladesh with deadly consequences for working people and rural toilers. On Thursday, the total number of official cases rose to 234,889 with nearly 2,700 new infections reported in the previous 24 hours and the number of people killed by the virus that day increasing by 48, to a total 3,083. These figures, however, substantially underestimate the actual situation in Bangladesh where testing, as in the rest of South Asia, is very low. Up until July 23, just over 1 million tests had been conducted in a country with more than 168 million peoplea testing rate of 0.65 percent. One positive case is recorded for every five tests carried out in Bangladesh. COVID-19 pandemic relief services in Chandpur, Bangladesh [Source: Flickr] This catastrophic situation is a direct result of the ruling Awami League-led governments contempt for the lives of the masses and the woefully unprepared Bangladesh public health system, which has been run down by meagre financial allocations by successive governments, Awami League and Bangladesh National Party alike. Under conditions where the countrys economy is heavily dependent on remittances from millions of overseas Bangladeshi workers, reports emerged last month about medical facilities producing fake coronavirus test reports. These reports are sold to Bangladeshi workers attempting to return to their jobs in Europe or northeast Asia. In response, several countries have started imposing travel restrictions. Italy recently found 65 positive cases among 1,600 Bangladeshis who reentered the country holding negative COVID-19 reports. On July 8, Italy forced 165 Bangladeshis on two Qatar Airway flights that landed in Rome to return to Bangladesh without testing them. Only 14 Bangladeshis with Italian passports and a pregnant woman were allowed into the country. Italy, Japan, China, and South Korea, where substantial numbers of migrant Bangladeshis live, have now banned flights from Bangladesh. Currently more than 140,000 Bangladeshis live in Italy, which is one of the largest sources of remittances. Bangladeshi migrants, who use Italy as a stepping stone into Europe and North America, are no longer allowed to visit the Schengen Areathe 26 European countries that allow people to travel freely across their internal borders. In an attempt at damage control, the Awami League government arrested Mohammad Shahed, Dr. Sabrina Chowdhury and her husband for selling the fake test reports at $US60 per document. Shahed has two unlicensed hospitals in Dhaka; Chowdhury and her husband operate a Dhaka laboratory. The government has also made it mandatory for air passengers to have negative virus test reports issued by one of 16 approved laboratories. While the government will no doubt find other scapegoats, the fake report rackets could not have occurred without political backing from the highest echelons of the administration. According to Transparency International, Bangladesh ranks 146th of 180 countries in the global corruption index. The increase of COVID-19 infections across Bangladesh is impacting on those seeking to legally migrate to the West on student visas and family reunions. Tasneem Siddiqi, the chair of Dhaka-based Refugee and Migratory Movement Research Unit, recently told the Nikkei Asian Review that about 90 percent of student migrants [will] stay back and would likely to miss the next semester. Bangladesh has around 12.5 million migrant workers overseas and in the 20192020 financial year sent a record $18.3 billion back home. Remittances and apparel exports have underpinned the average annual growth of 7 percent, but the pandemic is drastically impacting on the economy. Exports, including garments, have shrunk by more than 25 percent to $34 billion in the 20192020 fiscal year. The ruling Awami League this year has only allocated $3.4 billion or less than 1 percent of GDP to the health sector. According to the World Bank, an estimated 67 percent of all medical costs are borne by households through out-of-pocket payments, making it difficult for the poor to access proper health care. Like their counterparts around the world, the Bangladeshi ruling elite are safeguarding their profit interests at the expense of the working class and rural toilers. The lives of the ordinary people are just disposable material to be used for the enrichment of big business. In April, the World Bank warned that the virus will force some 50 million into poverty in Bangladesh. While the pandemic is heavily impacting migrant workers and apparel sector employees, the informal sector is the hardest hit. Missing one days work can lead to skipping meals, cutting down on medicine or being forced to sell personal assets. Mustafizur Rahman, a spokesman for the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a Bangladeshi think tank, told the media that COVID-19 meant the number of jobless people has increased drastically and income has fallen significantly. A CPD report in early June warned that the overall poverty has risen by 10 percent and could return to 40 percent. According to the World Food Program, 25 percent of Bangladeshis are already facing food insecurity and 11 million suffer from chronic hunger. On top of COVID-19, Bangladeshis have been hit with devastating floods that have affected five million people, displacing hundreds of thousands of families and killing 119 people. The disastrous impact of the pandemic in Bangladesh typifies the situation facing millions of workers, rural toilers and the poor across South Asia. India is currently the worse affected with over 35,000 deaths and 1,580,000 cases, followed by Pakistan with 5,924 deaths and 27,700 confirmed cases. These figures, however, underestimate the real situation, according to University of York public health expert Professor Kamran Siddiqi. He told the BBC this week: Many deaths are not reported within the vital registration system and the causes of deaths are incorrectly classified. All this is a graphic exposure of the political bankruptcy of the ruling classes in Bangladesh and across South Asia. KELOWNA, British Columbia, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Allied Corp. ("Allied") (OTCQB: ALID), an international medical cannabis company focused on creating and providing targeted cannabinoid health solutions to address todays medical issues, is pleased to announce the submission of a confirmation of readiness package (the Readiness Package) to Health Canada for a cultivation license at its new facility in Kelowna, BC. The Readiness Package was submitted by Allieds wholly owned subsidiary, Falcon Ridge Inc., a Canadian Licensed Producer applicant. Submission of the Readiness Package represents the last stage of review and approval before being granted the License to Cultivate cannabis under the Canadian Cannabis Regulations. When granted, the License to Cultivate enables the license holder to be able to sell wholesale product to other LPs (Licensed Producers) and import/export to and from domestic and international LPs. Prior to submitting the Readiness Package, Allied completed the in depth review requirements necessary for advancing towards the License to Cultivate. Some of these requirements included creating Standard Operating Procedure Report, Security Master Plan Report, Organizational Security Plan Report, Good Production Practices Report and a video of the new building facility. The new purpose built 9,000 square foot cultivation facility was designed and constructed based upon current GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) requirements. The building has rooms for custom breeding of novel genetics and cannabis flowering rooms, as well as a large scientific area that is dedicated to cannabinoid extraction and end product fulfillment. Along with the new facility in Kelowna, Allied continues to advance towards the first commercial harvest in Colombia. We are excited to enter into the last licensing step necessary in order to receive the license to cultivate in Canada, said Calum Hughes, CEO of Allied. This is a significant accomplishment for our operation in Canada and an important part of our international supply chain. Story continues For more information on Allied Corp., visit www.allied.health About Allied Corp. Allied Corp. is an international medical cannabis production company with a mission to address todays medical issues by researching, creating and producing targeted cannabinoid health solutions. Allied Corp. uses an evidence-informed scientific approach to make this mission possible, through cutting-edge pharmaceutical research and development, innovative plant-based production and unique development of therapeutic products. Investor Relations: ir@allied.health 1-877-255-4337 Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws in Canada or forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, forward-looking information). Forward-looking information may relate to the Companys future outlook and anticipated events, plans or results, and may include information regarding the Companys objectives, goals, strategies, future revenue or performance and capital expenditures, and other information that is not historical information. Forward-looking information can often be identified by the use of terminology such as believe, anticipate, plan, expect, pending, in process, intend, estimate, project, may, will, should, would, could, can, the negatives thereof, variations thereon and similar expressions. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is based on the Companys opinions, estimates and assumptions in light of managements experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that management currently believes are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. Forward looking statements in this press release include the following: that Allied is leveraging the conditions in its Colombia grow operation and future Kelowna location to support its Research and Development efforts; that Allied is making important strides forward to position itself as a leader in the medical cannabis space, that Allied intends to make a series of proposed trademark and other intellectual property protection filings, as part of the Companys Intellectual Property and Pharma Development (IP&PD) Strategy, statements respecting the joint development, manufacturing, and introduction of TACTICAL RELIEF branded products, and the use of proceeds from the offering of convertible notes. There can be no assurance that the underlying opinions, estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct. Risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information in this release include: the Companys exposure to legal and regulatory risk; the effect of the legalization of adult-use cannabis in Canada and Colombia on the medical cannabis industry is unknown and may significantly and negatively affect the Companys medical cannabis business; that the medical benefits, viability, safety, efficacy, dosing and social acceptance of cannabis are not as currently expected; that adverse changes or developments affecting the Companys main or planned facilities may have an adverse effect on the Company; that the medical cannabis industry and market may not continue to exist or develop as anticipated or the Company may not be able to succeed in this market; risks related to completion of the greenhouse construction in Colombia, risks related to market competition; risks related to the proposed adult-use cannabis industry and market in Canada and Colombia including the Companys ability to enter into or compete in such markets; that the Company has a limited operating history and a history of net losses and that it may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future; risks related to the Companys current or proposed international operations; risks related to future third party strategic alliances or the expansion of currently existing relationships with third parties; that the Company may not be able to successfully identify and execute future acquisitions or dispositions or successfully manage the impacts of such transactions on its operations; risks inherent to the operation of an agricultural business; that the Company may be unable to attract, develop and retain key personnel; risks resulting from significant interruptions to the Companys access to certain key inputs such as raw materials, electricity, water and other utilities; that the Company may be unable to transport its cannabis products to patients in a safe and efficient manner; risks related to recalls of the Companys cannabis products or product liability or regulatory claims or actions involving the Companys cannabis products; risks related to the Companys reliance on pharmaceutical distributors; that the Company, or the cannabis industry more generally, may receive unfavourable publicity or become subject to negative consumer or investor perception; that certain events or developments in the cannabis industry more generally may impact the Companys reputation or its relationships with customers or suppliers; that the Company may not be able to obtain adequate insurance coverage in respect of the risks that it faces, that the premiums for such insurance may not continue to be commercially justifiable or that there may be coverage limitations and other exclusions which may result in such insurance not being sufficient; that the Company may become subject to liability arising from fraudulent or illegal activity by its employees, contractors, consultants and others; that the Company may experience breaches of security at its facilities or losses as a result of the theft of its products; risks related to the Companys information technology systems; that the Company may be unable to sustain its revenue growth and development; that the Company may be unable to expand its operations quickly enough to meet demand or manage its operations beyond their current scale; that the Company may be unable to secure adequate or reliable sources of necessary funding; risks related to, or associated with, the Companys exposure to reporting requirements; risks related to conflicts of interest; risks related to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; risks related to the Companys potential exposure to greater-than-anticipated tax liabilities; risks related to the protection and enforcement of the Companys intellectual property rights, or the intellectual property that it licenses from others; that the Company may become subject to allegations that it or its licensors are in violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties; that the Company may not realize the full benefit of the clinical trials or studies that it participates in; that the Company may not realize the full benefit of its licenses if the licensed material has less market appeal than expected and the licenses may not be profitable; as well as any other risks that may be further described in and the risk factors discussed in the Company's continuous disclosure including its Management's Discussion and Analysis sections in its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K and Current Reports on Form 8-K filed under the Company's profile at www.sec.gov. Although management has attempted to identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information in this presentation, there may be other risk factors not presently known to the Company or that the Company presently believes are not material that could also cause actual results or future events to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking information in this presentation. 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 information. Accordingly, readers and viewers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date made. The forward-looking information contained in this release represents the Companys expectations as of the date of this release or the date indicated, regardless of the time of delivery of the presentation. The Company disclaims any intention, obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities laws. How is an haute couture dress made? What is it made of? What is its story? Whose hands have touched it? On average, from an initial sketch to the catwalk, it takes around four months to make. To start with, the theme of the collection is chosen by the grand couturier (the title used in haute couture to indicate the artistic director of a fashion house, the designer at the head of the design team), a theme for which all the design personnel are required to do research, in order for the designer to then sketch out his or her designs. Each grand couturier has his or her own style, not only in terms of the actual designs but also in the way they sketch out their ideas. Some produce very detailed drawings, while others express their ideas in rough silhouettes. Model Kaia Gerber wears a creation for the Givenchy Haute Couture Fall-Winter 2020 collection. Credit:AP These croquis, or sketches, are then presented by the head designer to a key figure in the process, who is both central to the process and almost invisible in the media: the atelier head, the only person who works directly with the grand couturier to translate the sketch into three dimensions. The prestige of haute couture is also the result of the fact that it is the grand couturier who personally conceives these pieces. Unlike ready-to-wear, where the designs are often delegated to in-house designers, haute couture dresses are usually made using the croquis of the designer, who often follows its creation up until the client receives the garment. But the differences between haute couture and ready-to-wear are not only symbolic, they are also material: unlike ready-to-wear, haute couture garments are made without a flat construction, without a pattern, but with a moulage. This is made in toile beige, an off-white cotton fabric, at this stage in the three-dimensional creation it is not until the shape and the proportions of the dress are finally decided on that it is made up in the final fabric and cut directly on a wooden mannequin. Health Specialist, Cotonou, Benin Organization: Unicef Country: Benin City: Cotonou, Benin Office: UNICEF in Cotonou, Benin Closing date: Thursday, 13 August 2020 Health Specialist. SPECIALISTE SANTE, Grade NOD. Cotonou, BENIN. Imis # 11437 Job no: 533393 Position type: Fixed Term Appointment Location: Benin Division/Equivalent: Dakar (WCAR), Senegal School/Unit: Benin Department/Office: Cotonou, Benin Categories: Health, NO-4 UNICEF works in some of the worlds toughest places, to reach the worlds most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. And we never give up. For every child, we need a champion for his health. UNICEF BENIN. RECRUTEMENT DUN SPECIALISTE SANTE. Health Specialist. SPECIALISTE SANTE, Grade NOD. Cotonou, BENIN. Imis # 11437 Organizational Context: The fundamental mission of UNICEF is to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does A in programs, in advocacy and in operations. The equity strategy, emphasizing the most disadvantaged and excluded children and families, translates this commitment to childrens rights into action. For UNICEF, equity means that all children have an opportunity to survive, develop and reach their full potential, without discrimination, bias or favoritism. To the degree that any child has an unequal chance in life A in its social, political, economic, civic and cultural dimensions A her or his rights are violated. There is growing evidence that investing in the health, education and protection of a societys most disadvantaged citizens A addressing inequity A not only will give all children the opportunity to fulfill their potential but also will lead to sustained growth and stability of countries. This is why the focus on equity is so vital. It accelerates progress towards realizing the human rights of all children, which is the universal mandate of UNICEF, as outlined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, while also supporting the equitable development of nations. Purpose of the Job: The Health Specialist reports to the Chief of Health/CSD section for general guidance and supervision. The Health Specialist will supervise the HIV Officer (NOB) and a programme Assistant (GS5). S/He is responsible for supporting the Chief in managing the health unit and leading the management, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting of the health programme (e.g gender, maternal, neonatal, child survival/development) within the country programme. S/He provides technical guidance and operational support throughout the programming process to facilitate the achievement of concrete and sustainable results, according to plans, allocation, results based-management approaches and methodology (RBM), organizational Strategic Plans and goals, standards of performance, and accountability framework Key functions, accountabilities and related duties/tasks: Summary of key functions/accountabilities: 1. Programme development and planning Programme management, monitoring and delivery of results Advisory services and technical support Advocacy, networking and partnership building Innovation, knowledge management and capacity building 1. Programme development and planning iA Plan and provide technical support and guidance for the preparation, design and updating of the situation analysis to establish a comprehensive and updated strategic plan for development, design and management of health related programmes. Keep abreast of development trends to enhance programme management, efficiency and delivery. iA Prepare, coordinate and/or supervise the formulation of health programme recommendations and related documentations as a component of the Country Programme, establishing clear programme goals, objectives, strategies, and results based on results-based planning terminology and methodology (RBM). iA Ensure alignment of the sectoral programme with UNICEFs Strategic Plans, Country Programme, UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDF), regional strategies as well as national priorities, plans and competencies. iA Consult and collaborate with colleagues and partners to provide technical and operational support on programme planning, management and implementation, and to ensure integration, coherence and harmonization of programmes/projects with other UNICEF sectors throughout all stages of programming processes. 2. Programme management, monitoring and delivery of results iA Plan and/or collaborate with internal and external partners to establish monitoring benchmarks, performance indicators, and other UNICEF/UN system indicators and measurements to assess and strengthen performance accountability, coherence and delivery of concrete and sustainable results for the assigned sector in health programmes. iA Participate in monitoring and evaluation exercises, programme reviews and annual sectoral reviews with the government and other counterparts to assess progress and to determine required action/interventions to achieve results. iA Prepare and assess monitoring and evaluation reports to identify gaps, strengths and/or weaknesses in programme management, identify lessons learned and use knowledge gained for development planning and timely intervention to achieve goals. iA Actively monitor programmes/projects through field visits, surveys and/or exchange of information with partners/stakeholders to assess progress, identify bottlenecks, potential problems and take timely decisions to resolve issues and/or refer to relevant officials for timely resolution. iA Plan, monitor and verify the optimum and appropriate use of sectoral programme resources (financial, administrative and other assets) confirming compliance with organizational rules, regulations/procedures and donor commitments, standards of accountability and integrity, ensuring timely reporting and liquidation of resources. iA Prepare regular and mandated programme/project reports for management, donors and partners to keep them informed of programme progress. 3. Advisory services and technical support iA Collaborate and consult with key government officials, NGO partners, UN system partners and other country office partners/donors on policies, strategies, best practices, and approaches on health-related issues to support programme development planning, management, implementation, and delivery of results. iA Participate in strategic programme discussions and planning to provide technical advice and to contribute to policy discussions and agenda setting to promote health and development issues especially in the areas of gender, emergency preparedness, maternal and neonatal health, and child survival and development. iA Prepare policy papers, briefs and other strategic programme materials for management use, information and/or consideration. iA Participate in emergency preparedness initiatives for programme development and contingency planning and/or to respond to emergencies in country or where designated. 4. Advocacy, networking and partnership building Tags advisory services biostatistics central africa child rights child survival development assistance development planning development trends emergency preparedness environmental health family health good practices health education health policy health programmes human rights information systems knowledge management monitoring and evaluation programme management programme planning social justice Build and sustain effective close working partnerships with health sector government counterparts, national stakeholders, as well as global partners, allies, donors, and academia. Through active networking, advocacy and effective communication, build capacity and exchange knowledge and expertise to facilitate the achievement of programme goals on child rights, social justice and equity. Prepare communication and information materials for CO programme advocacy to promote awareness, establish partnerships/alliances, and support fund raising for health programmes (maternal, neonatal and child survival and development). iA Participate and/or represent UNICEF in appropriate inter-agency (UNCT) discussions and planning on health-related issues to collaborate with inter-agency partners/colleagues on UNDAF planning and preparation of health programmes/projects, ensuring organizational position, interests and priorities are fully considered and integrated in the UNDAF process in development planning and agenda setting. 5. Innovation, knowledge management and capacity building iA Promote critical thinking, innovative approaches and good practices for sustainable health programmes/projects initiatives. Keep abreast, research, benchmark, and implement best and cutting edge practices in health management and information systems. Institutionalize and share best practices and knowledge learned. iA Contribute to the development of policies and procedures and introduce innovation and best practices to ensure optimum efficiency and efficacy of sustainable programmes and projects. Lead, plan and implement capacity building initiatives to enhance the competencies of stakeholders to promote sustainable results on health related programmes/projects. Impact of Results: The efficiency and efficacy of support provided by the Health Manager to programme preparation, planning and implementation facilitates the delivery of concrete and sustainable results that directly impact the improvement of the health of the most marginalized and vulnerable women and children in the country. This in turn contributes to maintaining and enhancing the credibility and ability of UNICEF to continue to provide programme services to protect the rights of children, and to promote greater social equality to enable them to survive, develop and reach their full potential in society Competencies and level of proficiency required: Core Values Care Respect Integrity Trust Accountability Core Competencies Nurtures, Leads and Manages People (2) Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (3) Works Collaboratively with others (3) Builds and Maintains Partnerships (3) Innovates and Embraces Change (3) Thinks and Acts Strategically (3) Drives to achieve impactful results (3) Manages ambiguity and complexity (3) Functional Competencies Analyzing (3) Deciding and Initiating action (2) Applying technical expertise (3) Recruitment Qualifications: Education: An advanced university degree in one of the following fields is required: public health/nutrition, pediatric health, family health, health research, global/international health, health policy and/or management, environmental health sciences, biostatistics, socio-medical, health education, epidemiology or another relevant technical field Experience: A minimum of eight years of professional experience in one or more of the following areas is required: public health/nutrition planning and management, maternal and neonatal health care, or health emergency/humanitarian preparedness. Experience working in a developing country is considered as an asset. Relevant experience in a UN system agency or organization is considered as an asset. Language Requirements: Fluency in French and good working skills in English are required. Knowledge of another official UN language or local language of the duty station is considered as an asset. For every Child, you demonstrate... UNICEFs values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization. UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. Remarks: Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. Advertised: Jul 29 2020 W. Central Africa Standard Time Application close: Aug 13 2020 W. Central Africa Standard Time Chandigarh: As the death toll in the hooch tragedy rose to 86, the Punjab Police on Saturday arrested 17 more persons in a massive crackdown spanning more than 100 raids in the three affected districts of Amritsar Rural, Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran, along with several other places in and around Rajpura and Shambhu border. The total number of arrests in the case has gone up to 25. Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh has ordered the suspension of seven excise officials and six policemen in connection with the hooch tragedy and initiated an inquiry against them. The action has been taken against 7 Excise & Taxation officers & Inspectors, along with 2 DSPs and SHOs in connection with the hooch tragedy, which has so far claimed 86 lives. The Chief Minister has also announced ex-gratia compensation of Rs 2 lakh to each of the families of the deceased, most of whom are from Tarn Taran, which accounts for 63 deaths, followed by Amritsar Rural at 12 and Gurdaspur (Batala) at 11: State government A mafia mastermind, a woman kingpin, a transport owner, a wanted criminal and owners/managers of various dhabas from where the illicit liquor was being supplied are among the arrested accused, according to Punjab Police DGP Dinkar Gupta. The raiding parties have also seized large quantities of Lahan from various villages and dhabas in the region around Shambhu border, Rajpura and Patiala, he said, adding that the raids had exposed a massive racket in illicit liquor, extending across several districts. The dhabas, identified as Zilmil Dhaba, Green Dhaba, Chhinda Dhaba on Shambhu, and Banur and Rajpura in Patiala, have been sealed. As much as 750 litres of Lahan had been seized from village Baghaura from where two persons, Satnam and Rashem, had been arrested while another, identified as Lakhwinder, had been identified as a culprit. Kingpin Darshan Rani alias Faujan was arrested by Batala Police, while another key accused Beeri, of village Deo, Police Station Sadar Tarn Taran, has also been arrested for supplying the spurious alcohol. Prem Singh, the owner of Azad Transport, and Bhinda (wanted by Tarn Taran Police) were arrested by Rajpura police in raids conducted today. According to the DGP, raids were conducted at the house of Rupinder Singh alias Bittu, son of Gurmail Singh resident of Thuha but he had not been there for the past many days. Bittu is a friend of Hardeep Singh alias Goldy alias Kachhu, arrested by CIA Jalandhar Rural recently, and Kachhu's Scorpio vehicle was recovered from Bittu's residence. In the raid at Jhilmil dhaba, whose manager Narinder Singh have been arrested, 200 liters of Lahan was seized. The dhaba owner Harjit Singh has been named in the FIR. At Green Dhaba, Rajpura Chandigarh Road PS Zirakpur, approximately 200 liters of Diesel like liquid was recovered in 4/5 small containers, which truck drivers were selling to the dhaba owner. The dhaba has also been sealed and its owner Gurjant Singh has been arrested. One Narinder Singh, the owner of Multani Dhaba, has also been arrested in the case, said the DGP. Another 150 litres of Lahan was recovered from one Parminder Singh and 200 liters from Baljit Singh. Both these men have also been arrested. One of the key arrested accused who was bringing spurious liquor from Tarn Taran to Amritsar Rural area has been identified as Govinderbir Singh alias Gobinda, son of Gurmit Singh, who is a resident of Jandiala City, PS Jandiala. He was the main mastermind of the mafia in the Amritsar Rural District. Describing the modus operandi of the accused, the DGP said the trucks carrying spirit would be stopped at 6-7 identified Dhaba and the Dhaba owners collected the hooch from truck drivers and sold it to one Bhinda, resident of Pipla Road, Rajpura, who was also accused in Rajpura factory case and Bittu of a village near Banur. The spirit was being supplied by these people to Amritsar and surrounding areas. Raids were continuing, with SSP Patiala camping at Rajpura for personally supervising the raids and rounding up the culprits, the DGP said, adding that efforts were on to smash the complete supply chain of the spurious alcohol. We are ready to play the role of strong opposition in parliament: Anura Kumara By Damith Wickramasekara View(s): View(s): As leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Anura Kumara Dissanayake has presided over the party during one of the most significant and politically volatile periods in the countrys history. His admirers praise him as a steadfast defender of democracy and a man of principle. Critics accuse him of steering the party towards the arms of the JVPs arch-enemy, the United National Party (UNP). Mr Dissanayake contested the last presidential election at the head of a new alliance, National Peoples Power (NPP), under the compass symbol. The party is contesting under the banner of the NPP at the parliamentary election as well, as it seeks to tap into what it believes is the general discontent of the voters with the main parties that have governed the country over the past decades. Excerpts from an interview: On whether past election results indicate voters still havent forgiven the JVP for atrocities during the 1971 and 1987-89 insurrections Such incidents have been used to paint a dark picture of the JVP in peoples minds, but this was over 30 years ago, and I would say that this reputation is no longer accepted by the general public at large. Politicians who have no other charges to level against us often refer to these past incidents. If you look closely at those periods, you will see that state terrorism was unleashed on a much larger scale. The then government was sent home in disgrace by voters in 1994 owing to the atrocities it committed during the 87-89 period. The difference between us and other parties however, is that you dont need the past to criticise them. There are always new allegations. On the JVPs disappointing showing at the last presidential election During the last presidential election, there was a strong power struggle between the two main candidates. There was also a strong political conflict. We also saw electronic media channels getting involved in this struggle during the last election than at any previous election in our history. They brought this political conflict into the villages and sharply divided the country into two camps. In such a situation, it is difficult for a third party to make inroads. Even in this difficult situation, we still obtained more than 418, 000 votes. On why the JVP continues to receive a smaller percentage of the vote despite fielding the best qualified candidates with unblemished records If you look into the qualities of the candidates, I would say we are far ahead of the rest. Our movement is honest, free of corruption and committed to working for the betterment of the country. The people know that, but that is still not enough for them to vote for us. The votes will come when the people believe we are on the cusp of a victory. We have to acknowledge that our party has faced a shortage of victories on the election front in recent times. This has put off those who like our policies and who want to vote for us from doing so. They need a stimulus to encourage them to vote for us, and that stimulus has to come via some sort of victory on the election front. We are trying to use this election to create that enthusiasm among voters. If we are successful in doing that, it will complete our transformation. On whether voters themselves are responsible for the current political situation by voting for unsuitable candidates There is widespread anger and hatred among the people towards their representatives in parliament. Some people even hope that the entire parliament will be destroyed. This is because people have lost faith in their representatives.There are several reasons for this. Firstly, most of the MPs have no principles. They constantly switch sides. I remember during the constitutional crisis, how then President Maithripala Sirisena publicly claimed that the price of an MP had shot up to Rs 500 million. This was because they were all trying to find 113 MPs to form a government. I know personally that some MPs even took money to remain where they were. Secondly, the behaviour of most MPs is disgraceful. They brought knives and chilli powder into the chamber. They engaged in fisticuffs. They scolded each other in filth. The third factor is that many MPs are criminals. The biggest racketeers in the country in illegal sand-mining, those connected to the rice mafia and even drug traffickers have served in parliament. Given these factors, it is only natural that people feel angry at their MPs. At the same time, none of these MPs forced their way into parliament. All were elected by the voters themselves. As such, while people may wish ill on parliament, they must remember that part of the responsibility for what has befallen parliament also lies with them. Instead of complaining about how wrongdoers arent punished by authorities, the voters themselves have an opportunity to punish these individuals by voting them out at this election. That however, cannot be done by trying to sort out the good people in a group and voting for them. You must remember that your first vote will still be for the party and if the party you vote for is populated by rogues, then you are still opening the door for unsuitable people getting elected. You must also choose the best group. In that scenario, you can mark your preference to whoever you like in that group. We have fielded the best group of candidates for this election. On whether the parliamentarysystem is actually necessary if most of those getting elected are criminals Representative democracy is essential. We dont believe a dictator should be allowed to rule any country. Dictators have never built countries. They have only brought about their ruin. This has been the case from Iraq to Libya, from Germany to Italy. Representative democracy is still the best form of governance for our country, but we need to develop the political intelligence and vision necessary to take it forward. On whether he regrets instances in the past where a leftist party such as the JVP supported other parties If we look back on these incidents in isolation, I can say that the decisions we took were the best possible decisions that had to be taken at the time. However, if we were to remove these particular incidents and look back on our path with the benefit of hindsight, I have to agree that those decisions have somewhat blackened our name. It does have an impact. We are trying to change that. This is why we have contested most recent elections separately. On the future path the JVP will take after the upcoming parliamentary election I believe that the political map will be redrawn after the August 5 election. The two best periods for a government are the campaign season and the period just after the election. This government had both these periods. As such, it should be twice as good. Normally though, most governments remove taxes and provide relief to the people during an election season. Yet, this government imposed many additional taxes on the public. Consumers were given some very strange electricity bills. In a normal campaign season, a mayor accused of breaking down a royal assembly hall will be remanded in custody at least for a day. In a normal campaign season, someone like Udayanga Weeratunga will not be released and sent for campaign meetings. In a normal campaign season, you dont purchase helicopters when the people are suffering economically. What does all this tell us? It tells us that we will be in for a dangerous time after the election. We must build a camp, both within and outside parliament, that will be strong enough to meet this situation. Ranil Wickremesinghe can never face this threat as he is tied up in the Central Bank fraud. Sajith Premadasa too cannot meet it as he is tied up in the Central Cultural Fund fraud. We also believe that some people in their camps will go over to the government, which is hell bent on obtaining a majority. The voters will never give that. They didnt give it even during the parliamentary election held soon after the war victory. However, MPs in the Sajith and Ranil factions will undoubtedly crossover and help the government achieve their aim of a majority. We saw such large scale crossovers in 2005 and 2010. They crossed over in 2018 even when Ranil Wickremesinghe headed the government. What are the odds of them staying put when they lose? We are urging the public not to vote for these parties. You need a strong opposition in parliament. We are ready to play the role of that strong opposition. It would have been hard to find any city in the 7th century that was more prosperous and cosmopolitan than Xian, the then capital of China. Sogdian merchants standing in front of stalls called out to passers-by to inspect their wares, which included Armenia jewels and velvet from Byzantium. Tocharian ladies danced at exotic taverns to attract customers, their blonde braids shimmering under the sunlight. Syriac priests forced their way through crowded streets with a combination of threats and pleas, chanting blessings in different languages. As the worlds largest and busiest city of the time, Xian teemed, swirled and reverberated with life. Xi'an was the capital city of 13 dynasties. [Photo by Pixabay] As the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, Xian, formerly known as Changan, was then home to two million inhabitants during the Tang dynasty (618-907), over 100,000 of whom were foreigners. Visitors were easily spellbound by the fusion of thriving international trade and vibrant culture, while a plethora of different ethnicities created an unprecedented connection between China and the world. It was the high point in Chinese civilization, and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. 1,300 years later, the ancient Silk Road has been reinvigorated and transformed into the new Belt and Road Initiative, restoring Xians dust-laden glories and injecting new charisma into the ancient capital of 13 dynasties. It is now the most important international commercial hub in Northwest China, with 1,667 Changan freight trains departing from Xian to Europe and Central Asia in the first half of 2020, carrying 1.3 million tons of merchandise. It is also a rising high-tech incubator, taking the lead in advanced technologies such as rocket design and pollutant purification. Openness and respect for other cultures are core values imprinted in Xians history, which continue to thrive today. As international and mutual understanding between countries are highly desirable today, Xian will provide new opportunities to both China and the world, said Jing Yali, a history scholar at the Xian Forest of Stone Steles Museum. Cradle of a unity China The Xian City Walls are some of the oldest, largest and best preserved city walls in China. (Photo by Pixabay) The Terracotta Army that watches over the mausoleum of Chinas first emperor Ying Zheng (259 BC 210 BC) in its sequestered underground palace has borne witness to the changes taking place in Xian over two millennia. Although the army may seem to be a group of insignificant clay figurines, the role they played in the formation of a united China means this couldnt be further from the truth. Dating from approximately the late third century BCE, each terracotta figure has its own unique features, down to the face and toes. The Army includes warriors, chariots and horses, and has more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses. In order to run an empire great enough to create such a masterpiece, the emperor assembled talents across the land regardless of their backgrounds and social status. Some were even his enemies from other states. Dubbed the worlds eighth ancient wonder, the Terracotta Army is a collection of life-sized sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shihuang, Chinas first emperor. (Photo by Liu Ning) The Terracotta Army not only possesses unparalleled artistic value, but also demonstrates the integrity and strength of a united China. Hardworking, disciplined, respectful of talent and open to other civilizations - such virtues were revered by the Qin people and still form the core value of modern Chinese culture, said Jin Kai, a researcher from Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum. According to Jin, by introducing a range of reforms, such as standardized currency, weights, measures and a unified system of writing, the Qin turned China into a great power. Its stable economy and military strength allowed ambitious projects to be undertaken, including the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army, while the name of the dynasty is thought to be the origin of the European name for China. In light of what had begun under the Qin, even the striking changes made by later generations take on more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary character, said Jin. The Nestorian Stele records ancient China's connection with the world. As the cradle of a united China, Xian was also the worlds largest cosmopolitan city, attracting talents from the world over. The best evidence of this might be the Nestorian Stele located in the Xian Forest of Stones Stele Museum. With text in both Chinese and Syriac, the 279-cm limestone block documents 150 years of early Christianity in China. According to the Stele, a Christian missionary named Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from the Eastern Roman Empire through the ancient Silk Road in 635, bringing sacred books and images. While the Nestorian church was considered heretical by the West, the missionary and his fellows were able to find sanctuary in China. Alopen is not the only foreigner who, after coming all the way to Xian, was stunned by its mighty power and tolerance for other cultures. Ethnicities from Persia, Central Asia, Japan, Korean, Vietnam, India and many other places lived in Xian, with different religions, such as Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, Judaism and Islam coexisting in harmony. According to statistics, Xian during the early Tang dynasty was home to 111 Buddhist monasteries, 41 Daoist abbeys, 38 family shrines, two official temples, and seven churches of foreign religions. The craving for global cooperation and respect for different cultures are part of the reason for Chinas rise as an ancient superpower. We can find evidence for this in the Forest of Stones Stele Museum, said Jing, who noted that there were many similar steles in the museum recording the cultural and religious exchanges between China and countries like Japan, Nepal and India during the Tang dynasty. The reverence for different cultures benefited both countries along the Silk Road and China itself. Thanks to this cultural fusion, Chinese people have learned to absorb the essence of other cultures and make it their own, making us even more culturally confident, added Jing. Revival of the ancient capital Xi'an is now a rising tech hub in China. On May 7th, a freight train loaded with 49 cars full of fridges, tea and lamps headed for Uzbekistan from Xi'an, marking the 1,000th cargo train on the China-Europe route to depart from the city in 2020. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it took only 129 days for Xi'an to run 1,000 China-Europe freight trains this year, 76 fewer than last year, and recent daily traffic has doubled compared with the same period last year. As the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, Xian has once again led the charge in Chinas trade and economic cooperation with the world. Since 2013, Xi'an has opened 15 international freight train routes to Kazakhstan, Belgium, Germany, Poland and other European and Central Asian countries, building a "golden channel" connecting the ancient commercial hub with Eurasia. Along the Belt and Road, Chinas modern culture has also entered the international arena. At the digital center of the China Western Film Group, graphic designers and movie producers are working on a digitalization project to showcase the beauty of Xian a thousand years ago. The application of advanced technologies such as 3D allows viewers around the globe to travel through time, enjoying the splendors of the Tang dynasty. From Xi'an, Chinese movies enter the international arena. Established in 1958, China Western Film Group is one of the four major national film production companies in the country. It has produced over 300 movies and documentaries, and more than 180 TV series. Its works have won accolades at multiple international movie festivals, winning more than 70 international awards such as the Golden Bear, with 76 of its movies being introduced to audiences in 36 nations and regions. In 1988, the company produced Red Sorghum, which tells the story of an ordinary Chinese couples life in the 1930s. Upon its release, the movie garnered international claim, with Roger Ebert, the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, praising the movie for its strength in simplicity that Hollywood in its sophistication has lost. The movie won multiple international awards, sharing Chinas stories with the world. As well as being home to booming cultural industries, Xian has also become a prominent tech hub. Established in 1965, the Sixth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has designed and developed over 50 varieties of liquid propellant rocket engines, which have been used in the launch of both Chinese and foreign satellite and spacecraft. The aerospace industry can epitomize a nations capability in scientific research and technological development, and it is not only about rocket launches. Through the development of spacecraft, we have also made achievements in other scientific spheres, such as hazardous waste disposal technologies, which can benefit ordinary people, said Suo Xiaoqiang, the academys chief economic manager, who added that other products, including intelligent instrument, special pumps and valves, are also proving very popular in the international market. According to Suo, as a city that has many prestigious universities and research centers, Xian has provided the academy with talents and innovative ideas. With the citys complete industrial chain and abundance of tech companies, interdisciplinary research and cooperation can further strengthen the development of Chinas aerospace industry. Though China is a major power in aerospace technologies, we still have many technical problems that still need to be solved. We will continue to do our research, and more new technologies can be expected from us in the future, he added. Enable Ginger Cannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browser Disable in this text field Edit Edit in Ginger Edit in Ginger Enable Ginger Cannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browser Disable in this text field Edit Edit in Ginger Edit in Ginger Enable Ginger Cannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browser Disable in this text field Edit Edit in Ginger Edit in Ginger Enable Ginger Cannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browser Disable in this text field Edit Edit in Ginger Edit in Ginger Enable Ginger Cannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browser Disable in this text field Edit Edit in Ginger Edit in Ginger Enable Ginger Cannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browser Disable in this text field Edit Edit in Ginger Edit in Ginger Enable Ginger Cannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browser Disable in this text field Edit Log in to edit with Ginger Log in to edit with Ginger If their respective Instagram accounts are any indication, they're truly nature lovers. And on Friday, both Demi Moore and her youngest daughter Tallulah Willis posted a sweet image to their Instagram Stories, showing Demi, 57, holding a precious green hummingbird. In the snap, the Ghost actress wears a weathered maroon sweatshirt, and she peers at the little animal through yellow-tinted black rimmed glasses. Savior: On Friday, both Demi Moore and her youngest daughter Tallulah Willis posted a sweet image to their Instagram Stories, showing Demi holding a precious green hummingbird Moore's trademark dark hair hangs over one shoulder, and she has a contemplative look on her face. Tallulah, 26, took the picture at a wooden table in an outdoor setting, with yoga mats rolled up in the foreground. On Sunday, the mother daughter duo provided an update on their rescue mission, which included two more pictures and additional footage of Moore holding the hummingbird. Good news: The mother daughter duo provided an exciting update on their rescue mission, which included two more pictures and additional footage of Moore holding the hummingbird 'Rescued this little guy yesterday. Hung out with us for a few hours until it regained its strength and flew away,' Moore informed her nearly two million Instagram followers. As the mother-of-three tended to the bird, she could be seen gently stroking its feathers and whispering to the creature to just 'take it easy, buddy.' It was one of countless animal-related posts from Tallulah, the daughter of Moore and Fifth Element star Bruce Willis. 'Rescued this little guy yesterday. Hung out with us for a few hours until it regained its strength and flew away,' Moore informed her nearly two million Instagram followers on Sunday Compassion: As the mother-of-three tended to the bird, she could be seen gently stroking its feathers and whispering to the creature to just 'take it easy, buddy' Her feed is covered in posts dedicated to her deer chihuahua Cowboy, along with various other pooches and critters. The recent share comes after mom and daughter posed in support of Tallulah's new clothing brand Wyllis on Tuesday. In that snap, the pair appeared to still be getting on like a house on fire, with Demi in high spirits as she flashed a beaming smile, while her youngest daughter looked equally elated as she threw her arms in the air. Animal lover like her mother: It was one of countless animal-related posts from Tallulah, whose feed is covered in posts dedicated to her deer chihuahua Cowboy Demi opted for casual chic in a pair of shell-print trousers, with a form-fitting white T-shirt tucked in, teamed wit ha pair of black Birkenstock sandals. The Scarlet Letter star accessorized with the same pair of quirky glasses, while carrying one of her seven pooches - a small grey Chihuahua - in her hand. Meanwhile, Tallulah showcased her svelte physique in a plunging white vest top, which she teamed with a pair of high-waisted blue trousers. Models: The recent share comes after mom and daughter posed in support of Tallulah's new clothing brand Wyllis on Tuesday She finished the look with a pair of suede slip ons, while slicking her cropped locks back and accessorizing with a pair of retro sunglasses. '!!!! NOT PLANNED - MUCH CUTE !!!!' Tallulah captioned the snap, tagging her brand @shopwyllis. A-lister Demi regularly shares snaps with her fury pals, and most recently posted a picture with one as part of the Black and White women supporting women challenge. During a recent SiriusXM interview: Demi is a dog lover and is said to have seven pooches Demi uploaded a black and white image of herself and one of her dogs on her Instagram page on Monday, as she highlighted the struggle of women in Turkey. She wrote alongside the snap: 'UPDATE: I recently learned that this challenge originated in Turkey to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of women killed. 'Their photos would appear in newspapers in black and white. Ive shared more in stories, and you can learn more at @auturkishculturalclub. Lets all continue educating, supporting, and uplifting each other! #challengeaccepted! Love to see #womensupportingwomen. Stunner: A-lister Demi regularly shares snaps with her fury pals, and most recently posted a picture with one as part of the Black and White women supporting women challenge By AP July 31, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - NEW YORK (AP) U.S. officials frowned upon the opening of an Iranian supermarket in Venezuela's capital, saying Thursday that any presence of Iran in the Western Hemisphere is "not something we look very favorably on. Acting Assistant Secretary for U.S. Department of States Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Michael Kozak told journalists in a call that the opening of the market shows this is like an alliance of pariah states. I would be surely surprised if Venezuela is able to obtain much benefit from Iran, said Kozak in his response to a reporter's question about the supermarket. Iran is willing to play around, is willing to sell stuff to Venezuela when Venezuela really does not have the money to be buying very much. An Iranian cargo ship docked in Venezuela in June carrying food for the new market in Caracas, weeks after the Islamic Republic had already sent five tankers loaded with gasoline to the fuel-starved nation. The recent deliveries signal a newly blossoming relationship between the two nations in defiance of stiff financial sanctions by the Trump administration against each of them. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter The new Megasis supermarket, in the east of Caracas, was launched Wednesday amid a tightening of the coronavirus quarantine. The inauguration was a private event attended only by Venezuelan government officials, Iranian diplomatic personnel and businessmen, according to images a journalist for the Telesur television channel posted on her Twitter account. The supermarket is expected to open to the public this week. Kozak described Iran on Thursday as the world's biggest sponsor on terrorism. Iran is not going to save Venezuela from the situation it has put itself in, but it does put itself in a more dangerous situation by playing these games, he said. Megasis is headed by Iranian businessman Issa Rezaei, who runs a chain of 700 supermarkets in Iran. On Tuesday, Rezaei said on Twitter that our goal is commercial. He also said he is buying Venezuelan products like mangos, pineapples and wood to take to Iran. Venezuela has the worlds largest oil reserves, and critics of President Nicolas Maduro point to the nations reliance on Iran for gasoline as an example of the socialist governments failure. The U.S. seeks to oust Maduro, backing his political rival Juan Guaido. Maduro blames many of the problems on U.S. sanctions and other measures to undermine his rule. He says the U.S. wants to install a puppet government so it can exploit Venezuelas vast resources. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Post your comment below See also Iran Opens a Supermarket in Venezuela With High-Tech Covid Defenses : It comes equipped with high-tech Covid shield -- an airport-scanner-like booth that measures shoppers temperatures and sprays them with disinfectant mist. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. A special Vietnam Airlines flight brought 219 Vietnamese workers, 129 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19, home from Equatorial Guinea in central Africa on July 29. browser not support iframe. It was not the first time Vietnamese people stranded in a foreign country had been brought home, with such repatriation flights being testament to Vietnam's motto of "No one left behind". The flight from Bata International Airport in Equatorial Guinea took more than 12 hours to reach the Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi. The repatriation flight and medical evacuation was an unprecedented effort for Vietnam, which has no direct flights to Equatorial Guinea, a conflict-ridden country with poor infrastructure. Over 200 Vietnamese workers in Equatorial Guinea sent a letter to Vietnamese representative agencies in Angola in early July seeking help. Many were confirmed to be carrying the virus. After landing at Noi Bai, all passengers and crew were checked at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Dong Anh district, Hanoi, and then quarantined. Those on the flight were grateful for the countrys efforts./.VNA The storm has already caused widespread damage in several Caribbean island nations already grappling with coronavirus. Hurricane Isaias has ripped shingles off roofs and blew over trees as it carved its way through the Bahamas and strengthened slightly while heading towards the coast of Florida in the United States. Isaias was carrying top sustained winds of 140km per hour (85 miles per hour) and was located about 80km (50 miles) south of the Bahamas capital, Nassau, at 8am (12:00 GMT) on Saturday heading northwest, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC). The storm, a Category 1 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, was approaching Andros Island in the Bahamas and was due to pass over or near islands in the central and northwest Bahamas later on Saturday, bringing a danger of damaging storm surges of up to 1.5 metres (five feet) over normal tide levels, the NHC said. A hurricane warning was in effect on Saturday for the northwest Bahamas but was no longer in effect for the central Bahamas, authorities there said. Definitely strongest so far. All is well, but the glass door is like a vacuum to open. #Isais #hurricane pic.twitter.com/DWwe7BeHF7 Jeff Todd (@ByJeffTodd) July 31, 2020 Trevor Basden, the director of the Bahamas meteorology department advised that residents continue to hunker down. On at least two islands in the country, Abaco and Grand Bahama, which were battered by Category 5 Hurricane Dorian in August 2019, some residents were still living in temporary structures and had to be evacuated as Isaias approached. Paula Miller, Mercy Corps director for the Bahamas, told The Associated Press news agency that while the islands can normally withstand strong hurricanes, some have been destabilised by the coronavirus pandemic and the damage caused by Dorian. With everything not quite shored up, property not secured, home not prepared, even a category one will be enough to set them back, she said. On Thursday, while still a tropical storm, Isaias toppled trees, destroyed crops and caused widespread flooding and small landslides in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where hundreds of thousands of people were left without power and water. At least two people were killed in the Dominican Republic as a result of the storm, with one man electrocuted by a fallen power line. Florida prepares In Florida, meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis has established a state of emergency for a dozen counties on the Atlantic coast, which makes it easier to mobilise resources. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has also followed suit. The storm has also prompted authorities in parts of Florida to close coronavirus testing sites amid a recent surge in cases that has made the state the outbreaks new epicentre. Remain vigilant, DeSantis said at a news conference on Saturday morning, warning that slight variations in the Isaias path could make the difference between coastal communities facing hurricane-force winds or something more like a severe thunderstorm. He urged people to have seven days of food, water and medication on hand. Hurricane #Isaias is near Andros Island in the Bahamas. The hurricane is expected to approach the southeast Florida coast late today and on Sunday. Go to https://t.co/tW4KeFW0gB for the latest info on #Isaias and https://t.co/SiZo8ohZMN for your local weather forecast. pic.twitter.com/vLj0Hwfnfc National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) August 1, 2020 Scores of hotel rooms along Floridas east coast have been set aside for any people with COVID-19 who are ordered to evacuate their homes where they have been isolating themselves, the governor said. Meanwhile, officials in Miami said they were closing beaches, marinas and parks. YEREVAN, AUGUST 1, ARMENPRESS. Ameriabank in cooperation with Visa payment processing system has announced a special campaign aiming to promote tourism in Armenia and surprise and delight its customers preferring noncash payments, ARMENPRESS was informed from Ameriabank. Ameriabank cardholders who will make at least 15 non-cash* transactions in the period starting August 1 and ending September 30, 2020, using their Visa Classic or Visa Gold cards will get a chance to participate in the draw held by Ameriabank and win two of 500 Ameria Tour tickets. The qualifying payments should be for at least AMD 5,000 or its equivalent in foreign currency. The following winners will be selected randomly via Random.org out of the eligible Bank customers having performed non-cash transactions: 20 entrants will receive a 3-day stay for 2 persons at 20 top hotels of Armenia 250 entrants will receive Ameria Tour tickets, each for 2 persons The Ameria Tour draw will take place on October 15 at 3:00 p.m. and will be live streamed on Ameriabanks Facebook page. * Utility payments, card-to-card payments and account-to-account transfers do not qualify as non-cash transactions. For full information on the terms and conditions of Ameria Tour draw, please visit explorearmenia.ameriabank.am. Ameriabank CJSC Ameriabank is a dynamically developing bank and one of the major and most stable financial institutions in Armenia. Ameriabank CJSC is a universal bank offering corporate, investment and retail banking services in a comprehensive package of banking solutions. For full information, please visit www.ameriabank.am or call (+37410) 56 11 11. The Bank is supervised by the Central Bank of Armenia. Police in Zimbabwe on Friday arrested internationally-acclaimed novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga as they enforced a ban on protests coinciding with the anniversary of President Emmerson Mnangagwa's election. Dangarembga, 61, was taken away in a police truck as she demonstrated in the upmarket Harare suburb of Borrowdale alongside another protester, an AFP photographer saw. Streets in the centre of the city were largely deserted as police and soldiers set up checkpoints to prevent entry. Opposition politician Jacob Ngarivhume, head of a small party called Transform Zimbabwe, had called for demonstrations against alleged state corruption and the country's slumping economy The protests were timed to coincide with the second anniversary of Mnangagwa's election, which the opposition says was a fraud. But most people stayed at home after police on Thursday issued a ban and warned of a tough response. "All security arms of government are on full alert and will deal decisively with any individuals or groups fomenting violence," it warned. There were more checkpoints and roadblocks than usual on roads leading to the centre of the capital, manned by police and soldiers. In the central business district, police carrying batons or riot shields were heavily deployed, an AFP journalist saw. - Novelist arrested - In the suburbs, only a handful of people appeared to brave the ban. An AFP photographer saw Dangarembga and a fellow protester, Julie Barnes, hauled into a truck full of police armed with AK-47 rifles and riot gear. Shortly afterwards, she tweeted: "Arrested! At Borrowdale. Ope it will be OK". She also tweeted a photo of herself and Barnes, sitting on the floor at a police station. She had been carrying placards calling for reforms and the release of Hopewell Chin'ono, a prominent journalist arrested last week under a government crackdown. Minutes before her arrest, she told AFP: "It seems that there has been a big reaction by the authorities to this protest. "They declared it illegal -- I'm not quite sure (why), apart from the fact that they don't want it...Our constitution gives Zimbabweans the right to demonstrate peacefully and that's what we are doing." The Cambridge-educated author is the only Zimbabwean woman writer to win the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and has often been praised for speaking out on women's issues. She leapt to prominence in 1988 with "Nervous Conditions", a coming-of-age story about a girl's battle to escape poverty and gain an education. The book became an instant classic. Her arrest came days after her latest novel, "This Mournable Body," entered the long list for the Booker Prize. In a statement, police confirmed she had been arrested "for trying to incite the public to engage in illegal demonstrations while carrying placards written various political messages meant to cause public disorder." Among several others arrested Friday was Fadzayi Mahere, a lawyer and spokeswoman for the main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change-Alliance. Mahere live-streamed via Facebook images of riot police scaling metal barriers into a suburban eatery where she had retreated after her protest, and arrested her. The British ambassador in Harare, Melanie Robinson tweeted: "Very concerned about reports of abductions, arrests and threats targeting those exercising constitutional rights. Freedom of expression is vital even in times of COVID19, with social distancing observed". - Poverty and hunger - The government had denounced the protests, calling them an "insurrection". Ruling ZANU-PF spokesman Patrick Chinamasa earlier this week claimed that US ambassador Brian Nicholls was sponsoring the protests and called him "a thug". Mnangagwa took over from longtime ruler Robert Mugabe after a coup in November 2017. But hopes among many that he would end Mugabe's disastrous economic slump have been dashed, and many Zimbabweans say they are worse off than before. The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) says some 8.6 million Zimbabweans, or 60 percent of the population, will require food aid as a result of a drought, economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The country has recorded 3,092 virus cases including 53 deaths. fj-pho-str-sn/ri Mumbai, Aug 1 : India all-rounder Hardik Pandya on Saturday shared an adorable picture of his newly-born child on social media. In the photo, Pandya is seen holding the baby boy in his arms in a hospital. 'The blessing from God,' he captioned the image while posting it on his social media handles. On Thursday, Pandya and Natasa Stankovic were blessed with their first child. He had made the announcement via social media post which read: "We are blessed with our baby boy." It was posted with the picture of the baby's hand. The delivery took place in Vadodara. The duo had earlier announced in May that they were expecting a third member in their family. Hardik's Instagram post in May had read: "Natasa and I had a great journey together and it is just about to get better. Together we are excited to welcome a new life into our lives very soon. We're thrilled for this new phase of our life and seek your blessings and wishes." Earlier this year, Hardik had announced his engagement to Natasa via social media as well. On January 1, Hardik had shared an image of him proposing to Natasa and had captioned it: "Mai tera, Tu meri jaane, saara Hindustan. 01.01.2020 #engaged." -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Employees of the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) during a protest this week demanding additional incentive payments. Pic by Priyanka Samaraweera. Days into Victoria's first round of stage three coronavirus restrictions in April, staff at the Fella Hamilton womenswear factory in Moorabbin braced for the worst. The forty-odd employees were on limited hours and the logical next step was to close and ride the crisis out, chief executive Sharon Hamilton said. Sharon and David Hamilton at the Fella Hamilton factory in Moorabbin. The business has pivoted from women's knitwear to about 80 per cent face masks. Credit:Simon Schluter "We said to them, 'Look, we don't know what's going to happen. We have to be very careful. We'll regroup in a week's time'. It was very emotional," said Ms Hamilton, the daughter-in-law of Fella Hamilton, the label's founder and namesake. "That's when we pivoted and turned it all around." NDC communication team member, Chris Dugan says people praising President Akufo-Addo and his government are greedy and corrupt. According to him, the majority of Ghanaians are tired of the current administration and therefore calling for a change. From 2012 to 2016, we were able to employ 60,000 trained teachers at Ghana Education Service and the records are there to show. NPP only use their mouth to create jobs . . . they could not even employ 20,000 teachers within a year. I have proven with data; they should also challenge me with their data. So when somebody with this impeccable track record is telling you when I come I will do even better than what I have done based on my track record, then you have people who have performed so abysmally come out and be questioning . . . you should be the last people to ask questions, he said on UTVs Late News. Based on their abysmal performance, the majority of Ghanaians are calling for change except for the greedy and corrupt ones. They are saying four more for Nana. The majority of Ghanaians who voted for Akufo-Addo have now regretted, he stressed. 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 JAKARTA Indonesia, the worlds top exporter of thermal coal, is stepping up efforts to diversify sales of the fuel as shipments to top buyer India slump and with exports to China poised to slow. Indonesia is using diplomatic channels to promote sales around the region, from Vietnam to Pakistan and Bangladesh, a government spokesman said, as it seeks to offset a fall in annual exports and a global shift towards cleaner energy. While Vietnams growing appetite for thermal coal is unlikely to match that of sizeable markets like China and India, the country is emerging as a key market and experts say it is important to get in early. Thermal coal is used by power plants to generate electricity. In this current condition, we need to secure non-traditional markets for our future growth, said Hendra Sinadia, executive director of the Indonesian Coal Miners Association (ICMA). As part of such efforts, he said the government recently organized virtual meetings between Indonesian miners and Vietnamese buyers. We are geographically advantaged and our coal quality matched Vietnams needs, he said. Indonesias coal exports fell 8% in the first five months of 2020 compared with a year ago, according to data from Statistics Indonesia, led by a mammoth 35% drop to India as lockdown restrictions hit demand for power in the Asian giant. Thermal coal exports to China rose by 31% to 29 million metric tons in the January-May period from the year prior, while exports to Vietnam jumped 44% to 8.9 million metric tons over that period. With Chinas plans to boost domestic coal production likely to curb its coal imports in coming months, Indonesia is looking to Vietnam, where coal demand is growing, to offset some of those losses. Vietnam, which became the seventh-largest buyer of Indonesian coal in the first five months of the year, saw a huge jump in coal imports in the first half of 2020 from the year prior of more than 50% as it fed the countrys growing number of coal-fired power plants. After India, Vietnam has the largest coal-fired power plant projects in terms of capacity among countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia, according to Fitch Solutions analyst Daine Loh, even as it expands renewable power sources. There are currently more than 17-gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power-plant capacity under construction in Vietnam while nearly 29 GWs of coal-fired plants are also in the pre-construction stage, Fitch data showed. Indonesias second-largest coal miner PT Adaro Energy told Reuters last week that Vietnam had the strongest demand growth in Asia in 2020. Despite this, Indonesian miners are planning to curb output due to falling demand for the fuel owing to the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. ICMA said earlier this month its members would cut 2020 production by between 15%-20% from an earlier target to support prices. When Nell McCafferty, Nuala Fennell and Mary D'Arcy led the women's liberation invasion of the famous Forty Foot swimming area in Sandycove, Co Dublin, in the summer of 1974, I applauded their brio, but I'd never have joined in. Deep sea water? Terrifying. Sea swimming in summer time is something I think we should all try to do, and I usually plunge in once a year at least: but maybe I have also inherited my Connemara grandmother's fear of the sea. The family tradition was that grandmother had seen a drowning in her impressionable youth, and forever afterwards feared the seashore. This story was diligently transmitted to me, and children remember what they are taught when young. Yet I think the Connemara wariness of the sea was originally quite rational: that tumultuous Atlantic Ocean did indeed "take" people, and there was a superstition that when it "took" one, it would come back for two more. The desperate tragedy of the Cleggan Bay Disaster of 1927, when 45 Connemara fishermen drowned, left an indelible mark on the western coast. It was always said that fishermen deliberately didn't learn to swim, because in a disaster at sea, swimming would only prolong the agony of drowning. Being sent daily to the entirely safe location of the Dun Laoghaire baths over the summer months, I shouldn't have retained this fear of deep water, but I did. And yet, sometimes what we fear most also fascinates us most. If I were asked to name a global personality I especially admire, I'd probably nominate Sarah Thomas, the American woman who swam the English Channel four times consecutively in August last year: Dover to Calais and back, and Dover to Calais and back again. Read More She swam for 54 hours continuously and, because of the zig-zag channel winds and currents, what should have been 129km turned out to be 209km. What an achievement! Ms Thomas was 37 and had recently recovered from breast cancer. It's entirely fitting that the Forty Foot was liberated by feminists from being an all-male preserve: swimming is "the only sport where women are superior to men in long distance", according to the swimming historian Howard Means. Women's bodies - Michael Phelps notwithstanding - are more suited to swimming in cold water, having a greater proportion of subcutaneous fat, which helps both buoyancy and endurance. Phelps is the most highly decorated Olympian swimmer ever, and his almost fish-like anatomy is extraordinarily well adapted to speed in the water. But it was a woman, Lynne Cox, who was the first person to swim the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, in reported water temperatures of 3.3C. Lynne was also the first person to swim the Strait of Magellan and the first person to swim around the Cape of Good Hope. Respect! Human beings have been swimming for between 8,000 and 10,000 years, according to Howard Means in his history of swimming, Splash!. The Egyptians left traces of their swimming practices, and it was common in the Greek and Roman world - Julius Caesar was a swimmer, and Plato thought learning to swim should be part of everyone's education. Plato was undoubtedly right. But these ancients swam naked, and perhaps for this reason women were seldom seen to join in, though they might have bathed privately. Howard Means blames Christian prudery for discouraging swimming and even up to the 1930s, "mixed bathing" was controversial. In his memoir, The Thirties, Malcolm Muggeridge recalled that among the fiercest arguments of the time was whether men and women were permitted to swim together in London's Serpentine. The Liffey Swim in Dublin started in 1920 and it's now one of the oldest swimming traditions in the world. Women only joined the swim - which was painted by Jack B Yeats in 1923 - in 1991. It was the development of the fashionable swimsuit, pioneered by Carl Jantzen and his family, which put swimming in the spotlight. The waterborne movie star Esther Williams - a very accomplished swimmer - made it glamorous. Then the launch of the bikini in France in 1946 made swimming sexy: it remained banned on Spanish beaches throughout Franco's regime, until 1975. It's now August, and I will go down to the sea and swim, even if I do so rather gingerly. I had a mild fright a few years ago when a cold dip resulted in a temporary blackout: for an hour afterwards I lost consciousness, though I walked back to the house on a kind of automatic pilot. Subsequently, I was fine, but the GP cautioned that there can be a loss of oxygen to the brain, temporarily, by the sudden shock of cold water. Getting into the sea can be a little like writing. You dread the start of the endeavour - the cold, swirling water, or the blank, forbidding screen. But take the plunge, and it can all go swimmingly. Psychiatrists across the city say survivors of Covid-19, particularly those who had severe cases, may suffer mental health issues while rehabilitating, after recovering from the infection. Anita Agarwal, 42, tested positive for Covid-19 on June 29, and was admitted to Seven Hills Hospitals where she was kept on a ventilator for five days and spent another week in the intensive care unit (ICU). She was discharged on July 12 and has been since battling severe anxiety. She is afraid of spreading the infection even though she is now Covid-free. Even after 14 days in home quarantine after she was released from the hospital, she refused to step out of her room. She wouldnt allow our son to go near her. She was panicking continuously in fear, said Anil Agarwal, the patients husband. City psychiatrists say many Covid survivors are experiencing mental health issues, including post-intensive care syndrome (PICS), anxiety, sleep difficulties, depression and delirium. Covid-19 survivors often develop weakness and fatigue with muscle weakness. This adds to their anxiety levels. Many are showing signs of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), where they constantly clean their hands with sanitiser. They even refuse to remove masks at home, said Dr Avinash De Sousa, a psychiatrist and editor of the Indian Journal of Mental Health. Ashita Bose, 55, had come to Mumbai to visit her son in June when she was diagnosed with Covid-19. She spent 13 days at the isolation ward at Hinduhridaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray (HBT) Trauma Care Hospital in Jogeshwari, and was discharged on July 2. For seven years, my mother was treated for depression in Kolkata and had recovered gradually. Since her release from hospital, she has once again developed symptoms. She cant sleep at night and has almost stopped eating. She gets scared even if anyone rings the doorbell, said Boses son, Satadru who works for an IT firm. Owing to the infectious nature of Covid-19, medical staffers working in isolation wards have to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) all the time, which can make patients feel isolated and yearn for human contact. The relationship between doctors and patients relies on trust. But when a patient cant see the face of their treating physicians, it does sour ties. At the same time, they dont find their close ones beside them. This can lead to delirium, a confused state of mind post-discharge, said Dr Gautam Bhansali, consultant physician at Bombay Hospital and in-charge of managing Covid-19 beds in private hospitals. Patients who were intubated often experience flashbacks or feelings of paranoia. These patients have seen people die before them in hospitals, which is not an easy experience to forget. Many recovered patients keep checking their temperature in panic, said Dr De Sousa. Recovered patients may also face stigma and discrimination from others. Some neighbours are welcoming while others stigmatise Covid-19 survivors. In fact, often recovered medicos also get humiliated when they return after being discharged. This instigates the sensitive minds of survivors, who are already fragile after fighting against the virus, said Dr Milan Balakrishnan, secretary of Bombay Psychiatric Society. A report on psychiatric and neuropsychiatric presentations associated with severe coronavirus infections, which studied patients from China, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the UK, and the USA was published in the medical journal Lancet in May. It stated that 65% of discharged patients complained of delirium. Clinicians must be aware of the possibility of depression, anxiety, fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, and rarer neuropsychiatric syndromes in the aftermath, reads the study in its conclusion. Another study, by Henk Stam from Erasmus University Medical Center, Netherlands, has also advised continuing medical attention for Covid-19 survivors. The notion that patients surviving intensive care and mechanical ventilation for several weeks can be discharged home without further medical attention is a dangerous illusion, reads Stams study, which was published in the Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine in April. What to do after recovery? 1. Keep busy and follow a regular schedule 2. Dont oversleep or sleep less than eight hours 3. Be physically active 4. Practice meditation 5. Dont keep discussing Covid-19 with family members 6. In case of anxiety, try to breathe slowly 7. When feeling angry, count backward from 100 to 1 8. If you keep feeling sad persistently for days, consult a psychiatrist 9. Avoid tobacco, alcohol and other drugs 10. Avoid interaction with people who stigmatise or lack knowledge of the virus 11. Maintain a diary or blog 12. Listen to music. (Source: Guidelines issued by Union ministry of health) For millions living with dementia and for their loved ones the future may appear bleak. Thanks to medical breakthroughs, more people than ever are surviving our other biggest killers heart disease, strokes and cancer. But research into dementia drugs have led to dead ends, and time and again, hopes have been dashed. Now, finally, there is cause for cautious optimism. A host of exciting projects are under way that could result in new medications for people with the disease and, perhaps, a new understanding of how it develops in the first place. Noticeable improvement: Aldo Ceresa with his wife Laura. His symptoms eased during a trial but 67-year-old had his treatment stopped last year when the trial was halted Dr John Skidmore, of the Alborada Drug Discovery Institute in Cambridge, funded by Alzheimers Research UK, said: We know different types of dementia are caused by different disease processes. And because we understand the biology of those diseases, it gives us a chance to intervene. Last month, drugs giant Biogen submitted its pioneering treatment, called aducanumab, for approval in the US after trial results showed it could significantly slow the progression of Alzheimers disease, the most common kind of dementia. It means that the drug could be available in the UK in two years and pave the way for a new wave of therapies. Aducanumab targets amyloid, a protein that builds up in the brains of Alzheimers patients. Normally these proteins circulate in the blood, but if they become sticky they can clump together, forming what are known as plaques in the brain. It is thought that in some people with Alzheimers, too many of these toxic plaques form, while in others something happens which stops the plaques being flushed away as they should. Aducanumab, fed into the bloodstream via a drip, works by sweeping away these plaques to prevent damage. An initial trial found it was safe, significantly reduced levels of amyloid and reduced the rate of cognitive decline. But huge disappointment came after a second, larger study, launched in 2017, was abruptly stopped a year in when early analysis of one branch of the trial suggested the drug was not working. But when Biogen analysed all patients given the highest doses for the longest amount of time, from both branches of the trial, it found positive results. A host of exciting projects are under way that could result in new medications for people with the disease and, perhaps, a new understanding of how it develops in the first place (file photo) Dr Catherine Mummery, dementia expert from University College Hospital, London, who led the UK arm of the Biogen trial, said: The research community is very cautious, although optimistic. Some people will call what Biogen did data manipulation, and others will agree it supports their original findings But the fact is that there are people who believe theyve had a fantastic result. One such patient is retired dental surgeon Aldo Ceresa. The 67-year-old, who lives with his wife Laura near Oxford, had his treatment stopped last year when the trial was halted. He hopes it will now be reinstated, as he says the drug noticeably improved his Alzheimers symptoms. Within months, he felt his condition stopped deteriorating. He also got better at the puzzles set by the trial leaders to assess his brain function. I was beginning to get quite good at them, he says. Laura noticed I was getting better too. I was less confused and could concentrate better. Leaving a shingles infection untreated for longer than three days increases dementia risk Advertisement Since he stopped taking the drug, his condition has worsened, which has been frustrating, he says. I know its not going to cure me, but it could offer so many people so much extra time without their symptoms progressing. Until its approved, Im eating healthily and keeping my mind active by walking six miles a day and doing plenty of puzzles. My former colleagues are amazed Im still doing so well despite being diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2011. Dr Mummery says the aducanumab results proves there is a link between the amount of amyloid in the brain and the level of decline which opens the doors for other drugs to be developed. A decision from the American watchdogs could come as early as next year, and discussions are said to be ongoing with the European Medicines Agency to license the drug on this side of the Atlantic. There may also be hope on the horizon for patients with more advanced Alzheimers. Another type of naturally occurring protein, called tau, normally helps the brain to function, but in advanced Alzheimers patients it can build up and form tangles. When the tangles form, tau has the opposite effect, hindering the way brain cells work. These tangles are thought to develop later than amyloid plaques, and some scientists believe they could be a crucial target for drugs in the later stages of the condition. Experts are now also attempting to alter genes inside the bodys cells, to switch off the processes that cause these proteins to form in the first place. Last month, drugs giant Biogen submitted its pioneering treatment, called aducanumab, for approval in the US (file photo of a Biogen facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US) A study led in the UK by Dr Mummery involves a drug known as an anti-sense oligonucleotide, or ASO, produced by US pharma company Ionis. This targets the gene that produces tau. The drug is injected directly into the nervous system via the spine, and early trials have found it is safe. Further trials are needed to see how well it works. There are promising results in terms of it meeting its target, Dr Mummery said. Every single one of the patients in the first trial wants to continue taking it. Tangles of tau develop later than amyloid plaques, so the hope is we can intervene later in the disease and still see a difference. Scientists are also investigating whether the brains natural ability to clear away excess amyloid proteins can be improved. It is important to develop new approaches in tandem, Dr Skidmore says. None on their own are likely to be magic bullets. Most people think it will be a combination of treatments that will work. Do you want to stop checking on your portfolio and worrying about whether it's up or down? You can avoid many of the headaches involved with investing if you stick to buying blue-chip stocks that you plan to hold for decades rather than years or months. This can simplify your investing strategy while also minimizing your long-term risk. Below are three solid stocks that you can buy and forget about. Each is in a good position to withstand any adversity in the markets, including crashes. And they'll likely be great sources of recurring income for your portfolio for many years to come. 1. Abbott Laboratories Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) makes for a terrific investment for many reasons. For long-term investors, it starts with the Illinois-based company's rich history of dividend growth. This year, it hiked its dividend by 12.5%, marking the 48th year in a row that shareholders saw their dividend income rise. Abbott is well on its way to becoming a Dividend King in a couple of years.The dividend currently yields about 1.4% annually, a bit short of the S&P 500 average of 2%. Another reason Abbott makes for a solid investment is that its business is so diverse. Medical device sales accounted for 38% of its total revenue in 2019, while diagnostic and nutritional products each made up about 24% of sales. Pharmaceutical sales, which totaled $4.5 billion, accounted for the smallest piece of the top line at just over 14%. Abbott also sells its products all over the world, and the U.S. market represented just 36% of its revenue this past year. With diversification through its products and geographical areas, Abbott has many opportunities to deliver more growth in the years to come. And only once during the last 10 years has its profit margin failed to top 5%. The company's also been integral in COVID-19 testing, shipping out 5.3 million of its rapid ID NOW tests throughout the country in an effort to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. 2. Coca-Cola Beverage maven Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) has some similarities with Abbott. Like the healthcare giant, Coca-Cola investors see regular increases to their dividend payments. And while Abbott's on the verge of hitting the 50-year mark for consecutive increases, Coca-Cola's already well past that threshold. On Feb. 20, the Georgia-based company raised its payouts for the 58th year in a row, from $1.60 to $1.64 annually. The stock's current dividend yield is 3.4%. And like Abbott, the company's business is diverse, with more than 500 brands around the world and its products sold in more than 200 countries. Coca-Cola's even less exposed to the U.S. than Abbott, with just 31% of its sales in 2019 coming from its home market. In nine of the past 10 years, Coca-Cola's netted an impressive profit margin of at least 15%. COVID-19 has hit the company hard, with net sales in the second quarter down 28% year over year. Many restaurants and other businesses were shut down during the quarter, affecting demand for Coca-Cola's products. However, there's little doubt the company will rebound once the economy gets back to normal. With solid fundamentals and an impressive dividend, it's little wonder that this is one of Warren Buffett's top stocks. 3. IBM International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) is another household name that long-term investors can buy and forget. The New York-based company isn't anywhere near Coca-Cola or Abbott when it comes to its dividend streak, but it did recently join the club of Dividend Aristocrats after announcing that it would be increasing its payouts for a 25th year in a row on April 28. Its quarterly cash payment of $1.63 means that investors who buy shares of the company today will be earning a yield of about 5.3% -- the highest on this list. And IBM is yet another company with a diverse mix of revenue. From cloud software to business and technology services and beyond, the company's in an excellent position to add value to businesses, especially as they move to the cloud. Its acquisition of Red Hat last year has only added to both IBM's customer base and its capabilities. In 2019, 37% of IBM's sales came from the U.S., so it too generates the bulk of its revenue from other markets. In second-quarter results July 20, sales were down 5% year over year, but total cloud revenue was up 30% and Red Hat's sales grew by 17%. And like the other companies on this list, IBM is no stranger to a a strong bottom line, recording a profit margin of at least 10% in all but one of the past 10 years. Which stock should you buy today? Here's a look at how all the stocks are doing this year compared with the S&P 500: Only Abbott's outperformed the index this year, likely because of its involvement in COVID-19 testing and the positive press surrounding that. All these stocks are good buys, but let's take a look at their respective price-to-earnings ratios to narrow down which one provides the best bang for its buck right now: Thanks to its more modest valuation, I'd go with IBM. The tech stock is still generating some good growth in certain areas of its business, and with more businesses moving toward remote work and the cloud, it looks like there will be many opportunities for even more growth ahead. It's also hard to go wrong with the highest dividend yield on this list. Advertisement Hamza Akoshe Akuyam is the Bauchi state chairman of the PDP. In this interview with ALI GALADIMA, he spoke on the defection of Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara, Edo state PDP primary and the current crisis rocking APC. The excerpt Defection of Yakubu Dogara to APC is no longer a news. In your first comment you said he has not notified the party and he was still a member of the PDP, now that he has notified the party officially. What is your reaction on that? First and foremost we thank God. It is unfortunate that such development happened. Nobody would like any of his member to exit but the reasons he forward as reasons for his defection from the party to me he wants to leave the party long ago before that so what he just brought as reasons are baseless issues. If he had problems he has to meet the Governor and sort out issues with him. Now that he had left the PDP and he knew very well that when he joined us in 2019 election he join us saying that the APC government have failed the country, APC has done this has done that, and so he has no reasons to stay there and then the only option for him was to come to PDP which to him is better off then so now he is contradicting himself. He is trying to be either a political prostitute or just a nomadic politicians who never stay in one place and the only thing is as a member and former Speaker of the House of Representative and he did say in his letter that there is nothing more Honorable than to leave our party but I challenge him that there is nothing more Honorable than to resign that position. The position he is occupying is for PDP so if he resign the position and come and re-contest election from any other party we are ready for him, but not to take our party and say is Honorable which honor do you have, you have move from PDP to APC, APC to PDP and now to APC how do you take that one political prostitute no more no less. You say you knew before he left the party. What were the sign you saw? The signs were there. He never came to any of our functions, he never engaged our local party chapters either in the ward level or LGA level. We used to invite him for a meeting but he refused to come. He did not represent us very well. Have you ever seen him in the national assembly he doesnt go there so what else do you want from him if he want to leave the party he is welcome. But not by bringing flimsy accusations. When he has a concrete reason let him bring it. If he is really honorable, as he calls himself, let him resign his position because he cliched that seat on a platter of the PDP. Would the party miss him? We dont missed what you dont have Now that he is no more in the party the PDP in Bauchi missed him? No. We will not missed him, we were on and on before he came in, the PDP was intact for three years since 2015 when he left us and joined APC we were intact waiting to take over power in 2019. But he help your party to won election? We did not visit any LGA with him except his constituency as a Speaker. As the number four citizen, he is supposed to go round to the whole LGAs. He did not and there is no activity that we did that he attended. Chairman, we know that it was his constituency that gave you victory? No, no no, please we know it was his constituency that gave our party victory we have two members House of Assembly there, and his LGA Bogoro we won, and Bauchi LGA we won we won it we won many LGA and so is a great combine effort nobody would claimed victory alone. Speaker Dogara would not claim it alone, so it is unfortunate if he is the one claiming that he brought victory. But the only way he can prove it is for him to re-contest the election under the platform of APC then we can contest together with him then the difference would be clear. PDP is now on the driver seat in Bauchi state for a little over a year. How would you score the PDP performance so far? Well, you see you dont ask somebody to score himself naturally you go and access his performance with the people out there, and there are people all over the state that can tell you whether we are good or bad or we are better than somebody so I am not the one to score myself. The APC since PDP took over the reign, has been busy with internal problems and leadership tussle in the state. Why do you thing that is the case? I have been talking about these things in my previous interviews. APC dont know anything but opposition. They are always in opposition so when they find themselves in the mantle of power they cannot perform better. Everybody in Nigeria knows that we are better off then than where we are today. How are we managing Covid 19? How are we managing our prices? And, how are we managing our security? I cannot asses APC because I have not been a member and I do not expect anything better than crisis. Governor Bala Mohammed recently went to Edo State to conduct a very successful PDP gubernatorial primary. He made it look easy. Whats your take on that? Just to tell you that PDP know much about governance how we settle issues, and how to live with our people, how to live with our brothers and sisters and that was shown in Edo. We had a very successful primary and in Sha Allah we will take Edo state. At the legislative chamber, the number appears to favor the APC. But His Excellency has managed to navigate the waters. What do you think is responsible and do you expect the number of the PDP to increase in 2023? I think we will only cross the river. We will cross the bridge when we reach there. So come 2023 In Sha Allah, we will take over but I will not like to comment on 2023 until we reach there but we are prepared for that. Chairman there are allegation from Dogara camp that there was an agreement signed between Dogara and KAURA but you people reneged or you did not fulfill your own part of the agreement and that is one of the reasons why Dogara left to APC can you confirm that? The best thing you would have done is to ask for that agreement. When he produce it to you then we can look into it. I am not aware of any agreement. He had a problem with the APC. He was number four citizen yet he cannot cliche the ticket from the then Governor. He had no option but to run to us. He would not have been where he is now that is why I am challenging him if he worth his words let him resign his position as a Honorable member as a former speaker. What are the efforts you made to settle with him and before his exit? Yes, I have been writing letters to him calling him for a meeting but he refused to come. If a child does not cry would his mama know that he has a problem? She would not know. So far his mama to know that he has a problem he has to cry which he did not do. Sir, dont you think that the departure of Dogara would hurt your party because he has a lot of supporters? We have twelve members of house of reps in Bauchi state, he is just one Are you trying to repeat a similar mistake made by then Governor Mohammed Abubakar? That is why I told you if he is worth his name, he should resign and re-contest for the seat. Let me tell you somebody who was number four citizen and then then Governor could not give him seat or party ticket, he could not use his power to take that seat. He had to run away and come to the PDP. Let him come and see what we are capable of doing. Sir, A PDP chieftain Bibi Dogo recently made a statement that Dogara benefited from the 3.6 billion car procurement. Does that mean that the allegation were true? He has his problems. When you see a dog running, he is running from somebody or somebody is pursuing him. So he has his problem with the NDDC or NEDC. That is his problem and I am not aware of that. He knows better because APC looks like a save heaven for those who have criminal background. I am not saying he has but he knows better than everybody. Sir, he further alleged that you agreed that in six months you will conduct LGA elections? Gentleman, we have never said so. But let me tell you, we planned to have our council election sometimes in August but because of the Covid 19 we had to rearrange. Now, we are having it in October, so its not an issue. He cannot comment on that because he never followed us to any local government to know whether we have say it or not maybe he heard it somewhere yes, but we are in course. What about the issue of mismanagement of LGA allocation that he included in his letter? I think you should ask the Governor. I am talking from the party standpoint. The government is in better position to answer that. Governor Bala Mohammed visited Ibrahim Babangida recently. Any comment on that? I was not part of it he was his former boss so he has a right to visit him. He is an elder statesman so if he visit him there is nothing wrong you see it is only news when a man bites a dog not when a dog bites a man. He only said that your party agreed not to maltreated traditional rulers in the state but this is what is happening? One thing I want to comment on is this, we have never maltreated any traditional ruler to my knowledge there was crisis in Misau which led to the killing of eleven people because of land that is handled by these traditional institution. A Committee has been set up to investigate and report back to government. What is your message to your members with the departure of Dogara? We will remain focus and our eyes is on the ball. I want everyone to cooperate with the government and see reasons. We are only one year old and we can beat out chest that we have achieved a lot. Anybody who knows Bauchi very well can attest to that. So I am appealing to our teaming supporters to stay resolute. If Dogara have left, he must have a reason for living us. When he came, we were happy. So when he is living, we may not be happy. But when he want to tell us something we will tell him more than what he is going to tell us. A man attempted to rob a 76-year-old woman in Lusk at knife point having raided two nearby premises within a few minutes of each other, a court has heard. Declan Turner (23) committed the offences over a ten minute period within a distance of 500 metres of each other in Lusk, Co Dublin. He was identified on CCTV and told gardai he had a drug problem. Turner, of Barrons Hall House, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to attempted robbery at Supervalu; robbery at Gino's takeaway and attempted robbery at Orylnn Park, all at Station Road, Lusk, Co Dublin on November 15, 2019. He has 33 previous convictions. Detective Garda John Delaney told Dara Hayes BL, prosecuting, that Turner approached a staff member working at a counter in Supervalu, produced a knife and demanded money. He left empty-handed after the staff member pressed a bell on the side of the counter. Turner, still armed with the knife, then went to a neighbouring premises Gino's takeaway, demanded money and left with a 20 note from the float after jumping the counter. A 76-year-old woman walking in nearby Orlynn Park saw Turner walking towards her. He said hello and she responded in kind. Turner then grabbed her arm, produced his knife and demanded money. She told Turner she had no money and he told her: 'Give me the money or I will kill you.' The woman showed him her empty hands and looked Turner in the eye. He then walked off. The elderly woman, who felt jittery and scared, rang her brother-in-law who alerted gardai. Gardai reviewed CCTV from the two business premises and identified Turner who was arrested the following day. He was initially unfit for interview but later made admissions. He told gardai he had a cocaine problem and admitted the robberies, but did not know where he got or left the knife. He said he had no recollection of robbing the elderly woman. The garda agreed with defence counsel that Turner admitted taking drink and drugs earlier that day and does not remember the events. He agreed no one was injured and that Turner expressed remorse. Defence counsel submitted Turner had been assessed in one report as having a mild learning difficulty and has had dealings with mental health services. He said he needs assistance to stay on the straight and narrow, is easily influenced and has been subjected to bullying which gets him into a lot of trouble. Judge Melanie Greally remanded Turner in continuing custody and adjourned sentencing until November 5, 2020 to allow a psychological report be prepared. Eliot Engel, the chairman of the US House Committee, has subpoenaed Secretary of State to turn over documents related to the Biden family and Ukrainian energy company Burisma by August 7. In a statement on Friday, Engel said his panel is investigating Pompeo's "apparent use of Department of State resources to advance a political smear" of former Vice President Joe Biden, also the 2020 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, reports Xinhua news agency. President had tried to push a narrative that Biden, when serving as the vice president, tried to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor to shield Burisma from an investigation in order to protect the former Vice President's son, Hunter, who served on the energy company's board. The White House's efforts to have Ukraine investigate the Bidens were at the heart of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Trump. The Democratic-led House impeached the President in December 2019, while the Senate, controlled by Republicans, acquitted him in February this year. Engel's subpoena demands all records purportedly dealing with the Bidens and Burisma that the Department of State has produced to Republican-led Senate committees, said the statement. "Secretary Pompeo has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he's not even trying to disguise it," Engel said. "I want to see the full record of what the department has sent to the Senate and I want the American people to see it too." The House Committee said it has learned that the State Department has produced 16,080 pages of allegedly responsive material to the Senate Committees since February. In a testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday, Pompeo committed to continuing to send information to Senate Republicans. Pompeo, 56, became the Trump administration's second secretary of state in April 2018 after serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. --IANS ksk/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SHARON Police apprehended a man Friday near Pittsburgh in connection with a September shooting. Christopher M. Stinson, 30, of Turtle Creek, was charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, prohibited possession of a firearm and reckless endangerment in a shooting at 5 p.m. Sept. 28 in the 500 block of Baird Way, police said. Stinson was caught Friday morning in Turtle Creek, with the help of the U.S. Marshals Office, police said. According to a criminal complaint, police were alerted to the shooting at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 28 by a Baird Way resident, who said he was working in his back yard when a neighbor he knew as Chris was involved in a fight. The resident told police that he heard what he thought was a firecracker. But he later checked a video surveillance system on his property and said he saw Chris shooting another man. The resident gave the video to police. Police said the video showed the victim, a 26-year-old Sharon man, walking east on Baird Way toward a driveway, where Stinson confronted him. The video indicated that the two men spoke, and Stinson hit the victim in the head before shooting him in the leg. The mans injures were not life-threatening, Sharon police said. At least five other people were nearby when the shooting took place, resulting in the multiple reckless endangerment charges. Police later found a 9 mm shell casing on Baird Way near what police said was the scene of the shooting. Shortly after the shooting, a woman identified as Chris girlfriend left with a bag in a gray Toyota Camry, according to the criminal complaint. Using the vehicle registration, Facebook and the Pennsylvania Justice Network, police were able to identify Chris as Stinson. Police then spoke with the victim, who identified Stinson as the shooter out of an eight-person photo lineup. The victim confirmed that he knew Stinson as Chris. District Judge Dennis M. Songer arraigned Stinson Friday. He was taken to Mercer County Jail after failing to post a $500,000 bond. A preliminary hearing was set for Aug. 18. Lincoln's mandate is not being challenged, Lopez said, because the city-county health department predates the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, offering an exemption of sorts from state control. The local average weekly case count a key factor in the risk dial's placement has shown signs of leveling off since the mandate began July 20, Lopez said, and positive test rates may have begun to trend downward again. Testing capacity and availability remain high, Lopez said, as more than 5,000 residents were tested this week, bringing the county's total to 44,000 tests. Unlike many locations in the country," she said, "testing capacity and availability is not an issue here. Lopez said the department would like to see a faster turnaround on results from testing laboratories, which would allow local health officials to begin contact tracing sooner on positive cases, but that is out of the department's control. Once it receives the information, she said, the department has adequate staff and resources to meet the demand for contact tracing in the community. Hospital capacity remains healthy locally, Lopez said, with nearly 50% of ICU beds and 90% of ventilators still available. has become the country with the third most COVID-19 deaths in the world, behind the United States and Brazil. Mexican health officials said Friday there were 688 deaths for the latest 24-hour reporting period, pushing the country's total to 46,688. That put just ahead of the United Kingdom, which has 46,119, according to the tally by Johns Hopkins University. Mexico's population is double that of Britain. The health officials also said now has had more than 424,000 confirmed cases during the pandemic. Also on Friday, nine state governors from opposition parties criticized what they call the federal government's confusing messages on measures to curb the spread of the (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Melburnian has been slapped with a $1,652 fine after driving 300km across coronavirus-infected Victoria just to get a Big Mac. Police Minister Lisa Neville labelled the McDonald's run as 'appalling' after announcing 168 fines were given out within the last 24 hours for breaching strict public health orders. The resident had travelled from locked down Melbourne to Wodonga, which is near the NSW border on Friday, claiming they wanted to pick up their favourite snack. Along with the Big Mac lover, other Victorians were caught travelling long distances for 'fresh air' and even groceries. 'We are still continuing to see appalling behaviour. I know Victorians themselves are fed up with, I am fed up with it, Victoria Police are fed up with it,' Ms Neville said on Saturday. A Victorian was fined after travelling 300km to get a Big Mac (pictured, stock image of a Big Mac) 'Can I be really clear, just in case there is any doubt at all, that there is absolutely no reason or need to drive from Melbourne to Wodonga to have a Big Mac. That is one of the fines that was issued yesterday. The resident claimed they were just wanting to pick up their favourite snack before being fined $1,652 'There is absolutely no reason or need to drive from Melbourne to Ballarat for fresh air. There is absolutely no reason to drive from Werribee out to Springvale to buy groceries. 'Why would people think that is OK? They don't care, it can't be because people aren't aware of the rules.' On Saturday, Victoria announced another 397 coronavirus cases and three more deaths, amid fears the lockdown isn't being adhered to. Melbourne and Mitchell Shire was plunged back into lockdown on July 8, meaning residents can only leave their homes for essential reasons - and cannot leave their local areas. Breaching the rules will cop residents a $1,652 fine. Ms Neville thanked the 'majority' of Victorians who were doing the right thing but said many were still ignoring the rules. One group of friends were fined after throwing a party while renting out an Airbnb in West Melbourne. Police Minister Lisa Neville (pictured on Saturday) labelled the McDonald's run as 'appalling' after announcing 168 fines were given out within the last 24 hours for breaching strict public health orders The ten revellers were all caught in the apartment while two tried to hide in the bedroom. One man was busted travelling 40 minutes from Thornbury to Werribee for a haircut, while others were caught driving to brothels. Police stormed another party with five Victorians in an apartment in Melbourne's CBD as several tried to hide in the closet. Meanwhile a man was arrested at a NSW-Victoria border checkpoint after allegedly providing false information to police and then punching an officer in the face. The man and two women in their 20s were on Saturday morning in a car seeking to cross into NSW at Corowa when they were pulled over by police and defence personnel. Police say the two women presented valid permits and identification but the man, sitting in the back seat, did not follow suit. Police issued 168 fines to Victorians breaching public health orders within the last 24 hours (pictured ADF member tests patient for COVID-19 at testing site) Subsequent checks found the man was wanted on seven outstanding warrants including one revoking his parole. The 21-year-old man then allegedly attempted to flee the vehicle and punched a senior constable in the face, causing bruises. He was arrested by other officers and defence personnel and taken to Corowa Hospital due to suspected drug ingestion, with authorities seizing drug paraphernalia from the car. The man remains in hospital and is yet to be charged. A company located in the industrial area of Punes districts Chakan has confirmed at least 76 Covid positive cases among its workers and the number could go even further, according to a health official quoted by a news agency on Saturday. The development was reported on a day when the number of active coronavirus patients in Pune district rose to reach 46,345. The high prevalence of disease in a single company premises could be revealed only because the company decided to test around 900 of its employees two days ago. So far it has received results of around 750 samples and at least 76 employees have been found to have contracted the infection, Dr Baliram Gadave, Tehsil health officer of Khed was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. Also Read: Maharashtra adds 9,601 Covid-19 cases in day; tally at 4,31,719 Gadave said he visited the company on Saturday and gave them necessary instructions on containment of the disease. It is not immediately clear if the administration has taken steps for contact tracing of affected employees and how many of the firms remaining employees may have to undergo isolation to prevent further spread of the disease. As a precautionary measure, the district administration has asked the firms in the Chakan MIDC (Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation) area not to allow the employees who live in containment zones to report for work at present. Also Read: PMC brings down containment zones in city to 75 The official quoted above said all firms in the area have been directed to check pulse oxygen saturation of every employee visiting the company premises. They have also been instructed to mandatorily test staff whose oxygen level is below 95 per cent. The total count of coronavirus patients in Maharashtra reached 4,31,719 on Saturday with 9,601 new Covid-19 cases and 322 new incidents of deaths reported over the past 24 hour period, according to the daily health bulletin released by the state government. Maharashtra continues to be the worst-affected state by the pandemic with 20,749 active cases in Mumbai and 46,345 in Pune. Protesters in New Orleans stood outside of courthouses this week to block landlords from entering and filing evictions. Associated Press Protesters in New Orleans stood outside of a courthouse this week to block landlords from entering and filing evictions. Louisiana's eviction moratorium was lifted on June 15, but a federal moratorium didn't end until Saturday. One courthouse in the city has already seen 343 evictions, which was in the range of normal pre-pandemic, according to Nola.com. The protests disrupted some court hearings, but there were no arrests, officials told Nola.com. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. Men and women stood chained together outside of a New Orleans courthouse to block landlords and attorneys from being able to enter to file evictions, Nola.com first reported. The protestors banged pots and pans and stopped people from entering City Hall and the building that houses the First City and Orleans Parish Civil District courts, according to Nola.com. The move came several days after a federal moratorium on evictions was lifted last week. The state of Louisiana's moratorium ended on June 15, but the nationwide ban protected people who lived in federally-backed properties, which are about half the renters in New Orleans, according to Nola.com. Michael Isaac Stein (@misaacstein) July 30, 2020 The ending of moratoriums across the country will likely lead to a spike in homelessness due to pandemic-related job losses and the related economic crisis. Making rent during these times is impossible for some. Emily Benfer, one of the creators of Princeton University's Eviction Lab, told Reuters that a whopping 28 million Americans could lose their homes in the coming months as these bans expire. For context, about 10 million people were evicted following the 2008 financial crisis. Story continues As of Thursday afternoon, 343 evictions had been filed in New Orleans' First City Court since the end of the state ban. That's a number that is about normal for pre-pandemic times, Nola.com reported. Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse, using furniture to block the doors. Some climbed on the roof. The protest disrupted some court hearings, including evictions, but didn't result in arrests, officials told the local outlet. Read the original article on Insider In the wake of COVID-19, how this person watches your child might look a little different from before. For example, if your child is fairly independent 3 1/2 or older and is able to communicate needs verbally and go to the bathroom and isnt at high risk of dangerous behaviors, having a neighbor watch him or her in the backyard over the fence or on FaceTime with the ability to call you quickly for anything important is one option. Otherwise, a lot of families right now are pairing up with other families and quarantining together, Peters said. (This is referred to as a quarantine pod, and people across the country are doing it.) The Gioi Di Dong (Mobile World) has seen its key brands such as The Gioi Di Dong, Dien May Xanh and Bach Hoa Xanh growing rapidly, but has also had to shut down ineffective business chains. After 10 months of operation, Mobile World (MWG) recently shut down the Dien Thoai Sieu Re chain specializing in low-cost mobile phone products. Prior to that, in September 2019, MWG opened 10 supermarkets of Dien Thoai Sieu Re chain (dienthoaiSIEURE.com) in Go Vap district in HCM City. Unlike The Gioi Di Dong, Dien Thoai Sieu Re was positioned as the distributor of phone models with prices 10 percent lower than products sold at thegioididong.com, and models priced at below VND8 million. Dien Thoai Sieu Re does not provide 5-star services that The Gioi Di Dong provides, such as allowing customers to experience products before buying and exchanging products if the products have errors. With Dien Thoai Sieu Re chain, there is only one consultancy officer in each shop, and there is no wi-fi service and no customer reception staff. Customers have to bring their products to the manufacturers maintenance centers themselves. The Gioi Di Dong (Mobile World) has seen its key brands such as The Gioi Di Dong, Dien May Xanh and Bach Hoa Xanh growing rapidly, but has also had to shut down ineffective business chains. As the new business model failed, it was shut down by the owner on June 29. Doan Van Hieu Em, CEO of MWG and Dien May Xanh, admitted that Dien Thoai Sieu Re did not bring the expected results, but it helped the company develop more effective new models. Em said Dien Thoai Sieu Re and its other retail chains, such as watch and glasses retail, Dien May Xanh 4.0 model and laptop centers, are all trials by MWG. If they bring encouraging results, they will be multiplied. Prior to that, MWG had to shut down some business models it found ineffective to gather strength on models with more potential. Vuivui.com, an e-commerce website, was shut down in 2018, just two years after opening, though MWGs managers hoped that its growth rate would surpass Thegioididong.com after 4-5 years. Vuivui.com was a B2C e-commerce website. MWGs prospectus showed that Vuivui.com brought VND75 billion in revenue, not a large contribution to the holding company. Before the official closing, Vui Vui stopped distributing many types of products, while focusing on selling fast-moving consumer goods. It finally was merged with the online sale channel of Bach Hoa Xanh. Analysts say that MWG then made a wise move. Bach Hoa Xanh has been developing very strongly, while many other e-commerce sites such as Robins.vn, Adayroi and Lotte.vn have had to shut down. MWG also tried to jump into the drug distribution market by acquiring 49 percent of shares of Phuc An Khang drug store chain. However, the investment did not bring the desired effects. Kim Chi Mobile World asks for a 50 per cent discount in rental costs Mobile World JSC is asking for a 50 per cent discount on its store rental costs across the country for 12 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala Chamber of Commerce and Industry has urged the government to adopt a more practical approach while declaring containment zones. Declaring a large area as a containment zone creates difficulties to trade establishments, workers and the public. A more practical approach should be taken by reducing the size of such zones, its chairman Biju Ramesh said in a petition submitted to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Biju said the workers in trade and businesses are denied of salary for the past four months. Many owners are in deep trouble owing to mounting debt liabilities. If this situation continues, deaths due to mental stress will occur, much more than Covid deaths, he said. At present, a local body ward is declared as a containment zone if one person is found to have infected. If the border of the ward is a road, shops on one side will not be allowed to function while those on the other side can be opened. This is a kind of discrimination, he said. The guidelines for declaring containment zones should be revised to help traders, workers and the public, he added. Michaela Chambers, great-niece of Sen. Ernie Chambers, said that last Saturday, she was arrested and taken to a jail cell where she sat with a transient woman, who was there because of a domestic abuse charge. "That was my gift for peacefully demonstrating that black lives matter," she said. While she is a supporter of the bill, she said it was a "slap in the face" to those who were arrested, and not enough. "I believe that this is the tip of the iceberg and I believe that you, as our elected officials, can do and should do more for us to protect us as your citizens, to allow us to have our right to freedom of speech and for that right to not be taken away by the brutality and the aggression shown by sworn officers who made an oath to protect us as citizens." Bianca Swift, a university student and a member of the recently created policy committee of Lincoln's Malone Center, said she agreed that while the bill is not enough, it is most certainly a step in the right direction. "You must reside in Ward 3, and have been a resident in Ward 3 for at least a year," said borough Manager Christine Hart. At least six miners were killed while three others trapped after an explosion inside a coal mine on Friday (local time) in Colombia. The authorities have begun an investigation to establish the causes of the incident, reported Xinhua. Efforts are underway to rescue the trapped workers. Angelmiro Berbesi, director of the Risk Management Office in the municipality of El Zulia, was quoted as saying that the explosion apparently occurred due to the accumulation of gases inside the mine. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON By Online Desk More than 200 children have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an overnight camp in Georgia, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday. "On June 23, a teenage staff member left camp A after developing chills the previous evening. The staff member was tested and reported a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2 the following day (June 24)," the CDC wrote in a release. Following this, officials sent campers home the very next day but the camp wasn't shut down till three days later on June 27. In all, the camp had 597 attendees and 31 cabins which hosted up to 26 people per cabin. It was reported that 260 people including children tested positive for the infection after the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) on June 25, recommended that all attendees be tested. ALSO READ: Anthony Fauci optimistic COVID-19 vaccine will be widely available The camp that ran from June 21 to 27 had followed measures released in 'Georgia's Executive Order' signed by Governor Brian Kemp to conduct an overnight camp -- that only those with a "negative COVID-19 test within twelve days up from seven days prior to starting the camp," would be able to attend. Attendees included children (6-10 years), teenagers (13-17 years), and adults (18-21) of whom the most affected by the virus were children, according to the CDC report. Of the people who tested positive for the virus, "51% were among those aged 6-10 years," the CDC said. In India, as Unlock 3 is happening in full swing in different parts of the country, the increased rates of transmission among children in a group setting seem to throw light on whether it is safe to open schools just yet. Although all measures suggested by the CDC for youth and summer camps to minimize the risk for virus transmission were taken, campers were not required to wear cloth masks or open windows or doors for increased ventilation in the buildings. The CDC stressed that the event shows that "persons in all age groups" were susceptible to the infection despite efforts by officials to "implement most recommended strategies to prevent transmission." An important finding from the investigation was that of the role of children who test positive for COVID-19, which, "contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission." t also found that children in a "group setting" engaging in regular "singing and cheering likely contributed to transmission" and that the multiple measures adopted by the camp were not enough to "prevent an outbreak in the context of substantial community transmission." A Fiat Chrysler Automobiles sign is seen at the U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, By Giulio Piovaccari and Stephen Jewkes MILAN (Reuters) - A small profit in North America helped Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) to limit losses from the COVID-19 crisis in its second quarter, and the automaker forecast a "much, much better second half" ahead of its planned 2021 merger with France's PSA Group. The Italian-American maker of Fiats, Alfa Romeos, Jeeps and Rams said on Friday it slashed advertising costs and saw net prices rise in its key North American market, where it focused on retail sales over lower-margin fleet business. It also cut capital expenditure across the group, and expects to reduce the total for the full year by 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) to 8-8.5 billion euros. FCA posted an adjusted loss before interest and tax of 928 million euros for April-June, versus a forecast 1.87 billion euro loss in an analyst poll compiled by Reuters. Earlier in the week, Ford Motor reported a second-quarter operating loss of $1.9 billion. General Motors had an operating loss of $1.2 billion. In North America, FCA made adjusted earnings before interest and tax of 39 million euros. CEO Mike Manley said production in North America was back to pre-pandemic levels, apart from plants in Warren, Michigan and Toluca, Mexico, which are being retooled for new products. "We expect a much, much better second half," he told investors on a conference call. Milan-listed FCA shares were up 1.5% at 1310 GMT, having been little changed before the results. Manley said the group planned to launch a series of new Jeep models next year, including a new Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer, and a redesigned Grand Cherokee. Asked about electric pickup trucks coming from its competitors, Manley said FCA was "very committed" to electrifying its vehicles, adding: "Pickup trucks is a key franchise for us. We're not going to sit on the sidelines." FCA, which is set to tie-up with Peugeot maker PSA to create Stellantis, the world's fourth largest carmaker, said an ongoing probe by European Commission competition authorities was not expected to delay the merger timetable. Despite the pandemic, PSA earlier this week delivered a profit in the first half of the year. Story continues FCA said its industrial free cash flow was minus 4.9 billion euros in the second quarter, with a slightly lower cash burn versus January-March. It finished the quarter with liquidity of 17.5 billion euros. That does not include 4.5 billion euros still available on its loan facility. Ford had liquidity of $40 billion, and GM $31 billion. (Additional reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit; editing by Francesca Landini and Mark Potter) WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - Abraham Weintraub, a right-wing former Brazilian education minister, has been elected as an executive director of the World Bank, according to a statement by the Bank, whose staff had raised concerns about Weintraub's past racial comments. Weintraub is expected to fill a vacant position on the board in the first week of August and will serve until the current term ends on Oct. 31, when the position will re-open for election, the Bank said in the statement https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2020/07/31/updated-world-bank-statement-on-the-executive-director-for-brazil?cid=EXT_WBEmailShare_EXT on its website. It said Weintraub was elected by the constituency representing Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, the Philippines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, but gave no details on the vote tally. Brazil has a majority of the voting power in the group of nine countries. The previous executive director resigned in December. The association representing staff at the World Bank last month asked that Brazil's nomination of Weintraub to be executive director be reviewed over comments on Twitter in which Weintraub mocked Chinese accents, blamed China for COVID-19, and accused China of seeking to dominate the world. Weintraub resigned as education minister in June and said he was joining the World Bank, after he became the target of a Supreme Court probe for calling its judges "bums" who should be jailed. Brazil's federal audit court is now investigating whether he inappropriately used a diplomatic passport to travel to the United States, skirting quarantine rules. World Bank employees in June urged the bank's ethics committee to suspend Weintraub's nomination while reviewing whether his statements were in line with a 28-page code of conduct for directors, which expressly requires respect for diversity. In response to the staff's letter, the chair of the board's ethics committee, Guenther Schoenleitner, had said the World Bank had no influence over the appointment of executive directors, but would not tolerate racist remarks by anyone serving at the institution. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Michael Perry) Student The Ogun State government has given new directive to all secondary school teachers in the state to resume on Monday, August 3 ahead of the West African Senior Secondary Schools Examination (WASSCE) scheduled for August 17. The Special Adviser to the Governor on Primary and Secondary Education, Mrs Ronke Soyombo, gave this directive in Abeokuta on Friday. Soyombo quoted Gov. Dapo Abiodun as saying that the aim was to enable the teachers to work with their principals in preparation for students resumption on August 4. Abiodun said the directive was for teachers in public and private schools to enable them to assist in the distribution of materials provided by the state government for the examinations. He said all guidelines stipulated by the government for the students resumption were to be followed strictly by all school administrators. He enjoined all stakeholders to cooperate with the state government to ensure a safe return to schools. The Ogun state government wishes to inform the general public that all Senior Secondary School Three students both in public and private schools will resume school on August 4 in readiness for intensive revision classes ahead of their WASSCE. The revision exercise is being put in place to cover the academic gaps and lapses for students that could not follow the virtual classes tagged Ogundigiclass put in place by the state government while they were at home. The concerned students are to resume their individual schools on Tuesday, August 4, he said. DAILY POST recalls that this is coming after the Federal Government had approved the reopening of secondary schools across the country. With the rise in what some call "techno-nationalism" in the United States, Chinese companies are facing national security accusations by the US on a broad frontfrom telecom giant Huawei to popular video app TikTok. However, three of the four CEOs of major US tech companies that testified on Capitol Hill this past week said they had no knowledge of technology theft by China at their businesses. Their responses contrast with the relentless hunt by the US administration for culprits among Chinese tech companies. The four CEOsTim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Google's parent Alphabet, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebookwere asked on Wednesday at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing investigating the practices of major US technology companies whether they believed the Chinese government was stealing intellectual property from US companies. "I know of no case of ours where it occurred," Cook replied to the question posed by Representative Greg Steube, a Florida Republican."I can only speak to firsthand knowledge." During Cook's opening statement, he called iPhone maker Apple "a uniquely American company". But he also praised Shenzhen-based Huawei, which the US has worked to portray as a national security threat and has coaxed some of its allies to shun the company's gear, as a leader in 5G mobile technology. "We also know that customers have a lot of choices and that our products face fierce competition,"Cook said."Companies like Samsung, LG, Huawei and Google have built successful businesses with different approaches. We're OK with that. Our goal is the best, not the most." Pichar said: "I have no firsthand knowledge of any information stolen from Google", which runs the world's most widely used search engine. Bezos, the world's richest person who runs an omnipresent e-commerce company, mulled the question out loud before answering that it was something "I've read reports of, but don't have personal experience." Zuckerberg said the allegations of technology theft were "well documented", but didn't provide any specific examples. He said the fastest-growing app in the world is TikTok, a social media video platform owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. "History shows that if we don't keep innovating, someone will replace every company here today....If you look at where the top technology companies come from, a decade ago, the vast majority were American. Today, almost half are Chinese." Zuckerberg's testimony seemed at odds with his previously expressed ardor for China. In October 2014, he held a 30-minute question-and-answer session entirely in Mandarin at Tsinghua University in Beijing, when he had joined the school's advisory board. "I'm very glad to be in Beijing," he said to the audience that day. "I love this city. My Chinese is really a mess, but I study using Chinese every day." At a Canada-China Economic Forum on Monday, Paul Evans, a professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, said the ban on Huawei's 5G technology is just "the tip of a very large iceberg in the chilly waters of techno-nationalism". Xu Liping, a senior fellow at the National Institute of International Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US administration has been painstakingly looking for evidence to support its false claim that China has stolen their high-tech technology. But the answers from these tech firm leaders made its lies fall apart, Xu said. "Some US politicians, who speculate that China has stolen their technology, underestimate Chinese people's wisdom and technological innovation," he said. He said that with globalization, the science and technology gap between countries has been narrowed in the past few decades. But some US politicians think China's technology level remains at what it was three to four decades ago, an attitude that he said goes against common sense. "Politicizing high-tech development will hurt both sides, and the rational thing for the US to do is to boost technological exchanges with China rather than find faults with China and Chinese companies," he said. "What the US did to Huawei will also affect its own technological development." He said that high-tech development requires high investment as well as a consumer market for the products. Thus, a Chinese market that uses US technological products will further help the US boost its high-tech research and development."That is a virtuous cycle," he said. Alexander Capri, a researcher at the Hinrich Foundation, said with the "techno-nationalism" in the US, foundational and emerging technologies and all forms of tech collaborationsuch as cross-border research and development and exchanges between academicsare now falling under an extensive export-control umbrella. These trends are leading to a technology cold war between the US and China, he said. "We see the US getting TSMC(Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) to pledge to build a plant in the US and now there's a huge amount of funding that's going to come out to relocate semiconductor manufacturing to the United States, so this is all part of this decoupling process," he said. David Kappos, a former undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, said:"Threats aren't going to go very far with China anymore. They've got a huge economy and they can rival us in that regard. Logic, and fact and data are going to go a long way. "There will be competition, there will be tension and challenges, and interests that are not always aligned, but there's also a lot to be gained from cooperation." Rena Li in Toronto, Lia Zhu in San Francisco contributed to this story. PORTAGE, MI -- Portage Public Schools leaders expect to give parents choices for fall learning that range from all at-home virtual instruction to a mostly in-school option. Administrators released the plan late Friday, July 31. It comes after teacher union presidents from eight Kalamazoo-area schools sent letters to school boards, asking for remote learning only to begin the school year. The decision to return to face-to-face instruction is a looming disaster with deadly consequences, the unions wrote in the letter. The Portage school districts plan is a hybrid model scheduled to run at least through Sept. 30. The different options vary depending on grade level. Summaries of each, as stated by school administrators, were stated as follows in the release from the school district: Families with students in Young 5s - 5th grade have two choices: Face-to-face learning Monday through Thursday with virtual learning on Friday. Students are in the school building with a PPS (Portage Public Schools) teacher Monday through Thursday. PPS virtual learning taught by a PPS teacher Monday through Friday connecting to their face-to-face courses and using PPS curriculum. Families with students in 6th grade - 12th grade have two choices: PPS virtual learning taught by PPS teachers Monday through Friday. Students also have the choice to be in the school building while participating in virtual instruction Monday through Thursday. This allows for academic and social-emotional needs to be met while supporting family choice. Alternate third choice for all families in Young 5s - 12th grades: KRESA Virtual & Innovative Collaborative (KVIC) countywide virtual curriculum taught by a Kalamazoo County teacher Monday through Friday, plus mentoring by a PPS staff member. District leaders say they conducted a parent survey and received 5,000 responses. They said it was clear parents had three priorities -- health and safety, academic rigor and social-emotional well-being. We feel these plans honor those priorities, while giving families the flexibility they need to plan for their unique family situation. Portage Schools Superintendent Mark Bielang said in a written statement. School leaders say they will continually evaluate the programs, with hopes of getting back to all in-school learning as soon as allowed. Districts across the state are considering back-to-school plans after having to close buildings in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Muskegon and Grand Rapids schools are considering a fully virtual return to school this fall. According to a more detailed description of the Portage Schools plan, all students participating in the in-school option must wear masks except when eating and during mask breaks. Staff will be trained to spot COVID-19 symptoms, there will be no gatherings of multiple classes, schools will have a quarantine space, social distancing will be followed where possible, and handwashing will be scheduled throughout the day, along with many other protocols. More information about the Portage Public Schools return to learn plan can be found on the districts website. More from MLive: Catholic schools in Kalamazoo plan return to in-person learning in August Kalamazoo schools cant open safely, must be remote, teachers union says Kalamazoo schools to offer choices this fall, including fully virtual option Comcast will extend service along two roads in Axton and Horsepasture under the terms of its 10-year cable franchise agreement with Henry County, which the Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday. The agreement gives Comcast a year from signing to complete construction along roughly half a mile of J.S. Holland Road and 1.8 miles of Sandy River Road in the Iriswood district, board documents show. Comcast has also agreed to expand its network when neighborhood density reaches 20 homes per linear mile, instead of the past minimum of 30. Still, county officials noted, this leaves many rural pockets of the county where high-speed internet service is not available. While the franchise agreement only governs Comcasts television and video services not internet it launched an in-depth discussion about efforts to bridge the gap. Iriswood District Supervisor David Martin said the issue of rural broadband access has become even more urgent now that Henry County Schools plans to start the school year virtually on Aug. 10. Its kind of timely that were doing it now, Martin said of the franchise agreement, which supervisors first considered in February and then tabled to allow more time for consideration. Our school system is going to a virtual delivery system, and we have a county where the internet access is not what it should be because people are living in rural areas. During Tuesdays meeting, he pressed Comcast government affairs representative Nathan Daugherty to meet with schools Superintendent Sandy Strayer to discuss additional ways the company could help county students connect to the internet. Even with the service expansion, that doesnt chip away at the number of students who still do not have internet service to receive instruction in the coming year, Martin said. Henry County Schools has been working on different options to help students learn remotely. The district is providing all students from preschool to 12th grade with iPads or other devices to use at home, and most school parking lots are now equipped with free wifi for families to use from their vehicles. For students with no internet at home, the county is using federal CARES Act relief funds to order hundreds of mifi devices, which tap into cell networks to create a mobile wireless hot spot. However, they dont work in areas with no cell service. Comcast currently provides courtesy service at no charge in 31 government-related locations in the county, including public school buildings, the sheriffs office and jail, libraries, rescue squads, and fire departments, board documents show. Daugherty added that because of the COVID-19 crisis, Comcast is offering its $9.95 Internet Essentials package at no cost for two months to new customers who meet income requirements and sign up by December. The service offers a speed of 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload. Also, he told the board, Xfinity has opened up 1.5 million public wifi hotspots to everyone at no cost. People can search for local hotspots at www.xfinity.com/wifi. Martin asked, Is there anything else Comcast can do to help us? What has to happen for you to extend those hot spots into areas of the county where there is no cell service? Daugherty said he could not commit to specific outcomes before having a conversation with county officials, but he would be happy to meet with Strayer to discuss the options. Service center closure When the Board of Supervisors had a public hearing about the Comcast agreement in February, most of the discussion and opposition centered on the companys plans to close its only customer service center in Martinsville to the public. Comcast cited declining foot traffic in its decision and has been promoting online options for customers to conduct business instead. However, COVID-19 seems to have made this a moot point. The location on Commonwealth Blvd. has been closed since mid-March because of the pandemic. In their negotiations with Comcast, county officials have said they asked about replacing the payment window with an Xfinity retail store, similar to the one in Danville, but were told that was not in their business plan. Even so, County Attorney George Lyle told the board Tuesday afternoon, Its still probably a better agreement than if we went to court and disputed it. The new franchise agreement replaces an outdated one that expired many, many years ago, Lyle said. It will be in effect for 10 years and automatically renew for another five unless either party makes a written request to re-negotiate before the seven-year mark. Broadening broadband One challenge to rural broadband expansion is identifying the scope of the problem. Its difficult to get an accurate number of households that lack internet access because of flaws in the federal data, advocates say. Broadband maps from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tend to give a misleading and exaggerated picture of coverage in rural areas, according to a report from Commonwealth Connect, Gov. Ralph Northams plan to expand broadband access to rural and underserved areas of Virginia. The FCC relies on internet service providers to self-report the data used to construct the maps. This is problematic because private-sector providers are reluctant to offer what they consider proprietary data, the report states. Also, if a provider offers service to at least one household in a census block, the FCC counts the entire block as covered. This means the FCCs most recent estimate that 21.3 million Americans, or 6.5% of the population, lack access to broadband internet does not give the full picture. A tech organization called BroadbandNow tested the federal number by manually checking internet availability for addresses within covered areas and found numerous gaps in service. Instead, they estimate the true number is closer to 42 million people. What does that mean for Henry Countys numbers? A map from Purdue Universitys Center for Rural Development shows as much as 38% of Martinsville and Henry Countys population lacks home internet access and relies on cellular data only. Another model focused on school-aged children estimates there are 2,500 students in Henry County and 676 in Martinsville with no internet at home. Thats according to Digital Bridge K-12, a national nonprofit initiative to connect public schools with high-speed internet. Deputy County Administrator Dale Wagoner said Henry County has excellent broadband service for its industrial parks and commercial centers through Mid-Atlantic Broadband. Where we have gaps are primarily on the residential end, he said. Even in areas of the county that are already connected to cable, that doesnt mean individual houses have access. For example, Wagoner said, Eggleston Falls Road has Comcast service all the way to the end of that road, but we have houses and residents who cant get Comcast because they built their house 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile off the road. It makes it really difficult for the service provider to justify the expense to run cable to that one house. In the franchise agreement, Comcasts standard installation rate for new service covers locations within 125 feet of the public right-of-way. That means houses farther back from the road must foot the bill to extend the line. The rural broadband problem comes down to population density in sparsely populated areas, there arent enough potential customers for companies to justify the cost of spending tens of thousands of dollars building out broadband infrastructure. Thats why many localities in Virginia, including Henry County, are looking at grant funds to fill those gaps. Wagoner said county officials have been in conversation with the state and other potential funders to expand broadband in the area. The next step will be to seek grant funds from sources like The Harvest Foundation and Appalachian Regional Commission to commission a study to diagnose the scope of the problem. Once we get that study, then well be able to work with [internet] providers directly and issue an RFP to get services into those communities, he said. The good and bad news, Wagoner said, is that from a rural standpoint, we are doing comparatively well, with internet access that is leaps and bounds ahead of our neighbors. So, while there is still need in Henry County, funders have told Wagoner that they would be in back of the line. Thats not going to stop the county from pursuing grant funding, he told the board. Our shot is low, but were going to go after it. Kim Barto Meeks is a reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. She can be reached at 276-638-8801. Kim Barto Meeks is a reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. She can be reached at 276-638-8801. 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. A Deputy Spokesperson of the opposition National Democratic Congress Election 2020 campaign Team Madam Margaret Ansei also known as Magoo has said Ghanaians will punish President Akufo-Addo for deceiving the Ghanaians during the election 2016. Speaking on Adom TV on Friday, 31st July, 2020, she explained that president Akufo-Addo found his way to power through lies, deceipt and unrealistic promises. She opined that one would have thought that after winning the 2020 elections, he would have redeemed his image by fulfilling the promises bombarded the electorates during his opposition days but has executed very little. Madam Margaret Ansei maintained that president Akufo-Addo has not only failed Ghanaians but demonstrated that he is so far the most dishonest politician in the history of Ghana. ''Go through NPP's manifesto and you will realize that they didn't deliver majority of the things they promised Ghanaians. Anytime you ask NPP what they have done for Ghanaians, they mention free SHS meanwhile it has been implemented haphazardly without proper measures for the quality of it," she intimated. She urged Ghanaians to vote for former President John Dramani Mahama giving reasons that aside the progressive free SHS he introduced, he also improved other sectors that warrants him to take back power to continue for proper development of the country. Read what is in the news today. Society Twelve more people have tested positive for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the central city of Da Nang, including a two-year-old boy, sending the national tally to 558 infections. Vietnams Ministry of Health is tracking down passengers on two flights QH0159 and BL671 from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City on July 24 and 25, respectively, after some passengers on the flights have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Border guards in Vietnam caught 2,400 illegal border jumpers in July, Major General Le Van Phuc, deputy commander of the Vietnam Border Guard Command, said at a meeting of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on Friday. A court in the southern province of Tay Ninh on Friday sentenced a 27-year-old Cambodian woman to death for illegal transporting five kilograms of narcotics from Cambodia to Vietnam. Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup has donated 100 ventilators to an under-construction field hospital for COVID-19 patients in Da Nang. A tropical depression that formed in the East Vietnam Sea on Friday is likely to pick up strength and become a storm in the next 24 hours, according to the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting. Hanoi has ordered all bars, karaoke venues and roadside stalls to close and banned large gatherings from 0:00 Saturday, August 1. Lifestyle The Hue Festival 2020 in the north-central province of Thue Thien-Hue has been officially postponed until 2021 due to recent developments of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. An exhibition featuring photos of Vietnams 12 island districts was launched on Nguyen Hue Pedestrian Street in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City on Friday. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! In Landimala village under Ghosharamala GP of Maoist-affected Naktideula block of Sambalpur district, Laxmidhar Roul, a class 10 student of nearby high school climbs a 150 feet under-construction water tank every morning so that he can access the online classes run by his school. Like him, Ramachal Swain, a std 9 student of another high school too climbs the water tank while jostling for space. The BSNL tower in our village is useless for joining the online class. If I climb the water tank, then I manage to get a faint network of Airtel 4G tower 12 km from our village. Sometime I also climb the Mahul tree to catch the airtel network from the tree, said Roul. Hundreds of miles away in Koraput district, children in Pottangi block climb trees everyday too catch mobile signal. In Maliput Rajiv Gandhi High School of the block, children routinely climb trees and hills to catch mobile signal so that they can join the whatsapp classes started by the government. In Maoist-affected Daringibadi block of Kandhamal district, children most often come out of their homes to access the online education as mobile connectivity is erratic most of the days. Months after the Odisha government started online classes for about 70 lakh school students due to Covid-induced lockdown and shutdowns across the state, students in the districts like Sambalpur, Koraput and Kandhamal are trying everything to catch that elusive mobile network. In Landimala village, the BSNL tower can support not mroe than 30 mobile phones at a time. To get 4G signal of Airtel, children climb the water tank as well as trees, said Mahesh Swain, a villager of Landimala. While students in some districts like Khurda, Cuttack, Balasore and Bhadrak have somwhow managed to join the online classes, those in other districts have found it a huge task. Our school has 100 students and only 41 have phones and few of them are Android. Even teaching those who have Android phones is not easy due to lack of mobile signal, said Akshay Kumar Nayak, headmaster of Maliput Rajiv Gandhi High School in Pottangi block of Koraput. Of the 14 high schools in the block, schools in Ambabali, Kusuma, Digaguru, Nuagaon, Pukali and Chandka dont have any mobile network. The National Sample Survey on Household social consumption: Education done between July 2017 and June 2018 found that .on education, 24% of Indian households had an Internet facility while only 10 per cent in Odisha had access to Internet. For tural households in Odisha, it was starker - only 5 per cent had access to Internet. Anil Pradhan, a Right to Education activist said the online education in a state like Odisha is a luxury for most of the students. Not more than 20 per cent of the students would have access to smartphone. Even if they had a smartphone, it would have been with the parents. Then there are mobile connectivity issues and frequent power cuts. The government should have waited for some time before rushing off to start online education, said Pradhan. Senior IAS officer and project director of Odisha School Education Programme Authority, Bhupendra Singh Poonia, admits that it has not been possible to reach all the students through smartphones. We are able to reach about 30 per cent of the students. But no one who has not been able to log in to the online classes should feel left out. We are trying to rope in NGOs for reaching out to all the students, said Poonia. In Jagdalpur district of Chhattisgarh, loudspeakers are being used for teaching in the villagers because most of the students dont have smartphones. Niklesh Hari , a district administration official who is looking after the schools said it started with three panchayats and after peoples demand 53 more panchayats have started this program on their own. We teach English through Halbi-tribal language, telecast stories, nutritional awareness messages n direct lessons by teachers. There are about 50-150 kids per panchayats and more than 100 teachers are involved at field level. We have team of 10 teachers who develop content for English-Halbi program, said Hari. Bastar tribal kids are at disadvantage compared to rest of India . So as to ensure all possible means to learning, we have started this program, he added. In Jharkhand, school headmaster Shyam Kishore Singh Gandhi of Dumka district, has put up several loudspeakers across Bankathi village to teach over 200 students, who dont have smartphones. The students sit near the loudspeakers which have been put up on trees and walls at different locations, and attend the classes. Louder speakers are put up where the number of students is more. Five teachers and two para teachers teach over the mike from the classroom, Gandhi said.Thousands of schools and colleges across India have switched to online as classrooms remain shut since mid-March amid the coronavirus outbreak. There are 246 students from class 1 to class 8, and 204 of them do not have mobile phones, Gandhi said. If the students have any doubt or want to ask any question, they can send their queries to me from anyones mobile phone and we explain it the next day, he added. Gandhi said the model is working and students are grasping well what is being taught.The students are receptive and are enjoying the new style of studying, said an elderly villager.Lauding the headmaster, Dumkas district education officer Poonam Kumari said all the 2,317 government schools here should emulate the model so that the students would not have to struggle to complete the syllabus once the lockdown is lifted. (With PTI inputs from Ranchi) HARTFORD A city man beheaded his landlord with a samurai sword and is now facing a murder charge, police said. Jerry David Thompson, 42, was arrested Monday a day after police found his landlord, Victor King, decapitated in his home on Asylum Avenue, police said. Sammy Wilson shops for an ice-cream minus any type of face covering East Antrim DUP MP Sammy Wilson has been savaged on social media after describing anti-Covid face masks as "muzzles". Hundreds of people had a poke at the DUP man after he tweeted a picture of himself with a 99 ice-cream inside an Islandmagee sweet shop. "Support local business. You can't eat ice-cream when you're muzzled!" he tweeted. But party colleague Pam Cameron MLA, deputy chair of the health committee at Stormont, was among those who voiced her disagreement. Responding to another of the MP's tweets - saying it would be "mad" for the wearing of face masks to be enforced here - Ms Cameron said: "Just your opinion Sammy. I for one will be wearing a face covering and doing the little bit I can to protect those whose shielding is paused today," she said. The Executive wants to see more people using masks and face coverings by August 20. "If there has not been a significant increase in the use of face coverings by this stage, the Executive will implement the power to make this mandatory," it warned. Ulster Unionist Party chief whip Robbie Butler MLA said Mr Wilson was displaying "an incredible amount of ignorance". "Nobody's being asked to wear a face covering while they are eating and his petulant performance is grossly irresponsible," he said. "If there's another lockdown he won't be able eat out if the shops and restaurants are shut. "Sammy should grow up and realise it's not always about him." The MP's position also goes against a plea from Health Minister Robin Swann this week urging people to show "solidarity" with those shielding against Covid-19 by donning a mask. He also pointed to increasing evidence of their effectiveness. The shielding period ended yesterday. One shielder claimed the MP's tweet was an insult to people with disabilities. Michaela Hollywood from Co Down is a ventilator user and is especially vulnerable to the virus. She said people refusing to wear masks put her and others like her at risk. "How many more days of my life do I have to sacrifice for the whims of others?" she said. "Take your mask off to eat and drink if that's what you'd like to do. "But calling it a 'muzzle' is dangerous and derogatory to disabled people and those at the highest risk to this insidious virus." Marie Tunney, whose daughter Eve has to shield, said the remarks were "appalling". She added: "Face coverings are not 'muzzles', or 'face nappies', or any of the other ridiculous terms being used at the moment. "Is it really so difficult to wear a face covering when in shops and indoor areas so we can all protect each other? "Do we really care so little for others in our society who are so vulnerable and also should be able to step outside their front doors and feel that society is doing its best to keep them safe?" Mr Wilson did not respond to a request for comment. Close Donald Trump: 'We may be banning TikTok' Donald Trump has challenged Dr Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House's coronavirus task force, over why the United States has more coronavirus cases than other countries. Dr Facui said in front of a House subcommittee it was because the US only shut down 50 per cent of its economy, but Mr Trump says it's due to the country testing more. Although the president has blamed testing, that doesn't explain the surge in death toll and hospitalisations. In the month of July, 10 days posted more than 1,000 people dying from the coronavirus in a one day. The month prior only had three days within the month hitting that number. This comes as the president has said he would ban popular video app TikTok over security concerns. Mr Trump said a ban could be implemented on Saturday. On Friday he said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, I have that authority before adding: Its going to be signed tomorrow. TikTok's US general manager came back with a video on Saturday to users, saying the app was not going anywhere. Key impeachment witness Alexander Vindman penned a Washington Post op-ed against the president following his resignation. The lieutenant colonel accused Mr Trump of using "bullying and retaliation" against him after he spoke during the House impeachment trials against the president. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is nearing the announcement of his vice presidential choice. The top contenders and their advocates are making final appeals. The leading contenders include California Senator Kamala Harris, California Representative Karen Bass and Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Representative Karen Bass responded to scrutiny on Saturday after a Scientology event she attended 10 years ago resurfaced. Ms Bass defended her attendance by stating she was trying to be accepting of all organisations in her community while acknowledging the recent allegations against Scientology. NEW YORK, July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- If you own shares in any of the companies listed above and would like to discuss our investigations or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, please contact: Joshua Rubin, Esq. WeissLaw LLP 1500 Broadway, 16th Floor New York, NY 10036 (212) 682-3025 (888) 593-4771 [email protected] Grubhub, Inc. WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of Grubhub, Inc. in connection with the proposed acquisition of the company by Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V. ("Just Eat Takeaway"). Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, GRUB shareholders will receive American depositary shares representing 0.671 ordinary shares of Just Eat Takeaway for each GRUB share that they own. If you own GRUB shares and wish to discuss this investigation or your rights, please call us at one of the numbers listed above or visit our website: http://www.weisslawllp.com/grubhub-inc/ China XD Plastics Company Limited WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of China XD Plastics Company Limited in connection with the proposed interested-party acquisition of the company by Faith Dawn Limited ("Faith Dawn"), an entity owned by CXDC's CEO and Chairman Jie Han. Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Faith Dawn will acquire all outstanding shares of CXDC for $1.20 per share in cash. Since Mr. Han also owns 50.1% of the common shares of CXDC, he effectively controls CXDC and stands on both sides of the proposed acquisition. If you own CXDC shares and wish to discuss this investigation or your rights, please call us at one of the numbers listed above or visit our website: http://www.weisslawllp.com/china-xd-plastics-company-limited/ SOURCE WeissLaw LLP Related Links http://weisslawllp.com The passenger in the Jeep that sped through a Black Lives Matter protest, causing one woman to fall off the highway, said they were simply trying to drive to the airport and became jolted after people threw projectiles at the vehicle. Footage of a blue Jeep racing down a Aurora, Colorado highway as Black Lives Matter protesters desperately jumped out of the way made headlines on Sunday as tensions mount nationwide. The scene turned chaotic after the blue Jeep crashed into another vehicle and one man in the crowd opened fire. But according to Gregory Goodenough, the driver had not specifically targeted Black Lives Matter protesters and only drove onto the highway while following GPS instructions. Scroll down for video On Sunday, a blue Jeep was spotted racing through a Black Lives Matter protest in Aurora, Colorado, that caused demonstrators to jump out of the way Gregory Goodenough (pictured), the passenger in the Jeep, said they were not targeting protesters and were trying to reach a local airport During a two-minute long YouTube video, Goodenough described the incident from his point of view. Goodenough said a friend was driving him to a local airport ahead of a flight to San Jose, California. When Google Maps reportedly alerted them of a potential accident at an intersection, Goodenough said they rerouted the directions and took the next available on-ramp onto Interstate 225. 'We did notice that there were Black Lives Matter protesters on all sides of the street trying to stop traffic.' said Goodenough. 'We then avoided any pedestrians in the roadways and continued onto the freeway. There was no police barricade that stopped us.' Interstate 225 was temporarily closed that day for the Black Lives Matter protesters and investigators are still determining how the Jeep got onto the highway. Goodenough noted that demonstrators were on the side of the road, as well as standing in the middle of the highway. He claimed protesters began throwing 'projectiles' at the vehicle and 'trying to get in front of the vehicle with bats to damage the vehicle.' Goodenough said they avoided pedestrians with the Jeep, but a white pickup truck began driving next to them and crashed into their car. Interstate 225 was temporarily shut down on Sunday as Black Lives Matter protesters held a demonstration in honor of Elijah McClain Goodenough said the Jeep driver sped up the vehicle after protesters hit it with projectiles and approached them with bats One woman who reportedly tried to dodge the Jeep fell 20ft off the side of the highway (pictured) Sebastian Sassi, the driver of the white pickup truck, later told the Colorado Sentinel that he intervened because he believed the blue Jeep was going to hit and possibly kill demonstrators that day. Goodenough confirmed that claim in the YouTube video and the white pickup truck 'intentionally crashed into us and described us as having murderous intent for going towards airport.' 'Once this white pickup truck did crash into us, a man with a bat then approached the vehicle and began swinging at the vehicle,' he said. 'We then proceeded to speed off to avoid any potential damage to ourselves and the vehicle.' Goodenough said the Jeep sped off because the driver wanted to avoid any damage to the vehicle and themselves. That's when a gunmen opened fire on the highway and fired off seven rounds. A white pickup truck intentionally crashed into the blue Jeep (pictured) because they believed Goodehough and the driver may cause harm to protesters 'We then proceeded to go even faster and made our way through the crowd, which dispersed as we approached as well as once the gunfire did go off,' said Goodenough. He ended the video by saying the driver then pulled off Interstate 225 and recounted the event to police officers. In a Instagram post, Goodenough said that protesters 'beat our vehicle with bats, crashed into our vehicle on the freeway, and then fired 5+ rounds of gunfire at us.' 'Now they're trying to charge my best friend who was driving with attempted murder.' As of Saturday morning, neither Goodenough or the driver, 27-year-old Kyle Faulkison, have been formally charged with anything. A spokesperson from the Aurora Police Department told DailyMail.com the ongoing investigation will determine if Faulkinson will face charges. 'At this time, no charges have been filed against the driver of the Jeep. However, there is an open and ongoing investigation into the incident which will determine what charges, if any, are appropriate,' the spokesperson said. The Rocky Mountain Collegian reports that a tweet identified Faulkinson as a former student of Colorado State University and worked at PowerShield Limited. Public Safety and Rick Communications Manager Dell Rae Ciaravola confirmed that Faulkinson was briefly a student in 2015 and a semester in 2016. He did not graduate and is not currently a student at the institution. 'Kyle Scott Faulkinson tarnishes the name and reputation of CSU through his actions and CSU should condemn and distance the school from this person,' Ehret Nottington, a protester and political science major, told the publication. A statement released by the Aurora Police Department did not identify Faulkinson, but said during preliminary interviews the driver claimed to have sped off because he was afraid. 'He claims that the reason the he drove towards the protesters is because he was scared and trying to get away,' the statement read. But Black Lives Matter protesters are dissatisfied and previously rebuked claims that the Jeep was not used to target demonstrators. Candace Bailey, a protest leader, told CBS 4 that she's not sold on Goodenough's version of events. 'You cannot see where the individual entered the highway. APD had it blocked off at Mississippi. Where did it come from?' she said. ' Thats a bold face lie.' During the incident, several demonstrators were forced to flee from the Jeep and one woman appeared to fall 20 feet off the side of the highway to dodge the vehicle. One protester was struck when gunfire rang out and is in stable condition after going to a local hospital for treatment. A second protester was grazed by a bullet and suffered a wound. Samuel Young, 23, was arrested for allegedly aiming his rifle at the Jeep when he opened fire. 'It was the most reckless thing I have seen in a long time,' Aurora's Deputy Chief Harry Glidden said. A gunman opened fire during the Black Lives Matter protest, which resulted in two protesters being shot Young is currently being held at the Jefferson County jail on four counts of attempted murder and is scheduled to appear in court for an arraignment on Wednesday. A witness to the shooting told police that the suspect, identified as Young, was carrying an 'old school wild west gun' at the protest. They described how the suspect 'entered a state of shock' after he opened fire and appeared 'horrified at what he did'. Samuel Young, 23, was arrested Monday on suspicion of attempted homicide after he allegedly shot and wounded two people at a weekend protest in Aurora, Colorado While a small group of protesters have praised Young for attempting to stop the Jeep driver, police condemned his actions as shockingly irresponsible. 'It's the height of somebody doesn't know how to handle a firearm,' Glidden said. 'It's not the place to pull a gun and randomly shoot it.' The Black Lives Matter protest that day was held in honor of Elijah McClain, a black man who was stopped by police while walking down an Aurora street in August 2019 after a 911 caller reported him as suspicious. Police placed him in a chokehold, and paramedics administered 500 milligrams of ketamine, a sedative, to calm him down. He went into cardiac arrest and was later declared brain dead and taken off life support. One of the officers involved in McClain's arrest last August was fired earlier this month after receiving photos of three officers mocking and re-enacting the killing, outside the 23-year-old's memorial. The Aurora Police Department on July 3 announced Jason Rosenblatt was fired, along with officers Erica Marrero and Kyle Dittrich for their involvement in the October 2019 incident. A fourth officer, Jaron Jones, who also appeared in the images, resigned days ahead of a pre-disciplinary hearing. Rosenblatt, who was one of three Aurora cops involved in McClain's fatal arrest, also appeared in the pictures he received, but was terminated after receiving them in a text message and responding: 'HaHa'. Saturday night's march on I225 was held to bring attention to the death of Elijah McClain, a black man who was stopped by police while walking down an Aurora street in August 2019 after a 911 caller reported him as suspicious Aurora Interim Chief Vanessa Wilson publicly released the photos for the first time, which showed Jones pretending to put Dittrich in a chokehold while Marrero looks on and laughs. All three officers were on duty and in uniform at the time. They were taken two months after McClain, 23, a massage therapist who loved animals and who taught himself to play the guitar and the violin, died after cops held him in a chokehold on August 24. 'We're ashamed, we're sickened and we're angry,' Chief Wilson said in a press conference on July 3. 'While the allegations of this internal affairs case are not criminal, it is a crime against humanity and decency.' 'It shows a lack of morals, values and integrity, and judgment. I can no longer trust to allow them to wear this badge,' she added. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 19:46:36|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HAIKOU, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- A tropical depression strengthened into Typhoon Sinlaku at 3 p.m. Saturday in the South China Sea, 20 km west of the coastal city of Sanya, south China's Hainan Province. The provincial meteorological administration said Sinlaku would bring heavy downpours to southwestern and eastern parts of the island province from Saturday to Sunday. The typhoon center is sweeping the southern coast of Hainan at a speed of 25 km per hour northwestward before heading to the Beibu Gulf. The provincial emergency response department warned authorities in Lingshui and Sanya to call back vessels, as there will be big waves up to three meters high along the coast. Ferry traffic at Qiongzhou Strait was suspended at 6 p.m. on Friday. Sanya Phoenix International Airport has canceled outgoing flights, while inbound flights have remained unaffected. Enditem Photo: Miriam Halpenny Columbia Valley RCMP along with search and rescue crews spent Friday searching the Kootenay River for a man who was swept away while trying to rescue his dog on Thursday. RCMP received information just before 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 30, that a man had suddenly been swept away in the river near the Canal Flats area. "The victim was reportedly walking around a sand bar in the river, when his dog became caught up in the river's current when it attempted to swim over to him," says Cpl. Jesse ODonaghey, spokesperson for the BC RCMP Southeast District. "The victim tried to reach his dog, when he suddenly lost his footing, fell into the water and failed to resurface. The familys dog survived and managed to swim back to shore." Immediately following the incident, RCMP called for search and rescue crews while launching a search of the water. SAR technicians and RCMP Police Dog Services conducted the search. RCMP divers with the Underwater Recovery Team along with search and rescue personnel returned to the scene of the incident on Friday to resume the search however river conditions were deemed challenging. All efforts to locate and rescue the 43-year-old man from Edmonton have been exhausted and the search has been suspended. Officials are going to monitor river levels, conduct periodic shoreline searches and aerial searches as conditions permit. "I'm extremely grateful to all the agencies and local residents who supported our search efforts, including Columbia Valley SAR, Kimberly SAR, the Cranbrook SAR search dog, the Canal Flats Fire Department, BC Emergency Health Services, Coldstream Helicopters and our very own RCMP Victim Services," says Sgt. Darren Kakuno, detachment commander of the Columbia Valley RCMP. "Our search to date has involved twenty swift water SAR technicians, three jet boats, a police dog team, a SAR dog team, an unmanned aerial vehicle, underwater rovers and cameras, a helicopter and the RCMPs dive team. Local residents continued to drop off food and water for searchers, which was greatly appreciated." Hong Kong Postpones Elections By a Year, Citing Coronavirus By VOA News July 31, 2020 Hong Kong's top leader, Carrie Lam, announced Friday that the city's September legislative election would be postponed for a year, citing the coronavirus pandemic. The decision dealt a blow to the pro-democracy camp, which was widely expected to score a victory in the election. "To delay the Legislative Council election is a very difficult decision, but to suppress the pandemic and to safeguard public health while ensuring that the election is held in an open and fair manner ... this decision is necessary," she said at a news conference, adding that she was using a colonial-era emergency law as her basis for the action. 'No political considerations' Lam pointed to the record numbers of new coronavirus cases reported in recent days and maintained that there were "absolutely no political considerations" behind the delay. Critics, however, said officials were nervous about the possibility of pro-democracy candidates scoring a victory amid deep-seated anti-government sentiment and concerns about a draconian national security law imposed by Beijing. Observers said the postponement was the latest in a series of recent moves by the government to thwart the pro-democracy movement. This past week saw the firing of two pro-democracy academics active in politics, the arrests of four young activists on national security charges and the disqualification of 12 pro-democracy candidates for the legislative election. Lam said the authorities would ask China's National People's Congress Standing Committee to decide how to fill the vacuum due to the delay. If it decides to extend the term of the current legislature, the fate of four serving lawmakers would be unknown because they were among the 12 candidates whose nominations have been invalidated. Authorities have repeatedly accused the opposition lawmakers of "obstructing" the work of the government by vetoing unpopular bills. The national security law, enacted July 1, makes "serious interference, obstruction or damage" to the exercise of government power a subversion offense punishable by three to 10 years in prison or, in serious cases, life imprisonment. Separately, 22 pro-democracy lawmakers accused the government of failing to contain the coronavirus pandemic and now using it as an excuse to delay the poll and "brutally rob the citizens' voting rights." In a statement, they said the action would pose a constitutional crisis that shakes the basis of Hong Kong's fundamental political system. 'Devastating defeat' Commenting earlier in the week about the widely expected delay, pro-democracy lawmaker Eddie Chu wrote on his Twitter account that authorities wanted to "avoid a potential devastating defeat." The national security law and the crackdown on the pro-democracy camp make it hard to know what to expect in a year's time, said Joseph Cheng, a retired political scientist formerly with the City University of Hong Kong. "The postponement of the elections certainly destroys the pro-democracy movement's trend of securing a majority in the legislature," he said. "The major challenge at this stage is whether the opposition political activists are still meaningful and useful. This would be the question in the minds of pro-democracy supporters," he said. "These events are very disheartening for the pro-democracy movement." Many Hong Kongers say the delay has further alienated them from the government. "It is yet another example of the government using the pandemic as an excuse to achieve Beijing's political ends," said a 22-year-old student who identified himself as Benjamin. "I think it's very dangerous to mobilize a draconian colonial-era emergency law to arbitrarily impose all kinds of restrictions. I think the government will only increasingly resort to using this law," he added. China's liaison office said in a statement Thursday that it supported the disqualifications, singling out activist Joshua Wong, 23, and lawyer Dennis Kwok. It alleged that they have advocated independence, lobbied "foreign powers to place sanctions on Hong Kong," and vetoed government budget plans in order to paralyze the government and oppose the security law. Wong said the election office told him that he had been disqualified because he used the word "draconian" to describe the security law and that his remark showed his opposition to it. He said the election office alleged that in light of his remarks, he could not possibly uphold the city's constitution, known as the Basic Law, which is a prerequisite for a legislative candidate. "Beijing shows a total disregard for the will of Hong Kongers, tramples upon the city's last pillar of vanishing autonomy and attempts to keep Hong Kong's legislature under its firm grip," Wong said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The one that got away Ruvin de Silva A.S.H. Smyth interviews the actor, director and documentary photographer on the greatest shot he never got... and one he did View(s): View(s): In 2007, aged 21, and working as a cash-teller at HSBC, Ruvin de Silva began rehearsals for his first play, Chatroom, and at every single rehearsal, there was this guy with this massive black camera, unlike anything hed seen on anyone before. That man was Deshan Tennekoon (The One That Got Away, Sunday July 19). Promptly bitten by this second artistic bug, de Silva started borrowing cameras from friends, opened a Facebook album titled How to Steal a Camera, and eventually was able to buy a low-end Nikon D60 dirt cheap, with some money that his grandmother had given him. And it was black! Two weeks later, he dropped it in the Barefoot pond. But since then, hes run photography workshops for children at the Galle Literary Festival, collaborated in an art-and-music charity project in Kilinochchi, shot Red Bull stuntmen, photographed theatre, been a finalist in the Fashion Asia Awards, and undertaken long-term commissions for several international agencies. The one that got away Ive always had this big cinematic, theatrical thing in my head, wanting to play roles, so Ive often ended up kind of creating small scenes, as though from stories, and photographing them. This was a date, though. By that time I would always have a camera with me, and was known to be this photographer guy and was just always taking pictures. Anyway, it happened to be this amazing date (says me!), and we went to the beach somewhere in Mount Lavinia, one of those beach-bar spots, and we started drinking beer, and I remember there was this moment, both of us were sitting on those beach chairs, and then we looked at each other, and we started making out, the breeze was just right, her hair was flying, the sun was setting into the sea, this golden gleam and then I suddenly realised there was this family right behind us, with kids. Im trying to kiss this girl, but I can also see this mother trying to turn her childrens faces away! I still remember this perfect light. This beautiful subject. And then also this sub-subject, of a very Sri Lankan family theyve just come to enjoy their evening at the beach, yknow spluttering, why are they kissing, this is Sri Lanka, you should not be doing this kind of thing, my kids are here! I do zone out quite a bit. Like, Gimme a second: I just have to go and change the iTunes. But I wish I had just stepped away and taken that picture even just before it, or just after just to capture that scene, because I still remember it being so good, so perfect, and also really funny. But I was way too in the moment. I have many other pictures of that girl throughout our relationship: just not that one. Shes still part of my world, sort of. Shes married, and things like that The one that got away! The shot that he got This is a photo from the earliest days of my Flickr account, perhaps about 2008. To be honest, I dont even know why Id have uploaded it; but in that moment clearly I must just have felt something. It has so much drama in it. This guy with his arm out, stopping the traffic. Or maybe thats just what I want to think. Is he just turning? There dont seem to be many other cars around. And these guys with the pipe: are they going after the dog, or is that a coincidence? Then this man wearing his Korn T-shirt which is something that I only noticed last night. Korn! I used to listen to them! Honestly, though, I have no memory of taking this photo at all. I dont even know where it was. Somewhere in Colombo? Afternoon, for sure because I never woke up early back then! And shot from far away, maybe through a windscreen or something, and Ive probably cropped it, which is why you can see the grain. Its definitely not even a picture that Id wanted to get that day. This is B-roll, essentially. I would have been out shooting something else, some tree or some person, and this wouldve just happened right in front of me. I dont know if Im constructing this all in my imagination now, but this doesnt seem like a situation in which you could have said Oh, this guy is gonna hit the dog, lemme take a picture. I wish I could remember what happened immediately afterwards, though. If I went and spoke to these guys, or saved the dog, or So I do have the picture but I dont have the story. Really, I like the fact that we can reimagine a whole story just from looking at it. TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Government of Honduras, through its security, defense and human rights bodies, in close coordination with the Public Ministry, an institution free from all political interference, announced that a specialized operational team is working on the case of the illegal deprivation of liberty of the 4 citizens members of the Garifuna community. The Garifuna leaders Alberth Snaider Centeno, Milton Joel Martinez, Suami Aparicio Mejia Garcia and Gerardo Mizael Rochez Calix were kidnapped this last July 18 and their whereabouts are unknown. The Executive Power has made available to the Public Ministry all its technical, scientific and logistical capacities to clarify the crime and find the material and intellectual responsible. On July 22, as a result of that combined effort, the arrest of a person allegedly linked to the abduction was achieved. Likewise, other important advances have been made in the investigation for clarifying this highly reprehensible action against 4 Honduras citizens. President Juan Orlando Hernandez assured that "he has closely followed the progress of the case, and has been in contact with members of the community, the investigation agencies and other civil society representatives. In compliance with the law, I instructed these institutions to cooperate and work with the Public Ministry," Hernandez said. "We will continue the fight to seek justice for the victims and their families, until the work of human rights defenders throughout Honduras is recognized, protected, and respected. This is our top priority," he emphasized. The supreme goal of the State of Honduras is to protect all citizen and that is why, since the beginning of this administration, respect for human rights has been a matter of national priority. For pursuing this purpose, Hernandez administration has implemented strategic lines such as updating of national laws, and the strengthening and reform of the institutions that provide justice and citizen participation. Today Honduras has more robust institutions, technical and scientific wise, in order to guarantee that human rights of each citizen are respected. The Honduran government requested the permanent presence of an Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which has been operating without limitations since November 23, 2016. Likewise, the Human Rights office was elevated to the rank of Secretary of State, allowing civil society organizations and the government to deepen the promotion and respect of these guarantees. In May 2015, the Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, Journalists, Social Communicators and Justice Operators was approved, which has been active since August 2016. With the accompaniment of human rights organizations and civil society, a Bureau of Interlocution was established, in order to improve the incidence, oversight, policy discussion and planning. SOURCE The Government of the Republic of Honduras Zumrat Dawut said she was forcibly sterilized by the Chinese government for having one too many children. A former resident of Urumqi, the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, the 38-year-old Uyghur woman said she was fined 18,400 yuan ($2,600) in 2018 for having three children, one more than she was allowed to under Chinese rule. When she went to pay the fine, Dawut said she was told she'd also need to have a mandatory "birth control procedure." She said she was taken to a clinic, where she was hooked up to an IV and given a general anesthetic. A local doctor later told her she'd undergone a tubal ligation, a procedure that uses keyhole surgery to clip, cut or tie a woman's fallopian tubes. The doctor said the procedure was permanent -- she wouldn't be able to have any more children. Dawut's story is not unique. For years, Uyghur women both inside Xinjiang and around the world have accused the Chinese government of a campaign of abuse, including forced sterilization, cultural indoctrination and incidents of sexual violence. It's part of a wider pattern of human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang, where authorities are accused of detaining up to two million Muslim-majority Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups inside vast, fortified centers as part of efforts to enforce greater control over the region. Rahima Mahmut, a Xinjiang exile and project director for the World Uyghur Congress in London, said women in Xinjiang are living in "hell." "Just like any genocide, women are always the number one target ... There is a very, very serious crime happening at such a large scale," she said. The Chinese government has consistently denied all allegations, presenting its efforts in Xinjiang as legal and necessary measures to prevent extremism, and has used a series of what state-run media refers to as terrorist attacks in 2014 and 2015 to justify its crackdown. It has also attempted to discredit Dawut's account specifically, with the state-owned newspaper the Global Times quoting claims from her own brother that she's "peddling lies online." Crackdown on women Beijing has a history of policing women's reproductive rights as part of the "one-child policy," a mass campaign to slow birth rates in China. From its introduction in 1980, the policy officially saw 400 million births "prevented," amid reports of state-enforced abortions and mandatory contraception. The one-child policy was changed to allow two children in 2015 amid a rapidly-shrinking birth rate. In Xinjiang, rural couples are allowed to have up to three children, which authorities claim is out of respect for ethnic minorities' cultural traditions of large families. Now a new report, titled "The (Chinese Communist Party's) campaign to suppress Uyghur birthrates in Xinjiang," alleges that Beijing is trying to reduce the Uyghur population through enforced contraception and sterilizations. It was compiled by Adrian Zenz, a leading Xinjiang scholar, and is backed up by years of witness reports and statements from women both in Xinjiang and around the world. Xinjiang is culturally and ethnically different from the rest of China, with a large population of Turkic minority groups who until recently were the majority in the region. For years, the region has maintained an uneasy relationship with the government in Beijing. For decades, Zenz said Uyghurs often had larger families than officially permitted, sometimes with as many as nine or 10 children, and when authorities decided to discipline them it was usually only a fine. But beginning in 2017, Zenz quotes official Chinese government policy directives calling on administrators to "severely attack behaviors that violate family planning (policies)." From that year onwards, minority regions began a "special campaign to control birth control violations." According to the report, the stricter enforcement led to increased prosecutions of birth control violators and harsher punishments. Xinjiang accounted for 80% of new IUD insertions throughout China in 2018, according to official government records outlined in the report and confirmed by CNN. The statistics are primarily due to a massive drop in the use of IUDs in the rest of the country, as Beijing pushes women in the rest of China to have more children. In Xinjiang, the opposite is happening. There, the number of sterilizations has skyrocketed, according to government records. In 2014, the year before the start of the government crackdown in Xinjiang, there were 3,214 sterilizations in the region -- in 2018, there were 60,440. In his report, Zenz claimed that as a result of these policies, the natural birth rate in parts of Xinjiang with a large Uyghur population had seen a significant decrease in population growth. According to Zenz's calculations, across all parts of Xinjiang predominantly populated by Turkic minorities, natural population growth dropped from more than 15% in 2014 to just over 4% in 2018. Zenz estimated the birthrates by combining official Chinese government statistics for Xinjiang prefectures and weighting them by population. Worryingly, Zenz said that some predominantly Uyghur prefectures such as Kashgar didn't publish their population growth rates at all in 2019. The Global Times news outlet has claimed that Zenz's math is wrong, and attributed the slower population growth to increased education and income levels in Xinjiang. In a response to the report, the Chinese government said that between 1978 and 2018, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang had grown from 5.5 million to more than 11 million. However, Zenz claims that he has found evidence of a deliberate campaign to control Uyghur population growth that goes far beyond stricter enforcement of the two-child policy. The report claims that Chinese authorities imposed targets for up to 80% of child-bearing women in four southern prefectures, with large Uyghur populations, to undergo "birth control measures with long-term effectiveness." In some cases, women had IUDs inserted after only their first child, according to Zenz's report. "China is trying to reduce birth rates in Xinjiang because this was a region where birth rates were the higher than the rest of the country. And in a sense it was seen to be out of control. And of course it makes the Uyghurs harder to control. The more people you have, the harder they are to account for," Zenz said. The report also aligns with witness testimony from Xinjiang detention centers where multiple women have described being given injections and pills which stopped their periods. Uyghur exile Dawut said she spent about three months in a detention center from March 2018. Inside the center, she said she was forcibly given medication, after which she stopped menstruating. CNN spoke to an ethnic Uyghur and doctor from Xinjiang, who asked to go only by her first name, Gulgine, for fear of retribution. Gulgine fled to Turkey in 2012 and set up a clinic in Istanbul in 2013. She said since then she has examined around 300 exiled Uyghur women from Xinjiang, and almost all of them had some form of birth control. About 80 had been sterilized. Many of the women who had been permanently sterilized told Gulgine that they didn't know they had undergone the procedure until she told them. Zenz said that his findings were the firmest proof yet of "genocide" in Xinjiang. "It specifically fulfills one of the five criteria of the United Nations convention for the prevention of genocide, which is the suppression of births," he said. Campaign of abuse For years, women in Xinjiang have been reporting manipulation and abuse at the hands of the Chinese government. In 2015, China banned face veils and face coverings for Xinjiang women, saying that they encouraged "religious extremism." At the same time, local authorities pushed women to dress in more modern outfits, emphasizing cultural garb over overtly religious clothing. Experts said the campaign was called the "Beauty Project." In state media, the project was described as a means of helping to support Xinjiang designers and the local clothing industry. But experts on the ground said it involved numerous actions to change the way Uyghur women looked. "There were some instances where at checkpoints, on the street, women had long skirts or dresses cut by scissors because they were supposed to only wear pants and shirts, not have anything that would go below their waist, ostensibly because that was Islamic," said Darren Byler, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Colorado who worked in Xinjiang. When Uyghurs began to be forcibly placed into detention centers in 2016, the vast majority of the inmates were male, according to previous research by Zenz. Large numbers of women were left to care and provide for families on their own. When she visited the region for the last time in 2018, Elise Anderson, Senior Program Officer for Research and Advocacy at Uyghur Human Rights Project, said local women who recognized her in the street would come up and ask for news or help in hushed tones. "There was an older woman who started whispering to me and told me that her son had been taken away and just cried as she spoke," Anderson said. "They're missing important people from their lives and that is inserting grief and heaviness and an emotional burden while they're still trying to be good enough not to get taken away to a camp themselves." Some of the worst injustices are alleged to have occurred inside the region's mass detention centers, in the form of humiliation and sexual abuse. Gulbakhar Jalilova, an ethnic Uyghur from neighboring Kazakhstan and former detainee, claims she was on a business trip to Xinjiang in May 2017 when she was suddenly taken away by police and thrown into a detention center. She spent 15 months inside the camp. Jalilova claimed she was locked inside a prison-like room with about 20 other women, sitting in two rows. She said they were forced to strip naked in the yard every 10 days and squat up and down in front of guards. Some girls were only 14 years old, she said. Jalilova said one day she was raped by a guard. "I told him, 'Aren't you ashamed? Don't you have a mother, a sister, how can you do this to me like that?' He hit me with the electroshock prod and said, 'You don't look like a human'," she said. Chinese state-run media has previously called Jelilova a liar, saying she had never been inside one of the vocational training centers, which are what Beijing claims is the purpose of the Xinjiang camps. A US State Department report in 2019 said there had been reports of sexual abuse inside the detention centers, as well as by male Chinese government officials sent to stay with families across Xinjiang. Several female former inmates interviewed by CNN after escaping from Xinjiang have alleged sexual violence inside the detention centers. On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in November 2019, the Uyghur Human Rights Project issued a statement calling it "crimes against humanity." A generation changed Since the release of Zenz's report in June, the United States government has announced sanctions against prominent Chinese government officials in Xinjiang and the region's Public Security Bureau. "The United States will not stand idly by as the (Chinese Communist Party) carries out human rights abuses targeting Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang, to include forced labor, arbitrary mass detention, and forced population control, and attempts to erase their culture and Muslim faith," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. In June, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied it was attempting to control the Uyghur population. In a statement, it said the minority group had enjoyed a "preferential population policy" for years by being allowed to have more children than other citizens. Speaking to CNN's Fareed Zakaria in July, Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai denied that there have been any mechanisms such as sterilization or any attempts at forced population control of the Uyghurs. "I don't know how absurd all these fabrications can go," Cui said. Dawut, who is seeking asylum in the US, believes that the Chinese government wants to "completely eliminate" the Uyghur people from Xinjiang. "Our land is big. Our land is rich. And because we are the owners of that land, they want to eliminate us," she said. "From one side they sterilize our women decreasing our population; from another side they separate families by sending husbands and wives to separate forced labor camps." Mahmut, from the World Uyghur Congress, said she hasn't spoken to her four sisters in Xinjiang since 2017, not daring call for fear of getting them in trouble with authorities. But she said that without major change in either the local or national governments, she sees no hope for Xinjiang's women. "It has to be some kind of miracle from God that can that change anything," she said. "(It's) the largest prison and the government has total power over every individual." By Express News Service MADURAI: A doctor from a private hospital here was cheated of more than Rs 2 crore after making an order for N95 masks online. According to sources, the 41-year-old doctor, who runs a private hospital in Vadipatti, approached the District Crime Branch police on Friday. He stated that he ordered five lakh N95 masks from a private company in the Netherlands online. A person named Patrick Van Dick, who claimed to be from the sales section of the company, contacted him to discuss the sale and transaction followed by a man named Peter Boots who introduced himself as the manager of the company and confirmed the order. They asked the doctor to pay 20 percent in advance and he paid 1,60,000 US dollars. The duo sent him an airway bill and also asked for further payment of 30 percent, adding that the remaining 50 percent should be paid after the order reaches Chennai airport. Sources added that when the doctor grew suspicious and tried to cancel the order, the duo stopped responding. They neither supplied the masks nor returned the advance amount. The doctor was also cheated of over Rs 90 lakh by a Kyrgyzstan-based company after placing a similar online order in May. According to sources, the doctor, based on the advice of a man named Uday Shankar Parupalli from Hyderabad, had ordered two lakh N95 masks from the company. After that, another man named Surya Narayanan, claiming to be the commercial director of the company, contacted him and confirmed the order. But after paying part of the amount, he realised that the SGS certificate sent by the duo for the transaction was fake. When the doctor told them to return the money, they stopped responding to his calls, sources added. Based on the complaint given by the doctor, DCB police registered two separate cases against seven persons including the aforementioned men under Sections 120 (B) (Criminal conspiracy), 406 (Criminal breach of trust), 420 (Cheating) and 34 (Act done by several persons with common intention) of the Indian Penal Code. Police sources said that since the offences involve foreign nationals, the concerned embassies should be contacted for further investigation. Two businessmen in Mumbai and a doctor in Hyderabad also lost their money to similar fraudsters while trying to purchase N95 masks and PPE kits online. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) The Philippine Airlines on Saturday launched a COVID-19 testing site for returning Filipinos and foreign nationals with permanent and immigrant visas. The airlines accredited RT-PCR testing facility, a one-stop-shop, could process up to 1,200 individual tests daily, with results released within 48 hours, PAL said in a statement. It will cater to PAL passengers who are not overseas Filipino workers. They will shoulder test of the cost which is P4,500, PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Weekend. OFWs will be tested at no cost at the government's one stop shop in NAIA, PAL said. "Family members traveling together with at least one OFW will likewise be considered OFWs," PAL added. The airline said those authorized to enter the Philippines must fill out a case investigation form via this website and secure a booking in a government-accredited hotel in Metro Manila for at least two nights so they could be allowed to board their respective flights. Upon disembarking at NAIA, the Philippine Coast Guard will guide arriving passengers to their correct testing site. After the test, non-OFWs will be transferred to a hotel for their two-day quarantine. Villaluna said that those who test positive for COVID-19 will be referred to an isolation or a medical facility a while those who turn out negative will be released from quarantine. The government is still prohibiting the entry of foreign tourists and non-immigrant visa holders amid the COVID-19 crisis. Applications have opened for the annual Caroline Jones Award. The award is presented annually and is open to any female rural and regional journalist working in a non-metropolitan area. Applicants must be aged up to 30 years and have at least one year of full-time industry experience For the fourth year running, Women in Media Australia, in partnership with the National Press Club of Australia, is calling for entries for the countrys preeminent award for up-and-coming regional reporters. The Caroline Jones Women in Media Young Journalists Award recognises tenacity and passion for the craft of journalism from young women working across rural and regional Australia. It seeks to immerse the award winner in an intensive experience of journalism, politics and government in Canberra and to open doors to the experience and generosity of some of the countrys top female journalists. The annual award includes: $2500 personal learning fund Travel and accommodation to Canberra for five nights National Press Club lunch attendance and question Mentorship from members of the Canberra Women in Media Committee The winner will spend time in a variety of Canberra and Press Gallery newsrooms throughout the week. Applications close at 5pm on Friday August 14, 2020.. ENS Economic Bureau By Express News Service NEW DELHI: In a bid to encourage local manufacturing and assembling, the Centre has imposed restrictions on imports of fully-built colour television sets. The curbs, however, are unlikely to impact prices but it is expected to benefit local contract manufacturers, attract investments in component production and better assembly lines, say industry executives. Officials also say that the move would fuel the countrys dream of becoming a manufacturing hub for TVs and a competitive partner to the world economy. This step is definitely in the right direction and will help in creating a global hub, which we want to be and it also helps to create a strong ecosystem for manufacturing of the products, said Sunil Vachani, chairman, Dixon Technologies. The homegrown company manufacturers TV for the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi at its local factories. This will also help control the flood of import of TV sets in the short term and the industry will be self-reliant with the required scale and will compete with global markets, he added. TV is one of the larger segments under the entire domain of Appliance and Consumer Electronics accounting to a volume of almost 16-17 crore with an estimated sale value of about Rs 25,000 crore. Shipments worth Rs 7,000 crore come from countries like China, Thailand and Vietnam. Official data shows that as much as USD 781 million worth of TVs were imported in 2019-20. Of this, USD 428 million was from Vietnam and USD 293 million was from China. According to Kamal Nandi, President, Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association, the move will attract more investments in technology and manufacturing which will lead to creation of more jobs. CEAMA is closely working with the government to formulate and facilitate both phased manufacturing and end-to-end TV manufacturing in India. Various representations around the benefits of such a plan have also been submitted, Nandi said. Industry officials say the decision will impact business of companies such as Vu and Chinas TCL. For established brands like Samsung, Sony, LG and even relatively newer entrant Xiaomi, however, the restrictions are likely to affect import of some premium models even as a large of their products are either locally made and sourced. Currently, over 85 per cent of our Mi TVs sold in India are manufactured in India. We believe that this decision will encourage and give a boost to local manufacturing," a Xiaomi India spokesperson said. According to a notification from the commerce ministry's Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), as colour TVs are put under the restricted list, importers will now need to apply for a license to import certain categories of TVs. The curbs are imposed on TV sets of screen size ranging from up to 36 cm to over 105 cm. Liquid crystal display (LCD) television sets of screen size below 63 cm are also covered under the restrictions, it wrote in a note. Avneet Singh Marwah, CEO, Super Plastronics -- the exclusive brand licensee of Thomson and Kodak range of TVs in India -- pointed out that more needs to be done to make India a fully self-reliant manufacturer. We need to have a complete ecosystem of value addition such as manufacturing plants for components and display panels. Consumers would also get better quality assembled TV sets now, says Arjun Bajaaj, CEO and Founder of homegrown Daiwa. Most of the products that came from China in the form of completely built units were standardised products.The latest decision would remove unfettered imports and boost local production, he said. An aged care worker has tested positive for COVID-19, Queensland's Health Minister Steven Miles has confirmed. The woman, aged in her 30s is the wife of a Bellbird Park man, 27, who also tested positive for the virus on Friday. Both cases are linked to the infected young women who allegedly snuck across the border from coronavirus hot spot Melbourne and visited shops, bars and restaurants. The Bolton Clarke Aged Care facility (pictured) at Pinjarra Hills in Brisbane's southwest has been locked down after a worker tested positive for COVID-19 Olivia Winnie Muranga (left) and Diana Lasu, (right) both 19, arrived together in Brisbane from Melbourne via Sydney on July 21 The Bolton Clarke Aged Care facility at Pinjarra Hills in Brisbane's southwest has been locked down following the positive test and there are fears other workers and residents could be at risk. 'We are working with them (the aged care facility) to keep all residents safe,' Mr Miles said. Diana Lasu, 21, and Olivia Winnie Muranga, 19, allegedly lied on their border declarations about where they had been when they arrived in Brisbane from Melbourne via Sydney on July 21. Days later they felt sick but carried on working, socialising and visiting restaurants and cocktail bars while waiting for their test results - which came back positive, police allege. The aged care worker's husband is believed to have caught the virus from relatives who visited the Madtongsan IV Korean restaurant at Sunnybank on July 23, when one of the women was there. They are now at the centre of the new COVID-19 cluster, along with another 21-year-old woman Haja Timbo. All three have been charged with one count each of providing false or misleading documents and fraud over their alleged lies to authorities when they arrived in Brisbane. Haja Timbo (pictured) has been identified as the third woman, who allegedly provided misleading documents at the Queensland border after visiting Melbourne The woman in her 30s may have worked at the facility (pictured) while infectious, Queensland Health said The aged care worker is now the third case of community transmission linked to the cluster, after a sisters of one of the woman charged tested positive earlier this week. Community transmission had been eradicated in the state for two months before those infections. The state's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young says it's possible the woman was infectious when she worked her last shift at the aged care facility. 'I know that the facility is organising ways for residents to talk to their families,' Dr Young said. 'We'll see what happens over the next week or so.' Following the positive test at the facility (pictured) there are now fears other workers and residents could be at risk Queenslanders arrive at a COVID-19 screening clinic at the Parklands Christian College in Logan, Queensland, on Thursday (pictured). The school has been temporarily closed after an employee tested positive for COVID-19 All residents and staff at the facility will now undergo testing. She is now working with authorities to determine all the locations she has been to while infectious. 'She and her husband have been absolutely model citizens, they really and truly have been unbelievably fantastic,' Dr Young said. By Wendell W. Young IV As President Trump and some lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey. R-Pa., debate whether or not additional federal support is necessary to manage the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, I encourage them to spend just one day with Pennsylvania workers and their families before they make up their mind. They will learn, quickly, that we need more assistance. And we need it now. The workers I am proud to represent are under enormous pressure as they risk exposure to this disease every day. Our union has lost seven members to COVID-19 and 832 members have tested positive. Thousands of Pennsylvania workers who continue to work in the midst of this pandemic need greater access to personal protective equipment. Workers in food and meat processing facilities need stronger enforcement of new safety guidelines and workplace policies that reflect the unique challenges that COVID-19 poses. Our union also represents essential workers in nursing homes, as well as grocery store and pharmacy clerks, risk being exposed every day. They deserve stronger protections, and hazard pay. This is a public health crisis and an economic crisis. Our states unemployment rate stands at 12.9 percent and approximately 51,000 Pennsylvanians are filing unemployment claims each week, roughly the population of Harrisburg. Some of our workers and their family members have lost their jobs. If Toomey or other lawmakers were to visit an unemployment compensation office for just an hour, they would see that these families need the . Senate and Trump to extend the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program, which provides Americans forced out of work by the pandemic an additional $600 a week in assistance. That program is scheduled to expire at the end of July. This assistance is critical for low-wage workers, who have been hit especially hard by this pandemic. There is no doubt that this program, as well as many other provisions will help workers and families of color. It is important to note that African American unemployment more than doubled in April alone. Extending this supplement will help our nation begin to address the economic inequalities that disadvantage Black Americans. Every Pennsylvanian has a vested interest in this legislation. Our state closed the 2019-20 budget year on July 1 with a $3.2 billion shortfall. The states Independent Fiscal Office is projecting a $4.8 billion loss in state revenue in the next year. Local governments are grappling with significant revenue losses as well. School districts could face local revenue shortfalls of $1 billion in the next fiscal year. The debate over whether students can or should return to classrooms is raging, but under any circumstance, our public schools need to be ready to teach our kids this fall and that requires funding. The U.S. House has already passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or HEROES Act. Pennsylvanians need the Senate to follow suit. This legislation would provide another round of $1,200 checks to American adults and children. The legislation provides funding for hazard pay, paid sick and family medical leave, childcare support, OSHA protections, and funding for personal protective equipment. The HEROES Act would also provide $875 billion in state and local aid ($500 billion for states and $375 billion for local governments), $90 billion in education assistance, and an increase in federal Medicaid funding. The Act contains provisions to protect nursing home residents and workers, a critical consideration given that our state has more than 2.2 million residents 65 and over, fifth highest among all states. This provision is essential for our members. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey supports this legislation. Toomey is skeptical that additional cash payments to Americans are necessary or effective. Trump has been quick to come to the aid of banks and his wealthy backers, he has not yet developed a national strategy to protect workers. The 35,000 members I am proud to represent have stepped up and continue to punch the clock throughout this crisis. They are hardworking taxpayers who deserve leadership in Washington. Toomey needs to show he is more than Trumps lackey. He needs to lead. Wendell W. Young IV is President of UFCW Local 1776 Keystone State and a member of the CLEAR Coalition. For more information, please visit www.ufcw1776.org. Przepraszamy! Ogoszenie na stanowisku: IT Security Specialist Security Patching wygaso z dniem 2020-08-30 Ta propozycja bya zozona przez Nordea Bank Abp SA Oddzia w Polsce Mozliwe przyczyny wygasniecia ogoszenia to: propozycja zamieszczona przez pracodawce zostaa wycofana z naszych zasobow ogoszeniodawca zakonczy proces rekrutacji uzyskujac odpowiednia ilosc CV rekruter zmodyfikowa tresc zlecenia i jest ono dostepne pod innym adresem WWW dostawca tresci usuna ogoszenie z bazy danych nieprawidowy adres WWW ogoszenia Jezeli poszukujesz pracy w branzy Informatyka / Telekomunikacja, zajrzyj tutaj: Praca Informatyka / Telekomunikacja Jezeli poszukujesz pracy na stanowisku IT Security Specialist Security Patching, zajrzyj tutaj: Praca IT Security Specialist Security Patching Jezeli poszukujesz pracy w miescie: Gdynia, zajrzyj tutaj: Praca Gdynia Pamietaj, ze mozesz takze rozpoczac poszukiwanie pracy od strony gownej, kliknij tutaj. Inne propozycje, ktore mogy byc w kregu Twoich zainteresowan: The App Store has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent months. This is despite the App Stores popularity and usage soaring among iPhone users, with the store posting its best-ever quarter recently. App developers are clearly not happy with Apple and they have become increasingly vocal about the 30 percent commission that the company takes for App Store transactions. Apple has been charging developers a flat 30 percent commission on App Store transactions right from the store was first launched. For subscription services, Apple takes a 30 percent cut in the first year which is then reduced to 15 percent in the second year. Apple has also been in the news for forcing companies to include IAPs in their apps. The company did this with Basecamps Hey email app and wants Airbnb to do the same thing. Apple argues that it is just implementing the App Store rules fairly but it comes across as being greedy in many cases. App Store rules state that Apple will not take any commission for any physical service or product sold via iOS apps, but it is eligible for a 30 percent commission for digital services. This is actually in line with other mobile app stores including the Google Play Store, though Apple is regularly criticized because of its more stringent rules and not allowing iPhone users to sideload apps from other app stores. This would have allowed developers to bypass the commission they are otherwise required to pay Apple. Even Amazon takes a commission from sellers in exchange for providing them access with their platform and other tools. While the 30 percent commission was fine back in the day when the App Store was new, in recent years, developers feel that Apple is ripping then off. Major companies and developers like Spotify, Epic Games, and Telegram have all filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in the EU which has already led to a formal investigation against Apple for its App Store policies. At one point in time, Apple was even considering charging 40 percent commission from App Store sales, though it ultimately settled on 30 percent. In my opinion, both Apple and app developers are correct to a certain extent. Apple should rightfully get a commission for App Store sales as without the store, apps created by developers will never reach billions of people all over the world. Running the App Store requires a lot of effort that Apple has invested in over the year. The company even released a study last month to justify the commission it charges. Apple is also right in asking apps like Airbnb and Hey to implement IAP support in their apps as other smaller developers are also subjected to the same rules so creating exceptions for such big corporations would be unfair to them. However, I also feel that Apple is not doing enough for app developers. The company is raking in billions of dollars every quarter via App Store fees and yet, developers are not getting proper replies and feedback on app rejections from the App Store editorial team. Surely Apple can afford to spend a few more millions every month on the App Store to help improve the experience for app developers. What do you think about Apple charging a 30 percent commission on App Store sales? Do you think this is fair on Apples part? Or is the company being too greedy? Photo: The Canadian Press/Gratl & Company Shane Robertson is held down during his arrest by Vancouver police officers outside a Walmart in Vancouver in a May 12, 2019. An Indigenous mother and son have launched a lawsuit against the Vancouver Police Department, the City of Vancouver and Walmart over an arrest on Mother's Day last year. A statement of claim filed this week in B.C. Supreme Court says officers used excessive force and unlawfully arrested Shane Robertson and Margaret Deneault after they left a Vancouver Walmart store. The lawsuit alleges a security guard accused Robertson of stealing, he denied it and the family left the store. It says while they loaded their vehicle, six Vancouver police officers arrived, tackled Robertson to the ground and restrained him by putting their knees on the back of his head, neck and legs. The lawsuit says Robertson wasn't resisting but was repeatedly punched while he was restrained. None of the allegations have been proven in court and no statements of defence have yet been filed. Vancouver police spokesman Sgt. Aaron Roed said in a statement that police were called to the Walmart for reports of an assault in progress. The caller told dispatchers that a man spat on a store security guard, he said. After police arrived, Roed said Robertson refused to listen or co-operate with officers, and also shouted profanities. The suspect was taken to jail for breach of peace, and Roed said the man was later apologetic about his behaviour. Robertson was banned from shopping at any Walmart in Canada, the lawsuit says. Neither Robertson nor his mother were charged in connection to the allegations. Robertson's lawsuit alleges he received a concussion, broken ribs, bruising, cuts, sprains and other soft-tissue damage. It asks for general, special, aggravated and punitive damages. The statement says Deneault was also pulled from her vehicle, put in handcuffs and told she was under arrest. "The (police) members then took statements from both Deneault and Robertson, who advised that they had paid for all their items and showed (police) their receipt," the court statement says. The pair were questioned and ultimately released, although the lawyer representing the pair said in an interview that Robertson was unlawfully held for several hours. Toby Rauch-Davis said the lawsuit is about police brutality. "No crime had been committed, my clients had receipts and hadn't stolen anything. And really the police just came in, beat Mr. Robertson, arrested him in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses and then decided to ask questions about what happened." A video of Robertson's arrest released by the law firm shows two police officers and a person in plain clothes on top of the man on the ground when another male officer enters the frame and is seen kneeing the man in the back. The bystander taking the video can be heard shouting, "Why are you hitting him?" The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner has started an investigation into the arrest, said Andrea Spindler, its deputy commissioner. Investigations are required to be completed in six months. A spokeswoman for Walmart Canada said the company won't comment on matters before the court, but respect is a core value of its work. "We do not tolerate any behaviour which contradicts this value, including racism and discrimination," said Felicia Feder, the manager of corporate affairs, in a statement. From Canadas dreamers to the WE scandal, weve selected some of the best long reads of the week from thestar.com. Want to dive into more long features? Sign up for the Weekend Long Reads newsletter to get them delivered straight to your inbox every Saturday morning. 1. This migrant worker spoke out about a massive COVID-19 outbreak that killed his bunkmate. Then he was fired, a legal complaint says The reprisal complaint filed Wednesday evening to the Ontario Labour Relations Board claims Scotlynn Growers violated provincial health and safety laws when it fired 36-year-old Gabriel Flores Flores for raising concerns about the spread of the virus that infected more than 200 workers and killed his bunkmate. In an interview with the Star, Scotlynn president Scott Biddle said Flores was never fired. He said the worker requested to go back into Mexico because he had a sick family member and was scared being on the farm because of the outbreak. 2. WE says millions of kids participate in its Schools program. Heres why two former employees say its misleading WE denies it manipulates or fabricates data and says the 4.3 million youth impacted by its Schools program in the 2017/18 school year is based on numbers reported by teachers in surveys. 3. Shes one of Canadas dreamers. They said she had limitless potential. But now her future is on hold Thousands of undocumented Torontonians who were brought to this country as minors and flourished in our public schools are being shut out of university and college by restrictive tuition and student loan policies. They are Canadas dreamers. They have arguably even less support than their American counterparts, who have been under legal assault by the Trump administration. 4. It would be devastating: If Canada gets hit by a second COVID-19 wave this fall, government money could run out and some sectors may not survive Should a second wave cause closures and lockdowns on the scale seen in the spring many Canadians could be looking to governments for simple survival assistance food and electricity as winter closes in, says David Soberman, a marketing professor at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management. 5. Secret UFO files? In Canada the truth is out there online and searchable Its the stuff of UFO enthusiasts dreams or conspiracy theorists nightmares. Unpublished U.S. military findings about unidentified aerial phenomena could soon be made public. But America, it turns out, could learn a thing or two from Canada when it comes to transparency about flying saucers and the like. 6. The pandemic from 4,000 feet: Pilots found surprises lurked when flying the empty skies On April 11, as Gord Roberts flew north of the city toward the Kitchener airport to practise an instrument approach, the voice of the air traffic controller at Pearson came in clearly over the radio in his Cessna-182. Do you want something special today? the controller asked. 7. Patriots only: Im reading Trumps re-election emails so you dont have to Donald Trumps re-election campaign has been spamming me, sometimes as Trump himself, writes Jeremy Nuttall. My inbox hasnt been this full of guilt, emotion and unstable argumentative undertones since my first adolescent breakup. The Radical Democrats, who totally control Biden, will destroy our Country as we know it. Unimaginably bad things would happen to America, which is why we need to FIGHT BACK, reads one. 8. Leaked document shows how much WE Charity planned to pay workers running student volunteer program WE Charity proposed using public money for short-term contracts ranging from $30,000 to $125,000 for its own workers to administer a government program for students volunteers that was scrapped amidst a political firestorm, documents obtained by the Star reveal. Dated May 4, the proposal gives the most detailed picture yet of how the Toronto-based charity planned to use millions of dollars in payments from Ottawa to design and deliver the $543.5-million program, which was cancelled this month in the face of a conflict of interest scandal for the Liberal government. 9. A Jamaican migrant worker suffered catastrophic injuries on the job, then was told he could work as a shoe shiner and had his workers compensation cut off The decision currently under appeal is an example of unconscious bias and racism at play, according to the workers representative, retired lawyer Kendal McKinney. It also brings into question the fate of migrant workers who may be left with permanent impairments after battling COVID-19. These are second-class workers, said McKinney. These systems that are supposed to take care of them are nothing but Potemkin villages. And, morally, Im outraged. 10. How a Toronto hospital handled Canadas first COVID-19 case: We didnt know this was a moment in history On a Thursday evening in late January, a 56-year-old man went by ambulance to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre with a fever and persistent dry cough. He and his wife had returned to Toronto one day earlier from a three-month visit to Wuhan, China, where a novel coronavirus was circulating with reports of patients becoming critically ill with a pneumonia-like illness in hospital. This was Jan. 23. 11. When we get a COVID-19 vaccine the real question will be: Whos first? When a vaccine is developed, who will get it first, and who gets to decide? With COVID-19 continuing to spread around the world, these are literally life and death decisions. Canada has seen a total of almost 114,600 cases, including 8,901 fatalities. Some 99,860 people have recovered. Its fair to assume that, at least initially, we wont have enough vaccines to inoculate everyone on the planet, which will leave multiple jurisdictions jockeying for supplies, while public health authorities will be tasked with making tough decisions about who should be prioritized. 12. My mother was not a victim. I am not a victim: Natasha Trethewey on her book memorial to her murdered mother Natasha Trethewey was just 19 years old when her mother was shot and killed by her stepfather. Her new book, Memorial Drive: A Daughters Memoir, is the first time shes written about her childhood years. We live in a society that does not value some lives as much as others. And we can see that particularly in this story with the case of a womans life, Trethewey, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, tells the Star. Mike Isaac, Ana Swanson and Alan Rappeport SAN FRANCISCO TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app that has been under scrutiny from the Trump administration, is in talks to sell itself to Microsoft and other companies as President Donald Trump weighs harsh actions against the business, including forcing TikTok to divorce itself from its parent company, ByteDance, said people with knowledge of the discussions. Trumps decision would follow a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, a powerful government panel that has been examining ByteDances 2017 purchase of Musical.ly, an app that eventually morphed to become TikTok. The committee has decided to order ByteDance to divest TikTok, and the government is engaged in negotiations over the terms of the separation, according to a person familiar with the administrations plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. White House officials have said TikTok may pose a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who leads the committee, briefed the president on the divestment plan. But it remains unclear what the president will do, including whether the U.S. would apply a divestment order to all of TikToks U.S. operations and whether its actions would affect the apps global business as well. Trump is weighing several other courses of action, including an executive order that could use the vast powers of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to bar certain foreign apps from U.S. app stores. The Trump administration has also considered whether to add TikToks parent to a so-called entity list, which would prevent it from purchasing U.S. products and services without a special license, said people with knowledge of the matter. Discussions are expected to continue into the weekend. In his comments Friday, Trump told reporters that there were a couple of options with TikTok, including banning it. He added, But a lot of things are happening, so well see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok. Its unclear how advanced TikToks talks to sell itself to Microsoft and other companies are, but changing ownership is crucial for the app. The United States is one of TikToks major markets, so continued operations in the country are a priority. TikTok has discussed other scenarios to alleviate concerns by U.S. officials. In one scenario, non-Chinese investors like Sequoia Capital, SoftBank and General Atlantic could purchase a majority stake in the app from ByteDance, people familiar with the discussions have said. Any deal would likely be expensive. ByteDances valuation recently stood at around $100 billion, according to the research firm PitchBook. In a statement, TikTok did not address Trumps comments or any deal talks. A spokeswoman said the app was confident in its long-term success and that it was committed to protecting the privacy and safety of its creators so they could bring joy to families. Microsoft declined to comment. The discussions between Microsoft and TikTok were earlier reported by Fox Business. Bloomberg earlier reported that Trump was poised to announce an order to force ByteDance to sell TikToks U.S. operations. The developments reflect the increasing pressure on TikTok. For months, lawmakers and the Trump administration have questioned whether the app is susceptible to influence from the Chinese government, including potential requests to censor material shared on the platform or to share American user data with Chinese officials. It is well established at this point that apps that have granular access to user data and location and other sensitive personal data are very much on the radar of CFIUS and can cause significant national security concerns, said John Kabaelo, a lawyer who represents companies in CFIUS reviews. TikTok generally collects similar amounts of data from mobile phones as other social media apps, said security experts. But Christoph Hebeisen, director of security intelligence research at Lookout, a company that focuses on the security of mobile devices, said U.S. officials are concerned by the app because if the parent company is Chinese, which it is in this case, they are under Chinese security law. He added, I dont think it is a stretch to think if China wanted to access that data they would have a means to do so. TikTok is used by more than 800 million people around the world and is especially popular with young people. Users can easily add music and other audio tracks to their videos, which then often travel virally across Facebook and Twitter. As the app has become more popular, TikToks Chinese offices have swollen to thousands of employees. The company has also maintained a U.S. presence, with offices in New York and Los Angeles. In response to the heightened scrutiny from Washington, TikTok in May hired a top Disney executive, Kevin Mayer, to be its chief executive. The app has also pledged to publicly reveal the algorithm that powers its app. In addition, TikTok has bulked up its lobbying operation in Washington. With help from prominent investors like SoftBank and General Atlantic, it has hired the former head of the Internet Association, a trade group that represents companies like Google and Facebook, and staff members from prominent members from Congress. The company has signed on more than 35 lobbyists, including David Urban, a former West Point classmate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and an ally of Trump. The companys lobbyists have highlighted TikToks American investors and Mayers hire. Sensing weakness, rivals like Facebook have homed in on lawmakers distrust of TikToks Chinese ownership. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks chief executive, has said that U.S. companies like his would suffer if the government put them at a competitive disadvantage against TikTok. On Wednesday, with the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google testifying in front of Congress about their market power, Mayer defended TikTok while pledging to do right by the U.S. government. The entire industry has received scrutiny, and rightly so. Yet we have received even more scrutiny due to the companys Chinese origins, he said in a statement. We believe it is essential to show users, advertisers, creators and regulators that we are responsible and committed members of the American community that follows U.S. laws. CFIUS has previously ordered companies to divest their acquisitions. Congress had expanded the panels purview in 2018 to include reviews of transactions involving sensitive user data. The change was spurred by concerns that foreign ownership of data gathered by apps and internet sites could threaten national security. In 2019, the Trump administration ordered a Chinese firm to relinquish its control of Grindr, the gay dating app, concerned that China might use the information to blackmail American officials. The Chinese company, Beijing Kunlun Technology, said it reached a deal with CFIUS earlier this year to sell the app to an investment group, San Vicente Acquisition LLC, though Reuters later reported that the buyer had ties to the Chinese owner. c.2020 The New York Times Company This clever comedy captures Zooms dual capacity to connect and yet reinforce isolation, with the cast (which includes Ronny Chieng, Beecham Houses Pallavi Sharda and Sisters Maria Angelico), working extra hard in their solitary squares to establish a social circle of aspirational 30-somethings. At tonights virtual bar, they trash out relationship issues and drop truth bombs over a round of trivia. The characters are real enough to make the experience warming if not raucously funny. MADE IN CHELSEA 11pm, 9Life If you loved The Windsors on Netflix, this unashamedly stagey reality series about pretty, young people enjoying as close a royal existence as is possible outside The Firm is almost as funny, but for the wrong reasons. It seems life really is about little more than foxhunts, boozy launches and whos dropped who for this posh set. Tonight, the ladies engage in some superior cattiness as an outsider muscles in on the arm candy of one of the horsey peroxide blondes. Opponents of a public health order requiring people to wear masks in most indoor public spaces took part in an anti-mask demonstration in downtown Peterborough on Saturday on the first day of the order going into effect The protesters staged a rally at Confederation Square at 11 a.m. and then marched through the downtown at noon, expressing their views that people should have a right to choose whether or not to wear a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic. What we did today was just the beginning, demonstration organizer Neil Sheard told The Examiner. I know this (order) will not be rescinded right away, but given time and pressure this (order) will be taken off the books. We understand that some people want to wear a mask, so be it. What we want is the right to choose. The group plans to stage another protest next Saturday in Peterborough, joined by supporters from a similar group in Northumberland County. Some supporters of mask use argued with the protesters during the demonstration, with one woman coughing while the protesters marched past her. City police officers, wearing masks and riding bicycles, were on hand to monitor the demonstration. The anti-maskers carried the Canadian flag and signs with messages such as Masks only silence you and Face masks do not stop viruses, while counter-protesters had signs with messages such as Masks save lives. Peterborough Public Health has ordered that masks be worn in indoor public places and on city buses until further notice as an added measure to help curb the spread of COVID-19. Medical officer of health Dr. Rosana Salvaterra invoked the directive for mandatory masking, following the lead of other health units that issued similar orders earlier last month, including the neighbouring Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit. The order requires masks in indoor public spaces, in taxis and on public transit in Peterborough city and county. A new project between the city, county and Peterborough Public Health was launched Friday to give masks to people who may not be able to afford to buy them. Local community agencies will be handing out 5,000 masks to start, with further free masks available soon. Agencies that offer social services such as the John Howard Society, for example will be giving away the masks. Ontario COVID-19 cases This interactive map shows confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths related to the virus as reported by public health units across Ontario. The map is updated hourly. Peterborough Transit riders can still get a free mask at the Simcoe Street bus terminal for free while supplies last. Peterborough city and county went for nearly 40 days without a confirmed new case of the coronavirus, but the streak was broken when two new cases were reported Thursday and another on Friday after Peterborough had moved to Stage 3 of the reopening of the economy. Peterborough Public Health reported a new confirmed case Sunday, the 99th cumulative confirmed case so far for the jurisdiction, but there were no new cases Monday afternoon, leaving the number of active cases at four. One of the new cases is a man in his 30s who contracted it through travel out of the area and the other is a man in his 20s who contracted it through close contact with a confirmed case, according to Ontario Public Health. Peterborough now has a rate of 67 cases per 100,000 people, less than a quarter of the provincial average of 289.7 cases per 100,000 people as of Monday. The Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit also reported several new cases this week and as of Friday had one active case in the City of Kawartha Lakes and one active case in Haliburton County. More than 21,600 people, or about one in seven, have now been tested for COVID-19 as of Monday in the jurisdiction. Drive-thru COVID-19 testing continues at the Kinsmen Centre on a first-come, first-serve basis for people without symptoms who drive or walk into the clinic. The hours are from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays. Anyone with symptoms should call 705-876-5086 to arrange for testing at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre assessment centre. To arrange for a test on a weekend, with or without symptoms, also call 705-876-5086. Lottie Moss is 'dating I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star Roman Kemp'. The model, 22, and radio star, 27, are thought to have enjoyed a successful and 'tipsy' date at London's Soho House on Monday, reports The Sun on Sunday. News of the alleged blossoming romance comes just three weeks after Roman split from his girlfriend of three years Anne-Sophie Flury. New romance? Lottie Moss, 22, is 'dating I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star Roman Kemp after the pair had a successful and tipsy date in London on Monday' A mutual friend told The Sun on Sunday: 'They have known each other through the party circuit for a few years, but nothing has ever happened before. 'Roman's always thought she was beautiful, and decided to pluck up the courage to ask her out.' Speaking about their successful date, the source claimed they kissed and said: 'They had a really fun, very tipsy date and have been in touch every day since.' MailOnline has contacted Lottie and Roman's representatives for comment. Moving on? It was revealed that Roman had split from his girlfriend of three years Anne-Sophie Flury (pictured together) three weeks ago Radio star Roman and his neuroscientist girlfriend Anne-Sophie split up after three years together in July. The couple only moved in together in January but things went downhill during lockdown and they 'weren't able to make things work'. Roman met Swiss scientist Anne-Sophie on Tinder - and he is said to already be back on the dating apps to take his mind off the split. Bear-ly there: A source said that Roman had 'always thought Lottie was beautiful' and 'decided to pluck up the courage to ask her out' on Monday A source told The Sun: 'Roman loved Sophie and things had been going really well for them. But being in lockdown is tough for any couple and they just werent able to make things work, which has been upsetting and tough for them both. 'His pals have encouraged him to move on and have got him on [dating app] Raya, which is packed with attractive and creative women.' The couple had seemed inseparable- even co-owning a pet dog together, called Luna. Reports believe Anne-Sophie has kept the pooch - who would occasionally appear alongside Roman on Celebrity Gogglebox, but who has been absent of late Dead air: The radio star moved in with his ex girlfriend in January but things went downhill during lockdown and they 'weren't able to make things work' Roman took part in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! 2019, and it was Anne-Sophie who flew to Australia to wait for him to come out of the jungle. Meanwhile, Lottie has previously been linked to Alex Mytton and Jamie Lain, while she has also been close to Brooklyn Beckham, the eldest son of David and Victoria, Gary Lineker's eldest son George, and Rafferty Law, Jude Law and Sadie Frost's eldest son. She set pulses racing last week when she flaunted her figure in a tiny pink Care Bears bikini by clothing brand GCDS. The model smouldered into the camera as she posed up a storm in the flesh-flashing 212 crochet two-piece on Instagram. Lottie matched her barely there ensemble with her bubblegum pink wig as she seductively knelt down in one snap, while standing tall in another mirror selfie. The blonde beauty shares the same dad as famous sister Kate Moss - airline worker Peter Moss - but Kate's mum is former barmaid Linda Shepherd, while Lottie is the daughter of Peter's second wife, Norwegian model, Inger. Several countries in the Asia-Pacific prided themselves on containing the novel coronavirus earlier this year. But new record surges have shown that the worst is not over. In Australia, Thursday was the deadliest day of the pandemic yet. The country recorded 13 deaths and a record high of more than 700 new cases, mostly in its second-most populous state, Victoria. Authorities there have now ordered all residents in the state to wear masks. Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended a possible new array of lockdown measures on Thursday. ''We have now been in this lockdown now for some weeks, and we are not getting the results we would hope for. And as a result the further measures that are taken are certainly necessary. They will come at an impact to the economy - we understand that but, equally, not containing these outbreaks will have that effect also. And so it's important that we continue to work together to get on top of this and to take whatever actions are necessary." With just over 900 active COVID-19 cases linked to Victorian-aged care homes, the Federal government has sent 1,400 military personnel and five emergency teams to Melbourne to support those caring for the elderly, including with contact tracing. Vietnam, which was virus-free for months -- this week reported a sudden outbreak that had spread to six cities and provinces in just six days. Thousands had flocked to the coastal city of Danang to take advantage of cut-rate travel deals... ...now, the government has suspended all flights there after the virus resurfaced. At least nine cases have been linked to the city. Eighty-one thousand people are now in quarantine... ...and on Thursday the government sent a text message to all of the country's mobile phones urging those who visited Danang to report to disease control centers. Even isolated North Korea is on alert. Weeks ago a defector suspected of having the virus. . . illegally crossed the highly fortified border BACK over from South Korea. It's prompted strict quarantine and screening measures at the border. But so far -- North Korea says it has no domestic cases. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Reuters) Khabarovsk and Moscow Sat, August 1, 2020 15:41 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ae76fe 2 World Russia,protest,Vladimir-Putin Free Thousands of people marched in the Russian far eastern city of Khabarovsk on Saturday for the fourth weekend in a row, protesting at President Vladimir Putin's handling of a local political crisis. Residents of Khabarovsk, around 3,800 miles (6,110 km) and seven time zones east of Moscow, are unhappy about the July 9 detention of the wider region's popular regional governor, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested on murder charges he denies. His detention, which his supporters say was politically motivated, has triggered weeks of street protests, creating a headache for the Kremlin which is trying to troubleshoot a sharp COVID-19-induced drop in real incomes and keep a lid on unrest as the economy stutters. Sheltering from sporadic and heavy rain beneath umbrellas, protesters chanted "Freedom!" and "We came here of our own will." One banner read "Russia without Putin" and protesters chanted "Putin resign!" Read also: One sole Russian region says 'nyet' to Putin, defying the Kremlin Many held up placards in solidarity with the arrested governor, reading "I am/We are Sergei Furgal". Some marchers wore face masks with the same slogan. City authorities estimated around 3,500 people had taken part. Some local media put the number at around 10,000 or higher, but said the crowds were smaller than one week ago. The protests have highlighted anger among some in the far east over what they see as policies emanating from detached Moscow-based authorities on the other side of the country. Supporters of Furgal, the arrested governor and a member of the nationalist LDPR party, feel he is being belatedly punished for defeating a candidate from the ruling pro-Putin United Russia party in 2018. The Kremlin says Furgal has serious charges to answer. Such sustained demonstrations are unusual for Russia's regions, as is the fact that the authorities have not yet moved to break them up. Putin has named a new acting governor, but protesters say he has no connection with the region and have called on him to step down too. Xi Jinping envisions world-class Chinese army in new era PLA Daily Source: CGTN.COM Editor: Li Wei 2020-07-31 00:20:06 Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has come a long way since its birth during the armed uprising in the city of Nanchang on August 1, 1927, when it had only 20,000 soldiers. With two million servicemen, today's PLA pledges to build up new types of combat forces that have the ability to conduct special operations, all-dimensional offense and defense, amphibious operations, far seas protection and strategic projection. Over the past few years, Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), has reshaped the PLA and is leading it to become a world-class military force. World-class forces The Chinese president's thinking on strengthening the military answers the fundamental questions of what kind of armed forces China is pursuing and how China should go about building them. In December 2012, barely a month after he assumed the top post in the Party, Xi spoke of the need to build a strong military. "To realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, we must adhere to combining the building of a prosperous country with that of a strong military," Xi said. The PLA has reshaped its leadership and management system, optimized its structure and reformed its military policies and institutions since 2015. A road map to fully transform the PLA into a world-class military force by the mid-21st century was unveiled at the 19th CPC National Congress in 2017. In December 2018, Xi described it as a strategic task in socialist modernization to build a fortified national defense and a strong military commensurate with China's international standing and its security and development interests. According to Xi, the envisioned world-class armed forces must provide a strong backing to the protection of China's sovereignty, security and development interests, the safeguarding of world peace and stability, and the realization of the national rejuvenation. Built to fight "A military is built to fight. Our military must regard combat capability as the criterion to meet in all its work and focus on how to win when it is called on," Xi has pointed out. During his inspection tours of the army, Xi reiterated the need for the armed forces to improve their combat capability and readiness for war. In response to his call, military training in real combat conditions across the armed forces is in full swing. Since 2012, China's armed forces have carried out extensive mission-oriented training tailored to the specific needs of different strategic directions and exercises of all services and arms, including over 80 joint exercises at and above brigade or division level. This year, the PLA has also showed its combat capability in responding to emergencies. In China's battle against COVID-19, the PLA dispatched over 4,000 medical personnel to the epicenter of the outbreak, Hubei Province, to work on epidemic control. Medical teams were formed within two hours of receiving the order, and they arrived at their destinations within 24 hours, carrying a seven-day stock of protective materials. On arrival, they started to treat patients right away. According to the Chinese Defense Ministry, as of July 28, the PLA and the People's Armed Polices (PAP) had dispatched 725,000 personnel to fight on the anti-flooding front lines by reinforcing dikes, plugging levee breaches and evacuating residents. Strict military governance President Xi has repeatedly stressed the need to govern the military with strict discipline and in accordance with the law in every respect. The idea was also written into the country's rule-of-law blueprint during the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in 2014. When inspecting the 13th Group Army in southwest China in January 2016, Xi also called for strengthening the armed forces through reform, besides enhancing political awareness and lawfulness to build a strong army. Since 2012, fighting corruption in the military has also been a focus of the sweeping anti-graft crackdown, with dozens of military officers investigated and jailed, including Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, both former top generals and vice chairmen of the CMC. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address "I proved I was all there 'cause I aced it I aced the test. I took it at Walter Reed Medical Center in front of doctors, and they were very surprised. They said, 'That's an unbelievable thing rarely does anybody do what you just did.'" President Donald Trump, describing his performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment An excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, "Spot the Camel: A Journalist's Story." While friends and even passersby would express shock on hearing that someone in my physical condition was past age 50, it was an undeniable fact. Because full-tilt is my style, I threw myself into the various highs and lows that come with the onset of late midlife, from that precious first colonoscopy to full membership in AARP. At my annual physical, I asked my doctor if there was a test that could be used to assess brain function. She recommended the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, but warned me that it was 30 questions long. "Bring it," I said. She pulled out a single sheet. It was go time. The first challenge involved drawing a line to complete the relations between the numbers 1 through 5 and the letters A through E. The diagram already showed a line connecting 1 to A to 2 a clue that, after some thought, led me to realize the line should next proceed to B, then to 3. I'll skip ahead to when I drew the final line connecting 5 to E. There was a sharp intake of breath from my doctor, as if she had just watched Picasso paint a bull. "Go on," she said, a slight quaver in her voice. I won't bore you with the next few minutes, except to say that I gunned down those questions like Richard Burton killing Nazis in "Where Eagles Dare." Presented with pictures of three quadrupedal animals and asked to identify them, I did so in a strong, clear voice. (I was later told that my mispronunciation of "camel" it's "CA-mel," not "ca-MEL" didn't count against my score.) Then, the change-up: She asked me to repeat five words and commit them to memory. The words: face, velvet, church, daisy and red. Suddenly, I realized this wasn't going to be one of these straightforward identify-the-animal, know-how-to-count-to-five tests; this was a pro-league cognitive assessment the deep end of the pool, for sure. My doctor raised an eyebrow. Could she sense my hesitation, as if my anxiety was a stink wafting through the exam room? Using the Zen training discussed in a previous chapter, I visualized a box, shoved my fear inside and nailed it shut with mental roofing nails. Then I went back to a mnemonic trick I had employed back in my singing telegram days: Visualize an image that ties the data together. So I imagined the classic Batman villain Two-Face eating a velvet cake in church while holding a daisy and wearing something red. I had it! I could tell my doctor knew something almost preternatural was happening. After I repeated the words back to her, she walked out of the room and returned with another doctor. We proceeded into an especially savage portion of the assessment: I was asked to repeat back five numbers, and then given three more numbers to feed back but now in reverse order. As if this weren't enough math, I was asked to count backward from 100 by subtracting sevens yes, sevens: perhaps the most brutal single-digit prime number in the multiplication tables. When I made it to 65, the second doctor whipped around and excitedly punched a hole in the wall. For witnesses, they called in the receptionist and two patients from the waiting room. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. To test language fluency, I was given a minute to name as many words as I could think of but there was a catch: They all had to start with the letter F. I pounced. "Fluency, flu, flue but like a chimney, fluent, flow, flotilla, floatie " They stopped me after a dozen, but I could have gone the full minute easily. The receptionist and the two patients burst into applause; the doctors high-fived each other. As you can imagine, I was starting to get tired. You can't push the outside of the cognitive envelope like this for the eight minutes or so I'd been at it without feeling brain-burn. Needless to say, that was when they hit me with the whammy: My doctor said, "Do you remember ... the five words I told you earlier?" The receptionist got out her cellphone and began livecasting a likely HIPAA violation, I realized later, after the footage went viral. "Face," I said, thinking of Two-Face. Dammit, what was he eating? "Velvet. Church! Daisy! Red!" It was over. I had done it. My doctor burst into tears as she asked me to identify the date, day of the week and city we were in. I answered, got up from the exam table and began to get dressed. "That's an unbelievable thing," she said. "Rarely does anybody do what you just did." Though I disapprove of starting a sentence with an adverb, I had to agree. cseiler@timesunion.com 518-454-5619 Major businesses across NSW are taking it upon themselves to introduce face mask policies for staff and customers, moving ahead of government advice after more than a week of daily double-digit increases in coronavirus cases. The state recorded 17 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday as several clusters across Sydney's west and inner-east continued to grow. Aaron Johnson has a COVID-19 test at a popup clinic run by St Vincent's Hospital. Credit:Janie Barrett An 83-year-old man linked to the Crossroads Hotel cluster was also the first to die with COVID-19 in NSW in more than a month after passing away early Saturday morning, NSW Health confirmed. With Premier Gladys Berejiklian standing by departmental health advice suggesting masks only be considered where physical distancing can't be maintained, scores of companies across the state are going further. A senior officer of the Patna district administration, leading the Covid-19 battle in the state capital, tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday, on a day Bihar reported the biggest spike in Covid-19 cases with 3,521 new infections and 14 deaths. The officer, who played a proactive role in combating the virus and ensuring that the governments intervention reaches the Covid-19 affected in Patna, has opted for home isolation after he suffered a bout of fever, prompting him to take the test. A bureaucrat-turned-MP of the JD(U) also tested positive for the virus. The spike in cases coincided with the highest number of testing of samples 28,624 reported by the state health department on Saturday. Of the 3,521 cases reported Saturday, 2,502 samples were tested on July 31 and 1,019 on July 30, taking the states overall case tally to 54,508, with 18,722 active cases, said Bihars health secretary Lokesh Kumar Singh during the media briefing on Saturday. The governments Covid-19 bulletin, which was tweeted through the state health department Twitter handle, mentioned of 14 deaths till Friday. Nine Covid-19 deaths were reported from AIIMS-Patna and three from the Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH) on Saturday. Munger and Patna reported three deaths each, Bhagalpur and Muzaffarpur two each, while Araria, East Champaran, Rohtas and Siwan reported one death each, as per the governments Covid-19 bulletin. Two deaths were reported at AIIMS from Patna, and one each from East Champaran, Bhojpur, Saran, Vaishali, Aurangabad, Saran and Nalanda, according to Dr Sanjeev Kumar, Covid-19 nodal officer for AIIMS-Patna. Besides, two deaths were reported at the NMCH from Patna and one from Gaya, according to Dr Mukul Kumar Singh, nodal officer for Covid-19 at the hospital. As part of Bihars test, track and treat strategy, Singh said the department had been able to ramp up testing to 28,624. These samples were tested on Friday. It had tested 22,742 samples on the previous day, he added. A total 1,823 patients had recovered during the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 35,473, with a recovery rate of 65.08%, added Singh. Bihars chief minister Nitish Kumar, who inspected some hospitals through video conferencing, asked the hospital administration to ensure availability of doctors and also provide telephonic medical consultation to people. He asked his officials to ensure that doctors visited the patients regularly at the hospital. He also asked officials to ensure sufficient availability of ambulance to ferry patients, said Auupam Kumar, secretary, information and public relations department. Redressal of patient grievance In keeping with the CMs directive, Patna divisional commissioner Sanjay Agarwal visited the COvid-19 district control room and asked his officers to speak to patients and their relatives through video and phone calls to redress any grievance they had. He also advised them to prepare summary chart as per the requirement of patients, which should address issues like availability of ambulance, medicines, need for Covid test, requirement of doctors and paramedics, etc. He also asked officers to document questionnaire based on patient feedback. He advised them to ensure round the clock duty of doctors and paramedical staff at the Covid hospitals. He said people could avail of the facility of telephonic medical consultation by calling up the Covid-19 toll free number. Of the total 54,508 cases, Patna, which reported 442 cases on Saturday, topped the chart with an overall case tally to 9358, followed by 2638 cases in Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur (2459), Nalanda (2266) and Gaya (2209). In usually deep-red Kansas, Democrats have the luxury of a sleepy primary contest for US Senate. Republicans do not. That's because in the Democratic primary the Kansas state senator Barbara Bollier is the heavy favorite to win her party's nomination and then run a competitive general election campaign fueled by a large war chest of cash. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key national security official who testified during the House impeachment inquiry and said earlier this month he plans to retire amid fears of ongoing political backlash, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Saturday that he is "not alone in this ignominious fate." What he's saying: "The circumstances of my departure might have been more public, yet they are little different from those of dozens of other lifelong public servants who have left this administration with their integrity intact but their careers irreparably harmed," Vindman wrote. "At no point in my career or life have I felt our nations values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving." "Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents. Those who choose loyalty to American values and allegiance to the Constitution over devotion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished." The big picture: The president fired Vindman in February as the National Security Council's leading expert on Ukraine for being "insubordinate." Top military leaders including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper claim that Vindman did not face political backlash for his testimony. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the nations biggest oil companies, suffered their deepest losses in recent history during the second quarter as the coronavirus pandemic crushed demand for oil and sent prices to historic lows. Exxon lost $1.1 billion, its first consecutive quarterly loss in more than 30 years. It lost $610 million in the first quarter. Losses were equally widespread at rival Chevron, which lost $8.3 billion, suffering its worst performance in at least three decades. It had a $3.6 billion profit in the first quarter. The oil supermajors Friday reported losses across their upstream, downstream and petrochemicals businesses as demand for crude and petroleum products, such as gasoline, jet fuel and motor oil, plunged during the global coronavirus pandemic. The ensuing economic fallout forced oil producers throughout the industry to slash spending, halt drilling projects and lay off thousands of employees. In Houston, Exxon employs nearly 16,000 employees, and Chevron employs about 7,000, according to a Houston Chronicle survey. Weve never seen a decline in this magnitude and pace before, even relative to the historic periods of demand volatility following the global financial crisis and as far back as the 1970s oil and energy crisis, Neil Chapman, president of Exxons chemicals division, told analysts in a conference call Friday. Chevrons second quarter losses reflected not only steep drops in production and refining but also a $1.8 billion write-down of the companys assets in West Texas and Venezuela. Chevrons assets in Venezuela were mothballed in April after it was banned from drilling or transporting oil in the South American country by the Trump administration, which has been cracking down on money going to the socialist government. The companys losses also were compounded by $780 million in severance payouts to laid-off employees. Chevron this year plans to lay off about 7,000 employees because of the economic fallout from the pandemic. Exxon, on the other hand, was the only supermajor that did not write down the value of its assets to reflect the market downturn. Without a $1.9 billion improvement in refining inventory valuations, Exxon said, it would have suffered a $3 billion loss during the second quarter. Exxon and Chevron responded swiftly to the oil bust. Chevron cut its capital budget by 40 percent, reduced oil and gas production by 150,000 barrels per day and lowered its refinery output to 55 percent of capacity. Exxon slashed its operating expenses by 15 percent, reduced its oil and gas production by about 330,000 barrels per day and cut spending on new drilling by 30 percent to $23 billion. It is now looking to cut its capital budget to $19 billion by the end of the year. As crude prices climbed above $40 a barrel, Exxon restored the majority of its production from its shale plays in July. However, the company said it would keep production cuts of 200,000 barrels per day on average in the third quarter as demand recovery remains tenuous with rising coronavirus cases in the U.S. In West Texas Permian Basin, the nations top-producing shale play, Exxon expects to halve its rig count to 10 to 15 by the end of the year. Similarly, Chevron said it will hold off on ramping up oil and gas production in the Permian Basin until economic conditions improve. Chevron and Exxon said they plan to maintain shareholder dividends and prioritize projects that will help them maintain crude production once prices recover. Yet Chevron last month snapped up rival Noble Energy, a Houston-based independent with attractive assets in the Permian Basin, the DJ Basin of Colorado and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The $13 billion deal, pending approval from Noble Energy shareholders and regulatory officials, is expected to close this year. Chevron said it is preparing for a prolonged recovery in oil prices, pushing the company to become more efficient and make money at $40 a barrel. Were planning for lower for longer, said Pierre Breber, Chevrons chief financial officer. Its a very uncertain environment. I hope the second quarter was the bottom. It sure feels like it. paul.takahashi@chron.com twitter.com/paultakahashi Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: At least 86 people have died after consuming spurious liquor in Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran districts of Punjab and the state police has arrested twenty five bootleggers in over 100 raids conducted by five police teams. The husband of the alleged main accused woman also died in the tragedy. He had recently come out on bail in a case of supplying illegal liquor. Families of the deceased are protesting seeking compensation from the state government and have refused to record their statements. Demanding strict action against the liquor mafia, the family members of the deceased Kirpal Singh kept his body at the protest site and demanded a compensation of Rs 10 lakh as protests were held at Muchhal village in Amritsar (Rural). The protestors have threatened that they would block the Amritsar-Delhi National Highway if their demands were not met. On the other hand, a few families are not getting their statements recorded as they fear social stigma. "Many families are not coming forward to record their statements as they do not want any action and are also not getting the post mortem done due to the fear of social stigma, said a police officer. Deputy Commissioner of Gurdaspur, Mohammad Ishfaq said, "Some families have refused to accept the dead bodies of their family members as they say that their kin did not die due to consuming spurious liquor but due to attack." Punjab DGP Dinkar Gupta said that the raiding parties have seized large quantities of Lahan from various villages and dhabas in the region around Shambhu border, Rajpura and Patiala. The raids had exposed a massive racket in illicit liquor, extending across several districts. The dhabas, identified as Zilmil Dhaba, Green Dhaba, Chhinda Dhaba on Shambhu, and Banur and Rajpura in Patiala have been sealed. A mafia mastermind, a woman kingpin, a transport owner, a wanted criminal and owners and managers of various dhabas from where the illicit liquor was being supplied are among the arrested. As much as 750 litres of Lahan has been seized from village Baghaura from where two persons, Satnam and Rashem, had been arrested while another, identified as Lakhwinder, had been identified as a culprit. Kingpin Darshan Rani was arrested by Batala Police, while another key accused Beeri, of Deo village in Tarn Taran, has also been arrested for supplying the spurious alcohol. Prem Singh, the owner of Azad Transport, and Bhinda (wanted by Tarn Taran Police) were arrested by Rajpura police in raids conducted today. One of the key arrested accused who was bringing spurious liquor from Tarn Taran to Amritsar Rural area has been identified as Govinderbir Singh of Jandiala. He was the main mastermind of the mafia in Amritsar Rural District. Describing the modus operandi of the accused, Gupta said the trucks carrying spirit would be stopped at 6 to 7 identified Dhabas and the Dhaba owners collected the hooch from truck drivers and sold it to one Bhinda who was also accused in Rajpura factory case and Bittu of a village near Banur. Sources said that large amount of spurious liquor, drums and storage cans were recovered from the accused and have been sent for chemical analysis to check for constituents of spurious liquor. Deputy Commissioner of Taran Taran, Kulwant Singh said, "In Taran taran alone, the death tally has now touched 63 as maximum deaths are from the city and Sadar areas. A few families have cremated the bodies without informing the police." Besides Taran Taran eleven deaths have been reported so far from Batala in Gurdaspur and twelve in Amritsar. The death toll could rise further as the spurious liquor network was evidently spread across many areas. Seven Excise & Taxation Officers and Inspectors, along with two DSPs and four SHOs of Punjab Police have been suspended by the state government in connection with the hooch tragedy. The government announced Rs 2 lakhs ex-gratia compensation to each of the families of the deceased. The Member of Parliament from Khadoor Sahib, Jasbir Singh Dimpa, along with MLA from Jandiala, Sukhwinder Singh Danny, and Senior Superintendent of Police Dhruv Dhaiya reached the spot to pacify the protesters. Dimpa announced Rs 1 lakh compensation to each to the families of the deceased. Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh died at a Singapore hospital on Saturday. Singh had been undergoing treatment at the hospital for several months and had lately been admitted to its intensive care unit. He was 64. Leaders across the political spectrum condoled Amar Singhs death and said he was one of those politicians who had friends in all parties The flamboyant businessman-politician, who once counted Indias most influential icons from industry, politics and Bollywood among his closest friends, had been a key player in the cut and thrust of Indian politics till about a decade ago. Back in 2008, he also helped the then Manmohan Singh government survive a crucial trust vote that eventually led to his arrest three years later. He was accused of offering bribes to three BJP MPs to get them to support the UPA. WATCH | Amar Singh passes away in Singapore; tributes pour in from political world It was a chance encounter with Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav on a flight back in 1996 that led him to enter politics. He joined as its general secretary and soon became Mulayam Singh Yadavs crisis manager and the face of SP in Delhis power circles. Back in Lucknow, there were other power centres in the SP that he didnt get along with. Amar Singh was expelled from the party in 2010 after being blamed by Akhilesh Yadav for the defeat of his wife Dimple from Firozabad. Amar Singh spoke about his retirement from politics later but ended up launching his political party but it did not work out. He and his party lost every election it fought, often also the security deposit. He joined Ajit Singhs Rashtriya Lok Dal but didnt get far either. In 2016, Mulayam Singh Yadav eventually helped him win the Rajya Sabha election. But when son Akhilesh Yadav took the baton from his father, he had Amar Singh expelled from the party the next year. Singh continues to be an unattached member of the Rajya Sabha, occasionally Amar Singh, who had a kidney transplant in the Singapore hospital more than a decade back, continued to face health issues and was again admitted to the hospital earlier this year. From his hospital bed on March 2, Singh denied rumours that suggested he had died. He posted a 2-minute long video to clarify his health status and stressed that he was fighting back. Tiger Zinda Hai, he wrote in his short message. He also posted a short video message on March 22 from the hospital bed, appealing to all his supporters to back Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the fight against coronavirus. His Twitter handle remained active till hours before the news of death emerged. His last two tweets were a tribute to freedom fighter and educationist Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his death anniversary. In another tweet, he wished his friends on the occasion of Eid Al Adha. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Sky News presenter Alan Jones and Cardinal George Pell ate at an exclusive club days before a staff member tested positive for coronavirus. The three high-profile men, described as old friends, met at the request of Cardinal Pell on July 22, according to Sydney Confidential. The trio are believed to have eaten at the exclusive Australian Club, located on Macquarie Street in Sydney. Sources for Jones said it was just 'friends catching up and discussing the state of the world', the newspaper claimed. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Sky News presenter Alan Jones (pictured, left) and Cardinal George Pell (right) ate at an exclusive gentleman's club On Friday, it was revealed the venue would be closing due to a staff member testing positive for coronavirus. It is not known if the three men came into contact with the staff member. The dinner isn't Pell's only high-profile outing, after all enjoying dinner at with fashion icon Carla Zampatti. The private gentleman's club 'decided to act with an abundance of caution' and close its doors until Tuesday as it undergoes cleaning. The employee, who had dined at the Apollo Restaurant in Potts Point, was at the club on Monday July 27 between 6am and 9.30am, Sydney Morning Herald reported. 'Upon becoming aware that he had been at an eastern suburbs restaurant where another person had tested positive, he responsibly began self-isolation, absenting himself from the club and had himself tested for the virus,' the Australian Club said. 'Upon the confirmation of the positive test, all people that have been considered to have been a "close contact" have been advised and are taking the necessary steps and precautions.' The private club in Sydney's CBD was founded in 1838 and counts prime ministers, army generals and business leaders among its members. The private gentleman's club 'decided to act with an abundance of caution' and close its doors until Tuesday as it undergoes cleaning. The employee, who had dined at the Apollo Restaurant in Potts Point, was at the club on Monday July 27 between 6am and 9.30am Some of Australia's top barristers, academics, surgeons and judges are also members. Under the club's strict rules, women are only allowed to enter the club and mingle with the country's elite if they are accompanied by an existing male member. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Australian Club, NSW Health, Alan Jones and George Pell for comment. The Penns Grove Police Department has been temporarily taken over by the Salem County Prosecutors Office, and the departments police chief has been suspended pending an investigation, the towns mayor confirmed Friday. Penns Grove Mayor LaDaena Thomas confirmed to NJ Advance Media that the prosecutors office had temporarily taken command of the boroughs police and that Chief of County Detectives Elliot Hernandez would lead the department during the takeover. Thomas also confirmed that Police Chief Patrick Riley Sr. had been suspended pending an investigation. I had given individuals at the borough six months to get it together, and this is what we have, Thomas told NJ Advance Media. Now, it is time for me to put my foot down, and I am doing exactly what the residents have elected me to do, and that is to clean out corruption. When reached Friday, Riley Sr. declined to immediately comment on the situation. Thomas said she could not comment as to what the details are that prompted the investigation and takeover. I am just looking forward to doing the job that the residents elected me to do, Thomas added. The chief took over after the previous chief, John Stranahan, retired in December 2019. The Salem County Prosecutors Office was not available for an immediate comment. 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. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 14:03:23|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TRIPOLI, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Friday demanded immediate release of Ismail Abuzreiba, a Libyan journalist sentenced to 15 years in prison by a military tribunal in the eastern city of Benghazi. The UNSMIL said in a statement late Friday that it is dismayed by the sentencing of the journalist, calling for his immediate release. "The mission is concerned that the detention and trial appear to violate Libya's laws as well as its international obligations," the statement said. Abuzreiba is known for opposing the eastern-based army, which controls eastern Libya. The eastern-based authorities of Libya have not announced the reasons for Abuzreiba's arrest yet. Libya has been torn by a raging civil war, between the GNA based in the capital Tripoli and the Libyan National Army and its allies based in the east. Enditem The People's Court of the southern province of Tay Ninh handed a death penalty to a Cambodian drug trafficker on during a trial on July 31. Miech SreyNeang at the trial Miech SreyNeang, born in 1993 and residing in Phnom Penh, was sentenced to death for trafficking drug from Cambodia to Vietnam. According to the indictment, Miech SreyNeang smuggled five bags of methamphetamine weighting over 4,943 grams. The police caught the Cambodian citizen red-handed for carrying the drug at the Moc Bai international border gate in Tay Ninh province on December 2, 2019. Defendants involved in security disturbance case in HCM City sentenced At the trial The Peoples Court of Ho Chi Minh City handed prison terms to defendants involved in the case of disturbing security during a trial on July 31. Among the defendants, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, 44, residing in Binh Chanh district, and Hoang Thi Thu Vang, 54, in District 12, who have been identified as masterminds of the case, were sentenced to eight years and seven years in prison, respectively, for disturbing security. The sentences were in line with Clause 1, Article 118 of the 2015 Penal Code. Hanh and other members of a secrete group called Constitution - Do The Hoa, 52, in Hiep Thanh ward, District 12; Doan Thi Hong, 37, in Thanh My Loi ward, District 2; and Tran Thanh Phuong, 45, in Binh Hung Hoa ward, Binh Tan district - incited others to join activities violating the national security. According to the indictment, Hanh, Vang, Hoa and Ho Dinh Cuong, Ngo Van Dung, Tran Thanh Phuong, Doan Thi Hong and Le Quy Loc shared video clips through Facebook to induce people to take part in their demonstration. They assigned tasks, called for donations and prepared weapons for the demonstration, aiming to disturb social order and political security, thus sabotaging the Vietnamese State. However, their acts were soon detected by competent forces. The Peoples Procuracy said their deeds are specially dangerous to the society and would directly impact social order and safety as well as national security, and they must be punished strictly./.VNA From midnight today, EC will remove election publicity material from social media View(s): The Election Commission will take steps to remove election campaigning content and propaganda material from social media sites during the cooling period which begins from midnight today, a senior EC official said. Suranga Ranasinghe, Assistant Commissioner who heads Election Dispute Resolution Unit, told the Sunday Times that since social media platforms had a communication channel with the Election Commission, the Commission would take proactive steps to remove them immediately. The main difficulty we are facing is that we dont have adequate laws to regulate social media sites and campaign financing. The amount Sri Lankan candidates have spent on social media campaigns increased by USD 150,000 within a week by some 10,000 more tailored and targeted advertisements that appear on user timelines, according to the social media sites Ad Library which publishes expenditure details of paid campaigns. So far the candidates have spent up to US$ 359,795 (more than Rs 66.8mn) on 22,843 election-related publicity items on Facebook and its other platforms, including Instagram. The increase was 53 percent compared to last weeks expenditure of US$ 234,692 (Rs 43.5mn). Last week, the Facebook and related platforms recorded a nearly 300 percent hike from early this month as many well-funded candidates opted to pay USD 100-400 to carry out targeted campaigns. By July 5, it was nearly USD 60,000. Were working hard to protect the integrity of the Sri Lanka election by combating harmful content, working with civil society organisations to identify and stop emerging threats, and by limiting the spread of misinformation. Were constantly reviewing our tools to make sure that Sri Lankans feel safe while using our platforms and taking part in the civic process. Well continue to do this in the lead up to the vote, during the election and beyond, a Facebook spokesperson told the Sunday Times. Facebook said that anyone who wanted to run ads about elections or politics in Sri Lanka would need to confirm their identities and run these ads with a Paid for by disclaimer. Election watchdogs noted that the online publicity expenditure might have gone up significantly during the final days before the cooling period which begins at midnight today. (SR) Madonna reflected on one of the highlights of her unparalleled career on Friday, upon receiving some unfortunate news. After learning of the death of her Evita director Alan Parker on Friday, the Queen of Pop, 61, took to her Instagram with a lovely gallery of photos from the period when they made the 1996 film, which won Madonna a Golden Globe Award for best actress. 'I was so sad to hear about the passing of Alan Parker. One of the greatest directors i ever worked with on the film Evita,' she wrote. Looking back: After learning of the death of her Evita director Alan Parker on Friday, Madonna took to her Instagram with a lovely gallery of photos from making the film with the director 'He taught me so much, believed in me, pushed me to my limits and made an incredible film! Thank you! ' she continued, adding a film camera emoji and the hashtags #alanparker #evita. Evita was the film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice Broadway sensation, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1980. The 1996 film, also following the life of First Lady of Argentina Eva Peron, co-starred Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce and went on to be honored with several accolades as well. 'He taught me so much, believed in me, pushed me to my limits and made an incredible film! Thank you! ' the Queen of Pop wrote; seen here with Alan in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1996 In addition to Madonna's Golden Globe, the film won Globes for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical and Best Original Song - Motion Picture. Evita was also recognized at the Academy Awards in 1997, winning Webber and Rice the Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for the song You Must Love Me, which was created expressly for the movie. It was also nominated for cinematography, art direction, sound and editing. Accolades: In addition to winning Madonna a Golden Globe Award for best actress, the film won Globes for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical and Best Original Song Cast: The 1996 film co-starred Antonio Banderas (center) and Jonathan Pryce (left) Parker received a Golden Globe nomination for directing Evita, but that was far from his first honor. The Matlock, England-born filmmaker was also the helmer of classic films such as Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning, both of which earned him Best Director Oscar nods. Parker died aged 76 in London on Friday morning after battling a long illness, according to a family spokeswoman. Parker (right) received a Golden Globe nomination for directing Evita, but that was far from his first honor: He was also the helmer of classic films such as Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning, both of which earned him Best Director Oscar nods; seen in 1995 The BAFTA fellow had also won critical acclaim for films such as Pink Floyd's The Wall and Bugsy Malone. Tributes have flooded in from across the film industry for Parker, with Hollywood players such as James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli saying she was 'heartbroken at the news' of Sir his passing. 'It is an enormous loss to the world of cinema and a huge personal loss to his devoted family and friends who loved and admired him,' she also said. Amid an ongoing tussle between the young and old guard in the Congress, party veterans urged their colleagues on Saturday not to discredit their own legacy and said that by doing so they would only be aiding the BJP's designs to undermine the party in the public eye. Advising restraint in airing grievances in public, several former Union ministers cautioned their party colleagues, saying such tendencies divide the Congress at a time when unity is needed. They also said one needs to learn from past defeats and revive the party rather than play into the hands of its "ideological enemies". Former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor came to the rescue of party colleagues Manish Tewari and Milind Deora, saying the UPA's transformative 10 years were distorted and traduced by a motivated and malicious narrative. Tharoor took to Twitter and wrote, "I agree with Manish Tewari and Milind Deora. UPA's transformative 10 years were distorted and traduced by a motivated and malicious narrative. There's plenty to learn from our defeats and much to be done to revive Congress. But not by playing into the hands of our ideological enemies." His remarks came amid the row over a Congress meeting chaired by party interim chief Sonia Gandhi two days ago, which saw arguments and sharp criticism by younger leaders who appeared to blame the party's last government for its downfall. Amid the criticism of the senior leaders, a section of the party rallied behind former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Twitter. Congress leaders Anand Sharma, Tharoor, Tewari and former Mumbai Congress chief Deora -- all ministers in Singh's cabinet at one point -- defended the former Prime Minister, tagging criticism for him as "ill-informed" and part of a "motivated and malicious narrative". Earlier in the day, Deora responding to a tweet of Tewari said, "Well said, Manish. When demitting office in 2014, Manmohan Singh said history will be kinder to me. Could he have ever imagined that some from his own party would dismiss his years of service to the nation and seek to destroy his legacy - that, too, in his presence?" Deora's remarks came after Tewari on Saturday hit out at party leaders who questioned 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rule at the Centre, calling them "ill-informed". Interestingly, he gave the example of the BJP to put out a contrasting picture on party unity. "The BJP was out of power for 10 years (2004-14). Not once did they ever blame (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee or his government for their then predicament. In Congress, unfortunately, some ill-informed (leaders) would rather take swipes at Dr Manmohan Singh-led UPA government than fight the NDA/BJP. When unity is required, they divide," the member of Parliament from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab tweeted. The verbal lashing from the former Minister for Information and Broadcasting comes after a number of party MPs questioned the UPA rule and demanded introspection on Congress debacles. The members of Team Rahul had asked for introspection when the Congress' Rajya Sabha MPs met on Thursday. The issue of the 2014 election debacle was raised by Rajeev Satav, who was countered by Sharma and others. "Congressmen must be proud of the UPA's legacy. No party disowns or discredits its legacy. Nobody expects the BJP to be charitable and give us credit, but our own should respect and not forget," Sharma, the deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, said. The debate was triggered by Satav who asked former ministers Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram to introspect on the decline of the grand old party. However, in an attempt to clear the air, Satav on Saturday said "some motivated media reports have twisted facts". "The malicious attempt to draw Dr Manmohan Singh into this exchange is reprehensible. To say my observations cast a shadow over Dr Singhs leadership of UPA II is a lie, a total misrepresentation of facts. I hold Dr Singh in high esteem. He is above reproach," Satav said in a series of tweets. "Dr Singh has made commendable contributions to building modern India. He will always be held in high regard. I will discuss my comments, or those made by any other esteemed colleagues, on internal party forums only," he added. UPAII was a good govt, peoples govt.The success of UPA II is reinforced when we compare it to the sharp slide under Modi.Elections are on the anvil in Bihar& Assam. BJPs misdeeds have piled up.We need to jointly stand together under the leadership of Soniaji,Dr Singhji,Rahul Ji Rajeev Satav (@SATAVRAJEEV) August 1, 2020 Sharma noted that the history will honestly record the commendable contributions of former prime minister Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. "The two led India to a decade of compassionate and inclusive growth which all of us are proud of," he said, adding that he is personally proud to have been a part of both the UPA-1 and UPA-2 governments even as he recalled some of the achievements of the time in social and economic spheres. "UPA government was victim of a grand political conspiracy and malicious disinformation campaign of the BJP, political opponents and powerful vested interests. Six years later, what was alleged in 2014 stands proven false in 2020. Where are the leaders of the Campaign against Corruption today? The authors of the conspiracy generously rewarded the cheerleaders asking no questions," Sharma said in a series of tweets. Sources close to the Congress leadership said pioneering reforms of UPA-1 and UPA-2 were conceived, designed and formulated by the party, the National Advisory Council, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and were successfully implemented and executed by Singh and Team Congress. (With inputs from agencies) U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with leadership from the National Association of Police Organizations in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Friday, July 31, 2020. President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters he will act soon to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States, NBC News reported. Trump made the comments while chatting with reporters on Air Force One during the flight back to Washington from Florida. "As far as TikTok is concerned we're banning them from the United States," Trump said, calling the action a "severance." Trump did not specify whether he will act through an executive order, or another method. such as a designation, according to NBC News. "Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that," Trump said. A TikTok spokesperson told NBC News that the app helped to create jobs across the U.S. and was committed to user privacy. "We've hired nearly 1,000 people to our US team this year alone, and are proud to be hiring another 10,000 employees into great paying jobs across the U.S.," the spokesperson said in a statement. "Our $1 billion creator fund supports U.S. creators who are building livelihoods from our platform. "TikTok US user data is stored in the US, with strict controls on employee access," the statement said. "TikTok's biggest investors come from the US. We are committed to protecting our users' privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform." Trump's comments come as it was reported Friday that Microsoft has held talks to buy the TikTok video-sharing mobile app from Chinese owner ByteDance, one person close to the situation told CNBC. This person characterized the talks as having been underway for some time, rather than being brand new. Trump told reporters that he didn't support the reported spinoff deal involving Microsoft buying TikTok, NBC News reported. A TikTok acquisition could make Microsoft, a major provider of business software, more concentrated on consumer technology, which Microsoft has moved away from somewhat in recent years, by exiting the smartphone hardware, fitness hardware and e-book markets. Amy Hood, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in 2018 that in recent years the company had been consistent in its strategy on acquiring "networked assets" with many users, including LinkedIn. Fresh off a bout of COVID-19, President Jair Bolsonaro said Friday nearly everyone will probably end up catching the new coronavirus, urging Brazilians to "face up to it" and saying there was nothing to fear. The far-right leader's latest bid to downplay the pandemic came as Brazil closed in on the grim milestone of 100,000 people killed by the virus, the second-highest death toll in the world, after the United States. Bolsonaro, who is just coming off three weeks in quarantine with a case of the virus, pointed to his own case as an example. "I'm in the high-risk group," the 65-year-old president told journalists during a visit to the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. "I knew I was going to catch it someday, as I think unfortunately nearly everyone here is going to catch it eventually. What are you afraid of? Face up to it," he said. "I regret the deaths. But people die every day, from lots of things. That's life." Bolsonaro has faced criticism for his handling of the pandemic as it has surged in Brazil, the country with the second-highest number of cases and deaths in the world: more than 2.6 million and 92,000, respectively. Bolsonaro, who has compared the virus to a "little flu," has fought stay-at-home measures to contain it and regularly flouted social distancing guidelines, hitting the streets of Brasilia to exchange handshakes and hugs with supporters. He tested positive for the virus on July 7 after coming down with a fever, and spent three weeks in isolation at the presidential palace. On Thursday, in his first public event since his illness, he greeted a crowd of supporters in the northeastern state of Piaui, removing his face mask to loud cheers. The same day, the president's office announced his wife had tested positive for the virus. Bolsonaro later revealed he was again feeling poorly and was taking antibiotics for an infection that he called "moldy lungs" caused by inactivity during his quarantine. Bolsonaro argues stay-at-home measures are needlessly hurting the economy. He is instead pushing the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the virus, and took it himself when he was infected, despite numerous studies finding it has no benefit against COVID-19. Former President Barack Obama's half-brother Malik Obama is again lobbing insults at his sibling, calling him 'cold and ruthless' in a recent interview. Malik, 62, spoke to the New York Post via Skype from his home in the Kenyan village of Nyang'oma Kogelo for an interview published on Saturday to promote his new book, Big Bad Brother From Kenya. 'He got rich and became a snob,' Malik said. 'What I saw was he was the kind of person that wants people to worship him. He needs to be worshiped and I don't do that. I am his older brother so I don't do that.' Unsurprisingly, Malik is supporting President Donald Trump re-election in November, after gaining fame in 2016 for siding with Trump against Hillary Clinton. Former President Barack Obama's half-brother Malik Obama (above) is again lobbing insults at his sibling, whom he called 'cold and ruthless' in a recent interview '[I'm] 110% still with Trump,' he said. 'He's not fake. He tells us the way he sees it. He's bold and fearless and he's tough.' He also mocked the Democratic nominee Joe Biden as too old and feeble to win. 'I don't think he's going to make it. His teeth are falling off,' Malik laughed. 'He looks like he's going to drop dead.' Malik Obama's new book about his family ties was released on July 11 Malik claimed that he had spent the past 22 years writing his new book, which is 435 pages long and debuted quietly on Amazon on July 11. Malik and Barack Obama share the same father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan economist who died in a car accident in 1982. The two half-brothers first met in 1985, when Barack was 24, and they had a close relationship for years. But the relationship soured after Barack was elected to the presidency, and disputes erupted over which Kenyan relatives would be invited to the inauguration, among other things. Things took an even more bitter turn when Malik, soon after the 2008 election, announced plans to create the 'Barack H. Obama Foundation,' ostensibly named after their father. 'We had a big fight on the phone because he was not in support and insisted I shut down the website and not continue with the foundation. He had his reasons but I was not having any of it,' Malik writes in his book, according to the Post. 'We talked late into the night that night. He threatened to 'cut me off' if I continued with the idea.' The half-brothers first met around 30 years ago and were best men at each other's weddings Malik did persist with the foundation, which fell afoul of the law in 2011 by claiming to be a tax-exempt nonprofit without registering as such. Over the years, Malik has stepped up his antics, including repeatedly supporting the 'birther' conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. The unfounded rumors of Obama's country of origin were largely meant to call into question the legitimacy of his presidency. In 2016, Trump was apparently so impressed with Malik Obama's expression of support that he invited him as his guest to the presidential debate against Clinton in Las Vegas on October 19. In 2016, Trump was apparently so impressed with Malik Obama's expression of support that he invited him as his guest to the presidential debate (above) Unsurprisingly, Malik is supporting President Donald Trump re-election in November The Obama brothers have had a strained relationship over the years. They first met around 30 years ago and were best men at each other's weddings. Malik claims that he was invited to the White House on numerous occasions and that he stays in contact with the president. 'Of course we're close!' he told GQ in 2013. 'I'm the one who brought him here to Kogelo in 1988! I thought it was important for him to come home and see from whence his family came you know, his roots.' Malik told MailOnline that year that his more famous half-brother is 'always at the end of a phone line if I want to talk.' Drunken passenger Adam Lennon caused so much havoc on a commercial flight the captain decided to land at Bristol Airport. Lennon was flying with a friend by Ryanair from Murcia in Spain to Dublin on New Year's Eve, 2019, Bristol Crown Court heard yesterday. But after necking back vodka he and his friend started play-fighting and, when spoken to, Lennon threatened to punch cabin crew staff before telling one to 'f*** off'. Adam Lennon, 22, from Dublin, Ireland, was jailed for four months after his behaviour on a Ryanair flight back home meant the captain had to land at Bristol, costing almost 6,000 Because Lennon continued to be disruptive the aircraft's captain decided to divert to Bristol, where police were waiting in the wings. The diversion landed Ryanair with costs of almost 6,000. Lennon, 22, whose address was given as Baldoyle in Dublin, pleaded guilty to being drunk on an aircraft. The court heard he had not cooperated with his legal team, had absented himself, and was thought to be in either Ireland or Italy. Judge Michael Longman concluded he was legally able to deal with and jail Lennon in his absence, and jailed him for four months. The judge said: 'One can imagine his behaviour was alarming, in a closed space and at altitude, and such that it caused annoyance and disruption to a number of passengers.' The judge ordered Lennon to pay Ryanair 5,893.09, covering its full diversion bill. He said Ryanair should be notified of the outcome of the case, and they could decide if they want to prohibit Lennon from flying with them. Mark Worsley prosecuting, said all was well at the start of the flight, until staff noticed Lennon and his friend drinking their own alcohol, drunk and play-fighting. The court heard when staff spoke to them Lennon threatened to punch them, and the two men were separated. Lennon went on to tell a cabin crew member to 'f*** off', Mr Worsley said, and the pilot put out a message reminding passengers not to drink their own alcohol on board and comply with cabin crew. Due to continuing disruption the captain decided to divert the aircraft to Bristol, where police, airport security, and fire services were waiting. Lennon did not cooperated with his defence and was not present when the judge jailed him Mr Worsley said: 'Police went on the plane and Mr Lennon presented his hands for handcuffs immediately. He was taken off the plane. 'He was clearly drunk and slurring and had a half empty bottle of vodka between his knees.' Lennon was interviewed the next day, said his companion bought the vodka and denied threatening to punch cabin crew. Mr Worsley told the court: 'He said his behaviour was unacceptable. It is clear others on board were worried about what happened.' He added that authority states persons convicted of being drunk on an aircraft must expect a custodial sentence. The British government and the (EU) confirmed that a new timetable of meetings aimed at reaching a post- deal on a future relationship before the end of 2020. A series of meetings between negotiating teams from both sides will meet in London and Brussels during August and September, with a final round taking place in Brussels in the week ending October 2, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said last week at the conclusion of the last round of talks that an agreement would be needed by October at the latest. This was so it could be ratified by the EU and its 27 member states before the current post- transition period ends on December 31. Details of the program of meetings was published by Downing Street, with the British government saying the program takes into account the current state of the negotiations after six rounds. The latest round of talks ended on July 23 when both sides said there is still some way to go to reach a future trading relationship. The future of fishing in waters off the British Isles as well as the so-called level playing field were the crunch stumbling blocks to reaching a deal in time for December 31 when the Brexit transition period ends following Britain's departure from the EU on January 31. At the end of last week's talks, Barnier said Britain had not shown a willingness to break the deadlock over fisheries as well as post-Brexit rules on competition in trading. According to Downing Street, the schedule of meetings has outlined a forward process established to create what was the most conducive conditions for concluding and ratifying a deal before the end of 2020. Subject to any COVID-19 constraints, the negotiating groups will meet physically, in full alternately in Brussels and London, with specialised sessions in more restricted formats. Round 7, the next formal negotiating session, will take place in Brussels starting August 17. Round 8 takes place in London in the week starting September 7, with the final Round 9 crunch meeting taking place in Brussels starting September 28 and ending October 2. If Britain and the EU fail to secure a trade deal before the transitional period expires, both sides will trade under World Trade Organization terms, under which new border controls and tariffs will mean extra cost for their trade. --IANS rt/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Restaurants everywhere are changing their business models to stay afloat in the pandemic pivoting to things like offering takeout, selling meal kits and groceries, and creating makeshift patios. At a time when restaurants continue to make a fraction of what they used to and some even face permanent closure, Chef Carl Heinrich made a significant change and got rid of tipping last weekend at his downtown Toronto restaurant Richmond Station. He said he made the decision in order to give employees a steadier income and ensure better employment insurance. As a system and a culture, when you look at it on a worldwide scale, tipping isnt normal or expected in many parts of the world, said Heinrich, who opened his restaurant seven years ago after winning the second season of Top Chef Canada. They dont pay their staff less because they expect guests to pay their wages, which is what we have here. We have a system that seems normal, but just because we normalized it doesnt mean its right. He reasons that while many restaurant workers rely on tips to supplement their income, rarely do tips get reported during tax time in an effort to pay fewer taxes. But when a restaurant worker files for unemployment and collects employment insurance, they end up receiving much less than what they qualify for because they didnt report income from tips. He said that putting the entirety of an employees earnings on a paycheque ensures that theyll get the full 55 per cent of their income that EI pays. Heinrich said he and the management team were looking at eliminating tipping since 2016, first as a way to end the disparity between what servers and cooks were making, as servers would be the ones receiving tips from guests. They changed the way tips were distributed instead, rather than abolishing tipping. Theres a significant cost to business (when you eliminate tips) because you have to pay more on taxes. But fast forward four years and I regret not doing it back then because more of their money would have been insured and they would have been receiving it back when they receive their benefits, he said. We were trying to right the wrongs back then and we should have gone all the way. The concept of abolishing tipping isnt new, as a few restaurants in Canada and the U.S. have tried with varying success. In Toronto, Indian Street Food Co. and Sidecar didnt have much luck. Meanwhile, Newfoundlands Mallard Cottage chef Todd Perrin announced earlier this month that hes doing away with tipping to ensure a more consistent wage for staff. New York restauranteur Danny Meyer announced that his restaurant will be accepting tips again after ending the practice in 2015, telling the New York Times in an interview that he didnt want to deny staff the possibility of getting extra money from diners amidst a pandemic. Still, fellow New York restauranteur chef Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy continues to advocate for abolishing tips to be adopted on a wider level. A spokesperson from the provinces Ministry of Labour told the Star there are no plans to eliminate tipping in Ontario. Critics of tipping say that the practice is discriminatory and puts the onus of paying staff on the diners rather than the employers. The practice of tipping spread in North America after the Civil War, when restaurant owners didnt want to pay Black workers and instead asked guests to offer a tip. Many pieces have been published about the practice being racist and sexist, as in the U.S. Black and Latinx workers tend to receive fewer tips and male diners have been found to use tips as leverage to harass female servers. Diners also tend to tip differently depending on the restaurant: someone who works in fine dining is likely to receive a larger tip percentage than someone working at a diner. Heinrich says customers at his restaurant tip an average of 18 per cent, so on average menu prices have been raised that much to make up for the lack of tipping. That extra income goes directly to labour. Were not gaining financially because of this, he said. So far, he added, diners havent complained and the staff is on board. Id love to see more businesses take this approach because I dont know any other industry that relies on guests to pay the staffs income, said Heinrich. A lot of people want to see this change, and are unsure of how or when to do it, but we have to make sure that our employees are taken care of because we dont know when the pandemic is going to end. Veracity AI partners with Australian AgTech company View(s): Surveys have indicated that about 40 per cent of Sri Lankan farmers apply pesticides to their crops prior to the appearance of any symptoms of pest or disease, irrespective of whether the crop is actually diseased or not, according to a new tool that will address these issues. The incorrect usage and/or misuse of chemical pesticides in agriculture has long been the prevalent problem for the industry in Sri Lanka; one that has proven to have detrimental health effects on the farmers that incorporate them into their farming methods, the consumers that buy the produce, as well as on the environment that supports the growth of these crops. Instances where pesticide residues have been detected in exported consignments have also threatened international trade. Veracity AI and its subsidiary Spectrify AI, are developing a groundbreaking, phone-based AI detection tool that harnesses spectral and image technology to directly benefit the agriculture industry. For this, the firm is now partnering with Sensibility Ltd, an Australian AgTech firm that has just launched its innovative new venture, GoMicro. GoMicro that operates by integrating a clip microscope and smartphone together powered by machine learning- in order to accurately detect and identify pests on crops, pre empt leaf infections, and improve the quality of food as a whole, the local company Veracity AI said in a media release. This is a breakthrough for farmers as well as the industry, for the benefits of this early identification are manifold. Pests can be specifically dealt with -using only the relevant pesticide and within the right buffer zone- before they destroy crops, leaf disease and mineral deficiencies can be detected before symptoms manifest, and the quality of produce can be assessed effectively. Speaking on the collaboration, MIT and Cambridge graduate and former Associate Professor at the University of Canberra, Founder and CEO of GoMicro, Sivam Krish said, This partnership will allow both companies to bring cutting-edge, phone-based, AI-powered technology to agriculture in Sri Lanka. In combining phone microscopy and spectroscopy, the companies will together be building powerful solutions, the key focus being on the assessment of food quality, ripeness, and pesticide residue that is otherwise not visible to the naked eye. Furthermore, while typically thousands of images are required to train an AI engine, GoMicro can train AI engines with just 50 images, providing accuracies exceeding 90 per cent. This early and precise identification will as a result curtail the industrys over-dependence on pesticides, reduce pesticide resistance, increase crop yields, improve harvest quality, bring to a minimum the level of pesticide residues passed down to the consumer, and also significantly reduce the consequences of bad farming practices on the environment. There is immense potential for robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) to drive a major shift in the agricultural ecosystem here in Sri Lanka, said Dr. Krish. With GoMicro, we make machine vision technology and data-driven intelligence accessible and affordable, with the aim to benefit people, profit, and planet. GoMicro has already proven its mettle as an asset to the research and academic community, and hopes to soon commence beta testing the food quality assessment service with a major group in Sri Lanka. Dr. Krish will also personally be working with a university in Sri Lanka to train the next generation of agricultural students in the use of AI. Condoling the death of Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described him on Saturday as an energetic public figure, who had witnessed some major political developments from close quarters. Singh (64), a former Samajwadi Party (SP) leader, died in Singapore, where he was undergoing treatment, on Saturday. He had undergone a kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time. "Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise," Modi said in a tweet. Condolences to his friends and family, he added. Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his friends & family. Om Shanti. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 1, 2020 President Ram Nath Kovind also condoled the death of the Rajya Sabha MP, saying he was a man of many parts and an able parliamentarian. "Sad to hear of the demise of senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Shri Amar Singh. A man of many parts, Singh was an able parliamentarian. Condolences to his family, friends and well-wishers," Kovind said in a tweet. As the general secretary of the SP, Singh was instrumental in saving the Congress-led UPA government from falling after the Left parties withdrew support from it in 2008 over the issue of nuclear deal. FORT MYERS, Fla. Florida sheriffs who had attended a conference this week with a COVID-19-infected colleague met Friday afternoon with President Donald Trump. Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood reported his positive test just hours before more than a dozen other sheriffs stood with Trump on the Tampa International Airport tarmac. Chitwood had attended the Florida Sheriff's Association conference earlier this week in Bonita Springs. Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and law enforcement officers from around the state were also at the conference. On Friday night, the Florida Department of Corrections reported that Secretary Mark Inch, who attended the conference, and Deputy Secretary Ricky Dixon had tested positive. Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno, who hosted the conference and whose agency polices Bonita Springs, stood behind Trump along with 14 other sheriffs as Trump praised them and announced he had received "dozens" of their endorsements. Neither Trump nor the sheriffs wore masks. Two of the sheriffs said they had been rapid-tested for COVID-19 before meeting with Trump. Marceno said he was tested for COVID-19 before he met with Trump on Friday. President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign event Friday with Florida Sheriffs in Tampa, Florida. The crowd of several hundred who were close-packed into the front of the holding pen on the tarmac Friday were almost uniformly maskless, according to White House press pool reports. They stood about 15 yards away from the president. Trump spoke around 4 p.m. after exiting Air Force One and vowed to support the sheriffs amid calls for police reform in the aftermath of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police. As long as Im president, I will never defund your police, Trump said with a line of sheriffs standing behind him. Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey and Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco thanked Trump for his unwavering support of law enforcement as they endorsed his reelection. "In my view, there's only one candidate for president in 2020 that even understands what law and order means, and that is why we are all standing here today, Mr. President, in support of you," Ivey said. Story continues Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells was at the Tampa event Friday but was "socially distanced from all the others and wearing a mask while attending meetings there today," according to a spokesman. Wells had been "rapid tested for COVID," with negative results, "which cleared him to be with the president," the spokesman said. DeSantis had attended this week's conference but was not on the tarmac Friday. However, he was scheduled to attend a Friday roundtable on storm preparedness with Trump. Cody McCloud, a spokesperson with the governor's office, said DeSantis took quarantine precautions seriously at the conference, but there was no indication he interacted with Chitwood there. Nanette Schimpf, a spokesperson for the Florida Sheriff's Association, confirmed Chitwood did attend the conference but said many of the events were canceled. The association estimates an average of 530 people normally attend the summer conference, which is one of its biggest events. But because of the pandemic, this year's was far smaller. Since this was a smaller business meeting, it was shortened, and attendance was reduced by 75%, Schimpf said in a text. Coronavirus: Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain dies after battle with COVID-19 Chitwood, who was not in Tampa on Friday, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that at the Bonita Springs conference he had interacted with four or five people on the dais and left the event after giving his speech. Chitwood said he intentionally sat in the back of a large room and didnt go near anybody. He said some people in the conference room were wearing masks, which were optional in the ballroom. But he said there was probably about 12 feet between each person and he didnt wear a mask there. It's unknown how many sheriffs attended the conference, but no others have reported any symptoms, Schimpf said. "I dont know of anyone else who is sick or feeling ill," she said. But in a late Friday news release, the Florida Department of Corrections confirmed that Inch and Dixon had tested positive. Inch had been experiencing mild symptoms for about 24 hours following his return from the conference, according to the news release, which added that both Inch and Dixon are self-isolating. The release did not make clear if Dixon attended the conference, and a call to the department was not returned. Trace back measures have been conducted and individuals who were in close contact with Secretary Inch and Deputy Secretary Dixon in recent days have been informed of their positive status. These individuals have been encouraged to take proper precautions and undergo testing, the release said. At this time, the location of exposure to the virus ... has not been determined. Schimpf said Friday's campaign event was not associated with the Florida Sheriff's Association. Photos from various sheriff's office social media pages show representation at the conference from at least Flagler, Gilchrest, Hernando, Indian River, Manatee, Martin, St. Lucie, Polk and Wakulla counties. St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar told the News-Journal that he spoke with Chitwood at the conference but was not feeling any symptoms and does not plan to quarantine. Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk attended the conference but was not in close proximity to Chitwood, spokesperson Karie Partington said. The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office confirmed that Sheriff Bob Gualtieri was at the conference. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw did not attend the conference or travel to Tampa for the president's arrival, a spokesperson said. Other sheriffs not at the conference included Nocco of Pasco County, Hillsborough County's Chad Chronister and Leon County's Walt McNeil, according to spokespersons. Marceno, Lee County's sheriff who hosted this week's conference, said Friday that it normally would have included sheriffs from all 67 Florida counties. But Marceno described the meeting as a skeleton crew of sheriffs because of COVID. The Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort and Spa, where the conference was held, had a mandatory mask policy inside. Organizers set up the meeting to keep attendees at a distance, and tables that normally would seat 10 or 12 people only had one or two people, Marceno said. Many tables were empty, Marceno said. They cut everything back and everything was social distanced. It was real strict. Marceno said he knows Chitwood but doesnt recall if he was in close proximity to him at the meeting. I cant say yes or no, he said. I cant remember, to be honest. But Marceno said he was tested for COVID-19 before he met with Trump on Friday. Marceno stood directly behind Trump during the presentation on the tarmac after Trump exited Air Force One. I literally just got tested and I was negative, he said in a phone interview after Trump's speech, noting that at the sheriffs meeting, I wore a mask. I washed my hands. I social distanced. Because the Lee County Sheriffs Office hosted the meeting, there were other agency members at the meeting beside Marceno. He said he didnt have any plans to mandate any additional precautionary orders for those members beyond the COVID-19 protocols the agency already has in place. If someone said they didnt feel well, absolutely," Marceno said. "Other than that, we move on." Contributing: Ryan Mills of The News-Press and Naples Daily News, Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon of Florida Today, Carlos Munoz of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Jim Rosica of the USA TODAY NETWORK Florida Capital Bureau, and Frank Fernandez and Matt Bruce of the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Follow Devan Patelvon Twitter: @DevanJPatel This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Trump meets with sheriffs who attended forum with infected colleague President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he participates in a ceremony commemorating the 200th mile of border wall at the international border with Mexico in San Luis, Arizona, on June 23, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) Supreme Court Denies Request to Halt Border Wall Construction The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request to halt the construction of the border wall along the US-Mexico border. In a 5-4 ruling on ideological lines, with five conservatives in the majority and four liberals in dissent, the court declined the request from two groups, the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. Sierra Club is an environmental group. The Southern Border Communities Coalition says it advocates for people living in border areas. The case has its origins from when President Donald Trump had declared a national emergency in February 2019 to build the border wall along the southern border after the Congress provided only $1.375 billion for the border wall construction, far less than the $5.7 billion requested by the administration. The White House then identified an extra $6.7 billion from other government accounts to fund the border wall construction, including $2.5 billion from Defense Department, $3.6 billion from military construction funds, and $600 million from the Treasury Departments assets forfeiture fund. The case before the Supreme Court involves just the $2.5 billion in Defense Department funds. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a left-leaning legal group, had launched the lawsuit on behalf of the two groups. The non-profit organization has said it will seek to tear down sections of the wall that were built with the money. The Supreme Court had allowed the funds to be allocated in July 2019, granting an emergency request filed by the Trump administration. But the groups said in court papers that circumstances had changed since the courts earlier ruling. The courts four liberal justices dissented, saying they would have prohibited construction while a court challenge continues after a federal appeals court ruled in June that the administration had illegally sidestepped Congress in transferring the Defense Department funds. The Courts decision to let construction continue nevertheless I fear, may operate, in effect, as a final judgment, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a brief dissent (pdf) for the four liberals. As the Wall goes up, illegal crossings go down. This past week we built over 10 miles of Wall at our Southern Border. We now have 256 miles of NEW Wall and we are on track to have 300 miles completed by the end of August! pic.twitter.com/AWl0dYfY1w Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020 Building the southern border wall is a major promise of Trumps 2016 campaign. Trump said on Thursday that 256 miles of new wall has been built and there will be another 44 miles expected to be finished by the end of August. As the Wall goes up, illegal crossings go down, the president touted in a Twitter post. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to the report. Coronavirus cases in Pennsylvania increased by nearly 1,000 on Friday, fueled in part by a flood of new reports in Allegheny County. The 970 new cases in the daily report by the Pennsylvania Department of Health have pushed the statewide total to 112,048. The deaths of 13 more residents put the Pa. COVID-19 death toll at 7,189. (Cant see the map? Click here.) Locally, the Lehigh Valley has gone five straight days with no reported coronavirus-related deaths, a streak not matched here since the earliest days of the pandemic here, back in March. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is preparing to hire 1,000 more contact tracers to help control the COVID-19 outbreak. And Gov. Tom Wolf says that there will be no statewide order to close schools. Here are your Pennsylvania coronavirus updates for July 31, 2020. (Cant see the chart? Click here.) Coronavirus in Pa. With 244 newly reported cases, Pittsburghs Allegheny County led the states daily update on Friday. Of those, the health department said, 30 were from tests taken more than two weeks ago and 77 are from residents and staff of long-term care facilities. Philadelphia had 130 new cases reported, while three of its suburbs Bucks, Chester and Delaware counties each had 50 new cases or more. The health department estimates that 75% of infected Pennsylvanians have so far recovered. The statewide case rate has been rising since June but has slowed its ascent in the last two days. (Cant see the chart? Click here.) Pennsylvania has averaged 925 new cases a day over the last week, down from 975 as of Wednesday. Its a slight improvement, but the case rate is still elevated the last time it was in the 900s was in early May. Time (and social distancing) will tell if it develops into a downward trend. At the same time, individual counties are seeing significant rates of COVID-19 tests come back positive. The World Health Organization recommends a rate of 5% or less when considering economic reopening. The lower the rate, the more likely that testing is capturing the full spread of the virus in a community; high positivity rates indicate that only the sickest people are being tested. The Pennsylvania health departments early warning system, an online dashboard updated every Friday, lists 12 counties above that threshold, including some Philadelphia suburbs and Readings Berks County: Lawrence County (7.4%) Franklin County (7.2%) Indiana County (7.2%) Fayette County (7.1%) Armstrong County (7%) Beaver County (6.5%) Delaware County (6.5%) Allegheny County (6.4%) Lancaster County (5.8%) Berks County (5.6%) Philadelphia County (5.4%) Chester County (5.3%) The state measures positivity based on total tests, putting Pennsylvanias statewide rate at 4.6% in the last seven days. When duplicate tests are removed, as calculated by Johns Hopkins University (and in the chart below), the states weekly positivity rate rises to 5.8%. (Cant see the chart? Click here.) The rate of COVID-19 deaths in Pennsylvania is about 13 a day over the last week. The rate of weekly hospitalizations rose this month from 611 a week to 729. MORE: How to understand Pa. COVID-19 data with interactive charts Coronavirus in the Lehigh Valley No coronavirus-related deaths have been reported in either Lehigh County or Northampton County for the fifth straight day, according to state data. That has not happened here since Pennsylvanias first COVID-19 death, a Northampton County man, on March 18. Twenty-six new cases were reported on Friday, bringing the Lehigh Valley to 8,637 total with 624 deaths. That breaks down to: 4,810 cases and 334 deaths in Lehigh County, an increase of 15 new cases. 3,827 cases and 290 deaths in Northampton County an increase of 11 new cases. (Cant see the chart? Click here.) Both counties have seen increases in new confirmed cases and state-calculated positivity rates in the last week. Lehigh had 106 new cases last week and 176 this week, with the positivity rate jumping from 3% to 4%. Northampton, where a new testing center was recently set up, went from 88 new confirmed cases the previous week to 123 this week, and the positivity rate went from 2.8% to 3.4%. (Cant see the table? Click here.) Need a job? Pa. hiring contact tracers The Pennsylvania Department of Health on Friday said the state will hire 1,000 more contact tracers to help identify and notify people who may have been exposed to COVID-19. The state currently has 654 contact tracers. The department announced a $23 million federally funded contract with Insight Global to hire, train and support new workers. New contact tracers will earn $18 to $22 an hour, while supervisors and care resource managers can earn $22 to $24 hourly, according to the announcement. Full- and part-time positions will be available and recruitment will be focused on those who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. See more on contact tracing and the hiring process at health.pa.gov. Wolf wont close schools Gov. Wolf on Friday took to Twitter to quash rumors of a statewide order to close schools this fall as the pandemic continues. I am not closing school buildings or canceling classes, he tweeted. Any decision about reopening, in-person classes or virtual learning will be made by local school districts. School governing boards and administrators will determine if school buildings reopen and if classes resume in person, remotely, or a combination of the two. The best way to find out about these local decisions is to contact your schools governing board or administration. Governor Tom Wolf (@GovernorTomWolf) July 31, 2020 Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. The Blackhawks looked like a team that turned back the clock to their Stanley Cup days of five years ago during Saturdays 6-4 win over the Oilers in Game 1 of their best-of-five play-in series in Edmonton. The Oilers rallied with two goals in the third period, but the Hawks held on to take their postseason opener and the first Western Conference game of the NHLs return to play from the COVID-19 pause. Edmonton had ground to make up as the Hawks scored four goals in the first period, including three in less than a four-minute span. Blackhawks forward Dominik Kubalik, a Calder Trophy finalist, scored two goals and assisted on three others to collect a game-leading five points. He netted both his power-play goals off assists by defenseman Duncan Keith in the second period, capping the scoring for Chicago. The power play couldnt have turned out much better for the Hawks, who punched in three of six opportunities two more than Edmontons chances on the man advantage. The Oilers entered the game with the second-best power-play percentage (29.5), so the Hawks entered the series determined to stay out of penalty kill situations. Game 1 illustrated how important that mission is. Three of the Oilers four goals came on the power play. For the Blackhawks, Jonathan Toews also added two goals, and Brandon Saad and Dylan Strome also scored. Patrick Kane had an empty-netter called back on review because he was offsides. 2020 the Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. The attorney for the Penns Grove police chief, who was suspended with pay amid an investigation into his department, is calling for his immediate reinstatement. Attorney Michael C. Mormando told NJ Advance Media Friday the investigation involving Penns Grove Police Chief Patrick Riley Sr. by the Salem County Prosecutors Office was already completed, and that there was never an allegation that Riley Sr. committed a crime. Penns Grove Mayor LaDaena Thomas said earlier Tuesday the prosecutors office has taken over the police department amid an ongoing investigation. Mormando slammed Thomas, who earlier told NJ Advance Media, in reference to the investigation, that she had to clean up corruption, that she, had given individuals at the borough six months to get it together, and that she was doing what the residents needed her to do. Those comments by the mayor are willfully misleading given that Chief Riley was never accused of corruption, he was not suspended for allegations of corruption, he was not investigated for allegations of corruption, and quite clearly he has not been charged with corruption, Mormando said. Sadly, the mayors evidently defamatory comments appear only to be politicizing the police department, for a self-aggrandizing purpose perhaps, and further are cast to the direct detriment of the citizens of Penns Grove. It is our view that the mayors attempt to clad her own mistakes and improper handling of this matter as benefits to the residents is shameful and should not go unaddressed. It remains unclear what prompted the investigation into the police department, which is temporarily being led by Chief of County Detectives Elliot Hernandez. The office has not commented on the takeover or investigation. Mormando said Riley Sr.s rights have been violated, and that the mayor breached a confidentiality agreement by commenting on the matter. It is our view from consideration of the totality of circumstances that the mayors comments and her actions have been motivated by political agenda and an unfortunate lack of experience, Mormando said. And now, that the investigation is complete, we demand that the chief be reinstated immediately. Thomas dismissed Mormandos comments in a statement Friday night. Mr. Rileys attorney, Mr. Mormondo, is doing what he is expected to do and that is to make his client seem the victim. I can assure you that the only victims are the residents of Penns Grove, she said. Riley Sr. took over after the previous chief retired in December 2019. Thomas was sworn in this January. 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. San Clemente Island, viewed from a shuttle aircraft that regularly flies military and civilian personnel to the U.S. Navy-owned land mass. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times) The search continued Saturday for eight service members after their landing craft went down in hundreds of feet of water following a deadly accident off San Clemente Island, officials said. Helicopters and boats ranging from inflatables to a Navy destroyer were searching a roughly 200-square-mile area for seven Marines and a Navy corpsman. The amphibious assault vehicle is beyond the reach of divers and complicating rescue efforts for the missing troops. Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Osterman, the commanding general of the Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters Friday that the vehicle, which weighs 26 tons, sank completely more than 3,200 feet offshore and the assumption is it went all the way to the bottom. The AAV is actually in several hundred feet of water its really below the depth that a diver can go to, he said. The incident occurred when the vehicle carrying 15 Marines and one Navy sailor began taking on water about 5:45 p.m. Thursday, according to the Marine Corps. One Marine was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla and later died. Two others were injured and remain hospitalized but are no longer in intensive care. Five other service members were rescued. The Marines, with support from the Navy and Coast Guard, were still searching for the missing service members late Friday afternoon. We have not moved into recovery operations, Osterman said. Were still looking for them. The Marine Corps commandant, Gen. David H. Berger, said that even though the search was continuing, the focus now should be on the troops and their families. He added that he was suspending waterborne operations of all of the more than 800 amphibious assault vehicles across the Marines until the cause of the accident is determined. He said the move was out of an abundance of caution. The name of the Marine who died will be withheld until 24 hours after notification of next of kin, officials said, and all family members who are affected will be contacted directly by their Marines chain of command. All the Marines involved were assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is based out of Camp Pendleton. San Diego Union-Tribune staff writers Andrew Dyer and Phil Diehl and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Botswana has put its capital, Gaborone, back into a two-week lockdown starting Friday, closing schools and restricting movements, after confirmed local COVID-19 transmissions doubled this week. Botswanas health minister, Dr. Lemogang Kwape, said a return to lockdown was needed after the capital saw what he called a "worrying rise" in local cases of COVID-19. "I now regret to inform you that the situation has worsened in the last 24 hours," he said. "Botswana has recorded 30 new positive cases of COVID-19, with the majority of the cases emanating from schools in the greater Gaborone." Authorities closed schools in Gaborone on Friday and, except for essential workers, resumed requiring temporary permits for anyone to move around. Schools elsewhere in Botswana remain open. Confirmed, local transmissions of the virus in Gaborone doubled in the last week, from 70 to 140, most of them recorded in schools. Kwape said contact tracing had become more complex. He said some transport operators were failing to keep a passenger register, as required by COVID-19 regulations. "During the course of this week the disease has taken an unexpected turn. This now requires that we place the greater Gaborone zone under lockdown for a minimum period of two weeks to enable us to contain the disease," Kwape said. This is the second time Botswana has returned the capital to lockdown after lifting the restrictions since the pandemic began. Botswana, with 804 recorded cases of COVID-19 and two deaths, has been relatively unscathed by the virus, compared to other African countries. Botswana's neighbor, South Africa, is the worst-hit on the continent, with confirmed COVID-19 cases approaching half a million. The majority of Botswanas confirmed cases were along the border and most of them foreigners. Former Union minister Arun Shourie, veteran journalist N Ram and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan have moved the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of a legal provision dealing with criminal contempt for "scandalizing the court", saying it was violative of freedom of speech and right to equality. The petition, which may come up for hearing next week, challenged the validity of Section 2(1)(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 as being unconstitutional and incompatible to the basic feature of the Constitution and is vague and manifestly arbitrary. The provision defines what constituted criminal contempt and said that if by way of publication of words, the dignity of the courts is lowered and if they scandalize the courts then the offence of contempt of court is deemed to have been committed. The impugned sub-section is unconstitutional as it is incompatible with preambular values and basic features of the Constitution. It violates Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression), is unconstitutional and incurably vague, said the plea filed through lawyer Kamini Jaiswal. The filing of the plea challenging the validity of the provision assumes significance in view of the fact that a three-judge bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra on July 22 had issued a show cause notice to Bhushan after taking note of a petition urging it to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against him for his alleged tweets against the judiciary. This case is listed for hearing on August 5. The top court is also scheduled to hear on August 4 another criminal contempt case against Bhushan which was initiated in 2009 over his alleged comments against former CJIs in an interview given to a magazine. The petition alleged that the provision violated the freedom of speech and expression. The provision violates the right to free speech to the extent that it is not covered under the reasonable restrictions enlisted under Article 19(2) of the Constitution, it said. The offence of scandalizing the court' cannot be considered to be covered under the category of the contempt of court and under Article 19(2) of the Constitution which permitted reasonable restrictions on free speech, it said. The plea referred to the apex court judgements in the triple talaq case and in the decriminalization of homosexuality, and said that the provision can be challenged on the ground of "manifest arbitrariness" also. It also referred to the cases where N Ram and Shourie, a journalist-turned-politician, had to face criminal contempt proceedings and sought that the provision be held unconstitutional. The petition further referred to a fact that in England now the issue scandalizing the court is no more a ground for initiation of contempt. Connaught, however, had come up with a synthetic, liquid growth mixture, known as Medium 199, for cancer cell research that produced more virus, more quickly and without contamination. It was provided to Dr. Salk for his polio efforts. Image Dr. Farrell was a trailblazing Canadian research chemist. During much of her career, she was one of a few women in the field. Credit... Sanofi Pasteur Canada Archives It was Dr. Farrell, one of a very small number of women then working as research chemists in Canada, who figured out how to safely produce vast quantities of virus in Medium 199. Adapting earlier work, she developed what came to be known as the Toronto Method. Racks of specially designed machines gently rocked bottles of Method 199 and the virus. Her next task was to get enough machines built and to hire enough qualified staff to make not only enough virus for the tests in the United States, Canada and Finland, but also to create enough vaccine to inoculate all of Canadas children. In a bid to accelerate vaccination, the Canadian government gambled and placed an order with Connaught before knowing if the Salk vaccine would prove safe and effective in tests. It did, with the result made public on April 12, 1955, the day before Dr. Farrells birthday. I could not help feeling that I had received a pretty fine present, she said in a speech that fall. Variations of the Toronto Method were used until the 1970s to make polio vaccines, Dr. Rutty told me. Apparently, at Dr. Farrells request, Connaught decided not to patent the process. Dr. Rutty, who is the expert when it comes to Canadas role in polio research and who serves as the historian for Connaughts successor company, Sanofi Pasteur Canada, said that frustratingly little is known about Dr. Farrells personal life. She never married, as was the case with many other women in Canadian medical research, nor had children. Pompeo: US expanding scope of Iran metals sanctions Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 1:55 AM The US is currently working to expand the scope of Iran metals sanctions which relate to the country's nuclear, military and ballistic missile programs, says Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a statement on Thursday, Pompeo called the new move as a "major expansion" of such sanctions which target 22 specific materials that he said included aluminum powder with purity above 98%. The sanctions administered by the State Department would allow Washington to blacklist those who he claimed knowingly transfer the materials to Iran. "Iran's nuclear, ballistic missile, and military programs pose a grave threat to international peace and security," Pompeo claimed in the statement. The United States returned its sanctions against Iran after illegally and unilaterally leaving a historic nuclear accord between the Islamic Republic and major world powers that has been endorsed by the United Nation Security Council as a resolution. Washington has previously targeted Iran's metals sector with sanctions in an effort to slash the Islamic Republic's revenues. In June, the US issued sanctions against four steel, aluminum, and iron companies operating in the Islamic Republic, and also taken aim at the sales of Iran's largest steel manufacturer. The US Treasury Department said in a statement then that it had imposed sanctions on Tara Steel Trading GmbH, an offshore subsidiary of Mobarakeh Steel Co., three overseas' sales agents serving the steel company, and Iran-based Metil Steel. The Treasury said the sales agents "generated tens of millions of dollars annually from the foreign sale of Mobarakeh Steel Company products, providing significant contributions to the billions of dollars generated overall by Iran's steel, aluminum, copper, and iron sectors." The new move by the State Department comes a day after the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) fired ballistic missiles from underground launch facilities on the second day of its major naval and aerial drills in southern Iran. The IRGC's Public Relations Department said in a statement on Wednesday that ground, aerial and naval operations were carried out against positions of the hypothetical enemy on the second day of the final phase of the exercises, codenamed Payambar-e A'zam (The Great Prophet) 14. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address West Shore School District released updates on what distance learning will look like this fall to the school community Friday afternoon. The district announced earlier this month that it will start the year remotely on Aug. 25 and will determine whether it will move to a hybrid model by Sept. 10 making it one of the only area schools to start the year completely online. Superintendent Todd Stoltz posted the updates to the district website and a link to a parent survey for immediate feedback. It seems just as things appear to be moving in one direction, they can turn on a dime, Stoltz said in the statement. However, this message is not meant to explain what I think we all realize is happening, but rather to update you as best I can at this time. All students in the district will be assigned a time on Aug. 17 or 18 to pick up an iPad or Chromebook for distance learning and any textbooks or materials needed for school. The pickup schedule will be announced in early August. School lunches will still be provided, as well as tech support and other resources for students and families. Administrators and school counselors are working to create counseling groups and regular check-ins with students to help them navigate any mental health challenges they are facing. The district announced its phased return to campus plan at its school board meeting July 16. Elementary School Kindergarten students will be meeting in small group sessions online, according to the district website. They plan to bring kindergarten students back to in-person instruction as soon as they can. Kindergarten through second grade will be issued a district iPad to complete assignments and grades 3 to 5 will be issued Chromebooks. Lesson plans outlining instruction will be posted online every week so students and parents can see what their students will be working on. Instruction will be conducted through Seesaw and PowerSchool, as well as live Zoom sessions every day. Middle School Middle school class schedules will be released on Aug. 11 and each student will be issued a Chromebook. There will be Zoom classes held live every day, as well as prerecorded lessons posted every day. High School High school schedules will be posted on Aug. 11 and each student will be issued a Chromebook. High school students will also be given weekly lesson plans that outline instruction so they can stay on track. Vocational and technical schools will be reaching out to students enrolled in those classes for specific instructions on how they will be taught. Frankly, I think that election went well under the circumstances, Lamone said this week. Look what happened: People showed up at the polling place with their mailed ballot in hand. . . . They wanted to watch it go into the machine. We didnt anticipate that, and there was no way to react to it. Were trying to make sure that it doesnt happen again. By PTI HYDERABAD: Help is pouring in for three children in Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri district of Telangana who lost their parents, with actor Sonu Sood and also a state minister reaching out to them. Sonu Sood, who has been helping people hit hard by the COVID-19 induced lockdown and recently donated a tractor to a farmers family in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, has promised to take up the responsibility of the children. ALSO READ | Fans get creative on Sonu Sood's 47th birthday, calls him 'messiah' of migrant labourers "They are no longer orphans. They will be my responsibility," Sood tweeted after a twitter user brought the plight of the trio to his notice. They are no longer orphans. They will be my responsibility https://t.co/pT0hQd4nCx sonu sood (@SonuSood) July 31, 2020 According to official sources, their father had passed away earlier, while their mother died recently. They have a grandmother who is very old. ALSO READ | Sonu Sood gifts tractor to Chittoor farmer who made his daughters plough fields Meanwhile, state Panchayat Raj Minister Errabelli Dayakar Rao, who came to know about the children's plight, immediately got their detials from ruling TRS MLA Gongidi Sunita Mahender Reddy, in whose constituency their village Atmakur is located, and also the village sarpanch, TRS sources said. He informed leading Telugu film producer Dil Raju about the matter and requested him to adopt them. The film producer sent his men to the village and took up the responsibility of the children, they said. The minister again called Raju and lauded him for his gesture, they added. President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday greeted the nation on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, suggesting people to enjoy the festival sharing happiness with the needy by maintaining social distancing and other norms to contain COVID-19 spread. "Eid Mubarak! Idu'l Zuha symbolizes the spirit of sacrifice and amity which inspires us to work for the well-being of one and all. On this occasion, let us share our happiness with the needy and follow social distancing norms and guidelines to contain COVID-19 spread," the President tweeted. He tweeted in Urdu, English and Hindi. The Prime Minister expected that the festival would inspire people to create a harmonious and inclusive society. "Eid Mubarak! Greetings on Eid al-Adha. May this day inspire us to create a just, harmonious and inclusive society. May the spirit of brotherhood and compassion be furthered," he said in his tweet. Union Home Minister Amit Shah also took to Twitter, saying: "Greeting on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. May this day bring peace, harmony and prosperity in our society". Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha or Bakrid by stepping out in their best clothes and meeting their friends and families. As is the tradition, Muslims around the world sacrifice animals on this day. Later, a feast is prepared which is divided into three parts. One part is for family, friends and neighbours, the second part is distributed among the needy, and the last part is kept for immediate family. Khamenei Rules Out Negotiations With US, Says Trump Seeks Personal Gain Radio Farda July 31, 2020 The Islamic Republic of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has once again ruled out negotiations with the United States and accused U.S. President Donald Trump of suggesting talks with Iran for personal gain. In a televised speech on the occasion of Eid al-Adha on Friday 31 July, Khamenei referred to the United States' negotiations with North Korea and said the U.S. Government used that opportunity for propaganda purpose. He acknowledged that "U.S. sanctions have undoubtedly created problems for Iran" and that "Iran can sell very little oil" as a result. Nevertheless, he claimed that this has reduced the Iranian economy's dependence on oil. The comment came one day after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the United Nations Security Council members of UN sanctions snapback if the UNSC ends the arms embargo against Iran in October, as called for by the 2015 nuclear deal also called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Russia and China oppose the U.S. proposal to extend the arms embargo to stop Iran's destabilising activities in the Middle East. Last week, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook also said that ending the arms embargo against Iran will intensify Iran's military intervention in the region. Pompeo argued that the return of U.S. sanctions against Iran since 2018 has reduced Iran's vital oil revenue by 90 percent. He added that Iran spends its oil income to spread terrorism and further its "illegal nuclear program." Pompeo promised that the US pressure on Iran will continue with the objective of affecting Iran's "terror network." In his speech on Friday, Khamenei reiterated that "nuclear power" is what Iran needs. He added that that the United States wishes to negotiate with Iran to encourage it "to give up its defensive and regional power but this is unacceptable." Khamenei also criticized Europe's behavior as Iran's partner in the JCPOA after the United States pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018. He said "Europeans did nothing" after the U.S. pull-out. He characterized INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), the European financial mechanism to help Iran, as "nonsense" adding that it was both "wrong and harmful." Nevertheless, he added that the Europeans even did not try to use INSTEX to help Iran. France, Germany and the UK launched INSTEX on January 31, 2019 to facilitate trade with Iran despite US sanctions. Some other European countries also joined the mechanism later. However, Khamenei lashed out at the initiative, saying that the Europeans wanted to use the money various countries owed to Iran in order to sell things to Iran without asking Iran about its needs. The German Foreign Ministry announced in April that Iran had used INSTEX for the first time in March to purchase medical equipment from Europe. Nevertheless, Iranian officials say the mechanism is not efficient enough. Elsewhere in his remarks on Friday, Khamenei claimed that U.S. sanctions have led to a scientific flourishing in Iran. As a proof for this statement he said Iran has developed an Iranian jet aircraft named Kowsar. Experts, however, have pointed out that the aircraft is an upgraded version of U.S. F-5 fighters that date back to the 1970s and acquired by the pro-West monarchy. He also spoke about recent unrest in Portland and said: "The U.S. government may be able to suppress the current popular protests in various states, but they will remain like a fire under ashes. They will not be eliminated and will flare up again. They will bring the U.S. political system down." Khamenei added: "The U.S. government needs to create enemies in order to further its goals. Sometimes they introduce Iran as the enemy, sometimes China, sometimes Russia. But the U.S. establishment's biggest enemy is the American people, and they will eventually bring down the current US system." Later, probably alluding to China and Russia, he said Iran should seek help from its friends. However, he did not elaborate. At the end of his speech on Friday, Khamenei contradicted President Hassan Rouhani's remarks about going ahead with Muharram religious rituals regardless of the health risks involved, and said he would defer to the medical experts' attestation on the matter. Medical experts have said during past weeks that busy gatherings in the month of Muharram may lead to a new surge in the spread of COVID-19 in Iran. Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/khamenei-rules -out-negotiations-with-us-says-trump-wants- seeks-personal-gain/30758645.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 Ive lost track of the number of times Ive heard people say theyd like to take 2020, put it in a box, and toss it. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 1/8/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Ive lost track of the number of times Ive heard people say theyd like to take 2020, put it in a box, and toss it. The year, so far, has been one of disruption and fear. Theres no end in sight. But Ive just as frequently heard references to some of the good things that have come from this pandemic crisis. One colleague mentioned that despite the trials of carrying on with her paid employment from home while providing her own child care, she has deeply appreciated the time shes had with her young family being a stay-at-home mom. Others have remarked on the serenity that comes with living life at a slower pace and in a smaller world. Those of us who travel frequently for work havent missed the airport experience much, if at all. One of the big gains out of this has been a renewed appreciation for the relative security, safety and availability of our food system. There have been disruptions there, too, of course, and its become clear that we need to do a better job of caring for the people who help grow, transport, process and market our food. We have a responsibility to those folks. However, we also have "response ability" the capacity as a country to address those issues. All it takes is the will. So, as we celebrate Food Day Canada today by shopping local, cooking at home and eating with family and friends virtually or in person its a good time to be grateful for what we have, but also to reflect on what we can do better. Food Day Canada grew out of a typically Canadian response to another crisis that affected our food supply. A case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in 2003 prompted most countries to close their borders to Canadian beef. Canadians held the Worlds Longest Barbecue in a show of moral support as farmers were forced to hold onto cattle and stockpiles of processed beef grew. This year, Canadians are urged to "shop like a Canadian" using an all-Canadian shopping list. Its a great idea in theory, but even if all Canadians shopped all-Canadian all of the time, it wouldnt be enough to support all of the farmers we have today. Thats the catch-22 of the global pandemic and one of the biggest risks to our agricultural sector in its aftermath. Pundits are predicting the shop-local phenomenon will be a global outcome as countries become more protective of their domestic supplies and suspicious of foreign suppliers. That was already occurring pre-COVID-19 and the notion of "de-globalization" has become mainstream. "One of the things as we move into this de-globalization phase or regionalization or localization is the drivers of this change are going to be governments and society and the consumer," University of Tennessee agricultural economist David Kohl told the virtual audience attending the recent Ag in Motion Discovery Plus farm show. "The impact is going to be extreme volatility of price and cost." 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. Kohl went on to say that supply chains are going to come under increasing scrutiny in this environment. "Do we have too much concentration? Do we need to build more resiliencies into our regional and local processing? Those changes, if they occur, will come at a cost, either to the people producing the food, the people buying the food or to taxpayers. Who is it going to be? So while its important for Canadians to celebrate their local food bounty, its equally important that they recognize that bounty is supported in large measure by Canadian farmers continued access to global markets. They cant afford to have every country embrace a shop local mantra. Kohl said one of the big positives for farmers to emerge from the pandemic is a "repositioning" of modern agricultures image. As consumers, perhaps we can use Food Day Canada as an opportunity to engage in some food for thought about the larger issues facing our food system. Or maybe we just enjoy the day and save the dialogue for another time. Laura Rance is vice-president of content for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com Iran has announced it has detained a leader of a little-known California-based opposition group for allegedly planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others. Irans Intelligence Ministry also alleged Jamshid Sharmahd of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran planned other attacks around the Islamic Republic amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the US over its collapsing 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. It remains unclear how Mr Sharmahd, whom Iran accused of running the opposition groups Tondar militant wing, ended up detained by intelligence officials. Requests for comment sent by email to the Glendora-based Kingdom Assembly of Iran were not immediately answered and a telephone number for the group no longer worked. Iranian state television broadcast a report on Mr Sharmahds arrest on Saturday, linking him to the 2008 bombing of the Hosseynieh Seyed al-Shohada Mosque in Shiraz. It also said his group was behind a 2010 bombing at Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis mausoleum in Tehran that wounded several people. The report also alleged without providing evidence that Tondar, or Thunder in Farsi, plotted attacks on a dam and planned to use cyanide bombs at Tehrans annual book fair. State TVs Telegram channel posted a photo of a blindfolded Mr Sharmahd and said it was the first photo of him since his arrest by the Intelligence Ministrys forces. The Kingdom Assembly of Iran, known in Farsi as Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran, and Tondar seek to restore Irans monarchy, which ended when the fatally ill Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country in 1979 just before its Islamic Revolution. The groups founder disappeared in the mid-2000s. Authorities did not elaborate on how they apprehended Mr Sharmahd, though Iranian intelligence operatives in the past have used family members and other tricks to lure targets back to Iran or friendly countries to be captured. An alleged Iranian government operative who allegedly tried to hire a hitman to kill Mr Sharmahd disappeared in 2010 before facing trial in California, likely having returned to Iran. While overshadowed by other exiled opposition groups, Iran reportedly brought up the Kingdom Assembly multiple times while negotiating the terms of the 2015 deal, which saw Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. A statement attributed to Tondar claimed the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010 by a remote-control bomb, though it later said it wasnt responsible. Suspicion long has fallen on Israel for a string of assassinations targeting scientists amid concerns about Irans nuclear programme, which the West fears could be used to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran long has maintained its program is for peaceful purposes. Mr Sharmahds reported arrest comes as tensions remain inflamed by Donald Trumps 2018 decision to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal. A series of incidents last year were capped by a US drone strike in January killing a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Iran responded by launching a ballistic missile attack on US soldiers in Iraq that injured dozens. AP US Sanctions Are Intended to Collapse Iran's Economy, Supreme Leader Says Sputnik News 07:35 GMT 31.07.2020(updated 08:04 GMT 31.07.2020) Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States is expanding its metal sanctions against Iran to cover 22 additional materials used in various missile programmes. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that the US sanctions have made Iran stronger and more self-sufficient. "America's brutal sanctions on Iran are aimed at collapsing our economy ... Their aim is to limit our influence in the region and to halt our missile and nuclear capabilities," Khamenei said. He added that the US dream to achieve its goals through sanctions and maximum pressure on Iran will never come true. The nation's Supreme Leader said that Iran will not halt its ballistic missile or nuclear programmes. "Relying on national capabilities and cutting our dependence on oil exports will help us to resist America's pressure," Khamenei stressed. Iran will not negotiate with the US, which is determined to curb Iran's regional influence and end its progress, Khamenei added. Tehran faced US economic sanctions pressure after Washington withdrew from Iran nuclear deal (also known as the JCPOA) in 2018. Citing allegations that Tehran was still working on developing nuclear weapons, something repeatedly dismissed by both Iran and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, the US ditched the multilateral deal and threatened to impose sanctions against other participants, if they continued doing business with the Islamic Republic. Washington imposed sanctions on Iran's oil trade, one of its main sources of revenue, and the country's banks, resulting in their disconnection from the global SWIFT system. In response, Iran promised to completely stop financial operations using the American currency. According to allegations made by US officials, Tehran used gold as a payment method, when it delivered fuel and resources for refineries to Venezuela via tankers at the end of April. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Lewis and Clark County is erecting temporary shelter on the county fairgrounds to house homeless people who have contracted COVID-19. Lewis and Clark Public Health officials have cautioned the county that, due to tight quarters within homeless shelters, any positive case within such a facility could spread rapidly through its population, necessitating the additional shelter. The county plans to use the tents as a place to isolate members of the community that have nowhere to isolate. Officials intend for the temporary shelter to be fully operational by mid-August and have not had to isolate any homeless people to date. Lewis and Clark County Disaster and Emergency Services Coordinator Reese Martin said in an interview Friday that the endeavor has been in the works for more than a month. The county considered housing infected homeless people in hotel rooms, but negotiations with local hoteliers were less than fruitful. The tents will house any homeless male who contracts the virus. COVID positive homeless women will be housed in the Journey Home, a shuttered eight-bedroom mental health crisis stabilization facility near downtown Helena. If that facility is overrun, some of the women will be moved to the tents. Those quarantined at the site will need to be there for 10 days and maintain a normal temperature for 24 hours prior to being released. While Martin said the county has authorized him to make certain purchases to benefit the project, he plans on "keeping it fiscally responsible." The county spent $7,500 on two 16- by 48-foot, military-style tents that were pitched on the lawn in front of the fairgrounds' exhibit hall Friday afternoon with the help of some members of Montana National Guard and a local Boy Scout troop. The tents are expected to be able to house as many as 40 people in total. The county will seek reimbursement for the expenses with federal dollars through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act passed by Congress in March. American Red Cross has already donated some cots, and the Elk Horn Community Organizations Active in Disaster, or COAD, a group of area nonprofit organizations that coordinate disaster relief efforts, will provide the food. County staff is also grappling with the need for staffing the site for health and safety purposes. Lewis and Clark County Chief Administrative Officer Roger Baltz said in an interview Friday that the county will lean on the COAD to round up volunteers who will be trained to monitor the site and those housed there. The county may also need to pay to staff the facility, Baltz said. "That may be what we have to do," he said. "We've got to be as flexible as we can be so we're ready to move in any direction." The tents are made out of a dark green vinyl that could pose a problem as the valley sweats out the remainder of summer. Martin said the tents can be retrofitted with heating and cooling systems, but the county is still working on a plan for keeping individuals quarantined to the tents comfortable. According to Baltz, that is a top concern with the endeavor at the moment. "We're going to be very sensitive to that," he said. "The tents may not be a good solution when it's hot." He said the tents could be moved into the entryway of the exhibit hall, which is separated from the main building by a brick wall, if the weather is unfit for temporary shelter. However, the county is hoping it does not need to make that move as it is still utilizing the space. The exhibit hall has been used most recently for socially distanced jury selections. Baltz said he does not expect additional expenditures aside from the tents themselves and possibly staff. The burden, financial or otherwise, of sheltering homeless individuals and families during the health pandemic has largely fallen on the shoulders of the COAD. Following the virus' initial surge in March, YMCA of Helena, along with other member organizations, foot the bill to house homeless families at its Camp Child property west of Helena. Baltz applauded the COAD's herculean efforts in the past five months. "They really have risen to the occasion," he said. Love 3 Funny 6 Wow 2 Sad 3 Angry 13 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. Priyanka Saurabh. Recently our Prime Minister Modi Ji, in his address to the nation, mentioned the daughters of Haryana who studied in a government school and stood first in the state in various faculties. It is no small matter to top the state by studying in government schools in rural areas of Haryana. Salutations and salutations to these daughters under the venerated Guru Charan who showed their path to real knowledge by providing true education to these children in government and underprivileged schools in this phase of privatization. Today it has been proved that by paying a fee of only a hundred rupees, the students studying in the convent schools can not be beaten by filling the fees of lakhs, they can also be defeated at the state level and country level. Behind this success is not only the hard work of the children but also the dedication of those teachers who do not just sit on their pay and they show dreams to the children. Eventually, their hard work paid off. As far as I think, the picture of Haryana government schools has changed in the last ten years. Especially after the eligibility of teacher recruitment, the same people came into this profession who were qualified and you are seeing results. Discussions of this success are not in the country but on the world stage. The Chairman of the Haryana Education Board said that in this examination, the Faculty of Arts has been selected by the NCERT. Mahendragarh student Manisha daughter of Manoj Kumar scored 499 out of 500 and secured first place. The second place is Monica daughter Ajay Kumar of R & D (Chamarkheda, Hisar), third is RVMV. (Azad Singh, the rainy daughter of (Jabra, Rewari), scored 495 out of 500. First place in the Faculty of Science (Bodia Kamalpur, Rewari) student ManishaYadav daughter of Bijendra Kumar. N.c.m. Shrutika daughter Jagmendra of (Bahauli, Kurukshetra) secured 495 out of 500 marks. Daughter Manisha considers her parents, friends, and teachers as special contributors to this success. All these daughters say that they had to travel a distance to go to school every day. Manisha says that she had planned to top school, but she did not know that she would top in the state. Manisha says that people should change their mindset, today girls are ahead of boys. This achievement can be found by studying in a government school. What tremendous results have come, the rest of the government teachers should also take inspiration from them that if you can do the rest, you can also, the children of your schools can also write history. All government teachers should not consider themselves employees. Pay your duty so that everyone, especially children from poor sections, can get an education. With this, the lost land of these government schools will be returned and the trend of people will increase. One day everyone will send their children to government schools. You keep trying for such results. Apart from teachers and parents, governments too now need special attention to the condition of government schools. About half of the government schools in the country do not have electricity or playgrounds. The budgetary allocation due to privatization saw a 27% reduction in proposals made by the Department of School Education. Despite proposals of 82,570 crores, only 59,845 crores were allocated. Which is not correct. There is slow progress in building classrooms, laboratories, and libraries to strengthen government higher secondary schools. Government schools in India are facing teacher vacancies, which in some states are about 60-70 percent. Government schools should get additional funds at the revised estimate level of the main schemes. The Ministry of Human Resource Development should build schools and boundary walls in collaboration with Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It should also work with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy to provide solar and other energy sources so that electricity can reach schools. For a very long time, there have been two types of education models in the country. One for a particular class and another for the public. In Delhi, the AAP government sought to bridge this gap. Its approach stems from the belief that quality education is a necessity, not a luxury. Therefore, it created a model, which essentially consists of five major components and is supported by about 25% of the state budget. Today we need to make special improvements on topics such as change of school infrastructure, training of teachers and principals, restructuring school management committees (SMC), engagement with the community, curriculum improvement in teaching-learning. The government preschool system is managed through the child development scheme of the center, under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, while the schools are under the center and ministries of education in the states. There has been a huge investment in the Childhood Program in India, which is administered through 1.2 million Anganwadis under Ends. The findings of ASER 2019 make it clear that there is a need to strengthen these early childhood education centers so that they implement appropriate "school-readiness" activities. Coordination between central ministries is necessary to improve policy setting for early childhood education, but it is better to encourage the state and district administrations to do more to make elementary education effective. According to a news report, in recent days, new admissions in a government school in Haryana during the Corona period have crossed the 43,000 marks! At the same time, 82,000 candidates have applied for the school living certificate! Now how schools will work without teachers is worrying. In such a situation the irresponsible attitude of the government is even more worrisome. One thing that the Prime Minister of India has to know about the state of government schools and recruitment and functioning of teachers in the country. So that not only a uniform education environment will be created all over the country, all the states should implement their words strictly. Dualism in education should end now, everyone should get the same government education. Only then will there be a sense of equality in India in the future. : : 1. , ? 2. ? 3. - 22 4. 5. SCO - , PM 6. 7. 8. 30 26 9. , .? 10. - ? 11. ************************************************************************************ Disclaimer : / [email protected] By Jennifer Okundia Nigerian actress Victoria Inyama took to Instagram to share a video where she addressed Nigerian ladies to cover up and stop exposing their bodies. The movie star who is based in the United Kingdom revealed that in a country where there are no laws that protects women from rape, the women should take some measures to protect themselves from men who obviously have mental issues. Inyama revealed that a stripper or a prostitute in the U.S. or UK if raped, will have the case investigated and justice served the perpetrator, but in Nigeria, the reverse is the case. Appropriate Dressing & Comportment Its obvious to me that the Nigerian government is not really ready to put a fixed penalty to Rape and so l beg my ladies (minus the minors or aged victims) to plsssss ? dress in appropriate clothing so as to reduce the trigger for the perpetratorsA lot of these Perpetrators have underlying mental health issues & being around them in certain clothing is a trigger..sadly the victim still gets to be shamed & ridiculed, so since this government is Not ready to do much, it would be wise to safeguard yourself. Yes its not about the dressing some will say & compare with Europe & America but remember they take Rape cases seriously unlike Nigerian..Think about it? #notorape #notodomesticviolence she wrote She also shared photos of Elisha Abbo, a senator representing the Adamawa North Senatorial District in Adamawa State at the Nigerian 9th National Assembly, who assaulted a lady in a sex toy shop and the case was dismissed by a Nigerian court recently. Check her message below: Dear Nigerian woman living in Nigeria. This backs up my earlier post. Your government do not care about you. Your system is not set to work for or PROTECT YOU.. Despite video evidence.No case. Yall better fix up. Related Putting more force into our police forces might seem intuitively like a logical way to more effectively fight crime. Real-life experience suggests thats not necessarily so. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 1/8/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Putting more force into our police forces might seem intuitively like a logical way to more effectively fight crime. Real-life experience suggests thats not necessarily so. Experts say when using force is available, then its human nature for a trained police officer to fall back on that option when the going gets rough. Too often, however, the use of a little force escalates into too much force. And we all know how that can end in tragedy, and too often with a Black, Indigenous or mentally distressed person as the victim. A feature story from The Canadian Press published over the weekend highlighted a remarkable alternative model, and one that might come from a surprising community. The Nishnawbe Aski Police Service (NAPS) is Canadas largest Indigenous police force. Headquartered in Thunder Bay, it polices more than 38,000 people in 34 communities in a sweeping area of northern Ontario. In its 26 years of existence, no officer has ever shot and killed anyone, and none has died in the line of duty. And, notably, the police force achieved this with a fraction of the resources available to well-funded police departments in more populous parts of Canada. Its all the more remarkable, given the communities it serves are frequently in social distress, and hunting rifles and shotguns are as common as snowmobiles and ATVs. This may seem to defy logic but scratching under the surface reveals a very simple reason for the success of NAPS: necessity. With lower levels of funding than other police forces and with such a large area to cover, officers most often must work alone. If something goes wrong, backup may be hours away. They must count on their wits to deal with difficult and even dangerous circumstances. They have quickly learned that building relationships with the people they serve is key. They cant afford to be on hostile terms, because they just might need to count on citizens full co-operation when trouble breaks out. "In the past, you might have been the only officer in there," NAPS chief Roland Morrison said in an interview with Canadian Press. "You would have no radio, youve got no backup, so you really effectively have to use your communication and talk to people. You have to develop relationships with the communities in order to have positive policing." Equally important, the Indigenous communities see themselves in the faces of the 203 officers on the force. About 60 per cent of the officers are Indigenous, and all of the officers understand their mandate is culturally responsive policing. I dont know enough about the NAPS experience overall to heap unreserved praise on the organization. But I do know that if the object of a police service is to keep the peace, then this department has something special going on. Heavily armed police forces in southern Canada need to pay attention and see what they could learn from this department. For one thing, they might realize that pulling out a Taser at the first sign of trouble may subdue an agitated suspect in the moment but doesnt do much to assure the public that non-violence is the overarching goal of their police department. It also sheds a new light on the whole debate about defunding police departments. Adding more money more weapons, more equipment, more officers doesnt provide a straight line to happier and safer communities. Quite the opposite: its a sign that non-violent tactics have failed and its time to retreat into gated communities. 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. Take some of that money away and police officers might be forced to become more resourceful. They might more deeply appreciate the value of building bridges with the people theyre supposed to protect. And it will certainly make some of the more macho officers think twice before laying on heavy hands. Is there a risk to any of this? Will we face the possibility of officers not showing up at our door when we call? Perhaps. More likely, though, well see our police departments rethinking their roles and approaches. Maybe theyll become more of the peacekeepers they should be rather than tough guys who think their role is to subdue threats by force. Veteran political commentator Doug Firby is president of Troy Media Digital Solutions and publisher of Troy Media. Troy Media ByteDance, the Chinese internet giant that owns TikTok, has offered to sell all of the popular video apps American operations as a way to save the business from being banned by the Trump administration, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Saturday. President Trump had told reporters on Friday that he was considering various options for TikTok, including banning it. White House officials have said the app may pose a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership. India, one of TikToks largest markets, banned the app in June, citing security concerns. That helped prompt the Trump administration to consider with greater urgency whether TikTok should be curbed in the United States as well. ByteDances offer to completely divest TikToks American operations was reported earlier by Reuters. It was not clear whether the Trump administration would accept the divestment as a sufficient response to its concerns. ByteDance had previously sought to keep a minority stake in TikToks American operations, but the administration rejected that, according to the person with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential. Microsoft and other companies have been in talks to buy TikTok, but a deal has not yet been reached, the person added. Many of the parties are waiting for Mr. Trump to take action, one of the people said. The Governor of Ekiti State and chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, Kayode Fayemi, has tested negative for the coronavirus. Mr Fayemi disclosed his latest health status on Twitter on Saturday morning and also appreciated those who stood by him while battling with the deadly virus. After 11 days in isolation, I received news that my CoviD 19 repeat test came back negative. My sincere gratitude goes to God Almighty, my family, my medical team and all well wishers for the prayers and solidarity. We must continue to do all we can to tackle the pandemic. JKF After 11 days in isolation, I received news that my CoviD 19 repeat test came back negative. My sincere gratitude goes to God Almighty, my family, my medical team and all well wishers for the prayers and solidarity. We must continue to do all we can to tackle the pandemic. JKF Kayode Fayemi (@kfayemi) August 1, 2020 This newspaper on July 22 reported that Mr Fayemi joined a growing list of state governors and other high profile Nigerians who have tested positive for coronavirus. They include the governors of Kaduna, Oyo, Bauchi and Delta states. Many of them have since recovered from the virus while few others died of the disease. The attorney-general and commissioner for justice in the Ekiti, Olawale Fapohunda, and no fewer than 10 aides to Mr Fayemi had also tested positive for COVID-19. By Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Major U.S. airlines are pressing U.S. lawmakers for a six-month extension of the $32 billion U.S. payroll support program for airlines, airports and contractors set to expire in September, warning that some flights may disappear otherwise and more jobs are at risk. Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Gary Kelly said in a video message to employees the company backs the effort. "Were in lockstep with our industry organization Airlines For America ... in support of the labor unions' efforts," Kelly said in the video, which was viewed by Reuters. "I am personally involved in delivering that message to our federal leaders." Kelly also wants lawmakers to extend a ticket tax holiday and pass other tax breaks that give Americans incentives to travel "because without customers and places and events for them to fly to -- we'll never punch our way out of this crisis." Airline industry executives have privately told lawmakers they may need to halt some flights because of depressed travel. The payroll funding required them to maintain minimum service levels through Sept. 30. On Friday, American Airlines subsidiary PSA warned that based on American's October schedule, it may need to furlough another 230 pilots and flight attendants on top of the 1,000 potential furloughs announced this month. This week, 223 U.S. House lawmakers called for a six-month extension of the payroll aid program they called crucial to keeping hundreds of thousands of aviation workers employed through March 31. Congress awarded $25 billion in payroll assistance to U.S. passenger airlines in March, along with $4 billion for cargo carriers and $3 billion for airport contractors. Most of the bailout funds do not have to be paid back. When the first package was approved, large U.S. airlines hoped for demand to recover by October. But with a resurgent pandemic, airline executives warn demand is stalling again. Between American Airlines and United Airlines , more than 60,000 frontline workers have received warnings that their jobs are on the line. (Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio) Product : Non-prescription pain relief products containing codeine : Non-prescription pain relief products containing codeine Issue : Non-prescription pain relief products containing codeine should not be used by people under 18 years of age : Non-prescription pain relief products containing codeine should not be used by people under 18 years of age What to do: People under 18 years of age should not use non-prescription products containing codeine, including for the purpose of pain relief. Consult your healthcare professional about alternative methods and products to treat pain. OTTAWA, ON July 31, 2020 Canada Canada Canada Ask your healthcare professional about alternatives to non-prescription codeine-containing products to treat pain in people under 18 years of age. All health products, including non-prescription pain relief products, should be used with caution and stored out of the reach of children to prevent accidental ingestion. Always read the labels on your medications and any additional safety information provided by your pharmacist or other healthcare professional. There are alternatives to codeine-containing products available for people under 18 years of age to treat pain. Advise patients, parents and caregivers on the proper use of opioid-containing health products. /CNW/ - The Government ofis committed to informing Canadians about the risks of health products that contain opioids. As a result, Health Canada is advising Canadians that people under 18 years of age should not use non-prescription pain relief products containing codeine. Non-prescription codeine-containing pain relief products were previously not recommended for children and youth under 12 years of age.This recent action is an extension of Health Canada's previous advice to Canadians that people under 18 years of age should not use cough and cold products that contain opioids, including codeine.Healthcontinues to encourage patients, parents and caregivers to consult with their healthcare professional about the use of prescription pain relief products containing codeine or other opioids.These actions are a result of the Department reviewing all available information on non-prescription codeine-containing pain relief products, which demonstrated that using opioids at a young age may contribute to the development of problematic substance use later in life.Healthis working with manufacturers of non-prescription pain relief products containing codeine to update their product safety information to reflect the Department's recommendation that people under 18 years of age should not use these products.Should any new safety issue arise, Health Canada will take immediate and appropriate action.SOURCE Health Canada Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) on Saturday reported a 28 per cent decline in total sales to 41,300 units in July. The company had sold 57,310 units in the same month last year, HMIL said in a statement. Domestic sales last month were at 38,200 units as against 39,010 units in July 2019, down by 2 per cent. Exports were down 83 per cent at 3,100 units last month as compared to 18,300 units in the year-ago period. Commenting on the sales performance, HMIL Director (Sales, Marketing & Service) Tarun Garg said the company has been able to contribute towards triggering the country's economic revival. "With the changing trend of preference for personal mobility, our consistent efforts are towards fulfilling the customer needs and meeting the market demand," he said, adding that the company's sales in July were driven by the all-new Creta SUV, Venue and the new Verna sedan besides compact cars Elite i10 and Nios. Also read: Maruti Suzuki posts growth for first time in six months; July sales surge 1.3% Russia intercepts US spy planes over Black Sea for fourth time in a week Iran Press TV Friday, 31 July 2020 7:20 AM The Russian military has intercepted American spy planes over the Black Sea four times in the past week. The Russian defense ministry said a Su-27 jet fighter buzzed two US reconnaissance aircraft on Thursday after they had approached the country's border over the Black Sea. The American spy planes were identified as an RC-135 strategic reconnaissance aircraft and a -8 Poseidon maritime surveillance plane. "The American reconnaissance planes were not allowed to breach the Russian Federation's state border," the ministry said in a statement. A similar incident took place on Monday over the Black Sea. The Russian air force also escorted a -8 Poseidon plane away from the country's airspace last Thursday and again on Friday. American bombers and spy planes, as well as NATO aircraft, have frequently been spotted near Russia's borders. Moscow has time and again expressed its concern about the increasing presence and activities of the US-led NATO forces near Russia's western borders. The provocative flights have increased in frequency since 2014, when Crimea joined Russia following a referendum in which more than 90 percent of participants voted in favor of separating from Ukraine, and when the ongoing military conflict in eastern Ukraine broke out. The West brands the reunification as annexation of Ukrainian land by Russia, which strongly rejects the allegation. In siding with Ukraine, the European Union has followed Washington's lead in leveling several rounds of sanctions against Moscow. US marine veteran jailed in Russia over police assault In a separate development on Thursday, a court in Russia sentenced a former US Marine to nine years in prison for assaulting two police officers while drunk last year. Trevor Reed, a 29-year-old student, has been in jail since last year when he was arrested for the attack, which, according to the judge, had caused the two police officers to suffer "mental and physical harm." The court ruled that Reed's "state of intoxication" had played a decisive role in the incident and sentenced him to nine years in a penal colony. Reed and his family denounced the verdict as "completely political" and vowed to appeal to the US government for political support. Reed's conviction follows the high-profile trial of another former US marine Paul Whelan, who received a 16-year jail sentence last month on espionage charges. EU sanctions Russian intelligence over alleged cyberattacks Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) on Thursday levied sanctions on a department of Russia's military intelligence service over suspicions of participation in major cyberattacks across the world. The bloc said in a statement that the sanctions, which include travel bans and asset freezes, had targeted the department for special technologies of the Russian military intelligence service, known as Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The EU accused the Russian service of being behind two cyberattacks that hit several companies in Europe in June 2017 and resulted in large financial losses. The service was also accused of two cyberattacks against Ukraine's power grid in 2015 and 2016. Brussels also targeted firms from North Korea and China over the same claim, with both countries rejecting any involvement in the cyberattacks. China's diplomatic mission to the EU said in a statement early on Friday that Beijing "is a staunch defender of network security and one of the biggest victims of hacker attacks." China intends global cyberspace security to be maintained through "dialogue and cooperation" and not by unilateral sanctions, the statement added. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 1 Trend: Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 36 times, Trend reports referring to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts. A second colorway for Union Los Angeles upcoming Air Jordan 4 collaboration has surfaced. Sneaker leak account @Sneakerheadz on Instagram has provided a detailed look at the Guava Ice iteration of the Union x Air Jordan 4 that initially surfaced on the resale platform GOAT. More from Footwear News The Guava Ice colorway wears a premium light pink suede upper thats paired with a mesh ankle collar in red and blue accents on the sock liner and Nike Air heel tab. The shoes standout element is the UN/LA tab on the lateral side, which appears to be the only indication that this shoe is a collab with Union. Capping off the look is a tonal cream midsole and outsole. Jordan Brand and Union has not yet unveiled their Air Jordan 4 collab but according to @py_rates_, it will release on Aug. 29 for $250. The Off Noir colorway is slated to be hitting shelves globally and will likely be available on the SNKRS app and at select Jordan Brand retailers while the Guava Ice makeup is expected to release exclusively at Unionlosangeles.com and at Union stores. Sign up for FN's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Hundreds of people have gathered at Windrush Square in Brixton, south London, for Afrikan Emancipation Day. A number of demonstrators temporarily blocked Brixton Road at the junction with Acre Lane, forcing cars and buses to stop and turn around. Protesters, including some from Extinction Rebellion, occupied the middle of the junction until they were told to get back on to the curb by police officers. A short distance away, another group observed speeches before a three-minute silence was held to mark Afrikan Emancipation Day. A coalition of action groups is due to attend the event, including Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide, the Afrikan Emancipation Day reparations march committee and the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford campaigners. Extinction Rebellion said the event aims to promote the necessity of stopping the genocide and ecocide of African people and their environments. Three people - holding signs saying mask up and wearing visors - handed out face masks and hand sanitiser to those attending. Photos, however, appeared to show many people not adhering to social distancing rules. Numerous groups were there primarily to enjoy a family-friendly, socially distanced day of activities and learning, police said, but warned the event must not spill into nearby roads and must finish by 8pm. The force said that the time limit was set so that officers could separate those attending the demonstrations from people attending other gatherings or unlicensed music events. Boris Johnson postpones further lockdown lifting as coronavirus rise across England Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, in charge of the policing operation on Saturday, said: The decision to impose conditions on an assembly is never taken lightly and is made following a vigorous assessment of the information available to us. We have no intention of infringing upon a responsibly-organised community event. We only require that this is done in a way that makes use of Brixton's open spaces and leaves the main road through Brixton open to other Londoners. In recent weeks we have policed a number of UMEs (unlicensed music events) in which loud music is played at night, disrupting local residents and posing a real threat both to property and the officers who attend to disperse them. We have received information that there are those intending to come to Brixton on Saturday to purposely cause disruption, and to confront police officers. This is in stark contrast to the feel of the events that will take place earlier in the day and is in opposition to the wishes of the local community. Scotland Yard said that gatherings of more than 30 people will be in breach of the Health Protection (Coronavirus) Restrictions and its decision to impose conditions did not mean the assembly in breach of these regulations was authorised by police. Press Association A man was crushed by a driver who pinned him against the side of his van following a roadside argument in south London. The victim, 30, suffered serious pelvic injuries and remains in hospital following the collision in Croydon in the early hours of July 21. He was with a friend in Whitehorse Road sometime after 12.30am when his friend became involved in an verbal altercation with a man in a beige Mini Clubman. After a short time the pair got into their van and drove off, but noticed that the Mini had begun to follow them. Police are appealing for dashcam footage around the time of the incident in Whitehorse Road, Croydon / Google Maps They pulled over to confront the driver, at which point the motorist reportedly drove at them and crushed the victim against the van. Detective Constable Angharad Morgan, who is leading the investigation, said: It is unclear what led to the altercation between the victims friend and the man driving the Mini. "However, this disagreement escalated to serious violence that is totally unacceptable and resulted in significant injuries for one of the men. The victim was hit by a Mini Clubman, like the one pictured, which was beige in colour / Getty Images Although this happened in the early hours of the morning, this incident took place on a busy stretch of road near to a carwash. Did you witness anything out of the ordinary or see the collision itself? Did you see a beige Mini Clubman leaving the scene? Likewise, I would ask anyone who may have driven along this stretch of road in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday, July, 21 to check their dashcam for any footage of this incident. Any information that you can provide could be key to our investigation. Anyone with information should call police on 101 quoting CAD 4813/23JUL20. September will come with more than the usual amount of back-to-school jitters as parents, teachers and students grapple with how to return to class safely in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each province plans on reopening schools in the fall with varying requirements for keeping kids at a distance from one another, and Ontario is the only province to mandate that all students from Grades 4 to 12 don a mask. All provinces ask that students and teachers who feel unwell stay home rather than go to school, and require additional cleaning measures and stringent hand-washing routines. Experts at SickKids released a document last week, saying smaller classes are key to limiting kids contacts, and that younger students should remain at least one metre apart, and teens two. They also recommended that masks should be used by high school students when physical distancing is difficult. Heres how each province is planning to bring students back to class: British Columbia B.C. was the only province in Canada to open all schools at the end of the previous school year albeit on a part-time basis, with voluntary attendance. Now the provincial health officer has announced a plan to return all students to school full-time, with in-class instruction. The distinguishing feature of B.C.s back to school plan is the creation of learning groups essentially social bubbles within schools that will set caps on the number of students able to socialize with one another outside of their own classrooms. For elementary school students, the learning groups have a maximum of 60 students, while the number is 120 for high school students. The B.C. teachers union has come out against the back-to-school plan, saying its too early in the pandemic to bring a full cohort of students back to classrooms safely. Masks will not be mandatory in B.C. classrooms, but will be recommended where social distancing isnt possible. The province will be making masks available in schools. Alberta Alberta will be bringing students back to school for full-time in-class instruction in the fall. The provinces back-to-school plan emphasizes cleaning of surfaces, and spreading messages to students and parents about physical distancing and hand sanitizing. The plan allows for the possibility of staggering break times so that fewer students socialize together at the same time. Masks will not be required under Albertas plan, but the Calgary board of education is recommending them for the start of the school year. Saskatchewan Saskatchewan has announced a phased approach to back-to-school, whereby the return of in-class learning depends on whether the province keeps case counts of COVID-19 to a minimum. The plan provides for the possibility of a return to at-home instruction if the province sees a COVID-19 resurgence. Saskatchewan has not yet announced which phase of its back-to-school strategy will be in effect come September, but plans to do so next week. Masks will be optional. Manitoba All students will return to in-class instruction in the fall in Manitoba but high school students may still be learning with a mix of online and in-class teaching. High schools will decide on individual plans for bringing students back to school, with the requirement that the students must interact within cohorts with a maximum size of 75. A likely result is that high school students will learn in-class for only two days a week. Students in Grade 8 and below will go back to school full-time. Masks will not be required. Ontario Most of Ontarios students will return to traditional classrooms full-time in September. Elementary students and many high schoolers will be in school five days a week in standard class sizes, while secondary students at two dozen boards that are higher risk will only attend class half the time in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. Those high schoolers will have a maximum class size of 15 and receive curriculum-linked independent work when they are not in school. Some of it will have to be live video conferencing or other so-called synchronous learning. Students in grades 4 through 12 will be required to wear masks in class, while younger kids are encouraged to do so. Quebec Quebec released its fall back-to-school plan in June. It was one of only two provinces to send students back to school before the end of the 2019-20 school year, but reneged on plans to return Montreal students to classes as the city tackled one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the country. The plan includes strict physical distancing rules. Students up to Grade 9 will have to keep two metres between one another, except for small subgroups comprising six students each. For older students, schools can decide to implement similar subgroups or stagger school attendance to every second day, with half of the instruction happening online. Quebecs education ministry has confirmed it has not changed the back-to-school plan announced in June, as neighbouring jurisdictions such as Ontario released their strategies. Quebec will not be requiring students and staff to wear masks. New Brunswick New Brunswick announced a return-to-school plan with significant physical distancing measures in June. Students in Grade 5 and below will only interact in groups of 15, with class sizes likely larger than that. Middle school students will be asked only to interact with other members of their classrooms, and high school students will return on a staggered basis, taking about half their instruction online. The province quickly reversed a decision to make masks mandatory in public buildings last month, and they will not be required. Nova Scotia Nova Scotia plans to return students to school in the fall with classrooms reorganized for physical distancing, and students restricted to socializing within their classroom bubbles. The province will require high school students to wear masks in circumstances where physical distancing is not possible, but students wont have to wear masks in classrooms where desks are spaced apart. School gatherings and assemblies will be cancelled, and students will be required to eat lunch at their desks. The province will require masks for high school students in common areas, and for all students on school buses. Prince Edward Island Students will return to school in Prince Edward Island full-time in September, with classrooms rearranged for physical distancing, staggered break times and the promotion of social contact only within cohorts. The province also plans to reduce bus routes, asking parents to transport their kids to school if they can. Students and staff may be asked to wear masks in common areas. Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador will send students back to class full-time in September unless an uptick in coronavirus cases changes course for the province. The province released three scenarios at the beginning of July: a full return with extra physical distancing, a partial return or the cancellation of classes. The province has not yet officially announced which scenario it will use come the fall. Newfoundland and Labrador does not recommend masks for kids, but says students and staff may choose to wear one. With files from The Canadian Press Read more about: A police officer guards barriers erected to isolate hospitals with Covid-19 patients in Da Nang, July 27, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong. The Health Ministry confirmed 28 new Covid-19 infections Saturday night, with 26 linked to Da Nang, now Vietnam's novel coronavirus epicenter. Two of the new infections, "Patient 559" and "Patient 560," are repatriated citizens quarantined upon arrival. Flying from Indonesia to Can Tho International Airport in Mekong Delta on July 29, they are receiving treatment at the Tra Vinh Tuberculosis and Lung Hospital Hospital in nearby Tra Vinh Province. "Patient 561" to "Patient 565," aged between 19 and 75, live in Quang Nam Province, neighboring Da Nang. One previously contacted a Covid-19 infectee while the remainder are either family members of or patients at Da Nang Hospital. "Patient 566" hails from northern Thai Binh Province, and had previously contacted a patient treated at Da Nang Hospital. HCMC residents "Patient 567" and "Patient 568," who took care of patients at Da Nang Hospital, are being treated at the HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases. The other patients, numbered 569 to 586, aged between 9 and 86, live in Da Nang. Eleven of them are linked to Da Nang Hospital while the remaining seven were reported in Hai Chau, Lien Chieu, Cam Le and Hoa Vang Districts. Vietnam has recorded 40 new cases in a single day. The country's Covid-19 tally has risen to 586 cases, including 213 active patients after 373 recovered. Three patients have died in the past two days, all suffering chronic diseases. Since the novel coronavirus resurfaced in Vietnam last Saturday, it has spread to six cities and provinces, with 104 cases reported in Da Nang, 26 in Quang Nam, seven in HCMC, and two in Hanoi. Quang Ngai Province in the central region and Dak Lak Province in the Central Highlands have reported one case each. Da Nang, now Vietnam's major Covid-19 outbreak, began a 15-day period of social distancing on Tuesday. With several hospitals under lockdown, authorities are planning to set up a field hospital in Hai Chau District to treat Covid-19 patients. More than 91,000 people are currently in quarantine across the nation for coming from overseas, having had contact with patients, or having been to Da Nang recently. Worldwide, over 683,800 Covid-19 fatalities have been confirmed. Love Island star Greg O'Shea visited Sligo at the weekend and said he had 'the best time' during his stay. Greg was visiting Yeats County in conjunction with Discover Ireland, and he made the most of his few days here. Posting on Instagram, the Limerick man said: "I've travelled to all corners of the world but the best time I've had was right on my doorstep!" He started his weekend off with a cycle with North West Adventure Tours, when he got to light a campfire and take in views of Lough Gill. He stayed in The Sligo Park Hotel and dined in Hooked restaurant. On day two of his visit, he called out to Strandhill and did outdoor yoga with Blaithin Sweeney, in the shadow of Knocknarea. He then visited Shells and surfed with Sligo Surf Experience. Greg also picked up his litter picker and bin bag to do a bit of litter picking , even though it 'wasn't in the itinerary, we all have to help to keep our island clean and beautiful,' he said. He sampled ice-cream from Mammy Johnstons and enjoyed a meal in Stoked, while taking in the stunning sunset in Strandhill, even comparing it to Bali on his Instagram posts about his stay. Voya Seaweed Baths was next on his itinerary, before he visited Eagles Flying in Ballymote and got to hold close with some of the animals at the sanctuary. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 12:25:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SEOUL, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export fell 7 percent in July, marking the first single-digit fall in four months, a government report showed Saturday. Export, which accounts for about half of the export-driven economy, reached 42.83 billion U.S. dollars in July, down 7.0 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. The outbound shipment shed in single figures in four months, after tumbling 25.5 percent in April, 23.6 percent in May and 10.9 percent in June respectively. The daily average export slipped 7.0 percent in July from a year earlier, topping 1.7 billion dollars in four months. Import declined 11.9 percent over the year to 38.56 billion dollars in July, sending the trade surplus to 4.27 billion dollars. The trade balance stayed in black for the third consecutive month. Enditem YEREVAN. What we hear from Baku is not very impressive because I think that after July 12 it was shown more clearly that the language of threat, the method of threatboth in rhetoric and in actionsdo not affect Armenia and Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)]. Armenias Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan stated this in an interview with a local TV company. "This is rejected in all respects, and such rhetoric does not bring honor to our entire region. This is rhetoric which is more in line with a process of settling neighborhood scores; this is unacceptable and destructive. The language of the threat does not work; it is more than clearly rejected; this has been our position for the past two years. It has been more than clearly, continuously expressed in the political field, in the diplomatic field, and it has been expressed since July 12," he said. To the question whether the statements of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs are in line with the current situation, the Armenian FM responded as follows: "Since July 12, immediately hours later, we were in touch with the Co-Chairs, they were very actively involved, we were working togetherat any hour, at any timewe were working for one goal: to ensure de-escalation, to restore the ceasefire, to restore the situation that will not lead us to an even deeper crisis. Three times we have tried to shape the restoration of that ceasefire; it has become more effective since the third time. We have said very openly about the role of all three co-chairs, they have been very coordinated, but especially the co-chair of the Russian Federation. Through the coordination of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, we managed to ensure what we have today. Today's main goal is to ensure de-escalation, to restore the climate we are constantly talking about, which contributes to ensuring normal work and progress in the negotiation process." To the remark that there is an impression that only Russia is active among the three OSCE Mink Group co-chairing countries, the FM of Armenia said: "It may be an impression to some extent, but I have already said that Russia has been quite actively involved. But it is very important to emphasize that Russia has worked in a very systematic way with France and the United States [the other OSCE Mink Group co-chairing countries]. And during this time I have personally worked very actively with all three Co-Chairs to ensure the immediate goal that we have. Its reflection was also the Co-Chairs statement which was demonstrated during these events." Even 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, visitors describe the effect of this place as a speechless Mach horror. There is a lack of voice, the witnesses through the near Silence of the last time is larger rather than smaller seems. The Shoah, the murder of six million Jews, and the Lessons we can draw from this is to have a fundamental importance for our understanding of ourselves as citizens of this state. Auschwitz, is a hallmark of what today we understand humanity and human society. It remains, therefore, an urgent task is to integrate the memory in the memory of our society and our faith communities. On this meaning, we want to make our joint visit to the concentration camp memorial of Auschwitz-Birkenau at the beginning of August to the attention of. How can we deal with the speechlessness and disbelief that triggers the crimes of the Shoah to today in the us? On the one hand, the monstrosity of the Shoah, which is comprehend for the human mind hardly is. On the other side of the order, to remember the Horror of this crime. Only those who know the past can't help, that it is not repeated. Remember means, with Auschwitz to deal with its history, to the Victims, but also perpetrators, our own family stories with us. For Christians, this involves the painful realization of ecclesial failure, such as Martin niemoeller said: "It is not that we have made as a Church in the past, this and this wrong, it is a bug, but we have basically failed, the us applied the office in disobedience and thus become guilty of all." In the center of the Jewish as well as Christian Tradition, a culture of memory, which realizes its own existence from history and as a history with God suggests is. The escape from Egypt, the Babylonian exile, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, but in the Christian context, the cross of Christ belong to the basic data of the two memory cultures. The commandment to Remember ("Zachor") is a Central part of Judaism, like the commandment of Jesus: "This do in remembrance of me!", the core of the Central Christian rite in the sacrament is. this is very different due to the contrasting experience of the Shoah. Because it must not be forgotten that Auschwitz stands between us as Christians and Jews. The Knowledge that our families were in this terrible place, and touched both of us in completely different ways. The history of Auschwitz is on an almost opposite way, our history as Jews and Christians. The joint Recall is so difficult. To stand in silent remembrance together, in this place something, what we perceive from the Christian side as an undeserved gift. We are experiencing today, that the dehumanization and promoted hatred that made Auschwitz possible has not disappeared after 1945. He returns with a terrifying Power, and from the taboos in the public space. Anti-Semitism, anti-Gypsyism and racism are again on the agenda. In the social media haters spraying their poison: they deny and relativize the Holocaust. You threaten, insult and berate all those who do not conform to her image of human beings. Why this hatred can lead to, have led us to the attacks of hall and Hanau, as well as the murder of Walter Lubcke clear. Updated Date: 01 August 2020, 03:19 August 01 : Every day a new development is taking place in Sushant Singh Rajputs case. While Mumbai Police and Patna police are carrying out separate investigations, the late actors friends and people who knew him are coming out with new information about him. In a new development, Sushants US-based sister Shweta Singh Kirti, who has been sharing information about her late brother on social media, took to her Twitter handle and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to look into Sushants death case and ensure that the investigation is done in a fair manner, and no evidences are tampered with. I am sister of Sushant Singh Rajput and I request an urgent scan of the whole case. We believe in Indias judicial system & expect justice at any cost. @narendramodi @PMOIndia #JusticeForSushant #SatyamevaJayate pic.twitter.com/dcDP6JQV8N shweta singh kirti (@shwetasinghkirt) August 1, 2020 Recently, Shweta shared a picture of a white board on which we can see Sushant had written down his plan to start his workout regime from June 29. Sharing the picture on her Instagram, she wrote, Bhais White Board where he was planning to start his workout and transcendental meditation from 29th June daily. So he was planning ahead. It is reported that Patna police will interrogate the doctors who performed post mortem on Sushant. They will also question his film Dil Becharas cast and crew. Patna police also talked to Sushants counsellors and found that Rheas family members were also present during Sushants sessions. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court may hear a transfer petition filed by Rhea Chakraborty on August 5. Rhea had moved the Supreme Court demanding that the case registered against her by the Bihar Police be transferred to Mumbai. Latest updates on Sushant Singh Rajput Death Mystery LONDON (AP) Scientists at Imperial College London say they are immunizing hundreds of people with an experimental coronavirus vaccine in an early trial after seeing no worrying safety problems in a small number vaccinated so far. Dr. Robin Shattock, a professor at the college, told The Associated Press that he and colleagues had just finished a very slow and arduous process of testing the vaccine at a low dose in the initial participants and would now expand the trial to about 300 people, including some over age 75. It's well tolerated. There aren't any side effects, he said, adding it was still very early in the study. Shattock, who is leading the vaccine research at Imperial, said he hopes to have enough safety data to start inoculating several thousand people in October. Since COVID-19 infections have dropped dramatically in Britain, making it difficult to determine whether or not the vaccine works, Shattock said he and his colleagues are also looking to test their vaccine elsewhere. Were looking very carefully at the pandemic, at the numbers where the hot spots are and talking to collaborators that have the facilities to do these kinds of studies, he said. The Imperial vaccine uses synthetic strands of genetic code based on the virus. Once injected into a muscle, the bodys own cells are instructed to make copies of a spiky protein on the coronavirus. That should in turn trigger an immune response so the body can fight off any future COVID-19 infection. Earlier this week, the world's biggest coronavirus vaccine study started in the United States, with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers getting immunized with shots created by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc. Several other vaccines made by China and by Britains Oxford University, based on different vaccine technologies, began smaller final-stage tests in Brazil and other hard-hit countries earlier this month. The World Health Organization has said multiple vaccine approaches are necessary for COVID-19, noting that the usual success rate for vaccine development is about 10%. Story continues Shattock said there were numerous coronavirus vaccines now in clinical trials, and he predicted that at least some of them would prove to be effective. We have 20 vaccines in clinical trials, (so) we can be pretty confident that at least two of those will work, he said. It really depends on how strong the immune response needs to be to provide protection. Shattock said he was optimistic the Imperial vaccine would work, but must await the scientific data from the trial. I'm just going to hold my breath and wait to see, he said. Your browser does not support the audio element. The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed Vietnams housekeeping market. Housekeepers, who used to have the upper hand in bargaining with clients, now have to scrape by to pick up jobs. S.M is a housekeeping agency located on Quang Trung Street of Go Vap, a district of Ho Chi Minh City. On a July afternoon, their headquarters sees a wave of housekeepers searching for the slightest chance of work. Thao, the director of S.M, is handling a barrage of calls from a basket of 20 different phones. Outside of her office, a massive amount of job seekers occupy the few chairs on either of the two floors, while others take any available floor space while they wait. [During this] pandemic, many clients have dropped out of the housekeeping service. Our agency headquarters have been jam-packed with people since social distancing, Thao said. [Housekeepers] who are professional and hard-working are more likely to make it, but others who are demanding and quarrelsome with clients will probably find themselves coming back here. 26 housekeepers came to us just this morning, yet only four succeeded [in finding an employer], she added. Taking up a row of chairs at the corner of the room is a group of women. The group turns their heads in unison, casting the same investigative gaze at anyone who enters the door. This tense atmosphere completely dissolves whenever a potential client is introduced. A lineup of aspiring candidates forms in no time, striking up conversations based on the job description. An hourly housekeeper cleans the bathroom of her employer in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Le Van / Tuoi Tre The youngest candidate of the bunch, 38-year-old Hong Anh, had just been made redundant at a facility in neighboring Dong Nai Province after COVID-19 slowed production. When asked about her family responsibilities, Hong Anh detailed, I have been a spinster for ten years already, so dont worry! Anh has been on the waitlist of S.M since April and has since gone on several jobs, yet was laid off from all of them because of COVID-19 social distancing. S.M also works with experienced housekeepers with over 20 years on the job, one of whom is Be Ba, a woman from the Mekong Deltas An Giang Province. She has been let go by her clients as a kindergarten took over her job of childcare. Ba has been out of work for almost a month since. Thao commended Ba as a shining contender for the job: No husband, no child, no strings attached. She is reticent and affectionate to children. No choice to choose from The situation is just as intense, though slightly less competitive at another housekeeping service agency on To Hieu Street of Tan Phu District. Entering through the rear of the agencys headquarters, job-hunting housekeepers come to wait and rest on one of a dozen mats on the floor since a new job could come at any time. T.D, the agencys name, is operated in the same manner as the aforementioned S.M: job seekers assigned to the facility receive free accommodation during their wait in-between jobs. They must be ready to take a job whenever it arrives. A majority of the job-hunting residents came to T.D through social media or word of mouth. These agencies are referred to as osin market 24/24 with osin being a Vietnamese slang for a housekeeper first coined in the 1990s during the peak popularity of the Japanese TV series 'Oshin.' In terms of paperwork requirements, they only ask applicants to submit photocopied versions of their ID and household registration book. Even if no identification paper is provided, the agents can still help them get temporary jobs such as patient care at hospitals as long as applicants are always ready to work. Trang, a 38-year-old Ho Chi Minh City native with no identification, explained her job, If you have no ID, you can work like me: Getting paid VND350,000 [US$15.2] per day to take care of a patient at a hospital. The job lasts 10-15 days, depending on how fast your client recovers. The main duties are feeding and cleaning patients, [they are arduous] but well-paid. Mai, an hourly housekeeper in Tan Phu District, Ho Chi Minh City, struggles to find work during the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Photo: Le Van / Tuoi Tre Though, there is no guarantee that residency at these systems will secure you a job. A housekeeper around 60 years of age, commonly referred to as Ngoai literally translated to grandmother had been waiting at T.D for nearly a month. Experiencing an overtly hostile working condition, she quit her last job after working for only half a month. I bought eight tickets on the number 279 [in a pick-three lotto] but lost with all of them. Should I have won, I would have gone back to my hometown and spent my old age in comfort, she jokingly said. Another female housekeeper, who had just moved from the north-central province of Quang Binh, poured her heart about the struggle to make a living. Prior to this, I was working as a caretaker for a 90-year-old couple in Hanoi. It was tough, yet I only got paid VND5 million [$217] a month. Hence, I just called it quits and came here. By all means, Saigon pays better I make about VND7 million ($304) per month, she said, referring to the former name of Ho Chi Minh City. Midway through the conversation, she turns her head to the door, her eyes looking for something a thousand yards away. The woman, along with all of the other housekeepers in Ho Chi Minh City, are carrying on with nothing being ensured.Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Kristi Nix Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that he would extend emergency SNAP food benefits through the month of August as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Abbott said the Texas Health and Human Services Commission will provide around $185 million in emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave approval to the Health and Human Services Commission to extend the maximum SNAP benefits to families in need. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 12:44:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Eliot Engel, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, issued a subpoena on Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a statement, Engel said his panel is investigating Pompeo's "apparent use of Department of State resources to advance a political smear" of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, also the 2020 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Sitting President Donald Trump, who will face off with Biden this November, had tried to push a narrative that Biden, when serving as the vice president, tried to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor to shield Burisma from an investigation in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. The White House's efforts to have Ukraine investigate the Bidens were at the heart of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Trump. The Democratic-led House impeached the president in December 2019, while the Senate, controlled by Republicans, acquitted him in February this year. Engel's subpoena demands all records purportedly dealing with the Bidens and Burisma that the Department of State has produced to Republican-led Senate committees, said the statement. "Secretary Pompeo has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he's not even trying to disguise it," Engel said. "I want to see the full record of what the department has sent to the Senate and I want the American people to see it too." The House Foreign Affairs Committee said it has learned that the State Department has produced 16,080 pages of allegedly responsive material to the Senate Committees since February. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday, Pompeo committed to continuing to send information to Senate Republicans, according to the statement. The House subpoena, directed to Pompeo, requires that the records be turned over by Aug. 7, said the statement. Pompeo, 56, became the Trump administration's second secretary of state in April 2018 after serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Enditem The French state will continue its support for Air France "without ambiguity" even if more capital is required to save the national carrier from collapse, according to junior minister for industry Agnes Pannier-Runacher. Friday's statement comes just a day after the airline posted massive losses from April to June. "There is nothing ambiguous," said Ms Pannier-Runacher on the LCI political news channel, "the State will be there to assist, because we believe having a national carrier is an essential part of our sovereignty." Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire concurred with the announcement in a separate interview saying "yes, we must maintain a national airline." 4.4billion in losses in 6 months The announcements came as the Air France-KLM posted a loss of 2.6 billion for the second quarter of 2020, massively impacted by the collapse of air travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and follows a loss of 1.8billion over the first three months of this year. When asked about the possible nationalisation of the carrier, the junior minsiter Pannier-Runacher repolied that that issue "was not on the table." "What's at stake is finding out how to make Air France bounce back, and we will be there for [the company] and if we need to raise the capital, we will do so.. We're not leaving [that option] out, but it's not being tabled for now," she asserted. Le Maire, for his part, has said that "the state will do everything necessary for the preservation of the national airline, the jobs that go with it and the independence that that represents. "I believe that with the 7billion already agreed, Air France can make a come-back before the end of the year. But if at one monent or another, if air traffic doesn't resume as normal and the economic situation remains challenging, Air France can still count on the support of the State," assured the Finance Minister. KLM says it can stay the course France and the Netherlands own a 14% stake each in the Air France-KLM group. This spring, Paris granted a 7billion bail-out for Air France in the guise of guarnteed loans, while the Netherlands also accorded a 3.4billion line of credit for KLM. Conversely, in an announcement this Friday, the chief executive of Air France-KLM's Dutch arm said that the company would repay the 3.4 billion euros rather than seek fresh equity. CEO Pieter Elbers said, "I read all the suggestions and the speculations about this, but we've agreed a loan with the government and banks. We are going to make a plan to make sure we pay off those loans." However, despite the financial assistance, Air France is to cut some 7,580 jobs between now and the end of 2022, while upto 5,000 job losses are expected at KLM. By Trend Turkeys export to the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) from January through May of this year decreased by 20 percent compared to the same period of 2019, having slightly exceeded $16.5 billion, the Turkish Ministry of Trade told Trend. During the reporting period, the export to the OIC member states made up 26.9 percent of Turkeys total export volume in 2020, the ministry said. Meanwhile, Turkeys export to the OIC member states plunged by 46.3 percent compared to May 2019 and stood at $2.4 billion. The export to the OIC countries made up 24.9 percent of Turkeys total export volume in May 2020. According to the ministry, Turkeys import from the OIC member states decreased by 9.3 percent from January through May 2020 and made up slightly over $10.4 billion compared to the same period of 2019. The import from the OIC member-states amounted to 12.7 percent of Turkeys total import volume from January through May 2020. In May 2020, Turkeys import from OIC member states decreased by 21.1 percent compared to May 2019, slightly exceeding $2 billion. Some 15.2 percent of Turkeys total import volume in May 2020 accounted for the import from the OIC member states. Turkey's foreign trade turnover in May 2020 amounted to over $23.3 billion. In the reporting month, Turkey's exports dropped by 40.9 percent compared to May 2019, having stood at over $9.9 billion. Meanwhile, imports of Turkey in May 2020 went down by 27.8 percent compared to May of last year and amounted to $13.3 billion. According to the ministry, in the first 5 months of this year, Turkeys trade turnover made up $144.1 billion. From January through May 2020, Turkish exports decreased by 19.7 percent compared to the same period in 2019, having amounted to $ 61.5 billion, the ministry said. It was also noted that Turkish imports dipped by 5.2 percent compared to the same period in 2019, having made up $82.5 billion. The foreign trade turnover of Turkey in 2019 made up $374.2 billion. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz She recently broke both her feet and ankles during a freak accident amid her Turkish holiday. But Katie Price didn't let her injury get in the way of a good time as she enjoyed a night out on Friday while son Junior, 15, pushed her along in a wheelchair. The former glamour model, 42, was dressed to impress in a pink mini dress as she was wheeled down the street while new boyfriend Carl Woods, 31, filmed her. Model patient: Katie Price didn't let her injury get in the way of a good time as she enjoyed a night out in Turkey on Friday while son Junior, 15, pushed her along in a wheelchair Despite her discomfort, Katie appeared in good spirits as she joked along with Junior as they made their way to dinner at a local restaurant. In a video which she shared on her Instagram page, Junior was heard asking if she was OK, with Katie confirming that she was. He then asked what she wanted to say, with the star adding 'thanks for pushing me son.' Junior, who she shares with ex-husband Peter Andre, then joked 'I'll let you go downhill' Ouch: The former glamour model, 42, who recently broke both her feet and ankles during a freak accident, had earlier topped up her tan while lounging by the pool on holiday To which Katie responded: 'No don't, I've got no seatbelt on.' The reality star was dressed to the nines for the outing as she slipped her figure into a form-fitting strappy pink dress, which she teamed with a matching clutch bag. Katie is also on holiday with her and Peter's 13-year-old daughter Princess, who also joined the group for dinner. The blonde bombshell also shared a snap of her bandaged legs to Instagram as she soaked up the sun by the pool. What injury? Despite her discomfort, Katie appeared in good spirits as she joked along with Junior as they made their way to a restaurant, while her beau Carl Woods, 31, filmed Determined not to let her injury dampen her spirits, she captioned the picture writing: 'Still going to enjoy the sun and create new tan lines.' Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Katie said her second eldest son Junior was 'growing up' as she shared a snap of him showing off his toned torso. Alongside an image of the teen lifting up his shirt, Katie wrote: 'My boy @officialjunior_andre is loving the Abb shots. getting so grown up.' [sic] Ready to party: The reality star was dressed to the nines for the outing as she slipped her figure into a form-fitting strappy pink dress, which she teamed with a matching clutch bag Katie was rushed to hospital in Turkey on Wednesday, and took to Instagram Stories on Friday morning where she shared a video of herself in a wheelchair and confirmed that doctors have told her it will take 'three to six months, or even longer' until she is able to walk again. With her lower legs in casts, Katie begged her followers for help as she began the search for a mobility scooter and wheelchair ahead of her arrival back in England, before resigning herself to rest on a sun lounger and top up her tan. Speaking to camera, Katie said: 'Hi guys, does anybody know, or can someone get in contact where I can hire a mobility scooter and a wheelchair that I can use, for when I get back? 'Because, I'm not gonna be able to walk. Doctors have confirmed three to six months, or it could be longer. Poser: Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Katie said her second eldest son Junior was 'growing up' as she shared a snap of him showing off his toned torso Proud mum: Alongside an image of the teen lifting up his shirt, Katie wrote: 'My boy @officialjunior_andre is loving the Abb shots. getting so grown up' [sic] 'So, I need to get around on a mobility scooter and a wheelchair... Let me know, inbox me. Thank you.' Looking understandably fed up in the clip, while asking for assistance following her accident, Katie captioned the video: 'Please help!' making her plea for help crystal clear. Taking to Instagram on Thursday evening, she shared a picture of her bandaged feet, confirming she will need to have pins in her feet and won't be able to walk for three to six months. Please help! The ex glamour model earlier begged her followers for help as she began the search for a mobility scooter and wheelchair ahead of her arrival back in England According to The Sun, Katie, who is said to be in 'excruciating pain', spent the night in hospital on Wednesday after jumping off a wall at theme park Land of Legends in Belek, Turkey, and fracturing both heels in the process. The star shared a photo of her bandaged feet to Instagram and revealed she will have to undergo an operation and have pins placed in her feet. She wrote: 'Yes it's true I have broken my ankles and my feet, I have to have both feet operated on and pins put in been told I won't be able to walk for 3 to 6 months , Oh dear! Sharing a video of herself in a wheelchair on Friday, Katie revealed that doctors have told her it will take 'three to six months, or even longer' until she is able to walk again '@carljwoods is being amazing looking after me #reallove #bestgentleman #wordscantdecribemyloveforhim #hismyworld.' A source told The Sun: 'This is the worst thing that could have happened to Katie. She has spent all night in A&E in agony with a hairline crack through both of her heels. 'The pain is excruciating - but she has a bigger nightmare to come, trying to look after five children while unable to walk.' Shock injury: Katie shared a picture of her bandaged feet to Instagram on Thursday evening, and revealed she has to have an operation and pins placed in her feet 'Katie is expected to cut her holiday short and fly back to the UK for further treatment,' a spokesperson for the star told the publication. Katie's spokesman said: 'I can confirm Katie has incurred an injury. It was sustained by her own doing when visiting a family amusement park with her children, Carl and friends. 'Katie is expected to cut her holiday short and fly back to the UK for further treatment.' King Johns Castle has been an imposing fixture on the banks of the River Shannon since the 13th century. Located in the heart of the citys medieval quarter, this formidable fortress is without a doubt Limericks most iconic landmark. Bringing to life over 800 years of dramatic local history, locals and visitors alike are invited to step inside and experience the history of the castle and Limerick City through an interactive audio visual experience featuring state of the art 21st century touch screen technology, 3D models, computer generated imagery and discovery drawers that will connect you to tales of siege and warfare. In the castle courtyard get a sense of the bustling activity that would have once taken place here. From the blacksmiths workshop complete with tools and weapons to the thriving portal entrance at the watergate to the gatehouse where goods and supplies were once delivered. Explore the siege shelters, the remains of the Great Hall of the castle built circa 1280 or step into the sanctuary of the castle chapel to take a quiet moment. Undoubtedly the highlight of any visit to King Johns Castle is the panoramic 360 degree view one can enjoy from the top of the castle turrets across Limerick City, the River Shannon and Clare Hills. The castle also houses a charming cafe and gift store the perfect place to enjoy a relaxing cuppa and homemade cakes whilst taking in all the activity of the castle courtyard. For more information on King Johns Castle or to book tickets visit www.kingjohnscastle.com SAN DIEGO - The search continued Saturday for eight U.S. service members missing after their landing craft went down in hundreds of feet of water off the Southern California coast following a deadly accident. Helicopters and boats ranging from inflatables to a Navy destroyer were searching a roughly 200-square-mile area for seven Marines and a Navy corpsman. They were aboard an amphibious assault vehicle that had just completed a training exercise when it began taking on water about a half-mile (0.8 kilometres) from Navy-owned San Clemente Island, off of San Diego. The 26-ton, tank-like craft quickly sank in hundreds of feet of water too deep for divers making it difficult to reach. One of eight Marines rescued from the water later died. All of the Marines aboard were attached to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at nearby Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. They ranged in age from 19 to early 30s and all were wearing combat gear, including body armour and flotation vests, Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said earlier this week. The craft was one of 13 amphibious assault vehicles that participated in the routine exercise and was heading back to a Navy ship when the accident happened. Troops on board two other amphibious assault vehicles responded quickly but couldnt stop the sinking, Osterman said. The vehicle, nicknamed an amtrac -- short for amphibious tractor -- was designed to be buoyant and had three water-tight hatches and two large troop hatches. The Marines use the vehicles to transport troops and their equipment from Navy ships to land. The vehicles have been used since 1972, and continually refurbished. On Friday, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. David Berger, suspended waterborne operations of all of its more than 800 amphibious assault vehicles across the branch until the cause of the accident is determined. He said the move was out of an abundance of caution. It was the deadliest of several accidents involving amtracs that have occurred during Camp Pendleton exercises in recent years. In 2017, 14 Marines and one Navy sailor were hospitalized after their vehicle hit a natural gas line at the camp, igniting a fire that engulfed the landing craft. And in 2011, a Marine died when an amphibious assault vehicle in a training exercise sank offshore of the camp. The Left-backed Students Federation of India (SFI) took out a rally in the city on Friday to protest against the National Education Policy, alleging that it will jeopardise the present education system and inconvenience students. Around 150 activists of the CPIMs students wing from different colleges and universities marched from Subodh Mallick Square to Presidency University gate in College Street area, shouting slogans against the NEP and demanding that it be revoked forthwith. The new education policy will throw into disarray the present education system and inconvenience general students. It will also throw open the education sector to private players and they will make it out of the reach of the poor students who solely depend on state-run educational institutes, a state committee member of the SFI said. The rally, where the participants also carried placards, was led by SFI state unit president Srijan Bhattacharya and other office-bearers. The Union Cabinet on July 29 approved the National Education Policy 2020, the first education policy of the 21st century and replacing the 34-year-old National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986. Our rally also protested this move to covertly impose learning of Sanskrit and other ancient languages which is already there in certain higher educational institutions. We are not against research and academic activities in these languages. But we see an attempt by saffron forces to thrust languages such as Sanskrit on students in every higher educational institutes in the coming days with this move, he said. JACKSON COUNTY, MI Jackson County voters have a variety of contested candidate races and tax proposals going before them in the August primary election. The polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 4. Absentee ballots can be requested until 4 p.m. Monday, Aug. 3, and must be returned by 8 p.m. on election day. Those gaining the most votes in contested primaries will advance to the Nov. 3 general election. King Center, where Jacksons 1st Ward votes, to close through summer for $1.9M renovation Heres which contested primary races are on the ballot. For a list of all races, read here. Read which proposals are on various Jackson County communities ballots next week here. 65th District Representative in State Legislature Two Democrats are running for a spot on the November ballot for the Michigan House District 65. Dave Rowland, D-Pleasant Lake, and Nancy Smith, D-Jackson, are looking to win the Aug. 4 primary election and be on the November ballot. The primary winner will face incumbent Sarah Lightner, R-Springport. This is a two-year term and the winner in November represents the several townships in Jackson County: Blackman, Columbia, Grass Lake, Henrietta, Leoni, Liberty, Norvell, Rives, Springport, Tompkins and Waterloo. The position also represents parts of Eaton and Lenawee counties. MORE: Two Jackson County Democrats vying for spot on November ballot in 65th District House race Jackson County Sheriff Three Jackson County candidates are seeking to be the Republican contender for Jackson County sheriff in the general election. Kenneth Carpenter, David Elwell and Gary Schuette are running in the Aug. 4 primary election for the chance to move on to face Democratic challenger Val Cochran Toops in November. MORE: Three Republican contenders seek win in August primary race for Jackson County sheriff County Commissioner District 1 Two Republicans are running in the August primary election for the District 1 seat on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners. Incumbent Tony Bair of Sandstone Township is running against Michele McBain of Rives Junction in Aug. 4 primary. The winner likely will be the person winning the seat as there is no Democrat running. The two-year term for District 1 covers Rives, Tompkins, Parma, Springport and Sandstone townships and the Villages of Parma and Springport. MORE: Incumbent District 1 Jackson County Commissioner faces challenger in August primary County Commissioner District 2 A newcomer is challenging an incumbent for his District 2 seat on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners for a chance to represent the townships of Henrietta, Waterloo, Grass Lake and part of Leoni. Joseph Brown, R-Henrietta Township, is running against incumbent Rodney Walz, R-Grass Lake, in the Aug. 4 primary election. The winner moves on to the November election to face Democrat Chris Osinski, D-Grass Lake, for the two-year term. MORE: Incumbent, newcomer face off in primary for District 2 seat on Jackson County Board of Commissioners County Commissioner District 6 Two Republicans are running in the August primary to represent Concord, Hanover, Pulaski and Spring Arbor townships and the villages of Concord and Hanover on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners. Incumbent Earl Poleski of Spring Arbor Township is running against Aaron Losey of Horton. Poleski was appointed to the seat April 21, after former commissioner Dr. Allan Tompkins resigned because of health issues. Losey was the only other applicant for the seat, but the board voted 5-3 for Poleski. The Aug. 4 election winner likely will be the person filling the two-year term as there is no Democrat running in the November general election. District 6 covers Concord, Hanover, Pulaski and Spring Arbor townships and the villages of Concord and Hanover. MORE: Incumbent Jackson County Commissioner has competition for District 6 seat County Commissioner District 9 Two Democrats and two Republicans are running for the District 9 seat on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners to represent the district that covers Blackman Township. The Democrat and Republican with the most votes on Aug. 4 will move on the November election. Democrats Daveda Quinn and Steven Moton and Republicans Dr. Larry Farr and Ray Snell are running for the two-year term. Incumbent Dave Elwell is not running, as he is running for Jackson County Sheriff. MORE: 2 Democrats, 2 Republicans running for District 9 seat on Jackson County Board of Commissioners 12th District Court Judge (Two seats open) Four individuals are campaigning for votes to fill the judicial seat soon to be vacated by retiring 12th District Court Judge Darryl Mazur. Allison Bates, Jake Dickerson, Craig Pappin and George Lyons are on the ballot in the Aug. 4 primary. The top two vote-getters will face off in the Nov. 3 general election. The district judge term is for six years. Bates, Dickerson and Pappin will be on the nonpartisan ballot, while Lyons is running as a write-in candidate due to an error in his election filling. Incumbent 12th District Judge Michael Klaeren is up for reelection this year, though he wont be appearing on the ballot until the November general election. MORE: Four vying to be judge in Jacksons 12th District Court Columbia Township Supervisor Ray Kuzminski is set to challenge incumbent Columbia Township supervisor Robert Elrod in the August primary. With no Democrats on the primary ballot to advance to the general election, Tuesdays primary winner will likely secure the supervisor position. Read Kuzminskis response to the League of Women Voters Vote411 guide here. Columbia Township Trustee (Four open seats) Five Republicans are competing for four seats on the Columbia Township Board of Trustees in the August primary. Two challenger, James Anthony Minnick, Jr. and Mike Trout, will face three incumbents: Brent Beamish, Rick DeLand and Robin Tackett. Several of the candidates responded to the League of Women Voters Vote411 guide here. Grass Lake Township Supervisor Two Republican candidates are running in the upcoming primary election to replace current Grass Lake Charter Township Supervisor Jim Stormont. John Lesinski and Marc Cuddie are on the ballot for the Aug. 4 election. No Democrat has filed to run for the four-year term, so the position likely will be decided then. Stormont, who is finishing up a 16-year tenure as township supervisor that began in 2004, is not seeking reelection. MORE: Two running in upcoming primary election to become Grass Lake Township supervisor Grass Lake Township Trustee (Four open seats) Four of the five candidates in the August race for Grass Lake Charter Township trustee are incumbents and one of them could be unseated by a challenger. Incumbents Tina Bendarski-Lynch, Scott Bray, Thomas Brennan, and Barry Butterfield face a challenge from Danny Hart in the Republican primary. With no Democrats filing, the primary race will likely set the board before the November. MORE: Incumbents up for reelection face challenger in Grass Lake Township trustee race Hanover Township Supervisor A Republican challenger is competing against the incumbent supervisor in Hanover Township. Mark Nastally, a member of the planning commission and long-time resident, is looking to unseat three-term Supervisor Jeffery Heath in the August primary. The winner likely will be the person winning the four-year seat as there is no Democrat running in the November general election. MORE: Incumbent Hanover Township supervisor faces challenger in August primary Leoni Township Supervisor Two Democrats are facing off to get a spot on the November ballot for Leoni Township supervisor. John Spencer and Kimberly Dean seek to represent the Democratic ticket against Republican incumbent Howard Linnabary in the general election. MORE: Two Democrats compete for spot on ballot for Leoni Township supervisor Leoni Township Clerk Republican Cindy Norris is challenging incumbent Kerry Pickett in the Republican primary for Leoni Township clerk. Norris, who owns Norris Limousine, is running in the Right Vote Leoni coalition, according to its website. Read Picketts response to the League of Women Voters Vote411 guide here. Leoni Township Treasurer Two Republicans are running for Leoni Township treasurer in the primary election to face Democrat Connie Gibson in the fall for the four-year term. Russ Jennings and Marcia King seek a spot on the November ballot. Both candidates boast experience with business management as a reason for their candidacies. MORE: Two Republicans running for Leoni Township treasurer in primary election Leoni Township Trustee (Four open seats) Republican voters will see a highly contested race for the Leoni Township Board of Trustees on their August ballot. Nine Republicans are running for four seats on the board. Incumbents Jerry Cox and Matthew Horning face challengers Rae Fruth, Michael Hill, Ronald Hinch, Mary LaRoque, Karen Miller, Carl Rice Jr. and Dr. John Wald. All seeking to fill the four-year term. The four with the most votes on Aug. 4 will move on to the November general election, where they will face Democrats Valerie Doane and Eldonna Ruddock. MORE: Nine Republicans running for four spots for Leoni Township trustee Napoleon Township Supervisor Napoleon Township Trustee Dan Gallagher and former township trustee Timothy Horsch are seeking to fill a four-year seat as the townships supervisor. Both are Republican candidates who want to replace Dan Wymer, who filled the vacancy of township supervisor in 2018 after serving as a trustee from 2016-2018. No Democratic candidates are on the ballot and Wymer is not seeking reelection. MORE: 2 Republicans seek supervisor seat in Jackson Countys Napoleon Township Napoleon Township Clerk Two men are vying for the position of Napoleon Township clerk during the August primary. Incumbent John Hummer is running for reelection and is contested by Mark LaRocque for the 4-year term. Both Hummer and LaRocque are Republicans and are seeking the partys nomination in the Aug. 4 primary. No Democrat has filed for the office MORE: Napoleon Township clerk spot a two-man race in August primary Napoleon Township Trustee (Two open seats) Two Republican candidates will face off in the August primary for one of the two Napoleon Township trustee seats. Incumbent Julie Wilson and challenger Heidi Richardson are seeking the spot. The winner in the Republican primary joins Democrat Doug Lammers on the November general election ballot. Lammers is uncontested in the primary, so it is likely he and the Republican winner will take over the townships trustee seats. Dan Gallagher is not running for reelection because hes competing in the township supervisor Republican primary. MORE: Two Republicans face off in August primary for Napoleon Township trustee seat Pulaski Township Treasurer Two Republicans, incumbent Theresa A. Riske and challenger Bill Haire are vying to become Pulaski Township treasurer during the August primary election. No Democrat has filed to run for the four-year term, so the position likely will be decided in the Aug. 4 election. MORE: Two candidates vying to become Pulaski Township treasurer Pulaski Township Trustee (Two seats open) Four Republicans are competing for two trustee spots in Pulaski Township in the August primary. Incumbent Craig Dawson will face Sharon Reiniche, Ralph Riley and Mindy Thomas. With no Democrats in their respective primary, the two positions will likely be decided with the Republican primary results. Only Mindy Thomas responded to the League of Women Voters Vote411 guide. Read her response here. Rives Township Supervisor Joseph Lee Yang, D Jerry Adams, R (I) Vercilla Hart, R Rives Township Clerk Two Republicans are running for Rives Township Clerk in August. Incumbent Judith McCord, seeking her second term, is running against Happy J. (H.J.) Hipshier II on the Aug. 4 ballot for the four-year term. The primary winner will likely secure the seat as there is no Democrat running on the November ballot. MORE: Two Republicans running for Rives Township clerk Rives Township Treasurer An incumbent is running against a newcomer for Rives Township treasurer. Republican incumbent Janina Westers Teske and Republican Linda McMillin are running for the treasurer seat. The four-year term is on the Aug. 4 ballot, with the primary winner on November ballot. There is no Democrat running. MORE: Two Republicans on August ballot for Rives Township treasurer Rives Township Trustee (Two open seats) A total of eight candidates are seeking two seats in the Rives Township Board of Trustees race. The top-two vote getters in the Republican primary will go on to the November general election, where they will face Democrat Richard Jansen. The seven Republicans are Frank Adamczyk, Christine Beecher, Bryce Hammond, Thomas Kanalas, Cindy Saines-Bodell, James Smith and Kenneth Swift. Neither of the incumbent trustees, Wendy Culver and Debbie Miller, are running for re-election. Read how two of the candidates responded to the League of Women Voters Vote411 guide here. Summit Township Supervisor Two Republican trustees are vying for Summit Township Supervisor in the August primary election. Todd Emmons and Mike Way will compete for the position vacated by Jim Dunn. With no Democrats filed in the primary, the winner of the Republican primary will likely be elected to supervisor in the November general election. Summit Township Treasurer Summit Township Treasurer Douglas Hoyt will face a challenger in the Republican primary next week. Philip Moilanen, an attorney, is challenging Hoyt for the four-year position. With no Democrats filed in the primary, the winner of the Republican primary will likely be elected to the position in the November general election. Summit Township Trustee (Four open seats) Seven Republican candidates are vying for four seats on the Summit Township Board of Trustees on next weeks primary ballot. Incumbents Robert DuBois and Mike Trudell, as well as newcomers Scott Elliott, Tina Farkas, John Griffin, David Heins and Andy Trudell are running for the four-year terms in the Aug. 4 election. As there are no Democratic challengers, the four candidates chosen likely will be unopposed in the Nov. 3 general election. MORE: Seven vying for Summit Townships four trustee seats in August election DEAR ABBY: I am a small business owner. My store has local (repeat) and one-time customers. The other day, while checking out, one of my local customers spewed out a verbal and extremely bigoted rant. I was stunned speechless. I felt I should do something, but I wasn't sure what it should be. I have started losing sleep over it. If it happens again, should I remain silent and keep the peace, or stand up for all Americans and lose this customer and probably more? -- FREAKED OUT IN FLORIDA DEAR FREAKED OUT: To paraphrase a well-known saying, "All that's necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to ignore it and say nothing." If the rant your bigoted customer spewed was aimed at another shopper, you had a responsibility to protect the victim of the onslaught. In the future, it would not be out of line to state firmly that you don't want that kind of talk in your establishment. While doing that may (or may not) lose you a few customers, you would at least be able to sleep better than you're sleeping now. P.S. It may also GAIN you some customers once word gets around. ** ** ** DEAR ABBY: I have been with the same doctor for 15 years, only requiring an annual checkup. The problem is, the office is about a 40-minute drive, longer if I hit a rush hour. I have stayed with the provider because the care is so good. However, I recently found a doctor who is 10 minutes away and provides the same quality of care. Do I call the original doctor to let them know I am leaving the practice? Write a note? Leave it alone? What is the proper protocol? -- GOOD PATIENT IN MICHIGAN DEAR PATIENT: Contact your longtime doctor's office and ask either that your medical records be sent to your new doctor's office, or they be readied for you to pick up so you can deliver them yourself. In light of the fact that you have had a 15-year relationship with "Longtime Doctor," it would be nice if you wrote a letter thanking him/her for taking such good care of you all these years and explain that the commute has become more than you can now handle, which is why you are leaving. ** ** ** DEAR ABBY: I was sitting around bored with nothing to do and started thinking about my classmates from 1960. I hadn't seen or heard from some of them in more than 55 years, so I decided to call them and found all but two. Boy, was it ever worth it! Most of the conversations lasted 30 minutes or more. I enjoyed hearing their voices and reminiscing about old times. I couldn't believe how quickly the day went by. It made me feel great, and I hope it did the same for them. When I told them why I was calling, some of them thought it was such a good idea they were going to do it too. Maybe others will want to consider this. Try it. It's worth it. -- CATCHING UP IN WISCONSIN DEAR CATCHING UP: What you did was wonderful. Many people have been using this quarantine period to reconnect with long-lost friends, and I highly recommend it. There's no surer cure for the blues -- or boredom -- than reaching out to others. Thank you for an upper of a letter. ** ** ** Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069. ** ** ** What teens need to know about sex, drugs, AIDS and getting along with peers and parents is in "What Every Teen Should Know." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $8 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Teen Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.) COPYRIGHT 2020 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION 1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106; 816-581-7500 Havana: Cuban dissidents have called off a regular protest as the communist island prepared for days of tributes to the late revolutionary icon Fidel Castro. The Ladies in White movement decided to stay home on Sunday out of respect for those who mourn Castro and to avoid being accused of committing any act of provocation in the streets, said the groups leader, Berta Soler. We are not happy about the death of a man, a human being. We are happy about the death of dictators, Soler told AFP as Cuba prepared a week of events to bid farewell to Fidel Castro, who died on Friday at age 90. The Ladies in White group was founded in 2003 after Fidel Castros regime imprisoned 75 dissidents. While all have since been granted conditional releases, the group has held a protest almost every week. Fidel Castro had transferred power to his brother Raul after falling ill in 2006, and Soler predicted that the communist regime would not change. It will be the same Cuba with one dictator instead of two. The dictator Fidel Castro died and the dictator Raul Castro remains, said Soler, 53, a former microbiology technician. Dissidents were also lying low in Santiago de Cuba, the eastern city where Castros ashes will be laid to rest next Sunday. We are not happy (about Fidels death) and we will stay quiet, even though he is the main person responsible for the misery and lack of political rights in Cuba, said former prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer. We wont conduct any actions against the regime in the streets in the next days, especially out of caution in the face of the repression we could face, he said. Marta Beatriz Roque, one of the 75 people detained in 2003, said Fidels passing could prompt Raul Castro to enact more reforms. Raul has a freer hand to do things that he couldnt do before out of respect for his brother, Roque said from her home in Havana. Roque was watching television in her home on Friday night when Raul Castro appeared to announce his brothers death. While she was imprisoned by Fidels government, she said that due to her Catholic faith, I am not happy about the death of anybodyeven if it was the devil. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Taoiseach Micheal Martin faces a potential crisis in his home constituency after Aer Lingus confirmed its base in Cork and another in Shannon is under threat. A reduction or closure of Aer Lingus operations at Cork and Shannon will have devastating economic consequences for the south and midwest regions, politicians and business leaders warned last night. It emerged yesterday that staff at the airline had been briefed via video that the company's dire financial situation could see it seek compulsory redundancies as well as putting the future of the two non-Dublin bases at risk. The airline had already said it was seeking 500 redundancies. But yesterday CEO Sean Doyle outlined a potentially dramatic escalation of its cost- cutting plans in the internal staff video. Job losses would be implemented on a voluntary basis if possible, but on a compulsory basis if necessary, he said. "We have no line of sight on any meaningful resumption of operations out of either Cork or Shannon Airports. As such we are reviewing the scale of our flying programme from these airports and the ongoing viability of our regional bases there," he said. Earlier, on a call with reporters Willie Walsh, who heads up IAG, the international group that owns Aer Lingus, said the situation was the worst he had witnessed in his career. Losses at Aer Lingus were running at almost double what it suffered when international travel was disrupted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, he said. Aer Lingus recorded an operating loss of 98m in the three months to the end of June, its biggest ever quarterly loss, when it operated at less than 5pc of capacity compared with 2019. Mr Walsh said the Irish Government's travel restrictions - including the requirement for people entering the country from most places to quarantine - was the toughest in Europe and was hitting Irish airlines, including Aer Lingus harder than their European peers. A targeted regime including testing, tracking and tracing of travellers, and limited quarantine would better balance public health concerns and the economic situation, he said. Aer Lingus would continue to exist and to be supported by IAG, he said, but it would become a smaller airline. Even the step of easing Ireland's travel restrictions now would not prevent redundancies already in train, he said. Meanwhile Cork, Limerick and Clare Chambers of Commerce are seeking an urgent meeting with the Government over the Aer Lingus warning about the viability of the carrier's regional operations. Opposition politicians demanded an immediate statement from the Taoiseach about the future of Aer Lingus's regional hubs - and what State aid might be available to avert route losses and job cuts. Mr Martin's own constituency includes Cork Airport. Passenger numbers at Cork and Shannon are down by about 95pc due to Covid-19. Sinn Fein TD Donnchadh O Laoghaire said the economic consequences of regional airports losing vital connectivity would be potentially catastrophic. "The 'Ireland 2040' plan talks a lot about balanced regional development," Mr O Laoghaire said. "How can we have balanced regional development if Cork doesn't have a base for the national carrier? It simply cannot be allowed to happen." A group of activists have launched a legal effort to pause the rest of the demolition until the heirs lawsuit is heard, probably early next year. The authorities think they can just relocate a work by Picasso and Nesjar, and that it will be the same thing, she said. Under the governments plans, The Fishermen will be installed above a VIP entrance to the new building, and The Seagull will be in the lobby. Ancient skeletal remains found in River Valley Park, Swords earlier this year have now been retrieved and are undergoing specialist analysis, Fingal County Council has confirmed. In April 2020 locals out walking in River Valley Park, Swords spotted exposed human skeletal remains on the southern bank of the Ward River. The find was reported to Gardai and the National Museum of Ireland inspected the site, confirming the remains as archaeological. Due to the COVID-19 directives the site could not be excavated at the time but following the lifting of these restrictions, work has been able to progress. The site where the remains were found is a recorded archaeological monument where archaeologists from the National Monuments Service excavated six skeletons in 1999. These were medieval in date and as the burials were deposited in an irregular fashion within a flood plain it was thought they may reflect some form of communal hasty burial of victims of plague or other trauma. Following the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions a geophysical survey was undertaken to try and identify limits of the site followed by excavation to retrieve the exposed skeletal remains. Excavation was undertaken in June 2020 at the site by Maeve McCormick of Archer Heritage Planning Ltd under licence from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (DCHG) in consultation with the National Museum of Ireland (NMI). Ahead of analysis Ms McCormick, an osteoarchaeologist indicated the skeleton was a juvenile probably of 10-12 years of age and part of the same cemetery excavated in 1999. Radiocarbon dating and specialist analysis of the environmental samples, small finds and both the animal and human remains is currently ongoing. Mayor of Fingal Cllr David Healy said: 'I am pleased to see the investigation and protection of this site progressing now that it is possible to safely do so. Archaeological finds such as these provide an excellent opportunity for analysis to discover more about the rich heritage that lies all around us.' Christine Baker, Fingal County Council's Heritage Officer said: 'We are looking forward to what the results of the analysis will add to the story of this burial ground. 'We are also investigating the most appropriate means to suspend the erosion of the site and will continue to work with the National Monuments Service and the National Museum of Ireland to protect this archaeological monument.' When Jason Behan took his two children for a walk back in April, he took home schooling to a different level as a brief history lesson led to the accidental discovery of what is believed to be medieval skeletal remains. Jason, from Castleview Crescent, in Swords and his children Brooke (12) and Johnny (10) were walking along The Jacko, or the Ward River, to get fresh air during the current isolation 'lock down' last Monday evening. As the area is of historical importance - being a recorded monument where, in 1999, six medieval skeletons were recovered from the area by the National Monuments Service - Jason was giving his children a brief history lesson about the area. 'Dad was talking to us about this history of the area and that skeletons were found here a few years ago,' Brooke, who discovered the remains, told the Fingal Independent at the time of the discovery. 'I was throwing stones into the river and then saw what I thought was a hollow rock in the river bank,' she continued. 'When my dad said it was a skeleton I didn't believe him at first until we looked again and then saw the rest of the bones. It was a skeleton.' 'I was kinda shocked. Then it was like 'Wow', we were just talking about skeletons and then to actually find one. It was mad, so cool,' said Brooke, who attends St Cronan's National School. In Smiths The Unspoken (Thomas & Mercer, Oct.), society matron Violet Gerrigan hires Chicago PI Ashe Cayne to find her missing daughter. After a successful career writing books on nutrition and fitness, what compelled you to write mysteries? Ive always been a reader and lover of mysteries and thrillers, which led to a passion and desire to write mysteries, to deliver readers the excitement and emotions I get from reading authors like John Grisham, Michael Connelly, and Harlan Coben. I always wanted to make readers late to appointments, lock themselves in their rooms, or stay up deep into the night because they just have to read one more page. When readers tell me this after finishing one of my books, it makes me extremely satisfied that the mission was accomplished. Youre the cohost of the Rachel Ray Show, on the board of several foundations, and an expert on nutrition and fitness. When do you find the time to write? Writing to me is not work, but a pleasure that comes to me instinctively. I am very focused and efficient in my writing process. When I sit in front of the computer, its meditative, exciting, and cathartic all at once. But before I put a finger to keyboard, Im constantly writing in my head first. I see and hear things that give me ideas. I get inspiration from everything and everywhere. This makes it easier to develop plot, and fun to sit down and let all the ideas pinging around in my head escape onto my computer screen. What kind of lead is Ashe Cayne? Ashe Cayne is the kind of guy I would watch a game with or sit for hours and talk to over a plate of barbecue ribs and fries. Hes an imperfect hero. Hes tough and smart and sarcastic, but he struggles in romance and has a complicated relationship with his father. He has a big problem when it comes to injustice and an even bigger problem when people are not appropriately punished for their transgressions, even when everyone else is content with simply leaving things as they are. Most of all, he doesnt take himself too seriously. What were you trying to say about the privileged in our society through the character of Violet Gerrigan? The Gerrigan family represents the classic privileged elite who believe their wealth and connections give them rights the rest of us dont have. People who occupy this stratum delude themselves into believing because they set the rules, they dont have to follow them. I want readers to not only see how they think but to also see that their social status doesnt make them immune from what afflicts the rest of us. The Supreme Court on Friday denied a request from environmentalists to stop the Trump administration from building a section of President Donald Trump's long-promised southern border wall using $2.5 billion in military funds. Friday night's 5-4 decision allows construction to continue during the ongoing legal battle. The ruling came along party lines, with the court's four liberal justices offering their dissent. In the direct, three-sentence dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, quoting a 2019 ruling, "Just over a year ago, I suggested 'a straightforward way' to avoid irreparable harm to the parties in this litigation: stay the District Courts injunction 'only to the extent' that it 'prevents the Government from finalizing [relevant] contracts or taking other preparatory administrative action, but leave [the injunction] in place insofar as it precludes the Government from disbursing those funds or beginning construction.'" He added, ominously, "Now, the Government has apparently finalized its contracts, avoiding the irreparable harm it claimed in first seeking a stay. The Courts decision to let construction continue nevertheless, I fear, may 'operat[e], in effect, as a final judgment.'" MORE: Border wall construction plows through southwestern US undeterred by COVID-19 Members of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition first challenged Trump's use of a national emergency declaration last year. "The fight continues," said attorney Dror Ladin of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the environmental groups in the case. "Every lower court to consider the question has ruled President Trump's border wall illegal, and the Supreme Court's temporary order does not decide the case." "We'll be back before the Supreme Court soon to put a stop to Trump's xenophobic border wall once and for all," Ladin continued. "The administration has admitted that the wall can be taken down if we ultimately prevail, and we will hold them to their word and seek the removal of every mile of unlawful wall built." Story continues PHOTO: In this file photo US President Donald Trump participates in a ceremony commemorating the 200th mile of border wall at the international border with Mexico in San Luis, Ariz., June 23, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images, File) The southern border wall has been a hallmark of Trump's platform since the very beginning of his 2016 campaign. The then-candidate promised repeatedly at campaign events that he would build a wall along the entirety of the U.S.-Mexico border and Mexico would pay for it. "Build the wall" became a common chant at Trump political rallies on the campaign trail in 2015 and 2016. Ex-Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have each condemned the wall and said the country would not provide any money. But Trump has continued to pursue building the wall throughout his 3 1/2 years in office. MORE: Trump administration announces completion of 100 miles of border wall construction Very little new wall construction has actually taken place. The administration celebrated the completion of 100 miles of construction in January, but most of what's been completed thus far has been replacements of the smaller barrier designs that were constructed with decades-old technology. Trump visited the border in late June to celebrate 200 miles of construction even as the administration has shifted focus to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has promised 450 miles of wall by the end of the year. The U.S.-Mexico border is about 2,000 miles long. PHOTO: In this Sept. 10, 2019 file photo government contractors erect a section of Pentagon-funded border wall along the Colorado River in Yuma, Ariz. (Matt York/AP, File) The Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition both vowed to continue the fight Friday night. "This fight is far from over and we will continue to stand alongside the ACLU and the Sierra Club to fight for our democracy and our communities that are suffering from unaccountable and harmful border policies," Vicki B. Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, said in a statement. "We dont need more irresponsible walls at our borders, we need more responsible border governance that begins with respecting the checks and balances in this country. We need a New Border Vision that expands public safety, protects human rights, and welcomes all people to our region." "Border communities and ecosystems are suffering irreparable harm, but the Sierra Club will never stop fighting this disastrous project," Gloria Smith, managing attorney at the Sierra Club, said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling. Supreme Court allows border wall construction to continue during legal battle originally appeared on abcnews.go.com A Black Lives Matter group in North Carolina is apologising to the family of a man who was killed in police custody for demanding the release of surveillance footage showing his death. John Neville died from a brain injury he sustained while being restrained by corrections officers in Forsyth County jail. The Winston-Salem based Black Lives Matter group along with local media demanded surveillance footage from the prison of the incident, but Mr Nevilles family initially opposed the release of the footage. We apologise for any hurt that our support of the legal petition by several news outlets and publications for the release of this footage may have caused the Neville family or his loved ones, the chapter wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. We want to fully impart to them that we meant no harm in any way, and we wish to honour them and the dignity of John Neville. Days before a judgement on whether or not the court would release the footage, the family changed course and supported the effort to make the video public. Several members of the family had already seen the footage at that point. Ive seen it and it is something that will always stick with me, Mr Nevilles son, Sean, told Fox8 News. As time has gone on, including the community more, seems to be the best way to make things happen quickly....We appreciate that his death matters, because most people dont get that luxury. Natasha Martin, Mr Nevilles daughter, watched the video and said her father called out that he couldnt breathe more than 20 times. She said the video also showed prison workers laughing and joking while her father struggled on the floor. One of the keys broke inside the handcuffs, and they said, Oh thats coming out of your paycheck, Ms Martin said. They were laughing over my dad, while hes in distress. Ms Martin claims that after her father fell unconscious and prison workers carried him out of his holding cell, other inmates are heard singing Amazing Grace. One inmate apparently calls out yo, rest in peace John, while another yells at the prison workers you killed that man. Like theyre singing Amazing Grace in the background. That to me was the most powerful thing. You equate that song to a funeral, she said. Sean Neville asked that those who watch the video do so with the understanding that Mr Neville was a person and a father, not just a story or a figurehead. Recommended Sheriff threatens to ignore 911 calls from library that backed BLM With all due respect to the media, hes a story. With all due respect to the protesters, hes a cause. To me and my family, hes a person. Hes our father, he said. We ask people, if they see it, regulate that anger. That angers going to build up, from a human standpoint, and use it to do something positive. Mr Neville died in December after suffering a brain injury at the hands of corrections officers who held him down in a way that cut off his ability to breathe. Five detention officers and a nurse at the prison have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with Mr Nevilles death. Before his incarceration, Mr Neville had been arrested on a misdemeanour charge of assault on a female. Ghanaian Dancehall artiste Shatta Wale has expressed his appreciation to American pop star Beyonce for collaborating with him. In a post on Twitter before the screening of Beyonce's visual album Black Is King on Disney+, Shatta Wale thanked her for believing in him. Posting a picture of himself and Beyonce, Shatta wrote: Thank you My Queen for believing in my talent and giving me a platform to share my good message to the world ...God will forever bless you #symbolofhope #Already #BlackIsKing #ShattaIsKing @beyonce. Thank you My Queen for believing in my talent and giving me a platform to share my good message to the world ...God will forever bless you #symbolofhope #Already #BlackIsKing #ShattaIsKing @beyonce pic.twitter.com/iqs3ND80WU SHATTA WALE (@shattawalegh) July 31, 2020 A lot of attention has been focused on Shatta Wale since the announcement of the visual album with his face being used in promotional videos for the film. Beyonce has dropped the video for Already which also features Major Lazer and it has been viewed 657,772 times on YouTube since it premiered seven hours ago. On social media, Shatta Wale is trending and congratulatory messages have poured in for him celebrities including his colleague musicians. Black Is King, currently showing on Disney + is based on the music from Beyonce's 2019 soundtrack for the animated film, The Lion King: The Gift. Beyonce has said the visual album will highlight "the voyages of Black families, throughout time" and tell the story of "a young kings transcendent journey through betrayal, love, and self-identity. Source: Graphiconline.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 ABC NewsBy IVAN PEREIRA, ABC News The storm has already caused catastrophic flash flooding and mudslides in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Isaias, which strengthened into a Category 1 storm overnight, will hit the Bahamas Friday with torrential rains and high winds before taking aim at eastern Florida, according to forecasters. As of 5 p.m. ET, Isaias remains a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 75 mph. It is moving NW at 15 mph and the center is currently about 195 miles SSE of Nassau, Bahamas. Bands of heavy and tropical storm conditions are spreading over the central Bahamas. The latest forecast track shifted slightly westward, closer to the Florida coast, but that also means a slightly weaker storm. Some strengthening is still possible before Isaias begins to impact South Florida tomorrow, however the peak intensity has been lowered from earlier today. A hurricane warning is now in effect for parts of the east coast of Florida, from Boca Raton to the Volusia/Brevard County line The National Hurricane Center said in its 11 a.m. update that the Bahamas will experience wind gusts up to 75 miles per hour and heavy squalls throughout the day. Four to eight inches of rain is expected to fall in the Bahamas, according to the NHC. "These rainfall amounts will lead to life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides, as well as river flooding," the NHC said in an earlier report. Forecasters predict the storm will travel northwest and arrive in southeast Florida on Saturday and Sunday. Parts of the state could see two to four inches of rain with isolated maximum totals of six inches, according to the current forecast. "These rainfall amounts could result in isolated flash and urban flooding, especially in low-lying and poorly drained areas," the NHC said. The NHC added that its current models show Isaias strengthening, but the forecast of a possible Category 2 storm was removed. The NHC forecast cone has shifted slightly west, indicating the storm could affect parts of the Carolinas Sunday night into Monday. The latest forecast track also accounts for some type of transition into a post-tropical or extra-tropical low as it travels up the East Coast. Florida officials are on high alert and watching the storm closely. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that he has declared a state of emergency in every coastal county on the east side of the state from Miami-Dade to Nassau Counties. The governor said the state is preparing to create shelters and will activate them depending on the storm's path. COVID-19 testing sites that are in those counties would be closed, but the governor noted that the ones located on the west side of the state will remain open. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam also declared a state of emergency in advance of Hurricane Isaias, which is expected to impact parts of coastal Virginia starting on Monday. "Hurricane Isaias is a serious storm, and current predictions indicate that it may impact parts of Virginia as early as this weekend, said Governor Northam. This state of emergency will ensure localities and communities have the assistance they need to protect the safety of Virginians, particularly as we continue to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. I encourage Virginians to take all necessary precautions, monitor local weather forecasts, and stay alert," the governor said. NASA and SpaceX said Friday they decided to move forward with plans to bring astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley home to Earth with a splashdown on Sunday. Officials in Miami-Dade County announced Thursday that parks and beaches would close in anticipation of the storm. Isaias already caused tremendous damage to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Mudslides left people and cars stranded in the streets according to authorities. 134,806 customers are currently without power on the island. 10 hospitals, mainly in western Puerto Rico, are using generators and 147,000 customers are without water. ABC News' Daniel Peck, William Gretsky and Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report. Copyright 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. By Neil Jerome Morales MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday extended novel coronavirus restrictions in the capital, Manila, until mid-August and said the country would be given priority in supplies if China made a breakthrough with a vaccine. The Philippines this month recorded Southeast Asia's biggest daily jump in coronavirus deaths and biggest single-day increase of confirmed infections, overwhelming healthcare workers and hospitals in some cities. The capital region, provinces south of it, and cities in the central Philippines have been under quarantine restrictions since June, limiting movements of the elderly and children, and the operations of businesses from restaurants to gyms. "My plea is to endure some more. Many have been infected," Duterte said in a televised address. A coronavirus task force said it would impose lockdowns in areas with surging cases, while urging the government and private hospitals to increase bed capacity for COVID-19 patients. Duterte promised free vaccinations if they became available by late this year, prioritising first the poor and then the middle class, police and military. The Philippines would be given precedence by China in vaccine distribution, he said. "I promise you, by December, by the grace of God, we will be back to normal," Duterte said. Pharmaceutical companies in countries including China, the United States and Britain are conducting late-stage trials on vaccines. Duterte last week said he had made a plea to Chinese President Xi Jinping to make the Philippines among the first to receive vaccines should one be developed. The Philippines planned to buy 40 million doses worth $400 million for 20 million people, about a fifth of its 107 million population, said Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez. "Once the vaccine is available I am sure we can fully open," Dominguez said. The lockdowns imposed in mid-March, among the world's strictest and longest, crippled the Philippine economy, which had been among the fastest growing in Asia before the pandemic. Gross domestic product is expected to decline 2% to 3.4% this year, the first contraction in more than two decades. The Philippines has Southeast Asia's second-highest number of coronavirus infections after Indonesia, with cases up nearly five-fold to 89,374 and deaths more than doubling to 1,983 since the tough lockdown was eased in June. (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Ed Davies) YEREVAN. There are situations on a regular basis when we witnesseither intentionally or unconsciouslya complex of perceptions: "what does this mean, what does it mean?" But I think that all that which has been consistently expressed during these years is also summed up today also in the speech of the prime minister of the republic at the government sitting. Everything we do is, to some extent, summarized in the seven points. Armenias Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan stated this in an interview with a local TV program. "As for July 12, its most important message was that the language of threat, the track-record of threat and the use of force are not a factor, they are not a tool in any case, and it has no effect, has not had, and will not have. Armenia and Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] remain absolutely committed to the peace process, the peace process has no alternative; the alternative brings very serious consequences for the region. We have enough confidence to say all that because we have enough potential to defend ourselves, to defend, which was also expressed on July 12," the minister said. Referring to Azerbaijan's maximalist positions, Mnatsakanyan said: "Until now, we have not heard any signal, any wording, any word from the Azerbaijani authorities, which shows sensitivity toward the priorities of Artsakh and Armenia. No position, no step that will show that they are also ready to work towards compromise. And in that sense, if we listen more carefully to their positions, it is maximalism, which sees the solution only as it is sufficient exclusively for the Azerbaijani side. That will not work, it is not a compromise. And as for the compromise-based solution, no one is ready to move that way. If Azerbaijan assumes that in that way we are freezing the situationwhich we regularly hear from them, then it is simply unacceptable. If it is assumed that we can make progress in the face of escalation, that is ruled out. If it is assumed that we can view the threat, the use of force as a factor in the peace process, it will not happen; this seems to be more than clear; it has been clearly expressed, both politically and diplomatically, and already immediately in military terms." London: British Prime Minister Theresa May is set to face a new legal battle over whether the UK stays or leaves the European single market, the second legal challenge faced by the government over the Brexit process. British Influence, a pro-EU think-tank, is demanding a judicial review into the UK government's assumption that membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) automatically ends when the country leaves the European Union (EU). Lawyers claim the UK will not leave the European single market automatically when it leaves the EU and that the UK Parliament should decide on it. "There is a strong chance that the UK will be acting unlawfully by taking us out of the EEA with Brexit. We consider that they have an obligation to seek urgent clarification in the courts. So we are going to be petitioning for a judicial review," said Jonathan Lis, deputy director for British Influence. British Influence said on Monday it is writing to Brexit Secretary David Davis to inform him that it will seek a formal judicial review of the government's position. But the UK government's stand is that the country's EEA membership ends when the UK officially leaves the EU following a referendum in favour of an exit from the economic bloc in June. The European single market is a trade agreement that allows different countries within the EU to trade across borders as easily as they can within their own country, with no extra tariffs or negotiations. There is a view which claims that Article 50, which deals with a country's exit from the EU, does not provide for leaving the EEA, which extends the single market's tariff-free trade in goods to countries like Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein -- which are not full members of the EU. If the courts back the legal challenge and give Parliament the final say over EEA membership, then MPs could vote to ensure that Britain stays in the single market until a long-term trading relationship with the EU has been agreed. The legal question is focused on whether the UK is a member of the EEA in its own right or because it is an EU member. Professor George Yarrow, chairman of the Regulatory Policy Institute and emeritus professor at Hertford College, Oxford, told BBC, "There is no provision in the EEA Agreement for UK membership to lapse if the UK withdraws from the EU. The only exit mechanism specified is Article 127, which would need to be triggered." This latest challenge could mean a lengthy legal process, which could delay Brexit negotiations. If the courts say Article 127 does needs to be triggered, there is the question of whether an act of Parliament would be needed for it to be authorised. A UK government spokesperson said, "As the UK is party to the EEA Agreement only in its capacity as an EU member state, once we leave the European Union we will automatically cease to be a member of the EEA." For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Tehran Does Not Believe Blast on Natanz Nuclear Plant Caused by Missile, Drone Attack Sputnik News 13:37 GMT 31.07.2020 TEHRAN (Sputnik) Tehran does not consider that an incident that occurred on Iran's Natanz advanced centrifuge plant in early July was the result of a drone or missile attack, Mojtaba Zonnour, the head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in the Iranian parliament, said on Friday, adding that a reason should be found within Iran. "The investigation has shown that a source of the blast on the Natanz nuclear facility in the Isfahan province was caused by internal elements," Zonnour said, as quoted by local news agency ISNA, adding that he cannot reveal any extra information. Tehran does not believe that the explosion was caused by a drone or missile attack, the lawmaker added. Some local news outlets attributed the explosion to Israel's act of sabotage. In response, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi had dismissed these reports, according to Tasnim news agency. In mid-July, Mousavi warned that consequences will follow if Tehran learns information on the involvement of any country in the incident. On 2 July, a major explosion hit Iran's Natanz nuclear plant for enriching uranium. No casualties or leaks of radioactive materials from the facility have been reported. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Earlier this morning, the HCSO was notified by the Hamilton County Criminal Court Clerks Office of a potential scam that involves citizens receiving phone calls from 423-209-7600 which is the primary trunk line for Hamilton County Sessions Court (209-7600). The number is apparently a cloned number which leads people to believe they are receiving an official call from the court.Allegedly, once the citizen answers the phone, the caller will ask the person a question which will most likely result in a yes answer leading Clerks Office personnel to believe they are trying to solicit the citizens recorded voice approval for scamming purposes.Bottom line is the Criminal Court Clerks Office is not calling people asking them random questions, stated Criminal Court Clerk Vince Dean.We always communicate official court business by mail, he further noted.If someone believes they have been contacted by this number or if members of our media have additional questions pertaining to this potential scam, please contact the Criminal Court Clerks Office at 423-209-7500. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 22:57:44|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Raheela Nazir ISLAMABAD, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Traditionally, Eid al-Adha festival in Pakistan is an occasion of jubilation and celebrations. It is symbolized with shopping spree in markets as people purchase new clothes, shoes, gifts and sacrificial animals to celebrate the major Muslim festival of the year. During the Eid holidays, people visit homes of families and friends for Eid greetings, enjoy a big feast with a variety of dishes and share happiness of the occasion. This year, the festival is being observed on Saturday and the government has announced three-day holidays from Friday to Sunday. However, the festival is entirely different this time from the past as the conventional celebrations and festivities are not visible as they used to be, amid the COVID-19 pandemic that poses major health and economic challenges for the people of Pakistan and the world over. "I traveled all the way from federal capital Islamabad to my hometown in eastern Punjab province to meet my family and relatives, but the environment is fully occupied by unknown silence. The jubilation which was the hallmark of Eid festivals once is absent today," a government official, Muhammad Zahid told Xinhua. "My house used to be full with people on Eid as such festivals are enjoyed with friends and family members without whom the occasion appears mere lackluster activity," he said, adding that though family gathering and outings are common during Eid holidays, but many would avoid these activities this year due to the ongoing pandemic. "My family has no plans to visit friends and relatives or hold fun gathering at home on this Eid. Health is the priority for my family and me as these festivals will come again if we live," Zahid added. While Pakistan's new COVID-19 cases have seen a declining trend over recent weeks, citizens are still living in the shadow of fear as health experts in the country believe that the virus can make a comeback if precautionary measures are not adopted properly during Eid holidays. Earlier this week, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan urged the countrymen to adopt strict safety measures during Eid and upcoming Muslim holy month of Muharram to prevent the virus from rebounding. "Any recklessness on Eid and Muharram in terms of ignoring standard operating procedures can result in upsurge of coronavirus cases," the prime minister said in a televised address to the nation, adding that the government will be forced to impose strict lockdown in case of spread of the disease, which would result in increased financial losses and unemployment in the country. However, in general there is an environment full of mixed feelings among the masses. In less populated areas where the situation is under control with less number of COVID-19 cases as people are following standard operating procedures, things are little different. "My family and relatives are planning to celebrate the occasion more or less like before. We will be paying family visits and holding small scale barbeque parties and gatherings as we are not much worried due to a low number of confirmed coronavirus cases in our area," said a resident of northern Mirpur district Sardar Ijaz Khan. "We are enjoying the festival to the fullest, but definitely we will have to follow precautions set by the government for our own safety," Khan told Xinhua. In a bid to curb the spread of the virus ahead and during the festival, the federal government had rolled out guidelines for buying, selling and slaughtering of sacrificial animals and mass gatherings at mosques. Local administration in federal capital Islamabad has also banned all recreational centers, picnic spots, parks, hill stations and hotels during the Eid holidays. Due to the pandemic and ensuing social distancing restrictions, Pakistan has witnessed a rise in Eid-related online shopping especially buying of sacrificial animals for the festival, also known as feast of the sacrifice. Online sacrificial services like delivering of animals, slaughtering or charity donation are being offered by a number of animal traders across the country. Talking to Xinhua, Mushtaq Niazi, an online trader of sacrificial animals in the eastern city of Lahore, said he has received four times more online orders as compared to the previous year as citizens are preferring not to visit cattle markets to ensure their safety. "I have been providing this online buying and other sacrificial services for many years, but never got this response ever before," Niazi said. As most of the people are celebrating the major festival of the year in a simple way, some are taking the opportunity to rejoice themselves by helping those who are the primary victims of the ongoing pandemic. In a conversation with Xinhua, an Islamabad-based charity worker Shehryar Hassan said many people have not been able to cheer the festival as they have been laid off by their employers due to the closure of business activities amid the pandemic, badly deteriorating their financial conditions. "We have been providing them with all the Eid-related essential items including new clothes, shoes and food items so they can enjoy the occasion like others as well," Hassan said. "It's not just the government's responsibility to help those in need get through these challenging times. For me, Eid means happiness and it only increases when shared with others," he said. Enditem A columnist who claims bullying by colleagues forced her to quit The New York Times likened Cancel Culture to social murder and said that firing people who hold unpopular opinions is aimed at punishing them for being insufficiently pure. We're used to criticism, Bari Weiss said during an appearance on Friday on Real Time with Bill Maher. Criticism is kosher in the work that we do. Criticism is great. She added: What cancel culture is about is not criticism. It is about punishment. It is about making a person radioactive. It is about taking away their job. Bari Weiss (left), the journalist who quit The New York Times in June after she claimed she was bullied by other staff members for her views, told Bill Maher (right) on HBO's Real Time on Friday that 'cancel culture' was akin to 'social murder' Weiss claims that her 'centrist' positions led her then-colleagues at the Times to refer to her as a 'Nazi' and a 'racist'. The New York Times building in midtown Manhattan is seen in the above file photo On June 14, Weiss posted her lengthy resignation later addressed to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. She claimed that intellectual curiosity and risk-taking was now a 'liability' at the Times Weiss quoted writer Jonathan Rauch of The Atlantic magazine who said cancel culture is akin to social murder. And I think that's right. Weiss said: It's not just about punishing the sinner. It's not just about punishing the person for being insufficiently pure. It's about this sort of secondary boycott of people who would deign to speak to that person or appear on a platform with that person. And we see just very obviously where that kind of politics gets us. If conversation with people that we disagree with becomes impossible, what is the way that we solve conflict? It's violence. On July 14, Weiss wrote a scathing resignation letter that slammed the Times for fostering an 'illiberal environment' and allowing her to be bullied by coworkers for 'wrongthink'. Weiss, who joined the Times in 2017, said the paper of record was among the media institutions now betraying their standards and losing sight of their principles as she accused them of only publishing stories that 'satisfy the narrowest of audiences'. In her lengthy resignation letter addressed to publisher A.G. Sulzberger and posted on her website, Weiss claimed that intellectual curiosity and risk-taking was now a 'liability' at the Times. The controversial editor and writer said the opinions of those on Twitter had become the newspaper's 'ultimate editor'. Weiss, who once dated SNL's Kate McKinnon while studying at Columbia University, also accused the outlet of creating a 'hostile work environment' for employees that essentially had anything other than left-of-center views. She says this mentality resulted in her being constantly bullied by coworkers who have called her a 'Nazi and a racist' because of her 'own forays into wrongthink'. Weiss has generated controversy in years past for statements she has made about the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the #MeToo movement, and other issues 'Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery,' Weiss wrote. Weiss, who has previously said she doesn't support President Trump, started her letter saying she optimistically joined the newspaper three years ago in what she described as the outlet's efforts to bring in voices that wouldn't normally appear. 'The reason for this effort was clear: The paper's failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn't have a firm grasp of the country it covers,' she wrote. 'The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming. 'But the lessons that ought to have followed the election - lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society - have not been learned. 'Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. 'Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.' Weiss went on to claim that intellectual curiosity and risk-taking was now a 'liability' at the Times. 'Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm,' she wrote. 'What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. 'Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired.' Weiss has repeatedly drawn criticism during her time at the newspaper. Most recently, she tweeted that there was a 'civil war' brewing inside the Times in relation to the controversy surrounding the publication of the Tom Cotton op-ed. The Times ran a column calling the Senator's op-ed 'fascist' after he called on Trump to use the military to crack down on rioting, looting and violence in the wake of George Floyd's death. Initially, publisher A.G. Sulzberger stood behind the column but the outlet later backtracked. James Bennet, the New York Times editorial page editor responsible for publishing Cotton's column, resigned over the ordeal following the outrage from inside and outside the Times' newsroom. At the time, Weiss tweeted: 'The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same.' In response, staffers called for Weiss to be fired. Weiss repeatedly drew criticism during her time at the newspaper. Most recently, she tweeted that there was a 'civil war' brewing inside the Times in relation to the controversy surrounding the publication of the Tom Cotton op-ed The Times ran a column calling the Senator's op-ed 'fascist' after he called on Trump to use the military to crack down on rioting, looting and violence in the wake of George Floyd's death The article was initially defended by publisher AG Sulzberger (left) who said the paper aimed to share 'views from across the spectrum'. The newspaper's opinion page editor James Bennet (right) also defended the decision to publish. Bennet later resigned over the ordeal BARI WEISS' PAST JOURNALISM JOBS: Bari Weiss joined the New York Times as an opinions editor and writer in 2017. According to her website, Weiss was an op-ed editor at the Wall Street journal between 2013 to 2017 before joining the New York Times. In an interview with Vanity Fair last year, Weiss said she realized she was among the most left-wing people at the WSJ around the time Trump was elected. She claimed she wasn't allowed to write about what she believed was the hypocrisy of Melania Trump's anti-bullying campaign. Weiss said Trump winning prompted her to leave the WSJ. 'I was sobbing, openly, at my desk. I wanted people to see how I felt about this, and what I thought it meant for the country. I realized I had to leave,' she told Vanity Fair. She was also previously a senior editor at Tablet - an online Jewish magazine - from 2011 to 2013 where she covered news and politics. Weiss graduated from Columbia University. Advertisement In her resignation letter, Weiss noted that it took the Times 'two days and two jobs' to say the Tom Cotton op-ed 'fell short of our standards'. She was also among those to sign an open letter published in Harper's Bazaar Magazine last month that slammed 'cancel culture' and warned of an 'intolerant climate' for free speech. Weiss was also criticized for her opinion on the #MeToo movement after cautioning on immediately believing every woman who comes forward. When she weighed in on the Brett Kavanaugh controversy, she was slammed for asking on MSNBC if the accusations stemming from his teen years should be 'disqualifying'. Weiss later admitted that her soundbite about Kavanaugh sounded 'glib' or insincere. Weiss, in her resignation letter, said her opinions had resulted in her being bullied by coworkers. She described the Times as a 'hostile work environment' and criticized management for allowing her coworkers to 'publicly smear' her on Twitter and also on company-wide Slack channels. Weiss said some employees would post an ax emoji next to her name on company Slack channels and others would discuss the need for her to be 'rooted out' if the NYT was 'truly inclusive'. 'My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I'm "writing about the Jews again",' Weiss wrote in her resignation letter. 'Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. 'There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly 'inclusive' one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.' She went on to describe that behavior as unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment and constructive discharge. 'I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper's entire staff and the public. And I certainly can't square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage,' she wrote. Politicians are not robots. This week we have seen some display genuine emotion. Health Minister Jenny Mikakos. Credit:Luis Ascui Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos stopped mid-sentence at her regular mid-week press conference, wiped away a tear and sought the indulgence of the media pack for a quiet moment as she spoke of elderly Greek residents at a community nursing home being affected some dying with coronavirus. These are her base, people she knows. At a different press conference, the calm and unflappable federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, lost his train of thought, his voice cracked as he momentarily hesitated then recovered his equilibrium and acknowledged and even celebrated the efforts of the beleaguered staff working in infected aged care homes. Bill Shorten, now keeping busy as shadow minister for the NDIS but speaking as a neighbour, paid tribute to Theo who lived two doors down on the roundabout but died this week from the virus. Whatever you think of Bill, and everyone pretty much has some sort of opinion, it was clear that he was speaking from the heart, not from a script. Nothing confected here either. Well, this is both grim and bizarre. A man in Connecticut is charged with having decapitated his landlord with a sword after the man was told he had to move out because he owed back rent, say Hartford police. After they got a search warrant was obtained, police found papers showing Thompson believes he is a "sovereign citizen," meaning he is not subject to any statutes and interprets the laws in their own way, the detectives wrote. CNN: The Hartford Police Department responded to a 911 call Saturday morning from the landlord, Victor King, who said that his roommate Jerry Thompson, 42, had been "waving a sword at him in a threatening and terrorizing manner" amid a rent dispute, according to an arrest warrant filed by Hartford detectives. King gave officers Thompson's cell phone number, according to the warrant. It did not say if police spoke to Thompson Saturday. The next day, police received calls from a neighbor and then a separate friend of King's who were concerned about his safety, the warrant said. Police entered the residence Sunday afternoon to find a grisly crime scene and King's body "covered by numerous articles of bedding" on the floor, according to the warrant. A medical examiner investigator's preliminary observations suggested King's injuries were consistent with a large edged weapon, noting "lacerations to the landlord's right arm, upper chest and across the neck causing decapitation." Surveillance video also caught a male exiting a white Jeep, carrying a "long skinny white object in his right hand," walking into the residence Saturday afternoon, and exiting about 30 minutes later with the same object, the warrant said. More at the Hartford Courant: Roommate arrested in deadly Hartford attack on Travelers retiree, a top-ranked bridge player Two homes in the citys downtown were damaged by a fire late Friday night. Hamilton fire assistant deputy chief Carla MacDonald said crews were initially called to 51 Wellington St. S. for a porch fire. According to the Hamilton Fire Departments incident Twitter, firefighters were called to a structure fire in the area just before 9 p.m. MacDonald said when firefighters arrived at the home, a second storey balcony was fully engulfed in flames. The blaze then spread to neighbouring 53 Wellington St. S., engulfing its second-floor covered porch and attic. Photos of the scene taken Saturday morning show the second storey of both homes charred. Debris from the fire littered the yards. MacDonald said the cause of the fire is undetermined, but is considered not suspicious. There were no injuries reported in the fire. Both homes have since been turned back over to their owners, said MacDonald. As China takes on Hong Kong's democratic autonomy by postponing elections to the legislative assembly and arresting political activists after the passage of the draconian national security law, US invites world to condemn and isolate China, accuses it of brutality, blatant takedown of human rights abuses all over its mainland against minorities and political dissidents. Expressing deep concern over arrest warrants under Hong Kongs draconian national security law for several democracy activists, US House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Friday (local time) said this action further undermines Chinas credibility as a rule-abiding member of the international community. Representative Eliot L. Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Senator Bob Menendez, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations in a statement said: We are deeply concerned by todays announcement that China has issued arrest warrants under Hong Kongs new national security law for several noted democracy activists, including an extraterritorial warrant for the arrest of an individual who has been a United States citizen for over two decades. This action only further undermines the credibility of China as a responsible rule-abiding member of the international community. If Beijing thinks that this effort will silence those who stand for freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, it is gravely mistaken: today we are all Hong Kongers, they said in the statement. Also read: After UK, Canada and others Germany suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong Also read: US set to ban Chinese app Tiktok, Trump says will ban app Continuing with the ruthless suppression of the dissenting voices in the erstwhile British colony, six people including activist Nathan Law Kwun-chung and former British consulate employee Simon Cheng Man-kit are being sought by Hong Kong police on suspicion of breaking the new draconian national security law, reported South China Morning Post. The draconian law is aimed at crushing dissent in the erstwhile British colony which saw massive pro-democracy protests last year. The legislation, which came into effect ahead of July 1 punishes what Beijing terms secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference with up to life in prison. South China Morning Post citing a police source reported that the pair, who along with two of the others independence activists Ray Wong Toi-yeung and Lau Hong are currently in Britain, have been accused of inciting secession and collusion with foreign and external forces to endanger national security, according to a police source. Reacting to the development, Nathan Law said he was clueless about what offences he might have committed. He also stated that he would sever his ties with his family. US-based Samuel Chu of the Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) and Wayne Chan Ka-kui, previously reported to be in Amsterdam were also listed out as suspects. The Hong Kong police is issuing an arrest warrant against an American citizen for advocating and lobbying my own government, Chu, a US citizen said in a statement. Several countries have suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong in the wake of imposition of the controversial security law. Germany has decided to suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, Foreign Minister, Heiko Mass, said on Friday (local time) after the erstwhile British colony decided to postpone legislative council elections. China earlier announced the suspension of Hong Kongs extradition treaties with Canada, Australia and Britain after the three countries announced similar decisions in protest to controversial new security law. Also read: Chinese consulate in Houston was a den of spies: Mike Pompeo Sushant Singh Rajputs US-based sister Shweta Singh Kirti has shared a whiteboard with the actors plan post June 29 as a proof that he was planning ahead. The actor died by suicide on June 14 and his father has filed an abetment to suicide case against his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty with the Bihar Police. Shweta shared a post with Sushants plans for June 29 and ahead. His list included doing waking up early, reading books, doing meditation, working out and conquering the moment. Shweta wrote, Bhais White Board where he was planning to start his workout and transcendental meditation from 29th June daily. So, he was planning ahead. #justiceforsushantsinghrajput. Shweta has been sharing posts demanding justice for her brother. On Saturday, she wrote, Your branches may twist and turn as you flex toward the light, yet your unwavering intentions will ensure that no faint wind will sway you from your mission #JusticeforSushantSingRajput #Seekingstrengthandunity #biharpolice. She had also shared an interview of Ankita Lokhande, Sushants ex-girlfriend, while saying Satyameva Jayate (Truth shall prevail). On Friday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday filed a money laundering case against Rhea and her family on the basis of a Bihar Police FIR in which Sushants father has accused them of abetting the Bollywood actors suicide. Rhea also broke her silence over the FIR filed to say Satyamev Jayate (truth shall prevail), and that she had immense faith in god and the judiciary. She said this in a brief video statement released through her lawyers. A Bihar Police team which is in Mumbai to investigate the FIR registered in Patna against Rhea, recorded the statement of Ankita, in which she is reported to have said the late actor was not under depression, a police official said. The 34-year-old actor, who was dating Chakraborty, was found hanging in his apartment in Mumbais Bandra area on June 14. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Viber very strong in Sri Lanka By Duruthu Edirimuni Chandrasekera View(s): View(s): Viber, the messaging app with 1 billion users in 190 countries, is continuously growing in Sri Lanka with an increase of 118 per cent in community views and 39 per cent higher in daily activations, officials say. In terms of messages sent in 1:1 conversations, it has risen to 37 per cent higher while messages sent to groups have drastically increased by 91 per cent. We intend to further strengthen our presence and contribute to the tech industry through our diverse partnerships with credible and trusted organisations in Sri Lanka, Djamel Agaoua, CEO Viber told the Business Times in an email interview. All of our partnerships in Sri Lanka aim to leverage on technology to improve and provide more ease to the lives of our users, he went onto say noting that the companys diverse partnerships allow them to have access to verified information and empower its users to do some of their necessities and errands through the app. Some of these partnerships are with the Health Promotion Bureau Community and WHO which are the best source for COVID-19 information. Getting credible and real-time news updates are possible with our media partners. Weve also enabled our user for safer grocery shopping by partnering with Cargills and launching their e-commerce bot allowing for a convenient online shopping experience, Mr. Agaoua said. Viber is doing business within the legal framework of the countries in which they operate and always respects the law in all jurisdictions, Mr. Agaoua said when queried on conforming to local laws. He said the company is compliant with data protection and privacy laws applicable in their operations. In combating groups created for illegal activities and helping the law enforcement authorities, he said that Viber decided to carefully screen for illegal and abusive content in every community or Chatbot that appears in Vibers search engine, instead of fully opening up its platform to bad actors and dangerous messages in pursuit of growth and engagement at a high human and societal cost. We have implemented advanced AI algorithms to try to detect malicious behaviour and have a dedicated moderation team that is handling 24/7 signals related to abuses of our policy of use. He said that Viber decided to finally cut ties with Facebook in line with #StopHateForProfit which is a growing campaign calling for a boycott on ads on Facebook-owned platforms led by civil rights organisations consisting of Colour Of Change, NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants, Free Press, and Common Sense Media. The campaign called on Facebooks advertisers to hit pause on ad spending on Facebook and Instagram for July 2020 to demand that Facebook address racism across their platforms. How it all happened is when Facebook refused to mark posts by US President Donald Trump as misleading or inciting violence. It stands in contrast to Twitter, which marked several tweets with fact-check and warning labels for the first time. While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the posts did not violate the social media giants rules against inciting violence, civil rights activists say the controversy is emblematic of how Facebook provides a platform for racist rhetoric. Viber has always tried to balance the need to provide superior user experience and access to services with our firm commitment to protecting our users privacy and data, we have always been deliberately limiting our exposure to the Fb ecosystem, Mr. Agaoua said. Weve been hoping for a bigger change in Facebooks approach and behaviour over the last couple of years, but this has, sadly, not happened. Due to the recent events, we would like to take a principled stand as a company and support the #StopHateForProfit, because Facebook data validation and violent rhetoric have crossed the line. Weve been considering this decision for a while, but the recent events led to the turning point now. We are cutting the technical integration level connections and pulling out completely our ad spendings from Fb and Instagram. Its the right decision and clear principled position, he added. For now well still keep our Social Media accounts open on all platforms including Facebook-owned applications. Its a difficult decision that is made even harder by the fact that a lot of our users around the world have built habits and prefers to reach out to companies, Viber being no exception, via social media channels. So wed endeavour on a transitional path, where well use these channels only where absolutely needed for the communication with our users, while actively diminishing their role down the road. In terms of how Viber users will react and how itll affect them, he said, We believe that the billion-strong Viber family is expecting us to clearly stand behind our principles and to set an example in this new frontline for maintaining the dignity of only conversation and protecting better the users most valuable digital resource their data. In addition the user experience implications are rather small and they have perfectly capable alternatives. Only 7 per cent of our users used Facebook connect and registering through your number has always been available. Giphy is also substituted with Tenor which is a great product. Overall, users have not affected anyhow. Advertisement Cornish resorts have been branded 'Benidorm on steroids' after floods of visitors left residents too scared to leave their homes and go food shopping. Street marshals have been patrolling hotspots after tourists poured down narrow streets and flouted social-distancing rules - despite clear warning signs in place. Locals blasted the guests for their flagrant breaking of the restrictions, with one terrified woman saying she has banned her children from the main street and harbour. It comes as Boris Johnson 'squeezed the brakes' on easing lockdown restrictions across the country after coronavirus infections rocketed in the last month. Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies adviser Professor Graham Medley warned the deadly virus could 'get out of control' as he claimed there was a rise in cases among younger people. There were no free spaces for campers or campervans at any of the top 20 sites in Cornwall - or the top 15 in Dorset - for a week's stay for two adults from today as holidaymakers opt for a staycation rather than trip abroad. Parks and campsites across Britain have seen a boom in bookings recently, with Haven, Butlin's, Center Parcs and Hoseasons being inundated with requests. Those looking for sun-soaked day trips have started taking advantage of the country's beauty spots already, with huge crowds flocking to spots in Cornwall and Devon on Thursday - leaving car parks jam-packed. Thousands of tourists swarmed the beaches in the south of England yesterday when temperatures soared to 100F (37.8C) - the third hottest day on record - but they have left local authorities warning UK beaches are 'unmanageable'. Cornish resorts have been labelled 'Benidorm on steroids' after floods of visitors have left residents too scared to leave their houses and go shopping for food. Pictured: Bustling streets in St Ives yesterday Street marshals have been patrolling hotspots after visitors were seen pouring down narrow streets without paying attention to social-distancing rules. Pictured: Tourists flock to Fistral beach in Cornwall yesterday One resident described the area as 'Benidorm on steroids'. Pictured: People crammed into a bus in St Ives yesterday A St Ives resident who manages holiday lets, Claire Harris, 37, said her family was 'too scared to go food shopping'. Pictured: People flood the streets of St Ives yesterday Beachgoers flocked to Fistral beach in Cornwall yesterday to soak up the balmy weather Another resident, Jonathan Pitts, believes tourists think they are escaping coronavirus when they visit the quiet town Hundreds of beach goers were spotted on St Ives beach this afternoon in the sunshine One Cornish resident spoke on BBC Radio 1 this morning and described the area as 'Benidorm on steroids'. And a St Ives local Claire Harris, 37, who manages holiday lets, said her family was 'too scared to go food shopping'. She revealed she has banned her children from the main street and harbour because of the hordes of people descending on the port town. One local in Wadebridge said that some tourists were not socially distancing because they 'feel safe down here'. 'My shielding is paused from today but I'm too scared to go out,' she said. 'Tried walking into town a couple of times but no social distancing at all. I was constantly doubling back, leaping out of the way and panicking just to keep my distance from the hoards. It's horrifying. Another resident, Jonathan Pitts, told the BBC that he believes tourists think they are escaping coronavirus when they visit the quiet towns. Vicky White, from Newyln, said: 'It makes me very uneasy to go out with my two young kids. It is sad for residents to not be able to enjoy where they live.' Staycation beauty spots are being 'blighted by vandals and litter' By Alan Shields, Sarah Ward and Ellie Forbes for the Scottish Daily Mail Beauty spots are being blighted by litter louts and vandals, politicians have warned. Tory MSP Murdo Fraser is calling for a police crackdown on the problems as people flock to the countryside. The most recent incidents have seen yobs damage trees, vandalise ancient ruins and leave tons of rubbish behind. One of the most iconic sites affected in recent weeks was the recently restored sign at John o' Groats, which was snapped off by visitors swinging on it. Mr Fraser wrote in The Scotsman: 'With the closure of many official campsites due to the Covid-19 pandemic and restrictions on overseas travel, it is perhaps no surprise we have seen a surge in this activity in recent weeks. But that is no excuse for some of the behaviour we are witnessing. There is no one simple solution to this problem. It will require agencies to work together to identify offenders and hold them accountable.' Advertisement MailOnline surveyed the 20 best campsites in Cornwall according to campsites.co.uk and found the likes of Little Trevothan Camping & Caravan Park in Helston and Polruan Holidays in Fowey are full until the end of August. Others such as Trethem Mill Touring Park in Truro are fully booked until the end of September - but are having to run at reduced capacity of about 50 per cent to ensure they follow social distancing requirements. Further sites in the likes of Newquay, St Austell, Par, Looe, St Columb Major, Padstow, Whitecross, Mevagissey, Redruth, Bude, Perranporth, Camelford, Marazion and Bude are also fully booked for at least the next week. In Dorset, there was limited availability for next week at two of the 15 sites, in Owermoigne and Wareham. But the rest are booked up until at least August 16, with three in the county not taking bookings until September. Those hoping for a last-minute stay in a holiday hotspot this weekend will find campsites for 150 a night or 200 a night for three-star hotels as demand soars. Cornish locals have taken to Twitter in their rage at an influx in visitors to the region this weekend. One said: 'I live in Cornwall and there's so many tourists around I live on a high street and the streets are literally packed. I hate it here so much.' And another wrote: 'Yes Cornwall is beautiful but it's one of the poorest areas in the UK - second home owners drive up house prices, we depend on tourism and during a pandemic that is putting the residents at risk (we have ONE major hospital.' Elspeth Badger took to Twitter to write: 'I hear people in Cornwall are now scared to leave their house to go shopping because of the influx of tourists ignoring social distancing. It's just not on!' And another user replied: 'Yes I have friends in Cornwall saying exactly that. Horrible levels of selfishness and wilful ignorance.' One man who is currently on a staycation in Cornwall wrote: 'We were really lucky and are on our last day in Cornwall after getting a late deal. We paid 800 for a really nice three-bed static caravan in a lovely spot near Looe, only booking it three days before we went. 'Wasn't too busy at the start but like others have said, it's getting busy now. One four-star hotel on the beach in Newquay, Cornwall, comes in at nearly 350 a night, while a one-bedroom cottage in the Cotswolds will set you back 280 a night. Local authorities branded Britain's beaches 'unmanageable' yesterday after thousands of tourists and sunseekers descended to the seaside yesterday. Cornish locals have taken to Twitter in their rage at an influx in visitors to the region this weekend The camp site at Freshwater Holiday Park is busy with holidaymakers camping in tents, caravans and camper vans at Burton Bradstock in Dorset The Dorset campsite is completely full with caravans and tents as holidaymakers opt for staycations this summer MailOnline surveyed the 20 best campsites in Cornwall according to campsites.co.uk and found the likes of Little Trevothan Camping & Caravan Park in Helston and Polruan Holidays in Fowey are full until the end of August Holidaymakers have flocked to Newquay in Cornwall, pictured on Thursday, as the UK experiences a staycations boom The Porth Beach Holiday Park in Newquay, Cornwall, is pictured on Thursday as holidaymakers descend on the South West A caravan site at Papermill Lock in Boreham, Essex, was another popular site for holidaymakers with many opting to eat outdoors to soak up the rays Another caravan site, at East Mersea in Essex, was also a popular choice for holidaymakers who pitched tents and put up windbreaks to enjoy the sunshine Sunseekers were seen enjoying the warm weather sitting outside at a caravan site at Papermill Lock in Boreham, Essex Visit Cornwall chief executive Malcolm Bell also told Cornwall Live that campsites are fully booked and that anyone coming to Cornwall without a booking was unlikely to find accommodation. However he stressed that while the campsites are booked up they are not operating at full capacity to ensure they can follow social distancing guidelines. Mr Bell said that the feedback he had from campsites and other tourism businesses was that '90% of people are behaving themselves' but stressed that people who were not following guidelines included locals as well as tourists. How Cornwall's top 20 campsites are booked up Here is the latest availability at the top 20 campsites in Cornwall according to the Campsites.co.uk website, based on two adults booking for seven nights: Hendra Holiday Park in Newquay SEPTEMBER 12 Chy Carne Camping and Touring Park in Helston AUGUST 29 Court Farm Campsite in St Austell AUGUST 29 East Crinnis Holiday Park in Par SEPTEMBER 5 Looe Country Park in Looe AUGUST 5 Tencreek Holiday Park in Looe AUGUST 10 Trewan Hall in St Columb Major AUGUST 28 Padstow Touring Park in Padstow SEPTEMBER 14 The Laurels Holiday Park in Whitecross AUGUST 31 Tregarton Park in Mevagissey AUGUST 29 Globe Vale Holiday Park in Redruth AUGUST 22 Pencuke Farm in Bude SEPTEMBER 3 Polruan Holidays in Fowey AUGUST 23 Tollgate Farm Caravan and Camping Park in Perranporth AUGUST 31 Little Trevothan Camping & Caravan Park in Helston AUGUST 30 St Tinney Farm in Camelford AUGUST 29 Tower Park in St Buryan - TBC Trethem Mill Touring Park in Truro SEPTEMBER 30 Wheal Rodney Holiday Park in Marazion AUGUST 1 Willow Valley Holiday Park in Bude AUGUST 29 Advertisement He said: 'It is based on age, with locals and visitors, with those below 30 in particular who are not following the guidelines. You see some groups and think 'that must be a big family' as you see six children or more of a similar age.' Traffic is already building across Devon and Cornwall's main roads as the South West braces itself for an unprecedented influx of visitors this weekend. Devon County Council issued a warning yesterday and pleaded with road users to protect emergency services and wider highways team. The Coastguard had its busiest day in more than four years on Friday, when the UK recorded its third hottest day ever, as it dealt with more than 300 incidents. Thanet District Council asked people to avoid four of the area's beaches, including Margate's Main Sands, due to the number of visitors. Leader of the council Councillor Rick Everitt said: 'Early on, it became clear that they were going to reach levels of which we were concerned about.' Authorities expressed concern about keeping tourists safe in the water, as well as the potential spread of Covid-19 and maintaining social distancing. 'The RNLI only have a certain capacity,' Mr Everitt said. 'They're on seven Thanet beaches this summer, which is slightly fewer than usual, and they're doing a great job where they are but they don't have unlimited resources to deal with people in the water. 'If you have too many people on the beach, it just becomes unmanageable from that point of view.' Foreign summer holidays are now looking increasingly risky after the Government's last-minute announcement on Sunday that those travelling from Spain now need to self-isolate for 14 days following a spike in cases. And sunseekers are set to make the most of the warm temperatures in the UK, with Britain set to bask in a mini-heatwave amid 84F (29C) highs today before a 95F (35C) scorcher tomorrow on the hottest day of the year so far. Meanwhile an exclusive poll for MailOnline revealed today that a quarter of Britons are planning to alter their holiday plans in the wake of the decision to re-impose quarantine restrictions on Spain. Some 25 per cent said they were considering changes and more than a third said they were now less likely to book a foreign holiday at all amid fears that other popular destinations could follow in having restrictions put in place. But the poll, conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, also found more than two in five people backed how the Government handled last Saturday's announcement which came with just five hours' notice. The worries come as the government discusses whether lockdown restrictions were eased too early. And one of the government's top scientific advisers even warned that 'further interventions' could be needed to get pupils back in classes next month - suggesting that ministers should decide between pubs or schools. Hundreds of sunseekers flock to the beach in Bournemouth this afternoon to soak up the weather before it starts to rain later Four women are spotted sunbathing on the sandy beach of Bournemouth this afternoon while the south of England continues seeing sunny spells Groups of people lounged on the beach in Bournemouth and a few swam in the sea while the weather stayed nice and warm Bournemouth beach absolutely packed with sea lovers and beachgoers this afternoon Pop-up tents, towels and parasols were spotted dotted across Bournemouth beach while visitors lounged in the sun A group of people are seen sunbathing by the seaside in Bournemouth this afternoon Some beachgoers managed to keep their distance from others on the beach in Bournemouth this afternoon while others didn't A man takes his paddleboard for a spin on Bournemouth beach this afternoon Giddy sunseekers took to the sea in Bournemouth as they went for chilly swims this afternoon People enjoy the hot weather on the beach at Bournemouth this afternoon Dozens of beachgoers flocked to Brighton beach this morning to bask in the warm temperatures after local authorities warned Britain's beaches are becoming 'unmanageable' due to hordes of visitors who don't follow social-distancing rules The Coastguard had its busiest day in more than four years on Friday, when the UK recorded its third hottest day ever, as it dealt with more than 300 incidents. Pictured: A group of people are spotted sitting by the sea in Brighton this morning as the temperatures across the country start to cool Women sunbathe and enjoy the slightly cooler temperatures this morning on Brighton beach Police in Brighton patrol the promenade on what should have been Pride weekend in the city Professor Medley's comments come after Sage warned of anger at local lockdowns sparking riots over the coming months, which could 'overwhelm all attempts' to control coronavirus and 'catastrophically' undermine recovery plans. Britain was last night braced for new restrictions on meeting friends and family as the price for getting children back to school. Boris Johnson said he was 'squeezing the brake pedal' on easing lockdown measures after infections doubled in a month. Carefree daytrippers flocked to beaches across the country on Friday, sparking concerns about how sunseekers would keep to social-distancing measures. Temperatures reached 100F (37.8C) at London's Heathrow Airport at 2.41pm and also reached 99.1F (37.3C) at Kew Gardens, in west London, the Met Office said. Many calls to the Coastguard on Friday were about people being cut off by the tide, missing children and swimmers getting into difficulty. The Coastguard said the total number of UK incidents was 329, including 232 callouts for coastguard rescue teams, 129 for lifeboats, 22 requiring aircraft and three for a hovercraft. The coast along Essex and Kent saw a total of 45 incidents, it added. Brits were spotted sleeping on beaches this morning after flocking to the seaside to bask in the sizzling highs of 100F and staying the night. Pictured: A family sets up camp and pitch a tent on Bournemouth beach this morning Three people were spotted wrapped up in sheets and blankets underneath Bournemouth pier this morning surrounded by litter, discarded face masks, strewn flip flops and a shisha pipe. Some sunseekers seemed to have a little too much fun yesterday as a lonesome baby stroller was spotted near the beach adorned with two empty bottles of beer Cleanup crews were spotted in Bournemouth much less balmy weather this morning while they got rid of the mess left behind by yesterday's sunseekers Hordes of beachgoers left masses of litter behind in Bournemouth yesterday which had to be cleaned up this morning Litter was left strewn across Bournemouth beach after it was packed with sunseekers yesterday on the UK's hottest day of the year so far Holidaymakers and sunbathers enjoyed the weather at Dorset's Durdle Door yesterday A long line of visitors, many armed with swimming equipment, make their way to the beach at Durdle Door in Dorset The south west coast path from the car park was busy as holidaymakers and sunbathers flocked to the beach at Durdle Door Staff members from convenience stores in Perranzabuloe, Cornwall, have reportedly been subjected to 'unreal' amounts of abuse when they try and enforce social-distancing measures. Royden Paynter, harbour master at Mousehole, said: 'Suddenly we've been hit with a stampede. 'Everybody is a bit more stressed this year - they don't move out of your way'. Police officers condemn Boris's order to enforce 'absolutely bonkers' mask and social distancing rules and call it an' impossible' task Boris Johnson's call for police to enforce the mandatory wearing of masks in indoor areas was yesterday branded 'bonkers' by officers. The PM vowed a 'greater police presence' after it emerged officers fined just 13 people for not wearing face coverings on public transport in a two-week period last month. He said masks musts be worn in galleries, cinemas and places of worship, as well as in shops and on trains and buses, while insisting the police will have to ensure the rules are being followed. However, Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, told MailOnline the new policy was 'impossible' to enforce. He said: 'They want us to enforce the new rules in these other places now, but next door there might be a pub or a restaurant where people don't have to wear a mask. 'It doesn't make any sense, it's absolutely bonkers. 'How do they want us to enforce it in places of worship? It's impossible. We're just veering from one thing to another, almost seemingly on an hourly basis, and it always ends up becoming the police's problem. 'If you go into big stores, you might see people with masks on but in the little high street shops, people just wander in and out without them and it'll be the same with this. 'We can't enforce that. It has to be a collective social effort, we have to do this all together. They are losing the will of the police and the public in terms of what they are expecting from us. 'Rank and file officers will be wondering if they are just being set up to get abuse. We've got demonstrations all over London this weekend but as far as I'm aware you're still not allowed to meet in groups of more than 30. Advertisement But Adrienne Munday, a small business owner there, said Covid-19 concerns had been 'over dramatised' and most people were delighted to welcome back the 'summer buzz'. Coronavirus cases have more than doubled in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly - with 19 new cases in the week to July 27, compared to just eight new cases in the week before. A Cornwall Council spokesperson said: 'To help guide people in city and town centres we have marked 'keep right' walkways and put up signing, and there are street wardens on hand to offer advice. 'Cornwall Council will continue to monitor congested sites and provide signs and marshals where they may help, but we ask everyone to be considerate of others and follow public health guidance to help reduce the risk of transmission.' Sage's Professor Medley also claimed the rise in coronavirus infections appeared to be among younger people but warned there was a danger it could 'spill' over into other parts of the population. He said: 'The age distribution of infections has changed, it has moved down into younger age groups and so it is likely we won't see that increase in hospital admissions related to infection in the same way we did in March. 'But the big fear is the virus just gets out of control and we end up in a situation where there is so much virus that it inevitably spills out into all sections of the population.' The Sage paper warning of riots suggests the level of violence could be even worse than those seen during the notorious clashes of 2011, that inequalities fuelled by the virus have left the UK 'precariously balanced', with police not prepared to manage a large-scale break down of public order. As a result, the military should be put on standby, the experts argue. Thanet district councillor, Mr Everitt, said that Thanet's beaches had seen 'exceptional' numbers of visitors driven by the balmy conditions. 'We're happy for people to come to Thanet, our economy is dependent on it, and obviously a lot of businesses in the coastal areas are struggling, because they missed so much of the season,' he told PA. 'So it is a bit of a balancing act for us, because we don't want to be saying, 'don't come', as we know small businesses around our seafront are desperate for the revenue.' He said the facilities on the beaches, such as toilets, were not equipped for the number of tourists, while authorities would be able to cope better if demand was better distributed along the coastline. 'It's an irony isn't it that seaside towns have spent years complaining that people no longer visit them because they go abroad,' he added. 'We're getting greater numbers than we've ever seen since package holidays became a thing.' And Brits were spotted asleep on beaches this morning after flocking to the seaside yesterday to bask in the sizzling highs of 100F. Three people were spotted dozing while wrapped up in sheets and blankets underneath Bournemouth pier surrounded by litter, discarded face masks, strewn flip flops and a shisha pipe. Government statisticians yesterday admitted there is 'now enough evidence' to prove Covid-19 infections are on the up, calculating that 4,200 people are now catching the virus each day in England alone Blackburn with Darwen - the worst-hit authority in the country - will be subject to the new rules, as will Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Rossendale, Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees as well as all of Greater Manchester Visitors cram onto the beach at Southend-on-Sea in Essex on the hottest day of the year and the third hottest day ever yesterday Holidaymakers flock to the beach at West Bay in Dorset yesterday as further heatwaves are expected across the country And further down the beach a family had set up camp and pitched a tent into the sand alongside camping chairs. Some sunseekers seemed to have a little too much fun yesterday as a lonesome baby stroller was spotted near the beach adorned with two empty bottles of beer. And cleanup crews were spotted at 5am today sorting out the mess left behind by yesterday's carefree revellers. 'A hammer blow to business': Boris's sudden slamming on of brakes will devastate the UK's economy and cost more jobs, say experts as FTSE 100 slumps 1.2% by 72 points to 5,918 Business leaders yesterday warned that Boris Johnson postponing a further easing of England's coronavirus lockdown was a 'hammer blow' to the economy. The British Chambers of Commerce said businesses and consumer confidence will be damaged again after the Prime Minister warned the UK 'cannot be complacent' amid a rise in the Covid-19's prevalance in communities. It comes as the FTSE 100 index of Britain's leading firms was trading down by 72 points or 1.2 per cent at 5,918 by this afternoon in London, having initially been up at 6,043 this morning. In a further blow to the economy, England's Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty warned that it might not be possible to ease lockdown further. British Chamber of Commerce co-executive director Claire Walker said today: 'While tackling the public health emergency must be the priority, these announcements - made at short notice - will be a hammer blow to business and consumer confidence at a time when many firms were just starting to get back on their feet. 'Businesses communities need as much clarity as possible from government if they are to plan ahead and rebuild their operations in the coming months. 'Ministers must also consider extending support to all firms, many of whom will be forced to close for an even more prolonged period, as well as targeted measures to help businesses placed under localised lockdowns. UKHospitality called on the Government to provide more business support after the news that measures due to be lifted today, including small wedding receptions and reopening bowling alleys and casinos, were postponed for at least two weeks. Its chief executive Kate Nicholls said: 'We understand that safety is the priority, but it is still devastating news for hospitality businesses. 'They have spent a lot of time and money, which they can ill afford to lose at the minute, getting ready to reopen. For those people who work in those sectors, the security of their jobs remains uncertain. Advertisement Beachgoers hoping to wake up to a repeat of yesterday's balmy weather may be in for disappointment as temperatures are set to cool to 77F (25C) today as showers spread across the country. Temperatures soared to 37.8C at London Heathrow on Friday afternoon and even Leeds and Manchester reached 88F (31C) while Newcastle and Wales saw balmy weather of 79F (26C). But according to the Met Office temperatures will cool down today and rain and clouds will be seen across the north. Yesterday's announcement that the brakes were being applied to the easing of lockdown measures came just hours before a swathe of businesses were due to reopen. At a gloomy Downing Street press conference, chief medical officer Chris Whitty warned the country had 'probably reached near the limit or the limits' of what can be done to return to life as normal for now. He suggested trade-offs would have to be made if schools are to reopen in September, with some restrictions being reimposed. Families could be asked to avoid using public transport or meeting other households under one option. Meanwhile, more than two million people who have been shielding from the virus at home will no longer need to isolate in most of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland from today. Professor Whitty warned: 'We have probably reached near the limit or the limits of what we can do in terms of opening up society. The idea that we can open up everything and keep the virus under control is clearly wrong. 'What that means, potentially, is that if we wish to do more things in the future, we may have to do less of some other things and these will be difficult trade-offs.' 'Some of these will be decisions of government, and so which are for all of us as citizens to do. But we have to be realistic about this, the idea that we can open up everything and keep the virus under control is clearly wrong.' Measures due to be lifted today, including allowing small wedding receptions, reopening bowling alleys and pilots of sports gatherings, are delayed by at least two weeks. Face coverings will also become mandatory in more places in England including museums, galleries and places of worship from next Saturday and there will be tougher policing of the wearing of them. It comes as figures yesterday showed there are now 4,900 new infections a day, up from around 3,000 a day a fortnight ago and 2,000 a day at the end of June. After receiving the grim data on infection levels late on Wednesday, Mr Johnson is understood to have called a meeting of his closest aides on Thursday morning to work out a new battle plan. Ministers, including Matt Hancock, Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove, as well as Professor Whitty, finalised the proposals later that evening. In other developments: The Prime Minister revealed what he described as a 'pretty punchy' new slogan 'Hands, face, space' to re-emphasise social distancing rules; Mr Johnson claimed his drive to get workers back to the office is unchanged, despite a poll showing thousands of civil servants still work from home; Scots were urged not to visit parts of northern England, with Nicola Sturgeon citing a 'significant risk' of infections; Several other areas have seen spikes in infections over the last fortnight; Two million patients who have been shielding since March are being encouraged to return to normal lives; A leading provider said care homes in England have been without regular virus tests for over a fortnight. A pelican surprised a shocked sun seeker and tried to steal his tablet during the heatwave in St James's Park, London, yesterday People enjoy the sunshine on Barry Island beach in South Wales yesterday as the country experiences very hot weather Masses of people enjoy the scorching weather on Portobello Beach in Edinburgh on the hottest day of the year Prof Medley said: 'It might come down to a question of which do you trade off against each other and then that's a matter of prioritising, do we think pubs are more important than schools?' Drinkers crowding outside a pub in Primrose Hill, north London, last night appeared to pay little attention to social distancing On the hottest day of the year yesterday, many drinkers in Manchester enjoyed a pint outside of this pub in the city centre The 'Northern lockdown' ban on people in Greater Manchester, parts of east Lancashire and West Yorkshire meeting other households indoors or in gardens was announced immediately, with the other measures confirmed yesterday. What lockdown easing measures have been postponed today? Wedding receptions of more than 30 people will no longer be allowed to take place today as had been planned. They are delayed until at least August 14 Test sporting events will be put on ice for the next two weeks until August 15. Close contact beauty services such as facials cannot open until at least August 15. Casinos, bowling alleys and ice rinks cannot reopen until the same date. But Boris Johnson urged workers to return to work as planned from next week. Face masks will be compulsory in most indoor public spaces including places of worship and museums. Police will have new powers to enforce social distancing rules including the wearing of face masks. Advertisement Mr Johnson warned the restrictions in areas of the North West could become nationwide if infections keep rising. He said: 'Unless people follow the rules and behave safely, we may need to go further.' He also promised that the police will be would be playing a much bigger role in enforcing the rules on face masks, as well as breaking up large gatherings. Mr Johnson warned the restrictions in areas of the North West could become nationwide if infections keep rising. He said: 'Unless people follow the rules and behave safely, we may need to go further.' He also promised that the police will be would be playing a much bigger role in enforcing the rules on face masks, as well as breaking up large gatherings. But both the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, and the National Association of Police Chiefs said they expected shop owners and local councils to enforce the rules in the first instance. John Apter, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales said: 'We know the vast majority of the public will comply as the rules for where face coverings must be worn is broadened. Where people are not wearing coverings we expect the owner of the premises or local authority to advise and act.' Figures obtained by MailOnline reveal that just 13 fines had been handed out by police forces in June after masks became mandatory on public transport. The doom-laden press conference came two weeks after Mr Johnson said he hoped all restrictions could be lifted by Christmas. In stark contrast, he yesterday said 'we cannot be complacent'. He told the briefing: 'As we see these rises [in infection rates] around the world, we can't fool ourselves we are exempt. We must be willing to react to the first signs of trouble. 'We're now seeing a warning light on the dashboard. Our assessment is that we should squeeze that brake pedal in order to keep the virus under control'. But he insisted summer was not cancelled and encouraged the public 'still to think of wonderful staycations here in the UK' saying he hopes to take his own mini-break at home. He insisted plans for more staff to go back to offices should stay and said shielding advice will still be paused yesterday as planned. But the PM admitted there may have to be 'trade-offs' so pupils can return to schools, which is 'a national priority'. Last night it was revealed Government scientists have warned there must be 'sufficient headroom' in the rate of infections for schools to reopen safely. Minutes of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies committee show that on June 23, it said there 'may be a need to change measures at the end of the summer in order to be able to keep R [the infection rate] below 1 whilst proceeding with the planned reopening'. Yesterday the Office for National Statistics issued a warning over rising infection rates its first since May. Random testing suggests 4,200 people a day are getting infected in England. Although most do not show up in daily testing figures as they never develop symptoms, they can transmit the virus. Yesterday 880 tested positive the highest daily number for a month. Experts stressed the situation is nothing like as alarming it was in spring. And although officials are worried about a spike in parts of the North West where lockdown restrictions have been tightened for more than four million people rates of infection are still fairly low. Boris Johnson yesterday announced he is 'squeezing the brake pedal' on the easing of lockdown after an increase in coronavirus cases People wearing face masks have their temperatures checked before being allowed to go into Manchester Central Mosque to worship this morning as the city and much of the north-west was locked down Matt Hancock yesterday denied targeting Eid celebrations with a last-minute move to introduce strict new lockdown restrictions. Pictured: A man wearing a facemask has his temperature checked before being allowed to go into Manchester Central Mosque The new measures will affect 4.5million people living in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire (Manchester Central Mosque this morning) Blackburn, the UK's worst hotspot, has a weekly average of 83 cases per 100,000 people, which has fallen in the past week. Public Health England has named six places as 'areas of concern' including Northampton and Eden, Cumbria. Swindon in Wiltshire has also experienced a worrying surge. The British Chamber of Commerce said the halt to lockdown loosening would be a blow to firms trying to get back on their feet. And industry leaders from the beleaguered hospitality trade branded it 'devastating' for pubs, restaurants and holiday resorts across Britain. Mr Johnson's announcement also coincided with a 65-point slump in the FTSE as investor confidence reeled from the uncertainty. British Chamber of Commerce co-executive director Claire Walker said today: 'While tackling the public health emergency must be the priority, these announcements - made at short notice - will be a hammer blow to business and consumer confidence at a time when many firms were just starting to get back on their feet. 'Businesses communities need as much clarity as possible from government if they are to plan ahead and rebuild their operations in the coming months. 'Ministers must also consider extending support to all firms, many of whom will be forced to close for an even more prolonged period, as well as targeted measures to help businesses placed under localised lockdowns. The decision to impose lockdown at short notice has caused huge anger by those in the zone - and many are baffled by the rules UK Hospitality called on the Government to provide more business support after the news that measures due to be lifted today, including small wedding receptions and reopening bowling alleys and casinos, were postponed for at least two weeks. Its chief executive Kate Nicholls said: 'We understand that safety is the priority, but it is still devastating news for hospitality businesses. Coronavirus infection rate doubled in England in July Coronavirus cases in England are now at the highest levels since May and government scientists are 'no longer confident' the crucial R rate is below the dreaded level of one. Government statisticians yesterday admitted there is 'now enough evidence' to prove Covid-19 infections are on the up, calculating that 4,200 people are now catching the virus each day in England alone. The estimate by the Office for National Statistics, which tracks the size of the outbreak by swabbing thousands of people, has doubled since the end of June and is 68 per cent up on the 2,500 figure given a fortnight ago. One in 1,500 people currently have the coronavirus - 0.07 per cent of the population. But experts believe the rate is twice as high in London and still rising. The figure does not include care homes and hospitals. Advertisement 'They have spent a lot of time and money, which they can ill afford to lose at the minute, getting ready to reopen. For those people who work in those sectors, the security of their jobs remains uncertain. 'We now need clear communication to ensure that consumer confidence is not damaged further. 'We are also going to need further support for those businesses that cannot reopen. Full furlough ends today and businesses that remain closed are going to need help to protect jobs and keep their operations afloat.' And Matthew Fell, the Confederation of British Industry's chief UK policy Director, said: 'This news will come as a real disappointment for some businesses, but firms know that public safety comes first. Businesses will continue to do what is necessary to avoid an infection spike. 'Delayed reopening will unfortunately lead to even more financial pressure for some companies. So there may yet be a need for more direct support to shore up cash flow, including extended business rates relief.' The announcements came after the Government last night said it was reimposing partial lockdown measures on 4.5 million people living in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, banning mixing with any other households indoors or in a garden, because of increasing case numbers. The decision to launch the crackdown at midnight prompted community leaders to accuse the Government of 'an appalling abuse of power' because it came at the start of Eid celebrations. Mr Johnson apologised this afternoon for the disruption the new restrictions will cause as he addressed the nation just a matter of weeks after saying he was aiming to get life in the UK back to normal 'possibly in time for Christmas'. He said: 'With those numbers [of cases] creeping up, our assessment is that we should now squeeze that brake pedal in order to keep the virus under control. 'On Saturday August 1 we had hoped to reopen in England a number of the higher risk settings that remained closed. Today [yesterday] I am afraid we are postponing those changes for at least a fortnight. 'That means until August 15 at the earliest casinos, bowling alleys, skating rinks and the remaining close contact services must remain closed, indoor performances will not resume, pilots of larger crowds in sports venues and conference centres will not take place and wedding receptions of up to 30 people will not be permitted but ceremonies of course can continue to take place in line with Covid secure guidelines'. He added: 'I know that he steps we are taking will be a real blow to many people, to everyone whose wedding plans have been disrupted or cannot now celebrate Eid in the way that they would wish and I am really, really sorry about that but we simply cannot take the risk.' Mr Johnson said the extension of the legally enforceable requirement to wear a face covering will apply from August 8. Currently the wearing of face masks in England is only required in shops and on public transport. He said: 'We will also extend the requirement to wear a face covering to other indoor settings where you are likely to come into contact with people you do not normally meet such as museums, galleries, cinemas and places of worship.' The PM said that 'most people in this country are following the rules' but he had asked Home Secretary Priti Patel to 'work with the police and others to ensure the rules which are already in place are properly enforced'. He added: 'It means a greater police presence to ensure face coverings are being worn where this is required by law.' Despite the increase in infections Mr Johnson said plans to rip up work from home guidance remain 'unchanged' with workers still being encouraged to head back to their desks in August. Data from Public Health England released last week - the most recently available - showed how infection rates were changing in the 10 worst-hit authorities across the country And he also encouraged Britons to take staycations, saying he hopes to enjoy one himself. 'I will be working flat out as you can imagine, though I may allow a brief staycation to creep into the agenda, if that's possible,' he said. Mr Johnson had earlier been accused of having 'no regard for British Muslims' after the Government announced its north of England lockdown decision late last night. Mohammed Shafiq from the Ramadhan Foundation said the move to ban 4.5million people mixing for at least a week will ruin plans for thousands celebrating the religious festival in Manchester, east Lancashire and West Yorkshire until Monday night. Are cases really on the rise in the north west? Coronavirus cases are going down in one area of Greater Manchester - even though lockdown restrictions have been placed on the entire region. Official NHS statistics show infection rates have declined by 44 per cent in Rochdale over the past week. All nine other boroughs - Bolton, Stockport, Tameside, Oldham, Trafford, Salford, Bury, Wigan, and the city of Manchester - have been hit by a spike in outbreaks. Local Tory MP William Wragg said treating all 10 boroughs the same was 'not the right approach'. Stockport, which is home to 290,000 people, saw the biggest rise in Covid-19 cases between July 21 and 27 - the most recent data. Fifty-five people were diagnosed with the disease across the borough. This equates to a rate of 18.9 cases per 100,000 people - 150 per cent higher than it was the week before. Trafford saw a 94 per cent rise to 39.3 and Oldham's rate rose 90 per cent over the course of a week to 57.3, making it the second worst-hit authority in England. Wigan also saw a 127 per cent spike over the last week - but its infection rate is much lower and currently stands at 7.7 cases for every 100,000 people. Infection rates jumped by between 60 and 80 per cent in the city of Manchester (27.2), Bury (16.3), Tameside (16.0) and Salford (22.4). Bolton's rate jumped by 12 per cent to 16.8. The weekly rate in Rochdale - the seventh worst-hit area of England at the moment - dropped to 27.3. WHAT ABOUT IN LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE? Health chiefs only provide rolling weekly infection data for England's upper-tier local authorities, which are often county councils. It means it isn't possible to see how outbreaks are growing in smaller regions, unless local health bosses release the data they have. For example, figures show cases are still dropping slightly in Blackburn with Darwen (down 9 per cent to 83.3), which operates as a lone authority. But other parts of the county hit by the lockdown restrictions - Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale - all fall under the bracket of Lancashire. Lancashire's infection rate currently stands at 10.9 - 6 per cent lower than the rate last week. Local papers have, however, reported that infection rates are almost 40 in Pendle and Hyndburn. Bradford - one of the three areas of West Yorkshire hit by Matt Hancock's tough new measures - has seen a 1 per cent increase in cases. Data shows its infection rate now stands at 45.8. Calderdale's has risen 64 per cent to 36.7. But the rate in Kirklees has dropped 23 per cent to 20.5. All three boroughs are in the worst dozens authorities in England currently. Advertisement Health Secretary Matt Hancock was this morning forced to deny that he had targeted Eid when announcing the Covid-19 restrictions as the religious holiday was about to start. Mr Shafiq said: 'Already by the time the Government announced that on Twitter, families had already travelled to their loved ones' homes and people have already started their Eid preparations. To make that decision on social media, with no regard for British Muslims is an appalling abuse of its power and shows how disconnected they are from wider society. I condemn the announcement and I hope they have learned a big lesson from this'. Labour Bolton MP, Yasmin Qureshi, said today: 'For the Government to make a major public health announcement on the eve of Eid Al Adha (on Twitter) in haste, without clarity or guidance is beyond disruptive, it's irresponsible'. But on Friday a Tory with a Parliamentary constituency on the edge of the lockdown zone accused 'BAME communities of not taking this seriously enough' as coronavirus cases have been rising in towns with large Muslim and minority populations such as Blackburn, Rochdale and Bradford. Craig Whittaker, MP for the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, told LBC: 'If you look at the areas where we've seen rises and cases, the vast majority - but not by any stretch of the imagination all areas - it is the BAME communities that are not taking this seriously enough. 'We have areas of high multiple occupancy - when you have multiple families living in one household. It doesn't specifically have to be in the Asian community, but that is the largest proportion. Look at the areas. You've got Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees. Bradford and Kirklees have two of the largest populations in West Yorkshire'. When asked if he was referring to the immigrant population, he said: 'Immigrant and Asian population.' The Health Secretary defended last night's surprise announcement to tackle the surge in coronavirus cases across the region, which he made in a series of tweets at 9.15pm - less than three hours before the rules came into force. Residents in all of Greater Manchester, Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Rossendale, Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees are now banned from mixing with any other households indoors or in a garden to reduce Covid-19 infections. But people can still visit pubs, restaurants, cafes, shops and places of worship as long as it is with people they live with and they avoid interaction with others outside their bubble. The measures will be reviewed in a week's time, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has said. Mr Hancock was yesterday asked whether the rules were aimed at stopping families getting together for Eid al-Adha, an Islamic festival that will run until Monday night. There is a large Muslim population in the north west. He told the BBC: 'No. My heart goes out to the Muslim communities in these areas because I know how important Eid celebrations are.' There is anger as the strict restrictions were announced on social media just 165 minutes before lockdown began, with many people living in the zone likely to be unaware the new lockdown had started at all when they woke up this morning. Labour leader Keir Starmer blasted the move as a 'new low for the Government's communications during this crisis', while shadow business secretary Lucy Powell, who is the MP for Manchester Central, described it as a 'disaster'. 'With no one around to be able to answer some of the basic questions, I really think is not the way to build confidence and to take people with you and maximise compliance with these steps,' she added. There is also confusion because some of the areas, such as Rossendale, have only seen three three confirmed coronavirus cases on any day since start of July. In Trafford, Greater Manchester, there have been around ten cases per day in a borough with 236,370 residents and infections are 'very low', despite a small rise in cases, officials said this week. Local MP William Wragg said: 'Greater Manchester is not a homogenous area. We must always err on the side of caution but to treat 10 boroughs the same is not the right approach.' Spikes in Oldham and Blackburn with Darwen have both been driven by soaring rates among Asian communities, councillors have said. Arooj Shah, deputy leader of Oldham Council, confirmed they had seen a rise in cases among Oldham's Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, which account for up to two thirds of overall new cases in the Manchester town. Eighty-five per cent of new Covid-19 infections in Blackburn with Darwen have been among people from South Asian heritage, which also make up around a fifth of the local authority's residents. Around 20 per cent of Oldham's population are from Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage, compared to the 2.8 per cent average in England and Wales. Mr Hancock yesterday admitted the Government had planned more 'targeted, specific local action' in Oldham and Blackburn but could see that coronavirus was 'spreading more widely than that' so 'we had to take the action that we did'. He said: 'The reason for that is we've seen these increases across the board in Greater Manchester as well as the other areas that are affected.' The new lockdown means that in nine areas of the north: It is now illegal for people who do not live together to meet in any private home or garden; But people can still go to pubs, restaurants, cafes, shops, places of worship, community centres, leisure and entertainment venues, or visitor attractions with their household or support bubble; Going to work is permissible and weddings and civil partnership ceremonies in these areas can still go ahead. No more than 30 people should attend and it must be at a Covid-safe venue; The move came amid fears Britain is heading for a second wave following a surge in infections in European countries including Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and Croatia. Mr Johnson yesterday warned of a resurgence as the UK reported the highest daily total of Covid-19 cases for more than a month. There were 846 new infections, the greatest number recorded since June 28 when there were 901. Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said: 'I ask all Greater Manchester residents - young and old alike - to protect each other by observing these new requirements' He later tweeted a list of what he 'understands' the newly imposed measures will include Announcing the new regional lockdown last night, Mr Hancock said: 'The action that we've taken across parts of northern England where we can see that increase in the number of cases is all about keeping people safe. 'What we've seen is one of the causes of this increase is households gathering together and ignoring the social distancing rules. 'So we're having to bring in firm action and say two households cannot meet indoors, because that way we can help to stop the spread of the virus. We can see a second peak coming in parts of Europe, that's why we've taken some of the action we've had to.' Which places in England now have tougher Covid-19 restrictions? The following locations have restrictions in place which are different to those set out across the whole of England. Oldham, Greater Manchester Tuesday July 28 Residents are being told they cannot have 'social visitors' to their home. People must keep two metres away from friends and family if they see them outside, avoiding hugging and shaking hands. Care homes will not relax restrictions on visiting to protect older and vulnerable people. Friday July 31 Vulnerable and elderly people who have been shielding have been asked to to continue to do so for another two weeks. Blackburn with Darwen Tuesday July 14 Five new measures were introduced for all residents; reducing the numbers allowed to visit households to two; asking residents to wear a face covering in all enclosed public spaces; encouraging people to be tested; asking people to only bump elbows rather than handshake; stepping up advice and support to small shops to keep them safe. Saturday July 25 The Department of Health said new regulations will be signed by the Health Secretary Matt Hancock to make Blackburn exempt from the national lockdown changes - the opening of indoor gyms, pools, and other sport and exercise facilities. Leicester Monday June 29 People were asked to continue to follow stricter lockdown restrictions for at least two weeks in a 'local lockdown'. Non-essential shops were asked to close after re-opening on June 15. The city's bars, restaurants and hairdressers did not open on July 4 as planned. Thursday July 16 Health Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock announced that lockdown measures in Leicester City had to stay in place for another two weeks. It meant the measures introduced in the rest of the England to open the hospitality sector would not apply in Leicester. Saturday July 18 Additional lockdown restrictions ended in Charnwood and Blaby on 18 July. These areas have returned to national social distancing guidelines. In Leicester City, and the Borough of Oadby and Wigston, non-essential shops, schools and educational settings can now reopen. Single-adult households can still form a support bubble with one other household. People are still able to meet in a group of up to six and only outdoors, provided they follow strict social distancing. Luton Thursday July 23 All residents have been urged to keep a two metre distance from people from outside their household 'at all times'. Where this is not possible, a face mask must be worn in 'all enclosed public spaces'. Residents have been told to not make social visits to other people's homes or private gardens. If meeting up with others socially, they must do so outside in an open space or park. Large group meetings should not exceed a maximum of six people (unless they live in the same house) Friday July 31 Luton was removed as an area of intervention, meaning that indoor gyms, swimming pools and fitness studios that had to remain closed will be allowed to open from the week commencing August 3. Those who have been shielding have been asked to continue to do so until 17 August, but with slightly changed guidelines that will be told to them by letter or on the phone. Advertisement Shadow business minister Lucy Powell described the way in which the Government announced the new coronavirus restrictions on parts of northern England as a 'disaster'. Speaking on Times Radio, the MP for Manchester Central said: 'I mean announcing them two hours before they come into effect is a bit of a bolt out of the blue. 'With no one around to be able to answer some of the basic questions, I really think is not the way to build confidence and to take people with you and maximise compliance with these steps.' She said she was 'none of the wiser' about the data that has led to widespread restrictions on parts of northern England, including in her own constituency. 'I follow the data extremely closely as a Member of Parliament and I'm still none the wiser about what the data is that has generated this action so swiftly across such a broad area', she said. 'If we had a much better track and trace system in place we'd be able to see much more clearly some of the localised nature or where these transmissions are actually occurring, and take action more strongly in a more localised fashion rather than across such a broad area. 'We are still getting less than 50% of tests back within 24 hours and frankly that is just not good enough.' 'There's a huge number of questions here and it's not clear to me what the data is that is sowing such significant change over the last few days that such widespread measures are necessary, and I think it's something that I should know'. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer criticised ministers for making the announcement at just before 10pm and on social media. He said: 'Announcing measures affecting potentially millions of people late at night on Twitter is a new low for the Government's communications during this crisis.' Matt Hancock was grilled on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Friday morning about the latest restrictions in the North West and the decision to announce them at the eleventh hour last night. Mr Hancock defended the move, saying: 'If the Labour leadership in London doesn't think that people across the north of England can follow social distancing rules when they're announced, then they're wrong. 'People are very largely following the rules as we are bringing hem in and we do have to make changes because we're trying to tackle a virus that spreads through social contact. 'It's one of the sad things about this virus, that it thrives on exactly the sort of social contact that we all love and that makes life worth living.' Asked if the spikes in cases were being triggered because people were confused about what they can and can't do following the easing of lockdown, Mr Hancock appeared to conceded that the rules had become ambigious. He said: 'Well we are bringing in more advertising to set out exactly what people need to do and make clear that the basics are still incredibly important - washing your hands, the use of face coverings and social distancing - and if you get symptoms you must get a test.' The health secretary said the Government has not closed pubs or recommended people in the North West to start working from home again because the data showed the 'spread was happening between households visiting each other and people visiting their family and friends'. Mr Hancock added: 'One of the features of this pandemic is that, in Government, we've had to take decisions swiftly and then announce them swiftly so people know about them. 'We've done this with the local authorities, with officials of public health on the ground and talking to them about how we do it.' There was further concern that the restrictions which affect areas with large Muslim populations were announced hours before the celebration of Eid al-Adha began. Many compared it to cancelling Christmas at 10pm on Christmas Eve. Probed about whether last night's late hasty announcement was made to block Eid celebrations, Mr Hancock said 'no'. He added: 'My heart goes out to the Muslim communities in these areas and I know how important Eid celebrations are. 'I'm very grateful to the local Muslim leaders, in fact across the country, who've been working so hard to find a way to have Covid-secure celebrations, for instance celebrating Eid in parks where there's more space available, and of course outdoors is safer than indoors.' The health secretary was then asked why meeting friends and families in outdoor gardens was being banned, to which he said: 'Parks and outdoor public spaces are the safest option because for many people to go to a garden you have to go through a house and then you get more complicated rules. I think it's just a human tendency that when you're in your own home you do get closer.' The lockdown covers a much greater area than Leicester's, which was imposed on June 29 and will be eased from Monday. Pubs, cafes, bars and restaurants will reopen in the locked-down city from August 3, Labour MP Liz Kendall announced last night. People will also be permitted to go on holiday with their own household, but leisure centres, gyms and pools will remain closed. Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, urged locals to adhere to the new rules. He said: 'Over recent days, there has been a marked change in the picture across Greater Manchester with regard to the spread of Covid-19. 'We have gone from a falling rate of cases in nearly all of our boroughs last week to a rising rate in nine out of 10 affecting communities across a much wider geography. 'In Rochdale, the one borough where cases have fallen, they are still too high. 'We have always said that we will remain vigilant and be ready to respond quickly should the need arise. 'In line with that approach, I have agreed with the Health Secretary that it is right to act on the precautionary principle and introduce modest measures now to bring down the rate of new infections. 'I ask all Greater Manchester residents - young and old alike - to protect each other by observing these new requirements. They will be reviewed weekly; meaning the more we stick to them, the quicker they will be removed. 'This is a place which prides itself on looking out for each other. We now need to be true to that by not acting selfishly and keeping the health of others in mind at all times.' But the timing and manner of Mr Hancock's announcement drew criticism from Labour. Sir Keir Starmer noted how when Downing Street concluded its daily briefings regarding the virus in June, ministers promised to still hold conferences for 'significant announcements.' 'It's hard to imagine what could be more significant than this,' he said. Taking to Twitter, Sir Keir added: 'No one would argue with putting in place local action to reduce the transmission of coronavirus. 'But announcing measures affecting potentially millions of people late at night on Twitter is a new low for the government's communications during this crisis. 'For all the bluster, government has failed to deliver a functioning track and trace system that would spot local flare ups like these. 'The people of Greater Manchester now need urgent clarity and explanation from the government - and there must be proper support for those businesses and people affected by any lockdown.' Labour MP for Tottenham David Lammy added: 'The Government's shambolic announcement of local lockdown measures on Twitter tonight is the result of its total failure to deliver the functioning track and trace system it promised the country. 'Boris Johnson is asleep at the wheel.' First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon said the decision was the 'right' one. By the end of May, England had seen the highest overall relative excess mortality out of 21 European countries compared by the Office for National Statistics. But the hardest hit nations were Italy and Spain which suffered the largest spikes She tweeted: 'The UK government is right to act quickly if they think the situation warrants it. 'But this is a sharp reminder that the threat of this virus is still very real. Please abide by the all FACTS advice and stay safe.' Mr Johnson had yesterday urged the UK not to 'delude' itself into thinking the pandemic was over as he warned of up to 30 places where outbreaks were 'bubbling up'. On a visit to North Yorkshire, Mr Johnson said there would be 'real consequences' that would put the economic recovery in jeopardy if the virus was allowed to make a 'damaging' comeback. His cautious message came as Mr Hancock warned there was a 'second wave rolling across Europe' and the country must 'do everything in our power to stop it reaching our shores'. Challenged on whether his remarks were risking hysteria at a time when infection levels in the UK are still significantly down from their peak, Mr Hancock told Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm the Health Secretary in the middle of a global pandemic, so you'll excuse me for being concerned about the health of the British people and that is absolutely at the front of my mind.' Ministers were yesterday warned not to fuel hysteria over a resurgence in the virus, with Labour MP Chris Bryant saying: 'It makes me so angry that the Government are so loose with their language. There isn't a second wave rolling out across Europe.' Mr Johnson is also coming under pressure from within his own party not to panic over the rise in infection rates. The Province is launching a third-party review of York Region Childrens Aid Society in response to what it called troubling allegations of racism, bullying and harassment. The Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services issued a press release and directive Friday, calling for a review of the agencys workplace culture, processes and work on race and equity. Our government has no tolerance for racism, discrimination, bullying, and harassment of any kind, said Jill Dunlop, associate minister of Childrens and Womens Issues, in a release. The allegations are troubling and we do not take this matter lightly. Officials at the York Childrens Aid Society could not immediately be reached for comment. The directive, which will come into effect on Friday, orders the CAS, which is responsible for children in care in all of York Region, to co-operate in a review which will include an assessment of workplace culture, including leadership, alleged bullying of harassment and staff, and the diversity and inclusivity of the workplace environment, assessment of human resources policies and procedures, and accommodation policies. The CAS will also be required to provide the ministry with a work plan to implement the One Vision One Voice protocols, which were developed through extensive community consultation in 2015 to help child welfare agencies provide more culturally sensitive services to African Canadian children in care. Minister Dunlop said the ministry will take further action once the final report of the operational review is made public. 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. At the time when Congress party is facing a spirited internal rebellion from the young leaders against the old guards, a former cabinet minister of Kamal Nath government has taken a pot shot at party seniors. Umang Singhar who was in the limelight for his ugly public spat with the senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh last year, had fired a fiery tweet on the occasion of Eid-ul-Adha on Saturday. Congress party has a history of numerous sacrifices right from the freedom struggle to till date including those from leaders, party workers and Nehru-Gandhi family members but certain people are busy sacrificing countrys oldest party and youth leadership for personal interest, Singhar tweeted on Saturday. Singhar, the nephew of former Madhya Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Jamuna Devi, also tagged former AICC president Rahul Gandhi in the tweet, directing the salvo at the Congress leader. The Congress has been seeing a meltdown with young leaders confronting the party veterans over varius issues even as the party is losing strength nationally. One of the loyalists of Rahul Gandhi, Rajiv Satav had a spat with senior party leaders who were ministers in UPAII, during a video meeting of party MPs organised by Sonia Gandhi on Friday. Satav was of the view that these former ministers should also take the blame for partys shrinking base post 2014. In March, the party lost Jyotiraditya Scindia to BJP that also subsequently brought down the Kamal Nath government, thus reinstating the BJP led by Shivraj Singh Chouhan. In Rajasthan, the party has been facing the heat where former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot is engaged in a riveting battle with partyman and state Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. Singhar has had a public feud with party veteran Digvijaya Singh whom he had accused of blackmailing his own government for personal gains. Singhar had written a letter to AICC then interim president Sonia Gandhi accusing Singh of trying to establish himself as a power centre in Madhya Pradesh. However, as the feud had intensified, party high command had intervened into the matter. Scindia too had backed Singhar against Digvijaya Singh. Supporters of the state Congress working president Jitu Patwari have also been promoting Singhar as the leader of the state unit in future. His posters had appeared on and off on various social media handles along with those of Digvijayas son Jaivardhan and Kamal Naths son Nakul Nath. Party sources, however had blamed the opposition BJP for it. Islamabad, Aug 1 : Pakistan President Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday urged the nation to strictly observe precautionary measures on the occasion of Eid al-Adha in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. In his message, President Alvi urged people to help the needy as the coronavirus pandemic had negatively affected the economy, The Express Tribune reported. Prime Minister Khan, in his message, said the pandemic had become a challenge for humanity and the entire world is faced with a critical situation. He added that the people should strictly adhere to the SOPs in place and the government is utilising all its capabilities to control the epidemic in the country. As of Saturday, the number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan stood at 278,914, with 5,968 deaths. August 01 : TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, which has been banned in India recently, is also facing scrutiny from the Donald Trump administration. As President Donald Trump considers taking action against TikTok, and bans the app in the US, the company is at the verge of being forced to cut itself off its parent company, ByteDance. Taking advantage of the current situation in the US, Microsoft is in talks with ByteDance to acquire TikTok's US operations, reports Reuters. If everything goes well, and Microsoft succeeds in acquiring TikToks US operations, it will help in the companys advertising business. Recently, Microsoft revealed that its search ads sales grew by 1 percent to $7.7 billion over last year. However, the growth becomes flat when it excludes fees that the company pays to its partner websites and apps. Meanwhile, Trump would take the final call on TikTok after a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a government panel that has been examining ByteDances 2017 purchase of Musical.ly. It is reported that the app has morphed to become TikTok. It is also reported that the committee is set to ask ByteDance to divest TikTok, while the government is in negotiations over the terms of the separation. White House believes that TikTok may pose a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership. Earlier, Fox Business Network had reported Microsofts interest in buying the app. Meanwhile, TikTok has denied accusations that it supplies user data to China even though ByteDance is based there. ByteDance has also made organizational changes to satisfy US authorities as TikTok now has a US-based chief executive officer. New Delhi Hindu Group director and journalist, N Ram, along with journalist and former Union minister Arun Shourie and advocate Prashant Bhushan moved the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the validity of section 2(c)(i) of the Contempt of Courts Act which criminalises publication of any matter that could scandalise or lower the authority of courts. The petitioners contended that the provision is violative of freedom of speech under Article 19 of the Constitution and effectively gags discourse on matters of public importance. It violates right to free speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a). It is unconstitutional as it is incompatible with preambular values and basic features of the constitution, the plea said. The Supreme Court had recently invoked the provision to issue notice to Bhushan for his tweets against Chief Justice of India, SA Bobde and the Supreme Court. A three- judge bench headed by justice Arun Mishra had issued notice to Bhushan in the case on July 22. By criminalising criticism of court in sweeping and absolute terms, the provision raises a prior restraint on speech on matters of public and political importance, it was submitted. The offences of scandalizing the court is rooted in colonial assumptions and objects and have no place in legal orders committed to democratic constitutionalism, the petition said. The Contempt of Court provides for two kinds of contempt civil contempt and criminal contempt. Civil contempt is defined under section 2(b) as wilful disobedience to any judgment, order or direction of a court or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court. Section 2(c) deals with criminal contempt and attempts to punish publication of any material or commission of any act against courts. This provision has three sub-clauses which explain when such a publication or act could amount to criminal contempt. First, if such publication or act scandalises or lowers the authority of any court (sub clause i), second, if it prejudices or interferes with any judicial proceeding (sub-clause ii) and third, if it interferes with or obstructs administration of justice (sub-clause iii). The petitioners have challenged only sub-clause (i) which criminalises any publication or act on the ground that it scandalizes or lowers the authority of the court. The provision, it was contended, has an extremely wide import and is incapable of objective interpretation. For example, a mere interrogation by a traffic constable about the red beacon on the hood of a judges car was held to be contempt on the ground of scandalizing the court, the petition highlighted. It was argued that the provision uses vague terminology whose scope and limits are impossible to demarcate. In particular the terminology scandalizes or tends to scandalize invites subjective and greatly differing readings and applications. Thus, it violates Article 14 which demands equal treatment and non-arbitrariness, the plea added. Govt Introduces Regulations to Make Face Coverings Compulsory in Certain Circumstances The Chief Minister this morning announced that the Government would legislate for the use of face coverings in certain circumstances, as advised by the Director of Public Health. Today the Minister for Civil Contingencies, Samantha Sacramento MP, has published regulations introducing requirements for the mandatory wearing of face masks in certain spaces such as on public transport, at hair and beauty salons, in restaurants including terraces, and in retail shops. Although it was already mandatory for employees to wear masks in many of these establishments where social distancing could not be maintained as directed in their permits for operation, concerns over the spread of the virus and a lack of compliance with the conditions in permits issued to some businesses has led to these new regulations. The rules on masks have not changed - they have just been made mandatory by law. All employees working in retail shops, restaurants, and in hair and beauty salons will now have to wear a mask at all times, except in certain limited circumstances, such as during breaks for meals, or where it is essential to remove a mask to avoid injury. Previously, business owners were liable where employees failed to wear a mask as necessary; under the new regulations an employee who does not wear a mask as required by the legislation will be committing an offence. In addition, masks must be worn by everyone using or working in a public service vehicle, which includes buses and taxis. There are some limited exceptions, such as where an individual is unable to wear a mask because of any physical or mental illness or disability, or in certain emergency situations. Children under the age of 11 travelling in a public service vehicle do not have to wear a mask. The new regulations allow officers of the Royal Gibraltar Police and Environmental Health Officers to issue on the spot fines of 100 to any employee or business owner breaching the regulations. HMGoG says it continues to recommend the use of masks by any person inside establishments if the rules of social distancing cannot be observed and may extend compulsory mask use in the near future if necessary. The eastern hemlock is not one of those ubiquitous, celebrity trees such as the white oak or the white pine. Throughout much of its range from northern Alabama up to New Brunswick, Canada, and Minnesota the hemlock has lurked mainly in dark mountain valleys, where the cool, moist climate favored it over competitors. In northern states and Canada, it mixed with sugar maple, beech and other cold-hardy forest dwellers. Still, the tree has inspired naturalists and writers from Henry David Thoreau to Robert Frost, who took solace from snow falling from a hemlock. Andrew Washington stands outside his Wynnefield Heights home. He, like so many others, has been struggling financially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more Andrew Washington, 64, is not used to relying on others. Hes worked for more than three decades as a data analyst and was an auditor for SEPTA before he was laid off in April because of the coronavirus pandemic. His unemployment payments have arrived sporadically, and he doesnt want to ask his family and friends for help. He was counting on the $600 in federal pandemic unemployment compensation to pay his mortgage, car insurance, credit cards, and late bills. Im now pulling my hair out. I havent been able to sleep. I cant eat. I cant think, the Wynnefield Heights man said. Youre just worried about your situation." The $600 per week that kept many jobless Americans afloat officially expired Friday. With the Trump administration and Congress deadlocked over whether to extend it, untold millions of Americans may be at risk of falling behind on bills, going hungry, even losing their homes. The already struggling economy faces even more peril without the pandemic payments, experts warn. Companies continue to lay off workers at high levels. With the loss of income likely to slow consumer spending, more layoffs are likely. These folks are very hard-pressed and if they dont get help, if they dont think the governments got their back, theyre gonna go into panic mode, said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moodys. Even people who are employed, who think they might lose their job, will go into panic mode because theyre fearful they wont get help should they need it. READ MORE: The $600 in extra coronavirus unemployment benefits expires today. Heres what to do now. Congressional Democrats want to extend the full $600 enhanced unemployment benefit, while Republicans argue that amount is too much, noting some have earned more on unemployment than they did on the job. President Donald Trump has signaled that he supports a temporary extension of the $600 benefit, undercutting his GOP allies, according to the Associated Press. The end of the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation could affect hundreds of thousands of people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey who received billions of dollars in aid from the program. About 795,000 New Jersey workers were receiving the extra $600 in federal help as of July 11, according to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry said last week that it cant provide an exact number of recipients, but said the majority of the 3.3 million people who applied for unemployment assistance may have been eligible for the $600 payments. Since mid-March, Pennsylvania has distributed $14.5 billion under the program, while New Jersey paid out more than $7.5 billion in the federal benefit as of last week. State unemployment insurance will continue, but it is far less than the federal benefit. Although the federal program expired Friday, both state agencies said workers who are owed unemployment benefits for previous weeks will still get the extra $600 for those weeks, too. More than 200 Pennsylvania workers registered for a virtual rally last week demanding an extension of pandemic relief. Cecily Harwitt, an organizing director at One PA, a statewide racial and economic justice advocacy group, said its rare to see Pennsylvanians from cities, suburbs, and rural areas organize together. But those who signed up to attend were from more than 35 counties across the state. That is very telling how universal this problem is, Harwitt said. Philadelphia had an eviction crisis even before the pandemic hit. I am thinking about how many more evictions we will be looking at if the $600 are cut. READ MORE: About 90,000 Pennsylvania workers are still waiting for answers about their unemployment claims The expiration of the unemployment help, created by Congress in March as part of a $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package, came a day after the federal government reported that the U.S. economy shrank at a record-breaking 32.9% annual rate from April through June. Meanwhile, another 1.4 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment last week, including 35,000 in Pennsylvania and 27,000 in New Jersey. It was the second straight week that the number of new unemployment claims increased. The ripple effect of completely cutting off the extra unemployment aid could cost the economy 1.1 million jobs by years end, Zandi said, while slashing the weekly benefit to $200 would still cost nearly 1 million jobs. [Unemployment insurance] beneficiaries spend every penny of the support very quickly on necessities that generate other economic activity and jobs, he said. Observers expect elected officials to ultimately extend some level of extra unemployment aid. In addition to harming consumers and the economy, failure to act likely has political consequences with the November elections not far away. But allowing the lapse may already have caused damage. When you combine the surge in the virus with the stupidity in Washington and the massive divisions in the nation, it is hard to be optimistic about the economy achieving a sustained, rapid recovery, Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economics in Bucks County, wrote on his blog Friday. READ MORE: Millions more Americans filed jobless claims and Pa. is burning through unemployment cash. That could mean higher taxes later. Without the pandemic relief, Sandra Wade worries she may have to risk her health. Wade, 53, is a breast cancer survivor, a fact that could put her at greater risk from the virus. And she cant work at home, safely distanced from others. She is a model, actress, and filmmaker, and founder of the company On Demand Models, for models over 35. You know how it is in the gig economy, everything just started to shut down for me, she said of her work options as the coronavirus spread in Philadelphia. I was really worried about losing my home, she said. The extra $600 allowed me to keep my home and still get my bills paid. The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the citys push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org. BP is being widely tipped to slash its 6.7billion dividend this week. The FTSE 100-listed oil giant, which is run by Bernard Looney, is scheduled to unveil half-year figures on Tuesday. City analysts said BP could cut or shelve its payout alongside the figures, which have been forecast to show a $6.8billion (5.2billion) loss in the second quarter of this year. City analysts said BP could cut or shelve its payout alongside its half year figures on Tuesday Colin Smith, an analyst at Panmure Gordon, said: 'We now expect BP to cut its dividend... with the second quarter results.' Analysts at Quest, the cash flow specialist division of Canaccord Genuity, have also placed BP on its 'dividend at risk' list. BP generates the largest dividend payments amongst the FTSE 100 blue chip stocks. Both private investors and big City pension funds and institutions would be upset by the cut. Small shareholders in particular rely on companies such as BP for income in retirement especially as bank savings accounts now generate almost zero returns. The potential reduction of BP's dividend comes after Royal Dutch Shell cut its payout for the first time since the Second World War. Shell's dividend was slashed by 66 per cent from $15billion last year to $5billion this year. The move came after the oil price crashed following a massive row between Saudi Arabia and Russia. At one point in April, the oil price in the US fell below zero for the first time in history. Ben van Beurden, Shell's chief executive, said the 'monumental' decision to reset the company's dividend earlier this year was difficult but necessary to preserve the financial resilience of the company against the crisis of 'uncertainty'. BP, though, opted not to cut its dividend, which at the time surprised many City analysts and investors. Analysts expect BP will next week unveil a $6.8billion loss for the second quarter. During the same period last year, it generated a $2.8billion profit. Experts also expect BP to reveal that it will take between $13billion and $17.5billion of non-cash charges following financial blows and exploration write-offs. The latter could total between $8billion and $10billion. Aside from BP, other FTSE 100 dividends could be at risk this week. Diageo, the Johnny Walker to Smirnoff drinks giant, is also scheduled to announce full-year results which may include a cut in its shareholder payout. Royal Dutch Shell cut its payout for the first time since the Second World War The company will come under pressure to reduce the dividend after the closure of pubs and hospitality venues for months due to lockdown hammered its sales. Last year, Diageo handed shareholders 1.6billion in dividends. The total amount of dividends paid out by British firms is expected to halve this year as companies look to preserve cash. Some of the most reliable dividend payers including BT and HSBC have slashed their payouts. Research by investment firm Octopus Investments found many income-focused fund managers have already removed BP from their portfolios over fears for the dividend. The proportion of equity income funds that include BP dived from 61 per cent in January to 43 per cent by the end of May. Russia Opens Criminal Case Against Opposition Politician Over Anti-Kremlin Rallies By RFE/RL's Russian Service July 31, 2020 MOSCOW -- Russian authorities have opened a criminal case against Yulia Galymina, an opposition Moscow city councillor and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, over her involvement in anti-Kremlin rallies. Galyamina repeatedly violated rules on public assembly when she organized and staged unsanctioned protests, rallies, and pickets, the Investigative Committee said on July 31. If found guilty, she could face up to five years in prison and a ban from running for office for up to five years. Galyamina told RFE/RL that the case had been launched to "pressure" her. Amnesty International condemned the case as "appalling and reprehensible," saying it was aimed at "silencing a major dissenting voice and threatening to ban her political activities." Demonstrations of more than one person require advance consent from the Russian authorities. Galyamina has been involved in a campaign against what she described as Putin's illegal plans to remain in power. The campaign planned a peaceful rally on July 15 in central Moscow against constitutional reforms that gave Putin the option to remain in power for another 16 years. Dozens of people were detained by police during the protest. Law enforcement officials also searched the homes of Galyamina and other opposition activists ahead of the demonstration. Galyamina is accused of participating in several other peaceful rallies, including protests against electoral violations in Moscow in the summer of 2019. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russiacriminal-case -opposition-politician-galyamina-anti -kremlin-rallies/30759389.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 Two years ago I heard some remarkable comments by a senator in Nebraska who was addressing how as a culture, America has become socially disconnected. He explained that we are becoming a society lacking the social rootedness of earlier times due to the fast-paced, ever-shifting way we now live. Sen. Ben Sasses book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal, goes far deeper into the problems of social isolation than its title conveys. The message of the book focuses on the urgency to build relationship and connection in ways that result in grounding us as members in community. As a person who offers peer support to individuals with mental health challenges, I so much appreciate his message. In my years at GreenTree Peer Center I have seen how the participation of people in relationships that validate them as individuals with unique qualities and potential has been so healing and so beneficial for their mental and their physical health. It is my firm belief that through real connection and shared experiences, we increase the relatability, the common ground we have, together. For many readers, this relatability is something taken for granted. Yet for our elderly and for the many groups of socially marginalized individuals in our own community, disconnection is dangerously real. While testing for COVID-19 has ramped up since early March when the first positive case of the disease was reported in Connecticut those who have taken the nasal swabs to find out if they have the coronavirus can still encounter long wait times for results. Maura Esposito experienced a lag earlier this month when she went to MidState Medical Center in Meriden to get tested. I got tested on the 11th. I didnt get my results back until the 20th, Esposito said. She tested negative for COVID-19. Esposito is director of the Chesprocott Health District, which covers Cheshire, Wolcott and Prospect. While Esposito waited for her results, she self-quarantined even keeping away from other family members within her own household. She retreated to an area of their house with a bathroom nearby and took a TV. No one was allowed to come near me, Esposito said. Meanwhile, she had to call Hartford Healthcare, MidStates owner, to learn her results. Local health officials such as Esposito say such lags hamper their ability to contain the virus through contact tracing. Quicker turnarounds would also enable local health directors to advise other local leaders like school superintendents planning for the reopening of schools of any coronavirus spread. As of Friday, 711,102 tests for COVID-19 had been conducted across Connecticut, with 48,776 positive cases confirmed, according to the state Department of Public Health. Out of 25,233 recently-completed tests, 544, or just over 2 percent, were confirmed positive, according to DPH figures. Getting the nasal swab, though uncomfortable for some, is relatively quick and not all that painful, Esposito said. Testing site operators do advise residents to book appointments ahead of time, and if possible, to bring notes from their physicians. Not having a doctors note does not mean that you will be denied testing. Josh Geballe serves as chief operating officer in Gov. Ned Lamonts administration and is spearheading the states COVID-19 response. Geballe acknowledged the lags for out-of-state laboratory results. But he noted, for the labs with which Connecticut contracts, turnaround times have been much quicker: within 48 hours. The state has been monitoring those turnaround times. The labs that the state has on contract continue to perform very well, Geballe said. Those labs include Jackson Laboratory in Farmington, Yale New Haven Hospital, Genesis Diagnotics in Montville and Sema4 in Stamford. Meanwhile national labs, like Quest Diagnostics, have backlogs in large part because they have prioritized other regions of the U.S. that are experiencing coronavirus spikes. In Connecticut, the virus appeared to have peaked in late April when more than 1,900 patients were hospitalized. As of Friday, 71 patients were hospitalized. Statewide, there are 169 sites where residents can have their nasal samples collected for testing. Seven of those sites are in the Meriden area. Whether those samples are tested at in-state laboratories or tested out-of-state varies. Three sites are in Meriden, two in Southington and two in Cheshire. No locations for sample collection are listed in Wallingford. Stephen Civitelli, Wallingfords health director who also serves as president of the statewide Connecticut Association of Health Directors, attributed the local lags in test results to increased demands in other parts of the country where cases continue to climb. There is still a limited amount testing available from our national labs, Civitelli said. Dr. James Cardon, executive vice president and chief clinical integration officer for Hartford HealthCare, explained in a written statement that, because of the high demand for tests, results are turned around based on priority. Overall, statewide reports show COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continually declining in Connecticut. Still, Civitelli urged residents to continue to follow health recommendations. I think if we remain vigilant, if we continue working on protocols that we have, keep wearing our masks, and keep cleaning to the best of our ability, hopefully we can limit it, Civitelli said. And do everything that we can to try to control it, short of a pharmaceutical intervention. In the meantime, he urges everyone to adhere to existing public health guidelines. We cant take our eye off this. We have to stay on it, to make sure it doesnt become what it was back in March and April, to the best that we can, Civitelli said. Boeing donated $500,000 to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville in a gift that pushes the museum to the brink of meeting its fundraising goal to stay in business. Devastated by a drop in revenue because of the novel coronavirus, the rocket center launched a fundraiser on Tuesday to raise at least $1.5 million. The rocket center announced the Boeing donation on Friday afternoon. The fundraiser has now topped $1.1 million in four days. I am awed and grateful for the generous support from Boeing for this vital campaign, rocket center CEO and Executive Director Louie Ramirez said in the announcement. This has been a devastating season for the Rocket Center and Space Camp, but our family of supporters have given us hope for the future. Boeing has been a longtime and important supporter of the work we do. They understand the role the Rocket Center has in sharing the work of Huntsvilles aerospace community and in Space Camps unique role in inspiring its future work force. We thank them for this clear and profound statement of support. In a statement, Boeing described the rocket center as a cherished institution. We understand the unprecedented economic hardship the COVID-19 pandemic has caused educational institutions all across the country, John Shannon, Vice President & Program Manager for Space Launch Systems at Boeing, said in the announcement. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is a cherished institution that has inspired generations of future scientists, engineers, pilots and even astronauts many of whom now call Boeing home. With todays investment, we proudly stand alongside the Center throughout this pandemic and beyond as we work towards our shared goal of making Space Camp an even better, brighter, more inclusive experience for our future innovators. The rocket center closed in mid-March when cases first began appearing in Alabama and did not reopen until late June missing much of a window that is the time of year when almost half of its revenue comes in. Even in reopening, Space Camp and museum attendance was dramatically scaled back to accommodate social distancing requirements. On Thursday, the rocket center announced that it had received donations within the first two days from people in all 50 states as well Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Donations can be made at SaveSpaceCamp.com. A Polk County man was arrested after police say he attempted to kidnap female employees at two drive-thru coffee stands, Salem Police detectives said Saturday. Police said Christopher Santibanez, 39, of Independence, came to two different coffee stands in Salem around 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. July 25. In both instances, he allegedly approached the women, displayed a handgun and demanded the employee leave with him. Both times, the employees were able to get away from Santibanez and call police. The Human Bean, another nearby drive-thru coffee shop, reported a man attempting to get into their business the same day. Police believe it was the same man. They identified him using community tips, photographs and surveillance video. Santibanez was booked into Marion County Correctional Facility on the preliminary charges of robbery, kidnapping and felon in possession, police said. --Alex Hardgrave | ahardgrave@oregonian.com | @a_hardgrave Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. The Bihar police, who are in Mumbai to investigate an abetment to suicide case related to the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, said they were keeping a watch on his friend and actress Rhea Chakraborty. The four-member Bihar police team arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday to probe the abetment to suicide case registered against Chakraborty and others in Patna. On Saturday the team visited the Bandra police station in connection with the investigation. When asked whether Chakraborty would be interrogated, an official of the Bihar police said, It is not required as of now. But she is under our watch. Another member of the visiting team said they have sent notice to Chakraborty under CrPC sections, asking her to cooperate with the police in the probe. He also said that the Mumbai police was cooperating with them in the investigation of the case. Krishna Kumar Singh (74), Rajputs father, had lodged a complaint against Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, for alleged abetment to suicide, in Patna on Tuesday. The case was registered under various IPC sections including 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 306 (abetment of suicide). Singh has accused Chakraborty, a budding TV and film actor, of having befriended his son in May 2019 with the intention of furthering her own career. Rajput was found hanging in his suburban Bandra apartment on June 14. Meanwhile, a Mumbai police official said that the visiting team has recorded the statements of six persons as part of the probe. Till now, the police team from Bihar has met the late actors friends, colleagues and relatives. They have recorded the statements of six persons- Rajputs sister, who stays in Versova, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, a cook, his friends and colleagues, the official said. The police team is also likely to question the members of Rajputs staff, he said. They gathered information about Rajputs various bank accounts and also visited the banks to look into the financial transactions, he said. The visiting team had on Friday visited the Crime Branch office to submit an application seeking assistance from the Mumbai police in probing the case. As a large number of media persons gathered at the spot, the Andheri police personnel took the officers of the Bihar police in their vehicle for safety. A video of the Bihar police team being taken into the vehicle surfaced on social media with the netizens criticising the city police for their alleged mismanagement. When asked about it, the official said, The issue was about the safety of the Bihar police personnel. The city police put the team members inside a van and dropped them at a safe place. This is a time for reckoning. If ever there was one. This past week, House Democrats put forth the first-ever bill to repeal the Helms Amendment, which prevents U.S. taxpayers from being forced to fund abortions overseas. The House Democrats characterized the amendment as, you guessed it, deeply rooted in racism. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) teamed up to introduce the bill, known as the Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act of 2020, the text of which also touts the benefits to transgenders and people with uteruses in general. Schakowsky released a statement saying, The Helms Amendment is a policy deeply rooted in racism. It imposes our arbitrary and medically unnecessary abortion restrictions on international communities, allowing the United States to control the health care and bodily autonomy of billions of Black and brown people around the world. That, of course, is a bald-faced liein several respects. Abortion restrictions are neither deeply rooted in racism nor arbitrary. Quite the contrary. The Helms Amendment does not impose abortion restrictionsor anything elseon international communities or billions of Black and brown people around the world. They are free to do as they please. It restricts our efforts to aid and abet the deaths of countless innocent Black and brown people around the world while protecting the consciences of a great many Americans, 75 percent of whom say they oppose using tax dollars to support abortion in other countries. Democrats either dont care or dont believe they will be held accountable for their actions. Also this past week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D- Calif.) said that China is "growing into a respectable nation" and urged folks to hold the nation blameless for the coronavirus pandemic. Several other prominent Democrats, Joe Biden included, seem to have fondness forand connections to-- China and its ruling Communist Party. This despite knowing that the nation deliberately covered up the fact that the coronavirus had been unleashed on the world. And that it routinely engages in intellectual-property theft on our soil, is attempting to achieve total dominance in the South China Sea, threatens its neighbors, has violated its agreement with Britain and stolen Hong Kongs independence while beating up thousands of innocent protestersand has imprisoned more than a million Muslim Uighurs and thousands of Falun Gong members. Oh, and has been harvesting their internal organs, too. Hamid Sabi, a lawyer representing the China Tribunal, an independent panel instituted to investigate Chinese organ harvesting, recently told the United Nations Human Rights Council that Forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, including the religious minorities of Falun Gong and Uighurs, has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale. The Tribunals final report on the issue determined that the Chinese government sanctioned the cutting open of victims bodies while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale. China tacitly admitted to the practice by claiming it ceased using organs from executed prisoners in 2015. Sabi and the Tribunal have urged the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate the allegations. Unfortunately, the U.N.H.R.C. has been too busy lately denouncing the United States for its tentative attempts to stop rioters from burning down Portland and many other of its major cities to worry about little things like the mass incarceration and organ harvesting of people the Chinese Communist Party deems deplorable. Liz Throssell, a U.N. human rights spokeswoman, recently stated at a Geneva news briefing, There have been reports that peaceful protesters have been detained by unidentified police officers and that is a worry because it may place those detained outside the protection of the law and may give rise to arbitrary detention and other human rights violations. She added, The authorities should ensure that federal and local security forces deployed are properly and clearly identified and would use force only when necessary, proportionately and in accordance with international standards. To Democrats, preventing the needless death of thousands of Black and brown babies with the financial assistance of the United States is racist. And wrong. To Democrats, the NBA, tech giants, and assorted other leftists and progressives, the United States is a despicable place of systemic racism. Trumps tweets are beyond the pale, the Washington Redskins team name so hurtful it must be replaced. But Chinas plucking of an organ or two from tens of thousands of people from marginalized groups, while they are still aliveat least for a few more seconds, minutes or hoursis no big deal, no big whoop, no problem. Why so uptight? There are only two possible reasons for Democrats positions on these issues: they are mentally ill or truly, unadulteratedly, evil. This is a time for reckoning. Lets hope the reckoning occurs this November 3rd. If it does not, it may be too late. And a different kind of reckoning may await us all. Image credit: Max Pixel public domain Bambaru Avith in Cannes Classics By Susitha Fernando Digitally restored film among 25 world classics View(s): View(s): Sri Lankas 1978 auteur film Bambaru Avith (The Wasps Are Here) directed by Dr. Dharmasena Pathiraja has been selected as one of the 25 Classics in the world at the renowned Cannes Film Festival in France. The sole-surviving 35mm film positive of the film has undergone 4K film and sound restoration carried out by LImmagine Ritrovata and it is to be featured this years Cannes Classics 2020. Presented by Asian Film Archive, the raw and restored 4K scans, a new 35mm picture and sound negatives, and a new positive print of the restored version of the film have been produced and are preserved by the Archives. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the Festival de Cannes created Cannes Classics, a selection allowing to display the work of valorization of heritage cinema carried out by production companies, right-owners, cinematheques or national archives from around the world. Now an essential component of the Official Selection, in a dimension to the history of cinema from which many international festivals have got inspired, Cannes Classics presents the masterpieces and rarities of the history of cinema in restored copies, festival organisers announced. Because the Festival de Cannes also provides itself with the means of achieving the mission of enchanting the relationship of todays audience with the memory of cinema, Cannes Classics sets the prestige of the biggest festival in the world at the service of rediscovered cinema, accompanying all the new exploitations of great works from the past: theatrical releases, DVDs / Blu-rays, distribution on platforms or on VOD. The programme of Cannes Classics 2020 edition consists of twenty-five feature films and seven documentaries. This years Cannes film festival which was scheduled to be held from May 12 to 23 did not take place in its original format due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the Festival de Cannes did not take place, Cannes Classics 2020 will be hosted, in whole or in part, by the festival Lumiere in Lyon from October 10-18, and by the Rencontres Cinematographiques de Cannes from November, 23 to 26, the festival announced. Interestingly the festival organisers referred to Pathirjas Bambaru Avith, as an unknown masterpiece from Sri Lanka, Among the list of 25 films are In the Mood for love by Wong Kar-wai, Friendships Death (1987, United Kingdom) by Peter Wollen, The Story of a Three-Day Pass (La Permission) (1967,France) by Melvin Van Peebles, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1977, France) by Bertrand Blier, Hester Street (1973, USA) by Joan Micklin Silver New Year Sacrifice (1956, China) by Hu Sang, La Poupee (1962, France) by Jacques Baratier, The Hourglass Sanatory (1973, Poland) by Wojciech J. Has, LAmerique insolite (America as Seen by a Frenchman) (1959,France) by Francois Reichenbach, Deveti krug (The Ninth Circle / Neuvieme cercle) (1960, Croatia) by France Stiglic, and Muhammad Ali the Greatest (1974, France) by William Klein. The selection of Bambaru Avith is a much deserving international recognition. Pathiraja follows Dr. Lester James Peries who received the same recognition for his Gam Peraliya (The changing village) in 2008. The French Embassy celebrated this event by screening the restored copy Gamperaliya in Colombo. Bambaru Avith centres on exploitation of the poor and confrontation of capitalist and Marxist influenced doctrines. Set in the coastal village of Kalpitya, a local boss exploits the fisherman until a group of leftist youths challenge him. Their representative attempts to hold a speech before the villagers but attracts little interest and the empty square is representative of futility of his effort and he departs for the city. Meanwhile a police post, the representation of authority is being set up in another part of the village. Produced by Pathiraja himself and Thilak Godamanne for Saranga Salaroo, Bambaru Avith represented Sri Lanka at 1978 Moscow International Film Festival, screened at Mostra and Los Angeles Film Festivals, won Presidential awards for the Best Film and Best Director 1979 and OCIC awards for Best Film and Best Director 1979 among others and it was named the fourth Best Film made in the first 50 years of Sri Lankan film history. Influenced by the European New Wave of the 1960s, Pathirajas gritty black-and-white dramas, took completely different route from the popular Sri Lankan films, photocopies of South Indian or North Indian-Bollywood formats. Pathirajas masterpiece, explores tradition, exploitation and the perhaps unintended consequences of capitalism through the clash between a local boss and an urban interloper in a tiny fishing village. Pathi would have been thrilled- Donald After 43 years Donald Karunaratne, Dharmasena Pathirajas closest friend and cinematographer of almost all his films, now living in California, at a place 20-minutes away from Hollywood, recalls how Pathi, (the name master filmmaker fondly called in the industry) brought the script of Bambaru Avith written in a few sheets of papers and how it was developed into a film in remote Kalpitiya. How Pathi told me about the story, went to select the location, shooting for nearly one month and how post-production was done, everything is like a film itself, says Donald. One day Pathi said his plans to shoot the film in Kalpitiya and he wanted to go there. He said we could go in the morning and come in the evening. So I borrowed my wifes grandfathers car after dropping him at his office and we went to Kalpitiya to look for locations, described Donald. On the day when we were travelling to Kalpitiya on the main Colombo-Mannar road and as we turned from Palaviya junction to get to the hand like thing in Sri Lanka map, the driver accidently knocked against the roof of a shop at the junction, said Donald with a smile. Our main and only location was Kalpitiya and we got a tremendous support from the police, Navy and the villagers. We were lodged at the Kalpitiya Rest House which had only one room and it was given to two ladies Malani Fonseka and Ruby de Mel. The only request Ruby made was to have a bathroom with a commode as she had then undergone a surgery. The rest house didnt have a bathroom with a commode and it was we who fixed the commode before we start the film, Donald said trecking along the movie making memory of Bambaru Avith. Some others slept on mats spread along the open veranda of the rest house. But most of us slept under the massive Siyambala (Tamarind) tree in front of the guest house. The film colour was not black and white but it was grey and white. I did it with a purpose; to get the dry and remote atmosphere of Kalpitiya. But many critics could not or did not understand this,Donald award winning cinematographer said. I still can remember that every morning Pathi and I used to go to the location and plan days shooting. By the time we return others were ready with their breakfast taken. Pathi would have been amazed to see that his film is in the Cannes. I am sad that he is not there to celebrate this. Who thought that he would go before me, Donald said grieving over the loss of his dear friend who passed away in 2018. I could not understand much about Pathis politics and what he talked about the working class and the bourgeoisie class,. I am so thrilled to know that this film which we started as group youngesters has gone to Cannes and got world recognition. I have no word to explain it, said Donald in tears. There was socialism at the set W. Jayasiri, actor and lyrics writer of films iconic song Udumbara Hinahenawa, described how the funds were found and the film was made. It was from 50 percent loan scheme given by the National Film Corporation (NFC). But the halfway through money was over and it was Thilak Godamanna who helped to finish the film. Making of the film was like a fairytale. It was a wonderful experience.Kalpitiya was so remote that the Rest House keepers wardrobe was the fridge at the resthouse. His clothes were packed in the fridge, Jayasiri said with a hearty smile. The song Udumnbara is considered as one of the milepost in Sri Lankan film song history. Compared to other songs it is longer than a normal song. In the film Pathi divided it to three parts; first part for the title, second part after Cyrils death and the final part at the end. After it was given for the musical interpretation, Master Premasiri Khemadasa did all the wonders. It was not one song but three in one, said Jayasiri. The production of Bambaru Avith was completely different from the production of traditional mainstream film production style. We were all equal and united. Everyone ate together, lived together and enjoyed the same facilities. But when making ordinary films at that time, stars had special facilities, main crew different facilitiesa complete capitalistic structure. But in ours was a socialist structure where everybody was equal. We thoroughly enjoyed the shooting in Kalpitiya. Now the lobsters are a luxury food but every evening we all used to enjoy hoppers with lobster sambol at Bachchas Kade (kiosk) closer to Kalpitiya beach. It was just 25 cents. Pathi never got any support from the mainline politics. The film also received step-motherly treatment. It was J. R. Jayawardenes government. When it was to be screened, there was no circuit.There were only four circuit and then Cabinet Minister Tyronne Fernando had done film Puran Appu and Mr. Fernando wanted to release his without waiting in the queue. So government specifically created a special circuit called 5th circuit to release classical films. Bambaru Awith was screened in the first circuit but it won all the awards that year, Jayasiri said with a smile. I am so thrilled that Bambaru Avith has been selected as one of the best 25 classics. There were only a few critics like L. O. de Silva, Reggie Siriwardena and Piyal Somarate who stood by Pathi. It was alternative critics who were always there for him. We couldnt finish the film and Pathi had a close friend called Ananda Basnayake, the owner of Dress Sense and his brother-in-law Thilak Godamanna of Nine Hearts came to help us to finish the film. Bambaru Avith has proved that if we do a good work, we would reap good results. This will happen even after so many years. I am sad that Pathi is not here to enjoy this international achievement. Instead, it has declined new applications for DACA, maintaining a three-year-old freeze. It has done so even though hundreds of thousands of dreamers remain eligible, some having never applied in the first place and others having turned 15, the minimum age of eligibility. And it has cut work permits for roughly 640,000 dreamers currently enrolled in DACA to last only one year instead of two. A Sinn Fein Senator has reported a spate of online trolling to gardai. Fintan Warfield has said that a torrent of homophobic and transphobic abuse he suffered on Twitter led to an in-person attack outside Leinster House last week. The Senator has called on social media networks to take action against trolling before they are forced to by law. Mr Warfield, from Dublin, is a prominent LGBT activist and a member of the Cultural and Educational Panel in the Seanad. Politicians across the political divide have shown their support for Mr Warfield on social media and have condemned the abuse he received online. Sinn Fein TDs Louise OReilly and Eoin O Broin said he is a "fierce campaigner" and "a campaigner for equality, social justice and Irish unity", respectively. Im incredibly proud to be in the same party as @fintanwarfield He is a true republican, a campaigner for equality, social justice & Irish unity. Hes also got a pretty dapper dress sense which is never a bad thing in the often drab surrounds of Leinster House. pic.twitter.com/qm1FBG45Nz Eoin O Broin (@EOBroin) July 31, 2020 Ms O'Reilly added: "These homophobic attacks wont deter him." The Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris extended his "solidarity with the Senator" and denounced the "disgusting and vile abuse directed at him". He said: "Those behind it and those who quietly stand by and refuse to condemn it are disgraceful. Shame on them." He also called on Twitter and other social media companies "to wake up and take action". Chairperson of the Green Party and Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu said: "I suggest those who have so much time to hate on Fintan because he's gay go find a hobby." One of the best reporters around had told me recently that Fintan Warfield was one of the most trolled politicians. Looking at the tweets circulating I see she was bang on the money. I suggest those who have so much time to hate on Fintan because he's gay go find a hobby. Hazel Chu (@hazechu) July 31, 2020 RISE TD Paul Murphy added: "These homophobic far-right activists are becoming increasingly emboldened to target people. We need to build a united movement to stop them." The Texas-based doctor praised by President Trump for claiming hydroxychloroquine can cure COVID-19 is doubling down on her controversial assertion On Thursday, Dr Stella Immanuel, 55, was interviewed by The Houston Chronicle outside her office in the city where she once again endorsed the experimental drug. 'We have not lost one patient yet,' Immanuel told the publication, adding that she has used hydroxychloroquine to treat over 400 people stricken with COVID-19 - including asthmatics, diabetics and the elderly. She says there have been studies that show the drug's efficacy, but believes they are being deliberately suppressed by big pharma, who stand to profit off future treatments for the illness. 'Whenever we have two or three studies that show it works, there's always studies that come out and knock it down. It's fake science. They're going to allow people to die so that they can sell vaccines and $5000 drugs. It's diabolic,' she stated. Dr Stella Immanuel, 55, doubled down on her controversial claim that hydroxychloroquine can cure COVID-19 in a new interview with The Houston Chronicle Meanwhile, Immanuel also hit headlines for claiming that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. She reiterated those beliefs to The Houston Chronicle. 'I'm a demon buster. Yes, demons sleep with people. Yes, if you pray for them they get better,' she told the newspaper. Immanuel - was born in Cameroon and did her medical training in Nigeria - also holds several other unorthodox medical opinions. She claims people are being injected with alien DNA and believes the Magic 8-Ball toy is in fact a scheme to get children used to witchcraft. Immnauel also runs a church, and infuses spirituality into her medical practice. Her Fire Power Ministries church is set up in a strip mall next door to her clinic in Houston. The church's 'beliefs' section on their website - which has now been taken down - says they are against 'unmarried couples living together, homosexuality, bestiality, polygamy, etc.,' Heavy reported. Stella Immanuel shot to fame in a video touting a discredited COVID-19 cure Donald Trump on Monday night tweeted her video, before it was removed from social media However, it's Immanuel's views on hydroxychloroquine that catapulted her into the national spotlight. On Monday, President Donald Trump and his son, Donald Jr., retweeted a video of the doctor appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress. In the video - which has since been removed by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter - she attacks 'fake doctors' who doubt the efficacy of the drug, and claimed it's a 'cure', adding 'you don't need a mask.' 'If some fake science comes out and says we've done studies and they found out that it doesn't work, I can tell you categorically it's fake science,' she said. 'I want to know who's conducted that study and who's behind it. Because there is no way I have treat 350 patients and counting and nobody is dead.' She said she has treated patients with hydroxychloroquine along with zinc, and the antibiotic zithromax. Donald Trump Jr was also impressed by her speech, noting on Twitter that it was 'a must-watch'. Immanuel preaches sermons about homosexuality, aliens, and vaccine conspiracy theories Kuwait has banned until further notice commercial flights to 31 countries it said that it regarded as high risk due to the spread of the coronavirus, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Saturday. The countries include Egypt, India, Pakistant, the Philippines, Lebanon and Sri Lanka, which all have large numbers of expatriates in Kuwait. The list also includes China, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Iraq. The ban was announced the same day Kuwait began a partial resumption of commercial flights. The authorities have said Kuwait International Airport would run at about 30% capacity from Saturday, gradually increasing in coming months. Kuwait, which has recorded nearly 67,000 coronavirus cases and more than 400 deaths, began a five-phase plan at the start of June to gradually lift restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the virus. A partial curfew remains in place. Search Keywords: Short link: Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 19:47:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Passengers walk out of Kuwait International Airport in Farwaniya Governorate, Kuwait, Aug. 1, 2020. Kuwait resumed on Saturday commercial flights at Kuwait International Airport, the country's civil aviation authorities said. (Photo by Asad/Xinhua) KUWAIT CITY, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait resumed on Saturday commercial flights at Kuwait International Airport, the country's civil aviation authorities said. Sheikh Salman Sabah Al-Salem Al-Humoud Al-Sabah, president of Kuwait's Directorate-General for Civil Aviation, said in a statement that the first day of resuming commercial flights was a success in cooperation with all governmental and non-governmental agencies operating at the airport. The Supreme Committee for restarting commercial flights has taken all necessary measures to implement the approved plan and resume operation in accordance with the required health instructions, he noted. He praised the great efforts made by the Ministry of Health, calling on all travelers and workers at the airport to adhere to health regulations and guidelines. On March 13, Kuwait suspended all commercial flights as part of the efforts to curb the rapid rise of coronavirus cases. According to Tareq Al-Mezrem, the Kuwaiti government spokesman, the government has approved a three-stage plan to resume commercial flights to and from Kuwait International Airport. The operation of the first stage will be at a maximum of 30 percent capacity. New Delhi, Aug 1 : India needs to instil fear in the minds of Communist China if it has to achieve equilibrium in the bilateral relationship, Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi has said, calling for comprehensive and aggressive change in policy on China in the backdrop of Ladakh conflict . Advocating a three-pronged shift in strategy vis-a-vis Communist China, Singhvi said New Delhi must invest in building military capability, diplomatic heft by aligning with like-minded groupings, such as Quad, and inflict economic injury to China, all to instil fear in Communist China towards its Asian neighbour. At a webinar, organised by the Law and Society Alliance, a Delhi-headquartered think-tank, and Defence Capital, a national security and strategic affairs platform, Singhvi said India and its polity should grow beyond the local party politics to usher in single-minded, focused and unified response to the China challenge. He also called for a change in the mindset of the Indian bureaucracy and diplomats for strong, deft and resolute handling of the Chinese challenge on all fronts - geopolitical, economic or military. "The need is to generate fear about India in China. Only this is going to set the equilibrium between the two giants," the three-time Congress MP said. On the military front, Singhvi said the Indian armed forces should unabashedly carry out joint military exercises with its inter-operable friends and partners. Exploring possible diplomatic options, Singhvi said India should leverage and exploit the global anti-China sentiment and the unprecedented wave of anger that had swept across nations. "Quad is a very important formation that is now being reformulated and reconfigured, and it should be taken towards consistency," he said. Strongly proposing that India should work towards leveraging its ties with Tibet and Taiwan, he said the divinity and glory of His Holiness the Dalai Lama needed to be accorded the right place that he deserved, and New Delhi must unhesitatingly enhance diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Calling for vocal, diverse and comprehensive criticism of China on issues, like the Belt and Road Initiative, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean aggression, Singhvi said China's actions were of colonial designs with a coating of economic assistance. "India's power to name and shame China has always been less understood and even less considered. I will expect India to unleash a blitzkrieg in which it should name and shame China on the global fora with forthrightness, like US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo," he said. He also supported the idea of giving more room and space in India to non-government platforms, like the Law and Society Alliance for Communist China-persecuted communities. "People like Hollywood star Richard Gere on Tibet and Dolkun Isa on Uighurs should be given their due in India. The continuance of artificial restrictions on these activities are niceties that China itself exploits. China opposes India on Kashmir and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)." "Today, China is not the problem, but the Chinese Communist Party is. More than the party, Xi Jinping is the problem," he said. World Uyghur Congress director for China Affairs Ilshat H. Kokbore, in his presentation, highlighted the human rights abuses by China on the minority Uighur community in East Turkestan. RTHK: Coronavirus surge continues in Tokyo, Okinawa The number of new coronavirus cases confirmed in Tokyo was around 472 on Saturday, a new record, NHK public television quoted Tokyo officials as saying. It was the second day in a row that the number of cases in the capital rose by more than 400. Though Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has said the city could declare its own state of emergency, the central government says there is still no need to do so nationally despite a record spike in several cities around the nation. Okinawa region has declared a state of emergency and asked people to stay home for two weeks as the popular tourist destination sees an "explosive spread" of coronavirus cases. Governor Denny Tamaki on Friday asked residents to avoid non-essential outings following a record new daily addition to the southern island's total cases, the majority of which have been detected among US forces based there. "We're seeing an explosive spread of infections. We declare a state of emergency" through August 15, Tamaki told reporters, adding hospitals were being overwhelmed by the surge. Okinawa reported 71 new coronavirus cases Friday, bringing its total to 395. US forces account for 248 of those cases, according to the local government, which has created tensions with local officials, including the governor who has said he was "shocked" by the high numbers. There are approximately 20,000 US Marines in Okinawa, along with thousands more troops from other US military services. (Reuters, AFP) This story has been published on: 2020-08-01. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. A Ram temple is being constructed in Ayodhya with the consent of every Indian, Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath said on Saturday, four days ahead of the foundation laying ceremony. Naths colleague Digvijaya Singh said former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi also wanted the temple to come up. I welcome the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. People of the country were expecting and wishing for this since long. The construction of the temple is being carried out with the consent of every Indian. Its possible only in India, Nath said in a video message. Singh said Lord Ram is at the centre of everybodys faith. The centre of our faith is Lord Ram!And today, the country is being run with trust in the Lord Ram. Thats why we all wish that a grand temple should be built at the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya. (late PM) Rajiv Gandhiji also wanted the same, he tweeted. Singh, however, questionned muhurt (auspicious time) for the ground breaking ceremony for the construction of temple, slated to be held on August, 5 in the likely presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. If we talk about muhurt, then more than 90 per cent of Hindus in this country will be those who believe in religious science like muhurt, grihdasha, astrology, choghadiya etc. (sic), he said. I am neutral to the fact that there is no muhurt for the foundation laying on August 5. This is playing with the religious sentiments and beliefs (sic), the Congress leader said. When asked about Singhs tweets, MP Home Minister and senior BJP leader Narottam Mishra said, Some people have a habit of criticising, and whenever they speak, they seek to find evil in the good. (Unknowingly) even in their criticism, they have at least taken the name of Lord Ram. Mishra said it was the Congress which had tried to delay the construction of the temple. Kapil Sibal and other big leaders of Congress stood against the (construction) of Ram temple in court and kept saying in the supreme court that Lord Ram was an imaginary character. They said there was no Ram Setu. They should think now. Lord Ram is everywhere in this country, Mishra told reporters. A church leader in South Korea has been arrested amid an investigation into allegations that the church hampered the government's response to coronavirus. It comes after thousands of the worshippers were infected in February and March. Prosecutors in the central city of Suwaon have been questioning 88-year-old Lee Man-hee, chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious sect in the country. He faces charges that the church hid some members and under-reported gatherings to avoid broader quarantines. The Suwon District Court granted prosecutors request to arrest Mr Lee over concerns that he could tamper with evidence. Mr Lee and his church have steadfastly denied the accusations, saying they are cooperating with health authorities. Lee Man-hee, chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, attends at a press conference in Gapyeong / AP Kim Young-eun, speaking for the church, said it will do its best so that the truth is clearly proved in court. More than 5,200 of the South Koreas 14,336 Covid-19 cases have been linked to the church so far. Its branch in the southern city of Daegu emerged as the biggest cluster after infections spiked in late February. Health authorities used an aggressive test-and-quarantine programme to contain the outbreak in Daegu and nearby towns by April, but the country has seen a resurgence of the virus in the Seoul metropolitan area since late May. South Koreas Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday reported 31 newly confirmed cases. 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 At least 23 of the, were tied to international arrivals. The country recently reported dozens of infections among South Korean constructions airlifted out of virus-ravaged Iraq and crew members of Russia-flagged cargo ships docked in the ports of Busan and Incheon. India, meanwhile, recorded the steepest spike of 57,118 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking its coronavirus caseload close to 1.7 million, with July alone accounting for nearly 1.1 million infections. The countrys health ministry on Saturday also reported 764 additional deaths for a total of 36,511. Indias civil aviation ministry delayed resumption of international flights by another month until August 31. But it will continue to allow several international carriers from the United States, Europe and the Middle East to operate special flights to evacuate stranded nationals. Indias health minister Harsh Vardhan said that India achieved more than one million recoveries with active cases only one-third of the total. India is now conducting more than 640,000 tests in 24 hours, taking cumulative tests across the country to nearly 1.9 million, he said. Vadodara : A 43-year-old NRI woman from Navsari district of Gujarat has successfully completed her solo car journey of 32,000 kilometres from the United Kingdom to India and has expressed a desire to set up a healthcare facility in her native town. The woman, Bharulata Kamble made this announcement at her felicitation programme held in Navsari on Sunday which was organised by a local civic body. Earlier, she had made a halt at Vadodara where she was felicitated at Mayfair Atrium art gallery before motoring down to Navsari. During her journey, she traversed across 32 countries in 57 days from the United Kingdom to India to spread the message of Save girls, educate girls. Speaking on the occasion, Kamble said, Through this solo drive, I connected with people in 32 countries and raised funds for setting up a healthcare facility (modern hospital) in my hometown in Navsari. I have seen my grandfather die on a hospital bed due to lack of adequate medicare in Navsari. She also is said to be the first woman to visit most countries in only 57 days (she reached India at Moreh Check post in Manipur on November 8), covering a distance of over 32,000 kilometres. Kamble drove through nine mountain ranges, three major deserts and two continents. These include 5,500 km of mountain driving reaching the altitude of 3,700-4000 metres above sea level, and driving 2,500 km through desert areas. This journey will be recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. He soared to international fame starring as DCI John Luther in the hit BBC series. And after much anticipation, Idris Elba has confirmed that Luther will now be made into a feature-length film. Speaking to Digital Spy and other press on the back of his BAFTA win on Friday, the actor, 47, teased the upcoming flick as he remarked: 'the sky is the limit.' 'It's happening': After much anticipation, Idris Elba has confirmed that Luther will now be made into a feature-length film The crime drama finished its fifth series back in January 2019, following a thrilling week-long event which saw all four episodes air back-to-back. The show ended on a cliffhanger, leaving fans wondering whether a movie version could be on the cards. And fresh from picking up his Special Award at the very first virtual Virgin Media BAFTA TV Awards 2020, Idris confirmed that the film will be happening. He said: 'I've maintained that I'd like to see [Luther] come to a film. Confirmation: Speaking to Digital Spy and other press on the back of his BAFTA win on Friday, the actor, 47, teased the upcoming flick as he remarked: 'the sky is the limit' 'That's what I think we're headed towards, is a film. I'm looking forward to making that happen.' The star then cemented the news as he added: 'It is happening!' He then further opened up about the series making a transition from the small screen to the big screen as he teased big things for the flick. He added: 'With a film, the sky is the limit. Obviously, you can be a little bit more bold in the storylines, maybe international, a little bit sort of up the scale. But John Luther is always going to be John Luther.' Adamant: He said: 'I've maintained that I'd like to see [Luther] come to a film. That's what I think we're headed towards, is a film. I'm looking forward to making that happen' Things to come: 'With a film, the sky is the limit. Obviously, you can be a little bit more bold in the storylines, maybe international, a little bit sort of up the scale. But John Luther is always going to be John Luther' His words come just weeks after he teased a big screen outing for the unorthodox British detective, who he's played for 10 years. 'I've made it very clear that I'd like to see Luther come back as a film. And I can tell you this, that we are this close to making a film of Luther,' the actor said while promoting his comedy series In The Long Run. The news that a feature version of the series may definitely be on the cards was first reported by London's Sky News. Luther premiered in 2010 and garnered rave reviews and a loyal following. It also made a star of Ruth Wilson who played narcissistic murderer Alice Morgan and went on to star in Showtime's The Affair and the film Saving Mr. Banks. Special Award: It comes as Idris led the winners at the TV BAFTAs 2020 on Friday, as he earned the Special Award for his exceptional career and his commitment to championing diversity It comes as Idris led the winners at the TV BAFTAs 2020 on Friday night with viewers noting 'more diversity' across the ceremony after the BAFTA Film Awards were criticised earlier this year. The actor thanked the Academy for 'finally recognising' him as he was virtually reunited with his Luther co-star Ruth Wilson and presented with the Special Award. The Special Award presented to Idris honoured his exceptional career and his commitment to championing diversity and new talent in the industry. Upon accepting his gong, the actor said: 'Thank you, first of all thank you BAFTA for giving me this opportunity and FINALLY recognising [me]... I'm joking, very proud!' HAMMOND A 43-year-old Hammond woman died from her injuries sustained in a vehicle collision early Saturday in Hammond. Ayde Hurtado was pronounced dead around 3:53 a.m. at Franciscan Health Hammond. Her cause and manner of death are pending, the coroner said in a news release. Hurtado was inside a vehicle involved in a collision with another around 2:30 a.m. at the intersection of Calumet Avenue and Gostlin Street, Hammond Police Lt. Steven Kellogg said. Police determined one vehicle disregarded a red light, then struck the other vehicle. Hurtado was injured during the accident and taken to the hospital. Alcohol is not believed to be a factor in the crash, Kellogg said. It is unclear which vehicle Hurtado was in or if she was with other occupants. It is also unclear what directions the vehicles were traveling. The Hammond Fire Department also assisted at the scene. At least 260 campers and staff contracted the novel coronavirus at one Georgia sleep-away summer camp last month, a new report reveals. The camp, which was not named, took a number of precautionary steps to prevent an outbreak, including requiring staff members wear cloth masks. But it stopped short of making its campers wear face covering and many of its buildings did not have proper ventilation in buildings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed on Friday. Additionally, health officials say 'relatively large' groups of kids slept in the same cabin where they regularly sang and cheered, likely leading to infected droplets spreading through the air. The CDC says the findings provide more evidence that children are susceptible to contracting the virus and 'play an important role in transmission.' It comes as President Donald Trump pushes for schools to reopen this fall and public health officials attempt to weigh the risks of coronavirus spreading among students versus the risks of having them miss out on in-person learning. At least 260 campers and staff members became infected with coronavirus at a Georgia sleepaway summer camp in June believed to be the above camp at Lake Burton (in 2017) Camp employees were required to wear cloth masks but campers were not. About 51 percent of those who tested positive were under age 10 (file image) According to the report, the camp held an orientation for 120 staff members and 138 trainees in mid-June. On June 21, the 250 employees were joined by three senior staff member and 363 campers ranging between ages six and 19. Within a week of arriving, a teenage staff member developed chills and left the camp on June 23, the report said. The next day, the teen tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. That very same day, the camp began to send people home and alerted the state's Department of Public Health the next day before shutting down on June 27. The health department recommended anyone who attend the camp be tested for the virus and self-quarantine. If anyone tested positive, they were told to isolate. Out of 597 campers and staff, results were available for 344 people and 260 - about 44 percent - were confirmed positive. The highest percentage of positive results was seen among campers with 51 percent of those testing positive aged six to 10. Forty-four percent of those infected were in the 11-to-17-year-old group and one-third were between ages 18 and 21. Officials recorded information about symptoms for only 136 kids. Of those, 100 reported symptoms - mostly fever, headache and sore throat. The CDC said that while everyone submitted documents showing they had tested negative for COVID-19, students were not require to wear face masks, just staff. Additionally, the report noted that campers slept in not well ventilated cabins and participated 'in a variety of indoor and outdoor activities, including daily vigorous singing and cheering.' 'Settings, like multi-day, overnight summer camps, pose a unique challenge when it comes to preventing the spread of infectious diseases, considering the amount of time campers and staff members spend in close proximity,' the CDC said in a statement. A teen staff member first came down with chills on June 22 and the camp was ultimately shut down on June 27. Pictured: A camp at Lake Burton in Georgia in 2017 where the outbreak is believed to have occurred Although the name of the camp wasn't given in the reports, the timeline appears to line up with an outbreak that occurred at the YMCA's Camp High Harbor on Lake Burton in Rabun County, near the state's northern border with North Carolina. According to WSB-TV, the YMCA camp was also only open for four days before closing due to the virus. Under an executive order by Gov Brian Kemp, overnight summer camps were allowed to open in the state on May 31 as long all campers and staff members tested negative before attending . Dr Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, told The Washington Post that the report shows that schools should not open in the fall 'To me, this is a significant weight added to the side of the scale that says close the schools,' he said. Although children spend more time together at overnights, he added: 'It's solid evidence to suggest we should be extremely cautious about opening schools.' In its statement, the CDC also said properly wearing face masks, social distancing, rigorous cleaning and hand-washing can prevent the spread of the virus. These were included in the agency's recently released guidance to reopen US schools. Chaotic scenes broke out at Heathrow's border gates today as hundreds of passengers were crammed into queues after just three officers were left to check passports. The travellers, many with young families, even chanted 'we want more staff' as the lines in the 'poorly ventilated' room stretched for at least an hour. Heathrow Airport branded the situation 'totally unacceptable', but left were powerless because the gates are controlled by UK Border Force. A spokesperson for the Border Force today apologised for the delay and promised to work with the airport to 'ensure this does not happen again' - but did not go into further details. Natalie Crane, 32, from Surrey, had arrived back from a holiday to Majorca with her husband, mother, and three young children when she was faced with a two-hour delay. Chaotic scenes broke out at Heathrow's border gates today as hundreds of passengers were crammed into queues after just three officers were left to check passports She said: 'We queued with about 500 or 600 people; there was no social distancing, no ventilation - it would have been impossible to socially distance that many people in the room. It was just barbaric. While the central London airport's self service E-gates were operating, Natalie and dozens of other parents couldn't use them because of age restrictions on children, and had to see a border officer. 'After a while we found out there is only three people on the counters checking passports, so then everyone started chanting get more staff get more staff, this a disgrace. 10 minutes later all of a sudden you've got about 10 staff on. 'When we complained to one of the staff on the counters because he wasn't making people aware he was available, his response was 'don't go on holiday'.' The travellers, many with young families, even chanted 'we want more staff' as the lines in the 'poorly ventilated' room stretched for at least an hour 'There was no compassion from the staff whatsoever.' A spokesperson for Heathrow Airport told MailOnline that the queues were 'totally unacceptable', but that Border Force have forecasting systems to help avoid passenger queues on arrival. Emma Moore, Border Force Chief Operating Officer said: 'Border Force apologise for the extensive queues and delays that occurred at Heathrow Airport. We understand the significant inconvenience and discomfort this would have caused those affected. 'We are working with Heathrow Airport to ensure this does not happen again and social distancing measures are maintained while dealing with the increased number of passengers arriving at the airport. 'We would urge travellers to fill in their passenger locator forms before travelling to the UK to avoid any delays.' The experience added insult to injury for the family of five, as they reveal they also fell victim to the government's quarantine rule change. 'We went to Majorca last Saturday, so the evening we arrived we found out that Spain was being taken off the list and that the Balearics and canaries were not going to be exempt. Heathrow Airport branded the situation 'totally unacceptable', but left were powerless because the gates are controlled by UK Border Force 'I can't say it ruined the holiday because once we were there we knew we had to try and enjoy it. But it was disheartening, especially when you've got your children with you as well. 'I think I would've been more understanding if I was in one of the areas of Spain with the highest cases, but I'm on the island of Majorca.' All flights at Heathrow are currently operating from Terminals 2 and 5 following the temporary relocation of airlines from Terminals 3 and 4. Heathrow are expecting 280 plane arrivals across the two terminals today. Actor and comedian Vir Das has objected to the insensitive reporting on mental health in television media over the last week. Several news channels have carried reports and interviews on the suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, which has been called out by mental health advocates on social media. Vir said that the issue must be handled with care considering the large percentage of people who suffer from depression and other mental health problems in the country. Whats disturbing is to see the clueless and harsh rhetoric around depression on news channels this week. Please be mindful of the fact that a gigantic percentage of our country struggles with it, and watches you. Its important to communicate that it is nothing to be ashamed of, he wrote in a tweet. You can be depressed and be: Successful Fit Functional Cheerful Friendly Ambitious Hard working On medication On zero medication Focussed Optimistic All of the above at different times. Don't let your drive for ratings insult a great artist and a very large group of people. Vir Das (@thevirdas) August 1, 2020 He further clarified that some with depression can seem fit and happy on the outside, not presenting any symptoms. You can be depressed and be: Successful Fit Functional Cheerful Friendly Ambitious Hard working On medication On zero medication Focussed Optimistic All of the above at different times. Dont let your drive for ratings insult a great artist and a very large group of people, he wrote in another tweet. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer Sushant died by suicide on June 14. He was reportedly suffering from depression. However, his ex-girlfriend Ankita Lokhande said in a television interview that she found it heartbreaking to hear people saying that he had depression. How much ever I know him, he wasnt a depressed guy. I have not seen a person like Sushant, a guy who used to write his own dreams, he had a diary... He had his 5-year plan what he wants to do, how he will look, etc. And exactly after 5 years, he had fulfilled them. And when things like depression are used after his name... it is heartbreaking. He might be upset, anxious, yes, but depression is a big word. Calling someone bipolar is a big thing, she had said. In another interview, Ankita said she had not been in touch with Sushant in four years. . Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON THE Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, clarified on Wednesday that the government did not spend an amount of GH54 million on hot meals as being peddled around. He said out of an estimated amount of GH40 million, the government spent only GH12 million to provide meals to vulnerable Ghanaians during the lockdown period, including the cost of distribution. It is truly unfortunate that an attempt has been made to politicize the issue of providing food for our brothers and sisters during the lockdown period. It is also unfortunate that an impression has been created that a total amount of GH54 million was used for the meals, he said. Mr. Speaker, permit me to provide some clarification to the issue. We estimated that we would need an amount of GH40 million (not GH54 million) to provide meals to the vulnerable people during the lockdown period, he added. However, out of the estimated amount, we spent GH12 million in providing the meals, including the cost of distribution, he indicated. The Finance Minister explained that government budgeted for GH40.3 million for basic consumptions and food items, and said the GH42 million was spent on uncooked food items, which brought the total figure to GH54 million as captured in the mid-year review. According to him, a total of 150,000 people benefited from the GH12 million for hot meals during the lockdown, and added that this cost included operational and distribution cost. Mr. Ofori-Atta disclosed that government, in collaboration with Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs), also distributed dry food packages to about 470,000 families. The Minority in Parliament has questioned the amount asking for details after the ministers presentation on Thursday, July 23, 2020. 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 Medical staff discuss plans to evacuate people from several Da Nang hospitals to quarantine camp, July 27, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong. Vietnams Covid-19 outbreak Da Nang City reported 12 more cases on Saturday morning, after two Covid-19 patients died on Friday. The new patients, numbered 547 to 558, are either family members or patients at Da Nang Hospital, and those that have contacted previous infections in the city. In the past 24 hours, 94 infections, including 68 domestic ones, have been recorded in Vietnam. Since the first case of community infection was recorded in Da Nang last Saturday, a total of 116 domestic infections have been recorded. Ever since the virus returned in Vietnams community, it has spread to six cities and provinces, with 91 cases in Da Nang, 16 in neighboring province of Quang Nam, five in Saigon, two in Hanoi. Quang Ngai Province in the central region and Dak Lak Province in the Central Highlands got one each. On Friday, Vietnam reported two deaths of Covid-19 patients - a 61-year-old man and a 70-year-old man who had been receiving treatment for chronic diseases in Da Nang. By Saturday morning, Vietnam has recorded 558 Covid-19 cases, including 183 active patients after 373 have recovered. Now more than 91,000 are in quarantine in the nation. Worldwide, more than 682,000 Covid-19 patients have been confirmed dead. Cazenovia, N.Y. Sen. Chuck Schumer visited Cazenovia Friday as he continues his push for a coronavirus stimulus bill that would include $175 billion for K-12 schools nationwide. There is a way to open up schools safely, but it needs the large scale involvement of the federal government, Schumer said on the front lawn of Cazenovia High School, joined by, among others, Cazenovia Central School District Superintendent Matthew Reilly and Cazenovia College President Ronald Chesbrough. That $175 billion is part of the $430 billion Coronavirus Child Care and Education Relief Act bill that Schumer, D-NY, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced in the Senate on June 30. The money would help schools provide masks and other personal protective equipment for staff and students, offset increased costs from running additional school bus routes, provide internet hot spots for students who lack internet access at home and other expenses. Reilly estimated that Cazenovia alone would have to spend in the hundreds of thousands on PPE, thermal imaging systems at entrances and thermometers. The district also plans to boosting its maintenance staff either by hiring new workers or increasing hours in order to more rigorously clean the school. With fewer students in each classroom, the district may need to hire more teachers. The district also needs to double its school bus runs, with fewer students on each bus to maintain social distancing. The increased costs come amid projected cuts of up to 20% in state funding to schools, something Schumer called a double whammy for school districts. Were going to incur all these costs in a specter of a 20% reduction in state aid, Reilly said. We desperately need help from the federal government to rise to these challenges. Cazenovia Central School District Superintendent Matthew Reilly speaks to media alongside Sen. Chuck Schumer at a press conference outside Cazenovia High School. July 31, 2020.Jacob Pucci Cazenovia released its reopening plan earlier this morning. The school is planning on having all K-12 students back in school in person this fall, though they do have alternate plans for hybrid and totally remote models should they be needed. Theres a lot of work that needs to be done, Reilly said. But I think we can do it. Related article: How is your school reopening? See Central New York school district coronavirus plans The bill Schumer backs would also include $132 billion for higher education. Cazenovia College received $2.3 million in a Payroll Protection Program loan this spring, which allowed the college to keep all of its staff on payroll, said Chesbrough, the colleges president. The college also received $1 million from the CARES Act, signed into law on March 27. Of that $1 million, half of it went back to the students, Chesbrough said. Schumer said he would not support a stimulus bill that would only fund schools and not state and local governments. The HEROES Act, passed in the Democrat-led House, would provide $1 trillion to state and local governments, including an estimated $363 million for Syracuse. The HEALS Act, the Republican counter-proposal, provides no such funding. You got to go across the board, Schumer said of the proposed stimulus plan. When will we see a stimulus bill become law? Schumer said he, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met Thursday night to discuss the bill. Schumer said they made a little progress. Schumer initially said the Senate would stay in session until a deal is done, but then walked that back and said negotiations would continue, even if theyre not in session. Its going to take a little while, Schumer said. But hopefully not too long. Pakistani Shelling Kills 15 Afghan Civilians, Kabul Says, After Clashes At Closed Border By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan July 31, 2020 Cross-border shelling by Pakistan killed at least 15 civilians in Afghanistan on July 31, prompting Kabul to put its ground and air forces on alert. The shelling came after clashes between Pakistani and Afghan security forces at the closed Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossing, where people were waiting to cross on both sides of the border to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. The Afghan Defense Ministry on July 31 said that the country's chief of army staff had ordered the armed forces to respond with full force if the artillery attacks by the Pakistani Army continued along a disputed border between the neighboring countries. Pakistani security officials said a protest against the closure of the border for daily commute turned violent at the Chaman area on the other side of Spin Boldak in Pakistan's Balochistan Province, but no live ammunition had been used. However, activists blamed Pakistani security forces for opening fire on protesters and shelling into Afghanistan where people were also protesting. "If the Pakistani military continues its rocket attacks on Afghan territory, they will face retaliation by the Afghan Army," Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said in a statement. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters that the matter had been taken up with Afghan authorities and hoped it would be resolved amicably. The 2,430-kilometer-long Afghan-Pakistan border was created in 1893 between then-British India and the Emirate of Afghanistan. Clashes between neighboring states along the de facto border known as the Durand Line rarely occur, but relations are considered tense. With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, Reuters, and dpa Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/shooting -at-pakistan-afghanistan-border-kills- three-injures-17/30758251.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 YEREVAN. In an interview with a local TV program, Armenias Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan referred to the role of the CSTO amid the current Armenian-Azerbaijani tension. To the question whether the CSTO should have been petitioned to in order for it to become more actively involved in this process, the minister answered: "We have various international formats, one of which is the CSTO. We are a CSTO member. It is an international format of our cooperation, and we have our functions. When we say using all international formats, it means using, it means working, evaluating in a proportionate way where, how you work. And in that sense, in fact, we did not ask, at that moment we did not consider it necessary to do more than immediately inform the [other] CSTO member countries about the developments that have been taking place since July 12. We have fulfilled this function and will continue to work within the CSTO, in the sense that this is the platform of our cooperation. We will use all possible tools in our hands to make that platform serve our main goal, which, above all, refers to that function of maintaining stability, ensuring stability in the region." To the observation that there is no country that will support Armenia with the same unconditionally as Turkey supports Azerbaijan, the minister answered: "In fact, there is, but I will look at this issue in a slightly different context because such an assessment is at a more emotional, superficial level, and it turns into a sport of who supports whom how, or does not support. The other issue is much deeper, which refers to the important signals expressed by the [OSCE Minsk Group] Co-Chairs. It is the platform, the format that is recognized by the international community as the main platform for the peace process, and that mandate is given to the three Co-Chairs by the international community. Their position has received widespread support from the international community, which is expressed in a number of waysboth from individual states, the OSCE, the EU, and the UN Secretary-General. The main essence of this position, which is expressed in their statement, refers to a very important principle: to restore stability, to restore the ceasefire, to exclude threat and the language of threat, to exclude maximalism, and to workin the context of the peace processon solutions that are necessary to achieve that corresponding compromise balance. This position is more important for us than getting involved in any sport and assessing how Turkey supported Azerbaijan more, and Armenialess." A man allegedly decapitated his kind and gentle landlord with a samurai sword in a row over the rent.. Police say Jerry David Thompson took his roommate and landlords head off before refusing to talk about the horrific crime in Connecticut, US. The 42-year-old instead pointed police to paperwork in his cars glove box which suggested he considered himself a sovereign citizen and not subject to the law, the Hartford Courant reports. The victim, 64-year-old Victor King, was a professional bridge player and described as one of the good guys, one that would never hurt a soul. The former IT worker for Travelers insurance had recently taken Thompson in as a tenant for his spare bedroom. An arrest warrant states Thompson had threatened his landlord with the huge sword in a row about him not paying the rent. Mr King had reported this to the police a day before he was decapitated, on Sunday. He claimed Thompson waved the blade at him. The victims friends alerted police when they could not get hold of him on Sunday, before officers along with firefighters forced their way into Mr Kings home and found a gruesome scene. When Thompson was pulled over in his car in the city after a manhunt, he refused to speak. The arrest warrant states he scribbled on a piece of paper the words paper in glove compart in Jeep is all you need. This is when police found the paperwork. Thompson, who has previous convictions for robbery and assault, has remained silent. Thompson, who has previous convictions for assault and robbery, has been arraigned in Superior Court, and was held on $2 million bail. Mumbai, Aug 1 : Actor-comedian Danish Sait says his humour comes from observing real life and people, rather than from films. "The humour comes from real observation than from movies. I have seen more people than films. I have witnessed more real quarrels than quarrels in movies. My mum had a supermarket, so I have spent a lot of time on the streets observing people," Danish said. Talking about his favourite films, Danish said: "I have watched 'Mughal-e-Azam' almost 20 times. My mother had gone to Delhi for angioplasty and we were staying with my aunt, who showed us 'Mughal-e-Azam' around 20 times. Prithviraj Kapoor's voice wakes me up even now. The movie that is really close to my heart is 'Andaz Apna Apna'. One of my all-time Kannada favourite is 'Muthina Haara'. I also loved 'Om Shanti Om'." Danish was recently seen in the Kannada comedy "French Biriyani". The action comedy drama stars Danish as Asgar, a Bengaluru auto rickshaw driver, and Sal Yusuf as Simon, who is visiting the country for the first time. Their fates cross under unexpected circumstances. The film released on an OTT platform on July 24. Danish is excited about his upcoming films. "The next installment of 'Humble Politician Nograj' is coming up and I also have a small role in '777 Charlie' for which we had gone to Punjab to shoot, and it was a really fun experience," he said during a conversation on IMDb's "On the Scene". While the number of Covid-19 cases in Ludhiana peaked to the top spot in Punjab by the end of July, the month also saw a whopping 76% of the total Covid fatalities in the district so far. Ludhiana has confirmed 88 Covid deaths since the first fatality on March 29. July alone accounts for 76% (67) of these cases. Before the curfew restrictions were lifted on June 8, 11 people had died due to coronavirus since March 29 (70 days). This number burgeoned to 88 by the end of July (53 days) an eightfold rise. Much worse, 42% of the total deaths, at 37, took place in the last week of July. The health department had confirmed seven deaths on July 25, while two people died on July 26 and five on July 27. The number rose to six on July 28, while July 29 recorded the highest number of deaths so far, at nine. This was followed by two more fatalities on July 30 and another six on July 31. SPURT IN CASES March recorded one death, followed by three in April and five in May. As the borders reopened and curfew restrictions were eased in June, allowing public to venture out and businesses to reopen, the Covid positive cases shot up and fatalities rose to 12 in a month. The situation only worsened in July. Besides 67 more deaths, as of July 31, the district had 3,246 confirmed Covid cases 1,182 among these still active. A significant 72% of these cases cropped up in July. NEXT TWO WEEKS CRUCIAL According to Dr Bishav Mohan, member of the Covid-19 task force set up by the state government, the first two weeks of August were crucial as the pandemic was reaching its peak stage in Ludhiana. There will be a further spike in Covid-19 cases. Residents need to ensure they follow government guidelines, such as maintaining social distancing, wearing masks and frequently washing or sanitising their hands, said Dr Mohan. As the lockdown was lifted, public ventured out in droves, with residents mindlessly also attending large social gatherings. The irresponsibility of a few puts at risk the vulnerable population, including the elderly and patients with comorbidities, leading to more deaths. Its time to act responsibly to contain further spread of the virus and save lives, he added. Dr GS Grewal, former president of Punjab Medical Council, said if the cases were not contained, the number of deaths were bound to rise in the near future. Patients with comorbidities should immediately contact the health department once they notice the Covid symptoms. Delaying hospitalisation can be critical. Doctors should not give in to any pressure and admit symptomic patients swiftly, Dr Grewal added. Long-proposed legislation calling for sweeping changes in the states nursing home industry, including raising the minimum wage for workers and tougher penalties for facilities that fail to meet state and federal standards, was introduced in Trenton on Friday in response to a pandemic that has killed thousands. At the same time, the Senate and Assembly scheduled a joint hearing next week to discuss the ambitious bill package that its sponsors hope to quickly pass and get to the desk of the governor. In announcing the proposals, Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, who chairs the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, and Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, D-Bergen, who heads the Assembly Aging and Senior Services Committee, said the COVID-19 pandemic revealed cracks in the states long-term care system. While no one was fully prepared for the challenges brought by COVID-19, long-term care facilities were particularly unequipped to mitigate the spread of the virus, they said in a joint statement. More than four in 10 deaths in New Jersey from the coronavirus have been nursing home residents, according to the state Department of Health. Some of the legislative initiatives were recommended in the recent report by Manatt Health, the consultants hired by the Murphy Administration earlier this year to look at the states oversight of states nursing homes and come up with fixes. But even before the Manatt report, top legislative leaders had promised to take action after an investigation in May by NJ Advance Media for NJ.com detailed how the state failed to react fast enough or take forceful, aggressive actions to slow the deadly spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes. After vowing immediate action in the wake of that investigation, however, the Legislature had for months failed to move and a bipartisan committee announced in May with great fanfare by state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., R-Union, never held a single hearing. Sen. Joseph Cryan, D-Union, who sponsored several of the measures introduced on Friday, credited the NJ Advance Media investigation for playing a role in getting the legislation to the table. The stories created awareness. These people were living off the radar and you guys put it in the forefront. These bills did not happen without that, he said. Im glad were moving forward. Like every one else, we want to move quickly, but we want to move it right. Vitale and Huttle said the Manatt report showed COVID-19 did not create the problems in long-term care; it merely exacerbated them. Now its our turn to take action to address long standing issues and ensure our long-term care facilities are prepared to get through this pandemic and future emergencies, they said. Among the proposals: S-2758/A-4482 - Raises the minimum wage for direct care staff in long term care facilities to $3 higher than state minimum wage, which would be annually adjusted based on cost-of-living increases. S-2790/A-4476 Would create a Long-Term Care Emergency Operations Center in the New Jersey Department of Health to serve as a centralized command and resource center that would respond to future infectious disease outbreaks affecting long term care centers. S-2789/A-4477 Proposes revisions in license, operational and reporting requirements for long-term care facilities. S-2786/A-4483 - Allows employees in long-term care to earn paid sick leave. S-2759/A-4478 - Would require the Department of Health to establish a scaling system of actions and penalties for long-term care facilities found in violation of state and federal operating requirements. S-2788/A-4479 Proposes one-time, lump-sum payments to long-term care staff who provided direct care services to residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. S-2787/A-4481 - Would establish a task force to develop recommendations for change in the long-term care system. S-2791/A-4480 - Requires New Jersey Department of Human Services to review and evaluate any existing requirements for Medicaid managed care organizations for the delivery of nursing home services. I dont want to fail at this, said Huttle in an interview. There have been 6,700 deaths in our facilities. Its not just a statistic. These are our parents and grandparents and our loved ones. Separately, there are also a number of other nursing home reform measures also pending, including minimum staffing ratios for nursing home aides. That proposal died without explanation in January, never having been posted for a final vote on the floor of the Assembly after intense lobbying by the industry and the union representing nursing home workers. Assemblywoman Angelica Jimenez, D-Hudson, has reintroduced it. A LONG CHALLENGE Vitale said the Legislature has long discussed increasing the pay of nursing home workers. Thats always been a challenge. But now its critically important, he said, adding that the proposals are just the beginning of what the committee will look to address. There are other pieces of legislation were working on. Hearings on the proposals are on the calendar for discussion for next Thursday. Both Vitale and Huttle said they are hoping for quick, bi-partisan action on the legislation. But nursing home industry officials criticized the package of bills being proposed. Much of the legislation introduced today demonstrates a lack of insight into our industry and a distortion of the Manatt Report, said Jonathan Dolan, president and CEO of the Health Care Association of New Jersey, which represents many long-term care operators in the state. This overreach into an industry that is already among the most regulated in the state will not be beneficial to our residents and will not help in the fight against COVID-19. Dolan added that with better testing, greater access to personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns, and staffing support, nursing homes have largely avoided the ongoing spread of the virus now evident in the general population. We welcome and encourage the state to further collaborate with both industry experts and those in the field to focus on ways to provide additional support to facilities and measures that are working, instead of thinking the answer is more regulation and legislation, he said. Many of the states hospitals are also nursing home operators. Cathy Bennett, president and CEO of the New Jersey Hospital Association, said her organization was still drilling into the details of what she termed a robust package of bills. We agree with this key point from the consultants report that COVID-19 did not create the challenges facing our long-term care system, but rather, revealed some of the long-time systemic problems that impact our providers, their staffs and ultimately our most frail, elder New Jerseyans, she said. Were committed to being part of this policy dialogue to prioritize our seniors and the care system they depend on. James McCracken, president and CEO of LeadingEdge New Jersey, the statewide association of not-for-profit senior care organizations said COVID-19 has had a profound effect on society, the long-term care community and the country. He said LeadingAge is committed to working with all levels of government, the senior living and services community and constituency groups to improve our systems and evaluate ways we can better protect older adults and improve care in the future. Labor leaders representing 8,000 nursing home workers in New Jersey, meanwhile called the legislative package a meaningful jumping-off point towards transformation of the nursing home industry. Milly Silva, executive vice president of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, said the proposals included many long-overdue reforms. As these bills move through the legislative process, 1199SEIU will be making specific recommendations to address areas needing refinement, she said, including more avenues for nursing home workers, patients and their advocates to be directly involved in the process of industry reform. The individuals who have personally lived, known, and experienced the dreadful impact of COVID-19 in nursing homes must have more than a token role as New Jersey seeks to bring greater accountability, transparency, and higher standards of care to this industry, she said. Local journalism needs your support. Subscribe at nj.com/supporter. Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. By Douglas Busvine BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Friday it had signed a contract for SAP and Deutsche Telekom to build a software platform that would enable national coronavirus contact tracing apps to 'talk' to each other. The hope is that creating the gateway would help slow the spread of COVID-19 by making it possible to log encounters between people while they are travelling abroad and issue push warnings should one of them be infected. Such a 'roaming' function would be an add-on to the Bluetooth-based smartphone tracker apps, which now only work within national borders, with the goal of making it safer to revive travel and tourism. The European Commission signed the contract with SAP and Deutsche Telekom's IT services unit T-Systems to build the platform for cross-border exchange of exposure notifications, the three said in a joint statement. Details on further steps will follow soon. It should be possible to launch a pilot version of the gateway in three to four weeks, Commission spokesman Johannes Bahrke added. The two companies, designers of Germany's Corona-Warn-App which has been downloaded 16 million times, proposed creating the gateway in June, when EU member states agreed on a framework to make the apps interoperable. Nine EU states - Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia and Poland - have launched apps based on a technology standard developed by Alphabet's Google and Apple. Another nine countries plan similar apps that will use this "decentralised" design, where phones that come into close contact share random identifiers and receive risk notifications if a contact later tests positive for COVID-19. The common design means these apps are compatible and could easily be plugged into the gateway. Experts say it will be more challenging to hook up the French and Hungarian apps, which store data on central servers. (Reporting by Douglas Busvine; editing by Thomas Seythal, Kirsten Donovan) Thank God we moved out of our house the night before the flood, or we would have been trapped there. The thought of what could have happened to us still terrifies us now, said Li Baoliang, a resident in Shifeng community, Xiaoyan township, Anhua county, Yiyang, central Chinas Hunan province, recalling an extreme rainstorm and the following disasters that happened on the morning of July 19. As a matter of fact, a day before the disasters, the chief forecaster and on-duty forecasters at the Hunan provincial meteorological observatory had worked together to correct the deviations of the numerical weather prediction models, verifying real-time data on such aspects as wind filed, height field, precipitation area, intensity, and evolution of precipitation echoes. Hunan provincial meteorological bureau gave out a yellow alert for rainstorms at 7:00 a.m. on July 18, pointing out that there would be a heavy rain in the northern and western areas of Yiyang, and torrential downpours in parts of these areas. Upon receiving the alert, the meteorological bureau of Yiyang immediately sent out an orange alert for geological disasters to hilly and mountainous areas of Taojiang county and Anhua county. After receiving the warning information from the publicity department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Yiyang municipal committee at 17:00 p.m. that day, the flood control staff of the news organization under direct administration of the department quickly made relevant news products, including dynamic messages, graphics and text information, and aired them to the society, particularly the residents in affected areas. An hour later, the loudspeaker of Shifeng community was turned on, and Liu Xingguo, Party chief of the community, started reminding local residents of the rainstorm, telling them to reach out to the community management committee once they find anything abnormal. Around the same time, Li received a message on his phone from the flood control and drought relief headquarters of Anhua county, informing him of the same matter. Persuaded by Liu, Li and his family moved to a safe area that evening. A total of 421 residents from 95 households in Anhua county were evacuated on the same day. At 7:00 a.m. the next day, a torrential flood caused a landslide behind Lis house. Rocks rolled down along with the mountain torrents and rushed into the kitchen and bedrooms of the house. Luckily, all the 11 people from Lis and his neighbors families had been relocated before the disaster. In an effort to guarantee the safety of peoples lives and property, many areas in China, including Hunan, Sichuan, and Zhejiang provinces, have explored monitoring and early warning technologies and improved their alert mechanisms since the beginning of the flood season this year. To find help and proper places for evacuation is the most concerned issue of the people once floods happen. They can react more calmly and rapidly if the monitoring and warning services get more precise and timely. Geological disasters happening during the main flood season in Sichuan province account for as much as 70 percent of the provinces total in a year. This year, the province launched a 2.0 version of its provincial-level early warning platform for geological disasters, incorporating 6,932 vulnerable areas that affect more than 50 people each and 12,099 sets of monitoring devices into its monitoring and control system. Residents in the province can check nearby vulnerable areas with potential geological hazards, as well as the corresponding liable officials and monitors on their mobile phones, said Xie Anjun, member of the Party organization of the Department of Natural Resources of Sichuan Province and Party chief of the organ. East Chinas Zhejiang province launched a special QR code system in June to guarantee the evacuation of residents in high-risk areas, help emergency rescue teams reach their destinations smoothly, and facilitate disaster relief and related work. We have the information of all the residents that need to be relocated in the system. Once the flood prevention emergency response is activated, we can easily locate them, said an official of Taoyuanxi village, Taiyang township, Linan district, Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. During the promotion of the QR code system, Linan district made evacuation lists for nine types of emergencies, which covered the residents possibly affected by flash floods, living in old and dilapidated houses, as well as waterlogged urban areas. Underground parking facilities were also a key focus of the lists. Thanks to the system, the district relocated 3,565 residents on July 6 alone. MEDIA COURTHOUSE >> A former Delaware County Children and Youth Services case worker was formerly arraigned this week on human trafficking and related offenses. Candace Talley, 27, of Sicklerville, N.J., is charged with felony offenses of corrupt organizations, trafficking individuals and promoting prostitution, as well as misdemeanor offenses of official oppression and coerce/threaten of official act. Talley is accused of soliciting one of her clients to join a prostitution ring in Philadelphia, according to an affidavit of probable cause written by Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division Detective Mark Bucci. Talley allegedly approached the 27-year-old victim in May 2017 and offered her an opportunity to make $1,000 per day while helping to get her children out of foster care. Talley knew the woman had been involved in prostitution and drug use in the past because she was able to access various government records and reports, according to the affidavit. It is truly horrible, and beyond imagination, that someone who is responsible for (ensuring) the welfare of children would pressure their mother into acts of prostitution for her own personal enrichment, and with the promise of a favorable custody recommendation, as this defendant is charged with doing, said Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer when charges were announced in January. Talley came to the victims home in May 2017 to discuss her children, the affidavit says. At that meeting, Talley allegedly explained that she was involved in a prostitution enterprise with approximately 2,000 customers. Talley explained that she assists the business by enlisting women to work as prostitutes and driving them to and from jobs, according to the affidavit. (The victim) said Ms. Talley told her she could help her with her childrens situation, implying she could assist having her children removed from foster care, according to the affidavit. Talley also allegedly told the woman she would only drug test her when she knew that she was clean and that Talley would switch the sample if she did test hot. Seeing an opportunity to make money and get her kids back, the victim agreed to work with Talleys associates, according to the affidavit. Talley allegedly indicated she would get in touch with her friend who runs the business for the pimp and have that friend text the victim. The woman met with Bucci and CID Sgt. Robin Clark in June 2017, according to the affidavit. The investigators reviewed texts the victim received indicating the pimp would keep 50% of any earnings and that Talley would take half of whatever was left as her cut. Talley was taken into custody Jan. 23 and released on $25,000 unsecured bail with electronic home monitoring. She is scheduled for a pretrial conference Aug. 17 before Common Pleas Court Judge John P. Capuzzi Sr. Assistant District Attorney Christopher Boggs, chief of the Special Victims Unit, is prosecuting. Two people answering phones for the law firm representing Talley hung up when called for comment this week. There were rumours on social media about Singh's death in March this year, too. Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh has died aged 64. Facing health issues for a very long time, Singh was reportedly undergoing treatment at a Singapore hospital. He is survived by wife Pankaja and twin daughters. Singh had suffered a kidney failure in Dubai in 2013 but recovered to return to public life in 2016. He was elected to Rajya Sabha with the backing of Samajwadi Party, a party he was the general secretary of until January 2010, when he was expelled by the erstwhile party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. As the general secretary of the SP, Singh was instrumental in saving the Congress-led UPA government from falling after the Left parties withdrew support from it in 2008 over the issue of nuclear deal. Despite his illness, Singh was active on social media. Earlier today, he paid tribute to freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his 100th death anniversary and also wished his followers on Eid. In fact, there were rumours on social media about Singh's death in March this year. But he tweeted "Tiger Zinda Hai" to put these rumours to rest. Panaji, Aug 1 : Authorities at the Colvale Central Jail on Saturday rejected grocery and other food items offered by the Goa Congress, after prison inmates staged a protest late on Friday over non-supply of food to them for 24 hours as food stock was finished, a party leader said. "There were no ration supplies in the prison and all prisoners had gone on strike on Friday. They were without food. So the Congress arranged 100 kg rice, oil packets, 50 kg each of onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and vegetables for the prison," state Congress Vice-President Sankalp Amonkar told the media here. "But they rejected our offer, saying we have to seek permission from the Inspector General of Prisons before donating these supplies," said Amonkar, who led the party delegation to the prison complex to hand over the provisions. On Friday, a few pictures of prisoners protesting outside their jail cells had gone viral. The prisoners had refused to return to their respective cells until they were assured of regular meals. Speaking to IANS, a senior North Goa district administration official said that the food supplies could not be delivered to the prison due to logistical and transportation issues on Friday. "We have received the supplies now. The supply chain has been streamlined to ensure this does not happen again," the official said on the condition of anonymity. The prison, with a capacity to hold more than 600 inmates, houses around 550 prisoners at present. There is a big spurt in locally-transmitted coronavirus cases in Kerala as the state reported 1,129 fresh cases and eight deaths on Saturday, said state health minister K K Shailaja. Among the dead is a police officer, first in the state. A close look at the states tally in last one week shows its aggressive strategy of isolating, contract tracing and treating patients is under deep stress due to increase in caseloads. With 1,129 Covid-19 cases, the total tally went up to 24,741 with 10,862 active cases and 13,779 have recovered . With eight casualties, highest since the outbreak began, death toll went up to 83. But there are allegations that at least 20 deaths failed to find a place in the list but the government maintained that it was going by the guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The first coronavirus case in the country was reported in the state on January 30, a China-returned medical student from Thrissur. Coronavirus cases started increasing in March first week but by April the state was on the verge of flattening the curve. But after lockdown norms were eased in May, there was a big surge of expatriates and people stranded in other states which vitiated the coronavirus scene again. Till June, imported Covid-19 cases formed a lions share but in July locally-transmitted cases went up, which is now more than 70%. It took five months to reach 10,000 but in 20 days it crossed 24,000. But there is some relief too as the recovery rate is also going up steadily. The government is now trying to enhance health system capacity and keep the transmission rate down. Our effective management and planning helped contain the spread of the virus. If we continue the strategy well we can check a massive surge in cases, said the health minister. The National Department of Healths use of the COVIDConnect platform as a contact tracing solution is a misguided attempt to make its previously failed contact tracing more palatable. This is according to Associate Professor Co-Pierre Georg of the University of Cape Town, a fintech expert who is part of the team behind the development of the Covi-ID QR-based contact tracing solution. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize recently announced the launch of COVIDConnect the governments contact tracing solution which runs on platforms like WhatsApp, SMS, and USSD, and employs a chatbot for its user interface. COVIDConnect provides patients with their COVID-19 test results and prompts them with questions to help gauge how severe their symptoms are. It then advises patients to either self-quarantine or seek medical attention depending on the severity of the case. Patients can also upload the information of people they have been in close contact with in the days before they tested positive for the coronavirus. These declared contacts are then sent an SMS and taken to a different part of the COVIDConnect system which also begins with a symptom questionnaire. Failed attempt at cellphone tracking Government has abandoned a previous attempt to conduct contact tracing through cellphone tower location triangulation. Georg explained this method was flawed because the spatial resolution for cellphone tracking was too low, which meant that a particular device could only be pinpointed to within a certain radius. In an urban environment, its a radius of about 400m, Georg explained. But within that radius, in a township, you can have up to 5,000 people. In rural areas, the spatial resolution is much worse. I know that the NDoH had been warned about the shortcomings of this technology and I dont understand why they chose to still go that route, Georg noted. This could never have worked, and anyone who does even a cursory Google search would have been able to tell that to Zweli Mkhize, he added. Not a true contract tracing app Georg explained that COVIDConnect cannot be considered a contact tracing app in the strict sense. This is a misguided attempt to make the Department of Healths previously failed contact tracing more palatable. But South Africa cannot afford to get a second-hand contact tracing system. The platform uses an existing platform the Praekelt Foundation had built for a different purpose to provide users with verified information and wants to turn it into a contact tracing application, Georg noted. While it augments the manual contact tracing process, it does not actually trace contacts itself, Georg noted. In the case that the system would send an automated WhatsApp to the contact details you upload, it would at least qualify as exposure notification, Georg said, albeit the least effective exposure notification he has seen. Less effective than manual contact tracing Georg claimed that COVIDConnect did not address what researchers label the biggest risk for COVID-19 contraction, which comes from what sociologists call weak links. These are people that you are in contact with only briefly, such as in a taxi or at a shopping centre, whom you may or may not know personally. COVIDConnect only allows users to upload names of close contacts that they know. What is worse, because the process is no longer human-guided, many important questions about the length of a contract, the type of exposure, and other context are no longer asked. This makes the system less effective than the previous manual process, Georg said. Certain European countries have opted to use smartphone-based solutions such as Google and Apples Bluetooth-based tracking API. Georg said that while this would allow for recording weak link exposures, its use was limited in South Africa, as around only half of citizens own a smartphone. He noted that other countries have shown that manual contact tracing can be effective. In many cases, it is one component of a bigger system, but the advantage of human contact tracers is that they can ask the context of an exposure, which is key to understanding transmission. But we would have needed many more contact tracers and more efficient management for manual contact tracing to be effective. Privacy concerns Georg said he was also worried about the issue of privacy and sensitivity in dealing with confirmed cases. Do we really want a WhatsApp message [or SMS] to tell a patient that she has a life-threatening disease? I find this callous, he stated. Additionally, there are no precautions to ensure that the patient receives this information in a private and safe environment, Georg claimed. What if she is in a taxi and receives the message that she has COVID-19? What if communities force their members to prove that they are not positive? We have so much stigma around COVID in South Africa that I am concerned about the security of patients using the app. The fact that the data ends up in a centralised database just makes it worse, because it creates a huge and unnecessary cybersecurity risk, he said. Mixing technology and manual tracing Georg maintained there were superior hybrid contact tracing solutions which combine the benefits of manual and digital contact tracing. This is why his team suggested a QR-code based system, which could allow a user to receive a QR code that they can print to present to appointed officials at key areas, such as when entering or exiting a taxi, building, or area with large concentrations of people. Singapore, for example, has deployed a QR code-based system to augment their original TraceTogether app, Georg said. He said that Covi-ID team had contacted the NDoH several times and offered that they can use the solution for free. This way you can record exposures of users who dont know each other easily, Georg said. The NDoH, however, has not responded to Covi-IDs offer. Now read: Government considers contact tracing app for South Africa But heres the caveat: The political party in charge controls the process and draws districts that best serve its interests, protecting incumbents and building power. Redistricting has been treated as an electoral spoil, regardless of party. It shouldnt be, and its time to bring a system that has been cloaked in darkness into the public spotlight. This decennial political cartography largely has been done behind closed doors. There has been no transparency, no real citizen input. In past years under both Republicans and Democrats new maps would be publicly presented as essentially a done deal. Its a process that lets politicians pick voters by creating spindly districts drawn to benefit the ruling party not whats best for the community. Not surprisingly, lengthy court fights have followed, incurring millions of dollars in legal fees to taxpayers. The constitutional amendment would shift control of the redistricting process from the General Assembly to a 16-member bipartisan commission consisting of legislators and citizens. Eight members would come from the House of Delegates and state Senate (four from each party and each chamber); eight would be citizens, with a citizen chair. Swords CFR (Community First Responders), which responds to calls of heart attack, cardiac arrest, chest pain, stroke or choking, has just unveiled a new public defibrillator/AED for River Valley, allowing it to continue to save lives in the Swords community. The group, made up of a team of fully-trained volunteers, went live with the National Ambulance Service (NAS) in January 2017, playing a key role in the area of first response. Swords CFR recently announced the installation of a new defibrillator/AED in the River Valley area of Swords, the latest such device to be introduced to Swords. Zita Corkery, Secretary with Swords CFR explains: 'What we do is we respond to emergency calls through the National Ambulance Service, we also want to get public access defibrillators for every area in Swords, and with River Valley there has been two cardiac arrests in the last two years in River Valley car park alone, so we really feel the community needs that resource available.' Speaking of how the system operates, Zita says: 'It's very very simple. Basically there's a code and if someone goes into cardiac arrest or heart attack you dial '999' and it's already mapped on the system with the control centre. 'They give them the code out, the code opens the box and basically you plug in parts and apply the parts to the person's chest and it'll go thorough what you need to do basically. 'It's 'hands on' CPR at the moment, they're not doing breath at the moment with the Covid situation. 'The operator will talk you though it, but also the machine talks you through it.' Zita says: 'It's housed on the side wall of Progressive Credit Union in Rivervalley, and we approached the team there to request access here. 'We are delighted they agreed and secured a local electrical business CPSE to install the unit.' Swords CFR also has AEDs located at Tesco in Airside, funded by the Tesco Community Fund, and at The Manor Inn in Swords Manor, funded by the group themselves. The new AED at River Valley was part-funded by Fingal County Council under the Community Enhancement Programme, and part-funded by Swords CFR themselves. Swords CFR has a dedicated team of 20 fully-trained responders, operating a 24/7 service. Just live two weeks, a cardiac arrest in River Valley car park was already reported, though thankfully, Zita says, the AER unit did not have to be operated at that time. Source: Xinhua| 2020-07-31 20:04:32|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Malaysian virologist Lam Sai Kit (L) receives an interview in the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, July 29, 2020. (Xinhua/Zhu Wei) KUALA LUMPUR, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Countries around the world should practice "internationalism" when facing a pandemic like COVID-19, including providing universal access when effective vaccines are available, a virologist said. Lam Sai Kit, an emeritus professor at the University of Malaya and a prominent infectious disease expert, commended China's progress in developing a vaccine and its pledge to make China's vaccine a "global public good." In a recent interview with Xinhua, the expert refuted conspiracy theories on the origin of the outbreak, stressing the importance of separating science from politics. VACCINE DEVELOPMENT "PROMISING" Lam, 82, has been involved in the study and handling of emerging virus infections throughout his long career spanning nearly five decades, including the Chikungunya and the Nipah virus outbreaks in Malaysia. He described the novel coronavirus as "very nasty and vicious," being able to attack so many organs, which would require effective vaccines to be used to eventually control the pandemic by building up herd immunity. During his career, Lam has also participated in the development of vaccines, including on dengue and rotavirus, and has been watching closely the race for COVID-19 vaccines. "I'm particularly glad that there's so much move towards developing a vaccine against COVID-19," he said, noting several vaccine candidates developed by China which are entering phase 3 clinical trials. At least 24 COVID-19 candidate vaccines are in clinical evaluation globally, and another 142 in preclinical evaluation, according to data released by the World Health Organization earlier in July. Chinese experts said in a study published recently in the medical journal The Lancet that a phase 2 trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate has found that the vaccine is safe and induces an immune response. Lam believes the prospect of a successful vaccine is "very promising," but expressed concern over whether the vast population could have access. "What I'm seeing now is very promising, that the various approaches are being made towards the production of a vaccine that could be applied universally. I am pretty sure that one or more of these vaccines will become available maybe in the next year or so," he said. "My concern is whether there will be enough of the vaccine for global use. As you can see some of the developed countries who can afford it are already cornering the market by buying up vaccines or ordering vaccines ahead of time," he said. Lam spoke highly of China's promise to make its vaccine "global public goods" and China's ability to step up production to make it widely available. "What is left for other countries like Malaysia? Fortunately, China has pledged that part of the vaccines that they produce will be used to help such countries and I'm particularly happy about it. China is able to step up the production," he said. China has pledged that when a COVID-19 vaccine is successfully developed and put to use in China, it will be shared with the world as a global public good to ensure vaccine accessibility and affordability, especially in developing countries. CALLING FOR INTERNATIONALISM For Lam, international cooperation during a pandemic is essential, as the virus knows no borders. "I think for pandemics, it is very important to practice what I call internationalism," he said. "There is no border. People work across borders and help each other to prevent the spread from one country to another." Lam praised China's role in the global fight against COVID-19 by providing essential supplies and sharing experiences. "I think it's very commendable that China has been helping other countries in the fight against pandemics. There are many developing countries, third world countries, that require this sort of help," he said. "China has done an excellent job by sending its experts to many countries including Malaysia, sending medical supplies, ventilators, sanitizers, to these countries that are very much in need." China's success in containing the outbreak domestically also shows that much could be done with public health measures before effective vaccines are available, such as wearing face masks and keeping social distancing and hand hygiene, the expert noted. It was "unfortunate" that in certain countries such measures like wearing a face mask were not followed and led to worsening situations, he added. More than 17 million COVID-19 cases are reported globally as of Friday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. SEPARATE SCIENCE FROM POLITICS In February, Lam joined over a dozen of scientists around the world to issue a statement published on the website of the medical journal The Lancet to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that the novel coronavirus does not have a natural origin. "A group of us scientists were very unhappy with the conspiracy theory because it didn't quite meet the standard of good science you know and there was no evidence base that we could see," Lam told Xinhua. He stood by his position that the novel coronavirus had a natural origin. "With the advent of molecular techniques and technology, it is possible to know whether the SARS-CoV-2 is actually man-made or from a natural host. And there is absolutely no evidence, there's no footprint in the nucleic acid of the coronavirus to show that it is man-made." Lam has played a central role in the discovery of the Nipah virus during the 1998-1999 outbreak in Malaysia. Based on his previous experiences, Lam said allegations that China failed to warn the world early enough about the outbreak do not hold water. "When they criticize China for not telling the world early enough about this COVID-19, I think it was wrong. I have gone through the whole thing. It took us three weeks before we announced the Nipah virus as the new virus causing a new disease. It's very important to be sure what you're going to tell the world. You cannot rush in a pandemic and then tell something and then later retract." Spreading between people and from other animals to people, the Nipah virus causes fever, shortness of breath, brain inflammation and seizures. While finding out the origin of the virus remains important, it should be done at an appropriate time that would not distract from efforts to contain the outbreak, and should not be politicized, said Lam. "I think it is very important to separate science from politics. And I always say that, for investigation of outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemics, it should be left to the health experts rather than to politicians," he said. "We should never politicize an outbreak where human lives are at stake," he said. "That is a very important principle." A dig site in Fort Bend County is believed to have revealed Native American remains, according to the sheriffs office. The agency said in a statement that it has stopped the excavation in the Sienna area and contacted members of the Karankawa Kadla, who it said will be coming to the site in the near future to conduct a burial ritual. Oregon lawmakers have successfully, if perhaps temporarily, halted the steady upward trajectory of public pension costs for government employers, according to a preliminary analysis of pension contribution rates that will kick in a year from now. Thats good news for public employers around the state struggling with revenue declines amid an economic recession, and increased service needs to combat the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Yet the rate relief comes at a precarious time for the pension systems already troubled funded status. It also raises question about the wisdom of lawmakers moves when it comes to assuring the systems long-term health. Milliman Inc., the systems actuary, presented the board of Oregons Public Employees Retirement System with the results of its preliminary system valuation on Friday. The study analyzed the systems financial condition at the end of 2019. A final version due in October will be used to set public employers required pension payments in the two-year budget cycle that begins next July. Those required payments have been on a steady upward march in the aftermath of the 2008 recession as the board attempts to dig out of a funding deficit that now stands at $24.5 billion. The rising payments have put increasing pressure on the budgets of schools, state agencies, municipalities and other public employers across the state. But due to unsteady investment returns, they have done little to improve the financial status of the pension fund, which now has 72 cents in assets for every dollar in liabilities. Nevertheless, lawmakers stepped in last year to provide employers with some budget relief. In particular, Gov. Kate Brown was determined to halt pension cost increases for schools and assure that revenues from the states new business tax for education made it into classrooms, and wasnt siphoned off to pay increased pension costs. Lawmakers engineered most of the savings with an accounting trick: extending the repayment period for the pension deficit for a decade. Senate Bill 1049, passed in 2019, also required public employees making more than $30,000 a year to resume making contributions to the system, which will offset a small portion of employers costs if they survive an ongoing court challenge. The legislation had the desired effect. Milliman said Friday that employers average contribution rates to the system, which are expressed as a percentage of their payroll, would decline slightly next July, from 18.32% to 17.93%. But in some ways, the situation looks analogous to 2009, when the PERS Board slashed employers contribution rates based on the systems healthy financial status at the end of 2007, after a six-year run of robust investment returns. By that time, however, PERS had already seen the market value of its investments implode. They dropped 27% in 2008, blowing a funding hole in the system that was only partially mitigated by strong investment returns the following year. After those lower rates went into effect, the systems unfunded liability increased by 20% between 2009 and 2011. The situation today is somewhat different. Financial markets have remained largely disconnected from economic fundamentals. The broad stock market, measured by the Russell 3000 index, is only down 4% from its record high in February, amid huge job losses and an economy that is struggling to recover amid a resurgence in the coronavirus. Oregons pension investments were down only 4.5% year-to-date at the end of June. But the consultant charged with projecting investment returns for the state predicts that losses from the funds private equity and real estate holdings about a third of the portfolio - will likely worsen over coming quarters as the valuation of those assets, which arent publicly traded, catch up with public markets. The board also learned Friday that the consultant, Callan LLC., was lowering its 10-year projection of the funds investment returns from 7.3% to 7.1%. The number is another critical driver of employers required contributions. Despite pressure to lower its own assumption, the PERS Board decided a year ago to protect employers from further upward rate pressure by standing pat on its current investment return assumption of 7.2%. It wont revisit that question for another year. Theres no telling where financial markets go from here. But Milliman said Friday that if the fund finishes the year where it is today, the systems unfunded liability would grow to as much as $32 billion, and its funded status would fall to 65 cents in assets for every dollar in liabilities. Nancy Brewer, finance director for the City of Corvallis, listened in on PERS Board meeting Friday and was alarmed by what she heard. She remembers some of the decisions the PERS Board made in the late nineties, which ultimately opened up the yawning structural deficit the fund faces today. In light of the current economic situation, she feels the pension funds investment portfolio will be lucky to end 2020 where it stands today I worry that were making short term funding decisions, and we will look back at this and say coulda, shoulda, woulda, she said. Public employees have sued to overturn the provisions of Senate Bill 1049 that require employees making more than $30,000 to start making contributions to the pension fund. The law directs 2.5% of salary for employees hired on or before August 28, 2003 to support the pension fund, and 0.75% of salary for employees hired after that date. Those contributions are expected to save employers some $300 million statewide in the next budget cycle by directly offsetting a portion of their contributions. There was some discussion at Fridays meeting about what to do if the Oregon Supreme Court does overturn the employee cost sharing in the middle of biennium. Milliman had proposed that employers rates would immediately adjust upward to maintain the same overall level of contributions to the system, though board member Lawrence Furnstahl, chief financial officer at Oregon Health & Science University, expressed hesitation due to the potential mid-cycle hit to employers budgets. Brewer, the finance manager for Corvallis, said she supports immediately raising employers rates if that comes to pass. Short-term rate reductions lead to long-term rate increases that are going to be higher and last longer, she said. Again, the situation parallels past events. In 2013, the Legislature passed a series of cuts to employee pension benefits to save employers money, including limits on retirees cost of living adjustments. Those savings eliminated sizeable projected increases in employers contribution rates in the next two-year budget cycle. But the Oregon Supreme Court overturned the changes in April 2015, calling them an unconstitutional breach of contract. Three months later, the PERS Board let the lower rates go into effect anyway, shortchanging the system for another two years and further exacerbating its funding problem. Gov. Brown on Friday called a special session of the Legislature for lawmakers to close a projected $1 billion shortfall. PERS staff told board members that the Legislatures budget chiefs were considering eliminating some of the relatively anemic provisions in Senate Bill 1049 that were actually designed to improve the systems unfunded liability. One proposal would sweep dollars appropriated to an incentive fund designed to encourage employers to make extra contributions to the pension fund, and abolish future revenue streams dedicated to it. Another would sweep money back to the general fund from another fund established to reduce schools future pension costs. Jeff Gudman, the Republican candidate for Oregon Treasurer this fall, was listening in on Fridays meeting. Given the presentation to the board, he said consideration should be given to accelerating the timing of any projected rate increases, despite the pain it in till inflict on every level of government and residents. Paying later will be even more painful, he said. -- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-2218505; @tedsickinger Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, Gov. Ross Barnett, in lieu of violence, had them arrested for violating the Jim Crow laws for integrating the bus stations whites only waiting room a law the Supreme Court had already struck down. They were tried, convicted and sent to Parchman Penitentiary for 60 days, which had the reputation for brutality. To make the convicted Freedom Riders as uncomfortable as possible, they were put to work on chain gangs. But Lewis, Vivian and the other Freedom Riders, before embarking on their journey, had already made peace with themselves that was superior to Parchmans brutal reputation. They knew in advance their efforts could lead to death. When those of us on the Freedom Rides left Nashville on May 4, 1961, Lewis said, the same year President Obama was born, we were prepared to die! Some of us signed notes and wills. If that was what it took, death, as Dr. King said, to redeem the soul of America, some of us were prepared to die. Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray to be hospitalized for treatment of neck pain Lockdown-like restrictions to return in Maharashtra? Here's what CM Uddhav Thackeray has to say Dont question Mumbai cops ability to handle Sushant Singh probe: Maha CM India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Mumbai, Aug 01: Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has said that he deplored attempts to question the efficiency of the Mumbai Police in handling the probe into the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. He said the state police were capable of probing the case, an assertion which comes in the backdrop of growing clamour for a CBI probe in the actor's death here in June. Speaking on Friday, Thackeray lashed out at Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis, saying the BJP politician had doubted the credibility of the Mumbai police in handling the case despite being a chief minister for five years. Sushant Singh Rajput's death case: Supreme Court to hear Rhea Chakraborty's plea on August 5 US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news "The opposition can even bring Interpol or followers of the Namaste Trump event into the inquiry. Devendra Fadnavis should understand that it is the same police whom he has worked within the last five years," Thackeray said at an event organised by a Marathi news channel. Earlier in the day, Fadnavis said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) should register an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) in connection with the money laundering angle in death case of Rajput. There is a "huge public sentiment" about handing over the case to the CBI, but the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state has been reluctant to do so, the former BJP chief minister said. Thackeray said the Mumbai police have been "corona warriors" and many personnel in the force have died due to the infection. To question their efficiency is an insult to them and "I condemn this," he added. Thackeray said if anyone has any proof related to the case, he/she can bring it to the Mumbai police. "We will interrogate and punish the guilty. However, please don't use this case as a Maharashtra versus Bihar issue. This is the most deplorable thing to do," he said. Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had recently said that the Mumbai Police are capable of handling the matter and that there was no need for a CBI probe into the case. The Mumbai police have recorded the statements of Bollywood personalities, including Sanjay Leela Bhansali, film critic Rajeev Masand, actress Sanjana Sanghi, the actor's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, casting director Shanoo Sharma, filmmaker Mukesh Chhabra, and Aditya Chopra of Yash Raj Films. The police have so far recorded statements of around 40 people, including those of Rajput's family and his cook. Rajput, 34, was found hanging at his apartment in suburban Bandra on June 14. A Bihar police team is probing a separate 'abetment to suicide' case on the basis of a complaint filed by the late actor's father in Patna. Speaking at the event, the CM said he wasn't bothered about the stability of his government as long as he enjoys support of the people of the state and Shiv Sainiks. "The BJP says our government is against the mandate. Then is destabilising democratically-elected governments a mandate?" he asked. Thackeray, who is also the Shiv Sena president, said his party and the BJP have "divorced" now so the national party need not bother about what his outfit does. "We were in a relationship with the BJP for 30 years, but they did not trust us. But those with whom we had political differences for 30 years trusted us," Thackeray said, referring to the NCP and the Congress, who are part of the Shiv Sena-led government. After a year-long deployment in the Middle East, 120 North Carolina National Guard Soldiers have touched down state side and were met with a heros welcome. On July 25, men and women from the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) landed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, and donning masks, they were greeted by senior National Guard members as they disembarked the aircraft. Elbow bumps and words of congratulation were exchanged. Nothing like being home, exclaimed ABCT truck driver Pfc. Qurita Patterson, as quoted by WTSP. The North Carolina National Guard posted footage on Facebook showing its members disembarking the plane, and netizens left welcoming comments and messages of gratitude for the returning troops. The 30th ABCT, nicknamed Old Hickory, had been stationed in the Middle East as part of Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Spartan Shield; it had been the teams task to provide M2A2 Bradley combat vehicles and protect critical infrastructure from ISIS during their deployment, reports DVIDS Hub. The year-long mission was Old Hickorys third deployment since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York. North Carolina Army National Guard (NCARNG) Brig. Gen. Allen Boyette called the soldiers return a special day, adding, It was a long road with train-up and mission. Boyette acknowledged the second big event of the day: besides their safe return, the 120 soldiers were honored with a World War Two Presidential Unit Citation at the divisions headquarters in Clinton, North Carolina. The citation was awarded in recognition of the divisions bravery and heroism at the Battle of Mortain in northwestern France over 76 years ago. The welcoming home was an encouraging sight for military families across the nation. The Department of Defense had extended the 60-day Stop Movement order for overseas travel on April 2o, reports Military One Source, thus disrupting travel plans, causing delays to anticipated arrival dates, and prolonging periods of separation between military personnel and their families. A number of overseas troops did make it home before the Stop Movement order went into effect, however. Roughly 1,350 U.S. soldiers from the Armys 25th Infantry Division returned home from Thailand in the second week of April to get ahead of the spreading pandemic in the region. The soldiers had been deployed as part of the Armys Pacific Pathways program, an ongoing mission to increase U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific region, reports Army Times. Leadership adjusted the timeline of the exercise based on an assessment that the unit had achieved its initial training objectives, U.S. Army Pacific spokesman Col. Derrick W. Cheng explained, and with obvious consideration to the evolving environment that COVID-19 presented. He added, With the COVID situation, different countries are adjusting their [military-to-military] activities to include those exercises Were adjusting along with everybody elsethe regional militarieson what the rest of the year is going to look like. We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc Heartbroken parents have shared an image of their son in tears after he was told that their dream holiday was being cut short. The Mason family had headed out to the Spanish island of Menorca to enjoy a much-needed 14-day holiday under the sun. But just four days in, parents Katy and Ben had to tell sons Ollie, 10, and Dylan, 13, that travel provider Jet2 had told them to return to the UK. The tour operator has cut short customers' holidays and is evacuating them from Spain after the Foreign Office issued a travel ban. Heartbroken parents have shared an image of their son in tears after he was told that their dream holiday was being cut short 'We were sat in a bar at the end of the island looking at the sunset and we had to turn around to the boys and say "it looks as though we're going to have to go home early - this weekend",' Ben told The Mirror. He added that Ollie broke down in tears, while Dylan 'went a bit quiet'. 'That was it. We gave up at that point because we were trying to book the flights so had to leave to get better phone signal and walked back to the villa. Jet2 have ruined our holiday.' The 38-year-old, from Bedford, says he published the picture of his distraught son because he wanted provider Jet2 to 'look at the affect of what they have done'. But the situation became more painful for the couple when they had to book seats on a flight to bring them home. The Mason family had headed out to the Spanish island of Menorca to enjoy a much-needed 14-day holiday under the sun. Pictured: Parents Katy and Ben They had wanted to push the date of their return as far back as possible to make the most of the villa which they had booked separately, but found spaces were disappearing quickly. 'At one point Katy had the flights in her basket and it timed out and we went back in and the flights were 200 Euros more. He said that Jet2 should have just assigned everyone a seat on planes back and charged a flat rate instead of causing a mad rush. Katy, 41, added that the brothers were now 'coming to terms' with losing out on part of their holiday. Jet have said they will refund flights for customers along with the difference of the new flight. 'We were sat in a bar at the end of the island looking at the sunset and we had to turn around to the boys and say "it looks as though we're going to have to go home early - this weekend"' Dad Ben added that Ollie broke down in tears, while Dylan (pictured) 'went a bit quiet' A spokesperson told MailOnline: 'We are sorry to hear about the Mason familys situation, and we understand that they have booked a return flight with Jet2.com after we contacted them with their options. 'We can assure them that any difference in cost between the original and new fares of their return flight will be refunded. 'We were recognised by the Civil Aviation Authority just yesterday as the only UK airline to refund customers promptly on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic, so we can assure the Mason family we will resolve this quickly. 'Nobody wants customers to be on holiday enjoying themselves more than we do. It is important to note that we are responding to a very fast-moving situation, with updates coming from the government with little or no notice, and we are having to make complex operational decisions accordingly.' Officials say Jamshid Sharmahd of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran planned the deadly 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz. Iran says it has arrested the head of a United States-based terrorist group accused of bombing a mosque in 2008 that killed 14 people and wounded more than 200 others in the southern city of Shiraz. The groups Jamshid Sharmahd, who was leading armed and sabotage operations inside Iran, is now in the powerful hands of Irans security forces, state television said in a report on Saturday, citing a statement from the intelligence ministry. The statement did not elaborate on where or when the leader of the opposition royalist group known as the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, known in Farsi as Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran, or Tondar (Farsi for thunder), was arrested. The group seeks to restore Irans monarchy, which ended when the fatally ill Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country in 1979 just before its Islamic Revolution. The groups founder disappeared in the mid-2000s. It remains unclear how the US-based accused was arrested. Tonder planned big operations Iranian state television broadcast a report on Sharmahds arrest, linking him to the April 12, 2008 bombing of the Hosseynieh Seyed al-Shohada Mosque in Shiraz. Iran hanged three men convicted of the bombing in 2009, saying they had ties to the monarchist group. Iran hanged two other convicted members of the group in 2010, who had confessed to obtaining explosives and planning to assassinate officials. The statement issued on Saturday said Tondar had plotted several other big operations which failed. It said Tondar had planned to blow up a dam in Shiraz, use cyanide bombs at a Tehran book fair, and plant an explosive device at the mausoleum of Irans founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 2010. While overshadowed by other exiled opposition groups, Iran reportedly brought up the Kingdom Assembly of Iran multiple times while negotiating the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. A statement attributed to Tondar claimed the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010 by a remote-control bomb, though it later said it was not responsible. Suspicion long has fallen on Israel for a string of assassinations targeting scientists amid concerns about Irans nuclear programme, which the West fears could be used to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran long has maintained its programme is for peaceful purposes. Sharmahds arrest came amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over the collapsing 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from in 2018. In January, a US drone attack killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Iran responded by launching a ballistic missile attack on US soldiers in Iraq that injured dozens. At the same time, the mail system is being undercut in ways set in motion by Mr. Trump. Fueled by animus for Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and surrounded by advisers who have long called for privatizing the post office, Mr. Trump and his appointees have begun taking cost-cutting steps that appear to have led to slower and less reliable delivery. In recent weeks, at the direction of a Trump campaign megadonor who was recently named the postmaster general, the service has stopped paying mail carriers and clerks the overtime necessary to ensure that deliveries can be completed each day. That and other changes have led to reports of letters and packages being delayed by as many as several days. Voting rights groups say it is a recipe for disaster. We have an underfunded state and local election system and a deliberate slowdown in the Postal Service, said Wendy Fields, the executive director of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of voting and civil rights groups. She said the president was deliberately orchestrating suppression and using the post office as a tool to do it. Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington, one of five states where mail-in balloting is universal, said Wednesday on NPRs 1A program that election officials are very concerned, if the post office is reducing service, that we will be able to get ballots to people in time. During his eulogy on Thursday for Representative John Lewis, former President Barack Obama lamented what he said was a continuing effort to attack voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people dont get sick. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the Centres New Education Policy stressed on building job creators instead of job seekers and emphasized that the time had come for increased focus on learning, research and innovation in the field of education. The 21st century is the era of knowledge. This is the time for increased focus on learning, research, innovation. This is exactly what Indias National Education Policy, 2020 does. We are focussing on the quality of education in the country. Our attempts have been to make our education system the most advanced and modern for students, PM Modi told students at a virtual interaction. The Prime Minister was addressing students at the Smart India Hackathon 2020 grand finale, through video conferencing. This year, around 10,000 students are participating in the hackathon. The grand finale of Smart India Hackathon 2020 (Software) will be held from August 1 to 3. ALSO READ | Young Indias innovative solutions will help nation move forward in challenging times: PM Modi Elaborating on the Centres attempts to transform the content and method of imparting education in the country, PM Modi said, The New Education Policy-2020 announced earlier this week emphasizes on inter-disciplinary study, which will ensure that the focus is on what the student wants to learn instead of being compelled to learn. He explained that the new education policy is about the spirit which reflects that the countrys students are gradually shifting from the burden of the school bag, which does not last beyond school, to the boon of learning which will help them for life, from simply memorizing study matter to encouraging critical thinking. He said the role of the youth was important for the nation to achieve its target of improving the ease of living to provide a better life for the poor and needy. Languages of India will develop more due to the changes brought about in the education policy. This will not only increase Indias knowledge but will also increase the unity among its people, the Prime Minister told the students participating in the Smart India Hackathon 2020. The hackathon is a nationwide initiative to provide students with a platform to solve some of the critical problems people face in daily lives. It is also aimed at building a culture of product innovation and a mindset of problem-solving among students pursuing higher education. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON On May 29, 2012, at an event marking the first anniversary of his administration, the immediate past governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun, reeled out his achievements. As is the practice with politicians, Mr Amosun went on and made several promises to the people of the state. Among the promises he made was a plan to build 26 world-class model secondary schools across the 20 local governments in the state. Mr Amosun said the foundations of the schools were already being laid adding that when the model schools were completed, they were going to raise the education standard in the state as they would provide first-class tutelage. Just last week, we laid foundations of 26 model schools that we believe will define the new Ogun standard in the provision of education at the secondary level. It is an ambitious educational programme, which will touch all of the 20 local government areas of the state. These schools will provide unparalleled facilities in science, technical education, agriculture, humanities, enterprise, and sports, with full boarding facilities, to serve the entire state. It is envisaged that these model schools will produce students who can compete with their peers anywhere in the world, he boasted. As it is usually the case with the development of new projects, ordinary people and communities would be expected to make sacrifices such as the demolition of their properties and the loss of their land (sometimes without compensation). For instance, Musafau Adebisi, a retired civil servant and the Baale (village head) of Oke Odo community in Ago Iwoye, Ijebu North Local Government Area, got to his farm one morning in 2012 but discovered his crops had been destroyed. When he approached the king, he was told that a model school was coming to the Oke Odo community and that his farm and those of others had to be sacrificed. I felt terrible. I was using about one acre of the land to farm. There were other farmers too, some of them were widows. Our crops were destroyed. Mr. Adebisi said. He said though they (farmers) were never consulted nor compensated before their crop were destroyed, they were pleased the land was going to be used for a good course. This newspaper tried to get the exact amount officially budgeted and spent on the project but was rebuffed by officials of the current administration in the state. Ade Akinsanya, Ogun States commissioner for works, declined to say the amount spent on the project. He also refused to reveal the name of the contractors who built the schools. Mr Akinsaya said the project was not handled by his ministry. You know the right channel to get that information, he said over the phone and hung up. Requests for information about the project sent to the states Ministries of Finance and Budget yielded no response. However, the May 2012 edition of a monthly magazine published by the states Ministry of Information, Ogun Update, claimed that it cost the government N750 million to build each of the schools. The then Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Segun Odubela, who made the claim added that additional N300 million was earmarked for equipment and furniture in each school. Each school comes to a total of N1.05 billion. The 26 schools would be a total of N27.3 billion, Mr Odubela said. Also, while boasting of his achievement over his predecessors, a few days before leaving office, Mr Amosun disclosed that each model school constructed cost N750 million. They talked about our model school, the cost of one is N750 million. He said this on the sidelines of the inauguration of a housing scheme in Isheri, Ifo Local Government Area in May 2019. Misplaced priority Despite Mr Amosuns self-adulation, some stakeholders in the state were not impressed by his decision to build the model secondary schools. Critics of the project argued that it was a waste of public funds and misplacement of educational priority. Titilope Adebanjo, the states chairman of the Nigerian Union of Teachers, described the project as unnecessary. He told this newspaper that the union was not consulted before the Amosun administration decided to build the model school. He wondered the rationale of spending billions of naira to build a few schools when most of the schools in the state were in bad conditions. You cannot begin to work on model schools when the existing ones are crying for help and assistance. So, from the beginning, we saw it as a misplaced priority, he said. Similarly, The Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools (ASUSS) chastised the governor for failing to renovate existing public schools. The existing schools should be taken care of in terms of structures, teachers, as well as the environment. Most of the existing schools in Ogun are over-populated. Many structures are in a sorry state, some buildings have leaking roofs, no furniture for the students, and no replacement for retired teachers, said Akeem Lasisi, the chairman of the association. Abandoned, disused, and plundered A PREMIUM TIMES investigation has revealed that despite billions of taxpayers funds spent on the project and the huge cost incurred by individuals that forfeited their properties to the government without compensation, most of the schools are in ruins and uninhabited. In October 2012, Mr Amosun claimed that 15 of 26 model schools would be ready in 2013. We saw the longtime neglect of the schools and so we decided to construct model secondary schools and they will be ready by early next year. By early next year, 15 of these 26 model schools would be ready, Mr Amosun said. Disappointingly, this promise was not fulfilled until February 2016 when the former governor and President Muhammadu Buhari commissioned some of the model schools among other projects in the state. Advertisements After the commissioning, the schools did not accept pupils until after six months. Even at that they only opened partially. For instance, at Akin Ogunpola Model College in Ewekoro Local Government Area, 250 pupils were admitted for summer camp in August 2016. During the flag-off of the summer camp, Mr Amosuns deputy, Yetunde Onanuga, said the schools were going to start operations fully in a month when the academic session resumed. She said the schools were going to be subsidised and would be open to exceptional pupils. We have so many brilliant students in our public schools that dont have the opportunity to go to private schools. But with these model schools, once you are brilliant and you are doing well, you can come. Its a subsidised form of school for the less privileged, she said. However, PREMIUM TIMES investigation revealed that till this day, only the Akin Ogunpola College remains the only one of the proposed model schools used for academic activities. After the summer camp, the school admitted pupils for the 2017 and 2018 academic sessions. But in 2019, due to dwindling enrolment, the new government of the state shut down the school. And like the other model schools, it quickly progressed into disrepair. Akin Ogunpola Model School In fact, some of the schools were never completed. Others which were completed couldnt attract students, were never inhabited and have since been abandoned. The completed schools have been taken over by thick bushes, reptiles and birds. At the model school in Kemita in Abeokuta South Local Government Area, bushes and thorny weeds have almost covered up the entire building; the scaffoldings have collapsed, and the building looks greenish due to weeds and algae growing on its walls. Residents of the area now use it as a preferred spot for open defecation and unpleasant smell pervades the area. Akin Ogunpola Model School In Ipokia, the model school is already collapsing while bushes have covered up the ground floor of the building The regent of Ipokia, Isiaka Abolurin, said what has happened to the school was unfortunate. It has been about eight years since the school was abandoned at that level, he told this reporter. What the people of Ipokia and the whole of Yewa wants is a recommencement of the project, he added. Akin Ogunpola Model School The completed school were in equally deplorable states. Though named after prominent persons in the state, they remained abandoned. Furniture and equipment have been left to rot away while the buildings struggle for sunlight with thick bushes and trees encroaching into it and threatening to overtake it. Inside the Sanya Onabamiro Model College, a fully furnished three-storey building and two separate buildings expected to serve as hostels, the doors were broken, the paint on the wall peeling off and the windows have become rusty. One of the security men, watching over the building project who identified himself as Saliu Jimoh, could not hide his disappointment at the state of the building and hope the government will revive it soon. Mr Jimoh, a retired policeman, said he has taken on the duty of making sure that the trees encroaching into the building do not completely cover up the building. Front view of Sanya Onabamiro College Ago Iwoye, Ijebu North I cannot just watch the bushes and trees take over the building. What if it were my property? It is the way you take care of your property that you will take care of someone elses. If I had not been weeding and cutting the bushes, we would not be able to enter. I intend to cut those ones around the hostels when I am on duty on Wednesday, he said. There were unused building materials used by the workers, including cement, paints, shovels in the building. While Mr Jimoh and his colleagues ensured that the multi-million naira facilities in the Onabamiro college did not completely rot away, the Adeoye Lambo college in Onijoganjogan in Abeokuta North Local Government Area was not lucky. The schools perimeter fence was uncompleted. Residents have seized the opportunity to create a broad thoroughfare across the premises used by pedestrians and vehicles. Residents alleged that scavengers and miscreants had broken into the hostel and have stolen all the fittings there. The wanderer It is those scavengers that pick rubbish. They always enter inside; I dont know what they are looking for. We cant stop them from entering. Come and look at that other building (pointing to the hostel building), they have broken part of the door to gain entrance. May God save us, said one resident who identified himself as Abdullahi Abdullahi Damaged Door Abdullahi disclosed that there used to be security men in the school premises but they had stopped coming, an action he claimed was responsible for the trespassing. Missing Sockets The school at Obafemi Owode Local Government Area has been converted into a tech hub while the HID Awolowo Model College in Ikenne is now being used as a COVID-19 isolation centre. Missing Bulbs Unaffordable school fees The Amosun administration claimed the model schools would reduce the number of out-of-school children and encourage parents to enrol their wards in public schools. The Special Adviser to the former Governor on Education, Tunji Abimbola, said in 2012 that the model schools would be established in line with the free education policy of the government and that children of both rich and poor would be able to attend. However, this investigation found out that the schools were never meant for the children of the poor. An admission letter to the Akin Ogunpola Model School in Ewekoro, obtained from a Facebook user, Akanni Balogun, showed that the boarding fee in 2017 was N400, 000 per term and N1.2 million yearly. In comparison, the minimum wage in Ogun State at the time was N216,000 per year. Our reporter put a call through to the admission officer, disguising as a parent who wanted to enrol his child. A woman picked the call and later passed it to a man, who claimed to be in charge of admissions. He claimed that the admission form for a new session was available for N5,000. Upon enquiry, he stated that the tuition plus accommodation fee for the new session is N100,000. The special adviser to the governor on primary and secondary education to the incumbent governor, Ronke Soyombo, neither answered, returned nor replied four calls and two text messages sent to her mobile phone. When our reporter visited the school, a security man, Suraju Afuwape, said he had been ordered not to allow anyone into the premises of the school, except someone authorised by the Ministry of Education. NUT, community leader want model schools converted to vocational centres Meanwhile, the state chairman of the Nigerian Union of Teachers, Titilope Adebanjo, said the government should convert the abandoned schools to vocational training centres. We have advised the present administration in many ways to convert many of them to vocational centres. We cannot say we want to finish a product that we have not seen the usefulness, so we had advised earlier before now that government should see how best they can make use of those places, he advised. Also, the traditional chief of Oke Odo community in Ago Iwoye, Musafau Adebisi, advised that the Sanya Onabamiro College be converted to a technical college where children can learn skills like tailoring, mechanical engineering, among others. I do not know the use of model school; what we need in Nigeria and in this area is technical college. Many children go to model school. In technical college, you can learn tailoring, mechanic, and so many things like that. When the child finishes Senior Secondary School 3, he can work for himself; he could then help himself to university. I have four children who are graduates, they still had to go learn (a skill) and there is money in this Nigeria. The amount of money I hear on the radio billions, trillions. Dapo Abiodun to demolish, convert model schools The incumbent governor, Dapo Abiodun, has told anyone who cares to listen that he is not interested in going ahead with the model school project of his predecessor. He has vowed to demolish some while some would be converted for different purposes. While addressing residents of Ogun West Senatorial District at a town hall meeting on the 2020 budget, he said the model school at Ilaro was structurally defective and promised to demolish it and replace it with a vocational training centre. Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun [PHOTO CREDIT: @dabiodunMFR] Remy Hazzan, a media aide to Mr Abiodun told this newspaper that the model school project was ill-conceived. You have classrooms that are no longer habitable for teachers and students, and they left all of those ones unattended to and began to build new schools. It means that maintenance culture was expunged from the books, he said. Mr Hazzan said the government was planning to put the schools to better use. For instance, he said the government is thinking of converting the model school at Ikenne, which is currently being used as an isolation centre to treat patients of COVID-19 into a specialist hospital. One of them is already being used as the base of the Bureau of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that is the one we call the TECH HUB. Some of them, we are already programming to use as vocational centres because even if you use them for the secondary schools they were originally programmed for, how do you determine whose sons and daughter will go there without creating a class problem, he said. Ibikunle Amosun (Photo: Guardian) He said the Mr Amosun administration did not hand over the financial and contractual documents of the model school project to the incumbent administration but promised that a project review committee is looking at the project and will soon reveal its findings. Mr Amosun did not return several calls and a SMS sent to his mobile number seeking for comment. This investigation was done as part of the UDEME project. Police officers were forced to make arrests and break up 'brawls' between sunseekers who flocked to the beaches yesterday as the UK experienced its hottest day of the year so far. Fights broke out in Bournemouth, Dorset, and Portobello, Scotland, as large groups gathered for a day in the sunshine. In Bournemouth, where more than 100,000 people had visited for the day, a woman wearing a swimming costume was filmed as she was led away by the police as dozens of people watched on. A woman wearing a swimming costume was led away by police on Bournemouth seafront yesterday She shouted at the officers who arrested her in Bournemouth and escorted her to the car and claimed they were 'racist' As she is escorted into a police car the woman shouts at the officers: 'You're racist.' Several officers can be seen in the video speaking to the woman on the beach by the pier before she is put in the car. The video also shows a startling number of large groups gathered on the popular Dorset beach, joined by a substantial number of people in hi-vis jackets. The Sun reported a spokesperson for Dorset Police said officers had detained a boy and a girl, from Southampton and both 16, and they were given dispersal orders. In Scotland, police were called to Portobello beach in Edinburgh after reports of a large disturbance yesterday afternoon. Several officers were seen speaking to the woman on Bournemouth beach before she was removed (left of the image) A large group of people in hi-vis jackets were seen gathered on Bournemouth beach along with hundreds of sunseekers Officers were interspersed with the large crowds who flocked to Bournemouth pier when the sun came out Reports said that more than 10 police vans and cars showed up to manage the crowds. Police were seen breaking up large groups of young people and removing alcohol from sunbathers. The incident came as the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said there had been an increase in Covid-19 infections among people aged 20 to 40. A Police Scotland spokesperson said: 'We received a report of a large disturbance on Portobello beach in Edinburgh around 3pm on Friday, 31 July, 2020. 'Officers are currently in attendance, there are no reports of any injuries and enquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances.' It is understood more than 10 officers still remain on the beach. Chief Inspector Gill Geany, Local Area Commander for the area said: 'A 16-year-old female youth was arrested in connection with the disturbance. 'A 17-year-old male youth was arrested and charged for being in possession of a wooden pole. 'Many people spent the day at Portobello Beach yesterday enjoying the good weather without incident. Bags of alcohol were confiscated from sunseeking drinkers at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh by police officers yesterday afternoon Police officers were seen walking along Portobello Beach near Edinburgh in the afternoon as temperatures soared across Britain The police walked through members of the public who have flocked to Portobello Beach near Edinburgh yesterday Unfortunately, a small group, intent on trouble spolied it for others. Disruptive and anti-social behaviour will not be tolerated and we will continue to work with local authority partners to ensure everyone is able to enjoy these spaces safely.' In Wales, beachgoers at Barry Island were crammed onto the beach while flouting social distancing guidelines. Images shared with WalesOnline show long queues of people waiting to board trains home after a long day in the sunshine. South Wales Police tweeted pictures of the chaos as hundreds of people made the most of the warm summer's day. Officers dealt with numerous incident, including six missing children which were reunited with their families and several bags of alcohol were seized from underage drinkers. Around 20-25,000 people are reported to have visited the beach at Barry Island in one day. Temperatures soared to 37.8C at London Heathrow on Friday afternoon, with even Leeds and Manchester reaching 88F (31C) and 79F (26C) in Newcastle and Wales. Temperatures in England were mirroring those in Ibiza and the Costa del Sol, pleasing those whose holidays to Spain were cancelled, with the mercury now closing in on the all-time UK record of 101.7F (38.7C) set just last year. Yesterday Brighton and Hove City Council said it was 'concerned' about visitor numbers in the city, urging people to not travel there because it was 'impossible' to maintain social distancing amid limited capacity on public transport. Sussex Police said 'Camber is now full', asking daytrippers not to travel there and warning that high numbers of visitors have previously caused traffic jams that have led to problems for the emergency services trying to get in. European diplomats and businesspeople on a special flight from Frankfurt to Vietnam, July 30, 2020. Photo courtesy of Delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Vietnam. A special flight from Germany has brought 226 diplomats and businesspeople from 15 European countries, and all were quarantined on arrival. The Bamboo Airways flight took off from Frankfurt and landed at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on Thursday night, a press release from the Delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Vietnam, one of the organizers of the trip, said. Marko Walde, chief representative of the delegation, said that "This will promote investment and business activities as well as contribute to the successful achievement of the dual objectives: promoting socioeconomic development and effectively preventing the epidemic in Vietnam." "This flight will be a special mark in the EU - Vietnam relationship as well as German Vietnamese cooperation, a perfect start when the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) will come into effect on August 1, 2020," Marko added. The EVFTA reduces or eliminates tariffs on 99 percent of goods. Vietnam halted international commercial flights and entry for foreign nationals in late March and has since only allowed people with diplomatic or official passports, experts and high-skilled workers to enter. Vietnam has had 558 Covid-19 cases, 182 of them active. Three people have died as of Saturday morning. The country of 96 million has been struggling with a new wave of domestic infections. Agartala/New Delhi, Aug 1 : The BJP-led Tripura government would file an affidavit before the Supreme Court as it feels the Solicitor General of the Central government has wrongly told the apex court that the state government did not pay salaries to the doctors and other health workers on time. An official release of the Tripura government said on Saturday that with reference to a writ petition, the Solicitor General of the Central government told the Supreme Court that five states -- Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tripura and Karnataka -- have not paid salaries to the doctors and health workers on time to their full satisfaction. "The Tripura government has been paying full salary to the health workers, including doctors, on due date every month. It is further asserted that not only health workers, but full salaries of all employees of the state government have been paid on due date without any deduction," the release said. It said the Solicitor General has stated that for doctors and health workers who are quarantined, the quarantine period is treated as on leave. "It is clarified that all health workers and doctors who are quarantined (in Tripura), whether in an institution or at home, as per requirements of their duty, their period of quarantine is treated as on duty. Further, full cost of their food, lodging and medical attention during the period of institutional quarantine is being paid by the government," the official release said. A Supreme Court bench led by Justice Ashok Bhushan on Friday told the Centre through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to issue directions to the five states for releasing the salaries of doctors and health workers on time. "If the states are not conforming to the directions and orders of the Central government, you are not helpless. You have to make sure that your order is executed. You have that power under the Disaster Management Act," the three-judge bench told the Solicitor General. Mehta said that after the top court's directions on June 17, appropriate orders were issued on June 18 to all the states with regard to timely payment of salaries to healthcare workers. The Solicitor General reportedly submitted that five states -- Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tripura and Karnataka -- did not pay salaries to the full satisfaction of the doctors and healthcare workers engaged in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. The Centre's counsel said that suitable steps in this regard shall be taken by the government to ensure that salaries of doctors and health workers are released on time to their full satisfaction. He sought a week's time to apprise the Supreme Court about the steps taken in this regard, which was granted by the apex court. The observations were made by the top court bench during the hearing of a writ petition seeking timely payment of salaries to frontline Covid-19 warriors and doctors. The Centre had informed the top court that it has written to the states, but some of them have not replied. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) A systemic flaw at the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation has fueled a cycle of fraud in the beleaguered agency, the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission said on Saturday ahead of the submission of the results of its investigation to President Rodrigo Duterte. The PACC, one of the presidential offices looking into alleged irregularities at PhilHealth, will submit a partial report to Malacanang on Monday, Commissioner Greco Belgica said in an online media briefing. The probe began in May following reports of PhilHealth's alleged overpricing of COVID-19 test kits. Theres really a systemic flaw sa sistema ng PhilHealth kaya napakahirap. Parang paulit-ulit, hindi matigil ang corruption. Kasi basically insurance fraud e, Belgica said. [Translation: Theres really a systemic flaw in PhilHealths system thats why its difficult. Corruption seems to be a cycle which cant be stopped. Its basically insurance fraud.] Belgica said the report is partial because "further investigation" is needed after the PACC uncovered loopholes and identified PhilHealth officials who are "vulnerable for these kinds of corruption." Belgica flagged PhilHealths information technology system and legal services as a major issue with several defects. Hindi kino-correct ang systems ng pag-report nila. Kaya withdrawal lang ng withdrawal ang mga whether it is hospitals or patients na manloloko sa PhilHealth. Tapos ang PhilHealth parang bulag talagang nabulag na sila, Belgica said. [Translation: The systems of reporting are not being corrected. That's why hospitals and patients involved in defrauding Philhealth just keep on withdrawing money. PhilHealth seems blindtheyre really blind now.] He suspects that these schemes may have gone unresolved because PhilHealth officials also profit from them. Belgica said he could not disclose further details since the report will have to be formally submitted to the President. The Senate is also set to investigate PhilHealth next week, after allegations of corruption, incompetence and inefficiency supposedly led to the controversial resignation of anti-fraud legal officer Thorsson Montes Keith. PhilHealth President and CEO Ricardo Morales denied the accusations. Duterte has since directed Undersecretary Jesus Melchor Quitain from the Special Assistant to the Presidents office to launch another probe on the issues hounding PhilHealth. READ: PhilHealth under probe, denies widespread corruption alleged by resigned officer The Hourglass Sanatorium was made in 1973, but it wasnt until 2014 and thanks to Martin Scorsese that many cinephiles came to know of the film. A bird flies towards the gnarled branches of a leafless tree. It appears oddly lifeless. It doesnt seem to be flying so much as suspended in the wintry-grey air. The camera pulls back, and we see the borders of a frame, which turns out to be the window of a train compartment. There are people inside. Their bodies keep shaking from the trains movement. But like the bird, they seem lifeless and the camera accentuates all this oddness with odder angles and compositions. (The ghostly music is odd, too: a siren-like sound piercing through other, undefinable nightmare-noises.) After about four minutes, we finally get a man who isnt sitting or lying down. And as he strides through compartments, we realise how dilapidated the train is. When he wakes up a passenger Joseph, our protagonist to announce that his station has arrived, we see theres something odd about him, too. His eyes are glassy. He may be the cinemas only blind ticket checker. Joseph disembarks, and trudges through snow to reach a building that appears to be even more dilapidated than the train. The stairs to the main door are blocked by trees. A portion of the parapet seems to have fallen off. There are cobwebs. Theres clutter. And the story begins. The Hourglass Sanatorium was made in 1973 (and it was awarded the Jury Prize in that years Cannes Film Festival), but it wasnt until 2014 and thanks to Martin Scorsese that many cinephiles came to know of the film and its director Wojciech Jerzy Has. Scorseses foundation remastered and screened 21 Polish masterpieces (made between 1957 and 1987) that he was hugely influenced by. Its hard to see how this beyond-surreal movie might have influenced Scorsese. (Had Terry Gilliam or David Lynch claimed kinship to this film, wed see the connection at once.) But why question gifts? Has does something art film-makers dont usually do. Unlike, say, a Tarkovsky (think Stalker), he lays down the rules governing this bizarre universe very early. The building Joseph has journeyed to is a sanatorium. Hes come to see his father, but the doctor tells him the man is dead. Then again, maybe not. The doctor says, The trick is that we moved back time. Time is late here by an interval I cant possibly define So the father perhaps died during his transit to the sanatorium, but here, his death hasnt occurred yet. The doctor says, We reactivate time with all its possibilities. One possibility may be death. Another could be recovery. Almost immediately, we get an example of the fluidity of time in this strange place. After the doctor leaves, Joseph looks outside. And he sees himself enter the sanatorium. So the time inside the building is the present, and the time outside is the past? These micro-rules, however, the director doesnt let out. And the easiest choice with The Hourglass Sanatorium is to surrender to the flow, and not wonder why for instance the blind ticket checker from the train has reappeared, and is now being borne along on a makeshift palanquin. Or why the landscape suddenly contains elephants. The film is adapted from the works of the Polish Jewish author Bruno Schulz. Asked whether he would be able to accurately capture the wonder of his childhood, Schulz wrote that events are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them (And if they) lose a thing or two in their attempts at incarnation, then soon, jealously, retrieve their possessions... As a result, white spots appear in our biography scented stigmata, the faded silvery imprints of the bare feet of angels, scattered footmarks on our nights and days while the fullness of life waxes, incessantly supplements itself, and towers over us in wonder after wonder. The director appears to have skillfully translated the fever-dream prose Schulzs imagined world into fever-dream visuals. (In other words, the visuals, too, are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them.) These worlds and visuals (the cinematography and production design are stunning) are, in a way, enough to enjoy the movie. Listen to a daughter talking about her mother. Shes inhabited by ghosts, phantoms, larvae and chrysalises. Helpless and naive, she takes them into her dream and sleeps with them. She wakes up half-conscious at dawn and remembers nothing. Thats why she is so sad. It sounds like Marquez. But how much of this can be understood by a non-Polish viewer or perhaps, even a modern-day Polish film viewer, distanced from film history as well as world history? But at least one thing is certain. All this hallucinatory, Fellini-esque carnival imagery is rooted in tragedy. Schulz was shot dead by a Gestapo officer in 1942, for venturing outside the Jewish ghetto and into the Aryan quarter. Maybe, like in Hey Ram, the madness of a period in Schulzs lifetime is recreated as a movie that itself seems unhinged. The presence of Death, unsurprisingly, is felt throughout The Hourglass Sanatorium. (In Polish, apparently, the hourglass of the title refers to both a timepiece and an obituary notice.) At one point, Joseph finds himself in a graveyard. At another point, he enters a room filled with immobile people. A voice says, They only seem dead. They dont have to breathe for a longer period. Who are these people? One of them is the anarchist Luccheni, assassin of the Empress Elizabeth. One of them is Bismarck. Other name-drops include the likes of Archduke Maximilian, Napoleon III Later, Joseph comments, Things went so far that I got involved with the dynastic affairs of great monarchs. And thats how the director wanted it. In an interview, Has said, I reject matters, ideas, themes only significant for the present day. Art film dies in an atmosphere of fascination with the present. Baradwaj Rangan is Editor, Film Companion (South). All images from Facebook. U.S. soldiers land with an amphibious assault vehicle (AAV) during a U.S.-Thai joint military exercise titled "Cobra Gold" on Hat Yao beach in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, on Feb. 16, 2019. (Sakchai Lalit/File/AP Photo) Marine Vehicle Deep Under Sea, Complicating Rescue Search SAN DIEGOA military seafaring assault vehicle that sank off the coast of Southern California is under hundreds of feet of water, putting it beyond the reach of divers and complicating rescue efforts for eight missing troops, officials said Friday. Still, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. David Berger, said the search was continuing while he was suspending waterborne operations of all of its more than 800 amphibious assault vehicles across the branch until the cause of the accident is determined. He said the move was out of an abundance of caution. Berger said the focus now should be on the troops and their families. One of the eight Marines who were rescued died at a San Diego hospital. Two Marines remained hospitalized with injuries but were stable and out of the intensive care unit. A total of 16 troops15 Marines and one Navy corpsmanwere on board when the amphibious assault vehicle started taking in water Thursday evening as it was about a half mile (more than 1,000 meters) from the shores of San Clemente Island. They had just completed a routine training exercise and were heading back to the Navy ship with a dozen other amphibious assault vehicles, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman, the commanding general of the Marine Expeditionary Force. An aerial view of the coast and the Pacific Ocean taken flying in to San Clemente Island, in San Diego, on July 16, 2013. (Mindy Schauer/The Orange County Register via AP) The U.S. flag was lowered to half-staff at Park Semper Fi in San Clemente, Calif., on July 31, 2020. (Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Register via AP) Troops on board two other amphibious assault vehicles responded quickly but could not stop the 26-ton vehicle from sinking, Osterman said. Its a very tragic situation, Osterman said, adding that his thoughts and prayers are with the troops and their families. Military ships, small boats, and helicopters continued searching the choppy seas for the missing Friday amid moderate to strong winds. The Navy-owned island is about 70 miles (112 kilometers) offshore from San Diego. The Navy and Coast Guard were discussing ways to reach the sunken vehicle to get a view inside it, Osterman said. All of the Marines on the vehicle, which resembles a seafaring tank, were attached to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. They ranged in age from 19 to early 30s and all were wearing combat gear, including body armor, Osterman said. Each troop also had flotation devices. The vehicle is designed to hold up to 24 people with 280 pounds of equipment each, Osterman said. He said there were three water-tight hatches and two large troop hatches and that it is designed to be naturally buoyant. Thursdays accident marks the third time in recent years that Camp Pendleton Marines have been injured or died in amphibious assault vehicles during training exercises. The vehicles have been used since 1972, and continually refurbished. Marine Corps officials said Friday they did not know the age or other details of the one that sank. A U.S. Marine Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) takes part in a landing operation during a military Exercise Baltops 2018, at the Baltic Sea near Vilnius, Lithuania, on June 4, 2018. (Mindaugas Kulbis/ File/AP Photo) In 2017, 14 Marines and one Navy sailor were hospitalized after their vehicle hit a natural gas line, igniting a fire that engulfed the landing craft during a training exercise at Camp Pendleton, the sprawling coastal Marine Corps base north of San Diego. And in 2011, a Marine died when an amphibious assault vehicle in a training exercise sank off the shores of Camp Pendleton. The Marines use the vehicles to transport troops and their equipment from Navy ships to land. They are nicknamed amtracs because the original name for the vehicle was amphibious tractor. The armored vehicles outfitted with machine guns and grenade launchers look like tanks as they roll ashore for beach attacks, with Marines pouring out of them to take up positions. The Marine Expeditionary Force is the Marine Corps main war-fighting organization. There are three such groups that are made up of ground, air, and logistics forces. By Julie Watson Washington DC: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX teams are all set to bring back NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) on August 2. "Conditions remain Go at several of the needed target locations for splashdown and recovery off the Florida coast on Sunday aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft," said NASA on Saturday (August 1, 2020). They added, "Teams continue to closely monitor Hurricane Isaias and evaluate impacts to the landing sites in the Gulf of Mexico along the Florida Panhandle. Teams have several weather decision milestones ahead of and after undocking to adjust the splashdown location and time based on the forecasted conditions for recovery." NEWS: Teams from @NASA and @SpaceX remain GO with plans to bring @Astro_Doug and @AstroBehnken home to Earth on Sunday afternoon. We will continue to monitor weather before undocking Saturday night. Read more: https://t.co/GjXe4q6tQA Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) August 1, 2020 SpaceX and NASA are targeting 7:34 PM EDT on August 1 (5:04 AM IST on August 2) for Crew Dragon to autonomously undock from the Space Station with the two astronauts aboard the spacecraft. After around 18 hours, the Dragon is slated for splash down at one of seven targeted water landing sites off the coast of Florida at 2:42 PM EDT on August 2 (12:12 am IST on August 3). The homecoming of Douglas and Robert after more than two months at the ISS will mark the first return of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft carrying astronauts from the space station. They're coming home! On Aug. 1, astronauts @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug will depart the @Space_Station on @SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft after a more than 60-day stay in space. Take a look at this recap of their #LaunchAmerica mission: https://t.co/l5xc6yQDn4 pic.twitter.com/paA05rPwr2 NASA (@NASA) July 31, 2020 Earlier on May 30, SpaceXs Falcon 9 launched Crew Dragons second demonstration (Demo-2) mission from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Crew Dragon autonomously docked to the ISS on May 31. This is the first time in human history @NASA_Astronauts have entered the @Space_Station from a commercially-made spacecraft. @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug have finally arrived to the orbiting laboratory in @SpaceX's Dragon Endeavour spacecraft. pic.twitter.com/3t9Ogtpik4 NASA (@NASA) May 31, 2020 NASA stated that once the Demo-2 mission is complete and the SpaceX and NASA teams have reviewed all the data for certification, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi will fly on Dragons first six-month operational mission (Crew-1) scheduled for late September this year. Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 01, 2020 | GOLCONDA By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 01, 2020 | 08:56 AM | GOLCONDA Due to the current situation with COVID-19, the Golconda Shrimp Festival board of directors has voted to cancel this years 20th edition of the event scheduled for September 19th. The celebration of the harvest of locally grown freshwater shrimp draws crowds of more than 5,000 people for shrimp dishes and live music in the historic Ohio River town. We put off this difficult decision off as long as possible, said Nathan Ryder of Mainstreet Golconda, the non-profit who relies on the event as their primary fundraiser for the year. The festival has a history of persevering through difficult events. The very first festival in 2001 was scheduled and then 9/11 occurred. It ended up being an opportunity for the community to come together and return to some normalcy. We were hoping the situation with COVID-19 was going to be similar, that infection numbers would be declining, and we could celebrate a return to normal. Unfortunately, we just dont see that as being a safe opportunity this fall, Ryder said. The festival board is planning to sell a commemorative t-shirt of this years non-event as a fundraiser. In addition, continued sponsorships and/or donations are tax deductible and will help Mainstreet continue their community outreach activities in Pope County. For more info visit: www.mainstreetgolconda.org Leaders across the political spectrum condoled the death of Rajya Sabha MP and former Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Amar Singh on Saturday and said he had friends in all parties. SP president Akhilesh Yadav tweeted a photograph of Singh with his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, and paid homage to the departed soul. Vice President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu conveyed his condolences to Singh's family and associates and prayed to god for the peace of the departed soul. Paying homage to Singh, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh described him as an energetic leader with a humorous nature and said he had friends in all the political parties. Echoing similar sentiments, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda said Singh was a strategist and a skilled politician with a sociable nature. Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel said Singh will always be remembered as a valued colleague and a wonderful human being. Patel's party colleague Raj Babbar paid homage to Singh and said may the almighty bless his soul and give strength to his family to bear the irreparable loss. Singh (64) died in Singapore, where he was undergoing treatment, on Saturday. He had undergone a kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time. Chennai: The MK Stalin-led DMK and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress have stepped up attack on the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre over its new education policy and alleged that the states were not consulted and it was passed without the Parliament's approval. The DMK called it ''an attempt to impose Hindi and Sanskrit in the states''. Hitting out at the Centre over the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, a senior minister of the Mamata Banerjee government said it was announced without being passed in Parliament and the states were not taken into confidence. Though education is in the concurrent list, the contents of the new policy had not been discussed with the state governments before it was passed by the union cabinet on July 29, West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said on Friday. Meanwhile, the DMK chief has vowed to fight against it by joining hands with like-minded political parties and Chief Ministers of other states. The sweeping reforms were not new education policy but a glossy coat on the old oppressive Manusmriti," Stalin alleged on Saturday (August 1, 2020). In a letter written to his party workers, The DMK chief the party was committed to the struggle against such policies of the government and recalled how it (also) moved the Madras High Court on the issue of OBC reservation in All India Quota (AIQ) in medical admissions. There was an "undeclared emergency" in the country, Stalin said while referring to the detention of political figures in Jammu and Kashmir among others. On the NEP, he questioned why the "successful" 10+2 system was being replaced with 5+3+3+4 and described the vocational education for children as a "psychological attack" on them. The DMK leader further said, "with Education placed in the State List, the Centre will assume the remaining rights of the states and take in its control (aspects ranging) from syllabus to university." "This is an attack on the federal structure being underscored by the Constitution of India," Stalin said in the letter. DMK was, therefore, opposing the NEP and will also join hands with other like-minded political parties and chief ministers on the issue, he added. It may be noted that the Centre recently unveiled its new education policy, which aims at strengthening the basic education and developing children's mental faculty to prepare them for global competition. The Deputy National Organiser of the National Democratic Congress, Chief Hamilton Biney Nixon has rubbished rumours making rounds that he has crossed carpet to become a member of the New Patriotic Party. Chief Hamilton in a statement posted on his Facebook page said his attention has been drawn to circular on social media platforms orchestrated by parsons he described as frustrated certified political mercenaries and desperate people within the failed Akuffo Addo government suggesting he has resigned from the NDC to join the NPP. According to the Deputy NDC Organiser, the circular is a tool meant to cause confusion and disaffection for his persona. Kindly treat it as a litany of mere irresponsibleness, disingenuous, scandalous, infantile and a tool to cause confusion and disaffection for my persona, he stated. He urged the public to instead of paying any heed to the said circular rather rally behind his partys flagbearer, Former President John Dramani Mahama to rescue Ghana from the ruling NPP whom he labelled as political entrepreneurs who are milking from our state resources only to their advantage, families and friends. Read his full post below: My attention has been drawn to a circular being peddled on the various social media platforms by some frustrated certified political mercenaries and desperate people within the failed Akuffo Addo government that I have resigned to join the NPP. It is in this regard that I urge the general public, the teeming supporters, loyalists, sympathizers and our hardworking party members to as a matter of urgency disregard the rumour that I have resigned and joined no other political party than a political party which epitomizes corruption, mass destruction and failure. Kindly treat it as a litany of mere irresponsibleness, disingenuous, scandalous, infantile and a tool to cause confusion and disaffection for my persona. I'm by this, calling on all Ghanaians to rally behind the NDC and H.E John Dramani Mahama to rescue Ghana from these political entrepreneurs who are milking from our state resources only to their advantage, families and friends. I would also like to use this opportunity to wish our Muslim brothers and sisters a happy EID- UL- DHA. Long Live NDC. Long Live Ghana. Signed Chief Hamilton Biney Nixon Deputy National Organizer ~ NDC My attention has been drawn to a circular being peddled on the various social media platforms by some frustrated... Posted by Chief Biney on Friday, July 31, 2020 Source: Ghanaweb.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 We dont know how it got from there to him, said Claudia Lange, a prosecutor. Three other police officers are being investigated on suspicion of helping Mr. Gross. Asked during the trial, Mr. Gross said he did not remember how he got the ammunition. When I met him, he stuck to that line. But otherwise he was not shy about sharing his views. Chancellor Angela Merkel belongs in the dock, he said. The multicultural cities in western Germany are the caliphate. The best way to escape creeping migration was to move to the East German countryside, where people are still called Schmidt, Schneider and Muller. A copy of Compact, a prominent far-right magazine, with President Trumps face on the cover, lay on a shelf. A selection of the presidents speeches had been translated into German in the issue. I like Trump, Mr. Gross said. As far back as 2009, some fellow police officers had voiced concerns about Mr. Grosss far-right views, noting that he had brought books about the Nazis to work. But no one intervened, and he was even groomed for promotion. There is no danger from the far right, he insisted. I dont know a single neo-Nazi. Soldiers and police officers are frustrated, he told me the third time we met, ticking off complaints about migrants, crime and the mainstream media. He likens the coverage of coronavirus to the censored state broadcaster during Communism. Instead, he says, he has a YouTube subscription to RT, the Russian state-controlled channel and other alternative media. In that parallel universe of disinformation, he learns that the government is secretly flying in refugees after midnight. That coronavirus is a ploy to deprive citizens of their rights. That Ms. Merkel works for what he calls the deep state. The deep state is global, Mr. Gross said. Its big capital, the big banks, Bill Gates. He still expects Day X, sooner or later. Riots linked to an economic meltdown. Or a blackout, because the German government is shuttering coal plants. US president tweets homeland security is not leaving until police complete a clean-up of anarchists and agitators! President Donald Trump has said the United Statess federal officers will stay in the protest-wracked city of Portland until local law enforcement officials finish a clean-up of anarchists and agitators. The forces, whose deployment was seen by many as part of the presidents law-and-order strategy for re-election and exacerbated tensions between authorities and anti-racism protesters, had been scheduled to begin their phased withdrawal from Portland. Trump tweeted late on Friday: Homeland Security is not leaving Portland until local police complete cleanup of Anarchists and Agitators! Hundreds of demonstrators, some with makeshift shields, were still on the streets of downtown Portland late on Friday, without any federal law enforcement in sight. Earlier on Friday, Portland police cleared parks and nearby roads around the city centre in anticipation of the phased pullout by federal forces. City Mayor Ted Wheeler said the deployment was part of the agreement for federal officers to leave. In a tweet late on Friday, Wheeler thanked the peaceful protesters, and said they had reclaimed the space that has been a staging ground for violence, to share their powerful message of reformative justice. Weeks of protests Last month, the Trump administration sent federal tactical teams, many wearing combat-like gear, to intervene in the city after weeks of protests against racism and police brutality saw windows broken and graffiti scrawled on the federal court and other buildings. But their deployment inflamed the situation, especially following footage of protesters being snatched off the street by federal agents and put into unmarked cars. Democrats said the intervention reeked of a police state and that it was a political move to show Trump, who is struggling in the polls ahead of Novembers presidential election, to voters as a strict law-and-order president. Attorney General William Barr has defended the use of federal officers, and rejected any suggestion of the political motivation. In the wake of George Floyds death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims, Barr said in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. Under an agreement between Oregon officials and the Trump administration on Wednesday, the federal forces were to begin withdrawing from the city on Thursday. However, their pull-out was conditional on local law enforcement ensuring the security of the federal court and other buildings that have been targeted by protesters. New Bill Backing Reform In Ukraine Seeks To Show U.S. 'Will Stand By Its Friend' By Todd Prince July 31, 2020 WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced legislation to provide military assistance and reform support to Ukraine over the next five years, underscoring the widespread congressional backing for the nation despite repeated disappointments as it battles Russia-backed forces. The Ukraine Security Partnership Act submitted on July 30 authorizes up to $300 million per year in foreign military aid to Ukraine, including lethal weapons, subject to meeting reform criteria. The act also calls for the State Department to set up a working group on Ukraine with European allies to prioritize economic and policy reform assistance and to again appoint a special envoy to Kyiv for peace talks. While Ukraine has made progress on many reforms over the years, it has struggled at times due to endemic corruption and pushback by influential oligarchs. The legislation comes a year after President Donald Trump recalled his ambassador to Kyiv and temporarily withheld military support to Ukraine, sparking a partisan impeachment trial that led to the departure of special envoy Kurt Volker and damaged U.S.-Ukrainian relations. The impeachment trial derailed a planned White House meeting between Trump and newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "The Ukraine Security Partnership Act gets the U.S.-Ukraine relationship back on track by increasing our security assistance for Kyiv as the United States continues to support their steps towards political reform and helps counter Russian aggression abroad," Chris Murphy (Democrat-Connecticut), one of the bill's six co-sponsors, said in a statement. The bill's sponsors describe Ukraine as a bulwark against Russian "malign influence" and of "vital" importance to U.S. security interests. Ukraine has demonstrated itself as a "valuable" security partner that has sent troops to support U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, demonstrating it is not just a recipient of aid. The co-sponsors also include Senator Jim Risch (Republican-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Bob Menendez (Democrat-New Jersey), the committee's ranking Democratic member; Rob Portman (Republican-Ohio); John Barrasso (Republican-Wyoming.); and Jeanne Shaheen (Democrat-New Hampshire). The United States has given Ukraine more than $3 billion in aid, including more than $1.6 billion in military assistance, since Russia forcibly annexed its Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backed separatists fighting in its eastern regions. The war, sparked by the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine's pro-Moscow president, has resulted in the deaths of more than 14,000 Ukrainians and devastated the nation's economy. The war continues to the present day, despite calls for cease-fires. "This legislation demonstrates to Ukraine, and to Russia, that the United States will stand by its friend throughout its democratic transition and in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. This bill will strengthen Ukraine's defenses through military training and equipment and enhanced U.S. and European diplomatic support," the senators said in a news release announcing the bill. The legislation calls for U.S. military aid to help bolster Ukraine's navy so it can better defend its Black Sea territory. The Black Sea borders three NATO allies and is of strategic importance to the United States. The legislation authorizes the secretary of state to supply such lethal aid as anti-ship, anti-tank, and anti-aircraft weapons. "This legislation demonstrates to Ukraine, and to Russia, that the United States will stand by its friend throughout its democratic transition and in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity," Risch said in the statement. Part of the aid is contingent upon progress on defense industry reform, including strengthening civilian control of the military, increasing the transparency of procurement, and enhancing efficiency at state-owned arms manufacturers. Ukraine's military-industrial complex has suffered from widespread corruption and mismanagement over the years, industry analysts and civil society groups have said. The government is currently undertaking the reform of Ukroboronprom, the state-owned military holding that consists of more than 100 companies, including manufacturers and design firms. The United States has been advising Ukraine on its reform of the defense industry. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/new-bill-backing-reform -in-ukraine-seeks-to-show-u-s-will- stand-by-its-friend/30758236.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 United States President Donald Trump, while talking about Covid-19 testing, compared US and India's figure in an attempt to deflect criticism against his administration's pandemic response. Trump said in Florida on Friday, that 60 million people had been tested for coronavirus in US, which was "close to six times" more than any other country. The US President compared the nation's figure to India, saying that 11 million people had been tested there. "Testing-wise, weve tested almost 60 million people throughout the country, which is about six times more than any other country, close to six times more than any other country. If you look at India, theyre at 11 million. Were going to be at over 60 million, so theyve done a tremendous job in testing considering we started off with very little. It was a unknown disease, and it was an unknown test," he said. Meanwhile, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany reiterated the same, saying that more than 59 million tests had been conducted in the US, with India at number two with "just about 14 million tests", which she said was "quite a difference". According to the ICMR, India has conducted 1,93,58,659 coronavirus tests till now, with 5,25,689 tests conducted on Friday. A statement released by the White House titled - President Donald J. Trump and His Administration Have Created The Best Covid-19 Testing System In The World - also seemed to follow the same narrative. It said that US was now averaging 810,000 tests per day, and during July, more than 930,000 COVID-19 tests were conducted in a single day. "India has a population more than four times as large as the United States, but has only conducted around one-third of the number of tests," the statement also said, adding that "thanks to President Trumps revolutionary testing efforts" US had been able to track cases better than other countries. It further read that countries that have not built a robust testing system in the way the United States had, had not been able to capture as full of a picture of the number of cases in their populations. Carnage broke out in London overnight as at least three shootings took place - one reportedly involving a sub-machine gun - and multiple illegal raves were held. Two people were reportedly shot in Hackney while another two men were shot in Brixton and a third shooting took place in Croydon just yards from West Croydon station. The first shooting reportedly took place on the Angell Town estate in Brixton at about 7pm. Police on scene after reports of a sub-machine gun shooting in Brixton last night. London's streets saw another night of violence as reports of at least two shootings have emerged Witnesses say 17 shots were fired at the two men in Brixton at about 7pm on Friday evening Armed Police, Paramedic and Response officers rushed to the scene after reports that 17 shots were fired. The men were treated at the scene by paramedics before being taken to hospital for further treatment. The surrounding area was locked down by cops as they searched for the shooter. Reports suggest a man was later arrested, but the sub-machine gun continues has not been found. A spokesman for the Met Police said: 'Police were called at 6.52pm on Friday, 31 July to reports of gunshots heard in the vicinity of Akerman Road, SW9. 'Officers, including firearms officers, attended and found damage to two parked vehicles. 'There was no trace of any victims. Police were called a short time later to a south London hospital after two males self-presented with gunshot injuries. 'We await an update on their condition. Officers remain at the scene. At this early stage, there have been no arrests and enquiries continue.' Two other people were shot at a silent party - an unlicensed music event - that was being held in Mandeville street in Hackney in East London. Three men were reportedly detained by officers at Homerton hospital after they transported the victims in a blue BMW to get live saving treatment after being shot in the early hours of Saturday morning. The detained men had all been at the gathering that was held in Willington court in E5. Armed officers were scrambled to both Homerton Hospital and Mandeville Street and the hospital was put on lockdown. Witnesses reported seeing specialist blood and explosives detection dogs being used to search the area. Reports suggest a bullet casing and a machete were found on a bridge near the scene of the shootings. Police on the scene of a second shooting in Mendeville Street in Hackney early this morning Armed officers rushed to Homerton Hospital after a shooting victim was dropped off in a BMW Officers on scene of a shooting in Hackney which took place in the early hours of Saturday A spokesman for the Met Police said: 'Police were called at 1.12am on Saturday, 1 August to Mandeville Street E5 following reports of men fighting. 'At approximately At 1.23am police were informed that a 30-year-old man and a 31-year-old man had been taken to an east London hospital with stab and gunshot wounds. 'This is currently being treated as linked to the earlier incident. 'Both men are not believed to have sustained life-threatening injuries and they both remain in hospital. 'A 30-year-old man [A] and a 31-year-old man [B] have been arrested in connection with this incident and are currently custody.' Officers remain on scene while forensic investigators collect evidence after Croydon shooting Forensic officers collect evidence and examine the scene of a reported stabbing in Harlesden Armed officers were also called to London Road in Croydon in the early hours of Saturday morning as London saw at least its third shooting in one night. A man believed to be in his 20s was shot at close range near West Croydon station. The road was cordoned off after reports of the shooting, and a forensic examination has taken place. Police said no arrests have been made but enquiries into the shooting continue. Meanwhile, forensic officers were pictured collecting evidence after a reported stabbing in Harlesden also in the early hours of this morning. Elsewhere, police officers were out in force and road closures were in place as more than 150 people attended an illegal rave in Archway. Residents reported a large police presence and disturbances in Tavistock Terrace in the early hours of this morning. Ch Supt Roy Smith, of the Met Police, said: Officers were out this evening closing down illegal and antisocial parties playing loud music into the early hours. Police shut down illegal rave with more than 150 people in London as revellers risk spreading COVID while breaking social distancing rules at the party in Archway last night Packed groups of 150+ people risking the spread of COVID and keeping poor families with young children away at 3am. Photos from the scene show officers confronting a large number of members of the public in the street. Ch Supt Roy Smith also shared a picture of a closure order which was issued to one property in the street as officers dispersed the crowds. A closure notice prohibits access to the premises for the period specified in the notice. Only the police or council can initiate the process to close premises which are causing antisocial behaviour, if they reasonably believe that there is, or is likely to be a nuisance to members of the public, or disorder relating to the premises and in its vicinity. In addition, the notice must be necessary to prevent occurrence or re-occurrence of the nuisance or disorder. A force spokesman told the MailOnline: 'At approximately 11.54pm on Friday, 31 July, police were called to Tavistock Terrace, N19 to reports of a large gathering of people playing loud music. 'Officers attended and spoke with the organisers, asking them to close the event. A closure notice was enacted. 'Officers stayed on the scene while those attending began to disperse. No arrests. 'Officers will be out across London, responding to calls from residents and working to close these events down.' It comes as Britain sweltered on the third hottest day in the UK on record with temperatures reaching 37.8 degrees Celsius in the capital. Revellers hit the pubs and bars to enjoy the mini heatwave sparking concerns social distancing was being ignored and the Met said extra officers were deployed to Londons streets in a bid to tackle illegal music events and parties. The Met issued a closure notice to a property in Tavistock Terrace, London, during illegal party The force has launched a campaign to tackle these kinds of events saying: Unlicensed music events are illegal, have no security, are not ticketed and often attract antisocial behaviour and violence. We will not standby and allow these events to happen. They will be shut down. The Met is asking members of the public to report any illegal events they may be aware of ahead of time by using their Twitter page or calling Crimestoppers. A spokesman said: We acknowledge theres been an increase in violent crime and unlicensed music events across the capital and in order to combat this, were putting out additional officers across London this weekend. Coupled with that were proactively targeting those we know are involved in violence and violent crime in particular. We would like the public to help us by contacting us on Twitter or via Crimestoppers or our non-emergency number on 101.' New Delhi: In a public spat on social media, Australian envoy to India Barry OFarrell publicly reminded the Chinese envoy to India Sun Weidong of the 2016 South China sea award by Permanent Court of Arbitration that was rejected by Beijing. The case between Philippines v. china was ruled in favour of the Philippines with the tribunal ruling that China has "no historical rights" in the south China sea based on the "nine-dash line" map. The Australian envoy Barry OFarrell Tweeted, "Thank you @China_Amb_India . I would hope then you follow the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Award which is final and binding under international law, and also generally refrain from actions that unilaterally alter the status quo." Thank you @China_Amb_India. I would hope then you follow the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Award which is final and binding under international law, and also generally refrain from actions that unilaterally alter the status quo. https://t.co/1w2nrcrxhr Barry OFarrell AO (@AusHCIndia) July 31, 2020 The tweet by Envoy Barry was in response to Chinese envoy Sun Weidong tweeting, "Noted remarks by Australian HC to India on #SouthChinaSea disregarding facts. #China's territorial sovereignty & maritime rights&interests are in conformity w/ int'l law incl UNCLOS. It's clear who safeguard peace&stability & who destablize&provoke escalation in the region." Noted remarks by Australian HC to India on #SouthChinaSea disregarding facts. #China's territorial sovereignty & maritime rights&interests are in conformity w/ int'l law incl UNCLOS. It's clear who safeguard peace&stability & who destablize&provoke escalation in the region. Sun Weidong (@China_Amb_India) July 31, 2020 The Australian envoy on Thursday had said, "Australia remains deeply concerned by actions in the South China Sea that are destabilising and could provoke escalation." The Tweet by Australian envoy got lot of traction on Twitter and was retweeted over 2000 times while Chinese envoy's tweet was retweeted just around 100 times. The Chinese envoy had again responded to Australian envoy's tweet saying, "So-called arbitral tribunal of #SouthChinaSea violated principle of state consent. The award is illegal,null&void&has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it. We hope those non-claimant countries could contribute to regional peace&stability rather than contrary." On 23 July, Australia lodged a note with the UN Secretary-General refuting Chinas unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea. US secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, on Friday announced the imposition of sanctions on two Chinese companies, officials for linkages with human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province, seized the Chinese Communist Party by the neck urging global boycott and condemnation. US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Friday said that sanctions have been imposed on Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and two of its officials for their connection to serious human rights abuse on the Uyghur community in Xinjiang. After the sanctions imposed by the US Department of the Treasury, Pompeo urged countries worldwide to condemn the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for their continuous human rights abuse against its own citizens. We call on all countries to join us in condemning the CCPs heinous abuse of the human rights of its own citizens, affecting countless families across the world, he said. According to a press statement issued by the US Department of the Treasury, The US Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned one Chinese government entity and two current or former government officials Peng Jiarui, the Deputy Party Secretary and Commander of the XPCC, and Sun Jinlong, a former Political Commissar of the XPCC in connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Also read: After UK, Canada and others, Germany suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong Also read: Amid LAC tensions, Nepal FM calls 1947 pact on Gurkha soldiers redundant, says it needs discussions These designations include the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), Sun Jinlong, a former Political Commissar of the XPCC, and Peng Jiarui, the Deputy Party Secretary and Commander of the XPCC. The entity and officials are being designated for their connection to serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which reportedly include mass arbitrary detention and severe physical abuse, among other serious abuses targeting Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim population indigenous to Xinjiang, and other ethnic minorities in the region. As previously stated, the United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers accountable in Xinjiang and across the world, said Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. The sanction has been imposed in accordance with the Executive Order (E.O.) 13818, Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, the statement read. On May 22, the US had added nine PRC entities related to human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region to the Commerce Entity List, thus, adding to the October 2019 Commerce Entity List of 28 entities involved in the PRC repression campaign in the Xinjiang region. The XPCC is a paramilitary organisation in the XUAR that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The XPCC enhances internal control over the region by advancing Chinas vision of economic development in XUAR that emphasizes subordination to central planning and resource extraction, the statement read. The US Department of Treasury further said that Chen Quanguo (Chen), who is the current First Political Commissar of the XPCC, was designated on July 9 for his connection to serious human rights abuse. Chen is also the current Communist Party Secretary of XUAR, and has a notorious history of intensifying security operations in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, where he was deployed before arriving in Xinjiang to tighten control over members of Tibetan ethnic minority groups. Following his arrival in Xinjiang, Chen began implementing a comprehensive surveillance, detention, and indoctrination program targeting Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minority groups. The XPCC has helped implement Chens CCP policy in the region. Also read: US set to ban Chinese app Tiktok, Trump says will ban app A person holds a smartphone as Tik Tok logo is displayed behind in this picture illustration taken on Nov. 7, 2019. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters) Trump Says He Will Ban TikTok President Donald Trump on July 31 said he will bar the TikTok social media app from operating in the United States. As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. Trump said he would use an executive order to ban the app as early as Saturday. He also signaled he would not support an American company buying TikTok. TikTok is owned by a Beijing-based company ByteDance. Trumps announcement came shortly after reports surfaced that Microsoft was in talks about buying TikTok. Those news followed on the heels of rumors that Trump is considering signing an executive order to demand that ByteDance sell its U.S. stake in TikTok to alleviate concerns that the app is sending sensitive data to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). TikTok is the fastest growing video platform in the world and is extremely popular with young people in the United States. Cyber experts warn that the app acts as spyware for the Chinese regime. The company has denied these claims and sought to distance itself from its Beijing owner, pointing to its American board members and new chief executive. It says its servers are located in the United States and Singapore, and that it would not share user data with the Chinese regime if requested. The House of Representatives on July 20 voted on a measure to ban TikTok from all government-issued devices. India banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps in June, saying they posed threats to the countrys security and sovereignty. The Pentagon last December ordered military personnel to delete TikTok from government devices. Wells Fargo recently instructed employees to remove TikTok, while the Democratic and Republican national committees have warned their staff against using the app. Meanwhile, a U.S. panel is conducting a national security review of ByteDances $1 billion acquisition of social media app Musical.lywhich was rebranded to TikTokin 2017. In 2019, TikTok paid a $5.7 million fine to settle U.S. government charges that it had illegally collected personal information from users under the age of 13 in violation of child privacy laws. Federal agencies are currently looking into whether the company has complied with this agreement, according to Reuters. South Korea recently fined TikTok over similar privacy breaches. Elements of activist hacking group Anonymous also recently turned its attention on the social media app. A Twitter account linked to the group posted on July 1: Delete TikTok now; if you know someone that is using it, explain to them that it is essentially malware operated by the Chinese government running a massive spying operation. The Twitter post shared a Reddit post by an engineer who claimed to have reverse-engineered the app and found that it was collecting an enormous amount of personal informationmuch more than other social media apps like Facebook and Twitterand went to great lengths to hide this. This information has not been confirmed by security researchers. The Reddit user bangorlol has since created a subreddit to share data for independent researchers to investigate. A report by security research firm Penetrum found that the app does an excessive amount of data harvesting. From our understanding and our analysis it seems that TikTok does an excessive amount of tracking on its users, and that the data collected is partially if not fully stored on Chinese servers with the ISP [internet service provider] Alibaba, the report said. Alibaba is a major internet company in China. Recently, TikTok users ran an iPhone software that lets them know when an app is collecting their data, and found that TikTok was copying their keystrokes every few seconds. The company said it was actually an anti-spam feature and issued an update removing it. Back in March, it was caught by security researchers doing the same thing, and had said it would stop the practice within a few weeks. Bowen Xiao and Cathy He contributed to this report. By PTI KOLKATA: West Bengal's state secretariat 'Nabanna' will be closed on Monday and Tuesday for a sanitisation drive, after a sub-inspector posted there tested positive for COVID-19, an official said. The SI was posted at the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) on the 14th floor and tested positive on Thursday, he said. The secretariat, located in adjoining Howrah district, will undergo an "intense cleaning and sanitisation process" on these two days, the official said. "All officers and staff of 'Nabanna' will work from home on Monday and Tuesday," he said. The official added that the SI's wife also tested positive for coronavirus and both of them have been admitted to a hospital in Rajarhat area. The secretariat building is regularly sanitised as part of protocol, ever since the son of a senior state government official tested positive for coronavirus in March, the official said. Though 'Nabanna' functions with 50 per cent workforce on alternate days, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee attends office everyday, barring notified holidays and total lockdown days. The mother of an inmate who died after an apparent drug overdose is upset by the way she was told of her sons condition and how visitation rules were enforced at the hospital. On Monday, Lydia Leos learned her son, Julian Dena, 34, was arrested and being processed into the Bexar County Jail on a felony warrant for possession of a weapon. Hours later, Leos, 52, would be told by a doctor at Baptist Medical Center downtown that her son was 98 percent brain dead. Im so sad and so disgusted as to how everything happened, Leos said. The Bexar County Sheriffs Office said in a statement Thursday that while Dena was searched at the jail, a deputy saw him chewing on and swallowing a substance. Dena would later tell deputies that it was methamphetamine, after which he was immediately placed under medical observation. When he lost consciousness, medical staff began performing life-saving measures until EMS took Dena, who was in critical condition, to the hospital. Lydia Leos /Courtesy Read Also: Wolff: Bexar County jail 'running out of room' to separate inmates amid pandemic At about 9 p.m. Monday, a sheriffs office investigator called her and began asking her questions about her son. The investigator told her to wait for another call. An hour later, she was directed to go to the sheriffs office and obtain permission to visit Dena at the hospital. Someone shouldve really prepared me, Leos said. They shouldnt have prepared me for another call. They shouldve prepared me to let me know what I was walking into before I walked into it. Deputy Johnny Garcia, a BCSO spokesman, said it is common practice when notifying family members not to provide all details over the phone so they can make face-to-face confirmation of the next of kin. Shortly after learning about her sons condition, she was given the option of taking him off life support. On Monday and Tuesday, she said a guard told her she could not touch or get to close to her son. At one point, she was told her visit was over. Garcia said all visitation rules are enforced when inmates are in custody of the sheriffs office during hospitalizations, which the deputy was enforcing. But on Wednesday, Dena was granted a compassionate release so that family members could spend time with him before he was taken off life support. I want to change that so no other parent has to see their child lying there and not be able to kiss him or say Dad is here, mom is here, youll be OK, she said. All we heard was dont touch him. Court records show that Dena was released Wednesday on a $7,000 bond. Leos said that as she consulted with her family about what to do, it was her daughter who advocated for Denas release. After Denas family made the decision to take him off life support, Leos said she was finally able to spend two hours alone with him Thursday afternoon. Leos said she was aware of his drug problem, and that it came about during his struggle with depression. She said he had turned to drugs instead of taking medication to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder from a rough upbringing. Lydia Leos /Courtesy On Express-News.com: Tech-savvy Bexar County courts still need in-person meetings The past year however, she said she saw a spark in his eye as he spent more time tinkering with cars. She said he was recognized as the mechanic among his friends. I would always tell him, Youre the kind of mechanic who has spare parts, but the car can still run, she recalled. He also enjoyed working for moving companies. If clients offered him a piece of furniture, like a sofa, he would accept it and offer it to someone else, his mother said. He was giving what people gave to him, Leos said. There was good in my son. Dena leaves behind a 9-year-old daughter, Leos said. The sheriffs office said that while Dena was released from custody Wednesday, the investigation will be handled as a custodial death. The Converse Police Department has been notified of Denas death and is investigating as an outside agency, which a requirement of the Sandra Bland Act and the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. The Bexar County Sheriffs Office Criminal Investigations Division, Internal Affairs, and Public Integrity Unit are also investigating. Jacob Beltran is a reporter covering San Antonio and Bexar County. To read more from Jacob, become a subscriber. jbeltran@express-news.net | Twitter: @JBfromSA BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 1 By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend: The value of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Italy amounted to $4 billion over the first five months of 2020, compared to $4.1 billion during the same period of 2019, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Statistics Committee. The share of Italy in total value of Kazakhstans trade turnover was 11.5 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 11.1 percent during the same period of 2019. Kazakhstans export to Italy amounted to $3.6 billion over the period from January through May 2020, compared to $3.5 billion during the same period of 2019. Italys share in total volume of Kazakhstans export amounted to 16.5 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 15.1 percent during the same period of 2019. In turn, Kazakhstans import from Italy amounted to $352.8 million over the reporting period compared to $594.1 million during the same period of 2019. Italys total share in Kazakhstans import was 2.8 percent during the reporting period of 2020 which is compared to less than 4.3 percent during the same period of 2019. The total volume of Kazakhstans trade turnover amounted to $34.9 billion over the period from Jan. through May 2020 which indicates a decrease from $37.5 billion during the same period of 2019. Kazakhstans export amounted to $22.3 billion during the reporting period of 2020 ($23.6 billion in the same period of 2019), whereas import amounted to $12.6 billion ($13.9 billion). --- Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh 'Two-state' theory considered Lee Teng-hui's main political legacy ROC Central News Agency 07/31/2020 05:58 PM Taipei, July 31 (CNA) The "two-state" theory proposed by former President Lee Teng-hui () in 1999, which characterized the Republic of China (Taiwan) and China as two different jurisdictions, is considered one of his major political legacies as it emphasized Taiwan's national identity. Lee, who died on July 30 at the age of 97, was an advocate of "Taiwanization" during the democratization process and the first president of the country elected by direct election in 1996. As Beijing continued to squeeze Taiwan's space on the international stage, the "two-state" theory proposed by Lee during an interview with Deutsche Welle radio caused political uproar at the time. Asked by Deutsche Welle how he coped with the permanent pressure from Beijing, which considered Taiwan a "renegade province," Lee said Beijing "ignores the very fact that the two sides are two different jurisdictions." "The historical fact is that since the establishment of the Chinese communist regime in 1949, it has never ruled Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu -- the territories under our jurisdiction," he said. Moreover, Lee said, amendments to the Constitution in 1991 designated cross-Taiwan Strait relations as a special state-to-state relationship. "The resolution of cross-strait issues hinges on the issue of different systems," he said. "We cannot look at issues related to the two sides simply from the perspective of unification or independence." The statement won 65.5 percent of public support in Taiwan, according to a Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) survey conducted at the time, although it was blasted by both Beijing and Washington. In Lee's memoir published in 2016, he recalled that he was trying to get the jump on Beijing, which intended to position Taiwan as Hong Kong later that year when it marked the 50th anniversary of People's Republic of China. According to Lee, Beijing was planning to announce a plan to unite both Taiwan and Hong Kong under its "one country, two systems" formula. "One country, two systems" refers to a constitutional principle formulated by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping () during the early 1980s, which says there is only one China, but distinct regions such as Hong Kong and Macau can provisionally retain their own economic and administrative systems. If Beijing did so, Taiwan would lose its power to influence, which was why it had to make the first move, hence the characterization of the relationship with China as "state-to-state relations of a special nature," Lee said. Gunter Knabe, who fronted the Deutsche Welle interview, told CNA that looking back, Lee deliberately sent his message through the German media as Germany had a similar experience in handling split statehood. At the same time, not making the statement through U.S. media could also avoid provoking Washington, Knabe said. Commenting on Lee's death, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council in Beijing said only it was "aware of the news," stressing that the Taiwan independence movement leads only to a dead end. During his 12-year tenure as president, Lee made several remarks that angered Beijing. In June 1995, he attended an alumni event at Cornell University, where he delivered a speech on Taiwan's democratic reforms. In the speech best known for his quote: "Whatever I have done as president of my nation, I have done with the people in my heart," Lee is believed to have laid the cornerstone for the "Republic of China on Taiwan." The visit angered the Chinese leadership so much that within weeks, Beijing initiated a series of missile tests in the waters around Taiwan, which persisted through Taiwan's elections the following March. However, the missile crisis also mapped a clearer path for cross-strait relations, as Beijing recognized that its military strength lagged far behind that of the U.S., making unification by force impractical. Beijing's agenda also became clearer to the Taiwanese people, who gradually embraced Taiwanese identity and statehood through direct presidential elections. (By Lin Ke-lun, Lin Yu-li and Lee Hsin-Yin) Enditem/AW NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address " " About 70 percent of the world is water, but so little can actually be used because most of it is salt water. Hemera/ Thinkstock Reducing salt water to its basic elements -- salt and water -- is so simple that it's become a science lesson for first-graders. In fact, a "solar still" can turn salt water into fresh water in just a few days. Simply fill a large bowl with salt water and set an empty glass at the center. Then cover the bowl -- empty glass and all -- with plastic wrap that has a small hole poked in the middle. Place the contraption in direct sunlight, and watch the water cycle at work: The salt water evaporates, leaves salt crystals behind, and creates condensation that rises, gathers on the plastic membrane and drips into the empty glass. The resulting fresh water is good enough to drink [source: Williams]. But why remove salt in the first place? Turns out, drinking salt water can kill you. Ingesting salt signals your cells to flush water molecules to dilute the mineral. Too much salt, and this process can cause a really bad chain reaction: Your cells will be depleted of moisture, your kidneys will shut down and your brain will become damaged. The only way to offset this internal chaos is to urinate with greater frequency to expel all that salt, a remedy that could work only if you have access to lots of fresh drinking water [source: Thompson]. Advertisement People -- especially those in water-starved parts of the world -- have been searching for fresh water solutions for centuries. Turns out the same folks who built giant sphinxes and drove horse-drawn chariots also thirsted for clean, pure water [source: Jesperson]. Even in modern times, entire populations struggle with a cruel irony; they are surrounded by salt water, but lack drinking water. The scarcity sometimes spurs deadly conflicts. In 2009, onlookers killed a family in drought-ridden India for collecting water from a municipal well before it ran dry [source: Pacific Institute]. But what if an abundant supply of fresh water could be created from salt water? A large-scale desalination operation -- using principles similar to a simple classroom project -- could change the world. On the next page, we'll explore why it's not always so easy to turn salt water into drinking water. With a total of 1,35,598 confined COVID-19 cases so far, Delhi has the most number of infections in any Indian cities, followed by Mumbai which has seen 1,14,284 coronavirus cases till now. But Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai which had the highest number of infections are seeing a slowdown and the infection rate is falling. BCCL The three cities have also recorded impressive recovery rates and barring Mumbai which has over 20,000 active cases, the two others have around 10,000 people who are either in hospital or are in home isolation. But as the three-worst affected cities start showing signs of a recovery, other cities are emerging as the new COVID-19 hotspots. BCCL The turnaround of Mumbai is welcome news for Maharashtra, but its troubles are far from over as the two next hotspots are from the state itself. Thane which as seen 93,342 confirmed COVID-19 cases and Pune with a tally of 89,231 is making it tough for Maharashtra government. Pune Mayor Murlidhar Mohol has alleged that at least 400 suspected COVID-19 deaths have gone unaccounted for in the city in July. BCCL The mayor said that every month there are at least 400 to 500 deaths of suspected coronavirus patients that are going unaccounted for in Sassoon General Hospital and private hospitals in the city. "There are at least 12 deaths of suspected coronavirus patients that are going unaccounted for in Sassoon hospital daily. Similar cases are taking place in private hospitals also," he alleged. "These deaths remain unaccounted for because the patients are either brought dead to the hospitals or they die immediately after being brought there." "As per the guidelines, no test is conducted on a deceased. But when the doctors take the X-ray of these people, they show symptoms of COVID-19," Mohol claimed. With Pune predicted to emerge as the worst-hit in Maharashtra in the coming days, there is a political fight over une Municipal Corporation (PMC) expressed its inability to pay its share for building three mega covid health centres in the city. bccl The Maharashtra government had said that the PMC, Pune Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) and the state government would pay up Rs 300 crore that is going to be used to build three jumbo COVID hospitals in Pune. PMC, run by BJP said that it does not have the funds to pay for it, claiming that it is running short of cash has it has already spent Rs 250 crore during the pandemic. BCCL Another major worry is Bengaluru. On Friday, out of the 5,483 cases that the state reported, 2,220 were from the capital. In Bengaluru too, the number of active cases is much higher compared to other cities. Out of the 55,544 cases that have been confirmed so far, 37,618 are active. Mumbai: Actress Kangana Ranaut has issued a statement over reports of gunshots being heard near her Manali residence on Friday night. Kangana is currently staying in Manali along with her family. The actress feels somebody did this to threaten her after her recent comments related to actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. According to her statement, the Kullu district police deployed security at her house after the incident. The statement said: "I was in my bedroom. I heard a cracker-like sound at about 11.30 pm. At first, I thought it must be a cracker. And then another shot happened, and I got a little alarmed since that sounded like a gunshot. I called my security in charge immediately... Let's see what this was, and if this is repeated again. I have heard the sound of a bullet and I think it was definitely a bullet, very intently fired twice, two shots with a gap of about eight seconds between them. And it was right opposite my room. So it seems like someone was behind the boundary walls, there's a jungle and a water body there." Kangana assumes that this is being done to intimidate her for speaking up about Sushant's death. "I think some local people may have been hired to come near my place, you know, it is not difficult to pay someone seven-eight thousand rupees here and assign them something like this. To do this to make a statement on the day I called out the chief minister's son -- I don't think it was a coincidence. People are telling me that they will now make your life miserable in Mumbai. Well, I don't have to be in Mumbai, they are doing it here also. Is there open goondagardi in this country? This is how Sushant must have been frightened. But I will continue to ask questions," the actress stated. Even though the Kullu district police immediately reached Kangana's house after the incident on Friday night and deployed security as per her statement, it also claims that after due investigation, the police did not find any evidence of mischief. Kangana's statement claims that the police will continue probing the incident. Lone Star College-Kingwood is preparing for a return to campus with only a small amount of in-person instruction and protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus for classes starting on Aug. 24. However, lone star officials will have to implement the strategies with more students. LSC-Kingwood enrolled 330 more students this summer than last, reaching an almost 15 percent increase in enrollment, according to LSC-Kingwood President Katherine Persson. What I can ensure our employees as well as our students is we are doing everything possible to ensure their safety, very strictly following CDC guidelines, Persson said. We have successfully worked from home for most of the summer, most of our employees have been working from home, they have the equipment to do that, and were keeping in touch with students and we do that with email, with direct phone calls. EDUCATION: Humble ISD mulls return to class options amid conflicting instructions from Harris County, TEA, state Other than healthcare and fire science courses that had to have some in-person work, all classes were moved online. There will be about 1,200 class sections planned for the fall semester, 54 percent of which will be completely online, 29 percent will be hybrid meaning at least half the classes will be online with at least one class is in-person and only 17 percent are face to face. Persson said all hybrid classes could shift completely online if necessary. Most in-person classes for hybrid courses will not occur until Oct. 19, halfway through the semester. Persson said employees and students have been working from home successfully during the summer by using tools and technologies they did not have years ago. The entire campus is set up for socially distancing, as well as the classrooms. Before an individual can enter a building on the LSC-Kingwood campus as a student, employee, or vendor, they must be preapproved on a daily log. Two people serve at the one check-in point available right now in the CLA building, which means there is only one building the go through and one parking lot people are using. They are asked to put on a mask and gloves, which are offered in prepackaged bags in various sizes. Once they enter the building, they have their temperature taken by a kiosk-style reader. If the individual has a temperature higher than 100.4 degrees, they are asked to go home and seek medical attention. If they are at a normal temperature, they are then asked to fill out a health declaration form electronically. CORONAVIRUS: Coronavirus expert Peter Hotez reveals how Texas can reopen by October Persson said that while they do have a large population of dual-credit and early college high school students, they are treated the same as other students. Persson said the school learned some of the skills theyre using during Hurricane Harvey only three years ago. We were forced to switch to mostly online with Hurricane Harvey devastating so much of the college. So our faculty who had never taught online had to learn, no other choice, and I think that Harvey helped prepare us for the pandemic in more ways than I think most other college institutions, Persson said. So our faculty are well seasoned with online, theyve had a lot of success with it, so it wasnt as much of a stretch for them to have to shift to this mode with the pandemic. The Lone Star College system will be providing an additional 5,000 laptops for students taking classes this fall to help in closing the digital divide. Applications opened on July 29 and computers will be handed out before the fall semester starts on Aug. 24. Thanks to a donor, LSC-Kingwood was able to gift over 50 students with laptops and about that many students received webcams to communicate with teachers. "My eyes lit up and I had the biggest smile when I opened the box, LSC-Kingwood student Krysten Garza, said in a press release. I am so blessed and thankful that there are people out there spreading love and kindness during this hectic time." Not long before the coronavirus led to quarantines and changes in daily life, Lone Star College-Kingwood celebrated the groundbreaking of the $18.8 million Lone Star Health Professions Center on March 2. Persson said they were able to resume construction in mid-June, have already built up the dirt pad and expect the cement to be poured in the next couple of weeks. It will be open late fall 2021, we will have our first classes probably start there January of 2022, Persson said. savannah.mehrtens@chron.com The Queen gave Prince Harry a dressing down for using offensive language about her closest aide, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The scolding came after Harry, 35, flew into a rage when the Queen's dresser and confidante Angela Kelly was unable to meet Meghan's sudden demand to visit Buckingham Palace with her hairdresser to try on a tiara that the couple had chosen for their wedding. When it was pointed out that protocol dictates an appointment must be made to access the Queen's jewels, Harry is understood to have used offensive language about Ms Kelly as he heaped pressure on courtiers to persuade her to travel to London and unlock the cupboard where the tiara is kept. The Queen gave Prince Harry a dressing down for using offensive language about her closest aide, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Harry and Meghan are pictured above on their wedding day in 2018 Ms Kelly learned of the outburst and alerted the Queen to his bad language, prompting the monarch to summon her grandson to a private meeting. 'He was put firmly in his place,' said a Royal source. 'He had been downright rude.' A new biography of Duke and Duchess of Sussex accuses Ms Kelly of 'deliberately dragging her feet' when Meghan asked for access to the tiara before the couple's wedding in May 2018. According to the authors of Finding Freedom, Harry felt that some of the 'old guard' at the Palace 'simply didn't like Meghan and would stop at nothing to make her life difficult'. But last night a Royal source pointedly said: 'The book's version of what happened would not be everyone else's recollection of events and certainly not those who were close to it.' The scolding came after Harry, 35, flew into a rage when the Queen's dresser and confidante Angela Kelly (above) was unable to meet Meghan's sudden demand to visit Buckingham Palace with her hairdresser to try on a tiara that the couple had chosen for their wedding The 'tiara row' symbolised the frustration of the Sussexes with the so-called 'vipers' at the Palace. Harry saw it as a 'huge snub' that Ms Kelly did not organise for Meghan and her American hairdresser Serge Normant to get access to the glittering Queen Mary bandeau headpiece when they wished. A friend said: 'Meg had flown her hairdresser over from Paris for a hair practice and they needed the tiara. 'Angela Kelly said she couldn't come to London and Harry went ballistic. He was furious at the treatment of his then fiancee. Such a snub.' But others insist the couple misinterpreted Ms Kelly's reply. A source said: 'Meghan demanded access to the tiara. She didn't make an appointment with Angela, but said, 'We're at Buckingham Palace, we want the tiara. Can we have it now please?' 'Angela essentially said, 'I'm very sorry, that's not how it works.' There's protocol in place over these jewels. They're kept under very tight lock and key. You can't turn up and demand to have the tiara just because your hairdresser happens to be in town.' Contrary to previous reports, Harry's fury was not about which tiara Meghan was allowed to wear but about access to it. 'Harry was very quick to let everybody know of his anger and frustration,' said another Royal source. 'He let lots of people know that he was unhappy. He tried to get what Meghan wanted by ringing others to put pressure on Angela to bend the rules. 'He was insistent on getting his own way. There was never an appointment that Angela didn't turn up to. 'Harry and Meghan may have wrongly interpreted being told she couldn't have immediate access to the tiara as a snub, but Angela was following Palace protocol. 'It wasn't a snub, it's just the way the institution works.' Ms Kelly learned of the outburst and alerted the Queen to his bad language, prompting the monarch to summon her grandson to a private meeting. 'He was put firmly in his place,' said a Royal source. 'He had been downright rude' Regardless, Harry was perhaps ill-advised to criticise Ms Kelly, 61, a docker's daughter from Liverpool, who has risen through the Royal ranks to become one of the Queen's most trusted advisers. She wears-in Her Majesty's shoes and the monarch once told her: 'We could be sisters.' The Queen appointed Ms Kelly, nicknamed AK47 because of her uncompromising manner, a member of the Royal Victorian Order in 2006 and promoted her to Lieutenant of the same Order in 2012 for 'distinguished personal service'. She is also Her Majesty's Personal Adviser and Curator (The Queen's Jewellery, Insignias and Wardrobe), a role not previously granted to a Royal servant. SOLEBURY, Pa. (AP) Tucked between the Delaware River and canal path just north of New Hope lies a quaint English village Eleanor Miller calls home. When Im walking along the road out front, people actually stop and say, Where am I, this is unbelievable, she said. People come along River Road and suddenly they are in England. Its such a magical spot. Drive too fast past Millers Gothic-style home and you might miss the significance of one of the most influential artistic movements in American history. The hidden structures that dot the riverside of Solebury were once the center of the New Hope Art Colony, which served as a hub of the world-renowned Pennsylvania Impressionist movement at the turn of the 20th century. More than 100 years after it was formed, a group of artists and architects are trying to preserve the hamlet that grew out of the 18th-century Phillips Mill and inspired artists from around the world. We launched the idea of a way to recreate the original artist colony in a new way while preserving the original Phillips Mill community, which is certainly the hub of the artist colony in New Hope that extends out to many other local properties where artists resided, said Brett Webber, founder and president of the Phillips Mill Foundation for the Arts. It came to be a hub and meeting place for the artists in the early 20th century. Recently, the nonprofit consisting of a dozen members and a growing advisory board of local and national artists kicked off a $35 million fundraising campaign to acquire, restore and rehabilitate numerous structures in the village over a 5- to 10-year period. In 2018, we formed the organization with an ambition to essentially preserve the historic community that sits opposite the original mill and an assemblage of buildings that were originally farm buildings and residences that were over time built out to accommodate artist studios and workshops, Webber said. The group currently owns three structures on two parcels of the original community that overlooks the Delaware, Webber said. We have just shy of an acre of property, he said. The total of the hamlet here is a handful of acres but the larger properties within the site contiguous to the original (area) is comprised of 15 to 16 acres of property that are linked to other locations where artists lived historically and had studios where we have opportunities for future collaboration up and down the Delaware Canal. The first $425,000 raised was used to purchase and preserve the Norman French-style kennel and forge buildings fronting the canal previously owned by Morgan Colt, a New York City-based architect who built the village. Another purchase included its Foundation House, the former dormitory of New Hope School for Girls that was transformed into the Inn at Phillips Mill Restaurant years ago. (Colt) came here in the early 1900s and essentially gave form to the community, largely through what he called the English village, which was a combination of his aspirations for the arts and crafts, said Webber, an award-winning architect and lifelong Delaware River Valley resident. So there is English Tudor and French inspired structures here and a variety of adapted buildings. Colt was followed by Philadelphia Dr. George Morley Marshall, who later encouraged his friend and renowned painter William Lathrop to move to the property. A dedicated teacher, Lathrop later helped form the colony by attracting other artists to the area after moving into Phillips Mill in 1899, according to the Michener Art Museum. Sometimes referred to as the New Hope School or the Pennsylvania School, the Impressionist movement drew a number of artists who were inspired by the countys natural landscapes. In the community, we have over a dozen structures that are meaningful and important, but as we move forward with our plans that extend beyond the physical confines of the English village, there are farm structures and many other properties that would be a part of our long-term plan, Webber said. One of Colts three structures is his former art studio, where fourth-generation Phillips Mill resident Miller resides today. Millers heritage dates back to Marshall. Her husband, Shaun Marshall Miller, was a publisher and artist and son of painter R.A.D. Miller, who came to the community in 1928 before marrying Marshalls daughter, Celia Belden Marshall. By 1929, Lathrop negotiated the purchase of the mill from Marshall so he could host art exhibitions and form the Phillips Mill Art Association. To this day, the association hosts annual juried exhibits from artists across the area. Miller, PMFA co-founder and vice president, said she performed as an actress and traveled with fellow actor Bea Arthur before meeting her husband at the Playhouse in the Park in Philadelphia. Years later after we had children, we decided to come home down here, she said. So he commuted to work (in New York) every day and we had the country to enjoy. Miller said its important to restore and preserve the colony for others to enjoy for posterity due its significance. It is known all over the world, she said. We were in Europe in 1976 and we went to Switzerland and someone asked where we were from and I said, Oh, youve probably never heard of New Hope, Bucks County, Pa., and they said, The Art Colony! Theres a lot of history here. Later this year, the group hopes to launch the PMFA Membership Program, Fall 2020 programming, a virtual artists residency and an exhibition inspired by the Pennsylvania Impressionists. It is seeking memberships and donations on its website, phillipsmillfoundation.org. Following the acquisitions and restorations, the hope is the foundation can reinstate the acclaimed art colony with live work studios and exhibits while fostering professional and creative development for artists of all disciplines, Webber said. This is a unique place in the world ... I think architects and artists appreciate these sources and inspiration and there is a particular mythology that kind of resonates around this place because of the amount of people that passed through here and lives and work that it touched and influenced, he said. There is something important just intrinsically about interpreting history and telling history in the place where these things were created. There is a kind of energy that exists here. Karl Stefanovic has issued an apology to Tony Jones after mocking him over his awkward attempt to kiss Rebecca Judd. The cringe-worthy moment aired on Nine News in 2016, and Karl, 45, played the clip on The Today Show last week when Tony, 58, appeared via video link. Karl's rehashing of the embarrassing incident appears to have ruffled feathers off set, as the TV host felt compelled to make a sombre apology to Tony on The Footy Show on Sunday night. So sorry: Karl Stefanovic (pictured) has issued an apology to Tony Jones after mocking him over his awkward attempt to kiss Rebecca Judd He said at length: 'This is not easy for me to do, it is not often I will admit that I am wrong. 'To the people of Victoria, but more importantly to the much loved Tony Jones himself, I say from the bottom of my heart I am truly sorry. 'To use what many still refer to as one of Australian TV's top five moments as a cheap gag for LOLs was juvenile. He said at length: 'This is not easy for me to do, it is not often I will admit that I am wrong.'o the people of Victoria, but more importantly to the much loved Tony Jones himself, I say from the bottom of my heart I am truly sorry' No thanks: Tony (pictured) replied that he understood that the Today show did not know it was a 'sore point' for him but that he never wanted to see the clip again 'Tony, I love you and I promise the Today show will never ever, ever ever play it again, at least while I am in the chair. ' Tony replied that he understood that the Today show did not know it was a 'sore point' for him but that he never wanted to see the clip again. During the July 23rd episode of the Today show, Karl played the clip when discussing social distancing. As he introduced it, Tony, who was on screen via a video link, began snapping: 'Don't even go there, Karl. Don't go there. Don't go there! Do not'. Laughs: The cringe-worthy moment aired on Nine News in 2016, and Karl, 45, played the old clip on The Today Show on July 23rd when Tony, 58, appeared via video link Tony looked upset after the clip aired and Karl tried to joked, 'Oh come on TJ'. However Tony replied sternly: 'No, Karl, what you obviously don't realise is there was a ban put on that footage'. Concerned, Karl looked off camera, perhaps to a producer, and replied, 'No I wasn't aware of that'. He tried to laugh it off before saying, 'apologies to everyone out there... nah, it was worth playing the footage'. As he introduced it, Tony began snapping: 'Don't even go there, Karl. Don't go there. Don't go there! Do not' However Tony added sternly: 'No, Karl, what you obviously don't realise is there was a ban put on that footage'. Concerned, Karl looked off camera, perhaps to a producer, and replied, 'No I wasn't aware of that' However, it appears Karl was later propelled to make that apology in earnest. This comes after Tony vowed to 'walk off set' if Network Nine ever tried to broadcast the awkward and embarrassing footage again. Speaking to 3AW's Neil Mitchell in June, he said: 'Neil, can I put this on the public record, your show is the most listened-to radio show in Melbourne right. 'But I will say, if I see that played one more time at Channel Nine I will walk off the set. I do not want to see that kiss again.' Awkward! The incident with Rebecca Judd (right) occurred on Nine News Melbourne in August 2016, when Tony attempted to give the AFL WAG a peck on the cheek before she went on maternity leave 'Please find a reason to play it tonight and see if he walks off,' he said. The incident with Rebecca occurred on Nine News Melbourne in August 2016, when Tony attempted to give the AFL WAG a peck on the cheek before she went on maternity leave. 'Good luck, Bec!' he said, before leaning in. At that moment, the WAG instinctively pulled away and yelped, before bursting into fits of giggles. Realising he had just been rejected on camera, Tony crossed his arms and grumbled, 'OK, good, this is going well,' as his face turned red. Chinese has been given a miss in the list of foreign languages offered to students at the secondary school level in the National Education Policy (NEP), which was launched earlier this week. The list has French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Thai as electives that students can take up to learn about cultures of the world and enrich global knowledge... according to their own interests and aspirations. However, a draft version of the NEP, released last year, did list Chinese, along with French, German, Japanese and Spanish as examples of languages to be offered and available to interested students as electives. The approved NEP released by Union ministers Prakash Javadekar and Ramesh Pokhriyal on Wednesday omitted Chinese. The step has come amid a stand-off with China after the brutal brawl in eastern Ladakhs Galwan Valley on June 15 during which 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed by Chinese troops. Tensions between the two countries escalated following the Galwan Valley face-off. India had banned 59 Chinese-origin mobile phone apps, including social media platforms such as TikTok and WeChat, in June in view of the information available that they are engaged in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity and defence of the country. After that, 47 other Chinese apps, which were variants and cloned copies of the 59 apps banned earlier. After the fresh ban on 47 clones of prohibited Chinese apps, Beijing said it will take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies. Chinese embassy spokesperson Ji Rong said in a statement that Indias June 29 ban on 59 mobile apps with Chinese background severely damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies, The Indian government has the responsibility to protect the legitimate rights and interests of international investors in India, including Chinese businesses, in accordance with market principles, she added. The ban orders for the Chinese apps and their clones are among a string of economic measures unveiled by India in the wake of the months-old border standoff with China. It's been quite a week for the markets and while market news is likely to focus on the explosive gains in select FAANG stocks, I believe there's an even bigger story that's come to light during this surprisingly robust earnings season. You see, Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) had already revealed themselves as leaders well before last week's bullish earnings reports propelled them even higher. More interesting to me, are earnings reports over the past 2 weeks that point to a bullish tipping point in 5-G related stocks that indicates the super cycle in this new wireless standard is finally positioned to take off. WEEKLY CHART OF ERICSSON TELEPHONE CO. (ERIC) Swedish based Ericsson (ERIC) is a prime example as the stock soared more than 13% on strong 2nd quarter earnings boosted by a rise in 5G network sales. The company strengthened its position in this area with the signing of almost 100 5G commercial contracts since April. Since then, ERIC posted more bullish news after signing deals with Deutsche Telekom and U.S. Cellular to assist in the deployment of their 5G traffic. And just this week, they delivered their first U.S. manufactured 5G station to Verizon. As you can see in the weekly chart above, Ericsson broke out of a 15-month base on heavy volume following the bullish news. And while I anticipate a pullback to its 21-day moving average which is the top of its recent base breakout, a confirmed uptrend is now in place. Two other companies that reported strong 2nd quarter results have also attributed increased demand of their 5-G products as a major driver. DAILY CHART OF TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MFG. (TSM) Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) reported 93% growth in earnings for the 2nd quarter driven primarily by acceleration in 5G deployment. In addition, management is expecting increased demand in this area through the 2nd half of the year. Taiwan Semi is positioned to benefit the most from this new era of fast-speed data delivery as they're the largest chip manufacturer who services most of the biggest semiconductor chip companies instrumental in the 5G race. TSM gapped up bullishly on their earnings news and the heavy volume indicates Institutional buying that may well continue. Additional news that Intel (INTC) is delaying production of chips critical to this space also boosted the prospects for Taiwan Semiconductor. TSM can be bought on a pullback to its 10-day simple moving average. DAILY CHART OF QUALCOMM, INC. (QCOM) Last up is Qualcomm (QCOM) whose report of a modest improvement in 2nd quarter results was super-charged by news of a settlement with the world's largest smartphone maker, Huawei. The stock broke out of a 6-month base on volume as the bullish news clears the way for QCOM to see big growth as the new 5G standard is rolled out. Of note is the fact that historically, the longer the base that a stock breaks out of, the longer its advance out of that base; provided the company continues to report solid growth. With each of these highlighted stocks emerging from long bases while having sound growth prospects, their outlook is very promising. There are select additional 5G related stocks that I've identified and they haven't reported their quarterly results yet. You can access them with my MEM Edge Report. In addition to alerting subscribers to this week's winning FAANG stocks months ago, my bi-weekly MEM Edge report highlighted Qualcomm and Taiwan Semiconductor as being poised to trade higher. If you'd like to be alerted to similar stocks that are poised to greatly outperform the markets, trial my MEM Edge Report for 4-weeks for a modest fee. This top-performing newsletter not only provides precise entry and exit points for its selected stocks, you'll receive insights into sector rotation and the broader markets that will give you the confidence to take advantage of this bullish phase in the markets. Take a look at our track record here! Warmly, Mary Ellen McGonagle Founder, MEM Investment Research New Delhi: Actor Sushant Singh Rajput's sister Shweta Singh Kirti has been quite active on social media with regular posts on late brother. In one of her recent Instagram post, she shared Sushant's whiteboard which clearly had 'transcendental meditation' written on it which he planned to start on June 29, 2020. The actor was found dead at his Bandra residence on June 14, 2020. Shweta Singh Kirti wrote: Bhais White Board where he was planning to start his workout and transcendental meditation from 29th June daily. So he was planning ahead. #justiceforsushantsinghrajput She, in fact, wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting a fair probe into the case. Meanwhile, earlier in the day it was reported that a team of Bihar police officials visited Cooper Hospital in Mumbai, seeking Sushant Singh Rajput's post mortem report details. But reportedly, the hospital authority refused to share any such information with the Bihar cops investigating actor's death case. After actor Sushant Singh Rajput's father lodged an FIR against Rhea Chakraborty, her family and six others in Patna's Rajiv Nagar police station under IPC Sections 341, 342, 380, 406, 420 and 306 for cheating, exploiting him financially and abetment to suicide, a four-member police team from Bihar began its investigation process in Mumbai. Several political leaders have been making statements on the mysterious death case of Sushant, pressing for a CBI probe to ensure a fair probe. Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his Bandra residence on June 14, 2020. Fans and several celebrities have been demanding a CBI inquiry into the death case suspecting a foul play. NEW YORK President Donald Trump said he will take action as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok, a popular Chinese-owned video app that has been a source of national security and censorship concerns. Trumps comments came after published reports that the administration is planning to order Chinas ByteDance to sell TikTok. There were also reports Friday that software giant Microsoft is in talks to buy the app. As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States, Trump told reporters Friday on Air Force One as he returned from Florida. Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, I have that authority. He added, Its going to be signed tomorrow. Reports by Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal citing anonymous sources said the administration could soon announce a decision ordering ByteDance to divest its ownership in TikTok. There have been reports of U.S. tech giants and financial firms being interested in buying or investing in TikTok as the Trump administration sets its sights on the app. The New York Times and Fox Business, citing an unidentified source, reported Friday that Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok. Microsoft declined to comment. TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok. TikTok posted a short video from its U.S. General Manager Vanessa Pappas on TikTok and Twitter late Saturday morning, saying that Were not planning on going anywhere. ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the U.S. and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users. TikTok's fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and U.S. tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a competitive threat. It has said it has tens of millions of U.S. users and hundreds of millions globally. But its Chinese ownership has raised concerns about the censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government, and the potential for sharing user data with Chinese officials. TikTok maintains it doesnt censor videos based on topics sensitive to China and it would not give the Chinese government access to U.S. user data even if asked. The company has hired a U.S. CEO, a former top Disney executive, in an attempt to distance itself from its Chinese ownership. U.S. national-security officials have been reviewing the Musical.ly acquisition in recent months, while U.S. armed forces have banned their employees from installing TikTok on government-issued phones. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month that the U.S. was considering banning TikTok. These national-security worries parallel a broader U.S. security crackdown on Chinese companies, including telecom providers Huawei and ZTE. The Trump administration has ordered that the U.S. stop funding equipment from those providers in U.S. networks. It has also tried to steer allies away from Huawei because of worries about the Chinese government's access to data, which the company has denied it has. The Trump administration has stepped in before to block or dissolve deals on national-security concerns, including stopping Singapore's Broadcom from its $117 billion bid for U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm in 2018 in an effort to help retain U.S. leadership in the telecom space. It also told China's Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. to sell off its 2016 purchase of gay dating app Grindr. Other countries are also taking action against TikTok. India this month banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, citing privacy concerns, amid tensions between the countries. ___ Kevin Freking aboard Air Force One, Zeke Miller in Washington and Anne DInnocenzio in New York contributed to this report. Elon Musk says China rocks while the U.S. is full of complacency and entitlement Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk lamented the entitled and complacent character of people in the United States, and lauded the smart and hard working people of China, in the first installment of a three-part interview with Automotive News Daily Drive podcast published Friday. Specifically, Musk criticized New York and California -- states that have supported his businesses, especially Tesla, with considerable tax breaks, regulatory credits and other government help. Automotive News publisher Jason Stein, who conducted the interview, asked Musk, How about China as an EV strategy leader in the world? Musk replied: China rocks in my opinion. The energy in China is great. People there theres like a lot of smart, hard working people. And theyre really -- theyre not entitled, theyre not complacent, whereas I see in the United States increasingly much more complacency and entitlement especially in places like the Bay Area, and L.A. and New York. Last year, Chinese government officials helped Tesla secure loans worth around $1.6 billion to construct and begin manufacturing vehicles at the companys relatively new Shanghai factory. This year, the Shanghai government helped Tesla get back to normal operations quickly, at its new plant, after the region was struck by a Covid-19 outbreak and issued widespread quarantines that temporarily suspended manufacturing there. Musk pointed out, Telsa has not received as much assistance from the government in China as domestic companies. They have been supportive. But it would be weird if they were more supportive to a non-Chinese company. Theyre not, he said. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-china-rocks-us-full-of-entitlement.html? https://www.autonews.com/weekend-drive-podcast/daily-drive-podcast-july-31-2020-elon-musk-one-one-exclusive-tesla-finally Wharton photo As coronavirus cases continue to soar in the U.S., the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School today (July 31) announced that it had changed its mind about a hybrid fall semester of in-person and online classes. Instead, Dean Erika James said that Whartons classes will be virtual this fall. The announcement was made by James in a morning web conference with the incoming Class of 2022 MBA students at Wharton. Later in the day, however, the school issued a lengthly clarification indicating that MBA courses will be mostly online. While the MBA program instruction will take place largely online this Fall, we will provide academic requirements in-person where it is essential to have an in-person experience in order to meet curricular and/or pedagogical requirements, wrote MBA Program Vice Dean Howie Kaufold (see his full communication below). For the past several months, we concentrated our efforts on creating plans for an in-person experience for you, but as the developments unfolded over the last two weeks, it became clear that what we could deliver would not be sustainable amid the shifting situation, nor worth the heightened risk for those of you attending. Kaufold noted that tirst-year international students can get a support letter from the MBA Program to confirm they are attending a hybrid program for the Fall of 2020. The school also restated that while the classes will be mostly online, there will be no adjustments made to tuition for the academic year. The school had earlier said that its MBA for Executives Program would be fully remote for fall 2020. Harvard Business School and Stanfords Graduate School of Business are still moving forward with their plans for a blended opening, though it is not known how many classes will actually be in-person on either campus. Harvard, however, expects on-campus students to take COVID tests as often as every three days. Story continues Prior to todays change of heart by James, the school was planning to re-open for the fall semester on Sept. 1. Using a hybrid model, students were expected to resume classes through a mix of online learning and on-campus classroom instruction. All large lectures were to be delivered online and in-class instruction was to involve greater physical spacing of students, as well as plexiglass separators at lecterns where appropriate. The earlier plans had called for all Wharton classes with more than 48 students to be conducted online, while classes with 48 or fewer students could be offered in a hybrid format, with students alternating between in-person and virtual attendance and no more than 24 students in-person at any given time. Everyone on campus was expected to practice physical distancing, wear face coverings, and agree to testing and contact tracing. IN PHILADELPHIA, 30,213 CONFIRMED CASES AND 1,691 DEATHS FROM CORONAVIRUS Goizueta Business School Dean Erika James Wharton School Dean Erika James But cases of coronavirus have continued to climb in the U.S. and in Philadelphia, home to Whartons campus, the local government has warned that there is a high risk of community transmission. Thus far, there are 30,213 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Philadelphia alone, with 1,691 deaths due to the pandemic. Whats more, a newly released The New York Times analysis shows that Penn currently has one of the highest coronavirus case counts among colleges in the United States. As of July 28, Penn has had a total of 176 confirmed or probable coronavirus cases which comprise of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students currently in the country and abroad since it began COVID-19 testing in March. Out of the survey of approximately 270 U.S. colleges, The New York Times reported Penn with the eighth highest case count. Yale University has 220 confirmed cases and has conducted more than 4,000 symptomatic tests since March 10, while Harvard University has found 160 confirmed cases as of July 27. The earlier announcement that Wharton was pulling back on its hybird plan fueled a lively debate on community websites. Setting aside your personal risk appetite for contracting COVID, imagine being a member of Whartons administration if even one student/professor gets seriously ill and has long-term consequences (or worse) as a result of attending in-person classes, wrote one commenter on Reddit. Yes, theyre shifting liability onto the students. From a business/legal perspective, it makes total sense. Adds another: It definitely devalues the experience. Nobody is arguing that it doesnt, that would be crazy. But whats the number of deaths among M7 students, faculty, and collateral community spread that we can accept in exchange for returning to in-person classes? Is it 1? Probably not if one person was expected to die of COVID in the M7 if they all fully resumed course, thats probably a bet that people would take. But when does it become not OK? Can you put a number on it? GEORGETOWN ALSO IS GOING ONLINE Whartons announcement follows a decision earlier this week by Georgetown Universitys McDonough School of Business to start its MBA fully online. Georgetown President John DeGioia had said that as cases of the virus have accelerated and travel restrictions expanded, the schools previous plans inoperable. Over these past few weeks, we have been carefully monitoring the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our Fall plans, DeGioia writes. I write to share with you the difficult decision that, based on current pandemic and public health conditions, we will be amending our plans for the Fall. Courses for all undergraduate and graduate students will begin in virtual mode. While Wharton has yet to post an official notice about the fall on its website, the University of Pennsylvania today announced that almost all undergraduate courses will be online as well with only a few, limited, in-person offerings. THE PANDEMIC HAS CONTINUED TO SPREAD Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our Universitys planning and actions have been driven by two fundamental principles: that we do everything within our powers to protect the health and safety of our students, faculty, staff, and community, and that we provide our students with the very finest educational experience possible under these extraordinary and challenging circumstances, wrote Provost Wendell Pritchett and Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli in a newly published update. As we began planning for the upcoming academic year, we were well aware that bringing college students together from across the country and around the world in the midst of a pandemic presented uniquely difficult challenges. This has become ever more apparent as the pandemic has continued to spread over the past month with young people becoming the fastest growing cohort. In our message concerning the fall on June 25, we stressed that our decision was guided by the most current medical information and governmental directives, and cautioned that our plans could change depending on the progression of the pandemic. It is now evident that rather than plateauing during the summer, as many health experts expected, COVID-19 has instead gained momentum. Since our June 25 message, 1.5 million new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the United States, with the confirmed case count soaring from 2.4 million on June 25 to 3.9 million on July 22. This means that almost 40% of all confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States since the beginning of the pandemic have been reported in the last month. Against this backdrop and as the pandemic continues to progress, the Universitys planning has evolved on several fronts. Undergraduate courses for the fall semester are being offered online, with a few, limited, in-person offerings. While most business schools had been planning to return with blended formats, government restrictions will also play a major role in how and whether MBA programs will have in-person elements this fall. Only yesterday, for example, Harvard Business School noted that new requirements on self-quarantine imposed by Massachusetts for those coming or returning to Massachusetts go into effect on Saturday 8/1. As is true at other schools and universities, Harvard is looking carefully at what it means to have large numbers of people all arriving in a short window of time who thendifferent from residents or travelers who typically disperse to varied locationsconverge in what is being called a congregate setting (aka a college campus), according to the school. Harvard is likely to build on the states new guidancewhich requires quarantine for 14 days or a negative test from within 72 hours of arrivaland require multiple tests spaced over at least a week, for all students, whether living on or off-campus. Testing currently is administered on Tuesdays in the Harvard Stadium and on Wednesday in Longwood. The strong preference is for students to use this HUHS-administered testing, as it is convenient, free to those being tested, and enables rapid follow-up (e.g., support, contact tracing) should a positive result be returned. This is, we know, a very structured start. But it is driven by our strong hope that we can reduce the likelihood of a COVID-19 outbreak in our community. Maintaining a low infection level will be key in the future to enabling restrictions to be eased. Whartons full communication is below: MBA Class of 2021 and MBA Class of 2022, I am reaching out to follow up on Dean Erika James message this morning on Wharton HQ about the Wharton MBA fall semester shifting from its hybrid format to a remote model, and also the Universitys similar announcement today regarding their updated plans for the fall. The purpose of this note is to provide further clarification on several aspects of this change, including the impact for international students, updates on testing and contact tracing and further guidance on individuals planning to come to Philadelphia for the fall. I want to start by stating that the MBA Program staff and I share in your disappointment. For the past several months, we concentrated our efforts on creating plans for an in-person experience for you, but as the developments unfolded over the last two weeks, it became clear that what we could deliver would not be sustainable amid the shifting situation, nor worth the heightened risk for those of you attending. It is now evident that rather than plateauing during the summer, as many health experts expected, COVID-19 has instead gained momentum. Since late June, 1.5 million new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the United States, with the confirmed case count soaring from 2.4 million on June 25 to 3.9 million on July 22. All of Penn recognizes the challenges this creates, and are adapting plans to accommodate. In-person Courses: While the MBA program instruction will take place largely online this Fall, we will provide academic requirements in-person where it is essential to have an in-person experience in order to meet curricular and/or pedagogical requirements. First-year international students can get a support letter from the MBA Program to confirm they are attending a hybrid program in Fall 2020. Please see additional, updated information on the International Student & Scholar Services website for more details. Enhanced Virtual Learning: Wharton Computing has been hard at work to ensure that virtual learning will be maximized for MBA students and faculty. They are now supporting Zoom in addition to Blue Jeans (which has features that will enhance the virtual classroom such as expanded view of participants, embedded polling, raised hands, etc.). The Vice Dean of Teaching and Learning, Brian Bushee, has produced an extensive guide for faculty on delivering an online class that is drawn from student and faculty feedback from the Spring semester. We will schedule a session with Brian for next week in order to bring you more information about our enhancements in this area. Wharton MBA Financial Relief Fund: As Dean James shared this morning, there will be no adjustments made to tuition for the academic year. The school has established the Wharton MBA Financial Relief Fund to provide students additional financial assistance for 2020-2021. The MBA Financial Relief Fund will support MBA students who have incurred unexpected expenses directly related to the COVID-19 disruptions including moving expenses, travel, insurance, covering multiple rents, technology to support virtual access, and other urgent needs as appropriate. All students are encouraged to complete the Wharton MBA Financial Relief Fund application on or before 11:59 PM ET on August 23. Applicants will be notified by the first day of fall classes, September 1. Student Campus Compact: You should review the Student Campus Compact which applies to all Penn students in Philadelphia, regardless of whether you are living on or off-campus, and will be strictly enforced. Todays announcement from the University offers additional clarification on the Compact and how it will be enforced. Please also note, that if you are uncomfortable with the requirements of the Compact, you should not return to campus. Testing and Contact Tracing (PennOpen Pass): Campus access will require students to use the tracking program, PennOpen Pass, as a daily symptom checker to reduce the risk of COVID-19 to the Penn community. Penn is requiring anyone coming to campus with any regularity to perform daily symptom checks using PennOpen Pass before the start of each day including weekends, regardless of whether they are reporting to campus on that particular day. Specifics on contact tracing and PennOpen Pass can be found in the Universitys update, and further information is forthcoming. Co-curricular and Student Life: We are motivated in thinking about the ideas we can put into place to create what we are calling the Remote Plus experience. Though todays announcement means we will not have Wharton-sponsored co-curricular activities in person on campus, as the Wharton Proud community, we remain committed to making the remote experience inclusive, engaging and educational. The Office of Student Life, in conjunction with the WGA Leadership, will be in touch in the next few days to get feedback on what sorts of engagement would be on the top of your list. Remote Together Launch: Were going to be actively connecting first and second-year MBAs in whatever city they happen to be in to study together, to prep for interviews, and to socialize in what we are calling pods. Were also connecting those pods to the local alumni. Alumni clubs have been active all summer inviting students to their programming, including alumni clubs in NYC, Brazil, Singapore, Dubai, Chicago, Shanghai, New Jersey, and the Northern Capital Region. Working with our offices of Student Life and Alumni Affairs, were going to bring recent alums together with current first and second-year students for facilitated and self-directed activities in person where its allowed, and virtually when its not. Were also going to be working through the clusters and Student Life Fellows to build strong connections between students here in Philadelphia and their classmates around the world. More to come as we get a better idea of where people are planning to be for the Fall. Grading: First, we will not be enforcing an upper limit for the MBA grade point average. When faculty assign grades in MBA courses that are typically bound by a B+ average (3.33), this upper limit will not apply. Second, faculty will not assign LT indicators in MBA courses. Academic performance standards, however, will be enforced. In other words, you cannot get LTs, but accruing F grades can risk your academic standing. These decisions are a continuation of policies we put in place last semester in response to the transition to remote learning. We feel it is important to provide the same support as both students and faculty adjust to the synchronous and blended delivery models. That being said, we will be returning to our standard Pass/Fail in the fall semester. Each student may take up to one elective course unit on a Pass/Fail basis, not counting classes that can only be taken on a Pass/Fail basis. Standard deadlines apply, as well. This decision was made in accordance with other schools at Penn. While we understand this may provide students with less flexibility, we believe this is in the best interest of the MBA community. The above policies apply to Fall 2020, as no decisions have been made yet regarding Spring 2021. Leaves of Absence: If you decide you would like to pursue a leave of absence (LOA), please email mbaprogram@wharton.upenn.edu by Tuesday, September 8, regarding the reason for your leave and how long you anticipate being away. All leave of absence requests are reviewed by the MBA Program Office. An LOA from the MBA Program can be granted for a semester or academic year at a time. Leaves are not granted for a quarter only. Students must return to finish their degree within 5 years of their expected graduation date; a member of the Class of 2021 would need to return and graduate by Spring, 2026 and a member of the Class if 2022 would need to return and graduate by Spring, 2027. When you are placed on leave, your student status will lapse. This may affect your loans, regarding repayment, so please check in with your lenders about the change in status. Questions about fellowships and other financial aid can be directed to the financial aid office. You will have the option to purchase health insurance from the university; please feel free to contact Student Health Services about those details. Your Career Path and Course Match access will be frozen while you are on leave and reactivated upon your return. Your email will remain active until your expected graduation date and you will have the option of extending past that date as well. If we do see a rise in leave requests this fall, there may be restrictions placed upon the semester in which you can return. Fall Semester Survey: We recognize this decision could impact each of you in different ways including your intended location for the Fall semester. The deadline for you to let us know your plans has been extended to Friday, August 7 at 9:00 AM ET. We understand that some of you may need to alter your response to the survey, if so, please email mbaprogram@wharton.upenn.edu. Staff Support: Our MBA Program staff continues to be teleworking and accessible to provide helpful information and advice as you prepare for the Fall semester. You can reach out to staff via email and also connect with us on Wharton HQ. Finally, we are not only disappointed because this was not what we had envisioned for the Fall semester, but also because we will miss seeing you on campus. We look forward to seeing you virtually as we work together to stay connected with each other and as a community. Stay safe and well, Dean Howie Vice Dean, MBA Program DONT MISS: Harvard Business School Decides Against Starting Fully Online or Fall 2020 Reopening Plans At The Top 100 U.S. Business Schools The post Whartons Fall Semester For MBAs Will Now Be Mostly Online appeared first on Poets&Quants. ALBANY After more than an hour of mostly low-key speeches that were more pro-law enforcement than anti anything else, made to a chanting crowd of hundreds at the foot of the steps on the east side of the state Capitol while perhaps a dozen counter-protestors stood off to the side, Patrick McGee took the microphone during Saturday's Rally Round the Blue demonstration. A city patrol cop and president of the Albany Police Officers Union, McGee tore into familiar opponents, saying, The liberal media has pushed an agenda that it is taboo to support law enforcement. He mentioned Gov. Andrew Como, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, all Democrats, with each name drawing a chorus of boos from a crowd waving traditional American flags and those modified to include a blue line, meant to signify the police community. The three politicians valorize criminal as heroes, McGee said, adding of the trio, They demonize us at every turn. As he spoke, a handful of counter-protesters, some in Black Lives Matter attire, began to move toward the small stage erected for the rally. Attendees, many carrying flags on small poles and some in leather vests emblazoned with patches from motorcycle clubs, surrounded the counter-protesters, drowning them out with chants of U.S.A.! U.S.A.! When the tense confrontation escalated from verbal to physical, law enforcement stepped in, including uniformed state troopers and others who appeared to be plainclothes Albany officers. Even Lewis County Sheriff Michael Carpinelli got into the scrum. A Republican who traveled 150 miles from his home in north-central New York to speak at the rally, Carpinelli was also promoting his campaign to run for governor against Cuomo in two years. Officers at first moved the counter-protesters back toward the sidewalk, then acquiesced to their request to return to the main part of the rally. Murmurs in the crowd alleged that counter-protesters intended to deploy pepper spray, and a man in a Back the Blue T-shirt clutched the visible handle what appeared to be an otherwise concealed billy club as he repeatedly said, Give me a reason to use it. But the two-hour rally was largely peaceful, unlike Thursday night in Saratoga Springs, when a pro-police contingent faced off with Black Lives Matters demonstrators, and city police deployed an armored vehicle that fired pepper-spray bullets at BLM marchers. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. In addition to Carpinell and McGee, speakers included state legislators Jake Ashby, Daphne Jordan and Chris Tague, all Republican from districts in the greater Capital Region; Republican candidates Rich Amedure, who is running for state Senate, and Liz Joy, a challenger for Rep. Paul Tonkos 20th congressional district seat; and, as emcee, Melody Burns, host of a conservative online radio show. Event organizer Bill Tryon, founder of a group called the Liberty Bell Alliance, repeatedly told counter-protesters, Were allowing you to be here. He later said, We would give you everything we have if you would just become American citizens like us and Shame on you people. You should appreciate this country. I dont think anyone here would identify themselves as a racist. Theyd say they just want to support the police, said Adam Walker, an Albany photographer and videographer who documents rallies, marches, protests and other components of movements for racial and social justice on a Facebook page called The Peoples Voice. But I dont think they fully understand what it means to support a rally like this, said Walker, who is Black. If you say you fully back the police, youre also telling people who have experienced police violence that you dont believe them, that theyre lying. Of course theyre going to get upset. By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the wake of the death of a 55-year-old sub-inspector in Idukki district, the Kerala State Police Chief Loknath Behera has instructed the police personnel that the policeman above the age of 50 should not be deployed for COVID-19 field duty. It is the first death of a police personnel reported in the state due to COVID-19 infection. The deceased is Ajithan. He died in the Kottayam medical college hospital late Friday. The DGP also added that the policemen who have other diseases should not be deployed for duty and they should be given duty off based on their requests. The Kerala Police Headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram has been closed for two days as a Sub-inspector in the reception has tested positive on Friday. Behera said that the functioning of the headquarters will not be affected as Saturday and Sunday are holidays. The headquarters will reopen on Monday after disinfecting the whole building. READ HERE | Kerala Police officer tested COVID-positive dies of cardiac arrest, force's first casualty In a major concern, as many as 92 police personnel in the state have tested positive for COVID-19 until Friday. They include three policemen at Kilimanoor police station in Thiruvananthapuram district, the gunman of the deputy speaker and a sub-inspector at the police headquarters in the capital. With this, the other personnel at the Kilimanoor police station and other officers in the headquarters who had contacted the infected officers have been asked to go into quarantine. As per the latest information, 23 policemen are under treatment at various COVID First-Line Treatment Centres in the state. Of the 92 infected officers, 69 have recovered, according to the police. The DGP on Friday said the state police have devised new strategies, which will be implemented from Saturday. From now, senior officers will be deployed to contain the spread in the police force. A special drive titled 'Protect to Protect' has also begun in the state to ensure that the police personnel on COVID-19 duty are safe. Second of two columns In last Sundays column, we looked at the life of pioneer merchant George Dullnig (1849-1908), who built several businesses including the grocery and dry goods emporium that occupied the three-story Dullnig Building, still on the corner of Alamo Plaza and Commerce. A great-grandson, Darrell Dullnig, cited his ancestors historical significance when asking about the family burial ground founded in the late 19th century in the citys East Side complex of public and private cemeteries. It is in very bad condition, the younger Dullnig wrote, sharing photos that show a dilapidated, patched stone wall and damaged headstones. I contacted San Antonio Parks and Recreation (the department that oversees the cemeteries), where a staff member indicated that in the past, they have made repairs but stated that its not city-owned and that they could find no record of who owns it. For a local-history columnist, that last phrase They could find no record of who owns it is a hold-my-beer trigger. Really? Those cemeteries arent that old, in our city's tricentennial-plus scheme of things. The truth is surely out there. The Dullnig Cemetery, with 34 known burials, lies within the 40-acre rectangular area founded as a municipal cemetery in 1853. The city sold sections of the new East Side cemetery to church groups and fraternal organizations to establish their own burial grounds, according to a National Parks Service history of San Antonio National Cemetery, donated in 1867 to the federal government for military burials, including those of Union soldiers and those who served in the Armys Western forts after the Civil War. Among about 30 sub-cemeteries on the grounds is a Confederate cemetery, Catholic and Lutheran church cemeteries, Jewish synagogue cemeteries, burial grounds of benevolent orders including Hermann Sons, Knights of Pythias, Masons, Odd Fellows and United Brothers of Friendship, as well as several family plots. Dullnig, as a prominent member of the San Antonio community with a large family he and his wife, Frances, had 18 children, 14 of whom survived to adulthood would have expected to need a larger-than-conventional plot. City archivist Nat Norton did a search and found that none of our deeds shows a sale to any Dullnigs from the city. But no maps or other records kept by the city clerk in the Municipal Archives and Records Division indicate the Dullnig cemetery location being used for any burials prior to the Dullnigs burials. Norton did find an undated map, probably from the turn of the 20th century or its early decades, that shows the family burial grounds carved out of the much larger Lutheran Cemetery, later known as the Old Lutheran Cemetery. In the San Antonio Genealogical and Historical Societys 2019 publication, Volume 4 of Cemeteries of Bexar County, Texas, Dullnig Cemetery is located in the east end of the block bounded by South Monumental, Center, North Palmetto and Paso Hondo streets and is described as carved out of the west end of St. Michaels (Catholic Church) and surrounded by a 5-foot stone wall. So from whom did George Dullnig buy his cemetery? It seems more likely that Dullnig would have bought land for his family cemetery from St. Johns Lutheran Church. The church, founded in 1857 to serve a German Texan congregation, was familiar to the German-speaking Dullnig, who emigrated from Austria as a child with his parents. And the pastor of St. Johns preached at Dullnigs own home memorial service after his death in 1908. Maria Watson Pfeiffer, St. Johns archivist, couldnt find any record of the church selling land to Dullnig, but records might not exist that far back. She said church burial records do note that the cemetery was consistently referred to by the Dullnig name and that many Lutheran Dullnig family members were buried there. The oldest death recorded on a headstone in the Dullnig family plot is Louise Dullnigs in 1869, which predates St. Johns records and the indexed city records of property transfers. It might be misleading, however, as she might have been reinterred after the Dullnig cemetery was purchased. When it becomes possible to visit the Municipal Archives again, Dullnig descendants may contact Norton to make an appointment to see the handwritten, unindexed City Council minutes for the years 1847 to 1878 to see whether there is any record there of a Dullnig buying cemetery land during that period. Just in case Dullnig bought his property from St. Michaels founded in 1866 for Polish Catholics, that might have been unusual information may be requested from the archives of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, currently operating remotely and providing limited services. Send an email to archive@archsa.org to get the form for the request. So the truth may be out there, but so is COVID-19, and it might be getting between us and the facts on who owns that cemetery property which must have changed hands, as at least three generations are buried there. Pfeiffer has searched, starting with records from 1852, when the city first starting buying cemetery land and burying people there. There are lots of Dullnig family deeds, she said, and I tried to follow the trail of interfamily transfers. Nada. Long story short: When the Parks staffer told Darrell Dullnig they could find no record of who owns it they werent wrong. At least not in this historical moment. They do want to help, though, in an effort to repair the damage that was probably done to the Dullnig Cemetery during a rash of vandalism in 2017 and 2018 that struck the neighboring National Cemetery, Old Lutheran Cemetery, St. Michaels and City Cemetery No. 1. Parks spokeswoman Connie Swann confirmed that the city is willing to assist Darrell Dullnig with the project. The Dullnig Cemetery is a historic and privately owned cemetery. Although (it is) privately owned, the citys Parks and Recreation Department will work to facilitate a permit through the Texas Historical Commission, which is required prior to restoration and repairs of the rock wall at Dullnig Cemetery, Swann said in a statement. She said the permit process could take three to four months. historycolumn@yahoo.com | Twitter: @sahistorycolumn | Facebook: SanAntoniohistorycolumn By PTI KOLKATA: Three persons were arrested in Kolkata for allegedly duping people after taking money from them for COVID-19 tests, police said on Saturday. Two of them were working as contractual laboratory assistants at different state-run hospitals in the city, a senior officer said. They were using fake ICMR forms to collect swab samples of people to test those for COVID-19, he said. They took money from the people for the tests and duped them, the officer said. The racket was unearthed after family members of a patient who died lodged a police complaint, alleging that the test conducted by the accused was incorrect, he added. The three people were arrested late on Friday from their residences in the Netaji Nagar area, police said. YEREVAN. Hraparak daily of Armenia writes: Yesterday we had written that [PM] Nikol Pashinyan personally coordinates the course of the criminal cases initiated against Arthur Vanetsyan, former Director of the NSS [National Security Service], leader of the [opposition] Homeland Party. Yesterday, the NSS had summoned him for questioning on charges of abuse of official power. And since the charge is really absurd, and the political trendobvious, yesterday, according to our information, the preparation of the report [on this case] was already rejected, and this case has been closedbefore being initiated. However, as the Prime Minister's instruction is very strictto start persecution against Vanetsyan at any cost, yesterday the NSS opened a new case, and even detained a person. And now they are trying to file charges against Artur Vanetsyan on [possession of] illegal weapons. By the way, the [said] "illegal" weapon was in the NSS armament department, the head of which is now detained. Coronavirus Updates: Yediyurappa is the fourth BJP leader to have tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, which also saw a minister in Yogi Adityanath cabinet in Uttar Pradesh succumbing to the virus Auto refresh feeds Pointing out that 4,900 challans were issued to people for various violations on Friday, Singh asked why it is so difficult for people to wear masks, wash hands or not spit on roads. He warned of dangerous consequences for the state, which has been witnessing a spike in COVID-19 cases over the past few days if people did not follow the safety norms. Taking note of the "highly irresponsible" behaviour of some people not following the COVID-19 rules, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Saturday said the state's safety is in the hands of its people. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz, said in a statement that he has the virus but, like Gohmert, has no symptoms. He is at least the 11th member of Congress known to have tested positive for the coronavirus. The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee said Saturday he tested positive for the coronavirus days after he sat close to another member of the panel, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who also tested positive. The committee "highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of this COVID-19 pandemic", the WHO said in a statement, and warned of the risk of "response fatigue" given the socio-economic pressures on countries. The World Health Organization on Saturday warned the coronavirus pandemic was likely to be "lengthy" after its emergency committee met to evaluate the crisis six months after sounding the international alarm, reports AFP. Two persons from Cachar and one from Golaghat succumbed to the infection during the day. Three more COVID-19 patients died in Assam on Saturday, taking the toll to 101, while 1,457 new positive cases pushed the states coronavirus count to 41,726, Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. Hence it has been decided to extend the survey till Friday, an official said. A fresh sero-prevalence survey began on Saturday for a comprehensive assessment of the COVID-19 situation in Delhi, but due not many samples could be collected due to the Eid holiday, reports PTI. In a bid to augment the testing facilities, Odisha government on Saturday allowed private hospitals, nursing homes and laboratories to conduct COVID-19 tests through Rapid Antigen and RT-PCR methods, a notification issued by the health and family welfare department reports PTI. Andhra Pradesh, which has seen a surge in cases over the past two weeks, surpasses Delhi as the third-most affected region in India. As of Saturday evening, Andhra had 1,50,209 infections, while Delhi had 1,36,716 cases. As the pandemic worsens, United States, which has been hit the hardest, counted 61,262 new coronavirus cases in the 24 hours leading up to Saturday. It was the fifth consecutive day with more than 60,000 infections recorded. There were also 1,051 deaths in the 24-hour period. The US has now tallied more than 4.6 million cases and 154,319 deaths, making it the hardest-hit country in the world. Indias coronavirus count crosses the 17-lakh mark after 54,735 new cases are reported in 24 hours on Sunday. There are now 17,50,723 cases, while the toll rose by 853 to 37,364. India now has 5,67,730 active cases while as many as 11,45,629 people have recovered from the infection. Jammu and Kashmir government has extended the COVID-19 lockdown guidelines until 5 August. The Union Territory yesterday recorded 613 COVID-19 cases and 11 deaths, taking the total cases in the Union Territory to 20,972, reports ANI. Assistant Health Secretary Hugo L pez-Gatell said late Friday that I express my respect to the nine of Mexico's 32 state governors who called for his resignation, adding "I hope we can continue to work together. The head of Mexico's efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic has sidestepped calls to resign after Mexico posted a record case increase and the country's death count rose to overtake the United Kingdom as the third-highest in the world, reports AP. The total number of COVID-19 samples tested across the country up to 1 August is 1,98,21,831 including 4,63,172 samples tested yesterday, said the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The agency says eight of the newly confirmed cases were locally infected while the rest came from overseas. South Korea has reported 30 additional cases of the coronavirus, most of them associated with international arrivals. The cases announced Sunday by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought the national tally to 14,366 with 301 deaths. Uttar Pradesh Cabinet Minister Kamla Rani Varun dies in Lucknow. She had tested positive for the novel coronavirus on 18 July, reports ANI The Congress party took to Twitter to question the Centre's move to curb the pandemic from spreading. "When will the government stop living in denial and start taking action to control the spread of Corona in the country?" the tweet read. Odisha reports 1,434 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours. The state now has a total of 34,913 infections, reports ANI. India's recoveries have mounted to 11,45,629, while there are 5,67,730 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country presently, reports PTI. The recovery rate among COVID-19 patients has risen to 65.44%, while the fatality rate has further dropped to 2.13%, the data stated. Puducherry reports 200 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours on Sunday morning. The total number of cases in Puducherry rises to 3,806, including 1,445 active cases, 2,309 recovered cases and 52 deaths. Peretz is the second Israeli minister to have been infected with the virus. Israel's former health minister, Yaakov Litzman, also contracted it and later recovered. An Israeli Cabinet minister says he has tested positive for the coronavirus, reports AP. Minister for Jerusalem and Heritage Rafi Peretz tweeted late Saturday that he received a positive result after being tested the previous day. He said he felt well. Kamal Rani, the cabinet minister for Technical Education in the UP government, succumbed to COVID-19 at the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow on Sunday. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday condoled the death of Uttar Pradesh Cabinet minister Kamal Rani Varun who was being treated for COVID-19 and urged people to take all precautions to protect themselves from the virus, reports PTI. Eighty-three more people, including 14 security personnel and seven healthcare workers, tested positive for COVID-19 in Arunachal Pradesh on Sunday, taking the state's tally to 1,673, reports PTI. The ICMR in collaboration with the Health Ministry and the AIIMS is planning to set up the National Clinical Registry which will help researchers and policy makers understand effectiveness of investigational therapies, adverse effects taking place and generate evidence for improving the treatment of COVID-19 patients. A registry of hospitalised COVID-19 patients across the country is being mooted to collect real-time data which will help improve treatment outcomes, analyse trends in the progression of the pandemic and calibrate response, reports PTI. Roads were virtually empty with no vehicles plying on account of the strict implementation of the curbs, with police making it clear that private vehicles will be allowed only for emergency purposes. Tamil Nadu went on a total shutdown mode on Sunday with the government imposing intense curbs as part of its anti-coronavirus measures, leaving main roads deserted while most shops, barring pharmacies,remained closed. Singapore on Sunday reported 313 new COVID-19 cases, taking the country's total count to 52,825. The sole community case is a permanent resident (foreigner), said the Ministry of Health (MOH). There were five imported cases, who had been placed on stay-home notices upon arrival in Singapore. It said that 248,577 people have so far recovered across the country. The total number of active cases was 25,146. The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) in its update on the second day of Eid al-Adha reported that six more people lost their lives due to the contagion, taking the death toll to 5,976. Pakistan has recorded 553 more coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the country's COVID-19 caseload to 279,699, officials said on Sunday, reports PTI. Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said that the total recovered cases exceed active cases by 5,77,899 as of Sunday. Currently, the COVID-19 active cases (5,67,730) account for 32.43 percent of the total cases. The prisoner had escaped from Kokrajhar's RNB Civil Hospital on Tuesday night, Superintendent of Police Rakesh Roshan said. A rape-accused coronavirus positive prisoner, who had managed to escape from a hospital in Assam's Kokrajhar district, was arrested on Sunday from Lungshun area along the Indo-Bhutan border, police said. Delhi on Sunday reported 961 COVID-19 cases, 1,186 recovered /discharged/migrated, and 15 deaths in the last 24 hours. The number of COVID-19 cases in Delhi at 1,37,677 and death toll due to the infection stands at 4,004. The city's recovery rate is at 89.56% with total active cases at 10,356. Till date, 55,982 tests per million population have been conducted in the national capital. Director-General of Health Services (DGHS) in the Health Ministry Dr Rajiv Garg underlined that administrative and medical teams should be responsive to the psychological needs of patients admitted in COVID-19 wards and ICUs of various hospitals. Though mobile phones are allowed in hospital wards, the missive was issued following some representation from the kin of patients alleging otherwise. The Centre has written to all states and Union Territories stating that smartphones and tablet devices should be allowed for hospitalised COVID-19 patients so that they can interact with family and friends through video conferencing, which would provide them psychological support, reports PTI. Union Home minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus infection. Even though his health is fine, he has been admitted to a hospital on doctor's advice, Shah said on Twitter. The minister also requested all who into contact with him in the last few days to isolate themselves and get themselves tested. Shah had on Saturday spoken at ICCRs international webinar Lokmanya Tilak: Swaraj to Atmanirbhar Bharat. This was the last event he attended. Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit has tested positive for COVID-19 and has been advised home isolation, reports news agency PTI quoting a hospital bulletin. According to news agency ANI, Purohit is asymptomatic and clinically stable. As the infection is mild, he has been advised home isolation and will be monitored by a medical team. The IPL Governing Council has received official clearance from the government to host the Indian Premier League in the UAE this year, said reports. Accprding to news agency PTI, the IPL GC decided after a virtual meeting that the tournament will be played from 19 September to 10 November. Forced out of India due to the rising COVID-19 case count in the country, the IPL will allow unlimited COVID-19 replacements considering the delicate health safety situation across the globe. The GC also decided to retain all its sponsors, including Chinese mobile company VIVO. "Women's T20 Challenge will also take place in the UAE and will comprise three teams with four matches to be played during the IPL Playoff week," stated the BBCI in a press release. toll to 53, an official said. He said 230 people were discharged, taking the overall count of such cases to 4,668, leaving Goa with 1,809 active ones. A record spike of 337 COVID-19 cases in Goa on Sunday took the infection count in the coastal state to 6,530, while the death of five people increased the "Women's T20 Challenge will also take place in the UAE and will comprise three teams with four matches to be played during the IPL Playoff week," stated the BBCI in a press release. "I did not have any symptoms as such. But for immigration requirement, I had to do the COVID test and the report came positive on Friday. I've been in home quarantine since then," the 42-year-old told news agency PTI. "I'm taking multi vitamins and doing perfectly alright but now I will have to wait and see. It depends how long it takes to recover totally," he said about his resumption plans. His wife Simantini will be tested on Tuesday. Ace Indian golfer SSP Chawrasia on Sunday said he has tested positive for COVID-19 and is in home quarantine in Kolkata, the result spoiling his plans to compete on the European Tour. A four-time winner on the European Tour, including back-to-back Indian Open triumphs in 2016 and 2017, Chawrasia had started training at the Royal Calcutta Golf Course and was slated to fly to England this week. Rajasthan recorded 12 COVID-19 deaths on Sunday, taking the total number of fatalities due to the disease to 706, the health department said. The state also reported 1,167 fresh coronavirus cases, pushing the total caseload to 44,410. Of them, 12,488 are active, it said. A total of 29,697 people have been discharged after treatment, a health department official said. Our team is moving forward head on to fight this virus and emerge victorious in our fight against COVID-19 @MoHFW_INDIA @drharshvardhan @narendramodi @PMOIndia The Goa government on Sunday said that plasma therapy treatment for critical patients of COVID- 19 has begun in the state. State Health Minister Vishwajit Rane made this announcement on Twitter. Bihar reported 10 COVID-19 fatalities in the last 24 hours raising the toll to 322, while 2,762 fresh cases took the states coronavirus count to 57,270, the health department said on Sunday. The number of testing in a day has doubled in the state in the last five days, the department said. I have tested positive for coronavirus. Whilst I am fine, I am being hospitalised as a precaution on the recommendation of doctors. I request those who have come in contact with me recently to be observant and exercise self quarantine. The news of Singh, the Jal Shakti minister of Uttar Pradesh, testing positive for COVID-19 comes on a day when Kamal Rani Varun, the lone woman member in the state cabinet, succumbed to the disease. Uttar Pradesh minister Mahendra Singh has tested positive for COVID-19, a state government official said on Sunday. "He tested positive for COVID-19 around two-three days ago," he said. I wish Shri. B S Yediyurappa a speedy recovery & to return with good health to continue his work for the people. @CMofKarnataka @BSYBJP https://t.co/1Z8yM5WonZ Coronavirus Updates: Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Sunday said he has tested positive for COVID-19. Rajasthan recorded 12 COVID-19 deaths on Sunday, taking the total number of fatalities due to the disease to 706, the health department said. The state also reported 1,167 fresh coronavirus cases, pushing the total caseload to 44,410. Of them, 12,488 are active, it said. The IPL Governing Council has received official clearance from the government to host the Indian Premier League in the UAE this year, said reports. Singer and politician Babul Supriya said on Twitter that he had met Union home minister Amit Shah who has tested positive for COVID-19 "day before evening" and has advised to confine himself by doctors. Union Home minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus infection. Even though his health is fine, he has been admitted to a hospital on doctor's advice, Shah said on Twitter. Uttar Pradesh BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh and Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit have also tested positive for the virus. The Assam government has issued a new set of guidelines, allowing inter-district movement on two days of the week, and hundred per cent office attendance from Monday to Friday. The order will come into force from 7 pm on Sunday and continue till 14 August. Currently, the COVID-19 active cases (5,67,730) account for 32.43 percent of the total cases. India's recoveries have mounted to 11,45,629. Kamal Rani is the first minister in Uttar Pradesh to die after contracting coronavirus. She was 62. India's recoveries have mounted to 11,45,629, while there are 5,67,730 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country presently. The WHO warned the coronavirus pandemic was likely to be "lengthy" after its emergency committee met to evaluate the crisis six months after sounding the international alarm India registered over 50,000 new coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day on Saturday, taking the nationwide case count to 16,95,988. However, recoveries also surged to 10,94,374 and the recovery rate improved to 64.53 percent, said the health ministry. Meanwhile in Delhi, the tussle between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and Lieutenant General Anil Baijal resurfaced, with the latest point of contention being the LG's cancellation of orders allowing weekly markets and hotel to resume business in the National Capital. The capital also saw the beginning of the second round of a sero-survey to gauge the spread of the virus. Country records 57,118 new cases According to Union health ministry data updated at 8 am on Saturday, the country recorded 57,118 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, taking the overall case count to 16,95,988, while the toll jumped to 36,511 with 764 people succumbing to the disease during the same period. At the same time, the number of recoveries too surged to 10,94,374, it said. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), cumulatively 1,93,58,659 samples have been tested up to 31 July with 5,25,689 of them being tested on Friday. Of the new 764 deaths reported on Saturday, 265 are from Maharashtra, 97 from Tamil Nadu, 84 from Karnataka, 68 from Andhra Pradesh, 45 from West Bengal, 43 from Uttar Pradesh, 27 from Delhi, 23 from Gujarat, 16 from Punjab, 14 each from Bihar and Telangana, 12 from Jammu and Kashmir and 11 from Rajasthan. Of the total 36,511 deaths, Maharashtra has reported the maximum at 14,994, followed by 3,963 in Delhi, 3,935 in Tamil Nadu, 2,441 in Gujarat, 2,314 in Karnataka, 1,630 in Uttar Pradesh, 1,581 in West Bengal, 1,349 in Andhra Pradesh and 867 in Madhya Pradesh, the data showed. Case fatality rate drops to 2.15% The health ministry had in the morning reported that there are 5,65,103 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country. The recovery rate among COVID-19 patients was recorded at 64.53 percent, while the fatality rate had further dropped to 2.15 percent the lowest since the first lockdownthe ministry said in a statement issued later in the day. On the global platform, India continues to register and maintain the lowest COVID-19 mortality rate, it said, asserting that this is a testimony to the focused, coordinated, pre-emptive, graded and evolving "test, track, treat" strategy and efforts of the Centre, states and Union Territories. On the backdrop of rising recoveries and falling fatality rate, the Centre decided to allowed the export of indigenously produced ventilators, the ministry said. As on 31 July, only 0.22 percent of the active cases in the country were on ventilators, it stated. Delhi's containment zones down to 496, sero-survey kicks off Following a steady decline in the number of active COVID-19 cases in Delhi, the containment zones have also come down to 496 from 715 providing relief to thousands of people living in these restricted areas. The decision was taken after a two-day review, said Delhi Revenue Minister Kailash Gahlot. In Delhi, a locality is declared a containment zone by district authorities if three or more persons test positive to COVID-19. In a review of COVID-19 situation in Delhi, on 29 June, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had expressed concern over the large size of containment zones in Delhi as it restricted movement of a large population, Gahlot said. While more restrictions are being eased under Unlock 3, a fresh scuffle is on between the AAP government and the lieutenant governor, this time on whether hotels and weekly bazaars should be reopened. A day after LG Anil Baijal rejected the AAP government's decision to allow hotels and weekly bazaars to resume business, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah seeking directions to the LG to reverse his order. #Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia writes to Home Minister Amit Shah requesting immediate directions to be issued to Lieutenant Governor to overturn his decision cancelling Delhi government's directive to open hotels and weekly bazaars. pic.twitter.com/GfZUEgk0A8 ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 Sisodia accused the Centre of adopting a "dual policy" towards Delhi where COVID-19 situation has been "quite under control" in past one month and "is gradually headed to become normal" and said the state government would resend its proposal on reopening of hotels and weekly markets to the lieutenant governor on Tuesday. "At such a time when hotels and weekly markets are open in the whole country, even in states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka etc where highest number of cases have been reported hotels, it is beyond comprehension as to what the Centre wishes to achieve by keeping hotels and weekly markets shut in Delhi," he wrote. "I request you to ask the LG not to stop the proposal. If traders start their business, jobs will be generated, and that the condition of the economy will improve," Sisodia, who also holds the finance portfolio, said in his letter. Meanwhile, a five-day sero-survey, aimed at covering all districts and various demographic segments, began in the National Capital on Saturday. This will aid the govt to tailor its strategy to changing circumstances, the chief minister's office tweeted. A senior government official told news agency PTI that under the exercise, 15,000 samples would be collected from 1 to 5 August, across different areas and age groups. Representative samples will be taken from all the 11 districts, he said. A sero-prevalence survey involves testing the blood serum of individuals to check for the prevalence of antibodies against infection. An earlier survey from 27 June to 10 July had shown that 24 percent of Delhi residents have developed antibodies. The city reported 1,118 fresh coronavirus cases, taking the tally to 1,36,716. The active cases stand at 10,596. With 26 fresh fatalities, the toll mounted to 3,989. Odisha, Telangana see record spikes in new cases Many state and UTs reported fresh infections and deaths in the day, with Arunachal Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha witnessing record spikes in daily cases. Arunachal Pradesh reported its highest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases as 107 more, including 40 security personnel, tested positive for the disease, taking the state's tally to 1,591. "Forty security personnel of various central paramilitary forces -37 from Changlang and one each from Papum Pare, Namsai and Tirap - are among fresh patients," said state surveillance officer L Jampa. All, barring three, are asymptomatic and have been shifted to COVID Care Centres, he added. Arunachal Pradesh now has 670 active cases, while 918 people have recovered from the disease and three have succumbed to it. With 1,602 COVID-19 cases, Odisha also saw its biggest single-day surge in cases, propelling the state's total to 33,479, while the toll rose to 187 with 10 more deaths. Ganjam district which has emerged as a virus hotspot has so far accounted for 99 fatalities, followed by Khurda which has reported 25 deaths. Odisha now has 12,736 active cases, while 20,518 patients have recovered from the contagion so far, the state health department said. Telangana reported 2,083 new COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day spike so far, taking the count of positive cases in the state to 64,786. With 11 more deaths, the COVID-19 toll in the state rose to 530, a state government bulletin said on Saturday, providing data as of 8 pm on 31 July. While the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), the epicentre of the contagion in the state, continues to report a high number of cases, there has been a sharp rise in the infections from different districts, including Ranga Reddy, Medchal-Malkajgiri, Sangareddy, Warangal Urban and Karimnagar, the bulletin showed. Maharashtra added 9,601 new cases to its overall count, which rose to 4,31,719 on Saturday while the death of 322 patients, including 45 in Mumbai, took the toll in the state to 15,316, the health department said. Andhra Pradesh also reported a sharp increase in cases, with 9,276 new patients and 58 deaths pushing the case count over 1.5 lakh. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)leader and former minister P Manikyala Rao died of coronavirus in a private hospital in Vijayawada on Saturday, party sources told PTI. He was on ventilator support as he suffered a lung infection, the sources said. The-59-year old leader had on 25 July in a tweet said that there was nothing to worry about and he would emerge hale and hearty. However, he lost the nearly three-week battle with the virus on Saturday. With inputs from PTI News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. Gorey's Ian Lacey, author of 'Half the World Away', is happy to be back home after a challenging time being stuck abroad during the Covid-19 pandemic. He had been living in Kathmandu, Nepal working for UNICEF but got stuck in Dubai alone for two months after a visit to Pakistan. He continued working on the Covid-19 response for UNICEF across South Asia but returned home due to fears of being stranded. He is now working on another book after the success of his 2016 travel novel. In his own words, he tells us about his unique experience and perspective on this global pandemic: A close friend of mine describes the beginning of the pandemic as a time when the entire world was tripped up at once. Normally, we encounter difficult events in some sort of bubble - as a family, community or country - but this period in our history stands out from the rest. Everyone stumbled, and we now must help to pick each other up. I had just boarded a flight from Kathmandu, Nepal to Islamabad, Pakistan when the seriousness of Covid-19 became apparent to me. The constant reminders to wash your hands. The requests to wear a face mask. The strange suggestion you should stay at least two metres away from the closest person. It was early March and I felt huge change was on the horizon. I had been working for UNICEF in Nepal, but Aine Lynch, my partner, was in Pakistan with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a medical organisation that assists those affected by conflict, natural disasters and epidemics. I was visiting her for a few weeks, but almost as soon as I had arrived, we were planning to leave again. Aine got word that travel outside Pakistan may soon be restricted, so we decided to head for Dubai earlier than expected, as we had planned a week's holiday there. But almost as soon as the plane touched the ground, she was called back for fear she might not be able to return the following week. Around the same time, Nepal was taking measures to curb the spread of the virus. The capital had gone into lockdown and the airports were closed. This meant I just couldn't get back, and in the end, never did. In the two and a half months that followed, I bided my time in Dubai hoping that I could catch a flight back to Kathmandu. But as weeks and eventually months passed, hope of even returning to collect my things from the apartment and say goodbye to friends faded as the virus spread through South Asia and saw the region become one of the epicentres of the outbreak. Now that I'm back in Gorey, those months locked out of Nepal and living in an AirBnB in Dubai feels totally surreal. I was lucky that I could work remotely, and for the most part, putting the head down to concentrate on that made the time pass much quicker. As I worked for UNICEF's regional office for South Asia, I spent all of my time helping to coordinate communications on the Covid-19 response in countries from Afghanistan to the Maldives. In short, my job was to get out the core messages on hand hygiene and physical distancing, but much of it also focused on the secondary effects the pandemic was causing, such as the impact on children's mental health, their nutrition, and the discrimination many faced because they were of a particular religious or ethnic group. Perhaps the most difficult part of the entire time in Dubai was that I went to bed and woke up thinking about Covid-19. I found it a little tough to switch off in the evenings, and being confined to the apartment in a city that only allowed you to leave it for essential reasons did cause some down days. But then again, there was solace in knowing everyone was in it together, and in reality, I had it extremely lucky. Working for UNICEF during a global crisis helped me understand just how fortunate I was compared to so many others. It shone a light on the harsh realities of life for so many, even before the pandemic began. How could those living in urban slums maintain a physical distance between each other? What about women and children who face violence in the home on a regular basis and now were locked in with their abusers? Or how is a child supposed to learn from home when they have no access to the internet, let alone a tablet or computer? For me, having the laptop was a lifeline. It was great catching up with friends on Zoom calls at the weekends, and even for playing exercise videos to maintain some level of fitness, even if it was just running and doing star jumps on the spot. But looking out on other apartment balconies, I realised I wasn't the only one trying to keep active in the strangest of circumstances. Now that I'm back home I'm trying to do many of the things I missed while being stuck inside for so long. It's been amazing to go on hill walks and just ride my bicycle around Gorey. After self-isolating on my return, the first few days after that felt like a total release, swapping the confines of a Dubai apartment for a run on Courtown beach. I may have taken these things for granted before, but I definitely won't again. Ian Lacey's book, 'Half The World Away', is available in paperback or as an e-book from Amazon. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 13:06:38|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NEW YORK, July 31 (Xinhua) -- James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board of directors of News Corporation, according to documents unveiled by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. James Murdoch informed the board in a brief letter that he resigned as he disagreed with "certain editorial content" published by the company and "certain other strategic decisions." He said that his resignation would take effect immediately. News Corp, a family media empire founded by James' father Rupert Murdoch, owns a long list of media outlets around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post in the United States. Enditem As Rajasthan CM, Ashok Gehlot, makes the move of shifting MLAs of his camp, again, to Jaisalmer accusing the BJP of attempting to horse-trade and topple his government, the MLAs of Pilot's rebel camp have refused to attend Assembly Session on August 14, CLP meeting citing 'respect', amid brewing politics in Rajasthan and continued infighting between the two camps in INC. Congress MLAs, supporting Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, reached Suryagarh hotel in Jaisalmer on Friday. They were earlier lodged at Fairmont Hotel in Jaipur. Gehlot said that MLAs were shifted to keep them away from external pressure. Our MLAs who were lodged here (Jaipur) for many days, were being harassed mentally. We thought of shifting them, to keep external pressure away. Earlier, our MLAs were promised money. What will happen to the country when such a type of horse-trading is going on, he said. Also read: Delhi Govt, LG lock horns again: LG cancels key Unlock 3.0 decisions by AAP Govt Also read: Rajasthan Crisis: Gehlot alleges horse trading rate up, shifts all MLAs to Jaisalmer It is being reported that rebel MLAs of the Pilot camp may not join for the Assembly Session or the Congress Legislature Party meeting until FIRs against them are still pending, theyve maintained. Were fighting for respect, echoed voices from the camp, which has refused reports on a BJP merger. Rajasthan Assembly session is scheduled to begin from August 14. The politics, however, continues to simmer. While Congress leader, Randeep Singh Surjewala, who is now reported to have joined the Gehlot camp in Jaisalmer, has taken a dig at the BJP invoking former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayees stance against the illegal practice of horse-trading to fall duly-elected governments, BJP state President, Satish Poonia, has also raised suspicions on Congress unity and the need to lodge MLAs away from scrutiny if CM Gehlot was sure they were not on sale. Poonia also pressed Congress to provide concrete evidence in the charges levelled against the BJP for horse-trading MLAs and toppling constitutionally mandated governments. In another development, the Rajasthan Special Operations Group has decided to move the High Court in the leaked audio tape case to request voice sample of arrested middle-man Sanjay Jain for evidential purposes. The Congress, in the case, has accused BJP Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat of collaborating with rebel Congress MLAs and the aforesaid middleman in conspiracy to topple the Gehlot government. Congress claims their conversation has been well-recorded in the leaked audio-tapes case, while the BJP has accused it back of misusing state-power for personal agendas. MLAs were lodged at Jaipurs Fairmont Hotel after differences between Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot came out in open triggering a political crisis in the state. The Congress has accused the BJP of indulging in horse-trading to bring down the Gehlot government. However, the BJP has rejected the allegations. Also read: We cannot go on ignoring our informal sector: Rahul Gandhi in interaction with Mohommad Yunus Friendship Day 2020 in India will be celebrated on August 2. The day is celebrated on different dates in different countries. It is celebrated to honour friends and friendship amongst various communities, individuals, organisations in one's life. Take a look at Friendship Day 2020, meaning, history, significance, and some other facts about the day: Friendship Day History Friendship Day is celebrated on different days across the world. International Friendship Day is celebrated on July 30 as proclaimed by the United National General Assembly. However, apart from that, various countries celebrate on different dates. For instance, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Uruguay celebrate the day on July 20. However, in countries like Bangladesh, Malaysia, India, Singapore, and UAE, Friendship Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of the month of August every year. Hence, for the year 2020, the day falls on August 02. The idea of Friendship Day was first proposed by Dr Ramon Artemio Bracho, on July 20, 1958, when he was dining with his buddies in a town named Puerto Pinasco that is situated alongside the River Paraguay. That led to the formation of the World Friendship Crusade, which is a foundation that encourages fellowships amongst people and communities. The crusade declared it World Friendship Day. Later, on April 27, 2011, the Unites Nations proclaimed July 30 as official International Friendship Day. ALSO READ | SCUD Day History, Meaning, Significance And Celebrations; Know More Friendship Day Significance The day sheds light on forming strong bonds and making peace with various individuals and communities. It promotes relationships among fellowship among humans irrespective of the race, caste, colour and religion. According to the United Nations, ''Through friendship by accumulating bonds of camaraderie and developing strong ties of trust we can contribute to the fundamental shifts that are urgently needed to achieve lasting stability, weave a safety net that will protect us all, and generate passion for a better world where all are united for the greater good.'' ALSO READ | Is Today National Hot Dog Day? Know About The Meaning, Significance And Celebration ALSO READ | National Parents' Day Quotes To Wish Your Parents On This Special Occasion Friendship Day Celebration The day is celebrated with great enthusiasm and vigour. Some of the major highlights of Friendship Day celebrations are the exchange of greeting cards, tying friendship bands, text messages, and sending gifts. People spend time with their friends by organising events, gatherings or a trip to some location. ALSO READ | National Parents' Day Images To Share To Honour Them On This Special Day New Delhi, Aug 1 (UNI) Former Samajwadi Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh on Saturday died in a Singapore hospital, following prolonged illness, sources said. He was 64 and survived by wife Pankaja and two daughters. A former Samajwadi Party leader, Amar Singh was ill for a very long time and was undergoing treatment in a Singapore hospital for several months. He had earlier suffered kidney failure in 2013. The sources said that Amar Singh had recently undergone a second kidney transplant. Though the transplant was successful and Singh was recovering, there was a wound in the wall of his abdomen, which wasn't healing and had become infectious. The infection made it difficult for Singh to survive. The doctors tried to revive him, but failed. Sources said that Amar Singh's mortal remains were being handed over to his family. BJP leaders Rajnath Singh, Shahnawaz Hussain and Kalraj Misra paid condolences to Amar Singh. In his condolence message, Mr Rajnath said, 'Saddened to know about the death of senior leader and Parliamentarian Amar Singh.' Shahnawaz Hussain also paid tributes to Amar Singh. "No matter which party he belonged to, he had good relations with everybody,' Mr Hussain said. Uttar Pradesh Governor Kalraj Mishra expressed sorrow on Amar Singh's death. 'He will be remembered for all his contributions. We had very close relations. This is a personal loss for me,' Mr Misra said. Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh also condoled the death of Amar Singh. 'I am very sorry to hear about the sad demise of a very dear friend Amar Singh ji. He was a fearless politician and had the guts to speak out his mind. We shall miss him,' Mr Digvijay said. UNI AR RJ 1840 Joe Biden will soon choose his running mate, and Black Lives Matter co-creator Alicia Garza says it had better be a Black woman. A Black woman in particular and not just a woman of color, the Oakland resident told The Chronicles Its All Political podcast, because Black voters are who essentially made Joe Biden the presumptive nominee. Thats facts on facts. The facts being that Bidens campaign was floundering until Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, South Carolinas most powerful Black elected official, endorsed him before that states primary in February. That locked in South Carolinas substantial African American vote for Biden, who had been thumped in the first three primary and caucus states. Four days later, voters in most of the Super Tuesday states California was an exception followed South Carolinas lead, and Biden was suddenly on his way to locking up the nomination. Garzas demand is a sign of how far the movement has come. Now, Black Lives Matter is painted down the middle of streets in New York, Washington, D.C., and Oakland. Two in 3 Americans polled for a Gallup survey released last week said they support the racial justice protests that have occurred in more than 2,000 cities since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis police custody in May. Four years ago, few Democratic office-seekers would even say the words Black Lives Matter. Now, the partys presidential nominee-to-be isnt just saying the words, hes listening. Garza, now a principal in the Black Futures Lab think tank, said the Biden Plan for Black America sounds a lot like what her organization is proposing. Among his proposals: Hes calling for a $15,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers to help Black families build wealth, promising to pump $70 billion into historically black colleges and universities, and wants to triple funding for schools with low-income students. Garza said this is a next step for the movement: getting politicians to enact policies that help the Black community. It is heartening to me that after months of lobbying, were starting to see that this campaign is listening and recognizing that Black communities are not only central to them winning a presidential election, but Black communities are also central to making sure that our democracy survives, Garza said. Black people are among the most loyal Democratic voters, Garza noted. Now is the time for Biden to acknowledge their support, she said, not after the election. There are some people who are so fearful that (President) Trump will win the election in 2020, that theres no room to actually push the Biden campaign to be better and to do better, Garza said. That is why, in addition to the policy proposals and a vice presidential nominee, Garza wants Biden to nominate an African American woman to the Supreme Court. None of the 114 people who have served on the high court has been a Black woman. Black communities in this past primary really showed up and showed out to ensure that this particular candidate would become the presumptive nominee, Garza said. We need to actually see a reflection of that gratitude in relationship to who Vice President Biden surrounds himself with, and that includes who will be on the ticket next to him leading up to November and beyond. But Garza acknowledged that there is not great enthusiasm for Biden among young Black voters or young voters of any color. Biden also needs to talk to Black voters who are not potential homeowners, dont have access to college or cant find a job because they have a felony record, she said. He needs to reach those of us who are being pushed out of the economy, those of us who may have several family members who are incarcerated, Garza said. These are the kinds of issues that will expand the electorate and ensure that more of us turn out. For many young black voters, Garza said, the choice is not between Biden or Trump. Its whether to vote or not to vote. And thats a huge problem. Garza is not happy about the whisper campaign against one of the top candidates on Bidens short list for vice president, California Sen. Kamala Harris. A CNBC story anonymously quoted Biden donors who were trying to dissuade him from choosing Harris in part because she was seen as too ambitious. Too ambitious is rarely used to describe white men in politics, Garza noted. It sounds like it came from a white guy, she said. Joining Harris on Bidens short list are Los Angeles Rep. Karen Bass, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth and Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Val Demings, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, former Georgia legislator Stacey Abrams and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Only Warren, Baldwin and Whitmer are white. Lujan Grisham is Latina, and Duckworth is Thai American. Garza didnt express a preference, but said Harris is one of the very talented and qualified Black women on that list. She says that unlike many other progressives, she isnt troubled by Harris history as a prosecutor, both as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general. Garza points out that San Franciscos police union had an adversarial relationship with Harris, though statewide law enforcement unions were behind her by the time she was running for a second term as attorney general in 2014. If you were to listen to the police unions, you would have thought she was Huey Newton, Garza said. What is important is that Sen. Harris has really demonstrated that shes a fighter, Garza said. And I think that voters across the country want to see a fighter, because we want to win. We dont want to do this kumbaya type of thing. Were in a moment right now where we have to actually state what our values are and what theyre not, Garza said. And were going to have to go toe to toe with a machine that is hellbent on disrupting peoples ability to participate in the elections, and certainly is hellbent on taking this country into a direction that we should never go in. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli Kristina Lancaster struggled to get unemployment benefits for over four months. I was left in pending purgatory since March 16, said Lancaster, a Bay Area native who had been working as a hairstylist in Los Angeles. There were days Id cry and need a break from the constant setbacks and roadblocks and days where I had to really consider I may never get paid and what Im going to do with my life if that happens. She called the state Employment Development Department hundreds of times; contacted two elected representatives; posted frequently on social media, tagging Gov. Gavin Newsom and the EDD; faxed in her documents numerous times; and reached out to local media. The personal toll was immense. She depleted her savings, went on food stamps and got help from family, friends and clients. She moved twice, first to a smaller apartment, and then on July 27 she uprooted herself from L.A. to relocate to her brothers home in Discovery Bay. Similar stories of frustration and despair, of months with no income, of Kafkaesque quests to get benefits have become commonplace in California amid the huge waves of layoffs and furloughs. The state is overwhelmed with the flood of applications for jobless benefits more than 6.8 million since mid-March. More than a million jobless Californians are in limbo, desperately seeking unemployment benefits. That includes 889,000 who may be eligible for benefits with additional information, and 239,000 whose cases are pending resolution, according to a letter EDD Director Sharon Hilliard sent to her boss, Labor Secretary Julie Su, on Wednesday. It is a horrible number that reflects incredible suffering on the part of Californians, said Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco. Even people who do receive benefits now must wait longer. In June, 51.9% of claimants started receiving benefits within 14 days after becoming eligible, compared to 78.7% in June 2019, Hilliards letter said. From March to June, the average is 67.6% receiving benefits within 14 days, compared with an average of 76.4% for the same period last year. Despite being located near the epicenter of the tech industry, the EDD relies on antiquated computers. It has spent at least $110 million since 2010, much of that going to Deloitte Consulting, trying to upgrade its tech systems. EDD said the UI Online system introduced in 2013-14 has been a major workhorse for us in this current economic crisis, allowing it to automatically process a large volume of claims. In May, Deloitte received a $5 million no-bid contract to program new requirements of federal pandemic provisions. On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a strike team to suggest how to modernize EDDs technology and improve communications with claimants. The top goal is to get unpaid claims processed. EDD has taken steps to try to improve, proactively notifying claimants that they need to repeatedly certify claims online, adding an online chatbot to answer common questions, and using texts to alert people about their claim status. It has relaxed requirements on being available to work and has paid claims before final determinations. Its updated its automated system to process more claims without staff intervention. The agency also has extensively ramped up its number of call center agents but the vast majority can only answer general questions and take numbers for callbacks, which still take four to six weeks. Angry lawmakers and frustrated claimants say thats not enough. EDD is failing Californians every hour of every day of the week, said Chiu, whose #EDDFailOfTheDay tweets have garnered attention. Ive never worked on an issue where theres so much that is broken. It is a horrifying example of bureaucratic ineptitude. Its unacceptable, said state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo. How do people exist if they dont have those dollars coming in to provide the bare necessities? Also unacceptable, Hill said: EDDs director on Thursday said it will take up to five months to implement the new federal supplement to benefits if that is tied to peoples income, as expected. Congress is wrestling over what will replace the $600 weekly pandemic supplement that expired July 31. Individuals need that money now, not 20 weeks from now, Hill said. Appearing by phone at an Assembly Budget Subcommittee hearing on Thursday, Hilliard gave long lead times for other EDD reforms. The agency will take until late September to work through its current backlog. It will take until mid-October to create a system to route callers to agents depending on what they need. It will take until late September to implement a digital uploading system for claimants documents, which now must be mailed or faxed. My concern is that all these timelines seem totally out of step with the urgency of the moment we are in, Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach (Orange County), said at the hearing. Phone calls are the most visible issue. Hilliard on Thursday said that EDD eventually will merge its two call centers to provide coverage from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, but will not begin that process until mid-October after the call-routing system is implemented. Meanwhile, the call center that can directly address claim issues is open only four hours a day, Monday to Friday. That means claimants like Jennifer Dohn of Oakland could continue to experience what she described as akin to the dumbest Twilight Zone episode. After being laid off from two restaurant server jobs in March, it took Dohn six weeks to receive benefits. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes I thought, Now it will be all right, if we get on track with the payment schedule, Ill be OK, she said. But then she received a half payment, and then went seven more weeks without benefits, even though she spent hours calling and certifying her claim online. I called over and over; one day I called 100 times, she said. It feels like walking through a hall of mirrors; you keep getting this hope that the phones ringing; somebodys going to answer this time! Finally she was ecstatic to reach a live person. But the lady was like, Actually, I cant help you; you have to call the unemployment specialist and theyre only available from 8 a.m. to noon, she said, echoing a story reported by thousands of others. Why is it only open four freaking hours a day? Hilliard said the 100 experienced agents who answer calls in the mornings need to spend the rest of their time processing claims. EDD said it takes six months to train representatives to handle all the complexities of benefits. When it ramped up staffing for the pandemic deluge, it focused on people who could handle general questions, which require less training, so they could start to work more quickly. It said its working to add and train more staff to handle complex claims. Michelle Ochoa of Napa, who has a 2-year-old, had a similar stop-and-start situation, where it took six weeks to receive benefits, followed by several weeks with none coming in, even though she faithfully certified online and called dozens of times. She finally received several weeks worth of benefits in early June, but that was a catch-22. The amount was high enough to disqualify her family for food stamps. She had to go to her landlord to ask for a partial payment schedule. Her mom helped out and friends donated rice, beans and bread. Dealing with EDD is really confusing and frustrating, she said. Lancaster, the hair stylist from L.A., hopes others can benefit from her travails. She started a Facebook group called Action against EDD for jobless people to trade tips. Just as she was packing up to move to Discovery Bay, she finally received her debit card with her EDD benefits. It had her full amount owed for 19 weeks $16,000. I feel relieved I dont have to spend days crying or frustrated hitting dead ends and having to hear over and over again that people cant help me, she said. For now my claim issues have been resolved, but there are still many more in a similar position to mine and something must be done to help. People are becoming desperate, its very disheartening. Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid A combination of some of the top pacing colts and trotters in the Maritimes invade Northside Downs for a 14-race program, with a special first race non-wagering event for three-year-old trotters set for 12:40 p.m, followed by 13 wagering races starting at the usual 1 p.m. post. The Atlantic Sires Stakes three-year-old trot event features the top two sophomore trotters in the region, Tequila Tuesday and Mabou Ridge, as they continue to battle since their two-year-old season. The group of four chase a lucrative $13,600 purse. The other ATSS trot race for the two-year-olds drew a full field of seven, with the Clare MacDonald-trained and driven Mr Finlay Ridge designated the 5-2 morning line choice. Marc Campbell sends out a trio of trotters in this division, led by Treasureonthewater, who has drawn the rail with Brodie MacPhee slated to drive. The pacing colts compete in two A divisions and one B division, featuring Truro track record holder Woodmere Rollnpop, who just paced to a new mark of 1:54.2 last week at Truro for Clare MacDonald. Mr Kelly, for Adam Merner and trainer Melissa Rennie, will pose a major threat from post four in this division. The Rennie and Merner combination have Windermere Ryan as the top choice in the second A division, saddled with the outside post five. Windemere Ryan comes in off two A division wins, including a lifespan's best 1:55 last week at Truro. Two of the best Cape Breton aged pacers will lock horns in the afternoon's Winners Over as Euchred ships in from Inverness Raceway to battle J.A. Ferguson winner Runaway Mystery in a field of six. Racing action can be streamed online tomorrow by clicking on "Links" then "Live Video" and selecting "Northside Downs" from the Standardbred Canada homepage. Northside Downs is available for wagering on via HPIbet through the entire 2020 season. To view Saturday's harness racing entries, click on the following link: Saturday Entries - Northside Downs. (Northside Downs) Epstein Docs Unsealed, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Dershowitz Named Watch - The Hill Krystal and Saagar share their thoughts on new documents revealing the names of powerful people who allegedly visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island. Posted July 31, 2020 Unsealed documents show Epstein, Maxwell correspondence in 2015 Attorneys for Maxwell have argued that she hadnt had any contact with the accused sex trafficker for more than a decade. By Sarah Fitzpatrick, Tom Winter, Merritt Enright and Adiel Kaplan A trove of court documents unsealed Thursday night appear to show that the late, accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was in contact with his now-charged confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2015. Attorneys for Maxwell, who was arrested July 2, have argued that she hadn't had any contact with Epstein for more than a decade, and is the target of overzealous prosecutors. In one email between Epstein and Maxwell in 2015, Epstein appears to be composing a draft statement for Maxwell to release publicly. The date in January 2015 is a few weeks after one of Epsteins alleged victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, first shared her story with a British newspaper. In another typo-filled email a few days later, dated Jan. 25, 2015, "jeffrey E." writes: "You have done nothing wrong and i woudl urge you to start acting like it. go outside, head high, not as an esacping convict. go to parties. deal with it." The emails refer to "Gmax" either in the recipient section or the email address. That's the name the FBI and federal prosecutors say Maxwell used when trying to set up a cell phone this past year in another person's name. Prosecutors have contended this was one of the ways Maxwell sought to avoid detection and possible arrest. Watch - New allegations against Ghislaine Maxwell revealed in unsealed documents The documents released Thursday night have been under seal for years, but Judge Loretta Preska last week ruled that a batch of documents from the case, including a deposition of Maxwell and correspondence between Maxwell and Epstein, could be released. The documents are from a defamation case filed against Maxwell in 2015 by Giuffre, who has alleged that Epstein sexually abused her and that Maxwell and Epstein directed her to have sex with other men between 2000 and 2002. The case, which Giuffre brought after Maxwell accused her of lying when she said Maxwell and Epstein had exploited and abused her, was settled privately. The unsealed documents released Thursday also contain allegations that Jane Doe 3 whose allegations match those of Giuffre was "forced" to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew on Epsteins private island in what was described as "an orgy" with numerous other under-aged girls. It does not specify the year. The woman was allegedly instructed by Epstein to "give the Prince whatever he demanded" and "report back to him on the details of the sexual abuse." Similar allegations against Andrew were ordered by a federal judge to be struck from court records in 2015 after being lodged as part of a lawsuit involving Epstein but the judge did not rule on the veracity of the claims. NBC News has reached out to Andrew's representatives for further comment. Some of Andrew's supporters have long maintained that the royal had done nothing wrong, and pointed out that just because allegations are included in court papers it does not mean they are true. Requests for comment from Maxwell's attorneys were not immediately returned Thursday night. Andrew has denied allegations he had sex with Giuffre, who says she was trafficked by Epstein when she was 17. The prince said that he had no recollection of ever meeting her or having any sort of sexual contact with her at any point. A representative for Giuffre said Thursday night that she has no comment and is unable to comment because it is an ongoing legal case. Maxwell, 58, was arrested at a remote New Hampshire mansion. She had not been seen in public since Epstein, her longtime associate, was arrested on sex trafficking charges last year. She was charged in a six-count indictment that alleges she recruited and groomed underage girls, some as young as 14, who were sexually abused by Epstein in the mid-1990s. Prosecutors also said that in some cases she participated in the sexual abuse of minor victims. The charges against Maxwell cover a time period before Giuffre met Maxwell and Epstein. Maxwell pleaded not guilty at her arraignment and has previously denied all allegations of any improper sexual contact. Epstein died by suicide in jail last summer while awaiting trial. Following his death, federal prosecutors vowed to continue the investigation and prosecute his enablers. Maxwell had petitioned a judge for home confinement in a luxury Manhattan hotel, pending trial, according to court filings, but that request was denied. Prosecutors have described Maxwell as an extreme flight risk, saying she has access to millions of dollars, extensive international contacts and citizenship in France, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. The documents released Thursday were just part of the group the judge ruled on. Additional documents could be released as early as Monday. Maxwell has appealed the release of documents that quote from or disclose information from her own deposition or that of a "John Doe 1" in the case to the Court of Appeals. If that court does not rule by Monday, those documents will also be unsealed and released then. The disclosures Thursday night followed a day of high stakes legal drama as Maxwells attorneys tried multiple last-minute interventions to prevent the release of documents that had remained under seal for years. Maxwells attorneys sought to submit materials under seal that had been ordered to be made public by a judge last week and when that did not work, requested an emergency conference with the judge, which was also denied Thursday evening. In Preska's order for the release of the documents to go on as planned, the judge wrote: "The Court is troubled but not surprised that Ms. Maxwell has yet again sought to muddy the waters as the clock ticks closer to midnight." Thursday afternoon, Maxwell's attorneys pleaded with a federal appeals court to keep the documents sealed, saying in part that Maxwell said things in her deposition including "regarding her consensual adult sexual activity" only because she was promised confidentiality. They wrote that in light of her federal prosecution, any revelations from the unsealed documents "will forever let the cat out of the bag. Sarah Fitzpatrick is an investigative producer for NBC News. She previously worked for CBS News and "60 Minutes." Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent covering crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the East Coast for the NBC News Investigative Unit. Merritt Enright is a researcher with the NBC News Investigative Unit. - "Source " - The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Post your comment below See also Documents: Epstein gave Prince Andrew underage girl for sex in blackmail bid Here Are The Top Highlights From Ghislaine Maxwell's Unsealed Court Records The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Eighty camels invaded three Russian villages after being allowed to roam free by their elderly owner, according to local residents. The two-humped animals are accused of breaking down fences, trampling through gardens, damaging water and gas pipelines and stripping fruit from the trees. Villagers even claimed they were too scared to leave their homes in the Astrakhan region because of the rampaging herd. If you look one directly in the eyes the animal chases you, and you have to run away, resident Yelena Bakhtemyeva told Interfax news agency. When a herd walks, it sweeps away everything in its path. Former owner, 83-year-old Yuri Serebryakov, released the animals because he was getting too old to look after them, officials said. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty He has refused to take responsibility for the camels behaviour and is instead trying to sell them for nearly 700 pounds each. I wont give them away, he told state-owned national TV station Rossiya 1 after it was suggested he should hand them over to a zoo. Its too late for that. The divisional prosecutors office are now investigating a complaint about illegal grazing of camels from the villages of Oranzherei, Fyodorovka, and Ninovka. It has been preliminary established that the camel breeder abandoned animal husbandry, a spokesman told TASS news agency. The camel invasion featured on the national news bulletin of state-owned TV. (Rossiya 1) The rest of the circumstances will be clarified during the prosecutors check and compliance with the legislation governing the procedure for keeping and grazing farm animals. Natalya Butuzova, the head of the Ikryaninsky district, said officials were still trying to work out how to tackle what she called an invasion of camels. It is a whole business to transport them, she said. It is impossible to shoot them, especially as this is someone elses property. But its not clear that the strategy is working. Several campaign aides and allies admitted that they have struggled to negatively define the former vice president in the eyes of voters a long-standing goal for the summer that is quickly slipping out of reach. As Biden has largely remained in his Delaware home due to the pandemic, many of Trumps attacks on his mental acuity, liberal policies and approach to public safety have not broken through. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Johannesburg Sat, August 1, 2020 22:03 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066aef051 2 Environment elephant,Botswana Free Hundreds of elephants that died mysteriously in Botswana's famed Okavango Delta probably succumbed to natural toxins, the wildlife department said Friday. The landlocked southern African country has the world's largest elephant population, estimated to be around 130,000. Around 300 of them have been found dying since March. Authorities have so far ruled out anthrax, as well as poaching, as the tusks were found intact. Preliminary tests conducted in various countries far have not been fully conclusive and more are being carried out, Wildlife and Parks Department boss Cyril Taolo told AFP in a phone interview. "But based on some of the preliminary results that we have received, we are looking at naturally-occurring toxins as the potential cause," he said. "To date we have not established the conclusion as to what is the cause of the mortality". He explained that some bacteria can naturally produce poison, particularly in stagnant water. Government has so far established that 281 elephants died, although independent conservationists say more than 350. The deaths were first flagged by a wildlife conservation charity, Elephants Without Borders (EWB), whose confidential report referring to the 356 dead elephants was leaked to the media early in July. EWB suspected elephants had been dying in the area for about three months, and mortality was not restricted to age or gender. Several live elephants appeared weak, lethargic and emaciated, with some showing signs of disorientation, difficulty in walking or limping, EWB said. Tests are being conducted at specialist labs in South Africa, Canada, Zimbabwe and the US. Topics : elephant Botswana Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Lagos, Nigeria Sat, August 1, 2020 15:07 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ae6b7a 2 World Nigeria,capsize Free Ten people were killed, five rescued and four others went missing when a passenger boat capsized in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos, a government agency said on Saturday. The boat was heading to Badagry from the Kirikiri area of the city late Wednesday when it sank in heavy currents, the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) said in a statement. "A total of 19 persons were involved in the incident; five were rescued with 10 persons confirmed dead and four passengers still unaccounted for," the agency said. It said most of the passengers were not wearing life jackets, contrary to maritime safety regulations. Read also: 10 missing after fishing boat capsizes off Indonesia "LASWA has apprehended the boat captain and has handed him over to marine police for further investigation and sanctions," it said. "The emergency and regulatory authorities are still on a search and rescue operation," it added. Boat accidents are common in Nigeria because of over-loading, disregard of safety guidelines, lack of maintenance and bad weather. Last month, dozens of passengers were killed when their overcrowded boat capsized in the central Benue state. A day earlier, seven people had died in Ikorodu, outside Lagos, when their boat sank following heavy rains. Topics : Nigeria capsize Loudly chanting their opposition to face masks and vaccines, thousands of people gathered in Berlin on Saturday to protest against coronavirus restrictions before being dispersed by police. Police put turnout at around 20,000 -- well below the 500,000 organisers had announced as they urged a "day of freedom" from months of virus curbs. Despite Germany's comparatively low toll, authorities are concerned at a rise in infections over recent weeks and politicians took to social media to criticise the rally as irresponsible. "We are the second wave," shouted the crowd, a mixture of hard left and right and conspiracy theorists as they converged on the Brandenburg Gate, demanding "resistance" and dubbing the pandemic "the biggest conspiracy theory". Few protesters wore a mask or respected the 1.5-metre (five-foot) social distancing requirement, an AFP journalist reported, despite police repeatedly calling on them via megaphone to do so. After several warnings, Berlin police ordered demonstrators to leave the area at the end of the afternoon. Police tweeted they had launched legal proceedings against organisers for not respecting virus hygiene rules. A handful of people held a counter demonstration. Dubbing themselves "grandmothers against the extreme right", they hurled insults against "Nazi" protesters. The protest's "Day of Freedom" slogan echoes the title of a 1935 documentary by Nazi-era film-maker Leni Riefenstahl on a party conference by Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party. Several politicians condemned the demonstration as Germany seeks to minimise transmission of a virus which had claimed just over 9,000 deaths as of Saturday -- a far lower toll than its neighbours. - 'Covidiots' - Saskia Esken of the Social Democrats, a junior coalition partner in Angela Merkel's government, blasted the demonstrators as "Covidiots". In a tweet Esken railed: "No distancing, no mask. They are not only putting at risk our health but also our success against the pandemic as well as economic recovery, education and society. Irresponsible!" Health Minister Jens Spahn agreed: "Yes, demonstrations should also be possible in times of coronavirus, but not like this. Distance, hygiene rules and masks serve to protect us all, so we treat each other with respect." Jan Redmann, regional head of Merkel's Christian Democrats in the eastern state of Brandenburg, also took aim at the marchers. "A thousand new infections a day still and in Berlin there are protests against anti-virus measures? We can no longer allow ourselves these dangerous absurdities," Redmann complained. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who hails from Merkel's traditional right ally the Christian Social Union, showed a measure of understanding, however. "Of course there are always different opinions regarding infringements of basic rights and restrictions of freedom -- first, it's normal and, in my view, it's not the majority," Seehofer told Bavarian daily Passauer Neue Presse. Saturday saw 955 new infections -- a level which the country had not seen since May 9, according to the Robert Koch health institute. - 'Scare tactics' - But marchers insist the risk of catching the virus is being much overblown. "It's pure scare tactics. I don't see any danger with the virus," one marcher, Iris Bitzenmeier, told AFP. "I don't know any other sick people. I knew many in March -- skiers, holidaymakers. Something was really afoot in February -- but now there are no longer any sick people," she insisted. Another demonstrator, Anna-Maria Wetzel, who had come to the capital after attending similar rallies in Baden-Wuerttemberg in the southwest, shared that view. "People who don't inform themselves -- unlike ourselves -- remain ignorant and believe what the government tells them. They get caught up in the fear the government puts in our heads -- and that fear weakens the immune system," she said. An international racket dealing in snake venom was busted in West Bengal's Malda district on Friday, and two persons were arrested in a major operation by the state CID and local police, officials said. The sleuths of the CID along with officers of Bamongola police station seized 600 grams of snake venom,estimated to be worth around Rs 1 crore, from a car in Pakuahat petrol pump area, they said. Two kingpins of an international racket were arrested in the raid, police said. They have been identified as Alam Miyan (32) and Musfik Alam (29), both residents of the Gangarampur area inDakshin Dinajpur district, a senior officer said. The snake venom was kept in a French-made bullet-proofbox, he added. Police got a tip-off that the duo was travelling toMalda to smuggle the venom and stopped the car midway and made the arrests, the officer said. Malda district on the India-Bangladesh border is notorious for smuggling. AccuWeather forecasters are warning chances of snow and other wintry weather to break out across portions of the eastern United States, just after a winter storm spent the weekend making a mess of places from the Tennessee Valley through the Southeast and up the Eastern Seaboard into New England. Hong Kong, Aug 1 : Six people, including activist Nathan Law, are being sought by the Hong Kong police on suspicion of breaking the new national security law imposed by China in the city, a media report said on Saturday. They have been accused of inciting secession and collusion with foreign and external forces to endanger national security, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) report said citing a police source as saying. This would be the first time Hong Kong police invoked the extraterritorial provision under the sweeping law imposed by Beijing on June 30 that bans acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with a foreign country to endanger national security. Responding to the news, Law, which is currently in the UK, said he would cut off ties with his family. "I stress that all overseas advocacy work has been done in my personal capacity, without any political connection with other individuals," Law said in a statement. "Since I left Hong Kong, I have not been in contact with my family members. I hereby cut off relationship and future contact with them." "I'm completely clueless to what offences I might have committed. At the end of the day, maybe the answer is: I love Hong Kong too much." Last month, Law revealed that he had fled from Hong Kong to London and that he would continue advocacy work on the international level. Besides Law, the five others comprise former British consulate employee Simon Cheng, activists Ray Wong and Lau Hong, both currently in Britain; Wayne Chan, previously reported to be in Amsterdam; and US-based Samuel Chu of the Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC). Chu, who has been a US citizen for almost 25 years, is believed to be the first non-Chinese citizen to be targeted under the new national security law, said the SCMP news report. The source said that police were pursuing the six for activities that took place after the enactment of the law, which he added did not have retroactive effect. "The six will be put on the list of people wanted by police and they will be intercepted once they return to the city," he was quoted as saying by the newspaper. MONROE An Ansonia man has been charged for his alleged connection to the burglary of the Roosevelt Drive Dunkin Donuts on Dec. 27, police said. Joseph Marino, 47, was charged July 29 with third-degree burglary, third-degree conspiracy to commit burglary, third-degree larceny, third-degree conspiracy to commit larceny, possession of burglary tools, first-degree criminal mischief, first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, third-degree criminal trespass and third-degree conspiracy to commit criminal trespass. Marino was arrested on a warrant by Monroe detectives while appearing in Bridgeport Superior Court on unrelated charges. Police Lt. Stephen Corrone said police received a complaint of a suspicious person near the Dunkin Donuts, 230 Roosevelt Drive, at 1:47 a.m. Dec. 27. While officers were en route, Corrone said, the dispatch center received an activated burglar alarm at the same location. Upon arrival, Corrone said officers discovered that Dunkin Donuts had been forcefully entered and burglarized. Police said $1,395 was stolen along with the digital video recording surveillance system worth $3,500. Through surveillance video from surrounding businesses, it was determined that two suspects in a small dark colored vehicle had burglarized the business, Corrone said. Through the investigation, Corrone said, detectives found that the same suspects and vehicle were involved in commercial burglaries in Shelton, Milford and North Branford. A multi-town investigation led to the development of Marino as a suspect, Corrone said. Using information obtained through search and seizure warrants, it was confirmed that Marino was in the area of the burglary in Monroe at the time it was taking place, said Corrone. Corrone said the identity of the second suspect in has not been confirmed. The case remains under investigation. Marino was held on a $75,000 bond. brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com Addressing Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in a message, Laszlo Kover the Hungarian National Assembly speaker expressed hope for the development of mutual cooperation between Iran and Hungary in the fields of culture, education, and science, Trend reports via Mehr. He wrote that "on behalf of the Hungarian National Assembly, I would like to express my sincere wishes for you on your election as the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He also wrote that by relying on the friendship between the two nations, the countries would be able to further strengthen fruitful cooperation in terms of cultural, educational, and scientific relations. However, there are wounds that existed before COVID-19, including the fact that slaughterhouse workers face one of the single most dangerous jobs in the country. The dangers they face include mimic repetitive motion (cumulative trauma injuries), accidents working with equipment that is designed to cut body parts, and an increased amount of PTSD leading to an increased abuse of substances and domestic assaults. A 2018 study in the Guardian newspaper reported that amputations (of a workers finger, hand, arm) happen on average twice a week in the U.S. meatpacking industry. Proxemics is the amount of space that people feel is necessary to set between themselves and others. The intimate distance of proxemics is zero to two feet, and it is within this field we usually allow only the people we love. So empathize being a slaughterhouse worker working five days a week, 40 hours a week and this intimate field being violated with the process of killing thousands of animals a day, and you can understand how this leads to PTSD. A surfer bitten by a 'massive' great white shark at a popular surfing beach in Western Australia has revealed the tattoo that 'saved his life'. Phil Mummert's leg was mauled by a five-metre great white shark while surfing at 'The Farm' at Bunker Bay about 2.15pm on Friday. The 28-year-old was thrown off his surfboard before being bitten on the upper part of his leg. Mr Mummert was airlifted to Bunbury Regional Hospital after getting back to shore and since shared the tattoo he believed 'saved' his life. His girlfriend, Mish Wright, shared a picture of his shark jaw tattoo from hospital. The picture reads: 'How ironic the shark jaw tattoo Phil has on the same side he got bitten by one ... He reckons it saved his life'. Phil Mummert's (pictured) leg was mauled by a five-metre great white while surfing at 'The Farm' at Bunker Bay about 2.15pm on Friday. He was airlifted to Bunbury Regional Hospital after getting back to shore and is recovering well His girlfriend, Mish Wright, shared a picture of his shark jaw tattoo (pictured) from hospital, which Mr Mummert believes 'saved' his life The 28-year-old was thrown from his surfboard before being bitten on the upper part of his leg. The five-metre great white shark ended up biting his board in half (pictured) Ms Wright went on to say that Mr Mummert's surgery went 'really well and he's now recovering'. 'We've been flooded with lots of lovely messages and I've been reading them all to Phil, thank you,' Ms Wright said. 'Also, for those asking, I was on the beach with Koa (our puppy) when it all happened and he is being well looked after. 'A massive thank you to everyone who has helped out during all this chaos.' Mr Mummert tried to defend himself by kicking the shark, which bit his board in half. He also tried to keep the back part of the broken board in its mouth to distract it. Surfer Brent Jones told 7News Perth he saw the 'massive' fin appear from the water while 'waiting for a wave' with about seven others moments. 'I thought the guy was gone because the shark was just huge,' he said. 'He's just very, very lucky to be alive'. Mr Mummert was rescued by fellow surfers Alex Oliver, Jess Woolhouse and Liam Ryan. Mr Mummert's upper leg was bitten before being hauled onto a board of a fellow surfer and taken to shore to be treated by emergency services (pictured) The great white shark attack happened at a popular surfing spot known as 'The Farm' at Bunker Bay (pictured) about 2.15pm on Friday They witnessed the attack and sprung into action to haul him from the water onto one of their boards. 'Alex went straight over. He hopped into the ocean. Alex is the bloody hero. He deserves a bravery medal,' Mr Jones told The West Australian. Mr Woolhouse and Mr Ryan, who had never met Mr Oliver before the attack, told The West Australian they shared a beer after the ordeal. 'We saw him (Mr Oliver) down the pub last night. We hugged it out and had a beer with him,' they said. 'Alex was the first one to help. Alex turned his (board) around away and went straight over there.' Ms Wright said she was on the beach with their dog Koa (pictured) at the time of Mr Mummert's attack Haiti - Social : 3,881 Haitians returning from DR in July, the situation in figures Through its call center the International Organization for Migration (IOM), is committed to providing individual and personalized follow-up over a period of 14 days after their return of all migrants in order to better inform them about the measures preventive measures to be taken against Covid-19 and refer potential suspected cases to the competent Haitian institutions. In addition, additional referral is offered for migrants in need of psychosocial assistance through the short number 840. Despite the closure of the land border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in March 2020, many border movements continue https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31312-haiti-dr-almost-100-000-haitians-return-to-the-country-in-6-months.html . The porosity of the border with the Dominican Republic exposes Haiti to a potential spread of Covid-19. The July situation in figures: For the month of July there were 3,881 voluntary returns of Haitians registered by the IOM on the border. 2 suspected cases of Covid-19 have been referred to the Ministry of Public Health for follow-up. 35.9% female and 64.1% male. Of which 8.6% pregnant women, 3.3% elderly people, 2.6% single-parent household heads, 1.3% disabled people. Top 3 Haitian migrant labor in the Dominican Republic : 1 - Trade (50.7%) 2 - Construction (12.3%) 3 - Agriculture (11.0%) Average family size : 5.39 people Main needs of returning Haitians : Cash Destinations of Haitians returning to the country : 59.5% returned to the North East 19.6% returned to the North 6.5% returned to the Northwest 3.3% returned to the Center 6.5% returned to Artibonite 3.9% returned to the West 0.7% returned to the South East See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31353-haiti-covid-19-unfpa-monitors-haitians-returning-from-dr.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31312-haiti-dr-almost-100-000-haitians-return-to-the-country-in-6-months.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31249-haiti-news-zapping.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-31118-haiti-dr-more-than-17-000-haitians-voluntarily-returned-to-the-country-in-2-weeks.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30859-haiti-ouanaminthe-assisted-voluntary-return-plan-for-haitians-in-dr.html SL/ HaitiLibre Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 00:51:53|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TIRANA, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- International rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) affirmed "B+" rating on Albania's economy, with a stable perspective despite the negative effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Minister of Finance and Economy Anila Denaj said in a Facebook post on Saturday. Denaj said the rating is a positive indicator of the emergency situation management. The assessment, according to her, testifies the sustainability of public finances and the successful financing of the fiscal gap, curbing the pressures of the balance of payments. S&P estimates that the pandemic and associated restrictions related to the movement of people will cause the Albanian economy to contract by 6.5 percent in 2020. According to S&P, the pandemic has had a direct impact especially on the tourism sector around the globe, and Albania does not make an exception due to the high weight that this sector occupies in the country's economy. The agency said the Albanian government is undertaking a strong stimulus program to limit the economic fallout from the pandemic and to resume reconstruction efforts following the November 2019 earthquake. "The government has secured credit support from International Financial Institutions to finance the fiscal gap this year and to stop balance of payments pressures. During this year the government managed to issue another Eurobond. If the economy deteriorates more than the institutions predict, the government still has room for some further policies," S&P added. S&P projects that the general government debt-to-GDP ratio will rise to nearly 80 percent in 2020, declining from 2021 onward as extraordinary measures are withdrawn and the economy recovers. Also on Saturday, Minister of Health and Social Protection Ogerta Manastirliu said some 300 doctors and nurses would be added to the Albanian health system in response to the medium-term plan and strategy for the situation caused by the pandemic. To date, Albania has registered a total of 5,396 COVID-19 cases, with 2,961 recoveries and 161 fatalities, according to health authorities. Enditem Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images Hong Kong police have issued arrest warrants for six pro-democracy activists living in exile, the first time the citys authorities have used a sweeping new law to target campaigners living outside Hong Kong. They include Samuel Chu, an American citizen who lives in the US, Nathan Law, a prominent campaigner who recently relocated to the UK after fleeing Hong Kong, and Simon Cheng, a former British consular staffer who was granted asylum in the UK after alleging he was tortured in China. Chinese state media reported that the six men were wanted for incitement to secession and collusion with foreign forces. The move comes a month after China introduced a controversial national security law in Hong Kong. China said the legislation targets the crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces and carries penalties as severe as life in prison. Critics warned that it would be used to target legitimate opposition, and highlighted the unusual decision to make the law applicable to both Hong Kong residents and non-residents. That apparently gives China jurisdiction beyond its own borders. Nathan Law. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP Chu, who runs the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington DC-based advocacy organization dedicated to furthering Hong Kongs freedom and democracy, is the first person targeted under this aspect of the law. He said China was sending a clear message to other activists by ordering his arrest. I would really emphasize how outrageous this really is, Chu told the Guardian. I am the first non-Chinese citizen that essentially is being targeted. I think they do intend to try to make this an example. Several countries have since suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong, including the UK, Australia and Germany, as a possible safeguard against attempts to use the national security laws to round up activists abroad. The US ordered an end to Hong Kongs special economic status earlier in July. Chu, who has lived in the US as an American citizen since 1996, said the charges amounted to China targeting a US citizen for lobbying my own government. Story continues We always knew that when the national security law went into effect there was a very troubling and illogical, irrational idea that they were claiming jurisdiction over anyone who is not even a Hong Kong resident, who is anywhere in the world, doing anything that they deemed threatening, he said. HK police is targeting a US citizen for lobbying my own gov't. I might be the 1st non-Chinese citizen to be targeted, but I will not be the last. If I am targeted, any American/any citizen of any nation who speaks out for HK can-and will be-too. We are all Hong Kongers now. pic.twitter.com/KQYGcStY1e Samuel Chu (@samuelmchu) July 31, 2020 The other activists charged wereRay Wong, Wayne Chan and Honcques Laus. Related: China passes controversial Hong Kong national security law Wong, who is currently in the UK, told Reuters the charges showed that the Chinese government was afraid of the advocacy work of Hong Kong activists internationally. I think they want to cut off our connection with people in Hong Kong it will make people fear that they may violate the national security law by contacting us, Wong said. An anti-ageing website has been slapped with more than $60,000 worth of fines for advertising products that it claimed could protect against coronavirus. The Therapeutic Goods Administration issued five separate infringement notices totalling $63,000 to Victoria-based company, SGC Products on Friday. The infringements were issued for the advertising of products in relation to COVID-19 on a website named 'Dr Ageless.' The TGA alleges SGC Products operated the website which advertised Thymosin Alpha-1 and Thymosin Beta-4 peptides and claimed they were a 'breakthrough preventative treatment for coronavirus.' The Therapeutic Goods Administration issued five separate infringement notices totalling $63,000 to Victoria-based company, SGC Products on Saturday in relation to a website named 'Dr Ageless' (pictured) Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health, Professor John Skerritt, said the TGA has not registered any products as a preventative treated for COVID-19. 'We allege an advertisement that claims a particular medicine can prevent COVID-19 could put lives at risk and is likely to be illegal,' Professor Skerritt said. 'Businesses are responsible for the content of their advertising - and just because they quote another source it does not remove this responsibility.' Since the infringement notices were filed, the allegedly unlawful advertisements have been removed from the website. The TGA alleges SGC Products operated the website which advertised Thymosin Alpha-1 and Thymosin Beta-4 peptides and claimed they were a 'breakthrough preventative treatment for coronavirus' (stock image) Dr Ageless claims on their website they specialise in 'all aspects of disease prevention' and offer 'scientifically proven anti-ageing, weight loss, muscle gain and recovery treatments.' The website also allegedly advertised products that were effective against 'cancerous cells.' 'Under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 representations relating to the treatment, cure, prevention, diagnosis, monitoring or susceptibility to cancer are prohibited representations,' the TGA said in a statement. Dr Ageless have been contacted for comment. The TGA warned consumers to be on alert for any businesses that claim they have products which can prevent or fight against COVID-19. Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health, Professor John Skerritt, said the TGA has not registered any products as a preventative treated for COVID-19 (pictured: People tested for coronavirus in Sydney on July 30) This comes after the TGA issued three infringements on Friday totalling $39,960 to Melbourne-based company Italian Princess Coffee Brands, who were trading as Zafe Zone. The company is alleged to have promoted its disinfectant as effective against coronavirus, without having the necessary authorisation from the TGA. It is also alleged Zafe Zone falsely advertised the product had been approved by the TGA. 'Promoting disinfectants that have not been subjected to the TGA's regulatory framework has the potential to put the public at risk,' Professor Skerritt said. 'If businesses are thinking about diversifying to include disinfectants, hand sanitisers or other therapeutic goods, we encourage them to look at the legal requirements for advertising on our website, seek assistance from a legal or regulatory adviser, or contact us if they're uncertain.' Pakistan: 14-y-o Christian girl abducted at gunpoint fights for her freedom Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A 14-year-old Christian girl who was abducted at gunpoint during the COVID-19 lockdown and forced to convert to Islam has been allowed by a court to leave her captor's home and stay at a womens shelter until her case is heard by the Lahore High Court next week. The family of Catholic teenager Maira Shahbaz, 14, has been fighting for her freedom ever since she was abducted in April by three Muslim men. One of her captors, Mohamad Nakash, a married man who forced her to live with him, is accused of presenting a false marriage certificate to a lower court that said Maira was 19 years old and they had wed in October 2019. The document not only fails to provide proof of consent from Nakashs first wife, with whom he has two children, but the Muslim cleric whose name is listed on the certificate has denied involvement in the sham marriage. A court ruling that initially sanctioned the marriage was overturned, and hearings have bet scheduled to hear the case after police registered a formal complaint against Nakash and his two alleged accomplices accused of participating in the abduction. After Maria's mother presented her daughter's birth certificate to the lower court as proof that she's underage, Faisalabad District and Sessions Judge Rana Masood ordered that Maira be allowed to leave Nakash's home and placed in a womens refuge, known as Dar ul Aman, until the Lahore High Court hears her case, the Catholic group Aid to the Church in Need reported. The judge also prohibited Maria, who is from Madina Town near the city of Faisalabad, not to contact her family until after the hearings, which could result in her captor and his two accomplices being sentenced to jail. Developments over the past few days have been an answer to prayer and we are so grateful for everyone for their prayers in this case, Mairas family lawyer Lala Daniel was quoted as saying. Daniel added that had the Maira been ordered to stay in Nakashs home, she might have been forced to become a sex worker. Nakash has filed a counter-complaint alleging harassment against the girls mother, Nighat Shahbaz, and Daniel. Lawyer Khalil Tahir Sandhu, who is representing Maira and the family in Lahore High Court, said, I am hopeful of a good outcome. In a separate case, Christian teenager Huma Younus, who was kidnapped and forced into an Islamic marriage last year, is now pregnant and being confined to one room by her abuser, Aid to the Church in Need reported in July. Recently, Tabassum Yousaf, a lawyer representing the Younus parents, informed them by phone that she was pregnant after being repeatedly raped by the man who abducted her. Asked by her father if she could leave her abductors house and return to her parents home, she told him that she is not allowed to leave the house and that her life has become still more difficult, Yousaf was quoted as saying. [S]he is now imprisoned within the walls of one room. Younus was taken from her home on Oct. 10, 2019, at the age of 14, and later forcibly married to a radical Muslim man named Abdul Jabbar. Last month, yet another young Christian girl was nearly abducted from her home when a radical group of Muslim men attacked her entire family, the U.S.-based Christian persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported. The near abduction of the 13-year-old girl in the Christian-majority neighborhood of Sadigabad in Punjab province took place on July 12. The family was beaten up for saving the girl. The U.S. State Department has designated Pakistan as a country of particular concern for engaging in or tolerating egregious and systemic abuses of religious freedom. Pakistan has also been ranked as the fifth-worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution on Open Doors USAs 2020 World Watch List. Grants totaling nearly $3.5 million give early-career investigators independence to pursue brave and bold cancer research. Fifteen scientists from across the country were named Damon Runyon Fellows. The recipients of this prestigious, four-year award are outstanding postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators. The Fellowship encourages the nation's most promising young scientists to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding ($231,000 total) to work on creative, high-risk projects. We are thrilled to be funding these innovative, young scientists with the brilliance and passion to push boundaries and make breakthroughs. They are committed to understanding the fundamental processes driving cancer, which may ultimately lead to new therapeutic approaches for patients." Yung S. Lie, PhD, President and CEO of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Spring 2020 Damon Runyon Fellows: Nicholas M. Adams, PhD [Marion Abbe Fellow], with his sponsor Boris Reizis, PhD, at the New York University School of Medicine, New York, studies a specialized subset of immune cells that secrete potent antitumor cytokines called type I interferons (IFN-I). Within a tumor, these cells, called plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), are impaired, which contributes to immune suppression and cancer progression. Dr. Adams aims to uncover the molecular mechanisms that govern IFN-I production and pDC dysfunction in cancer. As dendritic cells are a promising cell therapy for cancer, understanding the regulation of pDC-IFN-I production can guide strategies to harness and integrate their anti-tumor function in new immunotherapies. Yiming Chen, PhD, with his sponsor Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, at Stanford University, Stanford, is developing platforms to conduct high-throughput screens of protein-based fluorescent biosensors. Biosensors allow visualization of otherwise invisible biological processes such as communication between cells. Cells use diverse peptides to send messages to each other, and this has important implications for tumor growth and side effects of cancer treatments. This project will increase understanding of the complex signaling networks among cells and may lead to rational design of new cancer therapies targeting faulty cellular communication. Junhong Choi, PhD [HHMI Fellow], with his sponsor Jay A. Shendure, MD, PhD, at the University of Washington, Seattle, is examining how the control of DNA replication plays a role in cell growth and proliferation. Cellular growth is tightly orchestrated around DNA replication, where the genome must be faithfully copied before the cell divides. Different cell types each have a distinct DNA replication program, dictating which parts of the genome are copied before others. Dr. Choi aims to develop a high-throughput method to profile DNA replication in many cells at once to gain a better understanding of the relationship between DNA replication and cell growth. This research has the potential to uncover critical insights into cancer development and rapid cell growth. Pragya Goel, PhD [Dale F. and Betty Ann Frey Fellow], with her sponsor Pascal Kaeser, MD, at Harvard Medical School, Boston, is investigating structural and functional aspects of dopamine transmission in the brain, a key neuromodulator for motor and cognitive processes. Dopamine receptors have also been implicated in a variety of cancers, and recent evidence suggests that brain cancer (glioma) cells can form synaptic connections with neurons that drive tumor progression. To better understand the molecular organization that supports dopamine signaling, Dr. Goel will use super-resolution microscopy, modern genetic approaches, and functional measurements to assess how major dopamine receptors are organized in the brain and determine the interplay between dopamine release and reception. This research aims to better understand the basic mechanisms of dopamine signaling, which may ultimately enable the design of novel therapies. Anita Gola, PhD, with her sponsor Elaine V. Fuchs, PhD, at The Rockefeller University, New York, is investigating how tissue regenerates the right cell type, at the right place. Effective cell-cell communication and cell-spatial organization are critical to maintaining organ function and homeostasis. Dr. Gola will use skin as a model tissue to understand how immune cells are organized and how they communicate with resident stem cells while maintaining tolerance and providing protection. When these interactions are disrupted, they can lead to cancers and other hyper-proliferative disorders. Unraveling the mechanisms that govern healthy immune-stem cell crosstalk and what goes wrong in disease may lead to new therapeutics for skin cancers. Rachel Segal Greenberg, PhD [HHMI Fellow], with her sponsor Stephen Liberles, PhD, at Harvard Medical School, Boston, is focusing on how sensory neurons that innervate internal organs develop and function under changing environmental conditions. Our ability to sense and respond to fluctuations in blood-oxygen levels or exposure to airway irritants is controlled by the sensory neurons that comprise the vagus nerve. These neurons detect changes in numerous organs including the heart and lungs, and mediate responses. Understanding how vagal neurons respond to these microenvironments may provide new insights into how certain conditions contribute to tumor growth and identify targets for the development of cancer therapies. Shuo Han, PhD [Fayez Sarofim Fellow], with his sponsor Philip A. Beachy, PhD, at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, is developing novel methodologies to fine-tune cellular signaling pathways that may prevent tumor formation and promote regeneration through the Hedgehog pathway. This pathway plays a central role in regulating embryonic tissue patterning and tissue renewal after birth. Dr. Han will take an interdisciplinary approach combining chemical biology, protein engineering, and computational modeling to examine the Hedgehog pathway in a cell-type specific and spatiotemporally resolved manner. This work aims to provide mechanistic insights into the function of Hedgehog signaling in tissue repair and establish new therapeutic approaches for regenerative medicine. Balint Z. Kacsoh, PhD [Rebecca Ridley Kry Fellow], with his sponsors Shelley L. Berger, PhD, and Christopher J. Lengner, PhD, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, is studying how social environment can affect disease initiation or progression. Empirical evidence suggests that extreme social environments--such as overcrowding or isolation--can induce or accelerate disease states such as cancer, but little is known about the underlying biology. Dr. Kacsoh proposes to dissect the molecular processes underlying disease progression as a function of social structure by using the very social model organism, the ant species Camponotus floridanus, and by generating a colorectal-like tumor model in these ants. Studies of model organisms with conserved cancer pathways may provide clues to the links between social environment and disease. Haoxin Li, PhD [The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research Fellow], with his sponsor Benjamin F. Cravatt, PhD, at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, is mapping the positions of the amino acid cysteine in cancer-relevant proteins. He will perform functional screens that reveal the cysteine residues that are essential to the progression of cancer. Since the unique chemistry of cysteine makes it an attractive target for therapeutic development, this map can guide the discovery and optimization of drugs that can bind to and inhibit cancer-promoting proteins. His research has the potential to greatly accelerate the discovery of new cancer targets and their corresponding therapeutics. Jingchuan Luo, PhD [HHMI Fellow], with her sponsor Jonathan S. Weissman, PhD, at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, is focusing on the interplay between energy-producing mitochondria and the nucleus inside mammalian cells. Mitochondria contain their own small genome that encodes some proteins, but the vast majority are encoded in the cell's nucleus. The communication between mitochondria and the nucleus to produce the proteins necessary to properly function is tightly controlled, and its dysregulation has been implicated in human diseases including cancer. Dr. Luo is using ribosome profiling in parallel with CRISPR to quantitatively monitor translation (the process of protein production from RNA) on the mitochondrial surface and identify key regulators of this process. She hopes gaining an understanding of the underlying mechanism will yield fundamental insights into mitochondrial biology and its role in disease. Tristan Wold Owens, PhD [Suzanne and Bob Wright Fellow], with his sponsor David A. Agard, PhD, at the University of California, San Francisco, focuses on heat shock proteins (HSPs) and their "master regulator" called heat shock transcription factor 1 (HSF1). The transformation and growth of cancers causes a wide array of cellular stresses including metabolic changes, genomic instability, and protein misfolding that would halt the growth of a normal cell. Tumor cells, however, depend on cellular stress response machinery, like HSPs, for their survival. HSF1 is critical to tumor development and progression, and HSF1 activity is strongly correlated with poor prognosis in many common cancers. For decades, efforts to develop cancer therapies targeting HSPs have failed. Dr. Owens aims to understand how HSPs and HSF1 interact to regulate activity, and how this regulation is co-opted to promote tumor growth and progression. Cristina Puchades, PhD, with her sponsors Yifan Cheng, PhD, and Lily Y. Jan, PhD, at the University of California, San Francisco, studies ion channels - proteins embedded in the membrane surrounding a cell. They act as molecular gates, opening in response to diverse stimuli to allow ions to flow into cells. The essential ion channel TMEM16A is required for many fundamental physiological processes, including neuronal signaling, muscle contraction, and salivary gland secretion. In cancer cells, increased activity of TMEM16A is closely linked to metastatic progression in esophageal, gastric, and pancreatic cancers. Dr. Puchades aims to understand how TMEM16A functions and how drug molecules hinder its activity. This research has the potential to guide the pharmacological targeting of TMEM16A as a novel approach for the development of anti-cancer therapeutics. Jiao Sima, PhD [HHMI Fellow], with her sponsor Yang Dan, PhD, at the University of California, Berkeley, is investigating the relationship between sleep disturbances and cancer development. She is dissecting how neurons controlling the sleep-wake cycle affect immune functions that impact cancer. Dr. Sima will also examine the complementary problem of how tumor growth and chemotherapy contribute to sleep issues by analyzing gene expression patterns in neurons that regulate the sleep-wake cycle. Understanding the cellular mechanisms linking sleep and cancer could pave the way for drugs that help prevent cancer-induced sleep problems and therapeutic approaches that boost immune function to fight cancer. Mark R. Sullivan, PhD [Merck Fellow], with his sponsor Eric J. Rubin, MD, PhD, at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, studies the processes that lead to opportunistic infections affecting cancer patients. The human body, which is a hostile environment for pathogens, is well-equipped to fend off infections from most bacteria. However, cancer and chemotherapy can cause inflammation, tissue damage, and impairment of the immune system in ways that leave patients vulnerable to bacterial infection. These opportunistic infections are challenging to treat, as antibiotics often have little effect on these bacteria. Dr. Sullivan aims to identify the bacterial components that allow opportunistic pathogens to live within the lung and survive antibiotic treatment. This research will be critical to discovering more effective therapies to eradicate these infections. Yunxiao Zhang, PhD [Merck Fellow], with his sponsor Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, is investigating how abnormal "mechanical loading" resulting from obesity, repeated joint use, and structural deformity affects the development of osteoarthritis, most common form of arthritis. Over time, the physical force on joints is converted to chemical signals that lead to wearing down of the protective cartilage in joints that cushions the ends of a person's bones. Understanding the underlying signaling pathway will facilitate the development of therapies for osteoarthritis, and may also shed light on cancer, which involves similar pathways. The importance of mechanical stress on disease progression is now being revealed. Google piloted the 'Bolo' app in about 200 villages in UP last year and the results were encouraging with 64% of children showing an improvement in reading proficiency in just 3 months. Around 10 million (1 crore) children enrolled in around 1.13 lakh primary schools of Uttar Pradesh will now be able to improve their vocabulary and pronunciation of Hindi and English, using tech giant Googles app, 'Bolo'. The free app, launched in India in March 2019, uses Google's speech recognition and text-to-speech technology. The app features an animated character, 'Diya', who encourages children to read stories aloud and helps if the child is unable to pronounce a word. It also lauds the reader when he/she completes the reading, state education department officials said. Designed for primary grade children, aged between 6 and 11 years, Bolo helps improve both their English and Hindi reading skills, by encouraging them to read aloud. The app also gives instant feedback, said Prayagraj-based State Institute of Educational Management and Training (SIEMAT) director Sanjay Sinha. He said that the app will also help teachers wherever they are in doubt about the pronunciation of a Hindi or English word. For its introduction in government primary schools, the Samgra Shiksha Abhiyan project officials have entered into an agreement with Google and till July 30, parents of these children who have smartphones, have also been trained by teachers to use the app at home to help children, they add. Google Bolo is actually a read-along app or a speech-based, reading-tutor app for Android-based smartphones. It can be downloaded for free from Google's Play Store. As part of efforts to implement Mission Prernathe flagship programme of UP government to improve quality of education in schools running under the Basic Shiksha Department across the state members of the state resource group (SRG), key resource persons (KRPs) and academic resource persons (ARPs) are giving online training to around 5.5 lakh primary school teachers of the state including assistant teachers, shikshamitras and subject instructors, since July 20 on using Google Bolo effectively, state resource group member Sunil Tiwari said. The app can also work offline and does not require an active internet connection, he said. These teachers were given the mission of helping and training parents of children with smartphones, in their respective schools, to download the app and use it till July 30, he added. Google piloted the 'Bolo' app in about 200 villages in UP last year and the results were encouraging with 64% of children showing an improvement in reading proficiency in just three months, state education department officials said. The annual status of education report (ASER)-2018 report, they say, had found that only half the students enrolled in grade 5 in rural India can confidently read a grade 2 textbook. "Lack of reading ability can significantly impact further education, and ultimately children's ability to realise their full potential. We expect this app to help a lot in this direction," they added. New Delhi: Seeking to break the deadlock, Home Minister Rajnath Singh has told Lok Sabha that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak on demonetisation if the Opposition wanted, but the rival parties demanding debate with a provision for voting remained unimpressed, forcing the House to adjourn for the second time. A number of opposition leaders, including Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Sudip Bandhopadhyay (TMC) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (SP), spoke as they pressed for acceptance of their demand for an adjournment motion, a condition not acceptable to the treasury benches which want a debate without voting. Also read: Parliament day 9 | Demonetisation debate in RS: Constitution doesn't give PM power to deprive people access to their money, says Anand Sharma With the Opposition parties firm on their stand, Singh said nobody is questioning the government's intentions over demonetisation or imputing any malafide. He said that the government was willing to listen to the complaints and suggestions different parties have over the execution of the demonetisation move. "As far as the Prime Minister coming to the House is concerned, if the Opposition wants he will come and intervene. I want to assure the Opposition. We are ready for a discussion," the Home Minister said during the Zero Hour, after the Opposition leaders had spoken. Also read: Demonetisation: Opposition decides to continue demands for PMs reply, JPC The decision on under which rule the discussion would take place is for the Speaker to make, he said. Demonetisation is a "historic, bold and pro-poor" decision, Singh said, adding that it was taken to target black money and was in national interest. However, members of a dissatisfied Opposition rushed to the Well, forcing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to adjourn the House till 1400 hours. Earlier, Kharge said demonetisation had harmed the economic system, the farmers, youths, labourers and women among others who are in distress. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. FLINT, MI In response to a recent spate of gun violence, protesters gathered at various locations in Flint on Saturday, Aug. 1, driving a message of change and peace. The Stop the Violence Rally 4 Action began around 10 a.m. outside Flint City Hall, 1101 Saginaw St. A motorcade was slated for later in the afternoon, with participants gathering at Hallwood Plaza, 4813 Clio Road, and driving to City Hall. Another march and protest were to occur subsequently in the day. The Rally 4 Action is really prompting people to come down and vote, said DeWaun E. Robinson, president of Black Lives Matter-Flint. We have City Hall open here so they can go upstairs and vote. We really want to encourage everyone to come on down so they can do over-the-counter voting. The thing is emphasizing on making a difference and really letting your voice be heard. Speakers were to address attendees, with music, vendors, and light refreshments accompanying the event. The Stop the Violence rally scheduled for Hallwood Plaza at 1 p.m. is intended to minimize the violence here in the City of Flint, to see how we can come up with solutions and resolutions to do a better job of working together in the city, Robinson continued. Everything today is about voting and stopping the violence. Attendees can vote until 5 p.m., after which the rally will move to the Target parking lot at G3515 Miller Road in Flint Township for a march. Were going to start having a few conversations of dialogue out there, then well assemble and march to the Flint Township Police Department and then make our way back to the Target parking lot, Robinson said. Come out, utilize your voice, and be part of the democratic process. Alfreda Riley, who collaborated with Black Lives Matter-Flint and was present outside City Hall, stressed the gravity of voting. Many of our people, through blood, sweat, and tears, lost their lives for us to have this right, this privilege, Riley said. We werent always able to vote. Its vitally important that all people vote, but especially African Americans, because I believe we determine the outcome of the election. Riley said there are about 90,000 residents in Flint, with about two-thirds of them being Black. Vote your voice, she continued. You have an obligation and a responsibility to educate yourself on each of the candidates so you can make an informed decision. Robinson also stressed the need to stymie violence in the city, which has experienced a spike of late. We are absolutely, 100,000 percent against violence Black-on-Black crime, any crime, whether its racial profiling, police brutality, were against that, she said. Were uniting our forces together for the good and also to educate ourselves and understand that were better together. The Target parking lot where the days later march is to occur also was the site of the citys first Black Lives Matter march after the killing of Minneapolis man George Floyd. It is entitled Walk With Us 2, in reference to that first march of May 31 that saw Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson and other area police join and walk with demonstrators. Both marches were organized by Johnie Franklin III, now the vice president of Black Lives Matter-Flint. I want it to be bigger as possible, Franklin said of Saturdays attendance compared to the May 31 march. Franklin said the march is also partially to commemorate father, Johnie Franklin Jr., who died June 11 and would have turned 74 on Aug. 3. The elder Walker was born in Alabama, was a civil rights activist, and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, his son said. For me, its twofold, Franklin said. Of course you want to commemorate whats going on, rally the troops one more time, and make people realize not to lose or get the message misconstrued. In other words, ensure that Flint still knows were still doing the work, regardless of how many times they may see us on TV or whatever. On top of that, just to be able to reiterate the message and re-mark that path for those who did not come the first time. That message, Franklin elaborated, is awareness, unity, and stop the violence. We have to unite the old and young, one more time, he said. I think a lot of the time people have too many different agendas, but the main agenda is still Black Lives Matter is more than just an organization; its a message as well, which is of course end white supremacy, end racial bias, end racial inequality, end systemic issues, end injustices, and police reform. In recent months, Flints violent crime has increased. As of July 12, Flints homicides were up 12.5 percent and violent crime had increased 17 percent compared to the same time in 2019. Flint police statistics show property crime had decreased 21 percent and overall crime was down about 5 percent during that same time. Mayor Neeley on July 21 announced new programs to buy back guns and form a special police unit to target areas of the city where violent crime is most prevalent. A rash of shootings occurred overnight between Saturday, July 25, and Sunday, July 26, that left 12 people wounded, one of whom later died. Six people were shot at Hallwood Plaza as part of a popup party Saturday night associated with a music video being filmed, according to the Flint Police Department. The other shootings are not believed to be connected to that event, police have said. Officers had made prior contact with multiple individuals associated with the Hallwood Plaza event after seeing it promoted on social media, and had encouraged them to cancel the event, police have said. The individuals were told the filming could not occur on public property, and that any gathering of more than 100 people would be illegal due to state guidelines related to the COVID-19 pandemic, police have said. Flint Police mobilized a massive force in preparation for the event with more than 250 percent more officers on duty Saturday than a typical weekend, per a Flint Police Department news release. They were assisted by the Michigan State Police which also nearly doubled its force. Officers were on scene when the crowd grew from 50 people to more than 1,000 people and were in the process of shutting it down when a fight broke out in the crowd, police said. Police were able to quickly secure the area, the release states. Multiple firearms were recovered at the scene. Among those 12 victims was 17-year-old Alexis G. Aaron, shot in her back at a relatives house in the 900 block of Johnson Avenue in the early morning of Sunday, July 26. She died two days later. Franklin spoke of the rash of violence, saying he didnt expect any such occurrences at Saturdays events. We just need people to keep a cool head, be peaceful, he said. This is something totally different when youre talking about inner city violence. Our entire country deals with this, any minority group no matter where they are across the country deals with this. Black Lives Matter can assist as much as we can, but people need to understand its two different fights with this. You have inner city violence which we cannot always directly contribute to. Our fight is a bigger mantra right now, but its not dismissing the fact. Franklin said Black Lives Matter-Flint is thinking about doing events on the citys northside, where much of the violence happens. I definitely want to make sure the peace is still kept, that the people are safe, Franklin said. Sheriff Swanson said late Friday afternoon that he had been in contact with all of the events organizers. Part of this whole reform is police reform, people reform, and police-people reform, the sheriff continued. Im excited that the community is getting together. Well have cruisers at Hallwood Plaza leading the motorcade to make sure nobody gets hurt. Its to show unity within the community. Read more: Flint mayor calls for end to violence after weekend shootings leave 12 injured Weekend shootings in Flint leave 12 people injured Friends and family hold vigil for 17-year-old girl shot and killed in Flint 17-year-old girl dies after she is shot in the back in Flint Flint will buy back guns as part of effort to combat rising violent crime Need a job? Flint pushes for residents to become police officers Flint will buy back guns as part of effort to combat rising violent crime While various businesses have been closed or operating at a limited capacity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Westchase District Farmers Market has been going strong the entire time. Now, the market which is located at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Rogerdale roads, in the parking lot of St. Cyril of Alexandria Catholic Church is open every Thursday from 3 -7 p.m. and has seen increased traffic in recent weeks. Stepping up: East Spring Branch Food Pantry meets increased needs during the COVID-19 pandemic The increased traffic is good news for vendors as the farmers market prepares for National Farmers Market Week, which spans from Aug. 2-8. For the first few weeks of the pandemic, everyone was spooked. Our vendor count was way down. Our customer count was way down, said market manager John Carey. But then after the first couple of times, people realized that you can get your fresh produce, get your eggs, get your bread. As people became more aware of that, our traffic increased, and our vendor count increased. We have more new faces coming to the market than weve ever had before. Jay Hiebert sells specialty produce that he grows on his 40-acre farm in Lexington, which is about halfway between Houston and Austin. He also carries the 18 jellies and jams that he makes for his business Ma-Meres Maison Specialty Foods. His sales are up 25 percent from the same time last year, he said. Beekeeper Chris Kohnke said the pandemic has not really impacted his business, Pure Texas Honey, and that his sales are right on par with where they were last year. The bees dont care, he quipped. Both Hiebert and Kohnke said that selling at the Westchase District Farmers Market does not create concerns for their health and safety. Both point out the much lower risk that comes with an outdoor market. The Centers for Disease Control has stated that outdoor gatherings are lower-risk environments than indoor gatherings. Residents are taking notice and attendance is up at some markets across the city. Both wear masks and encourage social distancing. Kohnke has a cord in front of his stand so people are not physically able to get close. Vice President of Communications for the Westchase District Sherry Fox buys a lot of her food at the farmers market. Im not speaking scientifically. Im speaking as a consumer, but it seems like an outdoor market is just about the safest place to shop, she said. Urban Harvest farmers market: At Houston farmers market, folks seek sense of normalcy and ways to help Carey pointed out that the Westchase District Farmers Market is a weekday market, whereas most markets operate on the weekends. He said that helps it serve the unique niche of people who are unable to get to a market on the weekend. Hiebert has been asked about whether he would want to get his jams into a big grocery store such as H-E-B. He said he does not because he feels like it would take the soul out of what he is doing. Kohnke enjoys the family feel of the farmers market. Fox feels that more and more people are discovering farmers markets during the pandemic and the many advantages that they present. The greatest tip that I can give them is by buying at the farmers market, theyre getting the best as far as the taste, the vitamin content and the freshness, Carey said of what people should know. The vegetables havent been frozen and shipped over long distances. These vegetables were literally picked last night or this morning, so freshness, taste, and vitamin content is what comes out of a farmers market. To learn more about the Westchase District Farmers Market, go to its Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/westchasedistrictfarmersmarket or website https://westchasedistrictfarmersmarket.com/ elliott.lapin@hearst.com A DUP friend texted me on Thursday morning, wondering if I thought Arlene Foster had reached what he wonderfully described as the "David Trimble Tipping Point Moment". It's a question which former UUP member Foster would understand, because she had previously been one of the party members suggesting that he stand aside for the sake and unity of the party. Had he stepped down in the spring/early summer of 2003 (he hung on for another two years) it is possible that Jeffrey Donaldson would have replaced him and a generation of younger party members, including Foster, would have stayed in the UUP and probably deprived the DUP of its top-dog role. There have been three moments during her time as leader when Foster has had real problems internally. The outcome of the 2017 Assembly election - which saw unionism lose its overall majority for the first time since 1921 and the DUP nudging just 1,200 votes and one seat ahead of Sinn Fein - led to stirrings of discontent and low-level mutterings about her leadership. The mutterings only stopped when the DUP unexpectedly landed a king-maker role in the aftermath of the general election a few months later, followed by the confidence and supply agreement with the Conservatives. It saved her, yet also stored up new problems further down the line. In February 2018, when it looked as though the DUP had conceded an Irish Language Act in return for a rebooted Assembly (the Prime Minister and Taoiseach were pencilled in for a visit to Stormont), Foster was sent a very loud, unambiguous message by her Assembly backbenchers and key players across the party. No room for manoeuvre was offered to her. Any deal involving the Irish language was off the table. Again, there were more murmurings of discontent, with two DUP MLAs telling me that Peter Robinson would never have permitted "such a mess". Indeed, a few months later Robinson gave a public lecture in which he argued leadership requires taking control of a policy and persuading your party of its merits. Foster was sitting a few feet away from him as he made what was widely interpreted as severe criticism of her style and tactics. Her third moment of crisis came in the autumn of 2019 when Boris Johnson and the entire European Reform Group within the parliamentary Conservative Party - in whom Foster had placed so much confidence - betrayed (there really is no other word) her over the Withdrawal Agreement. A few weeks later Nigel Dodds and Emma Pengelly lost their Westminster seats and North Down fell to Alliance. There was a great deal of restlessness across unionism, with many senior figures within the various parties voicing their concerns about the existential threat facing the Union "under Foster's watch". At each of those three moments of crisis Foster survived the internal criticism. She had also weathered what amounted to a possible coup against her by a group including some MPs and MLAs. I wasn't the only commentator or journalist who was briefed of growing internal discontent with her and the "serial damage she is doing to unionism". In the end, of course, nobody lifted or wielded the dagger. Possibly because the plotters weren't assured of a victory, or more likely because even those critical of her didn't really want to deal with the whopping ramifications of a leadership challenge in the middle of the other crises in 2017/18/19. But one thing is clear: Foster's currency was already seriously devalued before this latest crisis. Worse, this is a very public crisis. MLAs and MPs - from across all wings of the party - are not hiding or briefing anonymously. Fair enough it was never likely she would have been defeated in Tuesday's vote, yet that makes it all the more embarrassing and extraordinary that 11 of her MLAs should have chosen to defy her personal wishes and the party whip and abstain on an issue in which she has set so much store. Two other MLAs didn't even turn up. The DUP has 27 MLAS and 13 of them - just shy of 50% - didn't support their leader. Even more extraordinarily they demonstrated a clear preference for the opinion of a former Spad (Richard Bullick - who served both Foster and Peter Robinson) over Foster's own team of advisers and legal experts. They were also more swayed by the arguments of Jim Allister and the UUP's Doug Beattie than by Foster's assurances and reassurances. Had one more DUP MLA stayed away or abstained in person it might well have emboldened someone to finally lift the dagger and indicate a willingness to use it. They still might. Foster knows she cannot take for granted continuing majority support within her parliamentary or Assembly representatives. She will know how quickly and brutally Ian Paisley was toppled in 2008. She will know the huge level of pressure exerted on Peter Robinson to stand down or risk a similar fate in 2015. She will know how quickly and unexpectedly the dynamics around her have shifted. Crucially, she also knows the advice she would have given David Trimble were he in her shoes right now. All of which raises the obvious question: who would wield the dagger? The most obvious contenders are Nigel Dodds, Edwin Poots and Jeffrey Donaldson. Dodds and Poots are probably the easier choices, if only in the sense that Poots is already an MLA and Dodds could easily be found a seat without the need for a by-election. Donaldson would be required to stand down as an MP, which then requires a by-election to replace him (and he would also need an Assembly seat, of course). Lagan Valley should be an easy enough hold for the DUP, although what happened in North Down in December 2019 means that it is no longer bankable. I don't get the sense that Foster thinks she needs to go. Ironically, it's a quality of defiance she shares with Trimble. But she needs to be aware that her problems are very similar to his between 2003-5, when he dithered and clung to the wreckage while internal support withered and key allies stopped surrounding him when he went to the microphones to explain his latest dilemma. It was also interesting yesterday to hear Foster using the same defence she used to criticise him for: "I don't see it as a threat to my leadership when people express opinions. I welcome that actually... (anyway) my colleagues abstained, they did not vote against the bill." I remember her in the UUP laughing at that kind of defence. On Tuesday my hunch was that she was probably safe enough and would likely survive (even though she still deployed allies like Peter Weir and Poots to insist she was safe). Today, though, I'm beginning to think that this really is one crisis too many: the David Trimble Tipping Point Moment, if you like. Lets play the Israel-Palestine impossibility game. Its timely because the two-state peace for which I have long argued is now widely deemed unattainable. The answer, as one of the most thoughtful observers of the conflict, Peter Beinart, has recently argued, must be one state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians, a Jewish home that is not a Jewish state. Beinart, the editor at large of Jewish Currents and a longtime two-state advocate, changed his mind. Yes, its still possible. He gave up a core conviction, based on the evidence. I salute that rare capacity in an America of declaimed certainties, even as I disagree. The impossibility game goes like this: You list the reasons that a two-state outcome is impossible, before listing the reasons that a one-state solution is impossible, and then you decide which of the two is less impossible. As you do so, set aside the fact that history is a catalog of impossible events. Lastly, draw conclusions that reflect the enigma of personal conviction. Here we go. A two-state peace is impossible because the 53-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank has gone too far to be undone; because the conquest has become so accepted that only a handful of Jewish members of the Knesset will even use the word occupation; because Messianic Israeli nationalism, with its claim to all the land between the Mediterranean and Jordan River, has grown inexorably since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a quarter-century ago; because President Trumps United States has given carte blanche to that nationalism through a so-called peace plan contemptuous of viable Palestinian statehood; because Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank is a growing possibility invoked regularly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; because some 640,000 Jewish settlers now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; because the Palestinians have never been weaker; because the Palestinians have never been more abandoned by Arab states; because the Palestinian Authority, a supposedly interim form of self-government, has become the corrupt, undemocratic agent of Palestinian emasculation; because the infrastructure and economy of Israeli dominion are irreversible; because power on the Israeli side corrupts and powerlessness for Palestinians leads to the chimera of victimhood; because young Palestinians now prefer the one-state idea; because Israelis, post-Oslo, have other things on their minds. Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva tested positive for Covid-19, his office announced on Saturday. Grijalva, a Democrat whose district includes parts of the Phoenix and Tucson areas, as well as much of the state's border region with Mexico, is self-isolating in the Washington, D.C., area, according to spokesman Geoff Nolan. In a statement, the congressman criticized some other members of Congress for not taking the virus seriously and he praised House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to require masks. "While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some Members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously," Grijalva said in the statement. "Numerous Republican members routinely strut around the Capitol without a mask to selfishly make a political statement at the expense of their colleagues, staff, and their families." The news about Grijalva's positive test was first reported by the Arizona Republic, which said that Grijalva presided over a committee meeting on Tuesday that included Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert. Gohmert announced on Wednesday that he had tested positive for the virus. Grijalva appears to be the 12th member of Congress to test positive for Covid-19. There have been more than 4.5 million confirmed cases of the virus and at least 153,000 deaths in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Astronomers have confirmed Antarctica's Dome A, where China's Kunlun Station is located, as an observatory site with optimal seeing. Seeing is one of the important parameters for selecting an observatory site. Astronomers can obtain clearer star photos at sites where the seeing value is smaller. A research team from the National Astronomical Observatories, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, measured the night-time seeing at Dome A in Antarctica with a median value of 0.31 arcseconds, with optimal seeing reaching 0.13 arcseconds. Generally, the median values at the best sites in Hawaii and northern Chile are in the range of 0.6 to 0.8 arcseconds, which indicates that the Kunlun Station is a superior astronomical observatory site. The results lay a scientific foundation for China's further astronomical research in Antarctica. Kunlun Station is located in Dome A, the highest point of the Antarctic inland ice sheet with an altitude of more than 4,000 meters. Built in 2009, it is China's first Antarctic expedition station. The study was published in the journal Nature. Researchers from Australia and Canada also contributed to the research. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie and Dyaning Pangestika (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 The National Police have brought Djoko Soegiarto Tjandra, a fugitive and graft convict who had been on the run for 11 years, back to Indonesia after arresting him in Malaysia on Thursday. Guarded by personnel of the police's Criminal Investigation Unit (Bareskrim), Djoko, who was handcuffed and wearing an orange shirt, arrived at Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport in East Jakarta on Thursday evening. He was immediately taken to Bareskrims headquarters, where he is currently being detained. Bareskrim head Comr. Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo said the arrest had been made possible through cooperation between Indonesian police and their Malaysian counterparts. 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 South Korea has arrested a leader of a religious sect Shincheonji Church of Jesus - Lee Man-hee - linked to the country's largest COVID-19 outbreak, BBC reported. Over 5,000 members of the sect tested positive - this is 36% of confirmed COVID-19 cases. The country's authorities accuse the sect leader of concealing information about the meetings of the organization's members, as well as their possible contacts with carriers of the infection. Lee was arrested on Saturday following an investigation. According to the court, there were signs of the destruction of the necessary evidence in the case. South Korea has confirmed a total of 14,336 COVID-19 cases, while the death toll is about 300. New Delhi, Aug 1 : Actor Amit Sadh describes his meeting with Indian Army Chief MM Naravane in the Capital as a life-changing and life-defining moment. "I had the privilege of meeting the COAS (Chief of the Army Staff). It was a life-changing, life-defining moment to be sitting across the man, whose vision and knowledge saves us," Amit said. "We spoke about my career, my passion for the armed forces and the uniform. He congratulated me and gave me best wishes for my series 'Avrodh'. I also had the opportunity to discuss a few stories from the Army that inspired me. The moments spent with him and the knowledge gained will be cherished for life. This is the biggest honour of my life and I'm very grateful," he added. Amit also shared a photograph from the meeting on his Twitter handle. In the image, both wear masks. "Good Evening Everyone! Yesterday had the Privilege & Singular Honour to meet Our COAS Gen MM Naravane. It was a Life Changing Moment. Words of Encouragement coming from him is a Great Blessing one can only dream of. Thank You So Much Sir. Jai Hind," Amit wrote with the picture. In the web series "Avrodh: The Siege Within", Amit has the central role of Major Tango, an on-screen version of the real-life hero who spearheaded the mission. The show is directed by Raj Acharya with Samar Khan as the show runner, and it also features Darshan Kumar, Pavail Gulati, Neeraj Kabi, Madhurima Tuli, Anant Mahadevan, Vikram Gokhale and Arif Zakaria. "Avrodh: The Siege Within" is inspired from the September 2016 Uri attacks and is based on a chapter from Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh's book "India's Most Fearless". The 10-part series went live on an OTT platform on July 31. Jaisa Johnson was born fighting. She came into the world at just 27-weeks-old- 13 weeks premature. Johnson, the daughter of Resheeda Rhines and Jeremy Johnson, made her alarmingly early debut on Jan. 20. Jaisa Johnson was rushed to the Houston Methodist Childbirth Center at Sugar Lands Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Related: Memorial Parks new Eastern Glades puts visitors in awe Johnson is the first baby born severely premature to be treated in Houston Methodist Sugar Lands NICU. Until recently, Methodists NICU lacked the equipment to care for such a high-risk infant. Premature babies born in Fort Bend County like Johnson would have been transferred to Texas Childrens Hospital in Harris County. For families like Johnsons, who live in Sugar Land, the trek back and forth to see their child was a struggle. Related: What happens if divorced parents dont agree on COVID-19 learning? In years past, babies born as early as Jaisa would have been transferred to Texas Childrens for more specialized care, said Kaelyn Bujnoch, a representative from Houston Methodist Hospital Sugar Land. However, now Houston Methodist Sugar Lands NICU - soon to be classified Level III, the only one in Fort Bend - is capable of providing complex, round-the-clock care for infants born at less than 32-weeks gestational age or who weigh less than 3.3 pounds, as well as any critically ill newborn. Johnson is the first baby to graduate from the NICU, as the hospital has only recently upgraded to a Level III NICU. We have been preparing and working to earn Level III designation for some time, so we were pleased that we were able to keep Jaisa close to home and near her parents, said board certified neonatologist Dr. Shaeequa Dasnadi medical director of the Houston Methodist Childbirth Centers NICU. Having a Level III NICU in Fort Bend is a tremendous benefit to families with premature infants. It can take several weeks or months before a premature baby is able to go home and being close by removes a great deal of the stress, time and travel involved for parents. When Johnson was healthy enough to go home, Houston Methodist Childbirth Center staff surprised her parents with a special celebration. Once word got out that we were planning a celebration for Jaisa, there was no stopping the kindness and generosity of our Houston Methodist Sugar Land family, said Terri Walters, NICU manager. We had an outpouring of support from not only the NICU staff, but also from all of the teams that worked together to get Jaisa home - nurses, occupational and physical therapists, respiratory therapists, physicians, nurse practitioners, patient liaisons and more. It was an amazing show of love. claire.goodman@chron.com Isaias, previously a Category 1 hurricane, delivered torrential rains and high winds to the Bahamas Friday before heading toward Florida, according to forecasters. Early Saturday evening, Isaias was downgraded to a tropical storm. PHOTO: A resident carries full gas containers at Cooper's gas station before the arrival of Hurricane Isaias in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, July 31, 2020. (Tim Aylen/AP) Forecasters predict the storm will travel northwest and arrive in southeast Florida on Saturday and Sunday. Parts of the state could see 2 to 4 inches of rain, with isolated maximum totals of 6 inches, according to the current forecast. PHOTO: Storm clouds are seen over the city as Hurricane Isaias approaches the east coast of Florida, on August 01, 2020, in Miami. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) "These rainfall amounts could result in isolated flash and urban flooding, especially in low-lying and poorly drained areas," the National Hurricane Center said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Friday that he's declared a state of emergency in every coastal county on the east side of the state, from Miami-Dade to Nassau Counties. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam also declared a state of emergency in advance of the storm, which is expected to affect parts of coastal Virginia starting on Monday. Here's how the news is developing. All times Eastern. Please refresh for the latest updates. 5 p.m.: Isaias downgraded With sustained winds of approximately 70 mph, Isaias was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm early Saturday evening. The storm's movement has slowed a bit, with Isaias now heading northwest at about 10 mph. The storm's center is about 115 miles southeast of Fort Lauderdale. It's possible the storm could regain strength overnight and transform back into a hurricane. 2 p.m.: Isaias batters Bahamas but slightly weakens As of 2 p.m. ET, Isaias remains a minimal Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds now at 75 mph. It is moving NW at 12 mph and the center is currently about 140 miles SE of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There is now the chance that Isaias could weaken to a tropical storm at some point later today, according to forecasters. Little change in strength is forecast over the next 24 hours as Isaias moves near the east coast of Florida later tonight through Sunday. Story continues Isaias will then race up the East Coast Monday into Tuesday, continuing to weaken, but likely remaining a tropical storm bringing heavy rain and gusty winds up the coast early next week. In the coming hours and into this evening, more of the outer bands will begin to impact the south Florida coast with downpours and gusty winds. Sunday morning, the storm will pass near the southeast coast of Florida, bringing areas of heavy rain and strong winds. The magnitude of the impacts will come down to how close the storm actually gets to the coast tomorrow. Right now there it looks like wind gusts of 40 to 60+ mph will be possible right along the coast, from West Palm Beach to Jupiter and Port St. Lucie, Florida. 11:04 a.m.: Isaias makes landfall on Northern Andros Island in the Bahamas The brunt of Isaias is hitting northern Andros, New Providence, (including Nassau) and other parts of the central/northwestern Bahamas right now. Heavy rain, strong winds and storm surge will continue to impact these areas and overspread the rest of the northwestern Bahamas through the afternoon hours. As of 11 a.m. ET, Isaias remains a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds at 80 mph. It is moving NW at 12 mph and the center is currently about 135 miles SSE of Freeport, Grand Bahamas Island. In the U.S., a tropical storm watch has now been issued for portions of the southeast coast of Georgia. A hurricane /tropical storm warning remains in effect along most of the east coast of Florida. Further decrease in forward speed is forecast over the next 24 hours, with little change in strength expected as Isaias moves near the east coast of the Florida Peninsula tonight through Sunday. 10:43 a.m.: North Carolina governor declares state of emergency North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency in preperation for Hurricane Isaias. The declaration allows trucks and supplies to move where help is needed. The state's Emergency Operations Center -- already activated for COVID-19 -- is preparing for the storm as well, and state and local response teams are at the ready. "Although the track and arrival of the hurricane could still change, now is the time for North Carolinians to prepare," said Gov. Cooper. "Hurricane preparations will be different given the COVID-19 pandemic, and families need to keep that in mind as they get ready." The current forecast is for Hurricane Isaias to increase in intensity over the next 24 hours. The storm shifted west Friday afternoon, and its speed and path indicate it could reach North Carolina as early as Monday, making its greatest impact Monday night and Tuesday. However, the state is already seeing signs of the storm with high risk of dangerous rip currents along the coast, and the danger of tropical storm force winds is increasing. The North Carolina National Guard has 75 guardsman and high-water vehicles on standby should they be activated to respond. The state's Department of Transportation has more than 1,800 personnel, 1,550 pieces of equipment and more than 1,000 chainsaws ready to respond if needed. They have also suspended passenger ferry today, began voluntary evacuations of Ocracoke, waived tolls on evacuation routes, and are preparing facilities and mooring plans for vessels for storm conditions. Some local governments have already issued evacuation orders. While the state is still combating the COVID-19 pandemic, the state is urging people to make every effort to stay with family and friends, or even a hotel, as a first option. The state will coordinate shelters for those who need to evacuate. 9 a.m.: President approves Federal Disaster Declaration ahead of Isaias During a press conference Saturday morning, Florida Gov. DeSantis said that the president signed a Federal Disaster Declaration in expectation of Hurricane Isaias. On Friday, DeSantis signed an executive order for a state of emergency for every coastal Florida county on the East Coast yesterday. Twelve Floria counties have declared a state of emergency. The Division of Emergency Management is sending 25 shelter kits with PPE to counties in the path of the storm. Each kit provides PPE for up to 400 people for 96 hours, the governor said. PHOTO: Legislative Assistant Ryan Fernandez, puts sand bags in a resident's car trunk in Palmetto Bay near Miami, on July 31, 2020, as Floridians prepare for Hurricane Isaias while a State of Emergency has been declared for 19 Counties. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images) "The State of Florida is fully prepared for this," DeSantis said and that his administration has been in contact with local area hospitals. The hospitals aren't anticipating the need to evacuate patients at this time, but one smaller hospital is going to move some COVID patients to another hospital in Brevard county. DeSantis said everyone in Isaias' path "should have enough food, water and medicine for seven days" and said there is still time to get supplies. 7:53 a.m.: Hurricane Isaias has winds of 85 mph, approaching Florida later today. Hurricane Isais remains a Category 1 storm sustaining winds of 80 mph. The hurricane's eye is near Andros Island Bahamas. Isaias is expected to move through the Bahamas today and near Florida tonight into Sunday. Forecasts warn of a dangerous storm surge. Heavy rains are a main concern as Isaias nears the Florida coast. The storm is expected to run up the East Coast and impact the Carolinas, the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Significant rainfall in the Carolinas and the major Northeast cities is expected. ABC News' Alexandra Faul, Jason Volack and Daniel Peck contributed to this report. Live updates: Isaias, heading for Florida, downgraded to tropical storm originally appeared on abcnews.go.com The full moon is the lunar phase when the moon appears in its full illuminated state from the Earth. The full moon occurs when Earth is located between the Sun and moon. So when the moon and the lunar hemisphere is facing the Earth, it is completely sunlit. This further makes it appear as a circular disk. The next full will appear on August 3rd. Here are more details about it. Read Also | Mars' Two Small Moons Phobos And Deimos Huge 'mystery' For Scientists When is the next full moon? When will the next full moon appear? As mentioned above also, the next full moon will appear on August 3rd 2020. According to NASAs website, the full moon will be midday on Monday and appear opposite the Sun (in Earth-based longitude) at 11:59 AM EDT. The moon will appear full for about three days centred around this time from late Saturday night through early Wednesday morning. What is August full moon name? Sturgeon Moon The Green Corn Moon The Raksha Bandhan Moon Nikini Poya Green Corn Moon Barley Moon Fruit Moon Grain Moon. Augusts full moon is known as the Sturgeon Moon in North America. The Sturgeon Moon is named after the sturgeon, which is a large freshwater fish found in those areas. However, Augusts full moon can be called by other names as well. Like Green Corn Moon, Barley Moon, Fruit Moon or Grain Moon. The full moon on August 3rd corresponds with the Hindu festival Raksha Bandhan, which celebrates the bond between brothers and sisters. This full moon also corresponds with the Nikini Poya festival which is celebrated in Sri Lanka. The Nikini Poya commemorates the first Buddhist council which occurred 2,400 years ago, sometime around 400 BCE. Read Also | Sushant Singh Rajput Was The First Bollywood Star To Buy Land On The Moon, Details Here What will August 3rd full moon look like? It has been reported by a media portal that Sturgeon Moon will appear orangey as it rises in the sky. The reason behind that is that the Sun seems orange during sunset. Earths atmosphere is densest near its surface, therefore, objects seen close to the horizon have their blue light scattered. This results in a reddish tine and so when the moon gets higher in the sky, its colouration will fade to its normal greyish-white hue. It has also been reported that the moon will also get incredibly bright. So bright that one will have trouble looking at a full moon for more than a few seconds barely an hour after moonrise. Read Also | Apollo 15 Astronauts Drove First Man-made Car On Moon On This Day In 1971, Details Inside Read Also | Does Mars Have Moons? Know Whether The Red Planet Has Moons Image credits: Unsplash Irina Iriser Hundreds of anti-racism protesters took over one of Lisbons main squares on Friday to demand justice for Bruno Cande, a Black actor shot dead in a busy street last weekend. Cande, 39 and of Guinean origin, was shot several times by a white man in his eighties at Avenida de Moscavide, around 10 km from Lisbons city centre, according to police. A suspect was detained and is awaiting trial. Portugals criminal investigation police agency, the PJ, has not confirmed what motivated the attack. Candes family said in a statement on Saturday the suspect had threatened to kill him three days before the shooting and used racist slurs. Why are we here and unable to live in peace? We are working, paying our taxes. Why are they always killing black people? 32-year-old protester Sofia Rodrigues asked among the crowd. During the peaceful demonstration, protesters wearing masks due to the coronavirus outbreak held signs saying Justice! and Racism kills! In Guinea-Bissau, lawmakers passed a motion saying the murder was racially motivated and said they would send a delegation to discover what happened to Cande. The case has put a spotlight on racism in Portugal, including frictions with police. From authorities to day-to-day life, Portugal remains a racist country, said 65-year-old Eduardo Henriques who also at the protest. Also read: Ankita Lokhande says Sanjay Leela Bhansali offered Sushant Singh Rajput many films, Aditya Chopra was very supportive Europes main rights forum, the Council of Europe, said in a 2018 report there were numerous serious accusations of racist violence by Portuguese police. Last year, a court found eight officers guilty of kidnapping and beating up six young people from Cova da Moura, a predominantly black neighbourhood in the outskirts of Lisbon. There are several poor neighbourhoods around the capital where migrants mostly from Portugals African ex-colonies live. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop "They are doing a fantastic job and have been working really well with us. "Of course it is possible that the workforce there has relations with other workers in other aged care facilities so the Chief Health Officer will later today be issuing further directions to protect residents in other aged-care facility across the city and northern Gold Coast." Dr Young said the Bolton Clarke home was a "superb facility" that "could not be better set up for a situation like this". "All of the residents have their own private bedroom with an ensuite bathroom and the staff are absolutely superb," she said. "To the relatives of those residents who must be very, very, very concerned; I assure them that their loved ones are receiving the best possible care and I have no concerns about that. Viram Shah Over the past decade, investors across the world have increasingly started taking into consideration the non-financial impact of companies that they invest in. One demographic that has led this trend is the millennials. According to a 2006 study called the Cone Millennial Cause Study, millennials are more likely to trust a company or purchase a company's products when the company has a reputation of being socially or environmentally responsible. Half of those surveyed are more likely to turn down a product or service from a company perceived to be socially or environmentally irresponsible. Overall, this emphasis on the societal impact of a company has led to the popularisation of a new way of investing called ESG investing. What exactly is ESG investing? ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. ESG investing refers to a class of investing also known as sustainable investing. The goal for an ESG investor is to seek financial returns along with a positive long-term impact on society and the environment. ESG are three central factors in measuring the sustainability and ethical impact of a company. Environmental factors determine a company's impact on the environment and focus on waste and pollution, resource depletion, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, deforestation, and climate change. Social factors look at how a company treats people and focuses on employee relations and diversity, working conditions, local communities, health and safety, and conflict. Governance factors take a look at corporate policies and how a company is governed. How can one invest in ESG funds in the US markets? Today ESG investing is estimated at over $20 trillion in AUM or a quarter of all professionally managed assets around the world. Over time ESG investing has evolved from funds that simply screened out undesirable companies like polluters or sellers of tobacco to strategies that apply a matrix of sophisticated screens to assess the best and worst players in every industry and actively seek to have a positive impact in many ways. What started with a few ESG specialist firms has now become so widespread that nearly every reputed asset management company has multiple ESG funds. There are a total of 350 ESG funds and ETFs available in the US. Vanguard offers two ETFs called ESG US Stock ETF (ESGV) and ESG International Stock ETF (VSGX). Combined these ETFs have an asset base of $2 billion. Additionally, Vanguard also offers an actively managed mutual fund called Global ESG Select Stock Fund that includes 40 50 stocks in its portfolio. Some of the global companies that are included in these funds are Microsoft, Merk & Co, Starbucks, DBS Group, TSMC, and Starbucks. How is India poised in terms of ESG investing? India is still in the early days of ESG investing. But interest in the space has been increasing. There are a couple of mutual funds that have launched ESG funds in recent times such as the Axis ESG fund and the SBI Magnum Equity ESG Fund. One of the challenges with ESG investing in India is that finding companies that score well on the environment and governance standards can be difficult. As we have seen with the banking sector fiascos, even large listed companies face governance issues. Further, environmental impact is often overlooked when making key business decisions. The impact of COVID-19 on ESG investing COVID was the first big test for ESG supporters across the world and data seems to indicate that it passed the test with flying colours. Across Europe, sustainable funds saw 30 billion euro invested in the first three months of 2020, compared with outflows of 148 billion euro across European-based funds overall. Redemptions of 3.9 billion euro from ESG funds in March turned into inflows of almost 12 billion euro in April. Furthermore, according to research published by BlackRock in May, sustainable strategies have outperformed during this period of intense volatility, with 94 percent of a globally representative selection of widely-analysed sustainable indices outperforming their parent benchmarks in the first quarter of 2020. Now even Indians can participate in ESG investing and invest in sustainability. With direct investing in the US markets now possible via several platforms, one can open a brokerage account in the US and invest in ESG funds. The author is CEO and Co-Founder at Vested Finance. : 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. Kate Greene knows better than most what its like to live on Mars. As a member of NASAs inaugural 2013 HI-SEAS project, she spent four months in a simulated Martian environment on Hawaiis Mauna Loa. In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Greene examines humanitys yearning for space travel through the lens of her own experience and explores, not just the cold, technical capabilities needed to get us to Mars, but also the human element that will allow us to thrive on the Red Planet once we get there. In the excerpt below, Greene posits what NASA might look like today had the agency not gotten its start as an elite boys club. St Martin's Press From ONCE UPON A TIME I LIVED ON MARS by Kate Greene. Copyright 2020 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martins Publishing Group. On February 2, 1960, Look magazine ran a cover story that asked Should a Girl Be First in Space? It was a sensational headline representing an audacious idea at the time. And, as we all know, the proposal fell short. In 1961, NASA sent Alan Shepard above the stratosphere, followed by dozens of other American spacemen over the next two decades. Only in 1983 did Sally Ride become Americas first woman to launch. A certain kind of person might be compelled to ask, why would anyone think a woman should be the first to space, anyway? And to this person I would say, expert medical opinion, for starters. Women have fewer heart attacks than men, and in the 1950s and 60s, scientists speculated that their reproductive systems were more protected from radiation from space than mens because they are on the inside. Whats more, psychological studies suggested that women cope better than men in isolation and when deprived of sensory inputs. But there was another, possibly more compelling reason that women might outshine men as potential astronauts: basic economics. Thanks to their size, women are, on average, cheaper to launch and fly than men for the simple fact that they need less food. I verified this firsthand. During the mission, part of my job was to collect and manage the crews sleep data. One device used to track sleep was a sensor armband, which, in addition to sleep data and activity logging, also estimated daily and weekly calorie expenditure. Every week, sitting at the table where we ate our meals, Id dump the sensor data into my computer. While I didnt know which numbers belonged to which subject, due to anonymity requirements, I could see each subjects F or M. Over time I noticed a trend. Sian, Yajaira, and I consistently used fewer than half the calories of Angelo, Simon, and Oleg. Fewer than half! Consider the numbers. During one week in particular, the most metabolically active male burned an average of 3,450 calories per day while the least metabolically active female went through 1,475. Overall, it was rare for a woman on the crew to use 2,000 calories and common for male crewmembers to exceed 3,000. We were all exercising roughly the same amountat least forty-five minutes a day for five consecutive days as per our exercise protocol, most of us ardent followers of Tony Hortons P90X workoutsbut our metabolic furnaces were calibrated in radically different ways. Another observation: at mealtime, Sian, Yajaira, and I took smaller portions than Angelo, Simon, and Oleg, all three of whom often went back for seconds. I also remember that one of the guys complained how hard it was to maintain his weight, despite the piles of food he was eating. It all got me thinking about economics and gravity. Astronauts calorie requirements matter when planning a mission. The more food a person needs to maintain their weight on a long space journey, the more food should be launched with them. The more food launched, the heavier the payload. The heavier the payload, the more fuel required to blast it into orbit and beyond. Further, the more fuel required, the heavier the whole rocket becomes which, in turn, requires more fuel to launch. This means every pound counts on the way to space. A conundrum, but a predictable one, thanks to math. The rocket equation was first derived by a British mathematician in 1813, and later independently discovered again and applied to hypothetical space travelby the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1903. Its the equation that guides all decisions around how heavy payloads, and even rockets themselves, can be. A mission to Mars crewed only with women would, on average, require less than half the food mass of a mission crewed only with men. But in any scenario, the more women you fly, the less food you need. You save mass, fuel, and money. When I mentioned my proposal at dinner one night, one of my male crewmates grumpily dismissed it. I figured I was onto something. Our selection for HI-SEAS and the supplies we brought into that dome, including food, had nothing to do with the rocket equation. And of course the question of female astronaut suitability had long been answered. This meant that we were chosen, more or less, in the same way all NASA astronauts are chosen. Fundamentally, they must have the same baseline: be a documented U.S. citizen with at least a bachelors degree in science, math, or engineering and have worked at least three years in their field or have flown at least one thousand hours as a jet pilot. These requirements might make sense to you. Its a technical job. Potential astronauts should have proven their rationality and ability to handle the rigors of a machine dominated environment. This kind of educational prerequisite is a shorthand that says yes they can. But Ive often wondered about all the people who might have made very fine astronautscar mechanics, inventors, oil-rig workers, sculptors, clergy, EMTs, truck drivers, novelists, designers, plumbers, philosopherswho never got a chance. What would the history of spaceflight have looked like if it wasnt just formally educated scientists, engineers, and pilots invited to the party? In any case, I was qualified, but barely. My undergraduate degree is in chemistry, and I have a masters degree in physics. And though I never worked as a physicist after graduate schoolI went straight to science journalismI did take three years to complete my masters rather than the usual two because, as a chemistry major, I needed to make up some undergraduate physics courses. I dont know if the HI-SEAS selection committee considered journalism as relevant experience in addition to my three years in graduate school. In 2015, NASA put out a call for astronauts, and I thought I might as well give it one last shot. I didnt make it past the first round. It made me wonder if the agency or, more specifically, the algorithm programmed by those at the agency to sort through the 18,300 applications, a flood three times the size of the previous hiring round in 2011, operates with a fairly narrow definition of professional astronaut experience so that a journalisteven one with a background in science and time on Marswould always be a no-go. The group that came out the other end of NASAs hiring process two years later was made up of five women and seven men. Most had flight time, many in some branch of the military. Some were scientists, some were doctors, all seemed to be firing on all cylinders and had been for much of their young lives. Reading through their bios, what I read was ambition, and a lot of it. And it wasnt the usual American kind, either, that ambition for money. After all, the most financially hungry among us rarely go into science. Fewer still join the military. Its a different kind of ambition that propels people to NASA, something to do with glory, maybe, or perhaps a sense of something to prove, though Im sure its different for everyone. And while NASA pulls from the military, and the military often pulls from particular segments of the countrys population, I couldnt help but think, looking at those bios, of James Baldwins observation that ambition isnt equally distributed in America. In addressing his nephew in The Fire Next Time, Baldwin writes, You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. This was what it was to be black and born in Harlem, Baldwin writes in 1962. This sentiment, and the rightful anger behind it, also may apply to many other nonwhite Americans in other cities and rural towns today, to those born in poverty, to those who lack documentation. There are so many excellent people in this country, living now and throughout history, who have had their ambitions blunted before they could even get started, who have been told that they are not what America is looking for. What of the almost-astronauts or those who never even thought to give it a try? What might they have contributed to humanitys grand space endeavor? How might they have shaped it differently, for everyone? Staring into a computer monitor at the talking heads of defense attorneys, defendants, prosecutors, jurors and witnesses Friday, Court-at-Law Judge Rosie Speedlin-Gonzalez presided over the inaugural session of a specialty court for first-time domestic abuse offenders with drug problems. Its called the Reflejo Court reflection in Spanish and it offers adults charged with Class A misdemeanors for assault of a spouse or family member the chance to get their cases dismissed if they plead guilty and agree to a year of close court supervision. Among other things, the defendant must agree to random drug testing, individual and group counseling, and a $1,000 court services fee on completion of the program. When Speedlin-Gonzalez first contemplated such a program as a child welfare attorney, she never thought shed be conducting court from her chambers via Zoom, a concession to the coronavirus pandemic. Fridays session wasnt a hearing or a trial. Speedlin-Gonzalez, who presides over County Court-at-Law No. 13, called it an introduction or welcome for four defendants whom court personnel, public defenders and private attorneys thought would be good candidates for the Reflejo program. They had to meet a host of criteria, and two of them ended up being rejected Friday. It turned out that one man was the subject of a hold by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A woman in her 20s was rejected because she didnt really have a substance abuse issue, Speedlin-Gonzalez said. A 39-year-old woman who was accepted has two children and a night job at a bank. The judge thought she would be highly motivated to keep her job and do right by her children. A 34-year-old man who was accepted has a 9-year-old son and was accused of assaulting his wife. Well put him in the program, Speedlin-Gonzalez said, because of his son and our interest in breaking the cycle of violence. So many offenders were beaten as children or lived a childhood where violence, screaming and verbal threats were commonplace. Formally known as the Bexar County Domestic Violence Pilot Program, the Reflejo Court has been funded with $100,000 from Commissioners Court and $68,000 from the Alamo Area Council of Governments. It was authorized by the Legislature. The fledgling program joins numerous specialty courts and dockets, each focused on a particular type of offense or offender. They include Adult Drug Court, DWI Court, Mental Health Court and Veterans Treatment Court (Misdemeanor). Speedlin-Gonzalez said research indicates domestic violence often starts with verbal abuse and escalates. When we see them in this court, it may not be the first time theyve ever had a domestic violence issue, she said, but its the first time theyve been handcuffed and charged We have put so much time and money into domestic abuse prevention, but we still have record numbers of cases. We have to address the behavior and catch it upstream so we dont have to deal with the tsunami of cases downstream. The programs team of advisers will meet every two weeks to propose new participants, and they hope to have a graduating class of about 25 by late this year or early 2021. Not every domestic abuse defendant is a good fit for the programs rigorous requirements. If you dont have the right kind of defendant, attorney Melanie Lira said, you could be setting them up for failure. What if he fouls up half-way through and they send him back before the judge and they reimpose his guilty plea? If that happens, the defendant returns to the traditional criminal justice environment, where he can attempt to plea bargain with a prosecutor or try his luck before a judge or jury. Speedlin-Gonzalez said she hopes the reservations some defense attorneys might have about Reflejo Court would disappear when they see how the court, its staff and advisers operate. This is the stick and the carrot, she said. Its a huge opportunity for getting a case dismissed that would have given you lifelong problems if you had a conviction. bselcraig@express-news.net Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 23:08:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. - - - - DOHA -- The Qatari health ministry on Saturday announced 216 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Gulf state to 110,911, official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported. Meanwhile, 201 more recovered from the virus, bringing the total recoveries to 107,578, while the death toll remained 174, according to a ministry statement quoted by QNA. - - - - NEW YORK -- The United States has reported a further 67,000 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the country's total number of infections to 4,562,170, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Meanwhile, the country's death toll has climbed by 1,259 to reach 53,320. - - - - KUWAIT CITY -- Kuwait on Saturday reported 491 new COVID-19 cases and six more deaths, raising the tally of infections to 67,448 and the death toll to 453, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Currently, 8,470 patients are receiving treatment, including 134 in ICU, the statement added. - - - - YEREVAN -- Armenia on Saturday reported 291 new COVID-19 cases, bringing its total to 38,841, according to the National Center for Disease Control. Data from the center showed that 560 patients recovered in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 29,557. - - - - TOKYO -- The number of COVID-19 cases in Japan increased by 1,536 to reach 37,925 on Saturday amid a resurgence of infections across the country, according to Japan's health ministry and local governments. The total number of infections excludes 712 from the virus-hit Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama earlier in the year. - - - - HONG KONG -- Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Leung Chun-ying on Saturday lashed out at Hong Kong opposition for placing politics above public health as they criticized the postponement of the 2020 Legislative Council (LegCo) General Election of the HKSAR. Hong Kong is being hit by the third round of COVID-19 outbreak, with the daily new cases exceeding 100 for over 10 days and the source of infection of many cases remaining unknown, Leung said on social media, noting that all large group events have been postponed or canceled as a result. - - - - DHAKA -- Abiding by the recommended health advice to prevent the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladeshi Muslims with the spirit of sacrifice on Saturday celebrated Eid-al-Adha, one of the two major festivals in the country, but refrained from traditional hugs, embraces and handshakes with each other. Long lines of Muslims have been seen since Saturday morning in front of the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka for Eid prayers. Enditem This Week in Iran Policy Fact Sheet Office of the Spokesperson July 31, 2020 "Today, I expanded the scope of Iran metals sanctions targeting Iran's nuclear, military, and ballistic missile programs. Knowingly transferring any of these 22 metals to Iran is now sanctionable. Our pressure will continue until Iran behaves like a normal nation." Secretary Pompeo, Tweet, July 30, 2020 STATEMENT BY SECRETARY POMPEO ON THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF IRAN METALS SANCTIONS TARGETING IRAN'S NUCLEAR, MILITARY, AND BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAMS AND THE IRGC, JULY 30. Iran's nuclear, ballistic missile, and military programs pose a grave threat to international peace and security. To address these threats, I am announcing a major expansion of the scope of State Department-administered Iran metals-related sanctions. Today, the State Department is identifying 22 specific materials used in connection with Iran's nuclear, military, or ballistic missile programs. Those who knowingly transfer such materials to Iran are now sanctionable pursuant to Section 1245 of the Iranian Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act. Under the same provision of law, I am continuing my determination that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls Iran's construction sector. The IRGC's construction firm and many of its subsidiaries remain sanctioned by the United Nations because they were directly involved in the construction of the uranium enrichment site at Fordow. As a result of this IRGC determination, any knowing transfer of certain materials, including graphite or raw or semi-finished metals, to or from Iran to be used in connection with the construction sector of Iran remains sanctionable. The 22 materials I have determined are used in connection with Iran's nuclear, military, or ballistic missile programs are here. SECRETARY POMPEO'S REMARKS BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE, JULY 30. First, securing the American people's freedoms against authoritarian threats; securing American lives during the pandemic; and helping friends across the world secure those very unalienable rights. On authoritarian threats, we have evaluated the world with the same realism that the American founders did. We see the Islamic Republic of Iran for what it is: an aggressor, not a victim. We've gone full bore on our maximum pressure campaign. Since May of 2018, we've slashed the vital oil revenues the regime uses for terrorism and illegal nuclear activities by 90 percent. We've rallied nations to our side through diplomacy witness the designations of Hizballah from European and South American countries. And we've bolstered our military readiness vis-a-vis Tehran. There's more work to do. The Security Council must renew the UN arms embargo against Iran before it expires on October 18th. Iran already mines ships in the Strait of Hormuz, launches missiles at Saudi oil facilities, and ships arms to the Houthis. Should the Security Council fail to act, Iran will have a freer hand to sow destruction across the Middle East, and indeed the world. For the entirety of remarks, please see here. SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR IRAN AND SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE SECRETARY BRIAN HOOK TRAVELED TO TUNISIA, QATAR, AND KUWAIT TO DISCUSS EXTENDING THE UN ARMS EMBARGO ON IRAN, JULY 27. On July 24-26, Special Representative for Iran and Senior Advisor to the Secretary Brian Hook traveled to Tunisia, Qatar, and Kuwait to discuss extending the UN arms embargo on Iran, which is scheduled to expire on October 18, 2020. In Tunisia, Special Representative Hook met with Foreign Minister Noureddine Erray. He discussed the range of threats Iran poses to international peace and security and requested Tunisia's support as a non-permanent member of the Security Council to extend the arms embargo. In Qatar and Kuwait, Special Representative Hook discussed the need to extend the arms embargo to preclude a regional arms race and halt Iran's destabilizing activities in the region. He also emphasized the benefits of regional cooperation and reiterated the need for members of the Gulf Cooperation Council to take steps to rebuild trust and restore unity. In Doha, he met with Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al Thani. In Kuwait City, he met with His Highness Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al Hamad Al Sabah and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Ahmad Nasser al-Mohammad Al Sabah. Special Representative Hook traveled to Estonia and the United Kingdom on July 28-29 for consultations with our European allies. NOTABLE TWEETS @SecPompeo July 30 The Iranian regime is fixated on a hateful, bankrupt ideology. While the leaders of normal nations promote the prosperity of their people, the current regime promotes division and anti-Semitism. Iranians deserve better. @StateDeputySPOX July 30 @SecPompeo announced that knowingly transferring graphite or raw or semi-finished metal to Iran's IRGC-controlled construction sector is sanctionable. We haven't forgotten that the IRGC's construction firm built the uranium enrichment site at Fordow. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kenyan wildlife caretaker and guide, Jemu Mwenda, bittersweetly recounts one of his favorite memories of Sudan, the male northern white rhino who died two years ago, making headlines across the world. Sudan was the last northern white male rhino known to exist, explains Mwenda who works at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a wildlife centre in Kenya. One evening, while feeding him, I saw him dropping tears, and that made me ask myself: Why would he be crying? He continues: People may think that animals dont have feelings, but when I looked Sudan in his eyes, I felt the pain he was going through. Its not easy being the last of your kind on our planet. I think the emptiness of extinction, which means forever, and never coming back, is tragic. It is a void that would have made Sudan feel very sad. This really transformed me and helped me know I have a responsibility to be his voice. Mr. Mwenda reflected poignantly on the extinction of white male rhinos. In May 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed that approximately 1 million plant and animal species were in dire danger of extinction. Based in Bonn, Germany, the IBES works to strengthen the link between science and policy on issues related to biodiversity and ecosystem services. A merciless chase Rhinos have especially been victims of a merciless chase by poachers. The Ol Pejeta Conservancy is home to the two remaining northern white females20-year-old Fatu and 30-year-old Najin. What makes these gentle giants susceptible to poaching? Mr. Mwenda explains that poachers target rhinos for their horns that are made of keratinthe same component in human nails and hair. Though the sale of rhino horns was banned by the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) since 1977, its purported curative properties sustains its demand in the Far East. Theyre very prized, he says, especially [as it is believed that properties from rhino horns] can treat cancer, influenza, convulsions, and even act as an aphrodisiac. Theyre also used as status symbols. A kilo can fetch $60,000 - $65,000 in the Asian black market, he adds. People are willing to pay any price for their health. The chase for rhino horns began since the 1960s. At that time the population of northern white rhinos was about 2,400, according to conservation charity Save the Rhino. Technological advancements Although national governments with large rhino populations such as South Africa are taking traditional measures such as dehorning rhinos to make them less susceptible to poaching, innovative technology is also being explored to regrow the population of the endangered animals. This past January, Ol Pejeta Conservancy released the encouraging news that sperm from the late Sudan and another deceased male northern white rhino was preserved and frozen and has been combined with 12 eggs harvested from Fatu and Najin to create viable embryos. These embryos were slated to be implanted into the northern white rhinos cousin the southern white rhino. Due to COVID-19, however, plans for implantation have been suspended. Nevertheless, eggs from a southern white female in Germany were recently harvested and fertilized, and the viable embryos are now awaiting transfer. The invitro fertilization (IVF) process had been accomplished with southern white rhinos who carry their own embryos, but it is the first time that northern white rhino embryos will be carried by surrogate southern white rhinos. The results, according to Ol Pejeta Conversancy, could potentially be groundbreaking in growing the rhino population in years to come. Mr. Mwenda believes that using technology to save rhinos could be a boon. I think different methods can be explored to save the northern white rhino, including cloning, artificial insemination and IVF. These assisted reproductive techniques are essential. It seems many people agree with him. Kenyas Tourism Minister, Najib Balala urged scientists to explore how to use technology and innovation to ensure that rhinos dont go extinct. Its amazing to see that we may be able to reverse the tragic loss of this subspecies through science. In the meantime, Mr. Mwenda encourages people to be considerate of their fellow living creatures. I feel we have a greater responsibility to make the planet better and, especially being a young person myself, I am obligated to push young people to live conscientiously, he says. It is going to have an impact on us as young people and we have a responsibility to continue to help the best we can. For more information on COVID-19, visit www.un.org/coronavirus Africa Renewal R Peters,one of Australia's leading pioneers of the East Kimberley art movement, has died at the age of 85. The senior Gija elder and co-founder of the Warmun Art Centre died at the Kununurra Hospital in Western Australia on Thursday from pneumonia. Luke Scholes, curator of Aboriginal art and material culture at the Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory, in front of Peters' artwork Garnkiny. Credit:Helen Orr Before his death, he had been working with the Kimberley Land Council to oppose large-scale granite mining on Springvale Station, his birthplace in the Kimberley. Dominic Kavanagh, gallery co-ordinator of the Warmun Art Centre, said Peters strove to create work that bridged the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge. "He called his painting 'two ways' and he wanted there to be a communal understanding about his practice and his culture as depicted in his artwork." Find new 2021 Hyundai models at Hyundai of St. Augustine. Local Hyundai dealership in St. Augustine now has a wide selection of new Hyundai vehicles for sale. Shoppers can browse through over 40 Hyundai models at Hyundai of St. Augustine. From sedans to SUVs, this dealership offers a collection of new Hyundai vehicles suitable for all different lifestyles. Among the new models is the 2021 Hyundai Tucson. Powerful and easily navigated, the Hyundai Tucson sets itself up as a prime vehicle for a versatile family looking for a model that can handle both city driving and longer trips across the state. The 2021 Hyundai Palisade is the largest of the three available 2021 Hyundai SUVs. With over 86 cubic feet of cargo space, this goliath can tackle moving, vacations, and jobs for the family. The 2021 Hyundai Kona is a compact SUV that has strength in the mobility and agility its small stature provides. Quick to turn and fun to drive, the Hyundai Kona is geared more towards everyday life with the occasional vacation packed in. More information about these new Hyundai vehicles can be found at http://www.hyundaiofstaugustine.com. Shoppers interested in buying or leasing a new 2021 Hyundai vehicle are encouraged to get in touch with Hyundai of St. Augustine today by calling 904-567-7175 or by visiting the dealership at 2898 US 1 South in St. Augustine. The Supreme Court will hear actress Rhea Chakraborty's plea on August 5. In her plea, Rhea has sought transfer of FIR lodged against her in the Sushant Singh Rajput death case, from Patna to Mumbai. As per the latest cause list on the apex court's website, Chakraborty's transfer petition will be heard before a bench of Justice Hrishikesh Roy on Wednesday. According to the plea, the investigation by Bihar Police is 'erroneous' as the incident took place in Bandra, Mumbai and not in Patna. The actress also mentioned in the plea that she was in a live-in relationship with the Kai Po Che actor and has been in a state of trauma since his unfortunate demise. She further talked about how she has been getting rape and death threats. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajput death: Sister Shweta appeals to PM Modi to intervene "The deceased (Rajput) was suffering from depression for some time and was also on anti-depressants and he committed suicide on the morning of June 14,2020 at his Bandra residence by hanging himself," Rhea said in her appeal. She has also alleged that the late Sushant Singh Rajput's father has utilised his 'influence' in framing her in the Patna FIR and accusing her of abetment to suicide. Meanwhile, Rhea released a video on Saturday for the first time since Sushant's family leveled abetment and harassment charges against her. In this video, the actress can be seen as saying, "I have immense faith in God and the judiciary. I believe that I will get justice even though a lot of horrible things are being said about me in the electronic media. I refrain from commenting on the advice of my lawyers. Satyamev Jayate. The Truth Shall Prevail." Also read: Sushant Singh Rajput case: Rhea Chakraborty breaks down in latest video As the rainy season ends, Japan is entering summer without its typical scenes of festivals, fireworks and open beaches this year as the novel coronavirus continues to spread in the country. Shonan and other famous beaches in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo, are without huts or lifeguards as people have been advised to stay away amid strict coronavirus control measures. An association representing around 40 beach hut operators in Zushi in the prefecture said some members cannot make ends meet without opening their huts, while they continue to patrol and clean up as people are still visiting beaches that are not off-limits. Even those visiting beaches are taking anti-virus measures, including maintaining social distancing and wearing face masks. "I missed the Sun," said a woman in her 70s living in Fujisawa as she visited a beach in the Kanagawa Prefecture city with her son and his family for the first time this year. Wearing a face mask and sunglasses, the woman said she enjoys watching her grandchild playing in the waves. In northeastern Japan, the Omagari firework festival in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, which attracts 700,000 visitors every year, was canceled for the first time in 73 years, leaving many firework balls in stock. 'Deeply compassionate': NARAL president praises Biden's leftward shift on abortion Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The president of one of the largest pro-abortion advocacy groups in the United States has praised presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for his deeply compassionate evolution on the issue of abortion. In an interview with McClatchy DC this week, Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, explained why she can give her full-throated support as her organization is endorsing of the former vice president whose campaign was viewed skeptically by some abortion-rights supporters during the Democratic primary. Weve had awesome and robust conversations with the campaign, Hogue was quoted as saying. I think, collectively, were clear-eyed about the work that needs to be done. Biden made headlines last year by reversing his support for the Hyde Amendment, a federal measure in place since 1976 that bans the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. Hogue said Bidens evolution on the issue is evidence of his deeply compassionate character and willingness to listen to advocates. She stated that Bidens agenda has evolved. In addition to changing his position on the Hyde Amendment, Biden has pledged to codify the Supreme Courts 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which ruled that women have the right to an abortion without excessive government restrictions. Biden also pledged in February to have an abortion litmus test for Supreme Court nominees as president. One month before he received NARALs endorsement, another pro-abortion advocacy group, the political fundraising arm of Planned Parenthood, also came out in full support of Biden. Both groups have pledged to spend millions in the upcoming general election to influence voters. NARAL plans to spend nearly $35 million, while Planned Parenthood announced its intention to spend $45 million, tripling the amount it spent in support of Democrats in the 2016 election. The interview with McClatchy DC is hardly the first time Hogue has used the word compassionate concerning the topic of abortion. As a speaker at the Democratic National Convention four years ago, Hogue used the phrase compassionate care when talking about an abortion that she had years ago. Hogue described President Donald Trump as the manifestation of a long-term movement of which the anti-choice movement was really instrumental. Hogue has strongly criticized Trump and his administrations policies since taking office in 2016. In January, she took issue with his decision to speak to anti-choicers gathered at the 2020 March for Life in Washington D.C. Trump became the first president to speak in-person at the annual gathering of thousands of pro-lifers from across the nation. Enthusiasm and investment in the 2020 presidential election are not limited to pro-abortion groups. Susan B. Anthony List, a leading national pro-life lobbying organization, announced earlier this year that it will spend $52 million to help re-elect Donald Trump and safeguard the pro-life majority in Congress. The abortion debate has intensified during the Trump administration as a series of states have passed laws addressing the hot-button issue. In 2019, several states passed laws banning abortions when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. That same year, the state of New York passed a law allowing abortions to take place up until the moment of birth and removing the procedure from the states penal code. The abortion debate has also made it to the judicial branch, as the aforementioned pro-life laws have been met with legal challenges from pro-abortion activists. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a Louisiana law that required abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where they perform the procedure. Parliamentary elections postponed for one year because of the coronavirus emergency. Democratic Front: An excuse to avoid a crushing defeat. Jurists question the legitimacy of the postponement. The crackdown continues: the police accuse six activists of violating the national security law. They include Nathan Law. Hong Kong (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The city authorities have postponed parliamentary elections for a year and, according to press reports, are seeking the arrest of six pro-democracy activists sheltered abroad, accused of violating the new security law imposed by Beijing. Carrie Lam, head of the local executive, yesterday announced the postponement of September election because of the Covid-19 emergency. She said that exposing millions of people including election officials and voters to the coronavirus threatens to overwhelm the public health system. The pro-establishment leader also justifies the move with the fact that some Hong Kong citizens are stuck in China and abroad because of the pandemic, and cannot return to vote. Lam highlighted that the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress will establish how to manage the legislative "vacuum" in the interim period. However, several jurists question the legitimacy of the postponement. The city government's decision has sparked protests from the democratic front, which in the Legco (the local parliament) represents 60% of the population. Democrats maintain that Lam is exploiting the pandemic as an excuse to avoid a crushing election defeat. Immediately after the announcement, 22 democratic parliamentarians said they firmly opposed the postponement, inviting the executive to adopt health prevention measures to allow voting operations. The democratic forces believe a refusal to do so amounts to the destruction of the legal bases of the semi-autonomous territory. The democratic camp had already openly opposed the authorities for the July 30 disqualification of 12 of its candidates for the vote on September 6. Democratic activists and several observers believe the adoption of security legislation has triggered a repressive crackdown. THe measure which entered into force on June 30 confers broad powers on the police to target activities who are deemed to threaten national security. The Chinese Communist Party claims to have imposed it to restore order; the anti-Beijing front, which for over a year has been demonstrating for democracy in Hong Kong and to safeguard its liberal system, instead accuses the Chinese leadership of wanting to stifle the aspirations of the population. According to the South China Morning Post and CCTV (Chinese public television), the Hong Kong law enforcement agencies have issued an arrest warrant for six Democrats who live in exile abroad. They are accused of "inciting secession" and "conspiring with foreign forces". The security law contains "extraterritorial" provisions, which allow the police to prosecute citizens of Hong Kong in other countries even outside the borders of the former British colony. Nathan Law, one of the promoters of Demosisto, the autonomist formation that dissolved immediately after the implementation of the security law, is among the six targeted by the police forces of the city. The others are Simon Cheng, a former British Consulate employee in Hong Kong; Samuel Chu, son of a Baptist minister among the promoters of the 2014 "umbrella movement"; and pro-independence activists Ray Wong, Lau Hong and Wayne Chan. No one was shot or injured during the situation that unfolded about 6:20 p.m. near the intersection of Austin Boulevard and Madison Street in the South Austin neighborhood, according to Kimberly Nerheim, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. One of John Shafers constituents couldnt have put it more bluntly: Pass a resolution encouraging residents of this eastern Oregon county to ignore Gov. Kate Browns new stay-home orders, or I wont vote for you. Shafer, who is chairman of the Umatilla County board of commissioners, isnt willing to take that defiant stance. I guess Im not going to get his vote, said Shafer on Friday -- the same day the governor made Umatilla County the first and only in the state so far to return to stay-home status in an effort to stem the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus. The county is the states current viral epicenter. At 234 known cases for every 10,000 people, it has had more than five times the rate of infections as the state average. About 23% of people whove been tested recently have learned they have the virus -- and thats more than four times the state average. Meanwhile, after conducting a random sampling of residents in the city of Hermiston, Oregon State University estimates a startling one in six residents had the virus as of last weekend. Even so, Ive heard from way more people who are unhappy than people who are happy, Shafer said of the governors new stay-home order. The move has left residents across the state wondering if their counties are next. Back in March, Brown ordered the states more than 4.1 million residents to leave home only for essential tasks, then started lifting her order for most counties in phases about seven weeks later on May 15. Mandating that residents remain at home once again would certainly draw grumbles from a certain portion of the population in any part of the state. So its no surprise that her reinstated order has sparked a particularly bitter response in Umatilla County. Some residents say Brown has never been popular in this conservative, mostly Republican county of 78,000, which is geographically larger than Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties combined but has just 4% of the population. In 2018, when Brown ran for re-election, she won 29% of the vote compared to Republican challenger Knute Buehlers 64%. Since she made her stay-home announcement Thursday evening, Browns name has stirred up plenty of animosity as swimming pools and gyms close, and bars and restaurants are left to offer only takeout orders for at least the next three weeks. Churches and civic or cultural events are limited to 25 participants. Hermiston City Councilor David McCarthy said he isnt particularly excited about the governors new stay-home orders, but he doesnt know what the answer is when literally everywhere seems like its on fire. He said hes a member of a community Facebook group where many users shrug off the countys COVID-19 death rate, which the Oregon Health Authority says is about 1%. Thats half the statewide average of 2%, and even farther below counties such as Polk, Linn and Benton with 4% death rates and Wallowa with a 5% death rate, according to the Oregon Health Authority. With a 1% mortality rate, theyre saying Ill take my chances, McCarthy said. Its unfortunate because 1% of Umatilla County is 780 people. Are we OK with 780 people dying? Im not. The Oregon Health Authority has identified nearly 2,000 coronavirus cases in Umatilla County and 24 deaths, as of Saturday. *** No doubt, the governors order has drawn praise from a segment of Umatilla County who say theyve been watching the numbers worsen for the past six weeks and anxiously waited for the governor to take tough action. Some Oregonians whove taken to Twitter have urged Brown to ignore the naysayers and Stay strong! or go even further by placing new stay-home orders on the entire state or at least segments of it, including Multnomah County. Why not Multnomah?? Kiala (@Kiala) July 31, 2020 Thank you Governor. On behalf of the rational, intelligent citizens of Umatilla County, I apologize for the disrespectful and idiotic comments from the ignorant citizens. Angie Imholt (@AngieImholt) July 31, 2020 Friday, the think tank OSPIRG urged Brown to take statewide action by closing all nonessential businesses, limiting restaurants to only takeout service and allowing Oregonians to leave home only for food, medicine or exercise. The local group joined its national affiliate, U.S.PIRG, in calling for widespread closures coast to coast -- to shut it down, start it over, do it right. Gov. Brown needs to hit the reset button, said OSPIRGs Numi Lee Griffith. Although we slowed the virus down in the spring, we moved too quickly to reopen without hitting key benchmarks to be able to squash future outbreaks before they explode. And now were facing the consequences. New infections in Oregon have been surging for the past two months, and daily reported death counts have reached all-time highs. As of Saturday, the state had reported 18,817 known coronavirus cases and 325 deaths. The governor announced Thursday that she has added Multnomah County, as well as Marion and Hood River counties, to her Watch List thats now 10 counties long. The list is comprised of counties where COVID-19 is spreading fast and public health officials have been baffled by the alarming portion of cases that they havent been able to trace to a specific source. In Multnomah County, officials havent been able to trace the source of at least 56% of new cases, according to the latest two weeks of data available. That translates to 588 of 1,043 new infections that were untraceable and transmitted through what officials call sporadic spread. Baker, Jefferson, Lake, Malheur, Morrow, Umatilla and Wasco counties are also on the Watch List and could be next to rollback their reopenings. Friday, the governor rolled back Morrow Countys status from Phase 2 to Phase 1, meaning pools and movie theaters must close and religious, civic and cultural gatherings are restricted to 50 people indoors and out. Morrow County borders Umatilla County. Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, didnt directly answer a question about which of the 10 counties are closest to returning to stay-home status if their situations continue to worsen, but said the governor could take a variety actions. Those range from restricting the operations of individual types of businesses to rolling back entire counties to Phase 1 or baseline status, also known as stay-home status. As the Governor has said from the beginning of the reopening process, if we continue to see COVID-19 spread in our communities, all options are on the table, Boyle said. Boyle said the governor took more drastic and urgent action in Umatilla and Morrow counties because the virus is spreading like wildfire there and lives are at stake. *** Mark Rodriguez of Hermiston is one of those Umatilla County residents who is delighted with the governor for taking action in his county. But he knows not everyone is going to listen -- just as hes seen a small number shun statewide mask orders or continue to throw parties or go on outings together with no physical distancing. They want a summer like we have every year, but this year is different, Rodriguez said. We have a major crisis on our hands and we have to take action. Rodriguez supports the governors renewed restrictions even though they continue to hinder his ability to get a job. Hes currently unemployed. Its scary, knowing how its been thriving in our community, Rodriguez said. I dont want to get it, and I dont want to infect others. Hermiston City Councilor Lori Davis, too, supports the governors action Friday, despite the kinda strong Recall Kate effort around town. Davis was one of 471 residents who were randomly swabbed for the coronavirus last weekend. She heard back Friday that shed tested positive. I have no symptoms and feel fine, Davis, 56, wrote in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive. ...Totally caught off guard. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 40% of people with the virus show no symptoms. Davis said she wears a mask and doesnt know where she caught the virus, but added that she works at Two Rivers Correctional Institution. As of last week, an outbreak that started in late June had grown to 19 employees, inmates or others linked to the prison. Davis positive test result makes that at least 20. Outbreaks at the prison, a nursing home and at least 11 job sites have led some residents and officials to believe that beating back the virus can be done by focusing on tougher safety measures at those locations -- rather than an all-out stay-home order. More than 160 cases have been linked to the french fry processor Lamb Weston, 52 to the Regency Hermiston Nursing and Rehab Center, 28 to a Walmart Distribution Center and 15 to a Walmart Supercenter store. Even at the local hospital, there is more worry: 23 cases so far have been traced to Good Shepherd hospital. Shafer, the chairman of the county board of commissioners, said even though hes not willing to urge his constituents to defy the governors orders, he thinks the virus can be fought with other measures. For one, because of the many outbreaks at workplaces, he said every employee in every indoor workplace should wear a mask, even if theyre more than six feet apart and they dont interact with the public. Shafer noted that the governor isnt requiring employees who dont interact with the public to cover up if they maintain at least six feet from coworkers. Shafer said the county had been preparing to lobby the governor with that idea. But Shafer said the governors office told him public health officials cant be sure of where the virus is spreading because of the high percentage of new infections that cant be traced to known sources. That figure in Umatilla County stood at 51% last week. Were shutting down swimming pools, churches, bowling alleys -- weve had zero cases from there, Shafer said. The places that are not the problem are the places getting shutdown. Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter -- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Bengaluru, Aug 1 : State trade body, Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI), has appealed to Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa to handhold the real estate industry battered in Covid pandemic and asked for a uniform stamp duty for properties costing above Rs 35 lakh, an official said on Saturday. "To boost the real estate sentiment, the central government has already announced relief measures and the state government also should handhold the real estate sector in this time of crisis," said FKCCI President C.R. Janardhana. He asked Yediyurappa to slash the stamp duty for properties priced above Rs 35 lakh also to 3 per cent, matching the duty levied on properties costing between Rs 21 to 35 lakh. Janardhana said properties above Rs 35 lakh are currently being levied a stamp duty of 5 per cent which he is asking to be reduced to 3 per cent to create a uniform rate. "The real estate sector is contributing significantly to the state's economy. Under these circumstances, the sector and buyers need support. A slight reduction in the stamp duty will promote the property buying activities," he observed. Janardhana said the reduced stamp duty will benefit the middle class and give a shot in the arm to the real estate sector. He said all properties above Rs 21 lakh should have a uniform stamp duty of 3 per cent. Unionists are aiming to keep pressure on Sinn Fein over the funeral of Bobby Storey more than a month after the row began. Despite the Assembly recess DUP and other MLAs have tabled a series of written questions to deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill over her attendance at the burial on June 30. The DUPs Thomas Buchanan has asked whether Mrs ONeill was obliged under the rules to inform the joint office she shares with Arlene Foster of her intention to go to the funeral, and whether she did so. And Jim Allister has asked if the deputy First Minister was conveyed to the funeral in an official Executive car and what advice has been sought from outgoing Attorney General John Larkin over whether she breached her pledge of office commitment to support the rule of law unequivocally in word and deed. Read More On Saturday it emerged that Sinn Fein finance minister Conor Murphy has acknowledged using his publicly-funded ministerial business car to stop in on the Storey funeral. A department spokesman added: The minister was going from home to Stormont on official business and stopped in west Belfast on his way. Expand Close Deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill attended the funeral at Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA) PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill attended the funeral at Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA) TUV leader Mr Allister said: There are very legitimate questions for the PSNI and Belfast City Council to answer about the funeral but we should not lose sight of the fact that the most fundamental questions are for the deputy First Minister and more generally the Stormont Executive. There seems to be the usual desire to shrug the shoulders and move on. The weakness of the political response was the Assembly in passing a motion which merely expressed disappointment without any condemnation or suggestion the rules had been breached. It sent a message that republicans are above the law and that law makers can become law breakers without sanction. Asked for a response to the barrage of questions being formally tabled there was no reply from Sinn Fein. But Mrs ONeill told the Executive committee that organisation of the funeral was in conjunction with the PSNI with the regulations and restrictions in place particularly around the issue of stewards and making sure the whole route was stewarded. Im satisfied my actions were within the regulations and the public health guidance, she added. Expand Close The funeral of Bobby Storey in west Belfast Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The funeral of Bobby Storey in west Belfast Read More There are no longer joint press conferences with DUP leader Mrs Foster who insists it cant be business as usual because the regulations were flouted. And it has also emerged that Sinn Fein Junior Minister Declan Kearney was unable to respond to an Assembly debate on the regulations because he was also attending the funeral. The war of words also continued on social media after the DUPs Trevor Clarke demanded SFs Gerry Kelly resign from the Policing Board over his senior role in the funeral at the republican plot in Milltown Cemetery. On Twitter Mr Kelly hit back: I am deeply proud to have placed our National flag on the coffin of my close friend and comrade Bobby Storey. If Mr Clarke had a tenth of the courage and integrity of Bobby I might have taken him seriously. More than 30 mourners were permitted to have a service at Roselawn Crematorium for the veteran republican, while other grieving families had their services postponed, provoking a dispute still rumbling in the council. OTTAWA, Aug. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Four decades of turmoil war in Afghanistan has caused the suffering to both internal and external citizens including refugees, orphans and women. Taleam Systems has been following the war and peace situation closely and has struggled for real and stable peace in Afghanistan. Through the lens of CEO Meladul Haq Ahmadzai of Taleam Systems , Afghanistan war was a money business. He further adds, same for peace referring to the February 2020 peace deal that was signed between Taliban and Trumps administration. Today, Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid Al-Adha (celebration of the prophet Mohammad sacrifice). Although, the Taliban and Afghan government have announced a special ceasefire plan again, but still around 30 civilians were killed on the first Eid day. Ahmadzai explain, Ceasefire after ceasefire after ceasefire, but no sign of real and stable peace. Taleam Systems has developed a new technology for Afghan healthcare workers and humanitarians to use in the field. Ahmadzai adds, Different groups by the name of Daesh, Taliban, Haqqani, etc. are seeking to get power. He further adds, Healthcare workers and humanitarians have been impacted the most in the war in Afghanistan. Last month, Donald Trump didnt act against the Russians paying bounties to Taliban to kill American soldiers in the war in Afghanistan. Ahmadzai concludes, Taleam Systems believes in technology being used for good purpose, not wiping off the entire country, refers to Trumps previous remarks on Afghanistan. Taleam Systems provides tech support to hospitals and medical clinics in Canada. To learn more about Taleam Systems visit website www.taleamsystems.com Media contact: Meladul Haq Ahmadzai, CEO Phone: 613-521-9229 Email: melad@taleamsystems.com Kuwait's crown prince received a call from the deputy head of the national guard reassuring him of the health of Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, state news agency KUNA reported on Thursday. Sheikh Sabah, who has ruled Kuwait since 2006, arrived in the United States last week to complete medical treatment, and is in a stable condition, Kuwait's cabinet said on Monday. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dmitry Zaks (Agence France-Presse) London Sat, August 1, 2020 13:05 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ade7b2 2 Entertainment Alan-Parker,obituary,director Free Alan Parker, who juggled genres and celebrated music with hits such as "Bugsy Malone", "The Commitments" and "Evita", died on Friday at the age of 76. The British director, whose films have won 10 Oscars and 10 Golden Globes, also explored US race relations with "Mississippi Burning" and chilled audiences with the film noir "Midnight Express". The US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences called Parker "an extraordinary talent". "His work entertained us, connected us, and gave us such a strong sense of time and place," it said in a tweet, calling him "a chameleon" for his ability to change with the times. Andrew Lloyd Webber called Parker "one of the few directors to truly understand musicals on screen". His family said he died "following a lengthy illness". Modest beginnings The son of a north London house painter and dressmaker, Parker first tried his hand at writing and directing commercials. He made his first film for the BBC before blossoming in the 1970s with a rapid succession of standout hits, starting with the 1976 gangster musical spoof "Bugsy Malone". Its cast of children included a 16-year-old Scott Baio in the lead as an Irish-Italian boxer, and Jodie Foster as a gangster moll. She was then just 13 but already had seven films to her name. The film got critics' attention. "Midnight Express", a dark Oliver Stone scripted thriller about a US student who was thrown into a Turkish prison for drug smuggling, got Parker his first Oscar nomination. He followed that up in 1980 with the genre-setting American teen musical drama "Fame", which was spun off into a popular US TV series and led to other musical dance films. Parker shifted gears completely with "Pink Floyd -- The Wall", whose dark themes and powerful imagery helped build up the British rock group into superstars in 1982. "Alan was my oldest and closest friend, I was always in awe of his talent," said fellow British film director David Puttnam, who produced some of Parker's movies. "My life and those of many others who loved and respected him will never be the same again." Read also: 'Batman Forever' and 'Lost Boys' director Schumacher dies at 80 Controversy Parker moved from exploring music to asking questions about US treatment of African-Americans in the Deep South in the 1960s with the 1988 drama "Mississippi Burning". The film, which was based on the FBI's investigation into the disappearance of three civil rights leaders, was a critical and commercial success. But it also created controversy and an unexpected political debate. Some US civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr's widow Corette Scott King,condemned it for fictionalizing events and portraying the FBI too positively. The head of the NAACP, the leading US civil rights organisation, said "it reeks with dishonesty". Parker stood by his work, but admitted that he never expected the backlash. "I was somewhat bemused by it all -- and a little punch-drunk," Parker wrote on his official website. "It certainly wasnt intended to be the definitive story of the black Civil Rights struggle." The film won just one Oscar, for cinematography, after being nominated for seven. Cult status But Parker's career did not suffer. The director returned to his musical roots with the 1991 musical comedy drama "The Commitments", based on the novel by the Irish writer Roddy Doyle. The film gained cult status and became especially celebrated in Ireland itself. "I have not had a more enjoyable time filming than when I made this movie in the daily, hilarious company of these brilliant kids," Parker recalled on his website. "Probably of all my films, 'The Commitments' is the most liked -- particularly by critics." Parker's last major success came with the 1996 musical drama "Evita", in which Madonna played Argentina's late first lady Eva Peron. The adaptation of Lloyd Webber's stage show won three Golden Globes and an Oscar for best original song. Parker retired soon afterwards, spending the last years of his life painting. He was knighted in 2002. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) said it was "deeply saddened" by the news. James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli said she was "heartbroken". Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 02:12:38|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ADEN, Yemen, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in Yemen's government-controlled provinces increased to 1,730 on Saturday, as two new cases were confirmed. The Yemeni Health Ministry said in a brief press statement that during the past 24 hours, the number of recoveries in the government-controlled areas has increased to 862 since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus on April 10. Also, the government announced that the death toll from the deadly respiratory disease climbed to 494 in different areas under its control, including the southern port city of Aden. The Yemeni government called on donors and relevant international humanitarian organizations to provide support to help contain the pandemic. Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi group seized control of much of the country's north and forced the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of Sanaa. Enditem Tuolumne County Public Health View Photo Sonora, CA Tuolumne County Public Health reports seven new Tuolumne County residents have been identified with coronavirus, five are isolating, one is reported as recovered and one is hospitalized. Two individuals are no longer in isolation and are listed as recovered. Known Tuolumne tests: 7,979, positive 141 (72 females and 69 males), hospitalized 3, active cases 18, total recovered 121. Todays new cases bring Tuolumne countys 14-day case rate to 106.97 cases per 100,000 population, which is above the 100/100k mark for the state county watch list. To estimate case rates consider the countys population is about half of 100,000 and it can stay off the list if there are less than 53 new cases in 14 days. As reported here, 14 days ago Tuolumne increased by 1 case from 84 to 85 cases meaning there have been 56 new cases. Tuolumne Public Health again states It seems there are some continued delays in labs reporting results into CalREDIE, the statewide reporting system. It also seems that there are some delays with the reports of our case numbers within the state site. We do not know when the state will put us on the monitoring watch list, but will continue to provide updates as we receive more information. Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools reported all Tuolumne schools will be doing distance learning as detailed here. The most recent Calaveras update is here. The state website reports 6 new cases, 2 yesterday and 4 today but Calaveras Public health has not released new numbers yet. Daily COVID-19 Cases County Active Date New Today Hospital/ICU Alpine 0 7/27 0 0 Amador 46 7/30 5 4 Calaveras 27 7/28 7 1 Mariposa 7 7/31 2 0 Madera* 857 7/31 57 45 Merced* 1,752 7/31 159 80 Mono* 63 7/31 15 1 San Joaquin* 1,143 7/31 141 233/78 Stanislaus* 1,144 7/31 145 198/49 Tuolumne* 18 7/31 7 3 Totals (Cumulative) COVID-19 Cases County Recovered (new) Total Positives Deaths Alpine 2(+1) 2 0 Amador 69(+8) 115 0 Calaveras 80(+36) 108 1 Mariposa 44(+1) 53 2 Madera* 1,056(33) 1,943 30 Merced* 2,225(+0) 4,065 39 Mono* 77(+24) 141 1 San Joaquin* 10,172(+221) 11,483 168 Stanislaus* 7,742(+533) 8,890 104 Tuolumne* 121(+3) 141 2 Tuolumne County Public Health Updates Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools and our Interim County Health Officer issued a statement today regarding the start of the 20-21 school year. The Health Officer has been, and continues to, work closely with the County Superintendent of Schools and all of the district superintendents in planning for the start of school. Based on the many facets of the ongoing pandemic, including statewide requirements and guidance, and in consultation with the local Health Officer, the district superintendents and Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools have determined that the school year will start with students participating in school remotely. If you are having COVID-like symptoms, please contact your healthcare provider or the Adventist Health Triage Line at 209-536-5166. If you need immediate medical attention, please call ahead and go to Rapid Care or the Emergency Department. You can also visit www.valleycovidhelp.com for more information. The no-cost state testing site is open at the Calaveras County Fairgrounds Tuesday Saturday 7am to 7pm. Appointments can be scheduled ahead of time at: https://lhi.care/covidtesting Appointments are strongly recommended as walk-ins are extremely limited. The site now offers testing for children ages 3 and older (accompanied by a parent or guardian). It is important that people continue to follow prevention guidelines to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, including: Practice physical distancing at all times. Keep 6 feet space between yourself and others who are not part of your household. Stay in your household bubble! Wear a face covering in public. Wash your hands thoroughly and frequently. Avoid gatherings of any size with people who are not part of your household. Stay home if you are sick. Avoid unnecessary travel, and limit your outings to essential tasks. LINKS TO MORE INFORMATION & RESOURCES Community Resources Portal: https://bit.ly/TCcovidPortal Tuolumne County Public Health Website: www.tuolumnecounty.ca.gov/publichealth Public Health COVID-19 Call Center: (209) 533-7440 California COVID-19 website: www.covid19.ca.gov State Testing Site info and Appointments: https://lhi.care/covidtesting Tuolumne County Business: www.tcdisasterassistance.com CDC COVID-19 website: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html Thank you for your support and efforts to protect the safety and health of our community One noisy theme in the Donald Trump Disruption Show in an otherwise chaotic assemblage of messages has remained fairly constant: winding back US troop commitments. The US has fought its complement of wars, bloodied and bloodying. Time to up stakes and head home. It was a message that sold in 2016 across the aisles of politics, and it is one that continues to resonate. But the practice of it has proven murkier. Nothing this president does can be otherwise. The US military complex remains sprawling, overweight and defiant. As a result, the military footprint has been not so much dissipated as readjusted. President Trumps recent decision to move troops out of Germany is a case in point. Those wishing for a trimmer, less militarist imperium will be disappointed. The shifting of 11,900 US personnel out of the country is seemingly a matter of rearrangement and fitting. The imperium is merely adjusting the furniture. US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper gave the decision a tactical dress. The redeployment would, contrary to critics, strengthen NATO, deter Russia and ready the US military for a new era of great power competition. This realignment of our forces in Europe would support our partners and stand up to military adversary behaviour. Of the designated number, 6,400 will return to the US. These are intended for future redeployment in Eastern Europe and elsewhere while 5,600 are destined for Belgium, Italy and other NATO countries. Instead of coating the decision in the carefully chosen doublespeak of strategy, Trump was reliably cranky in justification. As he explained, the troops are there to protect Germany, right? Germanys not paying for it. We dont want to be suckers any more. The United States has been taken advantage of for 25 years, both on trade and on the military. So were reducing the force because they are not paying their bills. This was something of a stretch and a very elastic one at that. The gripe Trump and his circle have had since coming to office is that powers such as Germany simply do not spend enough on defence, while happy-go-lucky chauvinist states like Poland, do. In June last year, Trump suggested the possibility of moving US troops to Poland from Germany, while the Polish President Andrzej Duda felt deeply justified to ensure that the US troops are left in Europe. US ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher, forgetting her diplomatic posting, added a dash of one-upmanship. Poland meets its 2% of GDP spending obligation towards NATO. Germany does not. We would welcome American troops to in Germany to come to Poland. In August 2019, then US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, very much the fly in the ointment of US-German relations, warned that some form of withdrawal, either total or partial, would take place unless an increase in defence spending took place. As he is reported to have told the DPA news agency, It is actually offensive to assume that the US taxpayer must continue to pay to have 50,000 plus Americans in Germany, but the Germans get to spend their surplus on domestic programs. The current percentage of German military spending as a share of GDP is 1.5%. Washington continues to press for the threshold of 2%. Ironically enough, US troop redeployments will take place largely to countries with levels of expenditure even lower than Germany. Italy comes in at 1.2%; Belgium, a pinch under 1%. The military spenders in Poland will be disappointed. Whatever the substance of the decision, such reorientations struck the security establishment on both sides of the Atlantic as something nearing treachery. When the president floated the idea of reducing the troop numbers last month, there were protesting squeals and calls of warning. The Big Bully parent was abandoning its adoptees and advertising that fact. President Donald J. Trumps order to withdraw nearly ten thousand troops from Germany betrays a close ally, undermines confidence in Washington, and makes Europe and the United States less safe, suggested Philip Gordon of the Council of Foreign Relations. By questioning the sanctity of the US defence guarantee in Europe, treating NATO as a protection racket, and unilaterally diminishing Americas ability to uphold that guarantee, Gordon continues to fuss that, Trump is effectively signalling that an attack on a NATO ally would not necessarily be met with a US response. An imaginative reading, if ever there was one. Various German politicians, weaned on the narrative that a Germany with a US garrison is far better than a Germany without, were also shaken. Norbert Rottgen of the Bundestag and chair of the German parliaments foreign policy committee expressed his views through the Funke Media Group. He could see no factual reason for the withdrawal and doing so was very regrettable. Johann Wadephul, deputy chairman of the parliamentary caucus of Chancellor Angela Merkels centre-right Union bloc, was similarly unimpressed. The decision to remove such numbers of US troops from Germany without consulting NATO allies shows once again that the Trump administration is neglecting basic leadership tasks. Merkels transatlantic coordinator Peter Beyer was similarly aggrieved. This is completely unacceptable, especially since nobody in Washington thought about informing its NATO ally Germany in advance. Their shock suggested the sinking of an idea: that the hegemon, the superpower, is obligated to consult those whose territory it chooses to use, whose grounds it decided to occupy or leave for vague reasons of security. Daddy should listen. Emily Haber, Germanys ambassador to Washington, is keen that should happen, sending out messages of sweet reassurance that US troops had become neighbours, friends, partners and friends while protecting transatlantic security and projecting American power and interests globally. Notwithstanding the inconsistencies in the move, the logic of garrisoning such a large number of troops in Germany has not struck some pundits as particularly sound. Being of the Cato Institute, which does, from time to time, evoke a sensible sentiment with regards imperial overstretch, Ted Galen Carpenter assured opponents of Trumps decision that they look at the calendar. It reads 2020, not 1950 or even 1989. There is no totalitarian threat, and the Red Army is not poised to pour through the Fulda Gap in Germany and try to sweep the Atlantic. Exaggerating the Russian threat, however, is a long standing tradition that has made funding military budgets and keeping US troops in place over the globe a fundamental, if fictional necessity. Not even Trump has succeeded in dousing that paranoid passion. Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected] New Delhi: Over 8,000 teachers of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, who said they have not received their salaries since May, have threatened to go on strike from August 16 if they are not paid. The teachers association said they were yet to receive salaries for May, June and July and on Saturday sent a letter to the north corporations mayor and education department, giving them a 15 day-ultimatum. The civic agency said they were facing losses of around 200 crore due to the lockdown, but are working to find a solution to pay the teachers within 10 days. The north corporation employs around 8,500 teachers across 714 of its primary schools. Ramniwas Solanki, general secretary, MCD Teachers Association an umbrella body of all teachers association under the citys civic bodies said that though schools are shut for students, teachers are taking classes online and have also been distributing books and study material to students. North corporation mayor Jai Prakash said the already cash-strapped civic bodys troubles were exacerbated due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which he said severely hurt their earnings. Property tax, parking contracts, advertisements, stamp duty are among the bodys main sources of revenue. Our earnings have been affected drastically due to the pandemic. We are facing a loss of around 200 crore in the first two quarters of this financial year, so paying our employees has become tough. We are in contact with our teachers and have assured them to pay their salaries in next 10 days, the mayor said. Solanki added that the admissions process has started, and warned work on that front would be affected if they go on strike. We have been working without salaries for three months. The last salary we got was of April. For teachers, survival has become tough especially during the pandemic. We have today written a letter to the mayor and to concerned authorities in the education department to pay our pending salaries. We have given 15 days ultimatum to the corporation, so if they do not clear our dues we will stage an indefinite strike from August 16, Solanki said. He said that in June, the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) directed the North corporation to release teachers salaries at the earliest, after which they were paid their April remuneration last month. Till June-end, teachers were engaged in distributing dry rations and cooked food, in the wake of the lockdown. While the food distribution has stopped, they are now taking online classes and are also sending students recorded audio and video lectures on WhatsApp. Kuldeep Khatri, president, Shikshak Nyaya Manch Nagar Nigam, a teachers union, said the situation of North civic body school teachers has taken a turn for the worse, with many now forced to take loans to manage their expenses. Things have come to such a pass that we are not able to take care of our families. It has become a perennial problem, and the civic body should come up with a permanent solution, Khatri said. One Melburnian has been caught driving to Wodonga for a McDonalds Big Mac, while another travelled to Ballarat to get some "fresh air" in brazen breaches of lockdown restrictions. Police Minister Lisa Neville took aim at the "appalling behaviour" of those flouting stay-at-home directions on Saturday. "I am fed up with it, Victoria Police are fed up with it," she said. "Can I be really clear, just in case there is any doubt at all, that there is absolutely no reason or need to drive from Melbourne to Wodonga to have a Big Mac." Theres a new Jim Crow afoot in America. Once again, its coming from the Democrats, but this time, instead of pitting whites against blacks, its pitting blacks against whites. Beleaguered white people technically have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at their back but, in the witch hunt atmosphere currently prevailing in America, its unclear whether theyll have the courage to use it. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesnt mince words. It exists to outlaw discrimination based upon a persons race, color, religion, sex, or country of national origin. It explicitly expands these protections to employment programs. Under Title VII, It shall be an unlawful employment practice for any employer, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining, including on-the-job training programs to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training. (42 U.S. Code 2000e-2(d).) The City of Seattle has put a program in place for its 10,000 employees. There are special whites-only aspects of the program. In the white only portions of the program, whites must admit that they are racist (and, presumably, any refusal is more proof of racism), and then they must have that racism trained out of them. Christopher Rufo has obtained the materials for the segregated whites only training. Trying to summarize the material falls far short of showing the immensity of this Title VII violation, so Ive embedded all of the tweets below. The only question remaining after reading this series of tweets is whether any of the employees will sue. Its entirely possible that, because theyre Seattle residents, and therefore presumptively leftists, all will meekly accept this Maoist indoctrination that requires them first to confess their sins and then to submit to re-education. The training is called "Internalized Racial Superiority for White People." After attendees arrive, they must announce their pronouns and tell the trainers when they first became race-consciousin other words, when they began their journey of internalized racism. pic.twitter.com/ura3KDesnb Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) July 29, 2020 Next, white employees must examine their "relationships with white supremacy, racism, and whiteness." They must explain how their "[families] benefit economically from the system of white supremacy even as it directly and violently harms Black people." pic.twitter.com/GUcGTcGUPo Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) July 29, 2020 The Office of Civil Rights then claims that "white people internalize the system of white supremacy" through the racist values of "individualism," "intellectualization," "objectivity," and "comfort." Those values most be abolished from the work of city government. pic.twitter.com/3Xam5bkAwX Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) July 29, 2020 According to the critical race theorists, racism is everywhere. It is in every society ("structural"), every organization ("institutional"), every relationship ("interpersonal"), and every individual ("internalized"). There is no escape. pic.twitter.com/fCU4VXIPbG Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) July 29, 2020 Seattle's Office of Civil Rights is now explicitly endorsing segregationism, group-based guilt, and race reductionismugly concepts that should have been left behind a century ago. It's absolutely Orwellian: the guardians of "civil rights" are the architects of the "new racism." Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) July 29, 2020 P.S. Read the full materials for "Internalized Racial Superiority for White People" here.https://t.co/AK1kBqvE0a Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) July 29, 2020 Today's cancel culture no longer simply disagrees with people who do not want to get with the program. Instead, at the workplace, it forces people into training with the implied threat that their jobs are at stake. In the public sphere, the cancelation threat isnt implied, its open. Take, for example, Louisville, Kentucky: Businesses and non-profits in the East Market District of downtown Louisville, also referred to as NuLu (New Louisville), have received letters from left-wing activists demanding that they give in to a list of racial reparations or face having their businesses get negative reviews online. The demands are financially onerous. They impose hiring, buying, and training decisions on the threatened businesses. Academia is especially toxic. Colin Wright writes about the concerted activity to destroy his ability to get a job in academia because he sinned against leftist orthodoxies when he insisted that sex is biologically determined and cannot magically change. Its not just frightening that the scientific and academic world accept the unhinged notion that sex is a cultural construct. Its equally unnerving that, in this Brave New World, nobodies have appointed themselves as gatekeepers who stir up the mob: Earlier this year, on February 22nd, I tweeted out a Guardian article titled, Teenage transgender row splits Sweden as dysphoria diagnoses soar by 1,500%, accompanied by my own two-word commentary: social contagion. My tweet would have made sense to those familiar with the work of Brown University academic Lisa Littman, and particularly her scientific paper hypothesizing links between rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) and peer contagion within cliques of teenage girls. However, activists were able to contort my comment in a way that suggested I was targeting the children themselves or suggesting gender dysphoria was akin to a virus. Knowing I was on the job market, a Michigan State University graduate student (and president of the Graduate Employees Union) named Kevin Bird accused me of spreading disgusting transphobic pseudoscience. Unlike other critics, Bird didnt even pretend to be motivated by anything other than a desire to deny me employment in my field. Colin is now spreading disgusting transphobic pseudoscience. He's on the job market. I hope The EEB community is paying attention. This isn't how you @DiversifyEEB https://t.co/8iiYlWrXdq Kevin Bird (@itsbirdemic) February 23, 2020 Bird himself offers an interesting case study, because his example illustrates how even a single ideologically radicalized troll can present the appearance of a grass-roots campaign. If Birds name sounds familiar, its because he is the same activist who led a campaign against his own universitys senior vice president of research and innovation, theoretical physicist Stephen Hsu. Bird has no particular distinction in his academic field, has tweeted support for burning banks, and is on record stating that he has no interest in attaining or discovering truth when he does science. But he also has worked tirelessly to build up his online stature as a cancel-culture enforcer and a warrior against fascism. As such, he has been able to mobilize flash mobs of online trolls to aid in his deplatforming effortswhich is why Hsu was forced to resign his VP position despite the spurious nature of Birds racism accusations. It is long past time for someone to stand atop this monstrosity and holler Stop! I take that back. Although one person hollering is not enough. A society cannot tolerate this madness, and majority action is the fastest way to end it. We must all holler. Image: Twitter screengrab Almost 170billion was added to the value of three American tech giants yesterday just 24 hours after the US economy recorded its biggest slump in post-war history. Shares in Amazon, Apple and Facebook soared as investors cheered yet another set of bumper earnings figures. The huge rally saw Apple shares soar to record highs of more than $412 each, with the firm overtaking state-backed oil giant Saudi Aramco to become the world's most valuable listed company, with a market capitalisation of almost 1.4trillion. Riches: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez At the same time, the bonanza on Wall Street added 5.3billion to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' personal fortune and more than 5billion to that of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But shares in a fourth tech giant Google owner Alphabet tumbled after it posted the first drop in revenues in its 22-year history. The 5 per cent slide in shares saw around 18billion wiped off its value. However, Amazon added 46billion to its value, Apple gained 85billion and Facebook more than 37billion. The combined gains were worth more than the entire value of the UK's biggest listed firm, the 120billion consumer goods group Unilever. Together, the four US tech titans had reported an astonishing 156billion in sales for the three months to June 30, even as separate data showed the wider US economy had contracted by a record 9.5 per cent in the second quarter. It underlined the gulf in fortunes between the companies, which have benefited from the shift towards digital services during the pandemic, and more traditional businesses which have been hammered by lockdown restrictions. Roger McNamee, a longtime Silicon Valley investor, said: 'The day we found out the US economy declined more than it ever has in history, these companies recorded extraordinary growth.' Amazon is emerging as a major winner from the coronavirus crisis, with its second quarter revenues surging 40 per cent to 68billion as people stuck indoors turned to online shopping. Profits doubled to 4billion despite the company previously saying it wasn't expecting fireworks because of significant costs for making its warehouses 'Covid secure'. The results were even better than many Wall Street analysts had predicted, with Amazon handing a one-off 382 'thank you' bonus to tens of thousands of frontline staff who worked throughout June. Sales in North America rose from 29.5billion to 42.3billion during the quarter, while international sales rose from 12.5billion to 17.3billion. Bumper results: Shares in Amazon, Apple and Facebook soared as investors cheered yet another set of bumper earnings figures One Wall Street analyst branded the numbers 'simply humongous', while another said the firm's 'online sales hit the roof during the pandemic lockdown'. And the subsequent surge in Amazon's shares helped to further enrich Bezos, 56, who is already the world's richest man with a fortune of more than 138billion. It was also a good day for Apple, after the iPhone maker posted a rise in sales of all of its major products from MacBook laptops to iPad tablets. The company posted revenues of 45.4billion 3billion more than analysts had predicted. Facebook, meanwhile, also beat analysts' estimates for quarterly revenue, as more businesses used its digital advertising tools to take advantage of a surge in internet traffic during the pandemic. Total revenue at the social network rose from 12.9billion to 14.2billion, beating forecasts of 13.3billion. Daily active users also averaged 1.79billion for the period, an increase of 12 per cent compared to a year previously. However, Alphabet sales dropped 2 per cent to 29.1billion after big advertisers cut back spending in the face of economic uncertainty She recently jetted off to St Tropez with her husband Chris Hughes and daughters Lexi, 14, and Hollie, eight. Yet upon her return, Amanda Holden was enjoying the glorious British seaside as she took to Instagram on Saturday to share snaps from the trip. The Britain's Got Talent judge, 49, looked sensational as she showed off her toned abs in an off-the-shoulder blue striped top and denim shorts. Wow! Amanda Holden, 49, showed off her toned abs and long legs in an off-the-shoulder top and high-cut shorts as she enjoyed family staycation on Saturday Amanda's high-cut shorts accentuated her slender legs, and had chic bow detailing at the front and frayed edges. Her golden locks danced in the wind as Amanda left her hair to cascade over her shoulders, while she shielded her eyes with a pair of aviator shades. Earlier in the day Amanda looked incredible in a blue patterned bikini bottoms and a matching long sleeved top as she looked out on a scenic beach. Beach babe: Earlier in the day Amanda looked incredible in a blue patterned bikini bottoms and a matching long sleeved top as she looked out on a scenic beach Family fun: Amanda captioned the shot: 'The sea is a bone chiller but we still swam. Fish and chips supper- can't beat a holiday in Great Britain (when the sun shines) Family time' Amanda showed off her tanned and toned legs in the geometric print swimsuit as well as teasing a glimpse of her washboard stomach. She wore her blonde hair in a messy bun and shielded her eyes from the sun with black shades. Amanda captioned the shot: 'The sea is a bone chiller but we still swam. Fish and chips supper- can't beat a holiday in Great Britain (when the sun shines) Family time'. Amanda also uploaded some countryside shots during a hike along the coast. Moo! Amanda also uploaded some countryside shots during a hike along the coast including her posing in a field of cows Glorious: Amanda wrote: 'This view Great Britain is the best (when the sun shines)' Earlier this week, Amanda sent her fans into frenzy after sharing a sweet family snap as they claimed her eldest daughter looks just like Holly Willoughby. The Heart Radio presenter posted the Instagram, taken by friend and F1 icon David Coulthard, on Friday captioned: 'Ma famille.' One wrote: 'Your daughter so reminds me of a young Holly Willoughby! I knew her at 15!' Another added: 'I was thinking the exact same thing!!' 'What a way to wake up': The actress shared this picturesque view of the coast Amanda lives in Richmond-upon-Thames with her family and met originally met musician Chris in 2003 in Los Angeles but began dating a year later. They tied the knot in 2008 at St Margaret's Church in Somerset and held their reception at Babington House - the same lavish wedding location as TV host James Corden and his wife, Julia Carey. Leix was two at the time and she attended the extravagant ceremony. Family: Earlier this week, Amanda sent her fans into frenzy after sharing a sweet family snap as they claimed her eldest daughter looks just like Holly Willoughby The states largest school system has been seeking feedback on its preliminary framework for fall, which combines two days a week of in-person classes with three days of remote learning. Officials have stressed that parents can opt out of in-person instruction for any reason, though the Chicago Teachers Union continues to push back against any reopening of schools this fall without what its members believe are adequate protections against the spread of COVID-19. New Delhi, Aug 1 : Cracking the whip, Delhi Police's North West DCP Vijayanta Arya suspended 37 policemen on charge of dereliction of duty on Eid ul-Adha on Saturday and sent them to the district Police Lines. The policemen were supposed to be on duty at various spots during the festival but at least 37 were found missing. The matter was put up to senior police officers after which the action was taken. "The policemen showed a callous attitude and remained absent from their duties around 5 am on an important festival day. Hence, 37 of them were suspended and sent to the lines with immediate effect," said a senior police officer. The Delhi Police has been organising meetings at police station-level with members of the Muslim community for smooth celebrations amid the pandemic. Arrangement has been made by authorities in all districts in the capital to ensure proper celebrations amid safety precautions. Actress Kangana Ranaut has issued a statement over reports of gunshots being heard near her Manali residence on Friday night. Kangana is currently staying in Manali along with her family. The actress feels somebody did this to threaten her after her recent comments related to actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. The statement said, "I was in my bedroom. I heard a cracker-like sound at about 11.30 pm. At first, I thought it must be a cracker. And then another shot happened, and I got a little alarmed since that sounded like a gunshot. I called my security in charge immediately... Let's see what this was, and if this is repeated again. I have heard the sound of a bullet and I think it was definitely a bullet, very intently fired twice, two shots with a gap of about eight seconds between them. And it was right opposite my room. So it seems like someone was behind the boundary walls, there's a jungle and a water body there." Kangana assumes that this is being done to intimidate her for speaking up about Sushant's death. "I think some local people may have been hired to come near my place, you know, it is not difficult to pay someone seven-eight thousand rupees here and assign them something like this. To do this to make a statement on the day I called out the chief minister's son -- I don't think it was a coincidence. People are telling me that they will now make your life miserable in Mumbai. Well, I don't have to be in Mumbai, they are doing it here also. Is there open goondagardi in this country? This is how Sushant must have been frightened. But I will continue to ask questions," the actress stated. Kangana's father Amardeep Singh Ranaut told IANS that the shots were heard in the nearby apple orchards. "They sounded like gunshots, may be they were crackers just to keep the bats away from the orchards that are currently blooming with apples," Amardeep Singh told IANS over phone. Even though, the Kullu district police immediately reached Kangana's house after the incident on Friday night and deployed security as per her statement, it also claims that after due investigation, the police did not find any evidence of mischief. However, no security has been deployed at her residence and there was no anti-social activity. Superintendent of Police Gaurav Singh told IANS there was no evidence of firing at the spot. No formal complaint from the Ranaut family has been received. "We received a phone call about loud noise and subsequently patrolling was stepped up in the area as a precaution," he said, adding, "No security has been provided to her." A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen were identified by authorities Friday as the hackers who earlier this month took over Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorneys Office will prosecute him as adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, UK, and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, hackers sent out bogus tweets on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence, U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a news release. Todays charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived. Although the case against the teen was also investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren explained that his office is prosecuting Clark in Florida state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate. He added that Clark was the leader of the hacking scam. This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and hell be prosecuted here, Warren said. Security experts were not surprised that the alleged mastermind of the hack is a 17-year-old, given the relative amateur nature both of the operation and the hackers willingness afterward to discuss the hack with reporters online. I think this is a great case study showing how technology democratizes the ability to commit serious criminal acts, said Jake Williams, founder of the cybersecurity firm Rendition Infosec. Im not terribly surprised that at least one of the suspects is a minor. There wasnt a ton of development that went into this attack. Williams said the hackers were extremely sloppy in how they moved the Bitcoin around. Williams said it did not appear that the three used any services that make cryptocurrency difficult to trace by tumbling transactions of multiple users, a technique akin to money laundering. He also said he was conflicted about whether Clark should be charged as an adult. He definitely deserves to pay (for jumping on the opportunity) but potentially serving decades in prison doesnt seem like justice in this case, Williams said. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media companys employees into giving them access. It said hackers targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack. This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems, the company tweeted. After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitters systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington, D.C., were able to identify two of the hackers by analyzing Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain the ledger where transactions are recorded including ones the hackers attempted to keep anonymous, federal prosecutors said. Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or other electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information. Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later given the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The company has previously said the incident was a coordinated social engineering attack that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. It didnt provide any more information about how the attack was carried out, but the details released so far suggest the hackers started by using the old-fashioned method of talking their way past security. British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number. When the worker called the number they might have been taken to a convincing (but fake) helpdesk operator, who was then able to use social engineering techniques to trick the intended victim into handing over their credentials, Clulely wrote Friday on his blog. Its also possible the hackers pretended to call from the companys legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said. Fazelis father said Friday he hasnt been able to talk to his son since Thursday. Im 100% sure my son is innocent, Mohamad Fazeli said. Hes a very good person, very honest, very smart and loyal. We are as shocked as everybody else, he said by phone. Im sure this is a mix up. Attempts to reach relatives of the other two werent immediately successful. Hillsborough County court records didnt list an attorney for Clark, and federal court records didnt list attorneys for Sheppard or Fazeli. One of the key figures in the impeachment of Donald Trump has described being forced into retirement by 'a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation', and likened the current government of the United States to the dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Lt Colonel Alexander Vindman, 45, wrote a scathing op ed in The Washington Post on Saturday - the first day of his retirement. 'At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation's values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment,' said the Ukrainian-born lieutenant colonel. 'Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.' Alexander Vindman testified against Trump in November 2019 during the impeachment trial Trump, pictured Friday, was said to be more enraged by Vindman's testimony than anyone else He noted that opponents of the president are treated harshly, likening the treatment to that meted out by dictators. 'Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents,' he wrote. 'Those who choose loyalty to American values and allegiance to the Constitution over devotion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished.' Vindman, an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient who until February served as the top Ukraine policy officer on the National Security Council staff, was due for promotion to colonel before he testified in November. He said his promotion was ended due to 'bullying, intimidation and retaliation' by Trump and his allies. Trump fired him as policy officer in February. An official told The Washington Post that Trump dislikes Vindman more than any other witness in the impeachment proceeding and noted that he was the first one fired from the White House when it ended. 'The president said it was a 'total disgrace' what he did,' the official said. Vindman was born in the Ukraine but escaped Soviet Russia and fought for the United States Vindman wrote: 'The circumstances of my departure might have been more public, yet they are little different from those of dozens of other lifelong public servants who have left this administration with their integrity intact but their careers irreparably harmed.' Vindman's retirement was announced last month - after his promotion was approved by the Pentagon, but before it was sent to the White House for approval. He was crucial to the December 18 vote in the House to impeach Trump - making him only the third president in U.S. history to be subject to such censure. Vindman had told congressional lawmakers that he raised alarms about Trump's call with Ukraine's president, in which Trump appeared to make U.S. aid to the country dependent upon an investigation of Democratic political rival Joe Biden and his son's business dealings. 'I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen,' he testified. Vindman has said he does not yet know what he will do after leaving the military. Despite losing his career over this 'painful' experience, he stood by his testimony, he wrote. 'America has thrived because citizens have been willing to contribute their voices and shed their blood to challenge injustice and protect the nation,' he said. 'It is in keeping with that history of service that, at this moment, I feel the burden to advocate for my values and an enormous urgency to act.' He added: 'To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream.' 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Twitter account link TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND Washington: Spirit Airlines has warned up to 30 percent of its employees that they will lose their jobs in October, and regional carrier ExpressJet's future is in doubt after losing a key contract as the virus pandemic continues to hammer the airline industry. Spirit is the latest airline to deliver layoff warnings to employees, which are required by federal law 60 days before large-scale job cuts. The budget airline based in Miramar, Florida, said it told unions that about 20 percent to 30 percent of its pilots, flight attendants and other groups will be furloughed in October. The airline did not give a number. It had 9,100 employees at the start of the year. Spirit said it hopes to restore the jobs eventually. Earlier in July, United Airlines issued layoff warnings for 36,000 employees, and it warned pilots this week of possible additional job losses this year and next year. American Airlines notified 25,000 workers that they could be furloughed in October, when billions in federal money to help cover payroll costs expires. Airlines are slashing costs, getting federal aid and borrowing on private credit markets to survive a downturn in US Air travel that hit 95 percent in April. Hopes for recovery have dimmed in recent weeks with a resurgence of reported cases of COVID-19 in many states, which ended two months of growth in air travel. The retrenchment now threatens another small U.S. Airline. ExpressJet's survival was in doubt after United dropped its contract with ExpressJet and consolidated its United Express operations under affiliate CommutAir. United spokesman Charles Hobart said the change will take a number of months. ExpressJet spokesman Gary Cambre said the airline expects to continue normal operations through the rest of this year. We will now explore all options for the future of our company in 2021,? he said in an emailed statement. The Regional Airline Association, of which ExpressJet is a member, said the Atlanta-based carrier's announcement reflects the double-edged sword regional airlines encounter as they navigate the pandemic" the virus is harming their companies and the major airlines they serve under contracts. The trade group is lobbying for an extension of the federal aid to help airlines cover their payroll costs, which runs out in October. "For ExpressJet, it may already be too late," the group said. Earlier this year, Trans States and Compass airlines shut down after major airline partners reduced regional flights due to the pandemic. Alaska's Ravn Air also stopped flying. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) Healthcare advocates on Friday pushed for the creation of a cancer information center so that patients can access telemedicine services amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Antonio Villalon, former president of the Philippine Society of Medical Oncology, said cancer patients are at risk of contracting coronavirus in hospitals. Villalon said the facility may be patterned after the American Cancer Society Cancer Information Center, where trained medical experts in a 24/7 call center-type office respond to medical needs. Here in our country, the patients will call the hospital to set an appointment. But the hospital operator who will pick up their call cannot give (advise) because he/she is not a trained nurse or doctor, Villalon said in the daily Laging Handa briefing. Karen Villanueva of the Philippine Alliance of Patient Organization appealed to the government to implement the Universal Healthcare Law and the National Integrated Cancer Control Act. Now is the time to accelerate the move towards universal healthcare. Provide the healthcare services to the people and convene the cancer council to start the work for cancer control, said Villanueva in the same briefing, citing the creation of the National Integrated Cancer Control Council as prescribed in the law signed in 2019. (Natural News) Meteorites taken from the Thorsberg quarry in Sweden suggest that violent collisions occurred in space about 470 million years ago, flinging rapidly traveling meteorites toward Earth. Birger Schmitz of Lund University in Sweden is leading the research on the meteorites aged millions of years old. His teams findings, published in the journal Nature, show that the meteorites hold new and important evidence of Earths past. Many of these meteorites are as different from the meteorites that fall today as some of the animals that were living in that time are compared to todays animals, he said. Massive collisions in the asteroid belt increased meteorite impacts Meteorites are rock fragments that survived entry into the atmosphere and hit the earth. They usually come from the asteroid belt before a space phenomenon threw them toward a course headed for Earth. Schmitz looked for ancient meteorites to answer whether and how they may have influenced Earth eons ago. Since about 1990, he concentrated his search in a limestone quarry in Sweden. Initially, workers of the quarry threw out blemished floor tiles that were carved from limestone deposits. But as it turns out, the dark blemishes are ancient meteorites that are about 470 million years old and a few centimeters wide. Nowadays, the workers call Schmitz whenever they find blemished floor tiles. And each year, they turn in about four to five of the meteorites. Schmitz looked for other quarries that could also harbor meteorites but found nothing. Thats because sediments need to be deposited very slowly for the meteorite to accumulate in an area. Ten years later, Schmitz collected about 50 meteorites. He did some calculations and found that meteorites were falling 100 times more back when the limestone was forming than they do today. This discovery hints at what possibly happened about 470 million years ago on Earth and in Space. There is one very likely scenario: that if something explodes in space and breaks up into billions and billions of small pieces well, what we saw in the quarry, thats exactly what would happen, explained Schmitz. In their study, Schmitz and his colleagues showed that the meteorites had only been in space for about one million years not long in astronomical terms. Their finding was based on the effect of cosmic rays on the mineralogy of the meteorite fossils. They posited that impressive collisions occurred in the asteroid belt back then, which temporarily increased the rate of meteorites impacts on Earth. Simulations showed that these collisions caused fragments to travel more quickly than they do today. (Related: Researchers discover microscopic plant compound on meteorite fragment.) They concluded that the fossil meteorites in southern Sweden likely came from the inner main asteroid belt. However, the meteorites that were found are too few to significantly affect Earth. And it would take long before Schmitzs team could amass a substantial collection of the meteorites. This led Schmitz to broaden his search by looking for even smaller bits of meteorites: micrometeorites or space dust. Space dust from collisions led to Ice Age Meteorite impacts happen very often: Earth is hit by about 6,100 meteors every year, which is about 17 meteorite impacts a day. Larger, cataclysmic meteorites are the ones that are rare, such as the meteorite that experts believe hit Earth about 66 million years ago and decimated dinosaurs and 75 percent of life forms. For another study, published in the journal Science Advances, Schmitz and his colleagues looked for the extraterrestrial mineral, chromite, which is found in abundance in meteorites and can withstand strong substances. The researchers took rock samples from the quarry and dissolved them in hydrochloric acid. For every 5 kg of rock, they got 10 tiny fragments of extraterrestrial chromite, which are about a tenth of a milliliter long. Each rock sample was taken from the quarry at spatial intervals, which means their collective samples were spaced out throughout the area and therefore covered a wide perimeter. Data showed that there was a huge uptick in space dust in rocks aged 466 million years old, coinciding with a cold period known as the mid-Ordovician Ice Age. During the Ordovician period, the north of the tropics is mostly ocean while the existing land is mostly collected in the supercontinent Gondwana in the south. Earth experienced a milder climate earlier in the period. But when Gondwana shifted toward the South Pole later on, massive glaciers formed which caused shallow seas to drain and sea levels to drop. The researchers posited that a massive collision in the asteroid belt distributed both large meteorites and a massive cloud of dust, blocking sunlight from reaching Earth and plunging the planet to an Ice Age. (Related: So, were ALL aliens? New research suggests that DNA molecules were brought to Earth on meteorites.) The implications of the study are huge. The findings could mean that the space dust phenomenon is the second example of an event in the cosmos that profoundly shaped Earths evolution, next to the asteroid that took out the dinosaur populations. And Schmitzs team has a lot more to unveil, as another study has already been completed and will be published soon. This time, his team dissolved 20 more tons of rocks from different quarries that represent various periods in Earths deep history. This study addresses the partial record of rocks that were sampled in their previous research. Space.news has more on the space-related evolution of Earth. Sources include: UniverseToday.com CosmosMagazine.com UCMP.Berkeley.edu Phys.org Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nina Loasana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, August 1, 2020 08:35 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066ad18b4 1 National university,surabaya,East-Java,students,sexual-harassment,sexual-abuse Free Content warning: This story contains information about sexual assault that may be disturbing to some readers. Authorities are investigating allegations that a student at Airlangga University (Unair) in Surabaya, East Java, sexually assaulted multiple people after several first-person accounts of the allegations went viral on Twitter. The accused student, Gilang, allegedly tricked his victims into performing an act known as bondage mummification under the pretense of academic research. The case garnered public attention after a Twitter user with the handle @m_fikris gave an account of his encounter with Gilang, who allegedly claimed to be looking for a research subject for his thesis about wrappings. The user wrote that Gilang persistently begged him to take part in the research, saying he was at risk of failing his studies for not finishing his thesis. Gilang was in his fifth year of university. I felt sorry, so I agreed to help. He told me that the research subject needed to be wrapped from head to toe so they could show emotions such as anxiety. [At first] I refused, but he convinced me that it was totally safe, @m_fikris wrote. Gilang sent instructions for @m_fikris and his friend to take turns covering each others bodies, including their mouths and eyes, with duct tape. He also instructed them to wrap their bodies in jarik [traditional Javanese cloth]. Gilang asked them to record the process and to send him the footage afterwards. Another victim, who requested anonymity, said Gilang had asked him to visit his boarding house to help with his research last year. He said Gilang wrapped him in cloth, stripped him naked and sexually assaulted him. The incident has traumatized me for the last eight months. Ive had nightmares about it, the person told The Jakarta Post. Read also: Child sex abuse survivors are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault later in life Another victim, who asked to remain anonymous, said he managed an escape from Gilangs attempts in March. The 19-year-old college freshman from Surabaya had initially agreed to help Gilang with his research. As Gilang was not in Surabaya because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he asked me to carry out the wrapping process with one of his relatives and send him pictures and videos of the process, the 19-year-old said. He met Gilangs relative, a high school student who, he discovered, had been blackmailed by Gilang into participating in the so-called research. A third victim, a 24-year-old, said he had been assaulted by Gilang in 2015 when they were both university freshmen. While he was sleeping at Gilangs boarding house after a university event, he said he could feel Gilang cover his body with a blanket and grope him. Strangely, I could not move at that time. I suppose he had drugged me. I confronted him the next day, and he admitted all his actions, said the victim. Read also: Justice delayed, denied for victims of sexual abuse in Catholic Church Unair spokesperson Suko Widodo confirmed that Gilang was a student at the universitys School of Cultural Sciences (FIB) and had enrolled in 2015. Suko added that the schools ethics commission and the Surabaya Police were investigating the allegations against Gilang, including those filed several years ago. I cannot say much because we havent been able to contact Gilang yet. However, we would expel him if he was found guilty of committing the sexual harassment [that he has been accused of] as it would be a serious violation, the spokesperson said. Suko said no faculty members had received any prior reports but that he was looking into the matter further. The FIB has established an information center for victims who want to report their cases and has prepared counseling services for victims. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 00:52:14|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TIRANA, July 31 (Xinhua) -- The Albanian government signed here on Friday an agreement with the French renewable company Voltalia to build a 140 megawatt (MW) solar power park in Karavasta, western Albania. The signing ceremony took place in Prime Minister's Office with the presence of Prime Minister Edi Rama, Minister of Infrastructure and Energy Belinda Balluku and Sebastien Clerc, Chief Executive Officer of Voltalia. In his address at the ceremony, Rama called the construction of Karavasta Photovoltaic Park "very good news for the economy and image of the country." "This agreement paves the way for the construction of the larger solar power plant, where the French company will invest 100 million euros (around 118 million U.S. dollars), starting from September," Rama said. Voltalia will sell half of the green energy produced to the Albanian state at a subsidized rate of 24.89 euros per megawatt hour for the first 15 years of the contract, while the other half to be sold through another long-term power sale contract negotiated in the market. Voltalia won the tender for a 30-year concession contract in late May. The tender for this project was launched in January and postponed twice because of the coronavirus outbreak and the ensuing ban on travel. (1 euro = 1.18 U.S. dollars) Enditem " " Senate pages lead the procession of the Senate through the U.S. Capitol Rotunda into the House chamber with the Electoral College ballot boxes on Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call It may surprise you to know that Russia has a more direct presidential election process than the United States. In the United States, a system called the Electoral College periodically allows a candidate who receives fewer popular votes to win an election. In fact, there have been several presidential candidates who won the popular vote, but lost the election because they received fewer electoral votes. In Russia, where no such system exists, the candidate who receives a majority of popular votes wins the election. Every four years, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, millions of U.S. citizens go to local voting booths to elect, among other officials, the next president and vice president of their country. Their votes will be recorded and counted, and winners will be declared. But the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the Electoral College has not cast its vote. Advertisement The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism of presidential elections that was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a compromise for the presidential election process. At the time, some politicians believed a purely popular election was too reckless, while others objected to giving Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution. Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. senators plus the number of its U.S. representatives. Currently, the Electoral College includes 538 electors, 535 for the total number of congressional members, and three who represent Washington, D.C., as allowed by the 23rd Amendment. On the Monday following the second Wednesday in December, the electors of each state meet in their respective state capitals to officially cast their votes for president and vice president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the president of the Senate, who on January 6th opens and reads the votes in the presence of both houses of Congress. The winner is sworn into office at noon on January 20th. Most of the time, electors cast their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in that particular state. Some states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote, while other electors are bound by pledges to a specific political party. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, and there is no federal law or Constitutional provision against it. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 13:49:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SEOUL, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export posted a single-digit fall in four months, showing signs of recovery from an economic fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak across the world, a government report showed Saturday. Export, which accounts for about half of the export-driven economy, reached 42.83 billion U.S. dollars in July, down 7.0 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. The outbound shipment shed in single figures in four months, after tumbling 25.5 percent in April, 23.6 percent in May and 10.9 percent in June respectively. The daily average export slipped 7.0 percent over the year to 1.71 billion dollars in July, topping 1.7 billion dollars in four months. Import retreated 11.9 percent from a year earlier to 38.56 billion dollars in July, sending the trade surplus to 4.27 billion dollars. The trade balance stayed in black for the third consecutive month. The trade surplus increased from 390 million dollars in May to 3.63 billion dollars in June and 4.27 billion dollars in July. The improved export came as global demand partially recovered since May amid the reopening of businesses after shutdowns to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in major economies. South Korea's industrial output grew 4.2 percent in June from a month ago, marking the first rebound in six months. Both private consumption and facility investment expanded in the month. Real gross domestic product (GDP) slumped 3.3 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter, but it was better than the GDP falls in major economies, including the United States, Germany and France. The country's finance ministry forecast that the real GDP could turn around during the third quarter thanks to fiscal stimulus packages and accommodative monetary policy as well as the global economic recovery. Export to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, gained 2.5 percent in July from a year earlier, after expanding 6.9 percent in June. Shipment to the United States advanced 7.7 percent last month. It marked the first time in 21 months since October 2018 that export to both China and the United States increased on a yearly basis. Shipment to China and the United States takes up about 40 percent of South Korea's total export. Shipment to the European Union (EU) reduced 11.1 percent in July from a year earlier, but it was down from declines of 22.6 percent in May and 17.0 percent in June respectively. Export to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan and Latin America diminished in double figures last month amid the lingering effect from the COVID-19 pandemic. By item, semiconductor export rose 5.6 percent thanks to solid demand for chips used for servers and computers. Amid the fear of the virus infection, people preferred to work at home and attend online classes, resulting in strong demand for computers and higher data transmission. Computer shipment jumped 77.1 percent last month, keeping an upward trend for the 10th consecutive month. Export of telecommunication devices, such as smartphone, made the first rebound in four months, and consumer electronics shipment turned around in five months. Automotive export dipped 4.2 percent in July from a year earlier, but it was sharply slower than a 54 percent drop tallied in May. It was attributable to recovering demand from Europe and the United States. Auto parts shipment plunged 27.7 percent as global automakers adjusted production to tackle increased inventory, and export for general machinery, steel products and textiles all shrank in double digits. Export for oil products and petrochemicals dived 43.2 percent and 21.0 percent each amid the global supply glut and lower product price. Enditem (Reuters) - Three-times champion jockey Stan Mellor - the first to ride 1,000 winners over jumps during a celebrated career - has died aged 83, the British media reported on Saturday. Mellor, the champion jockey between 1959 and 1962, also enjoyed success as a trainer with more than 750 winners over the years. His landmark 1,000th victory as a rider came on Ouzo at the Christmas Spirit Novice Chase in Nottingham in December 1971. Despite not winning the Grand National in 13 attempts - finishing second on Badanloch in 1960 - or the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Mellor is considered by many in the horse racing world as one of the sport's greats. He guided Stalbridge Colonist to victory over great Irish racehorse Arkle in the 1966 Hennessy Gold Cup, becoming one of the few riders to manage the feat. Born to a timber merchant in Manchester, Mellor secured his first win at 16 on Straight Border in Wolverhampton before tasting success for the first time as a professional on Wirswall Prince at Ludlow in 1954. He retired in 1971 having ridden 1,035 winners over jumps in Britain with another nine victories in Ireland. He later trained both Royal Mail (1980) and Lean Ar Aghaidh (1987) to victories in the Whitbread Gold Cup. Both the horses managed third-place finishes in the Grand National. (Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson) The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Saturday announced new containment zones in the city, bringing down the number of areas under strict restrictions to 75. According to the order issued by the Pune municipal commissioner Vikram Kumar, there will be 75 containment zones in the city as compared to 87 previously. Kumar has also empowered ward officers to seal buildings or areas with more than five positive cases. PMC has allowed essential shops to operate in two shifts - 8am to 12 noon and 5pm to 6pm, instead of 9am to 2pm as per the previous order. Containment zones in Pune will continue to have all the previous restrictions. Only essential commodity shops will be open and timings will also be restricted. Movement of residents of containment zones is also restricted, said Kumar. The new containment zone map will be applicable from Saturday midnight. The commissioner has instructed the police and local PMC officials to seal these areas. PMC has adopted the micro-containment zone policy and is reviewing containment zones every week. Number of containment zones in city June 2: 63 June 16: 73 June 24: 74 July 1: 109 July 23: 87 August 1: 75 The law banning the importation of salvaged vehicles into Ghana comes. into effect on November 1, 2020. Shipping agents, Importers, and freight forwarders were therefore advised to properly counsel their clients on importing such vehicles to Ghana and its consequences. Parliament, in March, passed the Customs (Amendment) Bill, 2020 an amendment of the existing Customs Act, 2015 (Act 891). The amendment banned the importation of accident and salvaged motor vehicles comprising of wrecked, destroyed and those physically damaged by collision, fire, water or other occurrences into the country. Mr Aweya Julius Kantum, Assistant Commissioner of Customs in charge of Policy and Programmes, Customs Division, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), who gave the advice, said agents were the main source of information for importers, therefore, they needed to appreciate relevant laws before a they brought a car or anything into Ghana. Mr Kantum revealed that as scheduled, the GRA would start enforcing the law from November 1, 2020. The time of importation in Customs is the time that the ship docks and reports to customs that it has docked. If the ship comes from 1st November, it means it is time bound and it means that the law will catch it, he said. He added that it would be incumbent on agents to understand the law and desist from bringing salvaged cars and cargo into Ghana as one will be liable if he or she broke the law. He stressed that, Now anybody who intends to import, should be reminded that if the cargo arrives before the first of November then he or she is within time, if its after that, then it means they are time bound. Now dont assume that the law is going to change, work on the basis that the law is going to start and then you will not fall foul on the law Mr. Justice Njornan Magah Yadjayime, Supervisor in charge, Vehicle Valuation Unit Customs Technical Services Bureau (CTSB), on his part, explained that contrary to assertions that there was ambiguity in the definition of salvaged vehicles by the law, the Act did not leave room for human discretionary authority beyond what it stipulates. Mr Yadjayime observed that, The law is looking at the number of ways vehicles get damaged, so you are looking at flooding, collision etc. so all have been covered so that you dont leave it to anybodys judgement to say that this one can go and this one will not go. 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 Ahmadi Muslims, who played a pivotal role in the creation of Pakistan, are facing severe persecution by the Pakistani government. This culminated in the events of 1974, when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto turned the anti-Ahmadi movement into fully-fledged state-sponsored persecution. He enacted a 1974 Constitutional Amendment specifically targeting Ahmadi Muslims, declaring them not Muslims for purposes of law and constitution. It was a watershed moment in Pakistans history. A detailed report by the All Party Parliamentary Group titled - 'Suffocation of the Faithful: The Persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan and The Rise of International Extremism', speaks of targeted attacks on the non-Muslim community with particular emphasis on Pakistan. Life has become intolerable for Ahmadi Muslims living in Pakistan, and many have left Pakistan and sought refuge in other countries. In Pakistan today, anti-Ahmadi Muslim sentiment is as strong and violent as ever. Ahmadi Muslims have been denied the right to vote in Pakistan, and their core religious texts and websites are banned. Under General Zia-ul-Haqs promise to 'ensure that the cancer of Qadianism (a derogatory term for the Community) is exterminated', thousands of Ahmadi Muslims were charged under these laws, and Pakistan developed a sickening culture of anti-Ahmadi harassment, violence and murder. Most infamously, on May 28, 2010, two Ahmadi Muslim mosques in Lahore were attacked. 86 Ahmadi Muslims and a Christian were massacred. Mobs of hundreds have attacked mosques, the grave of Pakistans first Nobel Laureate has been desecrated, and the word Muslim scrubbed from his tombstone. "Despite the persecution we face in Pakistan and the myriad of restrictions placed upon us, Ahmadi Muslims continue to serve their nation with a spirit of love, selflessness and devotion, as loyalty to ones nation is an inherent part of Islamic faith," the report quoted Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the leader of the global Ahmadiyya community. The APPG report also requested the UK government to put pressure on Pakistan for removal of its anti-Ahmadi laws. In Pakistan, Ahmadi mosques have also been targeted on grounds that Ahmadis cannot pose as Muslims, therefore they cannot pray as Muslims and their places of worship cannot be called mosques or resemble mosques. As a result many Ahmadi mosques have been sealed, attacked and even destroyed. "If I call Azan, I would be punished with three years imprisonment. If I call myself a Muslim, I would be punished with three years of imprisonment. That law is still intact in Pakistan. People have been charged for fasting in the month of Ramadan, because by fasting in the month of Ramadan you are posing as a Muslim, and hence serving a sentence of three years. Mujeeb-ur-Rehman to the APPG Inquiry. The APPG Inquiry heard that Ahmadi Muslims are denied the right to rest in peace after death. Ahmadi families are routinely barred by local extremist clerics from burying their loved ones at the local cemetery. As a result, many families are forced to travel long distances to put their loved ones to rest. The persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the most severe in Pakistan. However, it is worrying to observe that phenomenon has spread to different countries across the world. The APPG Inquiry found extremist agendas and activity are filtering into the United Kingdom. It heard how extremist clerics coming from Pakistan have been able to freely enter the UK, to carry out fundraising activities and deliver inflammatory sermons at events such as Khatme Nabuwwat conferences and promoting antiAhmadi sentiments. Ahmadi Muslims have experienced discrimination in the UK. Many parents have told their children not to make friends with Ahmadi Muslim children at school. "The Inquiry heard how Birmingham City Council's Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) had refused membership for Ahmadis unless they removed the word Muslim from their title. Similar sentiments were echoed in other groups, such as the Waltham Forest interfaith forum in which Ahmadi Muslims were not permitted to be registered as part of a group representing local Muslims," the report added. On March 24, 2016, Ahmadi Muslim shopkeeper Asad Shah, was savagely attacked and stabbed in broad daylight on the streets of Glasgow. He died from his injuries at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. "The Ahmadiyya mosque in Sialkot of Pakistan was torn apart by hand and it was incited by a preacher who had come to the UK in 2014 and given a lecture here at the Khatme Nabuwwat Conference. Ive raised with the government that you need to ban this guy from ever entering this country because hes on video inciting the mosque to be torn down piece by piece but I have not had a response," said Fiyaz Mughal, to the APPG Inquiry. In Bangladesh, a suicide bomber detonated explosives during the Friday Prayer at a mosque in a remote northern village in 2015 and wounding three members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. In May 2017, an Ahmadi Imam was brutally attacked at his local mosque. Similarly, in 2019, extremists vandalized and torched houses owned by Ahmadi Muslims to protest against the Jalsa Salana, the communitys annual convention. Around 50 people were injured in co-ordinated attacks by hardline Islamist groups. Another election season is upon Harris County and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rack up cases and claim more lives. Both candidates for Texas House District 135 have committed to serving their community while attempting to deal with the limitations of social interaction caused by COVID-19. Current House District 135 Representative Jon Rosenthal and Republican candidate Justin Ray, former mayor of Jersey Village, are continuing to campaign as the election date of Nov. 3 comes around the corner. Both candidates are working with community leaders to find solutions for students going back to school in the fall while working on plans for the next legislative session in 2021. Justin Ray won the Republican primary to run for the position held by incumbent Rep. Rosenthal, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. Back to School Both Rosenthal and Ray agree that students ultimately need to physically be in school for the benefit of their education, addressing the pros and cons of both virtual and in-person education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, the Texas Education Agency made it mandatory for students to have an option to go back to school in-person. Cy-Fair ISD recently delayed the first day of school to Sept. 8 and is allowing parents to choose a virtual or in-person instruction method, per TEA requirements. Cy-Fair delays start of school: Cy-Fair ISD pushes school start date to Sept. 8, clarifies virtual and in-person instruction for 2020-2021 Rosenthal said students and families in low-income areas are most affected by a possible virtual instruction method when school starts in September. Rosenthal has aided local organizations like Cy-Hope in distributing food to low-income families in the Cy-Fair school district during the pandemic. Then on top of that youve got your working families, Rosenthal said. They drop kids off at school and go to work, especially families who have working single parents who work to feed their families to keep their house or keep the roof over their heads. Sometimes its a single parent working two or three jobs. Ray, who took the opportunity to speak on why in-person education is more effective than virtual classes for most students during a recent CFISD meeting, discussed the possible disadvantage for special education students. On HoustonChronicle.com: Gov. Abbott, GOP leaders clarify Texas in-school learning requirements for the fall Of course, you have the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC and a number of other doctors all agree that its actually important for the health and wellbeing of students to be in a classroom setting, Ray said. We also recognize that this is a very serious virus, its very contagious and it has very detrimental effects. We have to move forward with a balanced approach. Our position during the coronavirus experience is to go with a balanced proposal whether it be with the economy or the schools. Alternatively, Rosenthal said the new virtual instruction methods could possibly lead to better blended learning methods after the COVID-19 pandemic ends for students who function better online. Some students actually have excelled through the distance learning because some like the self-paced learning, he said. To make that work they have to have access to some form of assistance, some form of teaching where when they hit that spot thats difficult to get through, someone can help them. Cy-Fair COVID Resources: Where to find free food, blood drives and bill assistance Campaigning during a pandemic Ray continues to block walk during the pandemic while practicing social distancing, arguing that constituents prefer to see their possible representatives in person. People were very appreciative that they have a campaign out there knocking on their door, asking them what they care about, he said. Weve had to be creative with some of our efforts but at the same time weve been able to continue with some traditional campaigning activities while being health conscious. Rosenthal has opted for calling residents instead, speaking with voters about COVID-19 for the most part. I spend hours every day just calling random residents in the district, checking in, asking them how theyre doing and whats on their mind, and this pandemic just dominates the conversation, he said. I dont know about you, but Im personally am hesitant to open the door for a stranger right now and a lot of people feel that way. Rosenthal has also hosted virtual fundraisers during the pandemic with more on the way and has led Ray in fundraising as of July 16 with $130,000. Rosenthal has also participated in fireside chats hosted on Zoom with other members of the House. Ray has participated in local July 4 parades and community events, speaking at the most recent CFISD special board meeting. The race to November Ray and Rosenthal are working through the pandemic to either flip the HD 135 position or keep the section blue. Rosenthal said his main concern leading into the election is keeping his eye on serving the district first and foremost. Really, if youre seeking the title representative, its your job to represent the people and right now we are literally living a different life than we were even three or four months ago, he said. Its impossible for people not to focus on that. Our culture is changing. Ray said running a campaign during a pandemic was unexpected, but he welcomes the challenge. I wish they would pull out the rulebook on how to run a campaign during a pandemic, but that book does not exist, unfortunately, he said. We understand the importance and the significance and the danger of this virus, but we want to go with a balanced approach because the educational wellbeing and the developmental wellbeing are vital as well. chevall.pryce@chron.com Aerial photo shows a modern agricultural technology demonstration zone in Butuo County, Jiangyou City, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, on July 18. [Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing] Agronomist Xiong Ying began to offer pairing-up assistance to a county's poverty alleviation work in August, 2018, in Jiangyou City, Southwest China's Sichuan Province. Xiong with the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau of Jiangyou City was transferred to a modern agricultural technology demonstration zone in Butuo County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture of the province, helping local farmers develop agriculture and increase income. To get ready for the planting season, Xiong arrived in Butuo two months in advance to implement the experiment and promote new tree varieties and fruit-growing techniques. Following her investigation of the soil and climate conditions, she started trial planting of peach, plum and apricot trees in an eco-friendly way. However, the work is never easy. Xiong met plenty of difficulties such as plant diseases and insect pests. Given her continuous efforts, she finally led villagers to plant peach, plum, apricot and blueberries successfully, teaching them standardized fruit-tree cultivation and management skills and making them see the benefits of modern agriculture and facility agriculture. Xiong posted short videos on her official Douyin account, introducing fruit tree cultivation and related management skills as well as the local natural scenery. She hoped that more people will pay attention to the outcome of the poverty relief work of the county. Her followers have grown from 400 two years ago to over 6,600. Xiong Ying (R) instructs the local villagers of Yi Ethnic Group to thin and cover peach fruits while recording a video in the modern agricultural technology demonstration zone in Butuo County in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, on May 18. [Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing] Xiong Ying (2nd, R) and a village-stationed official (1st, L) instruct local villagers of the Yi Ethnic Group on pruning fruit trees in Shizui Village, Butuo County, in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, on July 18. [Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing] Xiong Ying records video clips of pruning and other field management steps in the modern agricultural technology demonstration zone in Butuo County in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, on May 18. [Xinhua/Xu Bingjie] Xiong Ying (C) instructs the local villagers of Yi Ethnic Group on fruit thinning in the modern agricultural technology demonstration zone in Butuo County in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, on May 18. [Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing] A photo taken on July 18 shows the blueberries in the modern agricultural technology demonstration zone. [Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing] (Source: Xinhua/Translated and edited by Women of China) kENUP Foundation has presented 100,000 donation into Malta's COVID-19 R&D Fund. The Fund is managed jointly by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) and Malta Enterprise with the support of the Ministry for Finance and Financial Services, and the Ministry for the Economy, Investment Small Businesses. The Malta fund will see 5.3Mfunnelled into developing innovative and improved scientific and technological approaches to the challenges raised by COVID-19 and future pandemics. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200801005005/en/ Boosting Investment in R&I: 100,000 donation by kENUP Foundation to Malta's COVID-19 R&D Fund (Photo: Business Wire) kENUP, a Malta-based not-for-profit global partnership in innovation, promotes research-based innovation for Europe with public and societal benefit. Holm Keller, Chairman of kENUP Foundation said, "We are very grateful to the Maltese Government for the initial support in the setting up of the Foundation in the Republic of Malta. kENUP Foundation is supporting the provision of financing for companies engaged in the development of innovative products aimed at fighting COVID-19. We are therefore very happy to also contribute to the Maltese COVID-19 R&D Fund and to support projects designed to protect the Maltese people and beyond." "With this significant donation, kENUP is giving the Malta Council for Science and Technology its appreciated support by boosting the Euro 5.3 Million COVID-19 R&D Fund set up using central government funding earlier this year," said Dr Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Executive Chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology. In his keynote speech, Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services and Digital Economy Hon. Clayton Bartolo said that Malta is not a newcomer to kENUP initiatives. "I know that years ago, MCST envisioned that kENUP could truly bring something new and big to Malta's ailing research and innovation sector. Along the years, kENUP has also found this government's help in addressing legal issues allowing for a novel concept in online tertiary education which ultimatley led to this setting up of EDU, also in Malta." The Parliamentary Secretary also highlighted that six years from its inception, kENUP has solidly established itself globally in innovation support particularly in the health sector. "Through this donation our country will strengthen its cause for more investment in Research Development," remarked Hon. Bartolo. The video of the event can be found at https://www.covidx.eu/news/Malta View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200801005005/en/ Contacts: Press contacts: kENUP covidX Programme: Nadine Castillo tel: +356 99452436 MCST COVID-19 R&D fund: Giselle Calleja tel: +356 2360 2173 Two key accused in the sensational Kerala gold smuggling case, Swapna Suresh and Sandeep Nair, were sent to judicial remand by a court here on Saturday. The accused were produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court (Economic Offences) as their five-day custody period granted to the Customs (Preventive) Commissionerate probing the case ended on Saturday. In a remand report submitted in the Court, the Customs said that their interrogation was done in accordance with the well settled principles of law having regard to the human rights of the accused. Swapna Suresh was allowed to meet her children on July 29 and 31 while in custody. Both the accused will be subjected to COVID-19 tests before they are shifted to jails. The duo was formally arrested by the Customs (Preventive) Commissionerate on July 24 when they were produced before the Special NIA Court here as their custody period ended. Suresh and Nair, arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) from Bengaluru on July 11, were subjected to custodial interrogation by the agency earlier. Meanwhile, NIA probing the terror funding angle in the gold smuggling case has extended its investigation to Tamil Nadu. Police sources in Tamil Nadu have confirmed that an NIA team led by a DIG level official was holding enquiries in Chennai in connection with the Kerala gold smuggling case. The sources, however, did not elaborate. NIA had earlier said that the accused, arrested in connection with the case, had sourced gold in large quantities from abroad multiple times earlier through various airports and seaports in the country, especially in Kerala. In a report submitted before the NIA special court here last week, the agency had said its initial investigation pointed out the larger conspiracy consisting of highly influential people both in India and abroad behind this case and the racket had already transported bulk quantities of gold from the Middle East and sold it clandestinely to various people. Investigation also disclosed that the accused had earned lucrative profit from the illegal business and proceeds of smuggling could be used for terror funding, it had said. The college admissions process can be daunting. I know. As a first-generation college student whose parents did not speak English, I am painfully aware of the challenges students face navigating the admissions process on their own. I was fortunate to fall in with a group of friends with older siblings in college. Mine was an extremely overcrowded high school in the lower Rio Grande Valley, where juniors and seniors attended from 7 a.m. to noon, and sophomores and freshmen replaced them from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Asking for help wasnt an option. I recall only one conversation with a high school counselor. It sticks in my memory because she tried to discourage me from attending the University of Texas at Austin, my eventual alma mater, and instead tried to steer me to a campus closer to home one that lacked a journalism program. Decades later, as my own daughter applied for college, I found the paperwork and deadlines just as intimidating but not as overwhelming. Many more resources by that time were available at her school, in the community and online, and for that I am grateful. Unfortunately, many families are unaware of the great help available here in San Antonio. One of those resources is Cafe College, a center where students with higher education goals can get expert assistance with college applications and financial aid paperwork, among other things. Funded by the city and operated by the San Antonio Education Partnership, the center has been in operation since 2010 and has grown to serve about 11,000 students annually. Cafe College caters not only to students going directly from high school to college, but also to community college students transferring to four-year schools, and those who stopped their college education short of earning a degree and want to re-enroll. It also helps people seeking career training. Cafe College has a permanent location at 131 El Paso St., near the University of Texas at San Antonios downtown campus. At the moment, all services are online due to social distancing requirements. Students can ask for help on the centers website and a counselor will respond. Montserrat Garcia, 20, is a U.S. citizen who recently moved back to San Antonio from Mexico, where she had been living and studying. She had expected to sit out a semester while she went through the college admission process. With the help of her Cafe College counselor Mayra Barrera, Garcia is on track to begin fall semester classes at San Antonio College to earn a nursing degree. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio school districts still struggle with the citys segregated past Before there was a Cafe College, there was a tiny nonprofit started by Chandra Murthy, a retired mechanical engineer who lives on the South Side. He dedicated his free time to helping first-generation minority students with their college admissions. He launched the effort after learning how difficult it was for him a college graduate to help his son fill out the admissions paperwork. He helped a number of students apply for the better part of 10 years, but gave it up after he saw Cafe College successfully filling the void in the community that had prompted his own efforts. I recently caught up with Murthy on the phone. He remains passionate about the importance of higher education and seeing minority students do well. Poverty breeds poverty, and we need to break that cycle, Murthy said. Murthy is absolutely right, but that will only happen if students pursue a post-high school education, whether its a college degree or certificate program. Now more than ever, students and parents will need help navigating the altered college admissions landscape. How will the shift to pass/fail grading, prompted by the pandemic and distance learning, affect GPAs and class rankings? What are the implications of universities waiving standardized test scores because of the novel coronavirus? With extracurricular activities and much community service work on hold for now, will letters of recommendation and personal essays carry more weight? College counselors can provide the assistance students need to achieve their higher education goals. They need to be sought out. We cant allow a pandemic to interfere with the college-going culture we have worked so hard to develop in our community. gpadilla@express-news.net For the first time in Ireland, and only the second time in the world, the highest national court has required a government to revise its national climate policy. The case dubbed Climate Case Ireland," lodged by Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) against the Government, argued that the State's National Mitigation Plan does not do enough to tackle climate change. Yesterdays ruling rejected the plan as invalid and in breach of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, overturning a High Court ruling last year which said that it could not second guess government policy. This landmark decision recognises the urgency of responding to the climate emergency and sets a precedent for courts around the world to follow. United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, Dr. David R. Boyd, said: "This landmark decision recognises the urgency of responding to the climate emergency and sets a precedent for courts around the world to follow." Advertisement Swedish environmental activist and founder of the school strike for climate movement FridaysForFuture Greta Thunberg congratulated the environmental campaigners who won the case. The Irish Supreme Court finds government climate plan falls "well short in historic law case. Congratulations to everyone involved!! https://t.co/q6brBiWwJx Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) July 31, 2020 Clodagh Daly of the Climate Case Ireland group said governments around the world must now be held to account: All governments must be on notice now that they cannot make promises they will not be able to fulfil. "They have a legal obligation to protect citizens from the worst impacts of climate change by reducing... emissions in the short-term, as well as the medium and the long-term. She said the ruling was a huge victory for climate justice in Ireland and the world. Climate Case Ireland said Ireland currently has one of the highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in Europe, with emissions rising rather than falling. Ireland contributes disproportionately to the climate crisis, but we have the means to lead the... transition to a low-carbon economy and society... the Supreme Court has now affirmed that there is no legal basis for a lack of political will, Ms Daly added. Government drawing board With Government now having to return to the drawing board on climate change policy, the Green Party welcomed the Climate Case victory. Green Party MEP Ciaran Cuffe said specifics are needed from all three parties in Government to tackle climate change: If we dont have the exact measures put down on paper, its very difficult to implement them. And look, for twenty years the Green Party has been saying we need to act on climate change. "If we dont have specifics, and if politicians talk in generalities, rather than say what we need to do with our energy, with our transport, with our agriculture, with our buildings, then were not going to achieve what needs to be done. Party Officials Implicated as North Korean Smugglers Caught Trying to Move Gold Into China 2020-07-31 -- Authorities in North Korea are investigating allegations that central Party officials of the ruling Workers' Party are involved in gold and platinum smuggling after seven alleged smugglers were arrested as they were attempting to deliver a large amount of the metals to buyers in China, local sources told RFA. After the provincial security department of Ryanggang Province received a tip that the handover was to take place, officers caught the seven smugglers in the act at a secluded area near the border city of Hyesan earlier this month. The smugglers were believed by sources to have been working not only with border guards, but also with members of the central Party, a 13,000-strong group of officials responsible for implementing Kim Jong Un's orders. They attempted to get out of trouble by offering to bribe the arresting officers with 100,000 yuan (U.S. $14,000), which is more than an average North Korean earns in years. "They confessed during the investigation that some of the gold they were trying to smuggle came from central Party officials," an official of the judicial authorities in Ryanggang province, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA's Korean Service Thursday "Some of the smugglers were found to have carried a large amount of gold to Hyesan on the instructions of the central Party officials. The officials hid their identities, and tried to get the gold into China by hiring the smugglers," said the source. A corruption scandal involving such high-level officials would create a shockwave among North Korean elites if word were to spread inside the country. The source added that the seized contraband included a small amount of platinum that pointed to high-level involvement. "This incident is all the more problematic because platinum, which is strictly controlled by the state, has been found among the goods that were to be smuggled across the border line," the source said. "But for some reason, the provincial security department has been passive in their investigation, because they realize that a number of central Party officials and Ryanggang province officials were also involved in this case," said the source. Maintaining secrecy The source said the investigators want to keep everyone tight-lipped about the incident. "The investigators are under pressure from the central Party and the state security department. Mindful of the potentially serious repercussions that could stem from the incident, the provincial security department officials are focusing on keeping the mouths of the people involved in the case shut. They don't want the whole story to be leaked to the outside world," the source said. A second source, a Ryanggang resident who requested anonymity to speak freely, confirmed to RFA that the seven alleged smugglers were arrested, and that senior officials were involved. "The provincial security department got a tip that the seven were trying to sell large quantities of gold to [someone in] China. After tailing them, they were caught in the act," the second source said. "The moment the smugglers, who were in league with border guards, entered the border area to hand over the gold, they were ambushed by the provincial security agents lying in wait," the second source said. The second source said he knew that the amount of gold they were trying to smuggle was a gigantic sum, based on the amount in bribes they offered to their captors. "The arrested smugglers reportedly promised 100,000 yuan to the border guards if they would turn a blind eye to their smuggling operation," the second source said. Smuggling amid a crisis Under ordinary conditions, smuggling of goods to and from China across the porous border is very commonplace, and is vital to the country's nascent market economy amid U.S. and UN sanctions aimed at depriving North Korea of resources and cash that could be diverted into its nuclear and missile programs. Since January, the closure of the border to prevent the spread of coronavirus and authorities' extra attention on smuggling has had a crippling effect on the livelihoods of people who make most of what they earn by trading imported necessities from China, or sending domestic goods to be sold in the enormous Chinese market. "[These days] ordinary residents are unable to even think about smuggling as border closures continue due to the coronavirus crisis. But this proves that the central Party officials are behind this case, because only they would have the power to try to smuggle gold bars at a time like this." But North Korean authorities have issued directives to go after the illicit activities of the country's elite. In February, the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper severely criticized the fact that tax breaks, special privileges and corruption were frequently found among Central Committee officials and the staff of Party officials. The price of gold has risen nearly 30 percent in 2020, and reached an all-time high Monday. As of Thursday evening it stood at $1,958.55 per Troy Ounce. Reported by Sewon Kim for RFA's Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong Copyright 1998-2016, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content July not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bhopal, Aug 1 : With the number of coronavirus infections on the increase in state capital Bhopal after Indore, the Madhya Pradesh government is getting strict on the implementation of the health and other protocols. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has directed his Ministers not to undertake official tours till August 14, conduct meetings and rallies only through videoconferences, and meet not more than five people at their residences. He has also warned that those not following social distancing and wearing face masks -- be it the Ministers, MLAs, other public representatives, and officials -- will face strict action. While the state's corona tally is over 31,000 now, Indore leads with more than 7,200 cases while Bhopal is at second position with over 6,300 cases. However, for the past few days, the number of new cases in Bhopal are increasing compared with Indore, worrying the authorities. A 10-day lockdown has been declared in Bhopal, which will continue till August 4. With 208 cases reported on Friday, the total corona cases in Bhopal increased to 6,313. Indore reported 112 new cases, taking its total to 7,216. Health Department Additional Chief Secretary Mohammad Suleiman said that antigen tests have been introduced in Bhopal to speed up the whole process. While private hospitals in Bhopal are being converted into Covid centres, hotels have been roped in to facilitate paid quarantine. District Collector Avinash Lavania said that while the treatment of coronavirus infection and quarantine at the government-run facilities is free, the paid quarantine facility has also been ensured for those who can afford it. Taking a dig at Chouhan, Congress MP Vivek Tankha wondered why he made announcements that he himself could not fulfil. He asked the Chief Minister if he could even think of acting against state Home Minister Narottam Mishra who he alleged was never seen wearing a mask in public. "Some wise men think not wearing masks is their only identity," he remarked. 1 Coury also said that, given the definition of teacher in the actual measure, it is highly likely that less than 50% of the money raised by this proposed surcharge would end up in the salaries of actual classroom teachers as they are commonly understood in the common vernacular. He also said the description failed to explain how the measure would tie the hands of Arizona lawmakers, forbidding them from reducing other funding for public education once these new funds started to flow. Coury brushed aside the fact that each petition had an actual copy of the initiative attached, meaning that would-be signers with questions could have actually read the entire document if they had questions. He said that those who would choose to go beyond the petition and the 100-word description would first have seen the finding and declaration of purpose section of the measure. And that verbiage, the judge said, only magnifies the significant risk of confusion of failing to mention key provisions in the description. By Express News Service KOLKATA: Responding to a call from the party high-command, senior BJP leader Mukul Roy, who skipped week-long meetings with the national leadership last week following his discontent with the partys Assembly seat-wise projections, will leave for Delhi within a day or two to meet top BJP brass. Roy is likely to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah and partys national president JP Nadda. The summoning appears to be significant in the wake of the recent rift in the partys Bengal functionaries that surfaced during the week-long meetings with the national leadership. READ| Bengal: Another BJP leader strikes discordant note after Mukul Roy After Roy abruptly left Delhi last week, BJP MP Arjun Singh had alleged that efficient workers, especially who defected from TMC, were not being allowed to work freely by a section of the leaders in the party hierarchy. Singh also pointed out the dominance of state president Dilip Ghosh in the partys day-to-day affairs. The return of Biplab Mitra and his brother Prashanta to the ruling party on Friday is reflecting the veracity of Singhs allegation. If more turncoats return to their parent party, it will not only create more embarrassment but also widen the crack in our organisation which might lead to a poor show in the Assembly elections, said a BJP leader. On many occasions, turncoats have alleged that they were not being informed and allowed to participate in BJPs regular activities. They alleged they were not even welcomed at the local party offices. These turncoats were active when they were in the TMC. If we force them to sit idle, it will be difficult to keep them with the party, the leader said. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.1 Trend: Armenia's provocation on border with Azerbaijan in the direction of Tovuz district, resulted in complete fiasco, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, Head of Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmat Hajiyev said. Hajiyev made the remark in an interview to Russias National Defense journal, Trend reports. "The recent escalation in Azerbaijans Tovuz district direction of the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border was the result of an Armenian provocation. With this move, Yerevan pursued a set of goals. Conditionally they can be divided into internal and external ones," he said. Hajiyev noted that the internal reasons are connected with the worsening situation in Armenia against the background of the difficult political and socio-economic situation and the deplorable situation with COVID-19. "As it is known, in 2018 Nikol Pashinyan came to power in Armenia on a wave of populist promises to the Armenian people. But time has shown that his government is unable to fulfill those promises, to change life in the country for the better. The situation with COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated its inefficiency. Therefore, amid the growing problems, Pashinyans government seeks to divert the attention of the population from internal problems," the assistant to president stressed. According to Hajiyev, among the external reasons, Azerbaijan's huge success in the international arena should be noted. Strengthening of our international positions, including those ones regarding the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan - all this creates envy in Armenia, he said. Against this background, the country, pursuing a destructive policy and continuing the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, seeks to divert the attention of the international community from the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories by creating a new hotbed of tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but this time on the state border. The official emphasized that with such provocations, Yerevan is trying to shape an opinion that Azerbaijan is allegedly committing attacks on the territory of Armenia and to involve military-political organizations, of which it is a member, in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. "In addition, among the goals of Armenia was the creation of a threat to strategic international projects such as export oil and gas pipelines, the East-West transport corridor. We can confidently say that Armenia did not achieve its goals and its provocation turned into a complete fiasco," he noted. "On July 12, using their artillery, they struck at the positions of the Azerbaijani army. This attack was repulsed with return fire. But, just like before, Armenia began to blame Azerbaijan for this provocation, citing unfounded and even ridiculous arguments. The Armenian side claims that allegedly two Azerbaijani servicemen in a UAZ vehicle tried to commit military sabotage on the border with Armenia. This, of course, is absurd and beyond any logic. What modern army will attack an armed enemy using unarmored vehicles?" he said. Hajiyev also stressed that Azerbaijan has no military plans or goals on the state border with Armenia. "With the aim of demilitarization, the protection of this part of the border with Armenia was entrusted to the border troops of Azerbaijan. Escalation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border does not meet the interests of Azerbaijan. On the contrary, as I have already noted, the emergence of a hotbed of tension in this area is in the interests of Armenia. One thing that needs to be clarified. There is no channel of communication between Azerbaijans president and the Armenian prime minister. There is a certain communication channel between the authorized representatives of the two countries. Practice has shown that as a result of factors related to Armenia, in particular the constant governmental reshuffle in Yerevan, this communication channel is practically ineffective. In fact, there is no one to keep in touch with. This proves again that the Armenian side is not sincere in its actions," he said. Further, the assistant to Azerbaijani president noted that every day in Azerbaijani society there is growing indignation over the impunity of the Armenian aggression, disappointment over the ineffectiveness of international efforts to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is quite obvious that as long as the impunity reigns, Armenia will continue to pursue its aggressive policy and occupation of Azerbaijani territories. The mass march in support of Azerbaijani army reflected the unshakable will of the Azerbaijani people, who are in complete solidarity and are decisive in the issue of liberating their ancestral lands from Armenian occupation, Hajiyev said. This important event once again demonstrated the complete unity between the people and the government. The people of Azerbaijan actively support the policy of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, President Ilham Aliyev and wish the soonest restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. I want to emphasize that in response to the call of the president, about 40,000 Azerbaijani citizens registered as volunteers in the army. This once again confirmed the high level of patriotic spirit in the country," he added. Hajiyev stressed again that Azerbaijan has no military plans or goals in the border zone with Armenia. "During the recent provocation, the combat task of the armed forces of Azerbaijan was to protect the state border and the security of the civilian population. The Azerbaijan army gave a worthy response to the enemy and again showed its military effectiveness and high morale. They have demonstrated broad capabilities in solving strategic and tactical tasks in the defense of the country, including the ability to effectively use high-precision weapons, including the successful use of unmanned aerial vehicles," he said. According to Hajiyev, during the hostilities, the armed forces of Azerbaijan prevented any penetration attempts, in a short time suppressing Armenian firing points, from where Azerbaijan's territories were subjected to artillery shelling. It should be noted that from these points Armenians shelled not only our military positions, but also settlements with civilians, which is a gross violation of international humanitarian law. We believe that it will be a good lesson for some of the warlords in Yerevan who dream of a "new war for new territories." Unfortunately, as a result of the recent act of armed aggression by Armenia, 12 Azerbaijani servicemen and a civilian were killed. Hajiyev also pointed out that the Armenian armed forces are hiding their true military losses from the public. "In this matter, all the leaderships of Armenia did not behave sincerely and always deceived their people. According to our data, given the fierce nature of the hostilities, the Armenian side has dozens of killed and hundreds of wounded soldiers. Based on past experience, we can say with confidence that soon these losses will be presented as non-combat losses as a result of road and other accidents," he said. Hajiyev also pointed out the fact that on the line of contact from the Armenian side, as a rule, a large number of mercenaries are involved, and the statistics of their deaths are not announced at all. Hajiyev also commented on Armenian claims that Azerbaijan inflicted strikes on civilian objects. "This is another lie. On the contrary, shelling of the civilian population is a long-standing practice of the Armenian armed forces. As in April 2016, this time they also deliberately shelled civilian objects and the civilian population of Azerbaijan from large-caliber weapons and heavy artillery installations, he said. As a result of the hostilities on the state border, an Azerbaijani civilian was killed, and there were no casualties among the civilian population of Armenia. Serious damage was also caused to the civilian population, state property, including the infrastructure facilities of Azerbaijan. The president of Azerbaijan has already signed an order on measures to eliminate damage caused as a result of the shelling of the Tovuz district by the Armenian armed forces," he said. Hajiyev noted that armed forces of Azerbaijan possess modern high-precision weapons and strike only at legitimate military targets. "Meanwhile, the armed forces of Armenia, using terrorist tactics, place their firing positions near or inside settlements, thereby deliberately endangering them. Therefore, not Azerbaijan, but Armenia should be responsible for the targeted shelling of civilians. The latest escalation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border must be viewed in the context of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia is a consequence of this conflict, armed aggression and the occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia. A destructive policy, including the commission of constant provocations on the line of contact and the state border, demonstrates Armenia's disinterest in resolving the conflict and its desire to extend the status quo," he said. As Hajiyev noted, the principles of the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have long been known. "The conflict should be resolved on the basis of four resolutions (822, 853, 874, 884) of the UN Security Council adopted in 1993, the Helsinki Final Act, within the framework of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, its internationally recognized borders. There cant be other solution. Based on the above principles, in the process of a gradual settlement, Armenia should withdraw the occupying forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts of Azerbaijan and create all conditions for the safe return of internally displaced persons to their homes," he noted. The assistant to president also noted that Azerbaijan remains committed to the political and diplomatic settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "However, negotiations for the sake of negotiations are unacceptable. To resolve the conflict, substantive negotiations are needed within the OSCE Minsk Group in order to discuss the liberation of Azerbaijani territories from occupation, and not their imitation. Azerbaijan insists on the withdrawal of the occupation forces, and the return of internally displaced persons to their lands. In turn, the world community should give a clear signal to Armenia, as an aggressor country, that changing the internationally recognized borders by force is unacceptable. In conclusion, I would like to reiterate the position expressed by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at the plenary session of the meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club : "Karabakh is Azerbaijan!" Hajiyev said. Lerner and Rowe host two Tucson drive-thru backpack giveaways! "It is our hope that some of the typical back-to-school expenses will be offset through the giveaways, as well as giving students the needed tools to help them succeed in the 2020-2021 school year." Kevin Rowe, Esq. Lerner and Rowe Injury Attorneys is pleased to announce that their law firm is partnering with GAP Ministries to host two FREE backpack giveaways on Saturday, August 15, 2020. Lerner and Rowe is providing 750 total backpacks stuffed with school supplies that GAP Ministries has coordinated to be distributed at Ministerios Ammijezreel (4102 S. 12th Avenue, Tucson, 85714) and Family Christian Center (6516 South Burcham Avenue, Tucson, 85756). Each location will hand out 375 backpacks from 8:00 a.m. through 10:00 a.m., or while supplies last. Limitations do apply. Families are asked to be mindful entering and exiting the parking lots. For 2020, our team continues to actively reinvent the ways we give back and support local communities. We know how much the COVID-19 pandemic has financially affected the lives of many families. As such, we are not cancelling our annual Tucson backpack giveaway, but instead are parenting up with GAP Ministries to host two drive-thru events at local churches in areas of high need. It is our hope that some of the typical back-to-school expenses will be offset through the giveaways, as well as giving students the needed tools to help them succeed in the 2020-2021 school year, said attorney Kevin Rowe. Anyone interested in learning more about Lerner and Rowes Tucson backpack giveaways in partnership with GAP Ministries should contact Tiane Kennedy with GAP Ministries at (520) 392-8436, or Cindy Ernst / Christa Luirette with Lerner and Rowe at (520) 977-1900. Like Lerner and Rowe on Facebook to learn more about this and future giveaways. More About Lerner and Rowe Lerner and Rowe Injury Attorneys is a powerhouse law firm in representing personal injury clients. Attorneys Glen Lerner and Kevin Rowe have grown their law firm into one of the largest personal injury firms in the country, with over 50 attorneys and nearly 400 support employees located in Arizona, Indiana, Illinois, Nevada, California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, and Tennessee. The law firms continuous exalted levels of success can be attributed to the high levels of respect and dignity shown to victims and family members hurt in an accident. For those injured outside one of the previously listed states, Lerner and Rowe has an established network of attorneys across the country, ready to help. The firm takes pride in nourishing these relationships as they know a personal injury attorney can make all the difference in obtaining fair compensation for the pain and suffering inflicted upon the victims of tortious conduct. For more information about Lerner and Rowe Injury Attorneys in Tucson, please call 520-977-1990. To connect with the law firm socially, follow Lerner and Rowe on Twitter and Instagram, or like their Facebook page. Also, be sure to visit lernerandrowegivesback.com to learn more about the many other community services that the lawyers and legal support team of Lerner and Rowe actively support. After entertaining the audience with an offbeat character in and as Ghoomketu, Nawazzudin Siddiqui is back with Honey Trehans Raat Akeli Hai. The makers of Raat Akeli Hai described the film in these words: "The most powerful usually hide the darkest secrets. What happens when a small-town cop is summoned to investigate the case of an extremely powerful local politician? How far is he willing to go into the darkness to search for the truth? A mysterious murder where the only suspects are from the same family, with each member having a hidden motive. Will Jatil (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) find his way to the truth or lose tracks midway?" I got in touch with Nawazzudin and Siddiqui and Raat Akeli Hais director Honey Trehan to talk about the murder mystery genre and shared about their notions of patriarchy. Here are excerpts from my interview: I have watched the film and I really want to give everyone a standing ovation for doing a film like Raat Akeli Hai. From direction to acting, everything is just perfect. What are you expecting from the audience? Honey: I enjoyed making and directing this movie. My writer Smita and I worked on the script for more than years. I just want the audience should love the movie the same way I did. Nawazuddin: I wanted to appreciate Smita because she picked up the nuisances of every character especially Jatil. I have noticed one thing about that she actually has great knowledge about male characters. She knows them well and captures the essence of a male character, from their complexities to their attitude. She wrote Ganesh Gaitonde and Jatil both and unki study bohot kamaal ki hai. I really loved that about her. Nawaz, you perfectly played Ganesh Giatonde and you did the same with your character of Jatil. I even started to think that you are the murderer. So, there is this mystery element to the story. What was your reaction when the script came to you? I had known Honey and I also had an idea about his thought procedure. There was second doubt the fact that I wouldnt be doing the film and not just this movie, I would have done any script that he would have got. This was a nice script and my association with Honey goes way back and when you know each other creative approaches, its easier to work. Honey, not much is done in the murder mystery genre in Bollywood per se, but your movie will keep the viewers at edge-of-the-seat. How difficult was it to attain that kind of mystery element? I took that thing as a challenge and I was very moved by the films by Alfred Hitchcock and novels written by Agatha Christie or Cornell Woolrich. So, Cornell has written Rear Window for Hitchcock. So, these kinds of films are there where you are hooked till the end, and being a fan, I kept the name of the company, MacGuffin. I love telling stories by adding thrill to it and that keeps you hooked. Then, you can add generic elements. All the characters have their own history for that matter. In Raat Akeli Hai, every character has a specific beginning, middle, and end. Theres not a single character thats left out or left open-ended. Every character is going through something and when I started working on the story, it turned out to be a murder mystery. If you go deep down, this is just one part and I also wanted to comment on patriarchy which is a curse on our society. Through this character, Jatil, I wanted to show patriarchy and its not coming from mother because she has a modern outlook at seeing life but he is still a part of that patriarchal society. The societys influence is that much that he is stuck. You will see how Jatil comes out of those patriarchal notions he has and makes peace with himself. I was about to point out the patriarchal bit. Nawaz, in the beginning, you wanted a sanskari wife but we see a complete metamorphosis as you fall in someone whos not even close to your concept of how a wife should be. You detested Radhikas character and then there was a change. Whats your comment on it? Obviously, you try and connect your character to yourself somewhere. I come from a family of patriarchs and when you move ahead in your life, you realize that certain code of conduct you took from your father or grandfather, they are wrong. Consciously and unconsciously, you try and remove these elements from your life as you grow. So, Jatil too had that mindset and slowly and gradually, he changed and he fell in love with someone who has a modern outlook. This is life. Honey, we have talked about you showing patriarchy but you have also reflected on whats good and bad in the society... Nobody is good or bad. Its how the situation plays you out and this comes from a moral understanding of our human behavior and upbringing through our culture and how do we want to deal with situations. Its more of that. As we are talking about good and bad in society, we are lacking empathy in real life. Jatil is shown to be an empathetic character but the reality is not even close... Nawaz: See its not completely like that. We have different types of people. We see things according to our perception. When things are good, you feel everything is perfect. And when things are not aligned your way, you start seeing things in a negative way. Duniya mein har tarah ke log hai, ache log kam hai par hai, isliye duniya chal Rahi hai. Its all about perceptions. Netflix What are you both taking back from Raat Akeli Hai? Honey: Empathy that we are losing in real life. Its a harsh reality. You were right. You need to make peace with yourself before judging someone and jumping to conclusions. Nawaz: Honey summed it really well and I also feel the same. Nawaz and Honey, we hope people appreciate the movie. International Iran urges regional cooperation for security, stability Tehran, Aug 1 (IANS) | Publish Date: 8/1/2020 12:26:52 PM IST Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said regional security can be attained through regional cooperation, semi-official Fars news agency reported. Regional security and stability can be achieved only within the framework of regional cooperation, Rouhani said in a phone conversation with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported. The Iranian president also called for development of relations with Qatar without any limits. Rouhani expressed the hope that the joint Iran-Qatar economic commission will convene again after the decline of the novel coronavirus pandemic, leading to further promotion of bilateral economic relations. For his part, the Qatari emir said Qatar attaches special importance to development of ties with Iran. Indian researchers have sequenced over 1,800 genomes of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), which will help them monitor mutations of the virus and trace the spread of the infection. So far, 1,886 genomes have been sequenced by various laboratories across the country. Of these, 833 are of very good quality and give us a lot of data. What we have learnt so far is that A2A is the dominant strain in India the same as the globally prevalent strain meaning that any drug or vaccine developed in other parts of the world should theoretically work here (factoring in the difference is response of people, of course), Dr Rakesh Mishra, director of the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, said. Click here for full Covid-19 coverage We have also seen that the virus is very slow to mutate. We have seen over 2,700 mutations even in the A2A strain but it doesnt make it very different and certainly doesnt change the clinical findings, he said at a media briefing through video link. The mutations act like a bar-coding system where we can trace the path of the spread of the virus. Union minister of health and family welfare, and science and technology Dr Harsh Vardhan said interpretation of the findings and correlating them to global findings will help Indian researchers understand the behaviour of the virus, which surfaced at the end of 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and spread rapidly across the world. The samples from parts of the country have been collected and the genome sequencing has been done there are areas in the country that have resemblance to the virus from Wuhan, then there are areas where the virus resembles that from Italy, he said. The most interesting finding was the A3i or A4 strain that was unique to India once accounting for 40% of the Covid-19 cases has now started declining and constitutes only about 5% of cases. The A4 strain also referred to as the A3i strain -- has almost disappeared in India. This was a big cluster of cases that came in from an East Asian countries such as Brunei and spread across India in a cluster of cases. And, although the A2A strain is better adapted to infect humans binding more easily to the ACE2 receptor, I think the A4 strain died out because of aggressive contact tracing and quarantine, said one of the scientists involved in the project, requesting anonymity. The path traced using the mutations of the strain imply that it travelled with members of the Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamaat, who gathered in Delhi for a religious congregation in March, the scientist said. Although the strain has almost died out in southern India, there are still some cases of the strain in Delhi, the scientist said. We get anonymised samples, but it is a possibility. The strain is present only in South East Asia and seems to have travelled from Malaysia to Delhi and then Hyderabad, where we first detected the strain. From what we have learnt about the strain, however, is that it seems weaker. Of the A3i genomes we sequenced, none of the patients had died, said Dr Mishra. The study of mutations in the Sars-Cov-2 strain also has implications for diagnostics and vaccine. If we talk about diagnostics, the RT-PCR {or reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, test uses probes of the N, S, E and RdRp gene to detect Sars-Cov-2. What we have observed is that the N gene has had more mutations than the others and therefore probes of N gene are likely to throw up more false negatives and be the first ones to fail. This will be different for different countries, of course. Monitoring the S or spike protein is also important as it helps the virus bind with ACE 2 receptor to enter cells. A study of the mutations will also be helpful for vaccine development programmes, said Dr Anurag Agrawal, director, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB). ACE2 receptor is the protein that provides the entry point for the coronavirus to infect human cells. The institute has sequenced almost 800 genomes already and is likely to complete 1,000 by next week. The most important thing has been studying the spread of the infection in various waves the first being the ones from Wuhan in Kerala, then subsequent waves coming in from Europe, North America and the Middle East with the international travellers, said Dr Agrawal. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Massachusetts lawmakers missed a self-imposed deadline to enact a policing bill by the end of the month, but a last-minute extension of formal sessions means a proposal to bolster police accountability could still become law this year. Lawmakers assigned to a conference committee, which is designed to determine the parameters of a final bill, started their fifth day of negotiations around 11 a.m. They continued until around midnight, planning to reconvene Saturday. Neither Senate President Karen Spilka nor House Speaker Robert DeLeo seemed concerned about the policing conference stretching into August. The House and Senate conferees are working really hard, around the clock practically. We believe we need a little bit more time just to get it right, Spilka, an Ashland Democrat, told reporters after midnight. Its better to get it right than just get it done for the sake of getting it done. In a statement issued after House recessed, DeLeo said the House will work with the Senate during the extended session to reach consensus on economic development, health care, climate change and, of course, police reform. Regarding police reform, the conferees are working productively to come to agreement, the Winthrop Democrat said. We are committed to reaching resolution, and the conferees will take the time to get it right. Legislators on the police reform conference committee stopped negotiations for the night (or morning) after starting at 11 a.m. @SpeakerDeLeo issued a statement saying they will take the time to get it right. #mapoli pic.twitter.com/4mYx69aLL8 Steph Solis (@stephmsolis) August 1, 2020 Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, a Springfield Democrat and chairman of the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, said he hoped to see an agreement soon on a policing bill. I think weve been having tough conversations, productive conversations, he said. A representative for Sen. Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, declined to comment on the status of the negotiations. In a statement issued Saturday morning, Sen. Chang-Diaz said the conferees are committed to getting a bill to the governors desk. We are going to keep working to meet this historical and moral moment, said Chang-Diaz, a Boston Democrat and a BLLC member. The coronavirus pandemic disrupted the Legislatures timeline for passing major legislation on transportation, climate change, health care and other priorities. For more than a month, lawmakers met only in informal session, where any lawmaker could halt a bill by objecting and effectively the Legislature from making headway on bills. The House and Senate implemented emergency rules in May so they could conduct business remotely, a first for the four-century-old body. Less than a month later, the nation was rocked by a viral video of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, dying in Minneapolis police custody. Prosecutors said officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on Floyds neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, figure Massachusetts legislators have referenced over the past two months in discussions about racism and police accountability. Floyds death sparked protests across the country, including several in Massachusetts. Gov. Charlie Baker, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka vowed to respond to calls for racial justice and police accountability in the wake of Floyds death and to do so before July 31. They held several conversations with members of the BLLC, which published a 10-point plan calling for a certification process for officers, stricter use of force standards, a commission on structural racism and civil service review. The bills that came from Baker and the two chambers, however, offered varying answers on the matter. Baker proposed a bill to create a certification system for law enforcement, with a process to decertify problem officers. The oversight board, called the Police Officer Standards and Accreditation Committee, would be created within the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. The committee would include seven police officials, the attorney general or an appointee and six civilians appointed by the governor. The bill also would offer financial incentives for officers who undergo certain levels of training, a provision that sparked criticism among community organizers and activists. Baker said his proposal came from nearly a year of conversations with the BLLC. The Senate bill, proposed as House leaders were preparing their own proposal, proposed a much more far-reaching series of reforms. It would create an oversight board that included police officials and civilians, strengthen use of form standards, as well as temporarily ban facial surveillance, limit qualified immunity and restrict what student information can be shared with outside law enforcement agencies. The House version similarly includes use of force changes, a facial surveillance ban, student information restrictions and other elements of the Senate proposal. It differs in the structure of the oversight board, proposing one mostly comprised of civilians. It also calls for a training committee comprised of law enforcement officials and an investigative arm. Another key difference in the redrafted House bill is that it would strip an officer of qualified immunity protections only if he has been decertified. The qualified immunity provisions in both the House and Senate sparked outrage from law enforcement officials across the state. Many also questioned proposed bans on no-knock warrants and a House amendment that extends the ban to cases when children and elders are home. The Massachusetts Coalition of Police issued a statement Thursday saying it supports responsible police reform and thanked several House members for voting no on the House policing bill. It takes a strong sense of right and wrong to resist the pressure some people are putting on these legislators. That is admirable, MassCOP said, asking law enforcement members and the public to support the 66 legislators who voted against the bill. It takes a strong intellect to recognize the problematic issues contained in these bills and to want them corrected. Sen. John Velis, a Westfield Democrat, spent his inaugural speech earlier this month warning against the potential unintended consequences of passing a policing bill that limits qualified immunity, perhaps not just for police officers but for firefighters and other public employees. On Friday, Velis said he was neither for nor against qualified immunity but believed the issue needs a closer look. We just dont know enough about it in this point in time, he said. I really think we need to bring those subject matter experts to tell us what this looks like in an actual courtroom. House Minority Leader Brad Jones, one of the legislators who voted against the policing bill last week, said it would be ridiculous if a deal was reached on a final proposal Friday night. This is like one of the most complicated, consequential pieces of legislation, and they are going to drop that out now and say were taking it up tonight, and people are going to have, what, 30 seconds to look at it? the North Reading Republican said. Thats ridiculous. The House and Senate recessed for the night after midnight with no conference report on police reform in sight. Jones said he hopes the extended session means conference committees can take part of August, or the entire month, to carefully deliberate on pending legislation. Hopefully, that allows ample time to do them right, he said. When asked about what the next month looks like, Spilka said several conference committees will be working to reconcile differences in House and Senate bills on major priorities. Theres transportation bond. Theres health care. We will now be appointing climate, so Im looking forward to that. Theres economic development, she said. So we will let the conferees do their magic and, hopefully, get something done and pass it. If its done next week, two weeks, she added, thats when we will come back to do it. Related Content: FILE PHOTO: A Takeda logo is seen in its research hub in Cambridge TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co <4502.T> on Friday raised its full-year profit forecast as it refocuses on its core prescription drug businesses following its $59 billion(45 billion pounds)takeover of Shire Plc last year. Japan's largest drugmaker by revenue expects operating profit of 395 billion yen ($3.78 billion) in the year to March 2021, it said on Friday in reporting quarterly earnings. The revision to its forecast was mainly due to one-time items, Takeda said. It compares with a previous forecast of 355 billion yen in operating profit and a consensus of 382.5 billion yen in a Refinitiv poll of 13 analysts. Takeda announced this year a pause in the start of new drug trials except for its plasma-derived COVID-19 therapy. It formed an alliance of 10 global plasma companies to develop a shared therapy that uses immune cells from the blood of recovered coronavirus patients. The group, called the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance, is ready to ship vials to study sites once the trial is approved by regulators in the United States, Takeda said this week. The Shire acquisition, completed in January 2019, expanded Takeda's pipeline and diversified its global sales, with about half now coming from the United States. But it also saddled the drugmaker with a big debt. To reduce leverage, Takeda has pledged to dispose of $10 billion worth of non-core assets. It has divested about $8 billion so far, and it said it is looking to sell its consumer drug business in Japan for about 400 billion yen. Domestically, Takeda is focusing on five business areas and revamping its human resources system in a plan that sources said may lead to job cuts. Operating profit for the three months that ended in June more than tripled to 167.3 billion yen, helped by a decline in integration costs related to Shire, Takeda said. Sales slipped 5.6% to 801.9 billion yen, largely due to foreign exchange effects. (Reporting by Rocky Swift; Editing by Tom Hogue, Robert Birsel) Nairobi, 30 July 2020 - Kenya Airways (KQ) today resumed international passenger services following the easing of movement restrictions as directed by H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta. The first international flights depart today 1st August to the following international destinations; London, Dubai, Addis Ababa, Kigali, and Lusaka. During the month there will be a gradual increase in the network with flights to Paris, Mumbai and Amsterdam. In Africa, the airline will operate flights to Accra, Dzaoudzi, Freetown, Harare, Kilimanjaro, Lagos, Monrovia, Moroni, Nampula and Zanzibar. Based on demand and other factors, resumption of services to other destinations around the globe will occur. The Airline plans to start operations to USA, China and Thailand from October 2020. These destinations require the bulk of the network to open up so as to sustain adequate traffic on the routes. Since resuming domestic flights on 15th July 2020, we have been monitoring the adherence to the protocols that we have in place to ensure the health and safety of our customers and staff, and I am pleased that they are being enforced and followed strictly, said Allan Kilavuka, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Kenya Airways. The resumption of our international flights is an important milestone for us. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, we have continued to provide connections for our farmers produce to reach international markets, medical supplies to reach our people through our Cargo flights, as well as reuniting families through the repatriation flights we mounted with support from the Government of Kenya. We look forward to welcoming our guests on board from today onwards as we play our role in kick starting economies, not only for Kenya but also for those countries that we operate to, he added. Some of the safety measures the airline has put in place to ensure the safety of passengers include: the use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) by the flight crew and airport workers where necessary, and limited interaction between crew and passengers. The airline is also providing sanitizer stations onboard and washing of hands will be encouraged by crew on board the flights. All the aircrafts are fitted with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters. The filters ensure that the quality of air on board is kept clean by constant filtration and replacement with air from outside the aircraft. They also trap particulates such as viruses and bacteria, and as the air flows primarily from the ceiling to the floor, it helps minimize particulates spreading throughout the cabin. The airline will continuously review the protocols in place and update where necessary to ensure the health and safety of all. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the tourism and aviation industries, globally. According to IATA, demand for travel is forecast to fall by 58% in 2020, while passenger revenues will decline by over $6 billion compared to the previous year. Kenyas tourism industry meanwhile has lost 80 billion shillings ($752 million) in revenue so far due to the crisis. While it is not expected that these sectors will immediately return to business-as-usual as travel restrictions are still a reality, the resumption of international flights is an important step for Kenya towards bringing these sectors back to life. According to the Kenya Airways Chairman of the Board, Michael Joseph, The global economic and geopolitical context remains uncertain and it will take another 2-3 years to gain the confidence of travellers and begin the path to recovery for air travel demand. A number of industry watchers predict that it will be a few years before air travel returns to the 2019 levels. However, the resumption of international flights from Nairobi to the world is a major step towards recovery, as it will enable local businesses to connect with global markets, contributing favourably to the Kenyan economy and towards the sustainable development of the continent, he added. About Kenya Airways Kenya Airways, a member of the Sky Team Alliance, is a leading African airline flying to 54 destinations worldwide, 41 of which are in Africa and transports over four million passengers annually. It continues to modernize its fleet with its 34 aircrafts being amongst the youngest in Africa. This includes its flagship B787 Dreamliner aircraft. The on-board service is renowned and the lie-flat business class seat on the wide-body aircraft is consistently voted among the worlds top 10. Kenya Airways takes pride for being in the forefront of connecting Africa to the World and the World to Africa through its hub at the new ultra-modern Terminal 1A at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. Kenya Airways celebrated 43 years of operation in January 2020 and was named Africa Leading Airline 2019 by the World Travel Awards. For more information, please visit www.kenya-airways.com or call our 24HR Contact Center: +254 20 327 4747, Twitter: @KenyaAirways, Facebook: Kenya Airways, Instagram: OfficialKenyaAirways. Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has deployed additional troops near Lipulekh Pass, which has been at the centre of Nepal-India territorial dispute and is also close to the communist countrys boundary with its two South Asian neighbours. After Beijing nudged Prime Minister K P Sharma Olis government in Kathmandu to ratchet up India-Nepal dispute over the Lipulekh Pass and the adjoining areas, the PLAs move to deploy additional troops near the three-nation-boundary point is apparently aimed at sending out a message to New Delhi. It came even as the three-month-long military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) the de facto boundary between India and China has not yet been completely resolved, with the mutually agreed process of withdrawal of troops from the face-off scenes being stalled due to the reluctance of the PLA to vacate the areas its soldiers occupied over the past few weeks on the northern bank of the Pangong Tso (lake) in eastern Ladakh. A source in New Delhi told the DH that the Indian Army too had moved troops in adequate numbers to reinforce its posts closer to the Lipulekh Pass in response to the build-up by the Chinese PLA. The source said that the Indian Army had also taken appropriate measures in view of the Chinese PLAs build-up in the middle sector and eastern sector of the disputed boundary between the two nations, adjacent to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh of India. Just days after the stand-off between Indian Army and the Chinese PLA along the western sector of the disputed boundary between the two nations started in early May, Oli Government in Kathmandu protested against a new 80-kilometre-long road New Delhi built from Dharchula in Uttarakhand to the Lipulekh Pass an India-Nepal-China tri-junction boundary point. Kathmandu alleged that the road passed through Nepal, although the claim was dismissed by India. New Delhi suspects that Beijing had a role in nudging Kathmandu to ratchet up Nepal-India territorial dispute, at a time when the Chinese PLAs transgression across the LAC in the western sector and the Indian Armys response to it already drew international attention to the communist countrys expansionist moves. The Oli Government went ahead, published a new map, which showed nearly 400 sq kms of Indias areas in Kalapani, Lipulekh Pass and Limpiyadhura as part of Nepal. It also got the Nepalese Parliament to amend by the countrys Constitution to endorse the new map. Kathmandu now decided to send its new map to the United Nations, seeking international recognition. The Oli Government is also planning to send it to Google, asking that the Google Map should now depict new inclusions Lipulekh Pass and the adjoining areas as part of Nepal. We are soon delivering the revised map incorporating Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura to the international community, Nepals Minister for Land Management, Padma Aryal, was quoted by myRepublica, a news portal of the neighbouring country. Nepal also over the past few weeks deployed its armed police personnel in four new border outposts it set up along its boundary with India. The Sowutuom Magistrate Court has remanded a 49-year-old man, Eric Richard Ashie, accused of shooting and injuring three persons during a funeral ceremony at Joma, near Ablekuma, in the Ga West District, in police custody. The three victims included two teenagers, aged 13 and 16, and a 26-year-old man. They are Kamal Nurideen, 13, who sustained a bullet wound to his head and is said to be in a critical condition at the 37 Military Hospital; Fuseini Amidu, 16, and Mohammed Abdul Tawab, 26, both of whom were treated at the Oduman Clinic for various injuries and have since been discharged. The court, presided over by Mr Stephen Tabiri, remanded Ashie in police custody to reappear before the court on August 28, 2020. Prosecution Prosecuting, Sergent Regina Nyarko told the court that at about 2:35 p.m. on July 25, 2020, the Anyah District Police Patrol team was carrying out patrol duties within Ablekuma and its environs when they heard of a shooting incident at Joma. The team, she said, proceeded to the scene where they saw that a funeral was ongoing. The prosecutor said when the team got to the scene, the mob had already apprehended Ashie and subjected him to severe beatings on suspicion that he might have fired the shots at the victims. Sgt Nyarko stated that some good Samaritans rushed the victims to the Oduman Clinic, near Ablekuma, where Tawab and Fuseini, who had blood stains all over their bodies, were admitted while Nurideen was transferred to the 37 Military Hospital for treatment. A team of investigators who visited Nurideen at the 37 Military Hospital found out that he was being prepared for surgery to remove a pellet in his forehead. Father remanded In a related development, the court also remanded a 35 year-old father who inflicted razor blade wounds on his four- year- old son. The accused, Anthony Adjei, was arrested at New Weija after he had inflicted razor wounds on the hands of his son who sustained deep cuts on his right arm but was abandoned to his fate. A visitor to the family saw the wounds and reported the incident to the Weija Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police, leading to the arrest of Adjei. The Weija Circuit Court, presided over by Mr Bernard Bentil, remanded Adjei in police custody to reappear on August 12, 2020, after the accused pleaded not guilty to a charge of causing harm. The court heard that the victim, who was a school dropout, had been living with his father, a paternal aunt and his siblings after his mother allegedly left in 2019 to an unknown location due to the abusive nature of Adjei. On July 26, 2020, a friend of the family visited them and saw the victim with wounds on his hands and after questioning the four- year-old boy he answered that it was Adjei who used a razor blade to cut his hands. Victim hungry The victim claimed he was hungry the previous night and took a piece of chicken that had been kept in their fridge and ate it. However, Adjei is said to have been angered by the boys action even though he explained that he was hungry at the time and there was no food while neither he (the father) nor the aunt was at home. Adjei allegedly took a razor blade and inflicted the wounds on the boy's arm to teach him and his siblings a lesson. Source: Graphic.com.gh 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 More than 30 arts organizations throughout the area had banded together to present Beethoven Rocks WS, but its all on hold, due to COVID-19 restrictions. Realizing a first It was during those early planning sessions last fall that David Blum, a research librarian at the Moravian Music Foundation in Old Salem, realized that the foundation owns an original edition of a set of parts of Beethovens Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral. While Blum was doing a routine cataloging of material that the foundation has owned for years, he noticed the plate number of the printing was 1809, his first clue that he was onto a first edition. He thought that would be great but unlikely; they are very rare so he checked the information in the Grove, a classic compendium of historical documents, which affirmed his original suspicions. Ever-vigilant and skeptical, Blum next contacted David Levy, a professor of music at Wake Forest University and a world-renowned Beethoven expert. Levy then reached out to the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany, and they confirmed that what Blum had was, indeed, a first edition. Armenia's provocation on border with Azerbaijan in the direction of Tovuz district, resulted in complete fiasco, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, Head of Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmat Hajiyev said. Hajiyev made the remark in an interview to Russias National Defense journal, Trend reports. "The recent escalation in Azerbaijans Tovuz district direction of the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border was the result of an Armenian provocation. With this move, Yerevan pursued a set of goals. Conditionally they can be divided into internal and external ones," he said. Hajiyev noted that the internal reasons are connected with the worsening situation in Armenia against the background of the difficult political and socio-economic situation and the deplorable situation with COVID-19. "As it is known, in 2018 Nikol Pashinyan came to power in Armenia on a wave of populist promises to the Armenian people. But time has shown that his government is unable to fulfill those promises, to change life in the country for the better. The situation with COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated its inefficiency. Therefore, amid the growing problems, Pashinyans government seeks to divert the attention of the population from internal problems," the assistant to president stressed. According to Hajiyev, among the external reasons, Azerbaijan's huge success in the international arena should be noted. Strengthening of our international positions, including those ones regarding the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan - all this creates envy in Armenia, he said. Against this background, the country, pursuing a destructive policy and continuing the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, seeks to divert the attention of the international community from the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories by creating a new hotbed of tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but this time on the state border. The official emphasized that with such provocations, Yerevan is trying to shape an opinion that Azerbaijan is allegedly committing attacks on the territory of Armenia and to involve military-political organizations, of which it is a member, in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. "In addition, among the goals of Armenia was the creation of a threat to strategic international projects such as export oil and gas pipelines, the East-West transport corridor. We can confidently say that Armenia did not achieve its goals and its provocation turned into a complete fiasco," he noted. "On July 12, using their artillery, they struck at the positions of the Azerbaijani army. This attack was repulsed with return fire. But, just like before, Armenia began to blame Azerbaijan for this provocation, citing unfounded and even ridiculous arguments. The Armenian side claims that allegedly two Azerbaijani servicemen in a UAZ vehicle tried to commit military sabotage on the border with Armenia. This, of course, is absurd and beyond any logic. What modern army will attack an armed enemy using unarmored vehicles?" he said. Hajiyev also stressed that Azerbaijan has no military plans or goals on the state border with Armenia. "With the aim of demilitarization, the protection of this part of the border with Armenia was entrusted to the border troops of Azerbaijan. Escalation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border does not meet the interests of Azerbaijan. On the contrary, as I have already noted, the emergence of a hotbed of tension in this area is in the interests of Armenia. One thing that needs to be clarified. There is no channel of communication between Azerbaijans president and the Armenian prime minister. There is a certain communication channel between the authorized representatives of the two countries. Practice has shown that as a result of factors related to Armenia, in particular the constant governmental reshuffle in Yerevan, this communication channel is practically ineffective. In fact, there is no one to keep in touch with. This proves again that the Armenian side is not sincere in its actions," he said. Further, the assistant to Azerbaijani president noted that every day in Azerbaijani society there is growing indignation over the impunity of the Armenian aggression, disappointment over the ineffectiveness of international efforts to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is quite obvious that as long as the impunity reigns, Armenia will continue to pursue its aggressive policy and occupation of Azerbaijani territories. The mass march in support of Azerbaijani army reflected the unshakable will of the Azerbaijani people, who are in complete solidarity and are decisive in the issue of liberating their ancestral lands from Armenian occupation, Hajiyev said. This important event once again demonstrated the complete unity between the people and the government. The people of Azerbaijan actively support the policy of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, President Ilham Aliyev and wish the soonest restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. I want to emphasize that in response to the call of the president, about 40,000 Azerbaijani citizens registered as volunteers in the army. This once again confirmed the high level of patriotic spirit in the country," he added. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Representative Image Amid an ongoing tussle between the young and old guard in the Congress, party veterans urged their colleagues on Saturday not to discredit their own legacy and said by doing so, they would only be aiding the BJP's designs to undermine the party in the public eye. Advising restraint in airing grievances in public, several former Union ministers cautioned party colleagues, saying such tendencies divide the Congress at a time when unity is needed. They also said one needs to learn from past defeats and revive the party rather than play into the hands of its "ideological enemies". Rising in defence of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the performance of which was questioned by young leader Rajiv Satav at a recent meeting of the party's Rajya Sabha MPs, former Union minister Anand Sharma said no one discredits their own legacy. "Congressmen must be proud of the UPA's legacy. No party disowns or discredits its legacy. Nobody expects the BJP to be charitable and give us credit, but our own should respect and not forget," the deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha said. Another leader said it is sad to see certain elements in the Congress knowingly or unknowingly aiding the BJP's design of keeping the party at loggerheads in public perception, when everyone should be seen united against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. "BJP was out of power for 10 years 2004-14. Not once did they ever blame Vajpayee or his Government for their then predicaments "In Congress, unfortunately, some ill-informed would rather take swipes at Dr Manmohan Singh led UPA govt than fight NDA/BJP. When unity is required they divide," former Union minister Manish Tewari wrote on Twitter. The debate gathered further steam when, replying to Tewari, former MP Milind Deora said, "Well said, Manish. When demitting office in 2014, Dr Manmohan Singh said, 'history will be kinder to me'." "Could he have ever imagined that some from his own party would dismiss his years of service to the nation and seek to destroy his legacy - that, too, in his presence?" Deora asked in a tweet. Another former Union minister, Shashi Tharoor, agreed with Tewari and Deora and said, "UPA's transformative ten years were distorted and traduced by a motivated and malicious narrative. There's plenty to learn from our defeats and much to be done to revive Congress. But not by playing into the hands of our ideological enemies." The debate was triggered by Satav, who asked former ministers Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram to introspect on the decline of the grand old party. Sharma noted that the history will honestly record the commendable contributions of former prime minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. "The two led India to a decade of compassionate and inclusive growth which all of us are proud of," he said, adding that personally, he is proud to have been a part of both the UPA-1 and UPA-2 governments even as he recalled some of the achievements of the time in social and economic spheres. "UPA government was victim of a grand political conspiracy and malicious disinformation campaign of the BJP, political opponents and powerful vested interests. Six years later, what was alleged in 2014 stands proven false in 2020. "Where are the leaders of the Campaign against Corruption today? The authors of the conspiracy generously rewarded the cheerleaders asking no questions," Sharma said in a series of tweets. Sources close to the Congress leadership said pioneering reforms of UPA-1 and UPA-2 were conceived, designed and formulated by the party, the National Advisory Council, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and were successfully implemented and executed by Singh and Team Congress. Noting that some people within the party were aiding the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) design, a source said, "Many of them are rootless wanderers seeking positions of power and place in the Rajya Sabha. All of them need to introspect that everybody needs to stand with Rahul Gandhi in fighting Narendra Modi rather than hankering for pies or positions of power." "This is the greatest disservice they are doing to the Manmohan Singh government as also to the Congress party. If they have an iota of faith or commitment to the Congress cause, they should stand unitedly behind Rahul Gandhi in the fight to take on the Modi government," the leader said. The divide between the young and old guard has routinely surfaced in the Congress, peaking recently with the exit of former MP Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh and the ongoing rebellion of Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan. Bengaluru, Aug 1 : A freak accident caught on video in the city shows a wire fling a man onto an unsuspecting woman in the opposite direction as she walks down a pavement path unaware, an official said on Saturday. "We have seen the viral video and it happened at TC Palya in Battarahalli, within K.R. Puram police station limits but could not find out who the man and woman were yet," told a police official to IANS. Likewise, the official is also clueless as to when the incident occurred. Already viral for a few days on social media, the video shows how a man who appeared to be an autorickshaw driver was standing beside a three-wheeler was flung a few metres by a thin wire. With a little portion of the wire perched on the ground between his legs and a major portion also hanging before and after him, the wire was forcibly pulled by something leading to the man being propelled up into the air and falling right on a woman walking behind. He was pulled up into the air from between his legs and there was not escape for him. It is not clear in the video if a vehicle or anything else pulled the wire but the pull had sufficient power to fling the man of some 60 - 70 kg weight far enough. The unsuspecting woman wearing a pink dress had no idea what happened but took a heavy hit from the flying man and fell flat on the tiled floor. The entire incident unfolded at a place that appeared to be the front portion of a series of shops leading to their entrance. Following the incident which occurred beside a service road, a tractor and other vehicles paused to figure out what exactly happened as the video ends. "We did not receive any police complaint and I am also not sure when it actually happened," he said. The official said they will try to go to the source of the video or the owner of the cctv from where the footage emerged. Anti-Femicide Protests Sweep Turkey By Dorian Jones July 31, 2020 A wave of protests sparked by the slaying of a young woman has been sweeping across Turkey as the government considers leaving an international convention that protects women against violence, despite warnings from rights groups about the rising number of killings of women. Last week, police found the strangled and battered body of 27-year-old university student Pinar Gultekin. Local media, citing police sources, said she was buried in a bin encased in concrete, in woodlands in the Aegean province of Mugla. Gultekin's killing triggered demonstrations across Istanbul and other cities with activists calling attention to reports of rising number of murdered women. At one protest last week in Istanbul's Kadikoy district, women chanted "we want to live," "end femicides." In the Aegean port city of Izmir, police broke up a women's protest and detained several demonstrators. Across social media, women placed videos of their protests. On Instagram, Turkish women are posting black and white images of themselves in protest at Gultekin's murder, in a campaign that has gone global. "From secular women to conservative women, from working women or not working, women are angry," said Melek Onder of the Istanbul based campaign group, "We Will Stop Femicide." "But we know that this anger makes women movement in Turkey becoming more powerful and strong," Onder added. "They are applying to our platform, saying we want to do something, we want to join the protests." The protests in Turkey come amidst wider international protests against violence against women, much of which is a grassroots organized through social media, including the "me too" movement. The "We Will Stop Femicide" web page records the grim death toll of murdered women, which rises nearly every day. In the first six months of this year, the group says there were 172 femicides, compared to 416 for the whole of 2019. In a tweet, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Gultekin's killing, but activists complain he has otherwise remained silent. The protests are happening as the Erdogan government faces new criticism over its commitment to gender issues. Erdogan's ruling AKP party is openly questioning Turkey's participation the international Istanbul Convention on protecting women against violence. "I say that signing this Istanbul Convention was wrong," said the AKP's deputy leader Numan Kurtulmus in a recent television interview. "There are two critical issues in the text of this convention that we should draw attention to that we can never accept. One of them is gender rights; the other is sexual orientation rights," Kurtulmus added. Turkey's religious conservative media is backing Kurtulmus, accusing the Convention of undermining the family. The AKP, in its early years in power, introduced sweeping legislation to protect women, culminating in being the first signatory of the 2011 European, "Istanbul Convention." The Convention was the first legally binding set of guidelines that created "a comprehensive legal framework and approach to combat violence against women," focusing on preventing domestic violence, protecting victims, and prosecuting accused offenders. But in recent years, critics have accused the government of increasingly backsliding in enforcing the agreement, in a bid to consolidate the ruling party's religious and conservative voting base. The AKP campaigns vigorously on defending what it says are "traditional family values." Parliament is expected to soon start discussing Turkey's withdrawal from the Istanbul convention. "We should evaluate well whether or not to abolish it," said Devlet Bahceli, leader of the MHP, which is the parliamentary coalition partner of the AKP. Bahceli acknowledges the country is facing a problem, "If we cannot prevent the murder of women, we will all be buried under an avalanche," he said. Erdogan has yet to weigh in on the future of the Istanbul convention. Opinion polls indicate a majority against withdrawal from the Convention. Pinar Ilkaracan, a veteran women's rights campaigner who once worked closely with the AKP on gender reform, warns that Erdogan could pay a heavy political price if Turkey withdraws from the Istanbul Convention. "In terms of women murders, there hasn't been a divide between secular and religious," she said. "A lot of women have been supporting the AKP government, religious women, and also the women in AKP have written against withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Schools Reopening Superintendent Jeanice Swift says Ann Arbor's plan will "land on the side of caution." by Shelley Daily From the August, 2020 issue "It's been four months since we closed our schools for health and safety, and as we look four months into the future we have no way of knowing whether as a country we'll be able to get this under control, or if this new normal will persist for a while," Swift says. "But by having a fully developed framework with several settings on the dial, our families, our children, will at least be able to understand where we'll be." When the district finalizes its plan at the end of July, those dial settings will include three learning models: virtual, in-person, and blended. AAPS has been fine-tuning its plans since Governor Whitmer released her MI Safe Schools Roadmap on June 30, which includes safety protocols for schools based on the status of the coronavirus pandemic. The state's plan allows for in-person instruction during Phase Four. But just days after its release, Whitmer said that in-person instruction this fall is in jeopardy because coronavirus cases were on the rise again. Whitmer's plan doesn't require social distancing or masks for K-5 students. But schools have the authority to enact stricter requirements, and Swift says Ann Arbor's "blended" plan "features all the CDC recommended practices, social distancing, and the wearing of PPE. "We're still working out the details of that because it's a massive puzzle," she says. "We are evaluating every single square foot in the district because it's possible we'll have to use other locations to make this work." She says that those students who are unable to learn fully virtually, including "our youngest students, our students with special needs, our students with second language needs ... we're looking at that [blended] middle setting as a way to conceivably provide more face-to-face for those students ..." If and when students return to classrooms in the blended model, it will be at "a roughly 50 percent occupancy rate," Swift says. For middle and high schools, "that gets our students in at least twice ...continued below... a week."The district will monitor the infection rate in the community and in every school week by week. And families will always be able to choose a fully virtual learning experience instead.But virtual learning for 2020-21 will look entirely different from how students finished their 2020 school year. "Our teachers did an extraordinary job in just an extremely tough situation," Swift says about the abrupt closure in March. Going forward, "we're talking about synchronous instruction, we're talking about a learning management system that makes it easy to find what you need. We're talking about a graded setting that's rich in direct feedback ... I would say it looks a lot more like school."But students won't be on screens six or seven hours a day, she emphasizes. "They may do some independent reading, they may do some maker kinds of activities, they need to get outdoors and get some physical activity.Swift says parent attitudes fall across the spectrum. Some want their child to be enrolled virtually because they or a family member have a medical condition. Others tell her that "if the doors are open, their children will be there."Schools, Swift says, are not a no-risk environment. "The very nature of community spread means that none of us is in a perfect bubble. We have great support from Washtenaw County Health Department and our own health officer. We are putting together teams for contact tracing and health screening. We have all the responsible components in our reopen plan. But that to me is kind of the bumper sticker," she says. "We will be responsible, not reckless ... We will land on the side of caution."AAPS will offer a fully online opportunity for every grade level in the fall as part of a "virtual classroom--what people would think of as an online school." After the plan is released, parents will have some time to consider and settle into a choice that works for their family--and will be able to change their minds during the school year.Faced with a projected shortfall of more than $7 million, Swift says the district will be amending its budget throughout the year. "There are so many things we don't know the answer to, and one of those is the infusion of funds from the federal level."Swift says the pandemic "laid bare" all the roles schools play in the social fabric of a community. "People think of us serving students when our doors are open, but we're serving students twenty-four-seven," she says. "Over 350,000 meals distributed in the past four months, 15,000 calls to our tech support center answered, 3,500 devices passed out ... It's been a massive effort to deploy every resource we have in service to children and their families."The message we want folks to know is that we will continue to serve our children, and we will meet our children and families where they are ... and we will persevere." [Originally published in August, 2020.] When New Jersey released its guidelines for reopening public schools earlier this summer, state officials acknowledged it wasnt going to be easy to social distance in classrooms, at lunch and in hallways. It was clear that most of New Jerseys 2,500 public schools simply lacked the room to squeeze everyone inside while staying six feet apart. So, the state guidelines included suggestions for split schedules and rotations in which a half or a third of a school districts students would come to class every fews days or alternating weeks while their classmates stayed home remote learning. Most of New Jerseys nearly 600 school districts say they are instituting versions of those hybrid plans for the 2020-2021 school year. Dear Amy: I've only been married for a year, but my relationship has been far from a honeymoon experience. Before marriage, my husband and I talked about children and I thought we were on the same page. We discussed how we would raise our children and even considered a prenuptial agreement around our future children. He mentioned that one of the reasons he was willing to marry me is because he could see me having his kid(s). This is a man who broke off two prior long-term relationships because he was too young and couldn't imagine having children with those partners. I took his word seriously. Fast-forward, he is now 39 and had been single for a couple of years before meeting me. Our marriage has been tumultuous since day one, due to cultural difference (he's British, I'm American), miscommunication, and our continuous triggering of one another. We're now onto our second therapist and things have gotten slightly better, but he is still up in the air about children. None of our therapists can even get a straight answer from him, but he mentions the unstable relationship as a factor in his decision-making. He says he will address it fully when the time comes. Honestly, I intended to have children in my early-30s, but now as I approach 30 and enter a rental lease agreement for one year with him, Im worried. I'm wondering -- how long should I wait -- or should I start mentally checking out within this next year. Help me, please! Stuck in Limbo Dear Stuck: Your husband said he was willing to marry you because he could imagine you having his children. Quick, call Hollywood! This is a romance for the ages. Im being snarky here. No marriage is perfect. But my point is that at the beginning it should at least feel perfect. Here you are, only one year in, and youre onto your second therapist. I am a big believer in couples counseling, but again, the goal of counseling is to find resolution, not another counselor. I will grant him this: he says he does not want to have children because your relationship is so unstable. You may see that as selfish I see that as self-preservation. He is actually being more thoughtful and careful than you are. He knows that a potential child deserves better than to have a parent who is so reluctant to be one. So -- let me put it this way: If you hesitate signing a one-year lease with your husband, please do not sign up for a lifetime of parenthood with him. Dear Amy: I have been in a relationship with someone for over a year. I very much love him. We are still getting to know one anothers families. Recently, his father had a stroke. Right after he had returned home from the hospital, we visited. While we were there, his father made various comments about how some of his nurses were very attractive. He said that while they were taking care of him he really wanted them to "get naked" and shower with him. He has been married almost 20 years! My boyfriend and I were the only ones in the room when he said this, and my boyfriend insisted it wasnt like him at all. I have worked in health care and although I have seen/heard just about everything, his comment absolutely crossed a line. We were invited over recently for a picnic. I couldnt bring myself to go, because the thought of spending time with that man made me sick! Am I overreacting when I say I dont want to be around that man? Should I believe his behavior was due to a recent health emergency and/or the resulting medication? Confused Dear Confused: During my own episodes with taking care of various family members, I have heard sweet little old ladies make statements in the ICU that would curl your hair. A stroke affects the brain. Medication also affects thinking and behavior. If your boyfriend says that this sort of comment is totally out of character for his father, then I think you should give him the benefit of the doubt, until further experience either refutes or confirms your first impression. (You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.) COPYRIGHT 2020 BY AMY DICKINSON. Read more advice: Ask Amy: Separated soulmates are eager to connect Dear Annie: Looking to hop off the hamster wheel Dear Abby: Children cut off stepmother with dads power of attorney Today, according to Vanderbilt, more than 35 percent of the nearly 7,000 undergraduates there belong to a Greek life organization, which are housed in 25 on-campus buildings. But there is a historical precedent for students walking out of their fraternities and sororities. During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, students rejected Greek life as a bastion of reactionary politics and racism, and dropped their affiliation en masse. Some local chapters disbanded. In 1968, a group of student activists occupied a Columbia University administration building during a protest. According to the historian Paul Cronin, these students faced off in a violent clash with a counterrevolutionary group calling itself the Majority Coalition, which consisted mainly of conservative athletes and fraternity brothers. (A row of clean-shaven white men, mostly wearing jackets and ties, punched away as students and outsiders tried to bash through what they called the Jock Line, Mr. Cronin wrote in Politico.) One of those in the Majority Coalition is the current attorney general, William P. Barr, who belonged to the Sigma Nu fraternity. Attorney General Barr is far from the only powerful government figure with Greek ties. Eighteen United States presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have belonged to fraternities, along with scores of other politicians and titans of industry. Vanderbilt fraternity alumni include William Bain, the co-founder of the consultancy giant Bain & Company, the Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and the Democratic governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear. The promise of networking connections and camaraderie is a large part of the draw. At many schools, fraternities and sororities run the social scene and throw the biggest parties. Since 1984, when the drinking age rose to 21 nationwide, fraternities became the unofficial bartenders of many campuses, Mr. Hechinger said. But with the pandemic preventing many students from going back to campus in the fall, Greek organizations have less to offer in a social sense. Fraternity and sorority dues, about 50 percent of which often go to the national organizations, are harder to justify. Ajmer: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti prayed at the historic and revered 13th century Ajmer Sharif Dargah in the pilgrim town of Ajmer. The Chief Minister did 'jiyarat' (worship) in Dargah and presented Chadar on the tomb of the sufi saint in the afternoon. She prayed to 'Garib Nawaj' (the sufi saint) for peace on India-Pakistan border and peaceful relations between the two countries. She reached the Dargah after Namaj-e-Johar (afternoon Namaz) and prayed in 'Asthana' (sanctum sanctorum) of sufi saint. Speaking to media persons, she said that peace and prosperity are slowly returning to Jammu and Kashmir but still most of the students are not going to schools in the valley. Mehbooba also listened to qawwali (Sufi devotional music) near panyti gate of the dargah. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Geneva, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 31st Jul, 2020 ) :The World Health Organization on Thursday warned that spikes in coronavirus transmission in a number of countries were being driven by young people "letting down their guard". "Young people are not invincible," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news conference in Geneva. While the pandemic, which has killed nearly 670,000 and infected more than 17 million people worldwide, has disproportionately impacted the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions, he stressed that "younger people are at risk too". He lamented that a major challenge in trying to rein in the novel coronavirus was "convincing younger people of this risk". He said there was evidence that "spikes of cases in some countries are being driven in part by younger people letting down their guard during the northern hemisphere summer." WHO 's technical lead for COVID-19 Maria Van Kerkhove lamented in particular that nightclubs in a number of places had become "amplifiers" of transmission. Tedros insisted that "young people must take the same precautions to protect themselves and protect others as everyone else". "Young people can be infected, young people can die, and young people can transmit the virus to others." PHILIPSBURG:--- Maarten continues with plans to reopen today, August 1st, to the U.S. Market. Considering this, a decision has been made by Madam Prefete Sylvie Feucher to close the French-Dutch Border as per July 31st, at noon. The French-Dutch internal borders are being controlled; however, for work and other medical reasons, persons will be allowed to cross the border to French Saint Martin with proper documentation. This means U.S. visitors are not permitted entry to the French side of the island. Our U.S. visitors are therefore invited to enjoy the southern part of this unique two-nation destination. St. Maarten assures that the health of the citizens and visitors is of top priority. Thus, the necessary precautionary measures have been put in place, allowing our visitors to experience and explore the various excursions, tours, restaurants, and food places safely. For the further information, the latest news on COVID-19 and Travel Restrictions, please visit www.vacationstmaarten.com and follow the link which takes you to www.stmaartenupdates.com. An Orleans Parish Civil District Court judge has issued a $51,000 judgment against District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro for his offices failure to turn over bogus subpoenas under a public-records request filed two years before the practice was exposed by the Lens. Judge Ethel Julien said in a Monday ruling that Cannizzaro acted arbitrarily and capriciously when he failed to fork over documents requested by an attorney for a nonprofit law firm who was probing the practice in 2015. While Cannizzaros office says it will likely appeal, the judges decision yet again highlights the controversial and long-standing practice of issuing bogus subpoenas to pressure crime witnesses to speak with prosecutors. +10 New Orleans DA Leon Cannizzaro says he won't run again, ending era and controversial career Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro announced on Friday that he will not seek a third term, a blockbuster decision that leaves th Genuine subpoenas must be approved by a judge. But for years, New Orleans prosecutors sent documents misleadingly called subpoenas, despite the lack of court authorization, to witnesses prosecutors hoped to interview ahead of trials. Cannizzaro dropped the practice after the Lens wrote about it in April 2017. Emily Washington, a lawyer for the MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans, made a public-records request in 2015 for copies of pretrial subpoenas obtained by prosecutors to question witnesses. In response, the District Attorneys Office said it would be overly burdensome to search for the documents. After the Lens published its story, Washington filed a lawsuit claiming that the office had wrongly denied her request. 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 In its defense, the District Attorneys Office said the fake subpoenas werent covered by Washingtons request -- because they werent the genuine documents for which Washington specifically asked. The office had nonetheless marked the disputed documents subpoena and they carried a warning of a fine or jail time. Juliens judgment said it was made against Cannizzaro in his official capacity. However, the MacArthur Justice Center said in a news release that it believes Cannizzaro will be personally liable for the penalty because Julien found the district attorney had acted unreasonably. Jason Williams and law partner seek to disprove claim they plotted illegal tax deductions City Council President Jason Williams and law partner Nicole Burdett were granted subpoenas Monday for records of their former tax preparer as We hope the Courts judgment of over $50,000 in penalties will deter the next district attorney from attempting to evade judicial scrutiny of the offices subpoena requests and public scrutiny of its practices, said Jim Craig, director of MacArthurs Louisiana office. A spokesman for Cannizzaro said the office is reviewing its options. We strongly disagree with the courts legal analysis and ruling in this matter. We intend to examine our options, including our likely decision to file a suspensive appeal of this judgment before the deadline of Aug. 26, said the spokesman, Ken Daley. Amidst the continuing political crisis in Rajasthan, at least one legislator loyal to the Sachin Pilot camp has said that he and other Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) loyal to the former deputy chief minister will attend the upcoming Assembly session if the Congress party issues a whip. The Assembly session is set to be convened from August 14. "We are with Sachin Pilot and will abide by whatever decision he takes. We have never spoken about leaving the Congress party. If the Congress issues a whip, I will definitely attend the Assembly session. We will raise our voice from within by being inside the party," Gajendra Singh Shaktawat, MLA from Vallabhnagar in Udaipur and one of the 18 legislators in the Pilot camp, told The Indian Express. Shaktawat added that the whip however is valid only inside the Assembly and not for party meetings, which was a point of contention between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's camp and the Pilot camp. "All we wanted was a change in leadership. A person who worked hard for six years to form the government in Rajasthan, you abuse him by calling him nikamma This is a battle of self-respect," the legislator said while referring to Gehlot's 'nikamma, nakara' comment against Pilot. "You are abusing your own family members. We have never spoken with anybody from the BJP. We dont want to leave the Congress," Shaktawat added. Meanwhile, another Congress legislator from the Pilot camp, Mukesh Bhakar, told the newspaper that he is loyal to the Congress ideology and does not plan on leaving the party for BJP. Amidst the tussle between the two camps, MLAs loyal to the Gehlot camp were moved to Jaisalmer from Jaipur on July 31. In the meantime, in Delhi, the Congress approached the Supreme Court against the Rajasthan High Court order restraining the assembly speaker from acting on the disqualification notices issued to Sachin Pilot and 18 other dissident MLAs. Auburn University is assessing the future of a lecturer who tweeted anti-police profanity earlier this week as the school said the behavior is inexcusable and completely antithetical to the Auburn creed. Jesse Goldberg, who was hired as a part-time lecturer of American literature and composition at Auburn, has since locked his tweets from being publicly seen, but WRBL reported that the incoming lecturer espoused anti-police views on his social media pages. F*ck every single cop. Every single one, read one of Goldbergs tweets, according to the station. The only ethical choice for any cop to make at this point is to refuse to do their job and quit. The police do not protect people. They protect capital. They are instruments of violence on behalf of capital. Auburn condemned Goldbergs social media activity in a statement Friday to AL.com. As stated earlier this week, Mr. Goldbergs comments on social media are inexcusable and completely antithetical to the Auburn Creed. Higher education is built upon the premise of the free expression of ideas and academic dialogue, but Auburn has not and will never support views that exclude or disrespect others, including hateful speech that degrades law enforcement professionals. Mr. Goldberg was hired on a temporary, non-tenure-track assignment, the university said. While the university did not directly respond to a question about any possible disciplinary action against Goldberg, Auburn said, university officials continue to assess the situation to ensure Auburn remains a campus where mutual respect and understanding is paramount. To help increase local tourism, Peterborough and the Kawarthas Tourism is launching a condensed travel planner called Dream Book. Tourism normally infuses more than $300 million into the local economy annually, according to the agency, but the tourism sector has been hit hard this year due to COVID-19. The launch of this new Dream Book is one of the ways local tourism officials are planning to kickstart the visitor economy through a three-phase recovery marketing plan, a press release from the agency states. The book is powered with augmented reality technology through a free app which can be found at both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store by searching Neighbur Vue. Throughout the book, images that are marked with a vue icon will activate the augmented reality technology on a users device. To start, users will be able to see videos of experiences, such as a time lapse video of the Peterborough Lift Lock. In the future, users will be able to have more interactive experiences as well, according to the agency. We know, as consumers slowly regain confidence, that hyperlocal and regional tourism are going to be our focus into 2021, said Kelly Jessup, director of marketing and communications for the agency. In co-operation with the efforts of federal and provincial tourism agencies, Jessup said theyre aiming to inspire local residents, seasonal residents and day-trippers to explore the exceptional volume and variety of experiences in Peterborough and the Kawarthas. Over the next six months, PKED will be executing a three-phase recovery marketing plan with tourism at the core. Phase 1, which kicks off with the Dream Book, will begin with a hyperlocal focus aimed at encouraging locals to shop, buy, eat and stay local, supporting food and drink, retail, artists, attractions and agri-tourism, said PKT. Jessup said re-entering the marketplace will require a delicate balance between encouraging local spending to support local businesses and responsibly encouraging the return of visitors in a way that considers public health and safety as well as sustainability. We are confident that a gradual phased approach will help us support those that need to recoup lost revenue due to the pandemic, while still supporting those who arent ready for increased demand yet, she said. Phases 2 and 3 will align with provincial efforts, as Ontarians regain confidence and are willing to travel farther to explore nearby regions, encouraging travellers from within the province to explore Ontario through road trips and to check some items off their bucket-list highlighting iconic sites, tastes and experiences in Peterborough and the Kawarthas, the release states. An international travel body has made the grim prediction that overseas travel will not return to pre-pandemic levels for at least another four years. Data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says the recovery in air traffic had been slower than expected. The prediction has been made using airline metric Revenue Passenger Kilometres (RPKs) a measure of the number of kilometres travelled by paying passengers. Travel may not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024. Source: Getty The IATA found in domestic travel alone, Australia had been one of the hardest countries hit by the coronavirus. Despite relatively low case numbers compared to other countries, Australias RPKs in June 2020 declined by 93.8 per cent compared to June last year. Three reasons for bleak travel outlook Slow containment in virus epicentre According to the IATA, renewed coronavirus outbreaks in the US and China, as well as other developing economies, have resulted in the grim prospect for international travel as those countries make up about 40 per cent of global air travel markets. Although developed economies outside of the US have been largely successful in containing the spread of the virus, renewed outbreaks have occurred in these economies, and in China, the IATA said in a press release. There are three reasons why international travel has changed. Source: Getty Furthermore, there is little sign of the virus containment in many important emerging economies. The IATA said the continued closure of borders in these countries resulted in a significant drag on recovery. A drop in business travel According to data company Statista, global business tourism spending hit a whopping $1,781 billion in 2019. However with big businesses tightening the belt on corporate travel budgets, the IATA said international business travel would be constrained as companies face financial pressure from the coronavirus. The IATA said there had also been less of a need for business travel with video conferencing becoming efficient enough to act as a substitute for meetings in person. Story continues Lack of consumer confidence According to the IATA, there is still a demand from people wanting to visit friends and relatives overseas, however there is a lack of consumer confidence when it comes to concerns over job security, as well as fears of contracting the coronavirus. An IATA passenger survey conducted in June found more than half of people dont plan to travel at all this year. How overseas travel could work as early as 2021 Australian Federation of Travel Agents chief executive Darren Rudd said he believed people would be able to travel overseas as early as 2021. However amid the coronavirus pandemic it would not look exactly how it did in 2019. Mr Rudd told Yahoo News Australia it would have to involve travel bubbles like the European Union has implemented, which includes opening borders to countries with similar coronavirus spread. International plane travel will look different from 2021. Source: Getty In May the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were the first to open their borders to each others' citizens. Mr Rudd said Australia could realistically open its borders to a travel bubble in the next few months, but to what countries would depend on those that had similar epidemiological patterns to Australia. He also said if countries in that travel bubble wanted to close off the border to each other due to the rise in coronavirus, there would need to be a pre-agreed checklist for countries so borders could not be impulsively opened and closed. Mr Rudd said however people would still have to self-isolate in some form. Its a balancing act between the need to open up borders versus the preservation of life, he said. Flights would also need to follow similar protocols to that of Europe, with a smaller number of people booked on flights, hygiene packs with sanitiser and masks for passengers and regular announcements and voiceovers warning of standard protocols. 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. In a straight shootout between Paul Young and the late, great Marvin Gaye, there would only be one winner. However, Young's 1983 treatment of Gaye's Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) is generally considered better than the original. Marvin Gaye co-wrote the song in 1962 as his solo career was starting to take off. It was included on his second album for Tamla Motown and, while not released as a single, did become popular on both the Northern Soul and Mod scenes in the UK during the sixties. It also re-surfaced as the B-side of Gaye's 1969 hit Too Busy Thinking 'Bout My Baby. Zip forward to the early eighties and Luton-born Paul Young, frontman with the highly rated but moderately successful Q-Tips, was struggling to find songs for his first solo album. 'As we were making the album, publishing companies were sending us all these overly complex songs,' Young told The Guardian in 2018. 'I said: "I just want a simple three-chord trick with a melody". Then I remembered an old Marvin Gaye B-side I used to play at my friend's house when I was 14. Because that version of Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) hadn't been a hit, I effectively had a blank canvas.' His use of that blank canvas was a masterstroke. He slowed it down, added more melancholy to the vocals and enlisted the help of bass player Pino Palladino who had been touring with Jools Holland and the Millionaires for 50 a week while sleeping on Holland's couch. Palladino's contribution is now one of the most famous fretless basslines in popular music. After two failed singles, Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) struck gold for Young. The first of his 14 UK Top 40 singles, it spent three weeks at number one and helped propel debut album No Parlez to platinum status in many countries. The song not only launched Paul Young's solo career, it was also life-changing for Palladino. 'After the record became a hit, David Gilmour from Pink Floyd called. Suddenly I was being asked to play with some of the biggest names in music. I've never stopped since,' he told The Guardian in 2018. 'It's funny, because when I first heard Wherever I Lay My Hat on the radio I was really embarrassed. The bass was loud and on its own, and it sounded a bit out of tune to me. Then all these people started telling me they loved it, so I quickly started saying: "Yeah it's great, innit? Thanks!".' 1 Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) Paul Young 2 I.O.U. Freeez 3 Who's That Girl? Eurythmics 4 Double Dutch Malcolm Mclaren 5 Come Live With Me Heaven 17 6 The Crown Gary Byrd and the GB Experience 7 Moonlight Shadow Mike Oldfield 8 Wrapped Around Your Finger The Police 9 Baby Jane Rod Stewart 10 Cruel Summer Bananarama BRIDGEPORT Shots were fired during a street fight in the city late Friday afternoon, officials said. Just before 5 p.m., a street fight was reported in the area of Maple and Park streets, according to Scott Appleby, the citys director of emergency communications and emergency management. During the fight, Appleby said, one of the people involved, who has a pistol permit, pulled out a weapon. Appleby said shots were fired in the area of Kossuth and Maple streets, but no victim was found. Appleby said police took the person who fired the gun into custody, but did not indicate whether that individual would face charges. The investigation is ongoing. The death toll in Bihar floods climbed to 13 on Saturday after two fresh casualties were reported, while floodwaters of the overflowing rivers in Uttar Pradesh affected 331 villages and about 1.90 lakh people following heavy rains. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued yellow alert for 10 districts in Kerala for the next four days, and heavy to very heavy rainfall for Mumbai and some other districts from August 3 to 5. The MeT Department has forecast heavy rainfall for Uttar Pradesh and gave a fresh yellow weather warning for heavy rains in Himachal Pradesh for August 4 and 5. Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana received light rainfall, while the Uttarakhand government started rescue operations through a helicopter in two sub-divisions of Pithoragarh district, which was wreaked by heavy rains in the past few days. In Delhi, a fresh spell of rains kept the mercury within comfortable levels. The Safdarjung Observatory, which provides representative figures for the city, recorded a maximum of 36.3 degrees Celsius and 6.7 mm rainfall. Humidity levels shot up to 95 per cent, causing slight inconvenience to the residents. In Bihar, the two fresh casualties were reported from Muzaffarpur district. Earlier, Darbhanga and West Champaran had reported seven and four deaths, respectively, according to a bulletin issued by the state disaster management. The number of people affected by the floods, across 14 districts, stood at 49.05 lakh, up from 45.39 lakh on Friday, while the number of affected panchayats too has risen to 1,043 from 1,012 on the previous day. The state has received a total average rainfall of 768.5 mm since the onset of monsoon, which was 46 per cent above normal, which has led to a rise in water levels of most rivers flowing through the state, especially those originating in Nepal and crisscrossing the northern districts, known for bringing along huge deposits of silt. The IMD has issued yellow alert for Alappuzha, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Iduk ki, Thrissur, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasaragod districts in Kerala. The weatherman's website also indicates the formation of a low pressure area over north Bay of Bengal towards the later part of the first week of August and says it's likely to intensify over the northwest bay of Bengal off the Odisha coast at the end of the first week. In Maharashtra, the places likely to receive heavy to very heavy rainfall, apart from Mumbai, are Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Pune, Kolhapur, Sangli, Beed, Latur and Osmanabad districts. Uttar Pradesh witnessed light to moderate rains along with thundershowers at many places in western parts of the state and a few places over the eastern parts with heavy rains at isolated places in the past 24 hours. State's Finance, Parliamentary Affairs and Medical Education Minister Suresh Khanna said 331 villages in 12 districts, including Barabanki, Ayodhya, Kushinagar, Gorakhpur, Bahraich, Azamgarh, Gonda, Sant Kabirnagar, have been hit by the floods but the situation is under control. Three rivers -- Sharada, Rapti and Saryu-Ghaghra -- were flowing above the red-mark at some places of the state. Sharda at Palia Kalan in Lakhimpur, Rapti at Birdghat (Gorakhpur) Rapti barrage (Shravasti), Saryu-Ghaghra at Elgin Bridge (Barabanki), Ayodhya and Turtipar (Ballia) were flowing above the danger mark, while the embankments were safe. The state has started preparations to deal with any eventuality and ration kits, food packets, tarpaulin are being distributed and boats have been deployed in the affected areas. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) have also been deployed. The MeT has forecast rains along with thundershowers at a few places and warned that heavy rains are very likely at isolated places over Uttar Pradesh on Sunday. In Himachal Pradesh, the Kullu National Highway was blocked due to landslides following rains at Jhiri village in Mandi district. Machinery has been deployed but big boulders have come down, officials said. The Uttarakhand government started rescue operations through a helicopter in two sub divisions of Pithoragarh district, where incidents caused by torrential rains recently killed 18 people and cut off around 60 villages. Heavy rains have wreaked havoc in Bangapani and Munsyari divisions in the last few days. In Rajasthan, light to moderate rainfall occurred in some parts, with Rohat (Pali) and Poogal (Bikaner) each recording 6 cm rains, Vallabhnagar (Udaipur), Mandalgarh (Bhilwara), Sanchor (Jalore) and Dungla (Chittorgarh) recording a maximum of 5 cm rainfall, Weir (Bharatpur), Rashmi (Chittorgarh) and Pokaran (Jaisalmer) recording 4 cm. Ajmer, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota also received 36.7, 15.1, 11.5 and 0.4 mm rains till Saturday evening since morning, according to the Meteorological (MeT) Department. Punjab and Haryana also witnessed light rains as Chandigarh, which recorded a maximum of 32 degrees Celsius and 31 mm rains. Ambala recorded a maximum of 32.2 degrees Celsius and rainfall at 6 mm, while Ludhiana received 42 mm rainfall. A 20-year-old activist wont be attending a Black Lives Matter street painting hosted by the City of Elizabeth and police on Saturday because he says issues of systemic racism in the police department arent being addressed. Kason Little, who unsuccessfully ran for city council in Elizabeths July 7 Democratic primary, pointed to Mayor J. Christian Bollwages defense of the citys former police director last year when he was accused of using racist and sexist slurs towards staff. The mayor accepted then-Police Director James Cosgroves resignation and the allegations were later sustained after an investigation. Its giving the mayor more publicity, more clout saying hes with the Black people, Little told NJ Advance Media after he made a post on Facebook about why hes not attending. No. No more. Little said the city should begin to mend its relationship between its largely minority community and police by diverting $10 million from the police department to more social services and creating a civilian complaint review board. He also demanded that disciplinary and misconduct records be released, along with data and demographics of police stops, arrests and use of force reports. A city spokeswoman did not respond when NJ Advance Media asked if it would work on any of Littles requests and was given the opportunity to reply to his comments about the mayor. The street painting is set to begin around 6 a.m. on Saturday across the street from city hall followed by a ceremony around noon. Speakers invited to the event include the mother of Eric Garner, who died in police custody in New York in 2014, and the brother of George Floyd, whose death earlier this year in Minnesota sparked protests across the country. Kim Nesbitt, one of the organizers of the street painting, said Little was trying to tarnish a positive event. She said Little was asked to speak with clergy so they could bring his concerns to the new police director, Earl Graves, who is Black. This is not a political event, said Nesbitt, noting that Little ran for city council. I think hes trying to make this a political event. Little, however, noted that clergy has strong ties with the mayor and council and are so afraid to go against the grain. And while he noted that the newest police director is Black, he said little has changed since he was first appointed last year since he was appointed by the mayor and still has to work for this guy. Elizabeths population is about 19% Black and 65% Hispanic, according to U.S. Census estimates. Theo Perkins, another organizer of the event whose aunt is a city council member, said there are no sides in this issue involving Little. We are making a statement for all Black lives by doing this and thats really the only the point of what were doing, said Perkins. Little said the communitys complicated history goes back to the 1990s. In 2000, a New York Times article probed a group of cops known as the Family that was labeled as a study group among brass, but known among residents as a racially insensitive collective of officers. Bollwage, Little pointed out, also once insisted that Elizabeth did not have a gang problem. That was refuted by the county prosecutor at the time. Last year, residents said Elizabeth police fail to investigate their complaints against officers. Their complaints echoed a federal lawsuit that was filed by a man who said he was beaten, shoved and dragged by Elizabeth cops while handcuffed. The city, at the time, said the most severe allegations are referred to the prosecutors office, while the mayor blamed former Police Chief John Brennan because internal affairs investigators would play favorites. Brennan, meanwhile, denied the allegation and blamed Cosgrove, the former police director, for interfering. The police departments internal affairs unit was taken over by the Union County Prosecutors Office but has since resumed control. Brennan has since retired too. Cosgroves resignation also sparked a major upheaval among the Union County Prosecutors Office. The state Attorney General removed the acting prosecutor, installed one of his top aides, and then later appointed Lyndsay Ruotolo. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Rebecca Panico may be reached at rpanico@njadvancemedia.com. As the spread of the coronavirus accelerates across the country, government and private hospitals are finding it difficult to recruit new and additional healthcare workers. With nearly 50,000 new cases logged daily for over a week, India's COVID-19 tally went over the 1.6 million mark on Friday. India recorded over 100,000 cases in just 48 hours as the country's toll stands at 35,807 and has overtaken Italy to have the fifth-most deaths. Daily spike in cases For weeks now, India has reported the fastest growth in COVID-19 infections in the world and scientists warn that the third worst-hit country in the global coronavirus tally after the US and Brazil, and would see it overtake Brazil in the number of daily cases. What's more the pandemic has added to the stress of an overburdened healthcare workforce as both state and private healthcare facilities find themselves stretched. Existing healthcare workers are unwilling to take on COVID-19 work due to poor working conditions in many public and private hospitals including long shifts and delayed and reduced salary payments, reported 'India Spend', a data-driven website. The pandemic has also brought to the fore the differences in salaries and facilities that contracted healthcare workers and their peers employed on a permanent basis are entitled to, the report said. Poor facilities and working conditions India has one medical doctor for every 1,404 people and 1.7 nurses per 1000 people according to the government's figures which is much lower than the WHO benchmark of 1 doctor and 3 nurses for every 1000 people. It is reported that there has been a reduction in salaries in several private hospitals across India. In some hospitals in north India, medical staff were not paid for almost two months. Healthcare staff in private hospitals in the southern state of Kerala, for instance, are facing a forced loss of pay, since the lockdown because private hospitals have restricted the number of days that staff work so that they are paid for fewer working days. Some months back, the United Nurses Association, a national union representing 380,000 nurses, filed a petition with India's Supreme Court seeking the government's intervention to frame a policy for their welfare, including regarding non-payment of salaries, lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals, long shifts and lack of access to adequate testing and quarantining. India will have different peaks In the western state of Maharashtra, which has the highest number of infections, many nurses are also unwilling to work because of the fear of Covid-19, the perception that hospitals do not provide adequate personal protection equipment, poor salaries and lack of job security. On Friday, the Supreme Court finally directed the government to ensure the salaries of doctors and healthcare workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 battle were paid on time.h According to a report by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP), India has shortage of an estimated 600,000 doctors and 2 million nurses. Scientists found that lack of staff who are properly trained in administering antibiotics is preventing patients from accessing live-saving drugs. Case counts have been spiking across the country as have rates of hospitalisation and deaths in hotspot cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Ahmedabad. A shortage of doctors, healthcare workers, well-equipped beds and lack of faith in state-run hospitals has left many states struggling to cope with the virus. India's curve has not yet turned the corner and epidemiologists believe the country will witness several coronavirus peaks where every area could have its own peak. Bhramar Mukherjee, a well known epidemiologist who has been working on mathematical models of the trajectory of COVID-19 in India said the tally of official detected cases will go up to 2 million by August 15 and 3 million by the end of August. The government announced that it plans to achieve the target of 1 million tests every day in the country within one or two months. Farhan Naqvi, founder and managing attorney of Naqvi Injury Law We appreciate the recognition from Super Lawyers, and share it with the passionate people on our team that are relentless in pursuing justice on behalf of our clients. -Farhan Naqvi Naqvi Injury Law founder and managing attorney Farhan Naqvi and attorney Elizabeth Coleman were named to the 2020 Super Lawyers list of Nevadas top attorneys. Attorneys from the firm have been recognized for seven consecutive years. Super Lawyers is considered one of the most respected legal rating services in the industry, with rankings based on peer recognition and professional achievement. The annual list offers a comprehensive and diverse listing of the top five percent of outstanding attorneys in each state. The top five percent are determined by an independent research teams evaluation of 12 indicators of professional success including verdicts and settlements, community service and experience. We appreciate the recognition from Super Lawyers, and share it with the passionate people on our team that are relentless in pursuing justice on behalf of our clients, said Farhan Naqvi. Naqvi is also regularly recognized as a top attorney in Nevada and has been a Gold Winner in the Best of Las Vegas for the past four consecutive years in the categories of Personal Injury Attorney and Trial Lawyer in addition to the firms gold-level recognition in the programs Law Firm and Customer Service categories. After more than a decade managing his firm and successfully handling over 4,000 cases, Naqvi stands out as one of the top personal injury attorneys in Southern Nevada. He is also a well-known philanthropist, sponsoring events and programs that benefit children and families in Southern Nevada including the annual KLUC Toy Drive and Cure 4 The Kids Foundation, for which he serves on the board of directors. Among a lengthy list of professional achievements, Naqvi has been recognized as the best lawyer in both Vegas Inc. and Desert Companion magazines, the Top One Percent of attorneys by The National Association of Distinguished Counsel and as one of the top 100 trial lawyers in the country by The National Trial Lawyers. This is the second time Coleman has received the recognition after being named a Super Lawyers Rising Star last year, an honor reserved for exceptional attorneys who are 40 years old or younger and have been working as an attorney for less than 10 years. Coleman, one of the leading attorneys at Naqvi Injury Law, began practicing law in 2011 and has since helped her clients recover millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements. To learn more about Naqvi and Coleman or for information about how Naqvi Injury Law can help you, visit http://www.naqvilaw.com. ABOUT NAQVI INJURY LAW Naqvi Injury Law was founded in 2008 by Farhan Naqvi, an award-winning personal injury attorney. In the 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 Best of Las Vegas Readers Poll, the Las Vegas Review-Journal named the firm a Gold Winner in a record-setting three categories: Best Personal Injury Lawyer, Best Law Firm and Best Customer Service. In 2019 the firm was also recognized in the new category of Best Trial Attorney. Farhan Naqvi has received the highest possible rating of AV Preeminent from Martindale Hubbell and holds an Avvo Superb rating. For more information, visit http://www.naqvilaw.com or call 702-553-1000. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 04:15:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RABAT, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister Nasser Bourita on Saturday held a telephone conversation with his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio on Libyan crisis and bilateral relations. Di Maio expressed his country's "appreciation" for the contribution and role played by Morocco for the resolution of the Libyan crisis, a statement by the Moroccan Foreign Affairs ministry said. The talks also focused on the bilateral relations between Rabat and Rome, in the light of the Joint Declaration on the multidimensional strategic partnership signed on November 2019, it added. Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on its website that Di Maio reiterated in this phone call the importance of collaboration with Rabat so as to achieve a political solution of the ongoing crisis in Libya. Concerning the Libyan crisis, Italy is concerned with two priorities which are the achievement of a lasting cease-fire, and the rapid resumption of oil production, the statement added. Enditem A male passenger on an Air Peace Flight P47182 from Calabar to Abuja Flight P47182 died on board on Friday. The deceased, 72-year-old, allegedly had a case of paraplegia due to spinal injury since 2019, and he was travelling for medical check-up in Abuja. His condition worsened as soon as the plane was air-borne, and upon arrival at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, Port Health official checked him and confirmed that he was dead. The airline spokesman, Stanley Olise, who insisted the deceased was certified fit to fly, confirmed the incident. The passenger was certified fit to fly by Port Health officials in Calabar before boarding our aircraft; but the passenger developed a medical condition in-flight. On arrival at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport Abuja, we urgently notified the Port Health officials who confirmed the death and took the remains of the passenger to the hospital for the necessary protocols. Air Peace has thoroughly decontaminated its aircraft and Port Health is on top of the situation, Olise said. Your tax-deductible gift today powers our reporters and keeps us independent. We rely on you, our reader, not paywalls to stay funded because we believe important news and information should be freely accessible to all. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe By Chris Nichols/Capital Public Radio President Donald Trump on Thursday repeated what election experts across the United States say is a false distinction between "absentee" and "mail-in" voting, one that experts say threatens to sow confusion and undermine confidence in this fall's election results. In a tweet that grabbed the nation's attention -- mostly because Trump suggested postponing the Nov. 3 election (something only Congress can do) -- the president also claimed absentee voting is "good," while again making the false assertion that mail-in voting is "fraudulent." What Is Absentee Voting? For decades, people have been allowed to request absentee ballots if they were sick, disabled or were traveling during the election so they could cast their vote by mail. A majority of states, however, no longer require voters to submit a reason to request an absentee ballot. The term has been phased out in many states, including California, in favor of "mail-in" voting or "vote-by-mail." In a recent article, Factcheck.org found Trump, who voted by mail himself in 2018 and again in this year's primary, has on numerous occasions said absentee voting includes stronger safeguards and verification. Elections experts from California to Colorado to Florida told us that's simply not the case. "There's really no distinction," said Darren Hutchinson, a law professor at the University of Florida and an elections expert, reacting to Trump's effort to draw a line between absentee and mail-in voting. "So, it's basically a falsehood that's been repeated over and over and over again." There are 34 states plus Washington, D.C. that offer what's called "no excuse" absentee voting, also simply called mail-in voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Under that system, voters do not need to attest that they will be out of the voting jurisdiction on election day, or that they cannot get to the polls because of an illness or disability. There is no special process that absentee out-of-town voters go through that other mail-in voters do not, Hutchinson said. There are eight states, including Texas, Indiana and New York, where in-person voting "remains the only option unless people can provide an approved reason not related to fear of the coronavirus," according to The Washington Post. Hutchison said elections officials in these states simply check to ensure an approved excuse is listed on the form, but they do not verify those excuses. 'Fundamentally, it's the same thing' Election experts said the same safeguards and verification process apply to all methods of voting. To register, a voter must be a citizen of that state and be of voting age. "Fundamentally, it's the same thing," said Amber McReynolds, Denver's former director of elections and chief executive officer of the National Vote at Home Institute. "Ballots are handled exactly the same regardless of whether or not it's an absentee ballot or a vote-by-mail ballot." Jessica Levinson, an elections expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called Trump's effort to draw a line between absentee and mail-in voting "a largely false distinction." "It is not the case that there is one bucket of absentee balloting that is much safer, and then vote-by-mail just lacks all integrity, or vice versa," she said. Levinson added that some of the confusion over the terms absentee and mail-in voting is generational. In California, election officials are phasing out the term absentee, but it was commonly used within recent decades. Whether someone uses it "is really more of an indication of when you started applying to vote-by-mail." Also in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in June requiring counties to send all active registered voters a mail-in ballot about a month before the Nov. 3 election. Newsom said the move was necessary so that people would not have to risk their health by voting at polling places amid the COVID-19 pandemic. California will also provide some in-person voting options. Six other states plus Washington D.C. plan to automatically send mail-in ballots to voters. Many other states allow voters to request those ballots. Sam Mahood, spokesman for the California Secretary of State's Office, agreed there's no distinction between absentee and mail-in voting. "We essentially do not use the term 'absentee' anymore in California," Mahood wrote in an email. Hutchinson, the Florida law professor, said the president should be well aware that absentee and mail-in voting are now essentially the same thing. As for why Trump continues to make this false distinction, Hutchison suggested the president "is trying to create uncertainty about the outcome" of the Nov. 3 election. "It's just a way of having people question the outcome if he loses," he said. CapRadio and PolitiFact California will continue answering questions about vote-by-mail and fact-checking similar topics through the November 2020 election. Email us your questions at politifactca@capradio.org, or contact us on Twitter or Facebook. NAIROBI Some Ugandans seem convinced that Joseph Kabuleta is a creation of the NRM Government to divide opposition votes. It comes as no surprise, really; this is the same supposition they have thrown around all these elections, whenever a fresh candidate for the presidential race shows face. Well, they may be right, perhaps hes been or is being bankrolled by somebody or some government but I am certain, beyond a shadow of doubt, that it is not by the NRM government. I have my theory who it could be. Stick with me a little while and see where the trail of breadcrumbs that has led me to my supposition goes. I became acquainted with Josephs father, Jackson Kabuleta (may his soul rest in peace) when he was still working with the East African Community in Nairobi in the 1960s. I was, at the time, pursuing my bachelors degree and somehow, our paths crossed. Being both Ugandans and Banyoro in a strange country, it was natural for us to form a bond. It was in Nairobi that he met his wife Margaret, who was also working with the EAC and, once or twice, I was hosted at their beautiful home in Kileshwa in Westlands. Around 1971, shortly before Joseph was born, Jackson moved back to Uganda with his family. Not long after, I also left Kenya for London to pursue my masters studies. I eventually relocated to Japan and after a while we lost touch as, slowly but surely, the flow of letters between us waned and eventually died out altogether. In the few years I spent around the Kabuletas, I was privy to information, some of it corridor-talk, that linked them with the ruling establishment of Kenya. You see, Josephs mother, Margaret, is a Kikuyu from Kikanjo in Nyeri, which is very close to a village called Thunguri in Othaya, also in Nyeri where former Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, hails from. Thanks to the proximity of their villages and friends or relatives-to-friends in common, their meeting was inevitable. Although Margaret followed her husband to Uganda and has become Ugandanised, so to speak, her ancestral roots are in Kenya and, politically, seem to run deeper than the surface suggests. I had heard the rumours, even when I was still in Nairobi, that Mwai Kibaki and Jackson could have been acquaintances or even more than acquaintances, their first encounter having occurred in Kampala in the late 50s when Mwai was studying at Makerere University. The one time I brought it up with Jackson, he laughed it off and I never raised the subject again. Later on, their relationship would continue in Nairobi as not only were they within the same professional circle Jackson was an Accountant and Kibaki was Minister of Finance but Margaret was known to both. It seems the two countries, Kenya and Uganda, have been dipping their straws in each others political drinking pots for a while. From as far back as 1992, when Mwai Kibaki contested for president against Moi, there was talk and accusations that the ruling establishment in Kampala was the financial muscle behind him. Years later, tables have turned and the talk in some not-easily-accessible corridors is that Kenya could be the springboard for Joseph Kabuletas presidential ambitions with some people linking him not just to Kibaki alone but to the Kenyattas as well plus a good number of moneyed businessmen who believe their interests can be furthered by having a son of the soil take the top seat in Uganda. It is said that Kibaki who was already friends with Jackson introduced him to the Kenyattas. Although theyve run against each other as political rivals, the Kenyattas and Kibakis are close friends. It is no secret that Mwai Kibaki is Uhurus godfather and his son Jimmy Kibaki is one of Uhuru Kenyattas best friends. Whats in it for Kenya, you may ask. Well the answer is found in Joseph Kabuletas opening statement of his presidential announcement, Uganda is blessed in the air with a friendly climate and incredible weather; blessed on the ground with half of East Africas arable land and blessed beneath the ground with rich extractives which include 27 different minerals spawned across the country in commercially viable quantities, as well as billions of barrels of explored oil with a lot more to be explored. In the next few years, Uganda will become a proper oil-producing nation, churning out in excess of 260,000 barrels of crude per day and the mining industry will take off in earnest. With proper investment, according to a recent World Bank report, the same period could see Ugandas Tourism sector pull in an annual revenue of $10bn, about three times its current input. So in many ways we are heading into a golden era of Ugandas wealth exploration. I am sure you remember the 2009 row between Kenya and Uganda over the half-an-acre piece of real Estate in Lake Victoria called Migingo Island. Another row in January 2020 threatened diplomatic relations between the two countries when Kenya seized Ugandan milk products amounting to over 55,000 kilos of powdered milk and over 260,000 litres of liquid milk over fears that they were contraband, counterfeit and substandard. However, the unofficial story was that cheap Ugandan milk was flooding the Kenyan market to the detriment of Kenyan milk. This very negatively affected the Kenyan dairy industry and the Kenyattas felt the pinch personally since they own one of Kenyas biggest producers of dairy products, Brookside Dairy. As with most governments, in Uganda, the truth is usually the unofficial version, and the talk for years has been that our Yoweri Museveni has shares in Pearl Dairies. So do you see how a political and economic marriage between families that have known each other for decades would eradicate most of those conflicts? Kenya gains access to an agreed amount of Ugandas wealth while Uganda gains easier access to Kenyas ports. And we all live in neighbourly happiness and wealth forever after. Related A friend who was moving to New Orleans gave them their mahogany dining room set. She knew we were moving into our new home, so the set was her housewarming gift to us, Brown says. We had to move it down the stairs from her third-floor apartment. It was so heavy. Luckily, shes also a power lifter. She, my dad, and Eno handled the move beautifully. The couple put a personal stamp on their new home with the art and photos theyd collected throughout their travels. I guess the art falls in my department, Udoh says. Im the curator. I like to incorporate African art when I can get it as well as good paintings that fit with our sensibilities. I found the main mask piece hanging over the fireplace in Chicago. We had gone to visit family and went to this huge outdoor market. I happened to see this piece and it caught my eye. I bought that in 2014. We had no place to put it in our apartment in the Central West End, but I knew some day we would have the right place, and here it is. Former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who asked President Donald Trump for compassionate release from his federal prison sentence during the pandemic, has contracted COVID-19, according to a spokesperson for the family. Stockman, 63, confirmed with laboratory test results that he has the virus on Friday, the spokesperson said. Immediate prayer request! reads a tweet from Stockmans Twitter account that tagged Trump. Steve Stockman learned yesterday positive for COVID, moved to isolation with others infected BUT GIVING NO medication. Steve had a hard time breathing last night. Im VERY concerned. PRAY!! The novel coronavirus has spread through Texas prisons for months. Activists and local leaders have called for the compassionate release of elderly or at-risk people from prisons and jails in the state to curb the spread of the virus. The former Republican congressman was convicted of an intricate corruption scheme in April 2018. He was sentenced to spend 10 years at the Federal Correctional Institution, a low-security facility in Beaumont. In April, his wife, Patti Stockman along with evangelical leaders, conservative officials and former members of the Cabinet and Congress made pleas for the mans release. They said he was especially at risk because he is overweight and has diabetes, lung scarring from asthma and high blood pressure. Our worst nightmare has come to life, he should have been sent to home confinement months ago, Patti Stockman said in a prepared statement. All other insulin-dependent diabetics over 60 were sent to home confinement, except him. Calls for release from Stockmans camp went unanswered by the Trump administration. He is still being held at the Beaumont prison. Stockman was convicted of a scheme that included spying on a GOP rival and misspending charitable contributions on shopping trips, dolphin boat tours, hot air balloon rides and 500 copies of his brothers custom-made pop-up Advent books. hannah.dellinger@chron.com There are many ways to make a body disappear in soapland, and burying someone underground is the most popular. EastEnders Dirty Den was deposited under the Queen Vic cellar floor, but given that the show had already resurrected him once, we couldnt be sure dead actually meant dead. Then there was Owen Turner, buried under a memorial tree. Brooksides Trevor Jordache was left lurking under a patio after being stabbed to death, and to this day I am suspicious of anyone without a spouse who has a nice terrace. Corries John Stape buried Colin Fishwick, the man whose identity he had stolen, beneath Underworld as it was being rebuilt, and Patricia Hillman wife of serial killer Richard was buried under wet concrete at a building site. More recently, Callum Logan endured a spell under the floor in Gails granny annexe (far preferable to being above it, in my book), and now we wait with bated breath to see if Rick Neelans body will be found in the woods where Gary buried it. Yes, Corrie wins hands down for buried bodies. Did the Granada props department get a job lot of shovels going cheap? EMMERDALE: THREES A GOOD CROWD Mandy, Paul and Vinny (pictured) bond, as well as Tracy discovers she's pregnant while getting her wrist checked out in this week's Emmerdale Mandy, Paul and Vinny make a rather pleasing little trio. I mean, Im not saying they should form a band or anything, but its good to see Mandy in a family setting other than the usual Dingle one that involves breaking the sound barrier with non-stop yelling. This new domestic... er, bliss would be pushing it a bit... contentment, shall we say, also gives Mandy a decent love interest who seems relatively normal compared to the psychos and muppets in the village of late. Sometimes, you cant help feeling they should rename the show Fraggle Rock. Alas, it looks as if a spanner is about to be thrown in the works when Gabby hears that Bernice is selling the salon. We know that in this village, a spanner is never a spanner; its a storm of toolboxes falling from above, and now Mandy is worried about losing her job. Theres also a shock for Nate and Tracy when, getting her wrist checked out at the hospital, Tracy discovers shes pregnant. For a young man, Nate really gets himself into complicated relationships. Ever thought about just hopping on a plane and going to Vegas with your mates, Nate? CORONATION STREET: FAB FOUR GO AWOL Gemma (pictured) tells Abi that it would kill her to be separated from her quads in this week's Coronation Street The signs of coronavirus are everywhere Sallys rubber gloves, Jennys hand sanitiser, the B&B being shut, social distancing in the Kabin, pointed references to the great work being done by the NHS, and not a character over 70 in sight. The biggest noticeable change, however, is no quads. Presumably, most young children are considered too vulnerable to be on set and incapable of keeping six feet apart from anyone. So, for the moment, we are not subjected to the usual cacophony of screaming infants, while Gemmas not tearing her hair out and is now having a very nice time in her new role as a mum. On Monday, she even managed to have a laugh with Bernie while hanging out the washing (when will someone tell her that she needs at least one more line, by the way? That one is barely long enough for a couple of flannels, let alone the laundry for four babies). When Abi is upset that her twins are bound for Australia, Gemma insensitively tells her that it would kill her to be separated from her quads. Its not that long ago she was talking of killing them, so its quite a turnaround. Abi is understandably upset, and when Gemma later apologises, Abi explains shes trying to put the twins first and not be selfish. At least she still has Seb, though if he keeps hanging round Alina like a limp lettuce leaf, Abi might be setting up a Go Fund Me to get him a one-way ticket to Sydney, too; at the moment, Id be happy to contribute. EASTENDERS: O COME ALL YE UNFAITHFUL Bradley watches a DVD of his new bride Stacey (left) kissing Max in an episode of EastEnders from Christmas Day 2007 Christmas Day 2007 this weeks rerun episode and Bradley sees red, watching a DVD of new bride Stacey kissing Max. Bless him, it wasnt hard for Bradley to see red every time he looked at his hair and permanently blushing cheeks in the mirror, in fact. And the day is going so well after Bradley excitedly opens his cufflinks from Stacey (hes easily pleased his choice of wife tells you that), she has the ultimate gift. I know what Im gonna give you next year, she coos. A bair-bee. Thankfully, the intervention of the DVD saves us from having to see them try for one. A 37-year-old man was allegedly shot at by unidentified men in Mumbais Kalyan on Friday night, police said. The man suffered bullet injuries and died on the way to the hospital. Jignesh Thakkar alias Munna Bhai had been running a lottery business since the past few years. He owned the Nilam club in Kalyan West. According to Mahatma Phule Police, the unidentified men fired four bullets at Thakkar near his work place late on Friday night. He was hit by two of them and collapsed on the spot. We are yet to identify the accused and reason behind the murder. We have registered the case and investigating the matter, a police official said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON British GP 2020 Saturday Team Quotes Pierre Gasly, British GP 2020 Red Bull Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport Lewis Hamilton (1st, 1:24.303): "This feeling never gets old, that's for sure! We made some changes to the car going into Qualifying and it felt worse, so it was a real struggle out there in the first two sessions. At this track, there can be a headwind, tailwind and crosswind all at different parts of the circuit, so it's like juggling balls whilst you are on a moving plate. Qualifying is a lot about building confidence and after that spin in Q2, I had to take some deep breaths, compose myself and mentally reset - especially knowing Valtteri was putting in fast lap after fast lap. Q3 started off well, the first lap was nice and clean, but the second one was even better. A big thank you to everyone at the team, working at the track and at the factories not far from here, for all their tireless work and continuing to push us forward. I'm really proud to be a part of it. It's going to be strange racing out there tomorrow without any fans, we definitely miss them and it's just a completely different energy. I know they'll be watching from home and supporting us, so hopefully we can put on a good show for them." Valtteri Bottas (2nd, 1:24.616): "It's disappointing to be second but the reality is that Lewis found more time in Q3, I just couldn't quite catch him. He did a really good job today and deserves to be on pole. It was a pretty smooth session and I had some clean laps in Q1 and Q2 - the car felt pretty good out there. But I had a harder time in Q3 as I struggled to attack the slow-speed corners and the rear end was drifting more than before. But tomorrow is what counts and I think my long-run performance has been really good this weekend. I believe there will be opportunities, and everything is still wide open, so I'm looking forward to it." Toto Wolff, Team Principal: "We can be very satisfied with our Qualifying session today although I guess we're not making many new friends out there. Our car was working very well today, it was really in a league of its own and the performance shows all the smart work that has gone into it at the factories just down the road from here. Both Lewis and Valtteri really delivered today as well and were able to extract everything out of the car. We can be really happy the result today, but we know that the points are scored tomorrow, and our competitors will put up a hard fight. We're determined to give it everything and carry our momentum into the race to hopefully put on a good show for everyone supporting from home." Andrew Shovlin: "Well done to the team and the drivers on this front row lockout, particularly to Lewis on his fantastic lap for pole. It's not been easy for him and Valtteri to put the laps together here; the wind has a big effect on the car balance and as soon as you start sliding, the tyre temperatures rise, and you lose grip. The conditions may have moved in our favour today, but we were also doing a better job of managing the tyre temperatures at the start of the lap. We're looking forward to the race tomorrow; we don't quite know where Red Bull are on pace. They looked very close to us on the long runs yesterday and have generally looked better in race trim than qualifying so we will be prepared for a fight and won't be taking anything for granted." Scuderia Ferrari Charles Leclerc (4th, 1:25.427): "A much better quali than we had hoped for. I am very very happy with the job we have done and with my final lap, where I think I got everything together and the car was feeling pretty good in terms of balance. I don't think there was anything more to extract from the car and I am very pleased with P4. Also, I had a great lap in Q2 on the Medium tyres, which got us through to Q3. It was a really good decision! We have been struggling yesterday with race pace so realistically it's going to be difficult tomorrow, but we have changed the car a little bit overnight, which didn't affect our quali pace apparently, and with a good strategy, I hope we'll manage to get some advantage from our tyre choice. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully we can score some good points." Sebastian Vettel (10th, 1:26.339): "I have struggled a little bit the whole weekend so far and qualifying was a bit up and down. It was not ideal, as I found it difficult to get the car working for me, even though it was not too bad. I had trouble getting into a rhythm. So, it was not a good session and although we made it to Q3, we were not on the ideal tyre and didn't make enough progress." Laurent Mekies, Sporting Director: "It was a very intense qualifying that ended with one driver fourth and the other tenth. Charles' performance was magisterial, not just to get on the second row, the best we have done during this difficult start to the season, but also because he made the cut to the final part of qualifying on the Medium tyres, which is the best choice for the first stint of the race. Sebastian has had a rather troubled weekend so far and all the time he lost because of various technical issues certainly didn't put him in the best possible shape for qualifying. Tenth place is essentially a logical consequence of that. Of course, we can't be satisfied with this result, especially when one looks at the gap to pole position. We know we have a lot of work to do to close this gap and that's what we are working on. Tomorrow's race will be difficult, especially when it comes to tyre management. As usual, our aim is to bring home as many points as possible." Red Bull Racing Max Verstappen (3rd, 1:25.325): "In general, I would say we had a good qualifying session and got everything out of the car that we could. My final lap in Q3 was good but you could see very early on that Mercedes were too fast, just like they have been for the past few races. I'm happy with P3 and it gives us a fighting chance for tomorrow, so I hope we can get a clean start and keep the pressure up. The wind is a big factor here and these cars are very sensitive to that. Yesterday it was really tricky with the low speed corners but we are still learning about the car and trying to improve it. I think we have found a good direction, it seems more predictable this weekend and it was a lot of fun to drive today. I don't think there was much more I could do but let's see tomorrow. We will try to score some good points, at least stay in third, but we always hope for a little bit more." Alexander Albon (12th, 1:26.545): "We were looking pretty strong this weekend and yesterday was a lot better than today but it's not a weekend to forget yet and there is still a race tomorrow. We were on the back foot slightly heading into qualifying after missing the track time in FP3 and I just struggled getting up to speed. It was tricky out there, the wind is changing all the time and the balance changes with that so we needed a bit of fine tuning. The times in Q2 are also obviously very tight out there so a small amount of time was worth a lot of grid positions and we just lost out. It is what it is but tomorrow we have free tyre choice so hopefully we can do something special with that and get some good points." Christian Horner, Sporting Director: "I would be lying if I said today hasn't been frustrating, especially with the kind of margins we are looking at to Mercedes. We know this track always suits their car but they are incredibly quick at the moment but we have to keep the pressure on them as much as we can. The wind has a massive impact on the aero of these cars and their performance which can unsettle the car and in turn the driver. It was disappointing for Alex and the Team not to make it to Q3 but losing the track time in FP3 hurt him, especially after yesterday's off. Max did a great job to wring everything out of the car to line-up on the second row which is actually our best qualifying here since 2016. The gap to the front remains our focus and clearly there is work to do for us as a Team, but we won't stop pushing. Our race pace is often more competitive compared with qualifying so hopefully we can maximize our points haul tomorrow with both cars." Renault Sport Formula One Team Daniel Ricciardo (8th, 1:26.009): "I'm happy with eighth place today, especially in quite tricky conditions. It was a clean lap, no mistakes, nothing too spectacular, but good enough for eighth and just short of seventh. It was pretty close there with a few of us within half a second of each other. We've been in and around the top 10 all weekend, so we can be pleased with today's performance. Tomorrow's race will be interesting, especially in the battle for sixth or maybe fifth position. We're starting on the Softs, as are most people around us, so we'll see what we can do. Taking home good points is the target." Esteban Ocon (9th, 1:26.209): "It's been a good qualifying overall. It was a very positive session, especially Q1 and Q2, where we were quite comfortable. We lost it a little bit in Q3, so we'll review what happened there. I'm happy with the progress from Hungary and we need to keep going. We seem to have better pace on Sundays, and qualifying has been the area where we've needed to find the most improvements. I think tomorrow will be good, we're in amongst the top 10 and we have a good opportunity for some decent points." Alan Permane, Sporting Director: "It was a tricky session with the conditions as the wind was picking up between Q1 and Q2, which made it difficult and often unpredictable, especially in the very high-speed corners here. We're very happy to have both cars in Q3, of course, and we have promising starting positions on the grid. Now, we look forward to a trouble-free race tomorrow. Our race pace, as ever, looks very strong from our Friday simulations, so we will look to capitalise on our start positions and make sure we score decent points in the race." Haas F1 Team Kevin Magnussen (16th, 1:27.158): "We saw this coming. It was our expectation coming into this race weekend, but we did the job that we could in qualifying ahead of the Alfa Romeos, who are our main competitors. That's all we can do at the moment. There's a bit of a jump to the next group. As long as we make sure we get the most out of qualifying, even though we're a little weak there, that's what we have to focus on being as high up there as we can. There are a few guys now that might have some penalties, so that might push us a little bit further up the grid. Who knows, that might move us closer to hopefully scoring points again." Romain Grosjean (19th, 1:27.643): "I felt really good in FP3, I was happy with the car, especially with the balance. We made a few changes for qualifying, but the car just didn't behave the same. That's really something we've been suffering with session-to-session it's not quite the same. It was complicated. We had three attempts in Q1 but none of them were really good. Let's see what we can do tomorrow. We're in England, lots can happen with the weather. It was supposed to rain for qualifying and we've got blue sky. Maybe tomorrow will be the opposite and we can take advantage of it." Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "I'm not really happy with the result, but it's not unexpected after the free practices we've had at the circuit. It's just so difficult for us to get out of Q1, that's where we are now. There's nothing else to do than to go through it, and hopefully tomorrow our starting slots will be a bit better once penalties are applied to the grid. We'll try to get the race pace together like we did in Hungary and hopefully we can make something out of it." McLaren F1 Team Lando Norris (5th, 1:25.782): "First of all, the team did a great job getting the car ready for quali because we had to make some big changes so we didn't quite get out on time but we got out, so thanks to the team for their hard work. It was a messy qualifying: I made mistakes on a couple of my runs, especially the first one. I went off the track, compromised myself and lost a bit of confidence throughout the first half of qualifying, which wasn't ideal. I was trying to play catch-up and get in a good rhythm and I didn't really do that until the final session. On the old tyres I matched what I did on the new tyres before, so I felt a bit more confident going onto the new set that had more grip, and I could push that little bit more. It's a great result, especially here at my home race. Tomorrow's the important day where we have to convert it into a good result." Carlos Sainz (7th, 1:25.965): "It was a very strong day for the team. For me in particular I've had a better feeling with the car as the weekend has gone by, so we made some progress on the balance and the set-up. In general, I would say there's still some work to do, but I'm happier with the car and we're in a good position for tomorrow. My last lap in Q3 wasn't exactly as I wanted though. I lost some time in the exits and with traction coming onto the long straights but, still, P7 and a good starting position for the race." Andreas Seidl, Team Principal: "This is our fourth qualifying session of 2020 and we've got both cars into Q3 on all four occasions. Well done to the team here at the track and back home for making that possible, and also to the drivers who pulled out the laps when it mattered most. FP1 and FP2 were challenging, but the team worked hard overnight to improve the car which helped us maximise the performance of the new components we brought to the track on Friday. Both drivers were a lot happier with the balance in FP3, which gave us a lot of confidence going into qualifying. We had some extra work to do on the cars after P3 and both car crews did a great job to finish just in time. With the yellow flags, red flags, blustery wind and traffic management, there were a lot of variables in play this afternoon, but the team focused, worked hard and got through the challenges. Starting the race tomorrow in P5 and P7 is an excellent return and puts us in a position to fight for good points. We now need to switch our focus to preparing for the race tomorrow." Racing Point F1 Team Lance Stroll (6th, 1:25.839): "The positive today is that we're starting P6 tomorrow and our strategy worked out meaning we have the advantage of starting on the medium tyre and that should help us fight some of the cars around us. We're definitely in a position to fight for another good bunch of points, and that's the goal. We looked stronger in practice yesterday, so we need to go away and understand how we can come back stronger tomorrow. It was difficult to find the optimum balance of the car today, and that affected us in the first sector - we lost a little bit of time there in qualifying. The temperature and wind conditions were different today and were quite changeable, so that was a challenge to work around as well. Overall, I'm happy with our position and tomorrow is another day. I'm confident we can make some positive steps overnight and be in good shape for our home race." Nico Hulkenberg (13th, 1:26.566): "We were so close to making it to Q3, and I'm happy with that considering I've come in from the cold this weekend! It's a big ask after eight months away to come back and jump into a completely different environment and into a Formula 1 car I've never driven before and immediately perform. Especially when Silverstone is such a high-speed challenge and the conditions were changeable throughout the day. That meant it was a little bit of a shock to the system today, and it was tricky to hook up the laps perfectly especially in the first sector. It was a challenge to use both the soft and medium tyre in Q2 and maintain the rhythm, but we almost made the strategy work which shows the team and I are working well together. I'm also starting to get an understanding of the car, so the goal is to keep learning and adapting quickly. We'll do our homework tonight and aim to score good points tomorrow." Otmar Szafnauer, Chief Operating Officer: "We took an aggressive approach to qualifying today with Lance running on the medium tyres in Q2. It was a difficult call, but we felt the strategic benefits for the race made the risk worthwhile. Lance made it work and progressed to Q3. Nico didn't quite make the top ten which is understandable given that he's been thrown in at the deep end and only drove the car for the first time yesterday. From P13, with competitive race pace, I'm confident he can score points tomorrow. Lance wasn't totally happy with his Q3 lap, but sixth place on the grid sets us up nicely for our home race. The margins were very close today which shows how competitive the entire grid is this year and it will be the same tomorrow. I think we can take the fight to the teams around us and come away with another strong result." Alfa Romeo Racing Antonio Giovinazzi (17th, 1:27.164): "We have made a few steps forward so we can be happy about this: there is still a lot of work to do, of course, but we are a bit closer to the others and we are moving in the right direction, which is giving us a lot of motivation. I am very happy with my lap, I feel it was as good as it could have been but it was just not enough for a place in Q2. As in the previous rounds, our race pace looks a bit better so I think we have a chance to battle for some points. We will try to have a good start, put up a good fight and we'll see what happens." Kimi Raikkonen (18th, 1:27.366): "The car has been stronger this weekend, I had a good feeling with it and the handling was good, but it's obvious we are still missing something. I could have been a bit higher up on the grid but I got held up at the last corner, although in fairness the end result wouldn't have been too different. We have things to work on as a team, we made an improvement but we need to keep going in this direction. Tomorrow's race should be interesting: I expect us to be better and we should be fighting for a place in the top ten." Frederic Vasseur, Team Principal: "We are still far from where we want to be, but we are heading in the right direction. We are getting closer to a place in Q2 and we have to take this as motivation to progress further. Antonio's and Kimi's laps were as good as they could be, except for some traffic at the end of Kimi's, and we can look positively at the small gap we had from the top 15. Our task now is to convert these starting positions into points: our race pace has been considerably better than what we have shown on Saturday, so we need to maximise the opportunities it will offer us to claim a place in the top ten." Red Bull AlphaTauri Honda Pierre Gasly (11th, 1:26.501): "I'm happy with my Qualifying today! We had the pace for Q3 again and matching the lap time of Racing Point, which is at the moment one of the top cars on the grid, is really positive and it means we did a pretty good job on our side. Starting the race from P11 tomorrow gives us a free tyre choice and I think we have the chance for a good result in the race. We made progress since the start of the weekend so hopefully, we can finish within the top 10 tomorrow and bring home some points." Daniil Kvyat (14th, 1:26.744): "My lap was really good and I'm quite satisfied with it. We changed a few things and I felt more comfortable in the car today, I had more confidence going through certain corners, which felt great, and the only place where I was losing a bit of time compared to Pierre was the straight line. I'm starting five positions further back due to my penalty, so I know it won't be easy tomorrow, but I generally feel strong during the race. I will push as hard as I can, as scoring points still remains my goal." Jody Egginton, Technical Director: "What we learned yesterday and today in FP3 suggests that the new parts we have introduced at this event, combined with the new set-up direction investigated during Friday, have combined into an improved package here in Silverstone which both drivers are managing to exploit, and this is positive. However, the midfield is very competitive, so we need to continue on this trajectory. Q1 itself was as expected, we navigated the session without incident whilst Q2 was interrupted by a red flag when both cars were out for their first run. As such, there was only the opportunity for a single run at the end of the session, which wasn't ideal. Pierre set an identical time to Stroll on his final run but later in the session, so he qualified P11 and not P10, whilst Dany qualified 14th, but unfortunately has a 5-place grid penalty due to a gearbox change. Although in some respects it's disappointing not to make it to Q3, having one car in 11th position provides some extra strategy options, so we should feature in the midfield fight from lights out. As for Dany, we are probably going to have to be more creative to try and get him into the same position." Williams Racing George Russell (15th, 1:27.092): "We have got to be pleased with our performance. It is three races in a row now we have been faster on Saturday and slower on Sunday, and so we tried to set the car up more for Sunday, so I was quite surprised with the performance we had today. The car felt great it was really fun driving around the track. Once we made it to Q2 we always want more, but our realistic goal was to out qualify the Haas and the Alfa, because the next team, AlphaTauri were just too far ahead. I was pleased with the job I did, and we will see what happens tomorrow." Nicholas Latifi (20th, 1:27.705): "We made a big reset with the car overnight to be more competitive. The car was feeling much better and I had a lot more confidence. I am very disappointed with myself and the mistake I made on my final lap. I got too greedy on the throttle, and just spun the car around. I think if I had actually done the lap, I probably could have done a lap good enough for Q2 that George showed was possible. We had some doubts coming into this weekend about the potential of the car in qualifying relative to how it was in Budapest. So it shows that the gains still carry over to a track like this. There are some positive signs, I am just a bit frustrated from my side of the garage." Dave Robson, Senior Race Engineer: "The pace of the car today was quite good and confirmed that we did a good job yesterday and overnight. After FP3 both drivers felt that the car had improved since Friday and were looking forward to qualifying. The gusty conditions this afternoon made driving a little difficult and unfortunately Nicholas succumbed to the wind on his final timed lap. The resulting yellow flag forced George to slow down and lose time on a rapidly evolving track. His time was still good enough to qualify for Q2 for the third race in a row, but unfortunately the stewards considered that he did not react appropriately to the yellow flag and consequently has been awarded a five-place grid penalty for tomorrow's race. Cooler conditions are expected tomorrow, but Silverstone remains a demanding track for the tyres and a variety of strategies can be expected during the race. We have tried to rebalance our qualifying and race pace this weekend having recently found races a little more difficult than qualifying. We will see tomorrow if we have made progress in this regard. Whatever happens tomorrow, both drivers did well today with Nicholas quickly adapting to the test items that George looked at yesterday, and George showing strong pace throughout the day. The pace of the car continues to improve and our ability to adapt the set-up from the high downforce demands of Hungary to the high efficiency of Silverstone bodes well for the rest of the season, especially when we look forward to the next triple-header which begins in Spa in a few weeks' time." Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 10:19:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Victoria Arguello BUENOS AIRES, July 31 (Xinhua) -- China's increasing openness to the world brings important opportunities for Latin America, which is of special significance as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to batter economies, an Argentinean expert said in a recent interview with Xinhua. "Without a doubt, the increasing openness of China will mean important opportunities for Latin America," said Santiago Bustelo, a political scientist and researcher at the Center for Argentina-China Studies at the University of Buenos Aires. "The increase in the quality of life of Chinese citizens will mean an increasing demand for imported products, of which Latin America can be an important supplier," said Bustelo, who is also a doctoral candidate in International Politics at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. "In the natural resources and food sector, the continent undoubtedly has important comparative advantages, which, accompanied by national strategies for value addition, could result in an increase in exports to China," he said. "The Chinese consumer will demand increasingly higher quality standards in products, so there is an opportunity to occupy niche markets with greater differentiation, quality standards, and value addition," he noted. "I believe that some countries could explore new opportunities in more sophisticated sectors, both in the industrial and services areas," he added. On the subjects such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the third China International Import Expo (CIIE), and China's proposal to build a global community of health, Bustelo said that these initiatives "are a clear sign of China's commitment to greater openness and integration in the world, both economically and diplomatically." "These initiatives, in turn, will play a fundamental role in economic recovery in the post-pandemic world, where new cooperation tools between countries will be more necessary than ever to boost worldwide growth," he said. On the growth of the Chinese economy in the first six months of the year, Bustelo said that China has shown a rapid recovery amid the global pandemic, thanks to its rapid response to and effective control of the virus, as well as good performance in exports. "Throughout the first six months of the year, the Chinese economy has shown significant recovery and a better-than-expected performance," he said. "Investment and industrial activity continued to improve in June, something that had already been observed in the month of May. China is undoubtedly the first country to show clear signs of economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic," he said. "This economic performance by China is based, first of all, on the effective control of the virus that has already been achieved," he said. "With most activities returning to normal in China, the consumer market is starting up again and industrial production along with it," he noted. Enditem New Delhi, Aug 1 : A boutique owner ran over four people in Delhi's Amar colony area causing injuries but when confronted by Delhi Police team, she blamed her dog for the accident. The incident which was reported on Friday night near Sapna Cinema in East of Kailash when a speeding BMW rammed into an ice cream cart injuring four people. The injured were identified as Mukesh Kumar, Sapna Kumari, Guddu and Harshit Kaur. Harshit Kaur received wound in her ankle. During the course of investigation the offending car was seized and 29-year-old Roshani Arora, a resident of Faridabad, Haryana was arrested in the case. To rule out consumption of alcohol by the accused, her medical examination was conducted, where no alcohol was found. However, the woman alleged that its her dog which has to be blamed for the accident. "On interrogation the accused stated that while she was eating ice cream sitting inside her car, her dog jumped and the gear of the car was changed and incident happened," said R.P. Meena, DCP South East Delhi. Berlin (AFP) - Loudly chanting their opposition to face masks and vaccines, thousands of people gathered in Berlin on Saturday to protest against coronavirus restrictions before being dispersed by police. Police put turnout at around 20,000 -- well below the 500,000 organisers had announced as they urged a "day of freedom" from months of virus curbs. Despite Germany's comparatively low toll, authorities are concerned at a rise in infections over recent weeks and politicians took to social media to criticise the rally as irresponsible. "We are the second wave," shouted the crowd, a mixture of hard left and right and conspiracy theorists as they converged on the Brandenburg Gate, demanding "resistance" and dubbing the pandemic "the biggest conspiracy theory". Few protesters wore a mask or respected the 1.5-metre (five-foot) social distancing requirement, an AFP journalist reported, despite police repeatedly calling on them via megaphone to do so. After several warnings, Berlin police ordered demonstrators to leave the area at the end of the afternoon. Police tweeted they had launched legal proceedings against organisers for not respecting virus hygiene rules. A handful of people held a counter demonstration. Dubbing themselves "grandmothers against the extreme right", they hurled insults against "Nazi" protesters. The protest's "Day of Freedom" slogan echoes the title of a 1935 documentary by Nazi-era film-maker Leni Riefenstahl on a party conference by Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party. Several politicians condemned the demonstration as Germany seeks to minimise transmission of a virus which had claimed just over 9,000 deaths as of Saturday -- a far lower toll than its neighbours. - 'Covidiots' - Saskia Esken of the Social Democrats, a junior coalition partner in Angela Merkel's government, blasted the demonstrators as "Covidiots". Story continues In a tweet Esken railed: "No distancing, no mask. They are not only putting at risk our health but also our success against the pandemic as well as economic recovery, education and society. Irresponsible!" Health Minister Jens Spahn agreed: "Yes, demonstrations should also be possible in times of coronavirus, but not like this. Distance, hygiene rules and masks serve to protect us all, so we treat each other with respect." Jan Redmann, regional head of Merkel's Christian Democrats in the eastern state of Brandenburg, also took aim at the marchers. "A thousand new infections a day still and in Berlin there are protests against anti-virus measures? We can no longer allow ourselves these dangerous absurdities," Redmann complained. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who hails from Merkel's traditional right ally the Christian Social Union, showed a measure of understanding, however. "Of course there are always different opinions regarding infringements of basic rights and restrictions of freedom -- first, it's normal and, in my view, it's not the majority," Seehofer told Bavarian daily Passauer Neue Presse. Saturday saw 955 new infections -- a level which the country had not seen since May 9, according to the Robert Koch health institute. - 'Scare tactics' - But marchers insist the risk of catching the virus is being much overblown. "It's pure scare tactics. I don't see any danger with the virus," one marcher, Iris Bitzenmeier, told AFP. "I don't know any other sick people. I knew many in March -- skiers, holidaymakers. Something was really afoot in February -- but now there are no longer any sick people," she insisted. Another demonstrator, Anna-Maria Wetzel, who had come to the capital after attending similar rallies in Baden-Wuerttemberg in the southwest, shared that view. "People who don't inform themselves -- unlike ourselves -- remain ignorant and believe what the government tells them. They get caught up in the fear the government puts in our heads -- and that fear weakens the immune system," she said. We are not only seeking the liberation of the homeland, but we are also moving towards a special direction, and that is to be Iranian, Sharmahd said at one point in the video. Because we have heard that once upon a time some people were living in the region who were able to build an empire. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A recent BBC headline claimed the world is facing a jaw-dropping global crash. Not an economic crash, mind you, but a crash in the birthrate. Citing a new study by University of Washington, the BBC article claims that Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century. In fact, 23 countries, including Spain, Portugal, Japan, and South Korea, could see their populations cut in half by 2100. The same study found that, between 1950 and 2017, the global fertility rate went from 4.7 children per women to 2.4 and is expected to drop below 1.7 children per woman by 2100. For reference, a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is required to maintain a stable population. A few suggested explanations for the drop, according to the BBC article, include more women in education and work and greater access to contraception, which leads to women choosing to have fewer children. Of course, the BBC was careful to offer the required nod to climate change, also suggesting that fewer people would result in lower carbon emissions and therefore help heal the planet. In truth, however, the scenario is far from rosy. I think its incredibly hard to think this through and recognize how big a thing this [population crash] is, says University of Washington Professor Christopher Murray. Its extraordinary, well have to reorganize societies. In his book, What to Expect When No One Is Expecting, Weekly Standard digital editor Jonathan Last suggests that any country in which citizens arent having enough babies can look forward to long-term economic stagnation and social deterioration. After all, children are the economic engines of the future, both tomorrows labor force and tomorrows consumers. Professor Murray described it this way to the BBC: Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work? And those are just the immediate concerns. As journalist Philip Longman explained years ago, declining populations and shrinking economies create a downwardly spiraling vicious circle: As governments raise taxes on a dwindling working-age population to cover the growing burdens of supporting the elderly, young couples may conclude they are even less able to afford children This, in turn, results in the kind of graying, despairing populations we see today in places like Japan and Europe, where some governments actually pay couples to get pregnant. At the same time, the BBC notes, the population of sub-Saharan Africa will triple by the end of the century. Developed nations will be forced to open their borders and perhaps even compete for migrant workers. Given the human propensity for tribalism and racism, lets just say this will could create significant social pressures. Writing at the Gospel Coalition, Philip Jenkins describes yet another vicious circle that entwines a civilization dealing with an increase in secularization and a decline in fertility. Increased fertility is often associated with traditional religious beliefs, but as more believers accept secular ideas about sex, family, and the purpose of life, their connection to religious institutions weakens. Shrinking religious institutions, in turn, leads to increased secularization. Babies have this unique ability to make adults care about the future, and even think beyond their own lifetimes. Babies incline people to save, invest, sacrifice and, most importantly, defer gratification. Even when it comes to the environment, the best reason to steward the planet is so our children and grandchildren can enjoy its fruits and grandeur. Christians should always encourage those government policies that make it easier for couples to choose life, but we also need to help people think more clearly about the whole issue. First, we have to debunk the over-population myth that should have died decades ago. The latest What Would You Say video tackles this question. Watch it, learn the key points, and share it with your friends and family. Second, Christian must take the lead in taking seriously Gods never-revoked command to be fruitful and multiply, and the Psalmists exhortation that children are a heritage from the Lord, and Jesus command to let the little children come to Jesus, which means there must be children in the first place. What greater gift can we offer this world and the world to come, other than Jesus Himself, than future generations of image bearers? Originally posted at breakpoint.org (Newser) Iran on Saturday said it detained an Iranian-American leader of a little-known California-based militant opposition group for allegedly planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others, the AP reports. Iran's Intelligence Ministry also alleged Jamshid Sharmahd of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran planned other attacks around the Islamic Republic amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the US over its collapsing 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. It was unclear how Sharmahd, whom Iran accused of running the opposition group's Tondar militant wing, ended up detained by intelligence officials. The Intelligence Ministry called it a "complex operation," without elaborating. It published a purported picture of Sharmahd, blindfolded, on its website. story continues below Requests for comment sent by email to the Glendora-based Kingdom Assembly of Iran were not immediately answered and a telephone number for the group no longer worked. The US State Department, which mentioned how Sharmahd earlier had been targeted for assassination in a recent report called "Outlaw Regime: A Chronicle of Iran's Destructive Activities," did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iranian state television broadcast a report on Sharmahd's arrest, linking him to the 2008 bombing of the Hosseynieh Seyed al-Shohada Mosque in Shiraz. It also said his group was behind a 2010 bombing at Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's mausoleum in Tehran that wounded several people. (Read more Iran stories.) This article was produced by FairWarning, a nonprofit news organization based in Southern California that focuses on public health, consumer, labor and environmental issues. COVID-19 sent Sylvia LeRoy, a pregnant nurse working at a Brooklyn hospital in the earliest days of the pandemic, into a tailspin that left her barely responsive in a brain recovery center in Pennsylvania. The coronavirus hit the 35-year-old with an array of maladies from severe muscle spasms to stomach issues and even a dislocated jaw, likely from when she was revived from heart failure that had to be addressed before the brain center could awaken her from a near-vegetative state. There was another hurdle as well. LeRoys insurance would only cover 60 days at the brain recovery center, not enough time for her to make real progress, her sister Shirley Licin, who is caring for the healthy baby that LeRoy gave birth to while sick, told FairWarning. Nor would her insurance begin to cover the costs of her recovery once she left the center, from a $70,000 vehicle capable of moving her wheelchair to a highly specialized $4,000 shower chair. Sylvia LeRoy (Courtesy FairWarning) It seemed obvious to her family that LeRoy got the disease at her workplace, the Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn, which had been overwhelmed with COVID-19 when the outbreak started. So they did the logical thing they filed a workers compensation claim. It was denied. Across the United States, workers like LeRoy face wildly varying rules about whether COVID-19 is covered as a workplace injury. More than a dozen states, including Utah, Michigan and Illinois, have changed their laws or rules since the pandemic, often so that a nurse would be presumed to have contracted the virus at work, leaving it up to the employer to prove that the worker got it someplace else. But even among the states that have created so-called presumptions, there are significant differences, with some extending them only to hospital or emergency response workers, while others include all of those whose jobs required them to interact with the public during the pandemic. Story continues Still others, like New York, have not made a change, forcing workers to try to document that they contracted the disease on the job. New York legislators have introduced a couple of bills, one creating a presumption for emergency responders and another that defines COVID-19 as an occupational disease, but they remain bottled up in committees. Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak That leaves workers like LeRoy with the formidable task of trying to prove they contracted the virus on the job. The workers comp carrier who denied LeRoys claim, GCG Risk Management, did not respond to a request for comment. Trying to prove where somebody contracted an infection is really difficult, Bill Smith, president of the nonprofit Workers Injury Law & Advocacy Group, said. Youve got health care workers working around individuals who are positive and you would think clearly they would be covered. They may or may not, depending on what state youre in. Workers comp systems vary considerably from state to state, but in general, employers are required to maintain workers comp insurance, which they most often obtain from private carriers that cover worker costs for medical treatment, lost time and permanent disabilities. These insurers make determinations on claims based on whether they believe the injury occurred on the job, as well as what treatments are warranted. Workers whose claims are denied can appeal to hearing officers and workers comp boards, and eventually in court, but in complicated cases this can take years. The stakes are high for those with serious cases. Even if they have health insurance, they can face ruinous costs if their workers comp claims are denied. And for survivors of those who die, the workers comp system may offer the only way to make up for their loved ones lost income. In Greeley, Colorado, the workers comp administrator for the JBS USA meatpacking plant denied a claim from the family of Daniel Avila Loma, 65, who died of COVID-19 in late April. JBS did not respond to requests for comment. Loma had worked at the plant for 30 years. When he got sick in March, he was working in the knife-sharpening shop, where workers dropped off their knives each day as their shifts ended. COVID-19 ran rampant at the JBS plant, which ultimately had almost 300 cases and six deaths. Daniel Avila Loma. Loma, who had five children, 16 grandchildren and a great-grandson, was on a ventilator and had several strokes before he died. His wife and one of his adult sons, both disabled, lived with him. My father was the sole provider for the household, another son, Olivier, wrote in a letter supporting a Colorado bill to create workers comp presumptions for front-line workers. The bill failed over claims it would dramatically drive up costs for public agencies. Almost 30 businesses, associations and chambers of commerce wrote to the state Legislature that extending the COVID-19 presumption to all workers would cost $3 billion, assuming half were infected. Mack Babcock, the attorney for Lomas family, believes those estimates were wildly exaggerated. In Ohio, Santina Curry, 45, a correctional officer at the Cuyahoga County Jail, came down with COVID-19 in March after she served breakfast to an inmate who was coughing and later tested positive. A week later, she got an excruciating headache, then a fever. She was sick for about nine weeks, and even now shes struggling with shortness of breath, which prevents her from being cleared to go back to work. Im not able to do a lot of things, like family activities, grandkids birthday parties, she said. Im so tired. Santina Curry. (Da'Shaunae Marisa / for NBC News) Curry, who is getting neither disability nor unemployment benefits, has instead started a GoFundMe page to cover the costs of her illness. Her employer, Cuyahoga County, is self-insured for workers compensation and fought the claim, and a district hearing officer at the Ohio Industrial Commission, which hears workers comp appeals, sided with the county. But Curry continues to fight for coverage and is waiting for the results of an appeal last Wednesday to a higher level hearing officer. Her attorney, David Nager, said the county did not present evidence that Curry got the disease elsewhere, just that she failed to prove she got it at work. Cuyahoga County did not respond to a request for comment. Ohio is one of the states that has not changed its law to shift the burden of proof to employers. Among the workers Nager is representing are truck drivers, a fast-food worker, and employees of grocery stores and hospitals. Historically, state workers comp systems have not covered most infectious diseases. There have been exceptions, said Emily Spieler, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston and an expert on workers comp. One example would be a nurse who worked in a tuberculosis ward and contracted the disease. But the line is usually drawn at ordinary diseases of life that someone could get as easily outside of work as on the job. Nobody was getting compensated for getting the flu, for example, Spieler said. The question becomes, in a pandemic, where you're telling people they have to go to work, and they may or are likely to be exposed, how should the workers compensation system respond? Since the pandemic started, 15 states have made it easier, either through laws or regulations, for workers who contracted COVID-19 to get their claims accepted, according to one tally. This often takes the form of creating a presumption for certain categories of workers. Fewer than half of the remaining states are considering legislation or other changes. The rest have done nothing. Related: "It's like there's this huge carrot dangling in front of my face, but it's a few inches away from me and I can't reach it," an out-of-work videographer said. The lack of a presumption may not doom a case. In states that have not created new rules for COVID-19, workers may still argue that the coronavirus is a work-related illness like black lung disease or a repetitive stress disorder. They have to show that their risk was higher than the general public because of exposure at work. In some states that have not created special treatment for workers who get COVID-19, insurers are nonetheless accepting claims. In Ohio, for instance, some employers didnt appeal when the state-run workers comp insurer approved claims, Nager said, whether it was that they didnt want to be the first jerk employer on the block or liked their employees or what. New York insurers are rejecting most claims, Michael Gruber, the attorney for LeRoy, the Brooklyn nurse, said. Weve had some very, very acute cases, which are very tragic, that are not being accepted, he said. Uncertainty over the long-term effects of COVID-19 may be driving the rejections, Gruber said. Is a person who has a positive test and has COVID-19 going to need medical treatment for the remainder of their life through medications or through occasional checkups, yearly checkups? I dont know, he said. But if they do then the workers compensation insurance company is on the hook. Workers comp insurers may have to raise rates because of uncertainties such as these, said Steven Weisbart, chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, an organization with more than 60 insurance company members providing data and studies. The institute is getting reports of people having long-term health issues affecting multiple organs, from the lungs to the brain. The long-term issues are absolutely unclear, he said. Thats a potentially big-dollar area. Babcock, the Colorado attorney, said he hopes some insurers are rejecting claims simply because they have not had the time they have 20 days in Colorado to make a decision to investigate the validity. The rejection can buy them more time to interview the worker and others to find out if there are any obvious reasons to continue to fight the claim a spouse got it first, for instance, or it was not prevalent at work. Related: Will we know that what we did worked? Or will we be right back to where we started? And that's the terrifying part," EMS Capt. AJ Briones said of a possible second wave. In Oregon, most claims have been accepted even in the absence of a law or a regulation for COVID-19 patients, Jennifer Flood, the state ombudsman for injured workers, said. But she said that many workers with potential claims havent filed them. Workers comp insurers told her they had not received claims from workplaces where there had been known clusters. I believe that workers are thinking, Well, the flu isn't covered if you get the flu at work, she said. She believes from anecdotal evidence that the lack of claims is a combination of workers believing they dont have a right to file, and employers telling them they dont. The families of undocumented workers may also be reluctant to file claims, she said, even though they are entitled to workers comp benefits. In the case of deaths, unlike illnesses covered in part by medical insurance, the workers comp system may be the only source of compensation. These cases can pay upwards of $1 million depending on the state, according to one law firm. Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak In most cases, workers whose claims have been denied have little recourse outside the workers comp system, created a century ago to allow workers to get quick help while employers avoided costly lawsuits. Its a high bar, but workers can sue in certain circumstances for instance if the employer were recklessly negligent or put workers at risk on purpose. A few such lawsuits have already been filed alleging that workplaces failed to take steps to protect workers against COVID-19 infection. Meanwhile, in New York, Licin hopes the state Senate will move forward with the stalled bills that would help her sister, who is now back home, get her case accepted by the workers comp insurer. LeRoys case is scheduled for a hearing in September. Its unfair on so many levels, Licin said. Obviously, I know insurance companies wont be happy. But these are people that had to go to work. CORRECTION (Aug. 1, 2020, 3:07 p.m. ET) : A previous version of this article misstated the location of the brain recovery center where Sylvia LeRoy was treated. It was in Pennsylvania, not New York City. Stella Immanuel, the Nigerian-trained US doctor who claimed she treated 350 COVID-19 patients, is insisting that chloroquine can cure th... Stella Immanuel, the Nigerian-trained US doctor who claimed she treated 350 COVID-19 patients, is insisting that chloroquine can cure the disease. Immanuel had come under criticisms after a video where she made the claim went viral. Twitter and Facebook had pulled down the video which they branded as misleading. In an interview with Click2Houston, a news platform in the US, Immanuel said Herman Cain, US ex-presidential candidate, who died after contracting COVID-19, would have been alive if someone had given him hydroxychloroquine. No Im upset. Im upset. This is not, Im not acting up, Im not putting this up, people are dying. Like we just had news that Herman Cain died. He didnt have to die. People saying he shouldve worn a mask. Yes, he should have if he did havent hydroxychloroquine, she said. If someone wouldve given him hydroxychloroquine its most likely he wouldnt have died. Just like every other people, just like every other person that has died from coronavirus did not have to die. Immanuel said the combination of hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, Vitamin C and Z-pak, is a whole treatment and serves as a cure for the disease. By taking hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, Vitamin C and Z-pak, tops, maybe $50-$ 60. You have a whole treatment for COVID, she said. YES! It eradicates the symptoms, it eradicates the virus We see patients, day one, we put them on hydroxychloroquine. They come back day seven, day 10 and theyre negative. She noted that the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) do not agree with her and also think she is dangerous because she is speaking the truth. The two health agencies had dismissed the effectiveness of chloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients. She said as of now, 400 patients have been treated by her, saying the patients can be interviewed to get the truth of the matter. Of course they think Im dangerous because Im speaking the truth. I said it many times. Number one: Ask Dr. Anthony Fauci, when was the last time he saw a patient? she asked. When is the last time he put a stethoscope on a patients [inaudible] and Im willing to ask him that. Number two: Im still waiting for him to come and give me a pee sample to find out if whether hes on hydroxychloroquine to treat himself. The studies that we did on hydroxychloroquine were done without Anthony Fauci. This is craziness, I have treated right now, over 400 patients. This is Houston. My patients are going to speak up. Youre going to talk to them. You can, you can interview. Put something on the news and call and tell people that have been treated to call. This is craziness. I dont know what they are doing and somebody needs to tell me FDA, Anthony Fauci, WHO why are you why do you want people to die? Asked if she was not worried about losing her medical licence, she replied: So you think I should defend my medical licence over people dying? Over people dying? Really. I should let people die because Im scared. Or I should let people die because Im scared of Anthony Fauci? I should let people die because Im scared of the WHO? Im not scared of any of them. Im not going to let people die. And if they come after me, its going to be on! Im not going to let people die. They can take my licence, then do it. I dont even have a licence to defend. Its going to be on. You have to wonder, as the years went on, how many husbands were actually reflecting their wives opinions when they went to the polls. The balance of power within families has shifted dramatically over the last 50 years, mainly because of money. The transformation began when the countrys post-World War II economic boom hit the killer recession of the 1970s, and everyone began to realize that a whole lot of the families of the future would not be able to afford a middle-class lifestyle unless the wives kept working. The womens movement combined with the hard facts of the economy created a world in which almost no one envisioned young women with a distinctly different wage-earning future from men. Ill never forget a visit I made to a community college in Connecticut, back around 1980. I was invited for some reason to speak to a class of young men, and I asked them to describe for me their ideal mate. There were a few polite murmurs about a good sense of humor and fine moral character then someone called out, And a good earner! I cannot tell you how enthusiastic the room became over the good earner qualification. It took professional politicians quite a while to notice there was a change going on. Then in 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated then-President Jimmy Carter, it became clear the country had moved on to a whole new political wave. Analysis of the final tallies showed that both sexes favored Reagan, but the women split very narrowly while the men went Republican 55 percent to 36 percent. The gender gap was born, and it really turned into a canyon in 1996, when Bill Clinton won the womens vote by a wide margin, while men narrowly favored Bob Dole. These days, women go to the polls more faithfully than men, and they are more likely to vote Democratic. That doesnt mean they always win. In 2000, women favored Al Gore for president over George W. Bush, 54-44 percent, while the men went for Bush, 54-43. In 2016, the male voters gave us Donald Trump in an election where the gender gap yawned at 11 points. But the power is there. Black women, whove fought dual battles against racism and sexism to exercise their right to vote, knocked the socks off Democratic organizers in Alabama in 2017 when they gave long-shot Senate candidate Doug Jones 98 percent of their vote and a victory over Republican former-judge-and-pursuer-of-teenage-girls Roy Moore. Seven people died after two small planes collided in Alaska, Sputnik reported citing regional Department of Public Safety. "At approximately 0827 hours on 7/31/2020, AST [16:27 GMT] in Soldotna received a report of a plane crash involving two aircraft near mile 91.5 of the Sterling Highway ... It was determined that two planes were involved. One plane had a single occupant, the other plane had six occupants. All were confirmed deceased on scene except for one person that succumbed to injuries during transport to the local hospital," the department was quoted as saying in a statement on late Friday. The lawmaker who was killed, Gary Knopp, was a Republican member of the state House of Representatives, the speaker of the House, Bryce Edgmon, said in a news release. Those among the victims include regional lawmaker Gary Knopp. As per the report, the National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation into the incident. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Taking cognisance of the incident, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked Gautam Buddh Nagar police commissioner Alok Singh to reach the spot. Noida: Two people were killed and three injured after a portion of a multi-storey building collapsed in Uttar Pradesh's Noida on Friday, police said. The under-construction building is located in Sector 11 and belongs to a private firm. The incident took place around 7.30 pm, they said. A large number of police personnel along with senior officers and teams of the fire department and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were present on the spot for rescue operations. "Five people have been rescued from the building. Two of them have died while three others have been hospitalised with injuries but they are out of danger," the district police said in a statement. Taking cognisance of the incident, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked Gautam Buddh Nagar Police Commissioner Alok Singh to reach the spot. He also asked Singh to ensure all victims are rescued and given proper treatment, according to an official statement released in Lucknow. Singh said information was received this evening that a part of the building had collapsed during construction work. "Teams of firefighters, police, district administration and ambulances reached the spot swiftly. The chief minister himself is monitoring the situation and a team of the NDRF has also been deployed for rescue work on his instructions," he told reporters after inspecting the incident site. "Those rescued have been sent to hospital and the NDRF team is continuing the rescue operation. The NDRF has teams of (sniffer) dogs and technical squads on the ground and is highly equipped for the work. They are looking for survivors, if any," he added. On the cause of the collapse, Singh said engineers and technical teams from the Noida Authority have reached the spot to ascertain the reason. The front portion of the building collapsed due to the construction work. The office of a solar panel manufacturing firm is located on the floor on which the work was going on, according to senior officials at the site. Jet2 has announced it will refund customers on holiday in Spain who have been asked to fly back to the UK early. On Thursday, the airline cancelled flights back to the UK for hundreds of passengers. The carrier told the BBC it is operating empty flights to pick up passengers from Spanish destinations up to and including 3 August. Jet2holidays will also refund unused nights for customers affected by the flight cancellations. The airline added that it would refund the difference if customers had to book new flights to return to the UK. Friendship Day is celebrated by different countries on different dates. The day is celebrated to promote fellowship among various individuals, communities, and organisations. In countries like Bangladesh, Malaysia, India, Singapore and UAE, Friendship Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of August and hence will be celebrated on August 2 in 2020. The day is celebrated to show mutual understanding between individuals and communities. On Friendship Day, people share warm, friendly messages, quotes of peace, honouring the importance of the occasion. With developments in technology, there has been a change in the way people have been celebrating the day. Sharing gifs and memes on Friendship Day are gaining massive popularity. With all that said now, here are Friendship Day memes to share: Friendship Day memes On this special day, people honour their friends and the impact they've had on their lives. With booming social media platforms and use of instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, many people use these platforms to thank their friends and celebrate friendship day. Sharing memes and gifs have also become very popular. #friendshipday2020 Whenever I am going for a fight .... My friends be like : pic.twitter.com/Wq2mdFcryT Meme_Raja (@thekhanwasif) July 30, 2020 Making a thousand friends is not friendship .A friendship made with faith ,Maintaining to death is a true friendship Cheers to all my friends out there #FriendshipDay #FriendshipDay2020 pic.twitter.com/8IlbXceIfM Rajath (@Rajath_TM) July 30, 2020 ALSO READ | National Parents' Day Quotes To Wish Your Parents On This Special Occasion The origin of Friendship Day goes back to the 1900s. Hallmark Cards founder, Joyce Hall is known to have proclaimed the day in 1919. Later, in the 1940s, the trend of celebrating friendship day faded. In 1998, in one of the sessions of the United Nations, the intergovernmental organisation named Winnie the Pooh as the world's Ambassador of Friendship. Then the idea of World Friendship Day was proclaimed by World Friendship Crusade. They declared July 30 to be celebrated as World Friendship Day. Later, the United Nations proclaimed July 30 as International Friendship Day. On the day, the member states are invited to celebrate the day taking into consideration the culture, customs of various communities at local, national and regional levels. ALSO READ | SCUD Day History, Meaning, Significance And Celebrations; Know More Friends acknowledge each other's presence in their lives on this special day by exchanging cards, gifts, and tying friendship bands. One of the most popular traditions of Friendship Day is the exchanging of friendship day brands. These are popular in countries like India and Bangladesh. ALSO READ | Is Today National Hot Dog Day? Know About The Meaning, Significance And Celebration #FriendshipDay2020 Pic 1: boys on friendship day Pic2: boys on rakshabandhan pic.twitter.com/SEfESMhSbl SARCASM (@ssaarrccaassm) July 30, 2020 Me with 0 friends in real life :#FriendshipDay pic.twitter.com/6lnM1vKkks NAMAN (@Pseudopanditt) July 30, 2020 Today all people wishes each other happy #FriendshipDay Me* pic.twitter.com/3h0fWKtcop Taksh Goutam (@GautamTaksh) July 30, 2020 ALSO READ | National Parents' Day Images To Share To Honour Them On This Special Day RICARDO B. BRAZZIELL, MBR / TNS Gov. Greg Abbott finally tried to offer clarity on when and how Texas schools may reopen in the fall in a letter released on Friday. In the letter, which was jointly issued by the governor, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and chairs of the legislatures education committees, Abbott said school boards are allowed to push back the 2020-21 start date past September. Theyre also allowed to start the school year with in-person instruction, distance-learning or a combination of both but can only do so for up to eight weeks, Abbott said. This is in line with previous guidance issued by the Texas Education Agency. Council Bluffs Community Schools will make a lot of adjustments because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the hybrid learning phase the district will likely start classes in this fall. Student lunch schedules, cafeteria safety measures and food distribution are among the things that will change. More lunch periods will be added at secondary schools to divide the student population into smaller groups, Superintendent Vickie Murillo said during Tuesdays board of education meeting. Seating will be limited to two or three students per table. Plastic wrap will be used in elementary school cafeterias to separate students on opposite sides of the tables. The plastic will be thrown away after each use and a new strand stretched across, and some meals will have to be sent home with students. Since students will be attending school every other day, breakfast and lunch for their off days will be sent home with them in Go-Home Kits at the end of the day, said Lisa Stewart, director of nutrition services, during a presentation to the board. Tuesday-Thursday students will receive those meals for Wednesday and Friday, and Wednesday-Friday students will receive take-home meals for Thursday and Saturday. The hybrid model is complex for meal distribution, she said. The entire district will continue to be eligible for the Community Eligibility Program, so students will not have to pay for meals. However, students will receive a card with a bar code that will need to be scanned whenever they receive a meal, Stewart said. This will take the place of students typing in their ID numbers when they get a meal. Scanning cards is a way to remove a touch point during meal service, and we still have a way to account for who had a meal if audited, she said. Under (the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program), we have to have names and ID numbers to give out meals. That was not the case with the Summer Food Service Program, which will close Aug. 1, Stewart said. Staff will practice social distancing in the kitchens and other safety precautions, Stewart said. Our kitchen staff will be wearing masks during food distribution, she said. At schools that do not have commercial dishwashers, disposable trays will be used, Stewart said. Previously, reusable trays from those buildings were taken to schools with fully equipped kitchens for washing. We will not be hauling dirty trays from building to building, she said. Pre-packaged food will be available at designated buildings in Council Bluffs and Carter Lake for students enrolled in the Virtual Academy, Stewart said. Five days of breakfasts and lunches will be distributed on Mondays at locations yet to be determined likely schools with plenty of cooler space. Cleaning and sanitizing will be a high priority. The Facilities, Maintenance and Custodial Services Department has developed a comprehensive cleaning plan, said Travis Martin, director of the department. Custodial staff will conduct deep cleaning every night, Martin said. Workers will use Victory electrostatic sprayers to make sure disinfectant clings to objects. The district currently has 19 hand-held electrostatic sprayers, four backpack sprayers and has ordered five more hand-held and three more backpack sprayers, which are expected to arrive before school starts. The district also has 1,400 spray bottles that teachers and staff can use during the school day, and more have been ordered, he said. Custodial staff are being trained on the electrostatic sprayers, sanitizers and personal protective equipment, Martin said. We want to fully equip our staff to be able to do a good job, he said. The district is ordering 750 touchless paper towel dispensers to minimize high-touch surfaces. Martin also hopes to increase the number of motion-activated faucets. New bottle fillers will be installed, and old ones will be disabled. Both portable and wall-mounted hand sanitizer stations are being installed. Clear plastic partitions will be installed at certain places in the buildings. Signs will be installed to limit traffic to one way in many places and encourage distancing, Martin said. The department will consult with HVAC vendors to determine whether more restrictive filters can be used and will also investigate the feasibility of installing ultraviolet sanitizing systems. Barriers may be used with students in preschool and kindergarten. The school district will continue to partner with First Student for bus transportation, according to Tim Hamilton, chief of student and family services. First Student will screen their employees, and drivers and monitors will wear masks. They will encourage distancing and have windows open whenever possible. Students will be able to get hand sanitizer from touchless dispensers as they board the bus. The district will also try to strengthen social-emotional support for students, Hamilton said. We want everybody to be safe, but the social-emotional part is we want them to feel safe, too, he said. The district will have two or more supportive adults counselors, behavior specialists, etc. in each school building, Hamilton said. Student support teams will be formed. School-based therapists will also be available. Staff will continue training on trauma-informed schools, and the district will make mindfulness sessions available for teachers. Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Observers said the postponement was the latest in a series of recent moves by the government to thwart the pro-democracy movement. This past week saw the firing of two pro-democracy academics active in politics, the arrests of four young activists on national security charges and the disqualification of 12 pro-democracy candidates for the legislative election. Critics, however, said officials were nervous about the possibility of pro-democracy candidates scoring a victory amid deep-seated anti-government sentiment and concerns about a draconian national security law imposed by Beijing. Lam pointed to the record numbers of new coronavirus cases reported in recent days and maintained that there were "absolutely no political considerations" behind the delay. "To delay the Legislative Council election is a very difficult decision, but to suppress the pandemic and to safeguard public health while ensuring that the election is held in an open and fair manner... this decision is necessary," she said at a news conference, adding that she was using a colonial-era emergency law as her basis for the action. Hong Kong's top leader, Carrie Lam, announced Friday that the city's September legislative election would be postponed for a year, citing the coronavirus pandemic. The decision dealt a blow to the pro-democracy camp, which was widely expected to score a victory in the election. Lam said the authorities would ask China's National People's Congress Standing Committee to decide how to fill the vacuum due to the delay. If it decides to extend the term of the current legislature, the fate of four serving lawmakers would be unknown because they were among the 12 candidates whose nominations have been invalidated. Authorities have repeatedly accused the opposition lawmakers of "obstructing" the work of the government by vetoing unpopular bills. The national security law, enacted July 1, makes "serious interference, obstruction or damage" to the exercise of government power a subversion offense punishable by three to 10 years in prison or, in serious cases, life imprisonment. Separately, 22 pro-democracy lawmakers accused the government of failing to contain the coronavirus pandemic and now using it as an excuse to delay the poll and "brutally rob the citizens' voting rights." In a statement, they said the action would pose a constitutional crisis that shakes the basis of Hong Kong's fundamental political system. 'Devastating Defeat' Commenting earlier in the week about the widely expected delay, pro-democracy lawmaker Eddie Chu wrote on his Twitter account that authorities wanted to "avoid a potential devastating defeat." The national security law and the crackdown on the pro-democracy camp make it hard to know what to expect in a year's time, said Joseph Cheng, a retired political scientist formerly with the City University of Hong Kong. "The postponement of the elections certainly destroys the pro-democracy movement's trend of securing a majority in the legislature," he said. "The major challenge at this stage is whether the opposition political activists are still meaningful and useful. This would be the question in the minds of pro-democracy supporters," he said. "These events are very disheartening for the pro-democracy movement." Many Hong Kongers say the delay has further alienated them from the government. "It is yet another example of the government using the pandemic as an excuse to achieve Beijing's political ends," said a 22-year-old student who identified himself as Benjamin. "I think it's very dangerous to mobilize a draconian colonial-era emergency law to arbitrarily impose all kinds of restrictions. I think the government will only increasingly resort to using this law," he added. China's liaison office said in a statement Thursday that it supported the disqualifications, singling out activist Joshua Wong, 23, and lawyer Dennis Kwok. It alleged that they have advocated independence, lobbied "foreign powers to place sanctions on Hong Kong," and vetoed government budget plans in order to paralyze the government and oppose the security law. Wong said the election office told him that he had been disqualified because he used the word "draconian" to describe the security law and that his remark showed his opposition to it. He said the election office alleged that in light of his remarks, he could not possibly uphold the city's constitution, known as the Basic Law, which is a prerequisite for a legislative candidate. "Beijing shows a total disregard for the will of Hong Kongers, tramples upon the city's last pillar of vanishing autonomy and attempts to keep Hong Kong's legislature under its firm grip," Wong said. A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin, authorities said Friday. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorneys Office will prosecute him as adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Meanwhile, Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, hackers sent out bogus tweets on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence, U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a news release. Todays charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived. Although the case against the teen was also investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren explained that his office is prosecuting Clark in Florida state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate. This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and hell be prosecuted here, Warren said. Twitter previously said hackers used the phone to fool the social media companys employees into giving them access. It said hackers targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack. This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems, the company tweeted. After stealing employee credentials and getting into Twitter's systems, the hackers were able to target other employees who had access to account support tools, the company said. The hackers targeted 130 accounts. They managed to tweet from 45 accounts, access the direct message inboxes of 36, and download the Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Spear-phishing is a more targeted version of phishing, an impersonation scam that uses email or other electronic communications to deceive recipients into handing over sensitive information. Twitter said it would provide a more detailed report later given the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The company has previously said the incident was a coordinated social engineering attack that targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. It didnt provide any more information about how the attack was carried out, but the details released so far suggest the hackers started by using the old-fashioned method of talking their way past security. British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that a targeted Twitter employee or contractor received a message by phone asking them to call a number. When the worker called the number they might have been taken to a convincing (but fake) helpdesk operator, who was then able to use social engineering techniques to trick the intended victim into handing over their credentials, Clulely wrote Friday on his blog. Its also possible the hackers pretended to call from the companys legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said. For years, #NeverTrump activists were pushing the challenge to Trump supporters on social media: Is there anything that Trump could do that would cause you to stop supporting him? It was one of the primary Orange Man Bad themes. The morality test is that Trump supporters are abandoning all principle by worshipping Donald Trump as our Messiah and engaging in a cult. Leftists in both parties have lied about Donald Trump, hurling smears and invective, accusinng Trump of saying things that Trump never said and doing things Trump never did. And yet it just isnt working. Why dont any of their attacks on Trump succeed? It cannot be because the #NeverTrump arguments are dishonest, unfounded, and unpersuasive. It has to be because Trump supporters are mesmerized. Trump has fooled us all into thinking he is wonderful. Never will #NeverTrumpers reexamine their arguments. The correct answer is obviously: No, there is nothing that Donald Trump can do to lose my support, because I am not judging the 2016 or 2020 elections based on Trumps supposed perfection. Because any intelligent persons necessary support Donald Trump has nothing to do with whether Trump is flawless or not, Leftists are wasting their time. Donald Trump being without faults never played any role in our decision. In 2012, the Republican Party made a fatal mistake. (Well, many, actually.) The main message of the Republican presidential campaign from those trying to drag Mitt Romney across the finish line was Obama bad. Not Mitt Romney better. But voters dont vote that way. The voters, I believe, were ready to concede that in many ways: Obama bad. But were the voters convinced Mitt Romney was better? No. The GOP did not even try to argue that. If you dont attempt to convince the voters why your guy is better, they are not stupid. The voters will read between the lines and notice what you left out of your message. I am convinced that in 2012 many voters agreed Yes, Obama is troubling, but would Bain Capitals Mitt Romney drive the economy into another 2008 meltdown? Do I want to take that chance? Maybe re-electing Obama is the less-risky choice. The GOP failed to counter attacks. Defending yourself wouldnt be polite. A gentleman just allows people to lie about him. It would be unseemly to point out your opponents lies. The GOP never to this day (I mean the party officially) rebutted the lies about the 2008 economic mortgage-collapse crisis or explained the Democrats guilt in creating it. Why would I ever vote for any Democrat, especially Joe Biden? I was Christine ODonnells campaign manager briefly when she ran against Biden in 2008 for the Delaware U.S. Senate seat, helping her win the Republican nomination along with Gretchen Ellixson, John Feroce, and others. I created a website The Biden Quiz documenting in precise detail (after Christine argued it) that Joe Biden was among the most far-left U.S. Senators. Biden has never been a moderate. Worse, Biden is a chameleon, a voiceover actor who simply memorizes talking points and delivers them like a narrator in a TV commercial. Biden doesnt actually believe in anything. But he does echo precisely whatever the far Left says or wants. All Joe has had to do for decades is repeat the talking points popular at the moment and collect applause. In his left-wing bubble, when Joe could say no wrong, it ceased to matter what came out of Bidens mouth. Rich Lowrys National Review actually launched the #NeverTrump hysteria with its landmark 2016 edition Conservatives Against Trump. Within two years, Rich Lowry tried to retreat from the mania. Writing in Politico , this week, Lowry tried to build common ground between the #NeverTrumpers he championed and Trump voters, without the benefit of a map. In The Folly of the Never Republicans, rather than deconstructing the reasons for the chasm, Lowry merely warns that burning down the Republican Party by electing Biden will not create a better outcome. Lowry concedes that Trump is an unacceptable boor -- suspiciously like what critics said about Winston Churchill and uncultured frontier woodsman Abraham Lincoln. But Lowry urges #NeverTrumpers to step back from the cliff. #NeverTrumpers can point out a thousand faults of Donald Trump -- none of which are true, but lets focus on the point. The alternative candidates are worse. One cannot point the finger at Trump when the candidates they are pushing are terrible. That includes the polite, dignified Republicans who think that letting the Democrats win makes them the better man. Or maybe they think that if they attack their own party, the alligators will eat them last. Havent we already tried those type of Republicans for decades? What could possibly make anyone want to back to those dignified Republicans? They are the problem, not the solution. The anti-Trump lies are astonishing after establishment Republicans spent decades fooling the voters and breaking their promises. The GOP since 1964 has lied to voters, promised common sense, conservative reforms, and then voting with the Democrats to enact left-wing, grow-the-government policies and general lunacy. Yet now they want to tell us that Trump has fooled us. I am making an intelligent, informed choice from my deep involvement in politics and government since 1984 that the modern Democrat Party has become a destructive force. Its not your grandfathers party anymore. The New Left rioted at the Democrat National Committee in 1968 just like they are doing today. The Democrats actually booed God at their 2012 Democrat National Convention. Even if Orange Man Bad we must also compare: Democrats Worse. A senior US Congressman on Friday condemned the Chinese Armys acts of aggression in Indias Ladakh region resulting in deadly clashes between the two countries along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), alleging that Beijing aims to redraw the settled border by force. Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a bitter standoff in several areas along the LAC in eastern Ladakh since May 5. The situation deteriorated last month following the Galwan Valley clashes in which 20 Indian Army personnel were killed and an unconfirmed number of Chinese soldiers died. I rise to condemn action taken by the Peoples Republic of China, or PRC in Ladakh region of India that led to deadly clashes between the two countries on June 15, Congressman Frank Pallone said on the floor of the US House of Representatives on Friday. Today, I condemned the recent Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control in the Ladakh region of India. I call on China to end its military aggression. This conflict should only be settled through peaceful means. pic.twitter.com/kqxciAHKX1 Rep. Frank Pallone (@FrankPallone) July 31, 2020 Since -- the truth is -- 1962, the PRC and India have been divided by a 2,100-mile-long Line of Actual Control. In the months leading to this clash, the PRC military reportedly amassed 5,000 soldiers along this boundary... that clearly meant to re-draw long standing settled borders by force and aggression, Pallone said. This intention of encroachment and escalatory tactics used by the PRC are consistent with the other provocative actions its forces have taken throughout south and southeast Asia, the Democratic Congressman from New Jersey said. To counter this, the House of Representatives has passed an amendment that calls on China to cease the military aggression and urges immediate diplomatic action to prevent further escalation of conflict, Pallone said. I will continue to work with my colleagues in the Congress to help bolster our vital relationship with India, the Congressman said. Architecture, art and food By Adilah Ismail Bentota Beach Hotels Heritage Experience takes visitors on an intimate Bawa tour View(s): View(s): Last week, a group of art and architecture enthusiasts were treated to a preview of Dayanita Singhs photographs of Lunuganga Chairs, at the Lunuganga Estate especially verdant after the southwest monsoons. Singhs photographs were the latest of the site-specic works to be added to the The Gift: Installation Series for the Geoffrey Bawa centenary celebrations. A guided tour of the installations was led by the Lunuganga Trust Curator, Shayari de Silva, and Bawa 100 Programme Advisor and Chairperson of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust and the Lunuganga Trust, Channa Daswatte. The tour was a part of an intimate Bawa experience organized by Bentota Beach Hotel along with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust and the Lunuganga Trust. The day-long programme combined art, architecture and food and was bookended by tours of two of Bawas most iconic properties. At Lunuganga Estate, visitors were taken through works already installed for the Bawa Centenary celebrations: Zephyrus Breath by Lee Mingwei, Symbiotic Organisms by Dominic Sansoni (a beautiful collection of photographs which guides the gaze towards the macro natural details of the sprawling estate), and Kithul-Ami by Kengo Kuma, a sculpture inspired by outdoor furniture designed by Bawa for Kandalama. Visitors were then served a curated lunch at Bentota Beach Hotel by Chef Sunanda Kumar the appetizer and dessert cleverly drawing inspiration from Lee Mingweis and Kengo Kumas sculptures and influences. A tour of the refurbished Bentota Beach Hotel which opened its doors in January this year as a five-star resort, and talks by Ismeth Raheem and Channa Daswatte were fitting conclusions for the day. A highlight of the tour was undoubtedly the insights into the details of the art and architecture which marks the hotel. What sets apart the Bentota Beach Hotels renovation is the process of archiving the building, to preserve the ideas inherent in it. While renovating Bentota Beach Hotel, it became evident its original structure would not withstand a refurbishment and new additions. Constructed in the late 1960s, the hotel was Sri Lankas first purpose-built resort hotel and has been lauded as a model for hotel design in tropical climates. The subsequent archival of the hotel was inspired by the careful dismantling of the structure of the Osmund and Ena de Silva House in Colombo and reassembling it in a different location, undertaken by the Lunuganga Trust in an effort to preserve it. The Bentota Beach Hotel, Daswatte explained, was a reflection of the wonderful magpie picking that Bawa had done, dipping into divergent traditions and drawing inspiration from everything from the kaludiya pokuna to the Padmanabhapuram palace to create one of the most influential buildings in modern Asian architecture. When a building has a series of ideas that are worth preserving but the building itself cannot be conserved in the usual way, perhaps archiving it is the way forward. Bentota Beach Hotel was one such important building that could not be justifiably conserved in a traditional manner but was still too precious to see destroyed and lost forever. For me, it was some of the wonderful ideas that were embedded in the building that moved me to propose to the hotel company that we should actually do what we did here, explained Daswatte, whose practice MICD Associates carried out the renovations. There is art beckoning at every corner of the hotel and those familiar with Bawa would be quick to recognize some of his frequent artistic collaborators. The lovingly reproduced Ena de Silva batik ceiling panels recreated under the guidance of Chandra Aluvihare, Director of the Aluvihare Heritage Centre, Architect Amila de Mel and Designer Roshan Rajapakse is the first feature, drawing visitors eyes to a ceiling that is a riot of colour. Paintings by Ismeth Raheem adorn the lobby and the newly opened Bawa suite, some of which are reproduced from the artists meticulously organized archives of his paintings which dotted the hotel originally. A peacock sculpture by Laki Senanayake (restored by Bandu Manamperi) takes pride of place near a stairway while Barefoot handloom fabric can be seen in the hotels interiors. The new additions to the hotel also take its cues from Bawas design ethos and place Sri Lankan art and design at the heart of the architecture. The hotel features inter-disciplinary work by Ajith Perera, Sameera Kalupahana, Bandu Manamperi, Sanjeewa Kumara, Sujith Rathnayake, Himanshi Wijeweera, Marie Gnanaraj, Sonali Dharmawardena, Nilanka Perera, Kingsley Gunatillake and Dominic Sansoni. Cinnamon Resorts has been careful to balance old and new with the hotel. A part of the Bentota Beach Hotel is a functional heritage monument while the new additions reflect the contemporary requirements of a seaside resort a banquet hall, additional restaurants, more rooms, another swimming pool enhancing instead of impinging on the original structure. Its a nod to the past but its also really about the now, notes Channa Daswatte. Various Heritage Experiences by Bentota Beach Hotel will be conducted monthly. For more information: https://www.cinnamonboxoffice.com/ or 0717118111 The Gift: Installation Series commemorating Geoffrey Bawas 100th birthday will continue at the Lunuganga Estate till January 31, 2021. An installation by Chandragupta Thenuwara is scheduled to be added later this month:https://bawa100.com/The-Gift As several sticking points remain, India preps for a long haul at Ladakh border India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Aug 01: The Indian Army would be looking to enhance deployment on the Ladakh border until total disengagement by the Indian and Chinese armies takes place. While the Chinese have claimed that disengagement has taken place along the disputed border, India clarified that the same has not taken place at both Pangong Tso and Gogra. India has been seeking restoration of status quo ante as of April. India says that the restoration of status quo ante would include reduction of troops, removal of new infrastructure constructed by the Chinese in the contentious zones and also restoration of patrolling rights. Also Read: A lot would however depend on the outcome of the fifth round of military commander talks between the two sides. While all eyes would be on the talks, India has prepared for a long haul. The next round of talks is expected in a couple of days, sources have told OneIndia while adding that the ground work is being laid for the same. The talks were initially planned over the weekend, but an official word on the same is still awaited. Sources said that on the disengagement, there has not been positive movement on the ground for at least 15 days now. On China's claim that disengagement had taken place, sources said that the statement is incorrect. US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news Earlier, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin had made the claim at a briefing in Beijing when he was asked whether the border troops from India and China have completed the disengagement from Galwan, Gogra and Hot Spring areas in eastern Ladakh. The reference to Pangong Tso, a major friction point, was conspicuously absent in the question asked by a reporter from China's official media. During the briefing, the spokesman noted that China and India have recently conducted "intensive communication through military and diplomatic channels." "Now the frontline border troops have completed disengagement in most locations and the situation on the ground is easing," Wang said. At the briefing, Wang said, "We have held four rounds of commander level talks and three meetings of Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC)." "Now we are preparing for the fifth round of commander level talks to study the settlement of the remaining issue. We hope India will work with China to implement our consensus and uphold peace and stability along our border areas," he added. It is likely the new outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic originated initially in central Da Nang city, and in the coming days more data will be monitored, updated and analysed for official confirmation, experts have said. It is likely the new outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic originated initially in central Da Nang city, and in the coming days more data will be monitored, updated and analysed for official confirmation, experts have said. Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam and a group of scientists, experts and volunteers who have analysed data and tracked epidemiological of COVID-19 were speaking at a meeting on COVID-19 data analysis, held in Hanoi on July 30. The group has worked since March and has been in touch with task forces sent by the Ministry of Health (MoH) to Da Nang to make comments and forecasts. The experts said once it was determined that the disease was from Da Nang, it was only necessary to zone for virus suppression in the city, whereas other localities should focus on managing people who have come from or went through the city. Also under the groups analysis, although Da Nang has some cases in the community, the biggest outbreak was in three hospitals and concentrated in several wards only. The situation is quite similar to the previous outbreak at Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi. Associate Professor Tran Dac Phu, former director of the Preventive Medicine Department under the Ministry of Health, said that the pandemic situation was quite similar to forecasts. Speaking at the meeting, Dam praised the groups efforts and analytical comments. The groups contribution is respectful. Data analysis to make recommendations is very important, therefore, data analysis to support decision making is essential, he said. Experts from the MoH said the ministry had directed departments of health and hospitals nationwide to strictly implement the Prime Ministers, the Deputy PMs and the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control's guidelines to help hospitals in Da Nang reduce overcrowding as quickly as possible. Dam emphasised that people should not be neglectful and always be ready for the worst-case scenario. Bui The Duy, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, head of the group, promised to the Deputy PM to continue working despite day and night to fulfil the mission, contributing to pandemic control so that people could soon return to normal life./. VNA A U.S. Marine Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) takes part in a landing operation during a military Exercise Baltops 2018. SAN DIEGO A search continues for seven missing Marines and one sailor after an amphibious assault vehicle sank off the coast of southern California on Thursday evening, killing one and injuring two others. In total, the boat carried 16 members of the military; five of whom have returned to their assigned ship, Marine Corps Gen. David H. Berger said at a Friday press conference. Berger said he has directed the suspension of water operations for amphibious assault vehicles until the cause of the incident has been determined. He said the entire fleet of vehicles would be inspected. All of the Marines on the 26-ton vehicle, which resembles a seafaring tank, were assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the Marine Corps said. The Marine Expeditionary Force is the Marine Corps main warfighting organization. There are three such groups which are made up of ground, air and logistics forces. We are deeply saddened by this tragic incident. I ask that you keep our Marines, Sailors, and their families in your prayers as we continue our search, Col. Christopher Bronzi, the unit's commanding officer, said in a statement from the Marine Corps. July 12: Multiple sailors injured during fire on USS Bonhomme Richard at Naval Base San Diego The incident occurred during a training exercise near San Clemente Island, located about 60 miles off the coast of Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Osterman, the commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force, said. "When the AAV began to take on water, they signaled to the rest of the unit," Osterman said. Eight Marines were able to be recovered at that time. The vehicle sunk and now sits several hundred feet below water, too deep for a diver to reach, Osterman. Thursday's accident marks the third time in less than a decade that Camp Pendleton Marines have been injured or died in amphibious assault vehicles during training exercises. Contributing: The Associated Press This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Marines: 8 still missing after sea tank sinks off California coast The Maryland school where Barron Trump attends will remain closed until October due to a Montgomery County, Maryland mandate. AP Images The Maryland private school that Barron Trump attends will not be permitted to open for in-person classes until at least October under a countywide mandate ordering private schools to remain closed. As The New York Times previously reported, St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland, previously planned a virtual-only return to class or a hybrid model that would have allowed students in classrooms. President Trump and his administration have for weeks been adamant that schools reopen to students for the upcoming school year despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The Maryland county home to the school attended by President Donald Trump's son, Barron, has ordered private schools to remain closed through the month of September. "Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have based our decisions on science and data," Montgomery County, Maryland, health officer Dr. Travis Gayles said in a Friday press release. "At this point the data does not suggest that in-person instruction is safe for students or teachers." Gayles said a rise in transmission of the novel coronavirus, particularly among "younger age groups," in Maryland and nearby Washington, DC, and Virginia, led him to order private schools to close. The county's public school system the fourth largest in the US by per-pupil spending according to the US Census Bureau, announced last month it would complete its entire first semester via virtual-only education. Anyone who is found to have "knowingly and willfully" violated the county's Friday order could be convicted of a misdemeanor, subject to jail time up to one year, and a fine of up to $5,000, according to the press release. In Maryland, there have been 89,365 reported cases of the novel coronavirus and 3,374 deaths, according to data from the state Department of Health. Over the past seven days, 4.47% of tests have returned a positive result. Montgomery County accounts for 17,665 of Maryland's reported cases, second to nearby Prince George's County. Story continues According to the press release, nonpublic schools include "all private pay schools, schools affiliated with religious institutions, or schools that are otherwise considered to be independent schools." Fox News personality Laura Ingraham chimed in on the decision, tweeting that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and the Montgomery County health director should "get ready to be deposed" because of the county's order. Hogan later Saturday tweeted that he "strongly" disagreed with the Montgomery County order. Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) August 1, 2020 Barron Trump's school had not decided whether to go online-only or to adopt a hybrid approach As The New York Times reported, St. Andrew's Episcopal School, where Barron Trump has attended since his family relocated to the White House, had not yet publicly announced whether students would return to their Potomac, Maryland, school building for in-person instruction. The private school, which is located in the Maryland suburbs of DC and provides K-12 education, had previously said it would make a decision between a hybrid approach or a virtual-only model the week of August 10, according to a statement posted on its website. Robert Kosasky, the head of St. Andrew's, did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment about the county's order Saturday. The president and his administration have for weeks stressed his view that US schools school open to students in the fall for in-person instruction despite a continued rise in reported cases of the virus and an uptick in deaths from the disease. At a press conference last month, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made headlines for telling reporters that "science should not stand in the way" of school reopenings. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also been an opponent of delaying school openings, saying last month it should be "the rule" for US schools to reopen to students. While the symptoms and side effects of COVID-19 are typically less harmful to children, children can contract the virus and function as asymptomatic carriers, infecting other people, including more vulnerable populations. Later in July, as the Associated Press reported, Trump acknowledged some parts of the country that may have to delay returning students to classrooms "for a few weeks." For districts that don't reopen, though, he said he would direct Congress to allocate stimulus money meant for schools to parents so they could send their children to a private school. At a press conference Thursday, Trump suggested that keeping schools closed "is causing death also," as CNBC reported. The White House did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on Saturday. Read the original article on Business Insider The West African Examinations Council (WASSCE) is urging candidates writing the 2020 exams to stay focused and continue preparations. The Examination Council is asking students to ignore the leakage of fake Integrated Science question papers. In a press release from WAEC, it labeled the circulated papers as fake while indicating that it is the work of people seeking to mislead candidates and bring the name of the examination council into disrepute. The Council wishes to allay the fears of all stakeholders especially candidates about the alleged leakage of the Papers. A scrutiny of the images being shared on social media indicates once again, the activities of certain individuals mainly operators of rogue websites and WhatsApp groups aimed at leading candidates astray and discrediting the Council, a statement from WAEC signed by Mrs. Agnes Teye-Cudjoe who is the head of public affairs has said. WAEC further charges candidates sitting for this years WASSCE to stay alert in order not to be deceived by persons sharing these questions on various platforms. The Council urges all candidates to stay focused, continue with their preparation for the examination and comply with the COVID-19 protocols in order to keep safe during the period, a portion of the press release said. Meanwhile, WAEC has alerted the BNI, CID, and the National Security about the threats posed by groups circulating fake question papers. The Council assures all its stakeholders that it has put in place all the necessary measures to ensure the smooth conduct of the WASSCE for Candidates this year. Full press release from WAEC below: French soldier Andy Fila was killed in a maintenance operation in Chad after a piece of equipment exploded, the defense ministry said in a statement on Friday. Fila was a 25-year-old father of one child. "While carrying out an intervention on a refrigeration unit at the Kossei base in N'Djamena, Chad, brigadier chief Andy Fila was fatally hit by the explosion of a gas cylinder," the ministry said in a statement. An investigation is underway to determine the exact cause of the accident. Twenty-five year old Fila belonged to the 14th infantry regiment of Toulouse. He had taken part in several external operations in the Sahel region in 2016, and more recently again in June, this time in Chad. In a press release, Florence Parly, Minister for the Armed Forces, expressed her condolences to Fila's family and his companions. She wished a "swift recovery" to another soldier who was also injured during the accident. Minute's silence Lawmakers at the French parliament also paid tribute to the electro-mechanic specialist by observing a minute's silence to him on the sidelines of tense debate over a new bioethics bill. France has more than 5,000 troops in the West African Sahel region as part of international efforts to fight Islamist militants in the area and has based its counterterrorism forces in Chad. The grandfather of the new MI6 boss Richard Moore was an IRA fighter who won a medal from Sinn Fein for fighting against British rule. Mr Moore, 57, said his grandfather Jack Buckley joined the IRA in Cork in 1916 and fought until 1922. His grandfather even won a medal from the Irish president for fighting against the British government, The Sun reported. The grandfather of the new boss of MI6 Richard Moore (above) was an IRA fighter who was awarded a medal from the Irish president for fighting the British rule He told a newspaper in Turkey, where he was ambassador: 'I am of Irish origin. 'My grandfather fought against the British Government in the separatist Irish Republican Army between 1916 and 1922. 'He received a medal from the Irish president. Now, I am the ambassador of the British government.' He spoke about his background to show Turkey he was able to arrive at a compromise with Kurdish separatist rebels. Having first joined MI6 in 1987, Moore went on to serve as the UK's ambassador to Turkey. Mr Moore is now set to take over as 'C' - the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. An accomplished spy and well respected across Britain's intelligence community, Mr Moore will take over the role from Alex Younger in the autumn. Outgoing MI6 chief Younger, who has served since November 2014, said: 'I am delighted by this appointment. Richard is a highly accomplished intelligence officer and we look forward to welcoming him back to the service.' Libya-born Mr Moore had postings in Vietnam and Turkey between 1990 and 1992, as well as in Pakistan and Malaysia, according to his FCO profile. Mr Moore, 57, said his grandfather Jack Buckley joined the IRA in Cork in 1916 and fought until 1922. Pictured, armed IRA fighters line the streets during the Battle of Dublin His wife of 35 years Maggie, who is visually impaired, was part of the inspiration behind the first guide dog partnership in Turkey. During his posting in Pakistan, he led a mission when the Taliban were in power. He defied the Taliban's ban on alcohol, as he was determined to restock the cellars of the British embassy in Kabul, and crossed the Khyber Pass with a case of wine in his MI6 Land Rover. The father-of-two was appointed his role at the Foreign Office in April 2018. Beforehand, he was Director for Europe, Latin America and Globalisation between 2010 and 2012, and Director for Programmes and Change between 2008 and 2010. Moore attended Oxford University to study a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and took part in the Stanford Executive Programme in 2007. It was while sitting on the couch breastfeeding her second baby that Debra Filippin realised something was up. She found herself staring into space, listening to the noise of the washing machine "and starting to feel really nervous. I thought, 'what's this weird feeling?' I just didn't know what to do or who to call." Ms Filippin had had two sons within 15 months. Baby Isaac was waking up very regularly overnight and both he and his toddler brother, August, had been ill. "It must have been my fifth load of washing that day, I would have changed 14 nappies," she recalls. Debra Filippin with sons Isaac (rear) and August. Credit:Simon Schluter Still, she worried if she contacted the maternal and child health nurse to say she was experiencing mental health symptoms "I might get into trouble". As a business development manager for a global law firm, Ms Filippin is accustomed to work pressure. But experiencing post-natal anxiety gave her an insight into what many women go through, and also a desire to support others. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 14:28:15|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Xinhua writer Guo Yage BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- On Aug. 1, 1927, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China was born out of a mission to seek national independence and liberation of the Chinese people. More than nine decades have passed. And now the PLA, ever developing and modernizing, has not only been standing guard for the security and well-being of the Chinese people, but also contributing to regional and global peace and security. First, the PLA has been firmly following a path of peaceful development. This determination can be well reflected in China's military expenditure. China is now the world's second largest economy. Yet its defense spending has stayed at around 1.3 percent of its gross domestic product for many years, well below the world's average of 2.6 percent. According to a draft budget report in late May, China will continue to lower its defense budget growth rate to 6.6 percent in 2020. Besides, a defense white paper issued July last year said the Chinese military has cut 300,000 personnel to keep the total active force at 2 million. Second, the Chinese military has been faithfully implementing a defense-oriented policy. Far from bellicosity, China always tries to solve disputes and conflicts through dialogue and consultation, and deplores the use of offensive force. In particular, the PLA has been committed to a self-defense nuclear strategy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones unconditionally. Beijing has been widely recognized and praised for long maintaining its strong commitment to global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament efforts. Third, Chinese soldiers have repeatedly demonstrated to the world with tangible action that China has always been ready to do its part and help build this world into a more peaceful and better place. Over the past 30 years, some 40,000 Chinese "blue helmets" have already been dispatched to conflict-affected countries and areas in 25 United Nations (UN) peace operations. China has become the largest troop contributor among the five permanent members of the Security Council and the second largest financial contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget. The PLA has provided many other public security services, completing numerous long and short distance patrols and armed escorts, treating more than 230,000 patients, and offering anti-epidemic supplies to the military forces of over 20 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also joined other global partners to address unconventional security challenges and improve global security governance. China's recent accession to the Arms Trade Treaty is a case in point. China will unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development, safeguard world peace and promote common development, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his 2020 New Year message. Indeed, just as Xi has committed, the PLA, as the military of a responsible major country, will continue to do its best to make the world a better place not only for Chinese, but for all. Enditem A senior Department of Homeland Security official told a Senate committee earlier this month that the department had not collected, exploited or analyzed information from the electronic devices or accounts of protesters in Portland, Ore. But an internal DHS document obtained by The Washington Post shows the department did have access to protesters' electronic messages and that their conversations were written up in an "intelligence report" that was disseminated to federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, as well as state and local governments. In a letter sent Friday, Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Brian Murphy, acting DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, about statements he made to committee staff on July 23 regarding the department's intelligence activities in Portland. "You stated that I & A [the intelligence and analysis office] had neither collected nor exploited or analyzed information obtained from the devices or accounts of protesters or detainees. Please confirm," the senators wrote. A DHS Open Source Intelligence Report dated six days before Murphy's briefing to the committee shows that the I & A office analyzed messages that protesters exchanged on the Telegram messaging app. They discussed which routes to take during marches and how to avoid the police. The report describes the messages as "likely Portland-based encrypted messaging app users discuss TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] to evade law enforcement when being pursued." It also states that the information came from "a Telegram chat room," which it described as "an instant messaging service." It's not clear how DHS obtained the messages and whether an informant or undercover officer had access to the Telegram group. Some officials familiar with the report, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe it, questioned why I & A was tracking the communications of people engaged in protests that are protected by the First Amendment. "DHS does not comment on congressional correspondence. We respond as appropriate," the department said in a statement. The Telegram messages don't show the protesters planning to harass or target police or damage property. A significant portion of their discussion is about how to avoid encounters with police, particularly federal officers, who they knew had detained protesters. "We went down the side street and it seemed to deter them from following us, they retreated," one unidentified user said about an earlier encounter with Portland police. "Seems they're less inclined to go into residential neighborhoods which makes sense." "Definitely a good strategy," another person replied. "Use more in the future." The senators also asked Murphy about whether I & A had taken part in questioning protesters when they were detained in federal custody. They asked him to confirm his earlier statements "that I & A personnel have not engaged in custodial debriefings" and "that I & A personnel have not interacted with protesters in any way." The senators further asked Murphy if I & A had "been indirectly engaged with detainee operations," perhaps by providing "suggested lines of questioning" to authorities who were questioning those in custody. Current and former officials have said Murphy's office may be exceeding the boundaries of its authority in an effort to crack down on "antifa" protesters to please President Donald Trump, who has broadly applied the "anti-fascist" label to people peacefully protesting police violence and to others who have vandalized memorials and statues to Confederate officers who fought to preserve slavery. Murphy, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, recently tried to broaden the definition of some protesters in Portland from "violent opportunists" to people who were "violent antifa anarchists inspired," according to an internal memo. Murphy argued that the protesters attacking federal buildings weren't merely taking advantage of a moment but had "overwhelmingly" been linked to radical ideologies "driving individuals toward violence." That conclusion was undercut by an earlier DHS analysis that found there wasn't enough information about the Portland protesters for the department to know how they might be connected to antifa or anarchist groups and what precisely was motivating them. Many of the protests in Portland have been peaceful and in response to police violence around the country. Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent senator who caucuses with Democrats and co-signed the letter to Murphy, said he was concerned that lawmakers didn't have enough information about what I & A operations in Portland. "We were hearing through the press about what was going on . . . and we should have been hearing about it in the committee," King said in an interview. King said he was concerned that some I & A activities may not be "consistent either with the rule of law or the constitutional protections of privacy." King also said he wanted more information about the intelligence office collecting information on journalists. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that I & A had compiled intelligence reports about two journalists who published leaked internal documents about the office's operations. After the article was published, the acting homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, ordered I & A to stop collecting information on journalists and said he was launching an investigation into the matter. King declined to comment on Murphy's interactions with the committee, but added, "We want to know what was done, under what authority, the purposes and how extensive" the operations were. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the intelligence committee vice chairman, said he was "extremely frustrated about how hard it is to get any information, much less full and accurate information, about what I & A is doing in Portland and the scope of their activities." "They have a legal obligation to keep the committee fully and currently informed, and they're not meeting that," Warner said in a statement. Anthony Fauci, the United States' top infectious disease official, raised concerns Friday regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines under development by China and Russia. Several Chinese companies are at the forefront of the global vaccine race, while Russia has said it hopes to be the first in the world to produce a vaccine for the public, with a target date of September. But the medicines will likely face heightened scrutiny given that the regulatory systems in both countries are far more opaque than they are in the West. Fauci, who was asked during a Congressional hearing whether the US could make use of Chinese or Russian vaccines if they arrived first, indicated that was unlikely. "I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing the vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone," he said. He added: "Claims of having a vaccine ready to distribute before you do testing, I think, is problematic, at best. "We are going very quickly. I do not believe that there will be vaccines, so far ahead of us, that we will have to depend on other countries to get us vaccines." Last month, Chinese media announced a coronavirus vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics was being used to immunize the Chinese military -- making it the first approved for people, albeit in a limited population. Many scientists however raised ethical concerns because the vaccine has not yet begun its final stages of testing. - 'Sputnik moment'? - Two other Chinese companies Sinovac and Sinopharm, have launched final phase three trials in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. China, where the virus originated, has largely brought its outbreak under control and has therefore had to turn to other countries to test its vaccines. The trials in Brazil and the UAE will be watched particularly closely, given China's history of vaccine and other health scandals. In 2018, more than 200,000 children were administered a defective vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (DPT) that caused paralysis in a few cases. Russia, which was once a global vaccine leader during Soviet times, aims to bring two to market by September and October, respectively. The first is being developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya institute and the defense ministry, and the second by the Vektor state laboratory near the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Russia has released no scientific data proving the vaccines' safety or efficacy. Nevertheless, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund which is financing the Gamaleya trials, told CNN: "It's a Sputnik moment." Sputnik was the world's first satellite launched by Russia in 1957. Three Western coronavirus vaccines are in final phase three trials. One is produced by US biotech firm Moderna and the National Institutes for Health; one by the University of Oxford and Britain's AstraZeneca; and the last by Germany's BioNTech with US pharmaceutical Pfizer. China and Russia both stand accused of attempting to steal Western coronavirus research -- charges they deny. New Delhi: Today marks the 100th death anniversary of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the most respected figures of India's freedom struggle. Tilak's most powerful slogan was 'Swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it' which caught the imagination of the entire country and inspired them in the fight against the colonial rule. A part of the Lal-Bal-Pal (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal), Tilak was called 'father of the Indian unrest" by British colonial rulers. He was also conferred with the title of "Lokmanya", which means "accepted by the people (as their leader)" while Mahatma Gandhi called him "The Maker of Modern India" On this day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his death anniversary and said that his courage, intellect and idea of 'Swaraj' continued to inspire people. PM Modi shared a video alongwith his post on microblogging site Twitter, he wrote: "India bows to Lokmanya Tilak on his 100th Punya Tithi. His intellect, courage, sense of justice and idea of Swaraj continue to inspire. Here are some facets of Lokmanya Tilaks life.." India bows to Lokmanya Tilak on his 100th Punya Tithi. His intellect, courage, sense of justice and idea of Swaraj continue to inspire. Here are some facets of Lokmanya Tilaks life... pic.twitter.com/9RzKkKxkpP Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 1, 2020 Born on July 23, 1856 in Chikhali village of Maharashtra he died on August 1, 1920 in Mumbai. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a scholar, a writer, mathematician and a philosopher, he received his education at the Deccan College in Pune and earned his Bachelor's degree in mathematics and Sanskrit in the year 1876. A Florida minor was charged Friday with 30 felonies relating to last month's Twitter "hack" that got top Twitter accounts blurting out a crude bitcoin scam. Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren filed 30 felony charges against the teen this week for "scamming people across America" in connection with the Twitter hack that happened on July 15. The charges he's facing include one count of organized fraud, 17 counts of communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to computer or electronic device without authority. Hillsborough County Jail records show Clark was booked into jail shortly after 6:30 a.m. Friday. Warren's office says the scheme to defraud "stole the identities of prominent people" and "posted messages in their names directing victims to send Bitcoin" to accounts that were associated with the Tampa teen. According to the state attorney, the scheme reaped more than $100,000 in Bitcoin in just one day. Kuleba said Ukraine is a unitary, decentralized state. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has elaborated on compromises the Ukrainian side is ready to make in negotiations with Russia to regain control over occupied Donbas. "The first is full control over the border of Ukraine. The second is the status of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions determined by legislation and within a broad form of decentralization, and the absence of any veto right over national decisions," he told the Glavcom media outlet in an interview. Read alsoMFA Ukraine asks EU to expand Russia sanctions Kuleba said Ukraine is a unitary, decentralized state. He also reiterated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's words about the mandatory withdrawal of foreign troops and military hardware from Donbas, as well as the disarmament of the armed formations. "That is, everyone who is illegally armed must be disarmed. And they can call themselves even the National Guard, or the 'militia,' even the 'police' or 'internal troops.' It is necessary to agree on how the order will be ensured in these territories in the process of ending the occupation," he added. This right royal election View(s): Dont get me wrong. This is no reference to those I used to call the messy types who emerged from various nooks and crannies to collect their precious ministerial certificates and other types of authoritative parchment papers that elevated them to positions of importance. Several of them came from a school by the Race Course in Colombo which gave rise to a joke that had the letters FRCS to distinguish them from the hoi polloi who held minor or secondary ministerial posts in the government. The FRCS (Former Royal College Students, not some medical degree) was supposed to instil in the Yahapalana Government such intellectual worth that Maithripala Sirisena could not keep track of all the shenanigans that went on under his nose. With this right royal mess as I used to say for convenience not to mention accuracy going on inside and outside such holy and sometimes unholy places as the cabinet, Sirisena smelled a rat well rats, if one may be excused for resorting to the plural. Now that was not too difficult, I mean smelling a rat. There were thousands upon thousands of political and other rats scurrying around gnawing at every tender and tugging at every alma mater to cut corners and prosper. The infestation was so widespread that one could not escape the smell. So Sirisena began a struggle to win back all those presidential powers that he unwittingly surrendered to parliament and premier thinking that he will go down in history as a benevolent ruler. Despite the best of presidential intentions it did not turn out that way. If he intended to retire to Polonnaruwa it misfired. Royal College (Polonnaruwa) and Royal College (Colombo) were engaged in pitched political battle that eventually devoured each other. The roads in Colombo and to Polonnaruwa are littered with the remnants of Royalists of both sides. Maybe someday there will be monuments erected to those who fell in political battle, heroes in the war to preserve Sri Lankas democracy, though it was hardly the issue which brought them face to face like the armies of Brutus/Cassius and Mark Anthony in the field at Philippi. Within days the parliamentary election will be upon us. With all the cacophony over medical regulations, social distancing, violations of electoral laws and PHIs going on strike continue, this election lacks public flavour. So much so that some veteran battlefield heroes like Achilles are sulking in their tents nursing their political wounds. But what makes Election 2020 interesting is not the manifestos belatedly waved before the people, promises that this country will be turned on its head and all the corruption, bribery and social ills will be eliminated with one fell swoop when the new legislature replaces the old with perhaps some of the same old faces. If yahapalana government was characterised by an overwhelming Royal presence in governing circles at the expense of the Polonnaruwa lot that was fighting a defensive battle to keep its powers alive, it is all different today. If the yahapalana Royals were so by name, those who have come to the fore in the last couple of weeks or so, are Royal by lineage, if one might describe it as that. Suddenly and without any prior notice, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Tourism Authority decided to seek all available information relating to King Ravana. What still remains unexplained is why this inordinate hurry to announce a research project to put King Ravana, who the Indians call Sri Lankas demon king and Sri Lankans almost deify as an highly educated and benevolent ruler, in the public eye a couple of weeks before the parliamentary election. I can understand if in the name of Ravana, who Sri Lankans believe is a great and respected ruler, some government scholarships were offered to young aeronautical students to complete their studies in Pakistan or some other South Asian country. That might anger our Indian neighbours who dismiss King Ranava as an abductor for flying away with Indian King Ramas wife. Such things did happen even several millennia ago and things apparently have got worse now, what with forces of law and order too getting in to the act of abduction. Okay, so as the Indians say Ravana had the audacity to cross into India, steal Sita and hurry back to wherever he parks his dandu monara it was indeed a dirty trick. After been galvanised into action by Sri Lankan authorities urgently calling us poor chaps not to sell our waste paper to the bothal karaya, one was determined to do some good for King and Country I mean our high flying monarch and the elected rulers. It seems to me that the Indians waited patiently all these millennia to get their own back at their tiny neighbour who insulted them by stealing their Queen Sita without even a by-your-leave. It might have been more courteous I would think if the two kings had a brief conversation over taking Sita for a holiday to Sri Lanka where some enterprising tour operators have now launched a tourist trail called Ramayana Trail or some such enterprising tour. But that is not what concerns me. There are thousands of students at Indian universities and elsewhere making a deep study of Indo-Sri Lankan affairs, This is especially so since various regional and global powers have started stirring the waters of the Indian Ocean and shaking the moorings of our little island. I would venture most humbly to say that many of our experts in geopolitics seem to have missed a point. India has waited 5000 years or more to get its own back on Lanka. They waited till 1987 to drop plane loads of parippu in Sri Lankas north to humiliate the island-nation for abducting an Indian princess. I have no idea whether Queen Sita ate chick peas or parippu. But I understand from very reliable sources that the local populace enjoyed it immensely and waved every time an Indian air force plane passed overhead even if it was a fighter jet accompanying a parippu-dropping aircraft. But this is not the only Royal issue suddenly raised at this election. More recently in Kurunegala there was a ruckus about the supposed demolition of a building that had been erected in the time of King Buvenakabahu 11. All this goes back some years and now this election has come up with two separate issues that concern royalty. First there is this sudden interest in Ravana and what kind of a king he was depends on whether he is being looked at from a Sri Lankan or Indian perspective. Was he a good and benevolent ruler as the Sri Lankans describe him or a demon king as Indians call him? The more recent squabble over the Buvenakabahu building in Kurunegala is small change (as they say) compared to what the archaeological search into King Ravana will dig up in the years to come though the study is limited to five years. But why on earth was this considered a priority so shortly before the elections? Is there a new Ravana due to emerge? When would be the Second Coming? (Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard from where he moved to London and worked for the Gemini News Service. Later he was Sri Lankas Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism). A sudden collapse of a dam in Sudan's Blue Nile State has destroyed 600 houses, local Sudanese media reported late on Friday. "Over 600 houses in the neighborhoods of Bout town in Blue Nile State have been destroyed due to a sudden collapse of Bout dam which is used to store around 5 million cubic meters of water coming from the valleys of Al-Angsana Mountains," local media quoted Nusaiba Farouq Kalol, acting executive director of Al Tadamun locality in Sudan's Blue Nile State, as saying. "The water surrounded another 600 families in a neighbourhood, with no access to them as the water flooded the area from three directions," she added. The local official warned against a big wave of displacement in the area, noting that the Bout dam constitutes the backbone for the area where there is a large market and more than nine basic education schools. Annually during June and July, Sudan witnesses waves of floods due to heavy rains. On Thursday, Sudan meteorological authorities warned of medium to heavy rains, accompanied by high-speed winds on Friday that would continue until Saturday afternoon, in various parts of the country. Search Keywords: Short link: A Portland woman was found dead on a Lincoln County beach Thursday morning, police say. Annette Fagan, 58, washed ashore between Devils Punchbowl and Otter Rock, but police said they dont yet know how long she was in the water. Police initially put out a call Friday morning asking for help identifying Fagan. Oregon State Police would not comment on whether foul play was suspected in the case, or whether Fagan had previously been reported missing. Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot speaks to the media persons as he leaves the airport after arriving back from Jaisalmer to Jaipur, Saturday. (PTI) Jaisalmer/Jaipur: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get the alleged attempt to topple his government stopped and said he is open to welcoming back the Congress rebels led by Sachin Pilot. Asked if the dissidents will be forgiven, he said, It depends on the party high command. If the party high command forgives, I shall embrace them. Since the power tussle between him and Sachin Pilot resurfaced last month, the Congress veteran has used harsh words against his former deputy, once even referring to him as 'nikamma' or useless. But Gehlot said he will do whatever the Congress leadership wants. He said the party trusted him and he has been a Union minister, AICC general secretary, state unit president and chief minister for a third time. What else do I want? I am doing this to serve the public, he told reporters in Jaisalmer. The chief minister was on his way back to Jaipur after an overnight stay at Jaisalmer's Suryagarh resort, where loyalist MLAs have been shifted ahead of the assembly session from August 14. The Congress has accused the BJP of playing a major role in the rebellion by the now sacked deputy chief minister and 18 other Congress MLAs who are threatening his government. We have no personal quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government. Modi should get the drama which is going on in Rajasthan ended, the chief minister said outside the hotel where the MLAs were shifted Friday. Gehlot said Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat should resign on moral grounds, claiming that his involvement in a conspiracy to topple the Rajasthan government is now known. He said Shekhawat's name also cropped up in a cooperative society scam in which money from poor people was looted. The chief minister also alleged that some other Union ministers, including Dharmendra Pradhan, are involved in the conspiracy against his government. Gehlot and other Rajasthan ministers are likely to spend most of their time in the state capital as the Congress tries to keep its numbers intact in Jaisalmer. Including the 19 rebels, the Congress has 107 MLAs in the 200-member assembly. The BJP has 72 MLAs. He claimed that democracy is under threat in the country and the Union Home Ministry is after his government in the state. He repeated the charge that the 'rate' for trying to lure MLAs away has gone up after the announcement of the assembly session. Back in Jaipur, he said Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati is giving statements under pressure and asserted that all six BSP MLAs lawfully merged with the Congress in Rajasthan last year. The BSP recently challenged the merger in the high court, prompting the Congress to charge that the party made the move at the behest of the BJP. Reacting to BJP state president Satish Poonia's statement over the shifting of Congress MLAs to Jaisalmer, Gehlot called him a new leader who wants to take on former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. He commented that Raje has 'disappeared' from the scene. Poonia had mocked the Congress, asking if the Gehlot loyalists will move further westward across the border into Pakistan. MLAs from the Congress and its allies had remained confined to Fairmont hotel in Jaipur since July 13, before being flown Friday to Jaisalmer on chartered flights. By Express News Service LUCKNOW: While sprucing up the security to the highest level in the wake of the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other dignitaries to Ayodhya for Bhoomi Pujan ceremony on August 5, Special Protection Group (SPG) arrived in the temple town on Saturday. UP police have decided to deploy around 4,000 COVID-19 negative cops below 45 years of age during PMs visit in Ayodhya. Moreover, a special team of health and sanitary officials also reached Ayodhya on Saturday to ensure the arrangement for the ceremony in compliance with COVID-19 protocol. Notably, a priest and 16 cops deployed on Ram Janmabhoomi premises were found positive for the deadly coronavirus on Thursday. As per the highly-placed sources, the SPG was set to throw a thick blanket of security in the entire temple town restricting the movement of people in the wake of the VVIP visit. All the senior-most officials of UP police and administration including the DGP and Chief Secretary were in Ayodhya to review the security and other arrangements. As per the decision taken at the highest level, only COVID-19 negative police personnel below 45 years of age will be deployed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other VVIPs visit to Ayodhya. According to UP DGP Hitesh Chandra Awasthi, the decision was made in a meeting held to review the security arrangements in Ayodhya. As per the DGP, the inner-most security ring will be handled by SPG. However, the police personnel, who have tested negative for the infection as well as those kept in reserve in complete isolation would preferably be deployed closer to the inner security ring of the PM. The DGP claimed that the process of testing cops at police stations and reserve police lines had been going on for the past few weeks. As per the sources, over 4,000 police personnel across Ayodhya district would be deployed for security and management of people's movement. Over 300 police personnel, who were younger and had tested negative for COVID-19 infection, were handpicked for VVIP security. Around 10 companies of the provincial armed constabulary (PAC) and the Central armed police force (CAPF) will also be deployed. The security arrangements will include sealing the district borders and curbing traffic movement. Over 75 barriers will be installed inside the town area. The entire Panch Kosi parikrama area (the five-kilometre radius of the Ram Janmabhoomi) will be sealed. Total restrictions will be enforced on roads entering Ayodhya town. According to UP DGP, the security was also tightened in the nine districts adjoining Ayodhya. Special alert has been sounded in adjoining Basti division which shares its border with Ayodhya and Nepal. IG Anil Kumar reviewed all the arrangements and issued an appeal to the people of Basti not to go to Ayodhya on August 5. Vigilance on border areas and across the waterways was increased to the highest level. The boundaries of Ayodhya would be completely sealed from August 4, said the senior police officials. Besides the team of health officials, over half a dozen special sanitization teams from Lucknow have already reached Ayodhya to start sanitization of the Ram Janmabhoomi premises on a daily basis till August 5. It's a milestone the country was never supposed to reach. First, there were the reassurances: "Like a miracle, it will disappear," the president promised months ago. And then came the shutdowns, with calls for a coherent national strategy and optimistic projected death tolls. But the divine has not intervened. The shutdowns were lifted, the warnings ignored and the predictions surpassed. And now, the novel coronavirus has officially killed more than 150,000 people in the United States, according to data gathered by The Washington Post. While the disease continues to kill the oldest with impunity, other disturbing trends have emerged. Among them: Hispanics make up an increasing proportion of covid-19 deaths. More than 25,800 have been struck down by the merciless pathogen, which now accounts for 1 out of every 5 deaths among Hispanics, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by The Post. America's death count reached six figures just after Memorial Day. In the summer weeks that followed, leaders who triumphantly reopened their states reversed course as coronavirus infections soared among their residents. Instead of jump-starting the economy, the restart fueled the virus's spread. The national fatality rate, on the decline for most of June, began rising steadily in July, and scenes from the pandemic's darkest days - the overwhelmed hospitals and overflowing morgues of New York City - were reenacted in states across the South and West. The contours of the crisis have not changed much: The virus has continued to deepen the country's divides and exploit its systemic inequities. The willingness to wear a mask, perhaps the most basic precaution, varies widely by political affiliation. And those hurt most by the rampant spread are still overwhelmingly elderly and disproportionately people of color. New numbers published recently by the CDC present one of the most complete pictures yet of the pandemic's evolving impact and shifting burden. When the virus first swept across the country, it devastated Black communities, killing African Americans at a disproportionately high rate in nearly every jurisdiction that published race data. In recent weeks, Hispanics and Native Americans have made up an increasing proportion of covid-19 deaths. The disease now accounts for nearly 20% of all deaths among those groups, higher than any other race or ethnicity in recent weeks, according to a Post analysis of the CDC data. Both in hot-spot states, and in states where the total number of deaths has decreased, Hispanics make up an increasing share of those deaths - a signal that the pandemic's shifting demographics are not due to its shifting geography. The death rate among Native Americans, meanwhile, has stayed somewhat consistent, even as it declines for other groups. States have reported an average of more than 1,000 virus-related deaths per day this week, the highest rate since late May, and experts say the toll is likely to increase rapidly. "We're playing with fire and gasoline and pine needles, and it could very well explode in our face, and I'm very concerned it will without serious and concerted action," said Howard Markel, a historian and physician at the University of Michigan. "I fear that we are headed, given the way it's being handled, to the worst contagious crisis in human history." Official government tallies tell only part of the story. The true toll probably exceeded 150,000 weeks ago. Epidemiologists say the country's shoddy testing infrastructure has allowed virus fatalities to go undiagnosed. Also, the pandemic's far-reaching effect on the health-care system has almost certainly contributed indirectly to many more deaths - in people afraid to seek medical care for other maladies, for example. Some fear the growing toll will have a numbing effect on Americans' psyches. "At some point, the numbers get so big that they lose their impact," said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "I worry as we continue to mark these milestones that they just become numbers, and they stop really resonating with us as deaths." In the pandemic's first few months, deadly outbreaks in New York, along with surges in other cities in the Northeast and Midwest, fueled the country's toll. In mid-April, New York state reported more than 1,000 deaths in a single day three times, accounting for nearly half of all deaths nationally. But now the virus is entrenched in the Sun Belt. Texas, Florida, California, Arizona and South Carolina have recorded the most average daily deaths in the past week. Mississippi and Louisiana have also seen sharp upticks in their numbers of fatalities per capita. And in many of these places, where the Hispanic share of the population is far higher than the national average, the coronavirus's shifting demographic impact is most acute. In Florida, California and Arizona, Hispanics consistently made up a disproportionate share of covid-19 deaths in June and early July. The disparity may be persisting, but CDC data lags state statistics, and the agency's most recent numbers were not complete enough to include in the analysis. (The federal data about age and gender among covid-19 deaths were not broken down at the state level over time, so those demographic factors were not included in the analysis.) In California, Hispanics account for 39% of the state population, but 46% of all virus deaths and 57% of virus deaths reported in the last week of June. In Texas, where Hispanics are 40% of the population, they account for an approximately proportional share of all virus deaths. In the last week of June, however, they made up 57% of the deaths. Poor data reporting, which initially masked the disease's disproportionate burden on Black communities, has continued to hinder researchers trying to study consequences for Hispanics. A recent report, however, links long-standing inequality to the surges in Hispanic infections and deaths. Crowded housing, exposure to air pollution and jobs in the meatpacking industry, which President Donald Trump declared were "essential," put Latinos at a particularly high risk for coronavirus infection and death, said Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, a George Washington University professor who is the lead author of a recent paper published by the journal Annals of Epidemiology. Rodriguez-Diaz and his team found that, in most parts of the country, counties where more Latinos live saw more cases and deaths - especially in the Midwest, home to most of the nation's meat-processing plants, many of which hire large numbers of Latino migrants. The researchers called for Medicaid expansion to address disparate access to health care and for better outreach, testing and infectious-disease surveillance to serve the diverse experiences of the country's Latino communities. In Arizona's Maricopa County, where almost a third of residents are Hispanic, the virus has killed more than 2,000 people. Bertha Esteban Diego, a 25-year-old from Mesa, was one of them. She died June 2 while giving birth to her second son, about two weeks after she was diagnosed with the virus. She and Gaspar Santiago were planning their church wedding. Instead, the couple's friends raised money for a funeral. Santiago told a local TV station that his family's story is an example of the danger the virus poses to Latino communities. "We say, 'This is not real, it won't happen to me,'" Santiago said in an interview with ABC15. "But you say that because you haven't lived it. This is a difficult disease. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone." Arizona and neighboring New Mexico also have seen alarmingly disproportionate deaths among Native Americans. In Arizona, Native Americans account for just 4% of the population, but triple that share of virus deaths. And in New Mexico, where Native Americans are 9% of the population, they make up 75%, of the state's deaths. The Navajo Nation, which straddles both states, has reported 453 covid-19 fatalities. Adjusted for population, Navajo Nation has seen more virus deaths than any U.S. state. Experts disagree about exactly how the pandemic will end, but most are united on at least one point: The country and its leaders can still influence whether - or when - another milestone is reached. "I don't want people to lose sight of the fact that this is preventable and we can change course," said Rivers, the epidemiologist. "This month counts, and the next month and the month after. I do see a lot of missed opportunities behind us that I mourn, but there is always time to make a change and chart a better course." One influential and oft-cited mathematical model has projected some such scenarios. At its current pace, the United States will surpass 219,000 deaths by November, says the forecast from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The model assumes that most schools will reopen in the fall and that state leaders will resume social distancing mandates once their local death tolls reach a certain threshold. But the model also predicts an alternate future, one in which at least 95% of people wear masks in public. In that scenario, more than 33,000 lives could be saved in the next three months. "A lot of things in our control," said Christopher Murray, the institute's director. "It's clear the two big drivers here are what people do and what governments do to encourage peoples' behavior change." Another forecast, from the University of Texas at Austin, projects an escalating death toll through Aug. 20, at which point it predicts the number of daily fatalities will top 3,000, a mark that would be record-setting. "We didn't have to go from 100,000 to 150,000 as fast as this has happened. I think it's been a real learning experience and maybe a wake-up call for the United States," said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a biology professor at the university and an architect of its U.S. covid-19 model. "I am hopeful that more of the American public have become amateur epidemiologists and really understand the impact of their individual choices on how many people die of this virus." The group's model, Meyers said, is based on past behaviors. It doesn't project further than three weeks because researchers cannot predict how the public will act. "The question is not so much what can we do about the number of people who will die in three weeks, but what we can do about the people who will die in four weeks," she said. "That's who our behavior today impacts." In interviews, leading public health experts were baffled that, after 150,000 lives lost, there is still seemingly no national plan. "These numbers will continue to accelerate. Our nation is in free fall right now with no federal plan," said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University. "The plan is for states to be in the lead. That was a failed strategy from the beginning. States never had epidemiological horsepower to understand how severe the problem could get and what the interventions needed to be. This was all predicted and predictable." The pandemic is so destabilizing, Hotez argued, that the best way to think about it is as a homeland security threat. He recently published an editorial in the journal Microbes and Infection urging a simple approach: The country should set a containment goal - one new case daily per 1 million residents, say - and impose stay-at-home orders until it's reached. At that point, he wrote, contact tracing would be possible and officials could stamp out any remaining infections. But Hotez sees an unwillingness to advance such a plan from both political parties, and he worries that Democrats are more focused on defeating Trump and inaugurating a President Joe Biden in the new year. "That won't work," he said. "If we wait until January 2021, we're not going to have a country by then at this rate of acceleration." Many experts fear the situation will only get worse in the fall, and they said three factors could influence the severity: colder weather driving more people indoors, where the virus has shown special vigor, a possible flu outbreak that could put even more strain on hospitals and, most pressing, the new school year. Schools are a vital part of every community in the country, the experts said, and they will play a crucial role in students' development and states' economic restarts, but some are worried the facilities will become virus hubs when in-person learning resumes. The coronavirus has spread with brutal efficiency in close, congregate settings, such as nursing homes, prisons and cruise ships. Schools, especially those with cramped classrooms, share some of the same risk factors. "There's no scenario here where everyone wins and everyone is protected," said Tara Smith, a professor of public health at Kent State University. "It's the elephant in the room right now, and unfortunately we have no good guidance at the federal level. It's every school for themselves." The prospect of an effective vaccine remains the biggest cause for hope, but one is unlikely to make it to market in the next year - despite the Trump administration's aspirations, said Hotez, who as director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital is researching coronavirus vaccines. "We're not going to vaccinate our way out of this mess - at least not any time soon," he said. "Waiting around for a vaccine is a false hope and one guaranteed to fail." When the pandemic finally does subside, Smith said, it's likely to be "with a whimper." There'll be no clear-cut end, she said, like the conclusion of a recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Instead, the coronavirus will eventually become endemic, she predicted - more nuisance than nightmare, thanks to vaccines, other treatments and enough immunity in the population. But that could take years. "I fear we're going to hit a lot more of these milestones," Smith said. "I don't see this burning out any time soon." - - - Data on deaths by region comes from The Washington Post's coronavirus tracker. Death data by jurisdiction, race and Hispanic origin comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. The analysis using the Post's tracking data includes Feb. 29 to July 25. NCHS data are collected at a lag and recent weeks are likely to be incomplete, so The Post's analysis only used deaths recorded through July 4. The analysis used provisional counts, which weight results to account for potential underreporting. The Washington Post's Jacqueline Dupree contributed to this report. Business Roundup The Irrawaddy Business Roundup -- This week, Myanmar unveiled two new large infrastructure projects: a special economic zone (SEZ) for Mon State and an industrial park in western Yangon. The Myanmar government also gave the green light for the film production industry to reopen under COVID-19 guidelines, though cinemas will still remain closed for at least the next three weeks due to concerns about the spread of the disease. The Parliament also approved major loans from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the countrys COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan (CERP) and an expressway that is a part of a regional highway project. The Yangon government approved an investment in beans and rice worth US$1.76 million. The countrys health and sport minister also said Tuesday that Myanmar does not need to be afraid of the pandemic if everyone in the country would strictly follow COVID-19 guidelines. Two major new infrastructure projects for Myanmar On Wednesday, Myanmar unveiled two major new infrastructure projects during the Myanmar-Japan Investment Dialogue Forum, according to the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Economic Relations (MIFER). The Myanmar government announced a special economic zone (SEZ) to be built in Mon State and an industrial park to be built in western Yangon. MIFER head U Thaung Tun said the SEZ in Mon State will be bigger and better connected than any other SEZ in Myanmar. Myanmar currently has three SEZs under development: Thilawa SEZ near Yangon, Dawei SEZ in Tanintharyi Region and Kyaukphyu SEZ in Rakhine State. The new SEZ will connect the Indian and Pacific oceans, linking Thilawa SEZ to Da Nang in Vietnam via the Greater Mekong Sub-Region East-West Economic Corridor. Deputy Minister of Planning, Finance and Industry U Set Aung said that the government has selected an international advisory body to help find a company to invest in the construction of the Western Yangon Industrial Park. He added that the government would select the investors through an open and transparent Swiss Challenge tender process. Around 1,000 Japanese businesspeople attended the virtual forum this week, along with Japans state minister of economy, the Japanese ambassador to Myanmar and the chair of the Japan External Trade Organization. Parliament approves ADB loan for COVID-19 relief On Wednesday, the Myanmar Parliament approved a US$250 million loan from the ADB to support the CERP. In early July, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said the government will create a fund of 500 billion kyats (US$366.7 million) to assist garment manufacturers, tourism businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have been impacted by COVID-19. The new loan will be used to provide social support for low-income households and to enhance the healthcare system to help with prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19. The Ministry of Planning, Finance and Industry said the loan will also support locally-owned SMEs. Parliament approves ADB loan for Bago-Kyaikto expressway The Parliament also approved a US$483.8 million loan from the ADB and a 27.8 billion yen (US$264 million) loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the Bago-Kyaikto expressway project, which is part of the Greater Mekong Sub-region Highway Modernization Project. The Parliament approved the loan proposal for the expressway projects with 336 out of 552 lawmakers voting in favor. Deputy Minister of Construction U Kyaw Linn said in Parliament that the expressway project will be part of the East-West Economic Corridor, which will stretch from Da Nang, Vietnam to Yangons Thilawa SEZ. Investments approved in Yangon and Bago This week, the Yangon regional government approved a local investment worth 2,400 million kyats (US$1.76 million), according to the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA). DICA said the investment focuses on rice and beans and that it will create job opportunities for more than 80 people. The Bago regional government also approved extensions of five existing investments worth US$8 million and 680 million kyats (US$498,772). The Bago government said they expect the further investments will create almost 1,000 jobs. You may also like these stories: Myanmar Takes US$250 M Loan from ADB for COVID-19 Relief Myanmar Approves $171m ADB Loan for Rural Electrification Irrawaddy Business Roundup Flagging: Donald Trumps suggestion the election should be delayed could not be ignored even by Republicans. Photo: Tom Brenner/Reuters President Donald Trump's pattern is now familiar: he makes a stunning assertion, on Twitter or impromptu. The head scratching begins. Was he serious? Was he trying to distract from other negative news? Allies are left to shrug their shoulders and brush off his remarks. Some regularly claim to have not read or heard them. A public numbness sets in, to the point that even Mr Trump's most ardent political opponents have difficulty summoning outrage. But this week the president offered a statement that stood out, even among many that have put Mr Trump's branding iron on the office. His standing with the public flagging amid myriad crises, Mr Trump floated on Twitter the prospect of delaying the November 3 election - a suggestion more in line with autocrats who try to quash the public's ability to vote than with the head of the world's leading democracy. It was a tweet that mattered, and couldn't be ignored, even by many Republicans who have long given him a pass. It mattered because it amounted to a stunning attack on the underpinnings of American democracy - on the notion that a nation that has held free and fair elections in the midst of wars, pandemics and the Great Depression might not be capable of doing so when it's Donald Trump's political career that is on the line. President Trump does not appear to have the same attachment to the tenets of American democracy as his predecessors. He has repeatedly put stress on the nation's institutions, prompting an obstruction of justice investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and impeachment by the House of Representatives for seeking a foreign government's help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden, now his Democratic opponent in the November election. In 2020, he has aggressively turned his attention to the electoral process that will determine his political fate. He's repeatedly raised unfounded accusations of fraud, particularly related to the uptick in mail-in voting that is expected due to safety fears during the COVID-19 pandemic. He's also refused to say whether he would accept the outcome of the election, saying it's too soon to give an ironclad guarantee. Mr Trump made similar statements as a candidate in 2016, and has also flirted with election fraud conspiracy theories as a private citizen. The fear among Democrats and many elections experts in 2020, however, has been that he would wield the power of his office to affect the outcome of the election or Americans' ability to vote - particularly if he thought he might be heading for defeat. In reality, Mr Trump doesn't have the ability to delay the election on his own. Changing the date would require approval from Congress - something Republican lawmakers made clear they would not support. Events on the other side of the world offered a cautionary tale. The day after Mr Trump floated a delay in the US election, Hong Kong's government announced that it would postpone September elections for a year, blaming the coronavirus pandemic. But the move was seen as a way to sideline pro-democracy politicians. The White House condemned the move. Nothing in the Constitution gives President Donald Trump the power to delay the November election, and even fellow Republicans dismissed it out of hand when he broached it Thursday. But that was not the point. With a possible defeat looming, the point was to tell Americans that they should not trust their own democracy. The idea of putting off the vote was the culmination of months of discrediting an election that polls suggest Trump is currently losing by a wide margin. He has repeatedly predicted "RIGGED ELECTIONS" and a "substantially fraudulent" vote and "the most corrupt election in the history of our country," all based on false, unfounded or exaggerated claims. It is the kind of language resonant of conspiracy theorists, cranks and defeated candidates, not an incumbent living in the White House. Never before has a sitting U.S. president sought to undermine public faith in the election system the way that Trump has. He has refused to commit to respecting the results and, even after his election-delay trial balloon was panned by Republican allies, he raised the specter Thursday evening of months of lawsuits challenging the outcome. Trump has put on the line not merely the outcome of this fall's contest but also the credibility of the system as a whole, according to even scholars and operatives normally sympathetic to the president. Just floating the possibility of postponing a presidential election, an idea anathema in America and reminiscent of authoritarian countries without the rule of law, risks eroding the most important ingredient in a democracy the belief by most Americans that, whatever its manifest flaws, the election result will be fundamentally fair. "It undermines the faith of the public in our electoral process," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who testified on Trump's side last year during the House impeachment hearings. "Any constitutional system is ultimately held together by a leap of faith. Citizens must trust the process if you want them to yield to it. What the president is doing is seeding distrust about the legitimacy of even the holding of the election." Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional scholar at the University of North Carolina who testified on the other side in those hearings, said Trump's statements were part of a pattern of disdain for the norms that have defined the United States for generations. "In the long term, I think there's going to be a lot of institutional damage," he said, "and the rule of law is going to be undermined to a very large extent." Even some of Trump's own current and former advisers see his attacks on the election system as a reflection of fear that he may lose and as a transparent effort to create a narrative to explain that away. Sam Nunberg, an adviser on Trump's 2016 campaign, said the president was "trying to get ahead of a potential loss" by blaming it on external factors like the coronavirus. "What President Trump does not seem to understand is that unlike past experiences where he was able to frame a defeat as a win, there is no spin for losing a reelection as an incumbent president and taking down the Republican Party with him," Nunberg said. "Despite what he may believe, even the overwhelming majority of the president's supporters are not interested in this claptrap." He added: "Republican voters and conservative media will ultimately feel that if you cannot beat Joe Biden, you do not deserve another term." As recently as April, a Republican National Committee official said former Vice President Joe Biden was "off his rocker" to suggest that Trump might seek to "kick back the election somehow." But in fact, Trump has a long history of sowing doubt in election results that do not go the way he wants them to go. When he appeared to be losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016, he repeatedly suggested that the election was being rigged and would not commit to accepting the results until he won, that is. And even after winning the Electoral College, he insisted that he had actually won the popular vote, too, because 3 million illegal immigrants had supposedly voted for Clinton, a claim seemingly made up out of thin air and one for which his own commission found no evidence. In 2020 alone, Trump has already made public comments, posted Twitter messages or reposted others suggesting election fraud 91 times, according to data compiled for The New Yorker by Factba.se, a service that collects and analyzes data on his presidency. Going back to 2012, Factba.se counted 713 instances when Trump cited vote fraud, spiking especially in 2016 and 2018 before elections in which he had a stake. Some of Trump's allies have said that he has justifiable reasons to raise concerns about widespread mail-in voting being employed in light of the coronavirus pandemic, even though there is a long history of its use without evidence of widespread fraud. And they accuse the Democrats of being the ones unwilling to accept election results when they lose, pointing to the yearslong effort to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and any ties to Trump's organization. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. In an interview last year with CBS News, Clinton made clear that she considered Trump's election shady. "I believe he knows he's an illegitimate president," she said. She is hardly the only defeated candidate to see injustice in her loss. Going back to the early days of the republic, questions have been raised about the legitimacy of presidential victories from those on the losing side. But the complaints do not typically come from the Oval Office, especially before an election has even been held. And no sitting president has made a serious effort to delay his own reelection, not even Abraham Lincoln in 1864 during the Civil War or Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 during World War II. Elections were held as scheduled during the pandemics of 1918 and 1968, as well. Ronald C. White, a prominent Lincoln biographer, noted that the 16th president did not try to postpone the election even though he thought he was likely to lose. Instead, he made it possible for soldiers in the field to cast their ballots, recognizing that they might support their former general, George B. McClellan, who was his Democratic challenger. "Even as the pandemic, economic collapse and racial protests have Trump calling himself a wartime president, the real wartime president, Lincoln, determined that the election of 1864 must go forward as a sign that the Union would go forward," White said. Jill Lepore, a Harvard University professor and the author of "These Truths: A History of the United States," said presidents bear a responsibility to foster faith in democracy. "Far from undermining public confidence in the democracy over which he presides, it is the obligation of every president to cultivate that confidence by guaranteeing voting rights, by condemning foreign interference in American political campaigns, by promoting free, safe and secure elections, and by abiding by their outcome," she said. Trump has for years been drawn to leaders of other countries who did not share that view, especially autocrats like Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Xi Jinping of China. He has expressed admiration for their leadership and envy that in their systems they can be decisive without impediments while avoiding criticism of their crackdowns on internal dissent. For Americans who have made it their mission to encourage free and fair elections in countries like those and elsewhere, Trump's suggestion to delay the November vote and his drumbeat of criticism leading up to it sounded like what they confront abroad, not at home "I have never seen such an effort to sow distrust in our elections," said Michael J. Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, a nonpartisan organization that promotes democracy around the world. "We are used to seeing this kind of behavior from authoritarians around the globe, but it is particularly disturbing coming from the president of the United States." Chinas top leadership led by President Xi Jinping on Saturday hailed the continuous development of Sino-Nepal friendship, saying Beijing has always treated Kathmandu as an equal in the backdrop of New Delhis disquiet about its smaller south Asian neighbours increasingly snug ties with the middle kingdom. Exchanging congratulatory messages with Nepalese counterpart Bidhya Devi Bhandari on the 65th year anniversary of establishing bilateral ties, Xi said China will work with Nepal to push for continued advancement of the bilateral relationship. Also Read: Be more like Pakistan, China tells Afghanistan and Nepal at four-country meet Xi, according to a statement published in official media on Saturday morning, said the two countries have always respected each other, treated each other as equals, enhanced political mutual trust and deepened mutually beneficial cooperation. Xi said the two sides have stuck together through thick and thin and stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight against the Covid-19 outbreak and have written a new chapter of friendship between China and Nepal. In her message, Bhandari echoed Beijings and President Xis -- often publicised rhetoric on international cooperation. Also Read: Nepal bought 6 Chinese planes that Dhaka rejected. Now it grounds them: Report Nepal welcomes the China-proposed vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind and actively participates in the cooperation on the co-building of the Belt and Road, she said. Separately, Premier Li Keqiang talked about enhanced mutual trust and friendship between China and Nepal with his counterpart, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. China is willing to work with Nepal to strengthen all-round cooperation in various fields and high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road Inititiave, and lift bilateral relations to new levels, Li said. Oli, in his congratulatory message, said that since the establishment of diplomatic ties, bilateral relations have seen a sustained, stable and sound development. The exchange of gushing pleasantries between Nepal and China comes amid Kathmandu finding itself right in the middle of the broader Sino-India rivalry in the region. In June, Nepal revised map of the country, including three areas it disputes with India within its own boundary. The two countries dispute the Lipulekh pass, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura areas at the India-Nepal border. Defence minister Rajnath Singh had recently opened the 80-km road that ends at Lipulekh Pass. It was built so that pilgrims going to Kailash-Mansarovar can avoid dangerous high-altitude routes through Sikkim and Nepal. The understanding in New Delhi is that Kathmandus new belligerence over an old dispute was at the tacit behest of China. Indian Army chief Gen. MM Naravane had remarked that Kathmandu was objecting to the newly built road by India near the disputed area at the behest of someone else. In June, a politically embattled Oli had alleged that India was conspiring with his political rivals to throw him out of power. Oli stoked another controversy recently by claiming that the real Ayodhya is not in India but in Nepal. Last Monday, in its latest effort to strengthen partnership with south Asian countries, China urged Nepal besides Pakistan and Afghanistan to carry a four-party cooperation in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and continue to build projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) including the China-Pakistan economic corridor (CPEC) and the trans-Himalayan multi-dimensional connectivity project with Kathmandu. Kaduna ram sellers, during the week, decried the low turnout of buyers in this years Eid-el- Kabir festivities. Eid-Ed Kabir is marked with the slaughter of rams to mark the day of Eid, which is a day after Arafat. It is celebrated on the 10 of Zul-Hajj, which is July 31, this year. Low patronage Our reporter visited the Yan Awaki ram market, Kawo, Kaduna. There, many ram sellers told PREMIUM TIMES this years patroage was low. They attributed the low patronage to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can see what is going here. Look at the market, there are plenty of rams but few buyers. Many sellers are here with their rams and no buyers. I have a customer that normally buys at least four rams every year but this year he only bought two. He almost settled for one, one of the traders captured the mood of most interviewed by the reporter. Most sellers were hopeful that in the days leading up to Friday, the day of the sacrifice, more people would buy rams. Many sellers complained that most of them travelled long distances to bring the rams. For every ram, I bought and transported from Jigawa State, it cost me N1000 naira. I brought 20 rams, I sold nine. Taking the rest back means spending the money I sold the nine rams to transport them back. Instead, I will have no option than to sell them at takeaway prices so I can just go, said Alkali Sabo. How pandemic affected ram sales in Kaduna A buyer, Mohammed Sani, said he waited until Sallah day to avoid the rush and price increase. I came today so I can buy a good ram at a cheaper price. Thank God, I got one that is good for N30,000. The said ram goes for over N40,000 before today yet there are plenty rams as you can see and no buyers, he said. Zango Also, a visit to the Zango Market, Tudun Wada, Kaduna, revealed the same tale of despondency. Umaru Mai Rago, a ram seller is, however, optimistic that many of his rams will be sold before the next two days of the Layyah rites elapses. Some people are scared the rams could be expensive because of the Sallah rush. Now people are coming around to buy. But one has to sell them cheaper than yesterday, he said. Some residents who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES blamed the pandemic for the downturn. Many people could not go about their businesses. Some people were retrenched, some could not get salaries for months, some only received half salaries. How can you buy ram? Foodstuff is also very expensive. So many settled for food instead. We thank Allah that we are alive to witness this years Eid, that is the most important thing, Alhaji Kasimu, a resident of Malali, told PREMIUM TIMES. Eid Prayers Meanwhile, following the lifting of restriction on Eid prayers by the Kaduna government, thousands of worshipers trooped to the eid praying grounds in Kaduna metropolis to observe the two rakaat prayers. How pandemic affected ram sales in Kaduna Most worshippers adhered to the COVID-19 health rules. Advertisements PREMIUM TIMES, however, observed that most worshipers outside the mosque premises did not observe the health protocol as issued. They prayed without face marks and there was no social distancing. Kaduna ranks seven among states with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria. According to NCDC, the state has recorded more than 1000 cases of COVID-19. Digvijaya Singh on BJP MLA's call to break legs of Congressmen: I'll go to his house to recite Ramdhun Construction of Ram temple is coming with the consent of all: Kamal Nath India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P Bhopal, Aug 01: Ram temple is being constructed in Ayodhya with the consent of every Indian, Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath said on Saturday, four days ahead of the foundation laying ceremony. Nath's colleague Digvijaya Singh said former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi also wanted the temple to come up. In a video message, Nath said, "I welcome the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. People of the country were expecting and wishing for this since long. The construction of the temple is being carried out with the consent of every Indian. It's possible only in India." Ram temple in Ayodhya to be grander than planned earlier: Architect Singh said Lord Ram is at the centre of everybody's faith. "The centre of our faith is Lord Ram!And today, the country is being run with trust in the Lord Ram. That's why we all wish that a grand temple should be built at the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya. (late PM) Rajiv Gandhiji also wanted the same," he tweeted. US to ban Tik Tok?| India's Covid-19 cases spike in July & more news | Oneindia news Singh, however, questionned "muhurt" (auspicious time) for the ground breaking ceremony for the construction of temple, slated to be held on August 5 in the likely presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ram Mandir Trust to distribute Bikaneri Laddoos to foreign embassies in Delhi on Aug 5 "If we talk about 'muhurt', then more than 90 per cent of Hindus in this country will be those who believe in religious science like 'muhurt', 'grihdasha', 'astrology', 'choghadiya' etc. (sic)," he said. "I am neutral to the fact that there is no 'muhurt' for the foundation laying on August 5. This is playing with the religious sentiments and beliefs (sic)," the Congress leader said. When asked about Singh's tweets, MP Home Minister and senior BJP leader Narottam Mishra said, "Some people have a habit of criticising, and whenever they speak, they seek to find evil in the good. (Unknowingly) even in their criticism, they have at least taken the name of Lord Ram". According to government data, there were 3,246 landslide events between 1971 and 2016 in Nepal. Thousands of people lost their lives and many roads and bridges were damaged. In 2014, a major landslide occurred in a densely populated area (Jure of Sindhupalchok), around 80 km northeast of Kathmandu. With 156 human casualties, it was one of the deadliest landslides in Nepals history. A case study was carried out on this deadliest landslide, and the report shows the loss of soil or land was experienced by many respondents (79%) and it led to the most severe losses and damages in monetary terms. The average cost amounted to more than $26,000 per affected household. The Baisari landslide in Myagdi, triggered by the Gorkha earthquake, was also one of the deadliest landslides in Nepal and its total loss was calculated at Rs 42 million. This year alone, by July 15, 116 fatalities, 50 disappearances, and 138 injured cases have been reported in landslides across Nepal. Civil engineering is all about construction, transportation, and development. While constructing roads for transportation, it is mandatory to have access by blasting or excavation. If there is no geological fault, and the slope is stable, the construction work will be sustainable for decades. Engineers must study aspects like slope, geological fault, hydrology, and slope saturation. This study should be done to assure safety during and after civil construction works. Mainly, we can face a landslide while or after the construction of different civil structures in the hilly and Himalayan regions. If the construction is done in the faulty zone, the construction site is more vulnerable to landslides. For example, sometimes, while fixing and constructing a road alignment, a road passes some of these large-scale palaeo-landslides. The road sections are critical in that road alignment but more vulnerable in the southern slope of the Himalaya. If possible, the alignment has to be changed, but sometimes it needs to be constructed in the unstable slope by following some engineering measures. While blasting in the hilly and Himalayan regions, and while doing construction works in the unstable zone, we may encounter landslides in the future. Road construction in the hilly region is always a difficult task because of having clayey soil and steep topography. Also, it is difficult to construct a road across the Himalaya region, because of fragile and rugged topography. Unfortunately, our countrys topography forced us to resort to the construction of different highways in both topographies. When highways are constructed, people who used to live in the valleys and the Himalayas start living along those roads. However, people have forgotten the influence of mass movement that occurred in the past in places like Siddhababa, Krishnabhir, and Sindhupalchok, etc. The road from Beni to Larjung of Kaligandaki also has a critical slope and susceptible to landslide occurrence. The major problem identified is the lack of physical information about soil characteristics, water table, pore-water pressure. This information is crucial for planning early warning systems in vulnerable areas. The lack of monitoring is also a greater problem. There is no monitoring system in the country. Moreover, the government body for monitoring is not quite effective. Many gabion walls were constructed earlier, and they are getting weaker nowadays and easily get destroyed by the moving mass in the monsoon. Instead, we must have a good practice of slope modification and construction of retaining walls with bio-engineering. Landslide susceptibility assessments have been carried out in Nepal, using direct geomorphological mapping, heuristic, and statistical approaches. Some researchers have used various methods to quantify the hazards in terms of safety. Studies have also been carried out to determine the influence of the construction of a new and extensive network of rural roads that are being connected to the national highways, and are found to be at an even greater risk of landslides. Landslide remedial measures are arranged in four practice groups, namely: drainage, retaining structures, modification of slope geometry, and internal slope reinforcement. For a reliable design of the remedial measures, an effective tool is back analysis of failed slopes, while advanced numerical methods are nowadays frequently used to design safe and cost-effective landslide remedial measures. The selection of an appropriate remedial measure depends on engineering feasibility, economic feasibility, legal/regulatory conformity, social acceptability, and environmental acceptability. Civil engineers and geotechnical engineers carry out different analyses for the predictionvulnerable area detectionand detection of a landslide with the help of remote sensing. Recognition of potential landslide areas can have a positive impact on landslide management. Slope stability analysis is carried out to know the stability of the slopes. Clearing the current landslides and preventing the pending landslides are the works that engineers should focus on. Technically, preventing the landslide means the addition of resisting forces and removal of the driving forces. Researches also propose installing a monitoring system in the areas and getting detailed information on geo-hazards in the area to overcome future risk. As done in the Niigata prefecture of Japan, survey stations should be established for accurate determination of ground surface. A proper warning system can be created by establishing those survey stations. At active or exposed areas, plantation of appropriate species should be done as they grow in a rocky base. In the steeper areas, civil constructions are quite complex. So, bioengineering is also preferred in some cases. Moreover, the dead load of civil construction will not be added if bioengineering is chosen. Some other solutions can be geogrid (two-dimensional polymer material for erosion control that ensures supplement soil stress), expansive anchor bolt, check dam, netting, wattle fence, gabion check dam, and so on. Dhakal is a civil engineering student at Kathmandu University. Your tax-deductible gift today powers our reporters and keeps us independent. We rely on you, our reader, not paywalls to stay funded because we believe important news and information should be freely accessible to all. The sight of an officer holding his knee on George Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes until he died from asphyxiation triggered nationwide protests in 2020. L.A. was one of the epicenters of the reawakened Black Lives Matter movement, with daily protests across the city, county, and surrounding areas. It wasn't the first time there was national outrage about a Black American being killed by police (see: Stephon Clark, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, the list goes on). But it was the first time that the talk of police reform moved beyond incremental steps to include widespread, mainstream discussions about foundational change. Suddenly, officials were talking about ideas once considered beyond the pale like defunding police departments and ending qualified immunity for officers. And the talk of reform wasn't limited to police and sheriff's departments. Activists also sought dramatic changes in L.A.'s District Attorney's office, Probation Department, and jail system. These are complicated issues. In this guide, we'll break down some of the forces at work, explain how policing in L.A. functions, and arm you with the tools and facts to make your own informed decisions. The LAPD's Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. (Andrew Cullen / For LAist) The Scope The first thing to know: There's a lot to learn about the many, many law enforcement agencies operating in L.A. County. There's LAPD and LASD, but also more than 70 smaller police departments. Long Beach, Santa Monica, Inglewood, and Pasadena are among the cities that have their own police agencies. Cal State University schools have their own. Also UCLA. And then there's the CHP, FBI, DEA, and ATF. Plus, the federal Department of Justice has women and men with badges and guns stationed around L.A. The Basics On The Big Ones 1. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Michel Moore As of February 2021: 9,799 officers 2,989 civilian workers Budget: Approximately $3.1 billion ($1.8 billion operating budget; $1.3 billion for pensions and other benefits) The LAPD is responsible for patrolling the city of Los Angeles and most Metro trains and buses. 2. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department (LASD) Sheriff Alex Villanueva 10,000+ deputies 8,000+ civilian workers Budget: Approximately $3.5 billion Note: We had to fill out a public records request for an exact headcount on deputies and civilian staff and have not yet received a response. The above approximations come from L.A. County's website. The LASD is responsible for patrolling all unincorporated areas of L.A. County. Some of those areas have large populations, like East L.A. (pop: 125,000) and Altadena (pop: 44,000). Some have tiny populations, like Castaic and Catalina Island. The Sheriff's Department also patrols 42 cities that don't have their own police departments, including Compton, Lynwood, Malibu, West Hollywood, Lancaster, and Palmdale. Here's the full list of contract cities. The department patrols parks, community colleges, and county buildings as well, and provides bailiffs for the courts. But if you only remember one thing, make it this: the L.A. Sheriff's Department runs the jails. An entryway into Central Juvenile Hall, a youth detention center in Los Angeles County housing both boys and girls. (Chava Sanchez / LAist) The Jails L.A. has the largest local jail system in the country. As of April 2021, it held about 15,000 inmates. The Sheriff's Department is responsible for overseeing the entire system, which includes seven facilities stretching from South L.A. to downtown to northern parts of the county. L.A. jails have long been a battleground for criminal justice reform. Lawsuits dating back to the 1970s described filthy conditions including broken toilets and infestation of vermin. They also described inmate abuse, and inadequate care for the mentally ill. In 2012, a blue ribbon panel issued a scathing report that found a "persistent pattern of unreasonable force" by Sheriff's deputies on inmates that "dates back many years." It blamed then-Sheriff Lee Baca and his Undersheriff Paul Tanaka. Both were later convicted of trying to cover up those abuses, and both are now serving time in federal prison. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca announced his unexpected retirement on January 7, 2014 (David McNew / Getty Images) In 2019, the county agreed to pay $53 million to thousands of former inmates at the women's jail in South L.A. who were forced to endure "highly invasive visual and body cavity searches under inhumane conditions" by deputies between 2008 and 2015. The vast majority of these women were Black and Latina. It was one of the largest payouts in county history. The jails remain under an August 2015 settlement between the county and the U.S. Department of Justice that requires a wide range of reforms, from reduced use of force against inmates to improved mental health care. As a result of that agreement, hundreds of new cameras in the jails serve as a deterrent to excessive force by deputies; in addition, the county created the Correctional Health Services division to focus on providing better care to inmates. For years, advocates argued that people with serious mental health conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, extreme depression, or brief psychotic disorders only get worse behind bars and don't belong there in the first place. One report found more than half of inmates with mental health issues do not need to be in jail. Advocates also pointed out that many inmates with mental health conditions are homeless and that they only committed quality of life crimes. Those are crimes that don't have a specific victim, but could affect the quality of life in a neighborhood like drinking in public, public urination, and "disorderly conduct." Many law enforcement leaders argued that homeless and mentally ill people present a danger to themselves and/or others. They also pointed out that L.A. didn't have enough community care facilities to safely house everyone who is experiencing mental illness or is homeless. But the political landscape shifted, and in February 2019 the Board of Supervisors took the extraordinary step of canceling plans to replace the aging downtown Men's Central Jail (MCJ) with a new lockup. The board voted to instead build a mental health care facility or possibly a series of clinics around the county. To sort out how that might work, the board created an Alternatives to Incarceration Work Group dominated by health care professionals and activists, not Sheriff's officials. In March 2021, a new working group said it would take 18 months to two years to close MCJ. The working group, led by the County Office of Diversion and Reentry and the Sheriffs Department, in partnership with community groups and service providers, laid out a three-pronged strategy for shutting down the nearly 60-year-old, "unsafe, crowded and crumbling" jail: Redistribute the MCJ population to other jails; Invest significantly in beds and services within the community; Divert some 4,500 people with mental health issues out of jail (roughly the number of people being held at MCJ). The report recommended adding 3,600 beds for community-based mental health care and some 400 beds for individuals with serious medical, [substance use disorder] and/or housing needs within the next two years. The working group did not put a price tag on the overall effort, while saying it will be particularly challenging figuring out how to pay for it, given the unprecedented housing and budget crises exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva greets new recruits at their graduation ceremony on Jan. 4, 2019 at East Los Angeles College. (Kyle Grillot for LAist) Sheriff Funding Law enforcement budgets were once a backwater for activists and journalists. But with the killing of George Floyd sparking nationwide calls for reform, they suddenly drew a lot of attention. Almost all the money for the Sheriff's Department comes from the county general fund a pool of tax revenue the county can spend as it pleases. LASD has a budget of about $3.5 billion (which dwarfs the LAPD's). A large portion of those billions goes to feeding, clothing, housing, and managing about 15,000 incarcerated people every day in the county's seven jail facilities. The byzantine county budget document is almost impenetrable. If you have the intestinal fortitude, you can dig into the details of how the sheriff spends his money in the recommended county budget for 2020-21 . Most of it is devoted to paying deputies. If you'd rather not go down that tunnel of pain, here are the basics: The budget is approved by the Board of Supervisors. In fact, the only control the board has over the independently elected sheriff is money. Once the supervisors hand it over, the sheriff can spend it any which way, without restriction. The board sought to rein in Sheriff Villanueva's deficit spending in 2019 when it withheld $143 million from him and slapped a partial hiring freeze on the department. In its June 2020 Care First Budget, L.A. County Reimagined report, Justice L.A. proposed taking $1 billion away from the Sheriff's Department budget. It urged a wide range of cutbacks to homeland security operations, Metrolink patrols, the helicopter bureau, and community college district patrols. Calls for slashing the sheriff's budget came amid a projected $1 billion drop in county tax revenue because of COVID-19. That already had forced the supervisors to reduce the sheriff's requested budget by $400 million. You can read more about that here and here , where Villanueva threatened to close patrol stations in response to the board's cuts. It's worth noting the board and Villanueva have had a rocky relationship dating back to his re-hiring of a deputy accused of domestic violence . (1/3) The Board of Supervisors proxy war against me continues unabated. This coordinated effort is direct retaliation for my efforts in exposing corruption at all levels of county government. I will not be deterred. Alex Villanueva (@LACoSheriff) September 18, 2020 LAPD Funding Almost all the money for L.A.'s police department comes from the city's general fund a pool of tax revenue the city can spend as it pleases. LAPD funding still accounts for nearly 54% of the city's general fund. Historically, police budgets have been off-limits for tinkering. Elected leaders' fears of being perceived as soft on crime, combined with the power of the Los Angeles Police Protective League (the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers), has meant reducing the budget in any significant way was never really on the table. As with the sheriff's budget, the killing of George Floyd changed that. L.A. City Hall, June 5, 2020. (Chava Sanchez / LAist) After mounting pressure from Black Lives Matter L.A. supporters, the L.A. City Council voted in July 2020 to cut $150 million from the LAPD's budget and redirect the money to social services and alternatives to policing in Black and Latino communities in particular. The LAPD cuts were achieved in part by scaling back on new hires and trimming the force from 10,009 officers to 9,757 by July 2021, according to the department. The police union denounced the move, saying it would "cripple" training, boost the city's debt for unpaid overtime, and slow down emergency response times. The city administrative officer and chief legislative analyst acknowledged that scaling back hiring "may negatively impact response times." The cuts were "a step forward" but "mostly symbolic," said Black Lives Matter L.A. co-founder Melina Abdullah. BLM's People's Budget, presented to the city council in June 2020, called for abolishing law enforcement in its current form by cutting the LAPD's budget by 90% and redirecting the rest of the money towards mental health care, housing, and other social services. (Tom Andrews/LAist) Use Of Deadly Force Here's one of the most important things you need to know: California recently redefined the circumstances under which the use of deadly force by a police officer is considered justifiable. AB 392, which took effect in January 2019, allows officers to use deadly force only when they reasonably believe that it's necessary to save themselves or someone else from imminent serious bodily injury or death. Previously, California used a similar federal standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court that did not include the word "necessary." AB 392 also made another major change. It said prosecutors may consider the actions of an officer leading up to a shooting. That's significant because it means district attorneys in California can address a problem called "officer-created jeopardy." It remains to be seen whether prosecutors will use the new legal standards to file criminal charges against officers who use deadly force. Another thing to know about police use of force is that many shootings are now caught on video by an officer's body-worn camera. California requires police departments to make that video available to the public within 45 days of a shooting unless releasing it would interfere with an investigation. The LAPD started equipping its officers with body cams in 2015. The Sheriff's Department began placing cams on its deputies in October 2020, with a plan to have all its frontline personnel wearing them by the spring of 2022. The images from body cameras are often disturbing, but it allows the public to see what happened at least from the officer's vantage point. Internal affairs investigators and prosecutors say the footage can play an important role in deciding whether an officer's actions were within policy and the law. Even with video, use of force cases can be complex. For example, here's body cam footage of a sheriff's deputy fatally shooting 25-year-old Fred Williams III in October 2020 as Williams was jumping over a fence in Willowbrook with a gun in his hand. The deputy says on the video that Williams pointed the gun at him, although that is not at all clear from the footage. But a use of force expert we consulted argued that it doesn't matter. While "you dont see it directly pointing at the deputy ... it is absolutely reasonable for this deputy to believe that this individual with a handgun, within a nanosecond, could point that gun at the deputy and shoot him," said Ed Obayashi, a Plumas County Sheriffs Deputy who analyzes use of force incidents. An activist holds a picture of Kisha Michael, left, and Marquintan Sandlin. The city of Inglewood paid $8.6 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit over their fatal shooting by police in February 2016. (Frank Stoltze / LAist) How Many People Have Been Killed By Police In LA? There were 605 officer or deputy shootings between Dec. 3, 2012 and May 31, 2020, according to the L.A. County District Attorneys Office. Of those shootings, 343 were fatal. The L.A. Times Homicide Report also tracks shootings; as of April 14, 2021, it listed 923 people killed by law enforcement in L.A. County since Jan. 1, 2000. To learn more, check out our "Officer Involved" project, which takes you deep inside the dynamics of police shootings and looks at how officers are trained. The 2015 KPCC investigation found that law enforcement in L.A. County the LAPD, the Sheriff's Department, and all the other departments fatally shot Black people at triple their proportion of the population . The pattern was not repeated with any other racial group. The California Department of Justice released a report in 2017 with similar findings. In our 2018 podcast Repeat , reporter Annie Gilbertson dug into Sheriff's Department shootings and found that more than 30 deputies opened fire at least three times during their careers. She also found time and time again that officers were returned to the field even after investigations found the person they shot was unarmed. The podcast dives into the case of one deputy who, records show, shot at four people in the span of seven months. Listen here . To learn even more about police reform, read the report by President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing , written in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Finally, when it comes to cops using force, you should know there's something called a " use of force continuum ." Officers are trained to use the lowest level of force possible when approaching someone. What's the lowest level of force? It's actually an officer's mere presence, which can act as a deterrent. The L.A. Police Commission revised its use-of-force policy in 2017 to include de-escalation. The LAPD also publishes an annual use-of-force year-end review here's the one from 2019 . One last thing: The activist research group Campaign Zero has come up with an interesting "model use of force policy" that's also worth a look. Some activists have criticized it as a misguided approach to reform. LAPD headquarters in downtown LA. (Andrew Cullen / For LAist) Transparency Police records are notoriously hard to get. And they're particularly hard to get in California. You can find out more in the L.A. Times' deep dive into the history of transparency. In the 1970s, powerful police unions convinced the legislature to pass and Gov. Jerry Brown to sign a law that virtually locked away discipline reports. Misconduct was kept in the dark even from prosecutors. In addition, the families of people killed by police have often been forced to file lawsuits just to obtain access to investigative files that might shed light on the death of their loved one. Then in 2019, there was a dramatic shift. Amid a changing debate about policing fueled by the 2018 killing of Stephon Clark by police in Sacramento the state legislature passed a bill that opened up police discipline and investigative records in three key areas: Records related to any incident in which a law enforcement officer fired a gun at a person (regardless of whether someone was hit), or used force that resulted in serious injury or death. You can get these records regardless of whether the department found the officer acted properly. Records related to incidents in which an agency found that an officer committed sexual assault against a member of the public, which includes attempts to coerce or proposition sex while on duty. (The change in the law led to this story.) Records related to incidents in which an agency found that an officer engaged in dishonesty in the investigation, reporting, or prosecution of crime or police misconduct. This kind of dishonesty could include filing a false report, testifying untruthfully, or planting evidence. The ACLU, which helped sponsor the law, has more information here. Still, many police departments have fiercely resisted complying. Some have refused to turn over documents. Others have put up roadblocks. For example, the L.A. County Sheriff's Office wanted us to pay over $3,000 for access to records from the county jail system. In addition, unions representing law enforcement officers filed more than 20 lawsuits trying to block the release of records from before Jan. 1, 2019, when the law took effect. KPCC/LAist and the Los Angeles Times successfully opposed the unions' attempts. That's a long way of saying that despite the changes, the battle for police records rages on. Since early in 2020, KPCC/LAist partnered with more than 30 news organizations to form the California Reporting Project. Reporters are currently working together to request, review, and share records from every law enforcement agency in the state. An L.A. police officer wears an AXON body camera. (David McNew / Getty Images) Accountability Perhaps the most significant breakthrough in police accountability in the past decade has been the body-worn camera. Bystander cameras have played an increasingly important role in watchdogging police since the Rodney King video was seen by the world in 1991. It was also a bystander video that brought widespread awareness to the killing of George Floyd. Body cams provide a different view, and sometimes a better one. In some cases they refute the argument by police that a bystander video didn't capture the whole incident. Body-worn cameras are now a litmus test of a department's commitment to accountability. The LAPD started putting cameras on its officers in 2015 and has now outfitted 7,000 of them. The Sheriff's Department started outfitting deputies in October 2020. California law now requires police departments to release all video (from body cams, dashboard cams, or other cameras) collected at the scene of a shooting or other major use of force that causes great bodily injury within 45 days of the incident unless it would interfere with an investigation. This report from the National Institute of Justice examines best practices for reviewing body cam evidence. As we know, releasing such videos can be powerful. Among the more disturbing in the L.A. area: But there are still two key questions about who can view body cam videos, and when: How much access does the public have to not just footage of shootings and other major uses of force, but to all body-cam video recorded by officers? The LAPD and LASD argue its evidence and therefore the public should not have access. Watchdogs say that needs to change if we want to truly hold law enforcement accountable. When can officers view the video of a shooting, in which they were involved before or after they write their version of what happened? Again, the LAPD and LASD insist their cops should view the video first. Watchdogs say officers should provide justification for why they opened fire before they see video, which could prompt them to alter their version of events. Body cam video can catch a lot in the name of accountability. But any expert will tell you that, on the most basic level, officers need to keep their partners in check. The National Institute of Ethics published a very good paper on this. Police leaders need to create a culture of accountability and establish systems in which people can feel safe reporting incidents of wrongdoing. Watchdogs say too few do. Now would be a good time to watch a clip from the 1973 movie, "Serpico." Supervisors sergeants and lieutenants, mostly can play a critical role in accountability, whether it's on the front lines of a protest or in a station house reviewing body cam footage. Accountability is currently playing out in very different ways at the LAPD and Sheriff's Department. At the LAPD, the Police Commission a five-member civilian panel appointed by the mayor selects the chief of police, establishes department policy, and decides whether an officer who shot someone followed policy, even when that officer is off duty. The commission also has an inspector general who conducts audits, reviews shootings, and investigates citizen complaints. That's a lot of power, and it's rare in the world of police oversight. However, the chief still runs the department and, along with an internal board, decides when to actually discipline officers including those who shoot. Translation: the Police Commission can decide a shooting was bad, but the chief can choose to do nothing about it. It's different at the Sheriff's Department. The sheriff is voted into office, and is beholden only to the voters. The sheriff doles out discipline as he or she pleases, and may choose to short-circuit said discipline, as Sheriff Villanueva has done. There's nothing analogous to the Police Commission. In 2016, the Board of Supervisors created the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, but it's advisory only. When Villanueva repeatedly refused to provide information about the department to the panel, voters in March 2020 approved a measure giving the commission subpoena power. Still, the sheriff has continued to resist the oversight (the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement is a great place to go to learn more about this issue). When talking about holding police accountable, here are a few additional things to keep in mind: Qualified immunity: it makes it harder to sue police. Learn about it here and here. Police union money: it has played a powerful role in local elections and influenced the way elected officials have historically treated police. Strong discipline: many experts say discipline, along with good training and effective supervision, is crucial to changing police accountability. Nationally, law enforcement officers have rarely been prosecuted for their involvement in fatal shootings. The Mercury News has a searchable list of police officers and sheriffs who have been convicted of crimes. It includes 179 individuals in L.A. County. Some of them are still working. A mural of Ezell Ford at the site where he was shot and killed by two LAPD officers in 2014. (David McNew/Getty Images) Notable Cases In LA Here are a few of the many cases involving law-enforcement accountability over the last decade in Los Angeles: 2011: Downey police arrived at a gas station to respond to a call about an armed robbery. They later said that 31-year-old Michael Nida, who was at the gas station, approached them in a threatening manner before running away. At some point during the chase, Officer Steven Gilley shot and killed him. Nida was the father of four children family members said that when the officers arrived, he was buying cigarettes while his wife bought gas. It turns out he probably wasn't the person the police were looking for when they got the initial call, according to the Sheriff's Department, which was tasked with investigating. The city of Downey agreed to pay Nida's family a $4.5 million settlement in 2013, but Gilley did not face criminal charges. In 2019, KPCC/LAist reporters learned that many of the records for that investigation were purged right before SB 1421 (the law requiring police record transparency) went into effect, so details about the investigation are still unknown. 2012: Abdul Arian, 19, allegedly fled a traffic stop and began driving erratically. He then called 911, reportedly telling the operator that he had a gun and would use it against cops if necessary (it was later discovered that dispatchers had not told LAPD officers Arian said he had a gun). The chase ended on the 101 in Woodland Hills, where police shot and killed Arian in the middle of the freeway after he got out of his car. They fired 90 rounds. It was later revealed that Arian did not have a gun. His family filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging excessive use of force and wrongful death, negligence, and battery. The case was tossed out by a judge a year later. 2014: The L.A. City Council agreed to pay a $5 million settlement to the family of 51-year-old National Guard veteran Brian Beaird, who was shot and killed by LAPD officers after a car chase. Officers suspected Beaird of drunk or reckless driving and attempted to pull him over. Beaird, who had schizophrenia and may have panicked, led police on an hour-long chase that ended when he crashed into another car at Olympic Boulevard and Los Angeles Street. When he got out of his wrecked vehicle, he put his hands up. However, the three officers mistook the sound of non-lethal bean bag rounds fired by other officers as gunfire, and opened fire on Beaird. He was shot 15 times. Beaird was unarmed. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said the three LAPD officers violated department policy. A police disciplinary board found two of the officers guilty of misconduct and fired them. DA Jackie Lacey declined to press criminal charges. 2014: Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old Black man with a history of mental health problems (he had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia), was shot and killed by LAPD officers in South L.A. Ford did not have a weapon. The department said the shooting occurred after Ford struggled with an officer and tried to grab his gun. Ford's family said there was no struggle. Chief Beck said the officers acted within policy, prompting protests. Two weeks after the shooting, the LAPD released the officers' names but requested a "security hold" on the autopsy report. In 2015, both officers were cleared by the LAPD and the Police Commission. In 2017, after a 20-month review, the DA's office said it would not file charges against the two officers. Ford's family later received a $1.5 million settlement. 2014: Just a few days before Ford's death, two sergeants from the LAPD's Newton Division pulled over Omar Abrego, 37, in front of his house. He was still in his Amtrak work uniform. Abrego started to flee and got into an altercation with the sergeants, one of whom punched him three times in the face. Abrego sustained a severe concussion and bruises to his face and body, and later died at the hospital. According to the L.A. Times, an autopsy showed Abrego died from the effects of cocaine but listed the "physical and emotional duress" caused by the altercation as a contributing factor. In 2016, the DA's office declined to charge the LAPD sergeants. In 2017, the city agreed to pay nearly $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Abrego's family. 2016: LAPD officers tased 42-year-old Alex Aguilar five times during a strip search. The officers said they tased him after they saw him trying to swallow a bindle of drugs and he allegedly resisted being searched. An autopsy found he choked on a bag of heroin. The family said the officers used excessive force and failed to render aid that could have saved Aguilar's life. The Police Commission ruled that use of the taser violated department policy. In 2019, a federal jury ruled that the LAPD officers were not liable for Aguilar's death. 2019: The L.A. Sheriff's Department faced criticism for ending 45 ongoing misconduct investigations. The investigations involved a variety of allegations against sworn and civilian staff, ranging from sleeping on duty to mistreatment of jail inmates to concealment of inmate grievances. The department also decreased disciplinary penalties in 21 cases, ranging from excessive force to driving under the influence. Instead of being fired, several of the alleged perpetrators received suspensions. As the mystery of Sushant Singh Rajput's death gets murkier with new revelations leaping out of the dark everyday, two probe teams have been trying to get a foot-hold -- the Mumbai Police who have been at it for over 45 days and the recent new entrant their Bihar counterparts post July 25. Allegation were raised that a four-member police team from Patna, which went to Mumbai to probe in to the alleged suicide of the 32-year-old actor who belonged to Bihar's Purnea, has not been getting cooperation from their Marathi counterparts. On Saturday, Bihar Director General of Police Gupteshwar Pandey spoke to the media in a bid to calm the atmosphere saying the Mumbai Police is "highly professional" and he hoped to get co-operation from them. Talking to journalists in Patna, the DGP accepted that though his team was yet to get a hold of the post-mortem report, photo of the crime scene, video and other 'documents' but he has full faith that all these will soon be made available to the Bihar team. The DGP said he is expecting full support from the Maharashtra government and its professional police. Sushant had died on June 14 in his Bandra residence and Mumbai Police is yet to register an FIR. It was on July 25, that the late actor's father registered the first FIR in the case at Rajiv Nagar police station in Patna. Pandey said, "Rhea Chakraborty, the main accused in the Sushant Singh alleged suicide case, has moved the Supreme Court to transfer the case to Mumbai. In such a situation, it is expected that Mumbai Police will be waiting for the order of the Supreme Court. "I am sure Mumbai Police will definitely accept whatever order the Supreme Court gives in this matter." The Bihar Police chief denied that Mumbai Police misbehaved with the Bihar Police team, a video of which went viral on the social media. The DGP said that there is no such thing. He said that Mumbai Police is "professional" and everyone has high expectations from them. Pandey said the members of Bihar Police team that went to Mumbai are constantly investigating the case and Mumbai Police DCP Crime has also assured full cooperation. He said, "The Bihar Police team met DCP Crime in Mumbai and they have assured that they will co-operate. They too are awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court in this case. After that they will give us all the documents. Then we will be able to investigate the matter independently and as I have said earlier that Bihar Police is fully capable of investigating this matter. Not only Bihar, the whole country today wants to know the truth in this matter. Bihar Police is engaged in bringing out the truth." The DGP said that Bihar Police is currently working on the basis of evidence. He said, "After Sushant's death, I was among those who first met his family. Sushant's father has lodged an FIR. Bihar Police team is in Mumbai. Our senior IPS officers are in touch with the Mumbai Police. We are awaiting the order of the Supreme Court. Before that we are working on the basis of evidence." Pandey also said that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was deeply saddened by the untimely demise of a talented actor. He said, "I had said this to his father when I went to meet him at his house after receiving the news of Sushant's demise. I said I have come to you with CM's condolence message. In this difficult moment, the entire state is with you and that is why I am again saying that as the head of Bihar Police, I assure you the justice on behalf of the entire state." On July 25, Sushant's father K.K. Singh registered a case against Rhea Chakraborty and six others, including her family members for abetting his son to commit suicide. After the case was registered, Bihar Police reached Mumbai and started investigating the case. Rhea Chakraborty has, however, approached the Supreme Court to shift the case to Mumbai. A decision in this regard is to be made on August 5 in the top court. For Britain's stock-market quoted firms, this is the summer of the emergency dash-for-cash, brought on by the pandemic. British Airways owner IAG, which will be seeking 2.75billion next month, is the latest to join the list. Since March, as many as 90 others, including WH Smith and Whitbread, have raised about 14billion of new capital through right issues and placings, at an average discount of 10 per cent, according to data from Peel Hunt, the stockbroker. Engine-maker Rolls-Royce may also be selling new shares to repair its battered balance sheet. But private investors have been shut out from many of these issues, some of which may have been an opportunity to buy shares at a low price and store up profits for the future, as the companies involved were in the doldrums. Rights issues are shares offered, normally at a discount to the prevailing market price, by a company to its investors, in proportion to their existing holding. Companies may need the capital to get through a crisis, or want it, to make an acquisition, for example. The convention is that the offer is open to all shareholders, large and small, so the trend to bar small investors during the pandemic has sparked anger. Richard Wilson, chief executive of Interactive Investor, is one of the most vocal critics of this private investor exclusion, seeing it as inspired by 'prejudice'. 'Ownership rights are being switched off,' he says. 'It's wrong, and the fact that it is legal is just a nonsense.' As he points out, one issue is that if private investors are excluded from a rights issue, their stake is diluted. As a result of a sale of new shares, they own less of the company than before. Galling: Some of Asos' investors were excluded when it raised 247m in April by placing shares with large shareholders and the board That must be galling to investors in Asos, who were excluded when it raised 247million in April by placing shares with large shareholders and the board. At the time of the placing, shares in the online fashion retailer were 1559p. They are now 3358p. Companies have been able to cold-shoulder their private shareholders because of a move to suspend the normal rules, which give all existing shareholders, from big City institutions to the smallest private saver, first refusal in an issue of new shares of above 10 per cent of a company's share capital. Until the end of September, they can raise up to 20 per cent of their value from pension funds and other institutions, without including private investors. The rationale is that offering rights issue shares to private investors is too time-consuming, so firms may not be able to raise the capital they need quickly enough a dubious argument at a time when technology makes the admin much faster. Open to all: Taylor Wimpey, the housebuilder and online grocer Ocado have embraced technology to allow all shareholders to join in But not all companies regard smaller shareholders as second-class citizens. Compass, the catering giant, Taylor Wimpey, the housebuilder and online grocer Ocado have embraced technology to allow all shareholders to join in. PrimaryBid, a tech business set up to democratise the process, makes it simple for private investors to apply for the new shares using its app or website. T he company, a partner of the London Stock Exchange, seems likely to assist in more rights issues and placings. But before rushing to buy in a rights issue, investors should ask themselves whether they will indeed be buying shares at a bargain price or throwing good money after bad. In the case of IAG, whose shares have fallen from 636p to 164.75p since January, many experts believe the airline industry is facing an existential crisis. BA's owner will presumably aspire to take advantage of the likely failure of rivals, when its finances are bolstered by the rights issue funds. Rolls-Royce, another casualty of civil aviation's woes, is said to need as much as 6billion. This week its debt was humiliatingly downgraded to junk status. And shares are not necessarily a bargain just because they are cheap either, particularly in the current climate of economic uncertainty. David Coombs, head of multi-asset investment at Rathbones, urges extreme scepticism. 'You should ask yourself how any company is going to use the money. If it wants the cash to purchase another business, remember takeovers tend to have a poor record. Institutional shareholders may be happy to support a rights issue purely to see a company survive, but that shouldn't be enough of a reason for a private investor.' He goes further, suggesting that reluctance to back a rights issue may be a sell signal. Private investors may well not be tempted by the chance to acquire more shares in either IAG or Rolls-Royce. But they would probably still like to have more access to future share sales for the chance to turn a profit and maybe to make a difference. Many among Britain's small shareholder community would like to play a role in the revival of the economy. Anyone who feels strongly about the matter can sign the letter addressed to listed company boards at allinvestorsmatter.co. uk. Why should you put up with inequality? Barcelonas Philippe Coutinho has been offered to both Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, but it is the Gunners that present the likelier possibility of a deal. The Emirates hierarchy are currently weighing up multiple options as they seek to reshape Mikel Artetas squad this summer, with some of that dependent on whether they qualify for the Europa League out of Saturdays FA Cup final. Winning it will significantly add to Arsenals budget. Arteta wants Matteo Guendouzi out of his squad regardless, and one option that has been presented is that Barcelona take the French midfielder and a notional 9m, while Coutinho goes to Arsenal on a permanent deal. The Brazilian would prove attractive to Arsenal for a few reasons, beyond his obvious talent. He best plays in a position Arteta needs to fill, especially if a deal cannot be secured for Dani Ceballos, but Coutinho would also offer insurance if Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were to go since he can play through the middle. The Arsenal hierarchy are currently weighing all this up ahead of what is set to be an important summer for Artetas squad-building. Complicating this option is that Juventus are also interested in Guendouzi, and it is understood Arsenal have broached the possibility of a swap there, too. Loans and part exchanges are set to dominate this summers suppressed transfer market. It is why Arsenal would be highly unlikely to just pay for Coutinho outright. The same applies to Spurs, although chairman Daniel Levy has been insistent on a younger profile of player, especially for this summer. Now is a challenging time for gold companies that need to grow and add ounces, said B2Gold's CEO Clive Johnson. Johnson spoke to Kitco last week. B2Gold (TSX:BTO) is a mid-tier gold company with mining operations in diverse locations: Philippines, Mali, Namibia and Nicaragua. The Vancouver-based company forecasts between 1,000,000 and 1,055,000 ounces in 2020. Johnson said the low precious metal prices of the past decade, plus the overhang from the industry's last spending splurge has diminished the gold supply. "There's been a lack of exploration and a lack of development, so I think the supply of gold probably peaked a couple of years ago," said Johnson. Johnson said he is not a "gold bug", but the extreme financial stress has favored the metal. "You can't print gold and there's a finite amount of gold in the world," said Johnson. He said producers are constrained by several factors if they want to add more production now through acquisitions. "When you talk about M&A, it's kind of interesting because there aren't many great development projects out there. Investors are nervous about people paying premiums to take over companies, because that didn't go so well in the past. Barrick set an example with the Barrick-Randgold deal where there was no premium in that deal. So I think that it's an interesting and a challenging time for those companies that really need to grow today," said Johnson. However, some mergers could better for all. "We're not desperate to go run out and do a deal. We've got great projects, a great pipeline of additional projects. I think you will probably see some more mergers of equals and I think that's good for the industry. I think we need fewer and better run gold mining companies," said Johnson. A future project that should grow B2Gold's production is the Gramalote project in Colombia, a joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti. A feasibility study is planned for the first quarter of 2021. The indicated mineral resource for Gramalote is 2.14 million ounces. B2Gold announced a fundraising initiative. The company is producing 1000 limited-edition ` Gold Bars to support conversation efforts for the critically-endangered black rhino. As COVID-19 devastated the tourism industry, wildlife parks across Africa have taken a hit and are in danger of being shut down. Thats affected the ability to protect these species. So thats why the Rhino Bars and the money generated from that is so important to assist today, in protecting the wild and supporting the communities that are doing this work. A lot of budgets would have been cut had it not been what were doing, said Clive Johnson, CEO of B2Gold. Forced to leave paradise in the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve received the option of free will. Free will means the right to choose to do good or to do bad. History has recorded many women who used that right of free will to work for good causes even in societies where they faced seemingly overwhelming gender or racial bias. This topic came from a reader. She asked about African-American women who were involved in early civil rights in American history. This discussion includes black American women who were guided by their faith to work for racial justice, equality and people with needs. Mary McLeod Bethune, educator and humanitarian, wrote, Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible. In a later column, I hope to discuss present-day Black women who are standing up for justice and equality. It was difficult to select a few women because many have been involved in seeking human and social rights for all people. Sources for information about these women can be found on many websites: National Womens History Museum, Biography, National Museum of African American History and Culture. New York, Aug 1 : New research adds to the growing body of evidence that Covid-19 pandemic is causing higher levels of depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies and psychological trauma among adults. Using an internet survey of 10,368 adults from across the US, the research team have sought to better understand the sociological and psychological effects of the pandemic. The common denominator in their findings is fear. "Fear is a pretty consistent predictor. We found is that fear, coupled with a range of social vulnerabilities, consistently and significantly predict a range of mental health outcomes," said researcher Kevin Fitzpatrick from the University of Arkansas in the US. "Additionally, as originally hypothesized, it appears as though individual fear is higher in those places where there is a higher concentration of confirmed Covid-19 cases and/or a higher death rate," Fitzpatrick added. In a study focusing on symptoms of depression published in the journal Anxiety and Depression, the research team found that on average, survey respondents scored one point higher than the cutoff for clinical significance on a commonly used depression scale. Nearly a third of respondents were significantly above that level, they found. They also found elevated depressive symptoms among socially vulnerable groups including women, the unemployed and people who report moderate to high levels of food insecurity. In a second study on suicidal thoughts, behaviours and actions, published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, the researchers found that 15 per cent of all respondents were categorised as high risk for suicide. The third study, published in the journal Psychological Trauma, examined fear and mental health consequences of the pandemic. When researchers asked respondents how fearful they were of Coivd-19 on a scale of one-to-10, the average answer was seven. But fear of the disease and its consequences is not evenly distributed throughout the country, they found; it was highest in areas with a greater concentration of Covid-19 cases and among the most socially vulnerable groups. "All three papers are part of an initial, early push to understand the sociological impact of Covid-19," said Fitzpatrick. Meanwhile, another recent study, published in the journal PLOS One, revealed that google searches during pandemic hint at a future increase in suicide. Recently, Australian researchers also found rates of elevated psychological distress, including depression and anxiety symptoms, were found among adults during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak in the country. The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has filed an emergency action and obtained a temporary restraining order and an asset freeze to stop an alleged fraudulent scheme that has raised nearly half a billion dollars from an estimated 1,200 investors nationwide. According to the SEC's complaint, spouses Lisa McElhone and Joseph W. LaForte orchestrated a scheme to raise investor funds through unregistered securities offerings for the cash advance company they control, Complete Business Solutions Group Inc., doing business as Par Funding. According to the complaint, McElhone and LaForte made opportunistic loans, some of which charged more than 400% interest, to small businesses across America. The complaint alleges that, to fuel the loans, McElhone and LaForte, with the assistance of other Par Funding personnel, allegedly used a network of unregistered sales agents and affiliated entities to sell promissory notes to the public while lying to or misleading investors about Par Funding's business, how investor funds would be used, and LaForte's role and criminal history. On July 28, 2020 the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted the SEC's request for emergency relief and ordered a temporary asset freeze against Par Funding, McElhone, and LaForte; a related company McElhone and LaForte control, Full Spectrum Processing Inc.; and others, including various companies affiliated with certain unregistered sales agents who participated in the scheme. The court granted the SEC's request to appoint a receiver for the 11 entity defendants and scheduled a hearing for August 4 to determine whether a preliminary injunction should be granted against the defendants for the pendency of the litigation. The SEC's complaint, filed on July 24 and unsealed today, charges the defendants with violating the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and the securities registration provisions of Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act. The SEC seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties. The SEC's continuing investigation is being conducted by Linda S. Schmidt and Crystal C. Ivory and supervised by Elisha L. Frank, Fernando Torres, and Glenn S. Gordon, all of the Miami Regional Office. The SEC's litigation is being led by Amie R. Berlin under the supervision of Andrew O. Schiff. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, the Texas State Securities Board, and the New Jersey Bureau of Securities. Core Materials Market Research Report by Type (Balsa, Foam, and Honeycomb), by End User (Aerospace, Construction, Marine, Transportation, and Wind Energy) - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 New York, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Core Materials Market Research Report by Type, by End User - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913973/?utm_source=GNW The Global Core Materials Market is expected to grow from USD 1,613.06 Million in 2019 to USD 2,396.39 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.81%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Core Materials to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: Based on Type, the Core Materials Market studied across Balsa, Foam, and Honeycomb. The Foam further studied across PET Foam, PVC Foam, Polyetherimide, Polymethacrylimide, Polystyrene, Polyurethane, and SAN Foam. The Honeycomb further studied across Aluminum, Aramid, and Thermoplastic. Based on End User, the Core Materials Market studied across Aerospace, Construction, Marine, Transportation, and Wind Energy. Based on Geography, the Core Materials Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Core Materials Market including 3A Composites, Armacell International Holding GmbH, BASF SE, Changzhou Tiansheng New Materials Co. Ltd, Core Composites, Diab Group, Euro-Composites S.A., Evonik Industries AG, Gurit Holding AG, Hexcel Corporation, I-Core Composites, LLC., Matrix Composite Materials Company Ltd., Plascore Incorporated, Sabic, and The Gill Corporation. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Core Materials Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19: COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Core Materials Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Core Materials Market during the forecast period? 3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Core Materials Market? 4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Core Materials Market? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Core Materials Market? 6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Core Materials Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913973/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Story continues CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 The writer, of Papillion, is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former director of the SAC Airborne Command Post. Thirty years ago this summer, the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) Airborne Command Post, without fanfare or notice, was ordered to cease its continuous airborne operations due in part to the end of the Cold War. The unannounced arrival of Gen. John T. Chain Jr., commander-in-chief of Strategic Air Command, to the early morning Airborne Command Post mission was a most rare occurrence, with rumors and speculation running rampant within the SAC Alert community. Was he going on Airborne due to a possible crisis in the world? Or was he the one shutting it down? After a routine, scheduled Airborne Command Post mission on the morning of July 24, 1990, Gen. Chain ordered the crew to land the aircraft with no routine and expected follow-on missions. Many of us were anxious and questioned this change of orders and continued to take the necessary actions to ensure our alert and backup aircraft were configured to launch if ordered. Our questions were answered when Gen. Chain gave the order that the Airborne Command Post would draw down from its around-the-clock, continuous airborne operations. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When Police Officer Joseph Everett was driving to the 120 Precinct, St. George to report to work Saturday morning he passed by the Fresh Kills Bridge and saw a car in a ditch. Upon closer inspection, he found a crying woman, 21, sitting in the car that had been pulled over to the side of the service road near Exit 7 of the Staten Island Expressway, in the direction toward the Goethals Bridge. The driver told him she drove off the side of the road and tried to flip the vehicle, said Everett. I knocked on the window. I started speaking to the female; she told me she didnt want to live, said Everett. I proceeded to say, Are you OK? Did you fall asleep? What happened? I ended up calling 911. The female kept stating that she didnt want to live and wanted to die, he added. In turn, Everett assured her he was going to stay with her and talk. I told her I was going to get her the help she needed, he said. But while he was talking to the 911 operator, the woman told Everett, I need five minutes, he said. As I was talking to the 911 operator, the female dipped her hands into the side of the door panel. I looked over the window and down. She pulled out an orange box cutter and extended the blade out, said Everett. I went to grab her hand, right before she tried to hurt herself. I put the box cutter in my back pocket. I grabbed both hands of the female and asked her why she was doing this. She said she didnt want to live. And I told her she was going to speak to me, and we were going to get an ambulance and she was going to be OK. Having had interactions like this before, Everett said it was his gut reaction to grab the box cutter to prevent the woman from hurting herself. NEVER OFF DUTY Everett said as a police officer he is trained to always look out for others in need. At all times, my head is always looking left and right. ...Becoming a police officer was important to me because of where my family grew up. I wanted to become a police officer to help out the community that I grew up in, he said, noting he grew up in St. George. FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK and TWITTER WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 01st August, 2020) A US resident from Moldova pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for authoring a malware program for the hacker group Infraud that allowed cyber thieves to steal nearly a half billion Dollars, the Justice Department said in a press release. "Valerian Chiochiu, aka 'Onassis,' 'Flagler,' 'Socrate,' and 'Eclessiastes,' 30, pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge James C. Mahan in the District of Nevada," the release said on Friday. "His plea came just over a month after the co-founder and administrator of Infraud, Sergey Medvedev of Russia, separately pleaded guilty on June 26." According to the indictment, the Infraud Organization was created in October 2010 by Medvedev and Svyatoslav Bondarenko, aka "Obnon," "Rector," and "Helkern," 34, of Ukraine, to promote the Infraud Organization as the premier destination for "carding" -purchasing retail items with counterfeit or stolen credit card information - on the internet, the release said. Under the slogan, "In Fraud We Trust," the organization directed traffic and potential purchasers to automated vending sites of its members, which served as online conduits to traffic in stolen identification documents, stolen financial and banking information, malware, and other illicit goods, the release said. As part of his plea agreement, Chiochiu admitted to authoring a strain of malware known to the computer security community as "FastPOS," the release added. During the course of its seven-year history, the Infraud Organization inflicted approximately $2.2 billion in intended losses, and more than $568 million in actual losses, on a wide swath of financial institutions, merchants, and private individuals, and would have continued to do so for the foreseeable future if left unchecked, according to the release. Chiochiu is a national of the Republic of Moldova, but resided in the United States during the period of the conspiracy. Sentencing in the case has been scheduled for December 11. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 20:45:28|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Kazakh armed forces soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, March 18, 2020. (Photo by Kalizhan Ospanov/Xinhua) Zhang said China is ready to work with Kazakhstan to fully implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries and strengthen cooperation in the military sphere. NUR-SULTAN, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Cooperation between the armed forces of China and Kazakhstan is developing steadily in a healthy and reliable manner, which corresponds to the comprehensiveness and strategic importance of bilateral relations, Chinese Ambassador to Kazakhstan Zhang Xiao told Kazakh media on Saturday. On the occasion of the 93rd anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China, the ambassador said the two sides have conducted military exchanges, competitions and training, and closely cooperated on the fight against terrorism, separatism and extremism, as well as "color revolutions" in the region. Their cooperation has protected the key interests of the two countries and contributed to the security, stability and prosperity of the region, said Zhang. Zhang said China is ready to work with Kazakhstan to fully implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries and strengthen cooperation in the military sphere. Zhang added that on the global fronts, the PLA has participated in international peacekeeping and humanitarian rescue operations, and it has been promoting non-proliferation efforts and responding to global security challenges. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages, the PLA has exchanged epidemic prevention and control experience with and provided aid to the armed forces of over 20 countries, Zhang added. RINGGOLD Delivery van manufacturer Morgan Olson, which announced in October 2019 that it would bring 703 jobs to the Dan River Region, started production in June and has hired more than 300 employees since January. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam spoke Thursday morning at the company's 925,000-square-foot manufacturing facility during a celebration of the company's start of operations at its warehouse Ikea's former location in Cane Creek Centre in Pittsylvania County just outside Danville. The governor, during remarks inside the warehouse at the event attended by about 50-75 people, praised the region's efforts at training workers and attracting industry. "Danville is a model for the rest of this country," Northam told attendees seated in chairs spaced six feet apart. He spoke in front of a large, white Morgan Olson walk-in step van that announced "Now Hiring" in black letters at the top. He also remarked how swiftly the company cranked up production after officials announced its plans less than a year ago. "Morgan Olson they meant business," Northam said. The company, based in Sturgis, Michigan, announced in October that it would bring 703 new jobs and a capital investment of $58 million. It makes delivery vans for such clients as FedEx and UPS. Mike Ownbey, president and CEO, told the Danville Register & Bee during the celebration that that company plans to have 450 people hired by the end of the year. Company spokesman Kenneth Klein said the goal of having 703 employees should be met by the end of 2021. "We're making 14 trucks a day," Ownbey said, adding that the company plans to produce as many as 48 per day in the future. The step vans made at the plant are delivering medical supplies to hospitals and homes, and food and water to people's doorsteps, Ownbey said in a prepared statement. The company took ownership of the former Ikea building in March. "We converted this ... facility into a state-of-the-art automotive factory," Klein told the Register & Bee. While many businesses are closing or sending their employees away from the office to work at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, Morgan Olson has its facility up and running, he pointed out. "This is a good COVID story," Klein said. Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville, pointed out that it's been about a year since Ikea announced it would close its plant by the end of 2019. It wasn't long before Morgan Olson stepped in. "All the cards fell into place at the right time," Marshall said during an interview inside the plant just before the event. "That was a real plus to take this over to get it back up and running." The company also credits the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance with helping it open on time. Ownbey also praised the success of the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, which trained workers for jobs at Morgan Olson. Bob Warren, chairman of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors, said of Thursday's celebration, "It's a wonderful event for the community because we have a first-rate company that has located here. We're really happy to have them." Klein said the company plans on holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony once pandemic travel restrictions are lifted. 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. Belfast City Council has agreed to a consultation after plans to pedestrianise the Ormeau Road angered traders. The Open Ormeau initiative had proposed a pilot this month to allow pubs and restaurants to expand on to the streets in a European-style coffee culture at weekends. While gaining support in the hospitality sector, other traders on the Ormeau Road say restricting traffic on the busy route will drive customers away. The concept is backed by the SDLP, Alliance and Greens, but is opposed by the DUP. A new group has been formed to resist the change, the Ormeau Road Business Development Association. Chris O'Reilly from the body is retail director at Mace and Centra on the Ormeau Road. "The Ormeau Road is busy on a Saturday for a reason. We've built up a complementary retail offer that people want to travel to," he said. "The new amendment put forward will also snarl up traffic and people won't want to come here again. "We feel there is a concerted political will to close arterial routes in and around Belfast to drive a potential green agenda and back (Infrastructure Minister) Nichola Mallon's aspiration for people to cycle and walk more. That's absolutely admirable, but that still needs a careful and considered approach where everyone has their say." SDLP councillor Gary McKeown welcomed the decision to hold a "robust" consultation that took all views into account ahead of any pilot scheme. "In reality, we can only see how these things would work in practice by trying them out, and a pilot would provide a safe, managed space to do this," he said. He added that officials would work with volunteers to aid the design of the trial, allowing proper time and subject to council approval. In a joint statement, DUP South Belfast MLA Christopher Stalford and Botanic councillor Tracy Carrol said many were "alarmed" by issues like parking and the likely impact on businesses. "Whilst we accept the people behind this idea may have had good intentions, we believe that it should not proceed as it will have a negative effect on the area," they said. "We are pleased that the community is to be fully and properly consulted on this matter and believe that the more scrutiny this idea receives, the less viable it becomes." NEW DELHI : A day after restricting imports of fully built colour television sets, the government on Friday signalled plans to offer incentives for television manufacturing in line with the scheme for domestic smartphone makers. Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP) for TVs is underway and specified parts like open cell, chips on films, printed circuit boards assembly (PCBA) are exempted from duty. Hence, industry will be able to rapidly move to domestic manufacturing and consumers will not see any price escalation," a commerce ministry official said on condition of anonymity. With PMP, the Centre aims to further deepen the manufacturing ecosystem for TV sets and components in India. Open cell or television panel and PCBA are two key components of TV sets that are imported for assembling here. The size of the TV market in India is about 25,000 crore, of which 30% comes as imports, primarily from China and South East Asia, while the rest are assembled here. Firms such as LG, Sony, Samsung and Xiaomi assemble TV sets in India with control of around 70% of market share while the remaining is with smaller players. Manish Sharma, chief executive officer at Panasonic-India and South Asia, said the change in government policy on TV imports is not a knee-jerk reaction to the geopolitical situation as discussions on PMP have been on for at least one-and-a-half years. The new policy will help firms backward-integrate and improve the quality of products available. India already has the capability." Currently, major contract manufacturers like Dixon, SPPL and Videotex are assembling TV sets for major brands. Sunil Vachani, executive chairman, Dixon Technologies, said with the new policy, he is hoping around 7,500-8,000 crore of manufacturing will shift to India gradually. Dixon that works as a contract manufacturer for firms including Samsung is looking at ramping up its annual TV production capacity from 4.5 million to 6.5 million sets, Vachani added. Colour TV sets worth $781 million were imported in the fiscal to March, mostly from Vietnam ($428 million) and China ($292 million). While major brands import only premium products priced over 1 lakh, other imports mostly belong to cheaper brands. Jaipal Singh, associate research manager, client devices at International Data Corp. (IDC) India, said many smaller brands are already planning to assemble in India. The restriction will only force them to rush things," he added. While the governments move is seen by many to be targeting non-essential imports from China, Xiaomi said in a note it welcomed the announcement, holding that it has been manufacturing smart TVs in India since the launch of Mi TVs in 2018. Prasid Banerjee contributed to the story. 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 Hong Kong: CE's office regrets misleading reports The Chief Executive's Office today expressed regret over misleading reports by individual media organisations on the communication between the Chief Executive and members of the government anti-epidemic expert advisory group. In a statement, the office emphasised that during yesterdays press conference, the Chief Executive explained in detail the grounds for the postponement of the 2020 Legislative Council General Election. It pointed out that in addressing questions raised by the media, the Chief Executive again explained the interaction and tacit understanding between the Government and its expert advisers developed in the past seven months over anti-epidemic work, noting that each anti-epidemic measure was rolled out by the Government after thorough consideration of all relevant factors. The statement noted that the Chief Executive also clearly stated that she had not discussed the postponement of the election with any of the expert advisers. All the expert opinions quoted by the Chief Executive at the press conference were related to the epidemic, including the concerns by one of the experts about the current situation given the large proportion of confirmed cases with unknown infection sources and the inadequacy in contact tracing. The office expressed regret over individual groundless media reports which attempted to mislead readers into believing that the views on elections quoted by the Chief Executive originated from the experts. It added that to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding, the Chief Executive took the initiative to clarify with the four experts attending the anti-epidemic expert advisory group meeting this afternoon. The Chief Executive's Office stressed that amid the present severe epidemic, various sectors in the community should unite together to fight the disease. Any individual who attempts to create division in society runs counter to the goal of combating the virus together. This story has been published on: 2020-08-01. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Jeff Bezos testifying remotely before a House Judiciary subcommittee on Wednesday. Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook testified before Congress on Wednesday about how they use their market power to destroy competitors. Unlike other tech hearings, this one had minimal grandstanding, and the politicians came prepared. The tech titans did not seem ready for that at all, and they admitted to doing a lot of offensive things. This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Since Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos went from being another Silicon Valley executive to the richest man in the world, we have rarely seen him worried. This is a man who dared the tabloids to taunt him. This is a man who employs a personal detective named Gavin de Becker. But on Wednesday, we saw his worried face. We saw it while Bezos testified before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee focused on antitrust enforcement. He and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook were called to answer questions about their power. These are the men who control how things get to you on the internet your apps, your messages, your ads, your news, your answers to questions, and just about anything you could buy. For the past year this subcommittee has been investigating whether that dominance over distribution has led to America's decades-low small-business creation whether Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon use their power to destroy would-be competitors. Given the historic nature and the intense media focus on the meeting, the lawmakers' primary mission was to articulate their findings on the vast power these companies wield in ways that Americans could understand. And Bezos showed us his worried face because, histrionics from a few members aside, the subcommittee members did just that. The subcommittee "showed that these companies are gatekeepers that they engage in anticompetitive practices and that their dominance is about monopoly power, not innovation," said Matt Stoller, an antitrust researcher and the author of "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy." Story continues It was the first time men like Bezos "masters of the universe," as Stoller put it have had to answer questions from informed, powerful people. And under pressure, they admitted to a lot of the toxic behavior their critics have been accusing them of for years. When you rule the roads For the most part, when Silicon Valley has gone to Washington it's been an embarrassment for our politicians. Geriatric senators ask basic questions about technology, and the CEOs in the hot seat restrain themselves using their best media training and paternalistic question-answering. There was some of that at Wednesday's hearing, mostly from the subcommittee's ranking member, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin. There was also some grandstanding about conservatives being silenced on Facebook (they are not) and Google (still not). But that was a minority of the minority. For the most part, members from both parties asked thoughtful, well-researched questions. And it seems the CEOs were not prepared for that. As Stoller said, they had to admit myriad shady business tactics: Members of both parties hammered Facebook over its strategy of buying, copying, or threatening competitors out of business, reading damning internal emails from the company's acquisition of Instagram. Bezos was tongue-tied when he was asked why Amazon made money from counterfeit goods, and he couldn't answer questions about Amazon's protocol for ensuring it's not selling stolen goods. Bezos squirmed through questions from Rep. Pramila Jayapal about how Amazon misuses third-party seller data to develop in-house brands that compete with merchants selling on his platform, saying only, "I can't answer that question yes or no." The subcommittee's chairman, Rep. David Cicilline, brought up that, outside Amazon, these third-party sellers are called "partners," while inside they're called "internal competitors." Much in the same way, Zuckerberg sweat through questions about Facebook's history of spying on competitors. Zuckerberg could not explain away the fact that his company profits from peddling misinformation. Cicilline said that, despite its commitment to distributing only accurate information about the coronavirus, it took Facebook five hours and 20 million views before it took down a video full of false claims about the virus. Amplifying that misinformation once it's on the platform, Cicilline said, is a "business decision." Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado pressed the CEOs of Apple and Google, both of which control app stores, to promise that they would not use the information they collect from apps in their stores to build competitors. Democratic Rep. Val Demings of Florida pressed Pichai about the way Google surveils its customers, bundling data from across all its products (such as Gmail and Maps) to sell them targeted ads. The CEOs were media-trained. They knew to try to give long answers to run out the clock. They knew how to evade. And they knew how to give nonanswers. Bezos at one point uttered the words "I do not understand," and I could not help but find the irony in that. Antitrust is complex. The way these companies build moats around themselves is so brilliant and sometimes ruthless that it's hard to believe Bezos could get lost following anything. But in this hearing, all four CEOs looked lost. Perhaps the most gut-wrenching moment of the hearing was when Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia played a recording of a small textbook seller that was crushed by Amazon when it got big enough to compete with Bezos' business. "We were never given a reason," the seller said. "Amazon didn't even provide us with a notice as to why we were being restricted. There was no warning. There was no plan." Confronted with the recording, Bezos had no explanation. Why we are here Now, you may be saying to yourself, "But Linette, if we don't have these big companies, how will we compete with big companies from China and elsewhere?" And I will tell you that we cannot compete against anyone unless we are competing against ourselves, here in the US. What these companies do when they crush their competitors undercutting them, or copying them, or burying their technology after an acquisition entrenches these companies. And the more entrenched they are, the less innovative they have to be. Perhaps, for example, if there were a Facebook competitor with a news feed that didn't peddle lies and outrages, we might be able to choose to go to that competitor. But we can't. Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg called that a "digital land grab." The US economy is not intended to be a land grab for the rich and powerful. It is intended to be an equal playing field, where people with talent and dedication can innovate their way to success. Even more critical than that, our country is contending with the kind of power these companies can wield. When our antitrust laws were written back in the 1890s and reviewed in the 1930s, our leaders understood that once companies became huge, they can capture politics and run this nation. "We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels," Henry Wallace, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vice president, wrote in a 1944 essay on the dangers of fascism. "As long as scientific research and inventive ingenuity outran our ability to devise social mechanisms to raise the living standards of the people, we may expect the liberal potential of the United States to increase. If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase." There is a sense in this country that liberty is decreasing, that power is in the hands of a few and that their voices matter more than those of the many. Even Sensenbrenner, who seemed confused for a significant portion of the hearing, called on the government to review the mergers that made these companies so dominant. He said that everyone makes mistakes and that regulators likely made them there. Expect the report this subcommittee released on its findings to contain damning emails and other information about how these powerful people have hoarded power and used it to make it virtually impossible for anyone else to compete. It's time the American people understand why their sense that something is very wrong is valid and where it's coming from so we can change it. Read the original article on Business Insider "Freedom is not the right to make others sick" said Mattarella. Italy's president Sergio Mattarella has warned people in Italy not to lower their guard amid a slight rise in coronavirus cases in recent days, reports Italian news agency ANSA. Mattarella, speaking at a ceremony before parliament's summer recess on 31 July, recalled the thousands of Italians who have died due to covid-19. The president said it was vital to maintain precautions to contain the spread of the coronavirus, including social distancing, the wearing of masks, and frequent hand washing. "Learning to live with the virus does not mean behaving like it no longer exists" - Mattarella said - "One must not confuse freedom with the right to make others sick." Stressing that Italy "must not forget what happened," the president recalled that on 31 March, just four months ago, "more than 800 of our compatriots died in a single day" due to covid-19. The president also thanked the sacrifices of healthcare workers as well as the countries that came to Italy's aid at the height of its covid-19 emergency. On 31 July Italy registered 379 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, with the majority of them in the northern Veneto and Lombardy regions, according to the Italian health ministry. This number compares to 386 new cases on 30 July, which was significantly higher than the number registered in previous days, reports ANSA. Photo credit: Antonio Nardelli / Shutterstock.com. Louisiana hospitals such as Lourdes Hospital in Lafayette have experienced a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. A powerful resurgence of COVID-19 infections in Louisiana is hitting the state harder than its first wave in spring, making it the only state in the nation to experience two devastating spikes of the virus, an analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. The state leads in COVID-19 cases per capita, continuing to outpace even Florida, Arizona and New York, where dramatic surges of the virus have occurred since the outbreak began in March. Louisiana leads US in total COVID-19 cases per 100k residents But unlike those states, Louisiana has been among the worst impacted in the U.S. twice during the pandemic: once in April when the New Orleans area led the state's rise in COVID-19 spread and again this summer when dozens of parishes across the state more than doubled the number of infections they experienced in April, according to the analysis by USA TODAY Network. Louisiana's experience with COVID-19 offers insight into how a state that took strict shutdown measures to curtail the rapid spread of the virus early on can suffer a more expansive surge after reopening. It also reveals how the course of the pandemic in a state can evolve, penetrating new areas relatively untouched by the first round of infections. Video: FDA opens door to at-home testing that could transform fight against COVID-19 Louisiana and New York have long been the top states for per capita infections, but as New Yorks cases have largely plateaued in recent weeks, the virus has made a strong comeback in Louisiana. Coronavirus hot spots shift to the South Since the beginning of the pandemic, Louisiana has reported 116,280 total cases and 3,835 deaths from COVID-19, according to the Louisiana Department of Health's update Friday. More: How the South and Southwest became the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic COVID-19 has spread far and fast in Louisiana, more 'than any point' Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat in a mostly Republican state, took criticism early in the pandemic for his stay-at-home order that shut down the state's economy in the spring. He has been hesitant to roll back reopening since the latest surge, instead focusing on a mask mandate and a more targeted closure order for bars. Story continues Edwards already is signaling he likely will extend his mask and bar closure order another two weeks. And he said he hasn't ruled out stronger measures to control the virus. The most important thing to know is that the situation remains very, very serious, Edwards said in a briefing Thursday. Theres more COVID-19 in Louisiana and across every community across Louisiana than in any point up to now. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was criticized early in the pandemic for his stay-at-home order in the spring that shut down the state's economy. Edwards is right. The spread of the virus is vast in Louisiana after the state began reopening in June, and more prevalent than it was in April's peak, according to the USA TODAY Network analysis. New Orleans no longer the problem That spike in July shows just how far and how fast across the state the virus has spread, with the greatest spikes reported in parishes around Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lafayette and Lake Charles, the analysis shows. Emergency Department Dr. Doug Clement and charge nurse Erica Granger are facing a new crush of COVID-19 cases at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. In northeast Louisiana's Madison Parish, the summer spike brought 133 new coronavirus cases in the worst week in June, an increase of more than 4,000% over the three cases reported during the worst week of April's peak. In Vermilion Parish, the summer surge peak came last week with 332 cases, an increase of 1,875% over the 16 reported in the worst week of April, the analysis shows. Sixteen of Louisianas 64 parishes have cumulative per capita infection rates greater than that of New York City, considered to have the nation's worst concentration of the virus early in the pandemic. One Louisiana parish East Carroll has recorded more than double New York Citys infection rate, according to the analysis. Louisiana's two surges differ as one prompted shutdown, the other masks Louisianas two defined peaks of COVID-19 place it among the worst-affected areas of the country in April and then again in the summer, and the USA TODAY Network analysis shows the second peak is worse. Louisiana first peaked in the week ending April 7, when it added 237.6 new cases per 100,000 residents, the third-worst in the country behind New Jersey and New York. In its second surge, Louisiana sprinted past the April peak. For the week ending July 27, Louisiana added 323.2 cases per 100,000 residents. The state's per-capita July peak is behind only Florida and Arizona, which are experiencing their first strong spikes of the pandemic. During the first surge, Louisiana had more aggressive measures in place to prevent the spread. Edwards issued a stay-home order on March 22 and kept the order in place until May 15, when the state moved into Phase 1 of reopening. Even with cases being confined to certain regions, the state locked down. "As we've opened up businesses and society, we're seeing an increase of cases," says Dr. Tina Stefanski, the Acadiana regional medical director for Louisiana's Office of Public Health. The second surge began after the state relaxed restrictions. Dr. Tina Stefanski, the Acadiana regional medical director for Louisiana's Office of Public Health, said there was not enough compliance with mask and social distancing guidelines after reopening. "As we've opened up businesses and society, we're seeing an increase of cases," Stefanski said. "Even though the virus was clearly still circulating, many people went back to their lives as they were before. It didn't change their behavior." The combined effect of two waves of infections: Louisiana now leads the nation in total cases per resident since the U.S. outbreak took off in March. Louisiana reported 2,463 cases per 100,000 people, followed by Arizona with a rate of 2,347, Florida with 2,148 and New York at 2,130. The New Orleans area has seen significant decreases in daily new cases since its peak during the first surge. Orleans Parish, for example, recorded 797 cases per 100,000 during the week of April 7. Its peak during the summer surge, during the week of July 16, brought only 181 cases per 100,000 a decrease of 77%. The same was true for the other parishes that had high case numbers during the first wave. The recent peaks for Jefferson and St. John the Baptist Parishes were 53% and 55% lower, respectively, than in the worst April weeks in those parishes. Many of the areas hit heavily by COVID-19 in the first wave in April implemented mask mandates earlier. New Orleans issued a mandate June 24. Jefferson Parish and East Baton Rouge Parish started mandating masks July 1. But the parishes that were largely spared during the first wave are now recording more cases than they did in April. Calcasieu Parish which includes one of Louisiana's most populous cities, Lake Charles had a modest peak of new cases during the spring surge with 121 in the week ending April 7. Its peak in the summer surge, last week, was more than 900% higher, at 1,245. Louisiana's second COVID-19 surge not as deadly as first yet Louisiana has seen signs in recent days that the state could be approaching a plateau as the number of new cases added each day has started to decline. But even with numbers of new cases falling, the state still had thousands of new cases this week, putting pressure on hospital systems. We hope that were seeing the beginnings of a trend toward a plateau in cases, although its at a very high level of cases, Edwards said. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards briefs reporters in Baton Rouge on the state's efforts against the coronavirus pandemic on May 4. During the summer surge, the death rate has not reached the peak that Louisiana hit in the spring. For the week of April 18, the state averaged 9.9 deaths per 100,000 residents compared to 5.4 per 100,000 for the week of July 30. Edwards said that while the state may be seeing evidence of cases leveling off, it may take a while for deaths to plateau. On Wednesday, the state recorded 69 new deaths, the highest daily count in more than two months. "We know that deaths are a lagging indicator of what's going on because the first thing you're going to see is people contracting the illness, then they're going to go into the hospital and so forth," Edwards said. "It could be some time before this shows up in fewer deaths." Stefanski said she's hopeful the mask mandate will lead to a decrease in infection levels, but it will take time to see the effects of the requirement. While more people are wearing masks, she said she's concerned about large crowds that continue to gather. "I'm really concerned that we're not going to drive down the level of infection in the community to the point that we really need it to be in order to open schools safely or helping nursing homes get back to some level of visitation," she said. "There are implications to people's behavior socially." Some Louisiana hospitals prepare for the worst of second surge Hospitals in central Louisiana, an area that has experienced some of the greatest increases in infections in the state during the summer wave, issued a plea this week for people to wear face masks and follow social distancing guidelines. We strongly believe the people of this community can help make this happen, the letter said. But to successfully do that, we need everyone to take all needed steps to limit their risk of exposure and help protect those around them. Masks, physical distancing and hand washing these things work and can help get the virus back under control in our community. At the governors news conference Thursday, Dr. G.E. Ghali, chancellor of the LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport, said that while North Louisiana has not seen the same large increases in case numbers as other parts of the state, it has seen a sharp increase over the past 30 days. On Wednesday, Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center posted a memo on Facebook written by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Henry Kaufman, which said the current rate of increasing cases will deplete the medical resources of our community. Dr. Henry Kaufman of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital has blamed the resurgence on resistance to common sense measures. In the memo, Kaufman said the communitys resistance to common sense measures was to blame for the areas difficulty in combating COVID-19. Lafayette Parish and other parishes had no mask mandate until Edwards implemented the statewide mandate July 13. Where other places have allowed science and reason to guide their actions, the curve has been flattened and the disease has been suppressed to the point where routine personal and commercial activities have resumed, Kaufman wrote. Here in our community, there has been much resistance to common sense measures and we are reaping the rewards of our obstinance." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Louisiana, in second COVID-19 wave worse than first, No. 1 per capita James Murdoch resigned from the board of News Corp. on Friday, citing disagreements over editorial content at the company founded by his father, conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The company owns The Wall Street Journal, known for its conservative editorial page, and Rupert Murdoch has counseled world leaders, espousing his philosophy, but son James over the years has moved to the left. James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, in January condemned the organizations coverage of climate change, particularly for denying the role of global warming in Australias devastating fires. My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the companys news outlets and certain other strategic decisions, Murdoch said in his resignation letter. A Harvard dropout and co-founder of a hip hop music label, the younger Murdoch was formerly chief executive of Twenty-First Century Fox, before most of its assets were sold to Walt Disney. The departure of the son of 89-year-old Rupert Murdoch would leave the News Corp. board with 10 directors. A representative for Murdoch declined to comment beyond the resignation letter. Late actor Sushant Singh Rajput's sister Shweta Singh Kirti took to social media on Saturday and penned an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the letter, she requested PM Modi to intervene in the case immediately and ensure that no evidence is tampered with or manipulated. "I am the sister of Sushant Singh Rajput and I request an urgent scan of the whole case. We believe in India's judiciary and expect justice at any cost," Shweta Singh Kirti said in a tweet. I am sister of Sushant Singh Rajput and I request an urgent scan of the whole case. We believe in Indias judicial system & expect justice at any cost. @narendramodi@PMOIndia#JusticeForSushant#SatyamevaJayatepic.twitter.com/dcDP6JQV8N shweta singh kirti (@shwetasinghkirt) August 1, 2020 In another tweet, Kirti said, "Somehow my heart says that you stand with and for truth. We are from very simple family. My brother had no godfather when he was in Bollywood nor do we have anyone right now. My request to you is to look into this case and make sure everything is handled." The Chhichhore actor was found dead at his residence in Mumbai on June 14. His father KK Singh has lodged an FIR against Rhea Chakraborty and six others, including her family, with Bihar Police. KK Singh has accused Rhea of befriending his son in 2019 to further her own career. The Patna FIR is registered under several IPC sections such as 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 306 (abetment to suicide). Meanwhile, Mumbai Police, which is already investigating the case, has questioned several famous people from the film industry, including Mahesh Bhatt, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Aditya Chopra, film critic Rajeev Masand and many more. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajput case: Rhea Chakraborty breaks down in latest video Also read: Sushant Singh Rajput case: ED files money laundering case By Caitlin Johnstone July 31, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - I had a weird dystopian dream recently where I was running away from these evil Agent Smith-type characters who looked just like normal people, so there was no way to recognize them; they could be an old man or a child or a librarian, or anyone. The only sign that allowed me to tell them apart from real people always came too late: if I ever talked about the dark forces I was fighting, at some point they would say the words Well, what did you expect? As in, what did you expect when you disobey us? What did you expect when you try to stand against our power? Did you think we wouldnt come after you? Did you really think you could win? It was a really scary, trippy dream, and Ive been thinking about it ever since. Ive been thinking about it because its such an accurate reflection of how subservience to power actually manifests in our world. You talk about abusive power structures in our world, from police brutality to corporate predation to imperialist military interventionism, and many people are receptive. But you always wind up standing across from some freaky empire zombie saying Well, what did you expect? No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter It really is like a zombie infection, like a virus of the mind which spreads through propaganda and toxic ideologies and leads people to support the abuse of the disempowered by the powerful. She is 14 years old. pic.twitter.com/3UFTigy00M Brynn (@pcbrynn) July 27, 2020 Whenever theres an act of police brutality caught on video, no matter how brutal or inexcusable it may be, when that video circulates online you will always see comments saying Well, what did you expect? That person was disobeying. Literally always. Always, always, always, without a single solitary exception. Theres a certain type of mind virus whose victims literally cannot help themselves. They absolutely cannot resist the impulse to start making excuses for the authority figure explaining why its okay for them to assault and abuse the disobedient weaker party. You get the impression that theyre not even really thinking about it; its an entirely mindless reflex for them. Like robots. Or zombies. And its the exact same mind virus which justifies literally any violence by the powerful against those who disobey them, from the smallest to the largest of scales. Those who respond to videos of police brutality with Well what do you expect? They were disobeying! arent just defending the police, theyre defending every power structure in the world where the weak are attacked for disobeying the powerful. From governments which attack, subvert and destroy weaker nations which disobey them, all the way down to parents who hit their children for annoying them. Its the same mind virus, and its the same dynamic, and it all funnels upward in support of the same power structures. The doctrine which says its okay for the powerful to use violence upon the disobedient disempowered applies anywhere else one might choose to apply it. Which is why theres so much overlap between defenders of police violence and supporters of various kinds of US imperialism. The 14-year-old boy was pinned to the ground, but apparently that wasn't enough for this cop. pic.twitter.com/6cPiBYfVpx In the NOW (@inthenow) April 30, 2020 Dont side with the powerful against the disempowered. Just dont. Learning to distinguish between empowered parties and disempowered parties can be a little tricky, even for relatively awake people, because nobody likes to think of themselves as siding with the powerful against the weak. Its something we all know intuitively to be wrong, so well often find clever ways of using an incomplete analysis of the power dynamics at play which allows us to feel as though were fighting the power when were really doing the exact opposite. And propagandists are of course all too eager to help us do this. Israel is a perfect example. You can squint at it in such a way that lets you feel as though youre defending a disempowered religious minority with an extensive history of persecution that is surrounded by enemies, but really it has nuclear weapons and the full might of the US empire on its side. In reality the Palestinians are the down-power ones, but people who want to believe the Israeli government is a poor widdle victim will do mental gymnastics to contort the power dynamics. These compartmentalizations ignore where the actual power is at on a global scale and just zoom in to a local analysis which ignores all else. Whenever you see the western mass media and their propagandized followers talking about The people of [insert targeted nation here], theyre cheerleading a US empire-backed movement against a weaker government which has resisted absorption into that empire. But theyre posing as supporters of the little guy. Juan Guaido is the brave rebel fighting the powerful Maduro regime! No, hes backed by the US-centralized empire which is trying to stage a coup in the nation with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. Yay, the freedom fighters in Syria are fighting the tyranny of their oppressive ruler! No theyre not, theyre jihadist extremists who were backed by the US and its allies with the goal of toppling Damascus in order to seize control of a crucial geostrategic region. Yay, the brave people of Hong Kong are liberating themselves from the tyranny of Beijing! Well really China is far less powerful than the US-centralized power alliance and the US government is unquestionably intervening in the HK protests. But people make believe its just the people vs the big bad Chinese government. In 500 media articles in 16 yrs, terms like the Venezuelan people or civil society were used exclusively to refer to opposition groups in alignment with (and funded by) the US government. https://t.co/FL7i0ErQ0V Media Lens (@medialens) February 1, 2019 This impulse to pretend youre fighting the power instead of fighting for power is so pervasive Ive seen people do ridiculous things like say Julian Assange is actually the power because WikiLeaks is influential. Hes one guy! Thats also what youre seeing when people try to spin these US protests as a Deep State color revolution backed by George Soros and the Chicoms. No its not, you just dont want to admit that you support the government and its armed goon squad against people who are sick of the brutal US police state, so youre doing ridiculous mental gymnastics to make it feel like youre actually punching up. Online forums are full of self-described anarchists who constantly wind up on the same side as the CIA and the US State Department on foreign policy because they act like every revolution in every nation is the people vs power while ignoring a global-scale analysis of real power. If your anti-authoritarian worldview frequently leads you to supporting agendas which make the biggest power structure on the planet more powerful, then youre not anti-authoritarian, you just want to feel like you are. Youre fundamentally no different than any other MSM-brainwashed tool. Learn to see clearly where the power is, and refuse to side with it. Expunge the What did you expect? mind virus from your system and youll be doing all of humanity a big favor. Caitlin's articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast, throwing some money into her hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying her book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. https://caitlinjohnstone.com The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Post your comment below See also The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. A New South Wales duo sent packing after trying to cross into South Australia during the week have been arrested in Adelaide, as the state records one new COVID-19 case. The 25-year-old man and 20-year-old woman tried to cross the border at Pinnaroo on Thursday, claiming they were headed interstate to sell a dog. They were refused entry and turned back to NSW, but police said officers later stopped their NSW-registered car in the Adelaide suburb of Kilburn on Saturday afternoon. The pair were charged with breaching COVID-19 directions and have been denied bail ahead of a court appearance on Monday. Man, 25, and woman, 25, from NSW attempted to cross in SA to sell a dog and were turned away only to be found in Adelaide just two days later (pictured, an SA border crossing) The arrests came as the state recorded one new case of coronavirus, a man aged in his 20s. He had returned from interstate and has been in quarantine since his arrival. The addition means there are four active cases of COVID-19 in South Australia. Police warned South Australians to reconsider travel to Queensland after new cases of community transmission in the Sunshine state. Commissioner Grant Stevens said while people are allowed to return to SA from Queensland, it's possible renewed restrictions will be imposed at short notice. Mr Stevens said no decision had been finalised regarding the re-introduction of travel restrictions with Queensland, nor was any date for changes being considered. But he said the situation would continue to be monitored. The pair were charged with breaching COVID-19 directions and have been denied bail ahead of a court appearance on Monday (pictured, the SA border) SA's Police Commissioner Grant Stevens (pictured) said while people are allowed to return to SA from Queensland the rules could change very quickly The warning came after a South Australian paramedic tested positive after going to Victoria to help test people for coronavirus. The woman in her 20s volunteered to help with testing operations in Melbourne to deal with with the current surge in cases. She returned to Adelaide on Wednesday and remains in isolation along with one close contact. Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said the woman followed all the proper procedures with protective equipment but an infection in such circumstances was 'part of the risk of this sort of work'. 'She absolutely followed the correct infection control processes,' Prof Spurrier said. 'This is risky business.' SA's Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier (pictured) said a paramedic who caught coronavirus after travelling interstate to help with testing followed all the correct guidelines It was also revealed that 170 people were expected to arrive in Adelaide on Saturday on a repatriation flight from India. All will go into hotel quarantine with officials expecting at least some to have COVID-19. South Australia has reported four COVID-19 deaths and and 443 people have been cleared of the virus. New Delhi: Ministry of Finance has issued several instructions to enhance ease of doing business for importers and exporters. In the latest directive, government has stressed on reducing and eliminating physical print-outs for custom clearance. Now, Importers and exporters will not be required to submit paper documents such as GAR-7 Forms/TR-6 Challans & Trans-shipment Permit (TP) for business purposes. These instructions will become operational from December 1, 2016. Government has asked all Customs Houses at Ports, Air Cargo Complex Inland Container Depot & CFCs to issue Public Notice in this regard. These steps will also help the importers and exporters to move towards paper- free environment and electronic messaging as advocated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For all the Latest Business News, Economy News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Georgia Fowler confirmed her romance with businessman Nathan Dalah in February. And now the couple have landed their first campaign together, launching Sydney Rock Oyster brand East 33's winter collection. Stunning photos see the 28-year-old New Zealand-born model packing on the PDA with Nathan, 25, on one of their many romantic date nights. Going strong! Georgia Fowler (left), 28, packed on the PDA with beau Nathan Dalah (right), 25, in a new campaign for an oyster company For one candid shot, a beaming Georgia nestles in close to Nathan, who appears to whisper sweet nothings into her ear. The couple seem oblivious to the goings on around them, as they bask in each other's company. They are treated to crisp beverages and oysters while dining at a Sydney restaurant. Sweet deal: For one candid shot, a beaming Georgia nestled in close to Nathan, as they launched Sydney Rock Oyster brand East 33's winter collection Guests of honour: They were treated to crisp beverages and oysters while dining at a Sydney restaurant In her element, Georgia later poses for a series of stunning individual shots. The brunette beauty lounges across a plush sofa in a racy purple dress with cut-out detail, exposing her trim waist and toned tummy. She raises her lithe arms above her head, and gazes at the camera, highlighting her striking facial features. Beauty: In her element, Georgia later posed for a series of stunning individual shots. The model lounged across a sofa in a racy purple dress with cut-out detail, exposing her toned tummy Other photos within the shoot sees Georgia preparing for a glamorous night out, donning a gold and white print blouse and accessorising with jewel earrings. The photo shoot was completed as a three-part series by creative director Romy Frydman of Style Me Romy. Georgia confirmed her relationship with Nathan, the co-founder of salad chain Fishbowl, in February. Since then, they've made no secret of their romance. Candid shot: Other photos within the shoot sees Georgia preparing for a glamorous night out Glamorous: The New Zealand native donned a gold and white print blouse and accessorised with jewel earrings Recent campaign: The photo shoot was completed as a three-part series by creative director Romy Frydman of Style Me Romy The couple attended Paris Fashion Week together in March, before coronavirus lockdown restrictions were put in place. They are also believed to have holidayed together in the Northern Territory earlier in the year. In the past, Georgia has been romantically linked to Hollywood stars including Nick Jonas and Leonardo DiCaprio. Going public: Georgia confirmed her relationship with Nathan, the co-founder of salad chain Fishbowl, in February. They are pictured at Paris Fashion Week that month The City of Burlington has announced that parking fees will be reintroduced in the downtown for on-street parking and in municipal parking lots starting Tuesday, Aug. 4. City staff noted that recent observations, a review of occupancy data and feedback from the public indicate that parking is steadily increasing to pre-COVID levels. They said it is anticipated the increase in parking demand will continue as most businesses reopen following the Halton Regions entry into Stage 3 of the Provinces reopening framework on July 24. Visitors using downtown parking are encouraged to use the HONK Mobile app. HONK offers touch-free payment and reduces the number of people touching the same parking machines throughout the day. As our community begins to enjoy activities with the Stage 3 reopening, weve seen an increase in parking demand and desire to manage supply and revenue, said Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward. Council listened to the voices of the business community and the Downtown Parking Committee to reinstate paid parking. Discussions are also underway about returning some of the 20-minute curbside pickup to regular paid parking. Brian Dean, executive director of the Burlington Downtown Business Association described the return to paid parking as a timely development for the business community. We appreciate the flexibility shown by the City of Burlington to pivot the parking assets when our business community needed both free parking and curbside pick-up during Stages 1 and 2. As we cautiously enter Stage 3 of the Provinces economic recovery plan we believe that a return to paid parking in the core will signal a sense of normalcy for our patrons, visitors and business owners, said Dean. Read more about: GLEN CARBON Police have retrieved as evidence a patch of bloody carpet from the home at which a man with a long criminal history allegedly beat his then girlfriend. Michael J. Consiglio, 30, of Granite City, is charged with aggravated domestic battery for allegedly choking a victim on April 7. He was also charged with a Feb. 28 domestic battery in New Orleans. Consiglio has also been charged with 77 counts of violating an order of protection. Two cell phones have also been taken as evidence as a result of a search warrant. A Glen Carbon police officer testified previously at a contested preliminary hearing that Consiglio was charged with aggravated domestic battery as a result of an April 27 incident in which police arrived at the victims Glen Carbon home to see four children, between the ages of 2 and 8, crying and screaming, stating their mother was beaten. The officer said the victim was found lying in a pool of blood and suffered three fractures to bones in her face and a fracture to her finger. A sworn statement alleges the victim was barely conscious and breathing. Her face was covered in blood, and she was taken to a hospital for treatment. Glen Carbon Detective Jerry Coppotelli testified that Consiglio used a Madison County Jail cell mates phone to call his former girlfriend and order her to stay home and not talk to anybody. Coppelli said Consiglio blamed the victim for his confinement. Assistant Madison County States Attorney Phil Voss said that Consiglio has been blocked from calling the victim. He said the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled authorities cannot forbid prisoners from using the telephone. Consiglio has a record dating to 2007 when he was convicted of felony theft. He also has convicted for theft, attempted burglary, two counts of violation of probation. He served 30 months in prison for a 2009 theft charge and four years in prison for a 2011 burglary conviction. He also has two prior convictions for domestic battery and three counts of probation violation. He has two misdemeanor domestic battery convictions, a misdemeanor battery conviction and a conviction for driving under the influence. He is currently on probation for driving under the influence. Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan, who is also commandant of the current state of emergency in Armenia due to the COVID-19 situation in the country, on Saturday signed a new decision. Accordingly, the sub-item of the decision, which stipulated that "Only persons of retirement age are served every day from 10:00 to 12:00" has been repealed, and is no longer a mandatory requirement. The Warsaw Ghetto residents were completely unaware of what had been achieved, the researchers write. Tragically, an even worse fate was ahead for most of those who survived. Nearly all of the Warsaw Ghettos residents were deported to concentration, forced labor and extermination camps, and about 7,000 were killed during an armed uprising in 1943 during the ghettos liquidation. Seoul, Aug 1 : The leader of a South Korean religious sect, which was at the centre of the early coronavirus outbreak in the country, was arrested on Saturday for allegedly obstructing the government's efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic. A local court in Suwon, south of Seoul, issued an arrest warrant for Lee Man-hee, the founder of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, reports Yonhap News Agency. Lee, 89, is suspected of submitting false documents to health authorities on the number of participants at the sect's gatherings and where the gatherings took place in February, when the fringe religious sect became a hotspot in the early phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. He is also accused of embezzling 5.6 billion won ($4 million) from church funds and holding unauthorized religious events from 2015-19. Prosecutors questioned him twice, on July 17 and 23, and filed for his arrest warrant Tuesday. The court held a hearing to review the request Friday. Seven senior officials from the group's headquarters were indicted on July 28 on charges including violation of the infectious disease control law and obstruction of justice. Three of them were arrested on July 8, said the Yonhap News Agency report. Some 4,000 Shincheonji followers, most of whom were from its branch in the southeastern city of Daegu, were infected with the coronavirus. South Korea's COVID-19 caseload increased by 31 to 14,336 on Saturday, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). More than 5,000 of them are associated with Shincheonji. The Eastern Regional branch of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has expressed satisfaction with the ongoing voter registration exercise in the region. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency ( GNA), the Acting Regional Secretary of the Party, Mr Cudjou Adukpo, commended the Regional Electoral Officer for her openness and cooperation with all players in the registration exercise. Mr Adukpo, however, expressed concern about occasions where party agents tried to stop people from registering instead of allowing them to go through the process and filed a protest against the registration. He said due to such incidents, one of the sympathizers of his party had his bicycle destroyed at Kyebi. Mr Adukpo said similar incidents were recorded at Nkawkaw, Mpraeso and Abetifi constituencies. He said the NDC would not be moved by such operations and would stick to the rules until the very end of the 2020 election. 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 President Donald Trump told reporters that he plans to ban the TikTok app in the United States through executive authority while flying home from Florida on Friday evening. "We're banning them from the United States," Trump said. The app, which allows users to film and share short videos of themselves along to accompanying music, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The relationship has caused the Trump administration, as well as lawmakers across both aisles, to accuse the app of being a security threat The president said he would sign something as soon as Saturday, without specifying whether he was going to act through an executive order. Trump called the decision "severance" and firmly rejected the reported spinoff deal involving Microsoft buying TikTok. MORE: US looking at banning Chinese social media app TikTok as security threat: Pompeo When asked for comment, a TikTok spokesperson told ABC News: "These are the facts: 100 million Americans come to TikTok for entertainment and connection, especially during the pandemic. We've hired nearly 1,000 people to our U.S. team this year alone, and are proud to be hiring another 10,000 employees into great paying jobs across the US. Our $1 billion creator fund supports U.S. creators who are building livelihoods from our platform. TikTok U.S. user data is stored in the U.S., with strict controls on employee access. TikTok's biggest investors come from the U.S. We are committed to protecting our users' privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform." TikTok has an estimated 65 million to 80 million users in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union, a New York City-based nonprofit advocacy organization, said banning an app like TikTok "is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical." PHOTO: This Feb. 25, 2020, file photo, shows the icon for TikTok. President Donald Trump will order China's ByteDance to sell its hit video app TikTok because of national-security concerns, according to reports published Friday, July 31, 2020. (AP, File) Trump threatened to ban the app while speaking to reporters before leaving for Florida earlier in the day, but did not commit to any specific actions, saying, "We're looking at TikTok, we may be banning TikTok." Story continues "Well see what happens, but we're looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok," the president said. The Chinese video-sharing social networking service hasn't just triggered fear among Republicans. The Democratic National Committee also warned members against using TikTok earlier this month, according to an email obtained by CNN. MORE: Content creators react to possible US ban on TikTok Earlier this month, a TikTok spokesperson told ABC News that the company is "led by an American CEO, with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security, product, and public policy here in the U.S. We have no higher priority than promoting a safe and secure app experience for our users." On July 15, Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows said, "There are a number of administration officials who are looking at the national security risk as it relates to TikTok, WeChat and other apps that have the potential for national security exposure, specifically as it relates to the gathering of information on American citizens by a foreign adversary." The United States would not be the first major country to ban TikTok. India banned the app in late June. ABC News' Alexandra Faul and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report. President Trump says he will ban TikTok in United States originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Meghan Markle's father Thomas has given up on his daughter and Harry 'completely' since reading new book, Finding Freedom. Thomas Markle, 76, has lost hope of a reunion with Meghan and Prince Harry and 'doesn't trust her' anymore, his son Thomas Markle Jnr has claimed. Thomas Jnr, 53, said his father was left angry after reading extracts of new book Finding Freedom, the Mirror reported. Thomas Markle, 76, (above) has given up on a reunion with his daughter Meghan since reading new book Finding Freedom, his son Thomas Markle Jnr has claimed Meghan's half-brother said that Thomas Snr 'does not trust' his daughter (both pictured) and that he has 'given up on Meghan and Harry completely' Meghan's half-brother Thomas Jnr told the Mirror: 'As far as a reunion goes, he's given up on Meghan and Harry completely. 'He doesn't trust her and doesn't want to know that person because of the lies, manipulation and deceit. He just had his 76th birthday needless to say, he didn't hear from Meghan.' Thomas Jnr, who speaks to his father every day, says Thomas Snr plans to enjoy his retirement travelling the world. He added that his father refutes the book's claims that he ignored messages and calls asking him to attend Meghan and Harry's wedding. Thomas Jnr said that his father 'was in hospital' at the time and had his phone switched off, which was 'why he didn't answer'. Thomas Jnr (above), who speaks to his father every day, said his father denies the explosive book's claims that he ignored messages asking him to attend Meghan and Harry's wedding Earlier this year, Meghan and Harry quit their royal duties and said they would separate their time between Britain and America He added: 'It says Harry spoke to our dad to say if he'd listened to him, Harry, there wouldn't have been any problems. That just did not happen.' He insisted that Thomas Snr called Meghan 'scores of times' before the wedding but was ignored. Harry and Meghan tied the knot on May 19, 2018, at Windsor Castle, and have since welcomed their son, Archie, who is now 14 months old. The couple have insisted that they did not contribute to the explosive new book, saying that it was based on 'independent reporting'. Meghan's father Thomas still wants to build a relationship with his 14-month-old grandson Archie and 'hold that little boy one time' But despite the rift, Thomas Jnr insisted that his father still wants to pursue a relationship with his grandson Archie and 'hold that little boy one time'. Earlier this year, Meghan and Harry quit their royal duties and said they would separate their time between Britain and America. In their statement, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said they wanted to 'carve out a progressive new role' and 'step back as 'senior' members of the Royal Family'. They said they wanted to balance their time between the UK and North America, 'continuing to honour our duty to the Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages'. (CNN) Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein, describes the psychological toll of Epstein's abuse in portions of a newly released deposition from May 3, 2016. Giuffre has previously described being recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's onetime girlfriend who has been described as a "recruiter" for Epstein's purported sex trafficking ring, as a teenager, and has alleged she was instructed by Maxwell to have sex with numerous men including Prince Andrew. In her deposition, Giuffre is pressed by attorneys to provide additional names of men who Maxwell "directed her" to have sex with. The attorney conducting the interview names several, including Prince Andrew, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and an individual described as "another prince," and another individual described as "the large hotel chain owner." "Look, I've given you what I know right now," Giuffre said in response. "I'm sorry. This is very hard for me and very frustrating to have to go over this. I don't -- I don't recall all of the people. There was a large amount of people that I was sent to." In the court filings, Maxwell and her attorney portray Giuffre as an unreliable narrator, pointing to errors in certain dates and figures she provided. Giuffre acknowledges in the deposition she was paid for the photo of herself with Prince Andrew that has been published in numerous media outlets. Giuffre's claims have been previously reported by CNN. Prince Andrew and Richardson have denied the allegations against them. Giuffre also claims in her deposition that she rode in a helicopter that Maxwell piloted to Epstein's private island in the Caribbean "plenty of times." Discussing her interviews with reporter Sharon Churcher in 2011, Giuffre says she told Churcher that Maxwell had claimed she flew former President Bill Clinton into the island owned by Epstein as well. "Ghislaine told me that she flew Bill Clinton in. And Ghislaine likes to talk a lot of stuff that sounds fantastical. And whether it's true or not, that is what I do recall telling Sharon Churcher." Giuffre acknowledges in her deposition that in some ways she felt Churcher got the story wrong but she never tried to correct her. Giuffre described wondering why former President Clinton was on the island while she was there and discussing it with Epstein. "I remember asking Jeffrey what's Bill Clinton doing here kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said well he owes me a favor," Giuffre told attorneys in a 2011 recorded conversation about her claims against Epstein. "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious. It was just a joke." Giuffre went on to say that Epstein told her "everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets." Giuffre said that Maxwell and other "girls" were on the island at the time as well. Giuffre has previously said publicly that she saw Clinton on the island. Clinton has denied ever going to Epstein's island in the Caribbean. In her deposition Giuffre described being "sent by" Maxwell to have sex with various men under the guise of "massage." "And when they say massage, that means erotic, okay? That's their term for it," Giuffre said. "I think there are plenty of other witnesses that can attest to what massage actually means. And I'm telling you that Ghislaine told me to go to and give him a massage, which means sex." The name of the individual has been redacted. The newly released documents also show email correspondence between Maxwell and an email address that appears to be Epstein from 2015, wherein Epstein complains about the negative attention he had received since he was charged with soliciting a prostitute in 2007. The documents are part of an unsealing stemming from a 2015 defamation lawsuit against Maxwell brought by Giuffre. This story was first published on CNN.com Newly unsealed documents describe Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse of one of Epstein's alleged victims Sulaiman Njoku and Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State An Igbo family that is Muslim are celebrating the Eid in a way they have not done before. According to Dailytrust, the Alhaji Sulaiman Njokus family of four is set for the activities marking this years Eid al-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice, on which Muslims are expected to slaughter sacrificial animals. Being the Chief Imam of Imo, the head of the family has the responsibility of providing spiritual guidance to other Muslims across the state for which he has to adequately prepare. But this is an unusual day instead of the open ground at Nekede or that at Amausa, the Eid prayers are taking place inside mosques, because of the coronavirus pandemic. Were going to pray in the mosques, according to the guidelines on COVID-19, especially on social distancing and wearing of face masks, he disclosed. This is not how Eid used to be celebrated, however. Eid was celebrated with pomp and pageantry, just as you celebrate Christmas, says Imam Njoku, adding, It was marked with all types of festivities, eating, drinking, sharing and visiting friends. But today all that is gone. We have to be careful how we celebrate so as not to go against the protocols on COVID-19. This year, there will be no festivities. With three children two girls and a boy Imam Njokus family is very small, compared to that of his father, Alhaji Yusuf Njoku. The elder Njoku, who died in February 1995, had three wives and 14 children. He lived in Kano, where he married his first wife, a Fulani lady. Imam of Imo state with some other religious leaders in the state Imam Sulaiman Njokus mother, who hails from Umuevu Umuokrika in Mbaise, Imo state, was his fathers second wife. The Imo State Muslim Council nominated Imam Njoku Chief Imam following the death of Alhaji Dauda Onyeagocha late last year. Apart from leading prayers, especially the Friday and Eid prayers, he is also a member of the Muslim Council of Imo State. After the Eid prayer, Imam Njokus family will retire home where, together with his siblings, they will celebrate and entertain those friends that will come around. Even President Muhammadu Buhari barred [people from] visiting Aso Rock during [the last Eid]. So we should have a low-key celebration to reflect the mood of the times. He added that, As a family, we will celebrate Insha Allah, according to what Allah has provided. The aim is to celebrate and thank Allah for keeping us alive. Life after COVID: Will our traditional and cultural food sharing rituals change on the other side of the Coronavirus? The story this illustration goes with answers those questions with expert opinions. Read more Imagine going out with friends before coronavirus. Maybe you dug into a bowl of free snacks over happy hour beers. Maybe you sampled one anothers cocktails to see if you liked someone elses better before ordering a second round. Maybe you split dessert, devouring one wedge of cheesecake with four forks. Only months ago, patrons of Midtown Villages Graffiti Bar were gleefully sucking down scorpion bowls fishbowls filled with something boozy, shared by straws between a few folks or more. Some of our pre-pandemic dining patterns may seem cringe-worthy now, but in the distant future, will the memory of COVID-19 change our ways? I think everything goes back to the way it was if theres a vaccine, said Jonathan Deutsch, a professor in Drexel Universitys department of food and hospitality management. If you want evidence of that, look at states that have opened up already. ... People are out there doing it, despite the virus. Even as cases tick up in Philadelphia, at Headhouse Squares Twisted Tail, customers still share the complimentary rosemary-bacon-seasoned popcorn that comes before dinner. READ MORE: Could COVID-19 inspire the faithful? Scholars predict spirituality surge in our future. A lot of people are dipping into the popcorn bag just as they normally would, said owner George Reilly. Twisted Tail provides individual servings if diners are uncomfortable sharing, but so far customers havent indicated theyre skittish. Theyre with people who they know and trust to be safe, I suppose, Reilly said. Weve all been out to dinner with friends who say, Oh, Im not going to offer to share, because I have a cold, Deutsch said. Until now, we felt comfortable self-regulating how we deal with that risk. Michael Schulson owns Graffiti Bar, as well as several other restaurants that have reopened for outdoor dining. At Sampan, Double Knot, and Via Locusta, customers continue to order and share family-style meals. I dont think its going to change, really, Schulson said. Everyone wants their life back. READ MORE: What will sex, dating, and marriage look like on the other side of the pandemic? Around the world, in countries where coronavirus has been better contained, life has returned to something close to normal and so have ways of eating and drinking. In China, many still prefer to eat from communal platters rather than use separate serving chopsticks, a change the government has tried to encourage. In Iceland, maskless diners are pushing tables together. In Taiwan, eating out has pretty much gone back to normal save for continued mask-wearing and sanitation efforts, says the Taipei-based food writer Katy Hui-wen Hung. In Auckland, New Zealand, where restaurants and nightclubs are busy again even in the absence of tourists bar owners report that customers are sampling each others drinks. It happens less frequently than before COVID, wrote bar owner Heather Garland, but it does still happen. The people who perhaps were a little germophobic pre-COVID are now that little bit more germophobic, wrote Ruari Hatrick, manager at Cassette Nine, a dive bar/music venue. Its just a recalibration, said Rebecca Spang, a historian at Indiana University and author of The Invention of the Restaurant. The thing about restaurants is that the norms that govern our behavior in them ... you dont even know youve learned them, Spang said. And now were all sort of having to relearn and rethink it. And that is how institutions like restaurants change. READ MORE: The impact of COVID-19 on our future vanity? Well-being will trump how we look. But, Spang notes, restaurants rather than customer behavior are more likely to reconfigure themselves in the wake of COVID-19. And customers, whether they want to or not, are going to find themselves with different kinds of options. And the question is, she said, whether customers will get accustomed. So what changes might we expect to see between the restaurants of 2019 and, say, 2023? We asked Stephani Robson, a senior lecturer at Cornell Universitys School of Hotel Administration who specializes in restaurant design. Will we see an end to cash-only establishments? Not likely, she said, as some owners will remain loath to surrender 2% to 3% of revenue to credit card fees. Its not so much about the restaurants going cash-only as the culture goes toward credit-only. But were not there yet. What about sitting at the bar, close to other patrons and bartenders? Oh, thats not going away, Robson said, noting that not only do solo diners prefer to sit at the bar but bar seats generate more spend per minute than any other seats. (Communal tables, on the other hand, will likely disappear at least for a while. Theyre around not because guests want them, but because theyre the best use of real estate a restaurant can get.) READ MORE: Whats the fate of hugs, handshakes, and high-fives in a post-pandemic world? How about brunch get-togethers? Oh heavens, brunch is important, Robson said. Breakfast foods (and drinks) are cheap and profitable for restaurants. Just expect gatherings to be limited in size for a time. Well, what about scorpion bowls? A scorpion bowl has so much alcohol in it, Robson said, that nothings going to live. I dont believe that, said Schulson, but theyre definitely not going away. Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) director of public relations, Colonel Overson Mugwisi, was a hardworker and remained loyal to the liberation war before and after independence, Minister of State for Harare Metropolitan province Oliver Chidawu has said. The army spokesperson succumbed to Covid-19 on Friday and was buried at Glen Forest Memorial Park in Harare yesterday. He was declared a liberation war hero. Addressing mourners, Minister Chidawu, who is also acting ZANU PF Harare chairperson, said Col Mugwisi will always be remembered. The ZDF shall forever cherish the late Colonel Mugwisis selfless service to the people of Zimbabwe before and after Independence. Col Mugwisi was first appointed the official spokesperson of the Zimbabwe National Army in 2009, when he was Lieutenant Colonel, taking over from Lieutenant Colonel Simon Tsatsi. He then rose to become ZDF spokesperson. Born in 1956 in Masvingo, Col Mugwisi attended Torwood Primary School, Drake and Amaveni secondary schools in Kwekwe, Midlands province. He then crossed into Mozambique to join the liberation struggle in September 1976. In his military career dating back to Zimbabwes independence in 1980, Col Mugwisi held various senior posts, among them Adjutant Zimbabwe Military Academy (ZMA), Officer Commanding Cadet Division ZMA, and Staff Officer responsible for Administration Plans at Army Headquarters. He was also Staff Officer responsible for research at the Zimbabwe Staff College and Directing Staff Joint Command and Staff Courses at the Zimbabwe Staff College before he went into public relations. Over the years, Col Mugwisi attended most career courses offered by the army during the Junior Staff Course, the Company Group Commanders Course and the Command and Staff Course. To cater to the antiviral fabrics and antimicrobial segment, almost all the Indian big textiles brands, including Reliance, Arvind, Aditya Birla, Donear Group, Raymond, and Siyaram have entered the market. Companies started their journey with reusable masks and PPE kits, and today, they are offering a range of PPE clothing along with fashion and casualwear. With the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic abating, companies are turning to preventive measures to boost their revenues. To cater to the antiviral fabrics and antimicrobial segment, almost all the Indian big textiles brands, including Reliance, Arvind, Aditya Birla, Donear Group, Raymond, and Siyaram have entered the market, which is expected to surpass $20.5 billion by 2026, globally. Companies started their journey with reusable masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, and today, they are offering a range of PPE clothing along with fashion and casualwear. Research shows that viruses and bacteria can remain active on textile surfaces for up to two days. Peter England, a menswear brand from the Rs 8,743-crore Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail, has collaborated with Switzerland-based HeiQ to bring the unique HeiQ Viroblock fabric technology to India. Under this collection, Peter England will be launching workwear, loungewear, and face masks. Antiviral apparel starts from Rs 1,800. Arvind will start manufacturing antiviral shirting and suiting material, readymade garments, and face masks. It has partnered textile innovation firm HeiQ Materials AG, in association with Taiwanese specialty chemical major Jintex Corporation, to introduce the anti-virus technology in India. The company will create these products using the newly launched antiviral textile technology in India under its brand Intellifabrix. Carlo Centonze, chief executive, HeiQ Group, said, HeiQ Viroblock is a special combination of our advanced silver and vesicle technology that has proven effective against Covid, with 99.99 per cent reduction of virus within 30 minutes. Kulin Lalbhai, executive director, Arvind, in an interview, had said that, while initially, products would be launched under the Arvind Intellifabrix brand, the company will extend it to other consumer brands in its portfolio. Arvind markets brands like Arrow, US Polo Association, and Flying Machine in India, among several others. The company is targeting around 10 per cent of the annual menswear sales of Arvind Intellifrabrix of about Rs 1,000 crore from this fabric. Donear Group has collaborated with menswear brand Zodiac to launch antiviral shirts called Securo. The company claims its technology kills 99.997 per cent coronavirus on fabric within 2-5 minutes. Prices start from Rs 250 per metre for shirting, and from Rs 400 per metre for polyviscose and slightly higher for wool blends. Rajendra Agarwal, managing director, Donear Group, said demand for such products has shot up and it is coming from across the country. He added, these products would cost 10-15 per cent more than other products. Raymond, Indias largest integrated worsted suitings maker, said it is utilising its garment manufacturing factories in Bengaluru to manufacture PPE products, including coverall suits and masks, which are currently being supplied to government, corporate sectors, and hospitals. Siyaram, one of most well-known fashion textile brands, has launched its anti-coronavirus range of fabrics. The fabrics, launched to fight against the spread of Covid-19 outbreak, have been tested by World Health Organization-approved laboratories. The new anti-coronavirus fabric provides protection from the virus and is developed in association with HeatlhGuard, an Australia-based firm. Loyal Textile Mills, earlier this month, launched Viral Shield, a line of Covid-19 antiviral, reusable PPEs, masks and protective fashionwear range. The series has been launched in collaboration with Reliance Industries and HeiQ from Switzerland. The coronavirus disintegrates quickly within hours on porous surfaces like fabrics. "The masks are used to prevent viral droplets to escape and spread of infection. "Apart from the use of fabric for making masks, there is no data that the fabric has antiviral property that can kill the virus instantaneously," said Dr Manoj Goel, director and unit head, pulmonology, pulmonary critical care & sleep medicine, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram. Antimicrobial clothes are talk of the town now. "We dont have enough scientific data on whether people using them get less infections compared to others. "We must also understand that for infections such as Covid, clothes are not the main mode of transmission. "It is doubtful that these fabrics, even if antimicrobial, will be able to reduce the transmission of infectious diseases, said Dr C Jagadeesh, senior consultant in internal medicine, Apollo Hospital in Chennai. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 00:12:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close A carrier rocket carrying the last satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 23, 2020. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing) BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- China declared the official commissioning of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) on Friday, marking the formal opening of the newly completed BDS-3 system for global users. The BDS system is one of China's major achievements since the reform and opening-up, said Chi Jun, chief director of the BDS-3 satellite research team at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). "BDS, an important piece of space infrastructure, serves the productivity and lives of people by providing accurate time-and-space information services," Chi said. "My colleagues and I have worked around the clock over the past years, experiencing many ups and downs. We are fully aware of its great significance to national security, economic and social development, as well as to public life," said Xie Jun, chief designer of the BDS-3 satellite system at CAST. The BDS system involves efforts of more than 400 agencies and 300,000 research personnel and technicians. The CAST, developer of the satellites, has gathered leading experts and manufacturers from around the country, and integrated the most advanced technologies and high-quality materials and products for the program. INDEPENDENTLY-DEVELOPED "HEART" Under the mechanism, the Xi'an branch of the CAST undertook the development of rubidium atomic clocks. Dubbed the "heart" of the navigation system, rubidium atomic clocks provide time and frequency standards for BDS satellites, and are key to the system's positioning, speed measurement and timing accuracy. In the past two decades, the Xi'an branch has delivered more than 100 rubidium atomic clocks, including 70 high-precision rubidium clocks, to the BDS program. China started to develop atomic clocks as early as the 1960s and 1970s. However, most of the research at that time was theoretical and ground-based. As China decided to build its own satellite navigation system, self-developed rubidium atomic clocks proved to be of great significance to the autonomous control of the whole system. The Xi'an branch developed the first rubidium atomic clock between 1996 and 2000, but there was still a long way to go before it could work in space since the clock had to stand the test of the vacuum environment, the impact of the launch, and long-term irradiation. In order to overcome the challenges in developing rubidium atomic clocks for space, younger members of the research team spent day and night in the lab and worked around the clock to carry out experiments. "I was touched by their dedication," said Lei Wenqi, a former leader of the rubidium atomic clock project at the Xi'an branch. China's first self-developed rubidium clock was successfully tested on a satellite in 2006. Since 2012, China's self-developed rubidium clocks have fully replaced imported rubidium clocks in some of the BDS-2 satellites. In 2016, the Xi'an branch was capable of producing up to 50 satellite rubidium clocks per year. "In the future, our goal is to enhance the performance of rubidium clocks, and improve their daily timing accuracy from one billionth of a second to one 10-billionth of a second," Lei said. UPGRADED SERVICES Along with positioning, navigation and timing services, the BDS-3 system can also provide a variety of value-added services like global search and rescue, short message communication, ground-based and satellite-based augmentation, as well as precise point positioning. A lightship which uses the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is seen in a water channel on the Pearl River estuary in south China's Guangdong Province, June 20, 2019. (Xinhua/Tian Jianchuan) The BDS-3 can accurately locate trapped ships and personnel, thereby contributing to international rescue efforts. The BDS-2 satellites have also been equipped with payloads of short message communication. In 2008, when a magnitude-8 earthquake struck Wenchuan in southwest China's Sichuan Province, severely damaging ground communication facilities, rescuers used the short message function of BDS-2 to report the locations of the quake-hit areas. Different from the BDS-2, the BDS-3 expanded the service area of the short message function from the Asia-Pacific region to the entire world. The regional short message communication capabilities of the BDS-3 have been improved nearly 10 times, while the capacity globally reaches 40 Chinese characters. These features endow the BDS-3 with great application prospects. China has developed a variety of BeiDou terminal products for disaster relief vehicles and personnel, supporting direct disaster reporting, vehicle navigation monitoring, and emergency rescue. Meanwhile, the BDS-3 system has also helped farmers free their hands via autonomous driving, high-precision positioning and navigation, and other emerging technologies. The BDS-based agricultural machinery management system, developed by Space Star technology CO., Ltd., offers operation supervision, real-time tracking, track playback, as well as emergency command and dispatching of agricultural machinery in agriculture production. This has been applied in Heilongjiang Province, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and other provincial-level regions. More than 20,000 BDS agricultural machinery terminals have been sold. BENEFITING ALL Adhering to the principle of "developed by China, dedicated to the world," BDS is now used by more than 120 countries and regions across the globe. The BDS system has been used for confirmation of land ownership, precision agriculture, digital construction and smart ports, in ASEAN member nations, as well as in South Asia, Eastern Europe, West Asia and Africa. China has delivered more than 1,000 sets of BeiDou ship-borne terminal products to Myanmar, providing the country's fishery regulatory authorities with functions like the supervision of fishing-boat locations, management of restricted-navigation areas and waters in which fishing is banned, as well as the notification of weather disasters. The products also provide local fishermen with assistance on positioning and navigation, reporting of fish catches, text communication, as well as distress and safety calls. BDS is one of four global navigation-satellite systems in the world. The other three are GPS of the United States, Galileo of the European Union, and GLONASS of Russia. China has been actively encouraging cooperation and exchanges between the BDS system and other navigation systems. BDS and GLONASS are compatible with each other, while BDS and GPS are compatible and interoperable. Frequency coordination has been promoted between China and the European Union. "The official commissioning of the BDS-3 system is a new starting point for us," Xie Jun said. "We will continue to offer operation management and technical support for the satellites in orbit, to ensure stable signals and reliable services during their designed lifespan of 12 years." The decline in Europe compares with a 9.5-percent quarter-on-quarter drop in the United States, which unlike Europe has not yet been able to get its contagion numbers firmly down yet and whose economic recovery is in doubt. For the currency union as a whole it was the biggest decline since the records started in 1995. The broader 27-country European Union, not all of whose members use the euro, saw output sag 11.9 percent. Spain, which along with Italy was among the first to get hit hard by the spread of the virus, suffered the region's heaviest drop at 18.5 percent. France, Italy and Portugal also endured steep declines, but no country escaped the impact of the pandemic. Economists say the worst of the downturn is past as many restrictions have eased, but that the recovery will be drawn out and vulnerable to renewed virus outbreaks. The economy of the 19-country eurozone shrank by a devastating 12.1 percent percent in the April-June period from the quarter before -- the largest drop on record - as coronavirus lockdowns shut businesses and hampered consumer spending. European governments are countering the recession with massive stimulus measures. EU leaders have agreed on a 750 billion-euro recovery fund backed by common borrowing to support the economy from 2021. National governments have stepped in with loans to keep businesses afloat and wage support programs that pay workers' salaries while they are furloughed. The European Central Bank is pumping 1.35 trillion euros in newly printed money into the economy, a step which helps keep borrowing costs low. Those support measures have helped keep unemployment from spiking. The rate rose to 7.8 percent in June from 7.7 percent in May. But many job losses will wind up being permanent despite the stimulus. Major companies such as Lufthansa, Daimler and Airbus have said they will cut thousands of jobs. Economists say the downturn was concentrated in the months of April and May when lockdowns were most severe. Many restrictive measures have been eased, and business confidence in Germany, the biggest eurozone economy, has ticked up for three straight months. But the outlook is for a long and uncertain climb back to pre-virus levels that could take until 2022 or longer. Company forecasts for the rest of the year assumed that there is not a renewed outbreak of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Cases have been rising again in several countries as people go on vacations and Britain slapped a 14-day quarantine on travelers returning from Spain. Rosie Colthorpe, European economist at Oxford Economics, said the current third quarter was likely to see high growth rates, "but not nearly large enough to make up for the damage." "Beyond this initial bounce, the recovery is set to be gradual and uneven," with pre-virus output regained only by mid-2022, she said, adding that "recent flare-ups of the virus in several European countries risk derailing this recovery." The Spanish economic drop was by far the sharpest since the country's national statistics agency began collecting data. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was meeting later Friday with the leaders of Spain's regions to discuss how to rebuild the economy and where to deploy billions of euros in European Union aid for recovery. Germany, the largest of the countries that use the euro, went through a 10.1-percent decline, the biggest since records started in 1970. In France, the startling plunge of 13.8 percent in April-June was the third consecutive quarter of contraction in France's worsening recession. The pain has been so damaging to jobs and industries that the government is talking down the possibility of another nationwide lockdown as infections tick upward again. Finance minister Bruno Le Maire called on French people to spend more to help the economy recover. "All the growth in GDP seen in the 2010-2019 decade has been wiped out in five months," said Marc Ostwald, chief economist at ADM Investor Services International. In Italy's case, economists said it wiped out about 30 years of growth. By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 07/31/2020 ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. couple Paul Staehle and Karine Martins had an explosive fight on Thursday in which they made assault allegations, involved the police, and Paul said he may file for full custody of their son Pierre after Karine allegedly cheated on Paul and violated a Child Protective Services case against her.Paul, 35, posted a lengthy Instagram Live video on Thursday afternoon that documented his argument with Karine, 23, at what appeared to be their new home in Kentucky and all the drama that went down once authorities arrived on the scene.Paul claimed that Karine called 911, and he told the police he had "no idea" why."I don't know what I've done. I'm pro-police I have nothing against you guys. I just want to know what's going on," Paul said, according to The Blast.The police reportedly asked what was going on and Paul replied, "We were doing a call, I look over, I see her talking to a Brazilian lawyer about child support and divorce. I asked her what's going on with this."Karine got very upset when Paul asked her about the text, according to The Blast, probably because the couple has a history of trust issues and jealousy on Paul's part."You're not taking my son out of the country. Absolutely not!" Paul yelled at Karine at one point in his Instagram Live session."You're not taking my son and running off... You can talk to a lawyer. If I have to, I'll release him to a judge, or I'll put him in custody of a detective. But I'm not giving you my son's documents -- absolutely not. No, not happening."Paul was seemingly refusing to give Pierre's passport to Karine, which would allow her to fly him out of the United States and possibly back to her native country of Brazil.Paul then said Child Protective Services already has "a case open against" Karine."CPS has a case against you and you violated your CPS case, and if I have to go before a judge on that, I will go before a judge because you violated your case with CPS," Paul said.Paul later snapped at Karine -- who can faintly be heard in the background -- "I am not giving you Pierre's documents -- absolutely not.""Why?! He's my baby too!" Karine argued.Paul subsequently repeated how his wife wasn't going to take his son out of the country, and then Paul alleged, "You want to run off with a man?! You want to do things like that? My son is not going out of this country. Okay? I'm not doing that."Karine apparently threatened to talk to a judge, but then Paul dared her to do it, saying he had already spoken to "a Brazilian lawyer."Police could be heard in the background, and Paul apparently told the officers Karine wanted to involve them in the first place -- not him."The Brazilian lawyer told me I could file and get full custody, okay?" Paul told Karine. "What are you accusing me of? Why did you call the cops? I want to know why you called the cops?"Karine told Paul that he had been "bad" and she was "not safe.""Why are you not safe? Have I hit you? Have I assaulted you?! No," Paul said, before repeating Karine wanted to take his baby and "run off.""I have cameras in my house. You can see the cameras. I did nothing wrong," Paul subsequently told the police."I'm not being robbed of my son, not again. She ran off, drank beer and had sex with a random guy before with my son. I had to fight for him. CPS has an open case... You can look it up in CPS computers and see the open CPS case."A police officer told Paul and Karine that they do not deal with custody cases and that is something for the court to determine.Another woman, possibly on speakerphone, can then be overheard appearing to translate for Karine and telling the police Karine wanted to be taken to a "shelter" where someone could "help her."The woman said Karine depended on Paul for everything, including money, and so Karine basically didn't have a way out.Karine yelled that Paul was "bad" and then the woman can be heard saying in Karine's defense that Paul had been "pushing" Karine and "saying bad things to her" when Karine is pregnant and nursing.The officer explained, "I can't take the child from him and I can't take the child from her... I don't know enough about the CPS case, but [Paul] said his kid isn't going anywhere."Pierre started to cry and the woman can be heard insisting it wasn't safe for Karine to stay in her home with Paul because Paul has a "hoarding problem."Paul and Karine then argued over who cleaned the house more and Paul insisted Karine had allegedly called another man. A police officer then told the couple he didn't come to listen to them bicker over cleaning the house.Paul told Karine that he had a camera on her and so if she assaulted him, he'd have it recorded.Paul's mother was also present at the scene, and she didn't seem to understand why the couple was fighting when they were fine the previous day.Paul told his mom that Karine had "assaulted [him] on camera" a night or two ago -- yet she was the one who called the police.Paul's mother accused him of being "one sided," but Paul insisted he was being accused of things he didn't do and Karine is "bipolar" and had cheated on him with the "random guy" with whom she allegedly drank beer with."I'm always 'the bad guy,' mom," Paul griped. "I need to make sure my son is safe. That's all I care about, is that my son is safe."Later that night, at around 4AM on Friday, Paul posted another video on his Instagram Stories and seemed to claim the police were called again."I apologize to you guys for earlier. It's been crazy here. I did not get arrested. The cops did come back," Paul said."We had a storm and Karine got on her cell phone and called the police because the WIFI disconnected. She said I was halting her communications... which didn't make any sense to me because she had her phone the whole time and the WIFI just randomly went out.""Sometimes Internet goes out in our houses -- it happens right?! But you're going to call the cops? For that? The cops weren't too happy about it."Paul added it's "been stressful" for the couple and they "need prayers.""That's the big thing," Paul noted. "Everybody, pray for us. And like I said... I don't want Pierre in dangerous situations. Pierre has been in a very dangerous situation before and that's why things happened."Pierre also claimed Karine had lied about Paul blocking her from being able to use Uber on her phone.Paul from Louisville, KY, and Karine 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 and see if there was potential for a long-term romance.After starring on Seasons 1 and 2 of : Before the 90 Days, the pair also appeared on Season 1 of : The Other Way.Paul and Karine got married in 2017 and announced in October 2018 that Karine was pregnant with their first child after she had suffered multiple miscarriages. Karine then she gave birth to son Pierre in Brazil on March 22, 2019.But shortly before welcoming Pierre into the world, Karine threatened to file for divorce from Paul because she was tired of fighting with him and dealing with the stress and tension caused from their financial struggles.Karine wanted to feel supported and taken care of, but Paul repeatedly insisted he was doing everything he could to provide for his family and be a good father and husband. Paul felt his efforts were never enough for his wife.: The Other Way's first season even featured Karine and her mother leaving Paul behind in Tonantins and traveling to Manaus via boat to file for divorce shortly before Pierre was born.However, Karine decided to give Paul another chance because she loved him and thought he'd be a good father to her son.On Season 5 of : Happily Ever After?, which is currently airing on TLC, Paul and Karine were shown planning a huge move to the United States after spending over a year in Brazil. Paul wanted to get a job where he could make more money."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."Once Paul and Karine moved, Paul has been shown trying to make Karine happy as they attempt to settle into a new life in the United States. Paul for instance, found a shed for Karine that was converted into a tiny home, and Karine said on the latest episode that she liked it.But the pair have been fighting, breaking up and making up for almost a year now.In early September 2019, Paul claimed Karine had threatened to file for divorce again over his mother allegedly spoiling their son.Things seemed to go back to normal until late September, when Paul suggested, once again, the couple's marriage was ending and Karine had initiated a divorce. Paul claimed on Facebook at the time that Karine didn't want him in her life anymore and had retained a divorce lawyer.The pair openly discussed filing for divorce -- yet another time -- in November, shortly after celebrating their second wedding anniversary.Paul claimed Karine had "started divorce proceedings in Manaus," and Karine told Us Weekly on November 12 that she was "looking for a lawyer."And in December 2019, Paul alleged Karine had taken off with their baby and was with a new man named Blake. He also said Karine was demanding a divorce again at the time.All seemed fine in the world when Paul took to Instagram in early May to announce Karine is pregnant with the couple's second child, but then in mid-July, Paul lashed out at his wife on Instagram for allegedly calling Paul a "horrible father and husband."Paul blasted Karine on July 15 in saying, "Yelling at me in public calling me horrible father and husband. We spend every penny we have on bills and designer [clothes] and video games for you. I did not buy anything for myself.""I made sure you and Pierre had everything you all could possibly want and I bought nothing for myself. I try to show my family USA History and I get shunned. Because only your country and culture matter," Paul continued."I take you to the hospital and stay by your side, make sure [you're] at all your doctors appointments and let you spend all your money only on what you want -- but I am a Bad Father and Husband you yell in public."Want more spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our homepage! SC asks Centre to furnish data on starvation deaths 18 Jan 2022 | 11:46 PM New Delhi, Jan 18 (UNI) The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre whether this can be believed that there is no starvation death in the country and said the community kitchens must be opened in states and asked the Centre to frame model scheme and logistics for the purpose. see more.. Police files case over making derogatory remarks on Muslim women on app 18 Jan 2022 | 11:44 PM New Delhi, Jan 18 (UNI) The Delhi Police on Tuesday registered an FIR against unidentified people for allegedly making derogatory comments against Muslim women and girls on voice chat app 'Clubhouse'. see more.. Actor Poonam Pandey gets relief from SC in pornography case 18 Jan 2022 | 11:43 PM New Delhi, Jan 18 (UNI) There is a big sigh of relief for the model and Bollywood actor, Poonam Pandey, with the Supreme Court on Tuesday granted her the interim protection from arrest in the pornography case in which businessman and the husband of Shilpa Shetty, Raj Kundra was arrested earlier. see more.. BJP Central Election Committee to meet on Wednesday 18 Jan 2022 | 11:18 PM New Delhi, Jan 18 (UNI) The Central Election Committee of the BJP will meet on Wednesday to discuss candidates for upcoming assembly polls, while marathon meetings were held by the core committee on Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday over the elections. see more.. Key leaders of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) closed ranks on Saturday and attempted to project the junior versus seniors fight as an attempt by some Rahul Gandhi aides, who held the UPA responsible for the declining fortunes of the Congress, to undermine the legacy of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Shashi Tharoor and Milind Deora, who both served as ministers in the UPA regime, came out on Twitter to support former information and broadcasting minister, the Congresss Manish Tewari,who wrote on the microblogging site this week that the question whether the former ruling coalition had been sabotaged from within must be gone into. Another UPA-era minister, Anand Sharma, wrote 11 tweets to say that honest introspection was always helpful and Congressmen must be proud of UPAs legacy. Party insiders said the seniors move to label members of the young brigade as critics of Manmohan Singhs legacy was aimed at isolating some Team Rahul members because the Congress brass cant afford to let the achievements of the UPA era to be dragged into ugly infighting. No party disowns or discredits its legacy, Sharma wrote. Nobody expects the BJP {Bharatiya Janata Party} to be charitable and give us credit but our own should respect and not forget. Deora invoked Manmohan Singhs wordshistory will be kinder to meto say, Could he have ever imagined that some from his own party would dismiss his years of service to the nation & seek to destroy his legacy - that, too, in his presence. Tewari, who had lashed out at Congres MP Rajiv Satav on Friday, continued his attacks. BJP was out of power for 10 years. Not once did they ever blame {Atal Bihari} Vajpayee or his government for their then predicaments. In @INCIndia unfortunately some illinformed would rather take swipes at Dr. Manmohan Singh led UPA govt than fight NDA/BJP. When unity reqd (required) they divide, he tweeted. Tharoor supported both Tewari and Deora and tweeted, UPAs transformative ten years were distorted & traduced by a motivated & malicious narrative. Theres plenty to learn from our defeats & much to be done to revive @INCIndia. But not by playing into the hands of our ideological enemies. Many team Rahul leaders have been critical of the second term of Manmohan Singh as allegations of corruption -- in the allocation of 2G telecom spectrum and coal blocks, for instance -- let the Congress down in the 2014 elections, when the party won its lowest ever tally of 44 seats in Lok Sabha. But senior leaders point out that all allegations were dismissed in the courts and the hallmark of Singhs government was rights-based legislation that brought about social empowerment. On Thursday, at a meeting of Rajya Sabha MPs with party chief Sonia Gandhi, when Congress veteran Kapil Sibal called for introspection, party MP Rajeev Satav retorted, People who are asking for introspect should have introspected much earlier. UPA 2 brought Congress down to 44 MPs. Later, KC Venugopal also countered former finance minister P Chidambaram and accused the seniors of not backing Rahul Gandhi. As the Team UPA versus Team Rahul tussle escalated on Saturday, a Congress leader did not rule out the possibility of some seniors approaching or writing to the leadership about attempts by a section of young leaders to demean Manmohan Singh and his team of ministers. If we dropped to 44, it was a collective responsibility. You cannot single out the UPA government and absolve the party organisation of its responsibilities, the Congress leader said, requesting anonymity. Also, you cannot demean a person of the stature of Dr Singh who has all along displayed grace and dignity. I am surprised that the person (Rajeev Satav) was not rebutted by seven UPA ministers present in the meeting, the leader added. Sharma, too, showered praise on Manmohan Singh and pointed out that the need of the hour was to fight the BJP. He listed major achievementsunprecedented social and economic transformation and empowerment of the poor and vulnerable Indians, the rural job guarantee programme and the Right to Food legislation,and rapid economic growth -- during the UPA regime. The UPA government was a victim of a grand political conspiracy and malicious disinformation campaign of the BJP, political opponents and powerful vested interests, he said. Congress as a democratic party is always open to a debate on its achievements and failures. Honest introspection and analysis are always helpful and gives strength to move forward, he tweeted, History will honestly record the commendable contribution of former PM Dr Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi. The two leaders led India to a decade of compassionate and inclusive growth which all of us are proud of. Late Saturday evening, Rajeev Satav, too took to Twitter to hit back. The malicious attempt to draw Dr Manmohan Singh into this exchange is reprehensible. To say my observations cast a shadow over Dr Singhs leadership of UPA II is a lie, a total misrepresentation of facts. I hold Dr Singh in high esteem. He is above reproach, Satav said, adding that he will discuss his comments or those made by any other esteemed colleagues, on internal party forums only. In a series of tweets, he maintained that the meeting of Congress Rajya Sabha MPs with Sonia Gandhi was extremely fruitful and said party has given many platforms to voice our views freely. He claimed that he has never been comfortable discussing internal discussions publicly but added that as a few of my esteemed colleagues and seniors have reacted on social media it has compelled him to clear the air. Satav hailed UPAII as a good govt, peoples govt and said, The success of UPA II is reinforced when we compare it to the sharp slide under Modi. Elections are on the anvil in Bihar& Assam. BJPs misdeeds have piled up. We need to jointly stand together under the leadership of Soniaji,Dr Singhji,Rahul Ji He also praised Singh for his commendable contributions to building modern India. He will always be held in high regard. The 65-inch Nokia TV will go on sale on August 6. The Audio on the TV is powered by JBL. The TV has a design similar to the 55-inch and 43-inch variant of the Nokia TV. Nokia entered the TV market with the launch of the 55-inch TV and subsequently launched the 43-inch TV as well. Just like the other 2 TVs in the Nokia TV family, the 65-inch variant runs on Android TV bringing with it access to the Google Play Store. It also boasts of a 4K resolution along with support for Dolby Vision and has audio powered by JBL speakers. Lets take a look at the specifications of the TV in detail. Nokia 65-inch TV specifications and features As the name suggests, the 65-inch Nokia TV brings with it a 65-inch 4K (3840 x 2160 pixel resolution) panel with support for HDR and Dolby Vision. The peak brightness of the TV is 480 nits which is more than what we get on the 43-inch and 55-inch TV. To put things into perspective, the Thomson 4K 65-inch TV with support for Dolby Vision has 550 nits of peak brightness. For connectivity, the Nokia 65-inch 4K TV has 3 HDMI ports and 2 USB ports. It also supports Wi-Fi but 2.4GHz band only. It has an optical port as well. The TV has a refresh rate of 60Hz. Under the hood, it has a quad-core processor, 2.25 GB RAM and 16GB storage. It also comes with Bluetooth 5.0. Running on Android the TV supports Chromecast built-in. As mentioned above, the Nokia 65-inch TV runs on Android TV and brings with it support for apps like Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar, Prime Videos and many more from the Play Store. Coming to the audio from the TV, it has speakers powered by JBL with a sound output of 24W. It supports Dolby Audio and DTS TruSurround. Nokia 65-inch TV price and availability The 43-inch Nokia TV is priced at Rs 64,999 and will go on sale August 6. When it comes to offers, customers can avail 10% instant discount with Standard Chartered credit card EMI transaction, 10% off with Axis Bank Buzz credit card, 5% unlimited cash back on Flipkart Axis Bank credit card and more. This was because of the closure of retail shops and factories after the nationwide lockdown was imposed to prevent spread of Covid-19, and a sharp increase in the metals price. Indias gold demand declined by a staggering 70 per cent in the quarter ended June 30 of calendar year 2020 (Q2CY20), the lowest quarterly figure in 11 years. However, at 44 tonnes, gold jewellery demand fell to its lowest on record. This was because of the closure of retail shops and factories after the nationwide lockdown was imposed to prevent spread of Covid-19, and a sharp increase in the metals price. Meanwhile, Chinas jewellery demand, which fell 52 per cent in the March quarter, improved in the June quarter and was down 33 per cent at 90.9 tonnes. India and China contributed the most to the global fall in demand, which halved to an unprecedented 251 tonnes. Data compiled by the apex industry body, the World Gold Council, showed that demand stood at 63.7 tonnes in Q2. This figure was better only than the 40 tonnes demand seen in the March quarter of 2009, in the aftermath of the Lehman crisis. As a result, gold imports stood at just 11.6 tonnes, a fall of 95 per cent, because of logistical issues and poor demand. Dore imports plummeted to 3.5 tonnes as against 75.5 tonnes in the corresponding period last year. While jewellery demand declined by 74 per cent in Q2, investment demand fell by 56 per cent in volume terms to 19.8 tonnes. The nationwide lockdown and high prices acted in combination to keep Indias gold demand to a record low at 63.7 tonnes during Q1. "Barring a couple of days, retail jewellery stores remained shut for most of the period. "Thus, the quarter was a washout for gold demand, said Somasundaram PR, managing director, India, World Gold Council, while releasing the Gold Demand Trends report for the quarter. Online trade played a significant part during the lockdown, as gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) grew after being dormant for many years. Digital gold, too, saw significant activity, though volumes remain negligible in the overall demand scenario. Photograph: Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters Chinese PLA handles diverse missions in tough 2020 Global Times By Yang Sheng and Liu Xuanzun Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/31 20:28:40 The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) will celebrate its 93rd anniversary on Saturday. In 2020, the PLA underwent extremely tough missions, including fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and massive floods, and responded to military threats from other countries in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Straits, and the China-India border region. The Ministry of National Defense said at a monthly press conference on Thursday that the PLA has succeeded in dealing with floods after they accomplished the mission of fighting the coronavirus. Ren Guoqiang, a spokesperson of the ministry, said by Tuesday, the PLA and armed police force had sent more than 720,000 personnel to 3,749 missions across regions affected by the floods. On Wednesday, three units of the PLA were given the First-Class Meritorious Service Medal by the Central Military Commission. One of them is a research laboratory of the PLA Academy of Military Science, and for confidential reasons, the defense ministry didn't say why. Observers said that this could be related to the COVID-19 vaccine research and development that makes China stand in the leading position in developing a vaccine. This year, apart from non-traditional military missions like fighting the epidemic situation and the floods, the PLA had faced military challenges, including border tensions with India, provocative military activities by the US over the island of Taiwan, and aggressive US military movements in the South China Sea. The PLA has responded resolutely and correspondingly, with many high-altitude military exercises featuring thousands of troops and advanced weapons in West China's border regions, frequent warplane sorties near Taiwan, and intense naval and aerial exercises in the South China Sea, media reported. In this special year in which the international situation has drastically changed, the PLA has done a good job in safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity, while also not escalating the situation and dragging the country into war, a Chinese military expert who asked not to be named told the Global Times on Friday. This year has been an intense year for the Chinese military's weapons and equipment development despite the COVID-19 epidemic. On January 12, the Nanchang, China's first 10,000 ton-class Type 055 guided missile destroyer, was officially commissioned into the PLA Navy at a port in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province. In the following months, it conducted a series of trainings, including main gun firing and maritime replenishment, as military observers said the advanced Chinese warship is on a fast track to achieve initial operational capability. On April 22, China launched its second Type 075 amphibious assault ship in Shanghai. The first Type 075, which was launched in September 2019, is expected to conduct its maiden voyage soon. The Chinese Defense Ministry revealed the H-6J bomber for the first time in July. It can reportedly carry more supersonic and powerful anti-ship missiles, and has a longer combat range. On the ground, the latest weapons to make their public debut during the 2019 National Day military parade were the Type 15 light tanks and PCL-181 vehicle-mounted howitzers, which were also commissioned, media reported. Further progress in China's new weapons development is expected to be unveiled this year, with the bi-annual Airshow China in November, the expert said. He believes a focus could be the new J-20 stealth fighter jets equipped with domestically developed engines. At the annual session of the National People's Congress in May, China announced that it set its 2020 defense budget growth target at 6.6 percent, resulting in a draft budget of 1.27 trillion yuan ($178.2 billion). This would ensure China has the capability to face increased military threats from other countries, analysts said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Washington, DC, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today (July 31ST, 2020) the U.S. House of Representatives passed the FY 2021 funding bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of the minibus appropriations bill H.R.7617. Included in HUDs Public Housing Capital Fund is $25 million for a competitive grant program to provide funds to public housing authorities who wish to retrofit public housing units with sprinkler systems. The program would also collect data on the presence of fire sprinkler installations in existing public housing units around the country to determine the possible need for additional federal investments. The funding provided in the appropriations bill is very similar to the Public Housing Fire Safety Act (H.R 5969/ S.3090) introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressmen Max Rose (D-NY) and Peter King (R-NY) and in the U.S. Senate by Tina Smith (D-MN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). Although fire sprinklers are now required in many newly constructed public housing units, there are thousands that were constructed before this requirement. For example: prior to 1992, New York City did not mandate fire sprinkler systems in high rise public housing units. Currently, 296 out of 316 New York City Housing Authority developments are unprotected by fire sprinklers. Not having fire sprinklers endangers not only the residents in public housing, but also the first responders who are called to respond to public housing fires. As a former firefighter, Fire Chief and State Fire Marshal, I know that fire sprinklers save lives. We have never lost a firefighter in a structure with fire sprinklers properly installed and operating, explained NFSA President Shane Ray. Just as important is the long overlooked social justice issue of housing and fire protection. We have experienced too many tragedies that underscore the need for fire sprinklers in HUD housing. The catalyst for this initiative was the November 2019 Cedar High Apartment Fire in Minneapolis. That fire killed five and injured four others. Were it not for the incredible work of the Minneapolis Fire Department dozens more could have died. NFSA is pleased that Congress has acted. Story continues The safety and wellbeing of Staten Islanders and South Brooklynites is paramount, but all too often the residents of public housing are overlooked, which is why Im proud to have secured these critical provisions to improve safety and accessibility, stated Congressman Max Rose (NY-11) When public housing buildings dont have critical fire sprinkler systems, it doesnt only put residents in danger, but also firefighters and first responders. This initiative to retrofit public housing units with fire sprinklers is supported by a broad coalition that includes the National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA), International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA), the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO), the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, the National Housing Law Project and the Congressional Fire Services Institute. About the National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA): NFSA was founded in 1905 and wants to create a more fire safe world and works to heighten the awareness of the importance of fire sprinkler systems from homes to high-rise and all occupancies in between. The Association is an inclusive organization made up of dedicated and committed members of a progressive life-saving industry. This industry manufactures, designs, supplies, installs, inspects, and services the worlds most effective system in saving lives and property from uncontrolled structural fires. For more information about fire sprinklers, how they work and access to additional resources and information, visit www.nfsa.org for the latest material, statistics and a dedicated team of fire safety advocates ready to serve all stakeholders in order to fulfill the vision of a safer world. ### CONTACT: Vickie Pritchett National Fire Sprinkler Association 615-533-0305 pritchett@nfsa.org The temperature hit 90 degrees five days running and it had rained every day between three and four oclock. The cat had to be fed daily at seven in the morning and at four-thirty. He would brook no disruption in his schedule. Now that kids were exclusively learning from home and spent only two hours a day at their computers, since they didnt need to go to lunch and all the arts programs had been eliminated, they roamed the streets a lot more, getting into all kinds of trouble. That really bothered her husband, who had been a teacher and had been forced to retire due to the virus. Politics also bothered him. A lot. After the 45th President lost the election and had to be dragged kicking and screaming like a lunatic from the White House (that horrible image of him gripping the door frame of the House, bellowing like an animal being led to slaughter remained in her mind), the country as a whole decided to do away not only with the Electoral College, but with the two political parties as well. It was decided that a sole Independent Party would be created, consisting of members from both former parties. Jill Stein was elected President in a nationwide landslide, ushering in what would become a long line of female Presidents, since everybody pretty much agreed that men were much too temperamental and emotional for the job. Almost everybody was now receiving government aid of some kind, since practically every type of job had been eliminated by the virus. Health care professionals, sanitation men, post office employees and gas station attendants were the only service people you saw anymore. Waiters all lost their jobs, since indoor dining was permanently banned. A lot more folks worked from home. People didnt wear masks or gloves as much, except during flu season. Folks still wiped down countertops and had pairs of outdoor and indoor shoes lined up at their front door. Cities and especially suburban areas were more crowded than ever. All the snowbirds had to return from Florida, since that state was deemed a disaster area and was temporarily closed until further notice, which meant that they had lost their winter vacation spots permanently. Folks that had moved there were given about a third of what they paid for their houses, but, in places like New York and San Francisco, President Stein ordered rents and property taxes to be lowered, making it easier for elder folks to return and start over for the second time in their lives. Of course, many of the returning elders were single women as, for some reason, the virus killed more males than females. Doctors blamed conditions such as obesity and diabetes, but women knew that guys just didnt have the emotional strength to weather the storm. That probably also explained the long line of women Presidents. Men had brought with them war, disease, famine, unrest and every other ill imaginable. President Stein was doing a great job, so far. Libraries permanently shuttered their doors. Nobody needed a library when they could access anything ever written online. Movie theaters turned into drive-ins. Gas prices went up, as did pollution. Even though folks werent returning to work, when they did travel, they traveled longer and further. One of the last things the former President had done before leaving office was to rescind all restrictions on car emissions, and cars retroactively had their catalytic converters ripped from their innards like a rotted molar. San Francisco and India lost their blue skies. Greta Thunberg got her doctorate in Environmental Studies from Princeton and cheered us on from the sidelines, but something was wrong. It was something about the way the light shifted during seasons and when it got dark and light and when the leaves began to fall that was aslant. All those older tunes like Autumn Leaves lost their relevance. It almost seemed like there was just one long season with many shifts in temperature. It hadnt snowed in two years. Summer was broiling hot. Every other season was mild. It was almost like the entire nation had turned into Los Angeles, but without the smog. It really bothered her. One of their reasons for staying in New York (besides the thought of living in Florida) was the change in seasons. Now, it seemed, there were none. Somehow, they had been stripped away by the virus, like so many other good things. Ah wellno time to fret. There was planning to be done. According to her Federally mandated wall calendar, it was Thursday, December 15th, 2022. Festivus was ten days away! {The preceding is dedicated to the memory and works of the late Ray Bradbury.} Hold those grey heads up! Comments on this and all my columns can be submitted to Talk To The Old Guy on Facebook. Like and follow the page. JACKSON COUNTY, MO (KCTV) -- A Lee's Summit man has been charged after shooting at vehicles on the interstate in what was possibly a road rage incident. According to the Jackson County Prosecutor, 54-year-old Joseph W. Terry has been charged with unlawful use of a weapon, first-degree assault, and armed criminal action. How do we stick it to the poor, the unconnected, the voiceless, the weak and powerless among us? Count the ways ending, today, with the stomach-turning abandonment of plans to deliver a desperately needed cultural and community hub project to Jane-Finch. The weasels are the double-dealers at Metrolinx, builders of the Finch West LRT; they are never to be trusted again. If there is one neighbourhood that you dare not backstab, dupe, mislead and totally promise to help, only to turn your back, it is Jane and Finch. Not ever, considering its deficiencies. And certainly not at a time when the world is growing wise to what systemic anti-Black racism looks like in all its ugly forms. And the LRT fiasco on Finch is so clearly among the ugliest. Jane-Finch. The metaphor for crime and punishment. The intersection whose very name is a symbol of urban living gone awry. Black. Ghetto. Canadian-style, of course. Lite. A long, long, long time ago a Toronto Star editor had the idea that I should drive around Jane-Finch with a white female reporter in a big car and see what happens. Maybe the cops would think I am a pimp. Maybe wed see the underbelly of a broken community, who knows. Nothing happened. This is it? my consort asked, unimpressed at the utterly run-of-the-mill presentation of the place. The big, bad Jane and Finch? How many times have I taken American visitors through the intersection only to evoke laughter and You got to be kidding when they are told, This is our ghetto, my friend, the heart of the Black community in Toronto? That is what my great Jane-Finch friends deal with all their lives. An amazing community of hard-working people, sharing an eclectic mix of bungalows, single-family homes, semis, townhouses and apartment buildings with a little bit too much of a tilt toward multiple conglomerations of social housing and enduring the stigma. Cause what else is there in Jane-Finch on the surface? Where is its curb appeal? Where are its community assets? Point to the public infrastructure amenities that says the entire city so cares about you in this corner that the city is willing to invest in your beauty and your capacity and your livability and enjoyment of life so that you feel good about yourself and the space you inhabit and you then transform that sense of pride into productivity and a competitive spirit that propagates and multiplies and spawns more like you. Jane-Finch was a poor neighbourhood before they coined the nice phrase priority neighbourhood to funnel tax money into social and community programs because, yknow, you have to strategize and scheme to spend public money on poor people who dont vote and have no time to sit on ratepayers associations when they spend their days catching hell doing two jobs with no one to take care of their kids at home after school. North York shouldnt have a Jane-Finch, no sir. If its civic representatives were worth their compensation and if they cared about the poor apartment dwellers there, instead of the voting homeowners the community would look oh so different. North York is rich. Has been rich. Mayor Mel Lastman used to boast that he cleared the snow before it hit the sidewalk. Garbage was picked up twice a week; snow cleared out from in front of your driveway. Go along Sheppard and Finch to see North Yorks wealth and strength where the city wanted to showcase it, before amalgamation in 1998. From Don Mills Road to Bathurst, does it get better? Willowdale is Shangri-La. Stable neighbourhoods in the midst of massive redevelopment means tiny bungalows turning into $2-million-plus monster homes. Two subway lines, along Yonge and along Sheppard East. But trail further west toward Keele and Finch and you trade in forgotten or compromised spaces. Take Finch West. It tries. The Xerox towers and condo alley at Yonge give a hint of urbanism. A little west, the privileged neighbourhood managed to seize a beautiful Edithvale Community Centre near Senlac Rd. Privilege knows privilege, and how to keep it. One intersection west, at Bathurst, there is a community hub and a rearguard action to rescue the Branson-Westminster neighbourhood, hard hit when the Mike Harris government closed the Branson Hospital there. At Dufferin, what passes for public infrastructure is the 1000 Finch courthouse building. Then, it is industrial wasteland the infamous oilfields where gasoline tankers come by the hundreds to refuel the gas stations of southern Ontario. By the time you get to Jane, the message is clear. The city is not invested here. At Jane and Finch there is zero sign of any public realm. The four corners? Gas station, mall parking, gas station, apartment highrise. A block west, at Norfinch, next to Hwy. 400, used to be home to York Finch hospital. That hospital closed most of its services when Humber River Hospital opened in 2015. By some providence, a large and flat open green space exists half a block west of Jane on the north side of Finch, directly opposite York Gate mall. On the south side is Hawthorne Place, where COVID-19 raged to dangerous effects last month. It is here, on the open field, that residents of Jane and Finch dared to hope that they might have something to treasure: swimming pool, theatre, studios, mental health and employment and multiple services, business incubator, and the like. With Metrolinxs blessings, community members consulted and planned following the blueprint of privileged communities. Plans were years in the making. For Metrolinx to threaten to take it away is despicable. The transit agency sent the city councillor a letter saying, in effect, Oops. Somebody made a mistake. This land is too valuable to give to the people of Jane Finch. We can sell it to the highest bidder for between $7 million and $9 million. Odious, yes. But it stinks even more. When governments announce they will spend our money to build major infrastructure like transit lines, we understand the nature of the social contract we enter. It costs us all some $1.2 billion in this case. The construction will be noisy and disruptive along the route for years. Businesses will be greatly impacted, as along Eglinton Avenue. However, as compensation for enduring most of the pain, the local neighbourhood gets more of the benefits. Yet before the prospect of the community arts hub, all Jane-Finch stood to gain from the 11-kilometre LRT line was a maintenance yard. In the middle of the community, on its most precious open space, the city and province and Metrolinx is putting 100,000 square feet of repair and maintenance shop and attendant facility for as many as 26 light rail vehicles. Jane-Finch is left on the other side of the tracks. Again. Except some smart citizens, learning from their allies in privileged neighbourhoods downtown and in midtown, proposed this: OK, put in the maintenance yard if you must, but cut off a 32-metre sliver closest to Finch so we can build a community treasure a perfect mask for the industrial-style repair shop that would dominate the open space. Metrolinx said yes. But now that the maintenance yard is being constructed (LRT service is scheduled for 2023) Metrolinx has effected the double-cross. They plan to relocate the community treasure. Hell, no. Its sickening. Metrolinx would not contemplate such a ruse on the Kingsway, Leaside, Rosedale, Willowdale (insert 100 other neighbourhoods here). Jane-Finch residents should be leery of promises of support from the premier, mayor and other politicians that do not expressly say stick to the original deal. If you think Jane-Finch is not worth $7 million to $9 million, consider the costs of police, courts, detention centres, jails, hospitals and grief counsellors to manage the carnage of urban blight. Correction Aug. 4, 2020: This article has been edited to correct the date of the closing of York Finch Hospital. New Education Policy emphasis on making job creators : PM Modi New Education Policy emphasises on making job creators instead of job seekers: PM Modi NEP 2020 aims to increase gross enrolment ratio in higher education to 50% by 2035: PM Modi Our New Education Policy is keen on inclusion, right from primary education. In higher education, the aim is to increase gross enrolment ratio to 50% by 2035: PM Modi New Education Policy: Provisions for multiple entries and exit important, says PM Modi In the national education policy, flexibility has been given great importance. There are provisions for multiple entries and exits. It wont just be a small lane for students, PM Modi said Introduction of regional languages in school education will be helpful: PM PM Modi said that India has a variety of regional and local languages. Students of our country should learn about the rich culture and languages of India. Most of the developed countries teach their students in their own local language. Flexibility to choose different subjects was much needed: PM The flexibility to choose subjects from various streams in one course was much needed, said the PM. After the implementation of New Education Policy, students will be able to choose subjects from any stream - humanities, science, commerce or vocational as per their interest. New Education Policy is people- centric and future-centric: PM The new education policy is people- centric and future-centric, PM Narendra Modi said. Students should never stop doing three things - Learning, questioning and solving: PM Modi PM Modi said that students should never stop doing three things - Learning, question and solving. When you learn you get the wisdom, when you question, you get out of the box methods to solve them, he added. New Education Policy is framed as per the need of students interest Earlier, students did not get to choose the subjects they are interested in. Even after achieving a number of degrees, students were not satisfied. This new education policy aims to transform the education system according to the interest of students, PM Modi said. It took 5 years to draft New Education Policy New Education Policy was drafted after discussing with people from all sectors for last five years, the PM said. Education System should focus on 21st century life skills: PM Education system has to be modified in order to focus on enhancing 21st century life skills among students, PM Modi said while talking about the New Education Policy at the grand finale of Smart India Hackathon Smart India Hackathon: PM asks a finalist to build real-time tracking system for schools PM asks a student from MLR institute that can he create a real-time tracking and alert system which can integrate schools, offices with police control rooms to ensure the safety of women, and children. Smart India Hackathon: Will ask the people of IPS Training Institute to interact with team Impressed by the ideas shared by the team of MLR Institute of Technology, Hyderabad that were mainly focussed on helping the police personnel in crime reduction, PM Modi said that he will ask some people of IPS Training Institute in Hyderabad to call your team and have a dialogue on these ideas. He asked the students to Interact with them to share their ideas. Smart India Hackathon: Student of MLRIT builds realtime facial recognition system Real-time based facial recognition. Even if we cover our face, the AI will recognise the eyes, the space between the eyes and nose which do not change, said a student of MLR Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. Smart India Hackathon: Reusable Sanitary Napkin A student is working towards reusable and bio-degradable sanitary napkin. PM Modi said, Government is providing a sanitary pad at 1 each. With the introduction of reusable sanitary napkin will be of great help to the girls. I congratulate you for being so thoughtful. A finalist has planned to prepare rainfall prediction system WIth the help of satellite, a rainfall prediction model will be prepared, said a finalist. PM Modi appreciated the step and said that it will be of great help to the farmers. Smart India Hackathon: It was challenging to conduct the hackathon amid Covid It was challenging to conduct the Hackathon in the times of Coronavirus. It is amazing to see it happening despite challenges Smart India Hackathon: PMs address begins Prime Ministers address begins at Smart India Hackathon finale Smart India Hackathon: Winner to get 1 lakh cash prize, says HRD Min Union HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank announced that the winner will get 1 lakh cash prize. Smart India Hackathon: HRD Minister begins his address Union HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has started his address through video conferencing. PM Modi has also joined. Smart India Hackathon: Video conferencing begins The video conferencing to launch Smart India Hackathon has begun. Smart India Hackathon 2020: Over 4.5 lakh participated this year In the fourth edition of Smart India Hackathon this year, around 4.5 lakh students have participated. Smart India Hacakthon: 2nd and 3rd winners to get prize money While the first winner will get a prize money of 1 lakh, the second and third winners will get 75,000 and 50,000, respectively. Smart India Hackathon : Winners to get 1 lakh The winner of Smart India Hackathon will get a prize money of 1 lakh . Smart India Hackathon: Around 10K students in finale This year, around 10,000 students have reached the grand finale round in the Smart India Hackathon. PM Narendra Modi to address grand finale of Smart India Hackathon Prime Minister Narendra Modi will soon address the Smart India Hackathon grand finale at 4:30 pm today [July 31, 2020] Kin + Carta: Partner for Google's Business Messages CHICAGO, July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kin + Carta, an award-winning global technology and innovation consulting firm, is a partner for Google's recently expanded Business Messages. With over 1 billion people using Google Maps every month, Google's announcement signals the company's continued investment in helping businesses connect with their customers. Google is working with partners like Kin + Carta to make those experiences more effective, empathetic and efficient. Google's Business Messages allows businesses to connect to their customers via Google Search and Maps and results by using Artificial Intelligent (AI) messaging capabilities. "We're expanding Business Messages in Search and Maps to support various types of businesses," said Katie Osberg, Global Retail Partnerships Lead, Business Communications, Google. "We're working with partners, like Kin + Carta, to implement this technology and provide businesses with a solution that's human-centered and cost-effective." Any of the millions of businesses on Google Maps, including grocery and retail, can help customers quickly find information about store hours, pick-up and delivery options, and even search for product availability and aisle placement within stores Other businesses are implementing the technology as a tool for converting sales and troubleshooting customer requests. "We are thrilled to now be integrating with Google's Business Messages," said Ryan Maguire, Kin + Carta CTO. "Our integration is a testament to the work Kin + Carta has been doing with Google and our ability to build solutions that help businesses meet the customer where they're at while returning direct value to their growth." As businesses continue to experience an influx of customer inquiries in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kin + Carta is leveraging its deep expertise in Google Cloud's Contact Center AI (CCAI) and Dialogflow platforms to deliver solutions focused on seamless customer experiences and decreased operational costs. In addition to Business Messages, these solutions also include Rapid Response Virtual Agents , a program for which Kin + Carta is an official Google Cloud integration partner. About Kin + Carta Kin + Carta exists to make the world work better. A consulting firm built for the 2020s, we make the journey to becoming a digital business tangible, sustainable and profitable. By building digital twins to replace existing analog processes, designing and launching new digital products and services, and unlocking future innovation through modernization initiatives, Kin + Carta seamlessly integrates the strategic consulting, software engineering and marketing technology needed to help businesses Make It Happen. As a Premier Google Cloud consulting partner, Kin + Carta helps enterprise clients across industries accelerate their journeys on Google Cloud Platform. Kin + Carta brings expertise in application development, modernization on Anthos, Google Cloud Search, and voice & chat experiences built with Dialogflow. Headquartered out of Chicago and London, our clients have access to a global ecosystem of 1,600 strategists, engineers and creatives across four continents. For more information visit www.kinandcarta.com Contact: Kat Hollingsworth (214) 529-2332 kat.hollingsworth@kinandcarta.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kin--carta-partner-for-googles-business-messages-301104105.html SOURCE Kin + Carta [ Back To SIP Trunking Home's Homepage ] Regulations currently allow pubs to only reopen if they can serve food, while also enforcing social distancing and limiting customer time to 105 minutes. Any licensed premises found to be in breach of the rules could be prosecuted, with 80 identified since the operation began a month ago. The big crowded pub, with people five-deep all queuing up at the bar, that sort of 2019 drinking vision that we all enjoyed, you know, isnt a good thing to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Infectious diseases expert Professor Sam McConkey says drinking like the year is 2019 is now a thing of the past: The big crowded pub, with people five-deep all queuing up at the bar, that sort of 2019 drinking vision that we all enjoyed, you know, isnt a good thing to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Advertisement He says the reopening of all pubs on August 10th could still go ahead, but in a very controlled way: Drinking outdoors, sitting down, tables two-metres apart, sitting at tables with people you live with, with table service with somebody wearing a face mask, thats relatively feasible. August 10th reopening Pubs will not receive clarity on if they can reopen until after the bank holiday, with the Government meeting next Tuesday to decide if Phase Four of the Republics reopening will go ahead. Taoiseach Micheal Martin has said they want to see if there is a stable trend in the number of new cases before making the decision, after 85 cases were confirmed in a single day this week. Nearly three quarters of those cases were among people under the age of 45. The Taoiseach says a cautious approach is being taken: You see whats happening in France, you see whats happening in Germany, you see whats happening in Spain. These numbers are going up very, very significantly at a rapid pace. The lessons for us really there are, you know, weve got to pace how we reopen, weve got to take stock. With Andhra Pradesh governor Biswabhusan Harichandan approving the two bills related to the formation of three capital cities for the state, the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government has begun the exercise to shift the administrative capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam. On Saturday, the state government appointed a high-level committee to look into the development of security infrastructure in Visakhapatnam. The committee is headed by Visakhapatnam Commissioner of Police R K Meena and would comprise of eight senior officials. An officer on special duty (security planning) would be its convenor. The committee will study the infrastructure required for strengthening the security and policing in Visakhapatnam in the wake of it being developed into the executive capital. It would also look into the requirement of additional police forces in the capital city. Director General of Police Gautam Sawang directed that the committee submit its report within two weeks. Soon after the issuance of gazette notifications on the two bills -- the Andhra Pradesh Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Bill, 2020, and the AP Capital Region Development Authority (Repeal) Bill, 2020 declaring them as Acts on Friday evening, minister for urban development and municipal administration Botsa Satyanarayana announced that chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy would soon lay the foundation for the executive capital at Visakhapatnam. An official in the chief ministers office familiar with the development said the chief minister is likely to lay the foundation stone for the executive capital at Visakhapatnam on August 15, soon after the Independence Day celebrations, which would also be held in the port city. Jagan reportedly deputed his CMO staff to make arrangements for the foundation stone laying ceremony. The shifting of the government offices would commence shortly in a phased manner and if everything goes as per plan, the state secretariat and other administrative offices would be shifted to Visakhapatnam by October 25, coinciding with Dusshera festival, the official said. The farmers of Amaravati who had given away nearly 34,000 acres of land to the state government for development of the state capital during the Chandrababu Naidu regime, have vowed to fight against the shifting of the administrative capital to Visakhapatnam. Hundreds of farmers from Tulluru, Mandadam, Venkatayapalem and Velagapaudi staged protests in their respective villages, maintaining social distance as per Covid-19 norms, to express their dissent against the Governors approval for the three capitals. We are completely shattered. The state government is least bothered about the sacrifices made by thousands of farmers hoping that there would be a capital at Amaravati. We are pinning our hopes on the judiciary now, Amaravati Parirakshana Samithi Joint Action Committee (JAC) leader A Siva Reddy said. The farmers are now planning to move a petition in the high court on Tuesday seeking a stay on the implementation of the three capitals Act. A petition filed by former Telugu Desam Party MLA from Tadikonda Sravan Kumar earlier this week is pending in the high court, which posted it to August 6 for hearing. We are questioning on what basis the state government had taken the decision to form three capitals. The so-called expert committee by G N Rao was formed only to suggest measures for the all-round development of the state and not for trifurcation of the capital city. We are ready to face a long-drawn legal battle in this regard, Anil Karumanchi, a farmer from Venkatayapalem said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Authorities in An Giang Province have detained 41 people who illegally entered Vietnam from Cambodia. On July 31, Colonel Tran Quoc Khanh, vice head of the Military Command of Border Guard of An Giang Province said they had detected and seized a group of 41 people entering Vietnam via eight boats while patrolling along the Tien River. There were 20 adults and 21 children from several families. They have worked with the Customs Department of the Vinh Xuong Border Gate to transfer the boats and people to the border checkpoint for investigation. Initial investigation shows that they live in Siem Reap and Posat provinces in Cambodia. Due to the difficulties, they wanted to move to Vietnam. All 41 people in the group lacked personal papers. The border guards warned the families and persuaded them to return to Cambodia, especially as Vietnam is experiencing a Covid-19 outbreak. Quang Ninh border guards arrest 11 people illegally entering Vietnam Border guards in northern Quang Ninh province have caught 16 Vietnamese citizens trying to illegally enter Vietnam from China. Three arrested women They were discovered on July 30 by the border guards patrolling trails in Quang Ninh province. They include ten women and six men who admitted illegally entering China previously via trails in Lang Son, Ha Giang and Cao Bang provinces. They have all been given medical checks and put into quarantine in Mong Cai city. Since the beginning of February, border guards discovered 187 cases with more than 700 people involved in illegal immigration. Police in southwestern Tay Ninh province, in coordination with the Immigration Management Department, on July 30 also apprehended three Vietnamese citizens and eight Chinese nationals trying to illegally enter Cambodia. They were discovered at 1:45pm in two cars in Ben Cau district. Three Vietnamese citizens living in Tay Ninh province and HCM City admitted that they helped eight Chinese nationals who wanted to enter Cambodia from Vietnam. Police has transferred all of them to a local quarantine camp and also inspected the identities of the eight Chinese people and their movements in Vietnam./.VNA Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund event at the JW Marriott in Washington, on Feb. 7, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Kamala Harris Supports Freeing Ex-Aide from NDA After $35,000 Settlement Deal: Reports A senior advisor to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) told Business Insider that Harris supports releasing a former aide from a nondisclosure agreement from nearly a decade ago that placed a gag on revealing details of a dispute that ended with a taxpayer-funded $34,900 settlement and the aide leaving her job. Sabrina Singh, the advisor, told Business Insider that Harris strongly opposes the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence anyone, adding that, She fully supports the release of Terri Carbaugh from this NDA if she chooses. When Carbaugh signed the nondisclosure agreement in September 2011, she was working for Harris, then the California Attorney General, as chief deputy attorney general for administration and policy. A 13-page settlement agreement provided to the Sacramento Bee by the Department of Justice (DOJ), indicates that both Carbaugh and the DOJ, a party to the agreement, concluded that it would be desirable and in the best interests of the Parties and the public to settle these claims and disputes in the manner and on the terms set forth herein without the additional public expresses associated with litigation. The settlement does not provide any details regarding the claims and disputes, noting only that when the DOJ determined that Carbaugh should leave her job, she disagreed with that determination and asserted certain disputed claims and damages relating to her employment with the Department. One of the terms of the agreement was that neither Carbaugh nor the DOJ disclose, discuss, or provide the contents or terms of this Agreement to third parties. In exchange for agreeing to resign, Carbaugh received a letter of recommendation written by Harris, which describes Carbaugh as an indispensable member of my executive team and a longtime friend, praises her leadership style, and credits her legislative expertise for protecting the DOJ from budget cuts. The DOJ also cut Carbaugh a check for $34,900 and the agreement required that she release the Department and its staff from any liabilities and claims, including any for harassment, retaliation, or discrimination. Harris office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In 2018, Harris co-authored a bipartisan bill with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ark.) aiming to to address the ongoing issue of workplace harassment and the pervasive culture of fear that has resulted from those in power silencing their victims, a news release stated. One of the stipulations of the bill was to ban nondisparagement and nondisclosure clauses that cover workplace harassment as a condition of employment, promotion, compensation, benefits, or change in employment status or contractual relationship, arguing that such clauses have perpetuated a culture of silence. Harris is widely considered one of the front-runners for Joe Bidens running mate in his bid for the White House in Novembers election. Biden plans to choose his running mate in early August, he told reporters recently. (Natural News) During an appearance on Wednesdays Hannity on Fox News Channel, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) spoke out against Big Tech, describing Google as the most dangerous election interference organization in the world. (Article by Jeff Poor republished from Breitbart.com) However, he acknowledged lawmakers on Capitol Hill would be reluctant to take on Big Tech given they were bought off by those companies. Heres the message to the president: Congress will not do anything on big tech because Congress is bought off by big tech, he said. But weve proved today that many of Americans largest technology platforms are not acting in the best interest of our country. Theyve pulled out of deals as Google has with our own military to keep our service members safe. But then Google has no problem going and partnering with the Chinese military of all folks. Even General Dunford, the chairman of the joint chief of staff, said that Google is directly benefiting the Chinese military. But its not that they are just working with China, they are trying to turn our country into China. Google, in particular, is the most dangerous election interference organization in the world. Sundar Pichai was at a meeting where his top executive team said that they had to stop Donald Trump in four years and make his victory just a populist blip in history, Gaetz continued. And since then, he admitted that individuals can go and alter search and change things on blacklists, so you dont see sites that are conservative like The Federalist, The Daily Caller, Breitbart and others that Mr. Jordan mentioned. And then, also, you know, Mr. Pichai had to confess the fact that I really think there is an outcome that cannot be explained through these glitches where the conservative sites that we use to see in news are now starting to disappear. They want to control what you see so they can control what you think and how you act, and a free society must stand against this. The Florida Republican congressman went on to urge the Department of Justice to be more active in its pursuit of civil action against the tech giants. Twitter shadow-banned four members of Congress during the Russian hoax Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Devin Nunes and Matt Gaetz. That wasnt a coincidence, Sean, he said. And you know what? The Department of Justice should go and investigate these major tech platforms and prove that they are not biased. Weve got enough smoke. Theres definitely fire. And I think the Department of Justice needs to be a lot more active in this civil litigation. Read more at: Breitbart.com Claims that Prince Andrew 'lobbied the US government to help get a sweetheart plea-deal for pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein' that saw him jailed for just 18 months in 2008 are a 'straight forward untruth', a Royal insider insists. The allegation is contained in newly unsealed court documents, including a motion by lawyers for two anonymous Epstein accusers who were trying to get hold of documents which they claim showed the Duke's lobbying efforts. The motion forms part of a 2015 libel case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's alleged madam, which have been kept under lock and key until today - when they were released following her arrest on sex trafficking charges. However, an unnamed friend of the prince today described the allegation as 'a straight forward untruth, no ifs, no buts,' adding that the US federal appeals court last year said the claim should be treated with 'extreme caution'. Prince Andrew 'lobbied the US government to get a favorable plea deal for pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein which saw him jailed for just 13 months in 2009', new documents allege (pictured, Andrew alongside Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001) Prince Andrew drives himself out of Windsor Castle in his Bentley on Thursday, just hours before the first trove of documents were released Lawyers for the pair, Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, wrote: '(They are) seeking documents regarding Epstein's lobbying efforts to persuade the government to give him a favorable plea arrangement, including efforts on his behalf by Prince Andrew and former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. 'They have alleged these materials are needed to prove their allegations that, after Epstein signed the non-prosecution agreement his performance was delayed while he used his significant social and political connections to lobby the justice department to obtain a more favorable plea deal.' The newly-released documents also contain a transcript of a deposition given by Epstein's main accuser, Virginia Roberts, where she also speaks about the prince's involvement in Epstein's activities. Asked by her own lawyers in 2011 whether Andrew would have 'relevant information' in the case, she answered: 'Yes, he would know a lot of the truth. 'I don't know how much he'd be able to help you with, but seeing as he's in a lot of trouble himself these days I think he might, so I think he might be valuable.' Prince Andrew claims he distanced himself from Epstein after the conviction, meeting with him once in New York in 2010 to formally cut ties. Roberts separately claims she had sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions, including once in a Caribbean jurisdiction where she was underage, after being trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell. The documents form part of a 2015 libel lawsuit that Epstein's primary accuser, Virginia Roberts (pictured, brought against Maxwell - but were sealed after it was settled out of court She was pictured alongside Andrew in Maxwell's London townhouse in 2001, hours after she claims she first met Andrew in Tramp nightclub in Mayfair. 'MAXWELL STRIPPED ME AND TOOK PART IN CONTINUOUS ORGIES' Ghislaine Maxwell undressed Virginia Roberts and told her to lick Jeffrey Epstein's nipples during their first meeting when she was just 15, newly-unsealed court documents have revealed. Roberts detailed the ordeal in testimony she gave to lawyers in 2011, which formed part of a 2015 libel case against Maxwell that has been kept secret until now. Roberts said Maxwell also stripped naked, instructed her to perform oral sex on Epstein while he fondled her, and then told her to 'straddle him sexually'. In separate testimony, Roberts also recounted 'continuous' orgies that Maxwell was involved in on Epstein's private Caribbean island with underage girls. Roberts said girls were routinely flown in via private jet to participate in sex sessions which happened all over the island. Asked to describe women she personally saw Maxwell have sexual contact with, she responded: 'There's so many, I don't know where you want me to start.' 'There were blondes, there were brunettes, there were redheads. They were all beautiful girls. I would say the ages ranged between 15 and 21,' she added. Advertisement Roberts claims the pair also had sex that evening - an act that made her feel so dirty and ashamed that she showered straight afterwards. Andrew, once a close friend of both Epstein and Maxwell, has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. Prince Andrew is also facing pressure to speak to the FBI to aid their investigation into Epstein and his inner circle, including Maxwell. US Attorney General Bill Barr said earlier this year that Andrew must speak to the FBI and his team 'definitely' want to interview him. He said: 'The department wants to talk to Prince Andrew. That's why the Southern District has been making efforts to communicate with him. We've made it clear that we'd like to communicate with him'. A source close to Prince Andrew previously told DailyMail.com that he was 'bewildered' by the ongoing claims that he wasn't cooperating, and says his team tried to reach prosecutors several times. Andrew's legal team claim they have been 'ghosted' by US prosecutors, despite repeated offers of help in the case. Elsewhere in Robert's testimony, she claims that Maxwell undressed her and told her to lick Jeffrey Epstein's nipples during their first meeting when she was just 15. Roberts detailed the ordeal in testimony she gave to lawyers in 2011, which formed part of a 2015 libel case against Maxwell that has been kept secret until now. Roberts said Maxwell also stripped naked, instructed her to perform oral sex on Epstein while he fondled her, and then told her to 'straddle him sexually'. In separate testimony, Roberts also recounted 'continuous' orgies that Maxwell was involved in on Epstein's private Caribbean island with underage girls. Roberts said girls were routinely flown in via private jet to participate in sex sessions which happened all over the island. Asked to describe women she personally saw Maxwell have sexual contact with, she responded: 'There's so many, I don't know where you want me to start.' 'There were blondes, there were brunettes, there were redheads. They were all beautiful girls. I would say the ages ranged between 15 and 21,' she added. Ghislaine Maxwell had 'continuous' orgies on Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island with girls as young as 15, accuser Virginia Roberts claims in newly-unsealed court documents Little St James Island, in the Caribbean (pictured), was owned by Epstein and was where Roberts alleges the orgies took place Maxwell participated in sex sessions with them by a pool, near the beachfront, in small huts and in Epstein's cabana, she alleged. 'One occasion stands out,' she said. 'Models were I think they were models were flown in. There were orgies held outside by the pool.' CLINTON, GORE, CAMPBELL, KLUM: EPSTEIN'S 'GUESTS' REVEALED Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum were among high-profile guests that Jeffrey Epstein entertained, Virginia Roberts claims. Clinton visited Little St James after his presidency ended because he 'owed Epstein a favor', Roberts told investigators in newly-unsealed testimony. Clinton has denied he ever visited the island. 'He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious,' she said. The former president stayed in Epstein's private villa where 'orgies were a constant thing,' she claims. Vice President Gore was also a guest on Epstein's plane, the Lolita Express, as were models Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, Roberts claimed. Orgies also took place on the jet, she alleges. There is no suggestion those mentioned were involved in orgies. 'There would be sexual conduct, there would be foreplay, there was a bed in there, so we could basically reenact exactly what was happening in the house,' she said. 'It would start off with massaging or we would start off with foreplay, sometimes it would lead to, you know, orgies.' Advertisement The women - 'beautiful, tall, some were blonde, some were sandy brown' - did not speak English, and conversed in a European language that Roberts guessed was Russia or Czech. Describing the sex session, she added: 'Ghislaine, myself, Jeffrey, another girl in this blue, outdoor I don't know what you want to call it. Cabana, that just a bed could fit in.' Roberts also alleges that during the deposition that she was trafficked to Europe to have sex with powerful men, including Britain's Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz. She said Maxwell and Epstein constantly reminded her of how powerful their friends were, so that she wouldn't betray them. 'Jeffrey did a lot more of that than she did. But she definitely made it aware that we shouldn't cross boundaries with them,' she said. Describing her first meeting with Epstein, she said: 'For the first hour, it was actually a real massage, maybe not an hour, maybe like 40 minutes or something. 'That's when he turned over on the other side to expose himself fully. 'So then Ghislaine told me that she wanted me to undress and began to take off my shirt and skirt, my white uniform from Mar-A-Lago, she also took off her shirt and got undressed, and so I was there with just my undies on, and she was completely bare... 'During all of this I'm like: 'What's going on, how do I act, what do I say.' I was so afraid of, not afraid or fearful for my life, but unsure of how all this started and wanting to obtain a profession, I was so afraid thinking about upsetting and disappointing them... 'I was expected to lick [Epstein's] nipples, instructed on how to do so by [Epstein] and give him oral sex while he wanted to fondle me, and then at the end, I was told by Ghislaine to get on top and straddle Jeffrey sexually... 'When we were done, we went and had a shower in the room and Jeffrey told me to wash him up and down...' Also included in the tranche of unsealed documents are flight logs from Epstein's private jets, police logs Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a home, and email exchanges between Maxwell and Epstein himself. In one such exchange, in January 2015, Maxwell asks Epstein if 'Shelley' - believed to be one of Epstein's accusers - could publicly state she was his girlfriend. Court papers pertaining to a 2015 deposition civil defamation case against Maxwell included a January 2015 email Epstein sent to Maxwell insisting she had 'done nothing wrong' A separate email exchange from days earlier showed Epstein emailed Maxwell what appeared to be a court statement proclaiming her innocence, but was written from her point of view In response, Epstein writes: 'You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it. 'Go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict. go to parties. deal with it', he added. 'YOU'RE INNOCENT, ACT LIKE IT', EPSTEIN TOLD MAXWELL Newly unsealed court documents reveal Jeffrey Epstein told Ghislaine Maxwell she had 'done nothing wrong' and to 'start acting like it' after she was sued by Virginia Roberts in 2015. Dozens of documents relating to the civil defamation lawsuit against Maxwell were publicly released on Thursday, hours after a district judge denied her last ditch attempt to keep them sealed. Among the trove of court papers was an email exchange between the pair in January 2015, in which Epstein advised her to carry on normally and insisted she had nothing to worry about. 'You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it,' the billionaire pedophile wrote. 'go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict. go to parties. deal with it', he added. Advertisement The email exchange appears to confirm that Maxwell lied during a bail hearing, in which she claimed she hadn't spoken to Epstein in over a decade. Days earlier, Epstein had emailed Maxwell what appeared to be a court statement proclaiming her innocence, which read as if it was written by her. 'Since JE was charged in 2007 for solicitation of a prostitute I have been the target of outright lies, innuendo, slander, defamation and salacious gossip and harrassment; headlines made up of quotes I have never given, statement I have never made,' it reads. 'I have never been a party in any criminal action pertaining to JE.' The statement also claimed Maxwell had been in a 'very long-term committed relationship to another man' at the time of Epstein's conviction. 'Whilst I remained on friendly terms with him up until his plea, I have had limited contact since,' it continues. Roberts gave the testimony to investigators after filing a lawsuit against Maxwell in 2015, accusing the British socialite of libel after she branded her a 'liar'. Maxwell eventually settled the suit out of court for an undisclosed sum, though to be millions, and the documents were put under seal so they could not be made public. But Judge Loretta Preska ordered swathes of the papers to be unsealed following Maxwell's arrest earlier this month on sex crimes charges. She is also charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath during a seven-hour deposition she made during the lawsuit. On Thursday, Maxwell filed an emergency motion with the federal appeals court in Manhattan to block the release of that deposition, along with one other document. Lawyers for Maxwell said making her deposition public could make it 'difficult if not impossible' to find an impartial jury for her criminal trial. The trove of documents were publicly released hours after a district judge denied her last ditch attempt to keep them sealed The two depositions, and materials that quote from or disclose information contained in them, were expected to remain sealed at least until Monday, depending on how the appeals court rules. Materials covered by Preska's July 23 order included flight logs from Epstein's private jets; and police reports from Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a home, among other documents. Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997, and committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath. She was arrested on July 2, and has been housed in a Brooklyn jail after a judge called her a flight risk. Maxwell's trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein was found hanged at age 66 last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty. Maxwell has denied the allegations against her. Prince Andrew has denied previous claims against him. His representatives have been approached for comment on the new accusations. Taiwan Mourns Death of 'Mr Democracy,' Former President Lee Teng-hui 2020-07-31 -- Taiwan on Friday mourned the death of its former president Lee Teng-hui, widely regarded as the man who brought about the island's democratic transition. Flags were flown at half-mast to mark Lee's death at the age of 97 on Thursday evening, while tributes poured in to honor a consummate politician who presided over Taiwan's transition from authoritarian state under the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist regime to a pluralistic democracy. In 1996, Lee graced the cover of Newsweek with the words "Mr. Democracy" emblazoned under his photograph, after he became the first president to be chosen by direct, universal suffrage, in spite of military intimidation by China. In the first election of a president under universal suffrage in Taiwan, Lee swept to a landslide victory as KMT candidate in the March 23, 1996 poll with 54 percent of the vote, becoming the first Taiwan-born politician to lead the country, which is still formally known as the Republic of China, an entity founded at the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Born in northern Taiwan in 1923, when the island was part of Japanese territory, Lee was educated in Japan, Taiwan, and Iowa. Considered a skilled technocrat, Lee made his name addressing water supply and irrigation problems during his three-year tenure as mayor of the island's capital, Taipei, in the late 1970s. He was vice-president to KMT leader Chiang Ching-kuo, who ruled the island under martial law and kept a tight lid on local, pro-independence voices and other forms of political dissent. Campaigners for human rights and democracy were routinely arrested, jailed, or forced into exile during authoritarian rule by the KMT, which was founded with Soviet help and along similar lines to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Like the CCP, the KMT once had party committees at every level of administration and in major state-owned companies, holding billions of dollars in assets. Lee became president automatically on the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in January 1988, and later went on to lead the KMT. His re-election in 1990 was by limited electoral college in the form of the much-criticized National Assembly, whose delegates had remained unchanged since the KMT lost the civil war to Mao Zedong's communists on the mainland and occupied Taiwan at the end of World War II. The election of a fresh National Assembly in 1991 saw the rise of a growing popular campaign for direct presidential elections, which culminated in Lee's re-election by direct popular vote in 1998. A rift within the KMT caused by Lee's falling out with long-time political ally James Soong paved the way for the election of the first Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president, Chen Shui-bian, in 2000. Lee was later also forced out of his position as KMT chairman. 'Deeply impressed' Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen said she had been "deeply impressed" by Lee when she worked with him during the 1990s. "I was deeply impressed by his persistence in the ideal of democratization and his firm attitude towards national sovereignty," Tsai said. "My democratic predecessor experienced many challenges while leading Taiwan to democracy." U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered the condolences of the American people on Lee's passing. "Lee helped put an end to decades of authoritarianism and ushered in a new era of economic prosperity, openness, and rule of law," Pompeo said in a statement. "During his 12-year tenure, Lee's bold reforms played a crucial role in transforming Taiwan into the beacon of democracy we see today." He said the U.S. would honor Lee by "continuing to strengthen our bond with Taiwan and its vibrant democracy." Lee was taken to the Veterans General Hospital in February with pneumonia, and was visited there by his wife Tseng Wen-hui and Tsai shortly before he died. Gratitude for Taiwan's democracy The DPP expressed its "deepest grief and sorrow" at Lee's passing, and its respect and gratitude for his contribution to Taiwan's democratic development. "He had always had the development of Taiwan's democracy in his mind, bearing the welfare of the people as his mission, and strove to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan," the party said in a statement, crediting Lee with Taiwan's "economic miracle" and for promoting its democratic transition. He helped dismantle martial law and promoted constitutional amendments, the re-election of all legislative seats, and direct elections for the presidency, it said. Lee had also helped remove the KMT from the military and administrative systems, and promoted freedom of speech and assembly. His passing was also mourned by Chinese democracy activists, in particular veterans of the 1989 mass movement on Tiananmen Square that ended in a massacre by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Veteran rights activist Yang Jianli said Lee had written about the 1989 movement as "an opportunity for democratic development" as late as 2019, and described him on Twitter as "Mr. Democracy, the giant of Taiwan." A different path from China U.S.-based political commentator Li Hongkuan said Lee had led Taiwan down a different path from China, as the government there became every more corrupt. But he said that decision had originated with Chiang Ching-kuo, not Lee himself. Former 1989 student leader Wang Dan said he had spent more than two hours with the former president in 2013. "We didn't expect to extend the meeting for two hours," he said. "We didn't expect to extend it for more than one hour, but he wanted to keep talking, and he was very interested in talking [to me]." Wang recalled: "I remember he took my hand when I left and said, 'I am ninety-two years old and I am not afraid of death anymore. What I care most about now is Taiwan's democracy'." Lee had also lent him around a dozen books, and had shown a keen interest in how Taiwan's democratic transition could inspire change in China. "He was actually very concerned about China's democratization, and he also asked a lot of questions," Wang said. "What impressed me most was the democratic transformation of Taiwan that he presided over ... which has become a model for the rest of the world." Threats from Beijing Beijing has refused to acknowledge Taiwan as a sovereign nation, although the island has never been controlled by the CCP. China has threatened to invade if Taiwan's 23 million people don't submit to "peaceful unification." But opinion polls show Taiwanese have a strong sense of their own identity and nationhood, and have no interest in being ruled by the CCP. Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) swept to a landslide victory in January, garnering more than 57 percent of the total vote after she vowed to defend the island's way of life against threats, infiltration, and saber rattling by China to win a second term in office. Tsai's election victory came after she stood up to increasingly aggressive rhetoric from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Tsai had also argued that the erosion of democratic progress and civil liberties in Hong Kong under China's "one country, two systems" means that Taiwan should never take Beijing seriously when it talks about "unification." In an interview with the BBC in 2014, Lee warned that Chinese president Xi Jinping would take China back to a level of control and authoritarianism not seen since the Mao era. He said Xi had no intention of bringing democracy to China, and that pursuing corrupt officials was the role of the judiciary, not a campaigning politician. Asked how history would remember him, Lee said: "I hope everyone will say that when Lee Teng-hui was in power, everyone lived a very good life." Reported by Hwang Chun-mei, Hsia Hsiao-hwa, Li Zonghan, Lee Yu-ping, Zheng Chongsheng, Wu Hoi-man and Ma Lap-hak for RFA's Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Copyright 1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content July not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market Research Report by Crop (Cereals & Grains, Fruits & Vegetables, Oilseeds & Pulses, Plantation Crops, and Turf & Ornamentals), by Method (Fertigation and Foliar), by Type - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 New York, Aug. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market Research Report by Crop, by Method, by Type - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913967/?utm_source=GNW The Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market is expected to grow from USD 1,568.25 Million in 2019 to USD 1,970.35 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 3.87%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Controlled-Release Fertilizers to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: Based on Crop, the Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market studied across Cereals & Grains, Fruits & Vegetables, Oilseeds & Pulses, Plantation Crops, and Turf & Ornamentals. The Cereals & Grains further studied across Corn, Rice, and Wheat. The Fruits & Vegetables further studied across Brassicas, Citrus Fruits, and Roots & Tubers. The Oilseeds & Pulses further studied across Canola and Soybean. Based on Method, the Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market studied across Fertigation and Foliar. Based on Type, the Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market studied across Coated & Encapsulated, N-Stabilizers, and Slow-Release. The Coated & Encapsulated further studied across Polymer Coatings, Sulfur Coatings, and Sulfur-Polymer Coatings. The N-Stabilizers further studied across Nitrification Inhibitors and Urease Inhibitors. The Slow-Release further studied across Urea-Acetaldehyde, Urea-Formaldehyde, and Urea-Isobutyraldehyde. Based on Geography, the Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market including AGLUKON Spezialduenger GmbH & Co. KG, Agrium Inc., AgroBridge, ATS Group, Compo Expert, Greenfeed Agro Sdn. Bhd, Haifa Chemicals Ltd., Helena Chemical Company, Israel Chemicals Limited, Jcam Agri., Kingenta, Koch Industries, Scottsmiracle-Gro, SQM, and Yara International ASA. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19: COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market during the forecast period? 3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market? 4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market? 6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Controlled-Release Fertilizers Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913967/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Story continues CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31 Posted on 1 August 2020 by John Hartz A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, July 26 through Sat, Aug 1, 2020 Editor's Choice The four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them all The shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool: each distorts the urgent global debate in their own way Serious debates about what to do about the climate crisis are turning into action. The deniers have nothing to contribute to this. Signs of global warming on the Mer de Glace glacier in the French Alps. Photograph: Konrad K/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock Anew book, described as deeply and fatally flawed by an expert reviewer, recently reached the top of Amazons bestseller list for environmental science and made it into a weekly top 10 list for all nonfiction titles. How did this happen? Because, as Brendan Behan put it, theres no such thing as bad publicity. In an article promoting his book, Michael Shellenberger with jaw-dropping hubris apologises on behalf of all environmentalists for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Shellenberger was named a hero of the environment by Time magazine in 2008 and is a loud advocate of nuclear power, but the article was described by six leading scientists as cherry-picking, misleading and containing outright falsehoods. The article was widely republished, even after being removed from its first home, Forbes, for violating the titles editorial guidelines on self-promotion, adding further heat to the storm. And this is why all those who deny the reality or danger of the climate emergency should be ignored. Obviously, I have broken my own rule here, but only to make this vital point once and for all. The science is clear, the severity understood at the highest levels everywhere, and serious debates about what to do are turning into action. The deniers have nothing to contribute to this. Click here to access the entire opinion piece as originally posted on The Guardian website. The four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them all, Opinion by Damian Carrington, Comment is Free, Guardian, July 31, 2020 Articles Linked to on Facebook Sun, July 26, 2020 Mon, July 27, 2020 Tue, July 28, 2020 Wed, July 29, 2020 Thu, July 30, 2020 Fri, July 31, 2020 Sat, Aug 1, 2020 ADDIS ABABA The East Africa region is facing an unprecedented triple food security threat caused by the combined effects of recent severe floods, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the upsurge of desert locusts, the United Nation Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said. The FAO, in a joint position statement issued together with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) on late Tuesday, stressed that urgent action is required to prevent a major food crisis in Eastern Africa. It emphasized that there is an increased risk of below-average rains during the upcoming October to December season, which could further threaten food security and livelihoods across the region. According to FAO, even before these current challenges, Eastern Africa was considered among the most food insecure regions of the world, with nearly 28 million people in food insecurity crisis in 2019, or 20 percent of the total severely food insecure population across the world. It also stressed that an estimated 9 million children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, including 2 million facing severe acute malnutrition. The IGAD region is also one of the worlds leading sources and hosts of internally displaced persons and refugees and asylum seekers who, due to limited livelihood opportunities and degraded coping mechanisms, are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition, according to the FAO. The UNHCR estimates that the region currently hosts about 8 million internally displaced persons and 4 million refugees and asylum seekers. In this context of already high levels of food insecurity, the current triple threat facing vulnerable populations across Eastern Africa is expected to drive significant food security deteriorations in the absence of urgent action that protects lives and livelihoods, strengthens food systems, builds resilience across all vulnerable communities, and improves early warning systems and preparedness, the statement read. Between March and May 2020, heavy rainfall across the region resulted in widespread flooding and landslides across Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda. According to IGAD, some 2.4 million people were affected, including 700,000 who were displaced and over 500 who were killed. This is in addition to previous flooding between October and December 2019, which affected 3.4 million people across the region, according to FAO. Forecasts of above-average rainfall between June and September 2020, particularly across western Ethiopia, eastern South Sudan, Sudan, western Kenya, northern and central Uganda increases the risk of additional flooding during the next several months. Favorable weather and vegetation conditions across the Eastern African region in late 2019 to mid-2020 contributed to the worst desert locust upsurge in over 25 years, affecting all IGAD countries with varying levels of destruction to crops and pastureland. Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are of the highest concern, with FAO indicating that up to 2.5 million people are becoming severely food insecure as a direct consequence of desert locust in the IGAD region. Following the first COVID-19 cases in the region in early 2020, governments imposed certain measures which, though necessary, have had food security and nutrition implications. As of July 22, the IGAD region has seen over 47,000 COVID-19 cases. The resulting economic slowdown has led to significant declines in income levels for many vulnerable urban and rural cropping and pastoralist populations, compromising their access to food due to reduced purchasing power, it was noted. The FAO and its partners also stressed that COVID-19-inflicted movement restrictions and border lockdowns are also disrupting food logistics and supply chains, which in turn has reduced food availability and increased post-harvest losses in parts of the region. Restrictions are impacting the movement and supply of agricultural inputs, including labor, fertilizers, pesticides and equipment, thus posing serious challenges to food production, the joint statement read. As of July 22, 2020, the additional humanitarian requirements, on top of government resources, for food security, nutrition and livelihood support are 3.4 billion U.S. dollars for seven IGAD member states that are Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda. These requirements are just 33 percent funded, leaving a funding gap of 2.3 billion U.S. dollars, as per country-level humanitarian response plan, flash appeals, inter-sectoral COVID-19 response plans, and the global COVID-19 humanitarian response plan, according to the joint statement. This requires urgent attention considering that many governments will likely face significant difficulties responding to this large-scale crisis on their own, it added. Related By Express News Service NEW DELHI: China on Friday said the much-talked-about Rafale fighter jets are no match for its J-20 stealth fighter jets, days after the first batch of five French-made warplanes landed in Ambala. Quoting experts, an article in the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece The Global Times said: India has recently received delivery of five Rafale fighter jets, with a former Indian air chief marshal boasting that the French-made warplanes capability is superior to Chinas J-20 stealth fighter jet. Chinese experts said that the Rafale is only a third-plus generation fighter jet, and does not stand much of a chance against a stealth, fourth-generation one like the J-20. Saying that the Rafale is superior to the Su-30 MKI in some aspects, the article goes on to say that the acquisition does not yield a significant qualitative change. In some combat performance areas, the Rafale is superior to the Su-30 MKI fighter jets, which are in service in the Indian Air Force in large batches, but it is only about one-fourth of a generation more advanced and does not yield a significant qualitative change, it said. Air Commodore (Retd) Prashant Dixit dismissed Beijings claims as a bogey. The very shape of J-20 reveals that its more like any traditional aircraft. It is an unproven platform, too. Rafale is a proven platform and with the kind of weapons and missile it is packed with will be an aircraft which will deter any enemy, he said. Defence expert dismisses Chinas claims as bogey The very shape of J-20 reveals that its more like any traditional aircraft. It is an unproven platform, too. Rafale (in pic) is a proven platform, says Air Commodore (Retd) Prashant Dixit Chinese state television says Hong Kong police ordered arrest of six activists on charges of violating security law. Police in Hong Kong have ordered the arrest of several pro-democracy activists living in exile on suspicion of violating a China-imposed national security law, according to Chinese state media. CCTV said late on Friday the six are wanted on suspicion of secession or colluding with foreign forces, crimes the new law punishes with up to life in prison. It named them as Nathan Law, Wayne Chan Ka-kui, Honcques Laus, Simon Cheng and Ray Wong Toi-yeung. Samuel Chu, an American citizen living in the United States, was also on the list. Hong Kong police declined to comment. The arrest warrants mark the first time the citys police have used the extraterritorial power in the new law to go after activists who are not in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. Chu, speaking to Al Jazeera from the US city of Los Angeles, described the warrant for his arrest as outrageous and said it showed how desperate and how scared China is of international pressure. Its such an outlandish claim that they somehow have jurisdiction over an American citizen lobbying the American government, said Chu, who runs the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington, DC-based advocacy group. The kind of global bullying and censorship, not only of citizens of other countries, but businesses its starting to create a united front line, globally, pushing back, Chu said, adding: Todays move, particularly, shows they are scared of losing control. They know that if Hong Kong can continue to be a place of resistance, it threatens their control all over the mainland. Absurdity Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong legislator who is currently in the United Kingdom, called the charges trumped-up and said his only crime was that he loves Hong Kong too much. He said on Facebook the wanted bulletins, recent arrests, and mass disqualifications of pro-democracy activists from a now-delayed legislative council election are indications of our need to remain active on the global stage. That Hong Kong has no place for even such moderate views like ours underscores the absurdity of Chinese Communist rule. China imposed the contentious law on its self-governing territory on June 30, circumventing the local legislature, in a move condemned by some Western governments and rights groups as well as activists in Hong Kong. Critics of the law fear it will crush freedoms in a city that is a world financial hub, prompting some to flee overseas. But supporters say the security legislation is needed to restore stability and order to the former British colony after a year of sometimes violent anti-government protests. Law told Al Jazeera that while the coronavirus may have resulted in fewer demonstrations taking place, the protest movement has not ended entirely. Under COVID-19 and the national security law, it is very unlikely in Hong Kong that there will be large demonstrations like we had last year, Law said. But people are still voicing opposition and doing a lot like expressing that sentiment online so the movement is still alive, it just needs another opportunity to express these sentiments. Al Jazeeras Divya Gopalan, reporting from Hong Kong, said the issuing of arrest warrants on Friday was a strategic move by China. Basically, Beijing is trying to drum up grassroots support. They are recovering from the coronavirus pandemic and one of the main nationalistic areas of support is tightening its grip on Hong Kong. So its sending a very clear message that it has control over Hong Kong people, no matter where they are, she said. And on top of that, its sending a message to the international community, Gopalan added. One of the main tenets of this national security law was that it has no borders. No matter where you are, who you are, whether you are from Hong Kong or not, you could break this law. And China, by showing how long its reach could be, its sending another message to those countries like the US, UK, Australia and Canada that had condemned the implementation of the national security law. Elections postponed In just a month since the legislation came into effect, a dozen leading pro-democracy campaigners have been disqualified from running in legislative elections and four students have been arrested on suspicion of inciting succession with social media posts. Several countries have since suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong, including the UK, Australia, Canada and most recently Germany, as a possible safeguard against attempts to use the national security laws to round up activists abroad. We have repeatedly made our expectation clear that China lives up to its legal responsibilities under international law, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Friday just after Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam postponed the citys legislative election by a year. The vote was initially scheduled to take place on September 6, but Lam said a delay was essential to control the citys worsening coronavirus outbreak. But critics accused the government of using the disease outbreak as an excuse, with Emily Lau, a senior member of the opposition Democratic Party, saying authorities were delaying the vote because they are afraid they would lose. Who is she [Lam] trying to fool? Lau told Al Jazeera. I think its quite laughable. AP Donald Trump has challenged Dr Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House's coronavirus task force, over why the United States has more coronavirus cases than other countries. Dr Facui said in front of a House subcommittee it was because the US only shut down 50 per cent of its economy, but Mr Trump says it's due to the country testing more. Although the president has blamed testing, that doesn't explain the surge in death toll and hospitalisations. In the month of July, 10 days posted more than 1,000 people dying from the coronavirus in a one day. The month prior only had three days within the month hitting that number. This comes as the president has said he would ban popular video app TikTok over security concerns. Mr Trump said a ban could be implemented on Saturday. On Friday he said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to enforce the action, insisting, I have that authority before adding: Its going to be signed tomorrow. TikTok's US general manager came back with a video on Saturday to users, saying the app was not going anywhere. Key impeachment witness Alexander Vindman penned a Washington Post op-ed against the president following his resignation. The lieutenant colonel accused Mr Trump of using "bullying and retaliation" against him after he spoke during the House impeachment trials against the president. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is nearing the announcement of his vice presidential choice. The top contenders and their advocates are making final appeals. The leading contenders include California Senator Kamala Harris, California Representative Karen Bass and Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Representative Karen Bass responded to scrutiny on Saturday after a Scientology event she attended 10 years ago resurfaced. Ms Bass defended her attendance by stating she was trying to be accepting of all organisations in her community while acknowledging the recent allegations against Scientology. If ever there were a time to go back to school, this is that time, with this trend line, in this province. For all the temptation to panic in mid-pandemic, the midpoint may in fact be far off: COVID-19 could endure for years, and so we cannot allow a perennial suspension of the education of our children. Today, Ontario like most of Canada and much of Western Europe is blessed with a declining infection rate that is both a respite and an opportunity. It makes the governments choice to reopen easier, but also harder. For the decision to release our children from continued isolation imposes an obligation to spare them and teachers, too from any increased risk of transmission. Ontario must make the best of bad times, without making matters worse. The back-to-school plan unveiled Thursday by Education Minister Stephen Lecce is not despite efforts to demonize him the devils work. It is merely a work in progress, a sensible start in the long road to recovery, albeit short on key details notably its financial underpinnings. The good news is that it goes beyond the benchmarks of other provinces by mandating masks for the vast majority of Ontarios 2 million students. Given Doug Fords reluctance to impose a mask requirement province-wide for adults, it is a relief to see the premier mandating it for all but the youngest students, in kindergarten to grade 3. Whatever shortcomings it may have, the back-to-school protocol is not political, which is why criticisms need not be partisan nor polemical. Pointing fingers at the Progressive Conservative government, or reviving old grudge matches, will not advance student education nor enhance teacher safety. In this pandemic, the perfect is the enemy of the good. We must admit that the science is imperfect, that epidemiology means unpredictability, that there are no certainties with COVID-19, that there will always be risks foreseeable but unavoidable. Inevitably, children will come down with infections and teachers will be exposed to transmission. Predictably, the press and the politicians, parents and teachers, will all cry foul. The test will be whether the government did what it could and should to protect children in a pandemic, recognizing that keeping them captive at home would harm them more. There are gaps in the plan, but they are not gaping holes that cannot be plugged with political will, a little goodwill, and financial wherewithal. The governments initial blueprint lowballs the ultimate costs. It skirts the question of teacher absences (by the oldest or most vulnerable), and the need to shore up staffing as high school classes are kept small and scheduling challenges loom large. Opposition critics pounced Thursday on the lack of cash for students, on the same day they also demanded dramatically more money for seniors. The financial question mark is surely concerning but not catastrophic. The premier has pledged to do (and therefore spend) whatever it takes to keep students safe dont forget teachers so he cant duck when the bills come due. Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario president Sam Hammond quite rightly argued this week that masks should be mandatory something that other provinces, including B.C.s NDP government, have largely resisted. Fords Tories have gone a long way toward meeting that objective with most students, but they also heeded associate chief medical officer of health Barbara Yaffes advice that it should merely be recommended, not obligatory, in the lower grades where compliance is variable and the benefits questionable. To succeed in its mission and ambition, the plan requires the willing co-operation of 140,000 teachers who must like other essential front-line workers before them go above and beyond the call of duty amid the spectre of COVID-19. This is not what teachers signed up for, but it is unavoidably where they will find themselves until further notice just like other front-line workers, be they dentists, cashiers or bus drivers. The government owes it to teachers to give them the protection they need (some can redeploy to online learning). Teachers, in turn, owe it to students to give them the education they need. And all sides need to turn the page on past conflicts. (One option: a new minister of education to reset relations, liberating Lecce for another portfolio.) Teachers and their unions won unprecedented public sympathy (and supportive columns) during last years contract negotiations, after Fords government chose the path of gratuitous confrontation. They squandered some of that goodwill by resisting video conferencing during a difficult experiment in online learning last spring (which could have served as a dry run if classes were cancelled this fall), while Ford disrespected the relationship. Now, the challenge is for both sides to avoid escalation and reduce COVID-19 transmission for this is not a labour negotiation but a reinvention of our education system. The learning curve for everyone students, parents, teachers, politicians will be steep and the stakes will be high. We cannot afford to fail, for the costs will be incalculably higher. Read more about: Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 00:43:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NAIROBI, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- As Kenya battles to contain COVID-19, which is spreading faster in the east African nation, the disease is having unintended positive outcomes on farms in the east African nation. Its outbreak in March has seen farm activities surge across the country as some citizens, who have lost jobs while others like teachers who have plenty of time on their hands after schools closed, turn to farming. The result is that the country's farms are turning greener as the disease sparks a green revolution of sorts. Antony Kimani, a resident of Kitengela, south of Nairobi, is among those who have embraced farming this period. With his employer having adopted a system that sees them work in a two weeks shift to curb COVID-19 spread, the journalist embraced farming. He set up a greenhouse and has planted colored capsicum inside and on a separate piece of leased land, he has grown tomatoes. "I started farming sometime back but what I have done this period is to expand the business to using greenhouse," he said of the project that cost him 200,000 shillings (about 1,923 U.S. dollars). Since the outbreak of the disease in Kenya in March, Kimani has planted and harvested tomatoes. "I am in the second season of tomatoes that I planted this month and hope to harvest in late September," said Kimani, adding the project has boosted his income after his employer slashed their pay by 35 percent. Popular crops on Kenyan farms currently include maize, beans, onions, tomatoes, capsicum, fruits, chilies and cabbages as the number of people farming surges. Students, who are at home due to the disease, are among those who are contributing to the green revolution as parents find ready labor in them. In the Rift Valley, Kenya's breadbasket, most farmers expanded the maize acreage thanks to labor provided by their children who have been at home since March. "We harvested beans in June and we will start harvesting maize next month. I will plant a second season crop soon after," said George Ambuche, a farmer in Kitale, Kenya's breadbasket. Despite the COVID-19 disruption, Kenya expects to harvest 37 million 90kg bags of maize and 4.9 million bags of beans this year, thanks to increased farm activities, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. While this is a slight decline from last year's 39 million bags, it is a commendable feat. Social media pages in Kenya are filled with stories and photos of many young people engaging in farming for the first time during the period. "My small backyard farm in western Kenya, Trans Nzoia County, Kitale. Doing well. Agribusiness should be the backbone of our economy as a nation," Mathew Miyen, a young farmer, writes on Twitter as he shares photos of himself on his banana and maize farms. "Farming is the solution to unemployment in Kenya, we are living in days when joblessness is the norm," writes Abdulrahman Ibrahim as he shares photos of his freshly harvested tomatoes. Farming became more appealing to citizens after the government classified it as an essential service. This saw easy movement of farmers in search of inputs and to sell produce amid surge in demand for food following restrictions that slowed down imports from Uganda and Tanzania. Unlike many others, the local farming industry has braved the COVID-19 effects, seemingly emerging unscathed as food demand soars, what is appealing to many. Beatrice Macharia of Growth Point, an agro-consultancy, observed that besides the current conditions forcing people to farm, ease in access to extension services and market through online platforms has boosted uptake of farming activities. "The disease we can say has turned a blessing for Kenya when it comes to farming because people are embracing agribusiness amid job losses, closure of institutions and the tough economic conditions," she said. Enditem Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, many New Jerseyans have seen their news feeds filled with seemingly nothing but negative stories. With more than 150,000 Americans killed by the coronavirus and millions unemployed, there doesnt seem to be very much to smile about nowadays. However, thanks to people like Barney Corrigan, New Jersey has seen plenty of stories of people doing good for one another around the state. Corrigan, a Westville resident, has been hosting a free food pantry out of his own home for his neighbors who have been hit hard by the spread of the virus. Corrigan built a small wooden cabinet on top of a filing cabinet and put it in front of his house in April, filling it with a couple dozen non-perishable food items and inviting anybody to take whatever they need. I was just watching the news and saw how many people were losing their jobs, Corrigan said about the genesis of Barneys Place. So I decided to just build a little pantry and put it out front of the house and I went and stocked it. I figured it was the least I could do, he added. Before long, word began to spread about Barneys Place. Within weeks, Corrigan was being flooded with donations. In addition to accepting non-perishable food donations, Corrigan also has a Venmo account as well as a Cash App to accept monetary donations. And things quickly took off. Id say after about a week, I started getting so many donations, Corrigan said. The cabinet and drawers were no longer sufficient to store all the donated items. Corrigan put a bin on his front porch and would come home after spending the day out to find it overflowed with bags full of non-perishables. Barney's Place started out as a small display in front of Barney Corrigan's house. It quickly grew into something much bigger.Courtesy of Barney Corrigan When word began to really spread, the pantry and the filing cabinet would just fill up, Corrigan said. I started getting diapers and baby food and it was getting crazy. But, a good crazy. At this point, Corrigan quickly realized he needed to get organized. Instead of his wooden cabinet, he displayed all the items on shelves in his garage. Having just moved into town in March, he had plenty of available space. Every other weekend, Corrigan would allow anybody who was in need to stop by and take whatever they need. New Jersey is dependent on food shelters at this time more than ever before, with many shelters seeing the number of food-strapped families triple since the outbreak began. Barneys Place is helping take some of the strain off of the busy food banks, but Corrigan believes there is something special about his own operation. The biggest thing I get out of it is talking with people, Corrigan said. They tell me their story, why theyre in the situation that theyre in, they bring their kids with them. It makes my week every time, he added. After word spread of Barney's Place, the donations came pouring in and Corrigan was forced to move his free food pantry into his garage. While it may seem like a whole ordeal to go and wait in line behind two dozen cars at a food bank, Barneys Place seems to have almost a garage sale feeling to it. Ive noticed a mom will come one weekend and then the next weekend its her and her husband, Corrigan said. Then the kids will come and the kids are picking out things. They feel comfortable. Corrigan has witnessed firsthand how the coronavirus has caused such an increase in food insecurity. Running his own catering business, he has seen his business come to a standstill. With the sheer number of donations that have been coming in, Corrigans garage is beginning to seem like it may not hold all the donations, and he has even considered trying to find a larger space in which to host the bi-weekly pantry. Im just trying to do my part to spread a little love and compassion, he said. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Casey Roland may be reached at croland@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here. Murphy argued that the violent protesters were not merely taking advantage of a moment but had overwhelmingly been linked to radical ideologies driving individuals toward violence. That conclusion was undercut by an earlier DHS analysis that found there was not enough information about the Portland protesters for the department to know how they might be connected to anti-fascist or anarchist groups and what precisely was motivating them. Many of the protests in Portland have been peaceful and in response to police violence around the country. Figure it out: The Shelbourne Hotel and one of the Egyptian princess statues. Photo: Gerry Mooney A ready market exists for the statues removed from the front of the Shelbourne Hotel if the owners were to sell them, an auctioneer who has sold small figurines by the same sculptor said. Ian Whyte of Whyte's auctioneers said bronze figures of about 10 inches high by the popular French sculptor Mathurin Moreau have sold for around 1,000. "I would imagine the four life-size figures, sold together as a set, would probably go for 200,000-300,000," he added. "Not only are they beautiful and valuable for the material in them but their history and their current notoriety would create a lot of interest." However, Mr Whyte isn't expecting to have to clear a corner of his salesroom just yet as the statues are now the subject of a planning enforcement investigation by Dublin City Council. Read More The Shelbourne is a protected structure and the council said it did not have planning permission to make changes to its exterior. The statues, dating to the 1860s, are of four African women, two understood to be princesses and the other two their shackled slave girls. The hotel made a brief statement saying their removal was in light of recent events, a reference to the removal of statues which had become the target of Black Lives Matter protests abroad. Conservationists, including the Irish Georgian Society and Dublin Civic Trust, criticised the move while the black community and immigrant support campaigners applauded it. Art historian Kyle Leyden entered the fray to cast doubt over whether any of the figures were slaves, arguing the original catalogue from which the works were chosen listed them as Eygptienne and African women. He argued that if the women were intended to depict slaves, they would have been classified as such. But Dr Donal Hassett, a historian of French colonialism at University College Cork, said: "African people were depicted as exotic creatures, as objects of sexual desire and always as 'not European'. "Depicting them as something 'other' than European fed the culture that fuelled the project of colonisation. "I know people may say, they were just fascinated by African women at the time but they weren't fascinated enough to ask for their views on colonisation." Ian Whyte said he found it hard to see the statues as offensive. " To me they're just beautiful pieces of art," he added. "I fear that if we were to look at all sculpture with modern eyes, we'd have to go to Rome and tear down half the statues." Neither the Shelbourne nor parent company Marriott Hotels would comment. Iranians officials search inside a mosque after a bomb explosion in Shiraz, Iran, April 13, 2008. /Reuters Iran said Saturday it has arrested the head of a U.S.-based "terrorist group" accused of being behind a deadly 2008 bombing in the southern city of Shiraz and of other abortive attacks. The Tondar group's "Jamshid Sharmahd, who was leading armed and sabotage operations inside Iran, is now in the powerful hands" of Iran's security forces, state television said in a report citing a statement from the Intelligence Ministry. The statement did not elaborate on where or when the leader of the opposition royalist group known as the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar (Farsi for Thunder), was arrested. According to the statement, he had orchestrated the April 12, 2008 bombing in a packed mosque in Shiraz that killed 14 people and wounded 215. Iran hanged three men convicted of the bombing in 2009, saying they had ties to the monarchist group. It said they had been taking orders from an Iranian U.S.-backed "CIA agent" to try to assassinate a high-ranking official in Iran. Iran hanged two other convicted members of the group in 2010, who had "confessed to obtaining explosives and planning to assassinate officials." A woman stands by the bedside of a girl resting in the Namazee hospital recovering from injuries sustained after an explosion in a mosque in Shiraz, Iran, April 13, 2008. /Reuters The statement issued on Saturday said that Tondar had plotted several other "big operations" which failed. It said that Tondar had planned to blow up a dam in Shiraz, use "cyanide bombs" at a Tehran book fair, and plant an explosive device at the mausoleum of the Islamic republic's founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It was not clear how Iran arrested the U.S.-based Sharmahd. Tondar aims to overthrow the Islamic Republic and restore the Iranian monarchy that was ousted in the 1979 revolution, according to its website. Sharmahd's reported arrest comes as tensions between Tehran and Washington escalated following U.S. President Donald Trump's 2018 decision to withdraw from a multilateral Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 and the killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in January. Last year Iran said it had dismantled a CIA spy ring and arrested dozens of people linked to the agency. The country recently executed several men convicted of spying for the CIA. (With input from AFP, Reuters) A black bear that attacked a man in North Jersey was euthanized by the state earlier this week. The state Division of Fish and Wildlife trapped and killed the suspected problem bear on Tuesday in West Milford, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement. The DEP believes the bear, which had entered multiple homes in the past week, was the same one that attacked a man in his garage on July 24. The victim of that attack, 82-year-old Ronald Jelinek, was left with more than 30 stitches, according to a NorthJersey.com report. Jelinek, who lives in the High Crest Lake section of West Milford, was reportedly attacked when he walked in on the bear trying to get into a refrigerator. Jelinek declined to comment when reached by NJ Advance Media. This is the only bear attack recorded so far in 2020. It is extremely rare that black bears attack humans. New Jersey didnt have a recorded fatal bear attack on a person until 2014, when 22-year-old Darsh Patel, a Rutgers student and Edison native, was killed by a black bear while hiking with friends in the Apshawa Preserve, which is also in West Milford. The attack on Patel could be considered to be one in a million, experts said at the time. This year, between January 1 and July 21, there have been 200 bear sightings around New Jersey, according to DEP data. Thats about a 90% increase from the same time period in 2019, when there were 105 sightings statewide. The number of Category 1 bear incidents, in which state policy is to euthanize the responsible bear, has remained mostly steady. There have been 23 Category 1 incidents from January 1 to July 21 this year, compared to 22 during the same time last year. But the number of reported home entries by bears has more than doubled in those comparisons, with nine this year compared to four in the same time during 2019. Those numbers do not include Jelineks bear encounter, which occurred a few days after that date range. The DEP said earlier this year that bear sightings may be up because more people are at home, thanks to the coronavirus. This is the time of year when bears are looking for habitat, particularly younger males that have left their mothers, DEP spokesman Larry Hajna said at the start of July. Reports may have increased due to more people being at home seeing bears as they disperse into habitats. The surging number of bear sightings and incidents has rekindled debate over New Jerseys bear hunt, with hunting advocates like the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance using the statistics to call for an expansion of the annual season. Gov. Phil Murphy campaigned on a promise to end the states bear hunt, a move called for by animal rights activists and some environmental groups. But the governor is unable to take such action on his own, as the states hunting regulations are approved by the New Jersey Fish and Game Council. While he is unable to end the hunt outright, Murphy did ban bear hunting on state lands in 2018. That ban remains in effect. In January 2018, just days before Murphy took office, a report from state wildlife officials warned that ending the bear hunt could cause New Jerseys bear population to double by 2022. The numbers of bears killed by hunters has dropped since Murphys restrictions went into effect. There were 225 bears harvested in New Jersey in 2018, and 315 harvested in 2019. Both are down from the 409 bears harvested in 2017, the last hunt under former Gov. Chris Christie. New Jerseys 2020 bear hunt is scheduled to begin Oct. 12. To reduce the risk of dangerous encounters with bears, the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife recommends taking steps to keep sources of food, birdseed, trash and other things that may attract the animals out of reach. These steps range from using bear-resistant garbage containers and avoiding feeding birds when bears are active, to regularly cleaning outdoor grills and removing fruits and nuts that fall from trees into your yard. People who do encounter a bear should remain calm, make the bear aware of their presence by speaking assertively and making noise, avoid direct eye contact with the bear and allow the allow to have an escape route, according to state safety tips. Black bear sightings and suspected instances of bear nuisance in New Jersey should be reported to the DEPs 24-hour, toll-free hotline at 1-877-WARN DEP (1-877-927-6337). Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Michael Sol Warren may be reached at mwarren@njadvancemedia.com. Taking another step towards conservation of elusive snow leopards, Indias first Snow Leopard Conservation Centre will be opened in Uttarkashi forest division in Uttarakhand, officials informed. Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat along with state forest minister and officials from the state forest department took a meeting in this regard on Saturday. The conservation centre will be built by the Uttarakhand forest department along United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as part of its six-year long project, SECURE Himalayas. The project aims at securing livelihoods, conservation, sustainable use and restoration of high range Himalayan ecosystems. The project also looks into conversation of snow leopards and other endangered species and their habitats, found in Himalayas. This project was started in 2017. Chief minister Rawat said that special efforts should be made to conserve and increase the number of snow leopards in the state. Areas where snow leopards have been seen in the last few years, such areas should be identified by the forest department in collaboration with local people and military forces. Snow leopards should be estimated in these areas by making grids. The conservation of snow leopards and other wildlife in the area will give a boost to winter tourism in the state, said Rawat. He said that there are many species of wildlife in the hilly regions of Uttarakhand, which become the centre of attraction for tourists. The chief minister was apprised by officials that snow leopards have been frequently sighted in in Uttarkashi and Pithoragarh districts but an estimation has not been conducted so far. There are currently 86 snow leopards in Uttarakhand based on various researches. JS Suhag, chief wildlife warden of Uttarakhand said that the conservation centre will be built at a place named Lanka, near Bhaironghati bridge in Uttarkashi district. The snow leopard conservation centre aims to protect the animal with the help local community and also give employment to locals from nearby villages through tourism. Today (Saturday) a presentation was made in front of the chief minister where the design of the conservation centre and other details were discussed, said the chief wildlife warden. Rajiv Bhartari, chairman of Uttarakhand Biodiversity Board who was also a part of the meeting said that the aim of the conservation centre is to generate awareness amongst people about the elusive big cat. Architect Anne Feenstra shared details of how the snow leopard conservation centre will be; it will have three blocks, a learning block, a cafe block and a forest department facility. Given that the centre will be made at such a height, the structure is very important so that it withstands the extreme snowfall and the heat level is maintained in a sustainable manner, said Bhartari. He added that the centre through the cafe block and souvenir shops aims to give employment to locals from five villages in that area. The snow leopard is a Schedule I animal under Wildlife Protection Act of India and is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The animal faces many threats to its existence due to poaching and habitat destruction. It inhabits the Himalayas at elevations ranging from 3,000 to 4,500 metres. AMRITSAR: The death toll in the Punjab hooch tragedy rose to 84 as 43 more people died on Saturday, officials familiar with the matter said. A majority of the deaths, 62, were reported from Tarn Taran district, with Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts registering 11 deaths each. The police have arrested 25 people, including one of the key accused-- Darshan Rani, alias Faujan, in connection with the deaths across the three districts, officials said. The police have seized large quantities of lahan (raw material used for making liquor) from various villages and dhabas in the region around the Shambhu border, Rajpura and Patiala, Director General of Police Dinkar Gupta said. The raids have exposed a massive liquor racket, extending across several districts, he said, adding that several dhabas at Shambhu, Banur and Rajpura of Patiala have been sealed. An excise department official said on condition of anonymity that though reports of the chemical analysis of the material seized in police raids were yet to arrive, a preliminary check showed that the material was denatured spirit, generally used in the paint or hardware industry. News agency PTI reported that chief minister Amarinder Singh has ordered the suspension of seven excise officials, along with six policemen over negligence of duty. Among the suspended officials are two deputy superintendents of police and four station house officers, the news agency said. The CM also announced Rs 2 lakh ex gratia for each of the families of the deceased. Meanwhile, Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal attacked the state government over the deaths. The hooch tragedy is the direct and natural consequence of the patronage given to Congress leaders, including ministers and MLAs, for freely carrying out rampant illicit liquor trade in the state, he said in a statement. Reacting to the charges, Amarinder urged not to politicise the tragedy, saying such cases had happened earlier too under the SAD-BJP regime. Nath's colleague Digvijaya Singh said Rajiv Gandhi also wanted the temple to come up, but questioned the timing of the ground breaking ceremony on 5 August A Ram temple is being constructed in Ayodhya with the consent of every Indian, Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath said on Saturday, four days ahead of the foundation laying ceremony. Nath's colleague Digvijaya Singh said former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi also wanted the temple to come up. "I welcome the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. People of the country were expecting and wishing for this since long. The construction of the temple is being carried out with the consent of every Indian. It's possible only in India," Nath said in a video message. Singh said Lord Ram is at the centre of everybody's faith. "The centre of our faith is Lord Ram!And today, the country is being run with trust in the Lord Ram. That's why we all wish that a grand temple should be built at the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya. (late PM) Rajiv Gandhiji also wanted the same," he tweeted. Singh, however, questionned the "muhurt" (auspicious time) for the ground breaking ceremony for the construction of temple, slated to be held on 5 August, in the likely presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "If we talk about 'muhurt', then more than 90 per cent of Hindus in this country will be those who believe in religious science like 'muhurt', 'grihdasha', 'astrology', 'choghadiya' etc. (sic)," he said. "I am neutral to the fact that there is no 'muhurt' for the foundation laying on 5 August. This is playing with the religious sentiments and beliefs (sic)," the Congress leader said. When asked about Singh's tweets, MP Home Minister and senior BJP leader Narottam Mishra said, "Some people have a habit of criticising, and whenever they speak, they seek to find evil in the good. (Unknowingly) even in their criticism, they have at least taken the name of Lord Ram". Mishra said it was the Congress which had tried to delay the construction of the temple. "Kapil Sibal and other big leaders of Congress stood against the (construction) of Ram temple in court and kept saying in the supreme court that Lord Ram was an imaginary character. They said there was no 'Ram Setu'. They should think now. Lord Ram is everywhere in this country," Mishra told reporters. Jeffrey Epstein allegedly forced then-underage Virginia Roberts Giuffre to have sex with Prince Andrew in order to gather incriminating evidence so he could blackmail the British Royal, according to court documents. Court papers released in New York on Thursday allege Epstein trafficked underage girls to the Prince as well as other powerful and well-connected figures. Roberts, who is referred to in court papers as Jane Doe #3, was 'forced' to have sexual relations with the Duke of York 'when she was a minor' in Ghislaine Maxwell's apartment in London, in New York and on Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands. At least one encounter in the US Virgin Islands was part of an orgy with several other under-age girls, court documents say. Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire pedophile, allegedly trafficked underage girls to Prince Andrew (left) and other high-powered figures in order to gather incriminating evidence against them so that he can use it for blackmail. Court papers alleged Andrew assaulted then-underage Virginia Roberts Giuffre (right) on at least three separate occasions The encounters between Roberts and Andrew were allegedly 'facilitated' by Ghislaine Maxwell, who acted as a 'madame', according to newly unsealed court documents Andrew was alleged to have participated in orgies with other underage girls on Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands It comes as a Royal insider this morning dismissed claims the Prince 'lobbied the US government to help get a sweetheart plea-deal for Epstein'. Andrew's unnamed friend described the allegation as 'a straight forward untruth, no ifs, no buts,' adding the US federal appeals court last year said the claim should be treated with 'extreme caution'. The court papers say Epstein told Roberts 'she was to give the Prince whatever he demanded and required [her] to report back to him on the details of the sexual abuse'. Maxwell, Epstein's alleged madam, is said to have 'facilitated Prince Andrew's acts of sexual abuse.' She has denied all allegations against her. Epstein, the billionaire pedophile, was alleged to have sexually trafficked Roberts and others to powerful figures in order to 'ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information,' court papers state. These individuals include 'numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders.' The newly unsealed court papers contain several bombshell claims, including one in which Andrew 'lobbied the US government to help get a sweetheart plea-deal for Epstein' that saw him jailed for just 18 months in 2008. The allegation is contained within a motion by lawyers for two anonymous Epstein accusers who were trying to get hold of documents which they claim showed Andrew's lobbying efforts. The motion forms part of a 2015 libel case against Maxwell, Epstein's alleged madam, which have been kept under lock and key until Thursday - when they were released following her arrest on sex trafficking charges. Lawyers for the pair, Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, wrote: '(They are) seeking documents regarding Epstein's lobbying efforts to persuade the government to give him a favorable plea arrangement, including efforts on his behalf by Prince Andrew and former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. The documents form part of a 2015 libel lawsuit that Epstein's primary accuser, Virginia Roberts (pictured), brought against Maxwell - but were sealed after it was settled out of court 'They have alleged these materials are needed to prove their allegations that, after Epstein signed the non-prosecution agreement his performance was delayed while he used his significant social and political connections to lobby the justice department to obtain a more favorable plea deal.' The newly-released documents also contain a transcript of a deposition given by Epstein's main accuser, Virginia Roberts, where she also speaks about the prince's involvement in Epstein's activities. Asked by her own lawyers in 2011 whether Andrew would have 'relevant information' in the case, she answered: 'Yes, he would know a lot of the truth. 'I don't know how much he'd be able to help you with, but seeing as he's in a lot of trouble himself these days I think he might, so I think he might be valuable.' Prince Andrew claims he distanced himself from Epstein after the conviction, meeting with him once in New York in 2010 to formally cut ties. 'MAXWELL STRIPPED ME AND TOOK PART IN CONTINUOUS ORGIES' Ghislaine Maxwell undressed Virginia Roberts and told her to lick Jeffrey Epstein's nipples during their first meeting when she was just 15, newly-unsealed court documents have claimed. Roberts detailed the ordeal in testimony she gave to lawyers in 2011, which formed part of a 2015 libel case against Maxwell that has been kept secret until now. Roberts said Maxwell also stripped naked, instructed her to perform oral sex on Epstein while he fondled her, and then told her to 'straddle him sexually'. In separate testimony, Roberts also recounted 'continuous' orgies that Maxwell was involved in on Epstein's private Caribbean island with underage girls. Roberts said girls were routinely flown in via private jet to participate in sex sessions which happened all over the island. Asked to describe women she personally saw Maxwell have sexual contact with, she responded: 'There's so many, I don't know where you want me to start.' 'There were blondes, there were brunettes, there were redheads. They were all beautiful girls. I would say the ages ranged between 15 and 21,' she added. Advertisement Roberts separately claims she had sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions, including once in a Caribbean jurisdiction where she was underage, after being trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell. She was pictured alongside Andrew in Maxwell's London townhouse in 2001, hours after she claims she first met Andrew in Tramp nightclub in Mayfair. Roberts claims the pair also had sex that evening - an act that made her feel so dirty and ashamed that she showered straight afterwards. Andrew, once a close friend of both Epstein and Maxwell, has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. Prince Andrew is also facing pressure to speak to the FBI to aid their investigation into Epstein and his inner circle, including Maxwell. US Attorney General Bill Barr said earlier this year that Andrew must speak to the FBI and his team 'definitely' want to interview him. He said: 'The department wants to talk to Prince Andrew. That's why the Southern District has been making efforts to communicate with him. We've made it clear that we'd like to communicate with him'. A source close to Prince Andrew previously told DailyMail.com that he was 'bewildered' by the ongoing claims that he wasn't cooperating, and says his team tried to reach prosecutors several times. Andrew's legal team claim they have been 'ghosted' by US prosecutors, despite repeated offers of help in the case. Elsewhere in Robert's testimony, she claims that Maxwell undressed her and told her to lick Jeffrey Epstein's nipples during their first meeting when she was just 15. Roberts detailed the ordeal in testimony she gave to lawyers in 2011, which formed part of a 2015 libel case against Maxwell that has been kept secret until now. Roberts said Maxwell also stripped naked, instructed her to perform oral sex on Epstein while he fondled her, and then told her to 'straddle him sexually'. In separate testimony, Roberts also recounted 'continuous' orgies that Maxwell was involved in on Epstein's private Caribbean island with underage girls. Roberts said girls were routinely flown in via private jet to participate in sex sessions which happened all over the island. Ghislaine Maxwell had 'continuous' orgies on Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island with girls as young as 15, accuser Virginia Roberts claims in newly-unsealed court documents Little St James Island, in the Caribbean (pictured), was owned by Epstein and was where Roberts alleges the orgies took place Asked to describe women she personally saw Maxwell have sexual contact with, she responded: 'There's so many, I don't know where you want me to start.' 'There were blondes, there were brunettes, there were redheads. They were all beautiful girls. I would say the ages ranged between 15 and 21,' she added. CLINTON, GORE, CAMPBELL, KLUM: EPSTEIN'S 'GUESTS' REVEALED Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum were among high-profile guests that Jeffrey Epstein entertained, Virginia Roberts claims. Clinton visited Little St James after his presidency ended because he 'owed Epstein a favor', Roberts told investigators in newly-unsealed testimony. Clinton has denied this. 'He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious,' she said. The former president stayed in Epstein's private villa, she claims. His spokesman tweeted: 'The story keeps changing, the facts don't. President Clinton has never been to the island.' Vice President Gore was also a guest on Epstein's plane, the Lolita Express, as were models Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, Roberts claimed. Orgies also took place on the jet, she alleges. There is no suggestion those named took part in these orgies. 'There would be sexual conduct, there would be foreplay, there was a bed in there, so we could basically reenact exactly what was happening in the house,' she said. 'It would start off with massaging or we would start off with foreplay, sometimes it would lead to, you know, orgies.' Advertisement Maxwell participated in sex sessions with them by a pool, near the beachfront, in small huts and in Epstein's cabana, she alleged. 'One occasion stands out,' she said. 'Models were I think they were models were flown in. There were orgies held outside by the pool.' The women - 'beautiful, tall, some were blonde, some were sandy brown' - did not speak English, and conversed in a European language that Roberts guessed was Russia or Czech. Describing the sex session, she added: 'Ghislaine, myself, Jeffrey, another girl in this blue, outdoor I don't know what you want to call it. Cabana, that just a bed could fit in.' Roberts also alleges that during the deposition that she was trafficked to Europe to have sex with powerful men, including Britain's Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has denied the claims. She said Maxwell and Epstein constantly reminded her of how powerful their friends were, so that she wouldn't betray them. 'Jeffrey did a lot more of that than she did. But she definitely made it aware that we shouldn't cross boundaries with them,' she said. Describing her first meeting with Epstein, she said: 'For the first hour, it was actually a real massage, maybe not an hour, maybe like 40 minutes or something. 'That's when he turned over on the other side to expose himself fully. 'So then Ghislaine told me that she wanted me to undress and began to take off my shirt and skirt, my white uniform from Mar-A-Lago, she also took off her shirt and got undressed, and so I was there with just my undies on, and she was completely bare... 'During all of this I'm like: 'What's going on, how do I act, what do I say.' I was so afraid of, not afraid or fearful for my life, but unsure of how all this started and wanting to obtain a profession, I was so afraid thinking about upsetting and disappointing them... 'I was expected to lick [Epstein's] nipples, instructed on how to do so by [Epstein] and give him oral sex while he wanted to fondle me, and then at the end, I was told by Ghislaine to get on top and straddle Jeffrey sexually... 'When we were done, we went and had a shower in the room and Jeffrey told me to wash him up and down...' Also included in the tranche of unsealed documents are flight logs from Epstein's private jets, police logs Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a home, and email exchanges between Maxwell and Epstein himself. Court papers pertaining to a 2015 deposition civil defamation case against Maxwell included a January 2015 email Epstein sent to Maxwell insisting she had 'done nothing wrong' A separate email exchange from days earlier showed Epstein emailed Maxwell what appeared to be a court statement proclaiming her innocence, but was written from her point of view In one such exchange, in January 2015, Maxwell asks Epstein if 'Shelley' - believed to be one of Epstein's accusers - could publicly state she was his girlfriend. In response, Epstein writes: 'You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it. 'Go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict. go to parties. deal with it', he added. 'YOU'RE INNOCENT, ACT LIKE IT', EPSTEIN TOLD MAXWELL Newly unsealed court documents reveal Jeffrey Epstein told Ghislaine Maxwell she had 'done nothing wrong' and to 'start acting like it' after she was sued by Virginia Roberts in 2015. Dozens of documents relating to the civil defamation lawsuit against Maxwell were publicly released on Thursday, hours after a district judge denied her last ditch attempt to keep them sealed. Among the trove of court papers was an email exchange between the pair in January 2015, in which Epstein advised her to carry on normally and insisted she had nothing to worry about. 'You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it,' the billionaire pedophile wrote. 'go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict. go to parties. deal with it', he added. Advertisement The email exchange appears to confirm that Maxwell lied during a bail hearing, in which she claimed she hadn't spoken to Epstein in over a decade. Days earlier, Epstein had emailed Maxwell what appeared to be a court statement proclaiming her innocence, which read as if it was written by her. 'Since JE was charged in 2007 for solicitation of a prostitute I have been the target of outright lies, innuendo, slander, defamation and salacious gossip and harrassment; headlines made up of quotes I have never given, statement I have never made,' it reads. 'I have never been a party in any criminal action pertaining to JE.' The statement also claimed Maxwell had been in a 'very long-term committed relationship to another man' at the time of Epstein's conviction. 'Whilst I remained on friendly terms with him up until his plea, I have had limited contact since,' it continues. Roberts gave the testimony to investigators after filing a lawsuit against Maxwell in 2015, accusing the British socialite of libel after she branded her a 'liar'. Maxwell eventually settled the suit out of court for an undisclosed sum, though to be millions, and the documents were put under seal so they could not be made public. But Judge Loretta Preska ordered swathes of the papers to be unsealed following Maxwell's arrest earlier this month on sex crimes charges. She is also charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath during a seven-hour deposition she made during the lawsuit. The trove of documents were publicly released hours after a district judge denied her last ditch attempt to keep them sealed On Thursday, Maxwell filed an emergency motion with the federal appeals court in Manhattan to block the release of that deposition, along with one other document. Lawyers for Maxwell said making her deposition public could make it 'difficult if not impossible' to find an impartial jury for her criminal trial. The two depositions, and materials that quote from or disclose information contained in them, were expected to remain sealed at least until Monday, depending on how the appeals court rules. Materials covered by Preska's July 23 order included flight logs from Epstein's private jets; and police reports from Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a home, among other documents. Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997, and committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath. She was arrested on July 2, and has been housed in a Brooklyn jail after a judge called her a flight risk. Maxwell's trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein was found hanged at age 66 last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty. Prince Andrew's representatives have been approached for comment. More than a decade after a stake was driven into the world's most famous vampire romance, readers are getting ready to sink their teeth into the Twilight zone once again. Midnight Sun, the highly-anticipated prequel in Stephenie Meyer's bestselling paranormal series, will hit bookshelves on Wednesday. But has the multi-billion dollar Twilight franchise been sucked dry? Annie McCann, who founded online blog Read3rz Re-Vu after reading the Twilight series, can't wait to get her hands on prequel Midnight Sun. Credit:Renee Nowytarger Louise Sherwin-Stark, chief executive of publishing company Hachette Australia, said early signs are that readers haven't lost their taste. She said pre-orders for the companion novel, and the first in the Twilight universe since 2008, suggest it will "chart very well" and she hopes it will claim the number one spot on local weekly sales lists. Ms Meyer, whose debut Twilight was released in 2005, has sold more than 4.65 million books in Australia across all editions and formats, not including e-books or audio. Globally, she's sold more than more 100,000 million Twilight books and the first print run for Midnight Sun will see 750,000 copies published. Conservative MP Craig Whittakers claims about the vast majority of the black and ethnic minority community in his West Yorkshire constituency not taking the pandemic seriously are undeniably one-sided. We should not be playing the blame game, but instead trying to establish why some people believe that the virus does not pose a risk to them. While it is clear that some people in the Bame community are not exercising social distancing, the same applies to white communities. The prime ministers top adviser Dominic Cummings broke the rules and then lied about it to the nation. And just look at the footage from Bournemouth Beach during the recent spells of hot, sunny weather and see the large number of white people failing to listen to social distancing advice, selfishly putting themselves, their families and other people at risk. On 25 June, these mass gatherings led Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council to declare a major incident. Adding to the offence that Whittaker has caused, he uttered his divisive remarks on Eid-Al-Adha. Despite lockdown measures this year, Eid-Al-Adha and Hajj were commemorated differently to other years, but they were still celebrated. Like other religions, Muslims made sacrifices in keeping with their faith making sacrifices makes us more compassionate in a troubled world. Whittaker also referred to areas of high occupancy being an origin of the spread of the virus. Does he think that overcrowded families live like this out of choice? And let us not forget that many intergenerational families choose to look after their elderly parents in their homes, thereby taking the pressure off social care. This is a sector in which the government has failed to protect our older citizens in nursing homes, with 20,000 deaths to date. This fact was left out by Whittaker. He also failed to mention that Bame people are disproportionately dying from the disease, and the report by Public Health England has already identified health factors as a contributory factor to Bame people being more susceptible to Covid-19. They are disproportionately exposed to the virus despite Bame communities making up only 13 per cent of the British population, 12.3 per cent of NHS staff are from Bame backgrounds and many have jobs on the front line. Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece said, Divisive comments at a time of crisis are unhelpful. Assigning blame onto different communities does nothing to promote good community relations and MPs should behave more responsibly rather than apportioning blame. It was also inevitable that the number of Covid cases would rise again after pubs, bars and public parks reopened. If you wander into a park, or past a pub, especially on a sunny day, you will see hordes of individuals, friends and families together of all ethnicities. Several pubs have had to close again after customers tested positive for coronavirus, and further lockdown restrictions are being reintroduced. Lord Simon Woolley, founder and director of Operation Black Vote and the advisory chair of the UK Race Disparity Unit, said, When the data clearly doesnt support the rhetoric, the rhetoric is in danger of becoming a poisonous racist rant. Havent Bame communities suffered enough without now being blamed for its rise? The government would be better off reminding everyone that the pandemic is not over and will not be over for many months. This message needs reinforcing every day, stressing the importance of taking every precaution necessary to minimise peoples chances, where possible, of contracting the virus and passing it to others. Every person needs to continue to take the pandemic seriously. Every individual must bear his or her part of a shared responsibility. Maintaining social distancing is not a Bame issue; it is a national and global issue. The MP believes that by speaking out he could try to prevent excess deaths in Bame communities. Perhaps what he needs to consider is the use of his words in preventing deaths: as the World Health Organisations Covid-19 guidance states, words matter and that certain words could fuel stigmatised attitudes. He, and everyone else, should take this guidance seriously. If not, as the WHO warns, we risk perpetuating negative racial stereotypes, creating fear and even dehumanising people who have the disease. Rabina Khan is a Liberal Democrat councillor for Shadwell in Tower Hamlets Council Police are hunting a thief who attempted to steal an ATM machine after ram-raiding a shop in Craigavon. Police were called to the scene on Lurgan Road at 10.35pm on Friday after a black Opel Antara car reversed a number of times into the shutters of the premises, causing extensive damage to the shop front. A masked man then got out of the car and entered the shop before attempting to remove the in-store ATM, without success. The male then left in the vehicle, which has since been recovered in the Parkmore area of Craigavon. The suspect who entered the shop is believed to have been wearing a dark hooded top with the hood pulled up, white shoes and tartan trousers with large checks - red and white - and either dark blue or black. Detective Sergeant McCarragher said: "I am appealing to anyone who may have been in the Lurgan Road area last night just before or after 10:30pm and witnessed this incident to get in touch with us. I would also appeal to anyone who believes they saw the Opel Antara in the area or who has information about its movements after it was reported stolen earlier in the day from the Churchill Place area of Waringstown to call detectives in Lurgan on 101 and quote reference number 2240 of 31/07/20." A report can also be made using the online reporting form via www.psni.police.uk/makeareport. Alternatively, information can be provided to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or online at www.crimestoppers-uk.org 28 new COVID-19 cases recorded on August 1 evening Conducting quick COVID-19 tests for people (Source: VNA) The Health Ministry on August 1 evening announced 28 more COVID-19 cases, 19 of them are related to Da Nang Hospital, seven in Da Nang and two imported ones. The two imported patients arrived at Can Tho International Airport in Can Tho city from Indonesia on July 29 and were immediately quarantined at Tra Vinh Tuberculosis Hospital. Those who caught the virus via community transmission are aged from nine to 86, and from Da Nang city, Quang Nam province, HCM City and Thai Binh province. They were either patients at Da Nang Hospital, had close contact with COVID-19 patients, or were caring for family members at the hospital. As of 6pm on August 1, Vietnam recorded a total of 586 cases, including 304 imported ones which have been quarantined following their arrivals. Since July 25, there have been 142 cases related to Da Nang Hospital. At present, 91,462 who had close contact with patients or entered from pandemic-hit areas are under quarantine, including 953 in hospitals, 18,063 in other concentrated facilities and 72,446 at homes. Thailand tightens border security to deal with illegal trespassing Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on July 31 requested military commanders to step up security measures along the country's borderlines to keep out any suspected trespassers from neighbouring countries in the context that the COVID-19 pandemic continues developing complicatedly. The PM made the order at a monthly meeting with high-ranking military commanders at the Ministry of Defence. At the meeting, the ministry's spokesman Lt. Gen. Kongcheep Tantrawanich said that over the last several weeks, Thai authorities have detected many illegal border trespassing cases and arrested a number of Myanmar and Cambodian nationals. The authorities have feared those suspected invaders might be infected with the coronavirus, Kongcheep said. On July 29, Thailand extended its state of emergency to the end of August to curb the spread of the COVID-19, even though the country has not found any new community infections for about two months. The country has so far reported a total of 3,298 COVID-19 cases and 58 deaths. Vietnam records third Covid-19-related death A 68-year-old woman with leukemia was confirmed dead on early August 1 at Da Nang Oncology Hospital in the central city of Da Nang, according to Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son. The patient, known as Case 499 in Vietnam, died of blood cancer at final stage, severe pneumonia and COVID-19. She was admitted to Da Nang Oncology Hospital on July 28. She also had hypertension and diabetes. This is the third COVID-19 death in Vietnam. On July 31, the country recorded its first-ever COVID-19-related deaths, a 61-year-old man and a 70-year-old man, both with underlying health conditions. Fake medical masks seized in Ha Noi and HCM City Thousands of medical facemasks that fall below standards have been seized by the authorities. The masks were being sold without the necessary paperwork that proves their originality a breach of intellectual property rights. In a joint operation between the Ha Nois Market Management Department and police, officers raided a house on Ngo Thi Si Street and seized 300 boxes each containing 2,400 masks. On July 30, inspectors of the General Department of Market Management and the HCM City market management officials seized hundreds of thousands of fake 3M medical masks at Nam Anh Ltd. Cos factory. The Ha Noi Market Management Department has requested market management teams to intensify inspections of mask production, transportation and trading activities. A residential area is blocked for virus prevention in HCM City On July 31, the centre announced that two newly found Covid-19 patients in the area all returned from Danang City on two flights QH0159 on July 24 and BL671 on July 25. One of them, Patient 518 is a 61-year old woman in Tan Phu District. From July 19-23 she was a caregiver of Covid-19 Patient 436 at Danang General Hospital. On July 24, she boarded Flight QH0159 with her husband to Ho Chi Minh City. They started to self-quarantine at home from July 26. On July 28, they came to Tan Phu District's Healthcare Centre for health declarations and were isolated there and given viral testing the next day. Her sample was positive for SARS-CoV-2 on July 30. The other, Patient 510 is a 57-year old woman residing in District 10. She took care of her parents in Danang Hospital, Danang Oncology Hospital and Danang Hoan My Hospital from July 1-20, 2020. On July 25, she came to Ho Chi Minh City on Flight BL671 and self-isolated at her house in District 10. She also tested positive for the virus on July 30. Da Nang to test 3,000 high-risk individuals for coronavirus Samples for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 tests will be taken from close to 3,000 people in high-risk areas near three hospitals in the central city of Da Nang that have links with dozens of new COVID-19 infections reported over the past week. Director of the municipal Department of Health Ngo Thi Kim Yen said on July 31 that health workers will complete the taking of samples from nearly 3,000 people now in lockdown in areas near the Da Nang Hospital, the Da Nang C Hospital, and the Da Nang Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation Hospital on August 1. By the morning of July 31, more than 2,700 residents had had samples collected. The department has urged relevant units to promptly transfer patients on dialysis at the Da Nang Hospital to the general hospital of Hoa Vang district and requested all local medical clinics be ready to quarantine suspected cases and treat those infected with the virus. The Ministry of Health has sent a group of specialists to provide training for nearly 400 health workers and medical students in Da Nang on how to take samples for testing and tracing people in close contact with confirmed cases. Since July 25, the city has reported 80 new COVID-19 cases. More than 7,000 people have been identified as being in close contact with COVID-19 patients. The city has put nearly 5,600 high-risk people in quarantine at the three hospitals while about 5,640 others have been sent to state-designated facilities and district medical centres or been self-quarantined. VN confirms 12 more COVID-19 infection cases, another COVID-19 patient dies Vietnam reported 12 more cases positive for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on August 1 morning, according to the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control. Almost the new COVID-19 infection cases are patients and relatives of patients at Da Nang Hospital. The new locally transmitted infections bring the total amount of COVID-19 cases nationwide to 558. All the new cases, including eight men and four women, were recorded in the central city of Da Nang. Three of the new cases are patients at Da Nang Hospital. One is a 72-year-old woman being treated at the department of internal medicine, neurology and ophthalmology and the others are men aged 25 and 33. Eight other cases are either relatives of patients being treated at Da Nang Hospital or came into close contact with the positive cases, including a two-year-old boy who was in contact with Patient 509. Another patient is a 29-year-old man from Hoa Phuoc, Hoa Vang district, Da Nang city. It is not clear if he has any connections with the hospital and his previous whereabouts are being investigated. Earlier, Vietnam recorded 37 more cases positive for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on July 31 evening. Of them, 26 are imported cases who have been put under quarantine following their arrival, three in Ho Chi Minh City and eight in the central province of Quang Nam. Among the imported cases, six patients are Vietnamese crewmembers of a gas tanker that entered Vung Tau port on July 28 after travelling to Qatar, India and Singapore. The remaining imported cases were flown from Equatorial Guinea on Vietnam Airlines flight VN6 which landed at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on July 29. Of the 558 confirmed patients so far, 302 are imported cases, and 116 others related to the outbreak in central Da Nang city since July 25. According to the steering committees Treatment Sub-committee, 373 cases have recovered fully, and 183 others are being treated at medical establishments nationwide, including six having tested negative for the virus once, and eight negative at least twice. On July 31, the country reported its two first COVID-19-related deaths. As many as 91,462 people who had close contact with COVID-19 patients or entered from pandemic-hit areas are under quarantine, including 953 in hospitals, 18,063 in concentrated quarantine facilities and 72,446 at home. Another COVID-19 patient in Vietnam dies Another COVID-19 patient in Vietnam died on July 31, according to Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son. The 61-year-old male resident of the central city of Da Nang died of septic shock on the basis of other serious illnesses and COVID-19, he said. The patient had had chronic kidney failure, hypertension, diabetes and gout before he was found to have COVID-19 on July 27 at Da Nang Hospital. Earlier the same day, a COVID-19 patient with multiple comorbidities died of myocardial infarction with chronic diseases of hypertension, heart failure, end-stage chronic renal failure, and complication of respiratory failure due to heart failure and COVID-19. This is the first COVID-19 patient to have died in Vietnam, according to the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control. Da Nang sets up more field hospital for COVID-19 treatment The Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control of Da Nang central city on July 31 decided to set up one more field hospital in Hoa Vang districts medical centre, aiming to serve the reception of and treatment for COVID-19 patients. The 200-bed hospital will be used for quarantining and treating COVID-19 patients. The committee ordered the municipal Department of Health to give advice and propose the citys leaders to issue a decision related to the organisation of the hospital. Previously, the municipal Peoples Committee decided to establish a 1,000-bed field hospital in Tien Son Sport Centre. The municipal Department of Construction is working with relevant units to discuss a plan for building the hospital. As of 10:am on July 31, Vietnam had reported 509 COVID-19 cases, with 80 in Da Nang city, including eight medical workers, 44 patients, 26 family members of patients, and two detected in the community. A COVID-19 patient with multiple comorbidities was confirmed to die on the same day. On July 31 alone, the country confirmed 45 cases, all of whom had been quarantined at medical facilities and tested for the virus. Thirteen cases were also reported in the central provinces of Quang Nam (seven) and Quang Ngai (one), Ho Chi Minh City (two), Hanoi (two), and the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak (one). All of them are linked to the Da Nang outbreak. Health Ministry finds people who may have close contact with COVID-19 cases The Ministry of Health has issued an urgent notice calling on anyone who has visited, taken care of family members or had health check-ups and treatment at Da Nang Hospital from July 1 to come forward and seek medical help as soon as possible. The ministry also asked all passengers onboard Vietnam Airlines flight VN166 from Da Nang to Hanoi departing at 8.30am on July 25 to contact nearest medical establishments to get COVID-19 consultancy and testing. All of these people need to call the hotlines 1900.9095 (Ministry of Health), 0905.108.844 (Da Nang Citys Centre for Disease Control), 0969.082.115 or 0949.396.115 (Hanoi Centre for Disease Control) to provide details of those who have close contacts with them; and fill in the medical declaration forms at https://tokhaiyte.vn or download the NCOVI app from https://ncovi.vn and regularly update their health status as well as install the Bluezone app to get regular alerts about transmission risks at http://www.bluezone.gov.vn. Deputy PM: Top priority placed on wiping out COVID-19 hotbed in Da Nang Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam has requested authorities to give the top priority to localising and soon wiping out the COVID-19 hotbed in the central city of Da Nang. Chairing a meeting of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control in Hanoi on July 31, Dam, who is also head of the committee, lauded the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of National Defence and Ministry of Health for sending more experts and staff to join in the fight against the pandemic in Da Nang. As new infection cases are mostly related to three hospitals in the city, he asked localities, especially major cities, to strengthen countermeasures. Amid the rapid and complicated developments of the pandemic worldwide, members of the committee agreed to suggest the PM issue a document ordering preparedness in the new normal period in case of outbreaks like in Da Nang. The Ministry of Education and Training was also required to prepare plans for the upcoming high school graduation examination in line with the Prime Ministers Directive 16/CT-TTg. At the event, Director of the Health Ministrys Department of Preventive Medicine Dang Quang Tan said as of 7pm on July 31, Vietnam recorded 546 infection cases, including one death, a 70-year-old man residing in Hoi An city in the central province of Quang Nam. Acting Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said the pandemic in Da Nang is relatively complicated because infection source remains unknown. As many patients there also suffer other severe diseases, the Health Ministry has deployed the best equipment and staff to the locality, he said, adding that testing capacity has also been raised to 10,000 samples per day. According to him, the ministry established a special permanent unit in charge of COVID-19 combat in the city, continued tracing down those travelling to and from Da Nang and its hospitals, as well as collecting samples for testing. Over 451,400 Realtime RT-PCR tests have been carried out nationwide so far. Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Van Phuc said the 2020 high school graduation examination is still on schedule for August 8-10. He added that the Ministry of Education and Training will continue working closely with the Health Ministry and localities to ensure the exam amid the pandemic. About the repatriation of Vietnamese citizens from abroad, Deputy Foreign Minister To Anh Dung said the Foreign Ministry coordinated with representative Vietnamese agencies abroad and domestic authorities to arrange flights for prioritised citizens, including 219 from Equatorial Guinea on July 29 who were immediately sent to the second branch of the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanois outlying district of Dong Anh for testing and treatment. Other flights also carried home 212 citizens from Indonesia on July 29, 170 others from Brunei on July 29, about 290 from the US on July 3, and 240 from Myanmar on July 30. German media: Vietnam determined to fight ongoing COVID-19 outbreak German media has highlighted the measures taken by the Vietnamese Government and its determination to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the context of complicated developments from a new outbreak in the country. The Handelsblatt (Commerce) newspaper ran an article on July 30 reporting that after 99 consecutive days with no cases of community infection, the country then confirmed its 416th patient in central Da Nang city, marking the return of the disease. It also looked at Vietnams efforts and the strong measures taken to control the pandemic since the first outbreak in January. Vietnam closed schools in February and conducted systematic testing of all persons having contact with COVID-19 patients, the article noted. In March, Vietnam banned the entry of all foreigners, while Vietnamese citizens returning home were quarantined for 14 days, it added. With such stringent measures, Vietnam has managed to limit the number of infections to only a few hundred and achieved remarkable results in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. According to the article, in this second outbreak, Vietnam took the decision quickly to stop air and rail travel to and from Da Nang, close beaches, and ban large gatherings. Bars and festivities in Hanoi and HCM City have also been suspended. The paper said foreign observers are concerned about the development of COVID-19 in Vietnam, because it serves as an example of how difficult it is to prevent the pandemic, even when the strictest of immigration controls are in place. The article noted that the Vietnamese Government is very much determined to respond to the new outbreak, quoting Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc as saying it is necessary to act more quickly and decisively to control the disease. The German newspaper also cited Fitch Ratings as saying that the strength of Vietnams growth momentum owes much to the countrys success in curbing the pandemic. Meanwhile, German national television news channel Tagesschau (ARD) reported on the fact that Vietnam has detected new cases in the community after nearly 100 days and has quickly adopted measures to prevent the outbreak. Other German newspapers such as DW and TAZ also reported on Vietnams fight against the outbreak. Thailand permits medical tourists to return, but under strict control The Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) recently relaxed measures allowing four groups of foreigners to return to Thailand, including patients returning for a medical follow-up or those who have joined the governments Medical and Wellness programme. Patients wishing to come to Thailand for treatment must first test negative to COVID-19, and then quarantined in hospital for 14 days along with the people accompanying them. They will also be tested for COVID-19 while under quarantine. Each patient is allowed to bring along only three relatives and friends, who will only be allowed to travel around Thailand after quarantine. Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai, Chief of the Disease Control Department, said foreigners requiring immediate medical treatment will be allowed into the country at all times. Private hospitals are required to provide names of patients and coordinate with the Foreign Ministry,he said. Dr Akom Pradittasuwan, Director of the Department of Health Service Support, said the agency has verified 98 hospitals and 26 clinics as alternative hospital quarantine sites, and they will be open to both Thais and foreigners. Last year, foreign patients spent 15,000 baht (480 USD) per session on anti-ageing and rehabilitation, 140,000 baht on cardiovascular care, 300,000 baht on treatment of bones, joints, ligaments and muscles, 29,000 baht on dentistry, almost 500,000 baht on infertility treatments, 700,000 baht on cancer treatments, more than 2 million baht on organ transplants, over 26,000 baht on health examination, up to 50,000 baht on other conditions, 550,000 baht on heart surgery and 350,000 baht on gastric balloon surgery. This year, it is expected that foreign and Thai expat patients are expected to hold up to 160,000 treatment sessions within three months and bring the country up to 18 billion baht (580 million USD) in revenue. Philippines reports highest single-day rise in COVID-19 cases The number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines rose to 93,354 after the Department of Health (DOH) reported 4,063 new cases on July 31, the highest single-day increase in confirmed cases since the highly-infectious disease emerged in the country in January. The death toll also increased to 2,023 after 40 more patients have succumbed to the viral disease, the DOH said. It added that the number of recoveries further rose to 65,178 after it reported 165 patients have survived the disease. In a pre-recorded public address aired on July 31, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Metro Manila, which has the bulk of COVID-19 cases in the country, will remain under general community quarantine until August 15 due to the steady rise of cases, while other areas in the country are put under varying degrees of quarantine. Metro Manila is home to about 15 million people. It has so far logged more than 50,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Four more COVID-19 patients fully recover Four more COVID-19 patients have recovered and were released from the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases on July 31, lifting the total cases being given the all-clear to 373. They include two Vietnamese men and two Burmese men who are sailors on the Ipanema ship. Two Vietnamese men, Patient 356 and Patient 359, were admitted to the hospital on July 5. During treatment, they all had two tests and all tests came back negative for SARS-CoV-2 on July 28 and 30. The two Burmese patients, Patient 383 and Patient 413, were admitted to the hospital on July 19. During treatment, they passed two tests and results were negative for SARS-CoV-2 on July 27 and 30. At present, the four patients have no fever, no cough, no shortness of breath and are in a stable condition. They will continue to be quarantined and monitored at the hospital for the next 14 days, according to the Sub-Committee for Treatment of the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control. Vietnamese in Ukraine shows solidarity to cope with COVID-19 The Vietnamese Embassy in Ukraine held a videoconference on July 30 to encourage Vietnamese citizens in the country to strengthen solidarity to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants consider the prevention of COVID-19 an urgent task and shared their experience in preventing the spread of the disease. They also discussed online business models and the establishment of a centre to support the online business community. Vietnamese Ambassador to Ukraine Nguyen Anh Tuan praised sponsors who have provided material and spiritual support for COVID-19 patients and their family members. The embassys staff also updated the participants on the pandemic situation at home. Vietnam, Cuba highlight cooperation, friendship amid COVID-19 fight The friendship and sound cooperation exhibited between Vietnam and Cuba in times of hardship, particularly in battling the COVID-19 pandemic, were honoured at a ceremony for the presentation of gifts from Vietnam to Cuba on July 30 in Havana. First Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Ana Teresita Gonzalez Fraga said the achievements of the two countries in fighting the pandemic and upholding their solidarity and international cooperation manifest the preeminence of socialism in protecting the health, life, and rights of the people. She also underlined the mutual aid between the countries during the year they celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties (December 2, 1960-2020), and re-affirmed a wish to further bolster cooperation and diversify economic relations. Vietnam is Cubas leading investor from Asia and Oceania and second largest trade partner. Vietnamese Charge dAffaires Do Dinh Truong expressed his gratitude to Cuba for sending medicine and health experts to share their experience in the control of the new strain of the coronavirus and in vaccine research. He said this is symbolic of the special friendship, comprehensive cooperation, and mutual trust between the two countries and their people. Urgent notice to find people who may have come into contact with COVID-19 cases The Ministry of Health has issued an urgent notice calling on anyone who has visited, taken care of family members or had health check-ups and treatment at a Nang Hospital from July 1 to come forward and seek medical help as soon as possible. The ministry also asked all passengers onboard Vietnam Airlines flight VN166 from a Nang to Ha Noi at 8.30am on July 25 to contact nearest medical establishments to get COVID-19 consultancy and testing. All of these people need to call the hotlines 1900.9095 (Ministry of Health), 0905.108.844 (a Nang Citys Centre for Disease Control), 0969.082.115/0949.396.115 (Ha Noi Centre for Disease Control) to provide details of those who have close contacts with them; and fill in the medical declaration forms at https://tokhaiyte.vn or download the NCOVI app from https://ncovi.vn and regularly update their health status as well as install the Bluezone app to get regular alerts about transmission risks at http://www.bluezone.gov.vn. One more hospital locked down in a Nang, Hoi An begins social distancing Authorities in a Nang have ordered the closure of restaurants, cafes and online shopping from 1pm on Thursday (July 30) to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The city issued a statement early this morning, stressing that only traditional markets and supermarkets can open to supply food, as well as petrol stations, pharmacies, banks and health centres. According to the citys health department, 12,000 medical samples have been taken, with 11,986 testing negative as of Thursday morning, and the city would expand testing for all residents. It said the two patients in a serious condition (No 416 and 418) have gradually recovered, while the other COVID-19 patients are stable. The city's health department also confirmed that an 85-year-old patient who died at the General Hospital on July 28 had tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. The patient had been at the hospital for kidney failure, diabetes and pneumonia. The man is the father of COVID-19 patient No 418, but he was not infected with the virus, the department said in an official statement on July 29. The city also locked down private Hoan My a Nang hospital on Nguyen Van Linh Street from July 29 as patient No 449 had been treated for pneumonia at the hospital from June 26 to July 6. The hospital and surrounding streets were disinfected on the night of July 29. All staff and doctors at the hospital will be tested for SARS-CoV-2 as well as those in close contact with patients. More than 800 students from medical and pharmaceutical colleges have been called upon to help COVID-19 patients. Hoi An also began social distancing measures from July 31 after a COVID-19 patient visited the town and some surrounding sites. The city has taken 22 medical samples from people who had close contact with the COVID-19 patient. Ten people have tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 according to results released on July 30. It said 444 people have been quarantined at health centres. Quang Nam Province said 8,043 out of 8,595 medical samples at quarantine centres have tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. Public bus routes connecting the province with neighbouring Quang Ngai Province were closed from July 29. All passengers from the two provinces have to provide health declarations. Quang Ngai Province has isolated 298 people who were in close contact with COVID-19 patients for testing. Medical samples of 38 cases are negative for SARS-CoV-2, including a 10-month-old baby. Thua Thien-Hue also announced that four students who returned from the General Hospital of a Nang have tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 for the first time. The quarantine centre in the mountainous A Luoi district has isolated 94 people that had visited the COVID-19 hotspots in a Nang. Military strives to fight COVID-19 pandemic Defence agencies, military units and all soldiers should strictly comply with government resolutions and directives take drastic measures to fight COVID-19. The request was made by Senior Lieutenant General Tran on, Deputy Defence Minister and Head of the ministrys Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control. He was speaking during a meeting of the committee held on Friday to introduce urgent measures in response to the pandemics development. He asked all military units to review the number of people who have visited a Nang from July 1 or places with high risk of infections and requested them to fill in health declarations. Based on the risk, the units would implement prevention and control measures while effectively carrying out military and defence missions. According to Military Medicine Department under the Ministry of National Defence, the pandemic situation in the world is still complicated with an average of more than 200,000 new infections per day. In Viet Nam, there have been 93 new infection cases in the community since July 25, bringing the total number of infected people to 509. It was necessary to have resolute solutions, joint efforts and responsibility in prevention, tracking the source, quarantine and treatment to protect the health of soldiers and people while ensuring the countrys socio-economic development at the same time. Military units stationed in a Nang City should exercise social distancing in line with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc s Directive 16 which required people to stay at home unless for justified reasons and all non-essential businesses to close down. Other units at pandemic-hit areas were asked to strictly embrace instructions and directions of the steering committee while preparing equipment and personnel to be ready in any circumstances. To prevent the spread of the disease in military units, they should have their body temperature checked while spraying disinfectants on vehicles, wearing face masks, and detecting and quarantining infected cases in a timely manner. The Border Guards were requested to work closely with localities to manage border gates and prevent illegal entry and criminal activities, maintaining social and security order in border regions. Army quarantine areas should be ready to receive people in accordance with State regulations. Attention should be paid to prevent cross-transmission in these areas as well making sure staff on duty are protected. Military medical establishment should cooperate with international partners, boost research on vaccines, preventive medicine. It was necessary to assure that theres enough equipment for the pandemic prevention and control work. Agencies and units in the army should review their disease containment work and push up production to ensure troops health. Businesses support Da Nang combat COVID-19 The Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of the central city of Da Nang on July 31 received donations from domestic enterprises in support of the fight against COVID-19. Speaking at the event, Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee Huynh Duc Tho said the local people and authorities are grateful to businesses, philanthropists and people nationwide for supporting the city over the past time. Many businesses handed over a big amount of cash and donations like Vingroup with 100 VFS-510 ventilators worth 18.5 billion VND (804,000 USD), Tuan Chau Group 2 billion VND, Vietnam Electricity 1 billion VND, Heineken Vietnam Brewery Da Nang Co.Ltd 1 billion VND, the Central Power Corporation 500 million VND, among others. A Vingroup representative said the group is ready to lend medical equipment and deploy medical staff from its Vinmec hospital system to assist the field hospital which is being built in Da Nang. The Vinmec Da Nang general hospital is also willing to receive patients in need of special treatment like bone and brain injury at the expense of health insurance or those charged by public hospitals./ 230 Vietnamese citizens brought home from RoK A total of 230 Vietnamese citizens were flown home from the Republic of Korea by a flight of budget carrier Vietjet Air on August 1. Passengers include children aged under 18, the elderly, pregnant women, those with illness, workers with expired visas and labour contracts, students without accommodations, and those in extremely disadvantaged circumstances. The Embassy of Vietnam in the RoK sent its staff to assist these people to complete all required procedures before boarding the flight. Strict security, safety and hygiene measures were enforced by the carrier during the flight to protect the passengers health and prevent COVID-19 transmission. Upon arrival at Hanois Noi Bai International Airport, all passengers and crew members were given health check and quarantined in line with regulations. Vietnamese authorities and overseas missions plan to arrange more flights to fly more Vietnamese citizens home, depending on their need and quarantine capacity at home. According to the South Caucasian Railway, on September 1-16, Armenia will not receive cargo delivered by trains from the Georgian ports of Poti and Batumi. The reason is the planned maintenance of the railway bridge, due to which the movement of trains on the route from Georgia to Armenia will be suspended. "During this time, the goods will be accumulated in ports, and after the resumption of the railway connection they will be promptly delivered to Armenia," the SCR officials promised. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerces new Toronto headquarters will play a role in when the company returns employees to the office. Canadas fifth-biggest bank said it expects a small number of employees to come back in the fall in a second wave of returns, but a majority of those currently working at home will keep doing so into 2021. Timing for the next wave will depend partly on when staff can move into an office complex thats under construction. As we plan for the third wave, we will align our decisions and timing around our long-term real estate plans, including the move to CIBC Square for many of our team members in the Greater Toronto Area, Sandy Sharman, the senior executive vice-president overseeing human resources, said Friday in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. A CIBC representative had no immediate comment on the plans. The company, which is expected to start occupying CIBC Square by the end of the year, began revisiting floor designs and making adjustments to meeting rooms, workstations and seating at the skyscraper when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. CIBC is the fourth major Canadian lender advising employees that theyll be working from home until at least the end of the year as part of efforts to fight the spread of the virus. Read more about: People wearing face masks arrive at Talamanca beach in Ibiza - JAIME REINA /AFP Spains tourism minister has said the country will not impose any reciprocal quarantine measures on travellers arriving from Britain, even as fears rise about a second wave of Covid-19 infections hitting the UK. Reyes Maroto pleaded for tourists to "come back to Spain in an interview with the Telegraph. More than 10,000 British tourists have cancelled holidays to Majorca in the first two weeks of August alone after the sudden decision to quarantine travellers on their arrival back in the UK. Ms Maroto said Spain was not contemplating a 14-day quarantine for UK arrivals as Spain was in a phase of reactivation and had learned to co-exist with Covid-19. We have to respect it but we dont have to fear it, Ms Maroto said. We now have functioning protocols and therefore we need to be a bit more flexible as we confront this second stage of the pandemic, she added. The minister repeated concerns from within the Spanish government that the UK's quarantine rules were disproportionate, and said there was a mismatch between destinations favoured by UK holidaymakers, and the regions of the country that have witnessed new outbreaks. British tourists appear increasingly reluctant to face the uncertainty over flight cancellations, entry procedures and possible lockdowns in Spain. In early June, Spain was registering fewer than 100 new cases of Covid-19 per day, but that figure shot back up to more than 1,500 on Thursday, led by cases in the Aragon and Madrid regions. In July, the Catalonia region was also forced to reimpose a full lockdown on the city of Lerida, which has only just been lifted. Ms Maroto admitted Spain needed to boost confidence in its ability to handle the virus. Covid-19 tests in airports were on the table, she said, along with a tracking app to alert travellers of potential cases around them. Spain is desperate to recuperate some of the losses of economic shutdown caused by the virus. Its GDP shrank 18.5 per cent in the second quarter, economic data released on Friday showed, representing the biggest drop in economic activity since Spains 1930s civil war. With the economy facing an uncertain autumn, Spain is also keen to maintain its strong commercial relationship with Britain as Brexit looms. Maroto described the UK as an ally, without a doubt, and told the Telegraph she was convinced that Brexit can also be an opportunity to continue strengthening our ties, culturally and commercially. Srikakulam: Corona has created a furore all over the world at this time. People who went abroad for employment got stuck abroad due to Corona. They are facing many troubles which is unbearable. They don't understand who should they tell about their problem. According to the information received, about 200 people from Gaddelapadu, Pittavaganipet, Goluguvanipet, M Sunnapalli, Devanaltad of Vajrapukotturu Mandal, Polappi Mandal's Gappedupet in Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh went abroad in 2018. Meanwhile, the lockdown was imposed and due to this, everything got ruined. According to the information, private companies stopped work in Kuwait due to COVID infection. It was also told that for the last three months, they are not getting any work and salary. Apart from this, the company is only giving them food. Those workers say that the money they had finished. They are not able to send money to their parents either. All of them had gone abroad in search of employment for the upliftment of the family. All those migrant workers also requested the company owner to send them back home, but the government has expressed its inability to do so. Uddhav Thackeray breaks silence on CBI investigation of Sushant's death case Kodali Nani flares up at Chandrababu Naidu Kanpur police get another major failure, 3 criminals absconded To the extent Trump undermines U.S. policy, it is not necessarily because of his lauding of Putin, but because there is no coherent policy, the former official said. There is no devolution to fill out the details of the kind of deals he wants to make. The result is what is widely seen among experts as tactical responses to Russian actions. Many of those responses, from sanctions to combating disinformation, have been initiated or promoted by Congress, which often finds bipartisan agreement on Kremlin perfidy. A shell of a burned car sits along Avenida Miravilla days after the Apple fire rushed through on its way to the nearby San Bernardino National Forest, where it has burned more than 26,000 acres. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) Firefighters on Sunday continued to battle the Apple fire that has burned 20,000 acres in Cherry Valley and surrounding areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, destroying one home and prompting evacuations of thousands of others. More than 370 firefighters, assisted by several helicopters and air tankers, responded to the fire, which began Friday and sent billowing clouds of smoke hundreds of feet into the air that could be seen for miles. Firefighters were battling the blaze in triple-digit temperatures that prompted the National Weather Service to issue an extreme heat warning. As of early Sunday, the fire was zero percent contained. Evacuation orders remain in place for residents north of Dutton Street and east of Oak Glen Road, south of the San Bernardino-Riverside county line. They also include residents north of Gilman Street in the Banning Bluff area. New evacuation orders were put in place Saturday in Banning for residents north of Wilson Street, east of Sunset Avenue and west of Hathaway Street. Fire officials said residents can check whether their address is in an evacuation zone through the RivCoReady.org website. An evacuation warning was upgraded to an order Saturday evening for San Bernardino County residents of the Potato Canyon area west to Raywood Flat. A warning was in place farther to the east for residents north of Morongo Road, east of Millard Canyon Road and west of Whitewater Canyon Road. ALERT RIVCO MESSAGE #AppleFire NEW EVACUATION ORDERS issued north of Wilson St, east of Sunset Ave and west of Hathaway St. Interactive map is now available at https://t.co/wMWj2KQQ7e @CALFIRERRU @RSO @CityofBanning @BanningPolice pic.twitter.com/WtnRDUx6Cx RivCoReady (@RivCoReady) August 1, 2020 April Newman, a public information officer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Riverside County Fire Department, said Saturday afternoon that roughly 7,800 residents in over 2,500 households had been ordered to evacuate. Story continues An evacuation center was opened at Beaumont High School for people and animals. The vegetation fire was reported at 4:55 p.m. Friday in the 9000 block of Oak Glen Road, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. Another department spokesperson, Fernando Herrera, said Friday that open land with thick vegetation has provided "quite a bit of fuel for that fire to continue to burn [and] have a lot of intensity." He said the fire was burning very close to homes. The pyrocumulus plume from the Apple fire rises about 32,000 feet into the atmosphere and is visible from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES West satellite. The image was taken at 6 p.m. Saturday. (NOAA and Los Angeles Times) "A lot of peoples backyards were on fire," Herrera said. "It ran in between homes and around homes. It definitely was very threatening. We could have lost homes, but we brought in a massive amount of ground resources to do structure defense, protect the life and property of all these residents." The cause of the fire is under investigation. In Los Angeles County, a 150-acre brush fire was burning around Castaic Lake, north of Santa Clarita, according to the county Fire Department. No structures were threatened. Another phase of serological survey for Covid-19 began in Delhi on Saturday. Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain described the process a technical one but significant in the fight against the disease. The minister also said that the coronavirus situation in the national capital is improving. On the directions of Honble CM Shri @ArvindKejriwal, the Delhi govt has begun monthly sero-survey in the city from today. The survey conducted in June showed 24% Delhi residents have developed antibodies. This will aid the govt to tailor its strategy to changing circumstances, read a tweet posted by chief minister Arvind Kejriwals office. On the directions of Hon'ble CM Shri @ArvindKejriwal, the Delhi govt has begun monthly sero-survey in the city from today. The survey conducted in June showed 24% Delhi residents have developed antibodies. This will aid the govt to tailor it's strategy to changing circumstances. pic.twitter.com/BLMc2NU4QX CMO Delhi (@CMODelhi) August 1, 2020 Last month, Jain had announced that the administration will conduct sero survey across the national capital every month. The health minister said that the exercise will be carried out from the 1st till the 5th of every month. The findings from the last sero surveillance in Delhi suggested that the national capital has crossed its Covid-19 peak. Also read: Another one-day spike of over 57,000 Covid-19 cases pushes Indias tally to nearly 1.7 million Serological Survey for #COVID19 will start from today in Delhi. In the last survey, 24% people came positive. This is a very technical process but will be conducted across the capital: Satyendra Jain, #Delhi Health Minister https://t.co/1OqMex1BnR ANI (@ANI) August 1, 2020 The survey reported that, on an average, 23.48 percent of the residents across the national capital have developed Covid-19 antibodies. The study, which was conducted by the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) also indicated that a large number of patients remain asymptomatic. The survey was conducted between June 27 and July 10. Findings from the sero survey serve as important data to guide containment strategies - an exercise, that experts believe, is essential to be carried out periodically to know the exact burden of the disease and device appropriate strategies. The national capital has reported over 80 percent Covid-19 rate with over 1.2 lakh people beating the disease or being discharged from the hospital. The Covid-19 death toll in Delhi stands at 3,963 while the number of active cases is nearly 11,000. In a sharpest single-day rise, India reported 57,118 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours. With this, the countrys coronavirus caseload nears 1.7 million. The countrys Covid-19 death toll stands at 36,511 - fifth highest in the world while nearly 11 lakh people have recovered from the infection across the country. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 1) House Deputy Speaker and Basilan Representative Mujiv Hataman has confirmed that he and his wife Isabela City Mayor Sitti Djalia Turabin-Hataman have tested positive for COVID-19. The deputy speaker said they are now undergoing self-quarantine at home and are following strict health and safety protocols. Mayor Turabin-Hataman said in a video on her Facebook page that they both took a swab test on Thursday and the results came out positive on Friday. They are also waiting for the test results of their children. Turabin-Hataman said that they both had their swab tests taken at a private laboratory hence the quick release of the results. The mayor said they both experienced mild symptoms such as cough and slight fever, but are feeling better at the moment. Walang symptoms na kailangan i-treat sa hospital, dito lang kami. We will continue to manage at patakbuhin ang LGU from here, she added. [Translation: There are no symptoms that need to be treated at the hospital, so we will stay at home. We will continue to manage and run the LGU from here.] Contract tracing efforts are already being done, the couple said. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The Coast Guard is urging the commercial and recreational maritime community in the Tri-State area to practice hurricane preparedness as Hurricane Isaias has potential to affect the region. The National Weather Service has forecasted Hurricane Isaias can potentially accelerate into the Tri-State area as a tropical storm on Tuesday. Potential hazards include high surf, dangerous rip currents, heavy wind, heavy rainfall, and coastal flooding. Captains of the Port for New York and Long Island Sound are encouraging boaters to be proactive and prepared ahead of impending heavy weather. We are closely monitoring Hurricane Isaias and preparing for potential impacts to the regions Marine Transportation System, said Capt. Jason Tama, Coast Guard sector commander for New York. Storms such as this can be unpredictable, and it is important that both commercial mariners and recreational boaters prepare accordingly. He said storms affect every type of mariner on the water, so it is imperative that all mariners heed heavy weather advisories. It is important that everyone who uses the waterways take appropriate actions to prepare for the upcoming heavy weather, said Capt. Eva J. Van Camp, sector commander for Long Island Sound. For recreational boaters, that means pulling small boats out of the water and storing or securing paddlecraft and safety gear. SAFETY MESSAGES The Coast Guard is advising the public of these safety messages: Stay off the water: The Coast Guards search and rescue capabilities potentially degrade as storm conditions strengthen. This means help could be delayed. Boaters should heed weather watches, warnings, and small craft advisories. Check the weather: Checking weather anytime you plan to get underway and throughout your time on the water is highly recommended. The Coast Guard mobile app for boating safety is a tool to check marine weather from your phone. With the mobile app you can check the weather at nearby NOAA weather buoys, which provide wind speed and direction along with wave height. Secure your boats and gear: Owners of large boats are urged to move their vessels to inland marinas where they will be less vulnerable to breaking free of their moorings or to sustaining damage. Trailer-able boats should be pulled from the water and stored in a place that is not prone to flooding. Stay informed: The public should monitor the progress and strength of the storm through local television, radio, and the internet. Boaters can monitor its progress on VHF radio channel 16. Information can also be obtained on small craft advisories and warnings on VHF radio channel 16. Veronafieres two shows for the construction equipment and bitumen and road infrastructure value chains - SaMoTer and Asphaltica - have been postponed to March 2021. The decision was announced by a steering committee for the two events - comprising manufacturers, stakeholders and industry associations alongside Veronafiere Unacea and Siteb - after taking into consideration the Covid-19 situation across the globe. The 31st edition of Samoter and 9th edition of Asphaltica will open its doors to the exhibitors and operators from March 3 to 7 next year. The debut at SaMoTer by ICCX Southern Europe, the main prefabricated concrete event for southern Europe created in collaboration with ad-media GmbH, is also rescheduled for the new dates in 2021. Announcing the new dates, CEO Giovanni Mantovani said: "As always, we at Veronafiere listen to our customers with the intention of safeguarding the sector. Together with all our partners, we identified the beginning of March as the best time to organise SaMoTer and Asphaltica." "This is only a pit stop: the engines are still up and running so that we can join the entire reference community in defining a promotional path in the run-up to next year. An initial physical stage is already scheduled in October," stated Mantovani. The new 2021 dates will mean that the two events will be the first to inaugurate the calendar of specific trade fairs for the world of construction in Europe, he noted. "We must now launch a promotional path shared with the community to support the recovery of these value chains. Verona in 2021 will host the first sector events on a European scale for the world of construction; A chance to intercept the restart on the market and organise an even more pertinent event," he added. According to Mantovani, rescheduling these events will ensure broader representativeness in terms of large international groups and sponsors, thereby intercepting the recovery on the market in the wake of resumption by construction sites, not the least thanks to resources made available by the Recovery Fund. Unacea President Mirco Risi said: "After consulting our membership base through a flash survey, we are convinced that market conditions do not exist in 2020 for an event capable of living up to the expectations characterising SaMoTer. We therefore welcome rescheduling the event to March 2021, thereby positioning it in a manner that best exploits the hoped-for growth effects emerging from the expansionary measures announced on European and national scales." Siteb-Strade Italiane and Bitumi Association President Michele Turrini said: "We agreed with this decision, given the leading role that Asphaltica has always played for all players in the road infrastructure supply chain, stakeholders and the many associate companies that registered for the trade fair again this year. "We are convinced that the postponement to March next year will enable us to prepare an even more effective and visible event in international terms and thereby re-launch the entire world of road infrastructures," remarked Turrini. "As ever, the objective is to promote the opportunities for meetings and comparisons between companies, public administrations and institutions that have always been the heart of the event," he added.-TradeArabia News Service DENVER A vintage clothing retailer based in Tucson, Ariz. has cut ties with three of its Colorado stores after dozens of anonymous allegations of employee abuse surfaced on social media this week. Buffalo Exchange has stores in 19 states, with three locations in Denver and Boulder. As of today, our relationship with the Buffalo Exchange Colorado franchise stores is terminated, Corporate Vice President Rebecca Block said in an open letter Thursday. The Denver Police Department with help from the FBI are investigating the allegations against Colorado franchise managing partner Patrick Todd Colletti of sexual assault, underage drug and alcohol abuse, fraud and theft, The Denver Post reported. The newspaper said nine people shared stories that closely matched and overlapped with those shared on Instagram. Jessica Straughter, who worked as a buyer at the Denver location, told The Denver Post that the stories were true and that she was fired for not enabling Collettis behavior. The Denver location was closed but posted a sign saying that Colletti was released from responsibilities and associations from The Buffalo Exchange of Colorado, according to the stores Facebook page. The Denver and Boulder police departments said no police reports have been filed related to the allegations. However, Denver Police did open an investigation into the allegations made on Instagram. The department encouraged potential victims to contact detectives. Denver Police Detective Shanna Michael, who works with the FBIs Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, is providing FBI resources to the Denver department. A person using Collettis full name and personal phone number emailed The Denver Post this week, but did not respond to further requests for comment. Take it easy on my scared employees and I will give you a story worth printing, Colletti said. Twenty-five years of used pants. Not quite front page but a lifetime of love and community and inclusion. It cant be lost in a moment of anger. Pupils achievements at school are often shaped by the way that they act out specific gender roles, according to a new study which warns against over-generalising the gender gap in education. The study, by researchers at the University of Cambridge, suggests that young peoples attainment is linked to their ideas about what it means to be male or female. Those who defy traditional gender stereotypes appear to do better in the classroom. The research appeared in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Annual GCSE results in the UK, in common with many western countries, typically show that boys lag behind girls academically, but the research argues that this broad pattern masks a more nuanced picture. In particular, the researchers warn that a large sub-group of girls, who conform fairly rigidly to some traditional feminine norms, could be academically at-risk. They point out that these girls are often invisible in broad surveys of attainment by gender that showgirls performing well as a group. The researchers examined the English and Maths results of almost 600 GCSE candidates at four schools in England. On average, the girls did significantly better in English, while boys were slightly better at Maths. Girls outperformed boys overall. But the study then went a step further, analysing sub-groups of boys and girls according to how they expressed their gender identity. This revealed that around half of the girls displayed maladaptive patterns of motivation, engagement and achievement. By contrast, around two-thirds of boys were motivated, engaged and did well in exams. The pupils academic performance corresponded closely to their sense of gender. Dr Junlin Yu, a researcher at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: There has been a lot of justifiable concern about low attainment among boys, but we really need to move on from looking at averages, and ask which specific groups of boys and girls are falling behind. These findings suggest that part of the answer is linked to how pupils do gender at school. The study asked pupils to complete questionnaires which measured their motivation and engagement, and also examined how far they conformed to certain gender norms. These norms were drawn from two widely-used scales that identify the characteristics which people in western countries consider typically masculine or feminine. The supposedly masculine traits were emotional control, competitiveness, aggression, self-reliance, and risk-taking. The feminine traits were thinness, an interest in appearance, concern with relationships, and an inclination towards domesticity. In reality, most people exhibit a combination of masculine and feminine traits and the researchers found that pupils typically belonged to one of seven gender profiles that blended these characteristics. They classified these as: - Resister boys (69% of boys): typically resist traditional ideas about masculinity. - Cool guys (21%): competitive risk-takers, but concerned with appearance and romantic success. - Tough guys (10%): have an emotionally hard image, self-reliant. - Relational girls (32% of girls): shun appearance norms, comfortable connecting with others emotionally. - Modern girls (49%): concerned with appearance, but also self-reliant and emotionally distant. - Tomboys (12%): uninterested in feminine qualities, often regarded as one of the lads. - Wild girls (7%): embrace masculine behaviours, but also display an exaggeratedly feminine appearance. These profiles were then cross-referred with the pupils GCSE results. On average, the sample group performed as international trends predict. Girls had an average grade of 6.0 (out of 9) in English, compared with the boys average of 5.3. In Maths boys averaged 5.9; slightly higher than the girls 5.5. But the researchers also found strong correlations between the specific gender profiles and patterns of engagement, motivation, and attainment. The two groups who resisted conventional gender norms - resister boys and relational girls - were found to be better academically adjusted and typically did well in exams. The lowest overall performers were the cool guys and tough guys. This significantly affected the average patterns of attainment by gender. In English, for example, relational girls far outperformed all other pupils in the cohort (averaging 6.3), almost single-handedly raising the girls average. The modern and wild girls typically had more mediocre GCSE results. More worryingly, these groups also displayed signs of low engagement and motivation: they gave up easily when faced with difficult tasks, and generally, put less effort into their work. Collectively, these girls represented 56% of the total, but their underachievement was partially obscured by the high attainment average for girls. The study suggests that one reason for the close correspondence between gender profile and academic achievement is that adolescents tend to express strong and inflexible ideas about gender, which influences their attitude towards school. For example, cool guys, who prize risk-taking and winning, consistently admitted to not trying hard at school - probably because doing so maintained the illusion that they would succeed if they put in more effort. Attitudes towards gender probably also influence pupils engagement with certain subjects. Previous studies have, for example, shown that Maths is often perceived as male. Tellingly, within the sample, tomboys - girls who rejected feminine traits - earned higher grades than the other girls in Maths. The studys main recommendation is that efforts to close the gender gap in attainment need to focus less on girls versus boys and more on these nuanced profiles. However, the researchers also suggest that schools could support pupils by encouraging them to think beyond traditional gender stereotypes. Among boys in particular, we found that those who resist gender norms were in the majority, but at school it often doesnt feel that way, Yu said. Teachers and parents can help by encouraging pupils to feel that they wont be ridiculed or marginalised if they dont conform to traditional gender roles. Our findings certainly suggest that resistance to stereotypes is fast becoming less the exception, and more the rule. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) Follow more stories on Facebook and Twitter SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new study published today in Lancet Public Health has found that front-line healthcare workers with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) have a three-fold increased risk of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, compared to the general population. Those with inadequate PPE had a further increase in risk. The study also found that healthcare workers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds were more likely to test positive. Using the COVID Symptom Tracker App, researchers from King's College London and Harvard looked at data from 2,035,395 individuals and 99,795 front-line health-care workers in the UK and US. The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was 2747 cases per 100,000 front-line health-care workers compared with 242 cases per 100,000 people in the general community. A little over 20 percent of front-line health-care workers reported at least one symptom associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with 144 percent of the general population; fatigue, loss of smell or taste, and hoarse voice were especially frequent. BAME health-care workers were at an especially high risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, with at least a fivefold increased risk of infection compared with the non-Hispanic white general community. Professor Sebastien Ourselin, senior author from King's College London said: "The findings of our study have tremendous impact for healthcare workers and hospitals. The data is clear in revealing that there is still an elevated risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection despite availability of PPE. "In particular we note that that the BAME community experience elevated risk of infection and in some cases lack access to adequate PPE, or frequently reuse equipment." Researchers say their study not only shows the importance of adequate availability and use of PPE, but also the crucial need for additional strategies to protect healthcare workers, such as ensuring correct application and removal of PPE and avoiding reuse which was associated with increased risk. Differences were also noted in PPE adequacy according to race and ethnicity, with non- Hispanic white health-care workers more frequently reporting reuse of or inadequate access to PPE, even after adjusting for exposure to patients with COVID-19. Joint first author Dr. Mark Graham from King's College London said: "The work is important in the context of the widely reported higher death rates amongst healthcare workers from BAME backgrounds. Hopefully a better understanding of the factors contributing to these disparities will inform efforts to better protect workers." Dr. Claire Steves, lead clinical researcher from King's College London said: "I'm very pleased we have now introduced masks and social distancing where possible for all interactions in hospitalsto protect ourselves and the population we serve. We need to ensure this is reinforced and sustained throughout the health serviceincluding in health care settings outside hospitals, for example in care homes. "Additional protective strategies are equally as important, such as implementing social distancing among healthcare staff. Stricter protocols for socialising among healthcare staff also need to be considered." Explore further COVID risk calculator aims to help keep BAME healthcare workers safer Jimmy Owens (#20) of Newport, Tn., and Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Illinois, proved again Friday night why they are the two best and hottest dirt late model racers in America, winning the night's two $2,500 preliminary features heading into Saturday's 75-lap, $25,000 to-Win "Hoosier Dirt Shootout" at the Kokomo (Ind.) Speedway. The quarter-mile oval hosts its first-ever World of Outlaws Late Model series sanctioned event after Fairbury (Illinois) Speedway cancelled the annual running of the "Praia Dirt Classic" due to the state's COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Owens held off Georgia's Shane Clanton and Louisiana's Cade Dillard for his victory and Sheppard (#1) beat Ricky Thornton Jr. and Chase Junghans in his race. Officials have moved up Saturday's race start time to 4:30 p.m. due to the threatening weather forecast for the evening hours. The Dirtvision website will carry the race live Saturday for its subscribers. In Tennessee no racing took place Friday night but the usual gamut of Saturday night racing sees action all over East Tennessee and Northeast Alabama. Nigerian musician, Abbey Toheeb Elias aka Skiibii on Saturday gave a public notice to someone who reportedly stole from him. According to his post on Instagram, an undisclosed person stole a bottle of champagne from him. He wrote that he has uncovered the culprit from a CCTV footage. Meanwhile, at the end of 24 hours, Skiibii saiid that he would post photo of the culprit if the champagne is not returned. See the post below Related The Embassy of Switzerland in Accra has released a short movie to mark the 6oth anniversary celebration on the strong diplomatic relations with Ghana. The movie, released on Friday in Accra also marks the National Day of Switzerland, which falls tomorrow, Saturday August 1. Since 1891, Swiss citizens at home and abroad have celebrated the day to remember the origins of Switzerland from 1291. In a press release sent to the Ghana News Agency on Friday, the Embassy said it would not hold a public celebration for the 729th birthday of the Swiss Confederation in Accra this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, 2020 is a special year for the partnership between Ghana and Switzerland, as both states celebrate the anniversary of 60 years of their diplomatic relationship, it said. The release said Switzerland recognized the Republic of Ghana on its independence day, 6 March 1957, adding that three years later, the then existing Swiss Consulate in Accra was upgraded to a full-fledged Embassy. It said in the past 60 years, Switzerland and Ghana had established a fruitful and mutually beneficial partnership that culminated in the State visit of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to Switzerland in February this year. The release described Ghana as one of Switzerlands most important trade partners in Africa and one of the priority countries for Switzerlands economic development cooperation almost 20 years. It said the strong cooperation resulted in Switzerland supporting the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra. More than 50 Swiss companies operating in Ghana have also employed thousands of Ghanaians. Also, on the occasion of the memorable State Visit, a declaration for the trade of CO2 climate certificates was signed. Once, a bilateral agreement is in place, multi-million Swiss Francs of climate friendly investments could flow from Switzerland to Ghana, it said. Mr Philipp Stalder, the Swiss Ambassador to Ghana, Benin and Togo, noted that this year had been full of unexpected turns saying, In the more than 20 years of my diplomatic career, I would have never expected to celebrate the National Day of Switzerland virtually. The pandemic, he said, had a huge impact on all countries around the world, but during the difficult times, the good relationship between Ghana and Switzerland had to be lauded once again. The Ambassador said the movie, initiated and mandated by the Swiss Embassy in Accra, was produced in collaboration with pulse.com.gh. The short movie, he said portrayed three Ghanaians who were all connected to Switzerland and contributed in their own way to the sustainable growth of Ghana. The Link to the movie:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTb7naREx7w The protagonists of the short movie are the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Madam Shirley Ayorkor Botchway and the Swiss Ambassador, Mr. Philipp Stadler. 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 With Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) dragging its feet on restoring the status quo ante along the 1,597km Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Ladakh sector, the Indian Army has started preparing for a long winter as it does not want a repeat of April 2020 next year. Top government officials confirmed that the Indian Army has asked its defence attaches posted in embassies in the US, Russia and Europe to identify warm clothes and snow tent manufacturers in case there is a need for emergency purchases. Also read: After Chinese apps and contractors, India puts restrictions on colour TV imports After Operation Meghdoot in Siachen in 1984, the Indian Army gets all its requirements fulfilled by local manufacturers with regard to igloos, semi-hemispherical domes, Down parkas, snow goggles, boots and gloves for troops guarding the heights in the western sector. While the Indian Army has matched the Chinese PLA in terms of troop strength and support elements in the Ladakh sector, its commanders totally dismiss reports of induction of over 35,000 troops recently. However, the military commanders are clear that they will have to man positions along the LAC in specific areas to prevent any PLA aggression next year. After the PLA aggression, we dont trust the Chinese and fear that they will come back again north of Pangong Tso as summer arrives in 2021, said a military commander. Although the PLA has disengaged from patrolling points 14 (Galwan), 15-16 (Hot Springs), a smattering of adversary troops are still on forward location at patrolling point 17 A (Gogra) and withdrawal from all contested finger features is a distance away at the Pangong Tso. Also read: Disengagement process along LAC not yet complete: India rebuts China With the cold and arid claimate of Ladakh, not much snow is expected in the general area of patrolling points 15, 16 or 17, but the over 17,000 feet Chang La (pass) gets filled with snow and lies en route to defences at Pangong Tso. In order to cater for winter clothing requirements, we have not only placed orders with domestic manufacturers but also asked troops other than those stationed on Saltoro ridge and Siachen glacier to give up extreme snow clothing. For instance, even troops at Partapur and Thoise are allowed Siachen clothing but the height of the two bases is same as Leh. So in the worst case scenario we will ask Partapur and Thoise troops to give up their down jackets, trousers, gloves, boots and goggles to their fellow jawans being posted up on the occupied Aksai Chin front, said a second Army commander. The PLA aggression in the Ladakh sector has created so much of mistrust between the two armies that both will keep troops on select locations all along the 3488 km LAC. The Chinese aggression came despite all talks of peace and tranquility. It is very important on part of both sides to settle the border issue soon as the number of friction points are increasing on the LAC and even a small spark can cause a flare-up, as unlike in the past, the Indian Army is regularly mounting patrols to earmark Indian territory and defend it to the last inch, said a former Army chief. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Ten people suffering with alcohol dependency have died after drinking hand sanitiser following the closure of liquor shops during the coronavirus lockdown in India, police have said. A number of other people who also consumed the alcohol-based sanitiser in the town of Kurichedu, in Andhra Pradesh, were discharged from hospital. Those who had died mixed the product with water and soft drinks, and had started drinking the mixture about 10 days before they died, the BBC reported district police chief Siddharth Kaushal as saying. Some people who are heavily addicted to alcohol had been consuming hand sanitisers for the high, Mr Kaushal told Reuters, adding that some of those who died had other health conditions. Alcohol is not available because of the lockdown, but hand sanitisers are easily available ... we are investigating whether the sanitiser had any other toxic content. While Indias federal government has allowed the reopening of most economic activities, many states including Andhra Pradesh are still isolating certain pockets where coronavirus infections have surged, including Kurichedu. Meanwhile, in the northern Dinkar Gupta state, at least 21 people died this week after drinking tainted alcohol. A state government statement said the deaths were due to spurious alcohol and a crackdown on illegal alcohol manufacturing in the state was ordered. Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India, where poor residents cannot afford licensed brands from government-run shops. India reported another record daily surge in coronavirus cases on Thursday, registering 55,078 new infections bringing the countrys total to 1.64 million. Reported cases in Andhra Pradesh have leapt nine-fold in a month, compared with about a three-fold increase in the country as a whole in the same period. The state has the highest rate of testing per million people in the country. Additional reporting by agencies The National Audubon Society is re-examining and confronting the racist and slave-owning past of its namesake. The non-profit environmental organization, dedicated to the conservation of birds and other wildlife, was founded in 1905 and named in honor of Franco-American ornithologist John James Audubon. Audubon is perhaps most famous for illustrating birds in their natural habitats and publishing his book, Birds of America, as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838. But an often glossed-over part of Audubon's history is that he owned many slaves, sold them to others, and saw black and indigenous people as being inferior to white people. In a magazine piece, the Society says it plans to speak out and condemn Audubon's past, publish a new biography including his 'ethical failings' and highlight other founders of the organization. The National Audubon Society, dedicated to the conservation of birds, is named in honor of Franco-American ornithologist John James Audubon (left and right). In a magazine piece, the Society said it was speaking out against its namesake and condemning his slave-owning and white supremacist past The Society has taken down its biography of Audubon and is planning on publishing a new one regarding his 'ethical failings.' Pictured: Anna Hyatt Huntington stands to the right of the Hispanic Society of America Library on the Audubon Terrace plaza 'In the strongest possible terms, we condemn the role John James Audubon played in enslaving Black people and perpetuating white supremacist culture,' the Society writes. The organization says it has taken down Audubon's biography and is replacing it with content that does not 'ignore the challenging parts of his identity and actions.' 'Audubon didn't create the National Audubon Society, but he remains part of its identity,' writes Audubon historian Dr Gregory Nobles. Audubon began owning slaves in his late 20s or early 30s, and owned at least nine while living in Henderson, Kentucky. The family sold them at the end of the 1810s, but that wasn't their last dealing in slave-trading. The Society says that in early 1819, Audubon sailed with two enslaved men from Mississippi to New Orleans and sold both the men and the boat. He owned slaves yet again in the 1820s, but sold them in 1830, when the family moved to England. Audubon is most famous for publishing his book, Birds of America (pictured), as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838 Audubon was also staunchly against abolition. The Society reveals that, in 1834, he wrote to his wife, Lucy Bakewell Audubon, that British officials 'acted imprudently and too precipitously' after emancipating slaves in the West Indies. He painted himself as the 'savior of a fugitive family and defender of slaveholders' in a tale he wrote called The Runaway. In the story, Audubon, who was out hunting, confronts an armed black man in Louisiana, but neither shoots the other. He writes that the man and his family had escaped slavery and were living in the swamp and that Audubon returned them to the home of their first master and asks the plantation owner to buy them back from the family he sold them too. The tale ends with the black family 'rendered as happy as slaves generally are in that country' - still enslaved, but allegedly happy. His lack of appreciation for African-Americans and Native Americans who helped him write Birds of America is also evident. These groups often helped Audubon collect specimens and offered information on some of the birds that appear in his book. 'Even though Audubon found Black and Indigenous people scientifically useful, he never accepted them as socially or racially equal,' the Society writes. When Audubon moved to the US, his family owned several and sold several slaves and spoke out against abolition. Pictured: Audubon photographed by Mathew Brady in 1850 He never acknowledged black or indigenous people who helped him write his book and referred to black enslaved men as 'hands.' Pictured; Audubon In a letter from December 1831, he described a boating expedition with six enslaved black men and three white men - the black men whom he called 'hands.' It further indicates that he saw African-Americans as nothing more than helpers to the adventures of white people. He even painted his mother, who was one of his father's mistresses on a sugar plantation in Haiti as a wealthy 'lady of Spanish extraction' from Louisiana' who was killed during a 'negro insurrection.' The National Audubon Society is not the only institution to face a day of reckoning due to its past. Last month, the Sierra Club, the country's oldest conservation organization, say it would no longer pay 'blind reverence' of conservationist pioneer John Muir and other founders. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-02 00:50:21|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close YANGON, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar has postponed the fourth meeting of the 21st Century Panglong Peace Conference to the third week of this month, a senior official told media on Saturday. "The peace conference will be held on Aug. 19, 20 and 21. We can't postpone the date anymore as there will be a campaign period of political parties for upcoming general election soon," said U Zaw Htay, spokesperson of President's Office. The peace conference was firstly scheduled to be held in the first four months of this year and later postponed to be held on Aug. 12, 13 and 14 due to the outbreak of COVID-19. As part of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, the number of the delegates will be reduced to 230, one-third of total 700 attendees, the official recently said. It was learnt that the Union Accord Part III will be signed at the fourth meeting of the peace conference and the accord will include three parts relating to framework agreement on the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) implementation, post-election activities and basic federal principles. The peace conference was held in August 2016, May 2017 and July 2018, respectively. A total of 51 federal-related basic principles have been adopted into the union accord after the third conference. The 10 ethnic armed organizations have signed the NCA with the government since it was initiated in October 2015. Enditem EPFs investment growth retards in prevailing market conditions By Bandula Sirimanna View(s): View(s): Sri Lankas largest social security scheme, the Employees Provident Funds (EPF) listed equity investments are not generating expected growth due to prevailing market conditions, financial analysts say. Market values of investments made by the fund are not increasing proportionate to purchased cost of shares in listed equities and it will affect the rate of return of its member balances for the current fiscal year, they warned. However the investment policy of the fund is focused on providing a long-term positive real rate of return to the members, a senior Central Bank official said. Investments have been made ensuring the safety of the fund and availability of the adequate level of liquidity to meet refund payments and other expenses of the fund, he added. The EPF has incurred a market loss of around Rs.39.08 billion during the first quarter this year from their investments in 83 listed equities, Central Banks EPF department data showed. The total investment in these equities was Rs.84.05 billion at the end of the first quarter this year and its market value has come down to Rs.44.97 billion during this period. The fund has incurred a loss of Rs.39.08 billion by investing in the stock market, EPF departments listed equity portfolio record revealed. The highest sum of Rs.448.73 million has been invested in Access Engineering PLC and its market value has come down to Rs.270.31 million by 31 March 2020. The investment made in ACL Cables PLC was Rs. 155.51 million and the market value increased to Rs.183.72 million. A sum of Rs.1.99 billion had been invested in Aitken Spence PLC and its market value declined to Rs.632.14 million by 31 March 2020. Those were the three main investments among 83 listed equities selected to make EPF investments in the stock market. The total investment portfolio (book value) of the Fund grew by 10.9 per cent to Rs. 2,548.7 billion as at the end of 2019 from Rs. 2,298.8 billion at the end of 2018. Accordingly, at the end of 2019, the investment portfolio consisted of 93.8 per cent in government securities, 3.0 per cent in equity, 1.7 per cent in corporate debentures and trust certificates, 0.9 per cent in fixed deposits and the remaining 0.6 per cent in Reverse Repurchase agreement. The total investment income of the Fund was Rs. 259 billion in 2019, recording an increase of 16.5 per cent compared to the previous year. India will allow some of the world's top foreign universities to set up campuses in the country as the government also promised to spend billions of Euros more to propel national education well into the 21st century. The announcements drew both support and criticism after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government green-lighted the Nation Education Policy (NEP). Many in his BJP party had earlier opposed the entry of foreign universities into India. They argued the step could put higher education beyond the reach of most Indians who still earn less than 3.3 Euros a day. NEP has a special focus on fee transparency, so I am sure it will keep the cost in check, prominent educator Sirish Gupta told RFI. The policy paper said the world's top 100 universities will be facilitated to operate but within Indian regulations. A legislative framework facilitating such entry will be put in place, and such universities will be given content norms on par with other autonomous institutions of India, it added. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, the policy's main architect, rubbished the fears over their entry, which some experts believe may bring back Indian students who spend millions of Euros to study abroad. I did not find any concerns that India should interact with the better institutions of the world and if necessary bring the best of their experience into our soil, Kasturirangan said in public comments. India will also add 350 million new seats to higher education institutions by 2035. Opposition politician Shashi Tharoor in a series of tweets said some of the targets seemed unrealistic and warned the policy aimed to tighten state controls in on classroom education. Overall, my worry is the NEP showcases a strong tendency towards centralisation, said Tharoor, a former education minister. Standford University history professor Priya Satia in recent comments argued NEP will leave little room for dissent and critical analysis. Forgotten teachings India's ancient way of life will be now taught to Indian millennials. The vision of the policy is to instill among the learners a deep-rooted pride in being Indian, the policy said as some critics argued it could sully modern education with myth and superstition. But Kasturirangan, a former chief of India's national space agency, defended his plan. By learning our ancient heritage doesn't mean you are going to sacrifice your scientific temper, he told India Today TV. Modi's government said the policy was a result of wide consultations. There has also been the involvement of the common people?Higher education secretary Amit Khare added. Debate on mother tongue It also suggested junior grade students are taught in regional languages or in their mother tongue in India, where 15 percent of schools use English as the medium of education. Kulbhushan Sharma, president of National Independent Schools Association, said he wanted the choice is best left to parents. India's privately-run English medium schools are coveted but are beyond the reach of the poor who are compelled to send children to shoddy state institutions. Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders will perform special prayers at their residences on August 4 and 5 before the Bhumi Pujan ceremony of Ram temple in Ayodhya on August 5, said a party leader. Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president and former chief minister Kamal Nath held a meeting on Saturday in Bhopal and asked all the party leaders and MLAs to celebrate the occasion by performing prayers for two days. It was former Prime Minister late Rajeev Gandhi who opened the lock of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. He was the first person who coined the term Ramrajya and saw the dream of construction of the temple. Now, the Supreme Court has paved the way for the construction of the Ram temple, we will celebrate it, Nath told Congress leaders, according to a party leader who attended the meeting. Also Read: Tight security arrangements, Covid-19 protocols in Ayodhya ahead of Ram temple even MPCC spokesperson JP Dhanopia said, MPCC chief Kamal Nath asked us to organize poojas including the recital of Sunderkand, Ramayan and yajna at our residences and post videos of it on social media to inspire others to do so. Nath will organize a special pooja at his official residence in Bhopal on August 4. Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee also posted a message on social media on Saturday, presenting Kamal Nath as a devotee of lord Hanuman, while listing religion-linked decisions taken during his 15 month tenure as the MP chief minister. Former chief minister and Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh also tweeted and said, Lord Ram is a matter of faith for us. Its our aspiration that a huge temple of lord Ram should be constructed soon in Ayodhya for Ramlala. It was a will of late Rajeev Gandhi too. Also Read: Proud of denying permission to fire on kar sewaks in Ayodhya, says former Uttar Pradesh CM Kalyan Singh However, he repeated his questioning of the timing of the Bhumi Pujan ceremony in Ayodhya. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the Congress initiative was a political gimmick. Senior Congress leaders like Kapil Sibbal questioned the existence of lord Ram and now the same party is trying to change their image as Ram bhakts (devotes). These are political gimmick as they realized that lord Ram is a matter of faith for Indians and they cant oppose it, said BJP spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal. The BJP further alleged that this was mere posturing aimed at winning the by polls due in the state. If Congress leaders really have faith in lord Ram, what is the need for publicizing it on social media to declare themselves as bhakts? They are doing all these things to win the by-election but people are wise enough to understand the difference between real and reel, he added. Japanese lawmakers are calling for the country's military to be capable of conducting pre-emptive strikes on foreign missile launch sites to safeguard itself from potential attacks better than North Korea and China are capable of doing. Pre-emptive strike According to the Wall Street Journal, the defense policy committee of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) released a proposal on Friday that aims to be a new test of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pacifist constitution of the country. Prime Minister Abe had previously aimed to loosen military restrictions as Japan's response to the increasing aggression and challenges from Beijing and Pyongyang for the past few years. The proposal wrote that Japan needs to conduct new efforts to improve its deterrence of foreign attackers, including the possession of the capability to fight off ballistic missiles and other long-range weaponry even in the middle of enemy territory. In August, Japan's National Security Council is scheduled to consider the proposal as it reviews the country's defense policies. The support comes after the Japanese government decided in June to discard its plan to purchase a missile-defense system made by the United States. The system would have provided Japan with the necessary nationwide layer of protection that is capable of warding off ballistic missiles. Tokyo considered the decision due to the severely high costs and modification delays that were needed to ensure that the rocket debris of the Aegis Ashore system that Lockheed Martin Corp. developed would not land in residential areas across Japan. Also Read: UK, US Criticize Russian Space-Based Test-Firing as Anti-Satellite Weapons The LDP proposal stated that Japan should find methods of similar improvements to its foreign missile deterrent systems that the Aegis Ashore system could have potentially provided while keeping in mind the capability of warding off other external attacks. In Japan, any form of policy debate about national security and defense becomes a debate on constitution and legality, as reported by The Diplomat. For decades, politicians have discussed and debated over the country's strike capability. A shift in the balance However, in the past few years, the strategic and military balance in East Asia has become a significant factor that has changed the tide of the discussions. Japan is surrounded by several superpowers including China, Russia, and North Korea, who all hold nuclear capabilities and high-advanced missile systems and weaponry. Japan has had histories of arguments and territorial and sovereignty disputes. Recent incidents have disturbed the balance of power in East Asia. Japan's major defense policy papers' threat assessment considers North Korea to be a potential and imminent threat that is equipped with miniaturized nuclear weapons. China, on the other hand, owns intermediate-range missiles. Some Japanese officials claim that there is an apparent gap between the alliance of their country and the United States, and China. Several strategic thinkers are calling for Japan to broaden both its offense and defense capabilities. Some leading security experts are expressing their support of acquiring a strike capability and are urging serious discussions of the country's excessive dependence on the United States after the coronavirus pandemic is over. Related Article: China Using Coronavirus Pandemic as Cover Up to Silence, Detain Critics and Human Rights Violations? @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Syracuse, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today an initial decision is coming this week about whether school districts will reopen for in-person learning this fall amid the coronavirus. One big variable, Cuomo said, involves the comfort level of parents. They are concerned, he said. They should be concerned. The states 732 school districts were supposed to submit reopening plans to Albany by Friday. Most did, Cuomo said, adding that about 650 to 700 districts have complied so far. New York City, the nations largest school district, missed the deadline, Cuomo said today. The state will review the plans, the governor said. Here in Central New York, each school district is tackling the challenges differently. Some are bringing students into the classroom a couple of times a week. Others are bringing back younger students more often. In general, smaller districts are offering the most in-person learning. Cuomo said the districts should address technology needs as well. In the Syracuse city school district, 40% of families did not have access to WiFi or computers when schools shut down this spring. Remote learning, if not done well, can be a vehicle of division, Cuomo said today. Remote learning tends to work better in the wealthier school districts, he added. It tends to work better in wealthier homes and less well in poorer homes. Cuomo also said each district should have a clear plan for Covid-19 testing, including assurances that communities should be able to turn around a large amount of tests if needed. The parents need to review the plan, understand the plan and they have to have confidence in the plan, Cuomo said. If they dont have confidence in the plan, I dont care what the school district says. They arent sending their kids back. Got a story idea or news tip youd like to share? Please contact me through email, Twitter, Facebook or at 315-470-2274. Lee died on Thursday from septic shock and multiple organ failure in Taipei, after being in hospital for nearly six months, the BBC reported. Taipei, July 31 (IANS) Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, considered the "father of Taiwan's democracy", died at the age of 97, it was announced on Friday. He became the President in 1988 after the death of predecessor, Chiang Ching-kuo. In 1996, the first direct presidential election in Taiwan, he was democratically elected for a second term with a landslide victory. During his time in office till 2000, he led constitutional changes towards a more democratic political layout, including direct presidential elections. After his presidency, Lee was indicted on charges of embezzling public funds, but was acquitted. Taking to Twitter to condole his demise, incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen said "he laid the foundation of a democracy built on pride and our own identity". "This is a day of mourning for me and all Taiwanese with the passing of our former President Lee Teng-hui. "He laid the foundation for a democracy built on pride and our own identity, and his legacy will guide generations of Taiwanese to face the challenges ahead with courage," the BBC quoted Tsai as saying in the tweet. --IANS ksk/ A year nine student allegedly named dozens of his classmates in a horrifying 'kill list', which police fear could have turned into a US-style school massacre. The 14-year-old from NSW, who can't be named due to his age, has been charged after police allegedly found a homemade explosive device at his family home. More than 20 of his peers have now taken out personal violence orders against him after police believe he penned the chilling note about them more than a month ago. He is accused of writing vicious notes about his classmates, also just 14 and 15 years old. The teenager on Thursday was charged with possessing dangerous substances with intent to injure and will face court next month. A 14-year-old boy has been charged after allegedly naming more than 20 of his classmates in a 'kill list' (file image) He was taken to a psychologist after his mother allegedly found out about the list of names and notes about his classmates, The Daily Telegraph reported. The counsellor described the boy as expressing extreme 'hate' for the other students and there were concerns for their welfare. It was then reported to police, and the school has since hired security guards that carry out protocols similar to emergency lockdowns. Police searched the 14-year-old's home after he was taken into custody for a mental health assessment. One resident said the case had terrified the school community. 'It could well have been a US-style high school situation,' they said 'It is as serious as it gets it is quite scary.' The teenager also allegedly practiced detonating explosives at his home. He has since been released from custody and is under strict bail conditions at his home with his parents. The 14-year-old will appear in the Children's Court in September. LOUISVILLE, Ky. - When Louisvilles Black Lives Matter leaders organized a demonstration at the removal of the John B. Castleman statue in Cherokee Park in early June, local artist Brianna Harlan hosted a creative intervention a cleansing for the tired and weary protesters. Using lavender flowers, sage and any sticks, rocks and leaves they could gather from the area, the group gathered for a healing ritual. It was a powerful and cathartic form of public art for Harlan, a Black woman and Louisville native whose work bridges traditional art and social justice. Black artists like Harlan have been creating their own, non-traditional art collectives in Louisville for years, but on the heels of the Black Lives Matter movement, these same artists are now gaining more traction among mainstream art institutions. And while many of the citys Black artists say this recognition is long overdue, many wonder if these same institutions are playing into tokenism or are truly working to rise up to build a more equitable and inclusive arts community going forward. Louisvilles funding model comes a lot from philanthropy, Harlan said, which funnels down in a way that never really gives Black people any staying power, control or security to be able to make their best work. Its a common struggle for organizations across the country that are actively trying to bring more equity and inclusivity into the art scene without pandering to artists of colour or other minorities. For Harlan and other Black visual artists, its imperative that Louisvilles arts institutions value their work outside of movements such as Black Lives Matter, which often focus on the pain and trauma of the Black experience. Now that blackness is something to have a protest for, and people are finally making space for it, others are capitalizing off it, Harlan said. So until we change our standards as a culture for what we allow and dont allow the people in power to do, nothing is really going to change. So when Harlan has noticed Black artists finally being celebrated and recognized on larger platforms, she thinks: Its about time. Black people have been giving labour, innovation, creativity and so much gold to our culture for so long, she said. One organization taking that next step is the Fund for the Arts, one of Louisvilles leading non-profit arts organizations. It was born out of a commitment to equity, diversity and inclusivity that the organization had been working on for a long time, but was recently amplified by the social unrest in the community, said Fund for the Arts director of impact Kat Abner. Fund for the Arts is also working to deepen our investment in Black artists and the community, because they deserve to be celebrated and elevated, and so many artists are leading the charge of that movement, Abner said. The group recently announced its Black Artist Fund, an initiative to provide grants ranging from $500 to $2,000 to fund new works created by Black artists. Internally, Fund for the Arts has also created an Equity Task Force to help build awareness to the many talented Black artists in Louisville and begin fostering more future projects. At the Speed Art Museum, 2035 S. Third St., the oldest, largest and foremost museum of art in Kentucky, looking at Black artists is something the museum takes very seriously. I feel very strongly that we dont look to Black artists just to be muralists or protest artists, said Stephen Reily, director of the Speed Art Museum. We can always do better. The Speed is releasing a report soon detailing its efforts and commitments to racial equity through community outreach, programming and contracts. Its also taking a critical look at its staff make-up, Reily said, recognizing that in order to amplify Black artists, they need to have more employees that reflect the community. How do we take this immediate moment and the urgency around it a lot of which is about trauma and pain and anger very understandably and create a long term mission that invites everyone to celebrate art forever? Thats what were trying to do, Reily said. Were thinking back 90 years in our history and trying to think forward 90 years in our history. Harlan, who has exhibited at both KMAC and the Speed Art Museum, recently created a survey that was taken by 250 Louisville artists, many of whom said they often felt excluded from Louisvilles mainstream arts space. Over 90% of respondents felt that the citys diversity is not represented in art openings and that sexism and racism is pervasive in Louisvilles art institutions. Many also reported feeling tokenized by cultural institutions. Ramona Lindsey, a Louisville artist who works for the Community Foundation of Louisville, said in her experience, its difficult for Black folks to reach decision-making and leadership roles in the citys cultural arts institutions. A few years ago, when Lindsey was the director of education at KMAC, she was one of the only Black leaders in the visual arts community. That is starting to change, but we still need financial support, network support, resources that are necessary for a leader to thrive in the institution. Our leaders in the organizations have to be ready to make radical change to truly transform the culture here, Lindsey said. That means developing a pipeline of Black creative leaders through paid internships, purposeful outreach, mentoring and working directly with the local artists, she said. Toya Northington, a Louisville native and textile artist who also works at the Speed Art Museum, said she feels a responsibility as a Black artist working in a major art institution to push for more Black people at all levels of the organization, but it doesnt guarantee that they will have the power or influence to make changes once they get there. We have to be more specific, Northington told The Courier Journal. We want a diversity of representation. We want art and narratives told in exhibitions that represent the issues of interest, culture and perspectives of the people in our community. There has to be a culture shift so these institutions stop prioritizing white, western esthetics and perspectives. We are really asking them to reimagine their galleries and museums so they dont centre and prioritize whiteness. While the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled many arts organizations initial projections from Louisvilles Arts and Cultural Alliance in March indicated museums and performing arts organizations could lose $1.3 million a day during a total shutdown Northington said its also been an equalizer for creatives, forcing everyone to think differently about how to reach audiences. When you are a marginalized group, you have been used to making your own path, Northington said. Black artists have always been working outside the norms of our institutions because we had to make our own spaces, be innovative and often create public art. But what has happened in the art world until now cannot survive. When we return to normal, art institutions have to be intentional about bringing in new audiences and being genuine in their efforts. Outside KMAC on Museum Row in downtown Louisville hangs a window project from local artist and poet Hannah Drake, a powerful voice for the Black community. And inside the first floor is a mural painted by Jaylin Stewart, a Black woman. But KMAC, like many other art institutions, is looking at what more it can do, said curator Joey Yates. I think the arts in Louisville has suffered from the same systemic segregation as our other institutions and has inherited that legacy, Yates said. Thankfully, were all confronting that and hopefully, it can create a more integrated arts scene. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday (August 1, 2020) said that the New Education Policy announced by his government recently emphasises on making 'job creators' instead of 'job seekers'. The PM also asserted that ''there is now systematic reform in India's education system and attempts are being made to transform intent and content of education.'' The PM added that the ''New Education Policy is keen on inclusion, right from primary education. In higher education, the aim is to increase the gross enrolment ratio to 50% by 2035.'' Sharing more details, the PM said, ''In the national education policy, flexibility has been given great importance. There are provisions for multiple entries and exits. It won't just be a small lane for students.'' Addressing the finale of the Smart India Hackathon, the PM said the New Education Policy-2020 announced earlier this week emphasises on inter-disciplinary study which will ensure that the focus is on what the student wants to learn. In a fast-changing world, India will have to swiftly change itself to play an effective role, PM Modi said addressing the Smart India Hackathon. The role of the youth is very important in achieving the goal of 'ease of living' to give a better life to the poor, he told students. Students will enjoy the advantage of an academic bank of credit which will store all the academic credits acquired. This can be transferred and counted in the final degree, the PM said. The PM concluded by saying, ''We're shifting from the burden of school bags to the boon of learning. For years, the limitations of the system has had an adverse effect on the lives of students. Our new education policy is people and future-centric.'' The Grand Finale of the software edition in 2020 was being organized online by connecting all the participants throughout the nation together over a specially-built advanced platform. More than 10,000 students competed to solve 243 problem statements from 37 central government departments, 17 state governments and 20 industries. As the outcome of Smart India Hackathons till date, around 331 prototypes have been developed, 71 startups are under formation, 19 startups are successfully registered. Further, 39 solutions have already been deployed at various departments and around 64 potential solutions have been funded for further development. President Obama hugs U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), one of the original 1965 marchers in Selma, at an event marking the 50th anniversary of what became known as Bloody Sunday. (Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images) To the editor: "Thank you" is simply not adequate to describe our gratitude for the impact that the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) had on our lives. The destiny of our great nation was made supremely better by his indelible courage in the face of pure evil. ("Eulogized by presidents and civil rights leaders, John Lewis laid to rest in Atlanta," July 30) President Obama hit the nail on the head in his eulogy for Lewis. The late congressman belongs next to the legendary founding mothers and fathers of this beautiful country. He was as resilient as George Washington and wise as Benjamin Franklin. Brave as Harriet Tubman and foresightful as Alexander Hamilton. Pioneering as Susan B. Anthony and eloquent as Thomas Jefferson. Lewis stands among those men and women as one of the all-time champions for liberty, justice and equal rights. He may be gone, but he is not departed. May we garner the strength to hear Lewis' booming voice in these dark times, and make good trouble in his name. Henry Wilson, Barrington, Ill. .. To the editor: It's a real tragedy that the small number of protesters destroying property and throwing things at the police have learned nothing from Lewis' example of the power of nonviolent protest. The Voting Rights Act was introduced in Congress within weeks of "Bloody Sunday" in 1965 because the nation was repulsed by the sight of nonviolent protesters being brutalized by officers. Had those protesters, instead of marching peacefully, attacked the police, the national response would have been quite different, and civil rights would not have advanced as they did. Scott McKenzie, La Canada Flintridge The former police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown six years ago in Ferguson, Missouri, will not be criminally charged, the St. Louis County prosecutor said Thursday. "This is one of the most difficult things I have had to do as an elected official," Wesley Bell said at a press conference announcing the findings of an independent, five-month review. After examining thousands of pages of witness statements, forensic reports and other evidence, Bell said his office was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Darren Wilson committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law when he shot and killed Brown. MORE: 5th anniversary of black teen Michael Brown's death in Ferguson returns focus to police shooting Bell, who was elected St. Louis County's first Black prosecutor in 2018, said the investigation does not exonerate Wilson. "The question of whether we can prove a case at trial is different than clearing him of any and all wrongdoing," Bell said. "There's so many points at which Darren Wilson could have handled the case differently, and if he had, Michael Brown might still be alive. But that is not the question before us. The only question is whether we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime occurred, and the answer to that is no." PHOTO: Michael Brown is seen in this photo posted to Facebook, May 19, 2013. (Courtesy Brown Family/Facebook) Brown, a Black teenager, was unarmed when Wilson, a white police officer, shot and killed him on Aug. 9, 2014. The incident sparked national protests over police brutality and marked the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. Bell's predecessor, Bob McCulloch, turned the case over to a grand jury which declined to indict Wilson in November 2014. Wilson also resigned that month. The U.S. Justice Department declined to prosecute the former officer in March 2015, citing evidence and witnesses supporting Wilsons claims that Brown attacked him. PHOTO: Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson is pictured in evidence photos released by the St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office on Nov. 24, 2014. (St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office) Brown's family was paid $1.5 million in a 2017 settlement after they sued the city of Ferguson. Story continues MORE: Michael Brown's family wins $1.5 million settlement, Ferguson city attorney says Brown's name has been among those invoked in the recent nationwide protests against police brutality following the death of George Floyd in May while in the custody of Minneapolis police. Prosecutor not charging Ferguson officer who killed Michael Brown originally appeared on abcnews.go.com A man accused of murder escaped from jail after using knotted sheets to descend from a 12th floor cell. Pablo Robledo, 34, along with his cell mate, Jose Hernandez, used the sheets to clamber down from from the Oklahoma County jail in Oklahoma City. Mr Robledo, who was being held on a first-degree murder charge, was found and arrested Friday afternoon in southwest Oklahoma City by city police. Mr Hernandez fell or jumped from the makeshift rope around the fourth floor, apparently breaking a leg, before being found and subsequently arrested, officials said. Jail spokesman Mac Mulling said it appeared the men threw a mattress from building to help them, and that Mr Robledo was seen on the prisons video system at around 5.30am on Friday, shortly before the men made their escape. Pablo Robledo was being held on a first-degree murder charge (AP) Photographs showed the knotted rope that men used still hanging from the building. TV channel KOCO reported that when the jail was completed in 1991, engineers and architects said the $52m facility was escape proof because of its design. Just two months later, the jail saw its first escape. According to a story in The Oklahoman, 27-year-old Bill Linville used a mop handle to break through a second-floor window. He was at large for seven hours. Less than a week later, another inmate escaped. Additional reporting by Associated Press Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Saturday condemned the extension of PDPs Mehbooba Muftis detention, saying the decision of the Jammu and Kashmir administration was an assault on peoples constitutional rights. Mufti, the Peoples Democratic Partys chief, has been held in detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA) since August 5, 2019. The Union territorys administration has extended her detention by another three months. In a series of tweets, the former Union finance minister questioned how the 61-year-old former chief minister, who he said is a protected person under security guard round the clock, can be a threat to public safety. The extension of the detention of Ms Mehbooba Mufti under PSA is an abuse of law and an assault on the Constitutional rights guaranteed to every citizen, the former Union minister tweeted. She rightly rejected the offer to release her on conditions which any self-respecting political leader would refuse. One of the reasons given for her detention the colour of her partys flag was laughable, he said. He also asked why Mufti cannot speak against the abrogation of Article 370 and whether it was not a part of the right to free speech. I am one of the Counsel appearing in a case in the SC challenging the abrogation of Art 370. If I speak against Art 370 as I must is that a threat to public safety? We must collectively raise our voices and demand FREE MEHBOOBA MUFTI IMMEDIATELY, he added. The detention order of the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister was scheduled to lapse on August 5. Mufti is among 20-odd political leaders in the Valley who continue to remain under detention. She will continue to remain under detention at her official residence, which had earlier been declared a subsidiary jail, according to the order issued by the home department. A person can be kept under detention for up to two years under PSA. However, Peoples Conference chief Sajjad Gani Lone was released in Srinagar. A number of other prominent politicians, including two former chief ministers, Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah, have also been released from detention. They were arrested in August last year, hours after the Centre proposed the revocation of Article 370, which granted special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and proposed the bifurcation of the state into two Union territories. More than half of staff at Byron lost their jobs last night as the burger chain was sold to investment firm Calveton UK. Byron, which was founded in 2007, fell into administration in June and will hold on to just 550 of its 1,200 workers. Administrator KPMG said 31 of Byron's 51 restaurants will close, as it confirmed that 651 staff had been made redundant. Job losses: Byron, which was founded in 2007, fell into administration in June and will hold on to just 550 of its 1,200 workers Joint administrator Will Wright said the impact of the pandemic had been 'profound'. Britain's hospitality industry was already in trouble before Covid-19 struck and has been smashed by lockdown. Thousands of jobs have been lost at Carluccio's, Bella Italia, Cafe Rouge, and Frankie & Benny's, and the industry continues to struggle due to customers' concerns about the virus and the continuation of social distancing measures. On Saturday, 1 August, Zimbabweans and a range of foreign visitors in South Africa would have faced being declared undesirable after having overstayed their visas. But just hours before that, on Friday afternoon, the SA home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi gazetted a new set of directions to extend the validity of already-extended permits and visas. The effect is that some visitors to SA who entered the country after 15 March now automatically have permission to remain until at least 31 October, regardless of the date on their paperwork. They will face no penalty on exiting SA before that date. For refugees, asylum seekers, and holders of special Lesotho permits, the extension if automatic, with no application required. Conditions attached to visas and permits also remain unaltered, so those who were not allowed to seek employment still may not do so. Concessions for foreigners who found themselves stuck in SA as borders closed were first introduced in late March. In June extensions were also granted on asylum-seeker permits, refugee status, and users of a special permit for Lesotho citizens who were in SA before September 2015. Workers take a look at a huge crane that collapsed inside the Hindustan Shipyard complex in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh on Saturday. Eleven people were killed in the accident. In a grave mishap, 11 people were killed when a massive 70-tonne jetty crane collapsed during a load test in the Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL) on Saturday, said to be the first such tragedy in its 75-year history. The victims were crushed to death on the spot when they came under the massive iron structure that crashed on the ground with a loud thud after its cabin and base snapped during a trial run. The new crane was erected at HSL about two years ago but was not yet commissioned for regular operations due to change in contractors. The HSL management, with the help of three new contractors, started conducting a trial run of the crane when its cabin and base snapped and collapsed on Saturday as a dead-weight load was being tested, leaving 11 dead, Visakhapatnam District Collector V Vinay Chand said. There were no other casualties in the incident, he added. Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy spoke to Vinay Chand and enquired about the incident. Reddy directed the Collector and Visakhapatnam city Commissioner of Police RK Meena to take required follow-up action. Of the 11 deceased, four were employees of HSL, including a supervisor, while the other seven were workers of three contracting agencies, the Collector told reporters after inspecting the mishap site. Bodies of the victims have been retrieved and sent for post-mortem. While HSL constituted an internal committee, headed by its Director (Operations), the Collector formed an independent committee of engineers, comprising heads of departments of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering of Andhra Engineering College, to investigate the cause of the crane accident. "The committees will probe if there is any human negligence that caused the mishap," the Collector said. Anupam Cranes of Mumbai erected the jetty crane at HSL two years ago, but it was not made operational. The company later backed out of the contract and HSL subsequently engaged Greenfield Company to operationalise the crane. HSL also contracted Lead Engineers for maintenance and Squad7 for regular operation of the crane. "These contractors have commenced the full load trials now and the testing was being done when the tragedy occurred," Vinay Chand added. The other deceased were three workers of Greenfield, two of Lead Engineers and one of Squad7. One victim is yet to be identified. SL luring firms leaving China View(s): Amongst all the things the pandemic has done to make this world crazy, it showed that nations are over-reliant on China for everything from coriander to Chrysler. While US firms are said to be re-thinking their dependence on the country with some having already left China, the Japanese government is jumping on the bandwagon of a mass exodus from China. Japan gave US $ 2.3 billion to reform supply chains including money to aid firms in bringing production back to Japan or moving it to Southeast Asia. More than 690 Japanese companies have investments in China. It is reported that 34 of those, including Sony, Toyota Boshoku, Sharp and Panasonic, have already shown interest in shifting their factories, according to foreign newspaper reports. We have got quite a few inquiries by firms trying to shift base from China, Sanjaya Mohottala, Director General Board of Investment told the Business Times. Even at the height of the Sino-US trade war (when US President Donald Trump clamped 15 per cent tariffs on $300 billion in consumer goods imported from China) its appeal as a manufacturing hub for US businesses is still there, he said noting that its important to attract those who have taken a decision to shift. He said the Japanese firms will eye India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia. Apple is considering moving about 20 per cent of its iPhone production capacity to India because of the massive supply chain disruption that has broken the back of the manufacturing ecosystem of China. South Korean firms like Hyundai Steel, Lotte, KIA, and several other companies too are reported to be relocating their manufacturing facilities from China to India. Indonesia reportedly cleared up 4,000 hectares of land in Central Java to accommodate US companies planning to relocate from China. The Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (Beza) hired Sumitomo Corporation of Japan as a consultant to persuade the Japanese companies in coming to Bangladesh. After creating the profiles of the companies, the Bangladesh Embassy in Japan will meet those companies and try to motivate them to invest in Bangladesh, it was reported. For European businesses, COVID-19 has been a wake-up call of the need to guarantee they can source supplies from multiple countries. According to Mr. Mohottala, Sri Lanka ranks on top as a sourcing destination. Theres a big push were giving in terms of the fabric parks were constructing in this regard. (DEC) So, behind the ambulance, driving to the hospital after Munchie was shot, Gordon prayed she would not lose a second son. She had some hope maybe they had a pulse, maybe they had stabilized him. Her sister-in-law met her there. Inside Hook Running a bar or a brewery can be a challenge even in the best of times. Trying to keep one open during a pandemic when indoor bars can be particularly dangerous for spreading COVID-19 can make things exponentially more difficult. What if the easiest way to keep your bar running was to turn it into something else entirely? In a new article for The Washington Post, Tim Carman explores how breweries, bars and strip clubs have been weathering the pandemic by transforming themselves into restaurants. Its an understandable decision for many of them. Why? Because some state regulations treat bars and restaurants differently, keeping the former closed and the latter open. Hong Kongs deadliest wave of Covid-19 infections showed no signs of easing on Thursday as the city reported a new daily record of 149 cases along with another death, while the virus continued to spread in public hospitals and into an additional elderly care home. The latest figures pushed the citys tally of confirmed coronavirus cases to 3,151 with 25 related fatalities. Of the new cases, 145 were local infections and health authorities had not been able to trace the origins of 61 of those. There were four new imported cases, three of them seamen from India and the other an aircrew member who recently entered Hong Kong from the Philippines. Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China. The tally of infections is expected to climb further, with the health authorities reporting about 70 other people tested preliminarily positive on Thursday, including those staying on general wards of North District Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Caritas Medical Centre. An 80-year-old resident of Tsz Wan Shan died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Thursday after catching the virus. Asked what new measures were under consideration to counter the worsening epidemic, Undersecretary for Food and Health Dr Chui Tak-yi said they were monitoring the situation closely to see what impact the latest policies were having. The incubation period of Covid-19 can be as long as 14 days so we need some time to observe the trend. Its now a bit too early to conclude whether the measures [introduced in July] are effective, he said. Thursday was the ninth day in a row the city recorded 100-plus new infections. Isolation beds and wards at public hospitals have been squeezed to the limit, with occupancy at 77 per cent and 80 per cent respectively. From Wednesday, restaurants were barred from allowing customers to eat in at any time, while gatherings of more than two people were banned and mandatory mask-wearing extended to outdoor public areas. Story continues But in face of a public backlash, the government announced on Thursday that dine-in services in the morning and afternoon could resume from Friday. Among the infections confirmed on Thursday involved a resident at the King Fok elderly centre in Sham Shui Po, its first recorded case. Also added to the citys Covid-19 patient list were two taxi drivers and two more members of staff at the Sheung Shui slaughterhouse. So far, a total of seven workers at the slaughterhouse have been confirmed infected, while from Thursday night only workers testing Covid-19 negative would be allowed to enter the sites slaughter area. There were also four cases involving patients testing preliminarily positive for the coronavirus after staying in the general wards of public hospitals. The first was a 70-year-old woman who was looked after on a North District Hospital general ward for half a day before being transferred to an isolation ward, resulting in the identification of six patients as close contacts to be quarantined. There were two similar cases in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, including a 64-year-old man who was on a general ward there before testing positive, forcing the quarantine of eight patients he shared the room with. The fourth general ward case was a four-year-old who stayed at the Caritas Medical Centre in Sham Shui Po. There are quite a number of asymptomatic Covid-19 patients hidden in the community, so no matter how stringent or vigilant we try to be in screening patients, we might inevitably admit some asymptomatic patients into our medical wards, said Dr Sara Ho Yuen-ha, a chief manager of the Hospital Authority. But Ho added that public hospitals had already stepped up the Covid-19 screening process before admitting any patients. Asymptomatic people from categories including staff at elderly care centres have to be tested for Covid-19 before they are admitted. Meanwhile, two sources said there had been no meetings between the government and its task force of medical experts over the introduction on Wednesday of the latest social-distancing measures, which included the complete ban on restaurant dining that was later reversed. The last time they met was on July 11, although there had been communication via text messages since. The experts were not involved in the decisions on further tightening the measures since then, one source said. But the source added that the government would meet the experts again this week. By contrast, Beijings liaison office in Hong Kong had sat down with those experts at least twice in July to understand the latest epidemic situation and what support mainland China could offer Hong Kong, according to the sources. Professor David Hui Shu-cheong from Chinese University, one of the governments pandemic advisers, said they had reflected their opinions through the media, but added it was always better to express their views directly. It would only be through such meetings that there could be a real exchange of information and ideas, he added. Hui believed that the current coronavirus situation was still under control, as there were no geometric surges in cases. The public needed to allow time for the social-distancing measures to be effective, he added. Also on Thursday, Hong Kong recorded its sixth case of a pet testing positive for the coronavirus since February. A spokesman for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said the latest one involved a domestic short-haired cat living in Tai Kok Tsui with an owner confirmed as infected. The spokesman emphasised there was currently no evidence that pets played any role in the spread of the virus among humans as he warned owners never to abandon their animals. Additional reporting by Gary Cheung China's healthcare sector was one of the best-performing equity classes globally in the first half of 2020. Get a comprehensive industry review and insights on Covid-19 induced market shifts with the China Healthcare Report, brought to you by SCMP Research. Sign up for our 50% early bird discount now. You will also receive access to 6 closed-door webinars led by China healthcares most influential C-suite executives. Offer Valid until August 10th 2020. More from South China Morning Post: This article Hong Kong third wave: city confirms fresh daily high of 149 new Covid-19 cases, one more death first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020. Could a French telecoms billionaire be circling BT's Openreach arm? The mutter from the City gutter is that the secretive Patrick Drahi has set his sights on the division that maintains Britain's telephone lines and internet cables. Drahi, a powerful dealmaker, now resides in Switzerland but made his fortune in France building telecoms groups Altice. The rumour claims that one of the Altice companies Drahi controls perhaps Altice USA has secured financial backing from heavyweight bankers at JP Morgan with a view to paying 20billion for the unit. The mutter from the City is that the secretive Patrick Drahi has set his sights on Openreach Both Altice Europe and Altice USA insisted there was no truth in the speculation. But City gossips claim Drahi could even be weighing a hostile approach if BT isn't willing to negotiate. Drahi, though, may have competition for Openreach. In May, reports suggested that Australian investment bank Macquarie was interested in Openreach as was Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. This may all be music to investors' ears as earlier this year BT was forced to cut its dividend for the first time since 1984. BT last night declined to comment. Hastings Shares in car insurer Hastings revved up last week after it emerged its top shareholder, South Africa's Rand Merchant Holdings, had teamed up with Finnish insurer Sampo to make a takeover approach. The duo are yet to table a formal offer, which has added further importance to Hastings' first-half results on Wednesday. Scribblers at Peel Hunt have pencilled in a 58million pre-tax profit for the period, up by 26 per cent on last year, helped by lower claims as motorists drove less during lockdown. A strong set of results could help Hastings rebuff any potential offer or help it make a case for a decent price. Ibstock Investors in Britain's biggest brickmaker will discover how tough business was during lockdown when it reports results for the first half- year on Thursday. With work having ground to a halt at the height of the coronavirus outbreak, analysts expect a poor set of financial figures for Ibstock as a result. And the lockdown could even push the firm to a first-half loss, they reckon. The key for the share price will be how the company thinks business will fare over the coming months. Early signs of a robust recovery could lay the foundations for the share price to rebound. OKYO Pharma Keep an eye on stock market minnow OKYO Pharma in the coming days. The Mail on Sunday understands a well-respected healthcare executive is close to joining the company, which should help the group in its development of a blockbuster dry eye treatment. The talk is that OKYO Pharma's treatment could compete with the likes of Restasis, which is owned by drugs giant Allergan. Last week, the company raised 3.5million by issuing convertible loan notes. OKYO Pharma's shares closed at 14.75p after another strong week, but some reckon the shares can keep on climbing. CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt reported 321 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, the health ministry said, the lowest figure since May 3. In total, 94,078 COVID-19 cases have been reported in Egypt, of which 39,638 have recovered and 4,188 have died, including 31 on Friday, the ministry said in a statement late on Friday. Egypt reopened resorts to foreign tourists on July 1 after tourism came to a halt in March under measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak. But Egypt has not yet made it to a "safe list" of countries for resumption of non-essential travel to the European Union. Tourism accounts for 5% of Egypts economic output, according to the government. The figure rises to as much as 15% if jobs indirectly related to the sector are included, analysts say. (Reporting by Hesham Abdul Khalek and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Stephen Coates) The deal was announced on Tuesday. President Trump said the federal loan from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation would help reduce the United States reliance on other countries, in particular China and India, for the vast majority of ingredients used to make generic drugs. Mr. Trump called the Kodak deal a breakthrough in bringing pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the United States. Kodak said it was creating a new pharmaceuticals division and will expand its facilities in Rochester, N.Y., and St. Paul, Minn. The division will eventually have the capacity to produce as much as 25 percent of the active ingredients used in generic drugs in the United States. Kodak has been in the chemicals business for more than a century and has the facilities sitting there ready to go, Mr. Continenza said in a TV interview this week. Its unclear whether the ingredients that Kodak makes will have any role in the fight against the coronavirus. Kodak will coordinate with the federal government and other manufacturers to figure out which ingredients to make, prioritizing those that are deemed critical to Americans and national security. The day before the loan was announced, trading in Kodak shares surged, and its stock jumped about 25 percent, closing at $2.62 a share. That activity raised suspicion about improper trading ahead of the market-moving news, but The Wall Street Journal reported that it was apparently the result of reports by the media in Rochester, where Kodak is headquartered, about the pending announcement. Around the time that Kodak began talking with the federal government this spring, Kodak insiders began receiving stock options. The pattern was first reported by Non-GAAP Thoughts, a digital newsletter. On May 20, Kodak handed out 240,000 stock options to board members an addition to its usual equity distribution in January. The May stock options awarded to directors are now worth about $4 million. Those options are eligible to be exercised gradually over the course of this year. The 2020 national high school exam is scheduled to be held across the country on August 9 and 10. Candidates of the 2019 national high school exam. Da Nang City and Quang Nam Provinces administration yesterday asked the Ministry of Education to cancelthe upcoming 2020 national high school exam due to the complex developments of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 national high school exam is scheduled to be held across the country on August 9 and 10. As of yesterday, the number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus in Viet Nam has reached 546 after 85 new community transmissions were detected in a Nang City, while a 70-year-old man from the Quang Nam's Hoi An Town became the first death related to COVID-19 yesterday. Le Trung Chinh, deputy chairman of the city Peoples Committee, told an online meeting held yesterday by the education ministry with 63 provinces and cities nationwide to discuss preparation for the upcoming national high school exam that the citys education and training sector would determine whether a student qualifies for graduation based on their performance in high school. Chinh also asked the ministry and colleges and universities to create favourable conditions for local students when they applied for college or university entrance. Many universities use the results of the exam for selection of their new recruits so those who do not take the exam might be at a disadvantage. It is a hard decision for the local administration," he said. Although the city had prepared carefully for the upcoming high school exam, both parents and students were still worried about the health of the students while the pandemics developments became more complicated. Therefore, the cancellation was necessary "because of the students health and safety, he said. Also at the meeting, deputy chairman of the Peoples Committee of Quang Nam Province Tran Van Tan proposed three options to the ministry for consideration. First, the province would continue to monitor the situation of the pandemic until August 6. If the situation was under control, the province would hold the 2020 national high school exam as scheduled. Second, Tan proposed the ministry allow the province to hold the exam a month later. The third option was cancelling the exam and using the same model as a Nang to determine who graduates. Ngo Van Quy, deputy chairman of the Peoples Committee of Ha Noi, said although the capital was one of the localities with the highest number of candidates sitting the exam, preparations had been finished. However, Quy asked the Ministry of Health to issue more detailed instructions for disinfection, ensuring distance among candidates in the examination room, how to organise students moving in and out of the room to avoid cross-contamination as well as how to set up separate examination rooms for candidates who had directly contacted people positive for SARS-CoV-2. Duong Anh uc, deputy chairman of the Peoples Committee of HCM City, said he was very concerned about marking the tests, which would gather about 600 teachers in one place. It would violate the regulation of not gathering more than 30 people during the pandemic, so the ministries of health and education should give more specific instructions, he said. Ministries response Nguyen Huu o, deputy minister of Education and Training, said he would submit the proposals to the Government for consideration. Phung Xuan Nha, minister of Education and Training, said the ministry had worked with relevant ministries and sectors to carefully prepare for the exam. This is the first time Government inspectors had participated in supervising the exams implementation, he added. Nha said there was more than a week left, so every locality was told to closely monitor the pandemics developments to promptly issue necessary responses. For a Nang and Quang Nam, he ordered the localities to keep calm, closely monitor the pandemics development and prioritise students health and safety. Candidates nationwide are set to sit the exam on August 9 and 10. VNS August 5 polls: No international observers due to logistical issues View(s): Despite the Election Commission (EC) having invited them, the Parliamentary election next week will be the first major national poll in recent years to be held without international observers. EC Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya requested the Foreign Relations Ministry as recently as last month to facilitate the arrival of observer missions from the European Union (EU) and some Asian groups, authoritative sources said. However, the required logisticsparticularly the quarantine requests of the observerswere not in tandem with Government policy. In addition to it being difficult to arrange flights with the airport still closed, the EU observers had wanted to quarantine at the Colombo Hilton after arriving with a negative PCR test but were told it was not a designated hotel. There was no effort to practically address the logistical issues related to flights and quarantine, an official Sri Lankan source said. The EU group didnt want to stay in any quarantine centre meant for normal arrivals, so they werent limiting themselves to the Hilton. We could have offered another exclusive hotel as the EU bears the full cost of the observers. A foreign observation report would only have helped the Government, he continued, pointing to the mission statements after the November 2019 presidential election which concluded that the poll had been free and fair. It was not possible to facilitate the missions because of logistics, an EC spokesman said. Dont you know the airport is closed? he asked. How can we bring them in such a situation? We did invite them but they will not be coming now. Meanwhile, an EU spokesperson said they were invited and had even prepared to observe the upcoming legislative elections, as the EU did for the presidential election in 2019. However, the prevalent sanitary conditions and their impact made the deployment of a fully-fledged mission not feasible, he said. More specifically, travel restrictions and existing quarantine arrangements in place in Sri Lanka would not have allowed the EU to proceed to a deployment of full (European observer Mission) EOM (of around a 100 experts) complying with our duty of care for EU election observation experts. Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey said on Saturday that a team of Bihar Police, which went to Mumbai in connection with the probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, has not yet been able to "locate" the main accused Rhea Chakraborty. He said that Bihar Police is working on the basis of evidence and if needed, senior officers will also be sent from here to Mumbai. The Bihar DGP was speaking to reporters here on Saturday. He said that the team of Bihar Police probing in Mumbai has so far met friends, colleagues and relatives of the late actor and collected many important information from them. He said, "The four-member Bihar police team that went to Mumbai has recorded statements of Sushant's sister, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, his cook, his friends and colleagues. The team also went to the bank to collect information about transactions made from Sushant's bank accounts. Rhea Chakraborty, however, is yet to be located." On the question of the demand to get the matter investigated by the CBI, the DGP said, "Bihar Police is fully capable of investigating this case. If the family of Sushant would like the case to be investigated by the CBI, then it would be considered, but the Bihar Police would go to any extent to provide justice to Sushant. And I assure you that Bihar Police is fully capable of providing justice to his family for the peace of Sushant's soul." When asked about the allegation of going outside the jurisdiction to register a case in this matter, the DGP categorically stated that Sushant's father has himself registered the case in Patna, thereafter an investigation was launched. An accused in this case has also gone to the Supreme Court, he said adding "whatever the Supreme Court says will be followed. If the Bihar Police gets a chance to investigate the matter, the truth will be brought out." With regard to sending other officers to Mumbai, the DGP said if needed, a senior IPS level officer will also be sent to Mumbai so that he can meet his counterparts in Mumbai for better coordination. At present, the Bihar Police team in Mumbai is working hard and has met with some success. Sushant Singh Rajput, a resident of Patna and a well-known Bollywood actor, allegedly committed suicide at his Mumbai residence on June 14. Mumbai Police was investigating the matter. On July 25, Sushant's father K.K. Singh registered a case against Rhea Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, at Rajiv Nagar police station in Patna for abetting his son to commit suicide. After the case was registered, Bihar Police reached Mumbai and started investigating the case. Key Highlights A total of 22 companies have filed their application under the PLI Scheme Samsung, Foxconn Hon Hai, Rising Star, Wistron and Pegatron applied under International mobile phone manufacturing companies Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron are contract manufacturers for Apple iPhones Lava, Dixon Technologies, Bhagwati (Micromax), Padget Electronics, Sojo Manufacturing Services, and Optiemus Electronics have applied under Mobile Phone (Domestic Companies) Segment AT&S, Ascent Circuits, Visicon, Walsin, Sahasra, Vitesco, and Neolync applied under Specified Electronic Components Segment The Scheme is expected to lead to a total production of about Rs 11,50,000 crore, over the next 5 years Modi government's production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, announced on April 1 this year, has received an overwhelming response from both global as well as domestic mobile manufacturing companies and electronic component manufacturers. In a press conference, Union Minister for Electronics & IT, Communications, Law and Justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad, welcomed Apple, Samsung, Lava, and other domestic companies to manufacture mobile phones in India. "We would like to welcome the entire ecosystem of electronic manufacturing supply chain in India. India has got to offer - a good stable government, which is investment friendly, a popular leader of global stature- Prime Minister Narendra Modi - who stresses on ease of doing business, and India's extraordinary human resource, qualified engineers, good technicians, and good ecosystem globally. And most important, the last one, India offers a huge market by itself", said the minister. Over the next 5 years, the scheme is expected to lead to a total production of about Rs 11,50,000 crore. Also Read: Govt will give 5G spectrum for trials to all players: Ravi Shankar Prasad "A total of 22 companies have filed their applications under the PLI Scheme. The benchmark for international mobile phone manufacturing companies was to manufacture mobile phones worth Rs 15,000 and above, whereas there wasn't any such benchmark for the domestic companies. We welcome Apple and Samsung to India. Domestic companies - Lava, Micromax, Padget Electronics, Sojo - are welcome to go ahead," added the minister. International mobile phone manufacturing companies that have applied under the 'mobile phone' segment are Samsung, Foxconn Hon Hai, Rising Star, Wistron, and Pegatron. Out of these, three companies namely Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron, and Pegatron are contract manufacturers for Apple iPhones. Global companies have proposed a production of over Rs 9,00,000 crore. Apple (37 per cent) and Samsung (22 per cent) together account for nearly 60 per cent of global sales revenue of mobile phones and this scheme is expected to increase their manufacturing base manifold in the country. Also Read: Govt approves Rs 41,000 crore booster for mobile makers Indian companies including Lava, Dixon Technologies, Bhagwati (Micromax), Padget Electronics, Sojo Manufacturing Services, and Optiemus Electronics have applied under the 'mobile phone' (domestic companies) segment under this scheme. Domestic players are also expected to expand their manufacturing operations in a significant manner and grow into national champion companies in mobile phone production and have a proposed production of about Rs 2,00,000 crore. Under the 'specified electronic components' segment, 10 companies have filed applications and proposed production of over Rs 45,000 crore. Some of the names include AT&S, Ascent Circuits, Visicon, Walsin, Sahasra, Vitesco, and Neolync. "Please work to deepen the supply chain in India, both - of the electronic finished products and also the components", Prasad stated. The PLI scheme will not only help in meeting the domestic requirements but is also expected to promote exports from India. Out of the total production of Rs 11,50,000 crore in the next 5 years, more than 60 per cent will be contributed by exports of the order of Rs 7,00,000 crore. The scheme will bring additional investment in electronics manufacturing to the tune of Rs 11,000 crore. According to the government, this scheme will generate approximately 3 lakh direct employment opportunities in the next 5 years along with the creation of additional indirect employment of nearly 3 times the direct employment. Domestic value addition is expected to grow from the current 15-20 per cent to 35-40 per cent in case of mobile phones and 45-50 per cent for electronic components. There are probably more jokes about economists than there are economists themselves. The oldest is that if you bring ten economists together you will get eleven opinions. Which makes what is happening in this Covid-stricken world so remarkable. Economists actually agree with each other up to a point. They agree that we are facing a massive economic crisis. Some say we have to go back to 1825, when the Bank of England was a whisker away from collapsing, to find anything comparable. As the nation's workforce remains at home and our cities stay deserted, economists are actually agreeing with each other that we are facing a massive economic crisis Others say its even worse than that. But no one knows how much worse because these are still early days. At its heart an economy is pretty simple. Its about people working. If enough of us cannot work you have a crisis. The same applies if people choose not to work because theyre perfectly happy rubbing along as they have been for the past five months. And when one part of the vast economic machine ceases to work the resilience of the whole comes into question. Its obvious, they say, that we should get everyone working again as swiftly as possible. Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall and shattered into a thousand pieces. So its vital that we pick up those pieces and put him back together just as he was before that vicious little virus went on its rampage. And this is where, with all due humility, those of us who are not economists might raise a few pretty important questions. Economists tend to deal in abstractions of one sort or another. Its all about aggregates and absolute advantages and adaptive expectations which are, of course, very different from rational expectations. I could easily fill this page with their jargon. Or maybe a book. And I wouldnt understand a word of it. But there is one simple unquestioned assumption behind all this abstract modelling. We must get the economy back up to the size it was then keep making it bigger. There is, of course, one massive drawback with that approach. The more we produce the more we pollute. Slide me Deserted: The Square Mile stands empty (right) on a weekday afternoon with office workers staying away from their desks. The picture on the left shows how busy it used to be at a comparable time But lets put that aside for now and return to my rather simplistic image of Humpty Dumpty. In an absurdly sanitised version of the ancient nursery rhyme on CBBC (mustnt upset the kiddies must we?) all the Kings horses and all the Kings men actually made Humpty happy again. And, of course, its entirely possible that we can do the same. We can, perhaps, reverse the extraordinary process we set in train with the lockdown. We may once more gaze in awe at those towering goliaths of steel and glass with their vast multi-storey atriums and floor upon floor of open-plan offices furnished with row upon row of the one essential tool of modern economic life, the computer screen. British Airways Waterside headquarters near Heathrow Airport will remain empty as workers are expected to stay at home until next year This was the future once and maybe it will be again. After all, the towers are still standing as a mighty symbol of untold wealth for the few and prosperity for the many. But the streets at their base have become largely deserted. Human life there has fled. Birdsong can once again be heard, or would be if there was anyone to listen. The question is whether we should bend every sinew to reverse the process. There are already signs that big business is looking at its big buildings and seeing something different. John Lewis is the latest to reveal that its thinking of converting some of its big city stores into affordable housing. And you can bet that many a chief executive is wandering around his magnificent office suite with its panoramic views on the top floor, and wondering how much it would fetch if they spent a few quid turning it into a luxury penthouse. We already know that most office work can actually be done by the staff staying at home and curling up with their laptops. One firm after another Google, NatWest, Facebook, British Airways, KPMG and many more have announced that they have no plans to fill their city offices again at least until next year. And theyve dropped heavy hints that in many cases they may never do so. The Centre for Economics and Business Research has forecast that around a third of the workforce will stick to working at home, at least for the most part. So whereas last year it was estimated that about 1.7 million people worked mostly from home, soon it could be 10.7 million. So far, so obvious. But many economists and politicians are scared of the consequences. Alex Brummer summed it up brilliantly in these pages this week. The key word is interdependency. It might be fine for those financial workers to stay put in Godalming or wherever, but what about the developers who put their money into building those towers if theres no longer demand for their offices? With offices closed and staff working from home, Canary Wharf remained eerily quiet on Monday Canary Wharf is usually bustling during typical evening rush hours, with thousands working at the East London landmark Whats going to happen to the finances of public transport if no one needs the Tube and the buses and trains to get to work? Or the office security guards or the maintenance staff or the cleaners? And what about the little shops which rely entirely on office workers rushing out to grab a sandwich or drop something into the dry-cleaners, or get their shoes repaired or spend a quick hour in the gym? Or the pubs and restaurants? And what about our schools and hospitals and police and every other service thats paid for partly from the tax revenue that this frenzy of city life generates? All gone. Which is why Humpty Dumpty must be put back again, exactly as he was before. Or is it? This may well be a case of fear trumping common sense and, indeed, concealing a future that might be better. Economic change brings opportunities as well as casualties. Barclays CEO Jes Staley said he wanted staff back in offices because it is important to get people back together in physical concentrations Back in Godalming there will be a boom. Former city workers will still need all those services but they will go to their local shops for them. High streets will be reborn. People like security guards and cleaners who spent a chunk of their miserably low incomes commuting into the city at hideous hours of the day will find other ways to make a living in their revitalised towns. Its hard to think of a less productive use of time than spending two or three hours a day commuting. It has no merit. Allow me to steal a bit of economist jargon. Dynamic economies require creative destruction. If something does not work it must be allowed to die so that something better can take its place. Those who resist are Luddites. Of course its hard. Disruption is never easy. But change is better than keeping something going because fabulously rich companies or individuals have invested so much in it. The familiar can be the enemy of the new. As a native of South Wales I have seen the decline and fall of what was once one of the mightiest industries in the world. But Ive never met a mother who wanted her son to go down the pit. Shelleys famous poem Ozymandias tells of a traveller from an antique land who comes across the broken statue of the king of kings. Around it there is nothing left of a once-great empire. We might ask whether, as they saw the end coming, the subjects of Ozymandias worried about what was going to happen to the sandwich-makers and the shoe repairers. History, of course, does not relate. But were all still here, doing other things. So should we try to save the city by turning our back on what we have only now discovered? That a modern digital economy may not need, as we thought, the Towers of Mammon to survive. Or should we embrace change, even if it is disruptive, and abandon those towers as brash monuments of a world that once existed but does no more? How Books and Buckets program in Long Beach aims to keep kids away from gang violence Brussels (Belgium), 1 August 2020 (SPS) President of the European Coordination of Solidarity with the Sahrawi People (EUCOCO), Pierre Galland, has called on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to work to end armed conflicts by establishing serious negotiations and implementing treaties and conventions aimed at eliminating colonialism and illegal occupation, including in Western Sahara, in defence of the Sahrawi people's inalienable right to self-determination. Mr. Gallan reiterated EUCOCOs support for the United Nations on the occasion of its 75th anniversary, recalling the necessity of promoting the UN principles and charter and defending them, especially Article 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the occupied territory of Western Sahara. He also reminded the UN Secretary-General about the delay in the peace process in Western Sahara, stressing the urgent need to appoint a new envoy, to bring about serious negotiations leading to a final solution to this issue on the basis of ensuring the inalienable right of the Saharan people to self-determination, to end this suffering that lasted for more than 45 years. (SPS) 062/SPS/T Marching On U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who died July 17, was known as the conscience of the Congress. He was also the National Book Awardwinning author of the graphic memoir trilogy March, coauthored by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell. Like that series, Lewiss 1998 memoir, Walking with the Wind, recalled the civil rights icons activism; our starred review called the book a uniquely well-told testimony. In the week after the congressmans death, the 2015 edition of that title and the first volume of March, which pubbed in 2013, both saw a surge in sales. A Good Start Lindsay Ellis, a film critic and YouTuber with 988K subscribers, lands at #6 in hardcover fiction with her debut novel, Axioms End, a story of first contact with extraterrestrials. Lovers of character-focused sci-fi will find plenty to enjoy in this gripping alternate history, our review said. As with so many authors, Elliss tour has been virtual: she spoke with fellow SF author John Scalzi at an event hosted by the Strand in New York City on July 21, and on July 26, Bookshop Santa Cruz hosted a discussion with Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff. But Ellis recently had a close encounter of the IRL kind: she spotted her book on the shelf at her local B&N. Blow It All Up How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro is the #2 book in the country. American philosophy is under attack, he writes, by people on the political left whom he places within a tradition he terms disintegrationist. The philosophy of division is a philosophy of power politics, a philosophy that paints America as a mythical construct, instituted by those at the top of the hierarchy in order to reinforce their own control. In Twilight of Democracy, #11 in hardcover nonfiction, journalist Anne Applebaum sees a different threat. Responsible conservatism has drifted into bigotry, antidemocratic ideology, and revenge psychology, argues this deeply personal analysis of the populist right, our review said. This anguished and forceful jeremiad crystallizes right-of-center dismay at the betrayal of the conservative tradition. NEW & NOTABLE THE ANSWER IS... Alex Trebek #3 Hardcover Nonfiction, #4 overall The longtime Jeopardy host discusses his career, his personal life, and his cancer diagnosis, and devotes an entire chapter to his trademark mustache, which he famously shaved in 2001. THE PULL OF THE STARS Emma Donoghue #18 Hardcover Fiction Donoghues evocation of the 1918 flu, and the valor it demands of health-care workers, will stay with readers, our review said of this work of historical fiction, whose pub date was moved up a by year because of its resonance with the Covid-19 pandemic. Her blunt prose and detailed, painstakingly researched medical descriptions do full justice to the reality of the pandemic and the poverty that helps fuel it. She rose to fame in 2015 after she appeared in the Carl's Jr. Superbowl commercial for the chain's All Natural Burger. And Charlotte McKinney put the curves that put her on the map to work as she modeled a bikini for PrettyLittleThing on Friday. The 26-year-old bombshell wore only a seafoam green two piece swim suit as she posed near green trees. Model behavior: Charlotte McKinney put the curves that put her on the map to work as she modeled a bikini for PrettyLittleThing on Friday Her toned abs were on display in the triangle string bikini with matching low coverage bottoms that features string ties on the sides of her hips. Parted in the middle, her blonde hair was down in beachy curls framing her face as she pushed pieces out of her eyes. The Florida native had hey makeup done to in a full glam look, her eyes were full lined in black brining attention to the eye's light shade. She did a series of enticing poses, giving dramatic eyes at the camera, as she shot with photographer Timothy Buol. Colors of the sea: The 26-year-old bombshell wore only a seafoam green two piece swim suit as she posed near green trees The actress has been a frequent beach bum over the last few months and declared on social media that a day in the sand and sun is 'what every weekend looks like' these days. Recently, Charlotte spoke about her changing opinions around social media while putting her bikini body to work on the cover of the August issue of Hamptons Magazine. Charlotte stated that she grew up with Instagram when she used to just post modeling pictures, but now fans want so much more. 'They dont care just about pretty pictures - they want to see everything. What Im eating, what Im doing, me looking perfect and also me not looking perfect,' she said. Tied up: Her toned abs were on display in the triangle string bikini with matching low coverage bottoms that features string ties on the sides of her hips Beach waves: Parted in the middle, her blonde hair was down in beachy curls framing her face as she pushed pieces out of her eyes 'I am trying to adjust because now its not just about a pretty Instagram picture. Im trying to grow with how the internet is growing, which is kind of scary, and I definitely have trouble with it,' she added. She also opened up about life during the pandemic, explained that she's now looking more at the 'bigger picture.' 'Its really made me understand less is more, and that you dont need that much to be happy. Ive simplified my life over the last few months, and Ive taken this time to learn how grateful I am,' she added. Glam: The Florida native had hey makeup done to in a full glam look, her eyes were full lined in black brining attention to the eye's light shade Cover girl: Charlotte recently told Hamptons Magazine that she is struggling to adjust to the demands of Instagram and how much of her life her followers want to see McKinney added she is still doing her best to stay active and fit, turning her guest room into a 'hot yoga studio' and picking up a mini-trampoline for 'indoor cardio.' Charlotte starred in a 2015 Super Bowl XLIX Carl's Jr ad, which kicked off her successful model career. Aside from her work as a model, McKinney has starred in a number of films such as Baywatch, Flatliners and most recently Fantasy Island, with The Argument, starring Danny Pudi and Maggie Q coming soon. UPDATE: Shooter in mask dispute is wounded in gunfight with cops, police say A 35-year-old Slatington man is charged with attempted homicide and related counts after he fired gunshots at a clerk who told him he had to wear a mask in a Bethlehem Township cigar store, authorities report. The clerk was not wounded. Adam Michael Zaborowski.Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com Adam Michael Zaborowski entered Cigars International late Friday morning in the 4000 block of Nazareth Pike and the clerk told him of the mask requirement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, township police Chief Dan Pancoast said. During the escalating conversation, Zaborowski told the clerk that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolfs order does not require a mask be worn, Pancoast said. The clerk responded that it was store policy, Pancoast added. The clerk offered to deliver cigars to Zaborowski outside the store, but the man took two cigars and left without paying, Pancoast said. The clerk followed him to the parking lot to ask him to return to cigars, but Zaborowski pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and fired one shot in the air then two shots at the clerk, Pancoast said. Several store patrons were sitting outside smoking cigars as the shots were fired, but none was hit, Pancoast said. Bethlehem Township police investigate July 31, 2020, after an alleged mask-related shooting outside Cigars International in the 4000 block of Nazareth Pike.Mike Nester | lehighvalleylive.com contributor Zaborowski, who is believed to be armed and dangerous, drove a blue Dodge pickup with a Pennsylvania tag of ZLY6443 east on Brodhead Road, Pancoast said. Police Investigator Edward Fox III swore out an arrest warrant before a district judge on Friday afternoon charging Zaborowski with attempted homicide, aggravated assault (two counts), robbery (two counts), possession of a firearm when prohibited, firearms not to be carried without a license and recklessly endangering another person, court records state. Zaborowski spends time in Slatington, Allentown and Bethlehem, police said Friday night on Facebook. Pennsylvania requires masks in any indoor location accessible to the public, businesses included, as well as any outdoor space where distance cannot be maintained. The stores Bethlehem corporate headquarters did not return a phone message seeking comment. If anyone sees Zaborowski they should dial 911, police said. Anyone with additional information should call Fox at 610-419-9646 or email him at efox@bethlehemtwp.com. 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. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 17:42:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NAIROBI, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Jessica Andere, a trader in western Kenyan county of Kakamega was a happy businesswoman on Friday when she visited an open-air market for the first time in three months and sold clothes -- a business she has done for years. The resumption of trade at the market known as Malava and others in western Kenya followed the lifting of restrictions by the local county government, which had barred congregation at the facilities to curb the spread of COVID-19. "The market is full; people are back in business as we take precautions. They started over two weeks ago though for me it is the first time I am attending because I had to gather new stock," Andere said. For the three months that restrictions were in place, small scale traders that include those who run eateries, wholesale and retail shops and sell livestock, suffered as their sources of livelihoods were curtailed. Besides Kakamega, at least 15 other Kenyan counties had shut down their major markets in the COVID-19 fight. But business is brisk once again in the rural counties across Kenya, flourishing as the local governments lift restrictions to save livelihoods even as COVID-19 cases surge at an alarming level. Kenya's infections hit 20,636 on Friday after 723 more people tested positive for the disease, according to Cabinet Secretary for Health Mutahi Kagwe. In lifting the restrictions, the county governments are taking cue from the national government, which on July 7 lifted a partial lockdown that had restricted movement in and out of Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa. "Once I come to the market, I am assured of going back home with at least 1,000 shillings (about 10 U.S. dollars), which is better than nothing," said Andere, who visits various markets in the region every day of the week to sell clothes. As many other traders in rural areas who sell new and second-hand clothes and other items, she sources them from Nairobi, in particular the open-air Gikomba market and in Eastleigh, a commercial hub on the outskirts of the capital. The opening-up of the country has come as a major boost to the businesses in the rural areas as traders can source their wares from the capital unhindered. This reopening of markets in rural areas has spiral effects on other businesses that include hotels and eateries and motorbike taxis. Caroline Karimi, an avocado farmer in Murang'a County, said that with the selling points reopened in the region, market for the produce has increased, with traders visiting villages to collect the fruits. Ernest Manuyo, a business lecturer at Pioneer Institute in Nairobi, said that resumption of rural businesses would help protect livelihoods as the country battles COVID-19. "With no industries in rural areas, most residents rely on small businesses that include selling their agricultural produce at markets for survival. The markets are thus crucial. The county governments also collect revenues from the markets thus opening them is a huge boost to rural economies," said Manuyo. S cotland Yard thanked protesters in Brixton for a "largely peaceful" rally after only three people were arrested. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in south London for the seventh Afrikan Emancipation Day March. During the afternoon, a large crowd stopped traffic and forced motorists to turn around while marching on the A23 Brixton Road. It came after a coalition of groups including Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee, Rhodes Must Fall Oxford, and Extinction Rebellion warned they would block the road from Max Roach Park to Windrush Square and occupy the area for the day. Organisers planned to shut down a major road through the centre of Brixton in protest against a lack of action on the issue of reparations for slavery. On Friday Scotland Yard said that, while the majority of attendees would be congregating for a "family-friendly, socially distanced day of activities and learning", it was imposing an 8pm curfew and other restrictions on the event due to the road-block plans. Most protesters stuck to the curfew and after the event drew to a close, the force thanked attendees for their peaceful protesting. Recent rallies in the capital had turned violent with police arresting hundreds of demonstrators. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor in charge of the policing operation today said: The gatherings today have been largely peaceful and we thank our communities for working with us to ensure the voices of the community could be heard safely and done so responsibly to ensure the safety of all. Protests in Brixton on Afrikan Emancipation Day - In pictures 1 /13 Protests in Brixton on Afrikan Emancipation Day - In pictures Protesters gather in Windrush Square Wayne Chandai/Twitter A woman speaks to protesters supporting Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March PA A group of motorcyclists lead a march PA Protesters gather in Windrush Square Wayne Chandai/Twitter Protesters supporting Stop the Maangamizi Campaign PA Protesters supporting Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee during a protest in Windrush Square in Brixton PA PA PA Protesters gather in Windrush Square Wayne Chandai/Twitter Protesters gather in Windrush Square Wayne Chandai/Twitter Only three people people were detained on Saturday afternoon a man for affray, another man for assault on an emergency service worker and a woman for a racially aggravated assault. Crowds of people listened to music in Windrush Square where the event began watched speeches and observed a three-minute silence to mark the event, which is in its seventh year. Held on August 1, it marks the passing of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act, according to organisers. A coalition of groups were involved in the event on Saturday, including Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide, the Afrikan Emancipation Day reparations march committee and the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford campaigners. Protesters, floats with speakers and people on motorbikes spilled out onto Brixton Road shortly before 4pm and began to march to nearby Max Roach Park. Antoinette Harrison, who lives in nearby Clapham, praised the unity of the event as she marched with her cousin and cousins children. Protesters gathered in Windrush Square / PA On why she chose to join, the 38-year-old said: We are tired. And I was just saying, our parents have gone through, were going through this, and I dont want our next generation to. Its got to come to an end. She added: Whats lovely about it is theres such unity. Its not just the one race, like it was back in the day, now its whites, blacks, Hispanics everyone. Protesters gather in Windrush Square / Wayne Chandai/Twitter Asked if she had any concerns about Covid-19 while attending, Ms Harrison, who has been protesting since earlier in the summer, said: This is a pandemic racism and not having justice. A large number of Metropolitan Police officers observed the event, with some attempting to move demonstrators, many of whom were wearing masks, off the road and onto the pavement. Ahead of the demonstration, the force said blocking the road would cause serious disruption to Brixton and the surrounding area because it is used by hundreds of bus routes and thousands of motorists. A number of conditions were imposed on the demonstrations within areas such as Windrush Square and outside Brixton Police Station, stipulating that attendees must not spill into nearby roads and any event must finish by 8pm. The Metropolitan Police said that the time limit was set so that officers could separate those attending the demonstrations from people attending other gatherings or unlicensed music events. It also said that gatherings of more than 30 people will be in breach of the Health Protection (Coronavirus) Restrictions and its decision to impose conditions did not mean the assembly in breach of these regulations was authorised by police. It was a shame to see the Prime Minister split hairs on this point by shifting the onus back onto the Victorians for letting the virus into the community. The challenges of dealing with aged care are not unique to Australia, he told reporters on Wednesday. Indeed, in every country in the world where there is sustained community transmission, it is inevitable that this will find its way into aged care facilities. When it rains, everyone gets wet. And that is what we're seeing with broad-based community transmission in Victoria. Loading Morrison wont need to run a focus group of older voters to know that he sounded a little callous. He would remember, also, how quickly the public mood turned against him during the black summer of fires when he played pass-the-hose with the states. Every death in this pandemic is preventable if we are humble enough to learn from our own mistakes and be inspired by our neighbours. Taiwan, an island nation with a population comparable to ours, remains the gold standard. It has lost seven people in total to COVID-19, which translates to a death rate of 0.3 per million. Australia lost its first 100 people to the virus between March and June, with almost half coming from NSW. Victoria will have added 100 more to that toll by the time the final count for July is confirmed. Almost half that number will have come from nursing homes. By any measure, this is a scandal and the Royal Commission into Aged Care didnt pull any punches this week when it reminded both the federal and Victorian governments that every aspect of their responses to COVID-19 deserves to be investigated. But commission chairman Tony Pagone QC said his inquiry did not have the resources to do this at the moment. Our inquiries may reveal, as seems likely, that there needs to be a fuller and more forensic inquiry into the impact of COVID-19 in aged care, he said. Such an inquiry would need adequate time and resources extending beyond the time frame available to us. It will be for government to determine if such an inquiry is to be undertaken. Loading It is hard to imagine Morrison stonewalling this request. The question is whether he wants to use a broader inquiry to restore the role of government in aged care. The Commonwealth runs aged care on the Howard model of privatisation. It is the same model that applies in childcare, and it carries a certain political logic. The conservatives believe the private sector is more efficient at delivering services than government. But it cant trust the market to set a fair price for young families and older Australians, so it subsidises consumption of these privately run services through direct handouts to the voter, sorry customer. The great irony of the Victorian outbreak is that a Labor state adapted the Howard model by placing its faith in private contractors to manage the hotel quarantine of Australians returning from overseas. No other state, conservative or Labor, pulled this lever. The Victorian outbreak contains a further ideological twist. Victoria assumed it was the state most likely to protect multicultural communities from the virus, whether they were vulnerable workers or residents of public housing. Yet the best intentions of this socially progressive government were undermined by a curious lack of connection with the very people it champions. Loading The problem started with the public health message: it was too centred on Andrews and his chief medical officer, Brett Sutton. There is no doubt that the two are popular. Andrews and Sutton are the most earnest, most compassionate double team in the country. But what value are their briefings if the government doesnt back them up in each community, with messages tailored for each community? This isnt just about language. Health campaigns have to be delivered by ones peers, not betters, if they are to change behaviour. They need to be bottom-up, not top-down. Victoria has been slow to appreciate this simple rule of public health. Young Victorians are not fixated on their screens, soaking up every nuance of the Dan and Brett show. They are sharing conspiracy theories, and testing the boundaries of stage three lockdown. They are not alone in this, but they are one of the main carriers of the second wave. FLINT, MI -- The U.S. House of Representatives has passed an appropriations bill that includes $10 million for the Flint Registry, enough to keep the program for Flint water crisis victims running until the end of 2023. The bill to fund the program for those exposed to lead-contaminated water in Flint passed Friday, July 31, by a vote of 217-197 and now moves to the Senate for action, according to the office of U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, a Flint Township Democrat who introduced legislation last month that would have funded the program with $50 million to continue the registry through 2030. Because we are in this state of flux ... this gives us the breathing room we need between now and some time next year to get the full reauthorization for the 10-year period in place, Kildee said before Fridays vote. This gives us ... the certainty and the guarantee the funding is going to be there so that they can continue to operate what has become now a really important part of the public health infrastructure for Flint. An estimated total of 150,000 people qualify for health, educational, environmental and community service referrals through the program, and about 9,000 referrals have been made. The registry is for anyone who was exposed to lead-contaminated water in the city because they lived, worked, attended school or daycare between April 25, 2014, and October 15, 2015, at any address serviced by the Flint water system. Its helpful to be in the majority, Kildee said of the effort to secure the funding. What I had to do to get this done versus the backflips we had to go through in 2016 to get it authorized in the first place -- it makes a difference to be in the leadership and it makes a difference to be in the majority because we were able to get it done. Kildee is the chief deputy whip of the House Democratic Caucus and pushed for the initial $170 million assistance for Flint after the water crisis was recognized as a federal emergency in 2016. In addition to the registry, that funding also provided money for water infrastructure, home service line replacements and expanded access to health care in the city. Funding for the registry was set to expire in July 2021, and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha said it is imperative that the Senate also fund and support this critical public health infrastructure. I would like to thank Congressman Kildee for his leadership and the entire Michigan delegation for their continued bipartisan support of the Flint Registry, Hanna-Attisha, who leads the registry, said in a written statement. Every day, the registry is helping the people of Flint, not only recover from the water crisis, but also navigate our current public health crisis. Hanna-Attisha is the Flint pediatrician whose study of rising blood lead levels of Flint children helped end the use of the Flint River for drinking water after 17 months in 2014 and 2015. In addition to Kildee, U.S. Reps. John Moolenaar, Debbie Dingell, Fred Upton, Andy Levin, Bill Huizenga, Brenda Lawrence, Tim Walberg, Elissa Slotkin, Jack Bergman and Rashida Tlaib -- all of Michigan -- sponsored the registry funding legislation. The 10-year bill has been endorsed by organizations including the Greater Flint Health Coalition, the American Public Health Association, Earthjustice, Clean Water Action, Flint & Genesee Chamber of Commerce, the Genesee County Health Department, United Way of Genesee County and the Genesee County Medical Society. Kildee asks Congress for $50 million to continue Flint Registry for 10 years Residents exposed to Flint water during crisis urged to join new registry Kildee asks for $110 million for Flint schools, registry, water reconnections A group of doctors at Michigans Beaumont Health system are submitting a no-confidence petition on the eve of a possible merger with Chicago-Milwaukee-based Advocate Aurora Health system. The petition criticizes the companys focus on financial status over patient well-being and demands the removal of Beaumont CEO John Fox and Chief Medical Officer David Wood, Jr. The petition reads, Over the last five years, we the medical staff of Beaumont Health have seen a rapid and progressive deterioration in every aspect of patient care at Beaumont Health. We no longer have confidence in the administrations ability to provide a safe place for us to care for our patients. [Credit: Company website] In the petition against the merger, doctors cited recent pay cuts due to Beaumonts new compensation model, as well as a non-compete clause that would prevent them from quitting and joining another hospital in the area for one year. These doctors recognize what many studies have proven, the monopolization of health care worsens outcomes for patients and increases the exploitation of workers. Martin Gaynor, a Carnegie Mellon economist and author of several reviews on the subject, told the New York Times that evidence from three decades of hospital mergers does not support the claim that consolidation improves quality. In point of fact, the profit motivated health care conglomerates sacrifice real care for its surrogate Relative Value Unit (RVU), a measure of value used in the United States Medicare reimbursement formula for physician servicesoftentimes underestimated and almost never achievable in practical terms. As part of capitalisms incessant drive for profit and market share, health care mergers have ballooned in recent years, almost tripling in number between 2003 and 2017, hitting $533 billion in 2019. Ryan Buckley, partner at a mergers and acquisitions advisory firm in Chicago, cites unprecedented levels of liquid cash and investments at private equity firms (about $1.5 trillion) and the health care industrys higher returns on capital investment compared to other industries as the reason for this growth. Clearly, as unemployment and homelessness reach record levels, the financial oligarchy is sitting on unimaginable sums of money. They are using it to restructure the countrys health care system, not to increase the quality of life for the population but to extract more profits regardless of the consequences and oftentimes by overworking their staff of nurses and physicians. Beaumont is Michigans largest health care system with 38,000 employees, 8 hospitals, and 167 outpatient centers, bringing in $4.7 billion in annual revenue. It signed a non-binding letter of intent on June 17 with Advocate-Aurora to explore a merger of the two largest health care systems in the Midwest. CEO Fox joined Beaumont after the 2015 merger of Beaumont, Oakwood Healthcare and Botsford Hospital. He said the merger with Aurora is not due to financial concerns, pointing to the nonprofits favorable reviews from Wall Street. Moodys Investor services gave Beaumont an A1 rating in 2018, citing strong profitability margins. Advocate-Aurora Health is the product of a 2018 merger of Illinois-based Advocate Health Care and Wisconsin-based Aurora Health Care, creating the tenth largest non-profit health care system in the country. It has 74,000 employees working at 28 hospitals and over 500 outpatient facilities, making $12.8 billion in annual revenue. The merger fits in with Advocate and Auroras bold new strategy announced at the 2020 JPMorgan Healthcare conference to double revenues by 2025 and become a multimarket consolidator through mergers and acquisitions. Consolidation reduces health care access as less-profitable facilities that serve the rural and urban working class are closed. A 2014 study by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found nearly two-thirds of the roughly 230 hospitals opened since 2000 are in wealthier, often suburban, areas. In 52 major cities, the number of hospitals fell from its peak of 781 in 1970 to 426 in 2010, a drop of nearly 46 percent Most of the facilities closed were small to mid-size community hospitals in poor urban neighborhoods and public hospitals, leaving many low-income neighborhoods with no safety-net hospital. It was announced July 29 that Mercy Hospital in Chicagos working-class Bronzeville neighborhood will be closing after a merger with Advocates Trinity Hospital and two others fell through due to not receiving enough taxpayer funding. Since the hospital did not meet Advocates profitability requirements it was forced to close, and residents of the historically African-American neighborhood will have to travel outside their community for emergency care. 2019 saw a record number of rural hospital closures, with 119 closed since 2010. A study by Guidehouse consulting firm found about 81 percent of rural hospitals at financial risk of closing are considered highly essential to their communities. Under capitalism, the viability of a hospital is determined by its return on investment for Wall Street, not the health care needs of the population. While lower costs are cited as benefits of health care consolidation, those savings are not passed onto the consumer. A New York Times study of 25 metropolitan areas with the highest rate of consolidation saw that the price of an average hospital stay soared, with prices in most areas going up between 11 percent and 54 percent in the years afterward, according to researchers from the Nicholas C. Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley. With medical bankruptcies at record highs, massive profits are funneled to CEOs and Wall Street. Advocate Auroras CEO Jim Skogsbergh was the highest paid hospital CEO in Chicago, making $11.7 million in 2017. Beaumonts Jim Fox makes around $5.6 million annually. A survey of 82 not-for-profit hospitals by Forbes found a total of $297.5 million in cash compensation to top executives in 2017. The hospitals in this study spent $26.4 million lobbying the government for business-friendly legislation. Even while holding a reported $2.3 billion cash reserve, Beaumont spent 2019 outsourcing critical job functions and laying off employees in the middle of a pandemic to make its books more attractive for the merger. Seventy highly trained anesthesiologists, who risk their health performing intubations on COVID-19 patients, were told their jobs would be outsourced to Texas-based NorthStar Anesthesia, a company founded in 2004 by a private equity firm. In April, Beaumont announced they were selling their 500-employee ambulance division to an Illinois-based company and laying off 2,475 workers. Later, 1,360 were rehired to remain eligible for the $321 million in relief funding awarded through the federal CARES act. For its part, Advocate Aurora is sitting on a staggering $9 billion cash reserve. As part of their 2018 merger, rank-and-file employees lost their annual bonus. The Beaumont doctors are correct to protest the merger. But the demand for removal of this or that CEO will not change the fundamental drivers of the capitalist economic system. Nor will they find support from Democratic Party politicians. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessell is tasked with reviewing the merger and has issued perfunctory statements. Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and congresswomen Debbie Dingell and Rashida Talib, remain silent even as the hospital hemorrhages staff. The pandemic has exposed the irrationality of the for-profit health care system. Doctors, nurses and staff who heroically risk their lives every day are battling both the virus and hospital administrators, who force workers to take on impossible caseloads with inadequate PPE to save costs. Whistleblowers who expose dangerous conditions are fired. Record numbers of health care workers are being laid off, even as the 20 largest health care chains are sitting on $108 billion in cash reserves. The $175 billion in bailout funds, a fraction of the amount that went to Wall Street as part of the CARES Act, has done nothing to help these essential workers. Workers are not taking this lying down. Strikes and protests by health care workers are growing across the United States and have received significant support from the working class. This is the force that these workers should turn toward to wrench ownership the health care system away from the financial oligarchy, back into the hands of the population it is meant to serve. Enhanced unemployment benefits for more than 30 million Americans expired Friday after negotiations between congressional Democrats and the White House failed to produce any agreement on a new coronavirus relief bill. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., rejected four GOP offers, including a one-week extension of the supplemental $600-per-week federal jobless benefit. "The Democrats believe that they have all the cards on their side," Meadows said Friday at a White House news conference. "And they're willing to play those cards at the expense of those that are hurting." But Schumer and Pelosi contend the White House isn't grasping the seriousness of the crisis and signing onto a one-week extension of unemployment is worthless unless there's a deal on the horizon that addresses the broader needs of suffering Americans. "They want to do one small thing that wont solve the problem," Schumer said Thursday. "We don't have shared values," Pelosi added Friday at her news conference. Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who are negotiating on behalf of the White House, will resume talks with Schumer and Pelosi later Friday and potentially over the weekend. "We anticipate that we will have a bill," Pelosi said. "But we're not there yet." GOP PROPOSAL FOR $200 UNEMPLOYMENT AID WOULD MEAN BENEFIT CUT FOR 30M WORKERS On Thursday, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., proposed a vote on a one-week extension for the $600 payment. Congress passed the additional aid at the start of the pandemic to supplement state benefits, which on average pay about $330 a week. Schumer objected to the move, which he called a "stunt." An estimated 30 million Americans now will receive only their state benefits, if they still qualify for them. Democrats want to extend the federal supplement through January 2021. Republicans, however, proposed in their coronavirus package reducing the $600 payment to $200 until states can adopt a new approach that would cap the aid at 70 percent of the income workers received before they lost their jobs. Story continues Republicans have argued the expanded jobless benefits were so generous they prevented people from returning to work. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has sat out the talks between Congressional Democrats and the White House. The Kentucky Republican is stuck because his slim majority doesn't agree on what to do next and, consequently, lacks the votes to go forward without Democratic support. Instead, the GOP is daring Democrats to oppose an interim extension of just unemployment assistance next week at the $200 level. McConnell has also insisted on new protections for businesses against coronavirus lawsuits in a broader relief package, but the liability shield is not a must-have for the White House, the Washington Post reported. WHITE HOUSE ON WHETHER LIABILITY PROTECTION IS NEEDED IN COVID-19 DEAL: ASK MCCONNELL The White House wants to extend unemployment benefits and renew expiring provisions to protect renters from evictions, but certain Senate Republicans argue additional spending will drive the federal deficit too high. There are about 20 of my members who think we've already done enough and some who regret that we did what we did back in April and March," McConnell said in an interview with Fox News' Martha MacCallum earlier this week. "I do have about 20 members who feel that we've added enough to the national debt. MCCONNELL UNVEILS GOP'S $1T CORONAVIRUS STIMULUS FRAMEWORK Schumer and Pelosi, meanwhile, have so far rejected any piecemeal approach and want to hold out for an agreement on a larger deal they say is necessary to address the seriousness of the health crisis and economic downturn. Among their priorities: sweeping aid for state and local governments to help plug their revenue shortfalls, more food assistance to low-income families and enhanced funding for schools. The House passed a $3 trillion relief plan in May and has been waiting on Senate Republicans to respond. The GOP plan that McConnell unveiled this week, which the chamber hasn't voted on, costs about $1 trillion. Fox News' Chad Pergram and Fox Business Network's Megan Henney contributed to this report. Related Articles Dana Balter, a Syracuse Democrat, is running to represent the 24th Congressional District. Our state and local governments are facing serious fiscal crises right now because of the Covid-19 pandemic and we need support from the federal government. Without it, we will face severe cuts in everything from education to transportation to public safety to healthcare to social services. The editorial board of this paper made a compelling argument for that funding just a few days ago (Coronavirus decimated local government finances. Congress, send help, July 26, 2020). What the editorial failed to mention is that our federal representative, Rep. John Katko, in fact voted against the very aid we so desperately need. Congressman Katko is on a media blitz trying to make us believe that he is leading the effort for local government relief. This is simply not true. There are some important facts that the Congressman wont tell you because they are inconvenient to the narrative hes trying to spin. Fact: The House of Representatives passed the fourth coronavirus relief bill, called the HEROES Act, on May 15, 2020. This bill included $1 trillion in desperately needed relief for state and local governments. Almost $1 billion of that is slated for county and municipal governments in New Yorks 24th district. John Katko voted against the bill. Let me repeat John Katko voted against nearly a billion dollars in local government relief funds for our district. Fact: Over the next two years, the HEROES Act would provide $360 million for the city of Syracuse and $64 million for the city of Auburn. At the county level, Onondaga is set to receive $260 million, Oswego $66 million, Cayuga $43 million, and Wayne $50 million. So dont believe John Katko when he tells you hes leading the charge for local government relief; hes actually standing in the way. Fact: Local government funding isnt the only thing the Congressman voted against in that bill. He voted against $35 billion in aid for New York state which would prevent the across-the-board budget cuts were facing. He voted against $200 billion in hazard pay to frontline workers who have been putting themselves at risk to keep our communities moving. He voted against another round of $1,200 direct relief payments to individuals. He voted against extending student loan debt relief. He voted against homeowners and renters assistance to keep people from losing their homes. And he voted against extending the $600 federal unemployment benefit (which expires this week) through January 2021. We see this pattern over and over again with John Katko. He says one thing and does another. He voted to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, putting coverage for people with pre-existing conditions at risk. Then he claims to support protections for people with pre-existing conditions. He voted for a tax bill that incentivizes off-shoring jobs. Then he claims he supports tax policy that brings jobs to Central New York. He voted against a $1.5 trillion infrastructure package. Then he claims to be fighting for funding for local infrastructure projects. He voted against a billion dollars in local government relief. Then he claims hes leading the effort on bringing local government relief. The people of Central and Western New York deserve a representative who works in good faith and is honest with them about what theyre doing. John Katko has been playing these games with our lives and livelihoods for too long. Its time for him to go. See also: Katko, Balter reject Trumps idea to delay election, see no sign of voter fraud An experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson protected monkeys from infection in a new study. It is the second vaccine candidate to show promising results in monkeys this week. The company recently began a clinical trial in Europe and the United States to test its vaccine in people. It is one of more than 30 human trials for coronavirus vaccines underway across the world. But until these trials are complete which will probably take several months the monkey data offers the best clues to whether the vaccines will work. This week has been good now we have two vaccines that work in monkeys, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the studies. Its nice to be upbeat for a change. Follow live updates on the coronavirus here But she cautioned that the new results shouldnt be used to rush large-scale trials in humans. We just cant take shortcuts, she said. Unlike many other vaccines in development that might require two injections, the Johnson & Johnson candidate shielded the monkeys with just one dose, according to a study published on Thursday in Nature. Covid-19 Pandemic Tracker: 15 countries with the highest number of coronavirus cases, deaths Its a very reassuring level of protection we saw, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a co-author of the new study. The study comes just two days after a similar one was published on a vaccine tested by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health. But the two vaccines work in very different ways. The Moderna vaccine delivers a kind of genetic material called messenger RNA into cells. For latest updates on Coronavirus outbreak, click here The cells use the vaccine RNA to produce a protein found on the surface of the coronavirus, called spike protein, which then hopefully prompts an immune response. RNA-based vaccines are being tested for a number of diseases, but none have yet been licensed for use in people. In the Moderna study, researchers vaccinated monkeys by giving them two shots spaced over four weeks. A month later, they infected the animals with the coronavirus. In some of the vaccinated monkeys, researchers could not detect the virus in the nose or lungs. In others, the virus replicated slowly before disappearing. Moderna began Phase 3 trials of its mRNA vaccine on Monday, as did Pfizer, which is testing its own mRNA vaccine. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, in contrast, is based on a virus called Ad26, which researchers have modified so that it carries the coronavirus spike protein gene. The Ad26 virus can slip into human cells, but cannot replicate once inside them. Its host cell then uses the spike gene to make the coronavirus proteins. This month, European regulators approved Johnson & Johnsons Ad26 vaccine for Ebola. It was the first time this kind of virus-assisted gene delivery was approved for any disease. Coronavirus vaccine news live updates In March, Barouch and his colleagues designed seven variants of an Ad26 vaccine for the coronavirus. They made tiny changes to the spike gene to see whether they could get cells to make more copies of the viral protein. They also tested variants that would make the spike protein more stable, which might prompt a stronger immune response. Based on earlier research, Barouch and his colleagues suspected that the Ad26 vaccine would be very potent. They decided to run their experiment using just one dose, to see whether that was enough to provide immunity. After a single injection of the vaccine, they waited six weeks and then infected the animals with the coronavirus. Six of the seven vaccine variants offered monkeys partial protection against the coronavirus, meaning that the virus replicated only at low levels in the animals. The seventh version proved more powerful than the rest: Five out of six monkeys that received it had no detectable viruses at all. The sixth had only low levels in its nose. The fact that we could protect with a single shot in animal models was quite a positive surprise to us, said Dr. Paul Stoffels, the chief scientific officer of Johnson & Johnson. It was this best-performing vaccine that Johnson & Johnson used last week to begin its first human safety trial, a so-called Phase 1 trial. If it goes well, the company hopes by September to enter Phase 3 trials, which test not only whether the vaccine is safe, but also whether it works. The company plans on testing both single and double doses. Rasmussen said that a vaccine that proved effective with a single dose would make it far easier to treat the billions of people who need it. Theoretically, you would need less of it, so you give it to more people more quickly, she said. AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have developed a vaccine based on yet another type of modified virus, called ChAdOx1. In May, they posted promising results in monkeys, and now they are running Phase 3 trials in people. They may get results by October. Its exciting to see the number of platforms that are showing promise for a vaccine, said Stacey L. Schultz-Cherry, a virologist at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, who was not involved in any of the trials. A star from classic Australian film The Castle is locked in bitter battle with development giants over his family farm. Stephen Curry, who played Dale Kerrigan in the 1997 hit movie, is fighting to save his property in western Victoria from 85-metre-tall powerlines. 'I think if The Castle taught us anything it is standing up for ourselves but it is a one-sided battle... that doesn't mean it's a battle that's not worth waging,' he told A Current Affair. Stephen Curry (pictured), who played Dale Kerrigan in 1997 hit movie The Castle, is fighting to save his family farm in Western Victoria from 85-metre-tall powerlines Curry (pictured right in The Castle) said the farm 'means everything' to him and his family Curry said the farm 'means everything' to him and has been in the family since 1962. 'A man's farm is his future and I think if this project was to go ahead the way they want it, that future is in serious doubt,' he explained. Energy company AusNet is planning to build almost 200 kilometres of powerlines through properties from far western Melbourne to a wind farm in Bulgana. Although the exact route has not yet been determined, the proposed area cuts through hundreds of farming properties and local bushland. 'It strikes me as pretty ironic that in the name of finding renewable energy and sustainability we're prepared to knock down entire spades of forests,' Mr Curry said. Another furious farmer from Myrniong, 72km northwest of Melbourne, used his tractor to dig a rude message into a paddock in protest against the power lines. Peter Muir said the 500-kilovolt transmission lines would ruin his property and pose a danger to the local community. Energy company AusNet are planning to build transmission lines from Melbourne to Bulgana that may intersect through hundreds of properties (Curry's family farm pictured) The 500-kilovolt powerlines (pictured) will run dangerously close to state bushland Mr Muir showed his contempt for the 500-kilovolt transmission lines by carving the very blunt message 'P**s off AusNet' into a large green field. Mr Muir said the high voltage powerlines could be built on properties without the consent of the owners. 'They can when they say it is an essential service, so they just push through regardless of whether you want them there or not,' he told 3AW. Rural Victorian farmer Peter Muir used his tractor to carve a blunt message into a paddock (pictured) in protest of the 85-metre-tall powerlines being built on his property The farmer said the powerlines could potentially intersect on his 800 acre property and cause him to cease farming for 18 months. Mr Muir also voiced his concern over the powerlines reaching the Wombat State Forest and posing a fire hazard. 'It's very hard for firefighters to get there to put it out, no Country Fire Association crew is going to put their crew underneath one of the power lines too because they're an ignition point. 'It's not just the cost to me, it's the cost to the whole community, these ignition points will stop people from getting out of the bush or stop people getting in the bush during a fire,' he explained. AusNet's proposed high voltage powerlines will potentially stretch through almost 200km worth of properties in western Victoria (pictured) The farmer was told AusNet would turn the powerlines off in the event of a fire but was concerned they may not be shut off in time. Mr Muir claimed AusNet refused to consider underground powerlines because the venture was 'too costly'. 'The whole idea is so ridiculous that you can't believe anybody would think of it,' he said. An AusNet spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the company was still investigating a broad area and no exact route for the transmission lines had been decided. 'We absolutely understand that people in this area are concerned. We want to hear from local people about the potential impact on their land and their businesses. 'We've contacted many local landholders directly, including the Muir family, so that we can hear their point of view and we encourage all landholders to talk to us directly about their concerns. 'We're right at the start of this five year project and we will be consulting with the community at every stage,' the spokesperson said. Glock pistol and ammunition seized by Gardai in Dublin (Garda Press Office/PA) Gardai in Dublin have seized a Glock pistol and 12 rounds of ammunition after they stopped and searched a car in Clondalkin. The car was stopped on the Neilstown Road at 7.20pm on Friday night. A Glock Pistol and 12 rounds of ammunition were seized after Gardai stopped a vehicle and searched a male passenger last night on the Neilstown Road, Clondalkin. A man in his 20s was arrested and is currently detained at Ronanstown Garda Station. pic.twitter.com/mYD7eGzaio Garda Info (@gardainfo) August 1, 2020 They searched a bag in the car and found a Glock pistol and 12 rounds of ammunition. A man is his early 20s was arrested at the scene and is being held at Ronanstown Garda Station. The gun and ammunition have been sent for analysis to the Garda Ballistics Unit. As infection rates ticked and then soared upward over the summer, politicians, scientists, teachers unions, parents and school administrators went to war over whether and how to reopen school buildings. The science is inconclusive: Although many children do not appear to become seriously ill or die of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, it is unclear how easily they spread it. Grass Valley, California--(Newsfile Corp. - July 31, 2020) - - Rise Gold Corp. (CSE: RISE) (OTCQX: RYES) (the "Corporation") provides a correction to the previous news release today regarding the results of the Corporation's Annual General Meeting. The Corporation announces that the increase to the authorized number of shares of common stock of the Corporation was not legally affected at today's Annual General Meeting. Although 90% of shareholder votes approved this amendment to the articles only 39% of the Corporation's shareholders participated in the annual general meeting. Under Nevada State law, in order to approve an amendment to the authorized number of common shares, a majority of the shareholders must approve the measure. All other proposed resolutions at the Annual General Meeting were passed. The Corporation will convene a special meeting as soon as possible to revote on this item. In order to accommodate the lack of authorized capital to facilitate the closing of the US$3,300,000 financing previously announced on July 22, 2020, the Corporation's President & CEO, Benjamin Mossman, has agreed to surrender 1,097,298 stock options priced between C$0.70 and C$2.40 per share (average price of C$1.25). About Rise Gold Corp. Rise Gold is an exploration-stage mining company incorporated in Nevada, USA. The Corporation's principal asset is the historic past-producing Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine located in Nevada County, California, USA. The Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine produced 2,414,000 oz of gold at an average mill head grade of 17 gpt gold from 1866-1955. Historic production at the Idaho-Maryland Mine is disclosed in the Technical Report on the Idaho-Maryland Project dated June 1st, 2017 and available on www.sedar.com. On behalf of the Board of Directors: Benjamin Mossman President, CEO and Director Rise Gold Corp. For further information, please contact: RISE GOLD CORP. 333 Crown Point Circle, Suite 215 Grass Valley, CA, USA 95945 T: 530.433.0188 info@risegoldcorp.com www.risegoldcorp.com Story continues The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently 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. Although the Corporation believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitation, the impact of the COVID-19 virus and amendments to reporting and other applicable requirements as a result thereof, obtaining all necessary approvals, meeting expenditure and financing requirements, compliance with environmental regulations, title matters, operating hazards, metal prices, political and economic factors, competitive factors, general economic conditions, relationships with vendors and strategic partners, governmental regulation and supervision, seasonality, technological change, industry practices, and one-time events that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information contained in this release. Rise undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/60926 SLFP returnees smeared in sewage: Basil proposes political distancing View(s): Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) National Organiser Basil Rajapaksa this week made it clear that those who left them during the Yahapalana government would be welcomed back, but they need to maintain the distance. He clearly meant political distancing, and not social distancing. He was referring to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) members who had returned to contest on the SLPP ticket. Mr Rajapaksa was trying to explain to his supporters how the returnees should be treated. It has been no secret that some of the SLFP members contesting on the SLPP ticket have been snubbed at political rallies. Some people left us saying that there was some cow dung in our milk container and jumped into a sewage tank. Now they have climbed out of the tank and returned to us. When they come back, we must accept them, but we should not embrace them. We all know what would happen if we embrace a person who is smeared in sewage, Mr Rajapaksa told his supporters during a meeting. He said they would definitely welcome them back out of compassion. However, Mr Rajapaksa pointed out that to work together they must first need to purify those who were smeared in sewage.That seemed a stinging attack on SLFPers who are contesting under the SLPP banner, one of whom is former President Maithripala Sirisena. Sniping between the two have been going on for some time, and just last week the SLFP office bearers threatened legal action against SLPP members who attacked them from political platforms. Clearly, SLPP National Organiser Basil Rajapaksa has been under pressure from SLPP candidates who are engaged in the manapey porey (fight for the preference vote) often called the balu porey (dog fight) with SLFP candidates contesting from the same list in the districts. Questions over Central Cultural Fund document and allocation of Rs. 11bn A document has now surfaced where the Central Cultural Funds (CCF) Governing Council reportedly gave approval to release funds of the CCF for projects approved by former Minister Sajith Premadasa during his tenure of office. The document contains a date just a day ahead of the Presidential elections held on November 16 last year. It has now been revealed that no such meeting was held on the date mentioned in the document. The document contains only eight signatures of the 11 member Governing Council and importantly does not have the signature of the Councils then Chairman former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. It is also minus the signatures of former members of the council Akila Viraj Kariyawasam and the former PMs Secretary Saman Ekanayake. Among others who have signed the document are former Ministers Sajith Premadasa, Mangala Samaraweera, Mano Ganeshan and John Amaratunga. According to Council members the last meeting of the Governing Council was held as far back as March 05, 2018. Therefore, questions are being raised as to how the document came about when no such meeting was held. A report compiled subsequently had revealed that as much as Rs 11 billion had been withdrawn from the CCF funds without approval. The money had been spent during the election period. Some of it was spent on religious programmes and construction of buildings for religious schools. Presidential Media Unit: The picture of double standards On Thursday, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa attended campaign meetings in the Gampaha district in support of SLPP candidates contesting the 2020 parliamentary election. One of these meetings was organised by former Minister and SLPP candidate Prasanna Ranatunga at the Udugampola Sathi Pola (weekly market) premises. A Sunday Times team on election coverage was also in the district at the time. Our photojournalist, who had the official Media Identity Card issued by the Government Information Department, tried to enter the Sathi Pola venue to take some photographs of the event attended by the President. He was curtly informed that only photographers from the Presidential Media Unit (PMU) were authorised to cover the event from inside the venue. Just as he turned to leave, however, another photographer who claimed to be the official photographer for a local mayor was promptly granted entry to the venue. This begs the question, are personal photographers in the pay of SLPP mayors now recognised as members of the PMU? Bribery probe on two Kandy cops Police have opened an investigation against two Kandy policemen who reportedly obtained Rs 300,000 from an area businessman to expedite forensic reports needed to obtain bail for his son. The businessmans son was arrested by the Kandy Police District Anti-Corruption Unit and remanded. It is alleged that the police officers had demanded money to get the forensic report needed to get bail expedited. As the person is remanded for several months, the family members tried to obtain bail but had failed due to the delay in the report. Two police officers had wanted Rs 500,000 to get the reports, but eventually had agreed to obtain them for Rs 300,000. After making the payment and with no response for several months the businessman decided to complain to the police. The Kandy Police crime branch is conducting the investigation into the complaint. Wigneswaran declares assets, but questions on foreign currency in accounts The Northern Provinces former Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran has come out to declare his assets. He issued a statement giving details of his assets to show how transparent he was He declared that his local bank accounts had Rs 4.4 million while he also has 9,618 British Pounds and 1210 US Dollars in his accounts. Retired Justice Wigneswaran also said he had a plot of land in Sandilipay, Jaffna and he had gifted his Colombo 7 house to his daughter as dowry, but had life interest in it. He explained that the money in his savings was from the pension he got as a retired Supreme court judge and the salary he got as Chief Minister. There was no explanation to the foreign currency in his accounts. He is the first northern candidate who issued a media statement about his assets. A blast from the past Political party candidates are all out to promote themselves ahead of Wednesday s elections. Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka uses the vehicle in which he was caught in a suicide bomb attack at the Army Headquarters in Colombo in 2006. The vehicle that was badly damaged in the explosion is kept on display at the locations where Field Marshal Fonseka campaigns. A photograph showing the former Army commander injured is also on display along with a dummy of the woman suicide bomber. Pic by Deepa Adhikari Cat and drugs game out of the bag Guards at the Welikada Magazine Prisons, yesterday detected a cat with 1.7 grams of heroin, two SIM cards and a memory chip tied around its neck, officials said. The cat had been sent from outside the prisons into the prisons when the prison guards detected the animal. They noticed a small parcel tied around its neck. Yesterdays detection was the fourth foiled attempt to smuggle drugs, phones, SIM cards and tobacco into various prisons in the past two weeks. ACJU president Rizwe Mufti receiving the donation from a Chinese embassy official China makes donation for Muslims China has made a donation to the Colombo based All Ceylon Jamiathul Ulema (ACJU). The Chinese Embassys website has posted a picture of an official there handing over a document to an the ACJU President Rizwe Mufti. Food deliveries for Tucson hospitals, nursing homes and schools could be disrupted if union delivery and warehouse workers for distribution giant US Foods in Arizona go on strike to protest the companys COVID-19 safety practices. Phoenix-based Teamsters Local 104 voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday, July 29, to authorize a strike amid prolonged negotiations on a new contract with US Foods. The union says contract talks set for Aug. 10 may be the last chance for a settlement. The union, which represents about 220 US Foods workers in Arizona, says the company has failed to comply with the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions COVID-19 safety guidelines, including contact tracing of probable COVID-19 patients, disinfecting and cleaning work spaces and pre-screening employees temperatures before individuals enter the facility. In one recent incident, the union says, the Illinois-based company allowed a supervisor to enter a US Foods facility warehouse, even though the supervisor showed signs of fever and had recently been in close contact with a probable COVID-19 patient. We are concerned that the companys refusal to follow CDC COVID-19 guidelines could turn the companys Arizona operations into a hub for spreading the virus to struggling schools, hospitals and restaurants, said Frank Solis, a member and union steward for Local 104 who works at US Foods. US Foods said in a prepared statement that the company follows all COVID-19 safety guidance from the CDC and other public-health agencies. MIDDLETOWN Two female photographers have made it their mission to highlight the strengths and personalities of female entrepreneurs, as well as their undiscovered natural beauty. Brenda Tate, who runs Brenda Tate Portraits, and Leigha Chhay, owner of Rhymes With Sky Photography, a nod to the pronunciation of her surname, share space on an upper floor in the Pythian Building at 360 Main St., a former hotel built in 1873. The majority of the businesses there are owned by women. A green-and-black marble art deco facade was added to the building in 1938. Chhay already was in the space, and offered Tate, who specializes in beauty, glamour and branding photos, the chance to move her business to the facility in 2019. She became a professional photographer in 2010. Tate was Chhays assistant for three years, shooting images for Chhay when she was booked with other jobs at her wide-open studio, in a 147-year-old building downtown. Chhay lived in the Pythian when she first relocated from North Carolina, said Tate, who formerly operated her business in Watertown. When she first showed it to me, the wow factor was over the top with the windows, Tate said. I love back-lit images, I love natural light. I fell in love with it. Its such a wide-open, airy space for lots of different portraits. After serving in the Army and being a teacher, Chhay made a career change to pursue her artistic vision. The studio was a rare find, she said. She started taking boudoir photos after she realized her female clients were looking for gifts for their spouses or themselves. Seeing women see themselves the way I see them, for how strong and beautiful they are, its life-changing for me and the clients. Women, being so busy, often place their appearance low on their list of priorities, she said. Everyone should be able to be herself in that way. Day in and day out, we run around. We dont always have time to take care of ourselves or appreciate the bodies were walking around in, said Chhay, a mother of three. I really enjoyed connecting with other women in business, and I aspire to continue doing that, said Tate, who aims to convey their openness and friendliness. Shes discovered women are comfortable with putting up a selfie or image on social media, but it could be so much more. During the COVID pandemic, people are missing the face-to-face conversations they once enjoyed, Tate said. I want that person to shine through in an image that shows what clients are seeing. Often, women dont realize that sometimes a softer, more personable image also conveys professionalism, she said. I want to give to women whatever my abilities can do for them. Consultations include clients choosing five outfits to pose in. Tate supplies hair and makeup services as needed. Chhay sees her job as putting these women at ease in a low-stress atmosphere. Theres a lot of laughing. Sometimes women will bring a friend with them to share the experience, she said. Within the first few frames, I turn the camera around and show them the back, and they cant believe thats them, said Chhay, who takes pride in revealing womens true gifts. All bodies are beautiful, and it just takes the right eye to show off that beauty, she said. To observe social distancing guidelines during the pandemic, Tate will set up an appointment with her clients, and uses a long-zoom lens. Once photos are processed, they review the images together by phone or on a Zoom call. The studio is also sanitized as needed, and all COVID-related safety measures are followed. My relationship with my clients typically begins when they hire me for their wedding, and grows to include their major life events, from maternity photos to newborn sessions to family portraits, said Chhay, who specializes in boudoir photography, which she said is an incredible tool to build a body positive image. I love to see how empowered women feel when they take that cautious step beyond any insecurities to allow themselves to see the strength and beauty within themselves, Chhay said. With the daily grind of modern society, and the constant bombardment of heavily retouched advertisements telling us how we should look, it is so important for women to take time for self-care and reflection. Chhay said she believes everybody is strong and beautiful in their own way. Our bodies tell the story of our lives, and show the strength of our personal journeys what could be more beautiful than that? For information, visit Brenda Tate Portraits on Facebook, rhymeswithsky.com and the Rhymes With Sky Boudoir Facebook page. Iran said Saturday it has arrested the head of a US-based "terrorist group" accused of being behind a deadly 2008 bombing in the southern city of Shiraz and of other, abortive attacks. "Jamshid Sharmahd, who was leading armed and sabotage operations inside Iran, is now in the powerful hands" of Iran's security forces, state television said, citing an intelligence ministry statement. It did not elaborate on where or when the leader of the opposition royalist group known as the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar (Farsi for Thunder), was detained. Iran slammed its arch enemy the United States for hosting Sharmahd and "supporting known terrorists who have claimed responsiblity for several terrorist acts inside" the country. "This regime must answer for its support of this terrorist group and other groups and criminals who orchestrate armed, sabotage and terrorist operations against the people of Iran from inside America and spill Iranians' blood," a foreign ministry statement said. The intelligence ministry said Sharmahd had orchestrated the April 12, 2008 bombing in a packed mosque in Shiraz that killed 14 people and wounded 215. Iran hanged three men convicted of the bombing in 2009, saying they had ties to the monarchist group. Mosque Bombing It said they had been taking orders from an Iranian US-backed "CIA agent" identified at the time only as "Jamshid" to try to assassinate a high-ranking official in Iran. They were 21-year-old Mohsen Eslamian and Ali Asghar Pashtar, 20 -- both university students -- as well as Rouzbeh Yahyazadeh, 32. The three were found guilty of being "mohareb" (enemies of God) and "corruption on earth" by a revolutionary court in Tehran. Iran hanged two other convicted members of the group in 2010, who had "confessed to obtaining explosives and planning to assassinate officials". The statement issued on Saturday said that Tondar had plotted several other "big operations" which failed. It said that Tondar had planned to blow up a dam in Shiraz, use "cyanide bombs" at a Tehran book fair, and plant an explosive device at the mausoleum of the Islamic republic's founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. 'Complicated Operation' It was not clear how Iran arrested Sharmahd, who has generally been based in the US, in what its intelligence ministry called a "complicated operation". According to the association's website, Sharmahd was born in Tehran in 1955 and grew up in an Iranian-German family before moving to the United States in 2003, where he started to voice anti-Islam and Islamic republic statements. Tondar rejects the Iranian political system and campaigns to overthrow the Islamic republic and re-establish a monarchy similar to that of Cyrus the Great. Iran announced the arrest of a former opposition figure in similarly mysterious circumstances in October last year. It said Ruhollah Zam was arrested in a "sophisticated and professional operation". Zam, described by Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a "counter-revolutionary" who was "directed by France's intelligence service", was sentenced to death in June over "corruption on earth". Zam, who reportedly lived in exile in Paris, ran a channel on the Telegram messaging application called Amadnews and was accused of sparking unrest during anti-government protests in 2017-18. The Islamic republic also captured the head of a Sunni rebel group in a dramatic operation in 2010 and executed him in the same year, boasting of its reach in capturing adversarial figures. Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested while on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan, when Iranian warplanes forced the plane he was travelling on to land in Iran. The rebel group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) had waged a deadly insurgency in Shia Iran's southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan for a decade before it was severely weakened by Rigi's execution. Search Keywords: Short link: The Marine Corps will inspect its entire fleet of amphibious assault vehicles after one took on water during a training mishap, leaving one dead, two in critical condition and eight missing. Search and rescue efforts continue off the coast of California to locate seven Marines and a sailor whose AAV sank during a Thursday training exercise. The troops, assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were training near San Clemente Island, northwest of San Diego, when their vehicle began filling with water. Read Next: Marine Corps Plan to Ditch Tanks Could Burden the Army, Experts Say "I've directed an immediate suspension of amphibious assault vehicle water operations until the causal factors of this mishap are better understood," Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger said during a Friday press conference from Camp Pendleton in California. "All AAVs across the fleet will be inspected." Three AAVs and a rescue boat were in the water Thursday night conducting amphibious training between 1,000 and 2,000 yards from San Clemente Island, Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman, commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force, said during the press conference. An amphibious assault vehicle drives onto the beach during an amphibious raid aboard Capu Midia, Romania, August 3, 2011 (U.S. Marine Corps/Cpl. Dwight A. Henderson) When one of the AAVs began taking on water on its way back to the ship, Osterman said the troops aboard signaled the rest of the unit and immediate response was provided by the rescue boat and two other vehicles. Eight Marines were rescued, but one later died from his injuries. The Marine Corps has not released his identity, pending 24 hours of family notification. Two other Marines who made it out of the vehicle are undergoing treatment at Scripps Memorial Hospital and the other five have returned to their ship. "We are still continuing search operations ... for the other seven Marines and sailor who we have not yet found," Osterman said. Marines in the other AAVs watched the vehicle sink, and because of its 26-ton weight, Osterman said they suspect it sank to the bottom of the ocean. The area where the mishap occurred is several hundred feet deep, he added, so divers cannot reach the vehicle. The Navy and Coast Guard are assisting the Marine Corps in its search for the missing personnel and the AAV. Berger said the waterborne operational pause for the Marine Corps' fleet of more than 800 AAVs is being done "out of an abundance of caution." Once the cause of the mishap is determined, he said, service leaders will decide whether the vehicle can resume operations at sea. "First [we'll] make sure the families are taken care of and that search-and-rescue efforts go with all the support that we want it to," he said. "Then after the investigation is done, we'll see -- as always -- if there are any trends." Osterman said the age of the AAV that sank wasn't immediately known, but acknowledged that the vehicles were first fielded in the early 1970s. Since then, he said, several modifications have been made to make them safer. The Marines and sailor were wearing flotation devices along with their normal combat gear. Osterman said some of the Marines who were rescued were floating, indicating the gear was working properly. Three Navy amphibious ships, a destroyer, several rigid-hull inflatable boats, and a Coast Guard cutter are participating in the search and rescue efforts. There are also Marine, Navy and Coast Guard helicopters looking for the missing eight. Retired Col. William Preston McLaughlin, who commanded a Marine assault amphibian battalion, said the accident underscores the need for the service to field the new Amphibious Combat Vehicle to replace its fleet of aging AAVs. The Marine Corps expects to deliver some of the new ACVs to units later this year. "I would think after this accident, they might want to look at maybe fielding that equipment a little bit more quickly and putting it into units' hands like the 15th MEU -- those frontline units," he said. Berger and Osterman both said for now, their focus is on the families of the fallen and injured, and finding the missing service members. "I'd like to thank everyone for their heartfelt condolences on behalf of our Marines, sailors and family members affected by this tragic mishap," Berger said. "Let me add my own condolences and prayers to theirs and ask everyone to keep the families of these service members in their thoughts." -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Related: 1 Marine Dead, 8 More Missing After AAV Accident Off California Coast A convicted killer in California has been set free due to the threat of coronavirus behind bars, according to multiple reports. Sacramentos CBS affiliate reported that Terebea Williams, 44, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2001 as well as use of a firearm, carjacking and kidnapping in the death of Kevin Ruska Jr., 23. She was serving an 84-year sentence. And, not surprisingly, according to the report, Ruskas family is furious that she has been let go. I cant understand why this is happening at all I always felt responsible for him, Ruskas sister, Dena Love, told CBS. According to the report, Williams held Ruska at gunpoint in February of 1998 before putting him in the trunk of his car and shooting him in his abdomen. She then, reportedly, drove 750 miles with him in the trunk, and ended up leaving him tied up to a chair in a motel where he was found dead. The Yolo District Attorneys Office told CBS it was hopeful there will be a more balanced approach to inmate releases that addresses the needs to mitigate the spread of COVID. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was identified as the mastermind of a scheme that commandeered prominent Twitter accounts and scammed people A Florida teen was identified Friday as the mastermind of a scheme earlier this month that commandeered Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls and scammed people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. Two other men were also charged in the case. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorneys Office will prosecute him as an adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Two men accused of benefiting from the hack Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, UK, and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando were charged separately in California federal court. In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, bogus tweets were sent out on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address. The hack alarmed security experts because of the grave potential of such an intrusion for creating geopolitical mayhem with disinformation. Court papers in the California cases say Fazeli and Sheppard brokered the sale of Twitter accounts stolen by a hacker who identified himself as Kirk and said he could reset, swap and control any Twitter account at will in exchange for cybercurrency payments, claiming to be a Twitter employee. The documents do not specify Kirk's real identity but say he is a teen being prosecuted in the Tampa area. Twitter has said the hacker gained access to a company dashboard that manages accounts by using social engineering and spear-phishing smartphones to obtain credentials from a small number of Twitter employees "to gain access to our internal systems. Spear-phishing uses email or other messaging to deceive people into sharing access credentials. There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence, US Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California said in a news release. The evidence suggests, however, that those responsible did a poor job indeed of covering their tracks. The court documents released Friday show how federal agents tracked down the hackers through Bitcoin transactions and by obtaining records of their online chats. Although the case was investigated by the FBI and the US Department of Justice, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said his office is prosecuting Clark in state court because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases when appropriate. He called Clark the leader of the hacking scam. This defendant lives here in Tampa, he committed the crime here, and hell be prosecuted here, Warren said. Security experts were not surprised that the alleged mastermind is a 17-year-old, given the relatively amateurish nature of both the operation and how participants discussed it with New York Times reporters afterward. This is a great case study showing how technology democratizes the ability to commit serious criminal acts, said Jake Williams, founder of the cybersecurity firm Rendition Infosec. There wasnt a ton of development that went into this attack. Williams said the hackers were extremely sloppy in how they moved the Bitcoin around. It did not appear they used any services that make cryptocurrency difficult to trace by tumbling transactions of multiple users, a technique akin to money laundering, he said. He also said he was conflicted about whether Clark should be charged as an adult. He definitely deserves to pay (for jumping on the opportunity) but potentially serving decades in prison doesnt seem like justice in this case, Williams said. The hack targeted 130 accounts with tweets being sent from 45 accounts, obtained access to the direct message inboxes of 36, and downloaded Twitter data from seven. Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has said his inbox was among those accessed. Court papers suggest Fazeli and Sheppard got involved in the scheme after Clark dangled the possibility of obtaining so-called OG Twitter handles, short account names that due to their brevity are highly prized and considered status symbols in a certain milieu. They said Sheppard purchased @anxious and Fazeli wanted @foreign. Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington DC, identified two of the defendants by analyzing Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain the universal ledger that records Bitcoin transactions that they had sought to make anonymous, federal prosecutors said. Marcus Hutchins, the 26-year-old British cybersecurity expert credited with helping stop the WannaCry computer virus in 2017, said the skill set involved in the actual hack was nothing special. I think people underestimate the level of experience needed to pull off these kinds of hacks. They may sound extremely sophisticated, but the techniques can be replicated by teens, added Hutchins, who pleaded guilty last year to creating malware designed to steal banking information and just completed a year's supervised release. British cybersecurity analyst Graham Cluley said his guess was that the targeted Twitter employees got a message to call what they thought was an authorized help desk and were persuaded by the hacker to provide their credentials. Its also possible the hackers got a call from the companys legitimate help line by spoofing the number, he said. Fazelis father said Friday he hasnt been able to talk to his son since Thursday. "Im 100% sure my son is innocent," Mohamad Fazeli said. "Hes a very good person, very honest, very smart and loyal." "We are as shocked as everybody else," he said by phone. "Im sure this is a mix up." Attempts to reach relatives of the other two weren't immediately successful. Hillsborough County court records didn't list an attorney for Clark, and federal court records didn't list attorneys for Sheppard or Fazeli. Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset. I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly. As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump. Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos? My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump. Now the paper trail is finally catching up with what some of us analysts long ago surmised based on the limited information previously available. You dont like Donald Trump? Fine. The investigation here was indeed about Donald Trump. But the scandal is about how abusive officials can exploit their awesome powers against any political opponent. And the people who authorized this political spying will be right back in business if, come November, Obamas vice-president is elected president notwithstanding that hes yet to be asked serious questions about it. Story continues How to Conceal a Politicized Investigation It seems mind-boggling that, for so long, the FBI and Justice Department were able to keep a lid on the documents now being released. President Trump could have directed their disclosure at any time over the last four years. But when you think about it, concealing the paper trail was the easy part. The real challenge was: How to continue the probe even after Trump had taken office and was, at least nominally, in a position to shut it down? The Obama officials, including holdovers who transitioned into the Trump administration, pulled that off by intimidation: not-so-subtle suggestions that they could disclose damaging allegations at any time (e.g., the notorious pee tape), and that White House efforts to inquire into the scope of the investigation would be portrayed as criminal obstruction. Prior to the 2016 election, the FBI intentionally concealed the existence of the Trump-Russia probe from the congressional Gang of Eight (the bipartisan leadership of both houses and their intelligence committees). Senior Republicans were thus kept in the dark regarding purported suspicions that the Republican presidential campaign was a Russian front, unable to pose tough questions about the probes gossamer predication. Crucially, the Trump-Russia fabulists managed to sideline two Trump loyalists who would have been positioned to thwart the effort: national-security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That left in place Obama holdovers and Trump-appointed placeholders. They were indifferent to Trump himself and cowed by the prospect of being framed as complicit in a TrumpRussia conspiracy, or a cover-up. The paper record is profoundly embarrassing, so it is only natural that the FBI and Justice Department resisted its disclosure. But documents about the investigation were demanded by congressional investigators starting years ago particularly by the investigation led in the House by thenIntelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.). Congresss investigation was stonewalled. The more revelation we get, the more obvious it is that there was no bona fide national-security rationale for concealment. Documents were withheld to hide official and unofficial executive activity that was abusive, embarrassing, and, at least in some instances, illegal (e.g., tampering with a document that was critical to the FBIs presentation of facts to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court). Democrats wanted this information suppressed all along. So of course, once Democrats took control of the House in 2019, there was no possibility of pressing the question of why the Justice Department and FBI failed to comply with House information demands back in 201718, when Republicans led the relevant committees. One wonders, though, why the GOP-controlled Senate had so little interest in finding out why this paper trail stayed hidden despite repeated inquiries. Ditto the House Republican leadership in the first two years of Trumps term. It is hard to draw any conclusion other than that the GOP establishment bought the Russian interference in our democracy hysteria. Moscow always meddles in U.S. elections. The 2016 interference was par for the course and, as always, utterly ineffective. This time, though, Democrats were perceived as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries. For once, they and their media megaphone demanded that the political class treat Russia as a serious threat. On cue, Washington Republicans genuflected, lest they be portrayed as covering up for Trump, or as soft on Putin. Meanwhile Democrats, the party of appeasement (very much including appeasement of Moscow through the Obama years), were transmogrified into Russia hawks. And Russia hawks theyll remain . . . right up until the moment Joe Biden takes the oath of office. Exploiting Politics to Surveil the Opposition Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBIs New York City headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign surrogates the aforementioned General Flynn and thenNew Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won. In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that hed blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia. The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign using executive intelligence powers to monitor the presidents political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that hed had any role in Russian intelligences suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts. You didnt have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor whod rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take though an irrelevant one, since its up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power. So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russias behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate. Just two weeks before Pientkas August 17 briefing of Trump, the FBI formally opened Crossfire Hurricane, the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn. There was no case file called Donald Trump because Trump was Crossfire Hurricane. The theory of Crossfire Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putins bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trumps election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications between Trump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russias favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture. Get Them Talking Besides obtaining FISA surveillance warrants against Page, the Bureaus favored tactic a common one in criminal investigations was to create or exploit situations in which the suspects would be at ease. Either the settings would not seem investigative or, in Trumps case, repeated assurances were provided that he was not under investigation. With no notice that the FBI was trying to catch them and even prompt them into making incriminating statements, Trump and his campaign advisers would be invited to talk about Russia. Agents parsed their statements and scrutinized their demeanor, searching for any indication of pro-Russia sentiment or uneasiness about the topic anything that could be portrayed as incriminating. If the Bureaus contacts with Trump officials were not covertly recorded (as they were, for example, when informants interacted with Papadopoulos), agents would generate written reports about them, the kind of reports the FBI routinely writes when building a criminal case. This is exactly what Pientka did in connection with the August 17 briefing, under the supervision of Kevin Clinesmith, the rabidly anti-Trump FBI lawyer later found by the Justice Departments inspector general to have tampered with a key email, and Peter Strzok, the rabidly anti-Trump counterintelligence agent who was later fired. Pientkas significantly redacted seven-page memo is worth reading. The point of it is not the national-security information provided to the candidate; that is just context for the Bureaus documenting of statements made by Trump in response. For example, when the topic is differences in methodology between Russian and Chinese espionage, Pientka carefully notes that Trump asked, Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers [of FBI cases] are they worse than the Chinese? After all, maybe well find out he was reporting back to the Kremlin. When the topic turned to signals intelligence, Pientka notes that Trump interjected, Yes I understand its a dark time. Nothing is safe on computers anymore, and elaborated that his then-ten-year-old son had broken the code for access to a computer you know, just the kind of badinage youd expect from a co-conspirator in a Russian hacking scheme. Pientka then recounts that when other intelligence-agency briefers took over to continue the briefing on other topics, Pientka did not leave; he stayed in the room actively listen[ing] for topics or questions regarding the Russian Federation. Here, in a classified report they figure no one will ever see, there is no pretense: FBI agents are monitoring Trump. Pientka notes that when one briefer said the U.S. was the worlds leader in counterterrorism, Trump interjected, Russia too? And when the discussion turned to cheating by Russia and China on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Trump asked, Whos worse? When the briefer replied, They are both bad, but Russia is worse, Pientka took pains to relate, Trump and Christie turned toward each other and Christie commented, Im shocked [sic]. Youre thinking, So what? Yeah, well, thats the point. They had nothing, but the agents were exploiting the U.S. political process to try to turn nothing into a federal case. And would any public official voluntarily attend a security briefing, ostensibly meant to help him perform his public-safety mission, if he thought the FBI might be spying on him and writing reports with an eye toward portraying him as a hostile powers mole? Just as weve seen in the Flynn investigation, Pientkas official FBI report is marked in bold capital letters: DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL. Why deliberate over a draft when the purpose is to document a suspects statements? After all, he said whatever he said; there shouldnt be a need to edit it. Drafts and deliberations are necessary only if a report is being massaged to fit the perceived needs of the investigation. Observe that, although the briefing was August 17, the memo is dated August 30. Nearly two weeks later, and its still in the form of a deliberative draft, meaning theyre not done yet. This is not materially different from the Obama administrations plan on January 6, 2017. That is when the FBIs then-director, James Comey, briefed Trump in New York City. This briefing came just a day after Comey met with his Obama-administration superiors the president, Vice President Biden, national-security adviser Susan Rice, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. They discussed withholding information about the Russia investigation from President-elect Trump and his incoming team. Consistent with this White House strategy session, Comey did not actually brief Trump about the Russia investigation; he buzzed Trump with an allegation that the Putin regime might be in possession of blackmail material the pee tape that it could hold over Trumps head in order to get him to do the Kremlins bidding. The point was not to give information. It was to get information: to provoke Trump into making incriminating or false statements, or statements evincing consciousness of guilt. Outside Trump Tower was an FBI car equipped with a laptop so Comey could immediately write an investigative report. The director and his team treated this as an investigative event, not a briefing. Comey memorialized Trumps statements, as well as his physical and emotional reaction to the suggestion that Moscow might have video of the soon-to-be president cavorting with prostitutes. If a case had ever been made on Trump, Comey could then have been a witness, with his investigative report available to refresh his recollection about Trumps comments and comportment. That is one of the main reasons such reports are done. The FBI did the same thing with Flynn: a sandbag interview, against Justice Department and White House protocols, conducted after extensive planning about how to put him at ease, how to make sure he doesnt think hes a suspect, how to refrain from advising him of his rights. Then, knock him back on his heels by portraying a legitimate conversation between the incoming national-security adviser and the Russian ambassador as if it were nefarious. Dont play him the recording or show him the transcript; just grill him and hope he says something incriminating or redolent of guilty knowledge. And then, instead of following the FBI rules for promptly completing interview reports, generate another deliberative draft that can be kneaded for a few weeks . . . with the help of a former prosecutor (Lisa Page) who serves as counsel to the second-highest-ranking FBI official (thendeputy director Andrew McCabe). There is still plenty of paper trail to uncover. I havent even referred here to the Steele dossier, which investigators knew was bogus but relied on to seek and obtain court-authorized eavesdropping. I havent mentioned the unmasking of Trump officials indirectly targeted in foreign-intelligence collection. We havent considered the collaboration of American and foreign intelligence agencies in the scrutiny of Trump, or the collaboration of Obama officials and congressional Democrats, as well as the media, to promote the narrative that Trump was a Russian operative. There is much still to learn and to weigh. But this much we know: In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administrations investigative agencies to monitor his partys opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trumps name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it. More from National Review The death toll in the spurious tragedy rose to 62 on Saturday as 23 more casualties were reported from the state's Tarn Taran district, officials said. Till Friday night, the state authorities had reported 39 deaths from three districts. Nineteen of them had taken place in Tarn Taran alone, followed by 11 in Amritsar and nine in Gurdaspur's Batala. In Tarn Taran, the death toll has reached 42, Deputy Commissioner Kulwant Singh told PTI on Saturday, adding that the maximum deaths took place in the Sadar and city areas of district. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has already ordered a magisterial probe into the tragedy, unfolding since Wednesday night. Till now, police have arrested 10 people in connection with the case. The Opposition Shiromani Akali Dal on Friday had demanded a judicial probe by a sitting judge of the and Haryana Court while the Aam Aadmi Party's sought the chief minister's resignation. Bikramjit Singh, the station house officer at the Amritsar's Tarsikka police station, was also suspended. However, a senior police official on Saturday said families of several victims were not coming forward to record their statements but they persuaded them to do so. A majority of the families were not coming forward and did not want any action. Some of them are not even getting the post-mortem done, said the police official. Meanwhile, Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Ishfaq said some families have refused to accept that their kin died after consuming spurious The wards of some of those who died are not accepting that they died because of spurious They are saying their family member died of heart attack, said the DC. The chief minister has promised strict action against anyone involved in the case and has directed police to crack down on any spurious liquor manufacturing unit operating in the state. The Jalandhar Divisional Commissioner will conduct the inquiry, along with the Joint Excise and Taxation Commissioner and the Superintendents of Police (Investigation) in the three districts. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The education magazine news4teachers calls the reopening of schools in Germany after the summer holidays a gigantic field trial with an uncertain outcome. The resumption of classes are being staggered by federal states, beginning on August 3 in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and ending on September 14 in Baden-Wurttemberg. Eleven million children and about 800,000 teachers are affected. The situation is highly dangerous. Since the easing of the coronavirus restrictions, the number of cases in Europe, and in Germany, is once again on the rise. We are amid a rapidly developing pandemic, warned the president of the public health body, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, at a press conference on Tuesday. On Thursday, the RKI reported 902 new infections in Germany, the highest number since mid-May. In its July 29 daily situation report, the RKI described the development as very worrying and wrote, A further worsening of the situation must be avoided at all costs. This can only be achieved if the entire population continues to be committed, for example, to consistently observing rules on [social] distancing and hygienealso outdoorsby ventilating indoor spaces and, where necessary, by correctly wearing a face mask. An overwhelming majority of the population shares this concern and is behaving accordingly. According to a report by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment dated July 24, 2020, 92 percent of the population accept distancing regulation and the obligation to wear masks. Not so the state governments. When schools are reopened, the RKIs recommendations will be explicitly disregarded. For classrooms, the distancing rule of 1.5 metres and the obligation to wear masks will be thrown out. If at all, they only apply in corridors and partly also in the playground. The protective regulations that remain in force for businesses and public spaces do not apply in schools! These provisions were agreed at a joint conference of the state education ministers. They differ from state to state only slightly, no matter which parties comprise the state government. In general, schools are returning to regular operations. The regulations for infection protection are very general, often non-binding, and in many places not realizable due to the miserable condition of school buildings and the lack of personnel. The reaction of teachers and parents is a mixture of scorn and despair over feeble advice on social media, such as: To further limit the occurrence of infection, hygiene rules such as regular hand washing and regular airing of the rooms must continue to be observed. Direct physical contact is to be avoided as far as possible. (Berlin) Or, Sufficient liquid soap dispensers and disposable towels are to be provided and refilled to an extent that enables pupils and staff to carry out regular hand hygiene without unreasonable waiting times. (Hesse) In some states, the formation of cohorts spanning different classes or age groups is planned, which should, as far as possible, remain amongst themselves. In most cases, these are merely recommendations, with responsibility for compliance left to the schools themselves. All the models for opening schools state that the incidence of infection will be monitored and, if necessary, stricter measures will be taken. In other words, the state governments are deliberately allowing outbreaks of COVID-19 to occur in schools. What is striking is that Thuringia, which is governed by the Left Party under state premier Bodo Ramelow in a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, is the most unscrupulous of all the states. It provides for a so-called phased model. In stage 1, which applies initially, it says, In principle, schooling in 2020/2021 will take place with all participants within the school buildings without restrictions. Studies disprove reduced risk The assertion that the risk of reopening schools is manageable contradicts current scientific studies, which show that schools pose considerable risks in the event of a new wave of infection. For example, a study in South Korea found that older children and adolescents infected other household members as frequently as adults. Most infections occurred in households where a patient was between 10 and 19 years old. It follows that schools would become hotspots in the event of a wave of infection, as the SPD health expert Lauterbach admits. In a highly regarded study, Berlins Technical University has determined that the aerosol concentration in a classroom, which is critical for transmission, is reached after two minutes when a single infected person in the room coughs. The result of the study is documented in this video. The allegedly lower infectivity of children, which is often cited to justify opening up schools, is not proven. In its July 24 COVID-19 profile, the RKI warns, In another study from Wuhan, child-aged index persons infected household members more often than adults. ... Studies on the viral load in children show no significant difference to adults. In Israel, the Ministry of Education randomly investigated the sources of 727 infections during the second wave in the country and found that almost 30 percent of these were attributable to educational institutions. Policy conclusions Whether through negligence or malicious intent, the logic behind the reopening of schools is clear: the health and safety of children, parents and teachers are being put at risk in the interest of the economy. Children are being forced into schools under extremely risky conditions so that their parents can be available to work. After decades of neglect and ruin of the school and education system, the pandemic is bringing to light more glaringly than ever what can no longer be hushed up: All the establishment parties are giving priority to the profit interests of companies over the social needs of the population. It is not a matter of misunderstanding or incompetence, but of tangible class interests. Profits can only be made if parents work. And for this to happen, children must be out of the way, no matter how. Working parents are faced with the choice of risking either their jobs or the health of their children. There is massive resistance to this blackmail. Parents and educators also have many good suggestions and creative solutions to ensure safe teaching. There is no shortage of dedicated professionals who, with great personal commitment, do what they can to provide the best possible care and education for children in this difficult situation. What is needed is a political perspective that unites all those involved and makes them effective. Only a socialist perspective that places the school crisis in its social and international context can do this. The biggest problem is not the virus as such, but that it encounters conditions that block its effective control and favour its spread. These conditions are a result of capitalism, which is the cause of unemployment, misery, environmental destruction and, finally, dictatorship and war throughout the world. The coronavirus crisis will not disappear on its own. The misery in education will continue, even if a vaccine becomes available at some point. It must be actively tackled by working people in their own interest. This task is urgent and cannot be postponed. Trade union organisations, which once brought about certain improvements, are now failing across the board. The Education and Science Union (GEW) is an active accomplice to the irresponsible opening up of schools. It is miles away from organising effective resistance and from protecting the interests of teachers. It is hopeless to rely on appeals to governments or individual politicians. They have created the current situation in the first place. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) advocates setting up action committees in educational institutions and residential areas that are independent of the trade unions and establishment parties. In this way, the resistance against unsafe school openings can be coordinated. However, the problem cannot be solved within the education system alone. For example, the struggle must be expanded to guarantee continued pay during home childcare. To put opposition on a broad basis, action committees should make contact with workers in companies whose management is exploiting the coronavirus crisis to push through mass redundancies. There is also much to be done in other areas, especially in the protection of immigrants, left-wingers and all others who are threatened by neo-fascists and far-right terrorists from the police and state apparatus. The aim must be to get to the root of the problem and build a broad mass movement against capitalism. We call on all those who agree with this perspective and want to take part in this struggle to become active supporters of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei or its youth organisation IYSSE. Samet also has a quick pay program that cuts checks to subcontractors on a more frequent cycle so they can pay their workers on time. That compensates for the possibility an MWBE company might not have financial resources to make payroll from its own reserves while waiting for a larger or lump-sum payment from the general contractor, Sigers said. He said it is also important for companies to actively reach out to smaller MWBE companies and do their best to assure the subcontractor has a successful experience. Soon he has the capacity to compete on a larger scale, said Sigers, who gained experience as a project manager with a smaller MWBE company before assuming his current role. If the project is successful for them, the chances are good that they will be coming back to the table the next time, too. MWBE executive Sondra Wright said she would like to see the process go beyond a request that general contractors make a good faith effort to include minorities and women to more of a mandate. Wright recalled that an influential general contractor once told her the whole issue boiled down to the difference between a request and a requirement. As I warned 9 days ago, conservative champion Rep. Steve Stockman appears to have been targeted for assassination while in the custody of the United States Bureau of Prisons, the same agency that managed to let Jeffrey Epstein meet his maker before cutting any deals to name names. And the plot against Stockman is succeeding, step by step. The news that Steve has contracted COVID 19 while incarcerated at FCI Beaumont (on trumped up campaign finance charges), a facility reportedly with the highest rate of infection in the federal system, comes as no surprise. Steve is the only inmate there over 60 with diabetes and insulin dependence who has not been granted compassionate release. Steve Stockman (photo credit: Gage Skidmore). This contrasts with the treatment of former Democrat Rep. Chakah Fattah, as reported by Matt Rourke of the AP: The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has accomplished what former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah could not in two appeals. It sprang the disgraced pol early from lockup. A bureau spokesperson confirms that Fattah, a Philadelphia Democrat sentenced in 2016 to 10 years on corruption charges, returned to the city June 8 from a federal prison near Scranton and will serve the rest of his sentence either in a halfway house or under house arrest. But the bureau refused to say why the former congressman had been released more than five years before the scheduled 2025 date. (snip) The release appears to have been a Bureau of Prisons call. The U.S. Attorneys Office referred all questions its way. And there are no filings in the court case about the action. The most recent filing came last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit formally rejected Fattahs second appeal after a hearing in May. Keep in mind that Steves conviction was for a non-violent, non-sexual crime, meaning he is not threat to society at all. We and others have been warning that with his multiple comorbidities, Steves chances against COVID are not high. His wife Patti wrote yesterday via email: Steve learned yesterday that he tested positive for COVID and theyve moved him to a different building with other infected men. Hes actually been pretty sick for a few days and suspected it was COVID. Yesterday, they pulled 28 inmates into isolation and are giving them NO medication, though Steve had a hard time breathing last night. Im VERY concerned. PRAY!! Earlier this week, prison staff announced there was new CDC guidance saying that someone is over the virus 10 days after their symptoms present and that, therefore, they were putting most of the men whod been infected back to work (they do jobs throughout the prison). (snip) Families (and supporters) of Beaumont inmates will gather in front of the prison entrance Sunday morning 10:00 a.m. to protest the prison handling of the virus. My friend Richard Viguerie writes at Conservative HQ: Some evil people in the U.S. justice system are smiling right now. They got their wish. (snip) It is apparent that some people in the justice system want him dead. What has happened to Steve must be investigated, and the culprits in the justice system and their abettors in the Bureau of Prisons exposed and punished. (snip) Steve was told on April 23 hed be placed in pre-release quarantine, but was then turned away at the door by prison staff on April 24. Soon after, and one more time since then, Steve was told by prison officials he will not be leaving on orders from very high up. On July 13 Steve filed a Request for Administrative Remedy, which was denied on July 17 by Warden Garrido, incorrectly stating Steve must serve 50 percent of his time to be eligible. Time served, however, is only one factor of many that may be considered, and it is not a mandatory directive as the Warden incorrectly says it is. Warden Garridos letter also said that a Home Confinement Committee -- whatever that is -- reviewed Steves case and denied his request. Steve has been clearly eligible for compassionate release or transfer to home detention like over 100,000 inmates in the United State have been. Steves wife Patti asks for prayers. I wonder where AG Barr is? The Bureau of Prisons is part of the Justice Department and it has not exactly covered itself in glory recently. Who is keeping Steve Stockman ar extreme peril of death? Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi mentioned self-reliance no less than 17 times in a broadcast to the nation. This has prompted fears that India will resort to protectionism again, in spite of its dire experience during the licence-permit raj. In those days, protectionism protected the inefficient and corrupt. But it need not necessarily have that outcome. China has practised protectionism during its 30-year climb to becoming the worlds second-largest economy. But the Chinese have had the self-confidence to practise protectionism selectively and in their own way, to fit their requirements, often ignoring global trends and the advice of the World Bank. Self-confidence has led China to become the factory of the world. India, post the 1991 reforms, followed the World Banks advice and liberalised trade whereas it should have concentrated on improving the productivity and competitiveness of its manufacturing sector and lifted protections gradually. It seems to me that India will not achieve self-reliance until it gains the confidence to go its own way to exploit the unique assets it has, which are, all too often, seen as liabilities. Take the example of Indias population. Its usually regarded as a liability, an economic disaster rather than an economic dividend. But foreign investors see the population as a vast potential market. As a result of its lack of the self-confidence to pursue its own path, India has failed to exploit this asset and so has had to rely on imports to meet demand. Sunshine is a good example of an asset India has allowed China to develop. In 2019, India imported solar equipment worth 1694.04 million dollars. The motor industry is a rare example of India competing internationally. The most successful company, Maruti, has had the self-confidence to introduce a totally different model of working, the Japanese model. At a time when politicians are demonstrating all that is wrong with Indian democracy, the naked greed and ambition which makes a farce of the party system, it might seem absurd to regard Indian parliamentary democracy as an asset. Inevitably, the many advocates of a presidential system claim the present antics of politicians are yet more evidence that India would be better governed by a president rather than a prime minister. But India has a parliamentary Constitution which it can rightly be proud of. It is a Constitution that is remarkable among post-colonial constitutions for its longevity which has been widely admired internationally. That should be a matter of pride for India. The Constitution has also provided stability, which is a prerequisite for economic development based on self-reliance. In its early years, the Constitution also proved its suitability. The renowned historian of Indias Constitution, Granville Austin, ended his first book, published in 1966 with the optimistic words, ...equipped with basic qualifications, attitudes and experience for creating and working a democratic constitution, Indians did not default their tryst with dynasty. But instead of taking pride in the Constitution, the institutions which uphold it were gradually undermined, and so in 1999 Austin ended his second book on the Constitution calling for extensive social and economic reform. Unfortunately, India has not had the self-confidence required for taking the hard decisions to carry out those extensive reforms, and thats where the problem lies, not with the Constitution. To achieve self-sufficiency, India has to turn its attention to those extensive reforms. It has to reform the bureaucracy so that bureaucrats are not derided as babus, and its politics so that politicians are not dismissed as opportunists. In managing its economy, India has to have the self-confidence to learn from other countries as Maruti has learnt from Japan. It has much to learn from Chinas model of development. But in the end, India must have the self-confidence to chart its own course and work out its own path to self-reliance. The views expressed are personal . Deep-sea anglerfishes employ an incredible reproductive strategy. Tiny dwarfed males become permanently attached to relatively gigantic females, fuse their tissues and then establish a common blood circulation. In this way, the male becomes entirely dependent on the female for nutrient supply, like a developing fetus in the womb of her mother or a donor organ in a transplant patient. In anglerfishes, this unusual phenomenon is referred to as sexual parasitism and contributes to the reproductive success for these animals living in the vast space of the deep sea, where females and males otherwise rarely meet. The permanent attachment of males to females represents a form of anatomical joining, which is otherwise unknown in nature except for the rare occurrence in genetically identical twins. The immune system represents an estraordinary obstacle here. It attacks foreign tissue as it would destroy cells infected by pathogens. Just witness the difficulties surrounding organ transplantation in humans, which requires the careful cross-matching of donor and recipient tissue characters, together with immunosuppressive drugs, to ensure the long-term survival of the organ graft. But how is it possible then that, in case of anglerfishes, that individuals of the same species accept each other so readily when tissue-rejection is the usual and expected result of any such union? The phenomenon of sexual parasitism has posed an enigma that has existed for 100 years, ever since the first attached couple was discovered by an Icelandic fisheries biologist in 1920. Now, scientists from Germany and the USA have solved this century-old conundrum and report their findings in the scientific journal Science. Key functions of the immune system eliminated A few years ago, Thomas Boehm, a medical doctor and immunologist working at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany, and Theodore W. Pietsch, an ichthyologist and a internationally renowned expert on anglerfishes working at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, set out to study the genomes of different anglerfish species. They began by looking at the structure of major histocompatibility (MHC) antigens. These molecules are found at the surface of the body's cells and signal alarm to the immune system, when the cells are infected by a virus or a bacterium. To make sure that all pathogens are efficiently recognized, the MHC molecules are extremely variable, so much so that it is hard to find identical or near-identical forms in any two individuals of a species. This feature is at the root of the tissue-matching problem that plagues human organ and bone marrow transplantation. Interestingly, the researchers found that anglerfishes that utilize permanent attachment are largely depauperate in genes that encode these MHC molecules, as if they had done away with immune recognition in favor of tissue fusion. "Apart from this unusual constellation of MHC genes, we discovered that the function of killer T cells, which normally actively eliminate infected cells or attack foreign tissues during the organ rejection process, was also severely blunted if not lost entirely. These findings hinted at the possibility that the immune system of anglerfishes was very unusual among the tens of thousands of vertebrate species," says Jeremy Swann from the MPI of Immunobiology and Epigenetics and first author of the study. advertisement Survival without acquired immune facilities After these unexpected discoveries, the scientists suspected that the re-organization of the immune system of anglerfishes might be even more extensive than expected. And indeed, further research indicated that antibodies, which are the second powerful weapon in the arsenal of immune defence are also missing in some of the anglerfish species. "For humans, the combined loss of important immune facilities observed in anglerfishes would result in fatal immunodeficiency," says Thomas Boehm, Director at the MPI of Immunobiology and Epigenetics and lead scientist of the project. However, anglerfishes are obviously able to survive without essential adaptive immune functions. Thus, the researchers concluded that the animals use much improved innate facilities to defend themselves against infections, a most unexpected solution to a problem that is faced by all living things. Indeed, until now it was thought that a partnership of acquired and innate immunity, once it was formed in evolution, cannot be disentangled with severe consequences. Immune system affects the reproductive strategy The study thus shows that despite several hundred million years of co-evolutionary partnership of innate and adaptive functions, vertebrates can survive without the adaptive immune facilities previously considered to be irreplaceable. We assume that as yet unknown evolutionary forces first drive changes in the immune system, which are then exploited for the evolution of sexual parasitism," says Thomas Boehm. Interestingly, the scientists believe that, among their collection of fishes, they have even captured one species en route to developing sexual parasitism. "We find it remarkable that the unusual mode of reproduction was invented several times independently in this group of fishes," says Ted Pietsch from the University of Washington. Although the details of the improved innate immune facilities in anglerfishes remain to be discovered, the results of this study point at potential strategies that enhance innate immune facilities in human patients who suffer the consequences of inborn or acquired impairment of immune facilities. Hence, the scientific journey that began with an obscure observation on board a fishing vessel out in the mid-Atlantic unexpectedly opens up new avenues for the treatment of immune disorders in humans. Totalitarians hate religion because in their view, there can be nothing higher than the state. American totalitarians particularly hate Christians and Jews. Thus, we see Antifa burning Bibles in Portland: Public gatherings to burn Bibles: OK Public gatherings to read Bibles: BANNED https://t.co/pOySao961L Razor (@hale_razor) August 1, 2020 The Democrats are committed to the view that Portlands protests are peaceful and, as far as we can judge from their comments, praiseworthy. What do you think the chances are that any reporter will ask Joe Biden his opinion on burning Bibles? The Michigan Legislature is scheduled to meet next on Aug. 6. The House did not meet this week and the Senate held a pro-forma session with no voting. Rather than votes, this Roll Call Report describes some topical school-related bills of interest. Senate Bill 1038: Suspend state 11th/12th grade math/reading tests Introduced by Sen. Rosemary Bayer (D), to suspend in the coming 2020-2021 school year a law that requires public schools to administer a state learning assessment exam to all students in either 11th or 12th grade. Referred to committee, no further action at this time. Senate Bill 1039: Suspend building-level school performance measurements Introduced by Sen. Rosemary Bayer (D), to suspend in the coming 2020-2021 school year a law that requires the state Department of Education to assign each public school a letter grade based on the educational progress of its students during the past year. Referred to committee, no further action at this time. Senate Bill 1040: Suspend annual teacher performance ratings Introduced by Sen. Curtis Hertel, Jr. (D, to suspend in the coming 2020-21 school year a requirement that school districts perform annual year-end evaluation ratings of classroom teachers and rate each as either highly effective, effective, minimally effective or ineffective. Referred to committee, no further action at this time. Senate Bill 1043: Suspend school performance measurements Introduced by Sen. Sean McCann (D), to suspend in the coming 2020-21 school year a sampling program intended to determine whether Detroit children enrolled in kindergarten have the skills required to participate. Referred to committee, no further action at this time. House Bill 5833: Authorize school liaisons to communicate state education regulators Introduced by Rep. Brad Paquette (R), to require the Michigan Department of Education to establish and implement a program of school liaisons who are able to communicate directly with department staff on matters of relevance to the school. House Bill 5834 would require the Michigan Department of Education to host periodic statewide networking conferences for all these liasons. Referred to committee, no further action at this time. House Bill 5835: Mandate schools submit report on police who work in schools Introduced by Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo (D) to require public school districts that regularly have a police officer on duty in a school (dubbed school resource officers) to submit a report to the state with the names of these officers, their training and employment history, and whether the officers are armed. These reports would be exempt from disclosure under the state open records law. Referred to committee, no further action at this time. House Bill 5956: Increase school employee health insurance coverage Introduced by Rep. Mari Manoogian (D), to require public schools to provide employee health insurance plans that after December 13, 2020, must pay at least 90% of the total annual costs of all of the medical benefit plans it offers or contributes to for its employees and elected public officials. This would effectively repeal a 2011 reform that capped the amount that school districts could spend on employee health insurance benefits, and required employee cost sharing. Referred to committee, no further action at this time. Source: MichiganVotes.org, a free, non-partisan website created by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, providing concise, non-partisan, plain-English descriptions of every bill and vote in the Michigan House and Senate. Visit www.MichiganVotes.org. The funeral service for Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon known as the "conscience of the U.S. Congress," began at 11 a.m. Thursday, wrapping up six days of memorials paying tribute to his life and his legacy. Lewis, the son of Alabama sharecroppers, played an instrumental role in the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act in 1965 and went on to serve more than three decades in Congress representing the 5th Congressional District of Georgia. MORE: The voice of the late Rep. John Lewis echoes in the Capitol during ceremony Former President Barack Obama will eulogize Lewis, while George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will also attend the private funeral at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once led. Lewis will be buried in South View Cemetery in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon. PHOTO: An honor guard, followed by members of Georgia's Black Caucus, carries the casket of late Congressman John Lewis from the Georgia State Capitol building en route to his funeral in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/via Reuters) Lewis died on July 17 at 80 after a months-long battle with pancreatic cancer. In some of his final words, Lewis wrote about the current climate of America and the need to keep fighting for justice in an op-ed for The New York Times, which was to be published on the day of his funeral. MORE: The life of civil rights leader, John Lewis "Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe," Lewis wrote. "In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring." Here is how the service developed. All times Eastern. 2:36 p.m.: Lewis' casket brought out of church The casket of Rep. John Lewis was brought out of the Ebenezer Baptist Church and will head to its final resting place. Lewis will be buried at South View Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia. 2:06 p.m.: Obama delivers eulogy President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy for Rep. John Lewis, remembering his accolades that changed the course of history and looking forward to the world the congressman fought for. Story continues "So many Americans owe a great debt to John Lewis and his forceful vision of freedom," Obama said. He specifically noted that Lewis' desegregation campaign in Nashville was the first successful one in any major city in the South and that Lewis led the march from Selma to Montgomery. "America was built by John Lewises," Obama said. "He, as much as anyone one in our history, brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals, and someday when we do finish that long journey towards freedom, when we do form a more perfect union, whether it's years from now or decades or even if it takes another two centuries, John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America." PHOTO: Former President Barack Obama speaks during the funeral of late Congressman John Lewis at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool via Reuters) Obama noted the severe injuries Lewis and many others suffered at the hands of troopers during the Selma-to-Montgomery march. "I imagine initially that day the troopers thought they'd won the battle," he remarked. But Lewis returned, as did more marchers who were able to pass through, Obama noted. The message of the marchers eventually made it to the White House, and President Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act. While Obama lauded the accomplishments, he also urged people to know the fight is far from over. "George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators," he said, referring to the former governor of Alabama who ordered troopers to use violence against the marchers. PHOTO: Former President Barack Obama speaks during the funeral of late Congressman John Lewis at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool via Reuters) Obama added that while "we may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot," there are "those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restricted I.D. laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision. Even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election that's going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don't get sick." Though Obama did not explicitly name President Donald Trump, his comments come hours after Trump suggested delaying the election in a tweet because of the false notion that mail-in voting would amount to fraudulent votes. MORE: Trump suggests delaying 2020 election, a power designated to Congress Obama ended his speech by saying that Lewis was hopeful after seeing the recent protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the United States. Lewis "could not have been prouder" of young people "standing up for equality and protecting the right to vote," Obama said. He remarked he told Lewis, "John, those are your children." Obama said the protests showed the courage that Lewis taught -- courage that came from turning towards others, not away from them. "What a gift John Lewis was," Obama concluded. "We are all so lucky to have had him walk with us for a while and show us the way. God bless you all. God bless America. God bless this gentle soul who pulled it closer to its promise." 1:39 p.m.: Let's not give up,' Lewis' niece urges Sheila Lewis O'Brien remembered Rep. John Lewis not only as a revered civil rights icon and congressman, but as a family man. Calling him "Uncle Robert," she said she wanted to pay tribute "to a man who was larger than life." "For the last 60 years as a nonviolent civil rights activist, he was a voice for those who couldn't speak, the feet for those who couldn't walk and the champion of injustice for those that couldn't fight," O'Brien said. She said it was clear why Lewis' life had been so celebrated in the past few days and urged Americans to continue her uncles' fight. "Let's continue this celebration of life by taking up the baton he has now laid down and endeavored to get into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. Let's not give up." 1:29 p.m.: Lewis remembered as a boss by deputy chief of staff Rep. John Lewis broke down barriers in the workplace and created a family among his employees, his deputy chief of staff said. "We were a little family, a little enclave," Jamila Thompson said. "A lot of drama, a lot of fun and so much love." MORE: Georgia Dems nominate state party chairwoman for John Lewis' congressional seat Thompson said Lewis made each staff member feel "special" and "worthy" while working for him. "He allowed us to be our true and authentic selves, just the very best version," she said. Thompson, like others, also encouraged the American people to vote in November to honor Lewis. "Be the best version of yourself. Be informed. Stay engaged. Even though the work is hard," Thompson concluded. "If you are of age and eligible, for the love of God, please vote." 12:59 p.m.: Xernona Clayton recalls Lewis' love story, urges kindness Xernona Clayton, the founder of the Trumpet Foundation, spoke of the love story between Rep. John Lewis and his late wife Lillian Miles Lewis. Clayton said she had set the two up. Though both were initially hesitant, Clayton said when they finally had the chance to spend time together, their bond was clear. "Lillian and John stayed married. I put it together, but it lasted 43 years," she said warmly. "That's not a bad record, is it?" Clayton also spoke of their son, John Miles Lewis, who is her godson, saying through their love, the couple showed him love. PHOTO: Arlene Brown, left, with her son CJ Brown, 14, as they watch on a huge screen outside Ebenezer Baptist Church during the Celebration of Life Service Rep. John Lewis in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Chris Aluka Berry/EPA via Shutterstock) Clayton also urged those who want to honor Lewis, not just to listen to his praises but to "do something about the man he asked us to be in ourselves, and that is to be kind to everybody, to love everybody." She ended her speech with a clear message: "I want to advise you and admonish you, to really give meaning to the John we love: Vote." Bill Campbell, the former mayor of Atlanta, similarly encouraged Americans to vote in November to truly honor Lewis. 12:40 p.m.: 'Black lives matter,' Rev. James Lawson says in powerful speech Rev. James Lawson Jr., a mentor for Rep. John Lewis and nonviolent activist, said the only way to honor the late congressman's life is to ensure equality. "We need the Congress and president to work unfalteringly on behalf of every boy and every girl, so that every baby born on these shores will have access to the tree of life," Lawson, 91, said. "That's the only way to honor John Robert Lewis. No other way." Lawson also had a simple message for the congregation: "Black lives matter." PHOTO: Rev. James Lawson speaks during the funeral service for the late Rep. John Lewis, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. Lawson was a leading advocate and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. (Alyssa Pointer/AP) He said that while Lewis was shaped by his early preachings as a boy, he was also shaped by "the malignancy of racism in Troy, Alabama," where Lewis was born. "There formed in him a sensibility that he had to do something about it," Lawson said. MORE: Civil rights trailblazer C.T. Vivian laid to rest Lawson said he, like Lewis and others, such as civil rights pioneer C.T. Vivian, who also recently died, had a similar experience. "I maintain many of us had no choice to do, but we tried to do, primarily because at an early age we recognized the wrong under which we were forced to live," he said, "and we swore to God that by God's grace we would do whatever God called us to do in order to put on the table of the nation's agenda this must end." 12:27 p.m.: Crowd gathers outside church A crowd of about 100 people gathered outside the church where Rep. John Lewis' funeral was underway. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, only about 240 people were allowed in the Ebenezer Baptist Church. PHOTO: People watch on a large screen outside the Celebration of Life Service for civil rights leader and Democratic Rep. from John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Chris Aluka Berry/EPA via Shutterstock) 12:18 p.m.: Pelosi says Lewis' mission was ''nonviolently insisting on the truth' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke of her friend and colleague Rep. John Lewis, honoring his life and remembering his legacy. "When John Lewis served with us, he wanted us to see the civil rights service and the rest through his eyes," Pelosi said, noting he took members of the House to Selma for two decades. "He wanted us to see how important it was, how important it was to understand the spirit of nonviolence." PHOTO: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks during the funeral of late Congressman John Lewis, a pioneer of the civil rights movement and long-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives, at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/via Reuters) Pelosi also spoke about Lewis' legacy and mission, invoking the Sanskrit word "satyagraha." "It means nonviolence, and it means insistence on the truth. And that is what John Lewis was all about: nonviolently insisting on the truth," Pelosi said. PHOTO: Mourners attend the funeral service for the late Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/AP) Through tears, she told fellow mourners that he always worked toward a "more perfect union," with many messages specifically to young people. Pelosi ended her speech with an image of a double rainbow, saying that on his last night at the Capitol, one appeared, despite it not having rained. "He was telling us, 'I'm home in heaven,'" Pelosi said. "We always knew he worked on the side of the angels, and now he is with them." 12:03 p.m.: Clinton calls for all to 'salute, suit up and march on' PHOTO: Former President Bill Clinton speaks during the funeral service for the late Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/AP) Former President Bill Clinton said Rep. John Lewis left the world with "marching orders" to "keep moving," referencing his op-ed in the New York Times, which was published on the day of his funeral. "I just loved him. I always will, and I'm so grateful that he stayed true to form: He's gone off yonder and left us with marching orders," Clinton said. "I suggest -- since he's close enough to God to keep his eyes on the sparrow and us -- we salute, suit up, and march on." PHOTO: Former President Bill Clinton attends the funeral service for the late Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/AP) Clinton also recalled Lewis' ability to make "good trouble," as well as his "uncanny ability to heal troubled waters." The former president also spoke about Lewis' insistence for nonviolence, saying Lewis would rather keep moving in the right direction "without hatred in his heart" and with open hands rather than "clenched fists." Clinton highlighted the humble spirit of the civil rights icon, noting that that great achievements of a share-croppers son from Troy, Alabama is a testament to the greatness of the human spirit and an embodiment of American tenacity. "I think it's important that all of us who loved him remember that he was after all, a human being," Clinton said. "A man like all other humans born with strengths that he made the most of when many don't. Born with weaknesses that he worked hard to beat down when many can't, but still a person. It made him more interesting, and it made him in my mind, even greater." 11:46 a.m.: Bush delivers remarks PHOTO: Former President George W. Bush speaks during the funeral service for the late Congreeman John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/AP) Former President George W. Bush said that while he and Rep. John Lewis had their differences, "we live in a better and nobler country because of John Lewis." Bush said that Lewis' lifelong work does not end with his death and the fight is not over. "The story that began in Troy [where Lewis was born] isn't ending here today, nor is his work," Bush said. "He will live forever in the hearts of Americans who act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with their God." Bush was the last president to re-authorize the Voting Rights Act. Wearing a picture of Lewis on his lapel, Bush thanked the late congressman's family for inviting him to the funeral. PHOTO:Former President George W. Bus, left, and former first lady Laura Bush attend the Celebration of Life Service for civil rights leader and Democratic Rep. from Georgia John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/EPA via Shutterstock) 11:28 a.m.: Rev. Dr. Bernice King invokes words of MLK, says Lewis' fight for justice will continue Rev. Dr. Bernice King, the youngest child of civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., honored the life of Lewis with her father's words. "Death is not a period that ends this great sentence of life, but a comma which punctuates it to a lofty and higher significance," King said, quoting her father. King thanked God for "honoring us with his presence and allowing our lives to intersect with his." She also invoked the words of Lewis, saying that those fighting for justice would continue to make "good trouble as long as [God] grants us the breath to do so." She prayed for "good trouble" to dismantle white supremacy, protect Black bodies and ensure Black lives have equitable representation and power in every arena, and until "this nation truly becomes a compassionate nation." 11:20 a.m.: Funeral service is underway, Lewis remembered as 'true American patriot' Funeral services have begun for Rep. John Lewis. Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, started with the welcoming remarks, remembering Lewis for his lifelong fight as a civil rights icon and saying he is an emblem of a true hero. "When there is so much political cynicism and narcissism that masquerades as patriotism, here lies a true American patriot who risked his life for the hope and promise of democracy," Warnock said. PHOTO: Patrice Houston holds a picture of the late Rep. John Lewis while standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church before his funeral service, July 30, 2020, in Atlanta. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Warnock added that although the news cycle happens at a "dizzying pace" between the pandemic and protests for racial justice, "time stood still. The nation takes it time to remember him." "He became a living, walking sermon about truth-telling and justice-making, and he loved America until America learned how to love him back," he said. 9:38 a.m.: Speakers include Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bernice King, Pelosi Tributes for Rep. John Lewis will be delivered by former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, according to a copy of the funeral program. Obama, as reported Wednesday, will deliver the eulogy. PHOTO: In this March 4, 2007, file photo, presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama talks to Congressman John Lewis during the 42nd Annual Commemoration of the 1965 Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March in Selma, Ala. (Tami Chappell/Reuters, FILE) PHOTO: A horse-drawn carriage carries the body of Rep. John Lewis through downtown Selma, Ala., before crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, July 26, 2020. (Nicole Craine/The New York Times via Redux) Rev. Dr. Bernice King, the CEO of the King Center and youngest child of civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, will lead the funeral in a prayer, the funeral program showed. Other speakers paying tribute include Bill Campbell, former mayor of Atlanta; Jamila Thompson, deputy chief of staff for Lewis; Xernona Clayton, founder of the Trumpet Foundation; and James M. Lawson, an activist. Funeral ceremonies began last Saturday in Lewis' hometown of Troy, Alabama. On Sunday in Selma, 55 years after he and other demonstrators were beaten on "Bloody Sunday," Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a final time. Where he was once met with batons, Lewis' casket saw salutes from state troopers. ABC News' Janice McDonald, Steve Osunsami and Briana K. Stewart contributed to this report. This report was featured in the Friday, July 31, 2020, episode of Start Here, ABC News daily news podcast. "Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts. John Lewis' funeral features overwhelming calls to vote originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Global demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometers (CTKs), fell by 17.6% in June (-19.9% for international operations) compared to the previous year. That is a modest improvement from the 20.1% year-on-year drop recorded in Ma Global capacity, measured in available cargo tonne-kilometers (ACTKs), shrank by 34.1% in June (33.9% for international operations) compared to the previous year. This was on par with the 34.8% year-on-year drop in May. Belly capacity for international air cargo shrank by 70% in June compared to the previous year due to the withdrawal of passenger services amid COVID-19. This was partially offset by a 32% increase in capacity through expanded use of freighter aircraft. Global manufacturing demand stabilised in June: o The new export orders component of the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) rose by 11 points compared to May, the strongest monthly increase since the series began in 1999. o The PMI tracking global manufacturing output rebounded in June to its highest level since January. Cargo is, by far, healthier than the passenger markets but doing business remains exceptionally challenging. While economic activity is re-starting after major lockdown disruptions there has not been a major boost in demand. The rush to get personal protective equipment (PPE) to market has subsided as supply chains regularized, enabling shippers to use cheaper sea and rail options. And the capacity crunch continues because passenger operations are recovering very slowly, said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA's Director General and CEO. Middle Eastern carriers reported a decline of 19.1% year-on-year in June, an improvement from the 24.9% fall in May. International capacity decreased 25.8%, the best of all regions. This was driven by the aggressive operational strategies of some of the regions carriers. Other June regional performance African airlines posted a contraction of 13.8% in June. This was a weaker performance than the 7.3% fall in demand in May. The small Africa-Asia market continued to grow in June up 20.1%. However, the region suffered from the effects of the pandemic becoming more severe in June. International capacity in this region decreased 46.2%. Asia-Pacific airlines saw demand for international air cargo fall by 20% in June 2020 compared to the same period a year earlier. This was a slight deterioration over the 18.8% drop in May. Despite manufacturing starting to pick up in the region, demand was impacted by the reduction in shipments of PPE by air. International capacity decreased 32.3%. North American carriers reported a single digit fall in international cargo demand of 8.8% year-on-year in June. This was the smallest contraction of all regions. The resilient performance is due to the large freighter fleets of a few of the regions airlines as well as the fiscal support to airlines in the USA from the CARES Act. International capacity decreased 30.7%. European carriers reported a 27.6% annual drop in international cargo volumes in June. This was a slight improvement from Mays performance of -29.5% but still the second weakest performance of all regions. International capacity decreased 40.7% Latin American carriers posted a 29.4% drop in year-on-year international demand in June. This was the weakest performance of all regions. International capacity decreased 43.6% indicating a sizeable capacity crunch. The COVID-19 crisis is particularly challenging at present for airlines based in Latin America owing to strict lockdown measures. Dalits are those communities that have been oppressed, and marginalised in the worst forms for millenniums in the name of caste, the major practice of social stratification in the Hindu society in South Asia. Also termed Achhoots (meaning untouchables) by the radical enforcers of the extremely rigid caste system, the Dalits are not included even in the traditional four Varnas and are referred to as Panchamas. Dalits in South Asia In an orientalist historical explanations, untouchability originated when Indo-Aryan community migrated to the Indian subcontinent in around 1,500 BCE and deemed the indigenous community inferior in terms of cultural and racial aspects. Manusmriti, an ancient Hindu legal text written around 1,250-1,000 BCE, incorporated the caste system as the basis of order and regularity to preserve the purity of race and blood, ostracising the indigenous community into Achhoots. Indias BR Ambedkar, however, declines to accept this multiracial notion of Aryans and non-Aryans and the purity. He defines caste as an artificial stratification of people into fixed and definite units. He presents the caste system not as a racial division but as a social division of people of the same race. Dalits in Nepal In Nepal, the earliest caste system is said to have come to practice in Khas Rajya (modern-day western Nepal) in the 12th century when Brahmins from the then independent states in India came to the Sinja valley. Dor Bahadur Bistas Fatalism and Development details how the caste system was introduced in Khas Rajya during the early medieval period. Likewise, the caste system was introduced in Kathmandu Valley by King Jayasthiti Malla with the assistance of his five pandits in the 14th century by introducing four Varnas and 64 Jaats. In modern times, Prithvi Narayan Shah declared his unified territory as the country of four Varnas and 36 Jaats. Jung Bahadur Rana legitimised the caste system through the countrys first documented law, Muluki Ain (Civil Code) 1854, and also included non-Hindu groups in the caste system. The legal code documented the castes into four types: Taagadhari the elite thread-wearing group (Bhramins and Chettris); Matwali the alcohol-drinking group (further divided into Namaasiney or non-enslavable, and Maasiney or enslavable); Paani nachalney tara chhoichhito haalnu naparne (impure but touchable) Paani nachalney tara chhoichitto haalnu parne (impure and untouchable). The word Dalit The root of the word Dalit is Dalan, which translates to oppression in Sanskrit, Nepali and Hindi languages. Hence, Dalit means oppressed. Perhaps, the word was first used by the Indian reformer Jyotirao Phule. Although Mahatma Gandhi proposed and used the term Harijan or children of god in 1932, Ambedkar used and popularized the word Dalit as a quasi-class term, referring to a class of people at the rock-bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Social history of Dalits in Nepal Whether one believes the colonial orientalist view or the countering view of Ambedkar, it is undeniable that the Dalits have been ostracised and oppressed for more than three millenniums since the Vedic age. When the caste system was introduced in Khas Rajya, it created a hierarchical and social difference among the people of the state. Similarly, while many historians see the division of the caste system based on peoples occupation as a reform, it also led to segregation and oppression. For example, people from the lowest caste in the Kathmandu valley in the medieval period were not allowed to have tiles on their roofs and had to show respect to the people of the higher caste. Practising the caste system inflicted discrimination so much so that it would deny even the basic rights to the people from the lowest castes. Jung Bahadur Rana encouraged discrimination based on castes through the Muluki Ain, which was already in practice in the Nepali society. The punishments were set based on caste as the Brahmins were not given capital punishments while the people from the lowest castes would get severe ones. Similarly, marriage was made endogamic, i.e., within the same caste for the sake of purity. The people labelled as impure were denied even the basic social, economic, cultural, intellectual, and political rights. They were not allowed to touch tap water used by people of a higher caste, could not enter temples, would be punished if they married from a higher caste. They had no participation in politics and education and were even prohibited to touch people and their belongings. Dalit movements in Nepal The history of Dalit movements in Nepal can be traced parallel to the countrys political history. 1. Pre-Panchayat and Panchayat The first wave of Dalit assertion in Nepal began in 1947 in a village called Thadaswara in Baglung district when Sarvajit Bishwakarma established an organisation called Vishwa Sarvajan Sangh to challenge the existing caste system and wore a janai (the sacred thread) against the oppression. In the Kathmandu valley, the successful movement of the Pashupati Temple Entrance Campaign in 1954 is considered one of the first movements. Many other organisations such as Tailors Union (1947), Nepal Samaj Sudhar Sangh (2947), Nepal Harijan Sangh (1947) were established before the democratic struggle against the Rana regime in 1951, while many other organisations were established for Dalit movements and upliftment during Nepals first tenure of democracy in 1950-60. The Interim Government of Nepal Act (1951) was the first legal document to recognise people, including Dalits, as citizens with civil and political rights. The autocratic Panchayat regime formulated the New Muluki Ain in 1963 and tried to abolish untouchability in the legal and social systems. During the Panchayat era, nine more organisations were established for the upliftment of Dalits. 2. Post-Janaandolan I As the country adopted the free market policy after the restoration of democracy in 1990, it also sought to provide welfare through private development partners such as national and international non-government organisations (I/NGOs). Many organisations emerged with slogans of Dalit emancipation. As the Dalit movement rose, the government formed the Dalit Commission in 2002 and brought many programmes such as scholarships and reservations. And, although such steps were not adequate to abolish caste-based discrimination, it certainly boosted the morale of Dalit rights activism. Dalits had an important role during the decade-long Maoist Insurgency (1996-2006) as thousands of Dalit men and women participated in the armed conflict while around 200 were killed. 3. Post-Janaandolan II The country headed to a more participatory federal system post the second Peoples Movement in 2006. The issues of Dalits have been covered on the national agenda and the Dalit movement has gradually progressed although it is yet to be institutionalised. The major achievement during the last decade has been the criminalisation of caste-based discrimination through the Caste-based Discrimination and Untouchability Crime Elimination and Punishment Act in 2011, and the Constitution of Nepal (2015) endorsing the rights and opportunities for the Dalits for their upliftment. Moreover, the constitution recognised the National Dalit Commission as a constitutional body, and the National Dalit Commission Act 2017 was enacted to ensure opportunities for Dalits. Similarly, the Nepali Parliament has reserved certain seats for Dalits and other excluded communities in the proportional representation system to ensure participation in the political spheres. As per the election laws, 13.8% of the PR seats in the House of Representatives, as well as the provincial assemblies, are allocated for Dalits while the seven provinces must select at least one Dalit representative each among eight seats allocated to them for the National Assembly. Moreover, at least one woman between two women members in each ward of a local government must be from the Dalit community to ensure participation. The discrimination against Dalits is still a prevailing issue in Nepal as reports of discrimination, prejudice and even hate crimes emerge from time to time. In recent times, the news broke out about the killing of six people from the Dalit community in Rukum (West) as one of the victim tried to elope with a girl from a higher caste. The devastating news did not only shake the nation but brought out again the discourse on discrimination and oppression on the Dalits. The number of Covid-19 containment zones has come down to 496 in Delhi after an extensive review by the AAP government, providing relief to thousands of people living in such restricted areas. The number of containment zones was 715 in Delhi by the end of July, affecting nearly 3.5 lakh people. With the number going down to 496, the movement of only about one lakh people will be affected, Revenue Minister Kailash Gahlot said in a statement on Saturday. The review of the containment zones by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government comes after a Union health ministry memorandum earlier this week, allowing all states and Union territories to de-notify a containment zone 14 days after the discharge of the last Covid-19 patient, officials said. Earlier such a de-notification could be done 28 days after the discharge of the last patient. As desired by Honble CM @ArvindKejriwal all the containment zones in Delhi were extensively reviewed in last 2 days with each District DM and surveillance Team, Gahlot said in a tweet. A locality is declared a containment zone by the district authorities in Delhi if three or more persons there test positive for Covid-19. Reviewing the Covid-19 situation in the national capital on June 29, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had expressed concern over the large size of the containment zones as it restricted the movement of a huge population, Gahlot said. During the last two days, an extensive review of containment zones was carried out with Revenue and Health officials. The result has been quite satisfactory. Against 715 containment zones affecting 348099 people, the number of containment zones is now down to 496, which affects the movement of 10,6211 people, the minister said in the statement. The situation was again re-assessed by the chief minister, who directed such reviews at regular intervals. The Delhi government had been demanding changes in the containment zone norms as some restricted areas in the city were under a complete lockdown for three-four months with a large number of people forced to stay indoors, a senior government officer said. He said the redesigning of the containment zones will affect a lesser number people, while pointing out that the Rajnagar containment zone in southwest-Delhi, which affected around 43,000 residents earlier, will affect only about 1,600 people after the exercise. All entry and exit points are barricaded in a containment zone to prevent any movement of the residents. Police personnel are deployed to keep a watch on it, while necessary supplies are provided to the people in such zones at their doorstep. Two of County Wexford's TDs have highlighted concerns they have over ongoing issues in relation to the theft of animals across the county and nationally. Fianna Fail TD, Deputy James Browne, has called for the setting up of a new criminal offence based around the theft of companion pets while Deputy Johnny Mythen, of Sinn Fein, also spoke to this newspaper about the issue. The two TDs have raised their concerns in the wake of a recent incident that saw the Doyle family, from Enniscorthy, suffer the theft of their pet Springer Spaniel, Daisy, and seven of her seven-week-old pups. An appeal by the family notched up over 14,000 shares on social media and thankfully Daisy was reunited with her owners after being found in Dublin. Unfortunately, the pups haven't been recovered to-date. Deputy Browne is proposing that such a new offence should be called 'the theft of a companion animal'. Highlighting that Irish law considers dogs and other family pets as 'mere property' he said things needs to change. 'Irish law considers dogs and other family pets to be mere property,' said Deputy Browne. 'This means that if someone steals a family pet, such as a dog, it is punished in the same way as if someone steals any non-living object, such as a mobile phone or a power tool,' he added. Deputy Browne, who is his party's spokesperson on mental health, said the current law as it stands doesn't reflect the emotional harm that can be caused to victims of pet theft. 'The penalty for pet theft should be more severe than for the theft of a non-living property,' he said. 'Currently, there is no specific code on the Garda PULSE system to record theft of animals,' he added. 'The same code is used for all types of theft and therefore it is not possible to know the level of animal theft in Ireland [and] I am proposing the creation of a new offence called the theft of a companion animal.' It's well known that many people form close emotional relationships with their pets and rely on them for companionship and emotional support. 'We know pets can have a positive impact on their owners and can improve psychological well-being [as well as] reduce risks of depression and loneliness,' said Deputy Browne. 'Pets can also act as therapy dogs including reducing anxiety in children such as children with autism spectrum disorder,' he added. 'The potential strength of the bond between a dog and its owner is likely to cause in emotional trauma when this bond is broken.' He said the law should reflect society's recognition that companion pets are not considered mere property by their owners but are viewed as part of the family. 'The punishment for those who are stealing companion pets should be reflected in a more serious offence,' he said. 'Therefore, I'm calling for a new legal status for animals which distinguishes them from mere property.' Deputy Mythen said he has spoken to many constituents who outlined to him 'a serious increase in the organised theft of domestic pets'. 'I have been working for the last several weeks on the issue and plan to seek further measures urgently to solve the problem,' he said. 'I have submitted parliamentary questions to establish the extent of the issue, and how it is currently being dealt with,' he added. He has also urged the Minister for Justice to take action on the matter. He has also asked that a new pulse code for 'possession of a stolen animal' be set up. 'The theft of household pets is an extremely distressing crime and we need to ensure that the Justice system is adequately set up to deal with this effectively,' he said. 'Imagine a situation where a young child or family member walks outside to find their beloved family pet suddenly missing, your heart goes out to them,' he added. Deputy Mythen is urging his constituents to ensure their pets are microchipped and to be cautious of any unusual markings outside their house. 'I have heard reports that criminals are now marking out houses to target for theft of certain breeds of dogs in particular,' he said. 'I would advise people to be aware of the threat and to report any suspected theft to authorities without delay,' he added. 'I am working hard on this and I hope we will see improvements and a plan directed from the Department of Justice.' The Hamilton County Health Department is notifying the community of a potential COVID-19 exposure that occurred at Citico Mini-Mart, 1320 Citico Ave., between Monday, July 20, and Friday, July 31. The Health Department is notifying the public of an additional potential COVID-19 exposure that occurred at the following Chattanooga Mobile Market stops on Tuesday, July 28, and Wednesday, July 29: Tuesday, July 28 Emma Wheeler Homes: 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Cempa Community Care (Medical Towers): 1 p.m.-3 p.m. Dogwood Manor: 3:30-5:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 29 Mary Walker Towers: 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Silvertree Seniors Chattanooga: 1-3 p.m. Boynton Terrace Apartments: 3:30-5:30 p.m. Case investigations revealed that members of the public who visited or shopped at the Citico Mini-Mart or the Chattanooga Mobile Market stops during these time frames may have been exposed to individuals during their infectious period of COVID-19. It is recommended that anyone who visited these locations during that time frame be tested as soon as possible. If you think you were exposed to the virus, please stay home, away from others and monitor your symptoms, said Health Department Administrator Becky Barnes, Free testing is available in our community and we encourage anyone who has been in close contact with a positive case, or is experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to get tested. Free Health Department COVID-19 testing is available at the following locations and times: Sunday, August 2, at Orchard Knob Missionary Baptist Church, 1734 E 3rd St, Chattanooga, from 12-3 p.m. Beginning Monday, August 3 the Health Departments new testing site at the Alstom Plant, 1119 Riverfront Parkway, will be open daily from 7-11 a.m. Both sites are open to the public without an appointment or referral, and no symptoms are necessary. Walk-up or drive-through options are available. Call (423) 315-3994 for free transportation. Reservations for a ride can be made Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Rides to the testing sites must be scheduled the previous day. For more information, please call the Health Departments COVID-19 hotline at (423) 209-8383. The hotline is open Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-4 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Do not call the YMCA, Chattanooga Mobile Market, or Citico Mini-Mart for information related to COVID-19 exposures. Cempa Community Care, which has been involved in the COVID testing, said, "Earlier today, the Hamilton County Health Department issued a press release detailing possible COVID-19 exposures across Hamilton County, Tennessee. The title of this press release is Health Department Announces Potential COVID-19 Exposures at Citico Mini-Mart and Chattanooga Mobile Market Locations. "Of the multiple sites listed for the YMCAs Chattanooga Mobile Market, one is Cempa Community Care (Medical Towers) on Tuesday, July 28, between the hours of 1pm-3pm. "Cempas leadership wishes to clarify this with additional information. "Cempa Community Care has partnered with the Chattanooga Mobile Market for quite some time, allowing it to set up on 4th Street behind its facility. The market and its personnel operate completely outside the Cempa facility. Cempa wishes to assure patients and community members who visited Cempa Community Care on the date and times listed by the health department that they do not run a high risk of exposure from visiting the Cempa facilities." The mobile market is set up on 4th Street behind our building where it is open to the public during the hours of its operation. The market is not located inside our facility or on our property, said Shannon Stephenson, CEO at Cempa Community Care. We have partnered with the YMCA Chattanooga Mobile Market for several years and appreciate that they have always taken the best and safest precautions, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only two people are allowed on the mobile unit at a time, and all parties wear a face mask. By adding the extra precaution of having a plexiglass screen in place between the cashier and buyer, we consider this to be an incidence of low-risk exposure, one that our patients should certainly not be overly worried about. As is the case in general, Cempa Community Care encourages area residents to seek out COVID-19 testing, which is widely available across Hamilton County, should they experience associated symptoms or learn of direct exposure to a COVID-19 case, it was stated. Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we intend to prove it. Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends throughout. Here, they discuss the weeks events with Tom Moran, editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger. Q. New Jersey saw an increase in the number of new virus cases, with 2,000 over a four-day stretch, fueled partly by big house parties that break all the rules. Is it paranoid to think this dam is bound to break, given the national outbreaks? Julie: The reality is that New Jersey is a densely populated state and neither we nor any other state ever had a true shutdown. We had the opportunity to do it like some countries in Western Europe, where the shutdowns were so severe that most people were not allowed to leave their houses for months. There was no political will to do that here and so we are now reaping the consequences, even in those places where the governors have been relatively responsible. Mike: I remain optimistic that New Jersey wont return to anything like it looked like in April. Behaviors have changed drastically. We will not be perfect, but we can continue to open up in a safe manner and not go back to total lockdown. Our economy just contracted by 33% last quarter, unprecedented in American history, and four times worse than in 2008-09. We cannot hide. We need a safe balance. Q. Several legislators are pushing for a delay in school reopening, as are some county chapters of the states largest teachers union. Are we really going to reopen in September? How are families supposed to deal with this uncertainty? Julie: It's impossible to make childcare plans when there is no understanding of what the childcare situation will be like in a month. It's impossible to make work plans if you don't know whether your day job will consist of teaching your own children. It stands to reason that even if students return to the classroom in the first weeks, schools will immediately shut down again when the first few teachers, administrators or even children test positive for the virus, which is bound to happen. Reality tells us to prepare for another period of distance learning. Why are we pretending otherwise and not being given clear guidelines now of what that would entail for every family? Mike: We must allow flexibility based on districts and even individual schools. Some have space where kids can learn safely. Others wont have the same space. But we cannot give up before we even try. We cannot sacrifice a year of kids academic and social development out of fear. Lets at least try to get back with at least a hybrid model and be prepared for another period of distance learning as Julie suggests. Well, schools certainly dont need to be the canary in the coal mine on this issue. A massive amount of time and energy is being dedicated to in-school planning. If were not really going to be in-school Sept, then let us focus on a better virtual plan. https://t.co/Tb3dN3LFQS Rocco Tomazic (@FBPSsup) July 27, 2020 Q. Joe Biden says hell pick his running mate next week, and all we know is that itll be a woman. Who would help him most politically? Who would be the best president if it come to that? Julie: Vice Presidents are never chosen based on who would do well stepping up to the top spot, so I am going to ignore the second part of your question, especially since there is not one person on Biden's list who would be more of a disaster as president than Donald Trump. I am a big fan of Stacey Abrams but I am fiercely committed to the notion that Biden must choose an African American woman. African American women have been the backbone of the Democratic Party. Democrats can't keep showing up in Black churches and asking Black women for their vote the Sunday before Election Day, while ignoring their desire for meaningful political power when it really matters. It's time Black women have a real seat at the table, commensurate with their consistent electoral deliverables for our Party. Mike: The most important attribute of the VP pick is that she unquestionably be qualified to be president. If shes not, it becomes a massive distraction and allows the media and the opposing campaign to call the presidential candidates judgment into question. I worked for John McCain when he picked Sarah Palin, so I know. Bidens number one job is to keep the campaign focus on Trump, not his running mate. Biden should pick Sen. Harris. As an African American woman, she brings all the political benefits Julie says. She ran for president so has a national profile and knows the grind this will be. She is also a United States Senator and former Attorney General for the largest state in America. Stacey Abrams top qualification is losing a race for governor, so I just don t think that stacks up to Harris. Julie: Actually, Stacey Abrams' top qualification is the work she is doing on enfranchising voters. She lost her race in Georgia because her opponent used questionable tactics and the power of his office to disenfranchise Democrats. Abrams also represents a new paradigm: a younger woman of color who is not content to wait her turn and who can inspire others like her to follow in her footsteps. Someone like that can bring Millennials to the polls, as she did in Georgia. Q. President Trump seems to be in big trouble in Michigan, which he won narrowly in 2016. Hes down among women by 29 points in one poll, and the campaign recently pulled planned campaign ads. How important is this? Julie: It's critically important. Trump is not just at risk of losing Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- all states he won in 2016 -- but his campaign is now spending resources to shore up once-reliably red states like Arizona and Georgia. Ohio and Florida, which he won handily last time, are at risk of slipping away from him. Meanwhile, the economy, which I have said for years is the true barometer of his political prospects, just contracted at the fastest quarterly rate on record -- a whopping 33% annual rate of decline. He's in big trouble. Mike: He doesnt need to win every state Julie just listed, but he needs 6 of the 7 to win. He can afford to slip in Michigan but nowhere else. Q. Trump spoke to Putin, but said he didnt discuss intelligence reports saying that Russian intelligence pays bounties to Taliban fighters for killing American troops. Help me understand: Why isnt this causing Trump more political trouble? Julie: This illustrates the broken way in which most Americans consume news. Trump -- with a massive assist from Russian internet bots -- has convinced his base that anything Russia-related is part of the "Russian hoax," perpetuated by Democrats to hurt him. Democrats are just exhausted because they feel Robert Mueller's investigation didn't amount to any real consequences for the administration. COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter protests and the clashes between protesters and law enforcement are taking up all the media oxygen. To the extent that voters have even heard about this, they are not really paying attention. That is the biggest shame of all -- because our president is essentially selling out the United States to our greatest geopolitical foe for nefarious reasons that we will eventually learn about. Mike: Theres so much going on in the news every day daily COVID counts, protests in Portland, VP speculation, daily presidential tweets - that somehow a battle with Russia is below the radar. Q. New Jerseys unemployment rates spiked to 16.2 percent in June, the second highest in the country. At the same time, Murphy has overwhelming public approval. Can that last? Julie: It's always the economy, stupid. Not to knock Mike's brilliant handling of the 2009 Christie campaign, but it was the national economic crash and not Chris Christie that sunk Gov. Corzine. Sen. Bill Bradley, almost lost his senate race to a little-known Freeholder named Christie Whitman in 1990 because voters were angry over the economy. A month before the election, a poll had Bradley up by 36 points. He eked it out by 3. I know that the governor's staff loves to tout his seemingly invincible polling numbers, but if I were Governor Murphy, I would be concerned when economists predict that the state won't see a recovery in the next few years. People are giving the governor a lot of latitude now because we are in the midst of a crisis and the Trump clown show makes any sentient politician look great by comparison. But New Jersey voters are not a patient bunch. If Trump loses in November, New Jerseyans won't have a ready-made national bogeyman to blame if the economy keeps tanking and COVID deaths keep spiking next year. Mike: Christie won Independent voters by 25 points and only won the race by 4. The Democratic registration advantage is that huge, now nearly one million voters. At this point, Democrats have a huge advantage. Julie is right that working-class Democrats and Independents tend to turn on Democratic governors who oversee double-digit unemployment. It could be an especially acute problem for Gov. Murphy, a former Wall Street executive, because he will be expected to be expert in bringing jobs back. 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. 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. Vandals attempt to pull down the statue of former President Andrew Jackson in the middle of Lafayette Park in front of the White House during racial inequality protests in Washington on June 22, 2020. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Antifa Militant Indicted on New Charges for Destruction in DC An Antifa member who was charged after allegedly inflicting damage on statues in Washington, D.C., has been indicted on several new charges, boosting the number of years in jail he faces if convicted. Jason Charter was allegedly part of the mob that tried tearing down a statue of former President Andrew Jackson near the White House on June 22, federal authorities said. A grand jury returned an indictment against Charter late last month on charges of destruction of government property, destruction of veterans memorials, and aiding and abetting. Charter previously faced up to 10 years in prison. He now faces up to 21 years in jail if convicted of all three counts. Jackson, Americas seventh president, served in the military before his time in office, including as major general in the War of 1812. The statue of Jackson, a Democrat, was targeted by rioters in the nations capital because he supported slavery and has been accused of hostility toward Native Americans. The indictment stems from Charters alleged involvement in the vandalism. A man authorities say is Jason Charter in still images from surveillance video. (FBI) Surveillance video shows a man authorities say is Charter entering Lafayette Park on June 22 wearing distinctive clothing, including an armband and ski goggles. Later in the day, the same man grabbed ropes attached to the statue and adjusted them before being boosted onto the monument and unwrapping several ropes that were handed to him before attaching one to the statue and giving another to a man next to him. Charter is plainly visible in the footage, according to a criminal complaint. Charter is a self-described member of Antifa, a far-left, anarcho-communist movement that supports using violence against enemies, which include conservatives and police officers. He was previously accused of taking part in the toppling of an Albert Pike statue, also in June, but the new indictments dont mention that. Charter has said on social media that he is innocent. He pleaded not guilty to all counts during a hearing this week. He is not being detained at present; he was released soon after being charged on personal recognizance. The next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 4. Some companies in the United States want to know how they can make their workplaces safer. Industry healthcare experts say companies are worried because of information from the worlds top public health agency. About two weeks ago, the World Health Organization called for more scientific study of the airborne transmission of the new coronavirus. It is the cause of the disease COVID-19. Experts say if the virus can stay in the air for long periods of time it raises safety questions for people in offices, stores, and other workplaces. The possibility that the virus can spread through the air in this way has not been included in U.S. government rules for returning to work. Many companies have created rules based on information from the WHO that says drops of fluid with the virus could infect people after they landed on surfaces. Now, there are questions about whether the virus can survive in very small drops that stay in the air for hours. Companies are wondering whether their policies on face covering and improving air flow are good enough. Some stores have put in glass barriers between employees and customers. Now experts say they must decide what to do if the virus can stay in the air around their employees. Neal Mills is the chief medical officer at healthcare services group Aon. He began receiving questions recently about the WHOs decision to investigate airborne transmission. He said employers were slowing the return of workers back to their offices. They are doing due diligence around how are you going to reduce the transmission of the virus, if it is airborne, Mills said. The slowdown comes as some employers have already begun delaying plans to bring back office workers because of the rising number of coronavirus cases. Energy industry companies Halliburton in Texas and California-based Chevron are among them. Employers are asking if public health guidelines asking that individuals remain about two meters apart and wear masks are enough. They also wonder about air cooling systems that do not have filtration devices and the effectiveness of the glass barriers against an airborne virus, said David Zieg. Zieg is an expert at Mercer, a healthcare services company. Experts are telling employers to go beyond their existing plans. Plans may include measuring peoples body temperature, asking health questions and cleaning restrooms more often. The concept here is risk reduction. Its not 100 percent. You add in all the little things you can to reduce the risk, Zieg said. Months after U.S. companies sent workers home, many are trying to understand the best way to bring them back. Many employers are worried about their legal responsibility and the cost of employee healthcare plans. Some companies understood the possibility of airborne transmission early. Automakers General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler improved ventilation in their factories before restarting production on May 18. The companies said they were worried about airborne transmission. Im Susan Shand. The Reuters News Agency reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story airborneadj. moving in or carried through the air transmissionn. the process of sending something from one place to another or between people due diligencen.(legal) the care that a reasonable person takes to avoid harm to others or their property filtrationn. the process of removing pollutants from the air or water ventilationn. a system that lets fresh air flow through a building Nicki Minaj's husband Kenneth Petty had a request to alter the terms of his pretrial release conditions granted by a judge on Friday. The tweak will allow Petty, 42, to travel with Minaj, 37, 'periodically on business trips as her manager,' which will ensure he is present when she goes into labor, according to TMZ. Earlier this month, Kenneth and Nicki announced that they were expecting their first child together via Instagram. Other pretrial conditions will stay in place, meaning Petty cannot use illicit substances and he will continue to wear an ankle monitor. Granted: Nicki Minaj's husband Kenneth Petty had a request to alter the terms of his pretrial release conditions granted by a judge on Friday; Kenneth pictured in March 2020, after he failed to register as a sex offender in the state of California Petty is currently awaiting trial after being arrested for failing to register as a sex offender when he moved to California to be with the Move Ya Hips rapper. Earlier this week, he submitted a request to alter his pretrial release conditions, which only allowed him to travel within California, according to documents obtained by TMZ. Petty told the judge at the time that the U.S. Attorney's Office and pretrial services had no objections to the request, but still needed a judge's approval. Kenneth was required to register as a sex offender in California because he was convicted of first-degree attempted rape in 1995. By her side: The tweak will allow Petty, 42, to travel with Minaj, 37, 'periodically on business trips as her manager,' which will ensure his is present when she goes into labor, according to TMZ; Minaj pictured on Instagram on July 20 Expecting: Earlier this month, Kenneth and Nicki announced that they were expecting their first child together via Instagram In March he was arrested by Federal authorities for failing to register. Shortly after, he pleaded not guilty and was released on a $100k bond. To announce the impending birth of their first child, Nicki uploaded a snapshot of herself and Kenneth to her Instagram on July 20. In the post, Nicki cradled her full baby belly while dolled up wearing a curly yellow wig, embellished bikini, and sparkling platform heels, writing: ''#Preggers [yellow heart emoji].' Nicki shared a more introspective caption in another post, writing: 'Love. Marriage. Baby carriage. Overflowing with excitement & gratitude. Thank you all for the well wishes.' Other rules: Other pretrial conditions will stay in place, meaning Petty can't use illicit substances and will continue to wear an ankle monitor Rumors that the rapper was expecting have been swirling around since before she and Petty wed in 2019. Prior to their marriage Nicki shocked fans by announcing she was retiring from music to start a family. 'I've decided to retire & have my family. I know you guys are happy now. To my fans, keep reppin me, do it til da death of me Love you for LIFE,' she tweeted in September 2019. She later walked back her statement while responding to a fan's tweet. 'Im still right here. Still madly in love with you guys & you know that. In hindsight, this shouldve been a Queen Radio discussion & it will be. I promise u guys will be happy. No guests, just us talking about everything. The tweet was abrupt & insensitive, I apologize babe.' A rapidly breeding invasive blue crab species is currently wrecking the livelihood of Balkan fishermen in Albania. The menace it causes is not a pretty picture. The Blue Crab Invasion The invasive blue crab is disrupting the ecosystems of the region. Although this crustacean is native to the Atlantic Ocean, it started to emerge in the Adriatic waters of Albania more than 10 years ago, enabled by the warming temperatures of the sea. Stilian Kisha, 40 years old, laments that the crabs are clever and are very aggressive. This year, he says, they see the crabs everywhere--offshore, in inland water parts, and on the coast. He says they are causing enormous damage. READ: Alien Spotted-Thighed Frog Invasion Disrupts Southern Australia's Natural Biodiversity Disappearing Fishes It has become a source of anguish for these fishermen as they struggle to eke out a livelihood. The fish they catch are exceedingly disappearing because of the crabs. Near Karavasta Lagoon, in a marshy coastal zone, weirs and nets are being clogged by the invasive crabs. The fishermen say that the marine fishes and other native fauna that they depend on are increasingly becoming harder to catch. Forty-four-year-old Besmir Hoxha relates how the crab takes away their daily living and the fishes in their nets, leaving them with nothing to sell. There are days when fishermen collect 300 kilos (about 660 pounds) of the crab and only five or six kilos (11 to 13 pounds) of sellable fish. They say that stocks of eels, red mullets, and local sea bass are disappearing, while the crustacean invader destroys the delicate ecological balance underwater. Stilian says the crabs get to the fish first. Prolific Reproduction of Crabs Fishermen have reason to worry because the female blue crab can lay eggs by the millions, says University of Tirana hydrobiology professor Sajmir Beqiraj. The Atlantic Blue Crab, Callinectes sapidus, is a native of the Gulf of Mexico, thriving there but also spreading throughout the world via the ballast water of ships. It is now one of the Mediterranean's top 100 invasive species. According to Beqiraj, climate change enables exotic species to spread to places where conditions - especially temperature - just a few years ago would have been unfavorable. C. sapidus already disrupted the ecological balance of the native populations, causing their decline and extinction, especially the local crabs. C. sapidus also damages the seagrass beds which function as local fish nurseries. They do this by eating the snails and mussels which the fishes feed on. Beqiraj acknowledges that the damage caused to fish populations is significant. READ: Protected Areas All Over the World Vulnerable to Invasive Alien Species Crabs are Unmarketable Meanwhile, the crab itself does not bring profit. It only sells for 40 cents (Euro) per kilo, while red mullets sell for 14 euros per kilo. Even if the blue crab is a delicacy, it is not popular in Albania. Fishermen are left with boatloads of unsold crab. Hoxha says there is no crab market. In addition, unfrozen exports are banned in the E.U., thus preventing their sale elsewhere as well. This leaves the fishermen no choice but to let the crabs die in the sun. Twenty-seven-year-old fisherman Adrian Kola says they prevent the crabs from breeding by throwing them away. He says a solution must quickly be found, or else the crab's invasion might be as hard to control as COVID-19. READ NEXT: Invasive Plant Bacterium Could Jeopardize the Olive Oil Industry THE reports of stigmatization against Hutterites bring to mind the real-life experience of my friend Michael. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 1/8/2020 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion THE reports of stigmatization against Hutterites bring to mind the real-life experience of my friend Michael. He is a teacher who was hired to instruct elementary-level Hutterite kids at a colony about 20 kilometres north of Moose Jaw, Sask. I initially doubted whether teaching on a religious-based colony was a good fit for my friend, who self-identifies as an atheist. But Michael needed a job and the colony needed an instructor who was certified to teach the Saskatchewan curriculum, which didnt include teaching religion. Like many people, Michael knew little about this branch of the Anabaptists beyond stereotypical images. He was understandably nervous on his first day in the colony. The deal included providing lunch for the teacher because it was a long drive to Michaels home in Moose Jaw so, after the first morning of teaching, he joined the colony in a dining hall. They sat him at the head of a long table. Murmurs of Low German conversation filled the hall as women wearing long dresses and head coverings took their places on one side of the hall, and men wearing suspenders over long-sleeved shirts sat on the other side. A prayer was offered before the meal, and Michael inclined his head respectfully, although likely not in interior acquiescence to the deity mentioned. What came next flabbergasted Michael and quickly altered his opinion of Hutterites. Everyone watched as a woman from the kitchen brought out a large bowl, and served Michael first, setting it in front of him. He peered into the bowl. The severed head of a goose floated in steaming-hot water. Michael was thinking frantically of ways to refuse this unique culinary delicacy without offending his hosts, when he looked up to see everyone smiling at him. Another woman came out from the kitchen and served him salad and a hamburger. The goose-head prank relaxed Michael and dispelled some of his preconceptions of Hutterites as grave and dour, perhaps more interested in finding glory in heaven then having fun on Earth. This happened years ago, but he now recounts the colony gig as a highlight of his teaching career. He got to know the Hutterites as chill, friendly, more playful than he had expected, and often helping other people, including people outside the colony. On a deeper level, he noted their counter-cultural lifestyle seems to go a long way towards solving many social problems that stump mainstream communities: poverty, loneliness, unemployment, crime, possessiveness and the disrespectful treatment of older people. The admirable examples set by the Manitobans who live on these colonies seem to have been forgotten in recent weeks. Its ironic and sad that their altruistic work donating vegetables to off-colony soup kitchens, making and donating face masks, helping water rescue efforts with valuable expertise and highly advanced equipment hasnt been enough to stem a spurt of pandemic prejudice. The ungracious treatment of those wearing the kerchiefs and the suspenders is due to the public announcements of an outbreak of about 35 cases of COVID-19 on the 120 or so Hutterite communities in Manitoba. The Hutterian Safety Council said in a recent statement that, as a result of the publicity, Hutterites have experienced cultural profiling at medical and dental offices, and have been refused service at retail stores and massage therapy clinics. The council asked Manitoba to stop singling out Hutterites when new cases are announced, and chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin agreed to do that, unless theres a risk to public health. Hutterite spokesman Paul Waldner also said: "The government should really almost (make) a public statement and say, We were wrong here." 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 date, the government has not offered this requested acknowledgment of error, although Premier Brian Pallister on Wednesday urged Manitobans to treat Hutterites with "respect, patience and kindness." Many of us regret the stigmatization Hutterites are encountering. We hope they understand the prejudiced people are not acting on behalf of most Manitobans. Most of us realize the colonies have instituted strict pandemic precautions, including picking up food in pairs instead of eating in the communal food halls, and listening to church services through audio streams instead of gathering in pews. Its also relevant that this stigmatization comes at a time of great tension for all Manitobans. For more than five months, weve been warned to be wary and, because the deadly virus is invisible, some people have gone beyond a realistic appraisal of risk and see great danger where there is little. Such exaggerated fears have now found a target in a group of Manitobans who dress differently and live in a different way. We ask the Hutterites for compassionate understanding that were all enduring a high level of stress with no end in sight, and its brought out the worst in some people. We ask for grace. carl.degurse@freepress.mb.ca Carl DeGurse is a member of the Free Press editorial board. New Delhi: Dozens of Pakistani refugees living in a slum settlement were rendered homeless as nearly 30 shanties were gutted in fire at north Delhi's Majnu ka Tila on Sunday. A senior Delhi Fire Service Officer said the fire incident was reported around 12.45 PM. He said nine fire tenders were rushed to the spot and it was brought under control soon and no casualty was reported. The affected families have taken shelter at their relatives in the settlement, having around 100 temporary shanties, police said. A U.S. appeals court on Thursday agreed to rehear arguments over whether the judge assigned to the criminal case against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, must grant a request to dismiss it. A potential blow to Trump, who celebrated June 24th 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel that ruled in favor of Flynn and the Trump administration. That ruling said U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington had to grant the Justice Department's motion to clear Flynn. The D.C. Circuit Court panel said Sullivan was intruding on the Justice Department's authority to decide which cases it pursues. Sullivan asked the full court to reconsider the panel's ruling, saying the Justice Department's dropping of its own case against Flynn was unprecedented and had to be carefully scrutinized. Flynn was one of several former Trump aides charged under former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia's then-ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. Both he and Trump later accused the FBI of setting him up. Democrats have said the Flynn case is an example of Attorney General William Barr improperly meddling to help Trump's allies. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it would hold an oral argument on Aug. 11. Sri Lankas boat building industry regains resilience By Bandula Sirimanna View(s): View(s): Sri Lankas boat building industry has regained resilience in moving fast to secure the local and international markets while maintaining the normal production process, a leading boat builder said. Many Lankan companies are involved in making boats and ships while 11 identified companies are in exports. As a result the country is positioning to build boats to meet the post COVID-19 demand while continuing training for youth in the manufacture of boats, Director Administration of Neil Marine Company, Kapila Sumanapala told the Business Times. Since its inception the company has emerged as one of the leaders in the manufacture of Fibre Glass boats in Sri Lanka, having collaborated with several industry leaders in Europe and many other countries. The companys boat yard is ISO certified, 5S, Lloyds and only uses raw materials that carry the highest certifications, he said. It exports to the Netherlands, UK, Norway, Mid East, Africa, Maldives and many other countries and the boat design is done by naval architects from UK. Neil Marine has linked up with the ILO (International Labour Organisation) to continue boat manufacturing facility in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu involving youth in the North and East, he revealed. Funding for the two training programmes came from ILO assisted by Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). The Killinochchi manufacturing facility is now gathering momentum. Already more than 100 boats have been produced and disposed of. Presently the Cooperative Society is managing the activity assisted by the ILO, he disclosed. Mullaitivu activity is still being assisted by Neil Marine and it is turning out to be another successful venture, he said. The enthusiasm shown by the workers was very encouraging and the interaction they had with factory workers was unbelievable considering the fact that these youth were from war torn areas without any basic guidelines and facilities he added. Training is being given to youth on mould making and production of day fishing boats by assigning a separate experienced technical trainer attached to Neil Marine. On the advice of Neil Marine, the cooperative societies have put up shop floor facility and production activity continues in Killinochchi and Mullaitivu . Celebrating 50 years of unparalleled quality and service, Neil Marine took the initiative of uplifting the Dengue Ward at the Negombo Base Hospital,Mr Sumanapala disclosed. The company maintains a working relationship with the Vetus B.V, Netherlands-based marine engines, generators and technical equipment developer, manufacturer and trading company. Neil Marine is also the exclusive distributor of the Vetus Brand in Sri Lanka, he added. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After over a month of detoured buses as a result of repeated vandalism, Stapleton residents will soon see their routes return to their regularly scheduled service. Starting Monday, Aug. 3, the S52, S74 and S78 will return to their regular routes following over a month of detours, an MTA source with knowledge of the situation confirmed. In late June, the MTA detoured a handful of key bus lines -- the S51/81, S52, S74/84, S76/86 and S78 -- after a repeat offender within the service area continually vandalized MTA vehicles. On July 14, the detours were reduced to three routes -- the S52, S74 and S78 -- and were adjusted to align more closely with the regular routes. The prolonged detours sparked outrage from elected officials and community members alike, who described the move as punitive and absolutely outrageous. An entire community is being denied bus service by the MTA because of these unfortunate incidences, Dow Kevin Buford, a resident of Stapleton, told the Advance last week. This has taken place with no public notice, no public input, this is just something that the MTA decided to do. Why should an entire community suffer because one person did something that was wrong? Because thats exactly what is happening right now and its been going on for over a month, he added. Since then, the MTA has worked closely with the NYPD and Councilwoman Debi Rose (D-North Shore) to develop a plan in which the MTA Police Department and MTA Bridges and Tunnels Officers will work with the NYPD to safely restore the routes starting Monday, Aug. 3, according to an MTA source. After several one-on-one conversations with various parties, I convened a conference call Wednesday of all stakeholders, demanding that we work together toward a solution to restore all Stapleton bus routes while ensuring the safety of MTA drivers and passengers, following multiple incidents of rock throwing from one individual, said Rose. Were glad to be able to have the MTA Police and MTA Bridge and Tunnel Officers work with the NYPD to help provide a safe and secure environment for our bus operators and customers in Stapleton, and were grateful to the NYPD for arresting a serial attacker, said Craig Cipriano, President of the MTA Bus Company and Senior Vice President of Buses for MTA New York City Transit. On July 30, Johnny Ellison of Tompkins Avenue was arrested in relation to the repeated incidents of vandalism and was charged with criminal mischief and reckless endangerment, according to an NYPD spokesperson. These are not victimless crimes our buses and paratransit vehicles carry people, including those with disabilities, whose personal safety is directly at risk by this individual. Were lucky that this hasnt resulted in a tragedy, and we cant afford for there to be a next time, Cipriano added. Prosecutors should treat this case as a grave public safety matter and ensure an effective remedy that stops a repeat offender from going through a revolving door and striking again. The return of regular service will be a welcome sight for Stapleton residents, many of whom have been forced to travel additional lengths to catch a bus during whats been an incredibly warm summer. The pleas and demands of Stapleton bus riders have finally been heard. This detour was an extreme hardship on the residents in the Stapleton and Tompkinsville neighborhoods, punishing entire communities during a heat wave for the actions of one individual, who will be charged as a serial offender, said Rose. Special groups of foreigners can now enter THAILAND: Business operators can proceed to bring in their foreign visitors under the so-called Phase 6 of the easing of lockdown measures when they are ready, said the Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CSSA). CoronavirusCOVID-19economicsimmigrationtourismSafety By Bangkok Post Saturday 1 August 2020, 10:10AM Air travellers and airport officials go through the immigration process at Suvarnabhumi airport. Photo: AFP CCSA spokesman Taweesilp Visanuyothin said the CCSA has approved in principle the entry of four groups of foreign nationals and these visitors can resume their visits when local business operators have put in place disease control measures. The entry is granted to foreign business representatives, specialists, diplomats, migrant workers, exhibitors, film crews, medical tourists and Thailand Elite card members. One requirement is that they are required to stay in organisational quarantine facilities and such facilities must meet disease control standards. If they want to resume their visits, those concerned must have organisational quarantine centres ready. We dont have to say this easing will start on Aug 1. These groups of foreign visitors can resume the visits when the local operators are ready, he said. The CCSA yesterday (July 31) reported six new cases of coronavirus disease infection among returnees from Egypt and the Netherlands, raising the total to 3,310. Dr Taweesilp said five of the new patients had returned from Egypt. Four were male students, two aged 21 years and two aged 24. The four arrived on July 24 and were quarantined in Chon Buri province. They tested positive on Wednesday while being asymptomatic. The other returnee from Egypt was a man aged 28. He arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport on Thursday with a fever and breathing problems. He tested positive right away and was sent to a hospital in Chachoengsao province. The returnee from the Netherlands was a 52-year-old male chef who worked on a ship. He arrived last Saturday and was quarantined in Samut Prakan. He tested positive on Wednesday. Dr Taweesilp also warned that with rising COVID-19 infection rates overseas, Thailand could not expect to remain permanently free of new local community infections. Authorities could only hope to prolong the infection-free period as long as possible, and then cope with any outbreak as it occurs. ALBANY, N.Y. Thursday, the New York State Department of Health (DOH) took the final step to establish Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and 1,4-dioxane, three toxic emerging contaminants found in drinking water across the state. DOHs Public Health and Health Planning Council voted to set MCLs at 10 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOA, 10 ppt for PFOS, and one part per billion (ppb) for 1,4-dioxane. The regulations will appear in the next State Register, at which time they will be in effect. The MCLs will require all water systems in New York to test for these harmful chemicals and remove them from drinking water when the MCLs are exceeded. More than 2,000 small water systems, which together serve more than two million New Yorkers, have never been required to test for PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-dioxane. Clean water organizations emphasized that these MCLs are the first step in protecting drinking water from emerging contaminants. They detailed a suite of policy actions still needed from Gov. Andrew Cuomos administration and the State Legislature to ensure that every New Yorkers water is clean and safe to drink. We are glad that Maximum Contaminant Levels are finally in place. These new drinking water protections are the direct result of tireless advocacy by community members who literally have these chemicals in their blood, Rob Hayes, clean water associate at Environmental Advocates NY said. We will continue to urge Governor Cuomo to strengthen these regulations through regular reviews going forward. The science is clear: to protect people from cancer and other health hazards, New York must remove all PFAS from drinking water. Quick action is needed; it took almost five years for Governor Cuomos administration to set these MCLs, and we cant afford to wait that long for new drinking water standards, Hayes added. Ive waited for this day for five years. Yes, thats how long its been since I learned my water had been poisoned with PFOA. Thats how long Ive lived in fear of the PFOA in my blood, Michele Baker, Hoosick Falls resident and member of the New York Water Project, remarked. The people of Hoosick Falls fought for these drinking water protections every step of this process. Because of the persistence of our community, fewer New Yorkers will have to worry about toxins in their water when they turn on the faucet, Baker continued. New York shouldnt forget about Hoosick Falls, because theres much more to do. Its time to regulate all PFAS, not just two of them. Its time to address contamination of private water wells, not just public water systems. And its time for New York to commit to always, always making the protection of human health its first priority, Baker added. NYPIRG is pleased that the long awaited MCLs for PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-dioxane will soon be in place. The communities that have been harmed by these chemicals have fought for years for drinking water standards thanks to their tireless advocacy, that first battle has finally been won. Now there will be a clear path forward to clean and treat the drinking water serving millions of New Yorkers that has already been contaminated by these chemicals. But New York cannot allow mistakes of the past to be repeated. We urge Governor Cuomo and the Department of Health to ensure these MCLs keep up with the latest health science and are reviewed regularly moving forward, Liz Moran, environmental policy director for NYPIRG, added. SHOSHONE A wildfire ate up at least 3,000 acres of rocky desert Friday, coming dangerously close to several buildings on the northwest side of Lincoln Countys largest city. The Drops Fire began some time before 10 a.m. Friday morning right on Shoshones northwestern edge, next to the Lincoln County transfer station. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. A handful of planes, a helicopter, 15 fire engines and roughly 150 firefighters attacked the blaze on what was already a 100-degree day without the added heat from the fire. As of early afternoon, a massive wall of pale gray smoke blocked out much of the cloudless sky just outside Shoshone. Planes swooped in and out of the smoke, dropping long, billowing plumes of crimson retardant on the flames. A helicopter repeatedly doused the fire with massive buckets of water. In patches on the now-black desert, white smoke curled out of hotspots the fire had already passed through. The area smelled strongly of burnt sagebrush. Much of the desert around the fire is dominated by a brown-gold carpet of cheatgrass and other invasive species. In recent years the same area burned in the Lava Fire and Antelope Fire. A handful of agencies, including the Wendell, Gooding and Shoshone fire departments, Bureau of Land Management, Notch Butte Rangeland Fire Protection Association and U.S. Forest Service fought the fire. As of 2 p.m. Friday, the fire had not incinerated any structures and was heading northwest, away from Shoshone. Mitch Silvester, the BLMs incident commander for the Drops Fire, said the wind was likely to shift later in the afternoon, potentially pushing the fire back toward the city. Were really worried about it coming back, Silvester said. Were really getting a good plan in place for the future to keep the people of Shoshone safe. The Drops Fire poses a few challenges for firefighters. For one, its in unforgiving terrain. The landscape is covered in lava rock outcrops that make it difficult to drive close to the fire in an engine. Its incredibly difficult or impossible to drive a bulldozer over bare, bumpy areas of lava rock. On top of that, Fridays 100-degree heat helps the fire. Its extremely hot, this is one of the hottest days of the summer so far, Silvester said. The winds have been pretty strong this morning. Starting to calm down for a little bit, but we know theyre going to switch back the other direction. Silvester said that the strategy to keep Shoshone safe involves keeping a lot of engines on the fire, while mopping up the line that could affect the city of Shoshone. During the early afternoon, some firefighters were spraying down smoldering hotspots near the city. As a backup, firefighters are also bulldozing the area around some Shoshone neighborhoods to create a firebreak. That should create a defensive buffer zone if the primary plan doesnt work out. BLM Twin Falls District spokeswoman Kelsey Brizendine said that its been a relatively mild fire year so far. The Drops Fire is the largest the district has fought in 2020. Brizendine also emphasized that the public needs to keep a safe distance from the Drops Fire. Silvester noted that some people have been getting in the way and potentially putting themselves in dangerous spots. I know its interesting and cool to look at it, Brizendine said. But we really need people to stay out of the area and let the firefighters do their jobs. Love 0 Funny 2 Wow 2 Sad 4 Angry 0 How OTT filmmakers like Suravi Patnaik are driving the game away from Bollywood Sushant death case: Unable to 'locate' Rhea Chakraborty, says Bihar DGP India pti-PTI Patna/New Delhi, Aug 01: The Bihar police chief on Saturday said it was unable to 'locate' actress Rhea Chakraborty named in its FIR in the abetment to suicide case in the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput while her plea before the Supreme Court for transfer of the probe from Patna to Mumbai is listed for hearing on August 5. Sushant Singh Rajput's death probe: Why Maharashtra and Bihar police are locking horns|Oneindia News A four-member Bihar police team is in Mumbai since Wednesday to probe the FIR registered in Patna against Chakraborty, 28, and six others including her family members based on the complaint filed by Rajputs father. Krishna Kumar Singh (74) had lodged the complaint for the alleged abetment to suicide of his son on Tuesday. Shiv Sena terms it a conspiracy to link Aaditya Thackeray to Sushant case As the probe into Rajput's death escalated into a face-off between Bihar and Maharashtra governments ahead of Assembly polls in the eastern state, BJP leader and Bihar's deputy chief minister Sushil Modi targeted Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. "Uddhav Thackeray government in Maharashtra is under pressure from Congress-funded Bollywood mafia and that is why hell bent on saving elements linked to the actor's death case," Sushil Modi alleged in a tweet in Hindi. "Bihar government will go to any extent to bring justice to Sushant." Thackeray on Friday said he deplored attempts to question the efficiency of the Mumbai Police in handling the probe. Rajput, 34, was found hanging in his suburban Bandra apartment in Mumbai on June 14. Bihar's Director General of Police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey said the state police has not yet been able to "locate" Chakraborty, who was Rajput's girlfriend. A police team member, who did not be identified, said earlier in the day in Mumbai that the actress was "under our watch". "We are unable to locate her (Rhea Chakraborty). We are trying to locate her," Pandey said in reply to a question by media persons in Patna whether the Bihar police has served any notice to the actress to meet and talk to her in connection with its FIR against her. Asked whether any lookout notice has been issued against the actress or the Bihar police trying to arrest her, Pandey said, "this is quite an early stage of investigation". "I cannot tell you everything about the investigation. But, we will leave no stone unturned to ensure justice for Sushant Singh Rajput who was not only the son of Bihar but of Hindustan. Entire nation's sentiments and emotions are attached with him," he said. As the chorus for a probe by the CBI into the case grew louder, Pandey also asked why should the state seek a probe by the central agency when its police was capable enough to investigate the matter. He, however, said that if Rajput's father feels dissatisfied with the Bihar police investigations he can ask for a CBI probe. A Bihar minister also said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar would definitely act if a demand for the premier investigating agency to step in comes from the family of Rajput. On Saturday, the Bihar police team visited the Bandra police station. When asked whether Chakraborty would be interrogated, an official of the Bihar police said, "It is not required as of now. But she is under our watch." Another member of the visiting team said they have sent a notice to Chakraborty under the relevant CrPC sections, asking her to cooperate with the police in the probe. He also said the Mumbai police was cooperating with them in the investigations. A Mumbai police official said the visiting team has recorded the statements of six persons as part of the probe. "Till now, the police team from Bihar has met the late actor's friends, colleagues and relatives. They have recorded the statements of six persons-- Rajput's sister, who stays in Versova, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, a cook, his friends and colleagues," the official said. The police team is also likely to question the members of Rajput's staff, he said. "They gathered information about Rajput's various bank accounts and also visited the banks to look into the financial transactions," he said. As per the cause list uploaded on the Supreme Courts website, the transfer petition filed by Chakraborty will come up for hearing before a bench of Justice Hrishikesh Roy on Wednesday. The state governments of Bihar and Maharashtra have already filed separate caveats in the top court seeking to be heard before any order is passed on Chakraborty's plea. The father of the late actor has also filed a caveat in the apex court. Caveat is a pre-emptive legal measure taken to ensure that a party does not get any favourable order without a notice or a hearing accorded to the other side. In her plea filed in the apex court, Chakraborty has alleged that Rajputs father has used his "influence" in dragging her name into the case and accusing her of abetment of suicide of his son. In Patna, Sanjay Kumar Jha, the Bihar Water Resources minister and a confidante of Nitish Kumar, said the chief minister and his government are committed to bringing justice to the actor's family and would take every step towards that end. "The chief minister will definitely act if a demand for a CBI inquiry comes from the family of Rajput," Jha told PTI. Jha, who was approached by the actor's family for help, said people want the truth to come out and those found guilty punished. "It is only now that a fair investigation has begun after the registration of an FIR in Patna on the written complaint of Rajput's father," he said. DGP Pandey said the Mumbai Police is assisting the visiting team amid reports there was a tussle between the Bihar Police and the local police. Pandey said the Bihar Police wants all medico-legal evidence related to the case handed over to it, asserting that it will bring out the truth at the earliest. The Bihar Police also wants details of those who were examined by the Mumbai Police and what they have said in their statements, he added. Our team had a meeting with Mumbai's Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) on Friday evening. The DCP assured of cooperation... Initially, there was some confusion and non-cooperation, he added. Stating that the allegations of Mumbai Police's misbehaviour with the Bihar Police personnel were "rumours", Pandey said the local police helped the visiting team to reach its destinations in the city for investigations. Replying to a question on demands for a CBI probe, he said, Why would we ask for a CBI probe. Bihar Police is capable enough to probe the case. If needed, an IPS-rank officer may be sent to Mumbai to lead the investigation. Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: Rajya Sabha MP and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh passed away after a prolonged illness on Saturday in a private hospital in Singapore hospital where he was undergoing treatment for the past six months. Singh, 64, reportedly was in ICU and his family was by his side when he breathed his last. Singh had suffered kidney failure in 2013 and he had undergone a kidney transplant. Earlier on the day, he had tweeted a tribute to freedom fighter and educationist Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his death anniversary and also greeted his followers on the occasion of Bakrid. Amar Singh was the general secretary of the Samajwadi Party and a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1996. Then Singh used to be the central cog of Samajwadi Partys decision-making machinery. As part of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadavs core confidantes, Singh used to have direct access to Mulayams personal space. ALSO READ | Sonia Gandhi to Nitish Kumar: Condolences pour in from across party lines on Amar Singh's demise Mulayam Singh Yadav used to take his opinion in all most all the decisions both personal and political, says former SP leader Mohammad Shahid, while expressing grief on the demise of the leader. On January 6, 2010, Amar Singh along with his protege, actor Jaya Prada, had resigned from all the posts of the Samajwadi Party owing to his differences with Rampur strongman and SP leader Azam Khan. He was later expelled by chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on February 2, 2010. He spent a brief period in judicial custody in 2011. Later in 2011, he tried to revive his declining political career by floating a political outfit -- Rashtriya Lok Manch. Singh fielded candidates in UP Assembly polls in 2012 but without any luck. In 2014, he joined Jat leader Ajit Singhs Rashtriya Lok Dal. Born on July 27, 1956, in Azamgarh district of UP, Amar Singh first went to the Rajya Sabha in 1996. He was again elected to the upper House in 2016 as an Independent member but with support from the Samajwadi Party much to the chagrin of then UP CM and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav but then the will of SP patriarch had prevailed. Amar Singh was re-appointed as SP general secretary in October 2016. However, once considered to be the eyes and ears of Mulayam, Amar Singh severed all his ties with the party after he was expelled again by Akhilesh Yadav on January 1, 2017, after taking over as the SP chief removing his father in a coup of sorts. Akhilesh, who was caught in an intense family feud, expelled Amar Singh as he felt that he was the reason for the rift in Yadav clan. Singh would be remembered as the only politician who had made friends across the political spectrum. He was fond of Bollywood stars and had enjoyed very healthy friendships with many of them. Amar Singh and the Bachchans were very close at one point. But in 2016, their relationship strained after the former went public with his complaints against Jaya Bachchan, a Samajwadi Party leader. However, in February this year, he had extended an open apology to the Bachchans for his earlier diatribes. After detaching himself from SP and taking the vow of never to go back, Amar Singh had come out in support of PM Narendra Modi openly. He had posted a short video message on March 22 on Twitter from the hospital bed. In the video, he made an appeal to all his followers to support Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the fight against coronavirus. On March 2, he had posted another video message to end rumours that claimed that he was dead. Tiger Zinda Hai, he had written in his short message posted along with the video. In November 2018, Amar Singh donated a part of his ancestral property worth around Rs 15 crore to Sewa Bharti, an organisation affiliated to Rashtirya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS). It included his ancestral house worth Rs 4 crore and 10 bighas of land worth Rs 10 crore in Tarwan village of Azamgarh district. A Rumson man cited with violating coronavirus lockdown orders in April when he performed Pink Floyd songs from his front porch on a Saturday night and drew a crowd of spectators was fined and required to perform 40 hours of community service. The most serious charges against John Maldjian were tossed and he pleaded to a noise violation. Maldjian intended to perform an online-only concert for his friends on April 4, his attorney said, and he decided to play his solo, acoustic guitar gig on his front porch. Police arrived that evening to find about 30 spectators on Maldjians lawn. As officers tried to disperse the gathering, they were met with cries of F the police and Welcome to Nazi Germany from some spectators, according to borough police. As the coronavirus pandemic spread across New Jersey in the spring and Gov. Phil Murphy issued lockdown orders in an attempt to slow the spread, the state Attorney Generals office highlighted violators of the stay-at-home measures. Maldjians performance was one of the early examples cited. Maldjian, 54, was charged with disorderly persons offenses, including reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and charges for violating emergency orders. He pleaded guilty in June to a loud noises violation, while the other offenses were dismissed. He was fined $1,000, plus $33 in court costs and ordered to perform community service. One of the attendees, Ryan Sheftel, 46, of Rumson, was cited for disorderly conduct and violating a borough ordinance by disturbing the peace. He pleaded guilty in June to disturbing the peace and was assessed a $500 fine, plus $33 in court costs. The disorderly conduct charge was dismissed. Sheftel cursed at police and was the one who shouted, Welcome to Nazi Germany, the Attorney Generals office previously reported. Maldjians attorney, Mitchell J. Ansell, of Ansell, Grimm and Aaron, said his client had actually named his Facebook Live performance Stay at Home and that he didnt expect, and hadnt invited, people to gather in person. A few neighbors walked up and practiced social distancing early in the show, Ansell said, but as darkness fell, Maldjian couldnt see the growing crowd that had assembled. He lives on a corner and from where he was sitting hedges blocked his view of a side street where many attendees had gathered, Ansell said. When police arrived, he ended his performance and went inside, according to Ansell, adding that Maldjian didnt hear the insults hurled at police and didnt condone the offensive remarks. Through his attorney, Maldjian apologized to police and expressed his regret for having performed outdoors and attracted the crowd. When the case was first reported, Ansell said his client was depicted as a reckless law-breaker who invited people to a loud rock n roll show in front of his house. This case was reported around the world, Ansell said, and unfairly depicted Maldjian. John is an upstanding citizen, Ansell said. Not even a parking ticket on his record. Once the facts became clear, the most serious offenses were tossed and Ansell expressed his appreciation for that decision. As for performing community service, he said his client is happy to comply. John performs hours and hours of community service without being told by the court to do it. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Ukraine held constructive talks with Iranian officials over compensation for the accidental downing of one of its passenger planes in January, Ukraines foreign minister said today. Iran admits shooting down the Boeing 737-800 after mistaking it for an approaching missile, killing all 176 people onboard the plane. Irans own investigation found that its missiles were "fired due to human error" shortly after the plane took off from Tehrans airport. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described the 11 hours of talks with the Iranian delegation on Thursday as productive, but said the two sides didnt reach an agreement on compensation. "Iran has agreed to fulfill all of its obligations under the international aviation conventions to which it is a party. This means that we can build the relevant work constructively, Kuleba said, according to RFE/RL. If Iran stops cooperating, Kuleba said Ukraine would be open to an "alternative scenario to ensure the payment of compensation by other possible means." The next round of talks is set for October. Tehran initially denied involvement in the Kiev-bound flights downing. But within days, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani offered his condolences and said his government deeply regrets what he described as human error. Iran said its military was at its highest level of readiness when it mistook the aircraft as a missile. Hours before the crash, Iran was carrying out missile strikes on bases hosting US troops in Iraq in retaliation for the American drone strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Muslims pray spaced apart as a precaution against the new coronavirus outbreak during an Eid al-Adha prayer at a mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia. Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice," is a holiday which honours the prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham, as he is known in the Bible, for his willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael on the order of God who was testing his faith. (Image: AP) A Ten-member Ga North Council of Zango Chiefs has been inaugurated with Alhaji Moro Baba Issah, the Public Relations Officer of the National Council on Zango Chiefs calling on them to consider education as a tool for development. He said Muslims stood the chance of competing with others in all spheres of life when they are better educated. Alhaji Issah told the chiefs that a developed society was where the health and well-being of everyone particularly women and children were catered for and the youth provided with quality education. Alhaji Moro reminded them of the challenges that may confront them in discharging their duties but said that should not stop them from seeking The colourful event was attended by a representative from the office of the National Chief Imam, the Municipal Chief Executive of Ga North, Imams, the Queen mother of the area, chiefs and residents. The Chairman of the Ga North Council, Alhaji Bukari Kabore said the Council was carved out of the Ga North and West Zango Chiefs and urged his colleagues to work harder to better the lives of the people. Among a number of activities to be undertaken he said were the provision of scholarships to brilliant but needy students, construction of a senior high to teach English and Arabic, as well as the provision of quality health care. While thanking them for their cooperation and dedication towards building a just and prosperous community, he said that he would do everything within his might to foster peace and development in the area. In unity lies strength, Alhaji Kabore told his colleagues and said although the council had achieved a lot in terms of development, there was the need to do more. In a related development, the Council inaugurated a newly procured ambulance to improve quality delivery of health services in Ga North. Source: The Ghanaian Times 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 New Delhi China has mobilised a battalion strength of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers near Uttarakhands Lipulekh Pass, one of the locations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) where movement of Chinese troops has been noticed over the last few weeks outside of the Ladakh sector, people familiar with the matter told Hindustan Times. India and China have been engaged in a standoff in Eastern Ladakh beginning in early May that flared up on June 15 into the bloodiest clash between soldiers of the two countries in 45 years. Twenty Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of PLA men died in the clash. Three weeks later, both sides agreed to start disengagement and de-escalation of troops at the standoff points after a conversation between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi. There has been thinning of troops at the standoff points, but the disengagement is still a work in progress. Simultaneously, Indian military officers in Ladakh noticed a huge effort by Chinese troops to bolster their strength in their depth areas, and give infrastructure projects on its side a hard push. Chinese troops have augmented their presence on its side of the LAC elsewhere too. There has been accretion of PLA troops across the LAC at Lipulekh Pass, parts of North Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, a top military commander said, requesting anonymity. Lipulekh Pass, which falls on the Mansarovar Yatra route, has been in the headlines over the last few months after Nepal objected to an 80-km road built by India to the Himalayan pass. The Lipulekh Pass is also used for annual barter trade during June-October between tribal populations living on either side of the Indo-China LAC. Kathmandu escalated tensions with India this year after it changed its political map to count the Kalapani area including Lipulekh - which lies close to the tri-junction of India-China-Nepal - as its own. At Lipulekh Pass, PLA has moved a battalion - approximately 1,000 soldiers - at some distance from the border. It is a signal that the Chinese troops are prepared, a second army officer said. He added that India had matched the strength of the PLA troops and was keeping a close watch on Nepal in context of its recent border claims. The situation on the Line of Actual Control remains dynamic with the PLA trying to emphasise its presence beyond Ladakh by building infrastructure on their side of the LAC, the top military commander quoted above said. In Ladakh and elsewhere, the troop movements and mistrust has led the army to prepare to station soldiers in the icy heights of Ladakh through the winter irrespective of how the disengagement and de-escalation efforts pan out. The government has already sounded out its embassies in the US, Russia and Europe to locate manufacturers of high-altitude clothing and snow tent manufacturers for emergency purchases. If the supply still falls short, Plan B is to divert stocks from locations such as Thoise, the base station for soldiers deployed in the Siachen Glacier. It looks unlikely that we would be able to take our eyes off the border, said the army officer, underscoring that this could be the only way for now to make Indian territory off-limits for an expansionist China and hold peace on the border. After the PLA aggression, we dont trust the Chinese and fear that they will come back again north of Pangong Tso as summer arrives in 2021, said the military commander. Although the PLA has disengaged from patrolling points 14 (Galwan), 15-16 (Hot Springs), a smattering of adversary troops are still on forward location at patrolling point 17 A (Gogra) and withdrawal from all contested finger features is a distance away at Pangong Tso. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Lip service, box-ticking and waffle are not up there with the most grievous of crimes to come before the courts but no lesser body than the Supreme Court has ruled their perpetration is not to be tolerated. That's the effect of the unanimous judgment delivered by seven judges of the country's highest court that the State failed to provide an adequate plan to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The National Mitigation Plan 2017, our only statutory climate action plan, is not even to be left on the shelf like so many other half-hearted climate initiatives. It is to be taken down and tossed in the bin. The plan was produced on foot of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 which required government to come up with a strategy to drive the country's "transition to a low carbon, climate resilient and environmentally sustainable economy by 2050", our national transition objective (NTO). It was a masterclass in waffle, vague in intent and lacking practical steps to realise its undemanding ambitions. Justice Clarke pulled out a prime example: "We are endeavouring to improve our understanding of the drivers of emissions from these activities with a view to developing policies and measures to reducing the source of these emissions." He was not impressed. From the start of these proceedings in 2017, through the application for a judicial review, the unsuccessful High Court hearing early last year and the appeal in June, the terrifying prospect of a world ravaged by climate breakdown provided the unsettling backdrop. The need for greenhouse gas emissions to be urgently reduced to keep global warming, already at 1.1C, as much below 2C as possible, was agreed by all. And yet here was the State's response, defending a plan that saw action as pondering what might need to be done. Justice Clarke's response was rather sharper. "The public are entitled to know how it is that the government of the day intends to meet the NTO," he said. "The public are entitled to judge whether they think a plan is realistic or whether they think the policy measures adopted in a plan represent a fair balance as to where the benefits and burdens associated with meeting the NTO are likely to fall. If the public are unhappy with a plan then, assuming that it is considered a sufficiently important issue, the public are entitled to vote accordingly and elect a government which might produce a plan involving policies more in accord with what the public wish. "But the key point is that the public are entitled, under the legislation, to know what the plan is with some reasonable degree of specificity." He concluded: "In my judgment the plan falls a long way short of the sort of specificity which the statute requires." Dr Aine Ryall, co-director, Centre for Law and the Environment at University College Cork (UCC), said the ruling was of enormous significance. "It is a massive boost for climate action," she said. "The judgment will be welcomed around the world and will be a beacon for further climate litigation." She's right. Climate Case Ireland, the grouping that took the case, led by Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) and backed by 20,000 signed supporters, took their inspiration from the Urgenda case in The Netherlands. Other groups around the world with similar actions pending against their own governments are watching. Friends of the Earth director Oisin Coghlan tweeted that he was crying at the traffic lights on hearing the judgment. "The Government already had a scientific, political and moral obligation to step up its efforts to cut climate-polluting emissions. Now the Supreme Court has ruled it has a legal obligation as well," he said. Taoiseach Micheal Martin said the ruling would be studied. "There will be lessons to be learned," he said. Climate Action Minister Eamon Ryan said: "We must use this judgment to raise ambition, to empower action and to ensure that our shared future delivers a better quality of life for all." The judgment suits him, not only because it aligns with his beliefs, but because he has the 2019 Climate Action Plan left over from the last government which was meant to supersede the National Mitigation Plan and which is a big improvement but is not statutory and not sufficient. He needs something stronger. He also has new climate legislation to be drawn up and enacted to make State climate actions transparent and measurable. He needs co-operation from all parties to get this through without delay. Clodagh Daly of Climate Case Ireland emphasised this. "Exciting as the legal win may be, the real work now lies in the creation of a transformed National Mitigation Plan, one that guarantees the rapid and dramatic reduction of Ireland's emissions," she said. So more box ticking, lip service or waffle. Or, as youth climate activist Beth Doherty (17) put it best: "The Irish government can no longer make promises it will not fulfil." As Jammu and Kashmir completes one year of the official abrogation of Article 370 and 35(A), BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav says the occasion calls for a new kind politics in the union territory. In an interview to CNN-News18, Madhav talks about why politicians accustomed to selling the separatist rhetoric in J&K would find this new politics difficult, the delay in abolishment of Triple Talaq and why 200 invitations were sent for the upcoming Ram Mandir bhoomi puran ceremony. Edited excerpts: Let me start the interview with Jammu and Kashmir. What is the road ahead and what do you think are the problems? Where do you think is the opportunity? One year after the abrogation of Article 370 and 35, Jammu and Kashmir calls for a new politics. When I say new politics, the idea was laid out long back by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The three words he used were insaniyat, jamuriyat and kashmiriyat. These should form the basis for the new politics in J&K. I see the regional parties issuing a lot of statements these days. They would still want to return to their old rhetoric, but its not going to work. People want to move on, they do not want any violent rhetoric, any violence per say and have no appetite for it. They want new politics focused on development, employment and material development of the state. This is what we are looking at. In the last one year, we tried to bring in investment and MOUs worth Rs 13,500 crore were signed. There are many areas where development activity has kick started. About 10,000 people have been recruited in J&K already. This should be the direction now. Those who are used to the separatist rhetoric will find the new politics difficult and uncomfortable and say that there is no place for us. There is ample space for those who play development politics in Kashmir. There are 40-50 lakh youngsters in Jammu and Kashmir and there has to be a certain level of engagement. Going forward, do you see that happening? Because a lot of exercises such as the delimitation exercise, setting up and working towards conducting elections all of these aspects suffered a little setback and delay due to Covid-19. Very true. Initially, after the final act was promulgated on the October 31 last year, winters had set in and it is a difficult period for any kind of developmental activity in J&K. So we lost that period. As we came out of the winters came Covid-19. So certain impediments have occurred in the last one year for us to take it forward in a big way. But as you've rightly said, the youth of this state today is looking for a lot of development centric acts in the state. That is where state parties have to reorient themselves. I get really saddened when regional leaders talk in terms of resistance. Resistance will continue is one statement issued by a leader I saw. Those who want resistance politics better join Hurriyat. Those who want development politics, the time for them has come. The youth of the state are looking for more jobs, development and progress at par with the developed states of the country. People want to compete with the rest of India. Leaders are stuck in their old rhetoric. You mentioned Hurriyat so my next question is this: From Nishan-e-Pakistan to Syed Ali Shah Geelani,does it put bare Pakistan's machinations. Do you think this so called idea of independence and indigenous movement was nothing but a narrative pushed by Pakistan? First of all, it confirms what everyone has been all along alleging, that Geelani was actually a puppet in the hands of the Pakistani establishment. Today that puppet has been removed from the leadership position and probably to placate him some award has been given (to him) in Islamabad. That is between them but we have always said that Hurriyat never represented the real voices of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. They've always represented their master's voice from across the border. So I dont think there needs to be too much discussion about issues like Nishan-e-Pakistan, etc. One important landmark of BJP is the abolition of the Triple Talaq law and one year down the line numbers are showing there is an 82 per cent reduction in the total number such cases. What has been your understanding of it? In fact, I would say it was such a tragedy it took us so long to abolish it. The Supreme Court had been saying it since the mid nineties. There were at least three big judgments asking the government to take steps towards bringing in some kind of balance or equality among the women of different religions. It took so long whereas all other Islamic countries, be it the world's biggest Islamic country Indonesia or those in our neighbourhood such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia nowhere was this kind of verbal talaq acceptable. In India we continued with this great injustice to women. In that sense, its a great step in terms of gender equality, gender dignity and gender respect and also in terms of bringing in a much delayed and much needed reform in the Islamic Civic Law. The entire Triple Talaq issue is also related to Ram Mandir because of the Shah Bano case and what happened thereafter in 1985 and 1989. Its been a long struggle and now we have a Bhumi Pujan at Ram Lalla Virajman. What are your thoughts on this? As far as the BJP and RSS are concerned, we have had a long association with the movement. For us, it (construction of Ram Mandir) was never a political issue. We have sacrificed our government for this issue because we have seen it as an issue of national honour and unity. Ram is the greatest unifier of this country and it is not BJP or RSS but Ram Manohar Lohiya, a socialist himself, who had written that Lord Rama and Krishna were greatest unifiers. One united the north with south and one united the west with east. For us, Ayodhya always signified a unifying value or symbol. From that perspective, we see a gradual progress in the construction of Ram temple as a very heartening thingnot just for us but crores of Indians across, of course, party lines. I saw today Congress leaders telling their leadership, dont utter a single word against the temple because heart of hearts are aligned with that sentiment. Ayodhya is a very sacred place for Hindus because of its association with Ram and Ramayana, but not many know that it is also sacred place for Jains. At least five of the 24 tirthankars were born there. Its important for Buddhists as well because lord Bhagwan Buddha visited the place and one of his teeth fell there. Its a scared place for Sikhs too. It was a sacred place for those who never believed in temple worship such as Kabir who had great respect for lord Ram and used to refer to himself as the dog of bhagwan Ram. Its a sacred place for crores of people because certain value systems are attached to it. That is what symbolises the renovation or rebuilding of the Ram temple today. But at a time when COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in the country, do 200 people need to attend the Ram Mandir bhoomi poojan ceremony? I know some people are trying to make it an issue. We are all taking precautions when it comes to tackling Covid-19 but buses, flights and trains are running. But temples should not run that is not an argument. Having said that, let me assure people that all precautions are being taken. If it was a normal situation, I can imagine the kind of interest the Shilanyas would have generatedmay be 10 million people or more. Today, hardly 200 to 250 people are going to attend with all necessary precautions in place. Chief Ministers who have been waiting for this since the 1980s and 90s are not being given an opportunity to go. Is this about somebody trying to say that we have to be apologetic about being Hindus or being a majority religion in India or is there an anti-Hindu sentiment in this garb of secularism? How do you see this scenario? This whole discourse of majoritarian, minoritarian is a very flawed one. We never believed in it. We believed in Indians and they are all equal irrespective of their religions. We are all one nation, one people. So somebody being a majority or minority is a very distorted discourse. Ram symbolises the nations ethos and thats why I gave the examples of Kabir and Ras Khan who worshipped Lord Krishna. They are worshipped as heroes if not gods. But they represented this country's ethos, value system and soul and that is a universally accepted fact. Because of this faulty notion of secularism coupled with minority politics, they have really not helped minorites. The sachar committee report has itself is testimony to the fact that 40 years of minority politics has left minorities much more poorer and far more backward and underprivileged. Thats what needs to be corrected. As one nation, we need to rise to address the concerns of all religions. Its not against any particular religion or group of people. It is a symbol of the entire nation and national self-respect and honour. Another aspect is the Sanghs agenda and the new education policy. After 34 years there is a vision document that lays the roadmap from 2020 to 2035. But one of the key issues is that you wanted to establish an Indian language as the link language. That is not there in the revised national education policy. Why? First of all, stop blaming it as a Sangh agenda. I am not saying it's a sangh agenda, I am saying it was clearly a part of the Sanghs ideology that we have to move out of the coat tails of the Raj, drop English and go back to our roots. I agree that we need to embrace our Indian languages. But there is the issue of the link language. The full document of the national education policy has to come out. Certain details are available in the public domain but once it is all out we will get greater clarity on the issue. But immediately it addresses certain imp needs of the 21st century india which is ambitiously growing into a new india. Pm has been repeatedly talking about new india. New india will be self-reliant, new india will be economically, culturally and morally be a diff india than what we have seen in the last 50-60 years. It has to be different. And w eave a 10 year time before us in which we have to build this new india so that we will become one of the leaders of the world. So in that sense this education system has many things which will help in completely transforming the way we look at education. Structural changes have been announced like the 10+2+3 has been replaced by 5+3+3+4 which is there in many other countries. So our institutions can become on par with them. There is greater role and responsibility on private institutions and private charitable institutions to offer great quality education in this country. Most imp step i believe is to insist on mother tongue to be used during primary education because values cannot be taught in a foreign language. How are you going to implement it on ground because you will have children speaking multiple languages in different states. Does that mean all students in Mumbai will be instructed in Marathi? On the three-language issue, greater clarity will come once the document is released. But education in our country is a concurrent subject. States also have a big role to play. That's why I think it has been left on the state education departments to take the final call on the three-language formula. Obviously, one language should be the local language. As far as the other two languages are concerned, one could be English and the other could be another language of the country. The states will decide about it. You're saying a north Indian student in Tamil Nadu should learn Tamil, a South Indian in Delhi should learn Hindi. But do you see that really happening? Secondly, in terms of spending, from 2014 to 2020, the spending on education has actually dropped in terms of the GDP and now this says we are going to spend 6 percent of the GDP. How is that going to happen? The document also says we have to gradually move towards that kind of spending. We probably won't be doing it immediately, but we will be moving in that direction. That's what the document says. Today, you are right that we are spending much less than what we spend on other needs. For instance, defense calls for greater spending today. But moving forward, education area will require heavy funding and that's why the mention of 6.6 per cent of GDP being spent on education. That's a very important decision. What are your thoughts on Sanskrit becoming mainstream? It is one language that is invariably needed to link you to the cultural and moral values of this country. Had we attempted this at the time of independence how the Jews did it in Israel and Japanese in Japan even technology wise and science wise we would have returned to Sanskrit. But it requires a long journey. A big beginning where Sanskrit is going to become an important mainstream language of our education system will help build an integrated man through the education system and not a compartmentalised person. An integrated man who will really help build the nation. A long-time employee of the Rainforest Cafe in Niagara Falls says she was sent home from work Wednesday for wearing a protective face shield while serving customers. Camille Sneddon of St. Catharines, who has worked at the Clifton Hill restaurant for 12 years, says she is disappointed that management appears to not be taking employee concerns seriously since Niagara went into Stage 3 of the provincial reopening last Friday. With patrons once again allowed to eat inside restaurants, in limited capacity, Sneddon feels servers have the right to feel comfortable and safe on the job. She says a mask is not enough when serving a table full of patrons not wearing masks. It is impossible for us to physically distance from the guests in the restaurant, she says. The day after Sneddon received news that her sister in Tennessee had tested positive for COVID-19, she went to work Wednesday determined to wear a face shield. After serving two tables, her supervisor asked why she was wearing it. When she responded it was for increased safety, she says the supervisor went to consult with someone else, then returned saying she had to remove it. He said, I dont want everyone wearing that, so you cant wear it. I said, well, Im not taking it off. Sneddon was then told to cash out early and go home. Despite the regions mandatory mask bylaw going into effect Friday, Sneddon says servers are still at risk if customers remove their masks once seated. She says she brought this and other concerns to management as part of her duties with the Joint Health and Safety Committee, but says they were ignored. Servers at Rainforest Cafe are represented by the Workers United Canada Council union, which filed a complaint about the matter Friday with the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Rainforest Cafe is part of a group of restaurants and hotels owned by Canadian Niagara Hotels. When asked about the incident, Canadian Niagara Hotels spokeswoman Sarah Vazquez says it takes the safety of its staff and customers seriously and provides mandatory masks for employees as part of its safety procedures. She says while staff are allowed to wear tight-fitting eye protection, face shields are ineffective and not permitted. Both Niagara Region Public Health and the province discourage (them) and note the very open nature of these shields make them ineffective for protection and give a false sense of security it might create to a worker. However, Dr. Andrea Feller, Niagaras associate medical officer of health said while the public health department says a face shield is not a replacement for a mask, the department is not discouraging their use. She said a shield can be worn in conjunction with a mask as an extra layer of protection, as is the case for many grocery store employees. She said while a shield, by itself, is not as effective at limiting the spread of COVID-19 as a mask, it can be an option for those who cannot wear a mask for medical reasons. "If any employer has any questions about the recommendations, I would say they should give us a call or visit our website where a lot of that information can be found. Sneddon was scheduled to return to work Friday but was unsure if shed wear the face shield. I need to make money, so Im kind of stuck between a rock and hard place, she says. I dont know what to do. Its not just me, its all servers. Were pretty exposed. I feel like its my prerogative to protect myself. If somebody else doesnt want to wear a shield, thats their prerogative. I feel its my right. With files from Grant LaFleche, The St. Catharines Standard Usman Yusuf, former executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme ( NHIS), has described restructuring as a big nonsens... Usman Yusuf, former executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme ( NHIS), has described restructuring as a big nonsense which politicians plan to use to carve out their empires. There have been calls and agitation for restructuring, which will grant more powers to the regions. Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 elections, anchored his campaign on restructuring But interview with The Sun, the former NHIS boss said rather than adopt restructuring, the country needs a strong centre and a vibrant leader. He cited recent happenings at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), saying it is a proof that restructuring would increase corruption and injustice. All these talks about restructuring, confederation; do you think they have impact in the life of the common man? It is just politicians who want to carve their own empires, he said. When we were growing up, there were only 12 states in the federation, and then the minority tribes said it was the majority that was oppressing them; then another minority oppressing the minority of the minorities. All these divisions get us nowhere. Look at Niger Delta, look at what is happening in the NDDC, money we never knew existed, trillions, billions of Naira to clean up their land, build schools for their children, develop their area, was looted. There has never been any agency, any ministry that has been allocated this so much money. All these divisions- restructuring etc. are just nonsense, it is your own people that will cheat you. We need a strong centre, a leader that will shake things up; things are falling apart in this country I tell people that the ordinary person has more power than he realises. He has the power to change the leadership; we cannot always wait and say, because I dont have money that is why I cant do this or that. No, you do have what it takes to make a change. You dont want this leader, wait four years and be patient and get him out. That is what democracy is all about. Rotation, rotation, and how many times have we rotated. All these restructuring, rotation are big nonsense, not small nonsense. On insecurity in the country, Yusuf said soldiers should not be relied upon to solve the challenge because they are just one part of the solution. The former NHIS ES asked governors to adopt local solutions in tackling insecurity. Unless we address local problems, soldiers cannot solve insecurity for us. Soldiers didnt solve insecurity problem in Niger Delta, soldiers will not solve Boko Haram problem, and they will not solve banditry problem, soldiers are just one part of the solution, he said. We have to involve everybody and make them understand why you have this problem. The government understood why there was Niger Delta agitation because there was inherent injustice; you were getting oil from people and polluting their land. So, President Umaru YarAdua had to sit, understand and listen. What is happening in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is a shame, after all that the nation went through and YarAdua did, and yet, some people are cheating their own people. So, insecurity cannot be solved by soldiers coming from Abuja, it is a local problem; soldiers are just there to put off the flame. New Delhi: Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Sunday said that the Congress and its ministers were not vigilant enough to keep a check on corruption, but maintained it would be illogical to blame his party for the menace simply because it was in power. Corruption cases have been there in every government and I am not denying that. Corruption cases were registered in the 10 years when the UPA was in office. The Congress has been in office earlier also, when Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were prime ministers, Chidambaram said. The government of the day the Congress or any other party...let me take the Congress party. The Congress party and party ministers were not vigilant enough to put down corruption. Anyone who abetted corruption, punish him. Nobody said that you should not punish a Congress minister just because he belongs to the Congress, he added. The Rahya Sabha MP from Maharashtra also said it might appear that Congress has declined, but that does not mean it cannot rise again. He was responding to a question after his keynote address in a session India@70 at the Delhi Literature Festival. Chidambaram said there is corruption at the lowest level and pointed out cases where government officials were caught taking bribe with Rs 2000 notes. Only the other day a Military Engineering Services engineer was caught red-handed with Rs 2,000 notes and two officials of the Kandla port were caught red-handed with Rs 2,000 notes. Corruption is there. All you can point out that government is being not vigilant. The point is if you say because the Congress party was in power you see all this corruption, then it is mixing up cause and effect relationship. That is illogical. There is corruption in contracts, auctioning, services that are being rendered everyday, police thanas and municipal offices, he added. Several scams rocked the UPA-2 government and it was also one of the reasons for Congress defeat in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and the party was reduced to its lowest tally of 44. He, however, denied the party is facing any leadership crisis. If two (BJPs tally in 1984 Lok Sabha polls) can become 282 (BJPs tally in 2014). Dont think 44 cannot become 244. I recognise the challenges we face. I also recognise the limitations we have in terms of organisation. I dont agree with the assessment that Mr Modi won an election and therefore he will win every election. It is a view that the Congress has still not regained or regrouped itself. In 1977, we lost every seat but one in North India from Gujarat to Assam. The South gave us significant seat. The Congress party bounced back. It might appear that we have declined, but that does not mean we cannot rise again, Chidambaram said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi, Aug 1 : Even as the veterans vs Team Rahul war within the Congress is out in the open, former Union Minister Manish Tewari on Saturday hit out at party leaders who questioned 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance rule at the Centre, calling them "ill-informed". Interestingly, he gave the example of BJP to put out a contrasting picture on party unity. "The BJP was out of power for 10 years (2004-14). Not once did they ever blame (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee or his government for their then predicaments. In @INCIndia (Congress), unfortunately, some ill-informed (leaders) would rather take swipes at Dr Manmohan Singh-led UPA government than fight the NDA/BJP. When unity is required, they divide," the member of Parliament from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab tweeted. The verbal tongue-lashing from the former Minister for Information and Broadcasting comes after a number of party MPs questioned the UPA rule and demanded introspection on Congress debacles within the party. The members of Team Rahul had asked for introspection when the Congress' Rajya Sabha MPs met on Thursday. The issue of the 2014 election debacle was raised by Rajeev Satav, IANS had reported on Friday. He was countered by party senior and former Union Minister Anand Sharma and others. Tewari said on Friday: "Was the UPA responsible for the decline in the Congress fortunes in 2014 is a valid question. It must be gone into. Equally valid is the point that the UPA was sabotaged from within. The 2019 election defeat must also be analysed." An appeals court on Friday temporarily delayed the release of a 2016 deposition about Ghislaine Maxwell's sex life, after she argued it could destroy her ability to get a fair trial against criminal charges she aided the late financier Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of girls. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order after last-ditch scrambles by Maxwell to keep potentially embarrassing information, which her lawyer said could make it 'difficult if not impossible' to find an impartial jury, out of the public eye. Maxwell's appeal will be heard on an expedited basis, with oral argument scheduled for September 22. Her deposition had been taken in April 2016 for a now-settled civil defamation lawsuit against the British socialite by Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Epstein of having kept her as a 'sex slave' with Maxwell's assistance. An appeals court on Friday temporarily delayed the release of a 2016 deposition about Ghislaine Maxwell's sex life. Pictured: Jeffrey Epstein (left) and Ghislaine Maxwell (right) attend de Grisogono Sponsors The 2005 Wall Street Concert Series Benefitting Wall Street Rising Dozens of other documents from that case were released late on Thursday, after the presiding judge concluded that the public had a right to see them. The release of Maxwell's deposition had been scheduled for Monday, pending the outcome of the appeal. Lawyers for Maxwell and Giuffre did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997, and committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath. She was arrested on July 2 and has been held in a Brooklyn jail after a judge denied bail, calling her a flight risk. Maxwell's trial is scheduled for next July. Epstein was found hanged at age 66 last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty. In seeking to keep Maxwell's deposition sealed, her lawyers said in court papers on Thursday she had been promised confidentiality by Giuffre's lawyers and the presiding judge at the time, through an agreed-upon protective order, before answering many personal, sensitive and 'allegedly incriminatory' questions about her dealings with Epstein. They said further that Maxwell was blindsided when prosecutors quoted from the deposition in her indictment, and accusing Giuffre of leaking the deposition to the government. The unsealed court documents come from a deposition given by Virginia Giuffre (left), pictured with Lawyer David Boies, in 2016 as part of a lawsuit again Maxwell Ghislaine Maxwell had 'continuous' orgies on Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island with girls as young as 15, accuser Virginia Giuffre claims in newly-unsealed court documents In a court filing on Friday, Giuffre's lawyers called Maxwell's appeal 'frivolous, and a transparent attempt to further delay the release of documents to which the public has a clear and unequivocal right to access.' The lawyers also called the allegation Giuffre leaked the deposition 'completely and utterly false.' Friday's order also covers a second deposition by an unnamed Epstein accuser that Maxwell also wanted kept under seal. Other documents from Giuffre's lawsuit that quote or disclose information from the depositions also remain sealed. Among the documents released on Thursday were a few emails between Epstein and Maxwell dated January 2015, including one where Epstein told Maxwell that she had done 'nothing wrong.' Lawyers for Maxwell said on July 10 in a court filing requesting bail in her criminal case that she had not been in contact with Epstein for 'more than a decade.' Maxwell is now battling prosecutors in her criminal case over the scope of a protective order intended to protect her right to a fair trial while ensuring the privacy of her accusers. That has not stopped salacious details from coming to light in the newly unsealed documents, inlcuding where Giuffre described Epstein's 'madam' Maxwell's breasts and private parts. The court documents also revealed Giuffre was reportedly forced to perform inappropriate sex act on Maxwell in front of Epstein poolside on his private island. When asked if she recalled 'any distinguishing physical features' about Maxwell, Giuffre told investigators, 'I can tell you that she had very large natural breasts.' 'I can tell you that her pubic hair was dark brown, nearly black. I dont remember any specific birthmarks or moles that I could point out that would be relevant.' She added that she neither remembered any significant scars, nor was aware of any tattoos on the now-jailed socialite. According to newly unsealed court documents, Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre described Ghislaine Maxwell's private parts to investigators in 2016 Ghislaine Maxwell appears via video link during her arraignment hearing on July 14 Giuffre detailed the sexual encounters in graphic detail in a deposition she gave investigators in 2016 as part of a defamation lawsuit she had filed against Maxwell, which has been under a court order deal until now. In other statements featured in Exhibit 11, Giuffre told investigators that Maxwell allegedly told her to give a massage to former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. 'When Ghislaine Maxwell used the words, "Go give a massage to Bill Richardson", where were you?' the investigator questioned. Although Giuffre could not name the specific place where she allegedly met Richardson, she did verify that she was sent to New Mexico. Richardson has previously denied any involvement with Giuffre and claimed to never have met her. The unsealed court documents also mentioned former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who previously denied Giuffre's allegations In another excerpt, Giuffre described an incident when Maxwell allegedly sent her to have sex with the owner of a large hotel chain. 'I believe that was one time in France...I believe it was around the same time that Naomi Campbell had a birthday party,' said Giuffre. Where asked where the inappropriate interaction happened, Giuffre said it happened in 'his own cabana townhouse thing.' 'Jeffrey was staying there. Ghislaine was staying there.' said Giuffre. 'I was 17 staying there. This other guy was staying there. I don't know his name. I was instructed by Ghislaine to go and give him an erotic massage.' Giuffre then explained that 'massage' was a code word allegedly used by Epstein and Maxwell. She also said Maxwell instructed her to have sex with the late Marvin Minsky, a famed MIT scientist in artificial intelligence, Also mentioned in the court documents was Marvin Minsky, the late MIT scientist that specialized in artificial intelligence 'I believe it was the U.S. Virgin Islands, Jeff's -- sorry, Jeffrey Epstein's island in the U.S. Virgin Islands,' Giuffre said, Giuffre claims she performed a sex act on Ghislaine Maxwell in front of the billionaire pedophile on his private island and that his alleged madam had 'continuous' orgies with young girls, newly unsealed court documents reveal. Giuffre told investigators that girls were routinely flown in via private jet to participate in sex sessions that happened all over the island. Asked to describe women she personally saw Maxwell have sexual contact with, she responded: 'There's so many, I don't know where you want me to start.' 'There were blondes, there were brunettes, there were redheads. They were all beautiful girls. I would say the ages ranged between 15 and 21.' She alleged she saw Maxwell participating in sex sessions with them by a pool, near the beachfront, in small huts and in Epstein's cabana. Roberts - now Giuffre - claims girls were flown by private jet to the island so they could be abused, adding that it is 'impossible to know' how many were taken there At one point, Giuffre was asked to describe a specific time she saw Maxwell engage in sex acts, or orgies, with girls by the pool. 'There was quite a few girls and it was, excuse me if I'm saying this in an in explicit way, but I don't know how else to say it... girl on girl action. So there was a lot of - what's the word for it? Licking, licking vaginas, breasts. Fingers being used. She was involved with that. 'I remember specifically... I had to go down on Ghislaine. Jeffrey was there as well. We're still by the pool with lots of girls.' She said the girls, who she described as 'beautiful, tall, some were blonde, some were sandy brown', did not speak English and spoke in a European language that Giuffre guessed was Russian or Czech. Giuffrealso described one occasion that she said 'stands out' in which 'models were - I think they were models - were flown in. There were orgies held outside by the pool.' It is not clear if this is a separate time to when she claimed to have performed a sex act on Maxwell. Describing who was involved in one sex session, Giuffre said: 'Ghislaine, myself, Jeffrey, another girl in this blue, outdoor - I don't know what you want to call it. Cabana, that just a bed could fit in.' Giuffre named two women in the deposition that she allegedly saw Maxwell have sex with in front of her. When asked if she knew the names of any other girl that she personally saw Maxwell having sex with, Giuffre said: 'There's just a blur of so many girls... A lot of these girls would come and go and you'd never see them again.' A rush of investors seeking a safe haven from stock market turmoil is pushing the gold price close to a mythical $2,000 (1,538) an ounce. Fears of a second coronavirus wave causing another lockdown have seen demand for gold bars and coins among first-time gold buyers rise by more than 1,100 per cent over the past fortnight compared to the same time last year, according to bullion trader Pure Gold Company. Yet many investors are understandably wary that the soaring price of this precious metal might eventually come tumbling down. So is it too late to join in the gold rush? Most experts think it has become risky to buy at the current price even though it could yet go higher. Risk: Gold is seen as insurance amid the stock market turmoil Crucially, the booming market is being driven by people hedging against a future economic crisis not trying to get rich quick. Josh Saul, chief executive of Pure Gold Company, says: 'Clients fear they may have missed out on the gold price gains from December last year to now, when gold has risen in value by more than 30 per cent. 'But they are not buying purely for growth but as an insurance policy. The higher the risk, the more expensive the insurance and with the price of gold having risen, this provides an indication of how the market perceives the world during these times of great economic uncertainty.' Earlier this week gold hit $1,981 (1,523) an ounce before falling back down to about $1,975. This record price is above the previous high of $1,921 an ounce reached in September 2011 during the European debt crisis before it then fell. With economic uncertainty remaining on the horizon the possibility of breaking through this $2,000 barrier is real though not necessarily a reason to invest. Confidence over the economy has been further dented by a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in Europe, reinforced by last week's decision to reimpose quarantine rules for those travelling to Spain. On top are concerns that the printing of more money by the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England and European Central Bank might not be enough to fend off growing worries of a recession. This so-called quantitative easing tactic to boost economies also runs the risk of devaluing currencies making base metals such as gold seem relatively more attractive. Adrian Lowcock, head of personal investing at broker Willis Owen, says: 'We think gold could easily break through the $2,000 mark this year. But it is fair to ask after a rally of this magnitude if gold has any value left for investors.' If you think the gold price is going up or will stay high as other assets fall back one of the simplest ways to invest is through a fund that tracks the price. Jason Hollands, managing director of adviser Tilney Bestinvest, says: 'Thankfully, these days investment in gold no longer requires physical possession of the metal or even investing indirectly through volatile gold mining shares. 'A far simpler way to get involved is through an exchange traded fund an investment vehicle listed on the stock market that tracks the price of a physical asset. These can also be included in your Isa or pension.' Gold tracker funds include Invesco Physical Gold ETC, listed on the London Stock Exchange. It replicates the performance of the London Bullion Market Association Gold Price charging just 0.19 per cent a year. Another is ETFS Physical Gold. Last week gold hit $1,981 (1,523) an ounce before falling back down to about $1,975 A number of actively managed investment funds also put money into firms involved with gold usually through mining stocks. Gold funds include BlackRock Gold & General and JPM Natural Resources. Hollands says: 'Funds which invest in the shares of mining companies rather than bullion are not for the faint-hearted. 'The cost of extraction is high so profits are sensitive to changes in the underlying price of base metal. You can have periods of stellar returns followed by steep losses.' Hollands points out that year to date global gold mining equities are up more than 48 per cent compared to the 30 per cent rise for bullion prices. Investors that want the real thing can also buy shares in a 400-ounce, 24-carat gold bar for just a few pounds directly from a bullion trader, such as BullionVault or the Pure Gold Company. You can also invest in gold coins. Sovereign and Britannia coins are deemed legal tender, so escape capital gains tax if they rise in value. A Sovereign is currently worth about 380. Sitaram Kesari liked carbonated fizz drinks. His favourite was Limca. And he liked having it through a straw, making loud gurgling sound in his attempt to draw in the last dregs. Towards the fag end of his career at Congress headquarters at Delhis Akbar Road, the veteran leader realised politics offers no free cold drinks; or even one last sip to the vanquished. Kesari had managed the party treasure chest for decades. The least he would have expected was time to pack up his bags and an honourable send-off. Sonia Gandhi had joined the Congress party a year back and had decided to campaign for the party in 1998 general elections. In the second week of March, Kesari called one of his general secretaries for a meeting. Despite repeated reminders, the office-bearer in question did not turn up. So Chacha Kesari, as he was fondly called, decided to walk down the corridor at 24 Akbar Road to enquire about this inordinate delay. The general secretary was in a conversation with someone over phone, discussing the agenda for the Congress Working Committee meeting later that month. The CWC did meet. On the Ides of March, it passed a resolution requesting Sonia Gandhi to take over the reins of the party from 82-year-old family loyalists. As in this case, political coups and transition of power can be bloodless and swift. Or a long-drawn affair. The BJP went through the process from 2009 to 2013 till the party settled the leadership issue in favour of Narendra Modi. For the Congress, however, the transition of power from Sonia Gandhi to the successor has remained in suspended animation for more than five years now. On Monday, August 10, Sonia Gandhi completes one year in office of her second term. She took over after Rahul Gandhi decided to quit in the face of electoral drubbing in the general elections. The party since has lost power in one state. In another, it is tottering on the brink. Dissidence in both states has been led by ambitious young leaders. Citing these cases, a section in the party feels the Gandhi scion has put his trust in people who are willing to jump ship at the first opportunity. There is also a palpable discomfort over lack of intra-party communication in chalking out party line on crucial issues like Chinese incursion, governments response to Covid-19 et al. The old-timers blame Rahuls advisors for the current state of affairs. KC Venugopal, a trusted Rahul lieutenant is general secretary in-charge of organisation. Earlier this year, he was sent to RS from Rajasthan. This group would either want Sonia Gandhi to continue as president with full authority and executive powers. Or even if she were to hand off the reins to her son after one year in office, there should be a broad discussion and debate before the party takes a considered view on issues at hand. More than Rahul, it is Rahul Gandhis team which is in the crosshairs. The Gandhi scion had demitted office last year after the May 2019 Lok Sabha election defeat. His team has though asserted itself in the last few months. Rahul has taken a strident position on Chinese incursions, released online videos of his conversation with experts on the impact of Covid-19 on economy. Even some key political appointments to the position of Gujarat and Delhi Congress presidents has a firm stamp of team Rahul. Thus, Rajiv Satavs reported outburst at a meeting of Rajya Sabha MPs seeking to fix accountability for the 2014 electoral debacle does not come as a surprise. Satav, an MP from Maharashtra, is the former Youth Congress president handpicked by Rahul. He seems to be pinning the blame for the partys current state of affairs on the advisors who ran the show from 2004 to 2014. With Sonia Gandhi listening, a majority of those who matter in the current scheme of things reportedly kept mum. They fielded Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab Shamsher Singh Dullon to articulate their grievances: that their contribution to the party cant be set aside in one fell sweep. Not that that this meeting was bereft of customary return-Rahul chorus. PL Punia el al struck the chord. In fact, there has never been any opposition from the old guards on handing over the reins of the party to Rahul. A non-Gandhi as the head of the Congress can further complicate matters. The unrest is more about the way the MP from Wayanad is conducting his politics. The lack of confidence is more on the advisory board than the leadership itself. A comparison is being drawn between how the old team managed the party between 1998 and 2014 with Sonia at helm. And the plight of the Congress under the new political mangers. Last May, Rahul Gandhi insisted on demitting office. And opposed the appointment of a Gandhi family member as his replacement. But when Mukul Wasniks name was floated for the top post in AICC, Sonia Gandhi had to step in to fill in the void. With the interim president completing her one year in office, are the two sides preparing for a showdown after a protracted game of brinkmanship? Are these signs that things may come to a head sooner than later? Or is the brouhaha all about attempts to maintain the status quo? Chief Executive of the Private Enterprises Federation, Nana Osei Bonsu says government has not done enough to help lessen the impact of COVID-19 on private businesses. Nana Osei Bonsu who was speaking on the Townhall Talk Show on Asaase Radio99.5 argued that businesses in Ghana have not received adequate support to aid them survive the economic impact of the global pandemic. "Where is the support system for businesses to take care of their employees? Where is the support system for businesses to create the PPEs, face masks, the sanitizers, and where is the support system for businesses to create virtual platforms to engage their workers in virtual discussions? So these are times that are very trying, and upsetting the way that businesses normally operate because this is unplanned and you know businesses survive on predictability. They survive on plan, so if this unplanned budget is laid upon the already difficult income streams, then you know what I mean by the damaging impact of COVID-19, he averred. His comments were in response to a question posed to him by Host of the show, Kofi Abotsi about the impact of the novel coronavirus on local businesses, and governments efforts to support businesses. Nana Osei Bonsu said Ghanaian Businesses are at grassroots level with little or minimal procurement power, explaining that the capacity to procure the necessary tools and equipment including laptops and data to engage staff who may be at home due to the pandemic is expensive. He said "Because of the kind of systems that we have, the internet access by some businesses to be able to reach every employee at any time. The social distancing that is required, so we have introduced a shift system where two come in today and two come in tomorrow, there is no coordination. So were trying our best to meet the dangers of the pandemic, were trying our best to do business but its not easy. Were adopting, but slowly and like I said, the constraint is the access to internet and the consistency in the internet, that is one of the precarious conditions we find ourselves and the cost element as well." The PEF Chief Executive Officer bemoaned the high cost of internet in Ghana, particularly the cost overheads of telecommunications, since most employers now engage their staff mostly on phone and virtually saying I have to be talking to my employees on the phone consistently, I have to be on the internet 24/7, they have to be on the internet 24/7, so the cost element on the other side is the consistency and the quality of the service and this is why we have to find ways collectively, not only government, but private sector to ensure that now that COVID has leveled the playing ground, government should recognize the immediate need to emphasize on the availability of internet at the highest level. In April this year, government rolled out a six hundred million-cedi (GH600m) package as soft loans to Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in the country, as part of measures to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the private sector. President Akufo-Addo who announced this also indicated that the loan was to be repaid within two years with a one-year moratorium. The Minister for Finance has been directed by me to prepare, for approval by Parliament, a Coronavirus Alleviation Programme to address the disruption in economic activities, the hardship of our people, and to rescue and revitalize our industries. He will, then, immediately make available a minimum of one billion cedis (GH1 billion) to households and businesses, particularly small and medium scale enterprises, he said at the time. Education: Norma Foley said funding was on its way to schools. Photo: Stephen Collins / Collins Photos Dublin There are fears schools have "very little chance" of being completely ready to reopen in four weeks' time as they will be obliged to engage in a tender process for any building work that has to be carried out to enable physical distancing for pupils. During the last sitting of the Dail before a six-week break, independent TD Michael McNamara asked Education Minister Norma Foley if schools would have to invite tenders for the necessary works, which could lead to significant delays. "I'm ashamed to be a member of this Dail," Mr McNamara said. "We set an appalling example by decamping from Dail Eireann down here to this glass palace [the Convention Centre], which is costing thousands every day, but how much could that money do for our schools." He added: "I appreciate you're not terribly long in the job, Minister Foley, but schools are reopening in less than four weeks' time, so when are these works going to be carried out and will they be carried out on time?" Ms Foley confirmed schools will receive the necessary funding by the end of next week. However, when asked specifically about the tender process, she said "schools will know themselves what's involved". A spokesperson for the Department of Education confirmed to the Irish Independent that schools will be required to obtain three quotes for any minor works needed and they must retain documentary evidence, whether received in writing or over the phone. Pairic Clerkin, CEO of the Irish Primary Principals' Network, said there are also concerns over securing planning permission for prefabs in time for reopening. "It will be a logistical nightmare to get planning permission for prefabs over the line in such a short space of time," he said. The planning process has been hit with serious delays due to the pandemic. Some schools which applied for planning for prefabs before the crisis hit have yet to receive approval. Rachel O'Connor, principal of Ramsgrange Community School, in Co Wexford, told the Irish Independent: "I don't know on what planet you could get prefabs in situ in four weeks' time: it's not physically possible. "The schools are being left to find people to carry out these works but it's very difficult to find any available at the moment." The Government has provided a 75m package to fund any works required to enable physical distancing in schools. Some of these measures include the reconfiguration of classroom space, the re-purposing of rooms, the purchase of furniture, the altering of desk layouts and the adaptation of toilet areas. Ms Foley said schools would be required to "exhaust all other options" before resorting to off-campus accommodation, such as parish halls. "They have to be able to show there was a justifiable need for that and that all other options have been exhausted," she told the Dail. Mr McNamara said he feels the Government is "washing its hands" of responsibility by leaving it up to the schools to get the necessary works carried out. "Given that each school setting is different, individual schools are best placed to decide on the appropriate re-configuration measures for their school, necessary to facilitate school reopening," the department said. Meanwhile, the department has completed the tender process for personal protective equipment for schools and has a number of suppliers in place. Schools will be able to order the necessary equipment from next week. This includes hand sanitiser, disposable paper towels, wipes, face masks, detergents and hand soap. The list of suppliers will be ranked in order of price and service. The festive spirit of Eid al-Adha was subdued in the national capital on Saturday with the coronavirus pandemic badly hitting livestock sale for the festival of sacrifice and restricting many people to their homes. Despite just around 10,000 active Covid-19 cases in Delhi -- far better than was feared -- and easing of lockdown restrictions, many faithful preferred offering namaaz at their homes than visiting mosques. Those who offered prayers at mosques said a fewer number of people had turned up there, and the mood was not as ebullient as previous years. Outside the Jama Masjid, the Delhi Police put up signboards requesting people to wear masks and ensure physical distancing while offering namaaz. Imtiaz Ahmad, who offered prayers at the mosque, said the turn out was way less than before when the crowd would spill on the streets too. People wore masks, carried their own mats and avoided hugging each other, he said. Yameen Ansari, a resident of Jamia Nagar who offered prayers at Jamaat e-Islami Hind Markaz in Azu Fazal Enclave, said though some people stepped out of their homes, unlike Eid Ul Fitr in May, the festive spirit was dim. People could step out as things are under control in Delhi. Still, they were not as cheerful as before, he said, adding friends and family have been avoiding gatherings on the festival. Abdul Noor Shibli, a journalist, who offered prayers at the Jamaat e-Islami Hind markaz, said it was the first time in four months that he went to a mosque. He said the mosque administration had deployed volunteers for thermal screening at the entry gates. People wore masks and brought their own mats. Stickers were pasted on the floor to help them maintain distance, he said, adding the turnout was half of what it used to be during festivals in normal times. Umar Sheikh Mohammad, the president of the Nizamuddin West Resident Welfare Association, said he offered prayers in a nearby mosque but the crowd was thin. The 51-year-old businessman, however, said offering qurbani was not that easy as business was down. Covid-19 has hit businesses. People who could afford four goats till last year dont have enough money to buy even one this Eid, he said, adding, It was also not easy to purchase a goat and bring it home, as there are restrictions on the sale of livestock due to the pandemic. A large number of people could not buy a sacrificial animal because the pandemic-induced economic crisis has rendered them jobless, Mohammad said. Mohammad Izhaar, a goat seller at the famous sarpine market near Jama Masjid, said Bakr Eid has been insipid. Every year he sold around 15-20 goats on Eid al-Adha. This year, he has sold only four, that too at a loss. It (the pandemic) has sucked the life out of us, he said woefully. In a world without the coronavirus, sale of goats would have fetched 60,000 to 70,000, but this year they were sold at half the price, Izhaar said. The logo of Nokia is seen before the company's news conference in Espoo By Anne Kauranen and Supantha Mukherjee HELSINKI/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Finnish telecom network equipment maker Nokia reported an unexpected rise in second-quarter underlying profit on Friday as it took on less low-margin business particularly in China, sending its shares up 13% in early trade. Cutting less-profitable service business and not winning 5G radio deals in the cut-throat Chinese market helped Nokia, where new Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark takes over this weekend, upgrade its earnings outlook for 2020. "We do not mind trading poor revenue which doesn't have high quality margin for better revenue," outgoing chief executive Rajeev Suri told Reuters. Nokia said its underlying earnings in April through June rose to 0.06 euros per share from 0.05 euros a year ago, beating the 0.03 euros consensus in a Refinitiv poll. Nokia, which had warned of a weak second quarter due to the virus, raised its forecast for 2020 underlying earnings per share to between 0.20 and 0.30 euros, from 0.18-0.28 euros. Quarterly revenue fell 11% to 5.09 billion euros, below a consensus figure of 5.28 billion, Refinitiv Eikon data showed. Most of the drop was due to the effects on the economy of COVID-19, but Suri also cited a sharp decline in China based on a "prudent approach" in that market, and proactive steps to reduce low-margin services business, though he didn't say what the latter consisted of. Nokia lowered its outlook for its market share in its main markets, measured by revenue, to underperform from its previous guidance of performing in line with rivals. Suri's successor Lundmark still faces key decisions on finding a balance between improving profitability and defending Nokia's market share, which currently makes it number two behind China's Huawei [HWT.UL] but ahead of Sweden's Ericsson when measured by revenue. "While the improvement in profitability from extremely low levels is clearly very encouraging, we are unsure on how much further Nokia can take such an improvement when sales are coming under significant pressure," Liberum analyst Janardan Menon said. Story continues Ericsson had reported a rise in 5G network sales and software revenue two weeks ago. Suri steps down after more than a decade in charge of Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks. The leadership change comes as turbulence prevails in European telecoms markets, with increasing pressure from some governments for operators to exclude or limit the use of 5G equipment from Huawei. (Reporting by Anne Kauranen and Supantha Mukherjee Editing by Edmund Blair and David Holmes) The transition will take place in phases over the next four years. Existing Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice facilities are designed to house anywhere from about 50 to up to almost 300 youths who are committed to state custody through juvenile justice proceedings. The Department of Juvenile Justice will move out of adult-style, prisonlike facilities, and existing properties will be renovated to create the smaller residential centers, according to the plan. (Alliance News) - More than half of furloughed employees in the UK have already returned to work, ahead of the scheme being phased out from Saturday, new research suggests. The Resolution Foundation said reports that nine million workers remained furloughed are "wide of the mark". From August 1, UK firms have to contribute towards the cost of furloughed workers by paying their employer National Insurance and pension contributions. The think-tank said its analysis suggests that the peak number of furloughed workers was almost eight million in late April. Millions of furloughed staff have since returned to work, either fully or as partially furloughed part-time workers, meaning that fewer than 4.5 million employees are now furloughed, said the report. The foundation said the peak and subsequent fall in the number of workers on the Job Retention Scheme demonstrates its success in protecting firms and employees during the lockdown's introduction and easing. However, with millions of staff still furloughed, the threat of significant redundancies looms large as the scheme is phased out between August and October, the report added. Dan Tomlinson, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: "The Job Retention Scheme has supported around a third of the private sector workforce at some point since lockdown began, protecting family incomes and preventing catastrophic levels of unemployment. "But, with the number of furloughed workers having peaked in late April, it is misleading to say that nine million workers are currently furloughed. Over half of these workers have now returned to work as lockdown restrictions have eased. The true figure is below 4.5 million. "But while furloughing is currently far less widespread than commonly claimed, there are still millions of employees without work, particularly in the hospitality and leisure sectors. These workers face a heightened risk of unemployment as the JRS starts to be phased out from today. "The chancellor should reduce this risk by phasing out support for these hardest-hit sectors more slowly." Federation of Small Businesses Chair Mike Cherry said: "One in five small firms have been forced to let staff go over the last three months. Even with critical emergency measures in place, jobs are sadly being lost in the here and now. "As we look to the autumn, it's clear that we cannot afford to pull up the business support drawbridge any time soon. "Giving firms GBP1,000 for every employee they bring back from furlough is welcome, but Job Retention Bonus funds won't manifest until next year a jobs are being lost today. "In addition to job retention, the chancellor should be looking at job creation." A Treasury spokesman said: "We said at the start of the crisis that we couldn't save every job a but it's clear that the furlough scheme has saved millions of them a and now many people who've been furloughed are able to return to work. "That's good for the economy but more importantly it's good for individuals, their families and communities." source: PA Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. A repeat felon from Mariners Harbor is already facing state attempted-murder charges for allegedly firing a gun at another person in Stapleton two weeks ago. Now, federal authorities are also turning up the heat on Destin Burks. Burks, 22, has been indicted in Brooklyn federal court on an ammunition charge stemming from the near-deadly July 15 incident. The episode occurred around 2:35 a.m., authorities said. Burks met with several other individuals near a parked car on the 100 block of Broad Street, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said in court papers. After talking to one individual for a few minutes, Burks stepped back, raised a gun and fired twice at that person, allege federal prosecutors. What happened next was chilling, federal prosecutors contend. After lingering for a few moments, the defendant then casually walked away, as if the event was entirely unremarkable to him, federal prosecutors said in a detention memo. Fortunately, it appears no one was hit. The incident was captured on surveillance videotape, and Burks was busted the next day, said authorities. He was arraigned on July 17 in Staten Island Criminal Court on charges of attempted murder, attempted assault, criminal weapon possession, criminal firearm possession and resisting arrest. Burks was ordered held without bail. His next date in Criminal Court is Aug. 17. Afterward, Kelvin Richards, Burks lawyer in the state case, said the defendant vehemently denies these allegations and awaits his day in court. As it turns out, Burks will have his day in two courts. On Thursday, a grand jury in Brooklyn federal court indicted him on one count of possessing ammunition after having been convicted of a felony. The federal charge is in addition to the state charges. Federal prosecutors also sought to hold Burks without bail. In the detention memo, they cited the nature of the alleged crime; the strength of the evidence, to include the surveillance video and a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson shell casing found at the scene, and the defendants criminal history. All of those factors make him a flight risk, prosecutors contended. Burks has three prior felony convictions in state court, the detention memo said. He pleaded guilty in November 2015 to attempted robbery; in May 2016 to criminal firearm possession and in May 2018 to attempted robbery, said the memo. While behind bars last August, the defendant was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of possessing prison contraband, prosecutors said. He was released on Jan. 23 and was on parole when he allegedly pulled the trigger two weeks ago, said prosecutors. Burks was arraigned Friday in Brooklyn federal court. Michael Padden, his lawyer, pleaded not guilty on his behalf. The lawyer reserved making a bail application. Burks was ordered detained. He faces up to 10 years behind bars if convicted of the ammunition charge. Padden declined comment on the case. The forecast track of Hurricane Isaias has shifted farther west during the past 10 hours, posing a bigger threat to land along the Atlantic coast of Florida and the Carolinas and keeping the storm on a path that would take it closer to the Jersey Shore than earlier projections. According to the latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center, the hurricane would weaken to a tropical storm after brushing Florida on Sunday and hitting the Carolinas on Monday, but the center of the storm would move over the southeastern tip of New Jersey on Tuesday. UPDATE (Saturday, Aug. 1): Hurricane Isaias could dump 4 to 6 inches of rain on N.J. if latest forecast track continues Isaias started out as a tropical storm and grew into a Category 1 hurricane late Thursday night into early Friday morning, when its top winds strengthened to 80 mph. During the afternoon on Friday, the storms top sustained winds dropped slightly to 75 mph, maintaining its status as a low-level Category 1 hurricane. Forecasters from the National Hurricane Center have issued a hurricane warning for parts of Florida and hurricane watches for other sections of the Sunshine State, and said they expect Isaias to strengthen later Friday night and early Saturday with sustained winds up to 85 mph as it pushes across the Bahamas. As of 5 p.m. Friday, the center of Hurricane Isaias was swirling about 195 miles south-southeast of Nassau in the Bahamas and about 330 miles southeast of Freeport on Grand Bahama Island. That puts the storms center about 1,165 miles south and east of Cape May, N.J. Forecasters said the storms hurricane-force winds currently extend out up to 35 miles from its center, and tropical storm-force winds reach out as much as 175 miles from the center. The closer the storm moves to New Jersey, the more significant the impacts will be next week. Although the strongest winds and heaviest rain tend to be on the east side of tropical systems, they still can generate gusty winds and driving rain many miles to the west. Added to that is the strong likelihood of rough surf and coastal flooding along the Shore. This graphic shows the estimated arrival time of tropical storm-force winds from Hurricane Isaias.National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center The National Weather Services Mount Holly office, which oversees most of New Jersey, said it is closely monitoring the status of Hurricane Isaias and notes there are still a lot of unknowns about how the storm will ultimately impact the state. Uncertainty continues to exist regarding the future track and intensity of this storm, and exact impacts to the region will continue to change in time, the weather service said in a storm briefing package issued at 6 p.m. But based on the current forecast track, the weather service says the primary threats faced by New Jersey are rough surf, dangerous rip currents, strong winds and heavy rain. 5 pm Fri...Hurricane Isaias is located 195 mi SSE of Nassau, Bahamas moving NW at 15 mph with max winds of 75 mph. Some strengthening is expected later tonight and early Sat. Hurricane Warnings have been issued for parts of the east coast of Florida. pic.twitter.com/RgE68fAuzH NWS Eastern Region (@NWSEastern) July 31, 2020 The weather service said: Confidence is increasing that the first effects from Isaias will likely be in the form of increased swells and rip current risks along the Atlantic coasts of Delaware and New Jersey later this weekend and through the first several days of next week. With the current forecast, the threat for Tropical Storm Force winds (39 mph to 73 mph) will increase Monday night and continue into Tuesday night, especially along the Delaware and New Jersey coasts. Heavy rainfall could become a concern, mostly likely between Monday night through Tuesday night. More potential storms brewing Hurricane Isaias could have some company in the coming days. The National Hurricane Center is monitoring two new tropical disturbances in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and says each of them has a chance of developing into a tropical storm during the next five days. One has a 30 percent chance of developing, and one has already organized into a tropical depression Friday afternoon. This map shows two more tropical disturbances brewing in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Both have a chance of developing into a tropical storm during the next five days. The yellow X on the right just turned into a tropical depression late Friday afternoon.National Hurricane Center Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. In a recently unsealed deposition linked to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, one of Epstein's alleged victims detailed the psychological effect of the abuse and the role that Ghislaine Maxwell played in the whole The said deposition was made by Virginia Giuffre back on May 3, 2016. According to her previous testimonies, Giuffre stated that she was recruited by Maxwell to join the purported sex trafficking ring owned by Epstein. She also added that she was a teenager at that time and Epstein's former girlfriend instructed her to engage in sexual intercourse with several men, including Prince Andrew. According to CNN, in the said deposition, attorney's pressed Giuffre to reveal the names of other men that Maxwell told her to have sex with. Aside from Prince Andrew, several individuals were named by the attorney during the deposition, including someone who was described as "another prince," a "large hotel chain owner," and Bill Richardson who was a former governor of New Mexico. However, Giuffre expressed frustration about the questions and said that she has already given everything that she knew about Epstein's alleged sex trafficking ring. She also stated that it was very hard for her to once again recall what has happened, saying that there was a large number of people that she was sent to and she cannot remember all of them. Maxwell and her attorney have previously described Giuffre as unreliable during the court filings. Maxwell's party stated that there are errors and inconsistencies in the figures and dates that she provided in her testimonies. Meanwhile, Giuffre also acknowledged the fact that there was money involved when the photo of her and Prince Andrew have been published to a number of media outlets. Both Richardson and Prince Andrew denied the allegations of their said involvement with Maxwell and Epstein. Read also: Fact Check: Is Spongebob Squarepants' Home Located on Jeffrey Epstein's 'Pedo Island'? Furthermore, Giuffre claimed in the deposition that she was aboard a helicopter which Maxwell herself piloted going to a private Caribbean Island owned by Epstein many times. In addition, she also acknowledged the fact that she told reporter Sharon Churcher in 2011 that Maxwell had previously claimed flying former President Bill Clinton to the same island. In her statement, she said that Maxwell herself told her that she flew the former president, but also added a disclaimer that Maxwell is prone to take about stuff that sometimes sounds fantastical. She also stated that she felt that the reporter got some of her story wrong but she did not correct it at the time. Moreover, she described how she wondered about the possible reason why the former president is on the island while she is and that she also discussed it with Epstein. Aside from the deposition, documents showing email correspondence between an email address that appeared to be owned by Epstein and Maxwell dated back in 2015. The emails contained conversations where Epstein complained about the negative attention drawn towards him after being charged with soliciting a prostitute back in 2007, NPR reported. Both the deposition and email correspondence were part of the unsealed documents from the defamation lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Maxwell in 2015. Related article: Ghislaine Maxwell's Attorneys Ask Judge to Stop Accusers From Posting Evidence Online @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. After being promoted to the rank of lieutenant general on Tuesday, Jody Daniels is the latest woman to break into senior ranks of the U.S. Military. Not only that, Daniels now assumes command over the Army Reserve, making her the first woman ever to lead a component of the Army. The Reserves itself boasts a 112-year history. Daniels, who has served in the Army for over three decades, previously held the position of division commander and chief of staff for Army Forces Command, Army Times reported. Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels became the first woman to lead an Army service component. (Staff Sgt. Edgar Valdez/U.S. Army Reserve) She is a career intelligence officer who has held leadership positions in U.S. Africa Command and during U.S. operations in Iraq. Daniels also holds a degree in applied mathematics and a doctorate in computer science. During a live-streamed ceremony at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville marked the occasion citing her historic achievement. Its a special day because not only will Jody become the first woman to serve as the chief of the Army Reserve, but shell also be the first woman to lead an Army component, McConville said. The newly minted lieutenant general intends to pursue initiatives to restart collective training, modernizing the reserve along the Armys multidomain operations and retaining talent, Army Times reported. Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels attends her promotion ceremony on Tuesday. (Staff Sgt. Edgar Valdez/U.S. Army Reserve) I want foster a mindset of teamwork, continuous learning and growth, with a particular focus on junior talent so they have a desire to continue to serve and to lead, said Daniels. This culture of teamwork will be essential to shaping our future. Meanwhile, her husband, John McCarthy, 57, is a retired Army colonel, and they both served as intelligence officers. Shes intuitive, he said. Shes a negotiator. And she just sops up information like nobodys business. And shes a numbers gal. Danielss late father had also served in the Army as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers, and was a Vietnam veteran, USA Today reported. He was also her mentor, she says. He was taking everything in and assimilating and synthesizing it, she added. And then thinking about how he should respond. And I hope that Ive taken on some of that. Women have been increasingly rising in the ranks since 2015 when servicewomen were made eligible to participate in combat roles. Notably last year, Paula Lodi and Maria Barret became the first sisters to reach the rank of general. Meanwhile, women such as Gen. Maryanne Miller, of the Air Force Reserve, and Vice Adm. Robin Braun, of the Navy Reserve, also held command positions in recent years. Currently, women make up about 14.4 percent of active-duty personal serving in the military and about 17.9 percent in the Reserve, according to Americas Promise Alliance. Nassau County Based Construction & Demolition Company, AVF Development announces the launch of their new website this May. Founded by Anthony Ferrantello, AVF Development Corp., has been unmatched by any other construction firm in their market. With over 35 of experience, Ferrantello has a full staff of landscape architects, professional engineers, construction estimators and licensed land surveyors. AVF Development covers a wide variety of services within the construction industry such as demolition, excavation, site-work, concrete work and much more for clients in Long Island. Licensed in Nassau & Suffolk County, AVF Development has worked with several residential, commercial, industrial, public & private customers. AVF Development is fully licensed and insured and is available 24/7 for emergency response. In April, AVF Development has decided to launch their new website showcasing their vast knowledge in the construction industry. AVF Development hired Long Island Web Design Company, Benjamin Marc to design AVFs signature logo as well as their website. Working with Anthony Ferrantello has been an absolute pleasure, he has such a deep knowledge in the demolition and excavation trade, commented Benjamin Marc president, Anthony Savino. The website is comprised of several web pages that give a background of this construction powerhouse. Website visitors can read the history of AVF Development as well as look at detailed imagery that will no doubt put things in perspective of the skills and experience of AVF. For more information please visit https://avfdev.com or call their office directly (516) 292-4000. The new Immersive Experience will tell the story of the Normans Phase 2 of the Enniscorthy Tourism and Regeneration Plan will see the development of a welcome hub, cafe and retail space and a Blackbox space at the castle which will provide a centre-piece of the overall visitor experience. That was the news relayed to the members of Enniscorthy Municipal District Council at their monthly meeting last week. In a presentation spearheaded by consultant firm, Sherwood & Associates, the members were told the cost of Phase 2 of the plan will be in the region of 9.1m. The main focus of attention will be the Blackbox initiative which will be based on a model the Atelier Des Lumieres model in France. Maggie Moran, from Sherwood & Associates, commented on the success of the French initiative and said the Blackbox would be a fully interactive space. The councillors were also told that the visitors' journey would involve the outside of the castle as well as inside. The members heard that when the French attraction opened last year it welcomed 400,000 visitors in the first few months. 'It's a contemporary way of engaging people,' said Ms Moran. 'We thought the first exhibit could be a Norman exhibition.' Alan Sherwood, also from Sherwood & Associates, told the members: 'We like it [the Blackbox idea] because its a flexible space and the content can be changed.' Mr Sherwood also said: 'They are not hugely expensive.' Denis Byrne, from Denis Byrne Architects, also addressed the meeting and said: 'We found this flexible space [idea] very interesting. The castle needs something like this to give it the space.' The Head of Special Projects for Wexford County Council, Brian Galvin, told the members that the creation of the Blackbox experience would form part of Phase 2 of the overall project. The councillors were told the cost of developing the Blackbox, welcome hub, cafe and retail aspect of the plan would be in the region of 9.1m, however, the projected visitor numbers for such an initiative was in the region of 140,000 per year generating tourism expenditure of 9,940,000. The Blackbox space would also incorporate sensory narration and large-scale digital artwork. Health workers prepare to collect swab samples for COVID-19 tests, at an office in Kozhikode. PTI A total of 14 per cent of healthcare workers in Kerala contracted coronavirus due to shortage, reuse or improper usage of PPE (personal protective equipment) kit. According to a study conducted among the infected frontline healthcare workers by the State Department of Health and Family Welfare, around 14 per cent of health workers have complained about absence of adequate PPE kits while at work. Shortage and reuse of the kits also have cited as reasons by few healthcare workers. Nearly eight per cent of healthcare workers cited having food together in groups, without proper protection/PPE as the reason for contracting the virus. Improper handling of throat swab samples and fomites also has been identified as reason by few others. More than 70 per cent of the positive health workers had an identifiable positive person as contact (a patient, colleague or relative). Around 14 per cent of health workers detected their disease status through the sentinel surveillance. A total of 267 healthcare workers including nurses, nursing assistants, doctors, housekeeping staff, clerks, ambulance drivers, health inspectors, physiotherapists, lab technicians and ASHA workers have contracted the virus till July 20. Among the positive cases, 41 per cent are doctors and nurses. As many as 60 nurses contracted the virus while on duty (23 per cent) while 47 doctors also got infected (18 per cent). Twenty seven nursing assistants or attenders, 31 other paramedical staff, 38 office staff, 28 field staff and 34 ASHA workers also got infected. Highest number of positive cases among health workers was reported in Thiruvananthapuram district. The Health department through district surveillance units is constantly monitoring the rate of virus spread among health care workers both in government and private sectors. Based on the study, the probable reasons for the breach of protection can be identified. The study report will help the healthcare workers, institutions and the capacity building divisions in government and private sector Hospitals to build strong system. The resource persons have been instructed to give thrust on capacity building and ensure follow up of protective measures at individual and institutional level, said Dr. Rajan Khobragade, principal secretary, Health and Family Welfare. By Finian Cunningham July 31, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - Well, according to the Trump campaign, Democrat rival Joe Biden is the candidate whom Chinese leaders are rooting for to win the presidential election in November. Beijing Biden or Sleepy Joe would be a gift to China, so it goes. In turn, trying to out-hawk the Republican incumbent, the Biden campaign paints Trump as being soft on China and having been played by Chinese counterparts over trade, the corona pandemic and allegations about human rights. Biden, the former vice president in the previous Obama administrations, has vowed to impose more sanctions on China over allegations of rights violations. He claims to be the one who will stand up to Beijing if he is elected to the White House in three months time. Last week, Biden declared he was giving notice to the Kremlin and others [China] that if elected to the presidency he would impose substantial and lasting costs on those who allegedly interfere in U.S. politics. Thats war talk based on worthless intel propaganda. Trump meanwhile asserts that no-one is tougher than him when it comes to dealing with China (and Russia for that matter). Given the Trump administrations reckless policy of ramping up hostility towards China in recent months, that begs the question: how could a future Biden administration begin to be even more aggressive short of going to war? Relations between Washington and Beijing have plummeted to their worst levels since the historic detente initiated by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. The precipitous downward spiral has occurred under President Trumps watch. So, how exactly could a prospective President Biden make the relationship more adversarial? No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Newsletter The truth is both Trump and Biden are equally vulnerable to domestic partisan criticism about their respective dealings with China. The belated high-handed approach that both are trying to project is pockmarked with risible hypocrisy. The Trump campaign scores a valid point when it recalls how former Vice President Biden smooched and feted Chinese leaders with economic opportunities in the American economy. Likewise, Trump stands accused of lavishing praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping while ignoring the impending coronavirus pandemic because Trumps top priority was getting a trade deal with China. The fact that both American politicians have U-turned with regard to China in such nasty terms must leave the authorities in Beijing with a deep sense of distrust in either of the would-be presidents. Biden at one time waxed lyrical about his close relationship with Xi, but as his bid for the presidency heated up, Biden stuck the proverbial knife in the Chinese leader calling him a thug. For his part, Trump previously referred to Xi as a dear friend while dining him with beautiful chocolate cake at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, but his administration has since slammed the Chinese leader as authoritarian. Trumps racist slurs over the pandemic being Kung Flu and Chinese plague must give President Xi pause for disgust with the falseness. At the end of day, can either of these presidential candidates be trusted to pursue principled U.S.-China relations going forward? The toxic anti-China campaigning by both indicates a level of puerile treachery which foreshadows no possible return to any kind of normalcy. One distinction perhaps between Trump and Biden is the latter is promising to repair relations with Western allies to form a united front against China. To that end, a hawkish confrontational policy under Biden may have more impact on U.S.-China relations than under Trump. Trump has managed to alienate European allies with his broadsides over trade tariffs and NATO spending commitments. Although Trumps Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has recently urged an alliance of democracies to confront China, that rallying call is likely to fall on deaf ears with European allies irked by Trumps brash style. Biden on the other hand could bring a more unified Western policy of hostility towards Beijing (and Moscow) by affecting a more appeasing attitude towards Europe. In that way, Biden would be more preferred by the Pentagon and foreign policy establishment than Trump, just as Hillary Clinton was in 2016. However, it is doubtful that Beijing is paying too much attention to what either candidate is saying or posturing at. If both of them can flip so much from talking softly to shouting loud anti-China profanities then their individual characters may be deemed malleable and unscrupulous. Both have shown a shameless streak in stoking anti-China bashing for electioneering gain. Trump pulled that trick last time out in 2016 when he railed against China for raping America only for him to discover deep friendship with Xi following that election. Now he has reverted to hostility out of self-serving calculation to whip up anti-China sentiment among voters. And Biden is apt to do the very same. Forget about such fickle personalities when it comes to reading U.S. policy towards China. Beijing will be looking at the longer trajectory of how U.S. policy turned towards a more militarized approach with the Pivot to Asia under the Obama-Biden administration in 2011. Indicating how Deep State continuity transcends Democrat or Republican occupants of the White House, the next major indicator was in the Pentagon planning documents of 2017 and 2018 under Trump which labelled China and Russia as great power rivals. The American ship of state, it may be concluded, is therefore set on a collision course with both Beijing and Moscow in terms of ramping up a confrontational agenda. Who sits in the White House scarcely matters. For Trump and Biden to trade barbs about which one is softer on China or Russia is irrelevant in the bigger picture of U.S. imperialist ambitions for global dominance. The logic of a waning American empire and the concomitant inherent belligerence to compensate for the perceived loss of U.S. global power are the issues to follow, not whether Trump or Biden clinch the dog-and-pony race to the White House. Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said he deplored attempts to question the efficiency of the Mumbai police in handling the probe into the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. He said the state police were capable of probing the case, an assertion which comes in the backdrop of growing clamour for a CBI probe in the actor's death here in June. Thackeray lashed out at Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis, saying the BJP politician had doubted the credibility of the Mumbai police in handling the case despite being a chief minister for five years. "The opposition can even bring Interpol or followers of the Namaste Trump event into the inquiry. Devendra Fadnavis should understand that it is the same police whom he has worked with in the last five years," Thackeray said at an event organised by a Marathi news channel. Earlier in the day, Fadnavis said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) should register an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) in connection with the money laundering angle in the Sushant death case. There is a "huge public sentiment" about handing over the case to the CBI, but the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state has been reluctant to do so, the former BJP chief minister said. Thackeray said the Mumbai police have been "corona warriors" and many personnel in the force have died due to the infection. To question their efficiency is an insult to them and "I condemn this," he added. Thackeray said if anyone has any proof related to the case, he/she can bring it to the Mumbai police. "We will interrogate and punish the guilty. However, please don't use this case as a Maharashtra versus Bihar issue. This is the most deplorable thing to do," he said. Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh recently said Mumbai Police are capable of handling the matter and that there was no need for a CBI probe into the case. The Mumbai police have recorded statements of Bollywood personalities including Sanjay Leela Bhansali, film critic Rajeev Masand, actress Sanjana Sanghi, the actor's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, casting director Shanoo Sharma, filmmaker Mukesh Chhabra, and Aditya Chopra of Yash Raj Films. The police have so far recorded statements of around 40 people, including those of Rajput''s family and his cook. Rajput, 34, was found hanging at his apartment in suburban Bandra on June 14. A Bihar police team is probing a separate "abetment to suicide" case on the basis of a complaint filed by the late actor''s father in Patna. Speaking at the event, the CM said he wasn't bothered about stability of his government as long as he enjoys support of the people of the state and Shiv Sainiks. "The BJP says our government is against the mandate. Then is destabilising democratically-elected governments, a mandate," he asked. Thackeray, who is also Shiv Sena president, was speaking at an event organised by a Marathi news channel. He said the BJP and the Shiv Sena have "divorced" now so the national party need not bother about what his outfit does. "We were in a relationship with the BJP for 30 years, but they did not trust us. But, those with whom we had political differences for 30 years trusted us," Thackeray said, referring to the NCP and the Congress, who are part of the Shiv Sena-led government. Pralhad Joshi, Union minister for coal and mines, on Friday said the ministry has accepted the proposal of the Chhattisgarh government to exclude five coal blocks in Hasdeo Arand, one of countrys most pristine forest areas, and other bio-diversity-rich areas from commercial mining, but has also acceded to include three new ones in a bid to reduce the countrys coal import bill. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced on June 17 the auction of 41 coal mines for commercial mining by private players following which the Jharkhand government had moved the Supreme Court objecting to the bidding process because the state governments were not consulted. Chhattisgarh government had also objected and asked the coal ministry not to allow the auction of coal blocks which fall under Hasdeo Arand, Lemru elephant reserve and the Mand river catchment area that is a part of the biodiversity-rich forests. On Thursday, Joshi had met Jharkhand government officials and discussed the sticking point about the bidding process. Later, he told media persons that he had requested Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren to reconsider his governments stand on commercial mining. We are importing 250 million tonnes of coal every year because of the shortage. The Centre wants to compensate the shortage by opening up coal blocks for commercial mining, Joshi had said. Soren, however, stuck to his stand and insisted that the Centre should have discussed the issue with state governments. On Friday, Joshi met Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel and said that the latter has agreed to replace the five contentious coal blocks with three new ones, which would be added to the list for auction as per the state governments suggestion. At present, the total number of coal blocks put on auction in Chhattisgarh for commercial mining shall be seven (instead of nine earlier). Three new coal blocks will also be added to the list, the minister said. Of the nine coal blocks, five fall under Hasdeo Arand, including Morga -2, Morga (South), Madanpur north, Shyang, and Fathehpur (east). The other four coal blocks are Gare Palema (4/1), Gare Palema (4/7), Shankarpur Bhatgaon (second extension) and Sondhia. On June 20, in a letter to Joshi, Chhattisgarh forest minister Mohammad Akbar had said, Coal block between Hasdeo Arand and Mand river area also proposed for auction by the Union government However, recently, there has been an increase in the numbers of wild elephants in the state, which has led to a spike in human-elephant conflict. For providing habitat for wild elephants, 1,995 square kilometres of forest area around Hasdeo river has been declared as Lemru elephant reserve. The process of issuing notification has started, the state forest minister had said in the letter. Akbar said commercial mining in the area had to be stopped in a bid to ensure human lives are not lost due to man-elephant conflict. Joshi said the meeting with CM Baghel was positive and the commencement of commercial coal mining would usher in a new era of growth and development in Chhattisgarh. Under commercial coal mining, the state will fetch a minimum of Rs 4,400 crore revenue in one year. It will also create around 60,000 additional employment. Additionally, commercial coal mining will contribute around Rs 25 crore to the various district Mineral Foundation (DMF) funds of the state that can be used for inclusive development of regions surrounding coalfield areas, Joshi said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON WASHINGTON A deadlocked Senate on Thursday left Washington for the weekend without extending a $600-per-week expanded jobless benefit that has helped keep both families and the economy afloat as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaks havoc on the country. Fridays expiration of the $600 jobless benefit sent Republicans controlling the Senate scrambling to respond. Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell made a procedural move to make it easier to reach a potential compromise next week that would extend the bonus unemployment benefit while talks on a broader COVID-19 relief measure grind on. But ahead of late-night talks at the Capitol, the outlook dimmed. Im not very optimistic that we will have any kind of an agreement on a comprehensive bill in the near future, said White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. He said he even doubted a deal could be struck next week. But Democrats have so far rejected a piecemeal approach, saying the next relief bill needs to move as a complete package. Any short-term jobless benefits extension of less than $600 per week is likely to be a nonstarter with them. Talks on the relief bill are at a standstill with few reasons for optimism despite sweeping agreement among Washingtons top power players that Congress must pass further relief in coming days and weeks. President Donald Trump is eager for another bill, and its also a priority for GOP allies like McConnell, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer. Democrats hold a strong negotiating hand, with Republicans badly divided over their own proposal. Raising the stakes, a bleak government report released Thursday said the economy shrank at a 33% annualized rate in the second quarter of the year, a stark reminder of the economic damage afflicting the country as lawmakers debate the size and scope of new relief. This jarring news should compel Congress to move swiftly to provide targeted and temporary assistance to unemployed Americans, employers, and state and local governments, and liability protections for businesses who follow public health guidelines, said Neal Bradley of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the powerful business group. But bipartisan talks have yet to reach a serious, productive phase. Democrats are playing hardball, insisting on a package thats far larger than the $1 trillion-plus measure unveiled by McConnell on Monday. Thursday brought more tit-for-tat. They wont engage. Period, McConnell said as he opened the Senate. The Democrats are saying, my way or the highway. In an interview late Wednesday, he showed a willingness to consider some Democratic priorities, like additional food aid. He also said extending the additional jobless benefits was urgent and made clear that hes standing behind Trump. The economy does need more help. We have divided government. We have to talk to each other, McConnell said on the PBS NewsHour. And we have to try to get an outcome. Schumer continued his daily fusillade against McConnell and Republicans controlling the Senate, noting that McConnell refuses to go in the room and join the talks in person, instead transferring ownership of the talks to Meadows, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has been a key architect of previous accords. Were trying to negotiate, Schumer said. Whos holding things up? In an earlier piece of legislative theater, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sought unanimous stand-alone Senate approval of a conservative GOP plan to sharply cut back the $600 per week unemployment benefit to $200, saying that the current amount discourages people from returning to work. Democrats countered with a plan to extend the $600 benefit through January. Both ideas predictably failed, as did an effort by Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., to extend the $600 benefit for just one week. Pelosi was dashing back to Washington after having traveled to Atlanta for the funeral of Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon. Pelosis office announced a meeting for Thursday night with the White House negotiators. Other stark differences remain between the $3 trillion proposal from Democrats and $1 trillion counter from Republicans. Money for states and cities is a crucial dividing line as local governments plead for help to shore up budgets and prevent deeper layoffs as they incur COVID-19 costs and lost tax revenue in shutdown economies. Democrats proposed nearly $1 trillion for the local governments, but Trump and Republicans are resisting sending the states and cities more cash. Instead, the GOP offers states flexibility to use $150 billion previously allotted for the virus on other needs. Its clear that Democrats are trying to push an advantage in the negotiations because Republicans are so split over the prospect of additional government spending. Among the issues sure to gather momentum is a Democratic demand for a 15% increase in food stamp benefits. Trump has dismissed the GOP bill as semi-irrelevant since it leaves out so many Democratic items. Trump appears worried about the expiration of the $600 unemployment benefit boost as well as an expiring federal eviction moratorium on millions of rental units, potentially sending households into devastating turmoil. Trump has bristled at one provision of the GOP bill he said his Republican allies should go back to school and learn after they balked at $1.7 billion for FBI headquarters. Trump wants the FBIs central building to remain in Washington, across the street from his Trump International Hotel. If the FBI moved its headquarters, the site would become prime real estate for a competing hotel. McConnell has rejected the FBI funding request added to a $300 billion-plus appropriations package in private talks between Meadows and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Richard Shelby, R-Ala. since it is unrelated to virus relief. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report. (Newser) A California teen's petition to get Trader Joe's to change the branding on some of its international food items looked like it hit home with the grocery chain, but after hinting on a phaseout, management seems to be backtracking on that plan. Briones Bedell has noted some of the items in question featured "racist" packaging "that perpetuates harmful stereotypes," mostly via alterations to the word "Joe": "Trader Ming's," for example, included on packaging for some of the chain's Chinese food offerings, or "Trader Jose" for Mexican fare. Bedell also has a beef with the store's overall branding, saying its theme was based on "a racist book and a controversial theme park attraction" (Disneyland's Jungle Cruise ride). The high school senior's petition had more than 5,300 signatures as of Saturday, and Trader Joe's itself issued a statement that seemed to indicate it took Bedell's ask to heart. story continues below Via a rep, the chain said it was "in the process of updating older labels and replacing any variations with the name Trader Joe's, and we will continue to do so until we complete this important work," per ABC News. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Fox News reports on a new statement on the company's website that says earlier reports were "inaccurate" and that "we disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions." It noted its "Buying Team" had reviewed some older items and discontinued products that weren't selling well, but that the products Bedell complained about were popular with patrons. "Products that resonate with our customers and sell well will remain on our shelves," it added. Bedell's response: "Surely, the owners of Trader Joe's could afford to hire a diversity officer to assist their 'Buying Team.' Or, at the very least, a new PR team?" (Read more Trader Joe's stories.) Ronit Tehrani (left) and Edward Kraftmann (right), co-owners of Driven2Drive, work with a customer at Driven2Drive in Oaks, Pa., on Wednesday. Driven2Drive is a driver's education and independent test center that offers PennDOT certified driving tests. Read more Kaliesha Canady was surprised by her driving test in late June. When the 26-year-old from Collingdale, in Delaware County, arrived at the test center, she found out the examiner wouldnt be sitting in the car with her. Whats more, the test would take place entirely in the parking lot. She breathed a sigh of relief. With them being outside of the car, I was able to control my nerves and actually focus, she said. It was way easier overall. Canady took her test through Driven2Drive, a driving school and PennDOT-certified third-party licensing center with six locations across Southeastern Pennsylvania. The changes she faced during her test came after a June 2 announcement from PennDOT that drivers skills tests would resume with modifications after the department had canceled more than 28,000 tests scheduled from mid-March to May in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We did that to maintain the integrity of the test, but also ensure safety of both our customers and our staff, said Diego Sandino, a community relations coordinator for PennDOT. READ MORE: PennDot will resume giving driving tests, canceled by the coronavirus, on Tuesday The new test consists of PennDOT examiners remaining outside of the vehicle for the entire test, evaluating drivers from a distance with both parties wearing protective masks, Sandino said. Because the examiner isnt in the car with the driver, the test itself must be confined to a limited space such as a parking lot. Examiners have no way of evaluating driver behavior in real traffic conditions. Its a very modified and abridged test, said Ronit Tehrani, founder and co-owner of Driven2Drive. This test is so streamlined that if they know how to park, theyre basically going to pass the test. Road tests in New Jersey remain largely similar to what they were before the pandemic. Examiners and drivers are both in the vehicle, wearing protective masks with windows rolled down, said William Connolly, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. Tehrani says that the backlog in testing availability at PennDOT brought a rush of drivers to her business, which can schedule tests in as little as two days but charges a fee for doing so. The current wait time for a test at PennDOT in the Southeastern region of the state is 25 to 30 days, said Sandino. Since the changes, Tehrani has seen the pass rate for her tests increase. But that doesnt surprise her. Theres less of a chance for them to speed or blow a stop sign or fail due to judgment, she said. READ MORE: If transportation is essential, why has taking a driving test been so difficult in Pennsylvania? The pass rates for PennDOT have increased, too, from 62% for 16,500 tests in June 2019 to 74% for 22,500 tests in June 2020, according to Sandino. He also noted that the pass rate for third-party testing centers such as Driven2Drive increased from 82% in June 2019 to 89% in June 2020. Flaura Winston, the founder and director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, has concerns about what these changes mean for public safety. My biggest fear is that we already had this problem where the leading cause of death for adolescents was motor-vehicle crashes, she said. And were doing something that could potentially make it riskier for them. In 2017, nearly 2,500 American teenagers died in motor vehicle accidents, and about 300,000 were injured. Costs related to these were about $13.1 billion, about 8% of total injury costs related to motor vehicle crashes. Novice teen drivers are at higher risk of being injured or killed in a crash than older and more experienced drivers. Winston, who is also the co-founder of Diagnostic Driving, a driving education technology start-up, acknowledges that these statistics indicate that driving tests before the pandemic werent perfect, either. I dont necessarily think a driving test is a panacea, she said. But its all we have. READ MORE: How to take care of your car if youre not driving it a lot Kaleem Marriott, a 35-year-old new driver from Haverford who also took his test through Driven2Drive, thinks that the permit test, a written questionnaire, is the real barrier to entry. You cant really just walk in off the street and pass it, he said, noting that he found it more difficult than the road skills test. Thats part of the reason for a recent bill from State Rep. Melissa Shusterman, a Democrat who represents parts of Chester and Montgomery Counties, that proposes waiving the road skills test for the remainder of the pandemic. Instead, there would be a series of questions, and they would submit their practice hours, and it would give drivers a temporary license, Shusterman said. The representative clarified that she didnt want to put the public at risk, but emphasized that its purpose is to allow young people to help their households and have all hands on deck by driving and running errands. Marriott says his license allows him to help his 89-year-old aunt go to the doctor and with grocery shopping. The amount of freedom I have now in comparison to what I had prior is night and day, he said. Shusterman also hopes to mitigate risk by enforcing stricter rules on hours or mileage for new drivers. But overall, Shusterman said of young drivers that the help they can give outweighs the risk at this point. Winston doubts that a questionnaire would be able to evaluate drivers in the same way as on-road skills tests, but doesnt want to rule out any options without solid evidence. These are things we could evaluate with a small pilot study, she said. But we need to put in place systems to evaluate these changes, because were talking about a lot of deaths. One of two brothers who got into difficulty while kayaking off West Cork has been taken to hospital with a head injury. The young adult brothers were kayaking in separate kayaks off Dunworley Head when a heavy swell caught them and pushed them to the base of cliffs. One of the brothers sustained a head injury. Poor mobile phone signal meant their position could not immediately be pinpointed when the alarm was raised about 12.30pm. Courtmacsheery lifeboat and Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 115 both responded, as did the Seven Heads Coast Guard unit. The brothers managed to get to the top of the cliff, where they were met by Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 115. The injured brother was taken to University Hospital Kerry in Tralee for treatment and arrived there at 2.08pm; the other was taken by the Coastguard unit to safety and left the area himself. It is understood the two are from the Cork area. The operation was coordinated by the Valentina Coastguard. Dunworley Bay is about three and a half miles east of Clonakilty. It lies on the western side of Seven Heads, the peninsula that divides Clonakilty and Courtmacsherry Bays. Meanwhile, also in West Cork today, Irish Community Rapid Response air ambulance responded to a call for aid in Baltimore, where paramedics treated an injured jet skier. The @ICRROfficial helicopter has landed on #Baltimore pier in West #Cork where paramedics are treating an injured jet skier pic.twitter.com/Tz55tBtdaH Eoin English (@EoinBearla) August 1, 2020 Photo credit: NurPhoto - Getty Images From Popular Mechanics A new paper published in Current Biology describes how a sodium channel inherited from Neanderthals may be responsible for low pain tolerance in modern humans. While the in-depth study is compelling, this theory remains inconclusive. If you have a low tolerance for pain new research suggests you should blame it on our Neanderthal cousins. According to joint research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Swedens Karolinska Institutet, people who inherited a special ion channel from Neanderthals experience more pain. In their paper, the researchers describe Nav1.7, a sodium channel crucial for impulse generation and conduction in peripheral pain pathways, which showed reduced inactivation in Neanderthals. Researchers deduced that because of this lowered level of activation, Neanderthals experienced heightened pain sensitivity in comparison to modern humans. In Neanderthals, the Nav1.7 protein carried three amino acid substitutions (M932L, V991L, and D1908G) relative to modern humans. We expressed Nav1.7 proteins carrying all combinations of these substitutions and studied their electrophysiological effects. Whereas the single amino acid substitutions do not affect the function of the ion channel, the full Neanderthal variant carrying all three substitutions, as well as the combination of V991L with D1908G, shows reduced inactivation, suggesting that peripheral nerves were more sensitive to painful stimuli in Neanderthals than in modern humans. The researchers also discovered that through passed down genes, 0.4 percent of present-day Britons are carriers of the Neanderthal amino acid substitutions. When Neanderthals and Denisovansa group belonging to the Homo genus who were a species of early human and are also known as the Denisova homininsmated with the earliest modern humans, several genetic variants from both groups (Neanderthals and Denisovans) emerged and have been passed down to us. Story continues Additionally, the researchers also analyzed the SCN9A gene which acts as a guide for the production of the sodium channels and encodes the Nav1.7 protein. In their paper, the researchers share that humans who experience loss-of-function mutations of SCN9A tend to develop insensitivity to pain and anosmia (a lost sense of smell) whereas gain-of-function mutations cause people to present with sensory symptoms and pain, with pain as the dominant symptom. The Neanderthal variant of the ion channel carries three amino acid differences to the common, modern variant, says lead paper author and a researcher, Hugo Zeberg, in a news release. While single amino acid substitutions do not affect the function of the ion channel, the full Neanderthal variant carrying three amino acid substitutions leads to heightened pain sensitivity in present-day people, Zeberg explains. And it turns out that age is a factor in pain sensation, too. Zeberg says that those who carry the Neanderthal variant experience pain as if they were eight years older. In order to study the aforementioned genetic substitutions in real time, the researchers synthesized genes which included both the Neanderthal and modern human Nav1.7 sodium channel and transcribed them in vitro before injecting them into African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) oocytes (ovarian cells.) The researchers also used data from UK Biobank of 198,047 adult females and 164,897 adult males from the United Kingdom and found that those who were carriers of the variant ion channel had a lower tolerance for pain. While compelling, the results are not definitive. The researchers conclude that while they cannot be absolutely certain that Neanderthals necessarily experienced more pain that modern humans do, theres a strong case for this hypothesis being that Neanderthal peripheral nerve endings were extra sensitive to stimuli as suggested by the observations in present-day people heterozygous for the Neanderthal Nav1.7 variant. You Might Also Like Researchers from The Ohio State University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines whether to focus sharing economy marketing communications on the platform or on the provider. The study, forthcoming in the the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Providers vs. Platforms: Marketing Communications in the Sharing Economy" and is authored by John Costello and Rebecca Walker Reczek. Over the past decade, a growing number of firms have found success using a peer-to-peer (P2P) business model (e.g., Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit). P2P brands are expected to drive much of the sharing economy's future growth, with experts projecting a market size of $335 billion by 2025 for the overall sharing economy, up from $14 billion in 2014. Marketing communications represent the company's "voice" to consumers and offer a key way to shift consumers' purchase perceptions and behaviors. Although P2P brands face many important decisions about their marketing communications, a new study in the Journal of Marketing explores one specific, but consequential, decision for P2P marketers: whether to focus on the platform or on the provider in marketing communications. Both strategies are used among P2P brands in the marketplace, but existing research offers no insight into whether platform- or provider-focused communications are more effective and why. Consumers interact with two distinct entities in a P2P purchase. The first is the platform, typically a for-profit firm that acts as an intermediary for exchange between consumers and providers of goods and services. The second is a peer provider, an individual who offers a good or service and connects with the consumer through the platform. We find the P2P model leads consumers to perceive high provider-firm independence where providers are viewed as relatively independent from the platform(s) on which they offer goods/services. Given the perceived independence of the provider and firm for P2P firms, P2P marketing managers may choose to focus on either entity in their marketing communications. Through experiments and a field study conducted in collaboration with a real P2P company, the research team demonstrates that when P2P brands use provider-focused marketing communications versus platform-focused marketing communications, consumers perceive a purchase as helping an individual provider to a greater extent. This mental shift increases consumers' likelihood of purchase and app download as well as willingness to pay (WTP). Costello explains that "This is because provider-focused marketing communications in this context lead consumers to think about their purchase from the provider's perspective. We call this tendency an empathy lens, which is being aware of another person's internal state or putting oneself in the place of another. We also show that our effects do not extend to traditional firms because consumers do not view these purchases through an empathy lens." These findings have practical implications for marketing managers of P2P brands, public policymakers, and consumers. From a managerial perspective, they identify the importance of provider-focused marketing communications as a way to drive important brand outcomes and should be particularly helpful for marketers at start-up P2P brands. These new brands face increased spending from established P2P brands and a relatively high failure rate, thus making informed decisions about marketing communications particularly important. The research also suggests that there may be an opportunity for policymakers to educate consumers about how their perceptions about P2P purchases may be influenced by firm actions like marketing communications, and thus may not match economic reality. Reczek says that "Our studies show that consumers often view purchases from for-profit P2Ps as helping an individual provider. However, this perception could have negative consequences for providers. For example, if consumers already believe they are helping through their purchases, they may be less willing to support regulations that help protect these individuals financially or may be less willing to provide other support such as tipping." This point is particularly timely as experts recently reported that the threat of COVID-19 has dramatically decreased the usage of popular peer-to-peer (P2P) brands like Uber and Lyft, leaving many P2P providers in a difficult financial position. While some P2P brands are pivoting to services like food delivery to keep drivers active, consumers should remember that perceptions of helping do not always match reality. ### Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242920925038 About the Journal of Marketing The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Christine Moorman (T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University) serves as the current Editor in Chief. https://www.ama.org/jm About the American Marketing Association (AMA) As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what's coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences. https://www.ama.org/ Re: Pay parking moving along The Penticton City council and staff are looking to change many areas of currently free parking to pay parking in an attempt to generate funds for their deficit budgets and cost overruns operating a city budget. The idea of charging a fee for recreational, sporting event and beach parking is appalling and should not be accepted by taxpaying citizens. Taxes have and will continue to increase whether parking in these areas is free or payment required. The two months of tourist generated revenue will not be sufficient and the other 10 months of locals paying for recreation and activity parking is not fair to taxpayers. The idea of Pay Parking in these areas to subsidize and offset poor money management by the city staff and council is wrong. Pay parking has been proven to reduce activity levels of community citizens to use those activity areas and will have a negative impact on the health and activity levels of locals; especially seniors in need of getting out and being active each day as well as taking in community events due to the year round additional costs associated to using these areas. Council/staff could easily solve this budget deficit by managing their budgets more effectively and by instituting proper development fees and taxes to developers. After years of low rate charges compared to other communities increase those fees to appropriate rates instead of padding the pocket of every developer by offering them reduced rates in Penticton. Change these low rates to comparatively similar rates to other communities and manage your budgets better in council and staff decisions. Dont charge the taxpaying citizens to park in their own community for activity, recreational and beach parking in areas that are currently free by instituting fees as a tax grab to offset years of mismanaged funds. Council and city staff should be embarrassed by considering paid parking in these areas in an attempt to make up for budget shortfalls. John Buckley New Delhi, Aug 1 : At a time when the Government has given a clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday stressed the role played by Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak in achieving Swaraj. Shah addressing an webinar organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) remembered Tilak and said: "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it", saying this in the 19th century as well as spending one's whole life to achieve it cannot be done by many. "This utterance will always be associated with Lokmanya Tilak as golden letters in the history of freedom struggle of India." The topic of the webinar was "Lokmanya Tilak: Swaraj to Atmanirbhar Bharat" commemorating centenary of the pre-eminent freedom fighter of India. It sought to explore the legacy of Tilak in the 21st Century 'New India'. ICCR president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe said Tilak was "perhaps the first political leader in modern India to appreciate the importance of identity issues". He said that when Tilak asserted 'Swaraj is my birth right', it was essentially about fundamental Human Rights at a time when it was not a part of contemporary discourse. Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday paid tribute to the strongest proponent of 'purna swaraj'. Tilak, born as Keshav Gangadhar Bal Gangadhar Tilak, tirelessly contributed to help the country break free from the British rule. Part of the Lal-Bal-Pal (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal) troika, Tilak was called 'father of the Indian unrest" by British colonial rulers. Mumbai : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday hailed BJP's victory in polls to Maharashtra's local bodies as a 'win for pro-poor and development politics' and thanked people of the state for placing their faith in the party. BJP in municipal council bypolls have gathered 848 seats as against 298 in 2011. A Trends and results pouring in from around the Maharastra showed the BJP making inroads into the Congress and NCP strongholds. "I thank people of Maharashtra for placing their faith in BJP in local body polls. This is a win for pro-poor & development politics of BJP," he said in a tweet. I thank people of Maharashtra for placing their faith in BJP in local body polls. This is a win for pro-poor & development politics of BJP. a Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 28, 2016 He also praised Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and state BJP president Rao Saheb Danve for their efforts in ensuring the party's victory. "I laud BJP Karyakartas, CM @Dev_Fadnavis & @raosahebdanve. Their grassroot level work ensured people place their valued trust in BJP," Modi said in another tweet. BJP on Monday emerged as a major gainer in the first phase of municipal council polls winning 39 municipal chief's posts of the 147 urban local bodies, dealing a blow to Congress and NCP in the keenly fought elections, whose campaign centred around issues like demonetisation. Here is the tally of Maharastra Municipal Council and Chairman polls.A A A A A A Municipal Council ChairmanA A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A Municipal council (Nagar Sevaks) A A A A A A A Final Tally - 147/147 A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A Final Tally: 3259/3706A A A A A A BJP - 57 A A A A A BJP: 848 (298 in 2011) A A A A Shiv Sena - 24 A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A Shiv Sena : 616A A A A Congress - 20 A A A Congress - 688A A A A NCP - 19 A A A NCP: 576A A A A A Others - 27 A A A Others: 531 A A A 447 seats still left (with inputs from agencies)A The Deputy National Chairman on Communication and Publicity for the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Campaign Council in Edo Sta... The APC spokesman said on Channels Televisions Politics Today on Friday that the visit by PDP does not translate to the revered monarch endorsing the partys candidate.Obahiagbon did not also confirm or refute the question of whether the APC candidate, Osagie Ize-Iyamu has the blessing of the Oba.According to him, the Oba of Benin is a neutral traditional king and does not endorse anybody but prays for all his subjects.If you watch his prayers very meticulously, he would say that may the candidate that would bring freedom, may the candidate that will bring economic prosperity to my kingdom have the blessing of the great architect of the universe, Obahiagbon added.So we cannot situate or locate the visit of PDP to His Royal Majesty to be an endorsement. In any case, the APC is yet to carry out its campaign. When we do that, we will equally visit His Majesty, he added.According to him, APCs Ize Iyamu is confident of victory in the September governorship election.The APC Campaign had yesterday described the state Governor, Obaseki, as a confused man merely projecting the criminal plans his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are perfecting.It said it was dawning realization for the PDP and its candidate that they have been rejected by the people of Edo State. Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 22:35:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DOHA, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Qatari health ministry on Saturday announced 216 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Gulf state to 110,911, official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported. Meanwhile, 201 more recovered from the virus, bringing the total recoveries to 107,578, while the death toll remained 174, according to a ministry statement quoted by QNA. 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. A total of 498,666 persons in Qatar have taken lab tests for COVID-19 so far. 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. On July 8, Chinese health officials and medical experts held a video conference with Qatari counterparts to share experience and expertise in fighting COVID-19. The two sides also held in-depth exchange of views on the issues that Qatar is most concerned about, including coronavirus prevention and control, test analysis, clinic care, vaccine development and social management. Enditem Kabul, Aug 1 : Afghans celebrated Eid al-Adha amid a three-day ceasefire called by the Taliban. On Tuesday, the Taliban announced the three-day ceasefire ahead of the intra-Afghan negotiations that are expected in the coming weeks, reports TOLO News. The group called on its fighters to avoid attacking Afghan forces and to not enter government-controlled areas. This is the third ceasefire in the country since June 2019. Afghans in various regions of the country have welcomed the ceasefire. They called on the warring sides in Afghanistan to agree to a long-term ceasefire. "We call on all sides to swiftly start the intra-Afghan talks," TOLO News quoted a civilian as saying. "The people are very happy, they spent time in a peace, there were no clashes," another said. "We hope that the ceasefire marks the start of permanent ceasefire in the country," a Kabul resident was quoted as saying. On Friday, President Ashraf Ghani rdered the release of 500 Taliban prisoners in response to the militant group's ceasefire announcement. Ghani said the 500 prisoners were not part of the list given to the Afghan government by the Taliban and that these inmates will be released within the next four days, reports TOLO News. According to Ghani, the Afghan government has so far released 4,600 Taliban prisoners. Ghani's annoucement came as the Taliban also completed the release of 1,000 prisoners as per the peace agreement it signed with the US in Doha in February. A spokesman of the group, Suhail Shaheen, said on Twitter that they freed 82 prisoners on Thursday, bringing the total released by the Taliban to 1,005. Shaheed El Hafed, 1 August 2020 (SPS) - President of the Sahrawi Red Crescent Bouhbini Yahia on Thursday appealed to donor countries to accelerate the delivery of aid to Sahrawi refugees in the camps, faced with decreasing food stocks and the Covid-19 pandemic. "The response to the appeal launched by international organizations, in coordination with the Sahrawi Red Crescent, has so far brought only 20% of the needs, and therefore, we are very far from meeting all the demand," Bouhbini told APS. "This is why we appeal, once again, to donor countries for the rapid delivery of aid aimed at combating Coronavirus, which has now hit the refugee camps," he stressed, adding that this situation" requires many measures and other precautions, and we desperately need these contributions and donations at this very critical period. He said that confronted with the spread of the pandemic in the world and the decline in aid from donor countries and the delay recorded in the delivery of certain products, the Sahrawi Red Crescent has been forced, in recent months, to use stocks. "Today, we have a stock of some commodities which is enough only for three months," he said. "Currently, we are talking about a pandemic which can be longer and a possible second wave of it, which requires a chain of efficient WFP supply and this relies on contributions from donor countries," he added. Algeria had offered 300 tonnes of aid to Sahrawi refugees through caravans organized by the Algerian Red Crescent (CRA). (SPS) 062/SPS/700 A New York man was arrested twice for smearing paint across the Black Lives Matter mural that sits in front of Trump Tower. Mark-David Hutt, of Rochester, was arrested by the New York Police Department on July 25 and 26, becoming one of at least eight people to be detained for vandalizing the mural. Footage of Sunday's vandalism was captured by a witness and begins with the 31-year-old crawling on his knees while using his bare hands to smudge the paint. 'Unbelievable,' one witness says. At least five witnesses watch in stunned silence as Hutt defaced the mural. Cell phone footage shows a man, identified as Mark-David Hutt, smearing white paint across the Black Lives Matter mural in front of Trump Tower in New York City A NYPD officer appears halfway through the footage and tells Hutt that he must stop his actions. 'Sir, step up sir! You need to stop,' the officer says. Hutt ignores the officer's warnings several times and is eventually placed in handcuffs to be escorted out of the area. It took four police officers to get Hutt to comply wit their requests. NYPD Detective Denise Moroney told The Washington Post that Hutt was charged with criminal mischief. Hutt (pictured) crawled on his hands and knees to smear the paint while at least five people recorded the incident with their cell phones A New York City Police Department officer approached Hutt, but he ignored the officer and continued vandalizing the mural Hutt first reportedly defaced the Black Lives Matter mural with red paint on July 25 and used white paint on July 26 Hutt reportedly defaced the Black Lives Matter mural with paint on both Saturday and Sunday of last week. On Facebook, Hutt shared a trove of videos and images of him painting over the mural. In one video post, he wrote: 'Saturday, I splashed Red. Sunday, I splashed White. & on Monday...' He then blasted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for approving the mural and vowing to make reforms to local law enforcement. 'Mayor Bill de Blasio has ruined NYC & has put a target on the backs of NYPDs finest. We need to STAND UP and take our country back. #BlueLivesMatter, 'he wrote. Earlier this month, de Blasio and the New York City Council cut $1 billion from the NYPD's $6 billion annual budget in response to protests over police practices in the wake of George Floyd's death. Hutt identified himself as the founder of 'LGBTrump' and has several posts, both on his personal and LGBTrump page, making disparaging comments towards de Blasio and Democrats. Hutt (left and right) identified himself as the founder of LGBTrump on Facebook and has shared several posts disparaging New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio 'The #BlackLivesMatter "mural" is nothing more than a Democrat campaign billboard intended to cause more division in America,' one post on the LGBTrump page read. One meme shared by Hutt alleged the Black Lives Matter movement was 'no different' than the KKK.' Authorities have said at least eight people have been arrested for vandalizing the Black Lives Matter mural. The mural was first placed in front of Trump Tower on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, much to the President's chagrin, on July 9 with help from local community members and de Blasio. In one incident, a woman identified as Beverly Beatty, the president of At The Wells Ministry, was seen pouring black paint over the mural, An officer, who appeared to slip on the Beatty's wet paint and hit his head on the asphalt, was transported to Bellevue Hospital and is expected to fully recover. The incident occurred on Saturday afternoon at the 5th Avenue mural when a woman poured black paint on the letters For about 30 seconds, the officer writhed in pain on the street after slipping and seeming to hurt his arm or head Another woman is pictured pouring more of the blue paint on the mural along Fifth Avenue 'You wanna defund the police for black people?' the woman shouted, video from the incident shows. 'We want our police! Re-fund our police!' Three weeks ago, Juliet Germanotta, 39, D'Anna Morgan, 25, and Luis Martinez, 44, all of New York, were charged with criminal mischief and then released for covering the letters on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue with blue paint this month. Cell phone footage taken last Sunday showed a woman wearing an 'All Lives Matter' and rainbow cape splashing the logo. Police described the vandal as being medium build and said that he was last seen wearing a black t-shirt, black shorts, black sneakers and black sunglasses Cops release surveillance footage and photos of a suspect who poured red paint on Black Lives Matter mural in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan on Monday And a different video shows an unidentified man at approximately pulling the paint out of a bag as he approaches the mural. He can then be seen pouring the paint on various letters of the mural before heading off in an unknown direction. The suspect appears to be a white man who could be in his mid-20s or early-30s. Police described the vandal as being medium build and said that he was last seen wearing a black t-shirt, black shorts, black sneakers and black sunglasses. A number of Black Lives Matter murals have been painted across the country, including Washington D.C. amid ongoing anti-racism and police brutality protests that have swept the nation. Apart from Ankita Lokhande, the Bihar police has recorded statements of Sushant Singh Rajput's sister, who stays in Versova, a cook, his friends, and colleagues, an official has confirmed. The Bihar police team, which is in Mumbai to investigate an "abetment to suicide" case related to the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, has so far recorded the statements of six persons, an official said on Saturday. The four-member Bihar police team arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday to probe the 'abetment to suicide' case registered against Rajput's friend, actress Rhea Chakraborty, and others in Patna. "Till now, the police team from Bihar has met the late actor's friends, colleagues, and relatives. They have recorded the statements of six persons- Rajput's sister, who stays in Versova, former girlfriend Ankita Lokhande, a cook, his friends, and colleagues," the official said. The police team is also likely to question the members of Rajput's staff, he said, adding that some of them had been changed. "They also gathered information about Rajput's various bank accounts and also visited the banks to look into the financial transactions," he said. The visiting team had on Friday gone to the Crime Branch office to submit an application seeking assistance from the Mumbai Police in probing the case. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on 5 August a plea filed by Chakraborty, who has sought transfer of the FIR lodged against her. The actress has said in her plea that she was in a live-in relationship with Rajput and has been in deep trauma due to the death of the actor and moreover getting rape and death threats. "It is pertinent to mention that the deceased and petitioner were in a live-in relationship since a year up till 8 June, 2020 when the petitioner had temporarily shifted to her own residence in Mumbai," she has said in her plea. Chakraborty has also said in her plea that, "The deceased (Rajput) was suffering from depression for some time and was also on anti-depressants and he committed suicide on the morning of 14 June, 2020 at his Bandra residence by hanging himself." She has said in her plea that it becomes abundantly clear that the commencement of investigation in Patna is erroneous in absence of any cause of action having arisen at Patna. Krishna Kumar Singh (74), Rajput's father, had lodged a complaint against Chakraborty and six others, including her family members, for alleged abetment to suicide, in Patna on Tuesday. The Patna case was registered under various IPC sections including 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 306 (abetment of suicide). Singh accused Chakraborty, a budding TV and film actor, of having befriended his son in May 2019 with the intention of furthering her own career. Singh has also filed a caveat in the apex court seeking to be heard before any order is passed on Chakraborty's plea. A caveat is a pre-emptive legal measure taken to ensure that a party does not get any favourable order without a notice or a hearing accorded to the opponent. Rajput was found hanging in his suburban Bandra apartment on 14 June. The Mumbai police, who are already investigating the alleged suicide by the actor, have questioned several people from the film industry in connection with the case. (With inputs from Press Trust of India) * Education Minister Stephen Lecce and Premier Doug Fords government have unveiled their return to school plan for September. The announcement was very much to appease parents who do need to know if their child or children are physically returning to school in September. Parents can then create their own plan on Septembers school return, how it will work for them, child care arrangements or if they will even send them back. As an elementary school support worker, I am one of many staff on the front lines welcoming back our students and families. But really, what does this mean for us Stephen? When, where and how will support staff be brought up to speed on the plan and how it will affect us every minute of our working day? Most of Mr. Lecces announcements are geared toward parents and teachers. Are you forgetting who the glue is in every single school, helping to hold our students, parents and teachers above water? Support staff! Please consider us in your plans and your future announcements. Support staff matter. Heather Leann Pope was in junior high school when her family discovered she was hearing impaired. For years the kind, bubbly girl spoke a little louder than others and would often respond to people in a way that sometimes didnt make sense to them. But when Heather got hearing aids as a teenager, a whole new world opened up for her. I remember after we got her hearing aids, we got into the car and it was raining, Heathers mother, Carla Pope, told Dateline. She asked me, Mama, is that the rain I hear on the windshield? I just couldnt believe I didnt know how little she could hear. Heather Pope Carla said her daughter was bullied by kids in school, because of her disability, but that didnt stop her from treating everyone with kindness. She struggled, and so did we, Carla said. But she always kept a positive attitude, no matter what. It wasnt until Heathers funeral in 2010 that her family truly realized the profound and positive effect she had on others. So many -- just so many people came up to me right there at the funeral and told me about all the ways Heather touched their lives, Carla said as she still choked back tears ten years later. She was kind to everyone - from the dirtiest dirt to the people who carried those Louis Vuitton bags. It didnt matter. Carla said at least 600 people signed the guestbook and that Heathers funeral was quickly at capacity as people lined up outside to say their goodbyes. Heather was only 29 years old when she was murdered. Carla, and her sister, Paula, who also spoke to Dateline, said they remember that summer of 2010 being a typical hot, sticky Texas summer. After years of bouncing around from place to place and job to job, Heather had moved in with her mother in Royse City, Texas. She was lost, Heathers aunt, Paula Edge, told Dateline. But she was finding her way. Finally finding her way and then it was all taken from her. Heathers aunt and mother told Dateline that she had gotten involved with a bad crowd and were concerned about the road she was heading down. Story continues I dont want to paint a picture that she was this perfect person, Carla said. Because she wasnt. But those people she hung around with were not good people. But she was kind to everyone. She never met a stranger. And I think that got her into trouble. On July 23, 2010, Heather left the house, telling her mother she was going to visit a friend. It was the last time Carla ever saw her daughter. It wasnt unusual for Heather to go spend the weekend with a friend, of course, Carla said. But after a few days had passed and I hadnt heard anything from her, I began to worry. Because no matter what, she always checked in. Carla said she called Heathers father, Randall Pope, but he hadnt been able to reach Heather either. The couple, who had been divorced for most of Heathers life, maintained a friendship through the years for their two daughters, Carla told Dateline. Heathers parents reported her missing to the Royse City Police Department the week after she disappeared. For the next 11 days, the family searched the area around the house in Royse City and nearby Hunt County where Heather had friends, but there was no sign of her. Carla told Dateline that Heather often hung out with friends at a convenience store in the Quinlan area of Hunt County. While Heathers father and a family friend were out searching on August 3, she told them to try the store and ask if anyone had seen her. But when they asked, no one said they had seen or heard from her. Heathers father and the family friend decided to walk the property behind the convenience store near a vacant house on Cedar Hill Road. And thats where they made the gruesome discovery. Heathers badly decomposed body was found on the ground under a tarp next to the vacant house, according to Hunt County Sheriff Lieutenant Roger Seals, who was at the scene that day. It was one of the hottest days of the summer and her body had been there for awhile, Lt. Seals said. It was badly decomposed. Autopsy results showed that Heathers death was the result of blunt force trauma to the head. The Hunt County Sheriffs Office launched an investigation, but Lt. Seals said because of the lack of evidence found, it's been difficult to place anyone else at the scene where Heathers body was found. Heathers mother, Carla, told Dateline that she believes a man who Heather befriended is responsible for her murder. I think he was told no by her too many times, Carla said. And that made him angry. Angry enough to commit a horrible crime like this -- a crime of passion. Lieutenant Seals confirmed there was a person of interest who was questioned multiple times, but said there has not been enough evidence to charge him or anyone in connection with Heathers murder. He added that no one has been cleared, and the investigation is ongoing. Id love nothing more than for this case to be solved -- for Heathers family to have closure, Lt. Seals told Dateline. Out of all the cases we handle, this is one where everyone talks so well about the victim. She was definitely loved. But Lt. Seals said he believes its going to take a witness to come forward with information or someone to make a confession for this case to be solved. We follow through on every tip and bit of information we receive, Lt. Seals said. But were still waiting on the one that will break this case open. As this weekend marks 10 years since Heathers murder, her family talks about the piece of their hearts theyve lost. Carlas other daughter, Christi, still grieves for her older sister. She always looked up to her, Carla said. Anything Heather did, Christi wanted to do. And now shes lost without her. Ten years have passed, yet Carla said they feel no closer to finding out what happened to Heather. In April 2019, the Pope family met with Hunt County Crime Stoppers and offered a donation of $8,500 in order to increase the total reward to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for her death. Carla said she hopes the money will encourage someone to come forward with information that will help find Heathers killer and give their family closure. Were so blessed that we found her. So blessed, Carla said. Otherwise, wed still be looking for her now. Ten years later. Now, were looking for justice. Im her mama. I need to know what happened. Anyone with information about Heathers case is asked to call the Hunt County Sheriffs Office at 903-453-6800 or Hunt County Crime Stoppers at 903-457-2929. Types of obituaries The Missourian publishes two types of obituaries family obituaries and life stories. A family obituary is the version submitted by a funeral home or family. Please see the submission form for details on cost and deadlines. Family obituaries A life story is a closer look at a person's life and involves a reporter contacting family and friends. Life stories are based on newsworthiness and consent of the family. Life stories. Representative image Amid the surging coronavirus infections, India has extended the suspension of international commercial passenger flights to and from the country till August 31, said Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on July 31. However, international all-cargo operations and flights specifically approved by the DGCA have been permitted to operate. Initially, overseas flights were suspended in late March when the lockdown was imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The suspension of scheduled international commercial services was later extended till July 31. In a statement, the aviation regulator said the government has decided to "extend the suspension on the Scheduled International Commercial Passenger Services to/from India up to 2359 hours IST of 31st August". Follow our LIVE blog for the latest updates of the novel coronavirus pandemic COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show As international flight operation was suspended, the Centre started the Vande Bharat Mission on May 6 to help those stranded due to the novel coronavirus pandemic reach their destinations via international repatriation flights. During the suspension period, more than 2,900 repatriation flights by foreign carriers to uplift stranded passengers to/ from India have been approved, the statement said. Under the Vande Bharat Mission, Air India and Air India Express have uplifted 2,67,436 stranded passengers, and other charters have uplifted 4,86,811 stranded passengers from May 6 to July 30 period, it added. To allow gradual movement of passenger traffic amid the COVID-19 pandemic situation, 'Transport Bubble' agreements have been signed with the US, France, and Germany. "Recently, 'Transport Bubble' agreement has also been signed with Kuwait to uplift stranded passengers both to/ from India. More similar arrangements are likely to fructify and ease passenger movements from different countries," the statement said. Such bilateral agreements allow the operation of flights between the two countries subject to a set of regulations. International flight services to and from India remain suspended since March 23 due to the pandemic. (With inputs from PTI) Mr Alexander Nketia, the Volta Regional Director of the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), has said the reopening of tourist sites for business would depend on satisfying the safety guidelines and protocols. The Ghana Tourism Authority has developed standard COVID-19 protocols for all tourism enterprises including hotels, restaurants and tourist sites and what we have done at the regional level was to circulate the protocols to the various sub-sectors for compliance, he said. Mr Nketia, who spoke to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) after a tree planting exercise by the Authority at Tafi Atome in the Afadjato District to mark the 2020 Emancipation Day celebration, said the Authority had already sent guidelines to tourist centres ahead of their reopening to the general public. He said all tourist sites in the region were currently aware of all the various protocols they were expected to put in place. Mr Nketia said the management of the various tourist centres were given time to put the protocols in place and to invite the GTA for inspection before they were allowed to open to the public. The Director called on tourists who would be visiting the sites to strictly adhere to the COVID-19 safety protocols. He said tourists must observe social distancing protocols and go according to directives given them at various tourism operational sites to help fight the spread of the disease in the region. Mr Nketia said the Authority had supplied safety protocol materials such as veronica buckets, tissue papers, soaps and hand sanitizers to tourist sites in the region. He said there would be a periodic inspection of all sites to ensure strict adherence to all safety protocols and capacity building workshops organized for tourist centre managers in the region. The Director said the GTA had also linked tourist centres to the Ministry of Tourism and World Bank Grant Scheme to enable them to have access to funds to help develop the centres. Mr Francis Acquaye, the Manager, Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary and Cultural Village Centre, told the GNA that the Centre had put in place precautionary measures to protect tourists. He said the number of tourists at the Monkey Sanctuary would be reduced to ten to ensure social distancing while only tour guides would be allowed to feed the monkeys. The Manager noted that the pandemic had affected businesses and the development in the community since the ban on tourism activities due to COVID-19. 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 LANSDALE While dozens of parents shared their thoughts Thursday night on the North Penn School Districts reopening plans, two others sounded off on another topic thats had the district in the headlines lately. A pair of residents shared their thoughts with the board on the recent news regarding now-former administrator Ashley Bennett. Although I strongly disagree with what she had to say, our district has unequivocally violated her constitutional right to free speech, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, said resident Nicholas Rizzio. It has long been established by the Supreme Court that a public employee, who speaks on her own time, on a matter of public concern, is protected by the First Amendment, he said. Bennett triggered a round of social media controversy in late June with a Facebook post that read, in part, Im confused right now. I see signs all over saying #BlackLivesMatter. Im just trying to figure out WHICH black lives matter. It cant be the unborn black babies they are destroyed without a second thought. Its not black cops they dont seem to matter at all. Its not my black #Conservative friends. They are told to shut the - up if they know whats best for them by their black counterparts. Its not black business owners. Their property, their business, and their employees dont mean anything. So which black lives matter again?!? I cant keep up. I cant. Im exhausted trying to figure out what were all supposed to do, believe, and be offended by, and outraged by next. The district posted a statement on June 26 saying an administrator had been put on leave and that the comments did not reflect the districts values, and on July 16 the board approved personnel items that included her resignation. On Wednesday, Media-based law firm Francis Alexander LLC issued a statement saying Bennetts rights had been violated, the district had illegally retaliated against her, and that the board had violated their own policies and Bennett was considering litigation. Rizzio told the school board Thursday night that the only exceptions to worker free speech protections would be if such a post would interfere with the employees ability to do their job. Any kind of workplace retaliation is unconstitutional, even if the employees speech is inflammatory, offensive, or in bad taste, he said. There is no reason why Ms. Bennett, whose role is supervisory and administrative, cannot still perform her job. When we face bad speech, the remedy is more speech, not enforced silence. Citing Supreme Court cases that state that no official can describe or declare particular opinions to be correct, Rizzio asked that the board immediately reinstate Bennett, and consider the impact that the boards actions could suggest to students. It is vitally important that we teach our children that the principles of free expression are what allow us to discover the truth, he said. Resident Stephanie Harrison of Lansdale shared a different opinion. I just wanted to take a quick second to thank you all so much, for taking swift action regarding Ms. Bennett and her blatant disregard for people of color, Harrison said. Harrison added that she has a child entering kindergarten in Oak Park Elementary School) with an IEP, or, individualized education profile, and we are so pleased to be able to have a fresh start with a supervisor who loves all kids, and wants the best for all students. Board President Tina Stoll did not reply directly to the comments, but asked that all public comments during the July 30 meeting be limited to only the topic on the agenda, of school reopening. Solicitor Kyle Somers clarified that the public could add comments on any item that may come before the board, during this initial session (of public comment) as well. North Penn School Boards next meeting is 7 p.m. on Aug. 11. For more information visit www.NPenn.org. It breaks Karan Vances heart to read the growing roll call of dead: Brayla Stone, Merci Mack, and other Black transwomen who have been killed this year. As a Black female ally of the LGBTQ community and who is also an activist with a group called the Alabama Rally Against Injustice, Vance said she is aware of the reluctance to say the names of Black trans or gender-nonconforming people during recent protests. This is why the Alabama Rally Against Injustice is hosting an LGBTQ rally and march at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham at 2 p.m on Sunday. POWER House is also cosponsoring the event. Vance said people cant forget about Black trans lives while saying Black Lives Matter. Even before George Floyd, there has been such an influx of murders of trans people, specifically Black trans people, Vance said. For whatever reason, these deaths dont make national news. Thats a problem because if we are going to say, Black Lives Matter, we must include Black trans lives and Black queer lives. According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 25 transgender or gender non-conforming people have died by violent means in 2020. Seven of these deaths happened within a five-week time span. The majority of these deaths are Black transwomen. This years total number of deaths is on its way to outpace last years total of 27. HRC said the violence endangering the transgender community is provoked by anti-transgender stigma which is rooted in inaccurate beliefs about transgender people. This stigma also creates barriers that deteriorate the well-being of the transgender community, such as discrimination in health care and housing opportunities. Vance said the community needs to acknowledge the amount of harm caused by racism, transphobia and homophobia. I think a lot of people, especially within the Black community, need to recognize that, Hey, we are already being discriminated against by dealing with racism. Can we please note that its worse when youre Black and LGBTQIA? Vance said. Not only are they dealing with racism. They are dealing with racism and people who dont agree with their sexuality or gender identity and end up killing them as a result. Travis Jackson, a bisexual Iraq veteran who volunteers as an abortion clinic escort with POWER House, will be one of the speakers during the event. As a Black Lives Matter activist and cofounder of the LGBTQ organization Montgomery Pride United, Jackson said he plans to talk about how ignoring the hate crimes towards Black transwomen contributes to the violence they are facing right now. Hate crime tolerance is hate crime, Jackson said. When theres silence and no combative solutions towards hate crimes, then they shall increase. While the killings of trans people of color was the catalyst for the event, Vance said the goal of the rally is to provide a safe and fun space for the entire LGBTQ community as they eat, dance and march together. Vance said the LGBTQ community needs to know that there is someone there who supports them. We should value these people and protect these lives because they matter no matter who you vote for, no matter what your beliefs are, no matter if youre atheist or Christian, She said. These are people. Theyre human. By Caroline Pailliez QUIBERON, France, July 31 (Reuters) - The Hacienda bar in this French seaside resort was heaving with Saturday night revellers: a crowd of people, beer glasses and smartphones in hand, moving to the sounds of pop and hip-hop music as red and blue strobe lights flashed. The scenes in the bar in northwest France in mid-July were captured in mobile phone footage. Reuters could not independently verify the video, but health officials said the dancing that evening breached hygiene rules and one person present described it as too full. One of the people there was a 19-year-old student working a summer job on the bakery counter in a supermarket. He had a headache and left early. Three days later, on July 21, the student was diagnosed with COVID-19. Over the following days, dozens of his friends, many of them regulars at the Hacienda, tested positive. Public health officials said that as of Wednesday they had traced 72 positive cases back to the student and his circle of friends. Public health authorities closed the bar, shut the nearby beach from 9:00 p.m. nightly, set up a campaign of mass testing and appealed to young people to rein in their socialising. "They want to party," said Patrice Faure, the prefect of the region who ordered the Hacienda shut for two months when contact tracers connected the COVID-19 cases to the bar. The outbreak at the Hacienda is an example a phenomenon that is being repeated across Europe. After COVID-19 infection rates were driven down by months of strict lockdown, hotspots of infection are starting to emerge. PARTIES AMID PANDEMIC Several of the clusters - from Barcelona to northern France and Germany - were in vacation spots favoured by young people letting their hair down for the summer. Battling a resurgence in new coronavirus cases, Spain's regions have imposed a patchwork of restrictions on nightlife, ranging from socially-distanced dance floors to curfews and attendance limits. Hard-hit Catalonia, home to the famed nightspots of Barcelona, last week closed nightclubs, told bars in dozens of municipalities to shut at midnight and introduced fines of up to 15,000 euros for youngsters participating in outdoor "botellon" parties. Story continues Although the number of outbreaks linked to discos is relatively low, Spanish authorities want to clamp down on parties as the number of cases linked to each outbreak is high. Health ministry data on Thursday showed 30 active clusters linked to nightlife accounted for 1,100 cases, while family gatherings were responsible for 90 clusters but just 770 infections. In Germany, cities and police are trying to battle open-air parties in public parks and squares as dancing in night clubs and big public gatherings remain illegal in most places. The city-state of Hamburg has banned the sale of alcohol in stores and kiosks after 8 p.m. to cut down on dense crowds of revellers in the streets. In Frankfurt, Germany's financial capital, 39 people were arrested after late-night clashes with police earlier this month, and in Berlin police broke up an illegal rave involving around 3,000 people in a public park last weekend. The phenomenon has given rise to fears of a second wave of the disease sweeping Europe, hurting an already fragile economic recovery. QUARANTINE In the week before he took ill, the 19-year-old at the centre of the outbreak in Quiberon had been at the Hacienda every night. Earlier in the week, it was not busy, but by Saturday it was packed. "There were a few too many people," said the student, who asked not to be identified because he feared being stigmatised for his role in the outbreak. Earlier on Saturday, he had a headache, which he attributed to a migraine. He took some paracetamol, and went to the bar, but said he left before midnight. By Monday, still feeling unwell, he went to his doctor, who referred him to a hospital. He was tested for COVID, and received a positive result on Tuesday morning. Public health officials quarantined him in an apartment. The student told Reuters that he had tried to abide by health guidelines by socialising with the same group of people throughout his stay in Quiberon. Faure, the prefect, said the Hacienda was illegally running a discotheque, banned under COVID restrictions. Eric Adami, the bar's manager, said he thought he was doing nothing wrong, and that other bars in Quiberon were operating the same way, yet were not punished. "We got caught," he said in a brief telephone interview. "My morale is at zero." YOUTH CULTURE In France, the daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases is running at its highest level since May, though still well short of the peak of the virus. The biggest rise in new cases is among people in the 15-44 age range. Six weeks ago, 4 people per 100,000 in this category were infected; now it is double that. The number of people seriously ill or dying continues to fall. Young people are less likely to have serious symptoms. Still, young people - if they don't follow social distancing advice - could get infected and contaminate older, more vulnerable relatives, public health officials say. "One of the challenges we face is convincing younger people of this risk," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing in Geneva this week. "We have said it before and we'll say it again: young people are not invincible. Young people can be infected; young people can die; and young people can transmit the virus to others." The man at the centre of the Hacienda cluster was released from quarantine earlier this week. On Tuesday evening he was at the caravan where he stays through the summer, dressed in a mask, shorts and a T-shirt. He was gathering belongings before heading to stay with his parents, in a city 150 km away, for a week. He said he wanted to get away from Quiberon where, he said, he and his friends were being blamed unfairly for the outbreak even though they broke no law. Recalling the Saturday night when he went to the Hacienda with symptoms of what later turned out to be COVID-19, he said: "I didn't want to do harm, I just wanted to live a bit." (Additional reporting by Nathan Allen in Madrid, John Irish in Paris, Maria Sheahan in Berlin and Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Mike Collett-White) Apparel industry diversifies supply chains By Sunimalee Dias View(s): View(s): Sri Lankas apparel industry is now shifting its supply chain dependence from China to India and the region amidst the COVID-19 pandemic as it continues to receive reduced orders. In a bid to move out of its dependence on China for its supply chain, the industry is now buying its raw materials from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and others in the region, Joint Apparel Association Forum Chairman A. Sukumaran told the Business Times. He noted that moreover they were already working with the government to also fast-track the establishment of the Eravur textile manufacturing zone. In this respect, they expect the government to hand over the land to the industry by the end of the year to commence work on the construction of the textile manufacturing plants and the zone infrastructure that should happen simultaneously, he explained. We have to control the supply chain to ensure that most of the raw materials will as much as possible be sourced from within the country, Mr. Sukumaran said adding that there are four committed investors interested in investing in the country. Meanwhile, as the industry continues to work on a tough period since July with reduced orders, If there is no revival everyone will look at right sizing depending on the capacity of each organisation, he said. Sri Lanka apparel exports in the first half of this year had reduced to a total of US$1834.88 million compared to $2620.40 million, a drop in earnings of $785.52 million or 40.28 per cent. Exports in April recorded the lowest drop of $60 million and in June exports were at a total of $382.28 million compared to $481.40 million in June 2019. Adjustments will continue to take place until business picks up, he said referring to reducing operations in line with the capacity of the operations. Mr. Sukumaran said that they expect the business to continue in this manner until the end of the year as they continue to receive the same demand we had a month or two ago. The forecasts for a 30 per cent drop for this year remains unchanged and even though stores in the US are opening up buyers are still waiting to decide on future orders, Mr. Sukumaran said. Orders for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) production is currently on the decline but Mr. Sukumaran points out that this will never replace the regular business and was simply a makeshift stop gap. Premier Doug Ford would not commit Friday to providing nursing-home residents with four hours of hands-on care every day as recommended in a new report on a staff shortage made worse by poor working conditions in the COVID-19 pandemic. Ford acknowledged the shortage but said he needs to take a closer look at the report, whose urgent recommendation echoes long-standing calls for four hours of daily care up from the average of about 2.7 hours now with estimates the additional cost could be $1.6 billion a year. Theres no doubt, you know, we need more staffing, he said at a news conference. Is it going to be that amount? I have to read it over myself. Green Leader Mike Schreiner said Ford needs to act quickly with the potential for a second wave of COVID-19 in the coming months that could further devastate nursing homes, where almost 5,900 vulnerable residents caught the highly contagious virus and 1,844 died. Vague promises wont fix the issues in long-term care, Schreiner said. The premier admits the problem, but since he wont provide funding, his platitudes ring hollow. Almost 2,600 nursing-home workers also contracted COVID-19 and eight died, mostly personal support workers, with unions blaming a lack of personal protective equipment such as masks, face shields and gowns as the illness raced through many facilities. Daily care received by nursing-home residents includes bathing, repositioning to avoid bedsores, toileting, diaper changes, dressing, grooming, feeding, medical examinations and delivery of medications, performed by teams of personal support workers (PSW), registered nurses, registered practical nurses and others. Ford suggested a decision will be made soon. Were going to have money there to hire more staff. Thats a priority. We just have to put a number to that, he told reporters on a conference call. I dont believe in waiting. Lets make a move. A lot of long-term-care homes are in desperate need of the PSWs and nurses and other support workers. The report provided one particularly alarming example of just how bad staffing shortages can get, the burden that places on remaining workers and how that can impact the care residents receive. The largest proportion of missing shifts were among personal support workers, with one home reporting as many as 60 vacant PSW shifts experienced daily. About 58 per cent of the staff in nursing homes are personal support workers. Its long past time Ford came to the rescue of the 78,000 residents and 100,000 workers in Ontarios nursing homes, said New Democrat MPP Teresa Armstrong (London-Fanshawe), her partys critic for long-term care. He keeps calling them heroes but he doesnt put the actions behind his words, she added, calling for funding to create more full-time jobs with benefits in nursing homes so workers arent forced to cobble together a living with a series of part-time gigs that risk spreading illness from one nursing home to another. Theyre being taken for granted by this government, theyre being taken advantage of. The four-hour recommendation was in the Long-Term Care Staffing Study Report prepared by leaders in the long-term-care industry, a geriatrician and several academics at the recommendation of an inquiry into the murders of eight nursing home residents by a nurse. It is being used in the development of a staffing strategy to be released by the Ministry of Long-Term Care later this year. The report notes a shortage of nursing home staff has developed for a number of reasons, including better pay and working conditions in hospitals, and pointed to alarming levels of attrition that make it difficult to replace workers who leave. One-quarter of personal support workers with more than two years of experience quit every year, while the number of students in PSW training programs fell to 6,500 last year from 8,000 in 2016. Industry sources have told the Star that some nursing-home workers fled the sector out of fear for their health and their lives at the peak of COVID-19 this spring, with Fords $4 hourly pandemic pay premium doing little to stem the tide. Read more about: Inside Hook For many people, summer travel is an annual tradition. That could mean camping in a local national park, or it might mean boarding a plane and heading to the other side of the world. For obvious reasons, things are a little different this year. And thats understandable, too. Traveling during a global pandemic unless you absolutely have to is not the most prudent of decisions. Even if you arent planning to fly anywhere this summer, one question looms over the subject of travel as a whole. Specifically, its this: where can American citizens actually travel right now? The number of reports of closed borders and mandatory quarantines can be overwhelming at times, and keeping it all straight can be difficult. Thankfully, this week, CNN released a very helpful graphic illustrating where Americans citizens can and cant travel internationally as of now. Siddharth Pithani, who claims to have been Sushant Singh Rajput's friend and was with him the night before the actor's death, has alleged that Sushant's family is pressuring him to give a statement against Rhea Chakraborty. However, Sushant's father's lawyer Vikas Singh has questioned Siddharth's credibility, and claimed that he has done a turnabout after providing the family with information about Rhea until July 25. "Till probably July 25, he was talking to the family and trying to help by telling them that Rhea Chakraborty has been instrumental in whatever happened to Sushant," said Vikas Singh, speaking to Times of India. "Suddenly, he has done a volte-face. I don't know what happened, but I hope the police get to the bottom of the matter soon and find out what role he (Pithani) played in this case and whether he has any information that he hasn't shared," he added. In an email that he wrote to the Mumbai Police, Siddharth claimed that he was being asked by Sushant's family to mention a Rs 15 crore transaction allegedly made to Rhea. Rhea attached this email as part of her petition in the Supreme Court, requesting the transfer of the case from Patna to Mumbai. ALSO READ: Rhea Chakraborty Breaks Silence On Allegations: I Believe I Will Get Justice, Satyameva Jayate Regarding this, Vikas said, "It is very surprising. If this was written to only the Mumbai Police, how did it reach Rhea? By now when this mail is coming in public light, Rhea is already mentioned as an accused now in the FIR, so there's no question of the police sharing it with Rhea. If Pithani had sent it to Rhea, his credibility is in doubt. In that case, it was only set up to file it in Court." Talking about Siddharth, the lawyer added, "This boy was living with Sushant and he was the one who discovered the dead body. So when he found the door locked, he did not open it until Sushant's sister came. He waited for one-and-half hours." ALSO READ: Sushant's Friend Siddharth Pithani Says He Was With The Actor The Night Before His Death 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 Former RBI Deputy Governor Viral V Acharya on Friday cautioned against fire sale of state-owned lenders, saying that disinvestment should be undertaken in a graceful manner at the right price and also made a case for privatisation of some healthy public sector banks. Divestment beyond majority stake is the first step because it will help relax the fiscal constraint in terms of dependence of public sector banks on the government for capital, he said at a virtual event to release his book titled 'Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India'. "Perhaps reprivatisation of some of the healthiest public sector banks should also be on the table," he said. Citing the example of the South Asian crisis in 1997, he said that a large number of public sector banks in the region had to be privatised post the crisis and in many cases were sold at fire sale prices to private equity investors from abroad. "I am visualising that we should not end up in this scenario. In my view, it would be better to actually divest stakes in a graceful manner at right prices...," he said. Besides relaxation of the fiscal constraint, Acharya said privatisation would bring with them modern technology, fintech capacity, modern credit scoring capacity, risk management capacity and the ability to attract human capital with the right incentive compensation structures. In May, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that there will be a maximum of four public sector companies in strategic sectors while state-owned firms in other segments will eventually be privatised. This will be part of a new coherent Public Sector Enterprises Policy to be formulated to push reforms in central public sector enterprises, she had said. At the virtual event for the book release, Acharya was asked about question marks on governance in the private sector banking space and he replied that there will be failures. "There have been failures of governance in the private sector banks. But I think one should separate what is a systemic problem in a part of the banking sector, notably in the public sector banking... with what are idiosyncratic issues in a few banks in the private sector banking," he said. Acharya also said that because RBI does not distinguish in its rules between public sector banks and private sector banks, other than what the law requires, it is forced to actually adopt weaker standards for the system as a whole. "If we reduce the stakes of the government in the banking sector besides the back door privatisation, that was mentioned, I think we will actually lift the quality of regulation for the system as a whole," he added. Acharya, who reportedly had differences with the government, quit as RBI Deputy Governor in July 2019, six months ahead of his three-year term. According to the Russian Embassy in Armenia, 112 more Russians returned to their homeland by Yerevan-Moscow flight today. Russian citizens were brought to Moscow by the Armenia Aircompany. The necessary approvals were obtained from the Russian regional authorities, ministries and departments, as well as the Operational Headquarters under the Russian government. As a result, we are pleased to announce that on August 1, 112 more Russians were able to return home, Russian diplomats informed via Facebook. Waterloo Region Eric Thuss is looking ahead to October when Waterloo Region adopts new boundaries to protect the regions drinking water. Thuss is in charge of risk management in the regions water services department. He and his team are work to reduce contamination to the regions groundwater and work with property owners to help them adopt best practices. Most of the regions drinking water is supplied from groundwater sources. The Grand River Source Protection Committee, which is an organization created by the province in 2006 following the Walkerton tragedy to keep drinking water sources safe, updated its source water protection plan for the Grand River watershed at the beginning of June. Waterloo region staff asked for an extension until October to adopt the new plan. We have approximately 120 wells, says Thuss, We have a complex system. Its a challenge. Its a lot of work. Each of these wells draws water from the groundwater around it. The improved modelling by the source water protection committee wells draw water from a large area than previously thought. As a result, wellhead protection areas across the region have expanded 46 per cent, Thuss says. Water moves more quickly through bedrock than we had seen in the previous model. Were seeing that the protection areas are larger and more elongated, he said. As well, as the regions population grows, more water is drawn to meet the increased demand, meaning more water is taken from a larger area to replenish the well, according to Martin Keller, the source protection program manager with the Grand River Conservation Authority. On the ground, this means about five per cent more properties will now be in wellhead protection areas, Thuss says. All property owners affected by these changes were notified in 2019, Thuss says, and the region held open houses in March of that year. Residents and those wanting to develop property can visit Waterloo Regions Taps website at taps.regionofwaterloo.ca to see the source water restrictions and rules that apply to their property. The Clean Water Act lists 22 activities that threaten drinking water, including storing fuel, handling, storing and applying fertilizer and pesticides. The complete list can be found under O. Reg. 287/07 in the Clean Water Act here. A key concern in Waterloo Region is salt contamination. Road salt is considered a toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Salt kills birds, fish, plants, the microfauna and flora in soil. Virtually all salt applied on to paved surfaces eventually makes its way into waterways and groundwater. Concentrations as low as 12 mg/L can interfere with the distribution of oxygen and nutrients in waterways and impact entire food chains. At 250 mg/L, Keller says water is too salty to be used for drinking. In 1998, none of the regions wells were over this 250 mg/L threshold. Twenty years later, the region had 15 wells with salt over that level. Some had more than 400 mg/L of salt, Thuss says. The regions current solution is to mix water from saltier wells with less salty well water to provide drinkable water. But thats not a long-term solution, Thuss says. Salt is highly soluble and once in ground water, it cannot be removed without expensive and difficult desalination techniques. What happens when we dont have wells with lower concentrations? says Thuss, Thats why this work is so important. Its important to do this work now to ensure our water supplies in the future. Parliaments spending watchdog is to launch a crackdown on business class flights after MPs spent hundreds of pounds travelling in style to European destinations over the past three years. In future, MPs will have to provide evidence their journey did not cost any more than a standard ticket booked at the same time. The guidance will come into force later this year, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) said. Before 2017, MPs could make a maximum of just three European journeys a year, either to national parliaments or European Union institutions. But that year the rules were relaxed to remove the cap. Trips were also permitted to any destination in Europe, as long as the purpose of the visit was parliamentary. But a recent analysis of expenses claims by IPSA shows MPs spent 1,944 on business class air travel to Europe over the past three years. IPSA, which was set up in the wake of the expenses scandal in 2009, said it did not have evidence to show whether these flights were within the rules, as we do not know what the cost of a standard class ticket would have been. However, IPSA has chosen not to try to reclaim any of the money, saying it was unable to retrospectively check prices. The watchdog also found that the information submitted by many MPs did not allow it to ascertain the purpose of European travel claims. An IPSA spokesperson said: IPSA plans to update the evidence requirements later this year to help ensure good value for money. This will apply to European and domestic flights It is understood that acceptable forms of evidence under the new system could be as simple as a screen grab showing which flight was the cheapest. The new reforms come just months after IPSA clamped down on the use of parliamentary credit cards. John OConnell, chief executive of the TaxPayers Alliance, said: IPSA are right to introduce more transparency and controls into MPs airfares. Taxpayers get fed up with paying for politicians expensive flights, so these changes will give welcome clarity on any possible justification for flying business class or simply see costs come down. Earlier this year, IPSA announced that MPs would face tougher sanctions for misusing taxpayer-funded credit cards. It followed the revelation that 377 MPs, including nine cabinet ministers, had had their official credit cards suspended for breaking the rules on expenses since 2015. The Ashanti Regional Chairman for the National Peace Council, Rt Rev Christopher Nyarko Andam has called for a law to be passed to ban citizens from going to polling stations for either voter registration or voting with guns. According to him, it is condemnable for people either than police officers and security men to be carrying around guns as it may cause havoc at the least provocation at the registration centres. He made this reaction on JoyNews when someone claiming to be a national security personnel pulled a gun at a registration centre at Asawase in the Ashanti Region due to misunderstanding. He again condemned the Minister of Special Development Initiatives, Hon. Hawa Koomson for firing her gun at a registration centre with the claim that her live was in danger as she was surrounded by some thugs suspecting to come from the camp of her opponent in the NDC. Peace council condemns such activities totally. What we are saying is that police officers and other security men are always detailed to be at the polling stations and polling centres. If you go there and you have any grievance, report to the police officers on duty if it is for protection, he cautioned. He further admonished that people should not take the law into their own hands to deal with anybody who might have offended them by pulling a gun but instead urged them to rely on the police officer on duty for protection. He feared that failure to rely on the police officer on duty at the registration centres for protection but resort to taking the law into their own hands by pulling a gun may end up endanger the lives of people who have converge to take part in the registration exercise. The police officer is there to protect lives instead of you taking the law into your hands to deal with the person but the pulling of guns we will plead with all citizens that when you are going to a polling station is a place that is cloudy, people always converge there and if you are not careful and you pull a gun, you may kill, he stated. It is wrong; it is becoming a phenomenon and we must put a stop to it at once before it escalates to something else. It is not good going to the polling station to register your name or going to vote with a gun; the place is not a battle ground, he condemned. This is early signs and we must deal with them at once before it degenerates into something else. If possible, there should even be a law that nobody should take a gun unless maybe he is the person detailed to be the officer in charge of the polling station; no other person should go to the polling station with a gun, he stressed. Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com/[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 Pubs may have to agree to shorter opening times and limits on customer numbers as a price for reopening. Acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn said at least 19 cases over the two days have been identified as community transmission with an unknown source, while 20 cases remain under investigation. "We may be beginning to see more cases which we cannot link to outbreaks or close contacts. The National Public Health Emergency Team will continue to monitor this situation closely over the coming days," he said. The Irish Dog Foods factory in Naas, which was the centre of a large outbreak, remained closed yesterday for a deep clean. A number of its workers who live in direct provision centres, including facilities in Newbridge and Monasterevin, who tested positive for the virus are in self-isolation in the Citywest hotel in Dublin. Read More Although yesterday's daily toll of new cases was lower it still marks a significant jump from the average of 20 new infections which was seen in the previous week. Among the 123 cases reported over the last two days, 44 are in Kildare, 33 in Dublin, 11 in Clare, 10 in Laois, eight in Limerick and the remaining 17 were diagnosed across 10 other counties. Expand Close Mass testing: Dr Ronan Glynn. Photo: Stephen Collins/Collins Dublin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mass testing: Dr Ronan Glynn. Photo: Stephen Collins/Collins Dublin Remaining pubs which were hoping for the green light to reopen in early August have been dealt a setback by the resurgence. The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) will meet on Tuesday to consider phase four of the reopening of the country on August 10, including the remaining pubs, hotel bars and casinos and whether to allow outdoor gatherings of up to 500 people. Dr Glynn said yesterday mass testing has now taken place in relation to a number of known outbreaks. Some 26 of yesterday's 38 cases were linked with outbreaks or close contacts of confirmed cases which means they can be traced back. There is also growing anxiety about a survey of GPs showing vast majority of patients who had contacted them with Covid-like symptoms in the past week had not been self-isolating since feeling unwell. "The importance of isolating as soon as you have any flu-like symptoms cannot be overstated. Without this individual action we simply will not break the chains of transmission and we will put many people at risk of infection. It is important that people know that there is no charge for GP or testing services relating to Covid-19. Please do not hesitate to contact your GP if you have any concerns." Speaking in advance of the August bank holiday weekend, he said: "The six key things people need to do are limit the size of your network and time you spend with them, keep your distance, meet up outside if possible, wash your hands, wear a face covering and download the Covid Tracker App." Leading infectious disease consultant Dr Sam McConkey said he was less worried about cases linked to outbreaks that can be accounted for as cases of community transmission where people don't know where they were infected. "Community cases just pop up here. We don't know where they are and that is worrying. The virus might spread and grow in those hidden places. "It's like your enemies - you don't know where they are, that is scary," he said. Mater Hospital infectious disease consultant Dr Jack Lambert criticised the failure to provide proper training on Covid-19 prevention to industry other than in "glossy guidelines" in many cases. He stressed this was the key to prevention of outbreaks and needed to be on site. It is essential this is carried out in schools before they reopen, he stressed. "There needs to be on-site demonstrations and support at every level to combat this dangerous virus. We don't want to wait for an outbreak in schools. Why don't we train the schools today? They are asking for help but they don't have clear guidance," he said. The situation has so far been too "reactionary" due to the lack of a proactive plan, he added. "There are a whole bunch of people who answered the 'Call for Ireland' who could be trained up to provide this kind of guidance," he added. "The other solution is blame everyone when something goes wrong. Why not prevent the outbreak in the first place?" People are reminded that being outdoors is safer than being indoors. Where possible, meet with others outdoors and if that is not possible, keep windows and doors open when meeting others inside. Also, people are reminded to keep two metres apart where possible. Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month rose 28 percent from July 2019, satellite data showed Saturday, fueling fears the world's biggest rainforest will again be devastated by fires this year. Brazil's national space agency, INPE, identified 6,803 fires in the Amazon region in July 2020, up from 5,318 the year before. The figure is all the more troubling given that 2019 was already a devastating year for fires in the Amazon, triggering global outcry. That has put pressure on Brazil, which holds around 60 percent of the Amazon basin region, to do more to protect the massive forest, seen as vital to containing the impact of climate change. The fires are largely set to clear land illegally for farming, ranching and mining. Activists accuse Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right climate change skeptic, of encouraging the deforestation with calls to open up the rainforest to agriculture and industry. Under international pressure, Bolsonaro has deployed the army to fight the fires and declared a moratorium on burning. But activists say that does not go far enough to address the roots of the problem. Fires rose 77 percent on indigenous lands and 50 percent on protected nature reserves from July 2019, environmental group Greenpeace said, showing how illegal activities are increasingly encroaching on those areas. On July 30 alone, satellites detected 1,007 fires in the Amazon, INPE said. That was the worst single day for fires in the month of July since 2005, said Greenpeace. "More than 1,000 fires in a single day is a 15-year record and shows the government's strategy of media-spectacle operations is not working on the ground," Greenpeace spokesman Romulo Batista said in a statement. "On paper, the fire moratorium prohibits burning, but it only works if there is also a response on the ground, with more patrols. Criminals aren't known for obeying the law." Story continues Instead, the Bolsonaro administration has slashed the budget, staff and programs of environmental authority IBAMA. "Everything that was working was thrown out the window," Erika Berenguer, an Amazon ecologist at Oxford and Lancaster Universities, told AFP. - 'Conditions ripe' - Fire season in the Amazon typically runs from around June to October. But fires are just part of the deforestation picture. The rest of the year, ranchers, farmers, miners and land speculators are clearing forest and preparing to burn it. The first six months of 2020 were the worst on record for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with 3,069 square kilometers (1,185 square miles) cleared, according to INPE data -- an area bigger than the nation of Luxembourg. If a significant portion of those felled trees burn in 2020, the result could be catastrophic, experts warn. "I think August will be the make-or-break month," said Berenguer. Last year, the number of fires surged nearly 200 percent year-on-year in August, to 30,900, sending a thick haze of black smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, thousands of kilometers away, and causing worldwide alarm. The number of fires has fallen since then, under increased scrutiny and pressure -- including from companies and investors worried about the impact on Brazil's brand. But Berenguer said it was a matter of time before the newly deforested land went up in flames in the name of farming and ranching. "It's an economic investment to deforest. It's expensive.... You need heavy machinery: bulldozers, tractors, people, diesel," she said. "You don't deforest to leave all those trees on the ground. You need to burn it, because you need to recover your investment." Furthermore, US space agency NASA warned last month that warmer ocean surface temperatures in the North Atlantic mean the southern Amazon is facing a major drought this year. It said that made "human-set fires used for agriculture and land clearing more prone to growing out of control and spreading." "Conditions are ripe," it said. Exacerbating the situation this year, experts say the resulting smoke risks causing a spike in respiratory emergencies in a region already hit hard by COVID-19. Brazil has more infections and deaths from the new coronavirus than any country except the United States: more than 2.6 million and 92,000, respectively. Doesnt it feel good to feel normal again, ladies and gentlemen? The Uptown Bands frontman, Erich Cawalla, had an optimistic greeting for the concertgoers in front of him and to his left, but the first day of Musikfest 2020 felt anything but normal compared to the previous 36 years of the festival. Obviously, the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic had something to do with that. But, against all odds, that didnt stop Musikfest from adding at least a few outdoor concerts to its otherwise virtual schedule. When the Bethlehem festival announced back in June that it was going virtual, live performances werent on anyones mind at the time, but as Pennsylvanias response to the pandemic progressed and the state began to open up, it became a possibility, resulting in five outdoor concerts at the ArtsQuest campus spread over the 10 days of the festival. Friday night kicked things off with the Reading-based group playing to a couple hundred seated patrons. Of course, as social distancing, face coverings and other coronavirus safety precautions are still paramount, ArtsQuest, Musikfests parent organization, designed the Air Products Town Square and the Levitt Pavilion lawn to be as spaced out as possible for a safe concert-going experience. With 60-plus tables on the town square, where the stage is located, and a bunch of marked-off squares on the lawn, the campus capacity is reasonably high without feeling too crowded to be safe. In fact, if you approach the tables from a certain angle, its likely youll question how safe it really is, but when you meander through the seating area, its almost astounding how much room there actually is to walk. Come showtime, those who paid to reserve a table or a lawn space were responsible for the rest: keeping masks on, staying six feet apart and generally being sanitary guests. ArtsQuest has been hosting these small-scale concerts for its outdoor diners in recent weeks that have gone smoothly, which is part of the reason outdoor concerts were added to the festival slate, but slapping the label Musikfest on them raises the stakes. And as the evening went on and the band moved through two sets of mostly covers, it became clear that those gathered were grateful for the opportunity to partake in a Lehigh Valley summer tradition and werent going to put their chance of doing so again at risk. One woman, weaving her way through the tables, noticed a friend, and while at any other point in time she might go over for a hug, she instead stopped about 10 feet away and waved, taking off her sunglasses (but not her mask) so she could be recognizable. Two men, who were sitting at different tables, finished a conversation and then elbow-bumped a farewell. While the seating arrangement wasnt exactly conducive to dancing, a few took their moves to the outskirts of the cluster of tables in order to spread out from each other while letting loose to a cover of Ashs Burn Baby Burn. This isnt to say that everyone was getting up and moving around and talking to neighbors. An overwhelming majority of concertgoers stayed seated the whole time, talking with those at their table or their lawn square . In fact, most people were barely even paying attention to the music though it should be said, those on the Levitt lawn were a bit more in tune with the tunes, which made for a bit of an awkward setup since the band was positioned behind them (it was being broadcast on the pavilions video screen, but some decided to just turn around and face the left side of the stage). It remains to be seen if covers of Bruno Mars, Janis Joplin and The Notorious B.I.G. make good background music, but they seemed to work for attendees. But The Uptown Band shouldnt feel jilted, despite multiple call-and-responses falling flat. Musikfest is about community, and this is likely the first time in a while that most of the audience had felt any semblance of that. The band just had the honor of being the soundtrack to reconnecting. And Cawalla seemed to realize the importance of the evening for his audience, encouraging them to relish these moments a bit dark, since there will hopefully be many more in the future. But as for Musikfest 2020, there will be at least four more nights like these with elbow-bumps, lawn squares and responsible clientele in town. Musikfest will run from July 31 to Aug. 9 on a majority virtual basis. Forty performances will be streamed on Musikfests website and social media channels, and 40 more will be broadcast on Service Electric TV2. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to Lehighvalleylive.com. Connor Lagore may be reached at clagore@njadvancemedia.com. This time the site remained down for nearly a week. Were taking an abundance of caution because we dont want to end up in the same situation again, Mr. Williams said. Mr. Williams said he had hired an outside security team and contacted the F.B.I. to see if the agency would investigate. The F.B.I. did not respond to a request for comment. All was far from resolved when the sites settings were restored, said Debbie Kennett, a genealogist in England, who wrote about the breach on her blog. Were stuck with our DNA for life, she said. Once its out there its not like an email address you can change, she said in an interview. Because of its interconnected nature, she added, when any one persons genetic information is exposed, the exposed DNA can potentially affect their family members too. In a paper published last year, Michael Edge, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Southern California, and fellow researchers warned several genealogy websites that they were vulnerable to data breaches. Of course, hacks happen to lots of companies, even entities that take security very seriously, he said. At the same time, GEDmatchs, and eventually Verogens, response to our paper didnt inspire much confidence that they were taking it seriously. Other genealogy websites, he added, seemed more open to the researchers recommendations for improving security. For many, the presence of fake users in GEDmatch was as alarming as the breach itself. Genealogists know that they cannot trust names or emails. They also know that a user can easily upload someone elses genetic profile. But the breach exposed that behind the scenes, hidden by privacy settings, were all kinds of profiles of people who were not even real. The giveaway that the matches were not actual relatives was that their DNA was too good to be true, said Leah Larkin, a biologist who runs DNA Geek, a genealogical research company. People who managed profiles for many clients and relatives repeatedly found that these fake users somehow were displayed as close relatives across the unrelated profiles. Their visible ancestry information reinforced the matches were impossible and suggested the fake profiles had been designed to trick the sites search algorithm for some reason. Rummaging in dustbins and coming up with treasures By Sashini Rodrigo With the release of his latest book A Man called Ceylon, Sri Lankas pioneering maritime archaeologist Somasiri Devendra looks back at his life and work View(s): View(s): As the story goes, Lloyd Oswald Felsianes was a merchant seaman who in the traditional way of Burgher boys back then ran away from school, went on board a ship, and sailed all around the world. He was the only man from Ceylon aboard every ship he worked on, his grandson Lieutenant Commander (Retd.) Somasiri Devendra recalls. On deck, Lloyd (or as Mr Devendra calls him, his Dehiwala Grandpa) was referred to as Ceylon. This, many years later, proved to be the perfect title and first chapter of Mr Devendras latest, and last, publication. A Man called Ceylon Heritage is what you make of it is an exploration of local heritage through personal history. Heritage, as we know it, is often taken quite seriously, where ones inherited sense of identity, values, culture and artefacts contribute greatly towards shaping the individual and what they stand for. However, Mr Devendras stories range from the serious to the not-so-serious, embracing the simple truth that heritage is inclusive of all these stories and more and each of them has its own worth and importance. Amidst the beautiful surroundings of his home in Dehiwala, Mr. Devendra gives us an insight into his life and work. He explains that A Man called Ceylon is a collection of his articles that have appeared in various publications over the years, tied together with a personal twist. While the first part of the book, titled Waterways and Watercrafts, is dedicated to his mother, the second half is dedicated to his father and deals with History and Heritage by exploring heritage in less traditional ways. The stories are as arbitrary and all-encompassing as the concept of heritage itself. These include everything from reviews of publications relating to history and accounts of historical figures and events like Tissa Abeysekera and Gratien Fernando of the Cocos Island Mutiny, to recollections of treks through jungles and the curious history of one particular tree in Wellawatte. One such seemingly innocuous yet wondrous tale is that of Lottie Moore and the Ruby Ring. This chapter details the surprising connection between an Australian boy tracing the origin of a family heirloom through a single receipt from the 1890s, and Mr Devendras lovely wife Dayadari, whose great-grandfather founded the very same jewellery shop where it was bought. As the subtitle of the book implies, Mr Devendra invites the reader to take the gift of heritage, fully understand it and carry it forward. The cover itself, a photograph of schoolchildren on bamboo rafts taken by fellow historian Gerhard Kapitan, represents the oft-quoted Buddhist parable of the raft and the quandary of what to do with it at the end of your journey. Dont carry it with you, be thankful for it and leave it for someone else. So dont carry your heritage on your back. It is something that you benefited from, leave it for others and go forward. Theres a continuity in these things, he says. Though he is one of the most prolific pioneers of maritime archaeology in Sri Lanka, Mr Devendra sometimes wonders where his fascination for the particular subject came from, though he knows how it evolved. His father D.T. Devendra was an archaeologist, which made their childhood tradition of dining table seminars (sitting around the dining table and talking) particularly interesting. Every subject was discussed, including the introduction of scuba diving as we know it in the 1940s as well as the possibilities of underwater archaeology. Perhaps these conversations stayed with him even as he graduated from the University of Ceylon in 1955, having read for a degree in History, Economics and English. Once he joined the Navy as an instructor, Mr Devendra got involved with the newly-formed diving unit. Here, he discovered everything from shipwrecks to Arabic gravestones in the dockyard. Subsequently, after his career in the Navy and his mercantile career, Mr. Devendra found himself with all the time in the world, which he decided to dedicate towards maritime archaeology, and the burning question of how Sri Lankans went to sea. At the age of 55, he began his investigations. It was not a planned thing. It evolved, he tells us of his prolific work in maritime archaeology. Though he never set out to be an author as such, over the years Mr Devendra has nevertheless written countless papers and articles etc, on a wide variety of subjects mostly relating to maritime archaeology. Some of his esteemed works include, Yesterday is another country, Two to Tango, From Wooden Walls to Ironclads: Galle enters the Age of Steam, A History of the Navy in Ceylon. 1, The Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, The Navy in Ceylon (1937-1972): From Crown Colony to Sovereign Republic, Maritime Archaeology in Sri Lanka. The Galle Harbour Project-1992, Maritime Archaeology in Sri Lanka. The Galle Harbour Project 1993, Report of the Sri Lanka Department of Archaeology: Galle Harbour Project 1996-1997 etc. However, his favourite amongst them is the Records of Traditional Watercraft from South and West Sri Lanka as part of the BAR International Series, which he worked on as Associate Editor with author Gerhard Kapitan to map out Sri Lankas entire nautical culture. Mr Devendra is credited as being one of the key driving forces of maritime archaeology in the country, with a formidable list of accolades to prove it. A few such accomplishments include being the founder member of the ICOMOS Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage (ICUCH), recipient of a UNESCO Fellowship, recipient of the Uruma Prasada Pranamaya [Guardian of the Heritage] award and Archaeologist on all Feasibility Studies and Environmental Impact Assessments of port development sites (Galle, Hambantota, South Colombo), amongst other titles. He was Vice President of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, President of the Sri Lanka Naval Association, is an Honorary Life Member of the Sri Lanka Ex-Services Association and served as Project Consultant for the Centre for Studies in Human Rights of the Faculty of Law, Colombo University. Recalled to the colours in 1988, and again in 1995, he was awarded the Riviresa Campaign Medal. He has led every Sri Lankan project in maritime archaeology for 18 years, conducted several international field schools for UNESCO, while having travelled, published and lectured widely. Indeed, even in his retirement he finds curious souls seeking his guidance, and is always ready to share his plentiful knowledge and point them in the right direction, with many learning to appreciate history and research with the same passion and enthusiasm. There are many references to Sri Lankan ships and its three nautical cultures in the historical records of Sri Lanka, as well as other countries. Yet, we have little idea of the appearance or structural characteristics of the early vessels. Mr Devendra reminisces that though he has seen some of them in person, he realised their importance too late and was left with only a few photographs to go on. Though he tells us his writing days are over, his love for maritime heritage endures as he continues researching these ship-building traditions of Sri Lanka as far as he can. However, he maintains that he never wanted to be the last word on any of these subjects. You have to be satisfied that you did something worthwhile and discovered something. But you are one link in a chain. The satisfaction you get from meddling around in the dustbins and coming up with treasures, that is what its about! A Man called Ceylon is published by S.Godage & Brothers (Pvt) Ltd., and can be purchased for Rs.950 at Godage Bookshop or through their website at www.godage.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 21:05:57|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The South African police on Saturday announced the firearms amnesty extension for six months to allow those with illegal and possession of firearms which they do not need to surrender them without prosecution. The police said the amnesty period is from Aug. 1 until Jan. 31, 2021. " We believe that there are much more firearms out there that still need to be surrendered and we are confident the response to the previous amnesty would have been even more resounding if it were not for the pandemic," said police spokesperson Brenda Muridili. She said during the last six months amnesty, the South African Police Service received a resounding 46,714 firearms during the period from December last year to May. Muridili said they want to reduce the number of illegal firearms circulating in the country used to commit violent crimes. "The latest national crime statistics once again show that firearms were the preferred weapon in the commission of most of the violent crime. Reducing the circulation of firearms may potentially reduce the scourge of violent crimes quite significantly." The police said people can hand over the unwanted firearms to the nearest police station or surrender them for renewal of a competency certificate and a valid licence. The police said all firearms surrendered will be taken for ballistic testing, those firearms which have not been used to commit crimes would be destroyed. Enditem Amid growing demand for a CBI probe into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, the Bihar government Saturday said it could hand over the case to the central probe agency if the late actors father so demands, even as one of the actors sisters urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene. Sushant was found dead at his Mumbai residence on June 14. Talking to news channels on Saturday, chief minister Nitish Kumar said if Sushants father K K Singh, who had lodged the FIR with Patna police, demands a CBI probe, his government could think of recommending it to the ministry of home affairs (MHA). Kumar said it was the duty of the Bihar Police to conduct an investigation and it was doing so. Mumbai police should cooperate with Bihar police since a case was lodged by the actors father. Bihar police is investigating the case with full honesty and sincerity. The family should get justice, he said. Water resource minister Sanjay Jha had earlier said the chief minister would definitely recommend a CBI probe if Sushants family demanded so. Also Read: Thackeray under pressure from Bollywood mafia to derail Sushant probe: Sushil Modi Sushants sister Shweta Singh Kirti Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene expressing fears that the evidence in the case could be tampered with. She requested the PM to ensure everything was handled in a sanitised way. Meanwhile, talking to media persons, Bihars DGP Gupteshwar Pandey said it was for the family of the actor to demand a CBI probe. We do not and should not demand CBI enquiry. Bihar Police is capable of doing the investigation in the case. A senior IPS officer would be sent to Mumbai for assisting the four-member team. He also dismissed reports that Mumbai police were mistreating Bihar police officials. Also Read: Sushant Singh Rajput death: Rhea Chakraborty under watch of Bihar police The DGP said the police team had recorded the statements of Ashok Kumar (Sushants chef), Neeraj (sweeper), Ankita Lokhande (former girlfriend), Mahesh Shetty (friend), Meetu Singh (sister) and Dr Chawra (doctor) in Mumbai. Sushant was not only Bihars son, he was Indias son, Pandey said. The DGP said the police team could not locate Rhea Chakarborty, the prime accused in the FIR filed by Sushants father in Patna. The police team visited banks to gather details about the transactions. All evidence is being collected. The team also tried to collect CCTV footage, video clips, FSL report, medico-legal report, postmortem report and all related papers from the Mumbai police, he said, adding that he would not talk about the investigation details at this stage as the matter was sub judice. Also Read: Mumbai police cant be trusted to do a fair and impartial investigation: Tanushree Dutta Rhea had earlier moved the Supreme Court, seeking transfer of FIR filed in Patna to Mumbai. Sources said the apex court could hear her plea on August 5. Both Bihar and Maharashtra governments have already filed caveats in SC that they should be heard before any order is passed on Rheas plea. The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which registered a money laundering case soon after the FIR was filed in Patna, has sought details of the financial transactions of the Vividrage Rheality in which Rhea is a director, and Front India For World, in which her brother Showik is a director. A senior official said that Bihar police had also questioned director Rumi Jafferry since he was going to do a film with Sushant and Rhea. Rumi had earlier claimed he knew about Sushants condition. The four-member Bihar Police team will also question the cast of Sushants last film. After US President Donald Trump ordered federal law enforcement officers into Portland, Oregon earlier this month, the protests largely ended the same way for days: with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. The first protest held since the federal agencies agreed to pull back their officers was a more peaceful affair. As the Black Lives Matter-inspired vigil wound down early yesterday morning, there was virtually no sign of the Oregon State Police officers who had taken over protection of the federal buildings at the centre of the protests. Instead of being forcibly removed, the crowd thinned out on its own. By a little after 1am a relatively small crew remained, far fewer than the enormous crowd that had gathered four hours earlier to listen to speakers and chant anti-law-enforcement slogans. The mood was celebratory, if subdued. "Trump overplayed his hand," said Derrick, a 30-year-old protester wearing a helmet, ski goggles and carrying a shield with the Oregon flag on it. "He underestimated us." "I don't think he realises there are so many people aligned with the so-called Antifa, what he calls terrorists," added Derrick, who asked that his full name not be published. Some protesters said that without a notable police presence, the crowd had a different atmosphere. "It's much more low key and a bit more subdued," said Shannon Echavarria (53), speaking at around 10pm. "Normally by this time, people would be banging on that fence. There'd be fireworks." Echavarria said the change in tone was "100 percent because the feds are leaving". But the different atmosphere seemed to take some protesters by surprise. Many had arrived wearing helmets and gas masks but found themselves sitting on the grass of the park when they would have been running away on previous nights. "Well, looks like there won't be much of a battle tonight," one man said at midnight to a group of shield-wielding protesters. Minutes later, a small fire was started inside the cordoned off area outside the courthouse, though protesters quickly put it out. Some protesters were wary of the state police, noting the city police had used tear gas to dispel protesters long before federal officers arrived. But most protesters seemed to welcome the calm and believed Portland's protests would keep their momentum. "That will draw families back to the protests. Ultimately, while we wanted the feds out, this was really about Black Lives Matter," said Echavarria. ( Washington Post) WASHINGTON The U.S. Army is facing a significant COVID-19 challenge as infection rates soar across the South and Southeast, where most of the services installations are located. And now the disease is having a major impact on the Armys second-largest installation, according to a briefing obtained by Yahoo News. The briefing, dated July 20 and prepared for senior leaders at Fort Campbell, Ky., home to the 101st Airborne Division, shows that on that day, about one in five soldiers almost a thousand troops in total in one of the divisions three infantry brigades combat teams were unavailable for training, either because they had tested positive for COVID-19 or because they had been in contact with someone who might have had the disease. There has been an impact on the Army from the coronaviruss surge across the parts of the country where most soldiers are located, Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Scott Dingle told an online Association of the U.S. Army audience Wednesday. We are also experiencing the same things [as surrounding communities], but not in extremely large numbers. A memorial service for a veteran who died from COVID-19 while being treated at the Javits New York Medical Station in New York City, April 19, 2020. (U.S. Air National Guard/Major Patrick Cordova/Handout via Reuters) As of July 31, there were 9,276 active-duty Army personnel with COVID-19 (an increase of almost 400 in 48 hours). However, because the Defense Department forbids the Army from publicizing the number of cases in any individual unit or installation, it is almost impossible to judge how the service is handling this summers steep rise in cases in states like Texas and North Carolina, home to the Armys two other most populous posts. Lt. Col. Charles Barrett, a spokesman for the 101st, which has almost 20,000 soldiers and is one of the Armys most storied formations, said the division is seeing a slow, steady increase in cases, but was faring better than the communities around Fort Campbell. The rise in cases at Fort Campbell, which is occurring as the 101sts first and second brigades prepare for major training events, has prompted a series of social media posts from soldiers accusing the division of not doing enough to protect soldiers from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. In an interview with Yahoo News, the 101sts commander, Maj. Gen. Brian Winski, disputed the accusations, which appeared on TerminalCWO, a Facebook account that gives voice to soldiers with grievances and is run by an anonymous active-duty Army warrant officer. Story continues Noting that we have yet to have a single soldier that required hospitalization for COVID, Winski said he was really confident that the division was complying with all guidance from his higher headquarters at XVIII Airborne Corps, U.S. Army Forces Command and the Department of the Army in the Pentagon, as well as with the parameters for treatment set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But messages posted on the TerminalCWO Facebook page said some commanders in the 101st were reluctant to allow soldiers to get tested because they didnt want to lose large numbers to quarantine during important training exercises. Everyone keeps getting sick or coming in contact with COVID and then being told by commands not to get tested in fear of losing personnel to quarantine, said one poster. Winski said that such guidance is not division policy, but vowed to investigate it. For the folks reaching out to you and others, thats what theyre hearing, and we need to address that, he said, adding that he tended to believe that where theres smoke, theres fire. Anyone experiencing COVID-19 symptoms is supposed to inform their chain of command and quarantine immediately, according to Winski. If they had known contact with somebody that we now know is positive, that would warrant a test, he said. If theyre just symptomatic, we keep them in quarantine and see if the symptoms persist, and if so, then it would warrant a test. Or if not, then we would just keep them in symptomatic or asymptomatic quarantine for the 14 days, so if they were to have it, it would run its course. Army Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson puts on personal protective equipment before entering the patient care area at Javits New York Medical Station. (U.S. Navy/Chief Mass Communication Specialist Barry Riley/Handout via Reuters) A soldier who tests positive for COVID-19 is placed in isolation. The 101st also uses a sort of precautionary quarantine called judicious preventative measures, or JPM, for soldiers who have vague symptoms or who might have come into contact with someone with the disease. Leaders use their own judgement as to whether to place a soldier in JPM, which typically means staying home for no more than a couple of days, at which point they decide whether the soldier needs to move to quarantine until they can get tested or be cleared to go back to work, according to Barrett. Other social media posts claimed that the division was not planning to test every soldier prior to a large off-site training exercise. That claim is incorrect and is likely a misunderstanding, according to division officials, who said 100 percent of the soldiers slated to deploy on the training rotation are being tested, but in batches of 10. Winski, the division commander, attributed many of the complaints to misunderstanding, but acknowledged that there might be a kernel of truth to some of them. Anytime theres a groundswell of concern, theres probably something to it, he said. But taken together, the Facebook posts illustrate what Barrett said is a level of anxiety among soldiers and their families over the pandemic that is even greater than that typically associated with upcoming combat deployments. COVID has generated a lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear, he said. Some of the 101sts challenges in this regard typify those faced by the military at large, including how to balance the need to stay combat ready with the need to protect troops and their families, and how to keep installations virus-free in regions where COVID-19 is surging and local authorities are less observant than the military of public health advice. The stress in the 101st over COVID-19 is heightened by the fact that two of the divisions three infantry brigade combat teams (multi-battalion formations of up to 5,000 soldiers each) are slated to go to the Armys premier light infantry training site at Fort Polk, La., during the next two months. The divisions 2nd Brigade Combat Team is due to start its monthlong rotation next week, followed by the 1st Brigade Combat Team in September. With most Army units no longer deploying regularly to combat zones, a training center rotation is often the most critical event in a company, battalion or brigade commanders one- to two-year command tour, and is preceded by many weeks of field training at the brigade combat teams home post. U.S. Army nurses preparing to leave Elmhurst Hospital in New York City. (John Lamparski/NurPhoto via Getty Images) But the Armys quarantine policies mean that one soldier coming down with COVID-19-like symptoms, let alone a confirmed case of the disease, can have a knock-on effect that takes not only that soldier out of action but numerous others for up to 14 days. Interviewed by Yahoo News, a junior enlisted soldier said that one false positive in the 101sts 1st Brigade Combat Team resulted in pretty much half the company or about 60 soldiers being restricted to quarters. Those policies are making some commanders reluctant to allow their soldiers to be tested, for fear of losing significant chunks of their formations to quarantine during field training that takes place prior to the rotation at Fork Polk, according to several messages posted on TerminalCWOs Facebook page. One 2nd BCT soldier wrote that his unit was told you cant directly go see medical personnel if you feel symptoms of COVID-19 because youll be quarantined instantly and we cant afford to lose people. The junior enlisted soldier in the 1st BCT said that commanders were focused on getting as many soldiers as possible into the field for training. They wanted the numbers out there more than anything else, he said. They werent so much worried about the soldiers health. However, he said that his chain of command was not pressuring soldiers to not seek medical attention if they were feeling sick. In the brigade, they want you to get tested, he said. But a second junior enlisted 1st BCT soldier, when asked whether some commanders were reluctant to allow soldiers to get tested for COVID-19, said it appears that way, adding that during a recent training exercise, his chain of command waited several days before sending soldiers who had taken ill in the field back to the garrison. Winski acknowledged that the division places a high priority on each training rotation at Fort Polk. We want every soldier thats absolutely available to be part of that, because it is such a crucible training event and such an excellent replicated environment [with] a dedicated opposing force, dedicated role players who portray civilians on the battlefield and host nation security forces. However, he said, the division will ensure that no soldiers with COVID-19 deploy to Fort Polk. It does appear that the field is currently the safest place for troops. According to the slide briefing obtained by Yahoo News, on July 20, the divisions Brigade Combat Team that has been least affected by the virus is its 3rd BCT, most of which has spent the last few months split between operations on the southwest border and East Africa. By contrast, the worst affected formation was 1st BCT, which had 927 soldiers unavailable because of the virus, including 82 troops in isolation and 263 symptomatic soldiers in quarantine. The numbers appear to confirm Winskis assertion that most of the divisions COVID-19 cases, based on the research by Fort Campbells nine contact trace teams, come from social interactions during off-duty hours, especially in bars and restaurants, not from training or deployments. Fort Campbell straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and is only about 60 miles from the nightlife of Nashville, which has become a COVID-19 red zone in recent weeks since reopening. U.S. Army soldiers honoring service members who are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. (Tom Brenner/Reuters) The increase in cases at Campbell coincides with the city and county openings in the surrounding communities, Winski said, adding that the travel conducted by many soldiers and their families over the Fourth of July weekend was also a factor. But beyond encouraging mask use and social distancing when off-post (and enforcing those activities for soldiers on post), division officials are reluctant to put their troops back on the sort of lockdown that characterized the first months of the pandemic, when all training and movement was canceled. We cannot return to the shelter-in-place protocols that existed in April of 2020 in which only essential leaders were present for duty, 1st BCT commander Col. Robert Born said in a video statement posted on his units Facebook page. Winski acknowledged that the relative youth of an infantry divisions soldiers meant the bright lights of Nashville would always hold an appeal. Its just where young folks want to go, he said. Indeed, until the latest increase in cases, many soldiers were not taking the pandemic threat seriously, according to an enlisted 1st BCT soldier. We all poked fun at COVID-19 saying how high the survival rate is, he said, adding that the attitude of many young troops was its not that big of a deal if you have a good immune system, it really wont hurt you all that much. But in June the brigades dining facility was temporarily closed after a soldier who works there tested positive. Then cases just started popping up randomly, here, there and all over the place, he said. I think were taking it a little bit more seriously now. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: The Oregon Health Authority on Friday reported 373 new confirmed or presumed coronavirus infections and six more deaths. Oregon is in the midst of its deadliest stretch of the pandemic while average daily cases remain near an all-time high. Effective Friday, Gov. Kate Brown has pushed Umatilla County back into stay-at-home status and downgraded neighboring Morrow County into Phase 1 reopening. Surging case counts may persist in Umatilla County despite the new restrictions. Oregon State University on Friday announced that its testing of residents in Hermiston last weekend suggests about 17% of the citys population was actively infected. Oregon has averaged about 341 coronavirus cases a day over the past week. Meanwhile, at least 71 Oregonians have died since July 12. Where the new cases are by county: Baker (3), Benton (3), Clackamas (22), Crook (2), Deschutes (9), Douglas (3), Gilliam (1), Hood River (3), Jackson (17), Jefferson (6), Josephine (1), Klamath (8), Lane (17), Lincoln (6), Linn (5), Malheur (12), Marion (44), Morrow (20), Multnomah (77), Polk (6), Sherman (1), Umatilla (40), Union (2), Wasco (2), Washington (45) and Yamhill (18). New fatalities: Oregons 317th death linked to coronavirus is a 90-year-old Deschutes County woman. She tested positive July 12 and died July 28 at her home. State officials are confirming if she had underlying health conditions. The 318th fatality is an 81-year-old Deschutes County man with underlying health conditions. He tested positive July 7 and died July 29. State officials are confirming his location of death. Oregons 319th death is a 55-year-old Multnomah County man with underlying health conditions. He tested positive July 28 and died July 29 at Adventist Health Portland. The 320th fatality is a 58-year-old Umatilla County man with underlying medical conditions. He tested positive July 7 and died July 29 at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Washington. Oregons 321st death is a 70-year-old Multnomah County man with underlying medical conditions. He tested positive July 3 and died July 30 at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. The 322nd fatality is an 81-year-old Lincoln County man with underlying health conditions. He tested positive June 23 and died July 29. State officials are confirming his location of death. The prevalence of infections: State officials reported 343 confirmed infections since Thursday out of 5,536 people tested, equaling a 6.2% positivity rate. Who got infected: State officials reported new confirmed or presumed cases since Thursday among the following age groups: 0-9 (21); 10-19 (46); 20-29 (89); 30-39 (60); 40-49 (60); 50-59 (40); 60-69 (15); 70-79 (22); 80 and older (8). Whos in the hospital: The state Friday reported 153 Oregonians with confirmed coronavirus infections are currently in the hospital, up from 150 reported Thursday. Oregon remains well below its capacity, with hundreds of hospital beds and ventilators available. Since it began: Oregon has reported 18,492 confirmed or presumed infections and 322 deaths, among the lowest totals in the nation. To date, 403,241 Oregonians have been tested. -- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. New Delhi, Aug 1 : A likely cut in repo rate will weaken the Indian rupee, which has lately been supported by healthy fund inflows. Analysts said that the currency will move into a range between 75 and 74.50 as rising forex reserves keep the rupee in check. The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee is expected to release its resolution on the monetary policy after its meeting on August 4 to 6. It is widely expected that the Reserve Bank of India is likely to administer another dose of lending rate cut to aid the revival process from the Covid-19 induced economic downturn. "The RBI is lapping up dollars heavily under 75 and speculators are supplying. A rate cut may marginally weaken the rupee, but not much as relatively undervalued rupee and high rate differential with the US can support the currency. A range of 75.25 and 74.70 is on cards," said Anindya Banerjee, DVP, Currency and Rates, Kotak Securities. Recently, India's foreign exchange reserves increased by $4.99 billion during the week ended July 24. The reserves grew to $522.63 billion from $517.637 billion. India's forex reserves comprise foreign currency assets (FCAs), gold reserve s, special drawing rights (SDRs) and the RBI's position with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to Sajal Gupta, Head, Forex and Rates, Edelweiss Securities: "The market shall be watching the RBI commentary on monetary policy. MPC is expected to be dovish and growth supporting. Break below 74.50 would only give further direction to the market." Last Friday, the rupee marginally appreciated to 74.81 against a greenback. "We expect a rate cut of at least 25 bps to support the slowing growth," said Rahul Gupta, Head of Research-Currency, Emkay Global Financial Services. "This may give a boost to risk appetite and weigh on the USD-INR spot. Although the spot has not broken the crucial support of 74.50, unless it falls below that, we expect the spot to remain afloat. The trend for the next week will continue to be sideways with bearish bias between 74.50 and 75.10," Gupta added. (Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in) The Bank of India invited applications for 28 job vacancies for the posts of Clerk and General Banking Officer on Saturday. There are 14 vacancies each for officer and clerk level jobs. The submission of the online application started on August 1, 2020. The last date to apply for the job post is August 16. Educational qualification Clerk - 10th class pass or equivalent Officer - Bachelor's Degree (Graduation) in any discipline from a University recognised by the Government of India. Age limit For the post of clerk, the minimum age is 18 years (20 years for Khelo India sporting event), and the maximum age is 25 years. For the post of officer, the minimum and maximum age limits are 18 years and 25 years, respectively. How to Apply for Bank of India recruitment 2020? Candidates need to visit Bank of India's official website www.bankofindia.co.in to apply. Then, click on the 'CAREER' option and 'Recruitment of Sportspersons - Project No. 2020-21/1 Notice dated 01.07.2020'. This will open a new window. In this window click on 'apply online'. Application Fee: SC/ST/PWD - Rs 50General and Others - Rs 200 Morrison carried this approach all the way through 2019, into bushfire season and early 2020. He persisted with his Trumpist tribalism even in the face of a savage national disaster. He emoted over some fire victims, resisted any role in managing the crisis, and rejected the need for more active climate change policy in response. "I'm angry about the Prime Minister's response," said the former fire chief Greg Mullins. "It reminds me of President Trump when there's multiple shootings, saying it's nothing to do with guns." Illustration: John Shakespeare Credit: A central truth of Trump's divisive populism is that it's not principally about problem solving in the real world. It's about political posturing. It's a style of politicking, not suited to governing. There are many definitions of populism. My preferred definition is that it's a style of politics offering unworkably simple solutions to complex problems. And when it's carried from campaigning into government, it leads to disaster. As Trump is now modelling for the world. A country with 155,000 deaths, mostly avoidable. When Al Qaeda terrorists killed some 3000 Americans on 9/11, George W. Bush launched two wars. When 50 times more died, Donald Trump refused to put on a face mask. Eventually, a few days ago, he changed tack and put on a mask in public. But not because more of his citizens had died than in World War I but because his poll numbers were falling. Loading Morrison is not Trump's pathetic understudy any longer. After Australia's visceral frustration with him during the fires, Morrison reconsidered. And when the pandemic hit, an entirely different Prime Minister emerged to confront it. Instead of a divisive populist avoiding real crises while fomenting fake ones, we saw a unifying leader confronting the disaster. "What's interesting," says the political psychologist James Walter, "is the pragmatism that came to the fore during the pandemic. He did do well with the national cabinet and the early treatment of the pandemic, the willingness to listen to expert advice instead of the usual nonsense." Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: Walter, Monash University professor emeritus and co-author of a two-volume study of Australian prime ministers and leadership, says: "I think he's a better politician and more clever than Donald Trump. He has a healthy ego but he's not as narcissistic as Trump. The thing about Trump and [Brazilian President] Jair Bolsonaro is the magical thinking they both engage in. "I don't think you get that from Morrison, despite his belief that God's on his side." The reborn Morrison continued to evolve this week. We saw three notable developments. One was the emergence of friction between the federal and Victorian governments over the pandemic's resurgence in that state. Victoria's Premier, Daniel Andrews, sought to deflect blame by attacking the quality of private sector aged care homes, which are regulated by the federal government, not the state. Loading "Some of the stories we've seen are unacceptable and I wouldn't want my mum in some of those places," said Andrews. He's right. That state of Australia's aged care homes is deplorable for a prosperous, modern country. That's why Morrison had launched a royal commission into the system two years ago. But because something is true does not necessarily commend it to be spoken by a leader during a crisis. Andrews' intention was not constructive he was putting the blame on Canberra. The federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, responded with crafty evasiveness. He chose to interpret Andrews' critique as an attack not on federal competence but on the aged care staff: "They are wonderful human beings and I will not hear a word against them." This fracturing between Canberra and Melbourne got a lot of media play. Conflict is the very stuff of news. But when reporters repeatedly asked, invited and almost urged Morrison to attack Andrews, the Prime Minister declined. Morrison emphasised unity over division: "This is an Australian plan, based on Australian values, based on Australian challenges and Australian solutions and that will continue to guide our efforts, practically dealing with the problems that we face, bringing the best minds together, bringing the country together." Donald Trump has fomented ugly division between the federal government and state and city governments. He ordered unwanted teams of armed federal agents into Democrat-controlled cities in the past couple of weeks. In the face of opposition from state governors and city mayors, Trump sent hundreds of officers to break up protests and remove demonstrators from public places. Some were summarily detained without due process. Local leaders were outraged. What would Morrison be doing now if he were still in "Aussie Trump" mode? We can only speculate. But he certainly wouldn't be doing what he is actually doing: While Trump orders federal agents into states to divide, Morrison sends federal agents into states to unite. Loading The Prime Minister has offered troops, health officials and other support to any state that wanted it. Including Victoria. Which, belatedly, has welcomed the help. Together with Andrews, Morrison co-ordinated a federal intervention for crisis management of the stricken Victorian aged care industry this week. Has it been perfect? No. But it's been co-operative, helpful and ultimately must be an improvement. This is real effort to confront a real crisis, the very antithesis of Trumpism. The second notable development was Morrison's willingness to reconsider a decision. The federal position was not to offer paid pandemic leave to workers. But the Fair Work Commission decided otherwise. It granted two weeks' paid pandemic leave to aged care workers, including casuals on condition that they're employed regularly. Fair Work noted that "there is a real risk that employees who do not have access to leave entitlements might not report COVID-19 symptoms which might require them to self-isolate, but rather seek to attend for work out of financial need," which constituted "a significant risk to infection control measures". In the face of demands to widen this entitlement to paid pandemic leave, Morrison has signalled a willingness to rethink his position and change his mind. Would a "Trump mini-me" listen to reason, admit the possibility of error and reconsider? More likely he'd tell workers to inject themselves with bleach and get on with it. Or give similarly helpful advice. Third was this week's meeting of the Morrison government and the Trump administration. Morrison's Foreign Affairs Minister, Marise Payne, and Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds, went to Washington to meet their US counterparts, Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper, for the annual Ausmin session. Loading In his phase as Trump understudy, we can only imagine the sycophancy that Morrison would have ordered his ministers to perform in Washington. Instead, Payne and Reynolds conducted themselves professionally, secured practical new co-operation with the US and calmly avoided Pompeo's invitation to entanglement in Trump's re-election campaign. So at the end of a week where a panicking Trump was toying with the idea of delaying the US election, Morrison continues his evolution from Trumpian tribal warrior to unifying national leader. Which is, needless to say, a supreme relief for Australia's national interest. Which Morrison will emerge post-pandemic? There is an old stand-by for journalists who have to report on an unfinished event: only time will tell. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- New York Blood Center (NYBC) is calling on New Yorkers who have recovered from coronavirus (COVID-19) to donate convalescent plasma to help critically ill patients across the country. NYBC estimates 7,000 donations per week are needed to combat the virus. Right now, collections are far below that target, according to NYBC. In the treatment, known as convalescent plasma, the patient is transfused with the donors plasma with the goal of using the donors antibodies to help clear the virus more rapidly. When COVID-19 was at its peak in New York, thousands came forward to donate to help their neighbors, according to NYBC. FIRST PUBLIC BANK NYBC created the first public bank of COVID-19 convalescent plasma in March and now says it maintains the nations largest supply with 40,000 units distributed to date. As COVID-19 spreads, NYBC is shipping convalescent plasma to hot spots around the country, the organization said. Now is an extremely critical time to donate plasma because cases are surging throughout the U.S. at alarming rates. In our experience, convalescent plasma is a life saver and no person in need, anywhere, should go without it, said Christopher D. Hillyer, MD, president and CEO, of New York Blood Center. Until a vaccine arrives, convalescent plasma is lining up as first-choice therapy for this deadly disease. If you are eligible, please come in and donate so we can help treat as many patients as possible. It truly is a matter of life and death, he added. Donors must have tested positive for COVID-19 and be symptom-free for 14 days. One donation can be used to treat two to three patients struggling with severe cases of COVID-19. Interested donors can sign up at nybc.org/covidplasma. NYBC is one of the largest independent blood centers in the world. Its network serves local communities in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Rhode Island. With cities across the country being heavily impacted by the virus, NYBC plans to distribute its resources to the areas that need it the most. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK and TWITTER Germany will allocate a 170 million loan and a 28.5 million grant to Georgia as part of an agreement signed today between the governments of Georgia and the Federal Republic of Germany Agenda.ge reports. To date, within the financial and technical cooperation with Germany, more than 1 billion in funding in the form of grants, technical assistance and soft loans have been allocated for Georgia. EDMONTON - A former Edmonton nightclub employee convicted of sexually assaulting five women has been sentenced to eight years in prison, a term reduced partly because of a beating he suffered while in custody. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 31/7/2020 (536 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Matthew McKnight walks out of court during a break in Edmonton on Wednesday, July 8, 2020. McKnight, a former Edmonton nightclub employee convicted of sexually assaulting five women, is expected to be sentenced today. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson EDMONTON - A former Edmonton nightclub employee convicted of sexually assaulting five women has been sentenced to eight years in prison, a term reduced partly because of a beating he suffered while in custody. Matthew McKnight, 33, was accused of sexually assaulting 13 women ranging in age from 17 to 22 between 2010 and 2016. He pleaded not guilty, but a jury convicted him on five counts. In her ruling Friday, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Doreen Sulyma said his prison term on the five counts must be served consecutively. The prosecution had asked for a sentence of 22 1/2 years, while McKnight's lawyer had suggested five to nine years. Sulyma provided detailed reasons for sentencing on each of the five counts, including that in some cases McKnight did not use a condom. "In each case here, the victim was vulnerable, young, intoxicated and under the control and power of Mr. McKnight," Sulyma said. "(They) all gave extremely powerful and articulate accounts of their individual distress." Court has heard that McKnight met most of the women in bars and assaulted them at his apartment. Several victims told court that they have had nightmares, thoughts of suicide and anxiety since they were attacked. "For years, I have been terrified of you. You haunt my dreams and dictate my waking moments," one woman said in her victim impact statement read to the court in early July. The victims' names are protected by a publication ban. Crown prosecutor Mark Huyser-Wierenga has said that alcohol and "something else'' were used in at least three of the offences in what he dubbed "drug-facilitated'' sexual assaults. Sulyma challenged the submission in her decision, saying that evidence of drugs had not been proven in court. In total, Sulyma assessed 16 1/2 years for the five counts a number she reduced to eight years on her assessment of the "moral blameworthiness" of McKnight, his "excellent chances to rehabilitate" and that he was attacked by an inmate while at the Edmonton Remand Centre awaiting bail. "A sentence of 16.5 years simply exceeds what would be just and appropriate," she said. The reduced sentence caused outbursts in the courtroom with one woman yelling, "you guys are monsters." 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. During McKnight's sentencing hearing, his defence lawyer played a four-minute video from a camera in the remand centre showing him being punched, falling to the ground and getting kicked multiple times by a cellmate. There's blood visible on the floor in the video. McKnight had said he blacked out before the man was taken away by a guard. Several other guards were shown in the video gathering around McKnight and restraining him. He was then led away by guards in handcuffs and a spit mask, and later taken to hospital. "The attack (against McKnight) was not just vicious, it was ignored by the appropriate authorities," Sulyma said, adding that the investigation into the matter was "meagre." She noted that McKnight is a first-time offender and "I find that he has been obedient to the requirements of the justice system." "I accept his own statements to me at sentencing that he is very repentive," Sulyma said. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 31, 2020 In a contentious decision, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) on Friday issued social media guidelines for its personnel asking them to share their user IDs on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc and refrain from criticizing government policies on social media platforms, failing which strict legal and disciplinary action will be taken against the defaulters. The decision has not gone down well among the subordinates in the 1.40 lakh strong paramilitary force, which guards airports, metro, nuclear and space facilities apart from several sensitive government installations, who feel that the policy is unjust as social media keeps them entertained after long duty hours. The latest social media policy, issued by CISF headquarters in Delhi, say that, Inspite of clear guidelines, there have been instances where social media platforms were used by the force personnel to share sensitive information about the nation/organization and to criticize the policies of the government. HT has reviewed the copy of guidelines. Asserting that social media platforms pose a threat to the national security and the general discipline of the force, CISF has asked its men to disclose their user ID of all social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc) being used by them to the department, through respective units/formations. The personnel have also been asked to inform the department in case of any change of the User ID or creation of new User ID. The CISF men have been strictly asked not to create and use anonymous or pseudonymous User ID. Further, the directive says that the personnel should not use any social media platform to criticize the policies of the government on any matter. The jawans have been informed that social media platforms shouldnt be used as a tool to by-pass the chain of command and proper channel to air the grievances, according to the directive. In case of any violation, strict legal and disciplinary action should be initiated against the defaulters as per existing laws and rules, it added. The CISF top brass didnt respond to HTs calls or text. The PRO was also not available for comments. HT spoke to several serving officers in the CISF who said that the policy is arbitrary. Better they should give us a basic phone and a 2G connection otherwise smartphone has no use for us if such policies are implemented, said a company commander in CISF, who didnt wish to be identified. Another commandant rank officer said that we are mostly away from our families for months and social media is the only source to keep us entertained or express our opinions, which should not be taken away. The government has lately expressed concerns over central paramilitary forces jawans and Group-A officers extensively using the social media platforms and also criticising government policies or seniors. For example, the direct recruit officers of the paramilitary forces, also called CAPFs (central armed police forces), have been campaigning on Twitter and Facebook for over two years now for parity in promotion and pay benefits at par with IPS officers. Last month, Indian army banned asked its personnel to delete 89 apps from their smartphones including Facebook, TikTok, Tinder, PUBG and Instagram to plug leakage of information. The decision was taken after the Centre banned around 59 apps, mostly Chinese, including Tik Tok. Earlier, in January 2017, when a Border Security Force (BSF) Constable Tej Bahadur Yadav posted a video on social media showing sub-standard food provided to the jawans at the border, the government had issued guidelines asking all personnel to not upload any content which may jeoparadise national security or follow the chain of command to address their concerns. Yadav was dismissed from the force. A mysterious Australian plane found crashed at the end of a remote runway in Papua New Guinea has now been linked to an alleged attempt to import over $80million worth of cocaine. Australian Federal Police said a Cessna loaded with more than 500kg of cocaine took off from a remote airstrip at near Port Moresby in PNG on July 26 but crashed soon after. Police say the crash may have been inevitable thanks to the 'greed' of the alleged smugglers, who loaded the plane with so much cocaine it couldn't fly. The failed operation allegedly involved five members of a Melbourne-based criminal syndicate with links to Italian organised crime, who have all now been charged. A mysterious aircraft that was found crashed at the end of a runway in Papua New Guinea (pictured) Over 500kg of cocaine believed to be connected to the plane crash was found days later by Papua New Guinea authorities (pictured), police allege The plane was seen taking off from Mareeba Airfield in Queensland (pictured) before flying low to avoid radar detection as it entered PNG The light aircraft is said to have taken off from Mareeba Airfield in Queensland earlier that morning and travelled at under 3,000 feet to avoid radar detection. The Australian pilot, the sixth member of the group, allegedly arrived at the Australian Consulate in PNG on July 28 where he was arrested and charged with immigration offences and remains in the country. The five other men were arrested in Queensland and Victoria by Australian state police on July 26. It is alleged the men, aged 31, 36, 31, 33 and 61, conspired to transport the drugs and travelled between travelled from Melbourne and Sydney to Queensland between 19 and 25 July to carry out the operation. If convicted, all five men could face life in prison. Australian Federal Police said they have arrested five members of Melbourne-based criminal syndicate with links to Italian organised crime (pictured, one of the members being arrested) If convicted of the drug offences, all five men could face life in prison (pictured, one of the alleged offenders PNG authorities found the crashed Australian plane late last month but found no pilot or any cargo in sight. The country's prime minister, James Marape, said at the time he suspected it was used for drug trafficking and asked Australian authorities to help uncover the mystery. Photos from inside the plane show several hidden compartments covered up with boards where the drugs could have been stowed. PNG authorities suspected the Australian Cessna 420C twin-engine aircraft (pictured) was being used to traffic drugs The plane took off from the remote runway but quickly crashed out, possibly due to the weight of the cocaine On July 31, Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary located 500kg of cocaine that authorities believe was on the plane. The drugs are still being analysed and a number of men are speaking with local authorities. As part of the AFP investigation, Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce seized more than $3.5million worth of fiances and assets believed to be under the control of a syndicate member. The seized items included three properties, shares, account funds, and a car. A 31-year-old man from Maribyrnong, in Melbourne, faced Cairns Magistrates Court on 27 July charged with offences including importing commercial quantities of border controlled drugs and laundering over $1million. Two other men, aged 33 and 61, faced Melbourne Magistrates Court on the same day charged with conspiring to import commercial quantities border controlled drugs. Photos from inside the plane show several hidden compartments (pictured) covered up with boards where the drugs could have been stowed AFP Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney said the arrests were the result of a two-year investigation involving a total of six agencies. 'These arrests prove no matter how sophisticated or opportunistic organised crime's attempts are, or the methods they use, law enforcement is keeping pace and causing maximum damage to these criminal ventures,' he said. 'With current interstate travel restrictions in place due to COVID-19, the attempt to import illicit drugs into Australia shows how opportunistic and greedy organised crime can be,' he said. 'Australian law enforcement remains committed to working collectively to protect Australia, which is especially important now, due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic on the community.' A document detailing an account of the Duke of Yorks alleged sexual encounter with a woman who claims to be one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims has been unsealed. The manuscript, titled The Billionaire Playboys Club, is among a series of newly released court documents. It was written by Virginia Giuffre, who claims she had sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. Ms Giuffre, who is also known as Virginia Roberts, also alleges she had sex with a mystery prince a man whose name she did not know, according to the unsealed documents. The duke categorically denies he had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Ms Giuffre. The duke categorically denies he had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Ms Giuffre / REUTERS Ms Giuffre wrote in her manuscript the duke whispered sweet nothings into her ear and kissed her neck while on the dancefloor of Londons Tramp nightclub, during an evening out with Epstein and his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. She wrote: I would just giggle not really knowing how to reply to an ageing man with a bad smile and terrible moves Later when she alleges the pair had a bath together, at the home of Maxwell who has known Andrew since university, she wrote: He was adorning my young body, particularly my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches. Virginia Giuffre has claimed she had sex with Prince Andrew on several occasions / AP And after she alleges they had sex she was left with feelings of dismay. The documents are from a now-settled defamation lawsuit filed by Ms Giuffre. She claimed in the suit and other litigation that Maxwell recruited her in 2000 to be a sexual servant for Epstein. US district judge Loretta A Preska had ordered the papers released but two depositions given by Maxwell in the civil lawsuit in 2016 were not produced after her lawyers appealed against the ruling. Jeffrey Epsteine / AP When making her 2016 deposition in support of the lawsuit, Ms Giuffre was asked about men Maxwell was alleged to have told her to have sex with and, while naming some individuals, added another prince that I dont know his name. There is no suggestion the royal is a member of the British monarchy. Among the newly released papers were emails Maxwell and Epstein exchanged in January 2015, when Ms Giuffres allegations were getting a new round of media attention. Prince Andrew's car-crash interview on BBC Newsnight / PA Responding to an email from the British socialite, Epstein, then a convicted sex offender, wrote: You have done nothing wrong and I (would) urge you to start acting like it. He suggested she go outside and hold her head high, not as an (escaping) convict. Maxwell, who dated Epstein for a brief period in the 1990s, is in custody while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors for her former partner. The British socialite, who has pleaded not guilty, will go on trial in July 2021. Over the years Ms Giuffre has told her story to the FBI, but no charges were brought based on her allegations and she is not one of the three alleged victims in the current criminal case against Maxwell. Andrew stepped down from public royal life following his disastrous Newsnight interview in which he failed to show remorse over his friendship with Epstein, and little empathy with the sex offenders alleged victims. He has also been urged to come forward and be interviewed about his friendship with the disgraced financier, who took his own life while in prison last summer awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Lucknow: Motorists in Uttar Pradesh riding two-wheelers without helmet and four-wheelers without seat belts will have to pay twice the amount of fine compared to earlier as the state government issued a notification increasing penalties for traffic violations, a senior official said on Friday. "The fine for not wearing helmet and seat belts has been doubled from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000. Similarly, for creating hindrance in government officer's job, the fine has been increased to Rs 2,000 from Rs 1,000 earlier," the notification issued here by Principal Secretary, Transport, Rajesh Kumar Singh said. The fine for using the horn in prohibited areas will be Rs 1,000 for the first time and Rs 2,000 for the second time. Fine for using a vehicle without insurance will now be Rs 2,000 for the first time and Rs 4,000 for the second time, it said. People driving without a valid driving license and those less than 14 years will have to pay fine worth Rs 5,000 and for over-speeding, the fine will be Rs 2,000. The fine for giving wrong information in the driving license has been increased from Rs 2,500 to Rs 10,000 and a fine of Rs 1,000 will be levied if three commuters are found on a two-wheeler, it said. If one is found obstructing the passage of a fire brigade or ambulance, they will be fined Rs 10,000 and for parking in no-parking areas, the fine will be Rs 1,500 while Rs 1 lakh will be levied against a violator for selling a vehicle using fake documents. After the implementation of the notification on Thursday, the orders have been implemented in the state, transport officials said. Eid-Al-Adha 2020: Temperature screening was being conducted at Delhi's Jama Masjid, while a sanitiser tunnel was set up at a mosque in Bengaluru Eid-al-Adha was celebrated in a subdued manner on Saturday with mosques following social distancing norms and many devotees offering prayers from home, even as India recorded over 57,000 cases within 24 hours. At Delhi's Fatehpuri Masjid, devotees were seen offering prayers while following all COVID-19 norms. They also did away with the custom to hug each other while exchanging greetings. "We have ensured that we are cautious that we don't hug each other. We would be wishing each other by saying Eid Mubarak," a devotee told ANI. Temperature screening was being conducted at the Jama Masjid in the National Capital. "We have ensured strong arrangements here. In fact, we have ensured a safe environment in several big and small mosques on this occasion. Namaz will be offered at 6.05 am," said Sanjay Bhatia, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), had said. Devotees at Amritsars Khairuddin mosque assembled to offers prayers despite light rainfall and strictly followed social distancing norms. With the imposition of a weekend lockdown in Uttar Pradesh, subdued celebrations were witnessed in the state. In Lucknow, markets remained shut in prominent areas such as Hazratganj, Aminabad, Gomtinagar, Indiranagar, Latouche Road, Alambagh, Hewett Road, Aliganj and Gudumba. Imam of Lucknow Eidgah Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali told PTI, "Only five people offered namaaz at Lucknow's Eidgah. Most people offered namaaz at their homes, and also did 'qurbaani' in their homes. Ninety percent of the people completed their prayers in the early morning itself. By and large, there was silence in most parts of the city." People stayed indoors in cities like Pratapgarh, Gorakhpur, Barabanki and Rampur, while worshippers in Allahabad offered the namaz at mosques while observing social distancing. As the lockdown restrictions have been eased outside containment zones in West Bengal, many devotees were seen offering namaz in mosques, though the usual hustle and bustle was missing from the minority-dominated pockets of the city. The authorities made elaborate arrangements to sanitise the mosque premises and thermal screening of visitors, even though many chose to offer prayers at home. The Zakaria Street in north Kolkata, otherwise bustling with crowds during the festival, wore a deserted look, PTI reported. In Tamil Nadu, the states Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ) unit, which has over 800 mosques under its control across the state, appealed to the members of the community to avoid congregation, as advised by the state government and support the administration in the fight against COVID-19. Meanwhile, lockdown, job loss and decreased income dampened the festival, reducing the ease in procuring goats on a festival on which Muslims symbolically sacrifice a goat or a sheep as an act of sacrifice. "The pricing had been high this time - about Rs 2,000 more than in the previous year, per goat. Even the sale is not so brisk, as it had been in the past, due to the pandemic scare," Nadeem of Al Khair Goat Farm, Kundrathur, said. Bengaluru's Jamia Islamia placed a sanitiser tunnel at the entrance, Sayyid Imran Imam, Maulvi of the masjid. "The Karnataka Wakf Board released a circular that said that this year, Eid ul-Adha was only to be celebrated in masjids that are not in containment zones, and not in public places like corporations grounds. Those masjids that are in containment zones will not be open. Hand sanitisers have been placed across the premises," Maulvi Imran told ANI. The mosque that usually sees a crowd of 10,000 people every year will only allow 1,500 to 2,000 people, barring the entry of the elderly, ailing and young children. The maulvi also urged people to do the sacrifice ritual indoors. Holidays will be observed on 1 and 2 August in Jammu and Kashmir, where people stayed at home to celebrate the festival. Jammu is observing a weekly lockdown on Saturday, however, essential services shops remained open in the city. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan applauded the decisions of some mosque committees to remain closed for devotees on Eid-Al-Adha. "On Eid al-Adha, prayers can be offered in mosques with a limited number of persons. Some mosque committees in Kerala have decided to cancel prayers in view of COVID-19 which is a welcome step. The situation is not suited for large gatherings," he said. In Rajasthan, Congress MLAs Amin Khan, Amin Kagzi, Hakam Ali, Saleh Mohammed, Wajib and Rafiq offered namaaz from Jaisalmers Suryagarh Hotel, where lawmakers loyal to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot are staying amid a political crisis in the state. Eid al-Adha or Bakrid, also known as the sacrifice feat is marked by sacrificing an animal, usually a sheep or a goat to prove devotion and love for Allah. Post the sacrifice, devotees distribute the offering to family, friends and the poor and the needy. With inputs from agencies Boris Johnson has previously warned of a second wave of coronavirus across Europe. (PA) The government has been accused of blaming Europe for a second wave of coronavirus, as measures to combat a potential spike in cases are set to be introduced. Health secretary Matt Hancock said he was worried after he warned that figures showed that a second wave was starting to roll across Europe. But Labour MP Neil Coyle said Hancock was screeching look over there, and said that the crisis was homegrown. He tweeted: Hancock screeching look over there across all news this morn whilst the UK dead toll remains the highest in all Europe. Locked down late; threw care homes under a bus; failed to test on scale seen in other countries; app failed; and stats hidden. Any second wave here is homegrown. Hancock screeching look over there across all news this morn whilst the UK dead toll remains the highest in all Europe. Locked down late; threw care homes under a bus; failed to test on scale seen in other countries; app failed; & stats hidden. Any 2nd wave here is homegrown. Neil Coyle (@coyleneil) July 30, 2020 Hancock said on Thursday morning that a spike in cases across the continent would mean further measures introduced in the UK to tackle a potential uptick. He told Sky News: "I am worried about a second wave. I think you can see a second wave starting to roll across Europe and we've got to do everything we can to prevent it from reaching these shores and to tackle it. "The measures that the chief medical officer will set out later are part of that but so too are the measures we're taking, for instance to ensure that we don't directly bring cases back to this country where there's a big spike in cases. Health secretary Matt Hancock said he was "worried" about a second wave of coronavirus. (Getty) "So absolutely on a second wave it is something I worry about and I worry about it because we can see it happening. Hancocks comments come after a government source told the Daily Mail that the prime minister was extremely concerned by outbreaks bubbling up, both at home and abroad. Story continues Professor James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute medical research centre, also told Yahoo News UK that there were signs of a second wave in Europe. Self-isolation rule change People who test positive for coronavirus or display symptoms must now self-isolate for 10 days. The UKs chief medical officers said on Thursday that the period must increase from the current rule of seven days because of the risk individuals may still be able to spread Covid-19. In a joint statement, they said the change for those who experience the key symptoms of a new continuous cough, high temperature or loss of taste or smell is needed because of the low but real possibility of infectiousness up to 10 days. The chief medical officers for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland said that it is now the correct balance of risk to extend the isolation period for those who test positive or have symptoms to 10 days. Evidence, although still limited, has strengthened and shows that people with Covid-19 who are mildly ill and are recovering have a low but real possibility of infectiousness between seven and nine days after illness onset, they said. A passenger arrives at Heathrow Airport, following an announcement on Saturday that holidaymakers who had not returned from Spain and its islands by midnight would be forced to quarantine for 14 days. (PA) Quarantine reduced for travellers? Hancock also said ministers were investigating ways to reduce the 14-day quarantine period for new arrivals to the UK from at-risk countries, including Spain. But when quizzed over how many checks have taken place to determine the amount of people abiding by quarantine rules, Hancock was unable to answer. He told BBC Breakfast: The vast majority of people do abide by the rules. When pushed to ask for a figure, Hancock replied: Im terribly sorry I dont have the precise number of people we have been in contact with. Confusion on how many people are being checked to see if they are abiding by quarantine measures when coming back from Spain. Matt Hancock doesn't have an answer.#BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/NGMMjn7Fbp Haggis_UK (@Haggis_UK) July 30, 2020 Asked about reports of the quarantine reduction, Hancock added: "We're always looking at how we can have the least-possible burden of the measures that we have to put into place so that is something on which we're doing some work but we'll only come forward with a proposal when we're confident that it is safe to do so. However, Hancock said there would be no changes in the next few days to quarantine rules for people returning from overseas. A sign telling travellers to wear face covering for their safety is displayed at Stansted Airport, Essex. (PA) He said work was ongoing on whether testing people during the 14-day quarantine period would mean it was safe to release them earlier. Hancock added: This is a really important, essentially scientific clinical question, so that's something that we're working on. "But we are not imminently making an announcement on it because that work is not concluded, and until it is absolutely safe to make that sort of change, then we won't do so, but it is something that we're working on." NHS staff outside the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent, join in the pause for applause to salute the NHS 72nd birthday. (PA) Concern levels very high Health leaders have "very high" levels of concern about the possibility of a second spike in coronavirus cases, one expert has said. Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that the combination of a spike of cases with "exhausted staff" while the NHS tries to rebuild services could prove challenging". He told the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus: "I would say in relation to the second spike issue or something coming, the levels of concern among our members the people who are leading NHS trusts, who are leading in primary care and all levels in the systems is very high. "There's real concern about winter and the compounding factors there, but also about an earlier spike. Coronavirus: what happened today Click here to sign up to the latest news and information with our daily Catch-up newsletter STEPANAKERT. From July 26 to August 1, the adversary violated the ceasefire more than 170 times at the zone of contact between the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)-Azerbaijani opposing forces. During that time Azerbaijan fired around 1,700 shots at the Artsakh military positions, and from various-caliber firearms, the Artsakh Ministry of Defense (MOD) press service informed. But the Artsakh Defense Army vanguard units adhere to the ceasefire, and continue to take the necessary steps to reliably maintain their combat positions. Allahabad: A PIL filed in the Allahabad High Court has sought crackdown on alleged hoarding of black money since scrapping of high value currency notes. The PIL has claimed that black money is being given as cash donations to religious institutions and charitable trusts, most of these run by political leaders. The PIL filed by advocate Avinash Mani Tripathi, which is likely to come up for hearing before a bench later this week, alleges that there has been emergence of a "menace of converting black money into white through donation in cash" of "old high denomination notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 in the accounts of religious and charitable trusts running across the country". Further, the petitioner has contended that this would result in "failure" of government's attempt to "eliminate black money" since donations made to religious institutions and trusts became a part of their income which was "exempt from tax". He has also alleged "inaction on part of Government of India to make any declaration regarding monetary effect of specified bank notes received in donation box or directly at religious institutions or trusts". It alleged that many of these were being "run by political leaders," including those belonging to the ruling parties at the Centre and in the state. The petitioner has mentioned the names of institutions or trusts run by BJP MPs, an Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister, a former Union Minister from Congress and an AIMIM leader. Also Read: Strict law to be implemented for dealing with 'benami' transactions: PM Modi on illegal cash deposits The petitioner, who has named the Centre and the Reserve Bank of India as parties, has prayed for "directions to respondent authorities to declare that value of the old high denomination notes deposited in the accounts of religious institutions and trusts after November 08, 2016 would neither be credited nor exchanged". As an interim measure, pending hearing on the PIL, the petitioner has prayed for directions for "constitution of a high-level committee for taking appropriate action against the menace of converting black money into white through donation in cash of old denomination notes in the accounts of religious institutions and trusts across the country". Full coverage: Black Money Crackdown For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Civil rights attorney slams Obama for political speech at John Lewis' funeral Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Lifelong Democrat voter and civil rights attorney Leo Terrell criticized former President Barack Obamas speech at the funeral of civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis in an interview with Fox News Sean Hannity on Thursday. Terrell, noticeably frustrated by Obamas speech, claimed there were fallacies in the former presidents remarks on racism and election integrity. The setting of the speech, though, was also egregious to Terrell, a former radio host who recently announced that 2020 will be the first time he ever votes for a Republican. He has often appeared on news talk shows to provide political commentary. Youve got Barack Obama using a house of worship a funeral to raise a Democratic campaign speech, Terrell told Hannity. What amazes me is that he basically lied on television when he said federal troops were used for peaceful protesters. Theres not a peaceful protester whos trying to demolish a federal building. Terrell decried an analogy Obama used to compare President Donald Trump to George Wallace, the former Alabama governor known for racist and segregationist ideas during the 1940s. Terrell said the analogy was an example of using the race card. George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators, Obama said. While federal agents have largely been deployed to cities experiencing violence and riots such as Portland, Oregon, the Trump administration was criticized after federal agents used pepper spray and other irritants to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square in Washington D.C. in June. A video surfaced from the clearing operation of a U.S. Park Police officer using a riot shield to attack an Australian news cameraman. National Guard commander Adam DeMarco testified before the U.S. House of Representatives this week that tear gas was used in the clearing operation. U.S. Park Police Acting Chief Gregory Monahan told Congress Tuesday that tear gas was not used in the clearing operation but said that officers used other irritants and dispersal agents that include stinger balls, smoke canisters and pepper balls. In his speech at Lewis funeral, Obama also slammed Trumps displeasure with mail-in voting propositions. Obama said that voter suppression laws have targeted students and minorities. Obama admitted that there may be some who might not want him to dwell on political matters at a funeral, but said that he is mentioning these issues because this is a celebration of John's life. John Lewis devoted his time on this Earth fighting the very attacks on democracy and what's best in America that we are seeing circulate right now, the former Illinois senator said. Terrell took issue with not only the speech but also how some responses to tragedy are handled differently than others. According to Terrell, it is a matter of vilifying black Republicans. He mentioned Obamas silence on the deaths of David Dorn, a black retired officer killed in a riot; black Trump supporter Bernell Trammell, who was shot and killed in Milwaukee; as well as Herman Cain, a black Republican and former presidential candidate who died this week. You got a great man in John Lewis buried today and Herman Cain is being vilified. Im sick and tired of black Republicans being vilified, Terrell told Hannity. We are smart enough to realize were off the Democrat plantation and will vote for whats best for the country. Cain was a successful business owner and ran for president in 2000 as well as 2012 after his childhood consisted of difficulty and poverty in the South. His death by coronavirus was touted as a political statement on social media, as he was not in favor of wearing a mask during the pandemic. In wake of Obamas comments, nationwide concern on racial equality and the impact of the Black Live Matter movement, Terrell argued that that the movement does not appear to care about all black lives. Not all black lives matter because theres a lot of black police officers being killed and there is a lot of black-on-black crime, Terrell said. So if youre going to care about black lives, care about all black lives. Terrell said he will vote for Donald Trump in a July 17 interview with Hannity. A vote for Trump would be the first time Terrell has voted Republican in his life, he explained. His reasoning was due to his dislike for presumptive Democrat nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama presidency. Terrell said Biden was dishonest, not up-front and has a socialist agenda. He reemphasized his opinion on Thursday. I havent received a penny or dime from anyone and Im voting for Trump because he is the best candidate to win the highest office in the land, Terrell said. Whats in the best interest of this country is electing Donald Trump in November. ATHENS Greece will make mask-wearing compulsory in all indoor public spaces and also in outdoor spaces where proper social distancing cannot be observed, its deputy civil protection minister said on Friday, following a further rise in COVID-19 infections. Greece reported 78 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections on Friday, its highest tally in about two months. Overall, it has so far confirmed 4,447 COVID-19 cases with 202 deaths, a relatively low number compared to many European countries, after imposing an early lockdown in the spring. The decisive factor in successfully confronting the pandemic in the first phase was citizens responsibility, the individual responsibility of every one," Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias said in a televised address. This was the secret of Greeces success and we must all show the same responsibility and alertness in this phase." Health authorities made mask-wearing compulsory for consumers at supermarkets 10 days ago and on Tuesday moved to extend the measure to more indoor public spaces to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. Masks are already mandatory on public transport. Authorities will prohibit visits to care facilities for the elderly and to hospitals until mid-August. They will also set a limit of 100 people attending weddings, funerals and baptisms. Other restrictions to go into effect next month will allow no standing clients in bars, night clubs and live music establishments and will ban open air festivities until the end of August. Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor We all want to make an impact when we speak. Yet, theres a simple rule many forget which can undermine the impression we create. Its not just what you say that will have an effect but also how you say it. Im prepared to bet the latter is often more important. Two separate developments made me think of this last week. The first was Rahul Gandhis video that hiding the truth from the Indian people is an anti-national thing to do. Its a credible argument and its politically clever because it hits at Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modis greatest strength whilst scratching at a recent lapse. Its now well recognised that when Mr Modi said neither has anyone intruded across our border nor is anyone intruding, that wasnt the full truth. The Chinese are on Indian territory at multiple locations in Ladakh. Even where theyve retreated there are doubts theyve fully vacated Indian territory. Mr Modis confused statement is interpreted as an attempt to hide the truth. By the same token, it also diminishes his 56-inch strongman image and his promise to defend Indias national interests. Its this twin target Rahul Gandhi wanted to hit. But read what he actually said and ask if its an impressive way of making his point. Doesnt it reveal more of his own immature manner than the PMs contradictions? If you want me to lie that the Chinese have not entered this country, Im not gonna lie. I simply will not do it. I dont care if my whole career goes to hell. Im not going to lie. So, frankly, I dont care if it costs me politically. I dont care if I have no political career at all after that. But Im going to say the truth as far as Indian territory is concerned. If Rahul Gandhi had carefully considered what he wanted to say and done so with greater gravitas, he might have sounded more adult and less adolescent. He wanted to expose the PM but ended up exposing himself. The other example is very different. Its a case of being torn between wanting to say something and not upsetting those who are its target. Its what I call falling between two stools. Let me explain. Its said economist Rathin Roy resigned as director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy because of differences with the government. An article he wrote for the Business Standard after Nirmala Sitharamans July budget of 2019, suggesting her revenue and expenditure figures were misleading, reportedly annoyed the finance ministry. Perhaps this is why he was dropped from the PMs Economic Advisory Council when it was reconstituted last September. Its also whispered hes been told not to speak to newspapers and television channels critical of the government. But when questioned about this in a recent interview, Rathin Roy was caught between confirming the reports and not upsetting the government. Asked whether his article had annoyed the government he first said: If your question is were some people unhappy the answer is unquestionably yes. But when questioned who had told him off, second thoughts got the better of him. Maybe I dont even know. I dont know the precise quarter where that came from. What I heard I heard from hearsay. He answered with similar ambivalence when asked if hed been told not to speak to certain media outlets: It was conveyed to me sometimes that the particular outfit I spoke to was not one which would gather me many affirmative laurels in government. In both instances, the intention was to say yes but the message conveyed was confusion. A few might have understood Rathin Roys dilemma but many probably felt he doesnt know what he wants to say. So, now, do you get my point? When you speak in public you need to be sure of not just what youre saying but also of how to say it. Otherwise, your message might not get the response you hope for. Karan Thapar is author of Devils Advocate: The Untold Story The views expressed are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A prize fund of 9,000 should encourage foresters to apply for the 33rd RDS Irish Forestry and Woodland Awards which are now accepting entries. Prizes span the full range of possible forestry use, from small public amenities to large commercial operations, anyone with woodland is eligible to enter. In fact, you can even nominate friends and neighbours! Dr Michael Carey of the RDS Committee of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said: From the magnificent community woodland at Discovery Park, Castlecomer, with its great range of outdoor activities, to the inaugural Teagasc Farm Forestry Andrew OCarroll, Rathcash, the awards reveal inspiring examples of the benefits and diversity of forestry in Ireland. The woodlands and forestry of Co. Kilkenny are some of the most productive and picturesque in the country, and we know that there are many great people in the area that we have yet to recognise but they need to apply first to have a chance to win. Award winners of each category: Production Forestry, Teagsac Farm Forestry and Community Woodlands, will be announced at the 2021 RDS Spring Awards which will take place in the RDS Concert Hall in April next year. Focusing on sustainable, climate-smart agriculture, the RDS Spring Awards have gone from strength to strength in recent years, attracting over 250 attendees in 2019. With the closing date of August 7 fast approaching the RDS is calling on farmers, landowners and community groups in Co. Kilkenny to enter now for their chance to share in the 9,000 prize fund. Application forms are available at www.rds.ie/springawards or via forestry@rds.ie or on 01 240 7215. A wave of violence in Sudan's Darfur region has forced Save the Children to close facilities providing health services and food for 14,000 children, the charity said Friday. The move came after hundreds of armed men attacked Masteri, a town largely inhabited by farmers from non-Arab minority groups, killing more than 60 people and wounding dozens. Save the Children, which said five children were among the dead, announced the temporary closure of two health facilities and its field office in Masteri, cutting off "more than 14,000 children from life-saving health services". "The health facilities were the only two centres which provided health and nutrition services for children in the area," it said. The attack sparked panic in Masteri and nearby villages. The United Nations humanitarian coordination office OCHA said around 10,000 people had fled towards the town of El-Geneina and another 1,000 had crossed the border into Chad. Conflict struck Darfur in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against then-president Omar al-Bashir, citing marginalisation and discrimination. Khartoum responded with a scorched-earth campaign that left 300,000 people dead and displaced 2.5 million. Violence in Darfur had eased since Bashir's ouster by the army amid mass protests against his rule last year, and after an interim deal between the transitional government and rebel groups. But recent weeks had seen a surge as long-displaced farmers returned to their land. On Sunday, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said security forces would be deployed to the arid western region to protect residents and allow the farming season to go ahead. Arshad Malik, Save the Children's Sudan director, called on Khartoum to investigate the killings and bring those responsible to justice. "It is indefensible that children have been killed and wounded in the violence, and our thoughts go out to their families," he said. "If the centres are not reopened soon, children's lives will be put at further risk. With already 1.1 million children facing hunger in Sudan, this conflict can only increase the number of children in need." MEXICO CITY:With a total of 46, 688 fatalities, Mexico now accounts for the world's third highest number of coronavirus fatalities in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins University. Previously the UK had the third highest toll, and registered 46, 204 deaths as of Saturday, the University revealed in its latest update. The US currently accounts for the world's highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths at 4, 562, 170 and 153, 314. Brazil comes in the second place with 2, 662, 485 infections and 92, 475 fatalities. In terms of cases, Mexico ranks in the sixth place with 424, 637 infections, the University update added. In Mexico, local authorities have previously said they believe the real number of infections is likely to be significantly higher than those reported, the BBC said in a report. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is eager to restart the country's flagging economy. His government announced a phased plan to lift restrictions in May. In Mexico City, the capital, hundreds of thousands of factory workers returned to their jobs in mid-June. Some non-essential businesses were then allowed to reopen at the start of July in the city, the epicentre of the country's epidemic. On Friday 10 state governors slammed the government's handling of the outbreak and called for the resignation of Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lipez-Gatell. On Saturday, the overall number of global coronavirus cases stood at 17, 601, 361 with 679, 600 deaths. Judge stomps companys one last effort to mine uranium {child_byline}By CALEB AYERS Danville Register & Bee {/child_byline} DANVILLE The prospect of uranium mining occurring at Coles Hill in Chatham, the largest known uranium deposit in the country, took another blow when a Wise County Circuit judge ruled against Virginia Uranium Inc. on Thursday. In his ruling, Judge Chadwick Dotson described the lawsuit, which originally was filed in 2015 before finally going to a multi-day trial earlier in July, as one last effort by Virginia Uranium and other companies to utilize their property. In a case involving Virginia Uranium, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling last year that upheld the ability of Virginia or any other state to ban uranium drilling even though the federal Atomic Energy Act allows it with significant regulation. This lawsuit went with a completely different approach: a takings claim. The plaintiffs argued the government unconstitutionally took their private property without a compelling government interest, and the action they did take was overbearing. Dotson conceded the point that significant economic damage did occur through the states moratorium on uranium mining, which has been in place on a temporary basis since 1983, but he concluded the greater harm would be against the people if it were to be lifted now. Even the highest rights cannot be used in a vacuum; we are not solitary creatures. Our actions impact those around us, and sometimes those actions must be hemmed in so as to protect others, he wrote. John Oldendorf, one of the attorneys representing Virginia Uranium, declined to comment for this story. Walter Coles Sr., chairman and CEO of Virginia Uranium and manager of Coles Hill LLC, declined to answer any specific questions, but did say, the only thing were doing right now is reviewing the judges ruling. [We] have not decided how well move forward and what the next steps might be. A moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia was first passed for a year in 1982 before being enacted on a temporary, yet indefinite, basis while lawmakers looked to learn more about the economic benefits and potential environmental impacts. Numerous lobbying efforts, legislative actions and lawsuits from Virginia Uranium, Coles Hill and Bowen Minerals LLC at Coles Hill have been unsuccessful in overturning it. Coles Sr. and Henry Bowen collectively own Coles Hill. Those who oppose the practice of uranium mining largely do so for environmental concerns regarding the safe storage of tailings, which is the radioactive waste from the milling of uranium. There really can be no argument that a moratorium on uranium mining, which is an inherently dangerous activity with potentially dangerous indirect effects, achieves the commonwealths rightful duty to protect the public from injury and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the citizenry, Dotson wrote in his opinion. Based on evidence presented at the trial, Dotson said there are no uranium mining operations in comparable wet climates or with similar population densities that could be looked to as an example. Due to the high water table and possibility of weather events causing radioactive waste to seep into the water, the safe storage of the tailings could not be guaranteed, Dotson wrote. Proponents of uranium mining argue it would be a boon for the economy. An assessment in 2012 found nearly 120 million tons of uranium ore are in the land under Coles Hill. From that, roughly 132 million pounds of actual uranium can be extracted which would be worth an estimated $427 million if no moratorium were in place. The moratorium means the mineral state is worth exponentially less, Dotson wrote. However, others argue uranium mining actually would hurt other businesses and result in a net negative effect on the economy. The Danville Pittsylvania Chamber of Commerce, the Danville Industrial Development Authority, and the River District Association in Danville all signed a brief filed by University of Virginia professor Cale Jaffe in the Supreme Court case in favor of maintaining the moratorium. In his ruling, Dotson also conceded, the moratorium does no more than duplicate the result that could be achieved under Virginia nuisance law, which involves any condition that endangers the general public. That means that even absent a moratorium in the Virginia code, impacted citizens, whether they be neighbors or downstream communities, could go to court [against the operation], Jaffe said. When this case was originally filed in Wise County Circuit Court in 2015, there were two possible outcomes if the court concluded the takings claim was valid: an injunction that would change the regulation, or up to $483 million in compensation to make up for the lost economic benefits. The prospect of compensation was taken off the table in 2016 because of the statute of limitations. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who has repeatedly defended the ban, issued a statement celebrating Thursdays ruling. Todays ruling once again affirms that Virginia is well within its right to regulate mining activities in the commonwealth, Herring said in a statement. Im pleased we were able to yet again successfully defend Virginias environment and uranium mining moratorium in court. As the November 3 presidential vote nears, there are fresh signs that the nation's electoral system is again under attack from foreign adversaries. Intelligence officials confirmed in recent days that foreign actors are actively seeking to compromise the private communications of "US political campaigns, candidates and other political targets" while working to compromise the nation's election infrastructure. Foreign entities are also aggressively spreading disinformation intended to sow voter confusion heading into the fall. There is no evidence that America's enemies have yet succeeded in penetrating campaigns or state election systems, but Democrat Joe Biden's presidential campaign confirmed this week that it has faced multiple related threats. The former vice president's team was reluctant to reveal specifics for fear of giving adversaries useful intelligence. Because of such secrecy, at least in part, foreign interference largely remains an afterthought in the 2020 contest, even as Republicans and Democrats alike concede it poses a serious threat that could fundamentally reshape the election at any moment. Biden's campaign is increasingly concerned that pro-Russian sources have already shared disinformation about Biden's family with President Donald Trump's campaign and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill designed to hurt the Democratic candidate in the days leading up to the election. When asked directly, the Trump campaign refused to say whether it had accepted materials from any foreign nationals related to Biden. Trump was impeached last year after being caught pressuring Ukrainian leaders to produce damaging information about work Biden's son did in the region, even though repeated allegations of corruption against the Bidens have been widely discredited. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a key Trump ally and chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, denied having accepted any damaging materials on Biden from foreign nationals even after at least one Ukranian national, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, told The Washington Post he had shared tapes and transcripts with Johnson's committee and Trump ally Rudy Giuliani. House Democrats announced Friday they have subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents he turned over to Johnson's panel. "It does a disservice to our election security efforts when Democrats use the threat of Russian disinformation as a weapon to cast doubt on investigations they don't like," Johnson spokesperson Austin Altenburg said. The 2020 campaigns and party committees have been receiving regular briefings from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, whose director, Bill Evanina, released a rare public statement last week confirming Russia's continued work to meddle in the US election. Evanina said that Russia, as part of an effort to weaken the US and its global standing, has been spreading disinformation to undermine confidence in American democracy and to denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia 'establishment' in America. The threat is not limited to Russia. China, a target of escalating condemnation across the Trump administration in recent weeks, has been looking for ways to affect American policy, counter criticism of Beijing and pressure political figures it views as opposed to Chinese interests, Evanina said, while Iran has been involved in circulating disinformation and anti-American content online. Trump's team reported no specific foreign threats against the president's campaign, but campaign general counsel Matthew Morgan highlighted the Republican Party's yearslong effort to install various voter ID requirements across the country including photo verification, signature matching and witness requirements as an important tool to block foreign interference. Contrary to their narrative, the Democrats' efforts to tear these safeguards apart "as they sue in 18 states across the nation would open our election system up to foreign interference," Morgan said. "That's why we're fighting back to protect the sanctity of our election system. Despite Morgan's argument, there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in US politics, whether by American voters or foreign nationals. And there is no evidence, as Trump repeatedly charges, that an increased reliance on mail balloting this fall leaves the electoral system particularly vulnerable to outside meddling. The president pointed to those baseless claims this week to suggest delaying the election, something that can't be done without support in Congress, where Democrats and Republicans alike rejected the notion. There is ample evidence, however, that foreign powers are trying to sow confusion by spreading misinformation in addition to seeking to hack into political campaigns, as Evanina said last week. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, a Republican, described Trump's warnings about mail voting absurd and ridiculous. "He should be far more forceful and far more direct in condemning foreign interference," Ridge said in an interview. "The enemy is not within." Foreign interference played a significant role in the 2016 election, of course. US intelligence agencies determined that Russian operatives seeking to boost Trump's campaign hacked into the Democratic National Committee's servers and later shared damaging messages with WikiLeaks while running a covert social media campaign aimed at sowing discord among American voters. A former San Antonio police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black man during a 2016 arrest at a North Side apartment complex died early Friday. John David Lee, 41, was pronounced dead at 12:48 a.m., according to the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office. His cause and manner of death are listed as pending, investigators said. Lee, who had been with SAPD since February 2004, left the department on Feb. 13, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records. He was an 11-year veteran at the time of his encounter with 36-year-old Antronie Scott. On Feb. 4, 2016, Scott who was wanted on two felony warrants, was being followed by undercover officers with the Repeat Offenders Program. They watched as Scott drove to the Wood Hollow Apartments, 10362 Sahara St., at about 6:45 p.m. and called for a uniformed officer to approach him, SAPD Chief William McManus said at the time. Lee arrived at the complex and pulled up to Scott. As Scott was exiting a white Mercedes sedan, Lee approached him and said to Scott, Let me see your hands. Scott spun around quickly and Lee almost immediately fired his service weapon because the officer feared for his life, McManus said. Scott, who was shot in the upper torso, died at the scene as his wife sat in the passenger seat of their Mercedes. McManus placed Lee on administrative leave and issued a contemplated indefinite suspension immediately after the shooting. In March 2016, the chief instead decided to provide Lee with more training. According to McManus, Lee had put his vehicle too closely to Scotts during the traffic stop, putting him in a tactically poor situation. The chief also considered that Lee was following instructions from undercover detectives. The case brought attention to SAPDs tactics and use of force for a time that year. McManus decisions in the case led to a vote of no-confidence from the San Antonio Police Officers Association. Mike Helle, president of the association, said then that use of force was not rampant in the department. Officers also reportedly felt McManus was folding to community pressure while ignoring how Lee had been trying to arrest Scott for outstanding felonies that included possession of a firearm. At the time of the shooting, Lee had four incidents on his resume, and two of them were accidents. After the shooting, Scotts wife and mother filed civil rights lawsuits against Lee and the city seeking damages arising from his death. The amended complaint also names current and former city leaders including McManus, former City Manager Sheryl Sculley, and former Mayor Ivy Taylor. It alleges that they failed to properly supervise, screen, discipline, transfer, counsel or otherwise control officers known to engage in the use of excessive force, including officers repeatedly accused of such acts. The suits have since been consolidated and were reset on March 18 under the exigent circumstances created by the pandemic, according to court records. When Lawyer Thomas J. Henry filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Scott's wife in 2016, he said he was not alleging that race played a part in the shooting. Recent Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyds death have brought new attention to incidents in which Black men, including Scott, were killed by police in San Antonio. On June 14, Scotts son, Antronie Scott Jr., was among the protesters at the Roll For Peace protest in San Antonio. Scott held up his iPhone to the crowd, tears streaming down his face as he talked about his fathers death four years ago. Dad died because cops shot him in the heart after thinking his iPhone 4 was a gun, the young man said. In June, several protest groups and advocates called on Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales to re-examine the cases of Scott, Marquise Jones and Charles Roundtree. Gonzales has since said there was no new evidence to reopen the cases. An SAPD spokesperson said Friday afternoon a statement on Lees death would not be made because the results of his autopsy had not been released. Staff writers Laura Garcia and John Tedesco contributed to this story. Jacob Beltran is a reporter covering San Antonio and Bexar County. To read more from Jacob, become a subscriber. jbeltran@express-news.net | Twitter: @JBfromSA Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Guglielmo Mangiapane and Antonio Parrinello (Reuters) Palermo, Italy Sat, August 1, 2020 20:05 535 6657ac82168da9fa101c8a4066aee505 2 People student,Education,Italy,graduates Free At 96, Giuseppe Paterno has faced many tests in life - childhood poverty, war and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic. Now he has sailed through an exam that makes him Italy's oldest university graduate. This week, the former railway worker stepped forward to receive his diploma and the traditional laurel wreath awarded to Italian students when they graduate, applauded by his family, teachers and fellow students more than 70 years his junior. "I am a normal person, like many others," he said, when asked what it felt like to be graduating so late. "In terms of age I have surpassed all the others but I didn't do it for this." Already in his 90s when he enrolled for a degree in History and Philosophy at the University of Palermo, Paterno grew up loving books, but he never had the chance to study. "I said, 'that's it, now or never,' and so in 2017, I decided to enroll," he told Reuters in his apartment in the Sicilian city of Palermo, which he rarely leaves nowadays due to his frailty. "I understood that it was a little late to get a three-year degree but I said to myself 'let's see if I can do it'." On Wednesday, he graduated first in his class with top honors, receiving congratulations from the university chancellor Fabrizio Micari. Read also: 67-year-old becomes China's 'oldest new mother' Great depression, then war Growing up in a poor family in Sicily in the years before the Great Depression, Paterno received only basic schooling as a child. He joined the navy and served during World War Two before going on to work in the railways as he married and brought up two children. In a society focused on rebuilding after the war, work and family were the priorities, but Paterno wanted to learn and graduated from high school at the age of 31, always harboring a desire to go further. "Knowledge is like a suitcase that I carry with me, it is a treasure," he said. As a student, he tapped out his essays on the manual typewriter his mother gave him when he retired from the railways in 1984. He eschewed Google in favor of printed books and was not tempted by the late-night student parties of his 20-year-old classmates, who applauded him warmly at the graduation ceremony. "You are an example for younger students," his Sociology professor, Francesca Rizzuto, told him after he passed his final oral examination in June. Paterno confessed to a little unease with the video calls that replaced classroom teaching during the coronavirus shutdown, but said he was not put off by the disease itself after the war and everything else he had been through. "All of that strengthened us, all of my peer group, all of those who are still alive," he said. "It didn't really scare us that much." As for what he planned to do next, he said he was not about to stop now he had graduated. "My project for the future is to devote myself to writing; I want to revisit all the texts I didn't have a chance to explore further. This is my goal." Topics : student Education Italy graduates US President Donald Trump has walked back the idea of a "delay" to November's presidential election just hours after suggesting it. Mr Trump was heavily slated by both Republicans and Democrats after raising the possibility of delaying the poll as he made unsubstantiated allegations that increased postal voting will result in fraud. The president told reporters: "Do I want to see a date change? No. But I don't want to see a crooked election." It marked a shift in the language of a president lagging in the polls and grappling with deepening economic and public health crises. His earlier suggestion of a delay drew immediate push-back from Democrats and Republicans alike in a nation that has long held itself up as a beacon to the world for its history of peaceful transfer of power. Shifting election day is virtually impossible and the very idea represented another bracing attempt by Mr Trump to undermine confidence in the American political system. The date of the presidential election - the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in every fourth year - is enshrined in federal law and would require an act of Congress to change. Mr Trump repeatedly tests the Republican Party's limits on issues including race, trade and immigration. Now he has struck a boundary. GOP officials around the country quickly pushed back against Mr Trump's suggestion that it might be necessary to delay the election because of the unfounded threat of voter fraud. They reassured voters that the election would proceed on the constitutionally mandated day as it has for more than two centuries. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley was especially blunt: "All I can say is, it doesn't matter what one individual in this country says. We still are a country based on the rule of law, and we want to follow the law." New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu vowed his state would hold its November elections as scheduled: "End of story." Liz Cheney, Representative for Wyoming and daughter of former US vice-president Dick Cheney, said: "The resistance to this idea among Republicans is overwhelming." The top Republicans in the House and Senate, who have spent the past four years championing Mr Trump in Congress, also distanced themselves from the notion of a delayed election. It was a rare rebuke for Mr Trump from his fellow Republicans but one that might not last. There was little conservative opposition to Mr Trump's broader push to raise questions about the legitimacy of the November 3 election, including his suggestion later that a delayed result because of mail-in ballots would be a sign of fraud. The simple reality remains that Republicans up and down the ballot this autumn need Mr Trump's fervent base on their side. The dynamic has forced Trump-backed politicians to walk a delicate balance as they condemn the president's most erratic behaviour and ideas while trying not to upset his die-hard loyalists. At the same time, many Republican leaders are struggling under the weight of health, economic and social crises that the Trump administration has so far failed to contain. The government announced Thursday that the US economy plunged by a record-shattering 32.9pc annual rate last quarter as the pandemic forces a wave of layoffs that shows no sign of abating. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Just this month, a video of a dog missing his human went viral. The clip accumulated over 112,000 views. The dog was captured carrying his owners shoe onto the couch and curling up with the treasured footwear. Now, the footage assumes the dog is lonely (maybe he just likes a good shoe to chew). But the number of video views suggests that the dogs loneliness is speaking to people. It is meeting them in their present struggle. Consequently, many trending, current articles highlight the negative implications of loneliness imparted by social isolation and quarantine. But what exactly is loneliness in a pandemic? Is it the resulting emotion from physically being alone, or is it rooted in something deeper? A temporal perspective? The elderly and those at the highest risk of catching COVID-19 are the focus of much discussion surrounding mental and emotional well-being. Research suggests negative correlations between loneliness and cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and cognitive health. Medical studies list depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbances as some of the major implications of social isolation. Some even point to the potential for lasting negative impacts on our youth. The wealth of data that highlights the detrimental impacts of loneliness cannot be ignored. As humans, there is a substantial and harmful relationship between feeling alone and physical health. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) is now treating loneliness as a health priority. And while social isolation and lack of community most certainly leave us craving intimate human connection, this article left me to consider what lessons we might reap during this pause for solitude. Is this plague of loneliness, at least in part, due to a perspective rooted in the temporal? Called to gather but commanded to stay home Community is good. In fact, we are called to gather. Psalm 133:1 says: Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! There is no doubt about the value of worshiping and communing with fellow believers. Hebrews 10:2425 reminds us: And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. But we are also called to obey the government: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God (Romans 13:1). So then, given directives to limit exposure to those around us, are we destined to loneliness, isolation, depression, anxiety, and the host of other ailments associated with social isolation? Or does quarantine offer a situation in which physical interaction is restricted but community does not have to be wiped clear? Is the social isolation from the novel coronavirus simply perceived? Can we combat it with a shift in perspective, a sharpened toolbelt, and the mental armor of our Father? Loneliness is a disease that spans generations YoungMinds, an organization aimed at empowering young people to speak up for their mental health, conducted a study of parents and caregivers finding that 67 percent were concerned about the long-term impact of coronavirus on their childrens mental well-being. But it isnt just COVID-19 that has sparked isolation. A study before the pandemic estimated that isolation impacted over eight million older adults. In How to avoid elderly loneliness during COVID, eighty-six-year-old therapist Katharine Esty explained: Aging well is really all about connections and being socially active. A study conducted in New Zealand supports Estys viewpoint, pointing to remaining socially engaged as one of two integral factors to health in the centenarian populace, with abstaining from cigarettes listed right alongside it. And the young adult population isnt at any advantage. Named the loneliest generation before quarantine, it seems that those aged eighteen to twenty-nine struggle with factors such as an overwhelming exposure to social media and lack of person-to-person interaction. A 2020 silver lining Isolation and loneliness continue to be two real hurdles to present-day health, and the pandemic hasnt helped. The first begets the second. But does it have to? Or rather, does it always? In Loneliness Hasnt Increased Despite Pandemic, Research Finds. What Helped?, Joanne Silberner paints the picture of quarantine and social isolation in a very interesting light. Silberner describes several studies that point to the halt of the social-media-coined ailment fear of missing out. She also describes the camaraderie that a joint human struggle has established and how it has lifted the weightiness of loneliness rather than adding to the issue. Psychologist Jonathan Kanter of Washington University stated: That sense of solidarity that people are feeling when they are collectively under some threat togetherwhen they are collectively going through a challenge togetherseems to be a real strong protective factor. Protective factorKanters words struck me. If we can find protection and comfort in a joint fight against a novel virus, can we not find that much more protection and comfort in our joint fight against the spiritual forces of evil (Ephesians 6:12)? Silberners article references the silver lining to quarantine. To quote Kanter again: If there is any silver lining to this [pandemic]and its really hard to speak of silver liningsit is that so many people are finding ways to connect and finding ways to keep relationships. People are discovering mechanisms to combat loneliness, even when they are alone. They are finding ways to be content in the still, quiet, and maybe lonely confines of their homes. They are understanding the means by which they might connect and maintain relationships despite a lack of physical proximity. And they are uncovering strength in facing a struggle with the rest of the human race. Shields, helmets, and swords Some are even getting creative with ways to lower risk while still gathering with a select few. Quarantine bubbles and quaranteams are new buzzwords founded on the premise of physically interacting within a group who remain isolated from people outside ones quaranteam. Videoconferencing church meetings via Zoom have become popular. Volunteers from a high school in Colorado are equipping their local elderly community with the skills to navigate online video resources and other technological avenues for engagement. One participant of the program humorously offered: You now have to get dressed to come to church on Sunday. You cant come in your pajamas anymore. Is loneliness a real threat in these unprecedented times? I believe the answer is yes. But I also believe there is hope for an enlightened perspective and a shift in our point of view. While we may be alone, there is space to build new relationships and maintain present onesif we are willing and able to take advantage of technology and the reduced risk its protocols offer. And the evidence of strength discovered in a shared struggle positions churches and Christian communities to remind Christ followers that we are fighting something much larger than a crown-shaped virus. We are fighting Satan and the temptations of a fallen worldtogether. So let us put on the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, and pray hard for whatever the second half of 2020 holds (Ephesians 6:1618). We might be the only people in our homes, but we are never alone, for he is with usalways. Originally posted at denisonforum.org Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is flexing diplomatic and military muscle in Libya to bring about a cease-fire and a new round of peace talks. While Libya is the battlefield, there is a larger regional contest shaping up in the standoff between Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, it seems, is unimpressed by the Egyptian presidents red lines and threat of force. It will therefore likely be up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, rather than Sisi or anyone else, to prevent an escalation. "Time is not on our side" UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in July described conditions in Libya as "gloomy," adding that "time is not on our side." He expressed concern about foreign interference in the war, the 400,000 Libyans displaced by the conflict, and the spike in COVID-19 cases. A UN report this week detailed the scale of civilian deaths attributed to the conflict over the past month. The World Bank had designated Libya at risk of endemic poverty as a fragile state experiencing high intensity conflict, and that was before the pandemic. Red lines get blurry Egypt backs Khalifa Hifter, a military strongman whose forces have been rapidly losing ground to the Libyan Government of National Accord thanks to Turkeys military intervention on the government side. Among those on the side of the Government of National Accord are thousands of jihadi fighters shipped in from Syria, as Amberin Zaman reports. Libya has become one of the Middle Easts regional fault lines, with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on one side, and Turkey and Qatar on the other, as Gilles Kepel explained in a recent podcast. Turkey and Qatar are considered supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the others consider a terrorist group. Russia and France also back Hifter, and Erdogan has been at odds with NATO ally French President Emmanuel Macron over differences over Libya, as Ayla Jean Yackley and Bryant Harris report. The United Nations recognizes the Government of National Accord, so Erdogan believes he has international legitimacy on his side. If this all seems very 1914, even worse are the random acts that can escalate things. Hagar Hosny writes that some in Egypt speculate that a recent terrorist attack by Islamic State-linked terrorists in Egypts Sinai is connected to Sisis decision to intervene in Libya. In other words, the fight in Libya is about containing Islamist and Brotherhood affiliated groups in Egypt and elsewhere in the region. On July 20, Sisi said a parliamentary resolution that day approving combat missions outside the countrys border had provided Egypts intervention in Libya international legitimacy if it decides to deploy. Hifter has support among tribes in northeast Libya, where the oil fields are located. Sisi declared any move by the government to take Sirte, the hometown of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi and gateway to the fields, as a red line for Egypt. Sisi also has called for further arming of Libyan tribes in the region to hold off the Turkish-backed government offensive. Does Erdogan think Sisi is bluffing? With Hifter on defense, Sisi has also proposed a cease-fire and a new round of political talks in conjunction with his threat of military force, although the initiative may be dead on arrival, from Turkeys perspective. Erdogan is loath to grant a seat at the table to Hifter, and may not take Sisis warning about the use of force seriously, Metin Gurcan writes. Sisi may be eager for an intervention, hoping to boost his popularity in the Arab world and sustain the UAEs financial backing, but Ankara doubts the Egyptian military shares his eagerness, writes Gurcan. According to Turkish assessments, Egypts military would be reluctant to engage in a cross-border campaign with ambiguous military goals and risk losses that might damage its credibility and fuel internal rifts. The Turkish assessment is that Algeria and Tunisia would see Egyptian intervention as an unwanted escalation, as Simon Speakman Cordall explains, and that the United States and Russia, both close allies of Egypt, would advise against it. Did Putin get Erdogan to cave? Cengiz Candar writes that while a joint statement July 22 from Turkey and Russia backed diplomacy in Libya, that may not mean much because Erdogan feels he has the upper hand with Egypt and Hifter. Turkey committed itself, upon Russian demand, to refrain from going to war for Sirte and al-Jufra. Also, the reference to intra-Libyan political dialogue might be interpreted as Turkey, albeit implicitly, conceding to accepting Hifter as a party in the peace process, given the Libyan leader was also present at the Berlin Conference, Candar explains. Nonetheless, Candar concludes, All those who have faith in Erdogan's Libyan policy, which is now contained by Russia, can count on the inconsistency of Turkey's president. There is nothing permanent for Erdogan. Hence, although a war with Egypt that could have erupted due to his miscalculation is averted for the time being, one can never know what the near future might bring. Semih Idiz writes that Erdogans personal relationships with both Putin and Trump have strengthened Ankaras hand and averted serious crises, which could even have escalated into direct military confrontations between Turkish and US/Russian forces, most notably in Syria adding, Ankara has also not held back from using its ties with Moscow and Washington against these powers, depending on the occasion. Can the United States and Russia stave off further crisis? Libya is a collapsed state in conflict, a battlefield for regional powers since the overthrow of Gadhafi in 2011. And like Syria and Yemen, Libyas fate is not ultimately in Libyas hands. The Libyan conflict is, regrettably, on a path of "Syrianization," as Fehim Tastekin called it, the result of the jihadis shipped there by Turkey to fight on behalf of the Libyan government against Hifter. As in Syria, Putin and Erdogan find themselves at odds but willing to talk it out. And as in Syria, Putin is working all angles, not only with Erdogan and Sisi, but also with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (known as MBZ) and others, as Samuel Ramani writes. And that brings us to Trump, who has been actively engaged in his own summit-level diplomacy with Sisi, Erdogan, MBZ, Macron and Putin. All operate by personal connection and the action moves when they talk. Libya is a matter of war and peace, and the United States can further seize the role of invaluable mediator. The risks of escalation remain high, but the tele-diplomacy has the potential to energize the UN Security Council especially if Trump, Putin and Macron get on the same page for an active role in bringing an overdue reprieve to the Libyan people. A man of humanity is one who, in seeking to establish himself, finds a foothold for others and who, in desiring attaining himself, helps others to attain. The brothers decide in 1854 to journey from their home in Kwangtung province, searching for a better life in the United States. They leave behind their mother, Li Yus wife and soon-to-be-born child, intending to stay for only a few years, send money home and finally return to reunite their families. But like many assumptions the pair has made about life in America, what they experience is far different from what they had planned. First in the search for gold, then on the work gangs for the railroad, they face trials they never dreamed of. Not the least of their troubles come from strong prejudice against men seen as interlopers from across the Pacific whose only aim is to steal American jobs. A newspaper at the time, published as the railroad gangs move eastward through unyielding terrain, puts it this way: Praise for the people of Wrexham with a reminder its important we all keep following the rules as we enjoy these new freedoms This article is old - Published: Saturday, Aug 1st, 2020 Anyone who has any symptoms of coronavirus no matter how mild is being encouraged to visit one of two mobile testings units in the area before the end of today. The easy-access have been located at Caia Park Health Centre (Prince Charles Road) and Hightown Community Resource Centre (Fusilier Way) since Wednesday. They were introduced earlier this week to make it easier for people living near the edge of Wrexham town centre to get a Covid-19 test if they think they might have symptoms, regardless of how mild. The work has been co-ordinated by Public Health Wales, Wrexham Council and Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, with support from the army, AVOW and the local voluntary sector. Over 800 people presented themselves for testing since Wednesday, with Public Health Wales stating yesterday that all the test results from the first day are in with around 400 tests resulting in two confirmed cases. Two senior councillors have issued their thanks to the public for doing their bit to help keep Wrexham safe. Councillor Mark Pritchard, Leader of Wrexham Council, said: The response from the people of Wrexham has been amazing over the past four or five months. Lets keep going. By sticking to the rules, we can keep Wrexham safe. With pubs and restaurants allowed to serve indoors again from Monday , and other services and facilities continuing to unlock in line with Government guidance, its important we all keep following the rules as we enjoy these new freedoms. Lets stick together, lets stick to the rules, and lets keep Wrexham safe. I know we can do this. Councillor Hugh Jones, Wrexham Councils Lead Member for Communities, Partnerships, Public Protection and Community Safety, said: The support from the local community has been incredible. Staff working at the sites have been blown away by the community spirit theyve seen everyone has been so kind, co-operative and considerate of others. Every person who has come forward for a test to get their symptoms checked has done a really important thing for their community. By taking this small step, theyve played their part in helping to keep their family, their community and the whole of Wrexham safe. Im incredibly proud of the communities of Caia Park and Hightown, and of the people of Wrexham as a whole. Now everyone in Wrexham needs to keep going, we all still have a huge part to play by following advice and guidance. The mobile testing centres on Caia Park Health Centre on Prince Charles Road, and at Hightown Community Resource Centre on Fusilier Way (off Bryn Y Cabanau Road) until the end of today. If you think you have symptoms, you can also apply for a test online or by phone. Take a look at the Welsh Government website for more info. If you feel really unwell, use the online symptom checker or dial 111 (or call 999 if you think theres something seriously wrong). Spreading some love and cheer the AMITSU way By Joshua Surendraraj View(s): View(s): AMITSU which stands for AMI Tsunami Childrens House Foundation was founded in 2006 by the late PremelaWijemanne. Back then, Premela owned her own Montessori in Kansas City, USA. But, once the Tsunami hit Sri Lanka in 2004, she decided to start a home in Sri Lanka to provide a safe place for the children affected by the tsunami. When she passed away the home was left to her brother Dil Wijemanne, who decided to run it as a family from that point onwards with his wife Alison Joachim spearheading the foundation. Sixteen years later, they continued maintaining the home, which at present cares for 24 amazing children. We conversed with Alison Wijemanne, the daughter of Dil and Alison, who gave us an insight into the day to day operations of the foundation. She explains that aside from providing these children with a safe home and all the necessities they may have, the foundation also looks into their education. The goal is to ensure that each child receives a holistic education, which they can use one day to build a good future for themselves so they will never have to go back to the life they left behind. The hope is that when the children are old enough, they would be able to find their own path and AMITSU aims at helping them achieve whatever they set their minds to. The foundation also includes an in-house Montessori for the younger children, which was a request made by Premela, a montessori teacher herself. And as the children grow older, they are sent to a nearby school, and are also given English tuition, computer classes and dance classes. The foundation ensures that these children finish their education for as long as they are with them . Their higher education is also looked into thereafter. Our aim is to hopefully see that these children are sent out into the world with a good education and trained in a vocation suited to their talents, once they have completed their secondary school education, Alison says. The foundation also sets up bank accounts for each child, which will be used to help their future, after they finish their Advanced Level examinations. It has been AMITSUs priority to have a small home because they always wanted to look after the children in the best possible way. Therefore, they have not had more than 30 children at a time because thats their capacity at the moment. Each child has their own bed and we know we can provide well for the children that we have, Alison explains. Of course running the foundation is no easy task and AMITSU faces several challenges as well. At present AMITSU comprises a small team, which is funded and run by one family. Therefore, they need all the help they can get. So, whether youd want to fundraise for them, volunteer or just choose one of the many ways to donate or sponsor, the offer to help will be received with open arms. The only people more grateful to you than the family that runs the foundation, will be the children whose lives youre about to improve significantly, Alison adds. Currently the foundation is funded in many ways. For instance, a portion of the profits from the Wijemanne family business is directed to AMITSU. Aside from this, they also have benefactors who donate and help in different ways. Some people also sponsor the education of a child of their choosing. Most of them are friends of ours. My mum also does a great job in fundraising for the foundation in a variety of ways, Alison says. Being able to watch the foundation grow throughout the years has taught Alison how lucky she is to have had the chance to grow up in a loving home with two amazing parents and that unfortunately many people arent so lucky. Alison looks forward to continue playing a role in helping AMITSU grow and to provide these children with a good education and a safe home with love and care to grow up in, for as long as they need it. The foundations hope and prayer is that no child will ever have to go back to the life that they left behind and that they will grow to be productive citizens of their country. After staying with us we hope to encourage them to create a brighter future for themselves and we will give them all the tools to do exactly that. Any form of donations and help is welcome and greatly appreciated. This can be through the foundation website www.amitsu.org or by calling them on +94775810256. The big picture: As the geopolitical pressure ratchets up on TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, there's talks of President Trump moving to force ByteDance to divest itself of the popular social app. More interestingly, Microsoft is reportedly kicking the tires on buying it from ByteDance. The Redmond software giant doesn't have a major presence in social media outside of the professional network LinkedIn. TikTok could give it one. Update (Aug 2): It's been a busy weekend with back and forths of what the future of TikTok will look like, if any, in the United States. The rumor of Microsoft taking over the social app has now been confirmed by the software giant, who has made an official statement saying that following a conversation between CEO Satya Nadella and President Trump, Microsoft plans to continue discussions to purchase TikTok. The company's intent is to move swiftly to complete acquisition discussions with ByteDance by mid September, while remaining in communication with the U.S. government and make the takeover subject to a complete security review. Microsoft has clarified that the preliminary proposal involves a purchase of TikTok in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Under the new structure, Microsoft is proposing to add a layer of "world-class security, privacy, and digital safety protections." to ensure transparency to users and security oversight by governments in these countries. Multiple sources suggested late Friday that Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, the popular video app owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance. A potential acquisition from Microsoft seemed to stem from reports that President Trump would order ByteDance to sell its US operations. TikTok evolved from ByteDance's Douyin app which was primarily aimed at the Chinese market, before merging with the app musical.ly which brought TikTok to a worldwide audience. Since then the app has exploded in popularity and has subsequently attracted the ireful gaze of US lawmakers and regulators. As TikTok has risen in popularity, the app has been increasingly put under the microscope over concerns for privacy and national security. Regarding privacy, the app has already been caught copying iOS' clipboard contents, and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticized the app, calling it "fundamentally parasitic." TikTok also has a history of controversial data collection practices. TikTok has also been caught in the middle of the back and forth between the US and China, and over the alleged ties that ByteDance has to the Chinese government. TikTok scrapes a shocking amount of data on its users, and under the China Internet Security Law, ByteDance would have to surrender that data if the Chinese government requested it. However, TikTok maintains that its servers aren't based in China, and as such, aren't subject to such laws. TikTok is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and there are rumors that ByteDance could be added to the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List. That's the same list that Huawei found itself on, and would mean ByteDance would be cut off from American IP and technology. Microsoft acquiring TikTok would likely go a long way in alleviating western fears of privacy and national security. ByteDance has made its own attempts at lessening these concerns, including appointing former Disney executive, Kevin Mayer, as its CEO and even floating the idea of American investment companies buying back the company from ByteDance. Given its sheer popularity, especially with young crowds, TikTok is likely to continue in a controversial spotlight unless something big happens. TikTok has been banned by the Navy, Army, and the TSA. Joe Biden's presidential campaign staff was recently forbidden from using the app on work and personal devices, and the list could go on and on. Representative Image Shanti vividly remembers April 2015. She was working with a prominent IT outsourcing company in the US. A tech worker with more than 10 years of experience, she was excited and looking forward to a flourishing career. One day the project she was working on was given to a new team, which was packed with Indians. Soon after, Shanti and two other team members were side-lined on the grounds that the project did not require extra members. She was then laid off with the two colleagues. A former colleague told her later that the team recruited replacements immediately after their departure. Shanti said her exit had nothing to do with her qualification or skills. It was because the Indians in the team preferred to work with members of their own caste, according to her. Shanti belongs to a community in Tamil Nadu that is considered backward by the state government. I could have sued, but it would have taken a lot more toll on my mental health, she said. She also did not have proof that it was a case of discrimination and she was not sure how her experience would be perceived by the industry. Instead, she found a new job. Long-running problem Caste discrimination in the tech world? Really? At any other time, the experience of Shanti would probably have been met with disbelief. But not so much after a lawsuit was filed on June 30 by Californias Department of Fair Employment and Housing against US tech major Cisco on behalf of a Dalit employee for work discrimination based on caste. Also Read: Cisco sued by California state for job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste The lawsuit accused two upper-caste Brahmins, Sundara Iyer and Raman Kompella, of harassing the Dalit worker, referred to as John Doe to protect his identity, in their capacity as managers. Cisco was sued for allegedly denying the worker, who immigrated to the US from India, raises and professional opportunities as well as making him endure a hostile work environment. The Cisco lawsuit has now put the spotlight on caste discrimination that has long pervaded the Indian community in Silicon Valley and the tech industry in particular. Well, what else do you expect when Indians who grew up prejudiced and follow the caste hierarchy in India go the US, asked Kancha Ilaiah, a Dalit activist and scholar. They would obviously follow the same practice there. Moneycontrol spoke to Shanti and a scrum of IT engineers to understand the prevalence of harassment based on caste in the tech industry. Armaan, a senior executive with a top IT firm in the US, and from a minority community in India, said he has not faced outright discrimination thanks to his senior position. But if you ask me if it exists, of course it does, he said. Armaan said it has been five years since he was last promoted despite handling million-dollar client accounts. Most of his peers who joined the company in the same role with him have gone on to head verticals. I can assure you that there was no difference in terms of performance because till date I am one of the go-to persons for handling a crisis and challenging clients. Armaan said. Why then was he not promoted? My superior who is from a dominant caste promoted people who he related to, be it same community or caste and I was just not. When it comes to climbing the corporate hierarchy, the bias exists, Armaan said. This bias, tech workers who spoke to Moneycontrol pointed out, is subtle in most cases. There is not much empirical data to show the extent of discrimination, said Karthikeyan Shanmugam, executive member, Ambedkar Kings Study Circle (AKSC), an organisation that is involved in educating people about caste discrimination. The organisation is currently collecting testimonies from Dalits in the US about the discrimination they faced. Indians in the US Indians began moving to the US in the 1990s riding the wave of an IT services outsourcing boom. Most of these happened to be engineers from the upper caste community in India. Today, the number of Indians living in the US has grown exponentially; by 2017, there were about 4 million Indians living in the US, according to a 2019 report by the Strengthening South Asian Communities in America. Indians are the third largest immigration group in the US after the Mexicans and Chinese. The Indian population is more striking in Silicon Valley, the tech capital of the US. According to the 2019 report, there were about 5 lakh Indians in California, accounting for 1.3 percent of the states total population and home to 20 percent of the total Indian immigrant population. There is no clear data on how many of these Indians are Dalits. But according to the lawsuit against Cisco, only 1.5 percent of the Indian immigrants were from the Dalit community as of 2003. This number could very well have increased now. As Ilaiah emphasised, these engineers landed in new shores carrying some horrid habits from home. It (caste bias) is something all of us grew up with and continue to live with, said Shanmugam of AKSC. Journalist Yashica Dutt underscored how caste bias has taken root in the Indian tech community in the US in a powerful article in The New York Times. Caste prejudice and discrimination is rife within the Indian communities in the United States and other countries. Its chains are even turning the work culture within multibillion-dollar American tech companies, and beyond, she wrote. A 2018 Caste in the Unites States report by Equality Labs revealed that 67 percent of Dalits surveyed in the diaspora reported being treated unfairly at their workplace because of their caste. Up to 12 percent of Shudras had the same experience. The report also revealed that though Indians are by far the largest community to command a large payscale, there is a catch here. Close to 30 percent of Dalits and 25 percent of other lower caste people in the diaspora are still making less than $24,999 a year. But only 10 percent of Brahmins make less than $24,999 a year. Discrimination is as vast as the Indian population in the US, said Ilaiah. Indeed, divisions in the Indian community in the US run deep. Indians from one caste are a tightly-knit unit in the US, according to Shanmugam. So as one moves around in the same circle even in the US, they tend to gravitate towards the same community in workplaces as well, he said. Also Read: Cisco caste-bias case: Increasing voices now call for an anti-caste framework in Silicon Valley companies Even IIT and IIM graduates who are handpicked by the top US giants and IT firms to work in the US carry with them the bias, Shanmugam said. These divisions manifest at lunch breaks or informal team meetings, where there are large number of Indians. That is what happened to T Kathiravan, a senior executive living in California. In his testimony to ASKC, which Moneycontrol reviewed, he shared how his direct manager from a dominant caste used a slur for Indian affirmative action policies and claimed that it would have destroyed any chances of education for his son back in India. Tensions rise in the tech workplaces in the US as it happens in India when people from a community do not conform to caste norms. This too translates to discrimination, however subtle, both in workplaces and social life. Take for instance learning music, especially Indian classical music, which has been dominated by the upper-caste community in India. AG Ramya, a Dalit living in California, said in her testimony to AKSC that she and her husband were enquired about their caste by the music teacher in the US when she wanted to enroll their daughter. The teacher told the family that only certain sects of people have the ability of master music, according to Ramya. Devi, another tech worker, never fit in the US. For two years after she moved to the US in 2013, Devi, who has 15 years of experience, tried to take a stab at socialising with other Indians. She hosted parties, participated in community get-togethers and jumped from one group of Silicon Valley mothers to another. I just was not accepted, reminisced Devi, who is from a community that the Tamil Nadu government has designated as backward class. Any group I go to, there are a standard set of questions I would be asked, Devi explained. It was never what her caste was though, never that direct, she added. I would be asked if I have a Green Card, what kind of house I was living, if it was owned and if it had a lawn, she said. If answer to any of these questions is a no, I would be ignored totally. What is the solution? Shanmugam said it has to start with sensitising the Americans, majority of whom are unaware of Indian caste system and think of Indians as a big monolithic group. To understand more about workplace discrimination based on caste, we need to have empirical data on how people are being discriminated, he added. Though discrimination may not always be obvious in workplaces, there is a tendency for upper caste leaning given that majority of the Indian supervisors are from this community, he added. The first step is to accept that such practices exist. What we are trying to do is that urging these companies to recognise caste as operating similarly to race and gender as a source of discrimination and harassment and incorporate caste practices as unfair and punishable practice in their human resources policies, Shanmugam said. Once that happens, we want to have caste-centric policy that will not only help Indian American citizens but also to global offices where caste has transported with South Asian employees," he said. The names of tech workers quoted in the article have been changed to protect their identity. The full Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has agreed to hold a re-hearing on the Justice Department's efforts to drop the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the court announced Tuesday. The announcement from the full court tosses out a previous 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel on the court last month that sought to overrule D.C. district judge Emmet Sullivan and demand he accept the DOJ's motion to end the case. MORE: Judge to examine whether Flynn committed perjury after surprise DOJ reversal in case Sullivan had appointed an outside former judge to argue against the DOJ and Flynn's legal team as he weighed whether to move forward in sentencing Flynn, who previously pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the former Russian Ambassador in 2016. Sullivan had also raised issue with whether Flynn committed perjury by seeking to withdraw his plea. The announcement is the latest twist in the more than three-year, politically fraught case first brought by former special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. MORE: DOJ moves to dismiss case against former Trump adviser Michael Flynn Attorney General William Barr made the surprise decision to move to drop the case in May after he said a U.S. attorney he had appointed to review the FBI's investigation uncovered evidence that undercut Flynn's prosecution. Barr has repeatedly sought to brush off criticism over his intervention in the case involving one of the president's allies, saying in an interview at the time he was, "doing the law's bidding." The Justice Department and Flynn's attorney's have additionally argued that when Sullivan did not initially accept their motion to dismiss the case, he overstepped his authority and assumed the role of the prosecution. MORE: Mueller defends Russia probe, says Stone remains a felon Story continues Two judges on the appeals court agreed with that assessment at least in part. D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote in her opinion last month seeking to overrule Sullivan that, "a hearing cannot be used as an occasion to superintend the prosecutions charging decisions, because authority over criminal charging decisions resides fundamentally with the Executive without the involvement ofand without oversight power inthe Judiciary." "Each of our three coequal branches should be encouraged to self-correct when it errs," Rao said. "If evidence comes to light calling into question the integrity or purpose of an underlying criminal investigation, the Executive Branch must have the authority to decide that further prosecution is not in the interest of justice." The full court will now hear arguments between Flynn's legal team and lawyers representing Sullivan on Aug. 11. Michael Flynn's criminal case to be reheard by full appeals court originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Hermione Norris. Occupation Actor. Age 53. Relationship status Married. Best known for Cold Feet, Spooks and Luther. Currently Starring in Between Two Worlds. Hermione Norris: "My dream was to be an actor. I wanted to meet someone, but I wasnt desperate." Credit:Tarsha Hosking My paternal grandfather, William, was in the first and second world wars. He had the type of moustache worn by soldiers at that time. Every year he had to have shrapnel removed from his leg, as hed been exposed to bombs. In his sleep, he called out to boys in the trenches. He didnt play much of a role in my upbringing, though, as I only saw him occasionally. My father, Michael, was a businessman. He was charismatic, naughty and very, very funny. We share a particular take on life the same sense of humour, most definitely. He lived in London and collected art and loved anything to do with music. When I was young, hed come to see my shows. He died when I was 21. I was utterly shattered. President Donald Trump announced that he plans to ban the popular short video app TikTok from operating in the US as early as Saturday. President Donald Trump has announced he is going to ban the popular Chinese video-sharing app TikTok in the US. The US President is ready to sign an executive order as early as Saturday to block the popular application owned by Chinese firm ByteDance. US security officials have expressed concern that the app could be used by the Chinese government to collect the personal data of Americans. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order to ban the app. As far as TikTok is concerned, were banning them from the United States, Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. Source: Messagero TikTok has denied any accusation of sharing data with the Beijing government. TikTok confirmed that all US user data is stored in the US, with a backup in Singapore. The app is reported to have around 800 million active monthly users, most of whom are from the US and India. The number of its users continues to grow worldwide, it has up to 80 million active monthly users in the US. All accounts are public by default, but users can also restrict uploads to their contacts. It is not clear how President Trump can ban the Chinese app for the US and what legal challenges it would face. The trumps announcement came hours after reports broke that Microsoft could buy TikTok for $50 billion, but Trump confirmed its opposition to an operation that could bring an American company to acquire TikTok. Microsoft has reportedly been in talks to buy the app from ByteDance, but Mr Trump appeared to cast doubt that such a deal would be allowed to go through. A TikTok spokesperson declined to comment on Trumps announcement, he told US media outlets the company was confident in the long-term success of TikTok in the US. The announcement is the result of tensions between Trump and the Chinese government that is accused of aggressive conduct against the US government and its business. Other states have already blocked Chinese apps or are planning to do it, such as India. US officials have for weeks called action against TikTok due to its alleged connections to the Chines governemnt. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump administration was considering banning Chinese apps due to national security concerns. Last year, the US Treasury Departments Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States opened an investigation into ByteDance. Last week the US government approved legislation banning the use of TikTok on federal devices. TikTok recently announced it would increase transparency on its operations, it also plans to allow reviews of its algorithms. We are not political, we do not accept political advertising and have no agenda our only objective is to remain a vibrant, dynamic platform for everyone to enjoy, said the CEO of TikTok, Kevin Mayer. TikTok has become the latest target, but we are not the enemy. Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs hacking, China) Share this... Linkedin Share this: Twitter Print LinkedIn Facebook More Tumblr Pocket Share On Rating Action: Moody's downgrades California Pizza Kitchen's PDR to D-PD following Chapter 11 Global Credit Research - 31 Jul 2020 New York, July 31, 2020 -- Moody's Investors Service, ("Moody's") downgraded California Pizza Kitchen, Inc.'s ("CPK") probability of default rating (PDR) to D-PD from Ca-PD/LD following the company's announcement that it has commenced voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings. All other ratings are unchanged and the outlook has changed to stable from negative. Downgrades: ..Issuer: California Pizza Kitchen, Inc. (CPK) .... Probability of Default Rating, Downgraded to D-PD from Ca-PD/LD Outlook Actions: ..Issuer: California Pizza Kitchen, Inc. (CPK) ....Outlook, Changed To Stable From Negative RATINGS RATIONALE The bankruptcy filing follows CPK's decision to stop paying interest and principal on it's debt due to poor operating results and high capital spending that resulted in negative free cash flow and an unsustainable capital structure. The rapid spread of the coronavirus outbreak, deteriorating global economic outlook, low oil prices, and high asset price volatility have created an unprecedented credit shock across a range of sectors and regions. We regard the coronavirus outbreak as a social risk under our ESG framework, given the substantial implications for public health and safety. CPK is owned by Golden Gate Capital. CPK's financial sponsor ownership is a rating factor given the potential implications from both a capital structure and operating perspective. Financial policies are always a key concern of sponsor-owned companies with regards to the potential for higher leverage, extractions of cash flow via dividends, or more aggressive growth strategies. Subsequent to today's actions, Moody's will withdraw the ratings due to CPK's bankruptcy filing. Please refer to the Moody's Investors Service Policy for Withdrawal of Credit Ratings, available on its website, www.moodys.com. Story continues California Pizza Kitchen, Inc. is an owner, operator and franchisor with 206 casual dining restaurants in 28 states and 6 countries. The company is majority owned by affiliates of Golden Gate Capital. Annual revenue were approximately $570 million for the LTM period ending March 31, 2020. The principal methodology used in this rating was Restaurant Industry published in January 2018 and available at https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1108012. Alternatively, please see the Rating Methodologies page on www.moodys.com for a copy of this methodology. REGULATORY DISCLOSURES For further specification of Moody's key rating assumptions and sensitivity analysis, see the sections Methodology Assumptions and Sensitivity to Assumptions in the disclosure form. Moody's Rating Symbols and Definitions can be found at: https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_79004. 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The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moody's affiliates outside the EU and is endorsed by Moody's Deutschland GmbH, An der Welle 5, Frankfurt am Main 60322, Germany, in accordance with Art.4 paragraph 3 of the Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 on Credit Rating Agencies. Further information on the EU endorsement status and on the Moody's office that issued the credit rating is available on www.moodys.com. Please see www.moodys.com for any updates on changes to the lead rating analyst and to the Moody's legal entity that has issued the rating. Please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for additional regulatory disclosures for each credit rating. William V. Fahy VP - Senior Credit Officer Corporate Finance Group Moody's Investors Service, Inc. 250 Greenwich Street New York, NY 10007 U.S.A. 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A Lagos lawmaker, David Setonji, has raised alarm over the total collapse of Lagos-Badagry expressway following the drowning of 14 persons en route to the coastal city last Wednesday. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that at least 10 persons died and four others missing after a boat en route Badagry capsized at Kirikiri, Lagos on Wednesday. Mr Setonji, member representing Badagry Constituency II in Lagos House of Assembly, told NAN on Saturday that the total collapse of Badagry road forced the victims to undertake the ill-fated journey on waterways. NAN reports that Lagos State Government is responsible for the Iganmu Okokomaiko section of the highway while FERMA is handling Okokomaiko Agbara axis of the road. Also, the federal government in 2018 awarded the reconstruction of 46km Agbara Seme section of Badagry expressway to CGC Nigeria Limited which had abandoned the project. I am devastated by the pictures of the victims of the boat mishap that happened between Lagos and Badagry. Our people are looking for alternative means of transportation due to the total collapse and neglect of the Badagry expressway. We have made repeated calls for completion of work on this very important access road to Badagry. We have suffered greatly and are still suffering. Governance should be about welfare and safety of the people. I am pleading and begging government to urgently intervene to make the road safer for people, said Mr Setonji, Chairman, House Committee on Home Affairs. Social media political backlash forced the cancellation of a planned rally by a Republican congressional candidate to support President Trump and police scheduled for Friday at a Blakes Farms location. Tenth District candidate Lisa McClain planned the rally for 5-6:30 p.m. at Blakes Apple Big in Armada featuring Corey Lewandowski, Trumps former campaign manager, and former Milwaukee sheriff David A. Clarke. A flier for the event on McClains Facebook page says a reception at the event would be hosted by The Blake and Roncelli Families. A social media onslaught slamming Blakes and threatening a boycott compelled the Armada business to have McClain cancel the event for its location, although she still plans to conduct the event elsewhere. Blakes representative Andrew Blake says in a video on the orchard and cider mills Facebook page Monday afternoon he wanted to clear the air and indicates there was a misunderstanding during the planning of the event, which Blakes asked McClain to cancel. We have historically allowed different political parties, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians to host private events as a paying customer at our various facilities, Blake says in the 3-minute, 21-second clip. We thought Lisa was having a private event. We did not realize it was characterized as something more than that. The minute we fully understood the magnitude of what she was asking and what she was planning to do, we asked her to cancel the event at Blakes which she did. Blakes as an organization is not political, it is non-partisan. But that didnt satisfy Tanya Gazdik, one of multiple Facebook users who posted criticisms of Blakes on Sunday night and Monday morning. She doubts Blakes sincerity and said she will continue to seek a boycott of Blakes. Gazdik, a Detroit resident, pointed to a comment posted by Blakes on its Blakes Hard Cider page that was later removed. Blakes wrote in support of McClain, saying, Lisa is a very qualified and capable person who is a Republican running for Congress who the family has come to know and believe in. Gazdik told The Macomb Daily, I dont believe for a second that Blakes didnt know exactly what they were doing when they agreed to host the rally, not just rent out the space. She is a huge Trump ally. They cant redeem themselves, I dont care how many heartfelt videos they make, the horse has left the barn. Blakes later in the morning put out a statement. The promotion and positioning of this event went beyond the scope of what we are comfortable with as a family and a business, the statement says. We hope that you can forgive us for this honest mistake, as we will continue to strive every day to be an inclusive company serving all members of our community. Gazdik and others ignited the controversy when a copy of McClains promotional flier, which McClain posted on her political page, began circulating. Gazdik wrote: CANCEL Blakes. While I enjoy Blakes hard cider, they will not get another dime from me. I will be asking restaurants and stores I frequent to drop them. If no one is ordering/buying it, that should be an easy decision. Money talks. Pass it on. Her post by mid-afternoon drew 92 comments, some of them vitriolic in their criticism of Blakes. Other Facebook users also posted about it. Nancy Prena wrote, Well. Im done. Ugh, disgusting. No more Blakes for me. Andrew Blake explained the business should not have allowed it to happen. Obviously we should have done our due diligence to vet that further and will be putting in protocols to address that internally, he said. He also tries to sooth over political conflict in these polarizing times in the nation. Our family like every family in America has family members on different sides of the political aisle, he says. We have conversations at dinner, we debate we argue, often times heated but at the end of the day we leave loving one another, supporting one another forgiving one another. Meanwhile, McClain promises on Facebook the rally will go on, hosted by the Roncelli family at a new venue. It is exciting to have them in Macomb County just before the Primary Election on August 4th, she says. McClain is running against Doug Slocum and Shane Hernandez in next Tuesdays GOP primary. The winner will face the Democratic nominee, Kimberly Bizon or Kelly L. Noland, in the November general election. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) With the shift to virtual learning in the upcoming school year brought by the uncertain times, Globe Telecom partnered with the Department of Education (DepEd) in creating a safe and healthy online learning environment for teachers, students, and home educators. Globe and DepEd will organize a webinar entitled Global Filipino Teacher Series: Digital Thumbprint Program (DTP), part of a series of workshops on digital citizenship, online safety, and the responsible use of the internet. These workshops will help the participants increase their knowledge of current and constantly changing landscape of life online in the Philippines. Among the modules that will be presented in the webinars are how to protect ones self in various online threats, essential principles and practices around cyber safety and security, online etiquette and how to help create a responsible online community, how to identify credible or questionable information, and how parents and educators can keep children safe online. Globe continues to support DepEds thrust of delivering quality education and training to learners and educators and is one with the government in helping keep the online community safe for everyone, especially the children, said Yoly Crisanto, Globe's chief sustainability officer and senior vice president for corporate communications. The webinar, to be held on August 4 to 5 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., is open to all teaching and non-teaching staff of DepEd covering the national, regional, and division offices, and all public schools nationwide. Panelists from DepEd and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) will also grace the program. Parallel to the online workshop, Globe will launch shorter and shareable versions of the DTP cyber wellness training modules which are meant to reach a wider audience online. The webinar, which will be aired on Globe Bridging Communities Facebook Page, is another joint effort by Globe and DepEd in ensuring the safety of the countrys educational community. In 2019, Globe turned over the DTP modules to DepEd for integration into the K-12 curriculum and a localized version was implemented per region. In partnership with DepEd regional offices, Globe has also been rolling out a series of training under its Global Filipino Teachers Program that focuses on 21st century skills needed by teachers most especially in the new normal such as digital literacy and overall capacity-building to maximize the digital tools available to them. Actor Priyanka Chopra has once again listed all the things that inspired her this week. Among them was actor Sonu Soods recent act of kindness when he sent a farmer and his family a brand new tractor. Taking to her social media pages, Priyanka wrote, After helping so many people affected by the COVID-19 lockdown in India, actor @SonuSood recently sent a tractor to a farmer in Andhra Pradesh who didnt have money to rent an ox to plough his field. Proud of all the amazing work youre doing Sonu. She also attached a picture of the farmer, his wife and daughters posing with their new tractor. Reacting to her post, Sonu wrote, Thank you so much Priyanka for all the encouraging words. Means a lot @priyankachopra Earlier this week, Sonu came across a clip on Twitter wherein a tomato farmer in Madanapalle in Chittoor district was seen ploughing the land with his two daughters carrying the yoke on their shoulders. In his instant reaction, Sood promised a pair of ox to the farmer, but later said the family deserved a tractor. So sending you one. By evening a tractor will be ploughing your fields. Stay blessed, Sood, who acted as a villain in numerous Telugu films, said in a tweet. After helping so many people affected by the COVID-19 lockdown in India, actor @SonuSood recently sent a tractor to a farmer in Andhra Pradesh who didnt have money to rent an ox to plough his field. Proud of all the amazing work you're doing Sonu. https://t.co/Y16dNV1ymu PRIYANKA (@priyankachopra) August 1, 2020 Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu, who belongs to Chittoor district, hailed the actors gesture. Moved by the plight of the family, I have decided to take care of the education of the two daughters and help them pursue their dreams, Naidu said in a tweet. The farmer used to run a tea stall in Madanapalle before coronavirus left him out of business. He returned to his native Mahalrajupalle village to take up agriculture once again. Also read: Sushant Singh Rajputs friend Siddharth gave information to his family against Rhea Chakraborty, did volte-face later: lawyer Other inspirational things of the week listed by Priyanka included Ramy, the first Muslim-American sitcom, winning an Emmy nomination; a 17-year-old street dweller from Mumbai who passed her SSC exam; Michelle Obamas new podcast; Oprah magazine featuring the late Breonna Taylor on their cover; a Mumbai group feeding seven lakh meals and a tigers being sighted in a Thailand forest. Priyanka and her husband Nick Jonas recently made donations to Assam and Bihar flood relief. They also listed a few organisations where their fans can also make donations . Follow @htshowbiz for more US Imposes Sanctions on Two Chinese Individuals, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Sputnik News 15:02 GMT 31.07.2020(updated 15:30 GMT 31.07.2020) WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States has imposed sanctions against the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and two Chinese nationals connected to it under the Global Magnitsky Act, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on it website on Friday. The Treasury Department said the two Chinese nationals connected to XPCC that it listed are Jiarui Peng and Jinlong Sun. Earlier this month, the US imposed Global Magnitsky sanctions on the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (XPSB) and four current or former Chinese officials, including XUAR Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, XPSB former Communist Party Secretary Huo Liujun, XPSB Director and Communist Party Secretary Wang Mingshan and former XUAR Deputy Communist Party Secretary Zhu Hailun. In June, US President Donald Trump signed into law the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, allowing the government to impose sanctions against China over alleged human rights violations of the Muslim minority. The United States has been claiming that China is holding up to one million ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in re-education camps in the Xinjiang region under the pretext of fighting terrorism and religious extremism. China has repeatedly rejected the accusations, saying the claims are not true. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address A Joe Biden presidency would likely see a foreign policy about-face for the US with many of President Donald Trumps most significant and boldest actions dismantled or curtailed. From the Middle East to Asia, Latin America to Africa and, particularly, Europe, and on issues including trade, terrorism, arms control and immigration, the presumptive Democratic nominee and his advisers have vowed to unleash a tsunami of change in how the US handles itself in the international arena. With few exceptions, Americans could expect Mr Biden to re-engage with traditional allies. Where Mr Trump has used blunt threats and insults to press his case, Mr Biden, a former senator and vice president, would be more inclined to seek common ground. Historically, US foreign policy has not changed drastically as the presidency shifted between Democratic and Republican administrations. Expand Close US President Donald Trump attends the first working session of the G7 Summit in Biarritz, France (Jeff J. Mitchell/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp US President Donald Trump attends the first working session of the G7 Summit in Biarritz, France (Jeff J. Mitchell/PA) Allies and adversaries stayed the same and a non-partisan diplomatic corps pursued American interests. That changed with Mr Trump. Under his America First policy, he viewed both allies and the foreign policy establishment with suspicion, while speaking warmly of adversaries like North Koreas Kim Jong Un and Russias Vladimir Putin. But Mr Trump found it hard to make swift changes. Academics often say that American foreign policy is like an aircraft carrier: easy to order a wholesale change of direction from the bridge but far more difficult and time-consuming to alter course. Mr Trump saw that when he was unable to extricate the US from the Iran nuclear deal for more than year. This is the United States of America. We dont settle we aspire. Lets get to work. Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 24, 2020 His well-publicised withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organisation will not actually become final until after the November 3 election, if ever. His decision to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany could take years. Mr Trumps initial problems may have reflected a lack of governmental experience by both him and his top advisers. That created a steep learning curve that was complicated by their intense distrust of national security institutions. Mr Biden, with his Senate and White House experience, may be better positioned to deliver on change swiftly. Mr Biden told reporters in Delaware that he knows how to get things done internationally. Expand Close Air Force One (Joe Giddens/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Air Force One (Joe Giddens/PA) I understand the national security and intelligence issues, he said. Thats what Ive done my whole life. Trump has no notion of it. None. Mr Bidens campaign also has assembled an experienced team of foreign policy advisers. Among them is Susan Rice, national security adviser and UN ambassador under Barack Obamas presidency, who is on the shortlist for vice president. If she is not selected, she could become a key adviser if Mr Biden wins. Expand Close Then president Barack Obama looks to then vice president Joe Biden, left, as then national security adviser Susan Rice, sits right (Carolyn Kaster/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Then president Barack Obama looks to then vice president Joe Biden, left, as then national security adviser Susan Rice, sits right (Carolyn Kaster/AP) The Trump campaign casts Mr Bidens foreign policy experience as a weakness. Joe Bidens record of appeasement and globalism would be detrimental for American foreign policy and national security, and after decades of the status quo, President Trump has made it clear that the United States will no longer be taken advantage of by the rest of the world, deputy press secretary Ken Farnaso said in a statement. For decades, the first and often only foreign policy shift that new presidents of both parties directed on their first day in office, and Mr Trump was no exception, was abortion-related. Like clockwork, Republicans enacted the so-called Mexico City language, known by opponents as the global gag rule, to prohibit the use of US foreign assistance for abortion-related services. Democrats rescinded it and should Mr Biden win, he has promised to follow suit. But he has also pledged to demolish other Trump policies on Day One. They include reversing Mr Trumps ban on immigration from mainly Muslim countries, restoring US funding and membership to the WHO and halting efforts to oppose the Paris Climate Accord. He has promised to call top Nato leaders and declare of US foreign policy, Were back while convening a summit of major heads of state in his first year. One area that will require more nuance is China, which Mr Trump has placed at the top of his foreign policy agenda and on which he has painted Mr Biden as weak. Expand Close Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore (Kevin Lim/The Straits Times/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore (Kevin Lim/The Straits Times/PA) After previously boasting of warm ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Mr Trump has relentlessly attacked China, blaming it for the coronavirus outbreak that threatens his reelection prospects. Mr Biden also has said he would immediately restore daily press briefings at the White House, State Department and Pentagon, events once deemed critical to communicate US policy that the Trump administration has all but abandoned. Mr Biden and his surrogates say they intend to act quickly on the following: Middle East: Restore assistance to the Palestinian Authority that the Trump administration has eliminated as well as to agencies that support Palestinian refugees. Mr Biden has not said he will reverse Mr Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital or return the embassy to Tel Aviv. Expand Close Joe Biden has not made it clear if he will move the US embassy away from Jerusalem (Adam Davy/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Joe Biden has not made it clear if he will move the US embassy away from Jerusalem (Adam Davy/PA) United Nations: Restore US membership in UN agencies such as the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and possibly the UN Human Rights Commission. Europe: Tone down rhetoric Trump has used to berate and insult European allies. Mr Biden can be expected to try to warm relations among Nato partners. Africa: Try to raise Americas profile on the continent, which has become a new battleground for competition with China. Asia: Revert to a traditional US stance supporting the presence of American troops in Japan and South Korea. Mr Biden has also criticised Mr Trumps personal relationship with Kim. Latin America: Cancel Trump administration agreements that sent asylum-seeking immigrants to Mexico and other countries while they await court dates and halt all new construction of the southern border wall. Mr Biden also wants to restart Obama-era engagement with Cuba. Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: The Internal Revenue Service has released new guidelines that will restrict the use of carried interest in tax calculations after an error in the 2017 tax cut bill. S corporations and passive foreign investment companies will no longer be allowed to use exemptions on taxing carried interest. The change closes a significant hedge fund loophole in the Republican's tax cut package - a signature bill of the Trump administration. According to a piece in Bloomberg, the 2017 law...................... To view our full article Click here T housands took to the streets of Berlin in protest against measures imposed in Germany to stem the coronavirus pandemic Around 15,000 people marched around the capital on Saturday including self-described libertarians, constitutional loyalists and sceptics of the science behind policies to fight the pandemic. They said the Covid-19 measures implemented by the Government had violated rights and freedoms. There was also a small far-right presence with some marchers carrying Germanys imperial flag. Protesters danced and sang We are free people! to the tune of rock band Queens We Will Rock You. Others marched with placards saying We are making a noise because you are stealing our freedom! and Do think! Dont wear a mask!. Thousands joined the march in Germany / AFP via Getty Images The protests followed a rallying call from Michael Ballweg, an entrepreneur and political outsider who has organised similar rallies in Stuttgart and is running to become mayor of the southwestern city. Our demand is to return to democracy, said one protester who declined to give his name. A demonstrator holds a Prussian flag during a protest against the Government's restrictions / REUTERS The mask that enslaves us must go. He, like most of the protesters, was not wearing a face mask. People attend a demonstration of initiated by the initiative "Querdenken-711" / AFP via Getty Images Germany has been less severely hit than some other European countries, with more than 200,000 infected by the strain and nearly 1,000 dying from it. However, after initial success in curbing infections, they are starting to rise again. Most people have respected measures that include wearing face masks in shops, while the government has just imposed mandatory tests for holidaymakers returning from high-risk areas. Protesters said the restrictions violated their human rights / AFP via Getty Images But a vocal minority is chafing against the restrictions, saying they are crushing diversity of thought and doing untold social and economic harm. Only a few scientists around the world who follow the governments lead are heard, said protester Peter Konz. Those who hold different views are silenced, censored or discredited as defenders of conspiracy theories. Published on 2020/08/01 | Source Actor Lee Jung-jae is consolidating his filmography with another villainous role in his upcoming film "Deliver Us From Evil" set for release next week. Advertisement In the action film, in which he is being reunited with Hwang Jung-min after their 2013 hit film "The New World", Lee plays a ruthless killer chasing a hit man who killed his brother, traveling all the way to Thailand to avenge his brother's death. Lee, who used to appear in melodramas, mostly took on villainous roles in recent years. When asked about how he feels about his previous films like "The Face Reader" and "The Assassination" in which he played bad guys, Lee said, "I'm a bit worried about being typecast as a villain". He added, "When playing a villain, there's room to use your imagination to make the character more interesting. Not to mention various props, I tried out many things such as clothes, accessories, tattoos and even once wore a pink wig to create some mystique". "Deliver Us From Evil" is packed with action scenes including fistfights, gunfights and car chases. Lee even ruptured his shoulder while shooting scenes. "It matters to have a lot of spectacular action and stunts, but at the same time I wanted to portray a cruel look that is immediately recognizable", he said. "My role is like a beast who enjoys hunting. I put a lot of efforts to make facial expressions that would allow viewers to interpret the role by just looking in his eyes". The new film by Lee's close friend and actor Jung Woo-sung, "Steel Rain 2: Summit", was released early this week, about two weeks ahead of his film, which will hit theaters on Aug. 8. "Rather than competing with each other, both of the films can be a boost for the ailing film industry [due to the coronavirus epidemic]", he said. Lee is also preparing his directorial debut with an aim to release his own movie sometime next year. "Jung has been rejecting my offer for four years. He simply says he is thinking about it. I hope he will make up his mind soon", Lee said. ___________ "Deliver Us From Evil" is directed by Hong Won-chan, and features Hwang Jung-min, Lee Jung-jae, Park Jung-min, Choi Hee-seo, Park Myung-hoon, Oh Dae-hwan. Release date in Korea: 2020/08/05. She recently returned from the sunny shores of Spain, after joining a host of reality stars and influencers in jetting off for a post-lockdown getaway. And Francesca Allen looked sensational as she enjoyed a stroll near her home on the way to a friend's BBQ party in Chigwell, Essex, on Saturday. The Love Island star, 23, put on a stylish display in a plunging brown lace tank top which she tucked into a pair of colourful floral trousers. Chic: Love Island's Francesca Allen put on a stylish display in a brown lace tank top and colourful floral trousers as she headed to a friend's BBQ party in Chigwell, Essex, on Saturday Francesca's ensemble certainly gave off a summer vibe as it featured a light blue and orange fern print, while the flared trousers accentuated her lithe legs. She boosted her height in a pair of gold foiled heeled sandals, and kept her personal items in a small green handbag. Francesca wore her brunette locks in loose waves that cascaded over her shoulders, while she used a light palette of make-up to highlight her pretty features. The reality starlet also gave her outfit a glittering touch by wearing a chic silver pendant necklace and an array of bracelets. Stylish: Francesca wore her brunette locks in loose waves that cascaded over her shoulders, while she used a light palette of make-up to highlight her pretty features Glamorous: Francesca's ensemble certainly gave off a summer vibe as it featured a light blue and orange fern print, while the flared trousers accentuated her lithe legs Francesca's outing comes after she was spotted cozying up to a new man during a boozy night out in London on Friday last week. She looked to be on cloud nine as she got up close and personal with Edward Crossan, vice chairman of London-based waste management company Powerday. The TV personality put on a very affectionate display with her apparent new beau, who was previously been linked to TOWIE's Amber Turner. Accessorise: The reality starlet also gave her outfit a glittering touch by wearing a chic silver pendant necklace and an array of bracelets The star beamed as she sat on the hunk's lap, walked hand-in-hand and even wandered off for a private chat with a glass of wine in hand. Hunky Edward later appeared to place his hand on Francesca's pert derriere before leaning in for a kiss. In May last year, Edward was seen enjoying a jaunt on a yacht in Ibiza with TOWIE star Amber Turner, 24. Blossoming romance? Francesca's outing comes after she was spotted cosying up to a new man during a boozy night out in London on Friday last week (pictured last month) The accomplished businessman was named vice chairman of his father's company in January and is featured on the company's website. His working title is described on the website as: 'Edward joined the family business in 2007, starting as a machine driver and has worked in various roles within the company to now being a director overseeing the development of the business.' MailOnline contacted Francesca Allen's representatives for comment at the time. By PTI MUMBAI: Maharashtra Cyber, the police's specialised wing keeping a tab on online activities, has said that internet crooks have devised a modus operandi in which they make parents fall prey to technological and psychological tricks to make them believe their child has been kidnapped, and force them to pay a ransom. Officials, however, added that no case of this kind of "virtual kidnapping" has been reported here so far. They are using technology to spoof calls and morph images to carry out such crimes and target children who are alone at home as their parents are working, an official explained. "They befriend the child online and employ social engineering tricks to make him or her not attend phone calls or to go incommunicado. The image of the child, downloaded from social media usually, is then morphed to pull off a fake kidnapping for ransom," the official said. "Parents, who are unable to contact their kids, get convinced about the kidnapping claim made by these criminals and give in to their demands," he added. Parents must keep a tab on their child's online activities, report anything untoward to the nearest police station, check if the 'kidnapping' calls are from their child's phone, the Maharashtra Cyber official said. He asked people to not blindly trust any individual who claims he represents a legal body or embassy or the like. Leading South Korean mobile device maker and third party manufacturers of Taiwan Pegatron, and have made applications to the ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY) to participate in the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme offered to global players. The scheme aims to make India a manufacturing and export hub for mobile phones. The deadline to participate in the incentive scheme ended on Friday under which five eligible firms would be chosen. Two separate entities from the same group can also make more than one application. The three Taiwanese firms make mobile phones for across the globe. In India, has been using two of them (through its company Hon Hai Precision Industry) and to manufacture in India. A separate PLI scheme for home-grown players has also attracted attention: Around eight firms have applied, which includes Lava Mobiles. Others expected to apply in the end of the day are Micromax, Dixon, Padget, Sojo, and Optimus. It is, however, not clear whether Chinese giant BYD which had registered itself has also applied at the time of going to the press. Under the PLI scheme for foreign firms, global manufacturers are being offered an incentive of 4 per cent to 6 per cent for five years provided they meet certain thresholds in terms of production and investment earmarked for each year beginning FY21. The foreign firms have to make a staggered investment of Rs 1,000 crore over four years. They would be required to manufacture handsets with an incremental production value of Rs 4,000 crore in the first year and this has to go up to Rs 40,000 crore in the fourth year. However, incentives will be given only if these foreign companies manufacture phones which have a production value of over $200 apiece. The government has earmarked $5.3 billion as budgetary outlay for the scheme which is expected to transform India into an export hub. The incentive scheme is designed to reduce the yawning gap in cost of production disability that global makers face in India compared to manufacturing in China and Vietnam. This gap ranges from 9 per cent in Vietnam to 21 per cent in China. The PLI scheme for homegrown companies also offers similar incentives, but they have to invest only Rs 200 crore in four years. They need to have a production value of a minimum Rs 100 crore in the first year and that has to go up to Rs 3,000 crore in the fifth year to avail the incentive. Those privy to discussions point out that Inc, which has been looking at hedging its bets in China, where nearly 85 per cent of its phones are manufactured, has been looking at India for a while. With three players expected to make handsets for Apple, sources said one could see around 17 per cent of phones (in value) being manufactured in India in the next five years. The US company can also import second hand machinery from China. It will be calculated as part of its investment in India under the scheme. has already invested Rs 5,000 crore in a mobile plant to double its capacity in the country. However, sources say it had objected to the fact that it will not get credit under the scheme for the investment it has already made for a new mobile plant. So, it has to put in more money, as required under the PLI scheme, to avail the incentives. Among home-grown firms, Lava International has decided to shift its manufacturing of mobile phones from China to India for an export boost. The company wants to export phones worth less than $200 million across the globe and take advantage of the incentives provided under the PLI scheme. Next decade: Revival and beyond View(s): Is there any reason for us to remember the year 1977, which we passed through, or rather passed by, 43 years ago? One common answer would be that it was the year of the introduction of our open economy model in Sri Lanka. However, I am not referring to the introduction of the open economy, which was anyway a half-done agenda ignoring some fundamentals. The policy reforms aimed at an open economy in 1977 were dramatic, not necessarily because of their own substance. They were dramatic compared to what we had earlier. However, many essential elements such as public sector reforms, public enterprise reforms, capital market reforms, and labour market reforms were not in that policy package. What was in the package was import liberalisation, exchange rate reform and some level of withdrawal from the market by the government. The very foundation of an open economy is the law and order that consists of both law-enforcement and law-impartiality. Smooth functioning of the open economy model requires the discipline set by the rule of law. This essential element did not appear to be in the foundation on which the shaky open economy was built. What the country experienced after that has also led many to conclude that all evils are by-products of the open economy. Crisis in 1977 Apparently, it is a valid answer to the question I raised at the outset, but the answer I was looking for is the economic crisis. We should remember 1977 for the unparalleled economic crisis that brought the economy to a dead end. And why is it important to raise this question again after more than four decades later? Because, it was this economic crisis which prepared the way for the overnight change of the countrys policy regime from a closed economy to an open economy. If it was not for that crisis, the enabling environment for a radical policy change towards an open economy would not have been so uncommon as it was. The crisis can be understood by looking at either the numbers of the economy or the peoples hardship with domestic supply shortages. There might be differences in opinion, but the numbers tell us the truth. The average rate of real GDP growth remained as low as 2.9 per cent during 1971-77, and around 20 per cent of the workforce didnt have jobs. Someone could argue that the country achieved a current account surplus of 3.5 per cent of GDP after 20 years, thanks to the stringent import controls and the world tea price hike in 1977. Basic needs, including essential foodstuff, were in severe shortages justifying widespread price controls and regulations. The government decided even what people should eat and when they should eat such food. As per available evidence, Sri Lanka never had such a severe crisis so far during its post-independence history. It was the severity of that crisis which provided the opportunities for the complete turnaround in economic policy. Whether that opportunity was fully exploited or not is a different issue, but it is a fact that there was the opportunity. The second parallel Why did I bring the 1977 crisis into our discussion today? It is because, we are again faced with a second parallel to an economic crisis today and unprecedented opportunities emerging out of that crisis too. Even though the present crisis was led by the global COVID-19 pandemic issue, perhaps for Sri Lanka it came during a worst time of the history. Due to the economic fallout that has taken place for a long period of time, at the point that the COVID-19 pandemic issue hit the economy, the country had exhausted much of its economic strength required to face it. The rate of economic growth slowed down steadily letting the country to slip from upper-middle income category to lower-middle income category. In consistent with the slow growth of the economy, private investment and export growth didnt perform well enough for a long period of time. A much deeper issue could be attributed to the inadequate investment in the areas of research and development as well as in higher levels of human resource development. While many countries around the world were allocating significant amounts of resources for fiscal stimulus to support the affected people and businesses, Sri Lanka had to suffer from the lack of adequate resources. Faced with a weak financial strength, even the smaller amounts of cash allocated for financial assistance was dependent on the Central Banks lending to the government. This was in addition to the Central Banks own monetary policy stimulus provided through the banking system. There was neither multilateral donor assistance extended to Sri Lanka, although it was available to many other countries in the region. In fact, it was early last year that the IMF review showed the deteriorated macroeconomic conditions of the country and extended one more year to show the performance in order to release the final tranche of its Extended Fund Facility. And the country failed to show any improvement by the time of the outbreak of the pandemic. In the absence of multilateral support and the depleting tax revenue, much of the stimuli depended on Central Banks lending and money pumping under stringent import controls. It should be understood that in a desperate economy, import controls are the last resort that should come in for facing a problem irrespective of its detrimental consequences over people and the economy. This may be justified by some owing to the lessening foreign exchange inflows in the absence of a strong export base. However despite the dismal status of the economy, over 80 per cent of our imports consist of intermediate goods and investment goods which determine the countrys production and exports. Beyond economic revival There will be time sooner or later for the post-COVID global economic revival, but Sri Lanka needs to put the economy on track to go beyond revival. From the Sri Lankan point of view, revival means restoring the economy back to its sluggish performance level with unresolved macroeconomic problems. There is no justification for the country to stop there, as the nation requires much more than that higher economic growth, better investment drive, and strong export expansion. Two important factors will be critically important for Sri Lanka to bring the economy to a take-off stage that it missed even in 1977. The first is the fact that to which extent the potential investors can trust the political sphere of the country so that without fear and hassle they can bring their money and invest here. The second is the fact that to which extent can the country embark upon the third wave of policy reforms. For two reasons, the required policy reform at this point of time in Sri Lanka is much more intense than what they would have been in 1977 or in 1989 the two waves of policy reforms. The first reason is that we have not undertaken reforms for nearly 30 years so that the negative effect of the long lapse is much deeper than we can comprehend. Secondly, the world is different today than it was then, as there is severe competition among the markets and among the nations to offer attractive economic and political environment for businesses. As far as the ease of doing business is concerned, we should not forget that there are 99 countries in the world already performing better than Sri Lanka. These two factors point to the need of the country for an overhaul reform package. The next question is when do we undertake it? The best timing is the crisis time because the opportunities that have emerged out of a crisis would not be seen again. . (The writer is a Professor of Economics at the University of Colombo and can be reached at sirimal@econ.cmb.ac.lk and follow on Twitter @SirimalAshoka). At 11 years old, the 4 foot, 3 inches tall Chase Mosley rarely cries or shows much emotion. The little tough kid, as his mom calls him, sobs when his father comes to mind, though. And last summers disappearance of then 38-year-old Joshua Lee Mosley often keeps his son sobbing through the night. Those involved in Mosleys search are convinced the Willis man was a victim of foul play. I do feel like hes not with us anymore, said Aveena Ryzewski, Chases mother. Mosley, who for years grappled with drug abuse, left behind the vehicle he was driving the night of Aug. 30, 2019, his ID and little else to explain where he went. But Ryzewksi, 35, and Mosleys fiancee, Brandi Warren, 39, both think they know who his killer is. Meanwhile, a seasoned detective looks for leads to solve this missing persons mystery and help bring Mosleys family much needed closure. Seeking answers More Information Have a tip on Joshua Lee Mosley's disappearance? Mosley stood 6 foot, 1 inch, weighed 185, wore his brown hair short, had brown eyes and sported tattoos on his neck and throughout his body. Anyone with information on Mosley's disappearance is asked to call Multi-County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-392-STOP (7867). By law, tips are anonymous. If it leads to an arrest, a $1,000 reward may be available. Tips can also be made at multicountycrimestoppers.org or through the free P3 Tips mobile app. See More Collapse Sgt. Kevin Rooney, a Willis Police Department detective, said there was absolutely a suspicion of foul play in Mosleys disappearance. There is, however, no evidence of such. Based on what everybodys saying, I believe hes dead, Rooney said. Word on the streets there is (foul play), but I cant find him or I cant find any evidence to prove (it). Most telling is how Mosleys mother and sister have not received as much as a phone call from him, something uncharacteristic, Rooney explained. No one reported him missing for a while due to Mosley regularly going away for days only to return later. Once a missing persons report was filed, Rooney said too many people had been in Mosleys car to properly process it for evidence collection. It is unlikely he left the state because Mosleys vehicle, a 2007 Nissan Maxima, was recovered at Pine Circle Park in southeast Willis. Also, all family and friends are accounted for. This removes the possibility anyone helped him flee, Rooney said. As far as I know, he pulled it there, parked it and got in with somebody else, he said, pointing out there was no apparent struggle or any DNA left behind. The detective signaled Mosleys substance abuse-related criminal history likely contributed to a potential homicide. Nobody wants to come forward with any good information, otherwise Id have already found him, Rooney said. Around Willis, people who knew Mosley whisper about his disappearance. Ryzewski and Warren said many have pointed to an unsavory character both women know as having been a friend of Mosleys. Others blame this individual for Mosleys disappearance. Multiple accounts detail an altercation between Mosley and this person leading to the father of three being mortally wounded. We want his body so we can bring him home so we can rest and he can rest in peace, Warren said. New life cut short Mosley and Warren met in high school. Mosley was quiet and usually kept to himself. But he would often show a compassionate side when interacting with others, Warren remembers. She tended to keep to herself, as well, but after Mosleys brother, Justin, died from a drug overdose about three years ago, Warren reached out to console him. Something higher just made me want to say something to him, like go out of my comfort zone and say something, so I did, Warren said. The two soon started dating. Their son was born shortly before his dads disappearance. He looks exactly like his father, Warren said of the baby who was named Justin after his late uncle. Mosley, whose substance abuse Warren said stemmed from his fathers alcoholism, looked after her now 9-year-old daughter Ari. His Christmas 2017 gift to her was a Bible, just as he had given to his own young daughter from another relationship. His addiction got the best of him, but he was truly all about his family, she said. As Warren was recently gathering items while moving homes, she found a Christian book on how to manage grief. She helped Joshua Mosley deal with the loss of his brother, but she could not recall where she had gotten the book. When she flipped through the pages, Warren remembered who the giver was. Inside was a note as confirmation. It read, From Joshua to Brandi. Shared tears Aveena Ryzewski became pregnant about a couple of years after she and Mosley started dating in 2007. I remember he was so darn excited he was doing cartwheels on the freaking porch, Ryzewski said. At church that week, Ryzewski recalls her hand being placed on Mosleys side pocket where he was keeping her birth control test. Then the pastor started preaching about conception. Like the preacher was talking to us, she said. The two remained friends after their breakup and kept in close touch. Mosley was like a second father to two children she has from a previous relationship, she explained. But at the heart of a family torn by substance abuse is a young boy reeling for resolution on his fathers disappearance. Mosleys late brother was a part of Chases life. Upon his death, Chase grew resentful of his father being in and out of his life due to repeated incarceration. This would lead to fits of anger where Chase would shout at his dad, telling him he wished his uncle were alive in his place. One night after Mosley disappeared, Chase broke down crying. What he confided in his mother leaves her weeping. Mom, its my fault, he told her about his dad going missing. jose.gonzalez@chron.com twitter.com/jrgzztx Since Trumps election, leftists have insisted that he is a fascist authoritarian. Recently, though, they came up with an even worse charge to level at Trump: Hes not a dictator at all! Instead, he has a bizarre and unseemly fixation on states rights. The watchwords for Trump used to be about his alleged totalitarian instincts. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Obama called Trump as fascist: Obama told Kaine by phone, Tim, remember, this is no time to be a purist. Youve got to keep a fascist out of the White House, Kaine says a clip included in the Hulu series, Hillary, NBC News reported. It was a vile thing to say about a Republican candidate. Still, it was in sync with what Democrats and other leftists have been saying since the former Democrat announced he was running for President. In 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asserted that Trump was running concentration camps on our southern border, making him an authoritarian and fascist president. This past January, before the Wuhan virus came to America, Joshua Keating, in a single paragraph, summarized the claims that Trump is authoritarian, knocked them down, and then concluded by saying Trump is still authoritarian: Donald Trumps election in 2016 sparked a veritable cottage industry of commentary about the decline of democracy and the rise of authoritarian forces. Essays like Masha Gessens Autocracy: Rules for Survival and books like Steven Levitskys How Democracies Die made the rounds among jittery Americans suddenly wondering if they would recognize the end of American democracy when it came. Three years later, its clear that, if theres a tipping point where a country goes from free to not free, the U.S. is still far from it. That House Democrats were able to impeach Trump without fearing for their lives demonstrates that reality. And yet, the impeachment inquiry also highlights the degree to which this president has managed to carry out brazen displays of authoritarian behavior with no consequences thus far. We get it: Democrats believe that Trump is a dictator. Explaining that Trumps effort at shrinking the federal government is the antithesis of totalitarianism has proven useless. Now, though, things are different. Vox published an article describing San Franciscos lonely war against Covid-19. It explains that San Franciscos Mayor London Breed has consistently made all the right decisions to keep the city safe. This includes listening to experts (as Trump did with Fauci) and adapting to change (as Trump has done). Logic would suggest that, if Breed did all the right things, but the city still cant control the virus, the failure belongs to Californias Governor Gavin Newsom, who is one step higher in the political hierarchy. Given Californias escalating infection and death rates, people are beginning to question Newsoms total lockdown. Thats not Voxs conclusion. Instead, its found a different culprit. The city could have crushed the coronavirus. Then Trump got in the way. Trumps problem, it seems, is that he refused to be an authoritarian dictator and, instead, respected the limits of the federal government: We are not isolated; we are interconnected, Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, told me. The virus exploits that very interconnectedness of our society. Without a consistent, robust, and sustained federal response that is driven by science eventually things cannot be sustained. This is why, experts argue, federal leadership is so key: The federal government is the one entity that could address these problems on a large scale. But President Donald Trump has ceded his role to the states and private actors what his administration called the state authority handoff and the New York Times described as perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations. [snip] The Trump administration, however, has explicitly left most of these issues for states to solve. The White Houses testing plan declared that the federal government is merely a supplier of last resort, leaving it to local and state governments and private actors to fix choke points along the testing supply chain. [snip] To the extent the federal government has provided support, Trump has actively undermined it. When the federal government released a phased plan for state reopenings, Trump called on states to reopen faster to supposedly LIBERATE them from economic calamity. After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended people in public wear masks, Trump said it was a personal choice, refused for months to wear a mask in public, and even suggested that people wear masks to spite him (although a recent tweet seemed to support masking) Pay attention to the weasel words in that last paragraph. The writer alleges that Trump called on states to open faster, but Trump didnt use federal power to force them to do so. And when the CDC recommended masks, he disagreed but the author couldnt claim that Trump told his federal police to arrest people for wearing them. Donald Trump worst fascist dictator ever. Image: YouTube screengrab WASHINGTON - Should former Vice-President Joe Biden win the White House in November, America will likely be in for a foreign policy about-face as Biden reverses, dismantles or severely curtails many of President Donald Trumps most significant and boldest actions. From the Middle East to Asia, Latin America to Africa and, particularly, Europe, and on issues including trade, terrorism, arms control and immigration, the presumptive Democratic nominee and his advisers have vowed to unleash a tsunami of change in how the U.S. handles itself in the international arena. With few exceptions, Americans could expect Biden to re-engage with traditional allies. Where the iconoclastic Trump has used blunt threats and insults to press his case, Biden, a former senator, would be more inclined to seek common ground. Historically, U.S. foreign policy hasnt changed drastically as the presidency shifted between Democratic and Republican administrations. Allies and adversaries stayed the same and a non-partisan diplomatic corps pursued American interests. That changed with Trump. Under his America First policy, he viewed both allies and the foreign policy establishment with suspicion, while speaking warmly of adversaries like North Koreas Kim Jong Un and Russias Vladimir Putin. But Trump found it hard to make swift changes. Academics often say that American foreign policy is like an aircraft carrier: easy to order a wholesale change of direction from the bridge but far more difficult and time-consuming to alter course. Trump saw that when he was unable to extricate the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal for more than year. His well-publicized withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization wont actually become final until after the Nov. 3 election, if ever. His decision to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany could take years. Trumps initial problems may have reflected a lack of governmental experience by both him and his top advisers. That created a steep learning curve that was complicated by their intense distrust of national security institutions. Biden, with his Senate and White House experience, may be better positioned to deliver on change swiftly. Biden told reporters Tuesday in Delaware that he knows how to get things done internationally. I understand the national security and intelligence issues, he said. Thats what Ive done my whole life. Trump has no notion of it. None. Bidens campaign also has assembled an experienced team of foreign policy advisers: Jake Sullivan served as deputy assistant to President Barack Obama and policy planning director at the State Department. Nicholas Burns had high-level foreign policy positions under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Tony Blinken was deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser to Obama. Susan Rice, national security adviser and U.N. ambassador under Obama, is a finalist for vice-president. If she isnt selected, she could become a key adviser if Biden wins. The Trump campaign casts Bidens foreign policy experience as a weakness. Joe Bidens record of appeasement and globalism would be detrimental for American foreign policy and national security, and after decades of the status quo, President Trump has made it clear that the United States will no longer be taken advantage of by the rest of the world, deputy press secretary Ken Farnaso said in a statement. For decades, the first and often only foreign policy shift that new presidents of both parties directed on their first day in office, and Trump was no exception, was abortion-related. Like clockwork, Republicans enacted the so-called Mexico City language known by opponents as the global gag rule to prohibit the use of U.S. foreign assistance for abortion-related services. Democrats rescinded it and should Biden win, he has promised to follow suit. But hes also pledged to demolish other Trump policies on Day One. They include reversing Trumps ban on immigration from mainly Muslim countries, restoring U.S. funding and membership to the WHO and halting efforts to oppose the Paris Climate Accord. Hes promised to call top NATO leaders and declare of U.S. foreign policy, Were back while convening a summit of major heads of state in his first year. One area that will require more nuance is China, which Trump has placed at the top of his foreign policy agenda and on which he has painted Biden as weak. After previously boasting of warm ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Trump has relentlessly attacked China, blaming it for the coronavirus outbreak that threatens his reelection prospects. Biden has been slower to directly criticize Trumps recent actions against China, but his campaign questions whether the president will eventually undermine his administrations tough actions of late by personally striking softer tones toward Beijing The administration has a history of talking very loudly but not producing results, said Jeff Prescott, a campaign foreign policy adviser, Biden also has said he would immediately restore daily press briefings at the White House, State Department and Pentagon, events once deemed critical to communicate U.S. policy that the Trump administration has all but abandoned. Biden and his surrogates say they intend to act quickly on the following: - Middle East: Restore assistance to the Palestinian Authority that the Trump administration has eliminated as well as to agencies that support Palestinian refugees. Biden hasnt said he will reverse Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital or return the embassy to Tel Aviv. - United Nations: Restore U.S. membership in U.N. agencies such as the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and possibly the U.N. Human Rights Council. - Europe: Tone down rhetoric Trump has used to berate and insult European allies. Biden can be expected to try to warm relations among NATO partners. - Africa: Try to raise Americas profile on the continent, which has become a new battleground for competition with China. - Asia: Revert to a traditional U.S. stance supporting the presence of American troops in Japan and South Korea. Biden has also criticized Trumps personal relationship with Kim. - Latin America: Cancel Trump administration agreements that sent asylum-seeking immigrants to Mexico and other countries while they await court dates. Biden has also promised to divert funding away from the southern border wall and use it on other priorities, though the Trump campaign notes that the former vice-president in past comments hasnt committed to halting all new border wall construction. Biden also wants to restart Obama-era engagement with Cuba. ___ Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Market Reports on India Provides the Trending Market Research Report India Green Tea Market Forecast to 2027 COVID-19 Impact and Country Analysis By Type (Green Tea Bags, Green Tea Instant Mixes, Iced Green Tea, Loose Leaf, Others); Flavor (Lemon, Aloe Vera, Cinnamon, Vanilla, Basil, Others); Distribution Channel (Supermarkets and Hypermarkets, Convenience Stores, Online, Others)under Beverages Category. The report offers a collection of superior market research, market analysis, competitive intelligence and Market reports. The India Green Tea Market was valued at US$ 1,247.36 Mn in 2018 and is projected to reach US$ 2,112.47 Mn by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.1% during the forecast period. Green tea is prepared from the Camellia sinensis plant. The leaf buds and dried leaves of these plants are used in the preparation of the green tea. It is prepared by pan-frying and steaming these leaves, followed by drying them. Green tea is known to be effective against depression, and various types of cancers such as lung cancer, liver cancer, colon cancer, and gastric cancer, among various health issues. Request a free sample copy of India Green Tea Market Report http://www.marketreportsonindia.com/marketreports/sample/reports/2065155 Some of the scientific studies have also proven that the consumption of green tea helps enhance the thinking skills and lower cholesterol as well as triglycerides levels in the body. Green tea has gained the attraction of Indian consumers over the past few years, mainly due to its health benefits. Regular consumption of green tea boosts the immune system, helps maintain weight within desired limits, reduces physical stress, and keeps check on skin redness. The consumers in India prefer beverages that offer functional benefits, which ultimately propels the demand for green tea in the country. This encourages them to seek for green tea products as a preferred alternative to sugar-laden beverages. On the basis of type, the India green tea market is segmented into green tea bags, green tea instant mixes, iced green tea, loose leaf, and others. The market for the loose leaf segment is expected to grow at a rapid pace during forecast period. On the basis of flavor, the green tea market is segmented into lemon, aloe vera, cinnamon, vanilla, basil, and others. The India green tea market is further segmented on the basis of the distribution channel into supermarkets and hypermarkets, convenience stores, online, and others. In 2018, the supermarkets and hypermarkets segment accounted for the largest share of the India green tea market, whereas the others segment is expected to register the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. TATA Global Beverages, Unilever, Nestle, Associated British Foods plc., ITO EN, and Dilmah Ceylon Tea Company PLC., are among the major players in the India Green Tea market. The overall India green tea market size has been derived in accordance with both primary and secondary sources. To begin the research process, exhaustive secondary research has been conducted using internal and external sources to obtain qualitative and quantitative information related to the market. Also, multiple primary interviews have been conducted with industry participants and commentators to validate the data, as well as to gain more analytical insights into the topic. The participants who typically take part in such a process include industry expert such as VPs, business development managers, market intelligence managers, and national sales managers along with external consultants such as valuation experts, research analysts, and key opinion leaders specializing in the green tea market. Reason to Buy: Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies. The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the India Green Tea market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long term strategies. Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets. Scrutinize in-depth the market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it. Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentation and industry verticals. Browse our full report with Table of Content: http://www.marketreportsonindia.com/marketreports/india-green-tea-market-forecast-to-2027-covid-19-impact-and-country-analysis-by-type-green-tea-bags-green-tea-instan/2065155 About Market Reports on India: Market Reports on India is an excellent source to obtain top quality market research reports that helps you to understand the business in the Indian market. We cover various industries, identifying and understanding key macro and micro-economic trends, insights and futuristic growth opportunities. To help achieve all this and more, Market Reports on India is the answer to all your business needs. Contact us at: Market Reports on India Tel: +91 22 27810772 / 27810773 Email: info@marketreportsonindia.com Website: www.marketreportsonindia.com Follow us on: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn By Associated Press NEW YORK: As the November 3 presidential vote nears, there are fresh signs that the nation's electoral system is again under attack from foreign adversaries. Intelligence officials confirmed in recent days that foreign actors are actively seeking to compromise the private communications of "U.S. political campaigns, candidates and other political targets" while working to compromise the nation's election infrastructure. Foreign entities are also aggressively spreading disinformation intended to sow voter confusion heading into the fall. There is no evidence that America's enemies have yet succeeded in penetrating campaigns or state election systems, but Democrat Joe Biden's presidential campaign confirmed this week that it has faced multiple related threats. The former vice president's team was reluctant to reveal specifics for fear of giving adversaries useful intelligence. Because of such secrecy, at least in part, foreign interference largely remains an afterthought in the 2020 contest, even as Republicans and Democrats alike concede it poses a serious threat that could fundamentally reshape the election at any moment. Biden's campaign is increasingly concerned that pro-Russian sources have already shared disinformation about Biden's family with President Donald Trump's campaign and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill designed to hurt the Democratic candidate in the days leading up to the election. When asked directly, the Trump campaign refused to say whether it had accepted materials related to Biden from any foreign nationals. Trump was impeached last year after being caught pressuring Ukrainian leaders to produce damaging information about work Biden's son did in the country, even though repeated allegations of corruption against the Bidens have been widely discredited. A Biden spokesman said "absolutely not" when asked if the campaign had received any materials from foreign actors. "Joe Biden has been demonstrating international leadership to protect the sovereignty of our democracy for years, whereas Donald Trump has actively encouraged attacks on our elections," said Biden spokesman Andrew Bates. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a key Trump ally and chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, denied having accepted any damaging materials on Biden from foreign nationals after at least one Ukrainian national, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, told The Washington Post he had shared tapes and transcripts with Johnson's committee and Trump ally Rudy Giuliani. House Democrats announced Friday they have subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents he turned over to Johnson's panel. "It does a disservice to our election security efforts when Democrats use the threat of Russian disinformation as a weapon to cast doubt on investigations they don't like," Johnson spokesperson Austin Altenburg said. The 2020 campaigns and party committees have been receiving regular briefings from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, whose director, Bill Evanina, released a rare public statement last week confirming Russia's continued work to meddle in the U.S. election. Evanina said that Russia, as part of an effort to weaken the U.S. and its global standing, has been spreading disinformation to undermine confidence in American democracy and "to denigrate what it sees as an anti-Russia 'establishment' in America." The threat is not limited to Russia. China, a target of escalating condemnation across the Trump administration in recent weeks, has been looking for ways to affect American policy, counter criticism of Beijing and pressure political figures it views as opposed to Chinese interests, Evanina said, while Iran has been involved in circulating disinformation and anti-American content online. Trump's team reported no specific foreign threats against the president's campaign, but campaign general counsel Matthew Morgan highlighted the Republican Party's yearslong effort to install various voter ID requirements across the country, including photo verification, signature matching and witness requirements as an important tool to block foreign interference. "Contrary to their narrative, the Democrats' efforts to tear these safeguards apart, as they sue in 18 states across the nation would open our election system up to foreign interference," Morgan said. "That's why we're fighting back, to protect the sanctity of our election system." Despite Morgan's argument, there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in U.S.Mpolitics, whether by American voters or foreign nationals.MAnd there is no evidence, as Trump repeatedly charges, that an increased reliance on mail balloting this fall leaves the electoral system particularly vulnerable to outside meddling. The president pointed to those baseless claims this week to suggest delaying the election, something that can't be done without support in Congress, where Democrats and Republicans alike rejected the notion. There is ample evidence, however, that foreign powers are trying to sow confusion by spreading misinformation in addition to seeking to hack into political campaigns, as Evanina said last week. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, a Republican, described Trump's warnings about mail voting "absurd" and "ridiculous." "He should be far more forceful and far more direct in condemning foreign interference," Ridge said in an interview. "The enemy is not within." Foreign interference played a significant role in the 2016 election, of course. Georgetown County School District's plans to reopen amid the coronavirus were approved by the South Carolina Department of Education superintendent on Friday. The school district previously announced two options for students that included a remote to prime option and a virtual program where students are asked to commit to a semester of online learning. "I am delighted the superintendent approved Georgetown's very thorough and well thought out reopening plan," said board chairman Jim Dumm. "The superintendent and all of us must continue to be flexible and amenable to changes in the plan. COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc." State superintendent Molly Spearman also approved 35 other school districts' plans Friday, including Charleston County, Richland County and Spartanburg area schools. Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get the alleged attempt to topple his government stopped and said he is open to welcoming back the Congress rebels led by Sachin Pilot. IMAGE: Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot addresses media outside Suryagarh Hotel in Jaisalmer. Photograph: PTI Photo Asked if the dissidents will be forgiven, he said, It depends on the party high command. If the party high command forgives, I shall embrace them. Since the power tussle between him and Sachin Pilot resurfaced last month, the Congress veteran has used harsh words against his former deputy, once even referring to him as 'nikamma' or useless. But Gehlot said he will do whatever the Congress leadership wants. He said the party trusted him and he has been a Union minister, All India Congress Committee general secretary, state unit president and chief minister for a third time. What else do I want? I am doing this to serve the public, he told reporters in Jaisalmer. The chief minister was on his way back to Jaipur after an overnight stay at Jaisalmer's Suryagarh resort, where loyalist MLAs have been shifted ahead of the assembly session from August 14. The Congress has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of playing a major role in the rebellion by the now sacked deputy chief minister and 18 other Congress MLAs who are threatening his government. We have no personal quarrel with anyone. In a democracy, fights happen over ideology, policies and programmes and not for toppling a government. "Modiji is the Prime Minister of the country. People of the country gave him the chance (to lead the country) two times. He made people clap, clang utensils...people trusted him - it is a big thing. He must put an end to the tamasha (drama) in Rajasthan. They have increased the rate of horse-trading before the assembly session. What is this drama?," the chief minister said outside the hotel where the MLAs were shifted Friday. Gehlot said Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat should resign on moral grounds, claiming that his involvement in a conspiracy to topple the Rajasthan government is now known. He said Shekhawat's name also cropped up in a cooperative society scam in which money from poor people was looted. The chief minister also alleged that some other Union ministers, including Dharmendra Pradhan, are involved in the conspiracy against his government. Gehlot and other Rajasthan ministers are likely to spend most of their time in the state capital as the Congress tries to keep its numbers intact in Jaisalmer. Including the 19 rebels, the Congress has 107 MLAs in the 200-member assembly. The BJP has 72 MLAs. He claimed that democracy is under threat in the country and the Union home ministry is after his government in the state. He repeated the charge that the 'rate' for trying to lure MLAs away has gone up after the announcement of the assembly session. Back in Jaipur, he said Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati is giving statements under pressure and asserted that all six BSP MLAs lawfully merged with the Congress in Rajasthan last year. The Bahujan Samaj Party recently challenged the merger in the high court, prompting the Congress to charge that the party made the move at the behest of the BJP. Reacting to BJP state president Satish Poonia's statement over the shifting of Congress MLAs to Jaisalmer, Gehlot called him a new leader who wants to take on former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. He commented that Raje has 'disappeared' from the scene. Poonia had mocked the Congress, asking if the Gehlot loyalists will move further westward across the border into Pakistan. MLAs from the Congress and its allies had remained confined to Fairmont hotel in Jaipur since July 13, before being flown Friday to Jaisalmer on chartered flights. They are likely to visit Tanot Mata temple near the Pakistan border and some other places during their Jaisalmer stay, expected to continue till the assembly session begins. Gehlot recalled that he had informed Narendra Modi about the political situation in the state through a letter and a telephone conversation. He said he will write another letter to Modi asking him to call a video conference of all chief ministers again to review the COVID-19 situation. He said adequate testing for coronavirus is not taking place in some states while Rajasthan has increased its testing capacity to 40,000 per day. We have done excellent Covid management in the state. The recovery rate is good, the death rate is less than 1 per cent, he said. Meeting reporters in Jaipur, the chief minister said the states are suffering as revenues have come down after the coronavirus lockdown. Gehlot said he has asked the Centre to declare Rajasthan's eastern canal project, which was prepared by the earlier government led by Vasundhara Raje, as a national project. The project is aimed at providing water for drinking and irrigation to 13 districts. A mother who gave birth while battling coronavirus has no memory of being pregnant with her now three-month-old daughter due to a brain injury she suffered while fighting for her life. Sylvia LeRoy, a 35-year-old labor and delivery nurse at Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, was 30 weeks pregnant when she went into cardiac arrest on April 12, two weeks after she was diagnosed with COVID-19. Once stabilized, she was rushed to the emergency room to deliver her daughter, Esther, via C-section. The four minutes she spent without oxygen to her brain caused an anoxic brain injury that has affected everything from her motor function to her memory. Speaking with the New York Post, Sylvia's older sister, Shirley Licin, revealed the mother of two can barely speak and doesn't remember being pregnant. Scroll down for video Fighting for her life: Sylvia LeRoy, 35, from Brooklyn, New York, was battling COVID-19 when she delivered her daughter, Esther, via emergency C-section in April Heartbreaking: The nurse has no memory of being pregnant with her now three-month-old daughter due to an anoxic brain injury that has affected her motor function and memory 'We tell her, "Sylvia, you were ill, you had your baby, but you did really good do you remember?" And she shakes her head,' Shirley, 41, explained. Sylvia and her husband, Jeffry, are also parents to a three-year-old son, Jeremiah. The nurse's ongoing battle has been heartbreaking for her family, but they consider it a miracle that she is alive and at a point that she can now communicate. 'Im mourning the loss of the sister I had, but I still have her,' Shirley said.' Sylvia was six months pregnant and working at Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center, where she likely contracted the virus, when she started to feel ill. She was admitted into the hospital on March 27 and tested positive for COVID-19. Setback: Sylvia was 30 weeks pregnant when she went into cardiac arrest on April 12, one week after she was successfully taken off of a ventilator Healthy: After she stabilized, she was rushed into the operating room to deliver her baby girl. Esther weighed just 3.5 pounds when she was born, but she was able to recover well She was transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and placed on a ventilator. It was successfully removed a week later on April 9, but just when her family thought she was getting better, she went into cardiac arrest. Sylvia's sister and husband were both on the phone with the doctor and listened as the hospital team worked to revive her. Shirley told The Post that doctors believe the thick, heavy fluids in her lungs caused by the virus may have led to her going into cardiac arrest. Fears over her baby's life prompted doctors to perform an emergency C-section after she stabilized. Sylvia's daughter, Esther, weighed just 3.5 pounds when she was born, but she was healthy and able to recover well in the neonatal intensive care unit. Hard to handle: Sylvia's sister, Shirley Licin, appeared on CNN in May to discuss her condition, saying they were unable to visit her while she was on life support because of the pandemic Looking for help: Shirley said her sister needed acute rehabilitation at a state-of-the-art facility, but her insurance would only cover a short stay Sylvia's family was unable to visit her while she was on life support due to the hospital's coronavirus restrictions. 'In an otherwise non-COVID world, our family would be with her, we would be touching her, we would be talking to her, we would be holding her,' Shirley told CNN in May. When Sylvia finally regained consciousness, she wasn't cognitively responding, but medical professionals believed she could progress at a state-of-the-art treatment center that specializes in acute rehabilitation. Shirley said acute rehabilitation is only available at a handful of rehabilitation centers across the country, but her sister's insurance covers just 60 days of the months of treatment she would need. The family started a GoFundMe in April to raise money for Sylvia's medical costs and received more than $928,000 in donations, so far. Public support: The family started a GoFundMe in April to raise money for Sylvia's medical costs and received more than $928,000 in donations, so far Love: Esther, pictured in the hospital with her father, Jeffry, is thriving and providing motivation for her mom. Sylvia was recently able to live her arm and touch her baby girl's face 'The next six months are critical for Sylvia,' Jeffry told The Post in April. 'She needs and deserves the best care possible because she was 100 percent devoted to her job. In May, Sylvia entered a rehabilitation facility in Philadelphia, where she received occupational, physical, and speech therapy. Last week, she was able to move into her sister's home where her husband and two children are also staying. The LeRoy family is grateful for all the donations that have poured in, and they believe the nearly $1 million they have raised will be enough to cover Sylvia's medical costs for the next few months. After a weeks of therapy, Sylvia is able to say 'yes' or 'no' responses to questions and was recently able to lift her arm to touch baby Esther's face. 'Shes gotta have her babies around her, it encourages her to do more,' her sister said. 'They have a big important role to play in her life.' Sushant Singh Rajput's sister Shweta Singh Kirti has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to "immediately look into" the probe of the late actor's death. Shweta, who lives in the US with her family, has taken to Instagram to urge the Prime Minister "an urgent scan of the whole case." "Dear sir, somehow my heart says that you stand with and for the truth. We are from a very simple family. My brother had no Godfather when he was in Bollywood nor do we have anyone right now. My request to you is to immediately look into this case and make sure that everything is handled in a sanitized way and no evidence is tampered with. Expecting justice to prevail," Shweta's note read. "I am sister of Sushant Singh Rajput and I request an urgent scan of the whole case. We believe in Indias judicial system & expect justice at any cost. @narendramodi @PMOIndia #JusticeForSushant #SatyamevaJayate," the late actor's sister captioned her note. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Shweta Singh kirti (@shwetasinghkirti) on Jul 31, 2020 at 7:17pm PDT Shweta has been sharing posts demanding justice for her brother. On Saturday, she wrote, Your branches may twist and turn as you flex toward the light, yet your unwavering intentions will ensure that no faint wind will sway you from your mission #JusticeforSushantSingRajput #Seekingstrengthandunity #biharpolice. She had also shared an interview of Ankita Lokhande, Sushants ex-girlfriend while saying Satyameva Jayate (Truth shall prevail).' On Friday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday filed a money laundering case against Sushant's rumoured girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and her family on the basis of a Bihar Police FIR in which Sushants father has accused them of abetting the Bollywood actors suicide. LUANSHYA, Zambia, July 31 (Xinhua) -- The Zambian government in conjunction with China's Jilin University has set up nine farms for village chicken rearing projects in Luanshya, a mining district in the Copperbelt province of Zambia. Patrick Maipambe, Luanshya District Commissioner, when addressing farmers in the district Thursday, said "this village chicken rearing project is spearheaded by Technology Serve Organization and the University of Zambia in conjunction with the Jilin University of the People's Republic of China." Maipambe said the government of Zambia was committed to diversifying the nation's economy by putting up deliberate policies that would allow other stakeholders especially Chinese nationals to improve the production of livestock such as village chicken rearing as well as fish farming. "The promotion and implementation of the project in Luanshya will be done through the ministry of livestock and fisheries," he said. Maipambe said that chicken processing plants would be put up in some farms under the village chicken rearing project. He advised farmers to take the project seriously saying that this would help create more jobs for the locals. "Government of Zambia will continue working with stakeholders who mean well in improving the lives of Zambians socially and economically," he said. Lee Man-hee, chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, attends at a press conference (KIm Ju-sung/AP) South Korean prosecutors arrested the elderly leader of a secretive religious sect as part of an investigation into allegations that the church hampered the governments anti-virus response after thousands of worshippers were infected in February and March. Prosecutors in the central city of Suwaon have been questioning 88-year-old Lee Man-hee, chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, over charges that the church hid some members and under-reported gatherings to avoid broader quarantines. The Suwon District Court granted prosecutors request to arrest Mr Lee over concerns that he could tamper with evidence. Mr Lee and his church have steadfastly denied the accusations, saying they are cooperating with health authorities. Kim Young-eun, speaking for the church, said it will do its best so that the truth is clearly proved in court. More than 5,200 of the South Koreas 14,336 Covid-19 cases have been linked to the church so far. Its branch in the southern city of Daegu emerged as the biggest cluster after infections spiked in late February. Health authorities used an aggressive test-and-quarantine programme to contain the outbreak in Daegu and nearby towns by April, but the country has seen a resurgence of the virus in the Seoul metropolitan area since late May. South Koreas Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday reported 31 newly confirmed cases. At least 23 of the, were tied to international arrivals. The country recently reported dozens of infections among South Korean constructions airlifted out of virus-ravaged Iraq and crew members of Russia-flagged cargo ships docked in the ports of Busan and Incheon. Expand Close A health worker prepares to collect nasal swab samples for Covid-19 tests at a mobile testing site in Hyderabad, India (Mahesh Kumar A/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A health worker prepares to collect nasal swab samples for Covid-19 tests at a mobile testing site in Hyderabad, India (Mahesh Kumar A/AP) India, meanwhile, recorded the steepest spike of 57,118 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking its coronavirus caseload close to 1.7 million, with July alone accounting for nearly 1.1 million infections. The countrys health ministry on Saturday also reported 764 additional deaths for a total of 36,511. Indias civil aviation ministry delayed resumption of international flights by another month until August 31. But it will continue to allow several international carriers from the United States, Europe and the Middle East to operate special flights to evacuate stranded nationals. Indias health minister Harsh Vardhan said that India achieved more than one million recoveries with active cases only one-third of the total. India is now conducting more than 640,000 tests in 24 hours, taking cumulative tests across the country to nearly 1.9 million, he said. UPDATE 6:10 p.m. Friday, July 31, 2020 Police officials confirm one male victim was transported from the scene of the shooting. Sp[ringfield Police Department Capt. David Kane said the victim suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to the Baystate Medical Center for treatment. Kane said a car or cars were seen fleeing the area moments after shots were heard but detectives have yet to confirm if they were involved in the shooting. SPRINGFIELD Police are investigating an apparent shooting reported about 4:20 p.m. Friday near the intersection of Carver and Fountain streets in the Forest Park neighborhood. A witness said they heard six shots and people screaming, then saw a car flee up Carver Street toward Dickinson Street. This is a breaking news story. Information will be added as it is available. New Delhi, Aug 1 : The CBI has booked Rahul Gaur, a son of real estate group Gaursons chairman BL Gaur, the former's wife Navneet Gaur and their company on charge of cheating Bank of Baroda and Syndicate Bank to the tune of Rs 80 crore in the name of a high-end residential complex, officials said. A CBI official said that the company had been sanctioned Rs 250 crore for developing the high-end residential complex proposed by their firm Brys International Private Limited, comprising 291 luxury apartments in Sector 150 of Gautam Buddh Nagar. The official said that the company had been sanctioned Rs 150 crore by the Bank of Baroda and Rs 100 crore by the Syndicate Bank. The official said that Bank of Baroda in its complaint alleged that a total sum of Rs 80 crore was disbursed, but the project was left incomplete in the initial stages. The FIR claimed that the initial deposits made by the buyers should have been credited to the escrow account but it was not done. The complaint said that after the project was abandoned by the borrowers the account turned NPA on December 31, 2015. The complaint also alleged that the accused diverted the funds as per their convenience, instead of utilising them for the purpose for which the credit facilities were obtained. The FIR alleged that the forensic audit of the company's account showed round-tripping and diversion of funds, opaque functioning, and misrepresentation of facts. Bengaluru: Karnataka on Saturday (August 1, 2020) recorded 5,172 new coronavirus infections, with 1,852 confirmed cases being reported from the capital city, Bengaluru. Karnataka's coronavirus total has now surged to 1,29,287, of which 73,218 are still active cases. There were 98 COVID-19 deaths in the state in the past 24 hours that included 27 from Bengaluru. So far, 2,412 people in Karnataka have succumbed to coronavirus. On a good note, 3,860 people were discharged on Saturday that took the total number of recoveries to 53,648. The state's latest health bulletin stated that a total of 2,05,706 patients are under observation. As of Saturday, the state has conducted 13,85,552 COVID-19 tests, of which, 1,68,330 are rapid ag tests and 12,17,222 are RT-PCR and other tests. Karnataka has so far screened 1,52,310 flyers at the airports. Earlier on July 31, Karnataka's Agriculture Minister Kourava BC Patil tested positive for coronavirus. During his recent visit to Koppal district, five of the staff members who accompanied him were also reported COVID-19 positive. The first COVID-19 confirmed case in the state was detected on March 8, 2020, which was a case of an international traveler who returned to Bengaluru Urban. Since then the state has relied on 5Ts of tracing, testing, tracking, treatment and technology to tackle COVID-19. FILE- In this Jan. 3, 2019, file photo, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., waves to the audience during swearing-in ceremony of Congressional Black Caucus members of the 116th Congress in Washington. The NAACP is honoring Lewis for his Congressional service and long history as a civil rights activist. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) Read more Id been thinking about getting a Little Free Library for a long time. Too long. Id get giddy whenever I spotted one, relishing the idea of building community with a little box of books. Id linger as I tried to imagine the stewards behind each one by the volumes they chose to curate. One day ... , Id promise myself before walking away with a book or two. (Dont worry, I always returned with a few: Take a book. Share a book.) And then the day after Rep. John Lewis died on July 17, I came across a 2016 clip of the civil rights giant accepting a National Book Award for the third volume of his graphic memoir, March. In an emotional acceptance speech, Lewis was moved to tears as he recalled how as a child growing up very, very poor in a home with very few books in rural Alabama in 1956, he had been turned away from the public library for being Black. I had a wonderful teacher in elementary school who told me: Read, my child, read, and I tried to read everything. I love books, said Lewis. Watching that while mourning such a profound loss of light and leadership, I knew it was time. I ordered a library in his name that day, plus a plaque to officially commemorate it as the Rep. John Lewis Little Free Library. And yeah, maybe like some of you out there, Im desperately seeking signs that things will be OK, but it felt more than coincidental when on the day that I arranged to have the library installed, Lewis gifted the world with his final words. Not surprisingly, a man who almost always seemed to hit just the right notes in life did the same in death in a posthumous op-ed in the New York Times. Lewis said that he was inspired in his last days by the reckoning that has swept the country in the aftermath of police killings of Black Americans. Emmett Till was my George Floyd, he wrote, noting that he was just 15 when Till was killed at the age of 14. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. ... Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. If you havent read the whole essay, you must. In fact, let us not just read this stunning piece, but live it every day. Lewis marching orders are clear. Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. A few hours later I was watching former President Barack Obamas passionate eulogy, in which he honored Lewis by reminding us that the late congressman wasnt just a man of extraordinary wisdom but of extraordinary action. You want to honor John? Lets honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for. And by the way, naming it the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, that is a fine tribute. But John wouldnt want us to stop there. It was a vital reminder of all the work to be done. Count me in. But for now, may I present the Rep. John Lewis Little Free Library, a very small way to honor a very big legacy. Ive got all sorts of ideas for its contents, but for now Ive begun filling it with books Ive held on to because of their impact on me, from Claudia Rankines Citizen to Ijeoma Oluos So You Want to Talk About Race. Ive also added local authors: Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleves Crook County: Racism and Injustice in Americas Largest Criminal Court and Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias. Books that, as Lewis said, might help redeem the soul of a nation. Books for and by people who are making that good kind of trouble that I commit to making in this column. As I write this, I can see someone who has stopped by the library to browse. Its hard, but Im resisting the urge probably because Im on deadline to yell, Grab a book, and go make some good trouble! No promises for next time. The Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) has held a seminar to educate its members and political party representatives in the Northern Region on voter rights and responsibilities. The seminar was held to complement governments efforts in educating citizens on the need to ensure a free, fair and peaceful election, especially as the December 2020 parliamentary and presidential elections approaches. Representatives of the two major political parties present, the New Patriotic Party and National Democratic Congress, expressed their commitment to ensure free, fair and peaceful elections in the Region. The event formed part of the CCG's Voter Education and Election Monitoring Project with funding from Bread for the World, a non-partisan, Christian advocacy organisation based in Germany for the effective socio-economic and political development of the nation. Reverend Dr Cyril Fayose, the General Secretary of the CCG, said the Project periodically selected its representatives to assist in monitoring election processes and engage with institutions such as the Electoral Commission, National Commission for Civic Education and the security services on some of the issues identified during and after elections. He urged all citizens of voting age to register for their voter identification cards and go out in their numbers to exercise their franchise on December 7, adding that this would help strengthen the countrys democracy. "We must vote in a peaceful, cordial and civilised manner. Election is contest and not war" Rev. Fayose added. He urged observers to be vigilant and report issues identified to the right authorities including the polling station officers and security agencies for redress. Representatives from the Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Zion churches among others were present at the seminar. 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 Sushant Singh Rajput Once Told Ankita Lokhande He Could Cast Aside Suicidal Thoughts In 15 Mins. Felt It Was Wrong Some college classes may not offer as many courses this fall if conditions change with the coronavirus pandemic. Itll depend on whether that course can be brought online, or must be taught in person. Most colleges in Pennsylvania are planning for a mix of online courses with limited in-person instruction. With large gatherings prohibited and an eye to the future possibility of a second wave and more closures, most courses are planned for at least some online learning, with the caveat that it could move fully online if things change. But other fields of study require in-person contact for accreditation, or from sheer practice. Art schools are still planning to give students face-to-face time with an instructor in studio courses. Many technical programs with hands-on work also plan to do that in person. In either case, that will necessitate in-person contact during a pandemic that has infected more than 4.3 million Americans. If you want to be a physical therapist, a leg is attached to a person. Theres no way around that, said Greg Lupinski, director of environmental health and radiation safety at Temple University. Students in that situation will be given augmented personal protective equipment - more than just a mask - on par with what one would see in a hospital. He, like his counterparts at other universities who spoke to NBC10 in Philadelphia this week, is focused on spreading out the flows of people on campus. There will be social distancing signs everywhere, floor-markings, one-way paths, hand sanitizer stations galore. Parts of a recreation building, performing arts center and former library were all converted to classroom space to spread out students more. Signs reminding students to social distance are in place at Stockton University. Photo provided by the university. Cecelia Fitzgibbon, President of the Moore College of Art & Design, said students will have a choice whether to complete studio work on- or off-campus. The sliding barn doors that separate studios will stay open and students in painting, as an example, will sit at easels spread out. At the same time, the class will be filmed and livestreamed, she told NBC10. In South Jersey, Stockton University shared several images of a campus blanketed in 2,000 social distancing signs, with more on the way. "As Stockton prepares to welcome back staff, faculty and students, steps are also being taken to make clear that COVID-19 is definitely not welcome on campus," a news release says. Visit NBC 10 for more on what schools are doing to keep students safe during in-person, hands-on classes. JACKSON, MI Jackson College has re-tooled its business administration degree to make it easier for students to transfer credits to other schools, the college announced Tuesday. A release from the college said the 62-hour associate in arts degree will offer more transferable credits to a majority of Michigans four-year institutions and help students save money. The degree consists of six core classes business law; managerial and financial accounting; micro and macroeconomics; and computer information systems as well as a wider range of business and general education-related courses to satisfy Michigan Transfer Agreement coursework and electives. Within those classes, students will gain tools to analyze a business situation, shape long-term action plans, oversee plans as they are carried out and make large and small decisions along the way. The degree also offers flexibility for their career path, including owning their own business, working in sales, government, nonprofit or manufacturing sectors. Business administration faculty member Stephen Young said the colleges associate of applied science degree serves as a terminal degree for students who need a degree to enter the workforce, but they also found that many students left Jackson College for a four-year program. Having a broad base of knowledge from a variety of courses in the associate of arts program will help students develop the needed business knowledge and acumen to lead and manage in the dynamic and oftentimes complex nature of todays global organization and better prepare them for entry into their selected baccalaureate program, Young said. Along with the business administration degree, the college also announced last week it would be offering education classes for students looking to get a degree in teaching. Jackson College adds teacher education program Jackson College will teach classes online through remote instruction except for hands-on portions of approved classes, according to their website. More information on the fall semester can be found here. With the work of additional contact tracers in full swing and more coronavirus testing sites scheduled, two of Southeast Texas most rural counties are using this time to encourage residents to stay the course. After seeing a major spike in confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the beginning of this month, Jasper and Newton counties case growth has remained relatively steady over the past week. And the number of people who have recovered from the virus again far outweighs the active cases. As of Tuesday, Jasper County had confirmed 281 cases of the virus, while Newton County had confirmed 83. Of those, 72 and 18 cases, respectively, remain active. Jasper County Judge Mark Allen hopes additional contact tracers who have been on the job for about a week will keep the number of active cases relatively low. Related: Former GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain dies from coronavirus He said in the short time theyve been working, hes already seen a decrease in the amount of time it takes to contact individuals who have tested positive for the virus. More Information Coronavirus testing sites When: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursday and Friday Where: Cristo Rey Parish, 767 Ave. A, Beaumont When: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday Where: Journey Community Church, 1534 S. Main, Lumberton When: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Where: Jasper County Sub-Courthouse, 33625 US Hwy 96 S., Buna To register: covidtest.org or call (844) 778-2455 See More Collapse Once you inform someone that theyre positive and something needs to be done because they have the chance to infect someone else, they usually take that responsibility to keep from infecting others, he said. Weve also seen it put patients mind at ease because it helps identify their symptoms and follow up with them. The additional workers also have helped collect better data for the counties under the Jasper Newton County Public Health District, in part evidenced by several case reports given this week, compared to about one a week previously provided to the public. But Newton County Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator Olen Bean said the counties arent letting these seemingly positive numbers make them complacent. They are waiting to see what the next round of testing brings. In part as a result, the county at this time is holding off asking the state to reinstate its waiver for Gov. Greg Abbotts mask order. Top hits: Get Beaumont Enterprise stories sent directly to your inbox Previously, the county was below 20 active cases of coronavirus and as a result had been granted a reprieve from that order. He said County Judge Ken Weeks told him the county would wait until there was less fluctuation in the case numbers before moving forward with such a request. He said the state is doing testing this weekend in Newton. As of around 1 p.m. Thursday, some 160 people had been tested for the virus at a state clinic set up in Jasper. Allen said there also would be an opportunity to be tested in Buna on Friday. As long as theres a demand for it, were going to continue hosting these sites, he said. This helps us with our continued contact tracing. Allen said hes been proud of his residents resolve to follow safety protocols since the pandemic began. Even with that, however, he said hes also seen those precautions taken even more seriously as the virus spread and an increasing number of people gained firsthand experience with it. Related: Misinformation on coronavirus is proving highly contagious If they have cases in New York or California or England, its abstract. Even if there are cases in Houston or Austin, its abstract, he said. But when its physically here and you suddenly know someone whos infected, whether they have minor symptoms or they were on a ventilator, it hits home how serious this is. Jasper County has reported four deaths, while Newton County has reported two. However, a change to the way the state Department of Health and Human Services counts coronavirus-related fatalities shows the counties with six and four, respectively. Earlier this week, the department announced it would begin using fatality data based on death certificates instead of what is reported by local health departments. Allen said earlier this week he was made aware of the two additional fatalities. Officials are working on getting more information about those individuals. However, its been challenging largely because of medical privacy laws. Related: In reversal, Beaumont will keep public facilities closed While also remaining relatively cautious, Southeast Texas most populous county, and the location of most of the hospitals treating the worst coronavirus cases in the region, also this week has seen its rate of cases confirmed each day slow. Jefferson County rose to 3,952 cases on Wednesday, not including cases reported for Mid- and South-County on Thursday. The Port Arthur Public Health Department, which tracks cases for that half of the county, had not reported updated numbers by print deadline. From July 22 to Wednesday, the last day complete case data for Jefferson County was available, cases have grown by about 15%. Thats compared to growth rates of 25% and 38% for the two weeks prior. Experts have said the latter half of July will begin to show results from Abbotts mask order, which was issued at the beginning of the month. However, theyve noted that doesnt mean its time to celebrate and let up. Instead, the city of Beaumont, Jasper County and other local governments are continuing to look for more opportunities to offer residents coronavirus testing, a key to aggressively fighting the virus, at least through August. We dont need to let our guard down. We cant celebrate, Allen said. Its not time to say mission accomplished yet. kaitlin.bain@beaumontenterprise.com twitter.com/KaitlinBain YEREVAN, AUGUST 1, ARMENPRESS. A peace-keeping unit of the Armed Forces of Armenia comprised of 40 servicemen has departed for Kosovo to carry out peace-keeping mission as part of an American unit, MoD spokesperson Shushan Stepanyan told ARMENPRESS. ''The members of the unit passed coronavirus testing before leaving, all results were negative'', she said. A confrontation took place Saturday afternoon between a group of Kenosha teens known as Kenosha Activism and counter-demonstrators supporting Italian heritage. The confrontation was very loud at times, but peaceful. The Kenosha Activism organizersthree local high school students from Indian Trail High School and Academyhad planned a march titled Justice for Indigenous Peoples Protest for the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue in HarborPark and to urge educators to revisit the teaching of the history of Columbus. Beginning at 12:30 p.m. the group started out on what was to be an hour-long march from the Kenosha Municipal Building along 52nd Street to the statue of Christopher Columbus in HarborPark. There they were met with a large number of counter-demonstrators holding signs saying Preserve Italian Heritage, and Keep Calm and Have a Cannoli. As Kenosha Activism sat in the circle in front of the statue chanting Tell me what democracy looks like!, the counter-demonstrators stood in front of the statue, singing quietly. There was a large police presence with groups of officers spaced throughout the crowd. After sitting and chanting the marchers marched, some holding signs not specifically related to the cause of re-teaching the history of Columbus such as Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police. Observing and attending were members of the Knights of Columbus as well as alderpersons and other public servants. Im here because of my constituents and my heritage, said county board supervisor, Gabe Nudo. A lot of Italians (in Kenosha) have worked hard and contributed a lot of money to this community. Terry and George Ebner of Kenosha said they were at the rally to support those of Italian descent and the police. We back the blue and support the Italians, Terry said. Supporters of Kenosha Activism felt their cause was just as well. Kimberly and Jeremiah Johnson of Kenosha said they were there to support their children who took part in the march. I applaud what they are doing, Kimberly said. They need to fight for their future and for justice for the past. If they dont I dont think we can have equality. I tried to teach my kids the real history of America; not what theyre teaching in schools, added Jeremiah. Supporters of Italian heritage were not part of the original rally. According to Tim Rocco, the presence of those in support of Italian culture came about following social media rumors that there would be violence at the rally. It was rumored that some people from Illinois were going to try to hijack the protest and make it violent, but that didnt happen; it was just protesting, he said. We saw (the protest announcement) in the paper and came because we were concerned protesters might do something to the statue, George Ebner said. Rocco gave a shout-out to the police attending the rally. It should be noted that our police held their own even when they were provoked by the crowd, he said. The event lasted until 2:30 p.m. during which time the demonstrators left the statue grounds and circled back at least once. Shortly before their final departure for the Municipal Building, Alderman Rocco LaMacchia approached and hugged Whitney Cabal (who uses the name Billy Violet on social media), a spokesperson for Kenosha Activism. He told her he had heard online that the event might be violent and was glad it had not. Cabal acknowledged the angst felt by the Italian Americans present and tensions expressed by the activists as well. Today was very frustrating and a lot of hateful things were yelled in my ears, she said. I tried to pay respect to (supporters) of Columbus and present a plan to the community not to tear down the statue but to move it. Nudo noted that differences about history should not be contentious. I like everybodys historyIts history whether we agree on something or not. Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2 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. Dong Nai plans to send officials to assist the Long Thanh District in speeding up site clearance, compensation and resettlement for households affected by the Long Thanh airport project so that construction can begin next year. A rendering of the proposed Long Thanh International Airport in the southern province of Dong Nai. Photo courtesy of Airports Corporation of Vietnam As scheduled, Dong Nai Province will hand over the priority area of 1,800ha to the project investor by October, and the entire land by the second quarter of 2021. Cao Tien Dung, chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee, said at a recent meeting that it was important to complete the assessment of cleared land for affected households within this year. As of today, Long Thanh District Peoples Committee has made three compensation payments worth over VND440 billion (US$19.08 million) to 269 households, according to Dung. Le Van Tiep, vice chairman of Long Thanh District Peoples Committee, said due to the large number of affected households with the large land area, compensation payments will be implemented several times. At the end of April, the provincial Peoples Committee started construction of five bidding packages to build technical infrastructure at the Loc An - Binh Son resettlement area, including four roads and drainage systems. Land used for resettlement purpose is expected to be handed over to the affected households next month when the roads are completed. Meanwhile, the remaining technical infrastructure facilities are being implemented quickly, according to Tiep. Delayed disbursement According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, delayed land acquisition disbursement for the airport could affect the progress of the airport, scheduled to begin in the second quarter next year and to be completed by 2025. As of June, only 10 per cent of the VND18.19 trillion ($784 million) allocated for airport land acquisition and compensation had been disbursed, according to the ministry. In April, the Dong Nai administration committed to disburse all funding within this year, but the low disbursement rate means the province will likely fail to complete land acquisition and compensation by 2021 as promised, experts have warned. Recently, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc requested the province to speed up site clearance and compensation as well as disbursement of all VND23 trillion for the airport project in accordance with the law. The PM also set a deadline for assessment of cleared land for compensation purposes by the end of November. He suggested that the Ministry of Transport closely work with Dong Nai Province to promptly solve any hurdles to ensure the project remains on schedule. To build Long Thanh airport, the site clearance project must acquire more than 5,000ha of land and more than 364 extra hectares to build two resettlement sites. Around 4,800 local households and 26 organisations are expected to be relocated to make way for the proposed airport. The airport is expected to serve 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of freight each year. Covering a total area of more than 5,580 hectares, the airport will be located in six communes in Long Thanh District in Dong Nai Province. The airports total investment is VND336.63 trillion ($14.47 billion), with construction divided into three phases. In the first phase, a runway and one passenger terminal along with other supporting works will be built to serve 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo each year. VNS Long Thanh airport project may lag behind schedule The Ministry of Planning and Investment has expressed concern that the Long Thanh airport project might not get off ground in 2021 as scheduled, as the disbursement of capital for site clearance works has met a mere 10% of the target. Here are 20 of the most anticipated book titles being released in 2022. Some are out already, and the listed release dates are current as of Jan. 10. The National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharabutu, has expressed worry at pockets of violence that have characterised the voter registration exercise in some parts of the country. Sheikh Sharabutu says such acts dent the country's image and its democratic credentials. The Chief Imam was speaking at this year's Eid celebration on Friday, July 31. Commenting via his spokesperson, Sheikh Aremeyaw Shaibu, he said, these such acts of aggression during simple voter registration must be condemned seriously. I want to use this opportunity to urge the security agencies to expedite investigations and punish the perpetrators of the crime and lawlessness if they are found. He noted the stabbing to death of a man at Banda following an altercation between some New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) supporters as one of the most disturbing incidents. Also of concern was the firing of weapons at registration centres. The MP for Awutu Senya East, Mavis Hawa Koomson, is facing calls for her resignation after she discharged a firearm at a voter registration centre in her constituency during a scuffle. The ongoing compilation of a new voters register has had its fair share of violent incidences in other areas of the country since it began on June 30. Also, a point of concern during the process as been the undue prominence at some registration centres, which the Electoral Commission has warned against. The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), for example, has advised political parties to check the conduct of its party agents and members at the registration centres. Many others, including the NDCs vice presidential candidate, Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang have also condemned the menace, and have asked for proper punishment for the perpetrators. ---citinewsroom Source: Xinhua| 2020-08-01 20:51:38|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close -- The makeshift hospital mainly receives COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms or those still waiting to be admitted to hospital. As many as 500 beds are available in the first phase, and another 1,500 will be available if needed. -- Hong Kong is getting stressed out in the face of a resurgence of coronavirus infections since the beginning of July, with most of the new patients getting infected locally. Daily new cases have remained above 100 for 11 consecutive days. -- Experts said the makeshift hospital can help release more hospital beds so that patients with more severe symptoms can get necessary and timely treatment. -- At the request of the HKSAR government, the central government has decided to send testing personnel to Hong Kong to help with large-scale nucleic acid tests and assist Hong Kong in building temporary quarantine and treatment centers. HONG KONG, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- A makeshift hospital at the AsiaWorld-Expo, a venue near the Hong Kong International Airport, began receiving COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms since Saturday afternoon, Hong Kong's Hospital Authority (HA) said. The authority estimated that about 20 to 30 patients would be admitted on the first day. Henry Fan Hung-ling, chairman of HA, said earlier that 500 beds are available in the first phase, and another 1,500 will be available if needed. Photo taken on Aug. 1, 2020 shows the interior of a makeshift hospital for COVID-19 patients at the AsiaWorld-Expo, a venue near the Hong Kong International Airport, in south China's Hong Kong. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaochu) The makeshift hospital mainly receives COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms or those still waiting to be admitted to hospital. A patient will go through a physical examination in the makeshift hospital, and those with low blood oxygen, breathlessness or abnormal X-ray results will be sent to hospital immediately. Experts said the makeshift hospital can help release more hospital beds so that patients with more severe symptoms can get necessary and timely treatment. At the entrance of the makeshift hospital, three flat-TV screens broadcast each and every bed and each patient's conditions in a tabular form, and another four screens played the live coverage of the surveillance cameras. Dozens of computers have been lined up for registration outside the entrance. Medics have to put on their isolation gown and other protective gear in specific cubicles before entering. Eight wheelchairs, three sliding hospital beds and 20 chairs facing a TV are available in the waiting area near the wards. Inside each semi-isolated ward of about three meters long and three meters wide are a bed, a bedside table, a desk and a chair. Wi-Fi connections and common areas with TVs and sofas are also installed. Photo taken on Aug. 1, 2020 shows the interior of a makeshift hospital for COVID-19 patients at the AsiaWorld-Expo, a venue near the Hong Kong International Airport, in south China's Hong Kong. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaochu) An on-site medical staffer told Xinhua that there are 31 toilets that circle around the wards. Besides, several clinical waste areas, hand washing basins and an X-ray room are ready for use. To reduce the contact between medical staff and patients, apart from ultraviolet disinfection rooms and changing rooms, there are also self-service facilities for patients to disinfect themselves and measure their blood pressure and oxygen content. Wong Shuk-ching, senior nursing officer of Queen Mary Hospital, said besides 100 newly-purchased beds, the rest 400 beds were sent by hospitals across Hong Kong. Set meals will be served three times a day for the patients, she said. Cheng Chi-chung, a doctor with Queen Mary Hospital, said a patient can be discharged after he or she shows negative results in two nucleic acid tests or shows positive in an antibody test. Hong Kong is getting stressed out in the face of a resurgence of coronavirus infections since the beginning of July. The total tally spiked from 1,268 on July 5 to 3,396 on Saturday, with most of the new patients getting infected locally. New cases have remained above 100 for 11 consecutive days. People wearing face masks walk in the Central area of Hong Kong, south China, July 27, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Shen) The rapid increase has put Hong Kong's hospital system under great strain as isolation wards and beds are being squeezed to the limit, with many new patients unable to be admitted to hospital for isolation treatment in time. "We are on the verge of a large-scale community outbreak, which may lead to a collapse of our hospital system and cost lives, especially of the elderly," Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam said earlier this week, noting that Hong Kong is facing the most severe epidemic situation since January. Given the grave challenge, the central government has pledged all necessary support for Hong Kong. "Hong Kong has the strong backing of the great motherland to overcome the epidemic and all sorts of risks," the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council said Friday in a statement. At the request of the HKSAR government, the central government has decided to send testing personnel to Hong Kong to help with large-scale nucleic acid tests and assist Hong Kong in building temporary quarantine and treatment centers, the office said. The National Health Commission said Saturday that seven members of a newly-established 60-strong nucleic acid testing team from the mainland will arrive in Hong Kong on Sunday, marking the first batch of mainland professionals to join the anti-epidemic fight here, with more medical personnel and materials available if needed. Besides, the commission has also set up a panel of six experts from Wuhan to provide technical support for Hong Kong's construction of makeshift hospitals. People wearing face masks take a bus in the Central area of Hong Kong, south China, July 27, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Shen) While Hong Kong's medical system is approaching its limit, the assistance from the mainland at this critical point will inject a shot of "cardiotonic" into Hong Kong's anti-epidemic fight, Ng Chau-pei, president of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, said earlier this week. Echoing Ng, Chan Yung, vice-chairperson of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said the mainland has gained a lot of valuable experience in the battle against COVID-19 and the firm support of the central government will be a strong guarantee for Hong Kong to win the fight. The HKSAR government has introduced several rounds of stringent measures over the past weeks, such as compulsory mask-wearing in all public places, the group gathering limit of two people, and tightened testing and quarantine arrangement for exempted persons such as sea and air crew members. Meanwhile, due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, the chief executive on Friday announced the postponement of the 2020 Legislative Council General Election of the HKSAR by one year. (Video reporters: Qiu Bo, Wan Houde; Video editor: Zheng Xin) Recently, Rhode Island officials asked Connecticut and Massachusetts residents to stay away from that states beaches while Ocean State officials grapple with outdoor social distancing in the pandemic. The irony of banning from a beach people from Connecticut -- a state with some of the countrys most restrictive beach access rules -- would be rich if it wasnt a symptom of something ugly. While Rhode Island seeks to regulate who uses its state beaches, some Nutmeg State beach communities (looking at you, Norwalk) have tightened their already-draconian beach restrictions, under the guise of limiting large gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. The problem with that is that unlike Rhode Island, Connecticuts out-of-reach beaches is an old story that stretches back multiple generations, says Andrew W. Kahrl, author of Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for Americas Most Exclusive Shoreline, which won last years Connecticut Book Award for non-fiction. The pandemic is a cover. Localities are using the pandemic as a pretext for reintroducing ordinances that aim to exclude non-residents, said Kahrl, a University of Virginia associate professor of history and African American studies. Often times, public health crisis or other sort of times of social unrest can be the very moment when some of these exclusionary practices come back with a vengeance. This despite a 2001 state Supreme Court case that might have opened the gates. That year, the court ruled that a town ordinance that restricted the 147-acre park, Greenwich Point, to residents and their guests was unconstitutional. Brenden Leydon, now a Stamford lawyer, sued when he was denied a beach pass to enter the park. The case turned, oddly enough, on the First Amendment, and the park as a public forum. An ACLU of Connecticut press release trumpeted that the decision basically opened all town parks and beaches to non-residents. Except it didnt. Over time, shoreline towns have embraced their restrictions under the pretext of either protecting their local environment, or preserving the shoreline for people who pay taxes there. That last part would make sense except, as Karhl says, historically every shoreline town has cheerfully accepted state and federal funds. American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut is monitoring each town as they institute new restrictions that are, in addition to being iffy legally, are bad public policy, said David McGuire, the organizations executive director. Were urging towns to create policies in consultation with medical experts, said McGuire. Set a capacity limit of how many people can be on a beach, and instead of having town employees check for peoples identification, have a first-come, first-serve system. Were urging towns to take up a policy grounded in science, not fear and politics. You know where this is heading, dont you? Local, exclusive beaches generally reflect local, exclusive zoning laws, and in a time when the pandemic has unearthed so much of our societal inequality, there sit our segregated cities and villages, exposed and entrenched in systemic racism. Just a few days after a Black Lives Matter march in town, wealthy Weston, a town of just over 10,000 souls, decided to keep embracing single-family homes with yards no smaller than two acres. The state counts just seven affordable housing units in town, but according to a strategic plan, residents oppose plastic bags, so theres that. And besides, according to the plan, at least theyre more affordable than nearby Westport. It really isnt fair to single out Weston or Westport. Connecticut has an affordability problem that may be reflected in its shoreline residents rabid restriction of the beaches, but extends statewide. Connecticut has the countrys ninth-most expensive housing market, according to Partnership for Strong Communities, a Hartford-based advocacy organization, and some towns have spent no small amount of effort fighting affordable housing initiatives within their boundaries. Many of these very same communities historically and continue to practice exclusion in their housing market, with housing markets that are unaffordable in effect that means the shoreline is off-limits to working families, said Kahrl. Kahrl has long been interested in issues of race and equality in recreation and public space. In his research, he stumbled upon Connecticuts tattered history of restricting its beaches. Ned Coll, who drew the connection between racial inequality and exclusionary beach policies, was a Hartford firebrand in the 60s and 70s who brought children down from Hartford to wade in Connecticuts exclusive waters. Coll, a complicated man whom Kahrl captured faithfully, has mostly faded from activism, though hes still living in the Hartford area. I will say the issues that Ned Coll raised remain with us today, said Kahrl. And I think we need to recognize that making sure public space is open to the entire public is an important measure toward building a more equal and inclusive society. As a scholar and a citizen, said Kahrl, I believe racism and the history of racial injustice are the most important themes in American history. You cant understand history without understanding African American history. Its not an add-on. It is the story. For now, McGuire said that while the state ACLU monitors town policies, the organization will also watch that whatever pandemic-inspired policies dont linger longer than does the virus. Israel, US Sign Document on Joint Air Defence Military Cooperation Sputnik News 10:42 GMT 31.07.2020 MOSCOW (Sputnik) The Israeli Defence Ministry hosted on Thursday the annual US-Israeli Defence Policy Advisory Group (DPAG). The DPAG session discussed strategic and regional security challenges following the recent escalation between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement on the border, with explosions and exchanges of gunfire. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) and the US military have signed a document that provides for the partnership between the states in the air defence field, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said. The US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) and Israel's Iron Dome are both anti-ballistic missile defence systems, which are designed to intercept and shoot down short-, medium- and intermediate-range aircraft devices. The IDF also praised the longstanding cooperation between Israel and the United States. IAF officers, led by Air Defence Division commander, Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav, held a video conference with members of the US European Command, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing the IDF statement. The US has provided Israel with extensive support in political, economic and military directions. The two states also coordinate joint military exercises and weapons development, as well as some other scientific and cultural exchanges. With the backing of the United States, the expanding of sovereignty over the West Bank and the Jordan Valley was among the top declarations of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The sculpture of Zhao Yiman [CNSPHOTO] Zhao Yiman, a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), is a legendary heroine who fought against Japanese invading troops in northeast China from 1931 to 1936, and sacrificed her life fearlessly for saving the nation from the Japanese aggression. Zhao was born in Yibin County, Sichuan Province in October 1905. She joined the Socialist Youth League of China in 1923 and became a full member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1926. In September 1927, she went to the former Soviet Union to study at Sun Yat-sen University. She returned to China in the winter of 1928, and engaged in underground revolutionary work in Shanghai, and then in Jiangxi Province. After the September 18th Incident, she was sent to northeast China to start up struggles against the Japanese aggression. She laid down her life in 1936. In November 1935, the Japanese aggressors and the puppet troops encircled the 2nd Regiment of the 3rd Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Forces. Zhao, as Political Commissar of the regiment, commanded her troops to fight fiercely against the enemies and killed more than 30 of their number. In order to cover the troops as they broke through the enemys encirclement, Zhao was seriously wounded. Several days later, the enemy found Zhao in a farmhouse where she had stayed to heal her wound. In the fighting at the farmhouse, she was wounded again and captured by the enemy. Cruelly tortured, Zhao would rather die than yield. In order to extort a confession, the enemy sent her to a hospital to receive treatment. Once there, she loudly proclaimed the principle of resisting against the Japanese aggression and saving the nation. Han Yongyi, a female nurse, and Dong Xianxun, a guard, were deeply moved by Zhao's spirit and helped her to escape. Unfortunately Zhao was captured again by the enemy and suffered even crueler torture. But she never gave in. On August 2, 1936, she wrote down her last words, which asked her child to continue the struggle. On her way to the execution ground, Zhao sang loudly The Internationale and The Ode of the Red Flag, and shouted loudly Down with Japanese Imperialism! and Long Live the Communist Party of China! File photo taken in east China's Shanghai in 1928 shows Zhao Yiman and her son. [Xinhua] Before her death on August 2, 1936, Zhao left a letter to her son Ning'er: "It's a pity that your mother hasnt done her duty to educate you. Because of her resolute struggle against Manchuria and resistance to Japan, today is the eve of her sacrifice. Mother will never see you again before death. Hopefully, Ning'er will grow up quickly and comfort your mother underground! My dearest child! Mother does not need thousands of words to educate you, but uses practice to influence you. When you are grown up, don't forget that your mother died for the country. " For various reasons, this touching letter wasnt seen by her son Ning'er until 1956, 20 years later. (Source: cpcnews.cn/Translated and edited by womenofchina.cn) Male and female teenagers are equally as likely to experience sexual harassment in NSW high schools, with male students more exposed to different forms of harassment behaviour. A study of more than 4000 NSW high school students found 40 per cent of girls and just over 40 per cent of boys had been sexually harassed in the most recent school term alone. Ms Xiaojing Lei, the lead researcher from Macquarie University, said it was likely male students were victimised by both boys and girls whereas female students tended to be harassed mainly by male students. Sexual comments, jokes, gestures or looks were the most widely-experienced form of harassment, reported by 30 per cent of boys and 32 per cent of girls. Twenty per cent of boys and 15 per cent of girls said they experienced sexualised poking, grabbing or pinching. The family of a man who disappeared in Outback Australia more than a year ago has revealed his final message. Peter English, 38, sent his family a picture of himself sitting in front of a 'Welcome to Mount Isa sign' on February 11, 2019. The dad-of-two, from Caboolture in Queensland, wrote 'tick one off the bucket list' in the message but has not been seen or heard from since. His father Gary English believes his son is alive and possibly living off grid somewhere in Australia. 'It just said "tick one off the bucket list" and that's the last time we heard from him,' Gary told The Sunday Mail Peter English (pictured), of Caboolture, vanished after texting his family a picture of himself with the message 'tick one off the bucket list' Peter was experiencing a breakdown of his marriage and lost his job at Boral Asphalt at the time of his disappearance His car - a Ford Falcon with registration FPV-849 - was seen not long after near Tennant Creet in the Northern Territory. While his son hasn't been seen since Mr English is still hopeful he will be found alive. The father-of-two (pictured) was experiencing a breakdown of his marriage at the time of his disappearance and lost his job at Boral Asphalt Peter English's car, a Ford Falcon with registration FPV-849 (pictured), was seen not long after near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory The family - including Peter's son Bryce, 7, and daughter Marli, 4 - are desperate to hear from him. Mr English said his son loved the outdoors - fishing, shooting, dirt biking riding - and could see him on a property mustering cattle, somewhere off the grid. 'Just get in contact with us and let us know that you're all right ... Let us know that you're OK, happy, and that'll give us satisfaction,' Mr English told The Sunday Mail. 'And for the kids to know their dad is OK and they might see him one day that would be great.' Northeastern University said Friday it will require students to receive three coronavirus tests before attending fall-term classes, per the Boston Globe. How it works: Students must get tested as soon as they arrive on campus, again three days later and then once more two days after that. Students must quarantine until they've received their first negative test, and will not be allowed in classrooms until they've had their third. The rules will apply to all students attending classes on-campus, regardless of whether they live in campus housing. Of note: Northeastern announced in June that students will have a choice to attend in-person classes or opt for virtual learning. 'Amar Singh witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters' Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo Leaders across the political spectrum condoled the death of Rajya Sabha MP and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh on Saturday and said he had friends in all parties. Vice President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu conveyed his condolences to Singh's family and associates and prayed to god for the peace of the departed soul. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described him as an energetic public figure, who had witnessed some major political developments from close quarters. "Amar Singh Ji was an energetic public figure. In the last few decades, he witnessed some of the major political developments from close quarters. He was known for his friendships across many spheres of life. Saddened by his demise," Modi said in a tweet. SP president Akhilesh Yadav tweeted a photograph of Singh with his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, and paid homage to the departed soul. Paying homage to Singh, defence minister Rajnath Singh described him as an energetic leader with a humorous nature and said he had friends in all the political parties. Echoing similar sentiments, Bharatiya Janata Party president JP Nadda said Singh was a strategist and a skilled politician with a sociable nature. Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel said Singh will always be remembered as a valued colleague and a wonderful human being. Patel's party colleague Raj Babbar paid homage to Singh and said may the almighty bless his soul and give strength to his family to bear the irreparable loss. Singh (64) died in Singapore, where he was undergoing treatment, on Saturday. He had undergone a kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time. Mumbai: BJP and Shiv Sena have won six seats each as the counting of votes began this morning in the election to 147 municipal councils and 17 nagar panchayats across 25 districts in Maharashtra, seen as a litmus test for the Devendra Fadnavis government. As many as 15,826 candidates are in the fray for 3,705 seats spread over the municipal councils and nagar panchayats, where voting was held on Sunday in the first phase with around 70 per cent of the electorate exercising its franchise. No nominations were received for Shirala Nagar Panchayat in Sangli district while 28 candidates were elected unopposed. Counting of votes began at 10 AM. Polling was also held for municipal council president post in 147 places for which 1,013 candidates are in the race. The polls are being viewed as mini Assembly elections and a test of popularity of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis who led the BJP campaign to make inroads in the rural areas where Congress and NCP hold sway. This is for the first time that presidents of municipal councils will be elected directly by people. The second phase for elections to 14 municipal councils will be held on December 14. Demonetisation, farm distress, improvement in rural infrastructure and caste tensions due to morcha by various communities in the run up to the polls were the main issues apart from local matters. While ruling alliance partners, BJP and Shiv Sena, had tied up for the polls, the opposition Congress and NCP didnt formally announce any alliance. While BJP projected development as its main plank, during the campaign Fadnavis hailed the demonetisation move as a major attack on black money. The Congress highlighted the hardships being faced by the poor and common man due to demonetisation among other issues. In total, including yesterdays phase, elections are being held for 212 civic bodies, comprising municipal councils and nagar panchayats, in four phases. The next rounds of voting are scheduled on December 14, December 18, and January 8. Corn Oil Market Research Report by Product (Edible Corn Oil and Non-edible Corn Oil), by Application (Food Processors, Food Service Restaurants, Livestock, Pharmaceutical Industry, and Retails) - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 New York, July 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Corn Oil Market Research Report by Product, by Application - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913974/?utm_source=GNW The Global Corn Oil Market is expected to grow from USD 4,144.79 Million in 2019 to USD 6,537.71 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.89%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Corn Oil to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: Based on Product , the Corn Oil Market studied across Edible Corn Oil and Non-edible Corn Oil. Based on Application, the Corn Oil Market studied across Food Processors, Food Service Restaurants, Livestock, Pharmaceutical Industry, and Retails. Based on Geography, the Corn Oil Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Corn Oil Market including Abu Dhabi Vegetable Oil Company LLC, ACH Food Companies, Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Company, Associated British Food plc, Cargill, Inc., Conagra Brand Inc., Elburg Global B.V., FEC Solutions LLC, GreenField Specialty Alcohols Inc., and Savola Group. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Corn Oil Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. Cumulative Impact of COVID-19: COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Corn Oil Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Corn Oil Market during the forecast period? 3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Corn Oil Market? 4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Corn Oil Market? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Corn Oil Market? 6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Corn Oil Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05913974/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Story continues CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001